Month: January 2018

Rooms and offices were chosen, much of the required staff was hired, and the final pieces of equipment had been installed as the day of the grand opening of the AzTech Pyramid neared. Tomorrow would see the big media extravaganza that Aztech was throwing in the atrium lobby for the opening of the building and the relocating of the corporate HQ to floors 51-65, to be immediately followed by the Vanguard’s first official press conference in their own new base of operations.

After a late-morning meeting with Álvaro to go over and sign the final lease agreement and special covenants for the top floors, the billionaire had left for a staff meeting with his department heads, while the members of the Vanguard had scattered to their individual interests. Jonny, Roland and Chuck, having just that morning finally got Jonny’s X-Station 5 hooked up to the big screen in the cinema room, began what promised to be an epic session of Destiny. Artemis and JJ met in his office to go over the final candidates for the base’s Head of Security once more, while Kyle returned to his newly installed physics lab to finish calibrating the more sensitive equipment. Cooper returned to his room to call Meg and tell her the group had agreed she could have the exclusive on the first tour of the new HQ that evening… although she couldn’t print until after the press conference, of course. He then continued his intense studying of the legal guidelines and official protocols which SHADE had sent over with their security clearances the week before.

It  came as something of a surprise, about two hours later, when JJ received a call fromÁlvaro asking him to gather the whole team in the Danger Room (as Jonny had taken to calling it, apparently from something in one of his favorite comic books; Artemis kept insisting Simulation Chamber was more accurate, and less fanciful) at 15:00, in full uniforms.

“It’s a surprise!” was all the man would say when JJ pressed him for an explanation. So it was curious group that filed into the large open space on the 79th floor that afternoon. Álvaro stood in the center of the room toward the back, dressed in a dazzling white suit with a vest of iridescent purple and deep purple tie, a far cry from the elegant but very professional dark suit he’d been wearing earlier.

As the massive double doors slid shut and sealed with a hiss behind the group, Álvaro grinned and raised his hands, as if preparing to give a benediction. A wide grin split his face. “Thanks you all so much for coming… and now, let the games begin!”

“That is not de la Vega,” Artemis said, suddenly tensing. But even as she spoke the figure of the billionaire shimmered, digitized, and vanished as silently as a soap bubble.

“A hologram!” Chuck exclaimed, stating the obvious. “Cool!”

At that moment half a dozen panels opened in the walls around the room and  mobile weapons platforms darted out, while the lights increased to maximum illumination. While the others stood looking around in confusion, Artemis drew her escrima sticks and sprang forward as silvery coils of  metal shot out from the nearest hovering drone to immobilize her. Twisting aside, she deftly avoided their grasp, and her own hurled weapons wedged into an open port and smashed the optical sensor – when the sticks discharged their electrical blast, the drone shuddered, sparked, and crashed to the deck in a smoking pile of junk.

Simultaneously, another platform blasted Scion in the chest with a series of laser pulses, the ruby energy reflecting off his bronze and silver armor, to dissipate harmlessly. A Taser cannon fired at Phantom Ace, taking him completely by surprise – unable to phase in time, the electrical charge staggered him and he dropped to his knees, dazed. A flame thrower blasted a line of flames at Chilz, whose immense icy form just seemed to shrug off the heat without apparent effect, while coil launchers targeted Totem and Quanta. The first set missed the shaman entirely as he calmly stepped aside, while the second set wrapped tightly around Quanta – who shrugged his shoulders and expanded his carbon shell, tearing the metal coils in half. And as the pieces hit the deck Jonny started to reach down for the trigger that would ignite his flames, only to stagger forward at a Taser cannon blast took him in the back.

As the others slowly came to realize that something was wrong – with the exception of Chilz, who continued to think it was all just some cool surprise training session – Artemis retrieved her escrima sticks from the wreckage of the first drone, then leaping into the air drove them into the shell of another, bringing it, too, down in smoking ruin. “The weapons take 10 to 12 seconds to recharge between attacks!” she called out, turning to seek her next target.

Chilz aimed a hand at the drone nearest him at loosed a blast of ice shards toward it. The steel-like ice pierced the armor of the floating weapons platform, making it look like an ice sculpture of a cyborg porcupine. It wobbled, then crashed to the deck, where it shuddered once and died.

Realizing that something was seriously wrong, Scion dashed to a nearby section of wall that he knew contained control elements for the room. Ripping the access panel off, he began working at the glowing power conduits within. Phantom Ace, staggering back to his feet nearby and trying to shake off his dizziness, realized at once what his teammate was trying to do. But it would be quicker to do it from the control room, surely…

“Do you trust me?” he asked Scion, laying a hand on his shoulder.

“What? Yes, I suppose,” the engineer said absently, focused on his work. “Why–”

Phantom Ace focused his power and willed them both into the Danger Room’s control center on the floor below them –

– and felt like he’d been rammed into a wall of rubber at about 90 miles per hour. Already dazed, the feedback stunned him and he collapsed to the floor, barely conscious. Scion felt the feedback as well, but his armor shielded him from the worst of it. A quick check to see that the younger man was alive was all he could spare, however, as the weapons platforms continued to attack the others – and with increasing intensity. Shaking his head in frustration he turned back to the access panel.

As he worked to short circuit the whole system, Quanta began to throw up a carbon-fiber shield around him, one large enough to hold the whole group. Leaving gaps for Artemis and Blue Flame, who remained out of range, he called his nearer teammates to him…

As more attack drones popped out of the walls to bolster their dwindling brothers, the power of the attacks was definitely increasing. Blue Flame, after talking out one platform with a blast of searing plasma, actually felt the laser pulses from a second one that flashed through his form seconds later. The red energy interacted with his blue plasma to create a purple light show that did some, admittedly minor, damage – but he worried what would happen if they got more powerful… time to get behind Quanta’s wall!

As the shield grew in size and began to arc overhead to complete the dome, Totem’s mystic bolts took out one platform, but did nothing to shield him from the coils that nearly immobilized him. Bruised, he managed to wriggle free, and then blast the coils to pieces.

Blue Flame and Chilz shot bolts of fire and ice that took out one drone but missed another, and the former finally joined the latter within the closing dome. Artemis rolled in a second later, dispatching another weapons platform on the way, and Quanta sealed them in.

“Almost there,” Scion muttered, more to himself than the others. One more cross connection to this fiber-optic cable… reroute that signal booster… and…

“Done!” he cried in triumph, looking up at last and finally noticing the silvery dome around them all. “Nice touch, Quanta, thanks for keeping the damn things off me! I shut them down, it should be safe now…”

They all listened for any sound from beyond the dome, but there was only silence. After a quick glance at Artemis and Scion to see that they were all in agreement, Quanta dropped his shield. As the matter faded back into the quantum foam from whence it came they could all see that the system had indeed been shut down – fully intact but inactive weapons platforms were scattered across the room’s decking between the still-smoldering husks of their shattered brethren.

“What the hell was that all about,” Scion wondered, helping a still dazed but quickly recovering Phantom Ace to his feet.

“I don’t know,” Quanta replied, “but Álvaro has some explaining to do. I really don’t appreciate being pulled away from my work for some asinine practical joke, if that’s what this was.”

“I do not know what is going on either,” Artemis said, stooping to examine one of the destroyed drones. ‘But if I’m reading these setting correctly, all of the safeties were off. This was no joke, and no mere surprise training session.”

“Well, I agree that Álvaro needs to explain himself,” Scion agreed, heading for the doors with Totem and Chilz close on his heels. He punched in the code to open the door, but nothing happened. “What the hell? I didn’t override the door or the environmental systems, just the weapons systems. Why isn’t it opening?”

“I’ll ‘port down to the control center and see if I can open the door from there,” Phantom Ace volunteered. But once again he was stunned by whatever was preventing his teleportation power. “Well shit, I guess the teleport barrier isn’t tied into the weapons systems, huh?

“No, I’ll be fine,” he said as others helped him to his feet. He shook his head to clear it. “I’m a superhero, we recover quick, right? But jeez, what else could go wrong?”

As if in answer to his question the air suddenly shimmered around them, and the Vanguard suddenly found themselves standing in a large parking lot. The big box structure of a Wall-Mart rose several hundred feet away, and for a disorienting moment he wondered if they’d been teleported – the time of day looked right, but…

“A holographic recreation of the Wall-Mart property in the Bethlehem Flats section of the city,” Artemis called from the center of the room. She turned to scan their new surroundings. The parking lot was less than half full, and there was no sign of people or traffic anywhere. “I think–”

She was cut off as another shimmer in the air suddenly revealed six figures about a hundred feet north of her. Five were clearly humanoid robots, and aggressively military ones at that – almost eight feet tall, armored in white, with what looked like heavy calibre weapons built into their massive forearms. Behind the screen of robots stood another metallic figure, slightly smaller and to her trained eye obviously a man in full body armor.

Startled noises from behind her caused Artemis to turn for a quick look – an identical group, save that these were black, had appeared not twenty feet from her teammates gathered near the door. Or rather where the door had been. Something about these figures struck a familiar chord in her mind… the symbol on the thorax carapaces of the robots and on the chests of the knights… knights! That was it, they looked like –

“These are not holograms!” she called out to the others, springing aside to avoid a barrage of high-calibre rounds fired from the robots – Pawns – ahead of her. “This is an attack, act accordingly!”

The Pawns in front of Quanta suddenly unloaded scores of rounds into him at almost point-blank range. His quantum matter shell cracked and healed, cracked and healed, but held. The force of the attack pushed him back, however, leaving him slightly dazed and off balance. Before he could recover, the armored man behind the robots blasted him with some sort of gatling laser – a rapid stream of green energy pulses burst off his shell, keeping him on the defensive.

The white-armored man with Artemis‘ grouping – a Knight – fired his own gatling laser at her, and she leapt and jinked to avoid the emerald pulses. At the same time the white Pawns had all fired clusters of Taser darts. Each swarm had a dozen slivers of electrified metal, and she turned and twirled in a seemingly effortless dance that avoided them all… all except one, which tagged her left arm. The jolt was no more than an annoyance, but it sparked her anger – the escrima sticks flew at the white Knight. He staggered back, but was clearly unhurt, and her weapons now lay on the ground between him and his robotic Pawns.

Scion was momentarily torn between which teammate to aid, but Quanta yelled out “Leave this bunch to me!” so he leapt forward to hurl his tangle field at two of the Pawns menacing Artemis. The energy grid fully engulfed one robot, which shuddered and smoked under the charge, collapsing to the ground, inert. But the second one only caught the edge of the field, and though it staggered, it quickly recovered.

Quanta, reeling under another barrage of laser pulses from the black Knight and repeated high-calibre hits from the Pawns, still managed to throw up a quantum-matter shield between himself and the invaders. In the respite this gave him he quickly extended the carbon fiber construct to encase all of his opponents within a dome.

“Focus on the white group,” he called to his companions. “We’ll take them out first, then deal with these!” Matching action to words he began running toward the white group.

At about that time Phantom Ace, who had noticed Artemis‘ weapons of choice laying on the ground out of her reach, decided to teleport in and grab them for her. Perhaps fooled by the illusion of the hologram, or still woozy from his earlier damage, or more likely a combination of both, he forgot about the teleport inhibitor field – and laid himself out on the deck, once again semi-conscious.

Artemis, meanwhile, had not let the absence of her escrima sticks slow her down – ripping a bumper from the front of a holographic truck, she hurled it at a Pawn. The force field construct seemed as good as solid matter, knocking the robot back and sending its bullets skyward. The stream of lead passed through the Blue Flame, vaporizing as they did so, and a moment later the robot itself disintegrated in a ball of blue plasma.

Scion blew another robot apart with a round of armor-piecing rounds, and followed that up with a similar barrage at the white Knight. The rounds dented and cracked the armor, but the Knight rolled away before his defenses could be fully compromised. He quickly launched his own attack at the flying hero, knocking him back but doing no real damage to the superior armor.

Artemis took advantage of the Knight’s forced move to roll in and scoop up her escrima sticks, then whirled about to leap over the Pawn that had been tracking her movements, waiting for its shot. Coming down on its back, she jammed the sticks into each side of its neck and triggered the electric burst. The robot shuddered and shook, sparks flying and smoke rising from its joints, then collapsed in a tangle of dead limbs.

The last Pawn reached for her as she leapt off the dead form of its brother, and she grasped a metallic wrist, pivoting around to land on her feet and then using her momentum to hurl the automaton into the back of the Knight. He staggered away quickly enough, but before the robot could make it back to its feet it was pierced by half dozen spears of green ice that pinned it to the ground as the light in its electronic eyes dimmed and died.

With a grin Chilz turned from the dead robot and hurled a similar flight of deadly ice at the Knight, only to see him knock the barrage aside, shattering the spikes into sparkling shards. Then the Ice Elemental focused his will on the air around the embattled villain, bringing the temperature down to sub-Arctic levels in a matter of seconds. Thick frost began to form on the white armor – until a lance of blue plasma shot down from above, turning it to steam. In an instant a spiderweb of cracks snaked across the Knight’s shell.

Totem had earlier attempted to use his spell of Sleeping Mists on both the Knight and his Pawns, only to see it fail – the robots had no sentient minds to effect, and the Knight was protected in his sealed environment. But now the shaman saw his moment to act, and he did so. With the white Knight reeling and his armor damaged from bullets, ice and fire, Totem chanted out the incantation for the spell of Baleful Bindings… violet strands of energy flowed out from his gesturing hands and quickly twined and twisted themselves around the armored figure. In seconds his arms were bound to his sides and his legs solidly entwined – the Knight toppled over onto his back, struggling to no avail against the mystic bonds.

“Good work,” Artemis said, startling the shaman, though he hid it quickly. By all the Great Beasts, how did she do that? It was full daylight and he could’ve sworn she – he shook off the thought and focused on what she was saying. “I’ve seen something like this before – an organization called the Chessmen. It was a clandestine intelligence organization dedicated to espionage and blackmail in pursuit of the usual goals of such groups – political ascendancy and eventual world domination.

“But it was destroyed 30 years ago by the joint efforts of SHADE and the original Raptor… with a little help from me, mostly on the intelligence gathering side of things. Godwin Kaspar, the founder of the group and its ‘Black King,’ went to prison, as did all his followers who weren’t killed. I heard he died in prison five years later –”

As she spoke Artemis had been leading the group quickly back toward the silvery dome Quanta had erected over the black group of Chessmen, and now they all stopped as cracks appeared all across one side of the construct. “But I have no idea who could have resurrected and upgraded the organization,” she hastily concluded as the quantum shell exploded outward, “but clearly someone has.”

♠  ♠  ♠  ♠

As the rest of the Vanguard had been busy subduing the Chessmen’s white strikeforce, Gideon had been crawling back to his feet and trying to pull his wits together. It was obvious that his teleportation power was not going to be coming into play today, he was forced to admit as his head cleared. But maybe his other power could still be utilized… Álvaro had been slightly dismayed last week when he’d seen that his vaunted rotating phase shields couldn’t keep Gideon from passing through them like a ghost. Hopefully the tech genius hadn’t had time to find a way around that omission yet…

Gideon reached a tentative hand out to the silvery wall of Quanta’s temporary prison… and grinned as it passed through it without the slightest residence. The rest of him followed behind with alacrity. The interior of the dome was lit only by the red glow of the robots’ eyes and weapons, and the green glow of the laser guns on the armored dude’s arms. Clearly none of them needed the visible spectrum to see what they were doing – which seemed to be hammering on the shell that imprisoned them all.

Well, we can’t have that, Gideon thought as he watched faint cracks appear in the super dense material. He eyed the position of his opponents and considered the angles… which in the relatively confined space were rather interesting.

“Hey boys,” he called out, stepping to the spot he’d picked, “it looks like you can hit the side of a barn – or some freaky quantum construct, whatever – but I bet you can’t hit me…” he cocked his head quizzically and grinned.

The robot on his left was the first to let go with its arm-mounted machine-guns. The high-calibre stream of lead went straight into the center-of-mass of the target… and  passed harmlessly through, to tear into the meal guts of another robot behind him. Before the tactical computers of the other robots could absorb this datum two others had also fired on the target – one attack passed through to ricochet off the silvery walls, while the other struck but didn’t seem to harm the black Knight.

Realizing he couldn’t effect the Phantom Ace, the Knight resumed his assault on the wall, and using a single massive burst of laser energy, rather than the pulsed bursts his weapon usually delivered, blew a third of the structure away. In triumph he surged forward – straight into the waiting line of the Vanguard.

As the rest of the wall melted from existence Gideon saw Quanta gesture and one of his massive quantum blocks appeared over the three of the remaining robots. They looked up and he laughed as he visualized them holding up Coyote-esque signs with “Uh-oh!” printed on them. Then the block fell, crushing all three flat and then vanishing back into the ether before it could hit the pavement – which was really the deck of the Danger Room, Gideon realized. Jeez, that Quanta really was a genius! The pile of shattered exoskeletons smoked and threw off a few sparks, a few limbs twitched for a moment, and then stilled.

Gideon came up behind the black Knight, who was focused on attacking the heroes in front of him, and grabbed an armored shoulder. He phased, trying to take the man with him… but something in the armor resisted him, and his opponent remained solid. Which, of course, left him open to the bolt of red mystic energy that Totem unleashed on him, sending him to stumbling back.

Artemis dodged another swarm of Taser darts from the last Pawn, then did a sweeping kick to knock it off its feet. Before it could rise she was on top of it, driving her electrified escrima sticks into its head, which shattered. As she rose she saw the Blue Flame set off a flash of dazzling white light that seemed to momentarily blind the Knight’s optical sensors. To her approval he immediately followed up on the distraction and swooped in, his plasma katana taking shape in his hands. The energy weapon slashed across the chest of the armored figure, sending drops of molten material flying as it scored a deep gouge in the armor.

The Knight staggered back, arms flailing as the man inside tried to both keep his balance and aim his weapons – and he might have succeeded in at least one of those things if his foot hadn’t hit the remains of one of the destroyed Pawns. He went over on his back with a thunderous crash, and Artemis knew then it was all but over.

But as Scion moved in to make sure he stayed down, the armored man suddenly spasmed, his back arcing so sharply they could hear the sound as his back broke, before collapsing into utter stillness. Scion bent and ripped the helmet off the man’s head, revealing the face of a Caucasian man perhaps 30 years old… although it was hard to be certain, as his face was twisted in a rictus of pain, eyes rolled back so that only the whites showed, and steam rising from both the eyes and the gaping mouth.

“This one too,” Totem called out a moment later. He’d immediately dashed off to where they’d left the mystically bound white Knight, pulling off that helmet as well, revealing the equally distorted face of an African-American man. The Vanguard stood between the two corpses, and wondered just what the hell was going on here… and then the parking lot vanished, leaving them once again in the Training Room.

♦  ♦  ♦  ♦

The doors proved to be unlocked after the last of the Chessmen was dead, and the Vanguard immediately set to work seeking answers. While Artemis called SHADE and arranged for a team to quietly collect the bodies and the remains of the robots, Scion and Quanta sought out Álvaro de La Vega. They found him just leaving the marathon staff meeting he’d left them for that morning, and he appeared genuinely shocked when he heard what had happened. His shock turned to a dark rage neither hero had seen in him before when he heard the name “Chessmen,”and he set off quickly for the Training Room Control Center.

Until the next morning he still had unfettered access to the Vanguard floors, so he didn’t need his companions to let him in and was the first into the small, very high tech room. Smoke was still pouring from one of the primary consoles, and he swore long and colorfully (something else they’d never heard before) as he began tapping out commands. It took almost half an hour, with Álvaro impatiently waving away any questions or interruptions, before he settled back in the chair and sighed.

“This is bad,” he said presently, turning to look at Scion and Quanta, who had been closely watching everything he’d done. “But not nearly as bad as it could have been if you hadn’t defeated the intruders so quickly. That would have been a disaster of the first order!

“The Chessmen seemed to have planted taps into the computer systems of the Pyramid… I don’t know how yet, but I promise you I will, and soon! These taps allowed them to remotely control the Training Room systems and bypass the current security systems… I suspect they chose today to make their attack precisely because the full security systems go online tomorrow.

“The taps allowed them to hack into the Vanguard systems, and from there into the secure links to the AzTech servers and the classified SHADE systems as well. But from what I can tell they didn’t have time to access more than the surface layers of the first two, and nothing at all of the latter, thank God. I hate to imagine the fallout if they’d managed to get to some of my own classified files, never mind the government’s…

“Not that SHADE could really do much finger pointing here – since the announcement that the Vanguard was moving in they’ve had people all over this building making sure everything was secure, most especially the computer and data storage systems.”

“Quanta and I have both been over the systems ourselves,” Scion agreed. “We didn’t see any indication of compromised systems either.”

“They must have been completely inert,” Quanta agreed, “waiting until they were needed to power up. That still begs the question of how they got in here to plant them in the first place.”

“Not just here,” Álvaro said, shaking his head. “All throughout the Tower from what I can tell. It’s going to be hell for the next few days as my people go through every system – it won’t be hard to find the compromised ones, if they’ve all self-destructed like this one, but we’ll have to make sure there are no hidden, unpowered ones lying in reserve… at least we know what to look for now.”

“Will you delay the official opening of the building then?” Scion asked absently as he began examining the fused components himself, already reconstructing them in his mind.

“Hell no!” Álvaro exclaimed forcefully. “I won’t give those bastards the satisfaction. As far as the public will ever know, this whole event never happened. I’m glad Artemis called SHADE and not the APD… they know how to keep secrets.

“So put on your game faces, kids – tomorrow the party goes on as planned!”

After the press conference Scion, Artemis, Totem and the Blue Flame returned to Apergy Systems International, where the others continued to analyze the evidence in the wreckage left behind in the wake of the Astoria Incident. Although everyone was tired after the day’s events (with the possible exception of the Blue Flame, who seemed as hyper as ever) they all agreed it was too early to call it a night quite yet, with so much still unknown about the cause of the disaster.

“If we can’t get our hands on more of the crystal fragments without killing the hosts,” Dr. Froth sighed two hours later, rubbing his eyes as he looked up from the microscope he’d been peering into, “what about getting them from those who are already dead? Actually, blood and tissue samples from both the living and the dead could prove useful, too… ”

“That’s not a bad idea at all,” agreed Scion, pausing in his calculations on one of the computers scattered around the lab. “One of my big questions is about those deaths, actually… why did so many people have their meta-complex activated, while a smaller, but still disturbingly large, number of others died?”

“Well, even where the meta-complex is activated under normal circumstances,” Quanta began, and then laughed at his phrasing. “Not that anything is ever normal where super powered origins are concerned, but you know what I mean. However it happens, there’s always a percentage of bad outcomes, including death.

“Until we have final numbers on how many were “infected” by these crystals we won’t be able to determine if the Incident caused more or fewer deaths than would be statistically expected. Still, I think it’s an excellent idea to gather as much blood and tissue as we can, from as many sources as we can; and if we do get more crystals to study, that would be a bonus.”

“I’ll contact Detective Ransom, and see if we can get blood samples from the prisoners,” JJ said. “She might also be able to get us copies of the coroner’s autopsy reports as they come in, or maybe some actual tissue and blood samples.”

“Hey,” Jonny suddenly piped up from the window overlooking the river, where he’d been hovering cross-legged in mid-air ever since they’d returned to the lab. “We’re pretty sure I got my powers from the Incident… at least mostly… would a blood sample from me help?”

“Sure, kid,” replied Froth, with a laugh. “But you’ll have to turn back to norm-  um, that is, your human form. We can’t really get a blood sample from plasma, or whatever the hell you’re made of right now…”

“Yeah, about that,” the Eurasian youth said awkwardly. “I was hoping maybe some of you smart guys might have an idea or two about my, um, condition? I’ve been trying to change ever since we got back from the press conference, but I… well, it feels like I should be able to… you know, on the inside? But I just can’t seem to do it…”

This diverted the group for awhile as they considered the youth’s situation. Jonny filled them in on his accident with the Plasma Chamber at the University of Astoria’s High Energy Physics Lab the week before, more-or-less giving up his secret identity in the process, and described his interaction with the Incident insofar as he could remember it. Both JJ and Quanta ran numerous scans on him, using every piece of equipment available, while Totem focused his mystical senses on the kid, looking for any trace of supernatural energy.

Totem was the first one to come up with a definitive, if negative, answer for Jonny – whatever his powers were, they had no basis in any magic the shaman was familiar with. The scientific tests would take longer to be compiled and analyzed before Froth, Quanta or JJ could hazard even a quasi-reliable guess as to whether or not the youth would ever be able to revert to his human form again.

Once the initial testing was over and the computers had begun to crunch the data, most of the group turned back to the mystery of the crystals. But Phantom Ace quietly pulled Scion and Quanta aside and diffidently mentioned that they might want to test his blood.

“I’ve had my powers for awhile, but… well, I’m not really all that sure how I got them, not exactly, and it’s possible maybe I was, um, exposed to this crystal energy, in some way…?”

He then told them a somewhat truncated, and highly sanitized, version of his interaction with the mysterious “Reactive Agent 11” and how quickly he had developed full-blown super powers afterward. They both agreed it was worth testing his blood for any trace of the matrix energy signature, and called over Dr. Froth to do a blood draw. While Froth was busy with the analysis, the others returned to the discussion about what to do next.

“We know the ZeroPoint plane took off from McCall International, where the company houses three aircraft in one of the corporate hangers” Artemis recapped as they settled around the lab’s largest workbench-cum-conference table. “It was on its way to Seattle, supposedly, to pick up a company executive, and at the same time deliver various supplies to their factory there.

“If this were just an accident, not an intentional suicide attack, why was the pilot flying so low, and in restricted airspace? Even at a proper altitude, a normal flight path from Astoria to Seattle would not put the plane over that part of the city.”

Quanta leaned forward to look at the large city map spread out on the bench, tracing the short route they knew the plane had taken, based on the air traffic control data the FAA had turned over to the APD, and which the Chief, through Det. Ransom had in turn passed on to Astor.

“You’re right, it does seem odd,” he agreed. “Both course and altitude are way off. But the pilot must’ve been aware, because the plane navigated the towers of downtown without hitting any of them… see, he changed course slightly here… and here.” He tapped two spots on the map.

“Something to look into, certainly,” agreed JJ, scanning through the initial police reports on his PADD. “Maybe we can get access to the plane’s black box, once it’s recovered. I’ll check with Detective Ransom on that when I’m asking about the blood samples.”

After making a note on his PADD he continued, “It looks like the initial investigation into the Lemurian Star, the ship that brought in the shipment of “supplies” the ZeroPoint plane was carrying, didn’t turn up anything instantly suspicious… but this is just a verbal summation; it seems the Feds aren’t being too forthcoming with the APD when it comes to information sharing.

“I’ve set Penny to digging further into Advanced Concepts , ZeroPoint’s parent company,” he went on, “and the computers are working to analyze everything we’ve got so far… So, it might be best if we call it a night at this point, and get some rest. God knows it’s been a hell of a long day. I’ve got several guest suites here in the building, if anyone would like to use them.”

“Thank you John,” Artemis replied. “But I think it would be best if I returned to my own domicile for now. I shall meet you at 500 Police Plaza at 08:00 tomorrow.” After brief nods to the others she stepped back into the shadows… and vanished.

Phantom Ace and Totem readily agreed to taking beds in the guest apartments, while Quanta and Dr. Froth hesitated before deciding they should probably head to their own homes. “If I’m really going to be doing this hero thing now, I should probably put on my whole, um, uniform,” Froth said as they headed out the door. “I was feeling a little silly in just the mask.” Privately, he wan’t all that sure he wouldn’t feel just as silly in the whole costume…

“I guess I gotta stay,” Blue Flame said with a heavy sigh once the others had left or retired. “It’s not as if I can go home like this. But I don’t think you want me burning up one of your guest rooms… you got any place fire-proof I could crash?”

“Hmmm, a good point,” JJ replied. “There are a couple of relatively heat resistant chambers in the sub-levels of the manufacturing section; I suppose we could set you up there. But can you sleep in this form? Do you even need to?”

“Umm, I don’t know… I gotta admit, I don’t feel sleepy at all right now. I guess I just assumed I’d sleep eventually… it’s sort of a habit, you know? But so’s eating, and I haven’t done that since this morning – and I’m not even a little hungry. I think I filled up on fires today. So… who knows?”

They agreed that it would be best if he spent the night in one of the underground chambers as a safety precaution, just in case he did drift off and lose control of his energy form. After seeing the younger man to his “accommodations” JJ retired to the couch in his own office. It was Danish, very expensive, and more comfortable than many beds he’s slept on over the years. This was far from the first time he’d spent a night at the office…

♦  ♦  ♦  ♦

By 07:30 the next day most of the others were back at work in the lab, collating the data the computers had spit out and going through the new reports the APD had forwarded. After seeing that everyone was settled, Scion flew off to meet Artemis at 500 Police Plaza. The 20-story semicircle of curved bronze glass and white limestone shone like a beacon in the morning sun, in stark contrast to the five-story black granite and steel block of the City Jail which squatted behind it. The architect had intended something symbolic JJ seemed to recall having read when the facility was formally dedicated a couple years ago. Both buildings had gone up at the same time as the new Civic Center, half a mile to the northeast. The new complex had replaced both the aging and severely inadequate facilities of the old City Hall building on Eckart Avenue, and the old police headquarters nearby.

Fortunately only a few windows on the 15th and 16th floors along the east side of the tower had been shattered as a result of the Incident, and the jail had been completely untouched. Circling once, Scion touched down on the west side of the complex, where the morning shadows were deepest. If he was right…

“Good morning John,” Artemis said from behind him. “I appreciate your promptness.”

“Not a problem, Artemis,” he replied turning without surprise to greet her. She could hear the amusement in his voice, even behind the shield of his helmet. “Shall we go in? Detective Ransom is expecting us.”

The detective, wearing a different but equally chunky and colorful necklace than she’d had on yesterday, was sitting at her desk, dozens of reports and a PADD scattered across it, speaking into her phone. “I expect you to comply with the standing agreement SHADE has had for years with the APD, Deputy Director Archer… I think Director Adams made his feelings on the subject quite clear on our joint call last night… Yes, as I told you both, we intend to share what we have with Captain Astor and his team. Who, by the way, have already given us at least two leads you seem to have missed… Well, sir, that would come as a surprise to both the Air Force and City Hall… A wise decision sir, and I’m sure the Director will appreciate not having to hash this all out… again. Yes, I’ll expect the files within the hour then… Good-bye.”

“Inter-agency rivalries rearing their ugly heads already this morning, Detective?” Scion asked as she tossed her phone on top of a stack of reports. She motioned the two heroes to sit and smiled dryly.

“Not so much inter-agency issues, Captain, as superhero issues. I’m not surprised at the FBI getting pissy about sharing with us mere locals, never mind a new group of heroes, that’s par for the course. But I expected better of SHADE – they’re the ones who most often interface with the meta-human crime-fighting community… it’s in their damn title, after all.”

“Regional Deputy Director Reginald T. Archer,” Artemis replied before JJ could open his mouth, “was confirmed in his current position as head of the SHADE PAC-NW Region almost 11 years ago, following the death of his predecessor Eldon Hanover, who died with his entire family in an automobile accident. Archer was his second-in-command, a highly polished agent who climbed the office hierarchy without making substantive enemies.

“He would seem an ideal choice for leadership, and yet in the decade since his confirmation the PAC-NW region has seen a subtle but measurable decline in effectiveness compared to other SHADE regional offices. This might be considered simply a result of the historically low incidence of super-human problems in Astoria. But my own investigations lead me to suggest there might be a… more sinister reason for this.” Her voice, always a quiet, deep alto, dropped to little more than a whisper. ” Detective, you are aware of the existence of the Cabal, yes?”

Detective Ransom looked surprised, a state she was obviously not used to finding herself in. She leaned across her desk and lowered her own voice. “I am. But how did you know I knew? I’ve been extremely careful…”

“You have,” Artemis agreed, her voice returning to normal conversational levels. “But I have been opposing them for years, Detective, if less effectively than I might wish. I’ve made it my business to know all I can about them, as well as about others who oppose them. Subtle patterns in your case history files led me to believe you had learned of their existence a little over three years ago, and that you are aware of how deeply entrenched and dangerous they are – hence your caution in pursuing them.”

Ransom sat back in her chair, a bemused look replacing the surprise. “How the hell did you access my – never mind, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know. Rumors have been floating around for years about the cloaked “avenger of the night” – you, I assume – and I’ve done some analysis of my own – I believe you when you say you’ve been fighting them for years. But if I understand you correctly, you’re saying you think Archer is in their pocket?”

“From the beginning,” Artemis agreed.

“Do you have any real evidence to back this up? If so, we need to call Washington, tell the Director –” she stopped in mid-sentence, a look of enlightenment blossoming on her face. “You’ve already informed SHADE leadership, haven’t you? No wonder the Director was so quick to side with the city on sharing information!”

“You are very quick Detective,” Artemis said, her Mona Lisa smile briefly flashing. “I have known Director Adams for… some years. I shared everything I had gathered on Archer with him 6 months ago. But the man’s actions have always been subtle — an investigation tangled in red tape here, a defunded or under-supported initiative there — nothing that would bring undue attention to himself. It was nonetheless an effective, sustained strategy that kept SHADE’s attention off those whom I believe have been his true employers for many years.

“I do not know precisely what steps Director Adams has taken, but I am confident that whatever they are they will be effective in their own time. I only bring the matter up now to suggest that you – we – keep any truly important leads away from SHADE for the moment. With national attention focused on him I doubt he can risk any moves to actively thwart us, but he might still pass on information to his masters. And the less they know, the better.”

JJ couldn’t take it anymore. He’d sat there listening to the two women in growing confusion, and now he burst out with “What the hell are you two talking about? Who, or what, is the Cab-”

They both cut him off, Artemis with a finger to her lips and a slight shake of her head within her cowl, Ransom with a frown and a snapped “No!”

“I’m sorry Captain Astor,” the detective said quietly, quickly regaining her usual equilibrium. “If you don’t already know about this, now is not the time or place to bring you up to speed… even in Police HQ there are too many… potentially unreliable ears.”

“Cripes, you’d think you were talking about freaking Voldemort,” Scion groused.

“Not quiet,” Artemis said, her subtle smile flashing again. “But close enough for government work. I’ll explain fully when we are again in your lab. But for now, perhaps we should get on with the business that brought us here this morning?”

With a resigned shrug Scion agreed, and quickly explained to Ransom about the matrix crystals and the need for blood samples from the “enhanced” victims of the Astoria Incident currently sitting in cells in the nearby jail.

“Actually, they’re all in the medical unit and heavily sedated,” Ransom sighed. “When they built the new facility the designs included power-dampening cells for meta-human offenders, but they were never implemented due to complaints about the cost and the city’s lack of super-powered criminals. Idiot penny-pinchers!

“Anyway, until SHADE can get us portable dampening gear, which they’ve promised by this afternoon, there’s no way we could hold most of them without sedation. Especially that magnetic guy! Still, I suppose it will make it easier to get the blood draws –”

“I think not, Detective!” said a voice behind the seated heroes. They turned to see an auburn-haired young woman in a fairly severe business ensemble, briefcase in one hand, waving a clutch of papers in the other. “I’ve just finished filing the paperwork for an injunction to stop you people from keeping our clients sedated, and now I turn around to find you preparing for an illegal search and seizure!”

“Counselor,” sighed Detective Ransom, pinching the bridge of her nose. “We both know you’re not going to get that injunction – sedating meta-human suspects, where no other reasonable method of restraint is practical, is established case law. Why are you–”

“It may be a long shot,” the young woman interrupted, “but I have to try. We don’t even know if these people are actually meta-humans, just that they were beaten into unconsciousness by known meta-human thugs!” She glared at Scion and Artemis with chilly distain.

Artemis raised one eyebrow and cocked her head toward the lawyer. “You think that a man with four arms, each of which can stretch, and remain functional, to thirty feet or more, isn’t a meta-human, Counselor?” she asked mildly.

The woman blushed, and quickly changed tack. “Be that as it may, he still doesn’t deserve to be kept in a medically induced coma just because –”

“Actually, in his case he does,” Ransom cut her off. “The others are merely well sedated,” she explained to the heroes, “but “Stretch” really is in a medically induced coma —  head trauma from his fall, apparently — and they’re trying to save his life.”

That seemed to blunt the younger woman’s righteous indignation, if only momentarily, and Ransom took the breather to introduce her. “Captain Astor, Artemis, this is Ms. Susan Soledad, the latest addition to the Astoria Public Defender’s office… and assigned to Marius Night, I believe. Which begs the question – why are you filing motions involving other defenders’ clients, Counselor?”

“My co-workers agreed with you about the odds of success, Detective Ransom,” Soledad sniffed, “but they were willing to let me try. Obviously they haven’t been completely jaded by the system yet.

“They’ll sing a different tune, though, when I tell them you plan to not only take illegal blood samples, but to turn them over to vigilantes with no legal standing whatsoever! Precedent is on my side this time, and you know it – without a warrant you cannot take blood samples without permission; and keeping them all unconscious means you can’t get permission!”

“Ms. Soledad,” Scion said, trying for his most soothing voice. “Surely you can see that this is actually in your client’s best interest… this isn’t a drunk driving case, after all. We don’t want these samples to try and convict anyone, but to determine if they were infected with some outside agent.

“If they were, then they might not even be responsible for their actions; plus, it might be possible to reverse their conditions, give them back their old lives. Also, we’re not actually vigilantes, you know – I’ve been vetted by SHADE for years, and  Chief Edwards deputized the rest of the group last night.”

For a moment it seemed like he might have won her over… but then the stubborn expression returned to her face and she shook her head. “I’m sorry ‘Scion,’ but the law is the law – and even if I agreed with you, it’s not like I can give permission for my client without knowing his wishes. Which I can’t know while he’s sedated. So unless the police are willing to wake him up, you’ll need to get a warrant.”

No further argument seemed to sway the public defender, and in the end Ransom was forced to agree that she couldn’t allow them to take samples without an order from the court. She understood that time might be of the essence in this situation, and promised to try and get a warrant as quickly as possible, but it was unlikely to happen before late afternoon, and maybe not until tomorrow.

PD Soledad stalked away in at least partial triumph, while Detective Ransom excused herself to take a phone call. It was brief call, and after hanging up she turned back to her guests. “Sorry, but it seemes they’re preparing to release all the people arrested on looting and minor assault charges yesterday, mostly on their own recognizance. There are so many of them that they’re calling even senior detectives to help process them out, so I’m afraid I’ll have to cut this short. But I promise to get the request for that warrant started first.”

After the detective had walked them out of the bullpen and then headed toward the jail Artemis turned to Scion with a gleam in the green eyes behind her mask.

“John, it occurs to me that we may have another option here. Didn’t Quanta and Froth say it was likely the looters and “crazed” citizens were affected by the Incident as well? If so, might not their blood also contain evidence of matrix energy?”

“Maybe,” JJ agreed. “Of course we’ll still need samples from people who’ve obviously changed, gained powers or whatever… but the blood work from those affected but not changed might also tell us something. It’s worth a shot anyway.”

So the heroes stood outside the jail and talked to as many of the released citizens as they could, explaining in general terms what they needed the blood for and asking for samples. Some refused to even talk to them, some rejected the request, but over a dozen people agreed to allow a blood draw then and there.

Once they had the samples secured Artemis teleported back to the Apergy Systems lab with them, while Scion took to the air and followed at his own pace.

♦  ♦  ♦  ♦

It was a little after 10:00 when Scion dropped through the skylight into his office. Letting his armor flow back into its spinal brace form, and throwing on jeans and a hoodie, JJ stepped into the lab to see if the others had made any progress. Quanta and Froth were engrossed in the new blood samples, Artemis and Totem were poring over the new police reports as well as the just-arrived SHADE files the APD had forwarded. Phantom Ace scanned across the social media sites, TV stations, and other media outlets, to compile all the footage available concerning yesterday’s events. The Blue Flame, unable to help with any of these tasks, hovered near the window wall looking out at the river, bored and… well, blue.

Jonny hadn’t slept at all last night, and even though he continued to feel mentally sharp he was beginning to become concerned that he might never turn back into a human being. What would he do if he never got to sleep again? Or eat? Or have sex?! He was way too young to not have sex anymore – he’d hardly had any at all, really, compared to most guys! That seemed really unfair…

Quanta and Froth were both convinced that he could change back into his human form, although they differed on why he hadn’t yet – Quanta thought it was a mental block, a fear of losing his power if he changed back; Froth felt it was more likely to simply be related to a lack of training in using the psychic “muscles” required to make the change.

Jonny had thus spent the morning trying to meditate and exercise his mental muscles, but he remained as blue and flamey as ever. He had, however, discovered that he could control his flame aura, either expanding it to several feet or contracting it to a mere flicker over his “skin.” In doing the latter he also found he could lower his external temperature to non-incendiary levels, and was able to briefly handle many relatively solid objets without destroying them… although touching paper or other easily flammable items for almost any length of time tended to leave them charred, at best. Also, he had to really focus to keep his surface temperature down – if he was at all distracted it tended to quickly shoot back up to what appeared to be his ‘normal’ setting of about 200°F.

Jonny was pulled from his internal musings when Totem suddenly looked up from the PADD he was reading with a heavy sigh. “Well, I think we may now rule out a suicide attack on the part of the pilot.”

At the enquiring looks from the others he tapped his PADD.

“It is in the latest report that just came in from the APD… a jeweler from a shop on  Pacific Avenue came forward after seeing last night’s news. He claims that the pilot, Kevin Lipton, was scheduled to pick up a moderately expensive custom necklace he had previously commissioned, late yesterday afternoon – presumably after his return flight from Seattle. Apparently Mr. Lipton had designed it himself, and intended to give it to his wife today – for their 10th anniversary.”

No one had much to say at this sad news… certainly it seemed unlikely that the man had possessed any suicidal tendencies, even if it got them no closer to understanding what had really happened. Totem glanced down at the tablet and added, “He also had reservations for two at the Western Empire Tower tonight, at 19:30. His wife had always wanted to dine there, but they could never afford it. His employer is quoted as saying that Mr. Lipton’s recent promotion had allowed him to save up for his double surprise tonight…”

After a moment of contemplative silence everyone slowly began to return to their tasks, considerably more subdued. JJ stepped out to speak to Penny, asking her to find out if there was any outstanding balance on the necklace, and to pay it off if there was, then arrange to have the necklace itself delivered to the widow. All anonymously, of course.

A short time later Phantom Ace, or Roland as he had introduced himself to the others that morning, finished his compilation video and was eager to show it off to Scion. JJ was duly impressed at seeing the Incident and its aftermath laid out in chronological order and from many points of view – looked at this way, it almost seemed like they’d all known what the hell they were doing, instead of just winging it as events hit them. It did make him think that, maybe, with some effort, this whole team idea could really be made to work…

“You know, I could teleport into the jail and get those blood samples you need,” Roland blurted out as the glow of Scion’s praise began to fade. “It’d be no problem, in and out – and since their out cold, no one would ever know!”

“Er, that is, um, a very generous idea, Roland,” JJ said cautiously, a bit taken aback by this sudden offer to commit a felony. “But I don’t think we want to start off our relationship with the APD by violating their trust…  not to mention committing a major crime. Some times being the ‘good guys’ means doing things the hard way, because it’s the right way.”

“Oh. Well, OK, I guess I can see that,” the younger man replied, deflating a little. “Hey, how about ZeroPoint? I could pop over there and scout it out, see if I can spot anything suspicious, maybe something the cops missed?”

Realizing the kid needed something to do, JJ figured a little minor trespassing was better than leaving him to be tempted by his more felonious idea, and agreed to a discreet scouting mission. This kept Phantom Ace busy for an hour, and there was no surprise when he returned with nothing much to report – both the corporate headquarters and the manufacturing facility were closed, with only a few upper management types in to help the authorities with the on-going investigation. They really didn’t seem to be hiding anything from the cops, at least not that he could see.

It was shortly after Phantom Ace returned from his scouting mission that Penny  popped in to announce that she’d made an interesting find concerning Advanced Concepts.

“It turns out Advanced Concepts is a shell company, acting as an umbrella corporation for half a dozen businesses that manufacture various components used in hi-tech products – smart phones, tablets, gaming consoles and so forth. Not at all unusual, and I didn’t see anything that would seem to be related to all this.” She gestured at the PADDs, papers and monitors scattered about with various elements of the investigation on them.

“But I did finally track down the money behind AC itself – it’s independent, not owned by another corporate structure – it’s wholly owned by its shareholders. And the shareholder with the controlling interest is one Álvaro de la Vega.”

“The tech billionaire?” Quanta asked, overhearing. He set his PADD down and turned his attention to the young woman. “Founder of AzTech and inventor of at least half the technology in this room?”

“And one of the Triumvirate, as Wired Magazine dubbed them a couple of years ago,” JJ added. “Jobs, Musk and de la Vega, the three tech genius’ who “created the modern world,” as the author put it.”

“AzTech is the largest employer in Astoria; indeed, in the state, since they bumped Intel out of first place” Artemis put in. “The success of his company almost single-handedly pulled the city out of the ’90s economic slump and started the current tech boom. He is a major philanthropic donor, a supporter of the arts, a notable champion of the poor–”

“Not to mention, he was responsible for bringing Major League Baseball to the city,” Jonny interjected. “So he can’t be a bad guy!”

“Be that as it may,” Artemis continued, “matrix crystal technology is very much Álvaro Diego Alejandro de la Vega’s bailiwick. Given that, as well as the fact that I saw him viewing the scene of the Incident from a limo yesterday after the press conference, I think we should pay Mr. de la Vega a visit.”

The others agreed, and Penny smiled. “I thought you might want to speak with him, so I called his office to set up a meeting… you have an appointment with him in his office on the AzTech campus at 14:00 this afternoon.”

“Just like that?” Quanta asked, surprised. “I’d think access to one of the richest men in the world would be a little more difficult to come by.”

“I was a little shocked myself,” Penny admitted. “I’ve had some experience with this sort of thing and was prepared to fight through several layers of middle management before I could reach his real gate-keeper. But as it turned out, all I had to do was mention Captain Astor and the Vanguard, and I was put through to Mr. de la Vega’s personal assistant. He immediately agreed to clear the schedule for an afternoon meeting today.”

“I don’t know if that’s ominous or promising,” Totem said, frowning. The others made various noises of agreement.

“Oh, and he’s sending a limo for you all,” Penny added. “It should be here in about 90 minutes.” While the others began to discuss what this easy access might mean, Penny drew JJ aside.

“I checked with the jeweler, as you requested,” she said quietly. “There was an outstanding balance, but he’d already forgiven it and made arrangements to have the necklace delivered to Mrs. Lipton. I imagine she already has it, in fact.”

“Ah, a good man,” JJ smiled. “I’ll have to keep him in mind the next time I’m looking for something shiny to impress a lady with.”

“Well, my birthday is coming up,” Penny said with an innocent smile as she turned to leave.

♦  ♦  ♦  ♦

The long limo that Álvaro de la Vega sent easily held the six non-incendiary members of the Vanguard… the Blue Flame flew along above them. Totem summoned the Avatar of Wolf, once in the vehicle, in the hopes of sniffing out anything suspicious… and in this form he also had a strong sense of who was lying, an ability the others agreed might be useful in the upcoming interview. But Jonny suspected he just liked riding with his head out the window, eyes half closed and tongue lolling in the breeze.

Traffic was lighter than usual for a weekday afternoon, given that the city was still reeling from the previous day’s events, and they made good time. The AzTech campus was a sprawling 225 acre collection of generally low-slung buildings nestled in a setting of park-like lawns, trees and, of course, parking lots. Few buildings were over two stories tall, but the main corporate offices was one of them.

As the limo pulled up to the five-story block of mirrored blue glass and cream sandstone, Blue Flame shot up and made a quick circuit of the building. “Everything looks pretty normal from up there,” he reported, joining the others as they entered the lobby. The security guard directed them to the elevator, and as they stepped into it, strains of staid muzak drifting out, Jonny held back.

“Um, I think I’ll take the stairs, guys,” he said. “I really don’t want to roast you all, you know? Besides, if it turns out to be a fiendish death trap of some kind you’ll need me to come save you!”

On the top floor the workers in the offices and glass-walled conference rooms pretended to go about their normal routine, as if seeing a team of superheroes stopping by for a chat with the boss was an everyday occurrence. Scion’s armor-enhanced hearing, however, failed to pick up much business talk… and rather a lot of sotto voce comments about the Vanguard and its component members, which made him smile. Apparently Totem was the hottest Vanguard, in the opinion of most of the women. And a few of the men. Most of the other men seemed to find Artemis hot, but more than a little intimidating, if not outright scary.

Álvaro de la Vega’s office was, if not small, certainly cozy for the lair of a tech billionaire. A large but not ostentatious desk occupied one end of the room, with a very large flatscreen TV filling much of the opposite wall. Floor-to-ceiling windows ran the length of the room opposite the entrance and smaller doors in back of the desk and next to the TV led to… a bathroom and a personal assistant Artemis guessed, assessing the layout.

De la Vega stood as the Vanguard entered and came around his desk to offer his hand, first to Scion, then to Artemis, and then to each of the others in turn, hesitating only when he reached the Blue Flame. To him, he simply nodded and flashed a wry smile. He was 5′ 10″, maybe 50 years old, with the sort of boyish good looks that aged well. His black hair was touched with gray at the temples and a patch on the chin of his beard, which only served to lend him a certain gravitas. His brown eyes sparkled and he seemed genuinely happy to see them. His charcoal gray suit was stylishly cut and clearly very expensive, as was the pale blue silk shirt and navy silk tie.

“Please, come in, make yourselves comfortable,” he said as the door on the far side of the room, in the wall with the massive TV, opened and a young man came in, arranging two chairs in front  of the desk. “My assistant Trevor; Trevor, the Vanguard.” The young man smiled, nodded a greeting, then retreated back the way he had come.

After a moments hesitation Scion and Artemis seated themselves in the chairs, while Quanta, Totem, and Froth took the couch along the window wall. Phantom Ace stood behind Scion and Artemis, while the Blue Flame hovered further back. De la Vega re-seated himself behind his desk and leaned back in his chair, beaming at his guests.

“I’ve been watching all the video of your actions yesterday,” the billionaire began, “and I have to say, I’m very impressed. For people who’ve never worked together before, you functioned quite effectively.”

“Thank you Mr. de la Vega,” Scion said dryly. “Actually, a few of us have met previously, if only briefly. But we didn’t come here for an analysis of our technique, as incisive as I’m sure it would be. We came because, frankly, we have some questions for you.”

“Ah, well, I didn’t really think it was a social call,” de la Vega said, still smiling. “I’m happy to help in any way I can. And please, call me Álvaro.”

“Mr. de la Vega,” began Artemis. “We have evidence that –”

She was interrupted by the sudden appearance of four costumed people in the space between the heroes and de la Vega’s desk – three men and a woman, all with their backs to the Vanguard. The woman, who stood directly in front of the desk with the men arrayed to either side of her, leaned forward to place her fists on the desk top and loom toward de la Vega. She was dressed in head-to-foot chainmail, a knight’s surcoat of dark blue over it, blond hair spilling from beneath a steel helmet, and what looked like a shortened version of a medieval lance set in a clever harness across her back.

“OK de la Vega, spill it!” she growled. “What the hell do you know about yesterday–”

She cut herself off and whirled around, pulling the lance from her back in the same motion. Her eyes widened at the sight of the Vanguard, then narrowed in suspicion as she shot a glance back at de la Vega. The men turned a beat behind her, and seemed equally surprised to see the heroes.

“Cannon! Blast out that wall for Gargantua!”

At her shouted command the muscular looking red-headed man in army boots, jeans, and a white wife-beater with an artillery siting crosshair silk-screened on the chest grinned and pointed his left arm at the glass wall, fist clenched. The fist glowed white, and the air seemed to ripple as blasts of concussive force struck the glass, which first starred in a spiderweb pattern at least six feet across, then shattered outward in a silvery rain.

As the window blew out one of the other men, a nondescript looking guy in a dark purple business suit, dark gray hooded cloak and simple domino mask, vanished. The third man, large, overly-muscled, with the face of a thug and a shaved head, began to grow. In just a few seconds his head was brushing the ceiling – pretty obviously marking him as Gargantua. He lumbered for the shattered window wall, taking a backhanded swipe at Artemis as he did so, and leaped out, appearing to grow even taller as he fell. Artemis easily dodged his blow and somersaulted out the window after him…

Blue Flame raised his hands toward the knight lady and released a dazzling burst of blue-white light at her face, but to no effect as her visor polarized instantly against the flash. Scion rose into the air, only to be knocked across the room by another concussive blast from Cannon, while Quanta leapt out the window after Artemis.

Phantom Ace had teleported to a spot just beside the billionaire, who seemed nonplussed at the sudden outbreak of violence, if not especially afraid. He did look somewhat surprised, though, as the young man in the leather jacket and domino mask pulled him out his chair by his lapels.

“What are you–” he started to say…

“–doing?” he finished in the elevator car 100 feet from his office. “Oh, that. Meh, I’ve never really liked teleporting, you know? It always leaves a taste in my mouth like slightly off pomegranates…”

♦  ♦  ♦  ♦

Outside, Artemis had landed on the back of the now 60-foot tall Gargantua, and jammed her escrima sticks into the sides of his massive neck. An electrial pulse buzzed with a blue flash, but the giant just shrugged his shoulders in irritation, sending the hero flying. Turning in midair, she came down on her feet in a fighting crouch a dozen feet away, her cape billowing around her.

They were in a large open area,  a square maybe 200′ on a side, defined by the administration building, another office building three stories tall, and a large mostly windowless building that looked like some kind of manufacturing facility. Concrete paths meandered artfully around the grassy hillocks, strategically placed benches invited one to linger in the shade of various trees, while flowering shrubs provided semi-private nooks. A pond in the NE corner of the area was partially over-hung by a large white oak that must have been at least a century old.

As the lumbering behemoth took an immense stride toward Artemis, Quanta sent a stream of silvery matter blasting into his back, which didn’t seem to hurt him much, but at least drew his attention away from the woman – who was quickly back on the attack, hurling her escrima sticks at the vulnerable nerve points of knee and hip. Gargantua roared, but didn’t even stagger.

♦  ♦  ♦  ♦

Meanwhile, in de la Vega’s office, Totem, still in the form of the Avatar of Wolf, had leaped for Cannon’s throat. The villain blocked him with a forearm, and his teeth sank into – artificial flesh?! His teeth screed along solid metal and he realized the man was some sort of cyborg! A concussive blast from the other hand send Wolf flying into a very solid wall. What the hell was this building made of anyway, he thought as he staggered to his feet, trying to clear his head. Time for a more useful form he decided, morphing back into Totem…

“Hey, Cyberknight,” Cannon called out, sounding peeved. “You gonna join this fight, or just give the MEN orders?”

“Just do your job, Cannon,” the woman replied as her lance glowed yellow and she rose into the air. “And leave the thinking to me. Now lets move this dance outside!” She flew for the shattered window as Scion let loose a barrage of armor-piercing bullets, a few of which staggered her before an energy shield appeared from her left forearm to block the rest.

Blue Flame and Totem both followed her out the window, the former sending blasts of searing blue plasma at her and the latter casting a spell of Baleful Bindings. Cyberknight dodged both attacks, then aimed her lance at Blue Flame, returning the favor with her own blast of yellow plasma… only to see it absorbed by the hero without a trace.

Cannon, meanwhile, had moved to the opening and grinned as he looked down at the situation outside. The silvery dude… Countessa or some such faggy name, he’d heard it on the news last night… had his back to him and had just dropped a huge block of something on that idiot Gargantua’s head, actually seeming to dazed the giant. Cannon aimed both fists and sent a massive concussive blast into the douche bag’s back, sending the so-called hero flying forward to face-plant into the turf 20 feet away.

But while he was laughing at the beauty of the shot something hit him hard from behind, sending him flying out the window. As he tumbled in midair, trying to aim his concussive blasts at the ground to break his fall, he just caught a glimpse of a stream of multicolored bubbles dissipating above him, and the dude in the blue wetsuit floating out the window on a cloud of similar bubbles.

“Bastard!” he screamed up at the hovering man as he scrambled to his feet after a hard rolling landing. “Hitting a guy from behind! Dick move, man –  dick move!” But before he could get his own attack off he was forced to dodge a blast of blue flame from above that nearly singed him. He rolled away, pissed off and ready to put all these assholes down!

Dr. Froth, meanwhile, floated out over the battle. He aimed a stream of his very sticky binding bubbles at the Cyberkinght, who managed to break the stream with her lance, avoiding being bound, but taking a solid one-two hit to the head that left her on her knees, clearly dazed.

Quanta, staggering back to his feet, looked around and saw Cannon dodging Blue Flame’s plasma blast, and realized instantly who must’ve hit him from behind. He aimed both hands and sent a massive stream of bucky balls at the cyborg, who barely turned in time to see them coming. He dodged wildly, but took the hit to his left side – it spun him around almost 360° before dropping him to the ground.

Artemis, seeing that the giant was dazed by the massive weight Quanta had dropped on him, leaped up his back to delver a series of precisely aimed blows at critical nerve junctures, then flipped back and away from the staggered villain. But Gargantua zigged where she had expected him to zag, and his massive forearm just caught her right foot, sending her tumbling. Her controlled acrobatics became a pinwheeling mess, and she hit the ground hard, momentarily dazed.

Before the giant could follow up on her vulnerability, Scion blasted him with armor-piercing rounds from above, stitching a string of red welts along his back and side. Gargantua roared in pain and whirled around, only to find a cloud of green mist dropping from the sky around his head. Suddenly he was so tired… it was all he could do to keep his eyes open… he staggered, dropping to one knee… shook his head, managing to clear it, if just a bit…

Before Totem could intensify his Sleeping Mists spell, however, Cannon let loose with a new kind of attack, an explosive shot that blanketed the area in concussive force. Dodging blows from a flaming blue katana and streams of sticky multicolored bubbles, he’d suddenly decided this wasn’t fun any more. His massive area attack blasted Blue Flame from the sky, unconscious; sent Totem flying ten feet, also unconscious before he even hit the ground; knocked a dazed Dr. Froth onto his ass; and staggered the already dazed Artemis.

But Quanta, throwing up a carbon fiber shield, was entirely unaffected by the explosion, as was Scion in his armor. Both let loose with fusillades of bucky balls and stun rounds that knocked Cannon first one way, then another, stunning him and driving him to his knees. Artemis, shaking off the effects of the explosion very quickly, thanks to her naturally accelerated metabolism, hurled her escrima sticks at the stunned cyborg… and he was down for the count.

Dr. Froth, meanwhile, was clearing his own head when he saw Cyberknight climb back to her feet and heft her lance, aiming it straight at Artemis‘ exposed back. With a gesture he threw a massive stream of sticky bubbles at the techno-knight, this time taking her completely by surprise. The bubbles swirled around her torso, encircling her arms and pulling them tight against her body. This forced the lance into a vertical position, aimed at the sky, a danger only to passing birds. Even as she struggled against them the bubbles constricted, bringing her to her knees and completely immobilizing her.

She glared at Froth, but said nothing, abandoning her struggle against her bonds once she realized its futility. Then several spikes shot through the binding bubbles, and along various parts of her body the small spheres bulged outward. Froth realized then that she, too, was some sort of cyborg, and was trying to use her tech to escape. But his bubbles just let the sharp bits slide through, while their pressure kept the large bits trapped.

“I suppose you could try something explosive or energetic,” he said, and she could hear the grin even through his mask. “But keep in mind the bubbles will just direct most of that energy back at you… so I wouldn’t advise it.”

“Bastard!” she hissed. The spikes slid back into place, and the bulges disappeared. She lay back and stared up at nothing, ignoring him.

Gargantua, meanwhile, was still on one knee, trying valiantly to stay awake… and succeeding, if barely. Quanta took care of that problem by manifesting another multi-ton block of quantum matter over the giant’s head, and letting gravity do the rest. The dazed behemoth collapsed under the weight, finally out for the count. His body hitting the ground was like a small earthquake, and the water in the nearby pond leapt into the air, falling back to slosh over its banks.

♦  ♦  ♦  ♦

Phantom Ace and Álvaro de la Vega had been watching most of the battle from the roof of the administration building. In the elevator Ace had become annoyed with the billionaire’s apparent nonchalance about the whole affair, and had teleported them to the roof. There he had leaned de la Vega out over the drop, holding him by the lapels.

“I’m new to this hero thing,” he said, trying for a deep, threatening voice, “and I’m not as discerning as some of my new friends. If you want to make it through this, you should probably work with my friends when the dust settles.”

“Mmm, yes,” Álvaro replied, rather mildly under the circumstances. “Well, I have been around for awhile, and I know a bit about the hero biz… among other things. I’m not sure you’re getting off to the right start here, but I have a feeling you’ll do fine in the end… with a little help from those friends of yours.

“Speaking of which – ooh, that blast to the back looks like it hurt! But Quanta’s getting back to his feet… good for him!”

This distracted Phantom Ace from his charming attempt at intimidation, and the youth pulled de la Vega back from the edge. Straightening his lapels, the billionaire turned to join the young hero as both focused on the fight below. Although, as the tide ebbed and flowed, Álvaro spent more time watching his young rescuer/captor, a wry smile on his lips.

“Shouldn’t you be down there helping them?” he asked when an explosive blast from Cannon took out half the team.

Phantom Ace shook his head, not taking his eyes off the conflict. “Nah, they can handle these bozos; and I can be there in a blink, if I need to. But I think it’s better if I keep an eye on you. Just in case.”

In case of what, exactly, he didn’t say.

And then the battle was over. “Well, this little field trip was interesting,” de la Vega sighed. “But I need to get back to my office, if you don’t mind. Time to make sure none of my employees were injured during this little imbroglio, then call the police and the clean-up crew…”

The young would-be hero looked slightly guilty at that, not having given a thought to the possible innocent bystanders until now. He laid a hand on the billionaires shoulder, and with a “pop” they were back in the office…

♦  ♦  ♦  ♦

Outside, the other heroes were just beginning to contemplate how to secure their prisoners, especially the very loudly snoring giant, when the mysterious man in purple and gray popped back into their midst. Everyone had pretty much forgotten about him in the heat, and now he leaned down to pull Cyberknight up to her knees.

“I’ll take this one if you don’t mind,” he said with a snarky grin at Dr. Froth, who was closest. “You can have the others, and much joy of them I wish you!”

“No banter, Tempus,” the woman growled. “Just go!”

Tempus shrugged, and with a jaunty wave he and Cyberknight vanished silently just as a blast of bubbles tore through the space they had vacated….

♦  ♦  ♦  ♦

As soon as the battle ended Artemis and Dr. Froth rushed to the downed Blue Flame, who was now the very human, and naked, Jonny Osaka. At the same time Scion and  Quanta hurried to aid Totem, lying near the edge of the pond. Both unconscious heroes were brought to their senses fairly quickly, and the shaman was able to heal their minor injuries easily. Jonny seemed no more than bruised, if apparently de-powered; and he was deeply uncertain how he felt about the latter fact. Dr. Froth conjured a mass of bubbles for the Eurasian youth to wear until Trevor appeared with some clothes. It didn’t even surprise Jonny that they fit perfectly.

Fortunately neither de la Vega’s assistant nor any other AzTech employees had been seriously injured in the attack — nothing but a few minor cuts from flying glass and one sprained ankle reported. The landscaping, however, was going to require some serious remedial attention, Ted thought as he stared out over the former battlefield from the shattered wall in de la Vega’s office. At least the hundred-year-old oak had survived… there’d have been no replacing that!

It was after 17:00, and the APD and SHADE were just wrapping up at the crime scene and clearing out. Cannon had been placed in power-dampening restraints before he regained consciousness, and Gargantua was dosed with a massive amount of sedatives before two cranes had lifted him onto a very impressive flatbed truck, which was just now disappearing into the late afternoon sun.

“So, you were about to reveal evidence of some sort,” Álvaro said, causing Froth to turn back to what was going on inside, “before we were so rudely interrupted.”

“Yes,” Scion agreed. “But before we get back to that, I’d like to know what just went on here. The SHADE agent said something about evil…”

“E.V.A.L., actually,” de la Vega corrected. “The Extralegal Villains Assistance League.” He grinned at the various incredulous looks this got him.

“You’ve got to be kidding!” Quanta snorted, while Froth laughed out loud.

“The name is meant to be ironic,” Artemis said with a slight sigh. “E.V.A.L. is a… mutual aid society of sorts, created to provide logistical and tactical support to its members. All of whom are so-called ‘supervillains.’ The organization is rumored to be run by an entity known only as Cerebral. Little is known of this individual by the authorities, beyond the fact that he appears to be an extremely strong psionic.

“E.V.A.L. is also one of the four pillars of the criminal conspiracy known as the Cabal, which has been the power behind the scenes in Astoria, operating from the shadows, for decades.” She held up a hand to forestall the questions that were obvious in her teammates’ faces. “I will tell you all I know at another time.  But the existence of the Cabal is clearly not a surprise to our host, and these E.V.A.L. minions seemed to know him. How is that Mr. de la Vega?”

“I’m the single largest employer in the state, Artemis,” he replied with a shrug, “and a force to be reckoned with in this city. I’ve been both for over twenty years – it would be rather surprising if I didn’t know about the Cabal. Generally speaking, we came to an understanding years ago – they stay out of my business, and I stay out of theirs. Not a situation I’m happy with, mind you, but one forced on me by practicalities.

“On occasion this arrangement necessitates we communicate, so as to avoid direct conflict. Cyberknight has visited me three times before with either requests or veiled threats from the Cabal… I’m surprised you, at least, Scion – or rather Captain Astor – haven’t encountered the Cabal, given your own business interests in Astoria.”

“I hadn’t heard of them at all, until today,” Scion replied coldly. “No doubt my very public association with the “heroic” side of the meta-human community left them in little doubt as to the outcome of any attempt to suborn me.”

“Mmmm, well, maybe,” de la Vega said dubiously, ignoring the implied criticism. “Though that’s never stopped them before. Why do you think this city has had so very few superheroes over the years?”

“As I said, this is a discussion for another time,” Artemis interrupted firmly. “Why were representatives of the Cabal here today de la Vega?”

“Well, you rather interrupted them before they could say, my dear,” Álvaro replied, with a crooked smile. “But if I had to guess, I’d say they came to find out if I had something to do with yesterday’s Incident. Now, why do you think I might be involved?”

It took several minutes to fill in the billionaire inventor on the various elements that had led them to him, most of which did nothing to dent his bemused humor. But the revelation of the crystals, and particularly after seeing them displayed on his immense TV, which had miraculously survived the fight, seemed to wipe all humor from his face. He studied the images intently for several minutes, asking a few clipped questions of Quanta and Scion. By the time he turned back to the heroes his demeanor was decidedly grim.

“I assure you I had nothing to do the the so-called Astoria Incident,” he said solemnly, and walked slowly back to seat himself behind his desk. “But this is not the first time I’ve seen technology using these crystals… but before we get into that, I have an offer of a very  serious nature to make to you all. It –”

He was interrupted by a sudden sharp CRACK from outside, which startled everyone. All eyes turned to look out the giant hole in the exterior wall, to see a large bubble growing out of one of the nearby paved pathways.  A second later it retracted to reveal – the Liberty Alliance‘s Red Racer, Sure-Shot, Urbana, and their current magical member, Sabra.

“We should have known you couldn’t be trusted, de la Vega!” Urbana cried out, glaring up at the office. “And now you’ll pay for what you’ve done!”

De la Vega looked truly surprised for the first time that day, but before anyone could reply, Urbana shakily put one hand to her forehead and yelled, “Get out of my head!” With her other hand she pointed at de la Vega. Immediately, the walls of the office seemed to come alive, steel and concrete flowing like mud to form grasping hands and swinging mallets, while the other members of the Alliance quickly followed her lead and attacked.

As the grasping hands reached for de la Vega, Quanta threw up a solid wall of carbon fiber between the billionaire and the combatants, at the same time that Froth sent a stream of bubbles out to protect him— the wall cut the bubble stream in half.

“If de la Vega is their focus,” Quanta yelled, “maybe you should get him out of here Ace – it worked before!”

“I’m on it,” Phantom Ace called out, vanishing in one of his strange warpings of space. Appearing next to Álvaro, who was looking a bit peeved at this point, he grabbed him by the arm and they both vanished –

–reappearing on the top platform of a cell tower on the roof of the manufacturing facility across the courtyard from the admin building.

“You should have a great view from up here,” the teleporter assured the billionaire, patting him on the back. “Just don’t draw attention to yourself!” Then he was gone. Álvaro sighed, then settled in to watch another super-human slugfest tear up his campus… he suspected meta-human insurance was going to become very pricey in this town in the very near future…

♦   ♦   ♦   ♦

Back in the office, Scion had dodged a blow from one of Urbana’s remote hands, only to be knocked back by a concussive arrow from Sure-Shot. Artemis had hurled her escrima sticks at Urbana, only to see them bounce harmlessly off the gynoid’s synthetic body. Red Racer had zipped up the wall and into the room in a blur almost too fast to see, and had rained a thousand blows on Quanta’s wall in a second, actually causing the tough material to begin to crack. In less than three seconds the wall exploded inward, revealing the empty space beyond. The speedster cursed in frustration…

Jonny, suddenly very aware that he was eminently squishable in his current form, mentally reached into himself and touched the small hotspot he’d been trying very carefully not to touch for the last hour. In an instant he felt the heat grow, rushing out to fill his body from his core to his skin, and… he burst into glorious azure flames. “Wah-hoo!” he yelled, and his borrowed clothes turned to ash as he rose into the air — only to have two arms extrude from the wall and grab him.

Meanwhile, a second arrow from Sure-Shot had struck Quanta, and this one sent a jolt of sonic energy through the hero, bringing him to one knee and making him see black spots in his vision. Dr. Froth aimed a blast of bubble bullets at the blur of Red Racer, but missed by a wide margin, as the speedster rushed past the dazed Quanta, staggering him anew with a dozen blows in an instant.

Artemis, meanwhile had dove out the shattered wall once again, taking the fight directly to Urbana. The synthetic being was behaving very oddly, according to all she had heard of her, and kept clutching her head and muttering commands to “get out of my head!” between random attacks on the Vanguard. But whatever was afflicting the hero, her reflexes seemed unimpaired – she dodged Artemis’ attacks with ease, and nearly caught her in a giant hand of concrete.

Scion took another arrow from Sure-Shot as he flew out to join his teammate, but this time he was ready for it… and in any case, it was an electric shock arrow, which wouldn’t have had much effect on him even if he hadn’t been armored. He sent a stream of stun rounds at the archer, but the man was quick, nimbly avoiding the attack in turn. Blue Flame, having incinerated the grasping hands, joined Dr. Froth in trying to tag the crimson blur that was Red Racer, but to no avail. In the process their own fight spilled outside as well.

Quanta had given up on trying to create a teleportal back to the lab at Apergy Systems – between the sonic stun, the flurry of blows from the speedster and his own uncertainty about the distance, it just wasn’t happening – and  focused instead on the battle outside. Urbana, Sure-Shot and Sabra were all fairly close together… maybe he could end this quickly. He summoned his concentration and formed a large quantum matter weight over the grouping, and let it fall…

Urbana shrugged off the weight as if it were merely a bothersome insect, shattering it into several pieces. Sabra dodged out of the way, throwing up a mystic shield to protect her from the debris, but Sure-Shot was not quite so lucky – while he managed to avoid the main mass of the weight, several smaller chunks caught him solid blows to the body and brought him to the ground.

Scion took advantage of the distraction to rain a hail of armor-piercing rounds down on Urbana, actually causing the Spirit of the City to stagger as the bullets bruised her concrete-dense skin. She responded by swatting the armored hero with a small tree, sending him flying almost to the edge of the pond. At the same time Red Racer was pummeling Dr. Froth with dozens of blows a second, which Froth’s kinetic-energy-absorbing bubbles were only partially deflecting… he collapsed under the attack, and the speedster dashed on, leaving  his opponent dazed but conscious.

Artemis turned her attention to Sure-Shot, leaping over the rubble from Quanta’s last attack to take the archer from behind. But his battle-honed senses alerted him, and he managed to slip from her attempted sleeper hold, leaving her open to a blast of mystic energy from Sabra. But her own preternatural senses took Artemis into a twisting backflip that avoided the blast and positioned her to hurl her escrima sticks at the young mage. Sabra barely managed to get a shield up in time.

As Scion was plowing into the ground near the pond, the Blue Flame saw an opening, and leaped down at Urbana, a flaming katana appearing in his hand. He sliced the searing plasma construct through the gynoid’s stone-hard flesh, nearly severing the Liberty Alliance member’s left arm. The sudden shock seemed to momentarily distract the Spirit of the City from whatever internal torment was driving her, but almost as soon as the damage was done, she was healing herself. As the arm reattached itself, the pain in the synthazoid hero’s head seemed to return.

It was then that Totem finally entered the fight… as the battle had begun he had summoned the Avatar of Raven, and in that incarnation he sent out the power of his mind toward Red Racer… the speedster’s body might be moving faster than the eye could follow, but the speed of thought was infinitely faster. Although the young hero’s will was surprisingly strong, Raven was older and more experienced by far, his will commensurately stronger. After a brief struggle he seized control of the youth’s mind, and then Red Racer’s power was Raven’s to command.

It came as a shock to both teams when Red Racer suddenly sped up to his teammate Sabra and clocked her on the jaw – only her instinctive mystic wards saved her from unconsciousness. Before the stunned heroine was completely aware of what had happened Red Racer was on to Sure-Shot, who barely managed to evade his teammate’s attack with a spectacular backflip – during which he managed to loose two arrows, one at Scion and one at Artemis.

As the Racer moved on to rain thousands of blows on Urbana, Scion shot his stun net at Sure-Shot, who managed to dodge it — only to turn directly into Artemis‘ simultaneous attack. The archer stumbled back, momentarily stunned, and landed on his ass. But as Artemis moved in for the take-down he rolled away, and managed to nock an arrow… Suddenly, from above, a loudspeaker-enhanced voice rose above the din of the battle.

“STAND DOWN!”

Instinctively, both teams paused and looked up… to see one of the Liberty Alliance’s Pegasus space-planes hovering silently in the air, with Raptor standing on top of it looking down at the scene below. The Pegasus continued to hover in mid-air as she stepped off and glided down to land near Urbana.

“What the hell is going on here?” she demanded in a quiet but implacable voice. Her teammate looked down at her, then clutched her head with both hands and suddenly collapsed.

“Sabra, see to her,” Raptor ordered, turning to the young mystic. “Get her aboard the Pegasus and do what you can for whatever Is wrong with her. Let me know if we need to get her back to the Overwatch in a hurry.”

As this was being done she turned to Sure-Shot and Red Racer, a slight frown creasing her forehead above her mask. “Would you two like to explain –” she broke off and looked closer at Racer. Her eyes narrowed, then she turned to the Vanguard, who had grouped together behind her.

“Which one of you is mind-controlling him? ” she asked, rather mildly Artemis thought, under the circumstances.

Totem-Raven stepped forward, a charming grin on his lean, handsome face, one eye shadowed by his black hat, and said “That would be me.”

“I don’t recognize you,” Raptor began, then she paused. “Ah, you must be one of the avatars of the shaman, Totem.”

“Indeed I am, young miss,” the avatar replied, his grin widening. “I am known by several names, but you may call me Raven.”

Raptor seemed neither charmed by the avatar, nor intimidated. “I would be grateful if you would release my teammate. You have my word that he won’t attack again.”

Without a moments hesitation Totem-Raven turned his gaze on Red Racer. The young man gave a shuddering, full body shiver, then shook his head, looking confused. “What just happened?” he asked shakily.

It took awhile for Raptor to get the whole story, although she seemed to have no trouble listening to several people talking at once and keeping it all straight. Once she had all the facts she dressed down Sure-Shot and Red Racer, with the implication that a more thorough, and less pleasant, “debriefing” would take place back at HQ. She then apologized sincerely to the Vanguard, each member of which she then introduced by name to her chagrined teammates.

About this time Phantom Ace returned with a very sardonic-looking Álvaro de la Vega.

“Raptor,” he said pleasantly, shooting his cuffs. “A pity you didn’t show up with your friends in the first place… it would have saved my poor campus from a second beating today.”

“Álvaro,” Raven returned the greeting cooly. “I had business elsewhere that was equally important… and this was supposed to just be a quick information-gathering visit to you. Not a damn free-for-all.” Her expression turned grimmer. “I have no idea what set off Urbana like that; I’ve never seen her behave in such a way in all the years I’ve known her.”

“I sort of thought maybe de la Vega was mind-controlling her,” Phantom Ace offered, making his teammates wince slightly. The billionaire just smiled, and to most of the Vanguard’s surprise Raptor’s lips twitched a bit as well.

“Álvaro is… many things,” she said firmly. “But he is not a meta-human, and most certainly not a psychic of any kind. That said, he is indisputably smart and fiendishly clever… which is why we came to speak with him. Would you mind if we had a few words in private?”

“We’ve been trying to have a few words with Mr. de la Vega ourselves all afternoon,” Artemis said. “We keep getting interrupted by meta-human attacks.”

“Very frustrating, no doubt,” Raptor replied. The two women in black, so similar in many ways, gazed at one another for a full minute, seemingly without hostility, indeed, with no apparent expression at all. Just as the tension was getting unbearable for everyone else, both women smiled, ever so slightly.

“Perhaps you’ll have better luck,” Artemis said, gesturing toward the building behind them. As Raptor and de la Vega walked away, she turned to speak with the remaining members of the Liberty Alliance, who seemed very eager to make amends for the misunderstanding. A moment later she startled Phantom Ace as he stepped back from the group, laying a hand on his shoulder.

“No,” was all she said, looking him straight in the eyes.

“What?” he asked innocently. “I was just, um, just…” Artemis held his gaze. “I – oh, fine, I don’t really care what they’re saying anyway.”

Artemis smiled, patted him on the arm, and they both returned to the conversation with the long-time heroes.