November 18, 2006
The counter staff of the Covington Hotel greeted Miss Carfax with professional smiles and studied niceties. The sylph-like debutante’s bills were being paid for by no less than three discreetly anonymous benefactors, and the staff knew that clients like this were best handled with kid gloves. Miss Carfax smiled back winningly and took her shopping bags up to her suite. As Miss Carfax took the box with the Delacroix label from one of the bags, a voice from the side asked dryly. “So, whose credit card were you wearing out today, Alex?”
‘Miss Carfax’ turned to see Sandra Darden, a.k.a. ‘Lady Darke’ sitting in one of her ‘gentleman callers’ favorite armchairs, tactfully placed where no one could see who was sitting in it from the doorway. “Oh, hey, Sandra! Oh, as I recall it, it was Judge Whitcroft’s.”
“Whitcroft? You’re keeping a State Supreme Court Judge on a string?” Sandra asked with a smirk.
“And why not?” Alex ‘Vamp’ O’Brien asked matter-of-factly. “His money spends as easily as anyone else’s. And it can’t exactly hurt, if I ever get busted, now will it?”
“No,” Sandra sighed. Then she smiled wickedly, “Though, even if the worst happens, the fuss that will get kicked up when the news of exactly what the Judge has been keeping as a mistress gets out, will be absolutely delicious!”
“Which aspect are you talking about? The mutant aspect, the hermaphrodite aspect, the supervillain aspect, or the minor aspect?”
“Actually, I was thinking of the murderer aspect,” Sandra drawled.
Alex glared at ‘Lady Darke’. “I’m not a murderer. You pulled that off, to get me under your thumb.”
“Actually, it was Nightgaunt,” Sandra replied equitably. “I just put the frame around your neck. And that was on direct orders from His Unholiness.”
“Well, thank you so very much,” Alex said pettishly.
“And speaking of Graveyard Breath and direct orders, let’s go. He’s expecting us at the Batcave.”
“Oh? We’re finally going to break the Arch-Fiend out of durance vile?”
“Sorry, Kiddo, need to know information and all that crap.”
Vamp let out an exasperated grunt. “Okay! Fine! BE that way! At least tell me how to dress, so I don’t pick the wrong outfit and give Count Dorkula an excuse to knock me around again.”
“What are the options?” Sandra asked, glad to have as neutral a topic as fashion- even supervillain fashion- to discuss.
“Okay! Obviously, the sleek red off-the shoulder number is out of the question-” Vamp pulled out that outfit by way of demonstration, “- not only have they seen me in it, but I got my butt whupped in it. BAD associations. SO! Do I go for-” She pulled out a black strapless bodysuit with a cobwebby cape, “-Goth Ethereal-?” A black halter top/miniskirt combo with a short red ‘batwing’ capelet, thigh-high boots and opera gloves, “-Retro-Funky>” A black leather catsuit that laced up the sides of the legs and arms with a narrow red corset was next, “-or S/M Kinky?”
“GAWD!” Sandra exclaimed, “I HATE you! You’re what? Fifteen? You’ve got the figure of a freaking FIREPOLE! HOW do you manage to pull off those outfits? How can someone who was a Junior High boy a year ago, come off so fucking Hawt?”
“I can sum it up for you in three words,” Vamp said smugly. “At. Ti. Tood.”
Lady Darke let out an exasperated grunt of her own. "Go for the Retro-Funky outfit. C’mon, get dressed, you know how Darrow loves to be kept waiting.”
‘Miss Carfax’ pulled off her chestnut brown wig, revealing the long fine white hair underneath, and cleansed her face of the light foundation that covered her pale albino complexion. She carefully removed the gray contacts, showing off a pair of red- not ‘pink’, but ruby red- eyes. She put on some purple and red eye shadow deliberately chosen to match the color of bruises, and dabbed her thin lips with a dramatic shade of dark red lipstick. When Vamp was dressed, she covered up her dramatic new look with sunglasses and a thick overcoat, and she and Lady Darke left ‘Abby Carfax’s’ suite via the ‘discreet entrance’.
The Covington Hotel had been housing attractive and complaisant young women whose bills were paid by affluent older gentlemen since the 1880s. One of the amenities that they provided was a ‘discreet entrance’ that was very pointedly NOT watched, which had a state of the art security lock, the key of which was entrusted to the gentlemen who paid the bills. No one had seen Lady Darke enter, and no one saw her leave with Vamp.
Vamp got into Sandra’s car and grumped, “I still say that you can do better than this econo-box. I mean, what’s the point of being a sexy supervillainess, if you gotta shlump around in a POS like this?”
“Vamp, seductive adventuresses only drive sexy cars like Ferraris and Porches in the movies. In real life, it’s a lot safer to drive something nice and inconspicuous.”
“Which is why a Ferrari would be perfect!” Vamp shot back, “Everyone knows that only pretentious dorks like computer geeks and accountants drive Ferraris, so no one would suspect anything!”
Vamp and Lady Darke debated the issue until Sandra used her telepathic ‘blinding’ technique to keep her passenger from knowing where they were. “Oh Gee…” Vamp said dryly, “I can just feel the love…”
“Bosses’ orders. He doesn’t trust you yet.”
“Gee, what was your first clue? The way that his hand seems to be magnetically drawn to the back of my head, or that stake that he keeps playing with?”
When Vamp’s sight returned, they were in a parking garage, and Lady Darke was using a magnetic card to get past a security door. Inside the security door, they both went through the thumbprint, punch-code and voice recognition stages to enter the Necromancer’s latest lair.
As they entered, Nightgaunt was just coming out of the lair’s firing range. “Hey, Nighty-Knight!” Vamp called pleasantly, “How’s it shooting?” Getting no reaction, Vamp couldn’t even tell if Nightgaunt had heard her. The featureless blank helmet that he wore wasn’t just creepy in ways that more expressive masks only wished they were, it left others totally clueless as to Nightgaunt’s state of mind. It occurred to Vamp that she’d never seen Nightgaunt’s face, and she’d only heard him speak once or twice. She’d never be able to pick him out of a lineup.
Nightgaunt ignored her, heading into the gymnasium. As he went in, Lycanthros was coming out, reeking of sweat from his exertions. “Whew!” Vamp gasped, waving a hand in front of her face, “Yo! Dude! Let me clue you in to science’s latest breakthrough- the shower!”
Lycanthros bared his teeth in a not-smile, his one good eye burning red to match the large red stone set into the eye patch over the other eye. “What’s the matter, Little Red Riding Hood?” the hairy near-Neanderthal growled, “Can’t take the smell of a real MAN?”
“And what does a real man have to do with YOU, Alpo-breath?”
Lady Darke shoved Vamp off in the direction they’d been heading before the two could get any nastier. “I swear, I can’t take you two anywhere!”
Sandra and Alex walked through the abbreviated lair’s corridor to the Situation Room. Charles Darrow, a.k.a. ‘The Necromancer’ was going over an illuminated map of Boston with four men. One of the men was a massive mountain of a man with a square face and a general bullish air about him. The smallest of the men had a weasly cast to his face and the sort of eyes that take in everything as if weighing it to figure out if it was threat or prey. The third looked like a stock goon. But for all their predatory mien, it was the fourth man who was the most menacing of the lot. He was athletic, with a beard and a shaven head, and he had the sense of hard discipline that most people associate with career soldiers. And yet, under that, there was a sense of dangerous power about him, kept in check by that hard discipline.
Vamp sauntered over to one of the Security Panels and lounged against it. The Necromancer broke off his discussion with the two men and snarled, “Vamp! What are you doing in here?”
Alex weighed the advantages of maintaining her ‘brat’ rep by dissing the Necromancer against the risks that Darrow wouldn’t embarrass himself by whaling on her in front of company. The odds came down heavily on the side that Darrow would rip into her even more brutally than usual because the strangers were there. “I’m here for the mission briefing. That’s why you called me here, isn’t it, Boss?”
“This briefing is classified,” Darrow rasped through his skull mask. “You’ll do as your told, WHEN you’re told! Get out of here, before I lose all patience with you!”
“Fine, fine,” Vamp sighed as she sashayed out of the room. “On the off chance that anyone needs me, I’ll be in the Lounge.” The men were busy watching her backside leave, so no one noticed the wireless link stub patched into the Security Panel.
Alone in the lounge, Vamp fired up the Playstation3 and started playing a game, except she wasn’t really playing a game. Some time ago, she’d managed to swap the wireless game controller that came with the Playstation for one that she’d kludged a text pager into. As she seemed to be playing Final Fantasy XIII, she was really sending a text message to the wireless link stub back in the Situation Room. The stub exploited the one thing that Darrow’s security sweep system wouldn’t detect- namely the security system itself. And how had she figured out how to do this? Simple- she was sure she was the only one of the Children of the Night that had actually read the security system’s manual.
Still, she kept her message short and sweet- the Children of the Night were gearing up for something, and they had friends along. Once she’d composed her message and sent it, and she was certain that it had gone out undetected, she shut off the pager, and actually concentrated on playing the game. You never knew when Nightgaunt might come ghosting through a shadow unannounced.
November 19, 7: 25 AM
Miss Grimes looked peevishly at her wristwatch.
“What are we waiting for?” Ayla Goodkind asked. “The van is already here, let’s get ON with it already!”
“There are some girls from Whitman coming,” Grimes explained with strained patience. “They have business in Boston as well, and there’s no need for the van to go out twice.” Miss Grimes was an instructor in one of the more advanced courses in the Mystic Arts program. And, unlike several of the other instructors, she actually LOOKED like a teacher in witchcraft. She was tall, dark, elegantly slender, and quite attractive- if you were into Morticia Addams or the Groovie Ghoulies. Her large eerie heavily lidded gray eyes were set into a pale narrow angular face with a long sharp nose. Her lips were thin, but her mouth was wide, mobile and expressive. Toni figured that she must be the pinup girl for the Goth clique.
“Excuse me, Miss Grimes?” Nikki asked as politely as she could. “Why aren’t Bunny and Rip coming with us? I mean, they were with us the whole time.”
Miss Grimes’ mobile expressive mouth knotted into a moue of impatience. “Well, the District Attorney has decided that Miss Cormack and Miss Obregon won’t be necessary as they never left the van, and so they can’t contribute anything of significance. Also, unlike the rest of you, they managed to avoid being photographed, so there’s no reason for them to risk further exposure.”
“Okay, I can see that,” Tennyo allowed, “but what about Sara? I mean, she was in the thick of it!”
A look of distaste crossed Miss Grimes’ face. “Miss Wilson, do think about that for a moment. I’m sure that the attorney for the Defense would love it if the Prosecution called to the stand someone who is not only a minor, a mutant, and half-DEMON, but the object of worship for a rather notorious CULT. No, I gather that Ms. Collier will discreetly avoid the topic of Miss Waite altogether.”
The door to the lobby of Shuster Hall opened and a tall dark-haired girl in a long coat with an overstuffed backpack came bustling out. “Oh, I’m so sorry we’re late, Miss Grimes,” she blithered. “But some of us were way too late getting ready!”
A shorter, bespectacled, but still dark-haired girl came through the door behind her. “Oh, ‘some of us’? Well *I* wasn’t the one who kept going back because she kept thinking of ‘one more thing’!”
Behind the girl with glasses came two figures so bundled up in parkas and mufflers, as to be unrecognizable. “Oh, give it a rest, Bekky,” one of the Eskimo-like figures said.
Toni recognized the voice. “Sakti? Is that you?”
‘Silver’ peered out from the depths of her parka. “Chaka? What are you doing here?”
“Us? Oh, we’re going to Boston.”
“What? After what happened last time?”
“Precisely because of that. We gotta make depositions and give testimony in court.”
Silver sighed, “I envy you.”
“You envy us?” Toni asked, genuinely puzzled, “Why? All it is, is paperwork and sitting around in Court, sitting around while lawyers pile up billable hours!”
Silver let out a martyred sigh. “It still would beat what awaits me in Boston. Hours arguing with the tax man.”
Toni winced. “Owch, the IRS caught up with you?”
“Worse, the Indian version of the IRS. It seems that word that my ‘maiden silver’ is more than mundane silver has reached certain ears, and officials in New Delhi are trying to discover precisely how deeply they can burrow into my wallet. When they realized that I was creating materials that are conservatively worth about 30 million American dollars a year, they brought out the heavy mining equipment.”
“And them?” Toni indicated the girl with the backpack, who was talking to Miss Grimes, the bespectacled girl who was looking at Team Kimba with barely concealed interest, and the last girl who was so wrapped up in a parka as to be unrecognizable.
Sakti sighed, “As the School gets 7% of what I get for my moonsilver, I am suddenly a valuable asset. I was rather hoping that my days as a valuable asset were over. So, Miss Hartford doesn’t want me going off to Boston unguarded.” Sakti leaned in and whispered, “They’re trying to make out like they’re not a security detail, that they’re just a bunch of girls from the cottage who want an excuse to skip class and go to Boston.” She made a quiet disgusted noise. “I barely even know these girls!”
The bespectacled girl bustled up. “So, this is the famous Team Kimba!”
Nikki looked at Jade. “Are we famous?”
“From the noises I’ve been hearing, I thought ‘notorious’ was more on the money,” Jade replied.
“Nah, too big,” Tennyo disagreed. “More like, ‘talked about a lot behind our backs’.”
“Unless you count Peeper and Greasy, who talk about us behind our backs when they’re right in front of us,” Nikki pointed out. “But then, they’re exceptions to so many rules.”
“Hi there!” the new girl said briskly. “The handle’s Foxfire. You’re Chaka, right? Babs has nothing but good to say about you.”
“Babs?” Toni tripped over the apparent non-sequitor. “Oh, Compiler! That Babs?”
“Yeppers! By the way, how are you recovering from that beating that Little Bee gave you?”
Toni winced. “Physically, I’m all right. But I’m getting ‘O.J. got off’ vibes from people right and left.”
“Not to worry!” Foxfire breezed, “I mean, you got jumped by a runaway power frame, how can anyone sane hold that against you?”
“The key word there being ‘sane’, as in ‘reasonable’,” Chaka pointed out. “The problem is that reasonable people think before they do things. Unreasonable people just DO things, ‘cause it’s the first thing that pops into their pointy little heads.”
Almost as if on cue, the girl who was all swaddled up in her parka stalked over. She was wearing a flat featureless full mask that hid all of her face, except for three slots for the eyes and mouth. “What are they doing here?” she all but snarled.
“Oh, be quiet, Pucelle,” Silver grunted. “They have business with the Massachusetts courts in Boston.”
“Besides, it’s not like they’re sending anyone with GSD on this,” Foxfire pointed out.
“Oh, of course not!” the girl’s eyes glared at Nikki through the slots in the mask. “We can’t go offending the delicate sensibilities of the pretty little princess, now can we?”
Nikki started to respond, but Foxfire deftly stepped in. “So, Fey, I understand that you got a special mystic arts instructor, some Brit named Sir Wallace Westmoreland?”
“No, just Wallace Westmont,” Nikki corrected her.
“Did he get knighted, or is he just a baronet? And how’d you rate your own tutor so soon?”
“Nothing but the best for the little princess,” Pucelle sniped.
“Excuse me?” Foxfire cut her off, “Are you in the Mystic Arts program? Is this any of your business?” Pucelle retreated, her scowl apparent even through her mask.
“Jeez, rude much?” Ayla snarked.
“Hey, if you want, I can call her back,” Foxfire retorted. “But I can almost guarantee that you’ll be looking for a 2x4 by the time we get to the train depot. So, how DID you get this Westmont guy as a special tutor?”
Nikki blushed. “I’m afraid that my father pulled a few strings and arranged that. I’m afraid that he’s not adapting to my new condition as well as he likes to make out he is. But Sir Wallace-”
Foxfire silently shushed her as Miss Grimes walked up. “Finally, all set! Well, girls- Mr. Declan, into the van!”
Team Kimba and the Whitman girls piled into the van. Foxfire made a production of waiting, and a small nearly black fox came scampering up through the snow, to jump up into her arms. “Hey, Boots! So, find anything interesting?” The foxling gave a dismissive sniff, as if to indicate that if she’d just allowed her a few more minutes, she would have brought in a mastodon.
Nikki’s eyebrows shot up. “Is that your familiar?”
“Yeppers!” Foxfire held up the not-quite cub. “This is Slyboots. Ready to go traveling, Boots?” Boots gave another sniff, and dissolved into a gray mist, which wafted into the large soft carryall that Foxfire had slung over one shoulder.
“Excuse me? Can we get going?” Miss Grimes called from the front seat.
Foxfire, Nikki and Toni climbed into the rear seat. Slyboots stuck her head out of her ally’s tote and graciously allowed Nikki to scratch her between the ears. Foxfire herself leaned over. “A, ah, word in a pointed ear. Watch out. Word in the MA program has it that a certain long nose,” Foxfire cast a meaningful glance at Miss Grimes in the front seat, “is none-too-slightly out of joint about them bringing in a special tutor for you from outside the school. It seems that Grimsy had her pointed hat set on tutoring you herself. You know any reason why she’d be so het up to be Blaise to your Merlin?”
“Just another example of the blatant preference that this school gives to those who embody an arbitrary and pointless physical ideal of-” Pucelle stopped as Foxfire held a cupped hand in front of her and a bar of pale blue fire formed in the cup of her hand. It solidified into a crude 2x4 board, with which Foxfire tapped Pucelle none-too-gently on the forehead.
“Believe me, this is the only way to get her to shut up, once she gets wound up,” Foxfire said dryly. Slyboots rose up partially out of Foxfire’s tote and stuck a pink tongue out at Pucelle. <nyeh!> Pucelle bridled and started to say something, but the 2x4 grew into a gnarled club with a long spike driven through the end, ala’ ‘Li’l Abner’.
As Pucelle turned back around and sulked, Foxfire waved the club back into non-existence. Toni asked, “What kind of name is ‘Pucelle’?”
“She has a Joan of Arc fixation,” Foxfire explained with a jerk of the thumb at the hooded back of Pucelle’s head. “Joan of Arc never called herself that- she only referred to herself as ‘Jehenne la Pucelle’- or ‘the Maiden Joan’. Hence the code-name, which I kinda doubt does a lot for her social life.”
Pucelle started to turn to retort, until Foxfire whipped that club back out of nothing.
At the Dunwich depot, Slyboots flowed out of Foxfire’s tote and allowed Jade to show proper adoration by petting her. “Oh, she is simply adorable!” Jade gushed, and Boots silent agreed with her. “I know that witches and sorcerers are supposed to have familiars and stuff, but howcum?”
“Do you want to field this, Miss Grimes?”
“I have been explaining these basics for years, Miss Corbin,” Grimes responded with a chilly smile. “Let’s see how you handle it.”
Foxfire took a deep breath and began. “Well, there isn’t really ONE big reason, but a lot of good reasons. First, your familiar isn’t just a pet; she’s your ally. She’s the best friend that I’ve ever had, and that I’m ever likely TO have. She listens to me, and tells me when my head is up my- er- when I’m playing silly head games with myself. She can see invisible beings and forces, even when I’m not looking for them, so she watches my back. And heterodyning your magical power with an ally never hurts. And Boots gets… Hey, what DO you get out of it, Boots?” Boots answered by sprawling on her back to allow her tummy to get rubbed. “Oh. Right. That.”
Jade rubbed the little fox’s tummy and asked, “Are you gonna get a familiar, Nikki?”
Nikki shrugged. “I don’t really know. I haven’t really thought about it a lot. When the right familiar shows up, I suppose.”
“But she’s so Kyyeewwte!” Boots agreed with her wholeheartedly, and indicated with a shiv paw for Jade to continue the tummy rub.
As Jade fussed over the spoiled little fox, Sakti asked Toni, “Aren’t you taking a big risk by testifying against that Arch-Fiend fellow? Not so much from him, but from the Media? They’d love to get close-up pictures of the girls who took him down. Especially Fey.”
“Not really,” Toni said in a way that suggested that there was more going on than she was letting on. “You see, it’s what the Cops call a ‘Banner Hearing’. Like in Bruce Banner, the Incredible Hulk’s alter ego? Y’see, one of the big problems with guys who change shape like the Arch-Fiend does, is that the DA’s gotta prove that the guy in the handcuffs really IS the guy in all the photographs. Otherwise, he can say, ‘What? I’m just wimpy little Bruce Banner! I can’t throw tanks around! The Hulk did all of that! And he’s huge and green!’ So, they got these preliminary hearings to prove: A- whether or not the guy in the dock can shapeshift. B- whether or not the guy in the dock shapeshifts into something that resembles whatever it was that did the crime. And C- whether or not the guy in the dock has powers like the suspect. In other words, whether it’s worth the time and money to go any further. The big problem here is that this Bunsen guy has been playing it cagey. He hasn’t shifted once since he got busted, probably because he knows that his cell is being taped.”
“But, as I understand it, Tennyo caught him in the wreckage of that building, wearing only his pants.”
“Hey, his lawyer claims that he was in that building when Billie and the Arch-Fiend brought it down. I dunno what he was supposed to be doing, but they can’t prove that he wasn’t there. All security records for that day were destroyed in the collapse.”
“But the pants? He can’t say that he was in that building in only his pants.”
“He says that his clothes were destroyed in the rubble. I dunno how his pants managed to stay intact when his jacket and shirt- not to mention his socks and SHOES- were either destroyed or knocked off, but that's his story, and he’s sticking to it.”
“You seem to know a lot about this,” Foxfire said.
“I’m writing a paper on it for my Intro Criminology class.”
A while later, as the Grand Miskatonic Shuttle pulled up, Miss Grimes produced two animal carrying cases. “Miss Corbin?” As Foxfire got in some last-minute petting of her own familiar, Miss Grimes reached into her own commodious purse and pulled out a less than thrilled glossy black cat who scowled at her. “Don’t give me that sour look, Merlin” Grimes said primly. “We’ve been through this a thousand times. I’ll miss you as much as you’ll miss me, and I’ll come for you as soon as I can.” She gave the broody cat a kiss on the head, and made to store him in the carrier.
“_MERLIN_?” Ayla said, slightly aghast.
Miss Grimes and Merlin glared at Ayla with matching eerie gray eyes in one of those spooky mistress-and-pet moments. “I look like this, I teach magic, and I have a black cat for a familiar. There are times, Miss Goodkind, when you either laugh with the joke, or set yourself up to be laughed at.”
After Miss Grimes and Foxfire put their familiars in the carriers, the older Whitman girl, Jetstream by handle, stopped Pucelle. “Okay, enough is enough. Take off the mask.” Pucelle started to whine, but Jetstream just said, “No more weirdness! We aren’t supposed to draw attention to ourselves, and that stupid mask isn’t helping things!”
Pucelle looked at Miss Grimes, who merely arched an imperious eyebrow. Grumbling, Pucelle reached up and took the mask from her face. Team Kimba was slightly taken aback when the mask came down, revealing a lovely girl with classically nordic features that weren’t improved by her scowl of dissatisfaction. “What are YOU looking at?” she snapped.
“Damn good question,” Tennyo muttered under her breath.
The Whitman girls took another passenger car from Team Kimba. Pucelle grumbled about it for a bit, but Jetstream pointed out that it was safer if the two potential target groups sat apart from each other, and it wasn’t like there were first and second-class cars on the Grand Mistakonic shuttle.
Toni watched the Whitman girls go through the connecting passage between cars, and then an expression of enlightenment came over her features.
“What’s that?” Hank asked as Toni settled in.
“What’s what?”
“That smug ‘I got a secret’ look on your face.”
“Oh, ah, I just made Puccy Galore back there.” Toni said with a satisfied grin.
“Made her? You mean you know what’s got her panties in a knot?”
“Yup. The mask threw me at first, but once I saw the look on her face, I managed to peg her.”
“So?” Nikki snapped, “Don’t keep it to yourself! What’s her damage?”
“Well, basically, she’s a version of those really annoying White Liberals who go out of their way to show off how ‘enlightened’ they are, and how much they are on the Blacks’ side.”
“Oh,” Hank said, apparently getting Toni’s point, “You mean those left-wing nitwits who are always yapping about how much they care about this oppressed group or that?”
“Bingo.”
“Limousine Liberals,” Ayla said with a disgusted mutter.
“What’s that got to do with all the ‘pampered princess’ crap that she was giving me?” Nikki snapped.
“Well, y’see the whole ‘Black Brutha’s Best Bud’ bit isn’t really about politics or social issues,” Toni explained. “It’s really about Liberal Guilt. Y’see, these yo-yos are still pretty damned racist under it all, but they won’t really do anything to upset the balance of power between the races, and they can’t stand the thought that THEY look like bigots, so, they make this big noise about how ‘enlightened’ they are, and make these big productions of ‘standing up for the poor oppressed colored people’ so they won’t feel guilty about the fact that their families own slums or whatever. Actually treating Blacks, or Hispanics, or whoever’s pushing their guilt button at the moment, like human beings isn’t big enough, isn’t dramatic enough for them. They gotta SHOW the entire WORLD how unprejudiced they are!”
“What… does that… have to do… with ANYTHING going on here?” Nikki asked plaintively.
“Simple. Pucelle’s like that, only she feels guilty about GSD mutants. Same Bee-Ess, different subject.”
“You mean she feels guilty about the fact that she’s good-looking?”
“Hey, people can get hung up about damn near anything.”
“So, she’s busting my chops with that ‘princess’ stuff…”
“Because you’re one of the best looking girls in the school, and everyone makes a big deal about how gorgeous you are,” Toni finished. “I kinda suspect that she’s a little jealous of you, on top of everything else.”
“I’ll bet that she’s real popular with Thuban and the Factor Three crowd,” Ayla grumped.
“Nope,” Jade said with the calm assurance of an expert.
“Why not?” Chou asked, “Aside from the fact that you two are dating?”
“Why? Because if Toni-sempai is right, that Pucelle bozo is all about pity. She pities the GSD kids. And most of the F3 kids, Thuban especially, would hate being pitied, even more than being feared or hated. What they really want is a little respect, a sense of their own due, not some privileged bitch patting them on the head and telling them that they’re freaks, but it’s all right, she loves them anyway.”
“Score one for the short stack!” Toni cracked.
Tennyo shuddered. “I wouldn’t want to be that headcase’s roommate.”
“Are you quite through dissecting the personality of someone you barely know?” Miss Grimes asked dryly.
“Yep!” Toni said chipperly, “NOW, we start dissecting what that Foxfire nutjob was all about!”
November 19, 10:45 AM
“Pardon, but why are my students giving their statements in the SWAT ready room, instead of in the District Attorney’s office?” Miss Grimes asked ADA Pamela Collier.
The Assistant DA barely looked up from her dossier. “This is SOP for witnesses in Supervillain cases. The idea is that supervillains will be less likely to attack a witness giving a deposition, if said witness is in a reinforced bunker while giving it. Supervillains don’t often directly attack the DA’s office, but it HAS happened. And my boss really hates energy blasts before lunch.”
When the Whateley kids finished making their statements, Ms. Collier addressed them as a group. “Very well, you won’t have to sit through most of the proceedings. You’ll be called one at a time to give your testimony. Now, this is very important- you will be going up in front of Judge Winchester. Winchester does NOT like freaks. And don’t give me that look! This is important! We are accusing a flabby, nebbishy looking little non-entity like Wilbur Bunsen of being a super-freak like the Arch-Fiend. We need credibility here! Bunsen has been playing it very cagey. Or, at least whiny. So, that means that we have to be very convincing. Unfortunately, the only person here who actually SAW the Arch-Fiend change into Bunsen,” she glared at Tennyo, “is YOU.”
Billie scrunched up defensively. “What am I supposed to do? Wear a wig and contact lenses or something?”
“No, Bunsen’s attorney would just play on that. What I need you to do is this. Stick to three basic points: That *ahem!* ‘Tennyo’ was there, that she faced the Arch-Fiend, and that she saw the Arch-Fiend change into Wilbur Bunsen. Get that and ONLY that across! ‘Chaka’, you will go first. You will establish that ‘Tennyo’ was there when the Arch-Fiend first ripped open the roof of the SWAT van, and that she and Lancer exited the van to pursue the Arch-Fiend. ‘Lancer’, you were in a position to confirm that you saw ‘Tennyo’ battling with the Arch-Fiend.”
“Didn’t they take pictures of Billie fighting him?”
“Yes, but that will be corroborating evidence. You see, you can’t cross-examine a photograph. An eyewitness is always preferred over a photograph. Then, when we have established all that, you will take the stand, Tennyo. Now, all three of you- the defense attorney will do everything that he can to drag you off the point. He will bring up that school of yours, the fact that you’re mutants, the fight with the bank robbers, the fight with the Children of the Night, whatever he can think of to play the ‘freak card’. He wants to portray you all as a bunch of wild, out-of-control mutant freaks who are trying to shove the blame for their rampage off on his client.”
She paused, as if to suggest that she envied him that ploy. “Whenever he pulls any of this, I will object that it’s irrelevant or immaterial. All that you have to do is wait for the judge to decide. Fortunately, while Winchester doesn’t like freaks, he’s also a stickler for procedure. Especially in preliminary hearings like this. So, he won’t let the defense go very far afield.”
Collier put down the dossier that she was perusing, and glared at Team Kimba en masse. “Now, this is absolutely vital! This is BOSTON, not New York! We have a very low tolerance for super-powered weirdness! Especially in our courts! That means- NO TRICKS! No magic, no telepathy, sonic tricks, no NOTHING! Even if Bunsen turns into the Arch-Fiend right in the middle of the courtroom and starts ripping up the place, it won’t mean a thing if the defense claims that one of you did something to him. And YES, they have ways of detecting that, and you WILL get caught if you try anything!”
“Excuse me?” Chou raised her hand.
“Yes?” Collier responded dryly.
“Are you expecting the Children of the Night to attack?”
“Not really.”
“Then why are they here?” Chou pointed at the three superheroes standing at ease by the wall. They recognized Skyhawk in his royal blue outfit with the ‘wing’ cape and hood. The other two were an athletic young woman in a blue-and-white bodysuit with padded forearm guards and boots, and a speed-trimmed helmet with goggles. The third one was entirely encased in a power frame with black ceramet armor plates and gold trim. “Are they testifying as well?”
“Oh God, no. Like I said, Judge Winchester hates freaks, and he includes guys in high-tech jammies along with mutants.”
“We’re here in case the Necromancer does try to attack,” Skyhawk said. “Of course, he might use this as a distraction for something else. He has a habit of creating big noisy distractions for his real moves-”
“Like that bank robbery,” Hank said.
“Precisely,” Skyhawk said with a nod. “The problem is, we have to assume that he’s carefully weighing Bunsen’s value to him against whatever it is that he’ll be going for.”
“Assuming that he’s still in Boston,” Captain Tilly said.
“Oh, the Necromancer’s still in Boston,” Collier said. “And we have information that he’s going to try to pull something today. No details, just that he’s getting ready to try something, and he’s hired new help.”
“Does that mean that he might just let this Bunsen guy go down?” Tennyo asked.
“Not a chance,” Ayla snarked. “He’s your classic bullying micro-manager. If his underlings got the idea that they can get out from under his thumb by going to jail, he’d be losing enforcers right and left. But if he breaks them out, he sends two messages- one, that he can protect his own, and two, that you can’t get away from him, even in jail.”
“Nice call, kid,” Collier said. “But my reading is that Darrow will try to use the system on this one. Their boy, Metzlinger, is pulling out all the stops to spring Bunsen.”
“Is there any chance that Bunsen might actually walk?” Jade asked.
Collier gave a cold smile. “Not to worry. I got it covered, Win, Lose or Draw.”
“Okay, now that we’ve covered the paperwork, what say we get our signals straight for a change?” Captain Tilly said. “First, we at SWAT are duty-bound to respond to any calls. It’s our job. You long-john jockeys can go after whatever looks suspicious, but will you at least give us here at SWAT a head’s up somehow if you really run into anything? And as for you kids- well, I got my kiester chewed off for endanger’n minors on that last rumble, so I can’t suggest that you put yerselfs at risk again. BUT, just in case anythin’ should go down around here while we was out…” He pulled out a folder, and tacked a picture of a pale, white-haired girl with a smirk on her face. “The Children of the Night. Been around for a few years, every one of ‘em has at least one murder warrant out for ‘em. This is Vamp, the rookie of the bunch. She busted outta the Boston lockup about a year an’ a half ago. She bopped around town jumpin’ pimps an’ pushers an’ like that for a while, and then she killed some Beacon Hill nob name’a Phelps Carruthers. Dunno why. Ennyway, then she hooked up with the Nite-Kids. She’s a drainer, she can suck the strength right outta yer body. She’s pretty damn strong and quick, all on ‘er own. She can also create a cloud of darkness around herself. She don’t seem to be part’clarly slowed down by it herself.”
“She can also create a sense of sexual arousal,” Chou said. “Very distracting.”
“Tell me about it,” Skyhawk muttered.
“Aaahhh… Yeah.” Tilly dismissed that touchy subject. “Ennyway, she’s small fry, not much more’n a kid with a gimmick. Of the lot of ‘em, she’s the most likely to roll over on the others. Dunno how much she knows, but there you are.”
He tacked a mug shot of an attractive woman in maybe her late twenties or early thirties with strong regular features, and the sullen scowl of someone being booked. “Next on the hit parade, we got Sandra K. Darden, a.k.a. ‘Lady Darke’. Apparently, she’s a graduate from that school a’ yours.” Tilly gave the assembled students a sour look.
“Hey, some of us make the wrong choice,” the woman in the blue-and-white speedsuit said, “and some of us make the right choice.” She finished with a challenging grin.
“Ah, right.” Tilly harrumphed. “Ennyway, she’s what’s called a ‘Package Deal Psychic’?” He looked up for clarification.
“It means that she has a single mutant trait,” Miss Grimes explained, “which can, in turn, produce either a telepathic, a clairvoyant or a psychokinetic effect.”
“Yeah, I ran into her the last time,” Lancer said. “She did things with darkness, and she did something to my mind, too, that made me not able to see or hear anything.”
“Normally, psychokinesis is invisible,” Miss Grimes responded, “but sometimes the psychokinesis affects light in ways that create colored affects. Miss Darden’s apparently blocks all visible light bands. The ‘mental darkness’ sounds like a very elementary psionic intrusion that blocks the brain’s processing of incoming sensory data.”
“Whatever,” Tilly said flatly. “Like the rest of ‘em, she’s got a First Degree Murder warrant out for ‘er, but it’s one of those ‘repercussions of a felony’ raps, so there’s a chance of her rollin’ over too. Try t’ take her alive if y’can.”
“Take her alive if you can’?” The man in the power armor said, “So you’re saying that the Mayor has already okayed the use of Lethal Force?”
“No, Dynaman,” Tilly seemed to regard the man with the high-tech gear slightly more highly than the paranormals in the room. “It means that all’a these freakos are to be regarded as Armed and Dangerous at all times, and that you all, and all my men, are expected to treat them as such.”
“And speakin’ of Armed and Dangerous.” He pinned up a large picture of a ghoulish looking black figure with a helmet that was featureless except for two devilish looking horns, a Batman-style cape and some obvious body armor. “Nightgaunt. Real name unknown. There was another guy who called himself Nightgaunt, and used the same outfit, but he was on the side a’ the angels. We think that this ratsass killed ‘im and took ‘is outfit and gimmick. We didn’t get along that well with the REAL Nightgaunt, but he was one’a the Good Guys.
We’re looking at this bastard like he was a cop-killer. Somehow, he can travel from one shadow to another, instant-like. Almost invisible in darkness. Very sneaky, very hard to pin down. Other’n that, not much in the way of weird powers. Wears body armor, and carries a pretty nasty arsenal of weapons.”
“And he’s a stone-cold killer,” Lancer said, remembering the way that Nightgaunt had put the barrel of a gun to his forehead and pulled the trigger without hesitation. That move had backfired- literally- but it said a lot about the man who pulled the trigger.
“Amen to that, brother,” Dynaman said with authority. “He’s a cheap shot artist. Pop out of shadow, do something nasty, and pop right back into shadow before you can react, and then he’s setting up another back stab. His only weakness that I’ve been able to figure, is that he seems to require a shadow to dive into.”
“Can he use his own shadow?” Miss Grimes asked.
Even through the all-concealing power armor, you could see Dynaman startle slightly. “I… dunno…”
“Interesting…” Grimes mused. “What about that darkness that you said this ‘Vamp’ creates? Can he use those?”
The startle became obvious embarrassment on Dynaman’s part. “I dunno. I was always kinda too busy trying to nail the creep to take notice."
“Other’n that one shadow gimmick,” Tilly covered for the veteran superhero, “Nitey-boy here doesn’t appear to have much in the way of super powers. Still pretty deadly, but I’d say that if you can get him in a good grapple, that might be it for him.”
He pinned up two pictures, one of a rather Neanderthal like man, the other of a wolf-faced humanoid. “Next on our countdown is ‘Lycanthros’, real name: unknown. Now, you might not guess it to look at ‘im, but he’s NOT a choirboy! Yeah, real shocker, hunh? Obviously, he’s some kind’a werewolf, and he’s got seventeen differ’nt 1st Degree Murder wants out for ‘im. If you seen any old Lon Chaney Jr. movies, then you pretty much know what he’s about. There’s a shoot-to-kill order out on ‘im. Bringin’ him in would be nice and all kinds’a brownie pernts, but if he’s dead when you bring ‘im in, nobody’s gonna raise a ruckus.”
he pinned two more large glossy photos to the board. One was of an armored figure with a heavy ‘Death’s Head’ motif, swathed in robes of purple and black. The other was a portrait of a glowering elderly balding Caucasian man with a ledge-like brow over cavernous eyes, a beak of a nose and a tight, thin-lipped mouth. “And savin’ the best- or whatever- for last, Dr. Charles Darrow, known an’ feared far an’ wide as the Necromancer. B’lieved to have op’rated under at least five differ’nt names from 1935 to the present. He’s wanted for Mass Murder, Kidnappin’, Child Molestin’, Treason, Espionage fer the Nazis, abettin’ Terrorism, Arson, Mass Destruction a’ Private an’ Public Property, Mass Reckless Endangerment, more differ’nt kinds of fraud than I really wanna think about, and a whole raft of other stuff that would get him locked away ferever if we ever actually managed to get him in a cell.
“Some say he’s some kind’a magician. Some say he’s just some weirdo kind’a mad scientist usin’ magic as a cover. Some say that he’s actin’ as some sort’a advance agent for a hostile extraterrestrial power. Been known t’use both robots tricked out t’look like skeletons and real zombies.” Tilly paused and contemplated the two photographs for a moment. “This one is the Big Cheese, boys an’ girls. Our intelligence tells us that Darrow’s got it set up so that his entire operation is all about HIM. He goes, the rest just falls apart. He controls the money, the contacts, the properties, the whole schmeer. If he gets away, then he’ll just keep coming back with as many new hires as he’ll need to get the job done. But if we bag HIM, the rest of ‘em will just go their own ways. Darrow’s the only thing really keepin’ ‘em t’gether. That’s the best we can do; it would help if we had a better idea’a what was keepin’ skull-face in the Boston area.”
“You mean, you’re not sure precisely what he’s up to?” Grimes asked.
“No,” Ms. Collier answered, “and that is very troubling. On the museum raid that you children interrupted, according to the Museum security people, he first sent in a stealth team to steal an item from the Celtic Artifacts exhibit, which was called ‘Nimyoo’s Key’. Now, here’s the interesting thing- he sent in a stealth team, but after they delivered that key to him, then he sent in the rest of his goons to loot the place.”
Almost as one, Miss Grimes and Nikki asked, “Did you say, ‘Nimue’s Key’?”
“Aahhh… I think so,” Collier admitted. “Does that mean anything to you?”
Grimes and Nikki share a significant look, as though silently discussing something. “Nimue is probably better known to you as the Arthurian figure, ‘the Lady of the Lake’.” Grimes explained. “While Arthurian lore is a hopeless mishmash of Pre-Christian and Conversion Celtic and Germanic lore, with hefty helpings of propaganda and pure fiction thrown in, there are several figures and themes that hold true. One of the key figures to the whole Arthur cycle is the Lady of the Lake, who is a keeper of incredible power: she is means by which Merlin gains access to Excalibur for Arthur. She is the means by which Morgana le Fay places Merlin into a deep sleep. And she is one of the three queens who takes Arthur to Avalon. This begs the potent question: this key- is it the key OF Nimue, or the key TO Nimue? Is it her tool, or the means by which she can be controlled?”
From the look on Ms. Collier’s face, the African-American lawyer wasn’t particularly interested in the intricacies of Pre-Christian European theology. “Yeah. Whatever. The point here, is that the Necromancer seems to have set up shop in the Greater Boston area. He’s pulling something off, and that Key thing was only a part of it. And I really doubt that we’d like finding out what it is the hard way. So, we need to get Darrow behind bars, and his underlings in a position where they’re more afraid of US than they are of HIM.”
“Tough sell,” Alya muttered. “You’re sort of obligated to be sane, and he’s not.”
Collier gave Ayla a dirty look.
Captain Tilly took control again. “The Necromancer likes diversions; big, nasty, dangerous diversions that you can’t afford to ignore, ‘cause they’re real. Those bozos with the fancy frost-gun were small p’taters compared to some of the stuff that he’s pulled to cover his tracks.”
“Okay, that explains why SWAT was so quick to call for Superheroic assistance last time,” Toni conceded. “But howcum you were so slow to show, Birdguy?”
Skyhawk gave a nervous twitch. “I had an inside source that the Children of the Night were going to move that day. My source was on the money.”
“And his source says that the Nite-kids have sum’thin’ cookin’ on the stove right now, and they got extra cooks in the kitchen,” Tilly said.
“What I want to know,” Collier said with a chilly air, “is who this source of yours IS, and why he won’t come from out of the cold.”
“Ms. Collier, no one crosses the Necromancer lightly. My source wants Darrow on ice beforehand AND assurances of leniency due to coercion.”
Collier muttered something about crooks being crooks, Halloween costumes or not.
November 19, 11: 25 AM
In court, Collier called Toni to the stand first, having her called by her code name. Chaka testified that the rest of Team Kimba had been with her when the Arch-Fiend attacked the SWAT van, and that Lancer and Tennyo had flown out to deal with him. This laid the foundation for Lancer’s testimony that he had seen Tennyo mixing it up with the Arch-Fiend, and that they’d been going at it when the building collapsed. That in turn laid the foundation for Tennyo testifying that she had beaten the Arch-Fiend and seen him change into the Defendant, Wilbur Bunsen.
Mr. Metzlinger, Bunsen’s lawyer, hammered away at Chaka, Lancer and then Tennyo in turn. He ridiculed their use of code names, tried to drag the school into the matter, and generally did everything that he could muddy the waters. And he did an excellent job of it. While he couldn’t get Billie to lose her temper, he did effectively discredit her testimony about seeing the Arch-Fiend change into Wilbur Bunsen. And, as Billie was the only one who actually HAD seen Bunsen change, it was her word against the word of a man who had spent over a month in jail without resorting to changing into a form that could have broken out of that jail.
When Court recessed for lunch, Toni muttered, “I’m never gonna watch Perry Mason again.”
When court was called back into session, Judge Winchester announced that while Tennyo’s testimony was compelling, her refusal to give her true name damaged her credibility. And there wasn't enough proof supporting the claim that a single accusation by non-credible witness was sufficient to establish that the Defendant, Wilbur Bunsen, was indeed the individual known as the ‘Arch-Fiend’.
Bunsen almost glowed with smugness as his lawyer stood to petition for Bunsen’s release. Collier objected. “Your honor, while the Commonwealth of Massachusetts hasn’t proven that the Defendant is the individual charged, there IS the fact that Mr. Bunsen is in flagrant violation of his parole in New York State. And even if leaving New York State wasn’t sufficient grounds for revoking Mister Bunsen’s parole, there’s the fact that he hasn’t checked in with his parole officer for three years. The New York Parole Board revoked Mr. Bunsen’s parole two and a half years ago, and he is wanted in New York for several felonies. Your honor, I move that Mr. Bunsen’s extradition be expedited, and he be transported to New York immediately for incarceration there.”
Metzlinger stood and argued that even if Mr. Bunsen was extradited to New York, that there was no reason for him to continuing wearing the heavy and cumbersome ‘choke collar’ that he’d been wearing for a month. The ‘choke collar’ was a nasty bit of business that jail guards had come up with to control guys who grew and got stronger. Usually, one of the things that got larger quickly when someone grew was the neck. The ‘choke collar’ was designed to drape over the shoulders so that it didn’t interfere with the person wearing it as long as they stayed the same size. But if the neck expanded, the shape of the collar forced the neck to move so that two bulges on other side would pinch the carotid artery and the jugular vein, rendering the prisoner unconscious. Civil Rights activists hated it, calling it brutal and inhumane, but jail guards argued that it only worked if the prisoner was actively trying to escape. Judge Winchester ruled that since the Commonwealth hadn’t proven that Mr. Bunsen was the Arch-Fiend, that the presumption of innocence demanded that the choke collar be removed.
As they filed out of the courtroom, Chaka snarked, “Well, that was a day that would have been better spent in English class!”
Ms. Collier gave Metzlinger, who was hurriedly calling someone on his cell phone, a knowing look and smiled cruelly. “Not necessarily. Miss Grimes, do you think that your students might benefit from seeing a little more of the Justice System in action?”
Grimes picked up on Collier’s cue. “Well, as long as we’re here…”
November 19, 1: 20 PM
Sakti grumped as she stomped out of the elevator onto the eleventh floor, “I do not BELIEVE this man! First he drags me down here, then he has me wait for hours, then he tells me to take a long lunch break, and NOW he says that we have to be in his office NOW, or he’ll penalize me!”
“What can I say?” Jetstream, Sakti’s Junior-year chaperone said, “All the world over, tax men like to have the upper hand.” While the Republic of India does a lot of business in the Greater Boston area, it only maintains four Consulates, in New York City, Chicago, Houston and San Francisco. Jetstream was actually rather grateful for this, as a consulate would have had a security scanner at the door, which would have been embarrassing. The Indian Legation in Boston was actually only a law firm that had a history of doing business with India, and kept offices for a few Indian officials.
Foxfire and Pucelle followed Sakti and Jetstream into the law firm’s offices, where the receptionist told them that Mr. Ambekhar would be with them in a few minutes. Sakti let out a low growl.
November 19, 1: 25 PM
Chief Tilly looked at the Whateley students as they filed into the Prison Transport loading dock. “Plan B?” he asked Collier.
“Plan B. And hoping that we don’t need Plan C.”
“We have a Plan C?”
“Yes. Unfortunately, it involves a lot of people getting hurt.”
Metzlinger was with Bunsen as the jailhouse guards brought him to the loading dock. “WHAT is THAT?” Metzlinger snarled as he pointed an indignant finger at the transport van in the dock.
Most prison transports are either simple vans or busses that have been modestly reinforced, some with special ‘Protective custody’ cells. This van, however, looked more like an armored personnel carrier or an armored car. It was much taller than an average van by almost two feet. It had sixteen oversized puncture-resistant tires on eight wheels, four on each side, with armored hubcaps. The only windows were for the drivers, and the entire van was covered with thick angled armored plating. The door at the back looked like it belonged on a small vault.
“THAT,” Chief Tilly said with some pride, “is the ‘Iron Coffin’. Or, to be precise, the New York State Metahuman Prisoner Transport Vehicle. They’ve transported Gog AND Magog t’gether in that thing. That thing’s rated to contain a pris’ner with a Threat Ratin’ of SEVEN. Once they’re locked in there, they ain’t goin’ nowhere ‘till they get to Ryker’s Island.”
“Why are you singling my client out this way?” Metzlinger demanded. “We’ve proven that he’s not this ‘Arch-Fiend’! So why is he being subjected to such special attention?”
“Special?” Tilly responded equitably. “What special? The Iron Coffin’s NY Department a’ Corrections property. They sent it up here for the Arch- I mean, Mr. Bunsen, t’ answer for wants an’ warrants down in the Big Apple. It’s gotta go back to En-Why-Cee, and it’s just as cheap to send it back with a few pris’ners as it is empty. And, thanks to yer diligent efforts Couns’ler, Massachusetts has no further interest in Mr. Bunsen; so why keep him here, eatin’ on the Commonwealth’s tab, when we could send him down to Noo Yawk, where they axshully WANT him? And as for ‘singling out’?” Jail guards brought out three very large, very nasty looking prisoners, any one of whom looked both strong enough and vicious enough to rip poor flabby Wilbur Bunsen to shreds. “These bad boys gotta go down t’ New York too. Normally, the ol’ Iron Coffin only transports one or two at a time, but there’s more’n room for all four of ‘em.”
November 19, 1: 25 PM
The receptionist chipperly showed Sakti, Foxfire, Jetstream and Pucelle into the office. Mr. Ambekhar, the legation head introduced Mr. Mhalgiri, the tax official, and invited Sakti and Jetstream to sit down.
As she settled in, Sakti said, “I still don’t understand why the financial representative from Whateley isn’t here.”
“Oh, he is,” Ambekhar said, something happening to his voice, “and his continued wellbeing is a matter of your cooperation.” Suddenly, thick straps whipped out of the well-stuffed chairs snaring both Silver and Jetstream hand and foot to the chairs. ‘Mr. Mhalgiri’ darted forward, grabbing Foxfire, pulling her in front of him and putting a large-caliber gun to her temple. The figures of ‘Mr. Ambekhar’ and ‘Mr. Mhalgiri’ faded, revealing the darking forms of the Necromancer and Nightgaunt. “Resist, and he’ll blow her brains all over you!” the Necromancer barked at Pucelle, the only girl left free.
Pucelle paused, not sure what to do
‘Oh Shit’, Vamp thought to herself from outside the office, ‘Bonehead might actually pull this one off!’ That was not the plan at all. Lacking anything better to think of, she launched a paperclip at the back of Nightgaunt’s helmet with a rubber band. Nightgaunt was so tense and focused that he reacted enough to give Foxfire her opening. Slyboots scrambled up out of her mistress’ tote and blocked Nightgaunt’s vision. Nightgaunt reactively fired his gun. Foxfire reacted by erupting in a sheath of pale blue fire, and sending a bolt of fire across the desk at the Necromancer.
The Necromancer ignored Foxfire’s attack and stood menacingly. Pucelle reacted by shooting forward and ripping apart the chair that Jet-stream was trapped in with a single wrench. Jetstream, who had been struggling with the bonds, let out an eager “HAH!” and quick-drew a pair of blaster pistols. All in one spasm of action, Nightgaunt lunged for Foxfire, Foxfire dropped to the floor, the Necromancer fired a blast of necrotic energy at Foxfire, Jetstream fired both blasters at the Necromancer, and Pucelle threw one of the halves of the chair-trap at Nightgaunt. Silver, for her part, just sat there and let out a mild oath in Bengali.
The chair and the death-bolt hit Nightgaunt at the same time, knocking him through the plate-glass window. Foxfire hit the floor and tried to get an idea as to what the lay of the land was. The Necromancer who had been caught flat-footed by the ray-blasts, took them both square in the chest without any of his usual protections, and was knocked through the wall into the next office.
‘Well, that turned out nicely,’ Vamp thought to herself. ‘Still, Bonehead will skin me alive if I don’t make a token effort to the cause. Just give them a minute…’
Then Foxfire spotted Vamp at the door. “Charlie has backup! Get us OUT of here, Jet!” She sent a sheet of witchfire to block the door.
Jetstream ceased pelting the hole in the wall with rapid-fire blasts, and shucked off her long coat revealing her gear-rack. She touched a button, and a pair of wings unfolded, swinging out into a flying rig. With her off hand, she blasted the chair, which Silver had already managed to get halfway out of. “I can only carry two! Foxfire, can you fly?”
“Don’t bother!” Pucelle shouted, assuming a ‘heroic martyr’ pose, “I’ll hold him back, no matter WHAT the cost!”
Vamp figured that Jetpack Girl would have a much easier time getting away with Bluefire Girl than the mouthy brick. Besides, she’d really rather grapple with a brick than an energy-slinger. Well, it was time to look good for the Boss-man, and maybe give these gits the incentive to get their asses in gear before Darrow got his act together. She jumped through the wall of fire and threw herself at the bundled up one.
The armored man known as ‘the Anti-Paladin’ glowered at his three companions in the van, who were playing an idiotic wi-fi game on their cell phones in the middle of a mission. Both Lady Darke and Lycanthros had set off their diversions, and the Necromancer had signaled that the main mission was underway. And those three were playing a fucking video game. Admittedly, Darrow had hired them only to act as backup in case one of the local superheroes showed up in one of those strokes of incredible luck that superheroes seem to have. But still, is a little professional decorum so much to ask?
Then an alarm sounded. Checking the panel, the Anti-Paladin determined that Darrow had hit his ‘Immediate Problem’ button. The Anti-Paladin popped his head up out of the roof hatch to catch a dark figure falling from the floor where the Indian legation was. Then the dark figure’s cape snapped open, and it angled over to a convenient shadow, where it disappeared. A moment later, three girls appeared at the jagged opening in the window-glass of the building. One of them jumped out with a loud whoop. As she executed a wide arcing loop to return for the other two, the Anti-Paladin gestured, and a high powered sniper rifle, complete with targeting sights, appeared in a cocoon of flame.
The Anti-paladin examined the flight pack on the girl’s back through the sighting telescope as she took the two other girls by the hand and airlifted them. He tracked her, got a sense of her airspeed and general trajectory, and let off a single round that destroyed one of the rocket engines without actually hurting the girl. He didn’t know whether Darrow would want her for something or not. And if not, well, he could always kill her later. “Go get them!” he snapped.
Matterhorn and Jabberwock set their game aside without a pause and jumped out of the van. Ironhawk smoothly began getting into his combat rig. Finally, they were acting like professionals.
Jetstream felt something hit her back, and her right lifting engine went off line. As she and the others began a spinning descent, Jetstream screamed, ”SHIT! SILVER! HIT MY BELT BUCKLE!”
“Why?”
“SOS Beacon! We need help!”
“You couldn’t have done that before?” Foxfire snapped.
As he cleared his head, the Necromancer let out a reflexive telepathic call for his subordinates. *Lycanthros! Lady Darke! Arch-Fiend! TO ME!* By the time that he climbed through the hole in the wall, the Blaster-Girl was lifting out his target and the girl who had spewed magic fire at him through a hole in the windows. He let out a withering bolt of necrotic force, but his aim was rushed and he barely missed them as lit out the window.
Vamp was vigorously grappling with the sole remaining girl, in whom Darrow had absolutely NO interest. Darrow rushed to the window and was aiming at the fleeing figures when the crack of a firearm rang out. The flying girl’s jetpack jolted and then started to spin into a just-barely controlled descent. Darrow followed the sound of the shot to a van, where his hireling, the Anti-Paladin, was lowering a sniper rifle. The side door to the van opened, and he could see Matterhorn and Jabberwock exit the van and race to where the girls would land. Ironhawk was getting out of the van and enabling his flying rig with military precision. It was good to see that there were still some professionals left.
Darrow turned just in time to see Nightgaunt return through a shadow in the office. Nightgaunt came up on Vamp’s opponent’s blindside, bringing out a billy club as he came. The Necromancer stopped him. “No. Let Vamp finish this.”
As she wrestled with the Pillsbury Doughgirl, Vamp kept draining the girl. And draining. And draining. ‘Jeez Louise, how much juice does this bimbo HAVE?’ Vamp wondered to herself. Then, with an intense dread, she felt it start again. She was drinking in too much energy. This was why she’d gone after the brick, instead of the bluefire girl: when she drank in too much energy, it was like getting drunk. The more she drank, the more she wanted, and she started feeling her self-control slip. She tried to will herself to stop, but she couldn’t. And that was the last that she remembered before the Hunger took her over completely.
At the Courthouse, Wilbur Bunsen was pleading with his lawyer Metzlinger, who was yapping into a cell phone, but not really doing that much else as the jail guards dragged Bunsen into the ‘Iron Coffin’. Then he stiffened, and the jail guards got him into the van without much more trouble.
“Hmpf,” Captain Tilly said grudgingly. “I’d’a thot fer shure that he’d’a dropped the act by now.” He spared Tennyo a sharp look. “Are you absolute sure that you saw that guy change into the Arch-Fiend?”
Before Billie could reply, there was a sound of shrill screaming from inside the van, and the van started rocking violently. SWAT guards rushed to the back door of the van, but they were knocked aside when the orange-clad body of one of the prisoners was thrown through the door with cannon-like force. There were more terrified screams, and one of the jail guards was forced through the door by an arm wrapped around his throat, using his entire body as a living shield for the rest of the barely-human entity that was trying to get out.
“SHOWTIME!” Tilly barked. As a body, Team Kimba scurried back- not to avoid the fight, but rather to avoid the loading dock’s security cameras. When they were out of sight of the cameras, each of them held a small backpack in front of them. Nikki held up a scrap of paper and recited an enchantment. All of Team Kimba was obscured by an intense white light, and when the light faded, instead of six girls and a boy in school uniforms, there were seven figures in white outfits with colored trim and identifying symbols: red/ tree, saffron/ Tao symbol, dark blue/ knight-piece, light blue/ wings, dark orange/ cat’s head, black/ gradated capitol ‘P’. Well, except for the little one, which was in different shades of pink, with a ‘G’ inside a gear. The outfits were vaguely reminiscent of the outfits worn by the ‘Mortal Kombat’ characters ‘Skorpion’ and ‘Sub-Zero’. They were essentially ninja outfits with padded ‘vests’, shin and forearm guards, utility belts, and protective visors.
The figures in blue trim lifted off the ground. The figures in saffron and orange trim respectively produced a Chinese sword and a length of chain, and advanced carefully. The figure with gray trim sank through the concrete dock. The figure with red trim stayed back and began tracing lines of silvery fire in the air. The figure in pink stood still, but there was a twisting in the air, and another figure in a tattered black cloak with an eerie white face that belonged in a Japanese ghost story appeared.
Captain Tilly pulled out a bullhorn, and snarled through it, “Okay, Bunsen, you’re rumbled! You’re surrounded! We kicked your ass last time, when you had yer buddies backin’ you up! Now, it’s just YOU. Put DOWN the guard, and shrink back down t’ reg’lar size, an’ put on the collar, or I tell these kids to kick yer ass from here t’ Noo Yark!”
The Arch-Fiend hesitated, his eyes darting every which way, and saw that no matter what he did, he’d face someone. Despite his massive size, he cringed behind the guard that he was using for a shield- no, he was gathering his breath! He let out a deep gusting breath of thick, noxious bituminous smoke that assaulted their eyes and noses as well as obscured their vision. Nikki was on her knees, trying to keep from retching from the awful stench. She finally managed to keep her lunch down enough to summon up a wind that dispelled the vile mist.
“Where is he?” Tennyo asked, as she waved her sword at the last of the vapors.
Hank went high. “There he is!” He pointed to the northeast, “Heading out like his tail was on fire!”
“Okay, Team Kimba, Let’s roar!” Toni yelled, “Let’s nail that bunny!”
“Don’t bag ‘im right away,” Captain Tilly. “We took the pr’caution of taggin’ the boy while he was playin’ possum. He’s got a tracker device in his scrubs. Now ask yerselfs, kids- where is good ol’ Wilber mostly likely headed?”
“The Necromancer?”
“Right. You follow him, but let ‘im get to Darrow before you jump him. And don’t try to take Darrow down yerselves. Just keep him an’ his road-comp’ny Addams Fam’ly in one place while SWAT and the real superheroes take ‘em down.”
“*ahem!* ‘Real superheroes’?” Chaka said with a sharp tone to her voice.
“Hold on!” Grimes said, looking at her cell phone. “Jetstream just sent out a SOS!”
“ ‘Jetstream’?” Tilly asked bewildered.
“Which way is it?” Jade asked. Grimes checked the GPS on her phone and pointed in the general direction of northeast.
“Sorry Chief, but if Archie isn’t headed that way to give Darrow some backup, then a higher priority just dropped in our laps,” Chaka said. “Give the Supers the tracking frequency, in case there’s more than one show going down. We gotta go! Saddle up, people!”
Tennyo dropped down to pick up Bladedancer, Lancer gave a lift to Phase, Shroud took Chaka, and Fey flew on a lifting wind. ‘Generator’ sprouted a pair of pink butterfly wings from her ‘flight pack’ and lifted off in a sprinkle of fairy dust. As Team Kimba flew off to save Silver and the others, Tilly turned to Miss Grimes. “Butterfly wings?”
“Don’t ask me, I barely know those girls.”
Silver grabbed Foxfire and dropped from Jetstream’s grasp as the devisor-girl spiraled down towards the ground. Silver extended her legs and lowered them both to the ground. Foxfire goggled as an absolutely huge man in shades of blue, gray and white came thumping towards them, and an eerily distorted man who looked like he’d escaped from a Heironymous Bosch canvas followed. “Where the fuck did THEY come from?”
“Far more to the point,” Silver said grimly as she formed blades around her hands, “Where do they want their bodies sent?”
Foxfire whipped her hands forward, and a high wall of raging pale blue fire erupted between the girls and the two bizarre attackers. Jetstream bounced back from a less than graceful landing, shed her backpack and overcoat, and whipped out a pair of retro-tech looking blasters. She gave a glad “HAH!” at the prospect of a good fight, and stared blasting at the giant.
“Where’s Pucelle?” Sakti asked as she braced for the onslaught.
“Still back at the Legate,” Jetstream said as she unlimbered a large launcher tube.
“Why did you even bring that?” Foxfire asked.
“Hey, can you ask for a better illustration of ‘better to not need it and have it, than to need it and not have it?” Jetstream laughed. “Hey, Sakti, don’t worry about Pucelle- she can take care of herself!”
Pucelle was thrashing about helplessly in Vamp’s grip as the pale girl drained the very last of her energy with a rictus of manic glee on her face. Vamp giggled insanely as she dropped Pucelle and turned to Nightgaunt and the Necromancer. The Necromancer pointed to the broken window and shouted, “The Silver Girl!”
Vamp cackled and leapt through the window into the street, gliding on the wind in the general direction of the fight. “Can we trust her, in that state of mind?” Nightgaunt asked.
“That state of mind is the only condition that I trust Vamp in,” Darrow responded. “The Hunger drives her now. THAT, I trust. Go, make sure of our prize.” Nightgaunt nodded, and walked through a shadow. The Necromancer walked to the very edge. He’d watch from a distance, and insert himself only when necessary, if necessary.
Matterhorn was trying to batter down Foxfire’s wall of magical fire, even as Jabberwock was intercepting and deflecting the shots that Jetstream was lobbing at them. Then there was a screaming sound above, and Ironhawk dropped a concussion grenade on Jetstream. The grenade was muffled by her personal force field, but it still threw Foxfire for a loop. Her wall of fire dropped, and Silver was suddenly going hand to hand with Jabberwock and Matterhorn.
Jetstream grinned savagely up at Ironhawk as he banked for a turn into another pass. “Oh, so THAT’S the way you wanna play it, hah?” She struggled with her backpack and started cobbling things together with uncanny speed. “ ‘Oh, Jetstream, you’re so paranoid!’” she sneered in a mocking voice, “ ‘There’s no reason for you to bring along a flying rig, let alone a Dogfight Rig!’” She shouldered the rig and sent a blast at Ironhawk, who wasn’t quite ready to drop his next charge on them. She forced him to evade, which required that he pass and try again. Then Jetstream turned her MP3 player to the theme music from ‘Top Gun’, thumbed her own rig’s ignition, and lifted off with an exulting, “Yeeee-HAW!”
Matterhorn tried to pick up Silver time and again, but only got cuts on his hand for his delicacy. Jabberwock had his hands around Foxfire’s throat, but she erupted in a ‘Human Torch’ blaze of her trademark pale blue fire. As Jabberwock jumped back, the flame resolved into terrifying vision of a warrior angel in fantastic plate armor that displayed a set of curves that Foxfire couldn’t honestly lay claim to, with a shield bearing the sigil of the Seraphim and a longsword that blazed with divine fire.
Ironhawk sensed that the gadget-girl was coming up his tail, and tried to pull an Immelmann turn, but got zapped by her blasters for his efforts. Then an insane giggling came down the street, with an equally insanely grinning pale girl in black clubwear hot on its heels. She jumped past Matterhorn and Silver and tackled the warrior angel, knocking her head over heels. From there, the scene quickly devolved into the fog of war.
Matterhorn got a grip on Silver, but lost it when Ironhawk blundered into him at 300 mph. * The Anti-Paladin tried to get a bead on the jetpack girl, but that idiot Ironhawk wouldn’t get the girl to follow him in a trajectory that the Anti-Paladin could track. Didn’t that fool know what Fire Overwatch was FOR? * Jabberwock tried to slash at the angel, but Matterhorn dropped the silver-girl on top of him. * Foxfire kept slashing at the vampire-girl with her sword, but for some reason she seemed to LIKE it! * Feeling something under her, Silver reflexively twisted around and got whoever it was in a nutcracker grip. Upon reflection, she was very relieved that she hadn’t attacked Foxfire by mistake. * Jetstream rose up and came back down again, forcing Ironhawk to break off his pursuit. She clipped him on the way down, which knocked three grenades off the carrying rack. The grenades dropped near the melee, which only made the scuffle even that much more confusing. *
The Anti-Paladin bit off a curse as Ironhawk confused things even MORE. He made a mental note to never work with Ironhawk again. Power Armor jockeys were a dime a dozen, and there was no reason to put up with incompetents. He gave up on trying to hit the jetpack girl. If he did it right, he could render her inconsequential up there, and handle things on the ground. Hefting his sniper rifle to a carry position, the Anti-Paladin exited the van, and moved to a position where he could get a better shot into the melee. He braced and set the rifle, and waited for a clear shot. Even with a sniper round, he wasn’t that worried about killing the real target of the exercise; a round might only stun her long enough for Matterhorn to get things in hand. Unfortunately, Jabberwock was grappling with her, and he didn’t want to shoot the Jabberwock, who was actually acting like a pro.
However, the ‘angel’ was another matter. She was grappling with Vamp, and the Anti-Paladin didn’t think that the Necromancer would mind if he put a hole in her. Besides, the way that Vamp was frothing at the mouth, he might have to put a bullet in her anyway. So, he started to pick a single-shot kill on the ‘angels’ head. Take her out, and the ground troops could focus on the silver girl.
But before he could take the shot, Anti-Paladin heard a whining noise behind him. His shot was ruined when something hit him from behind with the force of a speeding car. As he reeled from the impact, a trim, athletic woman in a blue-and-white bodysuit with padded forearm guards and boots, and a speed-trimmed helmet with goggles skidded to a stop, and then came back at him. This time, she took the rifle from his hands and let it keep traveling as she came to a stop a good fifty yards behind him. He finally had a chance to recognize her. Speed Queen, one of the local white hats. She’d been one of the ‘heroes’ that Darrow had briefed them on. Top recorded speed: 230 MPH for about two minutes. Cruising speed: 90 mph. Able to go from a dead stop to 60 MPH in ten seconds flat, but had problems with inertia. Had been taped going through a brick wall without too much trouble. Theorized that her rather clunky looking boots either protected her feet from the thousands of impacts per second of her running, or in some other way assisted in her movement. The key to dealing with super-speedsters, especially ones with inertia issues, is not try to cope with where they are, but rather to control the lines of transit that they must use.
Moving so that he was situated properly, he held up his right hand and called forth a shotgun. Glowering at Speed Queen, who was waiting for him to aim before moving, the Anti-Paladin suddenly turned and aimed the shotgun at the angel-girl and Vamp. Gauging her speed by her sound, the Anti-Paladin didn’t fire, but sidestepped, called forth a large hoplite shield, and bashed her with it as she passed where he had been, knocking her into Vamp and the angel-girl. He looked up at Ironhawk and the jetgirl mixing it up in the air. He pondered briefly about retrieving his sniper rifle, and dismissed the thought. He dismissed his shotgun and called forth a broadsword. He headed into the melee before Speed Queen could disentangle herself from Vamp. Jabberwock was much better able to handle speedsters, so he’d free the Wock from his chore of pinning the silver girl down for Matterhorn. And the Fog of War lowered again.
* “Hey! Cut it out! I’m here to SAVE you!” * Foxfire dropped the seeming Warrior-Angel, and switched over to the ‘multiple images’ ploy.
When Silver felt an arm wrap around her throat, she extruded blades from her spine, but they only rasped against hardened metal plate.
Jabberwock pulled himself together after the Anti-Paladin shoved him aside. Then he saw Speed Queen zip away from Vamp’s draining embrace, and understood. * Vamp laughed as Speed Queen ran away. She was having the time of her life! Drink, drink, drink! There’s nothing in the world like the taste of someone’s life force going down!
The albino was too busy howling like a hyena, so Foxfire took advantage of the opening and sent a sheet of foxfire at the giant’s foot. Matterhorn was gearing up for another grab at the silver girl, when his right foot felt like it was on fire. He looked down, and, God Damn! His foot WAS on fire! The fact that his boot was armored and fireproofed didn’t really register as his hind brain took over, and he put everything he had into stomping out the pale blue fire that was chewing up his foot.
Silver grappled whoever was trying to choke her, pulled him over her and threw him into the giant’s other foot as he danced around trying to put out a fire that wouldn’t extinguish. *
“NO ONE MOVE!” boomed an artificially amplified voice. The force of the command made everyone stop and look. The Necromancer stood a few yards away, holding Pucelle by her neck like a rag doll. “If anyone moves, does anything, I’ll twist her neck off like a chicken!” He clamped his right hand atop her head as though to begin twisting.
Speed Queen, Silver and Foxfire all froze in their tracks, more out of need to figure out what to do, than real compliance. It didn’t matter, because the second that they froze, Nightgaunt leapt out of a shadow and struck the back of Foxfire’s head with a nightclub. He escaped through another shadow before Foxfire even had a chance to fall to the ground. Speed Queen and Silver were jolted out of their standstill, but the Necromancer shook Pucelle at them to keep them from doing anything. “Over there,” the Necromancer told Speed Queen, “with them.”
Speed Queen very pointedly walked, not ran, over to where Silver and Foxfire were standing. Matterhorn and the Anti-Paladin stepped away from them, and the Necromancer threw Pucelle bodily at Speed Queen and Silver’s feet.
Jabberwock was grappling with Vamp, who was all too eager to keep fighting. “Fine! And what about HER?”
Wordlessly, the Necromancer pointed at them and a whitish spray erupted from his gauntlet. A reek of garlic filled the air and Vamp started sneezing furiously. After a bit, she slumped in Jabberwock’s grip and moaned, “Ooohhh… my achin’ head…”
As this was going on, Foxfire struggled to her hands and knees, shaking the concussion out of her head. When she saw Pucelle there, she reflexively wrapped a protective wall of foxfire around them all. “Thank you, my dear,” the Necromancer said snidely. “That makes this so much easier.” From out of nowhere, he pulled a staff made like an overlong spinal column complete with back ribs, capped by a bear skull with rubies in the eyes. As the rubies glowed, he sketched runes of shadow in midair, which danced in the air for a moment before flying over to the wall of foxfire. They set themselves in the pale blue flame and created a filigree barrier that completely caged the four women.
“Aw, crud,” Foxfire said in a flat voice.
Once the barrier was complete, the Necromancer set about adjusting the pattern. “Excuse me,” the Anti-Paladin said, “but can you take care of that later? We’re out in the middle of the street here!”
“Patience,” the Necromancer rasped. “Patience is one of the few virtues that I still possess.” The filigree went black and grew iron thorns that pointed both within and without the cage. He formed a circular hole in the barrier and then started on another.
The Anti-Paladin looked up at Ironhawk’s dogfight with the jet-girl. The damn fool wasn’t getting anywhere with it. So much for his reputation as a hotshot jet jock. “Enough of that idiocy,” he snarled. He dismissed his broadsword, and a shoulder-mounted 4-shot rocket launcher appeared in a burst of hellfire. “I’ll just have to take the chance that it’ll hit Ironhawk,” he said as he set the spotter on the girl. “It’s not like he didn’t know that the job was dangerous when he took it.”
Just as the Anti-Paladin was getting a targeting lock on the jet-girl, she was tackled in midair by a red-and-orange figure. Jetstream gave out a surprised scream and went tumbling to the ground. She had just enough presence of mind to crank her personal force field up to the very max just before she hit the asphalt. Even so, she hit the pavement hard and immediately went still. The Arch-Fiend struggled to his feet and gave an awkward bow. “You called, Master?”
The Necromancer looked up confused from the second hole that he was forming in the cage. “Arch-Fiend? Bunsen, what the Hell are you doing here?”
A look of abject confusion crossed the Arch-Fiend’s diabolically handsome features. “But… you called me. You called all of us. So I came immediately.”
“Did I?” Darrow paused. “Oh, yes, I did.” Darrow’s skull mask couldn’t conceal his confusion. “You didn’t change where anyone could see you, did you?”
“I had to!” Wilbur cried. “They were just about to load me onto a transport down to New York! There are people in New York who’ve seen me change!”
“They were about to load you?” The Necromancer snarled, all uncertainty gone. “FOOL!”
“But… you called…” Wilbur whined as he cringed.
The Anti-Paladin whipped his rocket launcher up to his shoulder, scanned for a second and let a round fly. The rocket was intercepted in mid-flight by a blast of energy. The eye was immediately drawn back along the trajectory of the blast to a group of five white and one black figure flying figures, approaching.
Oh yes, and a figure in pink, with butterfly wings fluttering along behind, leaving a trail of pixie dust.
As the Anti-Paladin readied his next round, the black figure dropped the white-and-dark orange figure that it was carrying. Even before she hit the ground, Chaka pulled an odd-looking arrangement of bars and cables from its sheath and gave the main cord a pull. The pull of the drawstring caused the configuration to unfold, telescope and click into place as a powerful compound bow. As she hit the sidewalk, Chaka let fly with three telescoping arrows that flew unerringly to the three primed missiles in their slots in the Anti-Paladin’s rocket launcher. The rectangular launcher was designed to focus the power of an accidental blast forward and back, but even so the force of the exploding launcher would have killed a lesser man than the Anti-Paladin.
As the Anti-Paladin reeled, Darrow railed, “GET THEM, YOU FOOLS!” He added as a softer remark, “Try and earn your pay this time!”
Matterhorn grew to his full size and charged at Team Kimba, with Jabberwock, and Ironhawk backing him up. Darrow gave the Arch-Fiend a glower, and Bunsen launched himself at his pursuers.
Tennyo let Bladedancer drop and hung there in the air as Matterhorn came roaring at her. “Oh, puh-leeze…” Tennyo sneered, as she let go with a blast at Matterhorn. Her smirk melted as her plasma blast ricocheted off of the giant’s chest into an office building, creating a hole you could drive a car through just before his sedan-sized fist plowed right into her. He also intercepted Lancer in mid-flight, sending the boy sprawling into Fey.
As Tennyo pried herself out of the hole in the building that Matterhorn’s punch had created with her body, she snarled, “Buddy, when I get through with you, yer gonna wish that you’d stuck to selling string beans and peas!” She launched herself at Matterhorn and let fly with one of her most devastating blasts, one that would have slagged the laser range that had given her so much trouble. Again, it just bounced off his chest, and reduced three high price tag cars to molten slag. Matterhorn swatted Billie down to the street and literally stomped on her until she was embedded in the asphalt.
As Matterhorn raised his foot for another crushing stomp, Lancer disentangled himself (however reluctantly) from Fey and charged at a spot just above the huge man’s center of gravity, knocking the giant off balance. Fey stood, reached into her utility belt, producing a small manikin carved of white poplar and a red ribbon with characters embroidered on it in silver thread. “NECROMANCER!” She shouted in her best orating tone, “Charles Upton Darrow! By your name, and the names of your father, Edwin Acton Darrow, and your mother, Aseneth Ward Darrow, I bind you! By the unclean blood that stains Innsmouth, I bind you!” She wrapped the ribbon around the wooden doll. “As Fenrir was bound, so are you bound! N’stharasai aes wadaran stheno! By the Authority of the Court of the West, I charge you, liar, break-oath and traitor! Mordok yaasa tyamatak!” As Fey chanted and wrapped the ribbon around the doll, character in silver fire appeared around the man in sinister dark armor.
Darrow turned from his work and began gesturing as well. “So many personal details, Forgotten Princess! You’ve been gossiping with my treacherous niece, I see. I wager she even dipped that dainty ribbon in her own foul blood, didn’t she? Well, _I_ came prepared as well!”
As if on cue, Nightgaunt leapt from a shadow and clipped Nikki alongside the head with a truncheon. Nikki’s hood was well armored and padded against such eventualities, but even with that, Nikki was all too aware that Nightgaunt’s truncheon was made of Cold Iron. Nightgaunt brought the iron bar across Nikki’s ribs, causing her to drop the doll and ribbon, further causing the restraining glyphs to begin to wander. Nightgaunt was about to try to batter through Fey’s protective headgear and crush her brains, when an arrow flew out of nowhere and hit him precisely in the space between the joints of his shoulder and biceps armor. He immediately jumped back into a shadow, as a few more arrows passed through the place where he would have been.
Chaka cursed under her breath as Nightgaunt passed from her reckoning. She knew that with Tennyo down, her ‘fire overwatch’ was probably doing more to help the situation than anything else that she could have done, but every bone in her body wanted to be in the middle of the action, mixing it up. Tennyo was mixing it up with the bizarroid stretchy-guy and having a much harder time of it than she should have. Hank had the giant down, and was trying to keep him down, but he had his hands full. There was a white-and-black blur with tinges of red, and suddenly Hank had his hands full of girl.
“Well, hel-LO there!” Vamp purred. “Aren’t YOU just the cutest bundle of yes in the neighborhood?” Lancer grabbed her by the wrists, but Vamp just smirked some more and pulled free of his grasp. “Boy… I’ll bet that you’re all… hot… and *excited* from all this fighting, aren’t you?” She traced a finger along the line of his jaw, and then paused. “Hanh?” she blurted, “Why can’t I touch you?”
Hank, who had been slipping a little, jolted out of the hormone-driven trance, snapped out of it. “Vamp, is it? There’s something that I thought that I’d never have to say again.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m not that kind of girl.” With that, he backhanded her off of Matterhorn’s back. Then he felt something touch the back of his head. Turning around, Hank found himself looking down the barrel of a .45 automatic- again. Trusting that Nightgaunt didn’t recognize him, Hank said. “Well, I guess that you’re just going to have to pull the trigger.” Instead, Nightgaunt sank down into Hank’s shadow. As his gaze followed Nightgaunt down, Hank suddenly realized that the .45 had only been a distraction- the faceless fink had somehow stuck a US Navy General Issue Demolitions pack to his chest! Just as his hands were on the plastique, it went off.
Actually, while it did both knock him unconscious and blast him off of Matterhorn’s back, it did Matterhorn more damage than it did Hank. However, it also inspired him to a near-berserk rage. He reared up with a mindless roar and started swatting at everything in white. Of course, he wasn’t looking where he was stepping, and stepped on both Jabberwock and Tennyo.
Matterhorn’s rampage was a severe distraction to the two mage’s combat, so by unspoken agreement, they lifted off the ground. Thorny tendrils of darkness gusted forth from the bear-skull’s fanged maw as the ruby eyes glittered evilly. Fey conjured up a pair of golden wings which first acted as a shield on which the tendrils shattered and then scattered the tendrils like so much filthy smog. Then Nikki called up a shining sword carved from a single diamond, clipped it to the wings and sent them at the Necromancer. The necromancer pointed his staff at the approaching missile. The bear-skull grew huge and devoured it, the n returned to normal size, and spat something down the street. The gob of darkness hit the asphalt and thirteen long black iron chains erupted up from the street and wrapped themselves around the Faerie Queen who screamed at the touch of more cold iron. As Nikki writhed, a slight figure in white and saffron darted out as if from nowhere, severed all thirteen chains at their root with a single stroke, and was gone again.
As iron chains vanished like so much smoke, Fey was visibly pissed, even through her mask. “Mageling, for that, you’ll wish that your mother had given you to whate’er nameless abomination that she’d promised you to!” she snarled in the voice of the Daughter of the Burning Oak. She sketched an enneagram in the air, and a flock of 121 glowing fisher-hawks streamed forward to do battle.
“Oh, Please!” Darrow countered, “If I’d laid down and died every time that some self-appointed godling lay a malediction on my head, there wouldn’t be enough room in all the Hells for all of me!” He swept the fisher-hawks’ path with the bear-skull staff, which gobbled them all up. “Keep them coming, Pretender Princess! I know you now, and I’ve taken measures beyond mere cold iron! Behold the Scepter of Erlik! Erlik, the First Great Sinner! Erlik, who killed the First Queen of the West and ate her heart raw!” The Necromancer pointed the scepter at Fey, and a dark whirlwind emerged from the skull’s mouth and roared at her.
Nikki dismissed the wind with a negligent twiddle of her fingers. “Peasant, your ‘History’ is myth, your logic specious, and your arts second-rate. I DO hope that you got a receipt from whatever fraud sold you that piece of trash.” She gestured again, the Twelve Emerald Blades of Aesreth Kosvain launched themselves at the Necromancer, and the battle was joined in earnest.
Ironhawk hovered over the scene of the battle with a definite sense that he was badly overmatched. That was NOT good. A mercenary is only as good as his reputation, and so far in this fight, his rep was taking even more of a beating that he was. He’d been outgunned by a freaking girl, that freak Arch-Fiend’d had to save his butt, and now he was pretty much irrelevant. His common sense told him to light out, but running away after all that would be the final coffin in his professional coffin. The only way to redeem his rep and do something to convince the Necromancer that he’d earned his pay was to pull something from out of left field to win the day. He just had to find that ONE thing that would tip the scales…
There! The Arch-Fiend was mixing it up with the spooky chick in black and the little poof in pink. The spook was grappling with him, while ‘pinky’ was flying around taking shots at him with some sort of wrist blaster. Strange, the Arch-Fiend was ripping into the spook something fierce, but his claws weren’t really doing anything to her. Better and better. He could save the day, and show up the freak who’d shown him up, at the same time!
Ironhawk charged down at Pinky and tackled her in mid-air. He powered her down to street level, and turned on his PA system. “STAND DOWN!” he thundered. If the hostage ploy had worked for Darrow, it would work for him. He got her in a half nelson, pulled his utility knife and set it point first, just at her solar plexus. “IF YOU DON’T STAND DOWN, I’LL GUT HER LIKE A FISH!”
To his amazement, just as everyone was absorbing the facts of his tactic, ‘Pinky’ wrestled herself out of his grasp and forced herself onto his knife. He dropped her as she screamed and took the knife with her. He tried to catch her, but for some reason, his power armor wasn’t working.
Jann looked around ‘her’ new cybernetic body with some confusion at first. ‘Oh!’ she thought to herself, ‘So, THAT’S how this thing works!’
Suddenly, Ironhawk felt his flying rig kick on and lift off, even though he hadn’t done anything with the internal controls. He tried to take back control of his suit, but nothing that he did seemed to work.
‘Oh, this is so kewl!’ Jann exulted as she jetted along, taking a screaming Ironhawk along for the ride. ‘Let’s see what sort of trouble I can get into!’ Being new at it, she chose the biggest and most obvious target, charging into the side of Matterhorn’s head at top speed.
Back on the ground, the Anti-Paladin figured that the best way to deal with an enemy who was down, was to keep them down permanently. He called up a large caliber revolver and advanced on the small pink figure who was trying to pull the knife from her midsection. Let’s see if he couldn’t pick up the ball that Ironhawk had fumbled. A quick shot to the back of the head should do it. But as he was bringing the pistol down, he heard a roar off to his side, and turned just in time to see a white-with-blue-streaks tornado with a wide median band come spinning at him. He brought up his hoplite shield just in time to deflect its first impact. His shield held, but there was a buzz saw ripping sound, and much of the side of the shield went flying. As the tornado came for a second pass, the Anti-Paladin summoned up his broadsword again, wreathed it in hellfire and cocked it to strike.
But even as the white tornado tore at his shield, another white streak, this one with a sort of saffron tinge, passed just on the fringe of his sight. *shing!* As the Anti-Paladin swung the sword, impossibly his blade had been sheered off three inches from the guard. Enraged, the Anti-Paladin let the white tornado destroy his shield as he dropped his useless sword, and got the tornado in a crushing bear grip. The tornado jerked to a halt, resolving into a slender teenage boy in a slightly ragged white ‘ninja’ outfit. Hank glowered at the Anti-Paladin and snarked, “Hey, I already told yer pasty-faced girlfriend, I AIN’T that kinda girl!”
Hank twisted to return the Anti-Paladin’s grip. They struggled for a moment, and then an arrow flew into the gap of the Anti-Paladin’s helmet, delivering a powerful piezoelectric shock. The Anti-Paladin flinched enough for Lancer to begin bashing him mercilessly in the face with the striking plane of his own brow.
Vamp watched the battle from the safety of the cover provided by one of the parked cars. So far, it was coming along rather nicely. The hired hands were getting their professional asses kicked, the Necromancer had both hands full, and Nightgaunt had taken damage for the first time that she knew of. Still, she’d have to make at least one more appearance, or Darrow would accuse her of slacking off. And she’d make a big splashy play … later.
As Jann brought Ironhawk’s armor around for a third crash against Matterhorn’s north face, Phase managed to pound Jabberwock hard enough to give her room to lend Tennyo a hand. She pried Billie out of the hole in the ground into which she’d been mashed. “Ooohhh…” Billie groaned, “MAN, I am getting hammered today! Why can’t I hit this asshole?”
“What? You were asleep in Powers Theory?” Ayla asked. “Big Boy here is obviously a warper. Plasma may be able to burn anything, but it does squadoo against wrinkles in the fabric of space!”
“How do you know this?”
“You told me. That’s how you hold onto those plasma balls and form those energy swords of yours, remember?”
“Oh. Right.” Billie shook her head. “Okay, then how do I hurt this asshole?”
“Well, from the way that he and his buddy have been mauling you, I’d say that warper plus warper equals minus protection.”
“Hunh?”
“HIT him. Like, with your fist?” Then a thought hit Ayla. Warper… Powers Lab… Dr. Yablonski’s suggestion… Even through her ‘ninja’ mask, you could see Ayla smile. “Ooohhh… Yeeaaahhh… Y’think that maybe I can get some Powers Theory Lab credit for this?”
Since Jann/Ironhawk had gotten tired of ‘kamikaze’-ing into his head and gone looking for new sport, Matterhorn was free, and still pissed. He’d spotted them and was headed their way, with serious hurt written all over what you could see of his face. Jabberwock was moving to head them off, in case they tried to run away from his partner. Not wanting a second go-round with the man-mountain, Tennyo launched herself at Jabberwock, and they were soon embroiled in a classic- if graceless- catfight. Matterhorn brought a sledgehammer fist down on Phase. Ayla tensely timed it as best she could, and sent the energy that she used to ‘phase’ her body or other objects into the displacement field around Matterhorn, synchronizing with it.
A few words of explanation may be necessary here. Giants often cause a lot of fuss and argument in the High School science community, as they appear to violate several laws of physics. Such as the Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy, which asks where all that mass came from. Or the Law of Proportion, which states that all if a man grew from Six Feet tall to Forty Feet tall, his weight wouldn’t increase by a factor of Six, it would increase by a factor of six cubed. And ALL of that mass would rest on his feet and lower legs, which would buckle under the weight. Or the Square-Cube Law, which states that while his mass would increase by a factor of six cubed, his surface area would only increase by a factor of thirty-six, which would mean that his body heat would increase far beyond what his skin would be able to dissipate. In other words, he’d cook inside his own skin.
And yet, for all that, there are giants, they are very strong, and only a few of them breathe fire. Mutants who grow or shrink to huge or miniscule scale at will are a subset of the trait called ‘warpers’. Warpers bend- or warp, if you must- the fabric of time and space. Shrinkers displace the majority of their mass into another dimension while leaving a token amount within the four dimensions that we know. Giants, on the other hand, ‘expand’ their presence in the fabric of time and space to become larger. This displacement field is what we see, and it’s what actually moves things when a giant lifts something. It also dissipates much of incoming damage, so giants are, indeed, very tough opponents. And, not only don’t they broil from their own body heat, since their actual mass hasn’t increased, merely the surface area, they tend to be rather cold, since that heat is dissipated over an area that is (growth factor- squared) larger. Indeed, one of the reasons that Matterhorn got his nom de guerre was that he routinely developed icy deposits on his body as he fought.
The short form? Ayla caught Matterhorn’s incoming fist, took control of his displacement field, and stopped it dead. Slightly surprised, she hefted the fist, and lifted him entirely. It was like moving a really big balloon around! She swung him around, and got an idea of how it was done. He struggled as she slammed him into the street, shattering the blacktop. She lifted him again, and reversed the throw.
From where Chaka was, providing fire overwatch with her bow, it looked for all the world like one of those old Tom & Jerry cartoons, the ones where the mouse grabs Tom by a finger and ‘judo throws’ the cat back and forth, clobbering the hell out of him.
Back on the ground, Ayla came up with a few new wrinkles of her own. She used Matterhorn like a bat to swat the Arch-Fiend out of the air. Now having a better idea of her range and so forth, she went after bigger game.
The Necromancer was in the middle of constructing a Tartarean Tangle of Torment to send at his foe-woman, when his sense of personal danger warned him, and he looked up just in time to see a huge black leather-clad ass come at him at high speeds.
As the Necromancer was slammed back into a billboard, Nikki decided that it was time to get down to real business. She’d still have to keep Darrow busy, so someone else would have to free Silver and the others. She reached into her utility belt and took out the deliverance talisman that she’d prepared. She wrapped the talisman in a smaller set of the golden wings that she’d used against the Necromancer and sent it to Toni. [Chaka! I’ll keep Darrow off your back, you get Silver and the others out of that thing! Use this!]
Chaka grabbed the winged ‘key’ and gave her best bud a chipper thumbs-up before heading down to the street.
“Hey! Lancer!” Hank broke off from his tussle with the Anti-Paladin and saw what was coming, just in time to duck out of the way. The Anti-Paladin wasn’t as quick or as lucky. Matterhorn’s body mashed him into the sidewalk.
The Arch-Field was angry, frustrated and confused. He was mauling this stupid white girl all to hell, but he wasn’t getting any BLOOD! All he was getting some stupid chalk on his claws! And that stupid pink girl was harassing the hell out of him with her stupid wrist blaster thing. WHY DID HE KEEP RUNNING INTO STUPID WOMEN WHO WOULDN’T JUST UP AND DIE LIKE THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO?
Suddenly, Bunsen heard the Necromancer’s voice in his head. *Arch-Fiend! Stop piddling around and do something important! They’re trying to free the hostages! Stop the girl in white!*
Bunsen wasn’t really in a position to point out that almost all of their enemies were wearing white, and it would be very helpful to specify precisely which ‘girl in white’ his master was referring to. Still, it would be the girl in white that was going for the impromptu cage on the street. Bunsen disentangled himself from the girl in black and swooped away in the general direction of the cage.
Toni landed near the cage and tried to figure it out. The cage appeared to be made of pale blue fire, reinforced by really nasty jagged looking black metal bands of some sort. “Hey!” she called to the prisoners inside. “Any idea of how this thing works?”
“Well,” Silver said, “the Necromancer was working on that hole right there.” She pointed at a pancake-sized hole in the ‘filigree’. “I think that he was trying to create a door that he could take me out through, while leaving them in here.”
Chaka held up the ‘key’. “So, any idea of how to use this thing?”
Silver looked at Foxfire and Speed Queen. The superheroine shrugged. Foxfire said, “Well, I think that I might be able to figure it out…”
“Hold it.” Chaka hit her communications link. “Ah, Fey? You sort forgot to include the instructions manual with this key.”
[What are you talking about? It should be obvious!]
“Well, it isn’t!”
[What? Were you sleeping class?]
“Hello? They didn’t cover this in Intro to Mystic Concepts! I’m not the one taking special tutoring!”
[Chaka, I sort of have my hands full, keeping Mr. Evil Incarnate off balance! Figure it out!]
Chaka gave an aggravated snarl, and looked at Foxfire. “So, you had an idea?”
“Well… it’s a magic cage, that’s a magic key… there’s gotta be a lock somewhere on this thing… Well, I’m in the Mystic Arts program, why don’t you give me that key thing, and I’ll see what I can figure out?” Foxfire finished with a ‘what do you want?’ shrug.
Chaka tried to pass the key through the hole, but the blue fire wouldn’t let it past. “What IS this stuff?”
Foxfire gave a weak grin and held up her hands. “It seemed like a good idea at the time…”
Chaka chewed on it for a second, then her gaze flickered over to Silver. She pulled her left gauntlet off and removed her moonsilver bracelet. “Well, here goes nothing…” She carefully inserted the circlet flat into the azure flames. The fire went around the bracelet, forming a bypass of sorts in the energy. Then, the bracelet suddenly increased in diameter, filling the larger hole in the black fretwork. “Woof! I didn’t know that it could do that!”
“Neither did I…” Silver murmured.
Carefully holding the bracelet in place with her right hand, Chaka started to pass the key through the hole.
“Chaka! Behind you!” Toni looked behind her just in time to see the Arch-Fiend struggle out of Shroud