Race Against Crime

As Meg Halcyon and Totem strolled out from the odd, yet strangely charming little museum dedicated to Álvaro de la Vega they suddenly found themselves frozen in their tracks. A voice seemed to echo in their heads, and apparently in the heads of every one of the more than 1000 people milling about in the AzTech Pyramid’s massive atrium, celebrating AzTech’s 25th anniversary and the opening of the Pyramid.

“Astoria does NOT belong to Álvaro de la Vega!” the voice declared… male, cold, and very, very confidant… to the point of arrogance. “No, it belongs to E.V.A.L., and our reign begins – NOW!”

As suddenly as it came, the voice was gone and they could move again, but at the same instant two other things happened – a tremendous boom shook the building, shattering the massive glass canopy over the seven story high atrium; and on the small stage near the spectacular indoor waterfall a shimmering portal opened in the air. Despite his efforts to twist out of their grips, de la Vega was dragged forward by his two body guards, towards the portal. The instant they shoved him through it, the portal winked out of existence, and the two men suddenly staggered, looking confused and uncertain.

Few people in the crowd had much time to notice the billionaire’s disappearance, however, as half of them were screaming and running for the exits, while the other half seemed rooted in place, staring up in horror as a mass of lethal glass shards sleeted toward them. A handful of people reacted reflexively, from the Mayor and her Chief of Staff, to Dr. John Quest and his husband Hadji Singh, to several quick thinking wait staff – and, of course, the Vanguard.

On the west side of the atrium, almost under the mezzanine where many food cart vendors had set up serving stations, Phantom Ace was the first to react – almost before the glass began to fall he teleported into the thick of the crowd and grabbed the two nearest people he could reach – they in turn were pressed against dozens of others as the crowd surged towards the exits. Stretching his power to the utmost, he teleported them all.

Almost 30 people suddenly found themselves outside on the grass of Defiance Plaza, and before they’d had time to really absorb the fact, Phantom Ace was gone, reappearing in the heart of the crowd to grab another batch of civilians…

Almost as soon as Phantom Ace had vanished from beside him, Chilz began throwing up a curving barrier of ice an inch thick. It arced up over the heads of the crowd for 30 feet in either direction, and shards and panes of ice could be heard shattering to pieces beyond the translucent shield, sliding harmlessly down its sides to the floor.

Blue Flame leapt into the air as Chilz’ ice shield began to form, soaring out over the crowd beyond. Stretching his own power in a way he had never tried before, he essentially hurled himself outward in every direction at once. The effect was a brilliant cloud of blue plasma that vaporized every piece of glass that fell into it. Almost instantly he snapped back into his human-shaped containment field – but it had been enough. Most of the falling glass in the western portion of the atrium was suddenly nothing more than a cloud of disassociated atoms.

Totem, several dozen yards south of his teammates, practically sprained his brain summoning up the Avatar of Eagle, faster than he had believed possible. Before his body had even finished fully changing he had wrapped one wing over Meg, pulling her to this side for protection, and was calling up the winds… a shield of whirling air spread out over the crowd for 12 yards in every direction, catching up the falling glass and smashing the pieces against one another again and again, turning them to sparkling dust.

In the eastern half of the atrium Quanta had immediately thrown up one of the largest quantum matter constructs he’d ever attempted, outside of training and experimentation sessions. Anchoring its corners to the floor and arcing it up over the crowd, the silvery shield had screened the crowd in the eastern half of the Atrium from the lethal rain, the glass shattering to harmless pieces and sliding to the floor with minimal impact.

Whatever force had shattered de la Vega’s supposedly super-tough ceramic-glass composite seemed to have hit directly above the center of the atrium, and the debris there was more a hail of relatively harmless pellets than a storm of razor sharp death. Nonetheless, Scion hurled his tangle field as high and as wide as he could and, overcharging it to the limits of his armor, vaporizing a portion of the falling debris.

Artemis, recognizing the danger of a panicked, tightly packed crowd, had leapt up to the podium where de la Vega’s confused bodyguards were still staring at the spot where he’d vanished. Seizing the microphone, her commanding yet soothing words quickly calmed the crowd, and with the immediate danger obviously under control people began to get a grip on themselves again. The uninjured quickly turned to help those who had been cut by falling glass or trampled in the rush for the doors, and AzTech security quickly moved in to take over the cleanup.

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Once the immediate danger was over the Vanguard regrouped near the now abandoned stage, with Meg Halcyon trying to be unobtrusive nearby. But before they could even begin to investigate their patron’s disappearance, everyone’s comm link began sounding the priority alarm. Scion called up the holographic display on his armor’s wrist comp and the face of Evelyn Court, their swing shift dispatcher, appeared in the air before them.

“I don’t know what’s going on, Captain Astor, but it’s suddenly crazy up here. Aside from whatever that boom was that shook the building a minute ago, we’ve got three Priority Alpha emergencies coming in.” Her face vanished and a map of the city core area appeared in its place. Three flashing red circles pinpointed the urgent distress calls.

“The first one is from the Diamond District – half a dozen alarms went off simultaneously, at all the high-end jewelry and gem business in the area. APD has been dispatched, and reports are still coming in, but meta-human involvement seems certain. That one is just half a mile south of us.

“The second call came in less than thirty seconds after the first –a silent alarm from the Pacific Museum of Art. I’ve had one of our people trying to contact the museum, but we’re not getting any response. Tonight is Wednesday, so the museum is open until 21:00, and they usually have a pretty good turnout. Again, APD is on their way, but they request the Vanguard’s presence as well. The museum is 3.5 miles from the Pyramid.

“The third call is from Fort Stevens, and may be the most urgent – a military convoy  was escorting a large truck carrying a prototype weapon system from Sovereign Industries to the Fort for a major demonstration tomorrow. Not long after it left the Sovereign facility communications were suddenly lost, with only a single garbled transmission that suggests a meta-human ambush. The colonel who called seemed very concerned that the weapon system not fall into, um, ‘unauthorized hands.’ The last known position of the convoy is a little over three miles away.”

The Vanguard stared at one another in surprise… given the announcement that they had just made here, it seemed obvious that E.V.A.L. was behind this. But to split the team or not to split the team, that was the question. Scion was all for tackling the military crisis first, that seeming the most vital in terms of potential long-term danger, and argued that the other two might just be distractions from the main event.

“Actually, they could all be distractions,” Quanta interjected. He had been using his temporal abilities, his post-cognition as he thought of it, to “play back” the last few minutes, scanning for any clue as to what had caused the destruction and, more importantly, the disappearance of Álvaro de la Vega. “Distractions designed to prevent us from going after Álvaro, in fact.”

“Yeah, and Álvaro sure didn’t go willingly,” Phantom Ace offered. “And I don’t think those two body guards were acting on their own, either. I was looking right at Álvaro when they grabbed him, and it was just for a split second, but it sure seemed like they were fighting their own actions, at least at first.”

“I was much closer,” Artemis said, “and I got no such sense from the guards. They seemed to drag him very deliberately into the portal.” She paused, frowning. “But of course the ceiling was coming down just then, too…”

“You know, I always thought it was odd he didn’t seem freaked out that day in his office when those E.V.A.L. guys attacked,” said Blue Flame. “And he said he had contacts with them, to stay out of each others business supposedly.. but maybe…”

“Actually, I think Phantom Ace may be right,” Quanta interrupted. “I’ve been going over the last few minutes, looking for some clue, and I definitely agree that Álvaro’s men were trying to resist some outside influence. Which makes finding him a priority I’d say.”

“Have you found anything that would help us do that?” Scion asked.

“Well, no, to be honest. Nothing on any spectrum I can see, no hidden metas or tech within range, no trail at all… ”

“Then I think we should focus on these three attacks,” Scion replied. “Starting with the military convoy. Since we have no other leads, perhaps we’ll learn something if we can stop this crime spree and capture some E.V.A.L. operatives.”

“If we had some way of going after de la Vega, I’d argue with you,” Artemis sighed. “But we don’t, so you may be right that this is our best chance of finding him. However, I don’t think we should focus on a single attack. The museum has a significant number of people present, and could easily turn into a hostage situation… or worse. I would agree that the Diamond District problem is the least important, though, if we’re going to triage the situation…”

“Are you not the one who was recently telling Totem that one should never split the party?” Eagle asked haughtily.

Artemis shrugged. “Needs must, when the devil drives, as my… an old friend… used to say.” Eagle looked confused, but didn’t press the point.

It was quickly agreed that Scion and Eagle would fly to the convoy attack, with the latter carrying Artemis and Chilz, while Quanta would tunnel himself and Blue Flame to the museum. Phantom Ace was dispatched to reconnoiter the Diamond District and report to the other teams via the comm links, then join whichever group seemed most in need of his skill set.

♦  ♦  ♦  ♦

The military convoy had been attacked on the Aurora Freeway, just where the interstate was most constricted, and deepest, in Prospector’s Gulch, the shallow ravine that split Coxcomb Hill. Three military jeeps, a half-track and a semi cab were in various states of partial or total destruction, and traffic was already backed up for a mile in each direction when the heroes touched down.

Army Colonel Roberto Estevan quickly filled them in. Amazingly, despite some serious injuries, no one had been killed when Dominator, CyberKnight and an unidentified winged humanoid had come swooping down from the west and blasted the convoy. With the sun behind them it had been difficult to target the villains, and it was over in seconds.

A “flock” of Dominator’s Air Cavalry, of a heavier class than the Vanguard had seen earlier in the day at the city jail, had swarmed over the cargo container, blasted it free of the semi, attached magnetic grapplers and lifted it into the air. The three villains had provided suppressing fire while this was going on, and had taken off after the purloined container as soon as it had gained sufficient height and distance.

“They disappeared to the west, into the sun, less than two minutes ago,” Colonel Estevan growled, pointing in that direction. “Flying fairly low and rather slow. That’s about the only good thing I can say about this fiasco, Captain Astor – that armored shitheel Greer seemed really pissed off at how heavy the armored container was – his damn drones seemed to have trouble lifting it, and they were clearly moving a lot slower than he wanted.”

“Well, maybe his intelligence wan’t quite what he thought it was,” Scion said thoughtfully. “Let’s see if we can’t make his evening even worse.”

“Damn straight!” the colonel agreed with a grim smile. “Give the bastards hell, Vanguard, and thank you all… Godspeed!”

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It only took the heroes a little more than a minute to catch up with the flying crime scene, the eight drones laboring to move their prize through the evening sky only 150 feet or so above the rooftops. Dominator flew 50 feet above the stolen container, with the unknown winged man flying ahead of it and CyberKnight equidistant behind. Ten men rode atop the container, all in dark green paramilitary-looking uniforms, while five additional, smaller Air Cavalry drones continuously circled it.

Scion had led them around a bit, to come at the criminals from the side and above, rather than from directly behind or ahead. At a hundred feet from the enemy they still hadn’t been spotted, and Artemis tapped Eagle’s leg. He let go and her cloak spread out, catching the wind as she glided silently forward toward the container. She never failed to find this sort of flying exhilarating…

Domnator caught sight of her just as she pulled her cloak in and dropped towards the container – his arm canon roared, but she ducked and rolled, deftly avoiding the blast. She came up in a fighting crouch, and her escrima sticks lashed out, dispatching two minions in quick succession. One plunged screaming over the side, but was caught by one of the circling drones, which lowered him to the nearest rooftop before gliding back into its place guarding the container; the other man collapsed unconscious to the deck, his hand weapon skittering away and over the side. No drone rushed to save it…

Eagle swooped in close behind Artemis, dropping Chilz near her then stooping on one of the Air Cavalry units. His talons raked the drone, scoring its side, but before he could get a solid grip a machine gun blast from Dominator threw him back. A barrage of pulsed energy from the hand weapons of several minions flashed around Eagle as he veered off, one landing a solid hit on his side – a hit he actually felt!

The unknown winged humanoid went high, then dove down to launch a screaming attack on Scion. “I shall peel you from your can, interloper, and then Dark Condor shall feast on your entrails!” This dramatic pronouncement was somewhat blunted by the fact that his long, razor-sharp talons, on both hands and feet, didn’t even leave a mark as they >skreeeeed< along the hero’s armor.

Unfortunately, CyberKnight used her companion’s futile attack to launch a plasma blast at Scion from behind, and he certainly felt that! Momentarily spinning out of control, he knew he was going to have bruises in the morning…

He quickly regained control, however, and before CyberKnight could recharge for another attack, Scion flicked an eye at a certain control on his HUD, triggering a little something he’d been working on for the past several weeks… a nullification pulse flashed out from his armor, and every piece of electronic equipment in a 30-foot radius that was not his own suddenly lost power.

Unfortunately, his own systems were still recovering from that damn plasma blast, and the nullification pulse was only a fraction of what it should have been – CyberKnight staggered momentarily, but her systems were clearly heavily shielded. Of the drones in range only the nearest one went dark and started to fall. Still attached by it magnetic grappler, the dead unit dropped down to swing wildly below the container.

The pulse blasters of the E.V.A.L. minions, however, were less well shielded, and they all suddenly turned into nothing more useful, as a weapon, than a thrown rock. Momentarily nonplussed by their weapons’ failure, each man quickly slapped a button on his vest. An almost subsonic hum began, and when one of them slugged Chilz in the stomach, it was with a force at least five times stronger than that which the man should have been able to generate. It starred the hero’s ice form, momentarily, but failed to even move him.

Chilz backhanded the man into one of his companions, putting both men down, then turned to send a powerful blast of Arctic air at the nearest drone. Pulling water from the air, he encased the machine in a cocoon of solid ice, and in seconds it had gone dark, falling from the sky to join its crippled sibling, swinging like a pendulum below the container.

The platform lurched as the remaining drones strove to compensate for their lost companions and the suddenly shifting torque forces, the whine from their engines shifting up an octave. This caused the minion swinging at Artemis to stumble, and she shifted him through her momentum gate with practiced ease. She clubbed him into unconsciousness as two more minions attacked, but this time the lurching of the container threw her own balance off – one of the powered punches hit her in the ribs, while the second one clipped her head, dazing her… they moved in for the kill…

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Eagle, looping around and coming in for another attack on the drones, was forced to dodge a barrage of energy blasts from Dominator’s arm cannons. The villain continued the barrage as the winged hero swept back up, walking the blasts into Chilz‘ back. The energy staggered the ice elemental, causing his attack on a second drone to fail, but doing no real damage to his ice form as it cracked and starred, then almost instantly healed.

As Eagle jinked and dodged the laser blasts from several free-flying drones, he was suddenly stooped upon by the Dark Condor… who certainly did seem to love the sound of his own voice. “Rumor says you are a god, winged fool! I hope it is so, for I have never feasted on the flesh of a god before, and I relish the opportunity!”

His big talk was once again undercut by his actually performance – Eagle easily, gracefully turned his attack aside, buffeting the apparently cannibalistic avian into a sudden downward spiral. “Whatever I may be, mortal, you shall certainly never know,” he sniffed in a mixture of disdain and disgust.

At that moment Phantom Ace suddenly popped onto the container not far from Artemis. He had reported to her and Scion about the situation in the Diamond District, and she had suggested he join them, filling him in on the situation in the air even as she regained the upper hand and battered the two minions who had landed hits on her into unconsciousness.

Now he reached out and grasped one of the cables by which the Air Cavalry was carrying the cargo container and turned it insubstantial. Instantly the drone that had been attached to it lurched upward, suddenly free of its burden. Spinning wildly, trying to regain control, the rogue unit slammed into one its circling siblings, and both drones exploded into fiery debris that rained down on the roof below them…

Which happened to be the roof of the 27-story main tower of the Isobel Dixon Memorial Hospital. Now down three units, the struggling Air Cavalry were dropping toward the roof, and seconds latter the cargo container came to rest with a crunch on the hospital’s large helipad. The drones let the lines go slack as they went into hover mode, their generators humming as they began to build power for the next leg of their flight…

As Eagle swooped down for another pass at the recovering drones CyberKnight aimed her netcaster at him, hoping to entangle him in its electrified strands and bring him down; but Scion, soaring up behind her, fresh from spraying fire retardant over the burning debris on the roof, strafed her with armor-piercing rounds. She managed to avoid most of the fusillade, but in doing so her own attack went wide, missing her winged target completely.

As Chilz hit Dominator with another Arctic blast, which he shrugged off as usual, the group channel of the Vanguard’s comm link suddenly blared to life.

“This is Quanta, the situation at the museum has turned serious, we need help now!”

♦  ♦  ♦  ♦

Quanta and Blue Flame stepped out of the shimmering quantum tunnel across the street from the Pacific Museum of Art, in the shadow of one of the great old oak trees that lined the Park Blocks. The three story wall of glass that was the museum’s western face reflected the evening sun, but the heroes could see in sufficiently to tell that, in the enormous Main Gallery at least, there were a lot of bodies on the floor… and a handful of figures could be seen moving about, apparently looting the display cases. One of them bulked alarmingly large…

The main feature of the museum, both a part of its architecture as well as  a permanent art installation, was the Wall, and its companion, the Switchback. Opposite the glass face of the museum, at the back of the Main Gallery, the Wall dived the western and eastern halves of the museum. A massive out-thrusting of the earth’s bones, the floor-to-ceiling black basalt wall sloped backwards as it rose, and the Switchback wound back and forth up its face, an eight-foot wide ramp cut from the living rock.

On the ground floor, then again halfway up the face, and finally at the top, north and south archways off of the Switchback opened into the smaller galleries at the “back” of the museum – Native and Northwestern Art in the northern ground floor gallery, Special Exhibits and Glass & Textiles in the southern gallery; the Chin Zhia Asian Art Collection to the north on the second floor, with the American and Architectural Arts gallery to the south; and the Classical & European Art gallery on the north side of the top floor, with the Modern and Graphic Arts in the southern gallery.

Quanta momentarily considered a grand entrance straight through the great glass face of the museum, but realized it might be best to minimize property damage where they could… and there weren’t likely to be many such opportunities in the next few minutes…

Deciding that the most obvious point of entry was the best, the two heroes went in through the main doors, on the north side. Blue Flame immediately went high, emitting a dazzling burst of white light, to try and dazzle and blind their foes in the Main Gallery. This certainly alerted every criminal in the museum to the fact that the heroes had arrived, but it sadly did little to hinder them.  Hi-tech goggles on the minions shielded their eyes from the burst, and Gator’s nictating eyelids did the same for him.

The human-alligator Incidental had been at the end of the Main Gallery opposite the entrance, but as soon as the dazzling light faded he began to race down the aisle at the foot of the Wall. For such a tall, massive creature, he moved surprisingly quickly…

Quanta, who knew the museum’s layout intimately from many enjoyable visits in the past, realized the thieves would almost certainly be moving their ill-gotten loot out via the main loading bay, which opened off the south end of the Main Gallery. And sure enough, through the many display cases between he could see two dark-green clad figures guarding the doors into the bay…

With a smile, he formed a block of quantum matter over their heads, and let it drop… the men tried to dodge at the last second, but the block knocked them senseless, hurling them away from the doors as it settled into place across the opening. No further artwork would be getting out that way, not unless they had someone who could move ten tons!

As he congratulated himself over this clever end run, a shaky figure stepped out from behind a nearby display case and fired a pulse blaster at Quanta, almost point blank. The shot went wide, however, smashing into the gift shop behind him. As the hero raised a hand to take out the shooter a black-clad figure seemed to flow from the shadows behind him, a shining black blade already swinging. Quanta barely had time to turn to face this new threat before the sword cut across his abdomen. The power of the blow pushed him back a step, but the blade did no more than etch a groove across his quantum shell, with a sound like metal on stone. The gash immediately began to fill, and in an instant it was gone.

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A few yards away the Blue Flame, still hovering twenty feet up, sent a stream of plasma at the charging Gator. Moving with shocking agility, the behemoth dodged most of the blast, his tough hide seeming to have no trouble absorbing what heat did wash over him… and he never even slowed down.

Smashing the nearest display case, Gator grabbed the first heavy projectile to hand – a Remington bronze called “The Wicked Pony.” After a brief, regretful glance he hurled it with all his strength at the flaming man above him.

Blue Flame barely had time to register what the monster was doing, but in that split second he knew that while the bronze statue couldn’t hurt him, he would destroy it instantly if it touched him. Almost without conscious thought he flipped the switch in the back of his mind and turned human a fraction of a second before the bronze struck his chest, slamming him into the wall of the gift shop… as he blacked out he just had time to reflexively hug the statue to him as he slid to floor…

His fugue must have lasted only a few seconds, because Jonny came to with Gator looming less than two yards away. “Nice catch, kid,” the mutant rumbled… did he actually seem impressed? “Glad you saved the statue, I always did really like that one.”

Before Jonny could pull himself together enough to respond, Gator was suddenly knocked backward by a stream of silvery balls that ricocheted off the floor and smashed up into his protruding jaw, snapping his head back, and seeming to actually daze him…

Quanta was judiciously pleased with the results of his first attempt at a move he’d been practicing for some time – targeting multiple enemies with his quantum matter blasts. The ninja guy had been staggered, hurled back into the shadows, while a minion had been taken out of the fight completely… and he was gratified to see that he had calculated that ricochet into Gator’s jaw perfectly!

But as he turned to search for ninja guy, suddenly everything grew slightly hazy and dark in Quanta’s vision… he shook his head, and things cleared back up quickly. It was obvious to him then that whatever the effect was, it was rolling off ninja guy in dark waves… but waves that now appeared translucent to the hero’s eyes…

The Blue Flame took Gator’s momentary distraction to set down the Remington and reignite himself. Forming his flaming katana, he soared up over the monstrous figure. The behemoth blocked his attacks at every turn, but seemed frustrated to realize he couldn’t really take the attack to his opponent – his tough hide might resist heat and even flaming blades, to some extent, but he knew if he actually got his claws on that incandescent form, he’d regret it.

At that moment another figure leapt out of the shadows on the Switchback above them, silver flashes flying from his hand toward the Blue Flame. Gator took the opportunity, with the hero distracted by this new threat, to break contact and slip off between display cases…

“Feel the razor wrath of Shou Tzin, Western dog!” the mystery man cried as the shuriken he’d hurled struck the Blue Fame in throat, chest and groin – and vaporized instantly. “Really, dude?” the young hero yelled, after a brief instant staring from his crotch to the man dressed in a somewhat garish martial arts ensemble. “Not cool!” The man looked rather surprised himself, and barely dodged the jet of hot plasma hurled at him…

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Quanta, meanwhile, was peering into the dimness around him looking for ninja guy, who had vanished again into the shadows… his mind sifted rapidly through the evidence, and he quickly concluded that the villain’s powers must work something like those Artemis possessed –

But before he could pursue that line of thought, never mind develop a strategy to counter it, Gator crashed through a display case behind him. Grabbing him in a powerful bear hug, the muscles in the massive arms squeezed, and enormous jaws, lined with hundreds of razor sharp teeth, snapped down where Quanta’s neck met his shoulder!

The teeth grated on his quantum shell, unable to pierce it… but the pressure of those jaws was tremendous, and the shell began to crack… time seemed to slow to a crawl… he was finding it hard to breathe… hairline fractures were racing up his chest… In desperation he focused on the nanocarbon material protecting him, and instantly sharp, 6″ spikes drove outward and into his attacker.

Both arms and jaws released him suddenly, and Gator stumbled back with a roar of pain and rage. The molecularly sharp spikes had penetrated his unbelievably tough hide, if only barely, but it was the spikes in the softer tissues of his mouth that had really hurt the reptilian mutant.

Quanta staggered forward, gasping for breathe and desperately repairing and thickening his protective shell… looking up, all around him he saw not just the roaring, furious Gator, but ninja guy, suddenly stepping out from the shadows again; Blue Flame engaged with some Asian martial artist; and half a dozen E.V.A.L. minions closing in…

Heart racing, something he was not used to, he triggered his comm link while simultaneously calculating ballistic trajectories in his head… “This is Quanta, the situation at the museum has turned serious, we need help now!” he said urgently… and released seven streams of buckyballs toward their massed enemies…

♦  ♦  ♦  ♦

Back on the Dixon Memorial helipad, three of the remaining four free-flying drones had taken the place of the incapacitated carrier drones, protected as they did so by covering fire from Dominator and CyberKnight. As they snapped their own magnetic grappling hooks onto the cargo container, the recharging hum from the resting drones suddenly changed pitch… they were getting ready to take off again…

Eagle, who had just summoned the lightning to blast the annoying Dark Condor out of the sky, immediately sensed what was happening. As the singed villain spiraled away, panicked, smoking feathers trailing behind him, Eagle stooped on the end of the container hanging over the outside edge of the helipad, unfazed by Dominator’s machine gun fire and easily dodging a plasma blast from CyberKnight…

Talons grasped the end of the cargo container and Eagle’s mighty wings gave one tremendous flap… the container pivoted up with him as he rose… when it was high enough he gave a powerful heave… and it flipped over on its long axis, crashing down over the edge of the helipad and onto the roof. It came to rest upside down, canted at an angle against the crumpled edge of the helipad.

The Air Cavalry drones, engines straining, were taken over with the container, slamming into the roof, tangling themselves in their own cables, and several of them exploded into shrapnel. The few E.V.A.L. minions who had survived Artemis’ and Chilz‘ attacks tried to leap from the tumbling container, but most ended up either unconscious on the helipad or roof, or with broken bones… and some both.

Artemis vaulted gracefully free of the tumbling container, landing in a perfect three-point crouch on the helipad, her cloak settling around her like a shroud. She raised a hand to her ear, as if listening, nodded once, and turned to melt into the shadows. Chilz also leaped away from the toppling container, to come down somewhat less gracefully on the roof. Phantom Ace simply vanished…

…appearing in the shadow of the overturned container. As he peered up at the still solidly sealed container Phantom Ace had a sudden realization – he could no longer sense the energy field that had been playing along his nerves, like distant nails on a chalkboard, ever since he’d arrived. The same energy field that had been keeping him from teleporting into the container was gone… he vanished again with a ripple and a faint “pop”…

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For a moment everyone on or above the hospital roof paused in sheer shock at the audacity of Eagle’s move. Chilz was the first to break the silence. “Well, I guess this time the bird did the flipping, eh Dominator old buddy?” The armored villain seemed momentarily at a loss for words.

Eagle himself hovered in the air over his handiwork, surveying it with a look of smug satisfaction on his face. Which may be why he failed to see CyberKnight taking aim with her lance – a plasma bolt slammed into his chest, sending him flailing backward, stunned, spiraling downward out of sight over the building’s edge.

“You bastards!” Dominator screamed in fury as he finally found his voice. “You’ll pay for this, all of you! And I’m gonna start by peeling you out of that tinfoil armor, Scion – hell, my elderly grandma could probably rip up that stupid halloween costume of yours!”

“Maybe,” Scion said. “But if she did, at least I could fix it myself… unlike you and that outdated, third rate Army surplus crap you stole, Greer.” With that he flicked on the nullification pulse again… this time at full power and close range.

The remaining drones flickered and then went dark and silent… as did Dominator. Hovering ten feet over the helipad when the pulse hit, his voice cut off in mid-tirade and he seemed to freeze before plummeting down to crash onto the metal grating. He tottered back and forth for a moment, before crashing forward onto his face with a resounding clang.

CyberKnight, who had been at the edge of the nullification field, had felt the flicker in her own cybernetic systems and had hastily retreated to the far edge of the roof, coming down to a soft landing, just in case. Her electronics suffered no more than a few seconds of instability before returning to full functionality… but damn, she’d have to be careful about getting close to that bastard Scion again…

Scion ignored CyberKnight for the moment, listening to the report Phantom Ace was delivering via comm link about the contents of the container. “It seems like everything’s OK – jumbled all to hell, but it’s all in really heavy-duty cases, so I doubt anything’s broken. The weapon system is in like two dozen different pieces, some not too big, some huge.. altogether it must weigh a couple tons.”

“OK, Ace, this is what I want you to do…” Scion began.

A moment later Scion called out to his remaining teammates over his external speakers, rather than through the comm link. “OK, we’re clearly needed more urgently at the museum. Artemis and Phantom Ace have gone ahead, but we need to follow as quickly as possible.

“Thanks to Eagle, this situation is secure enough, but just to be sure – Chilz, I want you to ice over that container, really anchor it to the roof and helipad.” He turned to Eagle, who had recovered from the plasma attack and was again hovering over the scene, looking less smug and eyeing the distant CyberKnight malevolently.

“When Chilz is done, pick him up and get yourselves over to the museum ASAP. CyberKnight and the creepy bird guy, assuming he comes back, won’t be able to do anything before the military arrives in force… and Dominator’s armor won’t be coming back online anytime soon.” That wasn’t true of course, the nullifier only lasted a short time, and the military wouldn’t be coming until he called them… but the enemy didn’t need to know any of that.

“I’m heading to the museum now,” he concluded. “I’ll see you there soon.” With that he launched himself upward and was out of sight in an instant.

Chilz immediately began icing down the overturned cargo container, doing the same to Dreadnought in the process, just for good measure. The asshole had managed to regain his feet and was clearly struggling to reboot his very heavy armor… Chilz figured every little delay was all to the good, whatever Scion said about how long his nullifier would last.

CyberKnight, on seeing Scion vanish into the evening sky, cooly considered her next move. She’d love to blast that icy bastard into shards, but with that Eagle still around – no way she could count on Dark Condor to keep him occupied, he was clearly outclassed. Not that she hadn’t enjoyed seeing her “ally” get a beatdown, he gave her the creeps…

No, the best thing to do was wait until the cocky, overconfident fools left. Then she would see what she could do about getting Greer’s armor functioning again. He’d already summoned more of his Air Cavalry drones, before that EMP blast, and they’d be here in less than two minutes. It shouldn’t take much longer for her plasma blasts to free the container… they might yet salvage this cluster-fuck of a mission, thanks to the idiotic “heroes” splitting their team…

♦  ♦  ♦  ♦

Chagrin would have been clear on Quanta’s face, had anyone been able to really make out his features beneath his shell… his seven simultaneous attacks had turned out to be a bust. True, he’d succeeded in keeping Gator off balance, but he’d entirely missed ninja guy, martial arts guy, and three of the four minions he’d targeted. The one minion he had hit had barely been dazed, much less put down. How had he miscalculated those ricochets so badly? He’d done as many in the Danger Room, during training… but of course you couldn’t really simulate the adrenaline and roiling emotional state of field combat. Note to self, work on an AI simulation to address this. Assuming I survive, of course…

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Artemis appeared silently in the shadows of the entry archway to the Native and Northwestern Art gallery. A few yards in front of her Blue Flame seemed to be actually enjoying a sword fight with some sort of Chinese martial artist. She mentally rolled her eyes – the boy did love his martial arts movies, and was positively entranced by the romance of the sword, so it was hardly surprising that he would indulge his fantasies when the opportunity arose. However inappropriate it might be under the circumstances…

When his opponent had his back to her, in the shifting moves of the fight, Artemis hurled her escrima sticks at him, hoping to end this foolishness quickly. To her shock, the man turned just enough to avoid the thrown weapons, knocking them aside with his blade without missing a beat in his dance with Blue Flame. Who was this warrior?!

She had barely finished the thought before the man had whirled around to launch an attack on her. He was uncannily fast and assured, and it was only her own immortal reflexes and 150 years of fighting skill that allowed her to leap back enough to avoid a slash which would’ve disemboweled her!

It was those same preternatural senses, and the affinity for the shadows granted her by her cloak, that allowed Artemis to almost simultaneously avoid the attack that ninja guy launched at her back from the shadows – she felt his blade tug at her cloak, but the arcane garment seemed to tangle the weapon long enough for her to spin away…

…and right into a blaster pulse from one of the E.V.A.L. minions rushing down the Switchback. The energy beam struck her a glancing blow to the head, momentarily dazing her… the cloak absorbed much of the energy, fortunately, and being what it was, it was itself undamaged by either blast or blade

Even seeing stars she recognized the blade which the black-clad ninja wielded as he rushed at her – it was the Blade of Shadow, which meant this must be the infamous assassin Shadowson. She rolled away from his attack, angling herself to scoop up her escrima sticks from the floor, then blocking his next blow with them and sending a powerful kick toward his stomach. He dodged, and in his moves she recognized the the training of the Masters in hidden Shambhala. This could prove to be a very interesting fight…

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Scion was glad he’d decided to do a quick fly-by of the museum, rather than rushing straight in, as he noted the large truck backed up to the loading bay at the southwest corner of the building. From the street it would have been screened by the museum’s landscaping and a row of tall arborvitae, but from the air it…

Two men had just hopped down from the loading dock  and were climbing into the cab when Scion dropped down in front of them in his own classic three-point landing, shattering the pavement around him and sending a cloud of dust swirling up. He slowly stood up and looked at the men behind the glass, his blank metallic faceplate and glowing eye lenses as intimidating as any glare.

Recovering quickly from his surprise the man behind the wheel suddenly gunned the engine and the truck lurched forward to run the hero down. Scion braced himself and leaned in to take the impact as the truck slammed into him… the vehicle jerked to a complete stop and both men inside flew forward, hard. They hadn’t built enough momentum to actually come through the windshield, but the driver did get a bloody nose hitting the steering wheel and both were dazed.

Both men drew pulse blasters and fired thought the windshield, turning the glass into a shower of molten beads – one blast flew off into the evening, striking a car parked on the street 60 feet away and setting off its alarm, but the other struck the hero straight in the face. Momentarily blinded while his optic sensors reset, Scion took the moment to trigger his nullifier field once again.

He’d considered simply punching through the engine block and pulling it out the front of the truck, but really he preferred the more elegant solution when it was an option. Both minions fired their weapons at him again, but the driver’s was as dead as the truck and the second man’s weapon merely emitted a feeble pulse of light before sputtering out.

Leaping up to the hood of the truck Scion reached in and pulled both men out through the shattered, melted windshield, bashed their heads together, and let their limp bodies fall to the pavement…

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Inside the museum, the Blue Flame had renewed his flaming katana attacks on Shou Tzin once Shadowson drew off Artemis, and actually managed to daze the villain… which came as something of a shock to both of them.

Quanta, meanwhile, watched the battle raging through the Main Gallery with a calculating eye, dodging Gator and (most) pulse blasts, while running the possibilities through his head. If he could only…

The same shaky minion who had fired at and missed him several times already once again failed to land his shot, instead hitting the rampaging Gator in the back of the head. As the monstrous villain turned his fury on the poor, terrified minion Quanta launched another quantum matter attack – he missed the raging behemoth, but took out the minion, which he figured probably saved the man’s life.

As Gator turned back toward him Quanta again dodged his attack, his mind only half on this immediate opponent, waiting, watching… the martial artist continued to dance around in an almost balletic display with Blue Flame… Shadowson and Artemis were locked in a fight that shifted around the gallery, from shadow to shadow… everyone twisting and turning to avoid the pulses of ruby energy that filled the air as the E.V.A.L. minions continued to dart from cover to cover, tightening their circle…

Suddenly, Shadowson was behind him, slashing out from the shadows with his sword once again… but still unable to do more than score Quanta’s protective shell. With a hiss of frustration, the ninja vanished once more into the shadows. And if Quanta’s analysis of his movements in the fight so far was correct, he would appear… there!

This was the moment he’d been watching for –the configuration of friends and enemies that would let him take out the most bad guys at once and do minimal further damage to the museum’s priceless treasures. He formed a large disk of dense matter in the air and let it drop…

Gator took the brunt of the massive construct, and collapsed instantly into unconsciousness, as did three of the remaining minions… Shou Tzin, already dazed from a plasma bolt that had melted his blade, stumbled back and caught the edge of the disc, going down as well. And Shadowson  – No! The ninja-assassin threw himself flat and teleported at the last second! Cursing under his breath Quanta let his construct evaporate before it crushed the unconscious villains or the artifacts scattered around them.

Shadowson didn’t appear anywhere he could see, and with Artemis taking out the last few minions, it appeared that the battle was over… the ninja had no doubt recognized the fact, and had made his own escape, leaving his lackeys to their fates. No honor among thieves indeed…

A moment later Scion burst through the doors from the loading dock, Quanta having let the construct blocking them fade away as well. He was prepared for battle, but on seeing that his teammates had everything in hand, he relaxed.

“I just saw a guy in black,” he said, joining Quanta near the main entrance as the lights of the arriving APD and ambulances began to make garish patterns of red and blue around them. “He must’ve been hiding in the shadows when I took out their escape vehicle… just as I noticed him he stepped into the back of the truck. I got to him as he was picking up some sort of jade vase, or jar, but before I could grab him he’d stepped back into the shadows was was just… gone.”

“That would be Shadowson, the assassin we discussed earlier today,” Artemis said, coming up as he finished his story. “Like me, he commands the ability to travel through shadows, although his means of doing so seems to be… different… than mine. And he certainly wields the legendary Blade of Shadows, there is no longer any doubt of that.”

“Hrrm,” grunted Quanta, shaking his head. “So if he’d killed me with that damn thing it would’ve been your fault, for not taking it when you had the chance! I mean, how could he even mark my nanocarbon shell? Even the finest steel should just slide across it!”

“The blade is mystical in its origins,” Artemis shrugged. “It is said that it can cut through any metal, so I suppose we should be grateful your shell is not metallic in nature, yes?”

“Ugh, magic,” Quanta sighed, frowning. “I don’t really–”

But before he could expand on his thoughts on the subject, Phantom Ace suddenly appeared before the group, a big grin on his face. “Did everything go as we discussed?” Scion asked.

“Yep!” his young teammate replied. “We’re in the pipe, five by five.”

“Good. And now that the rest of the team is here,” Scion continued, glancing out the windows as Eagle dropped Chilz and then landed beside him, “I suggest we head to the Diamond District – hopefully there’s still time to stop that group as well. Can you open a tunnel Quanta?”

As cops and paramedics flooded the museum to take away the thieves and tend to the drugged patrons and staff, respectively, Quanta consulted briefly with Phantom Ace, to get the lay of the land as he’d last seen it, and then opened a quantum tunnel…

♦  ♦  ♦  ♦

The quantum tunnel opened onto the southern portion of Diamond Square, which, as Phantom Ace had indicated remained clear. As the team stepped through they could see that Seismic had raised another of his signature mounds of earth and shattered pavement on the northwest corner of the square, the rubble no doubt surrounding another escape tunnel into the Undercity.

The villain himself stood atop the highest part of the mound, exhorting his minions in his odd accent to hurry, and demanding to know if anyone had yet found the Stephano Emerald. His haranguing cut off abruptly as the heroes emerged onto the grass below him. The setting sun had dropped below the surrounding buildings by now, but it stilll shone directly down Amethyst Avenue, dramatically silhouetting the villain.

Before he could react, Artemis had launched her fully charged escrima sticks at him. The massive earth mover didn’t even try to block them, he simply let them bounce off him, the electrical charge apparently grounding itself in his stone-skined body.

Eagle immediately took to the air and, hovering over Seismic, brought his wings together to release his devastating Thunderclap attack. The blast of air and noise buffeted the massive figure, but did little more than ruffle parts of his vaguely Aztec-looking costume.

Blue Flame’s blast of plasma did as little to stop the villain’s laughter as Scion’s fusillade of armor-piercing bullets. “Is that the best you little “heroes” have,” he guffawed. “Fly away and save yourselves from embarrassment!” He then raised  a large, booted foot and slammed it down hard.

The ground rippled out around him as seismic waves tore up the turf and street, shattered the fountain in the center of the Square, and knocked Artemis onto her ass. Chillz and Quanta managed to keep their feet, barely, but the glass in the windows of the high-end jewelry and gem stores around them cracked and splintered.

It was Quanta who finally managed to wipe the smirk of Seismic‘s face by dropping a ton of quantum matter onto his head. He was forced to form it closer to his target than he’d have liked, to prevent the man from vibrating it apart, so it didn’t have the full force of gravity behind it… but it was enough to bring Seismic to his knees, clearly stunned, and to take out two of his minions who had been trying to escape into the crater.

Before anyone could follow up on this, however, the ground under the heroes erupted in a tremendous explosion as the gas main under the Square suddenly ruptured and ignited – Epiphany Jones’ signature move. Artemis, who was just climbing back to her feet, was hurled into the air, crashing down amidst the rubble of the fountain, semi-conscious. Chilz was hurled in the opposite direction, slamming down face first onto the pavement 15 feet away, his ice form cracking and partially melted.

Quanta, who was the least effected by the blast, staggered to his feet, scanning the area – yes, there she was, in front of the Tom Shane Company, next to the Columbia River Gallery. Damn, how could such a gorgeous woman be so bat-shit crazy? He called up what little the Vanguard knew about Epiphany Jones on his wrist comp, his quantum shell flowing away from the device. To his relief, she didn’t seem to have any special movement abilities…

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Blue Flame had turned his attention from Seismic to Jones‘ inexplicable boyfriend, Oblivion, when the man had stepped out from the ruined doors of the five-story building that held the NW Gemological Institute as well as the Astoria Diamond Exchange, two minions with bags of loot at his side.

Where his girlfriend managed to pull off the the Goth-Dark Alice-Steampunk look beautifully (and she’d added a little Clockwork Orange this time around, Jonny had noticed), Oblivion just looked like a dufus in his purple crushed velvet waistcoat, golden vest, and purple top hat, even with some cool-looking steampunk accessories… What does she see in this douche bag?

The wave of blue plasma that he sent at the wanna-be villain proved particularly satisfying to the Blue Flame, for while it didn’t take him down, it did blast the hat off his head and make him dodge and roll, mussing up his precious costume. Jonny grinned at the stream of invective as Captain Oblivious scrambled to his feet and looked at the charred remains of his top hat… his minions, as they dashed for the escape crater, couldn’t suppress their own smirks…

It might be easy to laugh at Morris Klein and his pretensions, Scion thought as he flew in low and fast toward the criminal, while he was still busy mourning the ruins of his hat, but it would be a mistake to underestimate the threat he posed. That glowing blue hand of his seemed able to disintegrate any matter it touched – better to take him down hard and fast, if they could. A high speed punch to the jaw should –

Oblivion whirled around at the last second, neatly avoiding the armored fist aimed at his face, and his glowing hand reached to grab his foe. Scion pulled up hard, barely escaping that deadly grasp, cursing under his breath. Damn, that idiot was fast!

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

While all this was going on Eagle swooped down to grab the stunned Seismic in his talons, lifting his massive form into the air. This ploy hadn’t worked out too well this morning, but Totem and Chilz had had an interesting discussion during the clean-up at the jail… they just hadn’t thought they’d get a chance to try it out so soon.

As Eagle soared higher and higher with the still woozy criminal, Chilz focused on freezing the water that was flooding the grassy area at the heart of Diamond Square. A continuous stream of it flowed from the burst mains, so he had a lot to work with… within a minute a frozen disc 20 feet across and over a foot thick lay atop a third of the little park’s grass. He looked up and grinned as he saw his teammate soaring ever higher…

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

E.VA.L. minions began pouring out of the surrounding stores, loaded with black nylon bags bulging with loot. Dodging the superpowered battles around them, they tried to maneuver their way to the escape crater…

Watching from the roof of the NW Gemological Institute building Phantom Ace saw two of the thieves make it up the side of the crater and begin sliding down the inside slope toward freedom. His teammates being distracted with their own battles, he supposed he’d better take care of this himself…

Teleporting down into escape tunnel, Phantom Ace was waiting for the two minions as they scrambled to what they thought was safety. They pulled up short in surprise at the grinning man in front of them… shocked looks turned to snarls and they tried to bull right through him. Ace went insubstantial, and they did indeed go through him, but not quite as they’d expected.

He reached for both men, and while the one on his left jerked away, the one on his right was suddenly as insubstantial as the hero, who slugged him into unconsciousness. Phantom Ace turned to go after the first man, but before he could move the minion vanished into a shimmering pink portal a few yards down the tunnel.

It had been behind Phantom Ace, and he hadn’t noticed it, much to his chagrin. And it looked just like the one that Álvaro de la Vega had walked through less than an hour ago! He dove for the opening, but it winked out of existence before he was halfway there. Damn! He’d better let the others know –

Suddenly the light in the tunnel, coming from the opening Seismic had made to the surface, turned dim, then vanished altogether. Pulling a small but powerful hand light from his pocket, Ace saw that the tunnel was now blocked by an amorphous plug of silvery substance –  ah, it was some of Quanta’s magical mystery matter.

He wondered if his teammate had known he was down here before he decided to plug the hole… probably not. And not that it really mattered, of course. He stooped to grab the collar of the unconscious minion and the handle of the black nylon bag, and teleported…

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

A minute earlier Quanta, too, had seen the pair of E.V.A.L. thieves make their escape down the crater. He couldn’t stop those two, but he’d be damned if any more where going to scurry down their little rat hole! Another pair had just reached the mounded dirt, and Quanta grinned… time to try something new…

It was a relatively small block of quantum matter he dropped on the pair, easily taking them out. But it was on the wrong side of the earthen mound, and he wanted to plug that hole… so instead of allowing the matter to dissolve before it could crush his victims, Quanta caused it to become liquid. It flowed over the unconscious men, up the short slope of the crater, and then poured down into the hole, seeming to gather mass and volume as it did.

In seconds the hole and the bottom of the crater were filled with a solid plug of silvery matter. Seismic might be able to shatter it, of course, or Oblivion disintegrate it… and he shuddered to think what Epiphany Jones might do. But none of their merely-human minions stood a chance of getting through that barrier. And the bosses had their hands full right now anyway, especially Seismic…

___________________________________________

Epiphany Jones stared in disbelief as that creepy human-bird creature pulled the boss into the air. She hadn’t thought anything could move his massive frame if he didn’t want to be moved… and yet that winged freak was doing it like Seismic was made of plastic!

“A pity that winged freak hasn’t been getting his potassium lately,” she muttered gleefully, “and so his leg muscles are suddenly cramping up something fierce!”

She grinned as she saw the freak jerk to a stop and suddenly scream in pain… and yes, his claws released their grip on the boss! Of course that meant he was now plummeting to the earth from several hundred feet up, but she knew that for him that was like diving into a pool of water…

Her face suddenly slackened in shock as she saw her leader frantically trying to turn himself so that he wasn’t falling head first, gesturing wildly… he slammed into the ground with a sound that shattered the few remaining intact windows around the Square and almost knocked her off her feet.

No, not the ground she saw… it was a thick disc of solid ice! It had fractured into a hundred pieces on impact, but it had done its job, preventing Seismic from opening a hole in the ground for him to escape into… and she’d been the one to… shit! Well, maybe she wouldn’t mention that little fact to him. Assuming he was still alive, of course…

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Once he had the ice disc solidly in place, Chilz turned his Arctic freeze onto Oblivion, who seemed annoyingly unfazed by it… although he was decidedly not unfazed a moment later when his erstwhile leader suddenly slammed into that ice disc like a comet.

The impact knocked the doofus off his feet, and as he scrambled up again he was visably furious. “This means nothing, you bourgeois tools! You can never defeat E.V.A.L., never! Strike down one, and two more rise to–”

He was forced to dive aside as Eagle, leg cramps fading, brought his wings together in a Thunderflap that send a wall of air at him. The villain dodged the powerful gust, but rolled straight into a plasma blast from the Blue Flame. He staggered to his knees, stunned and definitely singed.

“I think you’re thinking of Hydra,” Blue Flame called cheerily from 20 feet above him. “Which, by the way, is from a comic book, not real life.”

“And throwing around bourgeois?” Scion added, launching a tangle field at the dazed villain. “That’s rich, coming from someone robbing jewelry stores.”

The constricting coils hit Oblivion, but before they could discharge Epiphany’s voice could be heard yelling, “A pity you forgot to charge that net, Scion!” And with that her lover shrugged off the dead filaments.

Damn, that woman was dangerous! As he turned to send some bullets her way, however, Scion saw Artemis stealthily approaching the villainess from behind and held his fire… unfortunately, Oblivion saw her too, and he didn’t hold his tongue. “Behind you, love!”

Epiphany whirled at the warning, and just slipped from Artemis‘ grasp, losing her derby hat in the process. At that moment Quanta dropped a block on her, but she saw it coming and screamed “It has a flaw, straight down the middle!” The block cracked in two, the pieces falling to either side of her.

Chilz again tried to freeze Oblivion, but the man just seemed to shrug off the intense cold somehow, and this time he rushed the elemental hero. The aggressive move surprised Chilz, and before he could move Oblivion’s glowing blue hand slammed into his stomach.

Chilz had never really felt pain in his ice form – pressure, sure, and cracks and fractures felt odd, but not painful. Now a searing pain radiated out from where his body was disintegrating into nothingness! He managed to stagger back, away from the destroying touch, before he collapsed and darkness crashed down….

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Helping her boyfriend escape Scion almost cost Epiphany her own freedom, as she narrowly avoided Artemis once again. She needed to get this scary bitch off her back long enough to think… “That cornice piece is loose, a pity it fell and crushed Artemis!” A large chunk of masonry from the Shane Company building plummeted down, but to Epiphany’s shock Artemis somehow avoided it! But that never happens! How–

The “pop” behind her warned her just in time to avoid the punch that Phantom Ace threw at her head. She dodged left as he drew back for a second punch, but it was a feint! Suddenly Artemis had her in a choke hold… she couldn’t speak… her hands clawed at the steely arm around her neck… everything began to go black… No! She was too… powerful… to be…

Artemis felt the young woman go limp in her grasp, and lowered her to the ground. She quickly zip-tied her wrists and ankles, and then pulled a rather high-tech gag from a pouch on her belt. She fitted the device into Epiphany’s mouth and tightened the strap around the back of her head.

“I’m not going to ask why you have a ball gag on you,” Phantom Ace said innocently as she stood up, ostentatiously not looking at the bound and gagged women at their feet. “Nope, not gonna say a thing…”

“Oh grow up, boy,” Artemis snapped, rolling her eyes. “This isn’t the time for your puerile humor.” And looking back at the center of the Square, he suddenly realized she was right!

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Oblivion stood over the unconscious body of… what was his name? Oh yes, “Chilz.” What a stupid name! And he didn’t even bother with a costume. Ha! He’d be doing the asshole a favor when he disintegrated him, the unimaginative lout. He hesitated for a second… or was the “hero” already dead? Any normal person would be, with that much of their torso missing, and he didn’t seem to be breathing… but was he breathing before? Did he even need to breathe?

“Oh fuck it,” he said with a shrug. “Better safe than sorry.”

But as he started to bend down, his glowing left hand reaching for Chilz‘ head, he heard a sound… a small sound, from fifty feet away… but it was the sound of the love of his life in distress…

Whipping around he quickly spotted Nora, in the clutches of that freaky shadow bitch. She was choking the life out of her! Even as he raced toward her, all other thoughts driven from his mind, his lover collapsed to the ground, and the heartless wench began trussing her up like a turkey. The gag was the last indignity, and he saw red… he was going to disintegrate them all, they’d pay for this, and he wouldn’t make it fast, either…

Gouts of blue plasma and streams of bullets rained down around him, and he jinked and twisted to avoid them, never taking his eyes off Nora. Nothing else mattered… he sensed a shadow above him and rolled to the left, narrowly missing being crushed by a massive block of… something… no time to figure it out… he dodged another…

And then he saw that stupid Hello Kitty kid reach down and take Nora by the arms… and with a “pop” and a freaky wrinkle in space they were both gone. He came to a ragged stop. “Noooooo!” he screamed, falling to his knees. Without Nora none of it meant anything. He almost welcomed the darkness that took him when a plasma blast finally hit him square in the back…

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Chilz came to slowly… the pain was gone, but he felt very strange… he tried to sit up, but he seemed unbalanced somehow. Looking down he saw that half his torso, from just below his ribs (well, where his ribs should be, if he had possessed any) to his hip, was just… gone. He started to freak out then, and almost fainted.

A moment of deep breaths (not that he had lungs, or needed to breath, but habit, you know) got him back in control. OK, Chuck this obviously isn’t fatal, at least not immediately. Of course if I turned back to myself like this… he’d have turned pale at the thought if he wasn’t already a translucent green.

He needed to fix this before he turned back… how? He’d repaired lesser damage easily enough, pulling moisture from the air… this was gonna take more than ambient moisture, ha! He looked around and saw a large shard of ice from the disc he’d created earlier, for Eagle… not enough to fill the void, but…

He reached for the shard, and touching it, he immediately sensed all the ice around him. He willed himself into the ice and then he… traveled. Suddenly he was one with all the ice, it was like he was everywhere the ice was, all at the same time… he focused on the largest contiguous mass of ice and willed himself there…

Chilz rose up from the edge of the shattered ice disc, flowing up like some frozen genie, his body whole once again. The strange feeling was gone, and he felt like himself. Or at least like this version of himself always felt… he ran a hand over his stomach, and suddenly felt a chill that had nothing to do with temperature. This had been so close… too close…

The sounds of battle drew him out of his inward trance, and he realized his friends might still need his help… he looked around, puzzled at what was bothering him… Oh, yeah, were was Seismic? He’d seen him crash to earth, just as he and Totem had theorized he would, and he wasn’t battling the others, so where…

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Three kilometers up and climbing, Seismic had finally had enough. He scrabbled feebly at his captor’s leg. “Enough,” he croaked. “Enough… I… sur-surrender…” his teeth were beginning to chatter. He had never been so cold… and it was getting hard to breath… this creature was insane…

Eagle had snatched up the semi-conscious villain while the others battled the lesser foes, and carried him straight up at his top speed… which was very fast indeed. There would be no dropping this time, only the frigid air of the upper atmosphere until the prey’s fight was gone…

The cold did not bother him, of course, but he suspected his prey, a native of magma-heated subterranean realms, would be bothered by it very much indeed. Eagle was limited in how high he could ultimately go, given his own need to breathe, but if it came to it he suspected he could last longer than the prey.

But it seemed they would not have to find out who would last longer – surrender was given, and victory was his! As it always was, he thought smugly, for was he not the Lord of the Upper Airs, and Master of the Seven Winds? The greatest of the Great Beasts?

Looking down, he could see that his mortal host’s teammates were battling the blue-handed fop… and faring badly. Well, perhaps he could catch two fish with one talon… he folded his wings and began to dive earthward, his prey screaming behind him and clutching at his legs…

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Phantom Ace returned to his teammates and reported that Epiphany Jones was safely behind bars, and several layers of power dampeners, downtown. He also produced what looked like a large, cumbersome iron mitt.

“The SHADE techs swear it’ll contain Oblivion’s power,” he explained. “But I brought a neural dampener just in case. I figured better safe than sorry with this douche-nozzle.”

“Very elegantly put,”Artemis said dryly as she fitted the device around their prisoner’s head, while Scion examined the mitt before affixing it to the lethal extremity. “And very well reasoned, I’m compelled to add.”

Gideon hoped that meant the crack about the ball gag might be forgotten. Well, not forgotten, not with Artemis, but maybe forgiven?

“What the hell is that sound?” Chilz asked, looking around.

“That!” said Quanta, pointing up.

Coming down at them like a meteor was Eagle, with Seismic flailing behind, clutched in his talons. The sound was the whistling shriek of air around them, like that of a falling bomb, and the villain’s terrified shriek. At the last second the mighty wings spread and Eagle pulled up with a clap like thunder – leaving Seismic to slam into the ground. Momentum carried his limp form forward, grinding through asphalt to come to a stop half inside the now-shattered storefront of the Shane Company.

“How many times must we explain to him about unnecessary property damage?” Scion muttered under his breath. Quanta and Artemis just shook their heads, and turned to the job of securing the most definitely unconscious, if not actually comatose, villain.

“I had planned to slam him into the foppish one with the deadly hand,” Eagle said, landing next to the group. “But when I saw you had somehow managed to subdue him without my aid, I decide to make sure the massive one’s surrender held, once he was back on solid ground.”

“Ah, yes, well… that would probably have been quite effective,” Scion agreed with a sigh. “Assuming you didn’t take any of us out at the same time.”

“Unlikely, Captain,” Eagle sniffed. “I have excellent eyesight, incomparable relfexes, and unparalleled aim.”

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

With their big guns taken down so thoroughly, Quanta’s plug neutralizing their subterranean escape route, and the police blocking every other avenue of flight, the majority of the remaining E.V.A.L. foot soldiers decided surrender was their best option. Only two decided to “fight to the bitter end,” which had subsequently come, both quickly and painfully… for them.

Within 30 minutes the APD had the scene secured, and the two heavies were being loaded into special transport vehicles, the minions already having been whisked off to jail. CSI and the Feds had arrived, and were beginning to go over everything with a fine tooth comb.

Most of the stolen gemstones and jewelry were recovered, although it was obvious that some of the minions had escaped with fully loaded bags before the Vanguard had arrived. How many, and with what exactly would no doubt take the experts days to figure out, but at least one goal of the raid had been stymied. The fabled Stephano Emerald, the largest emerald in the world and generally considered priceless, was found in the bag Phantom Ace had taken from the minion in the escape tunnel.

“Well, if I could only stop one, I guess I picked the right one,… but I wonder why Seismic was so hot for this particular stone?” he wondered, holding it up so the light of the setting sun shone through it, turning his face a brilliant green. The police forensic  investigator, who was standing by with an evidence bag, a chain-of-custody-form, and two representatives from the NW Gemological Institute, looked nervous and jittery, and didn’t relax until the hero had dropped the stone into the bag and signed the form.

“Beyond it being one of the most valuable bits of rock on the planet?” said Chilz with a shrug. “Who knows? Maybe the police will get it out of him  during interrogation.”

“I bet they don’t get much out him,” said Blue Flame, adjusting his mask now that he was in human form again. “He seems too tough even in shackles… maybe they should give him to Eagle to interrogate.” They all chuckled at that, then looked over a bit nervously at the avian avatar, who was standing alone and staring into the sunset without blinking.

“Why hasn’t he turned back into Totem?” Chilz wondered. “He usually does once the action is over…”

“A good question,” said Scion, joining the three, Artemis and Quanta flanking him. “But it can wait. Right now I think it’s time we checked in on our old friends Dominator and CyberKnight.”

While the other two looked puzzled, Phantom Ace just grinned. “It was their idea,” he explained, gesturing at Scion and Artemis. “Once I was able to get inside the container, after Big Bird there flipped it and shorted out the jamming field, I reported back to Scion. He conferenced in Artemis and we agreed that I would ‘port all the pieces of the weapon system back to the armory in the Pyramid, one-by-one.

“Then I planted one of Scion’s special trackers, which I took from his lab, inside the now empty container. I placed it with a good line of sight down the length of the container,” he added in an aside to Scion. “We should have a perfect front row seat once they get the doors open.”

“Well, let’s see if that’s true,” JJ said, as his helmet flowed away from his face and merged into the rest of his armor. The others followed him into the ruined Shane Company store, and found an intact conference room at the back. Once they were sufficiently private Scion touched his wrist comp and projected an image on the wall. It was very dark, only a few sparks of red, amber or green relieving the gloom.

“My special tracker, besides working on an isolated frequency that should be very hard to detect, contains a miniaturized camera and omni directional microphone,” Scion explained. “This is the view of the inside of the stolen cargo container. It’s been recording ever since Phantom Ace planted it. Let’s fast forward…”

If not for the time stamp in the corner of the image, it would have been difficult to tell that the video wasn’t a still image, in the unchanging dark. Then, just a few minutes shy of catching up to real time, a crack of light appeared in the center of the screen and Scion slowed the playback.

The doors at the far end of the cargo container swung open to reveal Dominator and CyberKnight standing just outside, a dozen minions gathered behind them. The former had his helmet off, which meant the heroes got to enjoy the full effect of the changing expressions that flowed across Gerald Greer’s face as he took in the empty space before him: blank incomprehension, slow puzzlement, dawning realization, and finally stroke-inducing rage. CyberKnight’s reaction was harder to gauge, with half her face hidden by her own helmet, but a thinning of the lips and tightening of the jaw… the resolution on this camera really was amazing… suggested she was not happy either.

It was  mainly a non-stop string of profanities that accompanied Greer into the container as he stormed around making sure it wasn’t all some sort of illusion. Everyone listening, except perhaps for Artemis, learned at least a couple of new words in those few minutes. Finally the man wound down, coming to a stop at the doors and slamming a fist into the side of the container.

“It must’ve been that damn Hello Kitty ghost kid,” he said at last. “I should’ve noticed he was missing after that motherfucking bird-man flipped this thing.”

“Most likely it was the Phantom Ace,” agreed CyberKnight neutrally. “Could’ve been Artemis, I suppose, since they both supposedly took off for the museum right after. But the boss doesn’t think her teleportation is that strong, not for the bigger pieces anyway. But really, at this point what does it matter who did it? They won, we lost. No point in getting yourself in a lather over it.”

Greer looked like he wanted very badly to punch his associate in the face, but she just tilted her head slightly and looked at him, as if daring him to try. After a few tense seconds he again punched the wall, then shoved past her and out of the container.

“C’mon,” he said gruffly as he turned out of view of the camera. “We’ve got a little while before we gotta explain this shit show to the boss. He wants us all there at de la Vega’s “trial,” so we got that long at least…” his voiced faded as he passed out range of the mic.

“We kemo sabe?” CyberKnight puffed a quiet laugh as she turned to follow. “This whole clusterfuck is on you, you dimwitted oaf, and everyone knows it. Maybe once de la Vega is found guilty we can have two executions…”

With that she was gone, and the minions swung the container doors shut, plunging the camera back into darkness.

‘Well,” Quanta sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “The day may be almost over, but it looks like we’ve got a long night ahead of us yet…”