With the vanishing of the alien and his spacecraft, the silence of the ocean suddenly seemed immense. Even the creaks and splashes of the still-settling ruins of the Porpoise Mount Research Station seemed muted and far away. For a time no one seemed willing to speak.
“I’m quite certain that was the alien criminal, and renegade former-Paladin, Ebony Night,” Artemis finally said, breaking the mood. “I had heard he left Earth years ago, after his last big fight with the Alliance. But it seems he’s back now, and aligned with whomever was behind the Astoria Incident. If that was a chunk of matrix crystal—”
“It was,” Scion assured her with a sigh. “My sensor readings were off the chart! I wouldn’t have thought there was that much matrix crystal on the whole planet. If this —”
He was cut off as a groggy Kid Singularity groaned and tried to sit up.
“What – where… where am I am? Why am I on an iceberg in the middle of the ocean? Why am I tied up?!” His reedy voice started out confused and was edging quickly up into panic, but his wide-eyed stare as he took in his surroundings was clear – the milky sheen that had previously filmed his eyes was gone.
Artemis quickly bent to reassure him and to cut the zip-ties that bound his wrists and ankles. They currently had no means of truly restraining him when he was conscious, and she was unwilling to beat or shock him into unconsciousness. He seemed to shrink away from her, intimidated and wary. But then his eye caught sight of the Blue Flame hovering overhead and he suddenly grinned.
“Hey, Jonny!” he called rubbing his wrists and scooting a little away from Artemis. “That was so cool when you revealed your secret identity at that press conference yesterday! You really blew their minds, man!”
The Blue Flame, sensing a fan, dropped down to the ice floe, converting to human just before his feet touched the ice. “How you doing Chris? Nice to formally meet you!” He offered his hand and the kid enthusiastically extended his own.
“Wait, you know who I am?” he asked, suddenly looking worried.
“Yeah,” Jonny said with a shrug. “But don’t worry, you’re not in trouble… and we’ll keep your secret if that’s what you decide you want. Also… that press conference wasn’t yesterday – it was over a week ago.” He then proceeded to answer the confused teen’s questions about what the hell was going on.
Once her teammate was engaged with Kid Singularity, Artemis had moved off to free the reviving Ghostlight, who was looking as dazed and confused as her former “partner.”
“Artemis!” The girl clearly remembered their encounter two weeks earlier, that was good. “Where are we? What’s going on? I- I don’t… remember… how I got here..?”
“It’s alright, Cassie,” Artemis said soothingly, putting an arm around the girl’s thin shoulders. Despite the Goth/piercings/rainbow hair look that shouted “keep away,” the girl leaned into the older woman’s offered comfort. “It’s a long story, honey but you’re safe now and I’ll explain all that I can. Do you remember anything from the last 10 days?”
But before Cassie could do more than frown in thought, the low hum of approaching helicopters broke the oceanic silence. The sound quickly grew to a roar, and in a minute they could be seen, coming in fast from the east – three Apache gunships and a large transport chopper, all with the black and silver colors and markings of Underhill-Hart. There was no more time for questions then, as the helicopters moved to circle around the two ice floes and the hovering Interceptor.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
The Underhill-Hart reinforcements were led by a strikingly handsome woman with mocha skin and short dark hair, who introduced herself as Agent Blaze once the situation was made clear and everyone’s bonafides confirmed. Like her counterpart, Agent Mariner, she wore a variation of the usual Underhill-Hart uniform – a red, yellow and orange flame motif over the usual black, running from her ankles up her sides and from her shoulders to her wrists.
It quickly became obvious that she had a lot more than good looks and a snazzy uniform going for her as she organized the transfer of her people, both the wounded and the hale, to the transport, and dispatched teams to assess the damage to the research station. She also offered the Vanguard the loan of power-dampening restraints, a raised eyebrow her only critique on finding that the heroes didn’t have any aboard their own aircraft.
Crux was restrained before he regained consciousness, which left him only able to vent some truly memorable and unique invective at his captors. After a few minutes of this Agent Blaze added a sonic gag to the loaner equipment. Chains, like the others, was now free of Nimord’s mind-control, and again allowed herself to be bound, not meeting anyone’s eyes and saying nothing more than a muttered “sorry” occasionally.
Paragon seemed torn between glee at being in any way involved with the Vanguard, and chagrin at having been a mind-controlled puppet, once Phantom Ace filled him in. Of all the enslaved Changelings he seemed to have retained some awareness of what had happened to him. While his memories were disjointed and fragmentary, he did have at least a sense of the last three days.
There was little time to question him just then, however, with the arrival of the Underhill-Hart reinforcements. He tried to jump in to lend a hand with the evacuation of the wounded mercenaries, but was soundly rebuffed by their comrades – they might understand that he’d been mind-controlled, but that didn’t make them particularly forgiving of the injuries he’d inflicted. Seeing this rejection, Artemis asked him to stand guard over Crux and Chains, which seemed to brighten him up some.
Agent Mariner, once Agent Blaze had assumed command of the rescue operation, took to the water to search for the missing Washout. Able to breathe underwater and to swim at 120 mph, with greatly increased skin density, he was apparently the result of an otherwise failed military meta-human development project. Scion joined him in the search, as did a thrilled-to-be-let-out Orca.
“Try to keep up,” the ex-soldier said with a rare smile as he dove off the Interceptor. Orca laughed out loud and followed him smoothly into the water, while Scion took off like a missile. But despite their best efforts, including Orca’s heightened olfactory tracking abilities, the trio could find no trace of the rogue meta-human.
As the rescue operation began to wind down Agent Blaze asked the Vanguard for their version of what had happened at Porpoise Mount, for her official report on the action. The Vanguard had a few questions of their own…