424 - The Fall of Halcyon City

For the superhero community of Halcyon City, it’s a war zone.

Tyran Enterprises worked hard to make itself the only power in the city. Now that their premier superhero team has been exposed as a set of cloned shells run by remote control, they’re falling back on more faceless measures such as security robots, force fields, and energy projection weapons. And every time someone destroys something with the name “Halcyon” on it, Tyran offers to pay for repairs or replacements, provided the rebuild says “New Tomorrow”.

Emboldened by the Seven Wonders’ successful example, everyone from veteran locals to new arrivals are pushing the limits of these new security measures. Reliable jobbers like Handmaid, ambitious up-and-comers like Patchwork, chaos agents like Redline, and even villain teams like the Architects of Evil and the newly arrived Fulcrum Force, are all doing their thing.

A combination of armed law enforcement and coordinated superhero efforts used to keep it all under control. Now the Seven Wonders have opened the floodgates, and seem content to watch the flood rather than meddle directly.

For most citizens of Halcyon City, it’s life as usual if you don’t read the papers or watch the news on television. But those citizens are doing that less and less. A whole generation of heroes seems to have failed them, to be replaced by a powerful mega-corporation that makes big promises and seems to be keeping at least some of them. When there’s nothing but bad news, it’s easier to just stop reading any of it.


The most important thing, Andi decided, was changing the name of their new home in orbit. “It’s not the Quill Compound any more. Jason Quill is gone. He left it to Harry. And ‘compound’ makes it sound like we’ll be in some kind of standoff with the FBI.”

“What do you suggest?” Harry had asked.

“Q-Base,” said Andi, Fuko, and Trace simultaneously.

Clearly they’d already talked about this. Harry was too busy to push back, and so “Q-Base” had stuck.

Aboard Q-Base, then, the work continues at breakneck pace.

The base has a reactor that can sustain power indefinitely. There are force field generators meant for long-term stay in space. Trace has assigned himself the work of making sure these systems can be relied upon. His own quantum acoustic tech isn’t quite as good as Byron Quill’s force field systems, but his submarine tech is superior at keeping the complex from leaking air into space.

Doctor Zap, the True Atlantean squid, has likewise agreed to ensure that the softer systems for life support and food production will serve. He, out of everyone aboard, is most at home in zero gravity, as it’s not that different from swimming in water. He’s overjoyed at the ability to talk to humans without relying on his cumbersome translation computer, and when he isn’t at his work he’s indulging his boundless curiosity by asking questions.

Andi is asking her own questions, specifically of Harry’s family who are still on board. She’s methodically taking notes on every encounter they ever had, with every villain currently in the city - starting with the Seven Wonders. Everyone knows the time for secrets has passed. Now is the time when anything, even a half-remembered anecdote about a battle one time, could mean victory or defeat.

Fuko, the Atlantean-trained ninja, is putting her training to work coordinating superhero efforts in Halcyon. She can’t match the power and complexity of an entire corporation or a whole city full of villains, but she can help the heroes down there put out fires. Q-Base now has telescopes pointed permanently at the city far below, giving the team a bird’s eye view. She works with ASIST in real time to dispatch heroes to deal with villains nearby, and - regrettably, every so often - ask heroes to withdraw when they’d be outmatched, or when something more important is happening elsewhere.

Mirage, once a mental clone of Alycia Chin and now having realized her true nature and purpose, is cataloging the stuff available to the team in Q-Base using the vast knowledge she inherited about everything contained there. Harry made it clear that their priority was transportation options to get back to the surface, and she found three immediately. She’s building a database of gadgets in the warehouse that meet Harry’s rules: safe around civilians, easy for the team to use, and useful to the villain problem. The list is kept short by the first two rules, but it’s growing.

Harry is left to play errand boy for everyone else. When someone needs something done, he goes and does it. Components, cables, batteries, consumables, containers - anything that needs to be moved elsewhere or wired up or packed or unpacked - he does it all. To run in zero gravity, he’s set up handholds all over the complex.

Five days after the complex launched itself into orbit, Trace has had time to debug, test, and verify the most promising transportation option available to Q-Base. It’s called the Teletube and it’s built like a big white cylinder at the center of a ton of complex machinery that hums even when the power cable isn’t plugged in. The idea is that it transposes two volumes of space - one in the chamber, one at the destination. There’s a targeting laser that needs to be attached to the outside of Q-Base, and the shields need to drop when the system is operating, but it’ll work.

It’s time for the team to get back on the streets and help out more directly.


The team is suiting up in the Teletube. Harry’s going over the briefing once again, as a refresher.

“First rule, rule #1, the unbreakable Harry Gale Rule: we’re here for the people.”

“Villain rules of engagement. Show mercy, but no tolerance. Every villain on the street is stirring shit up. Nobody gets a pass for good behavior. We go in, we knock 'em down, we leave 'em for the robots. If the robots are hurting people, we hit the robots.”

“Tyran employees are people too. We’re here for them too. We worry about the all of Tyran’s crimes another day. That includes the Stellar Six.”

He looks up at his mother. A mixture of feelings cross her face - she was one of the people cloned to make the Stellar Six, and Harry knows she knows it - but after a second she nods her agreement. Harry goes on.

“The Seven Wonders want the adult HHL. That means the Gales. If they appear, anyone targeted retreats. We’re not ready to engage them, not yet.”

Everyone nods their agreement. Harry runs through a comms check, reviews the status of the various little systems in his own suit, and then looks around. Face after face is staring back at him. Most look determined. Some are smiling.

Harry smiles back. Time to make up for all the days he’s been away from the fight.

“Mirage. Engage Teletube.”


The world closes around them as though they were inside a book being shut by its reader. It re-opens with a view of a major street in Halycon City - Ransom Boulevard. The white glow of the Teletube’s energy begins to dissipate around them.

The situation on Ransom is a battle between the Architects of Evil and Tyran’s security robots. Two indie heroes, named Pencilneck and Hearken, are doing their best to keep a civilian evacuation going from the shops and businesses that line Ransom.

Mirage is monitoring. Strategies have been worked out. Everyone’s going to follow orders. If the order is “improvise”, they’re ready for that too.

“Stingray - Shields up, tackle Blaster of Paris,” Mirage orders. The villain has one schtick - plasma blasts - and he’s not very imaginative about using them. Stingray slams his fists together, activating the quantum-acoustic barrier emitters on his forearms, and he leaps forward. Sure enough, Blaster sees him and starts opening fire.

“A10 - tackle Flying Buttress.” Andi doesn’t need to be told twice.They’re both bricks, he’s a dick, and she’s gonna finish him with a well placed kick. But right now she has to keep him from helping his teammates. Good enough.

“Ninjess - disarm Madhesive.” The glue-using bad guy loves coating battlefields with his chemical sprayer, but he can’t do that if the hoses to it are cut or the spray head is blocked. Ninjess has enough throwable tools to take care of that. His other gimmicks, like glue grenades, will be dealt with via darts.

“Mercury, steal Madhesive’s glue. Immobilize Rubble Rouser with it.” Harry has to wait - actually wait - for Ninjess to create the openings he needs to pull this off. He spends those 13 whole seconds rushing civilians off the boulevard and onto side streets or other safe places, streaking past Pencilneck and Hearken who move like comparative statues. Pencilneck is using his stretching powers to stop debris from falling on people, and Hearken’s ultra-voice is effective at motivating the crowds, but some people just can’t move fast enough. For them, Harry’s there.

Rubble Rouser is animating concrete constructs out of the debris that have already fallen, as well as the material of the boulevard itself. The senior Gales are already on this, without any prompting from Mirage. Aside from the odd rescue, they’re using their vibratory powers to shake the constructs back into granite grains before they can fully solidify.

Ninjess has plugged up Madhesive’s glue gun with a grenade of her own that erupts into self-hardening construction foam. She’s got kunai - ninja knives - in both hands, and is busy cutting every hose and strap she can find that keeps the glue fiend’s gear attached to his suit.

As it begins to fall away, Harry dashes past. He grabs the backpack and runs. Already, glue is spilling out of the attachment points where the slashed hose used to be. He leaves a trail of it as he runs, spiraling closer and closer to Rubble Rouser as she frantically tries to animate more constructs. Finally he throws the whole thing down on the street and streaks away, along the narrow gap he left in the pattern.

His uncle Matt streaks in as he streaks out. The Comet’s special move is a high-speed impact, and he’s wound up for just this moment. He slams into Rubble Rouser. The impact is enough to send her falling straight into the biggest puddle of Madhesive’s strongest stuff, and there she’s stuck.

Stingray has managed to trap Blaster of Paris inside a hemispherical shield. The villain is angrily shooting at the barrier, and probably will be doing so for awhile. That frees the inventor up to work on another problem - like Flying Buttress.

“Full Nelson!” he shouts at Andi. She ducks under the flying man’s clumsy attempt to punch her. Based on his rather ugly remarks so far, he’s holding back, trying “not to injure a delicate flower of womanhood”. Andi, who does not regard herself as any such god damn thing, has no scruples about taking advantage, and pulls his arms into a lock. It won’t last, but it doesn’t need to.

Stingray rapidly switches suit modes between frog and octopus. He launches himself into the air, sprays a cloud of blinding ink into Buttress’s face, then kicks off his chest and lands in a crouch on the ground.

The villain is clawing at his eyes, shouting and raving, when Andi winds up a haymaker and sends him down to the concrete like a falling meteor. She descends, elbow first, and doesn’t let up until she’s very satisfied that Flying Buttress is out for the count.

Madhesive is just a guy in a costume and a lot of pain at this point, as Ninjess has relieved him of everything he was carrying and struck several vital areas for good measure. The team finishes by encircling Blaster of Paris, who although not the quickest on the uptake has realized he’s now very outnumbered.

“I… give up?” he offers, with a weak and worried smile.

“Smartest move you ever made, bro,” Stingray says mockingly.


The older Gales have Teletubed back to Q-Base before anyone could really take notice of their presence and alert the Seven Wonders. That leaves Harry to speak to the two heroes who were on the scene.

“Thought you guys ran for good,” Pencilneck says, sounding more than a little suspicious.

Harry could explain the situation. He could tell the story of the Seven Wonders and their vendetta against everyone in the HHL. He could make an excuse.

What Harry does is own up.

“We left. We’re back now, and we’re gonna make up for that time. You’ll see more of us. Right now, though, we gotta keep helping out. You two did great out here, by the way.”

The two local heroes smile at each other, and appreciatively back at Harry.

“That means much from you, Mercury,” Hearken says softly.

Harry grins. “We’re all in this together. Look forward to working with you two again.”

He heads back to his team, and calls in on comms. “Mirage. Four members of the Architects of Evil under Tyran robot supervision. Next assignment.”

“Current assignment marked as resolved. Congratulations. Your new coordinates are…”

There’s another problem to take care of, of course. There always will be, Harry feels.

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Assorted villains are out there, most of them C- or D-listers who’ve come out of the woodwork to try and make a name for themselves. Harry gives them some advice after the inevitably short battle: “Just… just go home, and don’t do this again.”

It’s not what he’d normally say. It’s not how the HHL would have done it, nor his parents. But more and more, he’s starting to think that turning people over to the Tyran security robots is the worst thing he could do.


During a brief lull, Harry directs a question at the others. “Why are you three so excited about this ‘Q-Base’ thing anyhow?”

Andi looks at Harry like he’s suffered a head injury. “Dude. Didn’t you ever have a treehouse or pillow fort or something and pretend like it was a cool secret base or elite HQ or something?”

This baffles Harry. “Uh, no. I grew up around the HHL Tower though.”

Andi, Trace, and Fuko look at each other. “Child of privilege,” Andi tells them, ignoring Harry entirely. “Child of privilege,” they echo back.

Harry sighs. There’s no winning here. He decides to check in instead. “Mirage, status. Anything else for us to handle?”

“Not at present. However, I’ve found some disturbing information during my analysis of city news media.”

“Uh, what information?” Harry asks, feeling increasingly worried. Have the Seven Wonders started moving again?

Mirage projects a hologram through the team’s gear for them to watch in real time.

“It’s Hard To Know Who To Trust.”

“Tyran Enterprises announces a hero verification program. In cooperation with ASIST, heroes can register their identities and receive transponders.”

“City government has authorized upgraded security robots for street patrol. These units will apprehend anyone endangering civilians or causing property damage, using modern power-suppression technologies. Approved heroes will not be at risk of accidental apprehension.”

The hologram shuts off, and Harry breathes in a lungful of air to try and clear his mind.

“They’re straight up licensing being a superhero in Halcyon,” Trace murmurs. “That’s… that ain’t how it’s done here.”

Andi scowls. “If any of the Irregulators are doin’ this…”

She then realizes aloud. “Hey, we should check in on the gang.”


Andi has been working with Mercury lately. Armiger has been off helping Concord. When the group get ahold of the current team, they find five people: existing members Alloy, the Animal, and Telekinetian, and new members Dark Derek and Sloth.

TK has taken over the group in Andi’s absence. He sits across from her at the Latorra Street Pizzeria and Bowling Alley, with everyone else sitting or standing as the mood takes them. Everyone has pizza. Nobody is eating.

“You guys took off at a really inconvenient time. I mean literally took off.” The launch of the Quill Compound into space has been pretty well publicized. And TK doesn’t seem happy about it.

Andi looks pained, and folds her hands together. “I know. I’m sorry - we left you in a lurch. There’s reasons for that, but I ain’t gonna defend what happened. I’m just gonna say you’re right, and ask what ya want us to do about it now.”

This is a lot less aggressive than TK is used to from her. He sits back, and thinks about it for a moment. “Look. We saw the Stellar Six thing at the airport. We’re not doing the whole Tyran hero sponsorship thing. But the Chosen went all in. So with the Menagerie half dead and half disappeared, it’s just us and them to rep heroes here in town.”

He lets out a long, pained sigh. “We just need some folks on our side on this one. You were the team lead. Mercury’s obviously a big name. Everyone loves him.”

TK turns to Trace and Fuko. “You two were Chosen too. I don’t want to short the pair of you - your support would be amazing as well.”

He looks back at Andi, his anger having melted into exhausted desperation. “I thought when it was the three of us left, we were done for. We got a couple of new folks, but… five against a city isn’t good odds.”

Andi smiles. “Well, we’re with ya. We’re back now. And in fact, we need ya.”

She nods at Harry, who starts explaining the plan. “So basically we’re gonna go right after the Seven Wonders. If we deal with them, the pressure is off the city and we can take away Tyran’s influence.”

TK sits back in his seat, with an exasperated look on his face. “You can’t just fight the Seven Wonders. I mean no offense, sir, but it was you and your whole family and you tried and you failed.”

“We learned how to succeed through that failure,” Harry insists. “We have a comprehensive strategy for every member of that team.”

Here’s the part he hates admitting. “Thing is, we need you and the Chosen both to help execute it.”

His fears are justified, as TK looks suspiciously back to Andi. “So that’s what this is. You come back when you need our help–”

Everyone is a little surprised when the normally reserved Fuko bursts in, interrupting Telekinetian. “We’ve always needed your help. And the truth is that you need ours too. The Menagerie taught us that. Don’t you remember that joint training session from a few years ago? Don’t you remember everything they did for us since then? What they taught us?”

The Menagerie trained with the other teen hero teams in “MASKS #23 - TRAIN & SHIP” – Ed.

"They always went to bat for us. JHHL or Chosen or Irregulators. And we forgot that lesson too.”

“We didn’t call you when we went against the Seven Wonders before. That was our mistake."

She draws breath, and looks around. “Listen. I went to Mercury. I asked, can you help me get a little more popular? I felt invisible as a hero, and I felt hated, because I was half Atlantean. And it was miserable. I wanted people to see me, and like me.”

She leans over the table and looks TK in the eyes. “You don’t just want to be used and discarded. You don’t want to be isolated. I know. I see you. I hear you. But this isn’t about that.”

She stands back up, and looks at the others, one by one. “This is about us, together, as Halcyon City heroes, doing something good for the city. Some of us might not make it out of that, and that’s really scary.”

“We don’t have support from most of the adults. Some of us never did.”

She spares a sympathetic glance at Trace, whose relationship with his father Nautilus was never good by anyone’s definition. He smiles back, in brief appreciation, and she keeps talking.

“Well. We’re the adults now. So you can say no, that’s your call. But say no to what we’re really asking for, not just what you assume we’re here for.”

Telekinetian is silent. The Animal, currently in the form of a lorikeet, scratches nervously at the seats of the pizza parlor’s booth. Alloy rubs the back of her bald head uncertainly. The two new members, Sloth and Dark Derek, look at each other uncomfortably.

Finally TK speaks up. “Mercury. You said you got a plan.”

Harry nods, hoping to god he’s projecting some kind of confidence. “Yeah.”

“For all of them?”

“Yeah.”

A smile slips onto TK’s face, almost unseen. “And do we get to hang out in your clubhouse too?”

Harry grins widely. “Yeah. Whether you help or not, Q-Base is open to everyone.”

TK raises an eyebrow. “Q-Base…?”

He looks over at Andi and understanding dawns. “Your idea.”

Andi grins back at him. “Course.”

TK looks back at his friends and teammates. All of them seem cautiously optimistic. He turns back and offers Andi a handshake. “Alright. I think ya got the Irregulators. Now good luck with the Chosen.”


The Chosen have likewise gone through some roster changes since their origin as the JHHL. Kinetica and the alien Scraaseetotabobah are the only originals left. Kid Kelvin has left Halcyon City for unknown reasons. Ninjess and Stingray are working with Harry now. Superchica has been working with Concord, and is only rarely seen in town. In their place, the Chosen have recruited two heroes named Briar Rose and Nitrogene.

The Chosen never had a strongly defined team leader. As they were essentially the feeder team for the HHL for awhile, they took their cues from the adults. Now that the HHL are essentially disbanded, that had to change. Kinetica seems to be the leader by default, and Harry lets Stingray do the talking - with a caution not to talk up the anti-Tyran angle. Just in case.

At the end of a cordial conversation, Kinetica still says no.

“Listen. We respect you guys. Trace, Fuko, you have to do your own thing. I get that. So do we. This is our chance to regain some respectability with the city. We can’t do that if we’re dead. And I don’t have faith that you guys can handle the Seven Wonders, no matter what you say. Everyone who’s tried except the original HHL has failed, and the HHL is no more.”

Stingray shakes his head. “You’re giving up the city to them, then. Tyran is the only other force in town, and the Seven clowned on their cloned heroes. We all saw it.”

“Tyran can afford to fail and try again, over and over,” Kinetica points out. “Yeah, I absolutely don’t like the idea that they can just manufacture cloned heroes from real people. I don’t like that and I don’t ask you to. But they’ve got super suppression tech. They’ve got new robots - we’ve seen them, you guys do not want to play around with them. And real people aren’t getting killed when Tyran goes up against the Seven.”

“So yeah, maybe we are sitting back in one sense. I prefer to say that we’re doing what Tyran isn’t, and dealing with other less dangerous villains in a more humane way, before the robot patrols get them. The people who don’t need to be doing 20 years for robbing a bank with powers, just because having powers went to their head. Folks like that need guidance, not incarceration. So we can inject some humanity into the process of law enforcement. Which really, isn’t that what being a superhero should be?”

Stingray has to accept this. But he leaves Kinetica with one question. “During this hero registration thing you all did… Did they take a blood sample? DNA samples?”

At first, Kinetica doesn’t think anything of it. “Yeah, of course, for pattern matching, so the robots…”

The implications of the cloning program sink in, and her face darkens. “Oh.”

“We’ll see who’s in the next batch of Stellar Six, won’t we,” Stingray remarks. But everyone knows this is the end of the conversation, and the two teams go their own ways.


“Footage of the new security robots is available,” Mirage radios down, as the team is considering its next move. “Your friend Kinetica was onto something.”

Footage appears again.

D-list villain Fred the Barbarian, whose power is transforming into a hyper-muscular version of himself, is caught on a security camera trying to car-jack a businessman’s BMW.

Out of nowhere, a pair of quadrupedal robots - looking like big, feral wolves - spring, and surround a suddenly surprised and fearful Fred. A snake-like robot literally drops out of the air onto him and begins constricting immediately. As the wolves leap away, a wasp-like robot descends. Its stinger extends and sinks deep into Fred’s skin. The stinger retracts. In seconds, Fred’s power reverses, and he shrinks back down to normal.

Mirage gives her analysis. “The robots work in combination. Isolate, immobilize, and neutralize. The Tyran robots appear to be equipped with a power-suppression chemical. General forms of chemical power neutralization are known, such as ZN-94T and RykoTek P9-V2. None of them are long-lasting. However, followup teams could apprehend a powered individual and employ more long-term containment solutions.”

“They took that guy down in seconds,” Stingray mutters. “Not just knocked him out - they shut him down completely. Why aren’t they going after the Seven Wonders with that?”

“Motormouth and D-SOL-8 have powers that could neutralize or even co-opt the robots,” Mirage answers. “The others seem difficult to pin down via the robots’ tactics. It is likely that the robots are not intended for use against the Seven Wonders, but are rather being deployed to put pressure on the city’s heroes. They are essentially weaponizing their own PR failure with the Stellar Six: ‘we tried playing nice and now we are forced into tactics like this’.”

Harry lets out a long sigh. This whole thing is really making him appreciate, against his will, just what kind of moral challenges the HHL faced.

“The thing is, we want the Seven Wonders restrained. We don’t want them in Tyran’s hands, though. But Tyran is the only game in town for villain containment.”

He calls up. “Dr. Zap. These chemicals are being used to suppress superpowers in human beings. It’s biochemistry. Do you think that if we got you samples of this stuff, you could synthesize it? Enough to keep the Seven Wonders suppressed long enough for us to get them into someone else’s hands? Someone trustworthy?”

“Eminently possible, young Mercury,” the squid scientist announces enthusiastically. “I shall need both samples of the chemicals and samples of the biochemistry in which they should operate, but I’m confident any of you would be willing to donate a small bit of tissue.”

Harry nods to his friends. “Alright. Well, it sounds like our next job is to go pick a fight with some Tyran security robots.”

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Mirage reports in, after a few minutes of analysis. “There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the deployment of Tyran’s new animal-themed robots. However, I think you will all be sardonically amused by their internal code name for the project, which was included as part of a document leak. TOXIN. Tyran Operations Experimental Individual Neutralization automata.”

“It’s like they know they’re the bad guys and they’re proud of it,” snorts Andi.

“We’ve been deploying in order of threat level,” Fuko theorizes aloud. “If these weapons were meant to deter threats, wouldn’t they be used likewise? Doesn’t this reinforce the idea that they are meant as tools of terror, and not true deterrents against super-crime?”

“I concur,” Mirage says. “This is a classic authoritarian tactic. As Achilles Chin, I employed similar actions.”

The others get a brief spasm of discomfort, as they are reminded of one of the component minds of their teammate.

But there’s bigger fish to fry. Harry pulls himself together to try and create a plan. “Doesn’t matter where they deploy. We just need to know when it happens, and I can get there. Mirage, can you coordinate a Teletube for the others to follow?”

“Affirmative.”


A few hours pass. Harry spends it on the street, running from encounter to encounter.

He’s seeing fewer and fewer heroes. Word of the new TOXIN robots has gotten around, and nobody wants to be the first hero on their menu. The villains who are still out seem to be assuming, as the team did at first, that the robots will be used only against the most dangerous of their number.

“Mercury, coordinates incoming,” barks Mirage over the radio, out of the blue. Harry gets the address, and takes off running.

He gets to the Xue Xi Plaza in time to see three Toxic Wolves surrounding a woman in powered armor. The suit is clearly a mish-mash of tech, probably stolen from different sources and combined. From the look of it, she was in the middle of blasting her way into a nearby office building when Tyran’s robots caught up with her. Harry doesn’t recognize her. Nor do his goggles’ augmented reality system, tied to Q-Base’s computers. They really are coming out of the woodwork.

This time he can see the deployment of the Toxic Snake robot. It’s dropped in by air, from some kind of bird robot flying overhead, like an eagle carrying a cobra.

Tyran really went all in on this animal thing, he tells himself dryly.

But he’s got a mission. He dashes forward. Nearby he can see the first signs of the Teletube’s activation, materializing his team, but at his speed it’s all playing out in super slow motion.

He tries to pick the woman up, suit and all, and discovers that she weighs a ton. No good - he can’t move her out of the way of the snake as it drops.

He frantically looks around. He needs some kind of pole or stick or pipe or something - there, a bus stop sign. He’s got enough momentum and vibration control that he can snap it off at the base, grab hold, and race back before the snake has dropped far enough to begin constricting.

He dashes back and holds the pole overhead, so the snake’s falling body lands and piles up on both ends rather than continuing its descent. It’s heavy, and getting heavier, but he’s blocked the initial constriction. The rest will have to be done by the woman in real time.

He dashes away and returns to regular speed. The woman, startled by a snake blocked by a beam of metal over her head, shouts loudly. The wolves pounce.

While the Toxic Snake is trying to coil around its target again, Stingray and A10 leap and fly forward from their Teletube arrival point. Andi swoops in and grabs hold of the Snake. Stingray switches his trident over to shock mode and strikes at the flank of one of the Toxic Wolves. The creature howls and convulses, and sparks shoot out from the point of impact. But as the trident pulls back, it rallies - slowed, but seemingly undamaged.

The Snake has responded by coiling itself around Andi. It in turn administers a considerable electric shock to her. She cries out in pain, and Harry has to force himself not to respond to that. He’s gotta find a way to stop these robots.

And where the hell is Fuko, he asks himself. He doesn’t see a sign of her, despite being sure she came down via Teletube with the others.

The Toxic Wolves are leaping at him. No problem, he can dodge that easily enough.

Harry can move at super speed. But a vulnerability of speedsters is that once you get them interested in something in one area, they tend to stay there.

What he doesn’t notice is a small, silent, fin-guided bomb drop from the Toxic Eagle, which is still circling the battlefield.

The bomb opens, and a general-purpose power neutralizing gas begins to spread–

And Fuko, who has been waiting for this moment out of sight, streaks by on Stingray’s Flying Fish. She’s got some kind of bag out, like a giant butterfly net, and she scoops up the bomb and the expanding cloud of gas. The bag automatically seals itself.

“Team! Evacuate!” she calls out.

Stingray turns his attention to the Toxic Snake. He grapples it with his Trident’s built-in grappling lines, then attaches the other end to a nearby bus bench whose supports are buried in the concrete. Andi flies away, and the Snake is jerked back by the grappling lines and smashes into the pavement.

“Bring her!” Harry shouts to Stingray, pointing at the woman in the power suit. He nods, turns, and rushes to take hold. His suit is considerably stronger than Harry is, and he manages to get away before the other TOXIN robots can respond to him.

Harry’s got the Wolves’ attention, but they can’t keep up with him at even his casual cruising speed. As the others Teletube away, he makes his own escape.


Having eluded the wolves, Harry Teletubes back to Q-Base – how fast I’m getting used to this new stuff, he thinks to himself – and finds himself looking at the villain they stopped earlier. She’s removed her helmet. Behind that, he can see a woman wearing glasses, with light brown hair, somewhere in her mid-20s from the look of it.

“Who are you?” he asks, carefully conversational.

“Carol!” she answers nervously, then gasps in realization that she gave herself away. “Uh, I mean Mishmash!”

“Mishmash?” Harry asks in disbelief.

“Yessir. Oh. Uh. You’re Mercury!”

Harry takes a moment to compose himself. He knows that. She clearly knows that. Why does her tone of voice sound like she’s telling him that?

“Yeah. Uh, I am. Anyway. Carol? What were you doing?”

Carol hangs her head, and Harry can see anger, frustration, and sorrow mixing together. “They took my dad’s business. Tyran, I mean. No - I don’t mean my dad’s business is Tyran, I mean-- Anyway. Last year, during the Atlantean thing. My dad owned it, the building, the patents, everything. Then the city said Tyran owned it all. They couldn’t find the records.”

This has been a distressingly common pattern. Tyran used the chaos of the Invisible Invasion of the world to seize control of so much of Halcyon City. More than a few people are certain that they did so in cooperation with the Atlanteans, who had made a point of striking data centers, halls of records, and the like.

Harry returns to the present. “Okay. So you…”

“…built a suit of powered armor to take revenge,” Carol finishes his sentence, as though it’s the most natural thing in the world.

She pauses and looks at Harry curiously. “We tried other stuff, I promise. But nothing worked. This wasn’t my first choice.”

Harry remembers being younger and hearing that phrase “can’t even”. He has felt it many times. He is convinced that he has never been more unable to even than right this moment.

He holds his hands up, trying to reclaim control of the situation from a mercurial and malicious universe.

“Alright - look. The robots didn’t get you. We don’t have any kind of record of you as a villain. So… technically you aren’t wanted as a criminal yet. Which means you can go home–”

“They’re foreclosing on us,” Carol says sadly.

Harry wants to bury his face in his hands.

Mostly he wants to go back in time, when it was just him and the Menagerie and assorted shenanigans like invading aliens or middle-aged Jason Quill or whatever.

He looks up at her through force of will. “Okay. So you built this armor–”

“My dad built it, technically,” Carol corrects him. “He’s the mechanic. I’m a software engineer.”

Harry turns to Trace. “Can you use a lab assistant?”

Trace, definitely sensing which way the wind is blowing, nods quickly. “Yeah, we could take a couple people on board.”

Harry’s eyes flicker to Andi and Fuko, who both shrug in their distinctive ways.

He turns back. “Okay. Carol, tell your dad to meet - uhh.”

No, he’s out of patience for dealing with this personally. He looks upward. “Mirage, can you arrange a Teletube pickup for Carol and her father? And any other arrangements you deem necessary?”

“I’ll take care of it,” the woman’s voice comes back.

“Okay. Cool.” He glances at Fuko again. “Let’s go see Dr. Zap and find out what we have here.”


Dr. Zap, after literal millennia of scientific research underwater, is elated to be working with a whole new regime of instruments and biologies. Harry privately thinks that if aliens abducted him via their UFO, he’d be taking up residence in their laboratories with equivalent fervor and never once think about going back to Earth.

“In cooperation with Mirage, I have established that this gas is none of the power suppression chemicals known. It is likely that this fellow named Tyran Enterprises has innovated something new.”

Some concepts, like corporations, still haven’t percolated into the scientist’s mind. That’s okay, thinks Harry.

“Given tissue samples from each of you, excluding Fuko, I’ve concluded that it is highly effective. Fuko is immune, which is to be expected as all of her capabilities are in fact biological in nature.”

He turns to her. “And may I add your capture of the sample was thorough and effective. As expected of an Atlantean ninja. Well done, my dear!”

Fuko smiles sheepishly.

Harry puts down the question he needs answered most urgently. “Can we synthesize enough of this stuff to keep the Seven Wonders suppressed for a few hours to a few days, if or when we defeat them in battle?”

“Without access to their particular biology, I can’t say for certain,” Zap counsels. “However, I think some effectiveness is indicated on everyone but this ‘Motormouth’, who if I understand is entirely technological in nature.”

Harry smiles. “That’s okay, we’ve got an atlernate arrangement for her.”

He rubs his hands together. Finally something is going according to plan.

Except that the next part of the plan is to fight the Seven Wonders of the villain world.

1 Like

Kinetica and the other members of the Chosen are surprised to see Andi at their headquarters, which is currently down to a broken-down National Guard armory.

“Your boyfriend send you to sell us on his plan?” Kinetica asks tiredly.

Andi shakes her head. “Nah. I’m here on personal business. It’s for the plan, but I don’t need any of you to do anything except talk to me.”

“About what?” Kinetica asks, with mild curiosity peeking out of her weariness.

Andi shuffles uncomfortably. Finally she can muster the courage to explain. "I want to ask you about myself. About how you see me. "


A10 and the Chosen are sitting together in the armory’s main room. There’s an assortment of used furniture scattered here.

Chosen, huh? How far they’ve fallen, Andi tells herself. But she’s not here to pick a fight. For once.

Instead, she explains her problem.

Her uncle Tatanka draws his power from the psychokinetic energy of objects - in his case, relics from the first occupants of the American continent. Andi inherited both the powers and the notebook of her late uncle Chan. And in that notebook she found the explanation of how her own powers work: by holding onto the power others grant her in their minds. She must forge a psychic link with those around her. Through that link, she can become stronger.

A10 talked to Tatanka about this in “420 - Revenge of the Seven Wonders” – Ed.

“Do you really need us for this?” Kinetica finally asks. “Didn’t you get enough love from your own team when you asked them?”

“I came to you guys first,” Andi says, to Kinetica’s evident surprise.

“Why us first?” the other woman asks, eyebrows raised, leaning forward on the couch to look at her rival team’s sometime leader.

Andi spreads her hands, palms up, in the slightest of shrugging gestures. “Cause I know what my guys think. Cause I don’t want to come in here riding high on praise and be brought down. Cause I value your opinions and want you to know it. The JHHL and Irregulators never got along very well. I get that. Lotta reasons for it. But it’s not like I look down on you. So if you’re gonna shit on me, I’m ready for it. I want you to be honest. I want you to say what you think.”

She looks around at the gathered heroes. “Can ya do that?”

Kinetica, too, looks at her team, reading their faces for the mood. She turns back and smiles. “If we say you suck, we mean it, huh?”

Andi grins. “Yeah. So say what you mean. So who wants to go first?”

The hero Briar Rose speaks up. “Nitrogene and I joined recently. We don’t really know you.”

Andi smiles gamely and shrugs it off. “Vague impressions are okay. If you don’t have any, just say pass or something.”

Rose nods. She taps two fingers of one hand against the palm of the other, in a sort of thinking gesture. Andi is reminded of an ex-smoker tapping their pack of cigarettes to loosen one, and forgetting they’ve given it up.

Finally she has something. “I have two things. The first Thunderbolt. Chankoowashtay del Rio. I always got the impression he was… I don’t know, not taking things seriously. He was always smiling when I saw clips of him. I sort of understood that you got his powers. I’m not sure how–”

“Uncle Chan is family,” Andi cuts in. “That’s how. Anyway. Sorry. Go ahead.”

Rose raises her eyebrows, but continues. “I guess I pictured you the same way. Not being too serious about things.”

She pauses, seemingly waiting to be rebuked or criticized or attacked.

But Andi just nods. “You said you had two things,” she prompts. “Or did ya have more here?”

The surprised Rose sits back, then considers. “No, that was the first thing, I think. Uh, the second thing. You’re in a relationship with Harry Gale - Mercury - right?”

Andi smiles a little awkwardly. “Yeah. We’re in something. Not sure what to call it.”

“Well, the second thing is, he seems like he’s really serious. He’s second gen at least. He gets the job done. He’s one of the reasons I came to this city to begin with. I thought, maybe I could get to meet someone like that.”

Rose shrugs. “So… if he takes everything so seriously, and he’s such an admirable hero, then… if he’s dating you, or on a team with you, or whatever, all of these things… then… the I guess… you must have some qualities about you that I didn’t know. So, I think you could say my impression of you is someone who has qualities I can’t see. You’re someone I’d like to know better, maybe.”

Andi takes all this in, and nods. “That’s what I’m looking for. Thank you.”

The alien Scraaseetotabobah goes next. Since a meeting with former teammate Superchica, he is no longer going by “Bob”. Andi doesn’t know what happened, but it feels like something positive happened and she’s willing to leave it at that.

The light the alien radiates pulsates in time with their words in English. “Your light has always struggled with your darkness. I do not mean light and dark like humans of Earth sometimes think, as ‘good’ or ‘evil’. It’s hard for me to understand these concepts. I mean in the sense of radiating versus absorbing. You struggle to radiate at times and you struggle to absorb at others. Your blackbody balance is distorted.”

Andi tries to process that. “What am I radiating?” she asks finally.

“Yourself,” the alien says. “Some people shine. As my teammate said of Mercury. He shines brightly.”

Andi thinks she gets it. “You’re saying I don’t assert myself at the right times, and I’m more assertive than I should be at other times?”

Scraaseetotabobah bobs his head enthusiastically. “Yes. You do not properly balance your light. That is my impression of you.”

Andi smiles. “Well. Thanks. That’s interesting.”

Nitrogene goes next. “I got nothin’, sorry. You seem chill. But that’s it. Pass.”

Andi nods, and looks to Kinetica as the last member.

The woman sighs, and sits back in her seat. “I’ve had time to think and it’s still not enough. Stingray and Kid Kelvin used to run things around here, and they’re both gone for different reasons. Things fell on my shoulders. And I kinda blame you guys. Not you specifically, but you guys. Mercury’s new team.”

Andi just nods. Like Rose, Kinetica seems to have been expecting some pushback, and receives none. So she resumes.

“I’m doing my best to keep things under control out there. In fact, I’m–”

An alarm goes off. Andi realizes this must be some kind of call to action the team is familiar with, because they all immediately jump up from their seats.

Kinetica looks down at Andi as she walks past. “I promise I’ll give you an answer. But you know how it’s been lately,” she says quietly.

Andi nods. “I know. Stay safe out there.”


The last time Andi met with her old team the Irregulators, TK was prickly and frustrated with his team being poached (as he saw it). This time he seems a lot more mellow.

“My opinion of you? I think you know. But just so that we’re all honest…”

TK folds his hands together. “There are times I think the world of you, darling. And there have been times I was really disgusted with you for leaving us. You can be a pain in the toches. And sometimes the only thing keeping me going is your refusal to ever give up, no matter how overwhelmed you are.”

“Andromeda, you are a complicated person. And you seem so infuriatingly intent on making yourself a simple person. You keep trying to pigeonhole yourself into ‘generic super-strong bruiser’ and you are so much more than that.”

TK lets out an exhausted sigh. “Anyway. You asked.”

Andi smiles. “I did. And I knew I could count on you, like I always can.”

She looks around expectantly. Nobody speaks immediately, and she feels a brief bout of disappointment.

It’s dispelled when she hears Alloy. “Geez, Teek, how are we supposed to follow that?”

But the woman smiles, takes a breath, and gives it a try anyway. “Uh. We all looked up to you. Well. Still do, I guess. Just we have farther to look, yannow?”

“You’re kinda like, untouchable though. Nothing could touch you. You kept us running when we wanted to quit. You’d yell at someone when they effed up, but it was never personal. We knew you’d chew anyone out. You’re like one of those uh, whatsit, drill sergeants from the movies.”

She finishes with a shrug, having nothing else. The Animal, currently in the shape of a raccoon, holds up a piece of paper in its paws. Alloy looks down questioningly and exchanges facial expressions with the Animal - “is this your answer?” “yes” “should I read it?” “please”.

She unfolds the paper, turns it around in her hands to face right side up, and clears her throat. “Okay. Ahem. A10 is an effective hero. She is not always an effective leader. I think it’s because she doesn’t want to be. But then why does she do it?”

Alloy glances down at the Animal, who’s looking steadily at A10 with it bandit-masked eyes. Alloy looks up as well, and shrugs helplessly. “I’m just the messenger, don’t shoot me.”

Andi smiles in understanding. “All good. Thanks.”

She turns to the new members, Dark Derek and Sloth, and extends her hands in invitation. “You folks joined because a couple of existing members bailed, including me. It was for good reasons to us, but I ain’t gonna defend it because you gotta make up your own minds.”

Derek, who seems perpetually wreathed in shadow, speaks. His voice is strange, sort of hollow and echo-y, like he’s shouting down a hallway to be heard despite being right here. “You said it, don’t really know ya. But all these folks keep talking you up, like they’re waiting for you to come back, like the team ain’t the team without ya. Take that how ya want.”

Sloth seems like she’s caught in a time warp and is moving at fractional speed. “You… seem… cool… hope… stuff…is…work…ing… out…with…new…team…”

Andi is now curious. This was her team - technically still is, the whole “teaming up with Mercury” thing has blown way out of proportion from what she’d intended. “Hey, you two, what’s your schtick and stuff?” she asks of the two new members.

Dark Derek explains himself first. He deliberately drops his voice into the lowest register he can manage. “I am the vessel of the Bloody Rose’s Flame. I am fated to be the living key that unlocks the seal of the forbidden knowledge behind the Black Gate.”

Andi looks briefly and with concern at TK, who smiles winsomely. “Just go with it,” his face tells her, though he doesn’t say a word.

She turns back to Sloth. “And you?”

Sloth, after a few moments, just nods at TK.

TK speaks up. “She’s giving permission for me to explain. It might take her awhile and she wants it gotten right. Sloth turns kinetic energy into a time-warp. Basically the faster you come at her, the slower you get. She’s like a reverse speedster, everything crawls to a stop around her. She can even extend the field to keep a building from falling down. It’s really impressive when you see it in action. Buuut… she’s been teased in the past about being ‘slow’. She’s kinda sensitive to that. It can take awhile to hear her out, but it’s always time well spent.”

Andi smiles and turns back. “Cool. Very cool. Glad to meet you both.”

Dark Derek looks away, uncertain how to handle the positive response. Sloth eventually smiles in embarrassed enjoyment.


Andi’s next stop is Tatanka.

It’s hard to get time on his schedule. As an HHL member, he’s been laying low at the request of the Gales, so as not to provoke the Seven Wonders before it’s time to deal with them. But he’s still interested in being a hero. So he’s taken his show on the road.

Andi finds him in Georgia, helping construct a hospital on Cherokee land. He sees her coming and cuts short a conversation he was having with two workers and a supervisor.

She smiles as he approaches, and taps her chest with a closed fist. “Hey. I talked to the young teams back in HC. As I listened, I could feel the psychic link building up. Felt like, I dunno, a cool drink. Refreshing. Calming? Not sure. But knowing I had to do this made all the difference, I think. I just never much cared about peoples’ opinion before. But now that I’m doing it, it doesn’t feel so bad.”

Tatanka claps her on the shoulder. “I’m proud of you. And do you need a contribution from me?”

Andi shakes her head. “I think I have it, actually. From last time we talked.”

Her mood darkens, and it reflects on her face. “No. The person I think I really need to hear from isn’t here. I wish… I wish Uncle Chan could tell me how he thinks I’m doing.”

Tatanka leads the way to a wooden bench that’s already been emplaced for hospital visitors. “I can’t speak for Chan. Tell you what though. I’ll tell you a story about him. You can tell me if it’s what he’d tell you or not. Okay?”

Andi takes a seat, and Tatanka joins her. With one elbow on the back of the bench, and one leg up and over the other, he starts talking.

“I had my own crisis of faith, when I decided to ask about using real artifacts from the tribes. I knew it was a political position I wanted to take - honor the power of the people of the continent and the beliefs they held. Some of it was pragmatic. I wanted to keep some of those artifacts safe. People can promise to respect territories and treaties, and too often they’re telling little white lies.”

Andi chuckles briefly at that.

“But at the same time, I asked myself, and still ask. Is it disrespectful? I’m using things that aren’t even from my tribe. The way I’m using them isn’t something anyone can just do, of course. But am I the proper bearer? Is it crass to use a medicine wheel to help stop a bank robbery?”

He gestures at the skeleton of the hospital. “I’m working for the tribe using Cherokee artifacts. Doesn’t have to be that way.”

He turns back to Andi, and smiles. “Chan gave me some stuff he’d been given, after he’d asked around. Tools are meant to be used, he’d said. Use them respectfully, but use them. They shouldn’t collect dust in a museum somewhere.”

“I asked him if it was okay, because of course he could give me permission on behalf of a whole people, right? But he just waved it away. He said, they’re yours now. Someone else already showed you their trust through that gift. Why are you asking me how to use what’s yours? Ask yourself.”

The older hero looks down at his niece. “He was trying to tell me that my own conscience was sufficient. I was a good steward because I always double-checked myself to not be a bad one.”

“I think he’d tell you the same thing. These powers are yours now. Like you say, he’s not here, so why are you trying to ask him anyway?”

Andi has had this conversation before. But the feelings of doubt don’t fade quite that easily. “What if I fuck up?” she finally asks.

“Well let’s find out,” Tatanka grins. “What did you do the last time you fucked up? And before that? You telling me you never fucked up and are new to this?”

Andi laughs and smacks him on the shoulder with a fist. “Alright, ya got me. Turn my own self-doubt back on me. Clever clever.”

She stands up from the bench. “I did fuck up. Recently in fact. Gonna go do something about it now, actually, if that’s okay.”

Tatanka rises and nods. “You can find me again, any time you need me.”

Andi leaps, and flies into the sky. There’s one conversation left unfinished.


Kinetica is on the roof of a parking garage. It looks like she’d between missions, from how out of breath she still is.

Andi lands. “Hey. If this is a bad time–”

The other woman actually laughs. “Every time is a bad time in the city lately. But I can fit you in now. You ready?”

Andi nods.

Kinetica cracks her knuckles. “Alright. Well, as current head of the Chosen, you are… You are frustrating.”

She gestures at the city. “You had a team. You walked away from that responsibility to be with your boyfriend on his team. You took a couple Chosen with you. And then this shit happens. And you people take off into space.”

Like others, she seems to expect that Andi will respond, and she’s surprised when that doesn’t happen. She peers back at Andi after several moments.

“It’s not really like that, is it. It’s not that simple is it.”

Andi shakes her head. “It’s not that simple. But you didn’t ask me for a briefing on stuff. I asked you for what you thought of me.”

Kinetica slowly nods, like this is hard to comprehend but it’s finally sinking in. “Well. I don’t apologize for how I feel. And this is how I really do feel, even if it might not be based on truth. But I think what really galls me is that you did all that and they still look up to you! The Irregulators love you. The JHHL loved you. You were this no-nonsense badass and you had all this respect and responsibility and you walked away from upholding that responsibility. And they still like you.”

She throws her hands up rapidly, a sharp impatient shrug. “See, I know it’s unfair, I don’t even need you to tell me. Because you people are going after the Seven Wonders. You’re not just hiding out in someone else’s fancy house until the danger passes. You’ve gone up against them since they returned. You’re fighting a fight the rest of us didn’t want to touch.”

She turns away, and looks down, and clasps one elbow in her other hand in embarrassment. “I kinda hate you because you make me look bad by comparison.”

Andi wants to say something, offer some kind of apology or comfort or something. But she came to hear this truth. It’s not her place to try and convince anyone to think better of her.

Can she say something anyway?

She tries.

“I’m glad to hear that’s why you hate me. I just talked to my uncle. Tatanka. He said, a good steward always thinks they must be a bad steward, always checks in on themselves, always doubts. If you’re so dedicated to improving that you feel like you aren’t leading well enough, I gotta think that makes you a good leader.”

Kinetica looks up, worried and tearful. “Yeah? I don’t feel that way.”

Andi laughs aloud at that. “You think I feel like I deserve 5% of the praise y’all have been giving me? Who the hell do you know that feels confident that they’re doing a good job?”

Kinetica thinks, and thinks, and shakes her head. “Okay,” she admits at last. “I think you might have something there.”

An alert goes off on her phone. Another incident requiring superhero intervention.

Kinetica sighs, and looks back to Andi. “Gotta go.”

But a thought occurs to her, and she smiles. “Wanna come along and help?”

Andi grins. “I’d love to. I wanna see what kinda leader you really are.”

Kinetica mock-sighs. “God, thanks for that. No pressure, huh?”

But her smile is genuine. And with that, the pair fly off the roof, and off on their mission to save the city.

1 Like

The team has spent the last few days working on the overall plan, along with the individual strategies and gambits for each individual villain of the Seven Wonders.

Harry’s dad has done his best not to influence his son’s team and their planning. He is indeed “running the play” Harry’s way. But he’s fine contributing flourishes like the framing of the plan.

The overall plan is the Big Game. Both teams have Playbooks - we know ours, we don’t yet know theirs. The “ball” is the initiative in the overall situation, and belongs to the heroes or the villains depending on circumstances. Every play has a Quarterback or QB. The QB in turn works with Running Backs, or RBs, on each play. The equivalent of “passing the ball” is to set up a situation where the villains commit to an engagement with what they think is a threat or opportunity, and then shifting the initiative by revealing the real plan.

“Once they start getting split up a couple times, they’re gonna get wise,” he warns Harry, during one of the many strategy sessions.

“I know, Dad,” grins Harry. “Some of our plans are counting on that.”

Mirage has repurposed the omnipresent holographic systems in the Quill compound, turning Q-Base into a gigantic simulation chamber. She is responsible for running sims of what the team thinks could happen, and she’s fond of deliberately messing with the team by having a simulated villain suddenly switch tactics or reveal a turnabout. The team is constantly reminded of the lifetime of experience with supervillainy that still lives in her head.

Every so often, the team hears about another incident. It’s not always villains. Gnosis, the telepathic Seventh Wonder, will make a broadcast to the city. Sometimes he’ll reveal secrets of city officials, such as indiscretions or financial crimes or the like. Other times, it will be a tip about a well-known hero, such as a lead on their secret identity or civilian workplace. It’s never something that would truly overturn the city - but it’s always something that builds toward that moment.

The preparations can’t go on forever. The city is suffering. Sooner or later, you have to go with what you have.


It’s the day of the Big Game.

Even the bait has been carefully prepared.

Tempest, Blackbird, and Guardian have publicly called out the Seven Wonders. It’s the sort of foolish gamble a desperate HHL might take. Silver Streak, Comet, and others have made their own simultaneous declaration, but it’s Tempest’s group that will matter. The others are just a diversion.

Khyrrsz, Glom, and Motormouth show up at the designated site - a big public park, which has been closed to the public by city order, in cooperation with the Playbook.

Glom and Motormouth are the two big talkers of the team. Today, Motormouth seems to have drawn bragging duties. Though trapped in a mashed-up technoshell of machine parts, she’s still managed to make it into something approximating a feminine outline. With one hand on her hip, she stands with her legs and torso canted, tilting her head this way and that as she looks at the HHL’s trio.

“Hey, you three! Nice to see you again. Thought you’d chickened out.”

Tempest speaks calmly and coolly. “The city needs us.”

“Whose city? It belongs to us now. We even put Rex Tyran in his place. And you lot? We’ve gone easy on you and you still couldn’t keep up.”

She cracks her knuckles, though it’s the squealing of metal instead of the popping of bone that’s produced. “We’re done fucking around. Prepare yourselves!”

While Motormouth has been talking, she’s been taking control of automated vehicles in the general vicinity of the park. Self-driving cars, buses, helicopters, drones, everything that can drive or fly under computer control. Now these things are all converging on the park, rolling from paved street to the bumpy, grassy ground.

The first order comes over the radio. “Snap!” This is from Tempest, who’s the Playbook for this particular encounter.

The three are immediately Teletubed away. Another Teletube immediately follows, leaving A10, Telekinetian, and the Animal - in the form of a giant eagle - all hovering in the air nearby.

“Get Glom!” shouts Harry Gale via radio.

Motormouth, who has been able to tune into the team’s frequencies before and is doing so again, immediately gestures to Glom - a signal indicating that she’s being targeted.

Glom can’t adhere to the soil of the park the way she can to concrete on a street in order to anchor herself. Instead, she repels herself off of it, and leaps high into the air.

A10 diverts up, tracing the villain’s ascent. She pummels her with fists. Repel glom sends the villain spiraling up and into the air even further, and A10 follows.

Khyrrsz roars. The prehistoric god raises their Blizzard Blade, and lightning descends from the empty sky and strikes it. That lightning, in turn, spreads to the rapidly incoming vehicles and chains its way between them. In seconds, they’ve formed an almost-solid dome of electricity, trapping the heroes inside it.

The Animal swoops down, clawing at Motormouth’s face and eyes. It won’t do any damage, but it’s not supposed to. The attack is meant as a distraction, to threaten her control over the vehicles.

As that happens, TK directs his power at several of the assembled vehicles. He pushes them apart, creating an opening wide enough that the lightning can’t reach and making an exit.

“Remember, our target is Khyrrsz,” radios Harry. “Don’t let Motormouth distract you. Spikes incoming.”

One after another, the Teletube materializes metal rods in a ring around the Seven Wonders’ position, well outside the lightning dome. Each of these is attached to a machine, which immediately applies hydraulic action to clamp the spikes upright against the ground and drive them in.

The Animal falls back, and flees at high speed through the gap TK created.

“86,” calls Tempest.

“Fuckin bird! You–” Motormouth is in the middle of shouting and flailing when the Animal retreats. She sees the sole remaining hero - TK - and grins. “Guess you’re the lucky–”

The spikes activate. Instantly, Khyrrsz’ lightning is pulled away from the vehicles, pulled toward the spikes. The lightning grounds itself down harmlessly into the earth. The giant god growls unhappily.

Motormouth turns and looks at what’s happening. When she turns back, TK has been Teletubed away.


Aboard Q-Base, Mirage is quietly making her own plans. “She’ll try to reach us next, via the radio link she felt and our control over the machines. Initiating self-destruct in the proxy satellite to break the link. 3… 2… 1…”

The team launched a satellite to keep themselves insulated from Motormouth’s powers. Now, in the vastness of space, that satellite quietly implodes. The remains, each no larger than a postage stamp, will safely de-orbit in time.


“It’s a distraction, or a trick,” growls Motormouth to Khyrrsz. “Keep your eyes open.”

The giant grunts their assent again, and lowers their Blizzard Blade into a fighting stance.

The self-driving vehicles that Motormouth summoned didn’t come empty. They’re full of people. Scared, panicky people. Some of them are willing to stay inside of their vehicles and wait for heroes to rescue them. Most, however, don’t have the faith they once did. They’re willing to get out, by force if necessary, and scatter to the four winds.

Motormouth sighs, and looks back at her partner. “Oh hey, hostages. Can ya give us a big ice slick? Big as you can, so nobody can run?”

Khyrrz grins and grunts. They begin exerting their power. The temperature across the park begins to drop.


Watching carefully via the telescopic optics from Q-Base, Mirage urgently signals the others. “Thermal fluctuations! Ice is indicated!”

“14! One-four! GO!” broadcasts Tempest from the Teletube chamber. She nods tensely to her son, who’s standing next to her and ready to go.

Across the city, and up in the air, heroes hear the call. Almost all of them involved in the plan, anyway.

Glom has attached herself to A10’s jacket, the one she wears over her usual outfit when she expects to fly - or be cold. She’s been swarming over A10, trying to deploy gas grenades or other gimmicks to knock the hero out. What the villain lacks in power, she makes up for in creativity, tenacity, and annoyance.

The one thing she’s done is get hold of Andi’s earbud radio, so she can’t make out the signal.

Silver Streak and Comet break off from their engagement with the other Seven Wonders - D-SOL-8, Veneer, and the Hand.

“When you gotta go, you gotta go,” quips the Hand, as the speedsters depart. “Let’s chase 'em down.”


The park is covered in ice. The civilians who’ve been trying to escape have slipped and slid, and are now piling up against each other in the depressions of the park’s rolling terrain.

“A10’s not responding,” comes Mirage, who’s keeping track of the situation. “Blackbird, step in.”

“Blackbird acknowledges,” the HHL hero says.

“TK, Alloy, Sloth, rescue,” Mirage orders. “Derek, icebreaker.”

The heroes aboard Q-Base are in their Teletubes. Mirage activates the system.

The scene shifts.

Harry goes from looking at white ceramic walls to an ice-covered park covered in cars, trucks, and more. Many vehicles are already slipping down the inclined ground. Some are approaching the people–

The Teletube has put TK and Sloth right at the center of the effect.

Sloth’s power is to slow down anything around her, proportionate to the kinetic energy of its movement.

TK’s power is to move things.

The skilled psychokinetic extends his power to every vehicle in his range. He can’t just stop them moving. But he can impart kinetic energy to them.

Sloth pushes her power, shouting as she does.

Every moving car, every moving bus, every heavy thing sliding on a collision course with terrified citizens, halts in its tracks.

Harry knows he could run around, rescue everyone here. It’s almost a cliché at this point - the cunning villain endangers civilians, then gets away while the hero saves them. But’s a cliché because a hero who doesn’t save those civilians loses their respect, and civilians who aren’t rescued can lose their lives. Everyone from bank robbers to national governments have used the tactic. It sucks because it’s so effective.

The heroes only have a narrow window of time - seconds, really - to capitalize on their opportunity against the Seven Wonders.

The toughest part of being a team player, he thinks, is ignoring the instinct to do just that - let the bad guy go, ensure everyone’s safe. There are people who are working on doing just this. He doesn’t have to. But it galls him that he isn’t part of that group.

Focus, he tells himself, as time crawls by.

Dark Derek materializes, right where Mirage wants him. Whatever thing he does, the fire he can conjure from shadow sure does burn stuff up. And it melts ice.

He’s cutting a path out of the park, and he’s yelling at the civilians to follow it. He’s wearing augmented-reality glasses that show him the path Mirage has plotted. All he has to do is aim his fire there.

Harry has never worked with this guy before. It’s hard to trust him for something this momentous. But that’s the Play.

Plan 14 involved retractable ice-ready spikes in teams’ footwear. Mercury and Tempest are so equipped. So are Comet and Silver Streak, who are even now racing at top speed across the ice to get into position.

Khyrrsz is still blowing snow everywhere. Ice is still forming.

Motormouth is big - not quite as big as Otto Newman, but definitely on that scale. She’s way too heavy for four speedsters to pick up and carry.

But she can be slid, assuming the surface - or her - was slick enough.

Mirage did the computations, redid them, checked and double-checked her assumptions. It could be done.

Plan 14 commences. It’s too fast for almost anyone else to see.

Tempest channels the blizzard flowing outward from Khyrrsz. She directs its power and fury forward, along a narrow line - with Motormouth in the way.

Motormouth is blasted with a sudden flurry of super-cold ice particles. They begin to coat her outside surface.

Blackbird, who’s been waiting for this moment, swoops in behind Motormouth. She slams into the big metal woman, knocking her forward.

Knocking her onto the path of ice Tempest is carefully shaping.

Silver Streak grabs hold of Tempest, lugging his wife into a bridal carry. Mercury and Comet take up positions on either side of Motormouth. And they run.

They run like they have never run before.

Tempest must hold onto the cold Khyrrsz is generating. She has to use her own power to lower the temperature along a straight path.

Mercury and Comet have to steer that path, steer Silver Streak so he doesn’t run into a building accidentally, steer the path around the cars and pedestrians that will doubtlessly be in the way. It’s a busy city, after all.

Blackbird doesn’t have to do anything. She just has to push, at top speed. Push and push and push until she’s got nothing left.

Incoming traffic! Tempest sees it, computes, and diverts.

It’s Olympic curling, with a villain as a stone, and an impromptu obstacle course thrown onto the ice.

A tractor-trailer in the middle of an intersection is a much more serious threat.

Harry doesn’t want to do this. But the needed distance is too much for a diversion.

He signals Comet - do it. The thing they didn’t want to do, but were prepared to do.

Comet, mouth set in grim determination, nods. He streaks forward. Rather than moving around the trailer, he simply smashes through it. Harry darts in, just behind him, catching and knocking away the thousands of fragments left behind by the destruction.

Silver Streak, hand protectively on his wife’s head to keep her from hitting anything, streaks through the hole left by the two halves of the trailer. He almost slips on the ice, but the spikes and the extra mass he’s carrying protect him.

Blackbird can’t make out anything. From her perspective, she’s rocketing through town, when suddenly a truck explodes. But she trusts the plan. She pushes, and keeps pushing.


Mirage is running the Teletubes at full power. Citizens are being plucked off the frozen park, then deposited elsewhere in the city. She’s starting with the ones who are choosing to remain where they are, so they don’t accidentally move outside the Teletube’s zone of engagement.

With the technopath out of the way, Stingray and his gear are free to deploy. He and NInjess, aboard the Flying Fish, concentrate on pulling trapped people out of their vehicles. He’s able to pry off doors or cut a way in when the doors have already been fried by Khyrrsz’ lightning. Ninjess is able to get in and pull people out with her extraordinary flexibility.

Guardian and Alloy are piling people aboard the Animal, who’s taken the shape of an elephant. The big creature can carry several people at once with a harness attached. Those who can’t make it to the path of safety Dark Derek is crafting with his powers can still make it out by elephant.

Khyrrsz has given up on the blizzard. They’ve called down lightning, which is picked up and dispersed by the lightning rods still ringing the park.

Now, they’re angry enough to simply attack the heroes.

They charge, full of raging storm and cutting winds, full of energy and motion and freezing wind, swinging their Blizzard Blade at full speed, and –

They stop.

Sloth stares unblinkingly up at Khyrrsz. She’s putting out her power at full strength. Beside her, Telekinetian is dumping as much energy into Khyrrsz as he possibly can.

The petite girl and the huge Neanderthal war-god are motionless, as time itself is slowed to a crawl. All they can do is stare at each other.


Somehow, the Gales have pushed Motormouth out of the city, coasting on what little ice they have left.

Sure would have been nice to have Kid Kelvin along for this, Harry tells himself in frustration. But that’s how the HHL did it, didn’t they - depended too heavily on the powers of one key person. Every part of this plan had at least one fallback.

Andi

He wonders if she’s okay. He wants to ask Mirage. He wants to call over the radio to anyone. But he just. Doesn’t. Have. Time.

The freeway banks. The speedsters don’t care. They just push Motormouth. The big metal woman, still coated with ice that hasn’t been allowed to thaw, crashes through the guardrail at unimaginable speed.

Crashes through, and hits a big wall that’s been set up specifically to absorb her impact.

Blackbird follows, and would have crashed too if Mercury and Comet hadn’t pushed her out of the way at the last second.

It’s only been seconds from Motormouth’s perspective. She was iced up, then bum-rushed, then slammed into a wall at high speed. Everything’s a blur, she’s dizzy, and she has to get her bearings.

Silver Streak races down, through the opening in the damaged guardrail, and hits a button.

There’s nothing electrical here, there’s no machines to take over. The button simply releases a bar of metal, which in turn releases other bits. And those release a trap door beneath Motormouth’s position.

The villain falls, and falls, and falls into the pit the team spent hours quietly excavating earlier. She yells and shouts and threatens on the way down, until she can no longer be heard.

The trucks to pour the concrete are already on the way. Mirage isn’t taking any chances.


“Motormouth is contained,” Tempest announces over the radio. Heroes everywhere begin cheering.

“Remaining Seven Wonders converging on the park,” Mirage reports. “Civilian evaluation is 58% complete.”

Everyone hears a new voice over the radio. “Hey gang. Your buddy, A10? She left an impact crater where a convenience store used to be. Might wanna look into that. Ciao!

It’s Glom.

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“Glom has the ball,” announces Mirage. Andi was to be the QB for the Glom plan, but she’s out of communication.

“Ball?” Glom actually giggles over the stolen comm unit. “Is this a sports thing for you people?”

That’s enough information for Mirage to initiate a tracking routine. Anyone speaking into a comm unit can be located. And Glom loves to speak. Will she be smart enough to discard the earpiece before she realizes?


The limited number of Teletubes aboard Q-Base are in non-stop operation. They’re beaming civilians up, re-targeting, then beaming them back out of the danger areas.

During one such operation, a shadow slips in among the civilians. When they arrive in Q-Base, so does the shadow. And before they’re beamed back down, the shadow slips through a crack and onto the base.


D-SOL-8 and the Hand arrive at the park. They see a curious sight. Their teammate Khyrrsz is staring down at a boy and a girl. All three are motionless.

The Hand looks, and D-SOL-8 computes. “Motormouth is missing,” the gloomy cyborg announces. “Capture is possible.”

The Hand gestures at the civilians being taken out of the park by numerous heroes. “She was probably trying to harvest hostages, eh?”

“Four HHL members present,” D-SOL-8 reports after a quick scan.

“We did warn them, didn’t we.” The Hand lets out a pained sigh, and brushes a stray strand of hair away from her face. “Well, let’s get started. Go hurt some people.”

“Very well,” drones D-SOL-8.


Mercury is racing people away from the park - not sure when the big frosty god is going to start moving again - when he spots D-SOL-8 approaching and raising his arms. Guns are popping out of concealed ports. He’s aiming at packs of civilians.

Oh shit–

Mercury pours on the speed. He goes for a street sign on the street adjacent to the park, and drags it into the path of the spray of bullets D-SOL-8 lays down.

The cyborg has two arms. Fortunately, Silver Streak also noticed. He too has grabbed a chunk of metal - a manhole cover, in his case - and is using it to block the bullets.

Father and son grin at each other, in recognition of their shared instinct. And they turn and look, as Tempest races across the park to engage directly with D-SOL-8.

There’s a sudden visual disjunction, and the cyborg is gone. The twin bullet streams stop too. Tempest plows through the suddenly empty space to no effect.

They’ve seen him do this before. They know it’s probably futile as a way to take him down.

The goal isn’t to take him down. The goal is to get him to shoot at them, instead of civilians.


Khyrrsz vanishes in a gigantic cloud of smoke, which rises upward at a dramatically slower speed thanks to Sloth’s ongoing power.

In its place is a gigantic, cartoonish bomb. It’s just a sphere of black iron, with a thick and burning fuse leading out of the top.

Mirage’s voice comes over comms. “Seven Wonders have the ball. I’m evacuating non-essential personnel. Ninjess, join Sloth. TK, you will assist civilian evacuation. Gales, concentrate on tackling D-SOL-8.”

The holographic coordinator activates various other functions of Q-Base, adjusting life support and atmospheric mixture.


Stingray flies past Sloth on the Flying Fish, and Ninjess leaps off from the back.

The Irregulator hero waves, very slowly. Ninjess smiles and waves back.

The Teletube engulfs them.


Mirage is working out of the command center. She refuses to call it “Q-Hub”, Andi’s chosen name, and half of her still knows it as “the Conversation Pit”. Most of the decor from the Quill family days is still up, and she does not allow herself the luxury of nostalgia. She has to pay attention to too many other things.

“There’s no way that bomb is real,” TK insists via radio. “This is a joke, right? Who can just summon that sort of thing out of nowhere?”

“Several people I can name,” Mirage says flatly.

“I tried dampening the fuse but it just won’t go out,” he calls back.

“Bomb is priority, team,” radios Mercury, over the sound of machine gun fire. “We’re on defense. Mirage, call the play.”

This is the kind of pressure she thrives under, honestly. But the stakes are so high.

“Civilian evacuation is at 82%. Stingray, I’m deploying plan 29. Be ready.”

“Am ready,” the young hero calls back.

Though the Teletube was the transportation method chosen to get people to and from Q-Base, there were others. One of those can be used to deploy big gadgets and cargo pallets and such back to Earth. It’s been prepped. Now, Mirage aims and fires it.

The package descends through Earth’s atmosphere, transforming into a blazing fireball by the forces of friction. Ablative shields designed to absorb this heat burn themselves out and flutter in tiny specks of ash down to the planet below. Boosters attached to the package ignite, slowing its descent. Finally, parachutes deploy to finish the job.

Stingray is up on his Flying Fish, providing terminal guidance to the package. It must land precisely around the bomb. And it must land before the bomb goes off. There can be no mistakes.

The package separates into six pieces. Each of them slams into the ground, in a hexagonal shape around the bomb. Nervously watching the bomb’s fuse dwindle down to nothing, Stingray slaps a button on his suit. The six separate pieces connect to each other, using his newly developed quantum acoustic shield technology.

The bomb was not an illusion. It explodes, as violently as Stingray expected from something so big. And because the shielding system couldn’t fully enclose the target - what’s under the bomb is just packed park dirt - the force goes straight down.

The back-blast destroys the device, and sends pieces of it flying everywhere. Stingray and TK, the nearest, raise their respective shields to protect themselves. They look around - any civilians hurt? But everyone this close has been moved away.

“Bomb neutralized,” reports a shaky Stingray.


D-SOL-8 has been firing machine guns, missiles, particle beams, and other ultra-tech weapons more or less indiscriminately. The four speedsters on site are too busy keeping people safe to even think about going after him.

Blackbird and Guardian, the remaining HHL members here, have tried their hands. But the cyborg’s ability to teleport is making this a frustrating experience. And often when he teleports, he leaves behind a land mine or other explosive that must be dealt with.

This is probably the worst time for Khyrrsz and the Hand to reappear, so of course they do.

The war-god angrily shouts to the sky, and raises their Blizzard Blade. Clouds gather, and rain turns to hail as it falls.


Fuko and Sloth are standing around the Conversation Pit, waiting for Mirage to deploy them again. But she isn’t doing that.

Fuko’s getting edgy. Finally, she speaks up. “Er, Mirage, shouldn’t we…?”

“You should not,” Mirage says sternly. She then turns to Sloth. “Tell me about yourself.”

The girl blinks, and points to herself. Mirage nods.

“Um, okay. Well, I chose the codename Sloth because…”

Realization dawns, and she looks at Mirage in surprise. “I’m speaking at your speed!” she exclaims.

“That’s because I’ve added power-neutralization gas to the atmosphere,” Mirage explains. She turns back to Fuko. “Do you feel any different? Exercise some of your more esoteric abilities, please.”

Fuko tries out her ink, her tentacles, her camouflage, even throws a couple darts. “Everything seems as normal,” she reports. “The gas has no effect on me.”

Mirage nods. “Good. Play 5. Veneer has entered Q-Base. She’s moving toward the power plant. Neutralize her.”

Fuko accepts the mission with a grin.


In the depths of Q-Base, Veneer has returned to human form.

She’s in the middle of sabotaging the complex power system when she senses an intruder. She turns, throwing knives at what she senses.

Ninjess dodges, and the two women regard each other.

Veneer is prepared. She’s wearing a compact respirator over her mouth and nose. Ever since Tyran started deploying its TOXIN robots, she’s been preparing for this. And it only made sense, once she learned that Gale and his kids had gone up against some of those robots.

“You could have made the smart move, honey,” she says in a weary voice, modulated by the respirator. “Now I gotta kill you.”

“That will not be so easy,” Ninjes replies, calmly readying herself.

Veneer pulls a compact automatic pistol from her suit, checks the chamber for ammunition, and raises it. “You might be bulletproof. Not against what’s in this magazine.”

Ninjess frowns, and vanishes.

Damn Atlanteans, Veneer tells herself.

Fine, she can do that too.

She flickers into shadow form, to begin the hunt - and then darts start coming from everywhere. They stick into the floor - they’re that sharp, apparently. They have weird bulbous ends, like dandelions. But so what?

What is this? This can’t hurt me.

She tries to glide across one of the darts. Only - it feels like it’s somehow snagging her. Like she’s suddenly gone from lightly gliding across a pond, the way it normally is, to trying to climb an infinitely high wall.

Could she have been exposed to the gas? Impossible. Her powers are working fine.

She can’t waste time figuring this out. She’d planned to complete her sabotage, then get back out again somehow. All the heroes should be on the ground, dealing with the others. Mirage could have been handled. But this–

She rematerializes as a three-dimensional person, and looks warily around. “What did you do to me?” she demands.

She hears Ninjess, but does not see her. “The darts have a fractal shape on one end. Patterns of complexity which increase as you descend the size scale. A surface area orders of magnitude greater than a simple sphere.”

Veneer understands immediately. “Clever, clever. Then–”

There’s a flicker of light, and she sees Ninjess in one corner of the chamber. She aims her gun, and fires, and fires–

And as she does, she feels a hand reach around her head from behind, and sees it yank the respirator off her mouth.

Oh no.

The image of Ninjess, untroubled by the passage of bullets through its body, shifts to that of Mirage.

The real Ninjess is behind her, holding her respirator. Every breath she takes will fill her lungs with the power-neutralizing gas.

“Checkmate,” Mirage says. “A game I prefer over American football.”

Veneer sighs, and tosses her gun away. She’s not one to surrender easily. But this - this she has to appreciate. And this way, she can still retain the thing most important to her: dignity.

“I suppose you ladies have accommodations prepared for me. Lead the way.”


Q-Base being full of gas means nobody can Teletube back to it safely. There’s no retreating.

The park has turned into a pitched battle between the Hand, D-SOL-8, and Khyrrsz, and the combined forces of Mercury’s team, the Irregulators, and the HHL remnant.

They’re all interrupted as a sonic boom resounds through the sky overhead.

Up in the air, A10 is hovering. Her costume is absolutely shredded. Her hair is a mess, still tangled up with bits and pieces of destroyed buildings. And she’s never looked happier.

“Hey!” she yells down. “That bouncy bitch got my earpiece! Who’s got a replacement for me?”

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Harry is overjoyed that Andi’s okay. He regretted not being able to go check on her personally.

Now, he’s getting worried for a different reason.

“So yeah I crashed into a convenience store - it’s uhh, Speedway, I think, that’s what the sign said, so I thought, haha, Mercury, Speedway, you know? Anyway, I thought, yeah this is gonna hurt, but no, I woke up feeling great, and I figured out why, it’s because I felt you folks all worrying about me, I felt that connection, and I think that’s the psychic link, that’s the powerup, that is what Uncle Chan was talking about - but I’d never really felt it before, but maybe I never went looking for it before? So I think the difference is that I was welcoming that link this time around and I’ve just been coasting on the passive weaker link this whole time–”

She takes a breath and goes right back to talking.

“You know what? I think this is why Uncle Chan was always so smiling and carefree, because he had it, he had this feeling inside him, like people were close to him or didn’t like him or whatever but they were thinking about him, he could feel it, he knew it, he never had to doubt who he was to people because he had this connection, and I gotta tell you it’s an amazing feeling, like, I know I used to keep people at a distance but god damn this makes me wanna talk to people more, it’s like the best fucking taco in the world, just so spicy and hot and the lettuce is crispy and juicy and damn!”

Harry is still tackling D-SOL-8. Andi, now equipped with an earpiece, is fighting off Khyrrsz. But she’s still talking.

“Listen, I think I gotta do something for whoever owned that Speedway. Like I get I didn’t deliberately wipe it out but that was someone’s livelihood. People worked there. Now the soda machine is out and their whole diary section is toast, like dude, I woke up covered in milk, it was the worst, but there was a fire hydrant nearby so I could wash it off, and uh, I think I broke that too, I probably should deal with that. Hey, what’s the new story on super-insurance in Rex Tyran’s world? Like we used to have it, but does insurance only cover licensed heroes now or something? Like how much pull does that guy have?”

Mirage somehow cuts through Andi’s chatter to deliver news. “Trace on Glom failed. The stolen earpiece was discarded almost immediately.”

Harry and his uncle Matt are busy negating D-SOL-8’s laser projector by stealing windshields from nearby cars, and using them as impromptu lenses to redirect the beam skyward. “Okay, that’s too bad, I guess we deal with these guys for now–”

“Oh, I can find Glom for you,” Andi chimes in brightly.

Harry hadn’t quite tuned her out but this is definitely more uh - definitely more useful than what she’s been saying so far?

“How?”

Andi’s grin radiates through her voice and over the radio. “She told me what she thought of me!”


Glom threw away the stolen earpiece after a couple of taunts. She coated it with repel glom, just so it would bounce around a bit before coming to rest - let that throw any hunters off the trail.

Her next stop was to one of her convenient supply caches. She got a sniper rifle with anti-super ammo, briefly checked the weapon and supporting equipment, and started bouncing across rooftops back to the park.

“Blackbird broke off with two of the juniors,” comes a voice over her Seven Wonders earpiece. It’s from D-SOL-8, so of course it’ll be a joyless status update. “All flyers.”

Glom stops to think. Maybe they got something on her after all? Well, if they’re flying…

She reduces the intensity of her repel glom and soft-lands on the roof of a high apartment building, then grabs for some mini-binoculars, and aims them along a line to the park. Sure enough, she can see three figures silhouetted against the sky.

She unlimbers the rifle, snaps the bipod out, and drops down. Maybe she can get a few shots off before they get here…


Blackbird has ultra-sharp vision. Before anyone else has any idea, she calls out the danger. “Rifle! Get low.”

A10 and Stingray obey, diving low for the street. Blackbird spins in midair and lets herself fall, using her flight power to jink left and right.

Shots ring out over the Halcyon cityscape. Behind them, dust puffs explode as the high-powered bullets slam into the stonework of buildings.

Stingray drops his Flying Fish to almost street level, then takes a hard left, overflying midday traffic. He figures on getting some distance, then coming around behind.

A10 almost hits the pavement for how low she flies, but she levels off. She’s flying just above car height, and weaves between the occasional bus or truck.

Blackbird hovers once she’s out of line of sight. “Mirage, shooter on the roof of a tall apartment building ahead of us. High-powered ammo.”

“That’s the DeFalco Apartments,” Mirage answers. “The shooter is most likely Glom.”

“It’s definitely her,” comes Andi’s voice. “I can feel her up there.”

Blackbird is the senior hero present. But she’s not in charge of this plan. “A10, call the play,” she says.

Andi doesn’t hesitate. “We get right up to the building at street level and we go straight up. Stingray left side, Blackbird right, me front.”

“Roger.” “Got it.”

The three heroes ascend. As they reach the top, they see the roof - and no supervillain. The access door is swinging closed, as though someone just used it.

“She went inside,” Andi says immediately, feeling for that connection.

“No problem, right?” Stingray asks. “Only so many ways out. We post up at the ground floor and–”

Mirage cuts him off. “DeFalco has a connection to the nearby subway system.”

Andi frowns. “Shit. If she goes underground, the plan is for nothing. What do you think - go after her, or go back and support the others?”

“It’s your play,” Blackbird reminds her gently.

Andi grinds her teeth. “Okay. Blackbird - topside. Stingray - front door and street level. I’m going in.”

She drops to the roof, and ducks through the access door into the building interior.

As her eyes adjust, she takes in her options. There’s only two things here: a locked cage full of tools, neatly arranged, and stairs down to the building’s elevator system. She immediately goes for the stairs, taking two at a time.

She leans down and sees Glom in the far distance, already sliding down the cable. She leaps over the safety railing here and lets herself simply fall.

Glom looks up, sees her, and descends faster. She lands hard on an elevator coming up, crouches, yanks open the access hatch on the top, and drops in.

Andi has to consciously soft-land so as not to break the elevator. She pries open the hatch, only to see a cloud of smoke pouring out. Power-suppression gas!

She leaps upward through the shaft and hovers in front of a pair of closed elevator doors. She pries them open, glances around for the emergency instructions and signs for the staircase, sees what she wants, and yanks open the doors. She doesn’t have to walk down the stairs - there’s a narrow gap between them, all the way down, and she lets herself drop.

She comes to rest on the floor where Glom must have gotten out, and still feels the presence. Through the staircase access doors on this floor, then through the hallways. Where are you, where are you–?

She sees an open apartment door and darts inside. Glom is there, in the middle of climbing out the window. She’s ditched her bulky rifle, but still looks like she’s packing some guns. She gives a grin and a jaunty wave, and leaps.

“She’s in the air!” Andi yells. “Uh - uh -”

The need to orient herself throws her off for just a second. “West side of the building!”

“On it!” shouts Blackbird.

“I’m Teletubing the Glom kit to the roof of that building,” Mirage announces.

“I’ll grab hold of it and catch up!” Stingray announces.

Andi climbs out the window Glom just used, with far less physical grace than the other woman. Although annoyed by that, she takes to the air in pursuit, and once again feels more in her element.

Blackbird comes into formation beside her.

Ahead of the pair, Glom is leaping and bouncing in unpredictable directions. It makes it difficult to get a bead on her, when you can’t anticipate where she’s going to be.

Stingray roars into formation as well. “I got the dinguses. Grab one off me when you can,” he calls out.

“Me first,” Blackbird announces. Someone has to keep Glom in sight at all times. She spares her attention for just a few seconds to fall back and have Stingray affix a device around her forearm.

Andi doesn’t fall back until she hears Blackbird has picked up Glom visually again. She too gets equipped with a device, then returns to looking ahead. It takes her a moment to match what she sees with what she feels, but then she gives a thumbs up.

Glom glances behind herself, and sees the heroes. She takes a page from their playbook, and suddenly bounces down - instead of the rooftops, she takes to the streets. bouncing between cars and trucks. More than once she takes a hard left or right along a cross-street, forcing the team to swerve to a stop and re-acquire her.

Then–

Glom bounces left, and down one of the subway tunnels.

“God dammit!” Stingray shouts.

“I’m on her!” Andi says, in fierce determination. “She ain’t bouncin’ on me!”

Blackbird nods. “Mirage, A10’s heading into the subway. Advise us on potential rendezvous points as they develop.”

“Roger,” announces Mirage.


Glom has bounced down the stairs, over a platform, and down a subway train tunnel. The villain has tucked herself into a tight ball. Andi, flying, follows her as best she’s able.

How the hell does she know where she’s going?

I guess it doesn’t matter, as long as she gets away.

Andi passes inches over the heads of midday commuters, and ducks into the dark tunnel. From the sudden darkness of entering the subway system, to the glare of the artificial lighting and the brightly-backed advertisements, to the grim void and oily smell of the train tunnel itself, Andi’s eyes are having a hard time adjusting.

But she can feel her quarry ahead of her. That’ll have to do.

Once, Glom bounces back past her, out of nowhere. It’s almost too late for Andi to realize what would have caused that, in a train tunnel…-

“Train!”

Andi stops herself, reverses course, and flies at breakneck pace back along the tunnel. Behind her, she can see the subway train from its lights, and see a surprised operator inside. She waves weakly at him. Finally the next station comes into view, and she flies off the track so the train can pass by.

Glom has descended down the escalator to the deeper train tracks. Andi descends too.

Following her feeling, Andi ducks into the tunnel. Glom has untucked herself and is now “skating” on the train tracks, somehow balancing her repel glom to push herself forward.

She sees Andi behind her and opens fire with a handgun. Andi ducks - she’s tough and bulletproof, but there’s no need to test whether it’s regular ammo in that gun.

“I took three of you out of the fight with the others!” Glom shouts proudly. “Y’all never give up, and that’s how I can manipulate you so easily!”

Andi just smiles. She heard other taunts earlier, when it was just her and Glom.

More shots. “You think you’re gonna take me so easily?”

This one Andi has a response for. “Didn’t say it was gonna be easy!”

Glom bounces up and off the track, and with perfect aim sends herself ping-ponging up the escalator to the higher levels. Andi follows.

Glom shoots up and out of the subway system. Mirage hasn’t always been able to track Andi’s signal. But she’s got a map of the subway tunnels, and there’s only so many places the subway goes. As a result, when Andi emerges, Blackbird and Stingray aren’t far behind.

At the top of Glom’s ballistic arc, Andi charges in. She doesn’t try to grab the villain. Instead, she launches a powerful aerial kick. It connects. The villain, coated in repel glom, goes where the kick would have to send her - higher into the sky.

Those few moments of ascent are enough for Andi’s support to catch up.

“Okay! We’re doing it! Deploy!” she shouts. Blackbird and Stingray snap on their devices. Hemispherical fields of force - Stingray’s quantum-acoustic tech - spring to life, emanating outward from the devices they wear. They’re essential large, immaterial, solid bowls.

Glom comes down. Andi, first and nearest, angles to catch Glom in the bowl. Glom bounces out of it - but of course she does. Back into the air.

Blackbird ascends. Glom comes down - into the bowl of force she’s projecting. And she bounces up.

Stingray is up next. Glom comes down into the half-shell, and up.

Glom quickly realizes what’s happened. She’s being hacky-sacked. And no matter which way she bounces, the three flyers are fast enough to move and intercept.

It’s worse. These three have been angling her eastward - away from the city, toward the ocean.

She fires her guns. No good - the force fields absorb the shots.

She tosses grenades. No good - the flyers can just adjust their positions.

This is a trap made deliberately and especially for her.

And when Glom realizes she’s trapped, Andi knows it too.

The villain soft-lands in Andi’s bowl, crouched down on all fours, and stares through the transparent force field at the hero. “How do we settle this?” she asks, diplomatically.

Andi is already fitting herself with a respirator. She sees Glom reach into her kit and pull one out as well, just on general suspicion.

“Well. We drop you in the ocean to drown. Or we send you into the upper atmosphere to freeze. Or… you come quietly,” Andi says with a broad smile.

Glom turns her attention to Blackbird, the HHL member who’s been a part of this plan. “You never could have taken me alone.”

Blackbird smiles, and glances at the Chosen and Irregulator alums with her. “Thing about being heroes is, we’re never alone.”


Andi and Glom teleport back to Q-Base. Andi with her respirator on, Glom without. The power-suppression drug is still in the air.

Mirage flickers to life in front of Glom. “Dispose of your equipment. All of it. Try to conceal something and I’ll know. If you try to escape, you’ll be ejected into space, which will afford you a short window of opportunity to reconsider your decision.”

Glom glances back to Andi, looking a tad worried.

“Don’t fuck with her, she’ll do it,” Andi says with a big, toothy grin.

And as Glom divests herself of her remaining weapons and tools, Andi broadcasts a signal over the comm system, from the game that will always be football to her.

“GOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAL!”

The Hand takes stock of the situation. What seemed like a trap before has turned into a much larger and better-coordinated trap now.

Motormouth, Veneer, and Glom aren’t responding. She’s no technologist, but she’s pretty sure it’s more likely they were captured than their radios all ceased to work at once.

She’s busy fending off the heroes trying to surround Khyrrsz. She calls to D-SOL-8, himself busy engaging with the Gale family but never too busy for a friendly chat.

“It might be time for a nanoport to recover our colleagues. I’ll provide you cover like before, if you let me know once you’re ready.”

The answer surprises and actually frightens her. “Negative on nanoportation. Opposing factors are at play.”

“Well how do we murder those ‘opposing factors’?” she asks. A flock of doves emerges from her hat, obscuring everyone’s vision and letting her relocate.

“Negative on nanoportation,” the cyborg repeats.

Well that’s frustrating.

The Hand makes an executive decision. “Friends and comrades, it might be time to execute Broken Crown. D-SOL-8, can you do that much, or are you permanently grounded?”

“Broken Crown is possible.”

She calls back to Gnosis, aka Dr. Ken Wissen the psychologist. “Chief, we’ve just lost three of our group. It’s Broken Crown, unless you got a better idea.”

The voice over the radio sounds calm; the seething anger is masked by the static of the connection. “Broken Crown approved. I’ll notify Khyrrsz.”


The surviving Seven Wonders have retreated in good order. The park is clear, civilians are being accounted for, and photos and video are being taken by pretty much everyone still on the scene.

Back at Q-Base, everyone is ready to party.

“We fuckin’ did it!” Trace shouts.

Fuko is far more reserved. “We have done well, but we have not done enough,” she cautions.

Andi isn’t having it. “Yeah but listen. We took down like, fuckin’ half of that master supervillain team in one day! That’s gotta count for something.”

“It counts for a lot,” Mercury agrees with a smile. “But as Fuko says, we’re not done.”

“I concur.” This from Mirage, who hasn’t given up monitoring the status of the city despite the generally upbeat mood. “Furthermore, we should see the capture of three villains as a motive for the remainder to escalate their attack. Motormouth was already willing to take control of vehicles with passengers, something she’d previously avoided doing.”

“That’s because of us,” Blackbird says quietly. “The plan was to use HHL members as bait. Well, it worked, but they went hard. As long as the team that defeated them once is still in town, it’ll drive them to bigger and bigger acts.”

She turns to her companions, Guardian and the Gale family. “I think the kids show they have what it takes. Isn’t it time to make the city safer, the one way we still can?”

The other HHL members look at each other. They know what Blackbird means. Give the Seven Wonders what they want, and leave the city.

James Swift thinks about it, and whispers something to his wife and to Matt. The three of them nod, and turn back to face their son Mercury and his team.

“She’s right. It may be time. But I think there’s something we can do to help you out with your problems too.”


The broadcast undeniably comes from Minneapolis, MN. But it’s broadcast via the Halcyon City networks.

“This is Silver Streak, Tempest, Comet, Blackbird, and Guardian of the former Halcyon Heroes League. In the interest of the safety of our home city, we’re leaving it.”

“This message is for the Seven Wonders. We aren’t leaving because you ran us out. Tell yourselves that if you wish. What we want is to avoid further civilians becoming endangered.”

“Maybe we would have stayed, if not for one other thing. There’s new heroes protecting the city. Mercury, the son of Silver Streak and Tempest. A10, another hero with a strong Halcyon legacy. Stingray, son of an HHL hero who helped us beat back the rogue Atlantis faction who invaded the world. And Ninjess, an Atlantean reformist whose strongest loyalty is to the people of Halcyon. These four have proven themselves over and over. To the people, and to us, their predecessors.”

“They aren’t alone. Other teams exist. The Chosen. The Irregulators. Halcyon is full of people who love it and want to keep it safe, against any threat.”

“We would never leave Halcyon undefended. We leave Halcyon because it is defended. We trust our children, our successors, to be the ones who rise above us and make this era their own. We ask the people of Halcyon to extend their trust to these heroes as well.”


That declaration is quickly tested.

Another broadcast follows within half an hour. This one comes courtesy of the Seven Wonders. The Hand is front and center, with nothing else in the picture to hint at her location.

“Glad to know the HHL has seen reason. Unfortunately by bestowing your mantle on your kids, you’ve put them in the crosshairs too. We claim control over Halcyon City. Restore to us what’s ours. If you fail to comply within 24 hours, the city will be utterly destroyed. You are then welcome to rule the ashes, if you wish.”

The call shuts off.

Mirage is the first to speak. “Clearly, ‘restore to us what is ours’ is code to release the captured Seven Wonders.”

“Can they really destroy a whole city at half strength?” Trace asks, nervously.

“Gnosis has had a decade to prepare. We were able to devise counters for them. Their team had as much time to formulate and enact their own plans.” Mirage paces, hands behind her holographic back, hand patting against hand as though keeping a beat for her brain.

She turns to the group. “We leveraged a combination of technology and cooperation to hinder the Seven Wonders. We can hardly deny them the ability to do the same.”

Trace sighs. “There’s probably a million ways to destroy the city, right? Every inventor out there has some kinda new particle or alternate dimension or whatever.”

“It was the job of AEGIS to monitor such things,” Mercury explains. “They worked with HHL to assess individual cases. AEGIS Department 42 would study the most interesting ones, and other groups would figure out what to do with the inventors themselves.”

Fuko now speaks up, raising her voice louder than her normal to get the group’s attention. “It is time to reveal what I learned about Veneer. I attached a tracking tag to her during the television-station incident. I followed up. I couldn’t get a line on their base - but I found a cache of supplies her team had prepared.”

This happened during “409 - The Soul of the Hero” – Ed.

“Certain of those supplies were unique hyper-tech innovations. They had AEGIS tracking identifiers still on them.”

“Why did you keep this from us?” Trace demands loudly.

Fuko shrinks back, looking worried. “I- it was so unthinkable. I wanted to be sure–”

A light goes on in Mirage’s eyes. “Accept the following as a hypothesis. Tyran Enterprises took control of AEGIS Department 42. Perhaps long before the Seven Wonders. There were always anomalies, things that didn’t make sense or fit together about Tyran. This would explain it.”

Andi shakes her head. “Hold on. AEGIS is supposed to be super strict about vetting their guys. How could an outside force just do that?”

Mirage turns to look at Andi, and smiles. “Human nature. The one vulnerability no security system can remove. Imagine being qualified to work with hyper-tech but forbidden to really do so.”

She looks to Trace. “Those inventors of yours - what do you suppose happens to them? AEGIS denied them their experiments, then perhaps tasked them to evaluate others’ work for danger. And all of it would simply go into a vault somewhere, to be forgotten. I’m sure you understand how vexing it is to see your own life’s ambitions suborned to someone else’s.”

The son of Nautilus does not need to be told this. He just nods grimly, and casts an apologetic glance at Fuko.

Mirage taps her own head. “Byron Quill remembered some of this. He too worked with AEGIS. His warehouse plays host to the most dangerous of the devices we’re talking about. And I have thoroughly accounted for its contents. The warehouse protocols always included offline records to avoid the possibility of digital modification.”

She turns back to the others. “Tyran Enterprises loves its robotics and has not shown itself to be so cautious in their security. Between Motormouth and D-SOL-8, I’m certain the Seven Wonders could have tracelessly taken control of the assets necessary to achieve this goal.”

Harry thinks and thinks. “But that’s good for us. It narrows down what it could be. What they could have taken - what they most likely did take.”

He looks back at Mirage. “It’s asking a lot. But the one HHL member nobody talked about today is Vigil. Do you think between you and him, you could make a list of ways the Seven Wonders could bomb the city?”

Mirage nods. “Few know the Vigil’s true nature. I feel we can perform a suitably subtle investigation.”


Harry accompanies Mirage on her check-in of their two prisoners.

Mirage explains the security protocols out loud within earshot of both villains, both for Harry’s benefit and to ensure the prisoners understand their position. “We’re using Stingray’s quantum-acoustic tech for short-term incarceration. This is to forestall the well-understood ways of breaking out of existing force fields, and is balanced with the newness of this technology.”

“In the case of an escape, the pair would find themselves exposed to the power-suppression gas flooding the larger chamber. We prefer not to use the gas as a first-line measure because the body will build up an immunity over time. This is one of the reason power suppression remains an active and volatile field of research.”

“Tell 'em the part how we’re not being fed,” says Veneer in a loud, sarcastic voice.

Mirage continues without acknowledging the snark. “Food and waste elimination are provided via a long-wear spacesuit design.”

Harry takes a second peek into the force field chambers. There are indeed Park Tech space suits in each chamber.

Mirage continues in a flat tone. “The prisoners may tamper with those suits at the risk of losing their sole source of life support. The air filtration systems have been removed to keep them from bypassing the gas.”

“And we’re gonna live here forever, being villainous astronauts and competing to see who can be the snarkiest?” Glom asks.

Harry turns to Mirage. “She has a point. We’re not jailers. The only jailer in town is also the biggest bad guy in town. But we aren’t the only town with a supervillain problem. It’s a big planet, right? Have you started reaching out to other–”

“They don’t want them,” Mirage answers bluntly. “I’m not done exploring options. But the early signs are not encouraging.”

Harry feels his stomach knotting up. “Wait. Why?”

Mirage ticks off items, as behind her, Glom and Veneer both begin to smirk.

“First. ‘Not In My Back Yard’, or NIMBY. Nobody really wishes to play host to super-powered prisoners. The cost, the risk of release, and other factors make it a job with no reward. The only potential payoff is the emotional catharsis of locking up a villain who has harmed your city. Only Halcyon City itself values that payoff.”

Harry reaches verbally for some rescue. “But - the government–”

Mirage continues in an almost robotic voice. “Second. The government trusted AEGIS, which not only had Alycia Chin, but was apparently letting her operate as a free agent without much supervision. This wasn’t their only sin, of course, but Tyran saw to it that they lost credibility in Washington. Before you bring up the Stellar Six, please realize that to some people, ‘repurposing’ villains into heroes has a certain poetic quality and may be regarded as a good use of resources. Thus, the revelation of the Stellar Six ironically makes Tyran more appealing as super-jailers to these people in power.”

Harry can finish the third point himself. “If those of us with powers turn into judge, jury, and executioner, we lose the public’s faith in heroes, probably forever. The Seven Wonders got due process for their crimes and they were still sentenced to stasis. If we decide it’s just easier to dispose of them, we become the criminals.”

Mirage nods. “To be sure, the sentencing was influenced by coldly practical desires, such as that of AEGIS to study the physiology of powers rather than some morally upstanding position against the death penalty. In addition, it has been proven to motivate other villains to escalate. If the ultimate penalty awaits a villain, why not go big?”

Glom chuckles from her cell. “Sucks to be heroes, don’t it.”

Harry finally loses his patience and turns. “I ain’t in a bubble, am I! Sure, I gotta spend time chasing down jerks like you people who are fine with hurting folks. But that’s time well spent because I get something out of it! People feel good! When they feel good, I feel good!”

“But you aren’t free. Are you.”

Veneer says this, and something about her intonation, something about the way she emphasizes the word, tells Harry she means something special by it.

When Harry doesn’t reply immediately, she says more. “You might say being a hero’s your choice. Is it? Both parents, heroes. Raised around heroes. What’s young Harry gonna do? Rebel against all that?”

She smiles out at him. “You’re in a bubble you don’t acknowledge.”

The conversation is interrupted by a call from Ninjess. “Mirage. Mercury. Incoming transmission of interest.”


The video feed looks like someone’s camera phone. There’s a device, with D-SOL-8 standing next to it, and a man. The man is speaking.

“My name is Herminio Silva. I work as a high-energy researcher for Tyran Enterprises.”

He glances at D-SOL-8, who makes the slightest of gestures at the device.

“I am here to confirm that the-- the Seven Wonders – they have possession of several devices. These are…”

A series of technical descriptions follow. The rest of the team turn to Stingray and Mirage to translate. Stingray just mouths, “big boom” and mimes an explosion with his hands. Mirage just nods in affirmation.

Herminio Silva is still talking. “I can confirm that these devices were previously in Tyran custody. They are armed and ready for use.”

The video shifts, as the Hand aims the camera phone back to her own face. “I’m really unhappy that we have to resort to such measures, folks. All we need is for the HHL’s successors - Mercury and his friends - to submit. The HHL set them a great example. Maybe you can ask them why they aren’t following that example.”

The video comes to an end.

Andi rolls her eyes. “‘Stop making me hit you.’ That’s bullshit abusers say.”

Mirage is next up. “Our search for candidate devices was longer than I’d like, but the technology they described was near the top of that list.”

Harry nods, then turns to the group at large. “Alright. Then that’s where we’re at. It’s us and the Irregulators. Stop the remaining Seven Wonders. Save the city from annihilation. And retain enough moral authority in our handling of those villains to win the city’s faith away from Tyran.”

“Now’s the time when we learn if we’re real heroes or not.”

Harry looks from face to face, seeing worry there, but also commitment. “And I sure hope we are. Because right now there’s nobody else.”

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Mercury is scouring Halcyon City.

Every street, every alley. Every steam tunnel, every sewer drain. Every laboratory. Every warehouse. Any place big enough to hold a bomb.

To his eyes, the city is a frozen tableau. People are caught in the act of walking or running. Sometimes they seem to be levitating, as both feet are off the ground. Cars are parked in jagged, irregular patterns across the street. The exhaust from their tailpipes forms a smoky sculpture.

Overhead, jets, helicopters, and aerostats hang motionless in the sky.

It’s eerie, and Harry hates the whole feeling. He hates the fear it sparks in him, the old familiar fear of being stuck this way forever.

He’d hate losing the city more.

Wherever he goes, he leaves behind a special device. As it’s planted on a surface, it starts monitoring, and blinking, and broadcasting. There’s a note printed on the back, and a phone number, just in case anyone reports the devices as dangerous.


Back at Q-Base, Mirage and Stingray are conferring. The bomb technology described by Herminio Silva is mostly unknown to either of them, and they’re frantically searching for more details. What kind of radiation might such devices emit? What would be a way to track it?

That research is being fed into a computer program that runs on Q-Base’s mainframe. The data from the devices Harry is planting is being collected and fed into that program. If the bombs are detectable, they will be detected.

The phone number is being called by citizens around the city. It’s met with an interactive voice - an AI answering machine. The AI can answer questions. Mostly it’s there to reassure civilians that something’s being done.

Whether something is meaningfully being done is debatable, Stingray tells himself.


A10 is overflying the city.

She remembers the fight against Glom, and how the woman’s taunting actually helped her.

“You’re just a brick! I’ve handled your kind before.”

“What good is your strength if you can’t stop me?”

“You’re wasting your time, sweetie. Li’l ol’ me is keeping big ol’ you away from the fight where you’re really needed.”

Every mocking remark bound the two together. She was able to feel Glom’s presence through the psychic link the villain had unwittingly given her.

Now she’s feeling for that bond with Khyrrsz, the bond that must be there. She’d fought them repeatedly in the past, matching strength against strength.

Does it matter if I did it before accepting the power?

Would I have to go fight them again? Dammit!

There’s still so much she doesn’t understand about herself and what she can do.

But right now, she’s trying. She’s trying her hardest. If she can find Khyrrsz, she can find the Hand. She can find D-SOL-8. Maybe she can find the bombs.


Harry finally comes to a stop - after subjective hours and hours, he’s mentally exhausted.

The signal that caught his attention is still blinking. He tunes in.

Mirage is broadcasting something to the team.

“This came in a minute ago. It’s going over all channels to the city, like before.”

The video feed shifts to the Hand, who’s still using an iPhone to broadcast from some unknown location.

“Bad news, gang. Due to recent actions from people who really should know better, we’ve accelerated our timetable. Bombs are going off in 20 minutes, not 24 hours.”

The phone pans over to one of the devices, where D-SOL-8 is making adjustments. A digital readout flips over from 24:02:37 to 00:20:00, and resumes counting down.

Harry can feel all hope draining out of his body.

“Mirage… any pings on the devices yet?” he dares to ask.

The voice, as artificial as it already is, comes back empty of all humanity. “Negative. We will continue to monitor.”

“Monitor?” Harry feels his patience slipping. “We need to do better than monitor!”

Mirage’s voice is still flat, but he can start to hear something behind it. “If you have suggestions we have not already considered, you are overdue in submitting them.”

Harry cuts off a few choice profanities. “Andi, whatcha got?”

Andi’s voice isn’t super enthusiastic, but… “I got maybe somethin’. Kind of a glimmer. Whatcha think. Chase it down, or keep lookin’? We only got 20 minutes.”

Of course I gotta make even these decisions, Harry tells himself furiously.

“Chase it down,” he says finally. “We need a Hail Mary. Hey, any word from Ninjess? What’s she up to anyway?”

“Chasing a hunch,” Mirage says. “I have no updates past that.”

A hunch?

A hunch?!


00:18:02

Rex Tyran stands at the top of his tower, and looks out at his kingdom.

An aide - it doesn’t matter who, not to him - stands next to him, clutching a briefcase and holding a tablet.

“Report,” he orders her.

“No leads on the bombs, or the Seven Wonders. Mercury and his people are searching–”

Tyran shakes his head quickly. “Ignore them, they’re useless. What about our AEGIS data on the bombs? And Silva?”

The aide flinches ahead of time, anticipating a harsh response. “Silva must have been part of Department 42, he’s not in our records. But um, we can’t find anything in the AEGIS personnel databases. They were very hush-hush and traditional, of course. Paper records, things like that. We’re still decrypting so much of the–”

Tyran turns to the aide, eyes flashing, and she wilts into silence. “Are you going to finish the decryption in twenty minutes or less?” he demands.

The woman almost squeaks. “No sir.”

The magnate turns around, and nods to himself. He seems more at peace. “Ready my personal helicopter. You will accompany me. The Seven Wonders will have already evacuated the city, of course. We must concentrate our resources on finding them and taking our vengeance.”

The aide’s ongoing fear seems to melt away. “Yessir.”

She retreats to make the necessary calls, leaving Rex Tyran to consider the fate of his New Tomorrow.


00:17:53

The Tyran helicopter lifts off from its pad, running lights bright.

The pilot has been well chosen. The craft has been checked and re-checked. Its fuel tank has been topped off. The priority flight plan has already been filed - make way, the king will be passing through.

Clinging to the bottom of the helicopter, camouflaged and unseen by anyone, is the Atlantean ninja called Ninjess.


A10 descends toward a tree-lined avenue, following her hunch.

00:12:23

She flies over the warning signs and barricades warning that the road is under construction.

She flies into a traffic tunnel, which passes beneath a cluster of high-rise buildings.

And inside, she sees a trio of figures –

“Q-Base from A10!” she shouts into her throat mic. “Seven Wonders spotted!”

The Hand is the first to turn. She sees A10 coming in at top speed, and gestures at her impatiently. “D-SOL-8! Contain her!”

The soulless cyborg raises a force barrier between the trio and A10. Andi throws herself against it, to no avail.

While she tries to think of options, Khyrrsz scoops up the Hand and flies rapidly down the tunnel, leaving behind a flurry of snow and ice in the air.

“You gonna die when your bombs go off, huh?” she shouts.

“I can teleport,” D-SOL-8 replies dispassionately.

Oh yeah, he can. Fuck.

“Gonna murder millions of people, then? Just like that?”

The cyborg is still unmoved. “I’m from the future. These people are already dead to me.”

Jesus, dude, no wonder you’re working with the worst villains on the planet.

“Well I’m in the present, and these people matter to me!” she bellows.

She throws herself against the force field, to no effect. D-SOL-8 simply watches.

I don’t have time for this, she tells herself.

She remembers Glom’s taunting.

She’s not slow-witted. She just… finds it easier to be a brick.

How deep does that force field go?

Andi dives into the concrete of the avenue, forcing herself to literally burrow underneath the wall.


00:08:19

The helicopter is touching down on the pad when Tyran walks out the door. His aide is right behind him.

At the top of the tower, something is happening.

The anti-air weapon pods mounted inside the tower are deploying and turning to engage with something.

Tyran immediately tenses up, looking around and growling.

The animal noise startles the aide, and she drops the briefcase. Tyran whirls on her, eyes wide and feral, mouth open and teeth bared. She screams, and scrambles away.

Tyran snarls in frustration, and keeps looking around for the source of the threat.

The weapons are slowly traversing. They’ve found something but they can’t lock onto it.

Finally he turns back to the helicopter, and sprints toward it. The pilot has already opened the door.

Tyran hops in, takes hold of the headset the pilot offers, and fits it over his ears. The helicopter is already ascending.

Outside the canopy, he can already see the first hints of snowflakes.


00:07:54

A blizzard has sprung up from nowhere. It’s the biggest storm Halcyon City has seen in awhile, and its origin point is the top of Tyran’s tower.

Standing on the tip-top of the tower are two figures.

The Hand, arms folded, is watching the retreat of Rex Tyran’s personal helicopter.

Beside her, Khyrrsz is extending their Blizzard Blade into the sky. Their power channels through the weapon, and cold air rushes outward across the whole city.

In the sky, the helicopter is buffeted by high winds. Frost etches itself over the glass of the windshield. Ice permeates the engine, and the careful thermodynamic balance of the engine is thrown out of whack as the temperature drops and drops.

“We have to land somewhere, sir, or we’ll fall out of the sky!” the pilot yells into his headset.

“Keep flying!” Tyran yells at him. “If you land, I’ll tear your head off!”

Something about the command convinces the pilot that the threat is literal and serious.


A10 comes up out of the ground to find D-SOL-8 gone.

“Shit!” she shouts. He really did just teleport out. So this was all for nothing.

Well, not all. She knows what Khyrrsz feels like. And she can follow it now.

Why is it getting so cold?

She flies out of the tunnel, and feels for the link.

Where - where - oh! There’s a blizzard. No wonder it’s cold.

“Gimme a minute!” she yells into her mic.

She flies up, toward the center of the city, and into the heart of the growing storm.


00:04:26

Tyran’s anti-air weapons open fire. A10 flies through the stream of bullets and beams, protecting herself with both arms and pressing forward despite the pain.

She targets the weapons by following the terrific impact they have on her, and crashing through every weapon she finds. Slowly, surely, the hail of pain cuts itself down.

Finally the weapons disengage - or freeze over. She’s feeling pretty cold herself.

Where is Khyrrsz? She felt them here, and somehow their presence is still here.

There - up on the top of the tower - she sees a familiar figure. The Hand!

She lands on the helipad and calls it in. “Hand located! Teletube to my position!”

In a few moments, flashes of light appear. Mercury and Stingray appear. But where’s Ninjess?

Along with Stingray is a device Andi doesn’t remember seeing before. Oh - wait - no. She knows what this one does.

The Big Game is still on.

Mirage’s voice comes over the radio. “The storm is blocking the Teletube’s targeting laser. We may not be able to use it again until the storm clears.”

The Hand holds her cape ahead of her. In a flash of smoke, she’s gone. In another flash, she reappears on the helipad, facing down the heroes. In place of her usual costume, she’s wearing something thicker - cold-weather gear.

Mercury starts the conversation, in spite of shivering. “Maybe you can leave before your bombs go off. Do you want to blow up your comrades too?”

The Hand smiles. “What are you talking about?”

Stingray looks briefly at Mercury, then back at the Hand, thinking he knows what she means. “You think we’re holding them up in space? What makes you think all three aren’t within city limits?”

It’s a bold bluff, made easier by the fact he’s got a helmet on. Mercury, whose face is visible, forces a neutral expression.

The Hand just laughs, and shakes her head. It’s like watching a mother amused by the antics of her children.

“No, no, my dears. What I mean is…”

The stage magician leans forward, watching the trio.

“What makes you think there are any bombs at all?”

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Aboard the helicopter, Rex Tyran can see an enormous face appear out of the blizzard.

The god Khyrrsz grabs hold of the helicopter as the engine finally fails.

The pilot can’t do anything but cower.

Rex Tyran does not cower. He stares through the frosted glass at the giant. He cannot stop what is happening, but he will not submit to fear.

The enemy may be a god, but there can only be one king.


The Hand gestures around her at the city, now engulfed in a supernatural blizzard.

“What makes you think we’d destroy all this?” she asks in an upbeat, cheerful voice. “Oh no, we put too much effort into this city to just pull the plug.”

Only Mirage isn’t thunderstruck by the implication.

“And we were willing to take the bait,” she replies thoughtfully. “We attributed the ability to you, we witnessed your policy of escalation, and failed to sufficiently consider the most important thing. Motive.”

The Hand takes an elaborate bow. “Our threats against the city’s heroes. Our acquisition of technology. Our defeat of the HHL. What comes next, do you think?”

Harry knows some magic. He’s finally able to recognize what happened. “The Pledge. You establish yourselves. The Turn. You convince us you can really do what you said. We bought it. Tyran was aboard that chopper, wasn’t he. The bombs, the 20 minute thing, all to spook him into flying. Now he’s heading into a blizzard you made, which’ll probably kill him–”

He looks up at the Hand in sudden realization. “You wanted to fool him. This wasn’t about us. We didn’t do anything to set that 24 hour deadline to 20 minutes. But Tyran didn’t ask any of us. He’d have no way of knowing that. You put on a show for him. But just killing him? You could have set a bomb on that chopper. No, it’s not that simple. You want him alive.”

A memory comes back to him. Gnosis - the Seventh Wonder - the dominant that holds the villain team together. His uncle Chase explaining it. He’s got some kinda telepathy… If we told you, and you interacted with him, he’d learn that we knew…

He tries to put this together aloud. “The Prestige. You want to take Rex Tyran to Gnosis, so he can read Tyran’s mind. Learn every secret, all the stuff he’s done or is doing in the city. You’ll have everything.”

He turns to Andi and Stingray with renewed urgency. “We gotta stop that chopper!”

Andi speaks up, excitedly. “I can handle the blizzard. And I can follow Khyrrsz.”

Stingray and Mercury turn back to the Hand, until Mirage speaks up on their communicators. “I’m the QB on this play. Leave her to me.”

The two men look at each other, and nod. Without warning, the pair leap off the building - Harry to run down the side, Stingray to use his Frog Tongue grappling system and leaping.

The Hand blinks at the heroes’ departure. “Well, that was easy…”

Suddenly, a force field snaps into place around the helipad. The center of it seems to be the device.

“It will not be as easy as you think,” comes a voice, from every direction.


A10 streaks through the cold and the darkness.

She can feel her hunch growing stronger. The god of blizzards and battles is far off, but they’re getting slowly closer.

Not far behind, Stingray propels himself from rooftop to rooftop, his suit in “frog” configuration and making mighty leaps.

On the street, Mercury races across a thick blanket of ice and snow, boots still spiked to handle the slippery surface.

They don’t have Mirage to coordinate matters - she’s busy, facing off against the Hand. Ninjess hasn’t checked in. Dr. Zap is in Q-Base, but he doesn’t have the organizational chops that Mirage does.

Now I really wish we had ASIST or the Ponies, Harry tells himself.

Stingray’s helmet system, and Mercury’s goggles, keep the snow and ice out of their eyes. More importantly, they show an automatic beacon: A10’s location, as she flies toward her quarry. All they can do is keep up.


A nearly transparent gas suddenly pours out of the strange device. It fills the zone within the force field in seconds, and keeps pumping.

The Hand peers at the machine, and bursts out laughing. “Let me guess. A smoke machine? Is someone trying to upstage me at stage magic now?”

“The gas is a power suppression formula,” comes the voice of Mirage from everywhere.

The Hand smirks. “It won’t work on me.”

With a puff of smoke, she disappears.

The force field remains on. Outside, the wind and snow bluster and blow. Inside, the gas continues to spread.

Time passes.

“The density of the gas pressure hasn’t varied from before your disappearance to after it,” the voice announces. “Ergo an entity with the volume of the Hand is still within the zone.”

Another puff of smoke heralds the return of the Hand to visibility. “Clever. But as you can see, I haven’t lost my powers. Your gas can’t affect me.”

She looks up and around. “What’s your next trick?”

“The gas doesn’t suppress powers. It is instead a truth drug of sorts. It heightens susceptibility. In time I will know that it has affected you. Then I will question you about the nature of your powers. Then you will tell me the truth, and I will devise a neutralization strategy.”

The Hand scoffs. “Honey, you aren’t in my league. This trickery doesn’t fool me.”

She approaches the device, clenching her fists, when she hears a noise behind her.

Mirage stands on the helipad, holding a pistol steadily in one hand. “We’ve captured three of your colleagues. It’s my responsibility to capture you next.”

“Can you shoot what you can’t see?” the Hand asks mockingly. Another puff of smoke, and she vanishes again.

Mirage, likewise, vanishes without a trace.

Time passes.

Again, the omnipresent voice speaks. “The gas is a soporific. Slowly but surely you will lose consciousness. Since I know you are somewhere on the helipad and cannot escape the force field, I will simply sever the helipad from the building via explosives. You will fall to your death.”

There is no reply. Of course. Mirage’s voice booms across the zone.

“Perhaps you think of me as one of the heroes you’ve interacted with thus far. I have no compunction against killing you - any of you - if it achieves my strategic goals. In fact, I’m something of a supervillain myself. I will tell my comrades whatever story suits me and matches the facts, and they will accept it.”

Silence reigns.

Finally there’s a flash. The Hand emerges from it. She runs toward the device, still belching out gas, and launches a kick at it.

There’s a puff of smoke, and the device itself vanishes. The Hand passes through the newly empty space and stumbles before regaining her footing.

Behind her, Mirage appears again, pistol still in hand. She aims, and the Hand ducks.

The sound of a bullet whistling past causes the magician to flinch the slightest bit. But she’s ready too. Metal plates painted like playing cards, each edge refined to a wicked sharpness, fly out of her hands. Mirage leans sideways, just far enough to avoid being hit.

“Lies and trickery!” the Hand shouts in accusation.

“That is your power, is it not?” asks Mirage calmly. The pistol is still aimed at her quarry. “I submit that the basis of your power is itself trickery. The nature of your power is such that people are unable to discern how it works.”

A slow smirk crawls across the Hand’s face. “Clever. A shame I can see through your tricks.”

Mirage raises an eyebrow. “Very well. Explain them.”

The Hand points back where the device was. “Your teleporter is still operating. You’re using invisibility and teleportation against me. Your gas as well - lies, just lies. You tried to use the power suppression drug on me and found that it didn’t work.”

Mirage tilts her head. “Yet here you are, inside the force field. You haven’t teleported out. Yet you’ve achieved similar-seeming effects in the past.”

The pistol doesn’t waver. “I’ve found that I can think much more clearly about your situation when I stop asking myself about your supernatural abilities… Because that’s not your weakness. It’s not how to stop you.”

Suddenly, the whole world behind Mirage begins to twist and waver. It bends, takes on new colors, and warps. Things seem to move only when they’re seen straight on, then return to solidity once they’re in the periphery of vision.

The Hand tries to take a step, and finds herself falling to one knee.

Mirage approaches, coldly aiming the pistol at the head of the villain.

“I know the true nature of your vulnerability.”

The Hand reaches into her suit for another trick. That’s when she feels a slight sting hit the back of her neck.

The last thing she hears is Mirage’s voice.

“You are… after all… only human.”


Mercury is relieved to hear Mirage’s voice over comms again. “The Hand has been temporarily neutralized. I will need to devote myself to her long-term confinement in the next 2 minutes. Until that time I am available for operational support.”

Stingray cuts in. Although Mercury can think fast, Trace can think methodically, and he’s more on Mirage’s wavelength. “We’re following A10. Project a line from us through her and figure out if there’s any helicopters in the air along that line. Or anywhere a chopper could set down. Prioritize sites where people could be taken off the street, like subway entrances.”

“On it.”


Aboard Q-Base, Dr. Zap is observing.

“My dear, I must know,” the scientist finally says. “How did you effect this victory? I’m very interested in your phrasing. ‘You are only human’. What was the significance of this?”

Mirage does not turn to look, instead looking at the instruments before her. But then, what is she ever really looking at?

“It was fruitless to examine her powers, which defy all analysis. I chose to ignore her powers and evaluate her as an individual. Either she is a supernatural being - a god, ghost, or the like - or she is not. Humans with powers are still human.”

“We built a device. It would project Stingray’s force field. It would project visual holograms. Stingray’s work is in quantum acoustics. Modulating the force field allowed me to project localized soundwaves. Everything inside the force field was some kind of illusion.”

“Including the gas,” Dr. Zap deduces aloud.

“Correct. I distracted her into thinking about our methods, the way evaluating her methods distracted us. Once I could get her to commit to a physical position, it was a simple matter to use audio-visual cues to induce vertigo - a common human vulnerability. While she was distracted, the device used its sole weapon - a drugged dart.”

The squid wriggles in his water-filled pod. “Fascinating. And it raises an inquiry. You yourself are a fusion of four human minds. One presumes the fusion is as human as its constituents, given your essentially human-like perspective. Do you, too, suffer from common human vulnerabilities despite your digital state?”

Mirage pushes away fears about what will happen to her teammates in the upcoming struggle against Khyrrsz and D-SOL-8. She doesn’t want to think about what would happen if Gnosis could use his telepathy on Rex Tyran, and learn everything about his domineering megacorporation. Despite her iron will and confidence born of competence, she worries.

“Unfortunately, Doctor, I do.”

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Ninjess had to exert all her self-control as she clung to the bottom of the Tyran helicopter. She had to stay attached, even after the vehicle took off. She had to endure the biting cold as the blizzard overtook the city, then the chopper, then her. She had to use her natural camouflage to stay unseen.

Shinobi. It means to endure, she tells herself, over and over.

Khyrrsz grabs hold of the helicopter. She holds on.

The engine fails. The craft falls, auto-rotating on its way down. Khyrrsz tears off the side door of the chopper. He yanks Tyran out of his seat, breaking the safety straps without even noticing.

Ninjess leaps from the chopper once the god is safely away. The assault of numbing white and obscuring darkness from the storm makes it hard for her to follow. But she extends the micro-glide wings from her suit, and does her best.

She lands in a crouch. The chopper could have come down anywhere within a mile and a half. The pilot should have survived - she has not neglected her duty there. Khyrrsz and Tyran have certainly entered the massive sewer entrance before her. She can see the footprints, slowly being erased by the accumulating snow.

She can barely feel her extremities through the cold, despite the natural insulation in both her body and her costume.

It hurts even to walk.

She creeps into the sewer system, unseen.


Andi calls in.

“Guys.. I lost it,” she says, sounding angry at herself. “The storm… it’s all Khyrrsz too. We’re in the heart of it, so I can’t feel any directionality any more.”

Snow is beginning to stick to the streets. It’s buffeting Harry where he stands, and he has to take cover in an alleyway.

“It’s okay,” he says finally. “Mirage?”

“28 seconds until I must attend to the Hand,” she reports. “Four potential sites located. Relaying.”

“I’ll take the north two,” Trace volunteers, from high on the rooftops of the city. He begins frog-leaping and swinging away.

“Going south,” Harry announces. “Andi, circle those sites, keep your eyes peeled for any sign, okay?”

“Okay, chief,” she mutters.

After a few minutes of intense searching, the trio can find no sign of any helicopter, crashed or otherwise. The designated entrances lead to the primary junctions of the city’s sewer systems, or are the entrances and exits to train tunnels. Nobody’s sure if they want to venture too deeply into those labyrinths without a stronger sense of where to go.


The three of them have gathered near to the biggest of the four routes. It’s a big access pipe from a water reservoir tower that pipes into the sewers. There used to be a grating covering it for safety, but some joyriders on rocket cycles tore through it a few months ago and the city hasn’t gotten around to fixing it.

Harry and Trace get signals almost simultaneously - Harry from the team communicator, Trace on his phone.

Harry broadcasts what he’s hearing, for the team’s benefit. It’s Dr. Zap.

“I’m receiving a signal from our esteemed ninja ally. She is broadcasting a location, but nothing else. I am not sure what I should do with this.”

Harry frowns. Mirage would have just been able to handle this. But Zap is still learning about things like spherical planets and the existence of the Sun. It’s going to be awhile before he’s a veteran operator with the computer system.

“Um, uh, ask the house’s computer to translate that location into navigation instructions from our present position,” Harry suggests. “Say exactly that.”

In the background, he can hear Zap doing just that - or trying. “Er, Mrs. Computer - or is it Miss Computer? Your voice sounds feminine, I assume based on the programming provided to you by the house’s prior occupant…”

While that’s going on, Trace nudges Harry and holds up his phone.

It’s the old Chosen group chat. Kinetica is asking for the team’s location and disposition. “We’re coming to help,” it says. “Had to pick up a gift. Where u at”

Harry gives a thumb’s up - it’s okay to share - and Trace grins. “Alright.”

While Trace is texting back, Harry hears more from Dr. Zap. “Very well! I think we have a current to swim - pardon me, a navigational path to follow. Ah! Miss Computer, please send this route to my friends.”

The route leads down, deep underground. Harry’s privately grateful that he’s using modern quantum comms. Old-fashioned radio would never have penetrated the depths they’ll have to follow.

“She’s alive, anyway. That’s good,” he tells the others. “If she’s broadcasting, she must have found something. Let’s check it out.”

It’s at that moment that Khyrrsz, the god of blizzards and battles, comes lumbering out of the sewer access tunnel. Their Blizzard Blade is slung over one shoulder, and they’re grinning wickedly.


Over a dozen armed goons came to take Tyran off Khyrrsz’ hands. The god relinquished their prisoner willingly, then turned around.

They walked past Ninjess’ position, as she lurked invisibly in a side tunnel. If they took notice of her presence, they didn’t reveal it.

She followed the goons through tunnels and side passages. When they activated a certain device and caused a hidden door to open, she risked following closely behind them, and threw a ninja tag through the rapidly closing gap of the door to signal the others.

Now, she soundlessly descends a long and slimy maintenance staircase made of black steel, following the goons. Ahead of them is what looks like an enormous sphere of a similar material, with a sort of airlock or submarine hatch on one side.

One of the goons turns the wheel to unseal and open the hatch, grunting with the effort of it.

From inside, there’s a cheerful voice. “Mr. Tyran. Come in, come in. We’re long overdue for a face-to-face session.”


The plan to handle Khyrrsz involved the lightning rods that have already been deployed at the park, a few devices up at Q-Base, and a few specific folks. Q-Base can’t teleport anything through the blizzard, and the folks aren’t here.

Harry has to admit he did not see the Sloth-TK combination working out, which was not in the team’s original plans. But he’s worried about falling back on specific people too heavily. The HHL did that - recruiting anyone, even villains, to deal with the Seven Wonder.

He doesn’t want to disparage Sloth. She seems nice enough. But he wants to see her as a person, or a comrade, rather than a tactic.

All this is great and stuff, he reminds himself. But you got an angry blizzard god here and now to deal with.

Rex Tyran is still down there with Gnosis.

None of the three people he has here can realistically solo the god. Maybe Stingray and Andi could distract them, letting Harry through-- but he doesn’t like that either.

Ninjess might be down there. But Harry isn’t confident she can solo Gnosis.

For their part, Khyrrsz seems content to watch the trio as they mill about, trying to form a coherent battle plan. The god’s mouth is split open into a big, toothy, eager grin.

“Incoming!” yells a voice. It’s not over comms - it’s close. Harry recognizes it as Kinetica.

She and Scraaseetotabobah appear through the blizzard, carrying a third figure. Harry thinks, maybe–

The former hero Kid Kelvin drops out of their grip and lands roughly in front of Harry, Andi, and Trace.

Harry immediately offers a handshake. “Good to see ya, man.”

The former Chosen hero smiles strangely. “Sorry for leavin’ town. Had to take care of my dad. Anyway, he passed. Peaceful. His time, all that, you know. So here I am.”

Harry’s smile fades, and his feelings grow more serious. “I’m sorry to hear that, man.”

The other man nods in brief appreciation, and turns to look at Khyrrsz. “Hear you got a problem. I’m here to solve it.”

Andi steps up. “Not alone,” she says, clenching her fingers into fists and popping bones in the process.

The former Kid Kelvin would have said something snarky and sarcastic. Now he just grins big, and nods. “Then. Pleased ta meetcha again. Still A10?”

“Still A10.”

The young man turns back to Khyrrsz. “Hey. You’re gonna dance with us. You, A10 here, and me…”

He stretches out his hands, and the blizzard in the air around them begins to subside. “The Winter Prince.”

“We’re with ya,” Kinetica tells Harry urgently.

Right. Tyran. Gnosis.

Harry points at the sewer. As A10 flies toward Khyrrsz, and the newly dubbed Winter Prince flexes his cold-controlling powers against the storm, four heroes head inside to confront the king of Tyran Enterprises and the chief of the Seven Wonders of the Villain World.

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FORESIGHT is the name of the paraquantum computer developed by Tyran Tech. Data flows into it from every part of the city. It processes this data and devises solutions for every problem it can find.

Usually that problem is something minor, something like “an unlicensed superhuman is operating in the city”. The solution is something like “dispatch TOXIN robot units to neutralize and contain the superhuman”. Things like heroism or villainy don’t enter into its calculations except as factors to account for.

AEGIS Department 42 analyzed the nanotechnology of D-SOL-8. This data was imported into FORESIGHT and used against Harry Gale, when his knowledge of the Stellar Six’s secret became a liability. This sort of thing was a mid-level issue for the computer at best.

The current matter is a much more serious problem.

Right now, Tyran Enterprises is itself under a form of social attack. The company’s Stellar Six initiative has lost credibility. The CEO, Rex Tyran, disappeared in a blizzard. A group identified as the Seven Wonders is at the heart of these failures. It has therefore become necessary to expediently dispose of the Seven Wonders, and in a way that empowers Tyran Enterprises.

FORESIGHT digests what it knows, and searches its data space for solutions. As a byproduct, it produces enough waste heat to thaw the blizzard outside, if that heat were allowed to vent out of its containment facility. Of course, doing that would incinerate the human attendants who maintain FORESIGHT. Doing that would be detrimental to its mission at this time.

Finally, it arrives at an answer.

FORESIGHT was introduced in “302 - A New Tomorrow” – Ed.


Mercury sprints through the sewers. He’s checking for traps, bombs, hidden guns, tripwires, and anything else the opposition may have left behind.

Scraaseetotabobah and Kinetica fly behind him. Stingray takes up the rear.

Harry’s quick sweep finds the ninja tag Ninjess threw down. As the others arrive, he wordlessly indicates it. Kinetica, quick on the uptake and with more experience with Ninjess’ methods, simply breaks through the hidden door.

Beyond is the black staircase, and a docking slot where something enormous must have rested.

Several armed goons are in the way. But aren’t there always?


The goons have closed the hatch behind Rex Tyran. But they didn’t close it fast enough to keep Ninjess from invisibly slipping through.

The interior of the sphere is minimalist. There’s very little here other than assorted devices built into the walls, a few computers, and so on.

Gnosis sits at a steel desk, which is bolted to the floor. He smiles, and glances at Ninjess’ position, despite her camouflage. Tyran also turns to look.

“You’re welcome to sit in, my dear,” Gnosis offers casually.

Ninjess returns to visibility.

Tyran snorts. “Another of the children,” he mutters. But he turns back to Gnosis - the person he really cares about here - and smirks. “I too think our meeting is overdue. Unfortunately I didn’t get an agenda with this meeting invite. Maybe you can lead off. Do you have a slide deck?”

“I’m a bit lower tech than all that,” Gnosis says with a smile. “My agenda is simple. One of us will rule this city. One vision will dominate. We are here to decide who that will be.”

He gestures briefly at Ninjess. “We even have a concerned citizen present, who can share her opinion of the city’s current affairs. Surely this shouldn’t take long to settle.”

Rex rolls his eyes. “Finally the meeting that couldn’t be an email.”

The sphere shifts and begins to shake. Rex stays steady on his feet. Ninjess briefly wobbles, but stays upright. Gnosis, of course, is seated. He raises a reassuring hand. “Don’t alarm yourselves. My base is mobile. We’re simply moving along an underground aqueduct, repurposed as an escape system.”

“Then you fear what you’re escaping from? How interesting,” Tyran says, leaning forward curiously.

“Are you hoping to analyze my psychology?” Gnosis retorts. “This is quite the reversal of expectations.”

Tyran tilts his head and flashes his bright white teeth in a wide grin. “You didn’t even say, ‘tell me about your mother’. It seems we can’t trust you to do anything right.”

He grows more serious. “The Stellar Six are discredited, not decommissioned. I have robots, paramilitary forces, and more to bring to bear. As embarrassing as it is to admit, the children have already disposed of half your forces. What you have left are a stage magician, a chilly barbarian, and a cyborg whose technology we already thoroughly understand. Do you propose that I really take this laughable idea of meeting as equals seriously?”

Gnosis is only slightly more serious. His patronizing smile is still plastered on his face. “I have you, sir. I have your thoughts. You’re worried the Stellar Six can’t track you. You’re worried that this capsule will block the tracking signal you wear - and rightly so, it will. You’re considering lunging at me. You’re–”

The telepath tilts his head. “You’re keeping something from me. Interesting. Ah. You realize how my powers work. That I can’t read anything you feel confident about. But - you’re worried I’ll see the secret. A thread I can pull.”

He lets out a long sigh, and leans back. “To answer your question. Aside from that which you keep from me, I have studied your security arrangements. You’ve been very public about some things, and very obvious about others. I have accounted for all of them. Even the possibility that you’ll assault me. And my power will soon see that you no longer worry about doing even that.”

But Tyran doesn’t seem to be growing calmer. In fact, he seems more and more agitated. “I’ve had time to study you as well. We know the limits of your power. You can neutralize the emotions of the person whose mind you read. All well and good. But there are limits, aren’t there. The mind and body aren’t so independent.”

The businessman rolls up his left sleeve. Gnosis and Ninjess glimpse the device at the same time. It’s clamped around his left forearm. Pincers, needles, and other devices are actively in operation. Glimpses of the skin around the device show it already bruised. Ninjess can even see blood. But the specifics don’t matter. It’s a device that uses pain to keep Rex Tyran on edge.

Tyran’s voice grows louder, harsher, and wilder. “The longer you’re in here with me, the more at risk you are, Dr. Wissen. And what good will it be to read my mind when what you read there is your death?”

Gnosis looks disinterested, almost bored. And as Ninjess looks back to him, sees his eyes’ dilation, sees his breathing, she realizes what’s happening. She and Gnosis slip on respirators almost at the same time, to compensate for the soporific gas that’s been filling the sphere.

The sphere is still jostling its inhabitants. It’s still moving - and it seems to be going faster, along some predefined course. Every so often there’s a jerk as it changes direction.

Ninjess steadies herself against a nearby wall. Gnosis is sitting down already. She recognizes that she’s already been impaired, and might lose her balance or become distracted. She bites down on her own tongue with a sharpened fang. The pinching sensation and the sudden warmth of blood in her mouth feels somehow soothing, which is bad - how long has that gas been pouring out?

Tyran alone seems unaffected. He takes a step closer to Gnosis. “I see there’s nothing of further value to be gained from you. You’ve satisfied my curiosity. Now, Doctor, you will serve another purpose.”


The Winter Prince, once known as Kid Kelvin, is doing his best to contain a blizzard that’s engulfed a city. To his credit, he can’t do much else. He’s up against the power of a god. Fortunately for him, he inherited the power of a king.

Andi, on the other hand, is taking this much more casually than usual.

As Khyrrsz races at the Prince to hit him with the Blizzard Blade, she body-checks them, hard. The god is knocked to the side, and lashes out, and Andi ducks under their swinging arm.

She comes up, not angry, not shouting, but almost grinning, and raises her fists in the face of the god.

“Hey,” she calls out. “You like fighting, doncha. Me too. So how about it? Wanna fight?”

She cycles her fists around each other, miming a boxer repeatedly pummeling a punching bag.

She doesn’t think Khyrrsz can speak or understand English. She kind of hopes they get the idea anyway, because she has no better plan. Her voice grows more serious, as she dodges the blade’s repeated swings and weathers the intense aura of cold that comes with it.

“So what am I to you, huh? An obstacle? A rival? An annoyance? How do ya see me?”

Khyrrsz charges at her, and the Blizzard Blade embeds itself into the concrete wall near the sewer entrance.

Rather than capitalize on the opening, Andi flies upward, looking around. She finds what she’s looking for - a sign on a pole - and flies down, yanking it out of the earth. She smashes the actual sign off the top end of the pole and kicks the concrete foundation off the base.

As Khyrrsz flies up and lands to confront her, she lands as well, and holds the metal pole in the same style as the god wields their sword.

“Huh? Huh? Hey, what about it?” she shouts at them. “How about this?”

A wide grin breaks out on the god’s face and they swing their blade down from overhead. Andi is quite sure this piece of steel is not gonna take the impact head on, and so hits the blade from the side as it comes down, knocking it off the center line. Every bit of heat leeches out of the steel, and Andi feels her hands tingle with the sudden sensation of cold.

She pulls the pole back with both hands, and tries a basic thrusting move, the way she’s seen her Irregulators teammate Armiger use his sword. Khyrrsz pulls the Blizzard Blade back, catching and parrying her thrust with the flat of their blade.

They could have just knocked that aside, or ignored it, Andi tells herself. I’m getting through to them.

She watched Armiger plenty, during his constant practice. She tries some of his moves. After a couple of those, the god deftly severs her pole-sword halfway along its length.

But it’s the grin on their face that tells Andi she’s got them. It’s not the curled lip of a sneering villain who has the hero at their mercy - Andi’s seen that plenty. It’s not the smirk of triumph, when someone gets what they want regardless of the human cost to get it.

Khyrrsz is having fun.


The goons are down.

Harry’s not even bothering with tying them up. He could have just done it - gone back and gotten some rope, whirled around them at ultra-speed, tied a knot he’s tied a thousand times.

Fuck it. Just, just fuck it. He’s only got so much mental energy left to care about anything, and it is 100% spoken for.

It’s clear that they’re in some kind of villain escape system. You’d build a secret base, and then you’d build a way to get yourself out when it all went to shit. This place is pretty ancient - it must have been built back in the 1980’s, Harry guesses.

There was an escape pod - the thing that must have once sat in the docking slot. It must have floated down the aqueduct on a steady stream of water, redirected from the sewer system above.

Now there’s a security door that closed behind the pod - oh wait, there’s not, Kinetica and Stingray teamed up to break through it. Good, Harry tells himself. This is how it should be.

Stingray has already cut his teammates into the team comms. Harry hears the alien Scraaseetotabobah ask questions, as he charges into the newly opened aqueduct.

“What is our objective, friends Stingray and Mercury?”

Harry’s already sprinting, splashing his way through the aqueduct. “Tyran and Gnosis are down there, along with Ninjess. This is the last play of the Big Game.”

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STELCOM - the Stellar Six Control Room - is staffed 24/7. Even now.

The chief duty officer receives a call. It’s Prescott Burke’s phone number and Prescott Burke’s voice. The caller has Burke’s authentication codes.

“New orders. Dispatch Doug Pitt to a location outside the city. Use his geokinesis to excavate Motormouth.”

Coordinates and a dig depth follow rapidly.

The duty officer doesn’t know what’s going on, but it’s not his job to question. He gives the orders, and the Stellar Six pilot assigned to Doug Pitt climbs into her tank.


The spaceport is south of the city, out on the coast.

Like STELCOM, the spaceport has a controller in charge. He too receives a call from an authorized Tyran Enterprises contact. He too is given an assignment. Payload XB-73 is to be launched into space, along this vector, effective immediately.

It’s a highly unusual request. But the sudden blizzard that engulfed the city is unusual. Thank God it didn’t come anywhere near the spaceport, or there’d be no launch. And Tyran’s always been able to handle the FAA before, and the checks always clear.

The spaceport controller gives the order. Launch.


Mirage wants to Teletube the Hand back to Q-Base. She’s restrained. She’s trapped in the bubble - which will run out of power, sooner or later. And until the blizzard clears, she has to stay here. It follows that Mirage must dedicate her full attention to the situation.

It’s become necessary once already. The Hand pulled a trick - and Mirage barely spotted the tell. Another battle of wits had ensued, and the stage magician had once again been outmaneuvered. But how many more times would Mirage’s attentiveness prevail against a superpower that literally was trickery?

The two are still on the helipad of Tyran’s tower. The blizzard still swarms around them. The anti-air weapons, destroyed by A10, still spark and jerk about from time to time.

Suddenly, the doors leading out from the tower to the helipad swing open. Armed soldiers emerge. Several of them carry conventional assault rifles, while a few are armed with more interesting high-tech devices.

They aim these at the device that’s emitting the hologram, that’s projecting the shield, that’s allowing Mirage to surveil the situation. They fire–

Mirage’s presence is jerked away from the scene, and she finds herself back at Q-Base. Now free to resume her operational duties, she speed-reads the transcripts of recent conversations, and gets on the comm system herself.

“Mirage to all Q-Base team members. Tyran forces used EMP weapons to disable the device at the tower. We should assume the Hand is in their custody.”

She double-checks a new indicator. “Launch from Halcyon Space-port. A rocket is en route to Q-Base. Purpose and payload unknown.”


Andi is grinning. Khyrrsz is grinning.

The Winter Prince, on the other hand, is flat out not having a good time. He’s exerting his cryokinetic power to neutralize a city-wide blizzard, and it’s taxing him. But Andi’s honestly impressed that he’s even able to do it - and that he’d be willing to try. The old Kid Kelvin was nothing like this.

He said he lost his dad. I lost Uncle Chan. Maybe that helped him grow a little, like it did me. Take things seriously.

The thought dampens her spirits somewhat, but she rallies. She’s gotta get through to Khyrrsz.

“You and me, buddy. We’re weirdos, aren’t we,” she calls out, wishing that her words would somehow carry back through that psychic link she’s building. “Cold and combat is all you know. So that’s all you do. Me too, buddy, me too. Until recently.”

She’s abandoned the attempt at sword-play, and has gone back to her fists. To her relief, Khyrrsz has set down their sword as well, and has balled up their own fists.

“I think we got something else. Neanderthal, right? That’s what they say. I don’t know how anyone figured that out, what with you not talking and everything. But listen. I read that like, your guys.. they didn’t make it. Homo sapiens came along. Outcompeted you. Maybe got rid of you. Same thing happened to folks in South America. North America. The Europeans came along. Overcame the indigenous people. Outcompeted 'em. Or, you know.”

Andi is huffing with the effort of an extended fight, as well as talking. God, she’s talking so much compared to her usual, and it’s something she’s not used to. But what else can she do? This has to work.

“So I think, like, you’re doing this whole villain thing the way I am doing this hero thing. Because we’re expected to. Because it’s like, the place we fit in. Because we didn’t grow as people enough to make our own choices. And like, maybe you got intelligent, well-reasoned rationales for what you’re doing, fuck if I know. But you don’t really seem cruel. Barbaric? Sure. But not cruel, not like the others. Like, you were gettin’ along with that girl, Glom. Right? You have friends. You know what it’s like to have friends.”

Tears are starting to come to her eyes with the weight of the emotion she feels. Feeling like she took “Thunderbolt” from her uncle, then disrespecting it. Making a mockery of the whole heroic career of someone she idolized, because she didn’t understand how to live up to it.

“I gotta do right by Uncle Chan. I gotta change. I gotta grow.”

Khyrrsz’ enormous fist slams into her, knocking her into a sudden impact crater in the ground.

But from the ground, laying on her back, she’s not giving up.

“And I gotta get through to you, buddy. I gotta find a way to help you, the way Tatanka and Mercury and everyone helped me. If you’re gonna be on this fucking path, I gotta at least show you there’s other paths you could follow. I gotta know. Is this all you want to be? Because it sure as shit isn’t all you could.”

She stands up and launches into the air. She takes a breath. And she charges straight at the god’s chest, both fists out.


Inside Gnosis’ escape pod, the villain is considering his options.

Tyran is looking more and more aggressive. The gas doesn’t seem to be slowing him down as much as hoped.

“Your rage is inescapable, it seems,” Gnosis concedes aloud. “But you’re sacrificing your rationality to sustain it. For example…”

His eyes flicker over to Ninjess. “I’m sure you wouldn’t mind disposing of one of the ‘children’ who have caused you so much distress. Wasn’t it Harry Gale who uncovered the identity of Never-miss - your clone of his own mother? Your man Burke revealed himself and the operation to Mercury’s team when the Seven Wonders became too much of a problem for either team alone. Rather than come to you, he went to a team outside your control. I’d be embarrassed, frankly.”

Tyran’s head turns by degrees, almost like it’s on a ratchet, and he looks down at Ninjess. Finally he growls out a reply. “Yess… You aren’t going anywhere… And I wouldn’t object to an appetizer… before the main course…”

Ninjess smiles, and draws her knives in anticipation.

The pain device on his forearm comes off - because the straps have snapped.

The man’s expensively tailored shirt and suit jacket begin to rip. His immaculately pressed pants, likewise, part at the seams. His shoes burst open.

The shadow that falls over the ninja is no longer that of a man.

Gnosis and his desk drop into a lower level of the sphere, and an armored hatch seals shut in the floor where they once sat.


Mercury has the sphere in sight. He’s running behind it, but doesn’t yet have a plan.

Behind him, members of the Chosen - Stingray, Kinetica, and Scraaseetotabobah - are keeping up.

“Acknowledge rocket,” Mercury calls up to Mirage. “I know you’ll do what you think is best, even if I don’t like it.”

Mirage’s voice crackles with just a hint of amusement. “Correct. In the meantime, good news. You’ve left the city limits. I’ve dug up details on the aqueduct from Byron Quill’s old records - he was aware of the facility but though it was safely sealed away. It leads to the ocean and an underwater HQ. I can’t Teletube anyone into the tunnel underground. Can you somehow get ahead of it and make a hole to the surface?”

Kinetica responds immediately. “I can make the hole, but we can’t get ahead of it.”

“I can take you,” Mercury offers. “I’ll vibrate us through the ground.”

The plan thus hatched, Mercury falls back to let Kinetica grab hold of him. Then he races forward - faster and faster - and then –

He jumps left, into the earth, using his powers to control the vibration of his molecules and those of Kinetica.

The space between atomic nuclei is vast, at the scale of atomic nuclei. The space within the atom isn’t empty - the electromagnetic field creates an “electron cloud”, and at certain points in that cloud, electrons can be found.

Electrons repel each other. But that repulsion is mediated by particles moving at a fixed speed. And if there’s anything Mercury’s good at, it’s outrunning speed limits.

He hates doing it. It takes him into a non-space, where he can’t see, can’t smell, can’t feel, can’t do anything except navigate by instinct.

The one sense that still works is hearing. The only thing to hear is his own body. His heartbeat, pounding. His throat, swallowing reflexively. His eyelids as they blink. Every gurgle, squirt, or grind in his intestines. Every bone scraping and popping against each other as he runs. The ache in his ears as the liquids that regulate balance go haywire.

All he can do is put one foot in front of the other, willing the soles of his feet to be just a little more solid, just for a moment. Otherwise gravity will pull him to the center of the Earth.

He’s got to compute how fast to go. He’s got to keep his feet flat. He’s got to guess–

He leaps out of the solid rock, Kinetica in his arms, into the aqueduct. Looking back, he can see the sphere in the distance, rushing toward them.


Mercury has raced down the tunnel, to almost under the coastline of North Carolina.

Kinetica leaped up, and literally pushed aside rock, dirt, and mud in an explosive display of power. As the sun strikes her face, she shouts joyfully. “I’m outside!”

Mirage scans. “Teletube targeting laser has a lock. Dispatching Sloth and Telekinetian to your location. We are raising screens to account for the incoming rocket.”

Two figure materialize in the aqueduct, as the sphere bears down on them. Kinetica flies back down, ready for action.

Mercury has little time. “TK, Kinetica, Sloth, stop that sphere,” he orders. “I’ll collapse the tunnel ahead as a backup.”

The heroes turn to face the challenge they’ve been set. Two of them have some variation on psychokinesis, while the third can turn such energy into time manipulation. If anyone can do this, they can.

Behind them, Mercury begins running at super-speed. His goal is to create seismic forces - a very localized earthquake.

Stingray has grappled the sphere. He and Scraaseetotabobah are holding onto those grappling lines for dear life, doing their damnest to slow it down from their end.

With such forces arrayed against it, what can mere steel do but come to a stop?

TK and Kinetica rip a hole in the side of the sphere, revealing everything.

Rex Tyran is in the middle of transforming into a terrifying, colossal hybrid of man and dinosaur.

Ninjess was facing him down with her knives when the sphere was yanked to a stop, and as the side is peeled off, she leaps off and out of the way.

Gnosis, mastermind of the Seven Wonders, is arming himself and frantically pressing a button on a device, to no avail.


Q-Base’s screens shut off suddenly. Mirage, frantically checking, determines that Byron Quill’s access codes were used to access Byron Quill’s computer, the system at the heart of the base. In desperation, she activates the emergency overrides. They were meant to keep her isolated, back when Jason was still uncertain of whether to trust her. Now they will keep the rocket’s mysterious payload from compromising the computer any further.

Those overrides still include her.

As she goes offline, her last thought is – how exquisite this poetry.


The blizzard is fading.

All across the city, a broadcast is filling the airwaves.

“FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE. Tyran Enterprises announces the neutralization of the Seven Wonders of the Villain World.”

Pictures of Glom and Veneer, successfully teleported out of Q-Base moments before.

A picture of the Hand, bound and gagged.

A picture of Motormouth, still partially coated in concrete.

All surrounded by soldiers wearing the same corporate logo.

“Tyran Enterprises. We Get The Job Done.”

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The last story in the Marvelous Menagerie series, “Legacy”, is coming soon.

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