Adventure: The Risen One 

Prologue: Laura Greene and Denise Miller are practicing their guitars together for the next meeting of the Maranatha Christian Fellowship.  Suddenly, Denise disappears in a burst of flame.  
Alarmed, Laura calls Mike Roberts.  After he disclaims responsibility, she calls Stephen Wolcott.  
Stephen is unable to locate Denise psionically at first, but he remains on watch.  
Denise appears atop a stone altar in a temple in another dimension.  A priest stands above her with a jagged blade, and proclaims, "This is the form of the risen one who will stand before us!  She has been granted us from the Balance of Power, to stand against our enemies! We shall worship this one, and she shall lead us to victory!  OUR DESTINY SHALL BE FULFILLED!" 
Denise, dumbstruck till now! can say only one word: "No!!" By the force of her Word the Temple rocks.  
The worshipers stand dumbfounded.  
The Risen One repeats: "NO! !!" Objects within the Temple ignite, and the Temple itself begins to crumble.  By force of will, the Risen One leaves her worshipers and returns whence she came.  
Part I: Stephen, still on the watch, notices the return of something really different.  He contacts Laura.  
Denise, back within the walls of her room, closes her eyes in relief.  But as her eyes are closed she sees things differently, and in a disturbing way.  Breaking through the walls of her room, she flees.  
Ellipsis finds the thing he sensed earlier to be undetectable now.  He now calls in the entire Balance.  
After they assemble, they spread out to search the entire campus plus environs.  
Ellipsis, much more mobile than before with his new powers, finds Denise first.  As he notifies his teammates, he swoops in.  
Denise, horrified by the approach of the notorious adventurer, shrieks in fright.  Ellipsis bursts into flame and crashes into the ground.  
FOAD and the Mighty Tim, patrolling together, arrive instantly.  Knowing the new powers of Ellipsis, they are alarmed at his fall.  They react strongly, with their most powerful attacks from all sides.  It only makes the Risen One angry.  She withstands all attacks.  As the attacks QO on, flame rises in the air above her, and 
	whirls around her to drive her attackers away.  	- 
Morningstar arrives and sees her teammates beleagured.  Straining her powers, she turns the flames back upon the Risen One in the middle.  Denise, surprised! retreats.  
The heroes regroup and compare lotes.  They finally conclude that, somehow, this is Denise, the one that Laura was searching for.  Somehow she's got new powers, which she doesn't know how to cope with.  If they all peaceably face her together, she might be reasonable.  But where is Ellipsis? 
Ellipsis at the bottom of a IO-foot trough, is recovering from the Risen One's attack.  Though he turned most of the flames away, the attack was still too powerful for his new physical powers.  He deems these powers to be equal in magnitude with those of his teammates combined.  Since he has himself fallen, he mat only assume that his teammates could not withstand the attack either.  If he is to prevail, it will take all his physical and mental abilities, as powerfully as he can apply them.  
The other heroes move forward to a field off campus, and find the Risen One cowering there.  Morningstar approaches, and says, • ...  Denise?" 
The Risen One responds to her name.  But suddenly Ellipsis strikes.  
He bursts out of the ground between!them and assaults the Risen One with energy bolts and mental force.  
She responds with roughly equal force, resulting in stalemate.  
Ellipsis now has one answer that he did not have before: increase the power! But the power of his 
	opponent increases as well!
Morningstar resolves the stalemate.  After she confers with her teammates, Mighty Tim strains his powers and intercepts all bolts between the combatants.  Morningstar then yanks Ellipsis away, and begins to chew him out.  With all his mental powers, why didn't he figure out who the Risen One was? Why didn't he confer with his teammates?  Ellipsis has to admit, now that he has new power, he found its use attractive.
Nonetheless the battle ends.  Ellipsis, upon mental examination of Denise, asks her and Morningstar to meet with him later.  The others insist on showing up, so they all find that Denise's strange abilities as the Risen One cannot be circumvented by either mental or physical means.  The attempt by Ellipsis and Morningstar to restructure her body mystically backfires.  Until these abilities are circumvented, Denise may not speak a word without wreaking havoc.  Somehow, she'll have to live her life as a godlike mystic being.  
Postlude: Ellipsis, when present, can easily link Denise's mind to Laura's.  Privately he is reluctant to do so: mental dependence is not good !or any of them.  Laura asks Stephen to act as mental conduit once more, though:  Denise has to let her friends at the Maranatha Christian Fellowship, and their spiritual leader Matthew Walker, know what happened, and 'speak" with them once more.  
Stephen thus accompanies the two to a Thursday night meeting.  (Not too long ago he would have insisted upon going in full costume, no matter how it disrupted the meeting.  However, since then! he's met two women Christine Lassiter and Julie Moretti - who know of his powers and don't seem to be offended by them.  Besides, he can always trust to his mental control to ensure that no complications arise.) 
The meeting starts as they arrive, with the "praise” session; thus, Stephen has to sit through 45 minutes of singing and dancing in the aisles.  he best he can do is endure it.  But finally the 'witness session arrives.  Stephen links himself with Laura and Denise.  
When Denise is ready to take her turn, Laura rises and proclaims, "Denise has something to tell us about.  She can't say it aloud, though.  She has to say it with her soul."  Meanwhile, Stephen prepares a mental link with all people in the room.  
Over the mental 1ink Denise tells her story: how she was 1inked with some malevolent demon.  She tells something in addition: she now sees things differently.  She could barely stand to be within the room that night! The false god trying to possess her body has biased her against Christ's wonderful salvation! Indeed, she is now biased against life itself! She needs their prayers for God's help - every minute, every second!
The room is silent for- ten minutes while the emotions of those within overflow with response.  Denise stands in the center of a laying-on of hands which even Stephen (surrounded by the faithful) joins.  His mental fortitude, with that of all the other-s, strengthens her against her inner enemy.  
Ste!hen stays for the meeting, and he and Laura walk Denise home.  Afterward, Laura (having prayed to God and the Holy Spirit for inspiration) talks to Stephen.  (He is very impressed with how the fellowship supported Denise.  But though he admires their fellowship, he cannot abide their mindless devotion to one point of view.) They divert to her room, and the conversation continues into the night.

Interlude: 
When Stephen Wolcott was young and his mind was evolving, he would have nightmares in which his mind was thinking in five directions at once, unable to carry any thought to completion.  He could only wait in bed until the mental paralysis passed.  As his control increased, the nightmares finally went away.  
When he first gained the power to read minds, he had otter nightmares in which the thoughts of other people replaced his own.  Again, as his control increased, the nightmares passed.  
But the nightmares are returning.  
Interlude: Strike the Preacher Down 
As usual when springtime hits the North, the street preacher Brother Jed has hit the campus, As usual, his preachings attract crowds of both the faithful and unfaithful.  The unfaithful scoff; the faithful try to persuade him not to make a fool of himself and his teachings.  He resists the faithful with great fervor and the unfaithful with greater fervor.  
Laura Greene and some of her friends from Maranatha listen to the preacher .  The others mostly say "Amen, brother." Laura wonders what the reactions of the non-Christian listeners to Brother Jed must be if the rest of the Balance might be any example, 
Mike Roberts listens to the preacher, and he is offended.  He hears Brother Jed accuse the entire audience of being whores and whoremongers.  In particular, one of his friends from the MSU Science Fiction Society who simply walks away from th~ preacher is proclaimed by Brother Jed to be a whore and denied her salvation (whatever that may be), He wonders if he can do something about it, without the rest of the Balance finding out.  He then sees Steve across the crowd.  
Stephen Wolcott listens to the preacher, He has talked with Laura at length about the principles of Christianity; this preacher who claims Christianity is not sounding at all Christian.  He observes that Brother Jed goes to great lengths to antagonize the crowd at large.  At that time his teammate Mike Roberts approaches him.  
Mike maintains that Brother Jed is slanderous and should probably be quieted.  After some small thought, Stephen agrees, and they draw their plans.  
Two hours later, a figure dressed in white with an obscured face, parts the crowd in front of Brother Jed and accuses him of blasphemy against the human race created in God's image.  Jed responds by accusing the figure of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (the offense of which is non-forgivable - Matthew 12: 31-32).  The angelically - dressed figure responds by consigning Jed's lies to the flames of hell.  Brother Jed disappears in a burst of flame.  The angelic figure proclaims, "Judgment is done" - and disappears also.  
Brother Jed appears in a pearly fog.  Another shining white figure appears before him, and calls him to account for his sins.  Jed replies, "I have not sinned against you, 0 Lord.' The response comes, "But you have blasphemed against those created in my image." 
"I have not proclaimed commandments other than your own for them to follow.” "But you have spoken lies against them, my human race." 
"How, 0 Lord?" 
·You do accuse them at large of whoredom and whoremongery, the accusation of which doth sting in nine eyes which see justice throughout my world." 
"But they do proclaim whoredom for other gods when they forsake thy commandments." 
Laura Greene walks past Wells Hall on her way home from class.  The people there are still excited over what happened: a man in white took Brother Jed for judgment.  Laura thinks for a moment says 'Oh no!', and rushes off.  A few moments later Morningstar rises to toe sky.  She sees a fog covering Hubbard Hall, the tallest building on campus, and flies toward it.  
Ellipsis continues to confront Brother Jed atop Hubbard Hall.  Ellipsis proclaims, "Many of those My 
	people whom you demerit do only follow me in their own ways." 
"But I preach to them that they may follow thine commandments which Thou hast stated to them."
"However, many that you preach to in My name do disregard Me due to your excesses in accusation." 
"But thy word which I preach doth divide them as a sword, as Thou hast stated.”
Then Ellipsis gets an alert from Mighty Tim: Morningstar is comin9~ He asks Tim: Can you get rid of 
	her somehow? Mighty Tim replies: 1 can try! 
Mighty Tim, wearing white robes instead of his usual black, appears in a burst of flame in Morningstar's flight path.  As she slams into him, he grabs hold of her and teleports.  They do not re-emerge upon the Earth for five seconds, 
They appear to the west of Lansing somewhere.  Mighty Tim stumbles briefly, and Morningstar shudders upon the ground.  Finally, she looks up and asks, ·why?" Why did he hurt her once more - without cause, this time? He has no immediate answer.  
(Because Morningstar derived her abilities in part from a teleportation attempt by the Mighty Tim, she is resistant to his teleportation if she fights it.  She did not know that until today, however.  But there's a catch: if she fights the teleportation, she suffers great trauma.  Her first experience adrift in the dimension of transport is something she can never suppress.) 
Meanwhile, Ellipsis has decided to end his verbal argument with Brother Jed.  His mutated wi11 power shall prove more effective.  Mentally he enters Jed's mind and begins to change it.  No more shall he preach.  
But Brother Jed resists - strongly.  This force he feels in his mind cannot be God's power! Therefore, it is falsehood!  And on the edge of his range Ellipsis feels Mighty Tim - returning with Morningstar.  Tim is thinking: better give up.
Therefore, Ellipsis tries to erase the knowledge of the conflict from Jed's mind as he takes his leave, Ellipsis does not succeed completely; Jed retains the impression of a climactic conflict with the temptations of evil.  He returns to preaching with greater fervor than ever.  
Days later, Laura Greene finds Stephen Wolcott.  The tone of their conversation is sad.