# Marvel Superheroes - Heroes of Silverage City UPDATED 5/19



## Dr Midnight (May 10, 2006)

Arrgh! I had JUST updated the story after two months of nothing and within hours the whole thing crashed. I guess I'll start reposting... Maybe I'll take it slowly so I can get new listeners and let them enjoy the whole episodic thing. 

This was a three session game of Marvel Superheroes (the classic FASERIP system). Instead of letting the players pick their powers, I had them choose what the characters were like before they GOT their powers. I chose the powers and generated the heroes... then the players discovered that they had superpowers as their characters did. 

For a three session game, I went kinda nuts... the entire write-up is going to be around 35,000 words.

Starting soon...


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## Dr Midnight (May 10, 2006)

Herbie Miller looked around the bus as it left the parking lot of Buscema High and hit the open road for the heart of Silverage city. Of course he was the last one on, again, and of course he’d now have to find a seat to share among a sea of people that hated him. Again. The 11th grade field trip to the Silverage Science Museum was underway.

Herbie was the scrawniest fifteen year-old in the state, he felt sure of it. His greasy hair clung to his forehead with a sheen and his thick-rimmed glasses turned with his head as he searched for a seat. His shoulders hunched in the posture of someone who doesn’t want to be seen. His voice was a nasal whine, and he didn’t use it to ask anyone for a seat. He just stood there until they told him the seat was taken, go away. 

Moving toward the back, he saw Claire. Claire Anna Tibbits, the cute punk girl he’d had his eye on since seventh grade. Not that she’d ever noticed him. She liked to be known as Cat. She was gazing out the window, and Herbie took advantage of her distraction to run his eyes over her slender neck and cheekbones once again. Her hair was done up in two bright pink pigtails that pouted from the top of her head. 

“Take a seat, Herbie,” Mr. Gola’s voice droned. Herbie returned to scanning the seats for an opening. Behind Cat he saw Donovan Maddox. The sullen, chunky youth was leaning his head against the window with his headphones on, locked away in his mind, somewhere, as it wandered. Beside him sat the inscrutable Latverian exchange student named Gustav Stammler. Stammler was looking at Maddox, apparently trying to puzzle out why the person in the seat next to them would wear a Slayer t-shirt and forego any attempts to be presentable. Not that Stammler was much more open to interpretation- he was a broad-shouldered, good-looking young man that no one here in the states could read. His face was plain and ever half-smirking, his demeanor distant and not quite cold. 

Across the aisle sat Emerson, the son of two noted physicists. He was kind enough, but the seat beside him was filled. He scribbled notes in his pad concerning gluons and their relationships to other things Herbie didn’t care about. Emerson was a geek, like Herbie, but at least Emerson had his brain going for him. Herbie wasn’t especially smart, making life’s handouts an even washout where Herbie was concerned. 

In front of Emerson sat an entire clique, spread across three seats- Mace Terryl, his horrid girlfriend Hammer, Dick Jacques, Glenn Bristol. At their head sat the two ringleaders of the group, Jeremy Mullen and Jacob Jones, known as JJ. Those two were star quarter-backers on the football game-team, or whatever their respective positions were called. Herbie didn’t know. In front of them sat Herbie’s last chance for a seat… Steven Piercey. Steven was an underdeveloped, bright-eyed AV club nerd that irritated everyone, even Herbie. His hair was a large mushroom cap of blonde, and his camera sat in his lap, waiting for an opportunity to snap a photo for the school paper. 

Steven looked up at Herbie, smiled, and patted the seat. “Have a seat, Herbie!”

“Yeah, have a seat, gaywad,” JJ sniped. 

Herbie sat, saying nothing. JJ reached back and slapped Emerson’s notebook out of his hands, laughed, then bounced his football off of Herbie’s head. “Nice catch, nerd,” Jeremy said. He seemed to decide he enjoyed picking on Herbie today. He leaned forward and said “Hey, excited for the field trip, Her-beee? Maybe you’ll get to hump one of the experiments.” Herbie’s brow knotted- he was used to unprovoked insults, but Jeremy was ruthless sometimes. Better to just ignore it and let it pass.

JJ said “Leave him alone. Dumb geek has enough to worry about, considering his mom’s a farm animal.”

Mr. Gola stood up. He looked like a pudgy Leonard Nimoy, which fit his role as enthusiastic science teacher. “Is there a problem, Jones?”

“No sir.”

“Well, good, we’re almost there. Around 11:30 we’re sitting in on the lightning rod exhibit- we’re going to see real lightning culled from the approaching storm cloud, right before our eyes. Is anyone else excited?”

“No,” Mullen laughed, believing it wit. 

Emerson raised his hand. “I am!” 

“You would be. Gaydo.”

Gola ignored that. “We’re starting with the Evolution of Man.”

JJ proudly said “It ended right here.”

Donovan, from his seat across the aisle, added “Yeah, it did.” JJ frowned, trying to puzzle out if he’d been insulted or not. Donovan was a large guy and one of the few people in school that was unafraid to tangle with the jocks.

Herbie sighed to himself. Life was an endless gauntlet of unhappy events and people that didn’t want to be around him. Today was one more day to slog through. 

The bus crawled on to Silverage. The city’s skyline was dark under the approaching thunderhead, which was pregnant with lightning.

_*Next:*_* The Exhibit*


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## sniffles (May 10, 2006)

I feel for you, Dr. Midnight! I lost several months of my story hours, but at least I didn't lose the whole thing! I hope the reposts catch some new readers. This has been a very enjoyable story hour.


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## Dr Midnight (May 11, 2006)

The bus emptied onto the steps, and the field trip began in earnest. The first exhibit was indeed The Evolution of Man. Next was Magnetism and the Human Mind, followed by Why Fossil Fuel? Each exhibit was duller than the next, until 11:00, when they stepped into an exhibit everyone seemed to have some interest in. 

The Science of the Superhuman was a lavish exhibit detailing how a number of superhuman powers work, and examples of how some heroes achieved their powers. The students walked into the exhibit, past a podium reading 

~funded by Charles Xavier~
_In hopes of spreading understanding in the face of the unfamiliar_​
The first stop in the exhibit was a plaster statue of Captain America. A recorded voice piped up from hidden speakers as the group positioned themselves. “Captain America was an early volunteer in one of the US’s most popular scientific holy grail searches: the creation of the super-soldier. As an outstanding example of how science can create a superhuman, he volunteered to be transformed into the marvel we know him as today when he was still an anonymous citizen of the country he loved. There have been many failed examples of super-soldiers since, but Cap remains to show us that there’s no reason to quit trying.”

The group moved on to a cheerless statue of a dimly-lit, angry green monster. “The ‘Incredible Hulk’ is a more tragic example of what happens when science creates a superhuman. Radiologist Bruce Banner was bombarded with gamma radiation when he ran out onto a testing field. For reasons yet unknown to scientists, he was turned into a raging monster whenever Banner becomes angered. A cure for his unfortunate condition is still being sought.”

The next statue was a generic human form, with a series of chromosomes and symbols painted onto the chest. “Mutants are a hot topic in today’s newspapers, but despite what you may have heard, mutants are no more than genetic anomalies. Theory suggests that the human genome has begun to take several gigantic leaps forward with randomly born humans, giving them powers unlike anyone around them, making them unique… making them mutants.”

“Frickin’ museum’s full of mutie-lovers,” Jeremy muttered as they moved on to the next statue. 

“Thor claims to be the actual god of classic Norse mythology. This remains unconfirmed, but no one can doubt that his ‘Uru hammer’, Mjolnir, gives him unbelievable powers and abilities. The science of Thor is one of our greatest mysteries: if he’s really a god, then what does that mean for what we know of science? If science and magic truly coexist in our reality, what can we really claim to know as scientists?”

The next portion of the exhibit was a series of four statues- one of a flaming man, one of a rock-man, one of a man with graying temples and elongated arms and legs, and one of a woman, formed from transparent glass. “The Fantastic Four are intrepid adventurers that frequently pit themselves against the likes of Dr. Doom and Galactus, but did you know that they were once scientists? Reed Richards and his crew were bombarded by cosmic radiation while on an exploratory mission at the fringe of earth’s orbit. They each developed their own remarkable yet unique powers. Richards has done countless studies on their powers and has made several discoveries, but what continues to puzzle him is this: how did four people, struck by the same circumstance, develop four very different kinds of abilities?”

The tour came to an end with a mural of a number of the more heroic heroes of the world, painted in elegant watercolors. “In closing, know that we only know so much about superheroes. Some are willing to come forward and make themselves available to science. Others are more secretive, keeping to the shadows and fighting for good or ill well away from the public eye. Rest assured of one thing- the nation’s top scientists will continue to toil to discover just what creates superheroes, and what can be done to reverse or provoke these conditions in the future. Imagine a world without a Magneto, a world where you can fly wherever you want, or a world wherein every police officer has a ‘danger sense.’ There are no limits for how high we can fly once science unlocks the key… to the superhuman.”

The group seemed satisfied, and left the exhibit having animated discussions of just what powers this person wanted, or what that person would fight for if he had powers. Nothing appeals to the escapist teenage mind, Mr. Gola thought, quite like the idea of super powers and what one would do with them. “Come on, it’s time for the lightning rod experiment,” he said. 

“He said ‘rod,’” JJ chortled.

“When’s lunch?” Dick Jacques moaned. He was a huge, pudge-cheeked oaf, and it seemed lunch was all he ever cared about.

“12:15 sharp,” Gola replied. 

“Soon enough, I guess. Let’s get this over with.”

The students filed into the main exhibit hall, an enormous auditorium with stadium seating surrounding a platform. A telescoping lightning rod was centered on the platform, pointing upwards to a skylight. The storm rumbled overhead and the sky seemed almost black with roiling clouds. Everyone took their seat and an excited-looking scientist began discussing the effects of lightning upon science through history, and what benefits could be wrung from capturing lightning’s energy in the future. 

The skylight above cracked into six segments and began withdrawing into the ceiling, opening a hole for the rod, which began its telescopic climb into the stormy sky. The pole rose about fifty feet above ceiling level. “Now,” the scientist said, “we only needed to watch and wait for the fireworks to begin. “

The auditorium was silent, all heads craned upward. Three minutes passed. Someone coughed. Two more minutes passed. People began to shift uncomfortably and rub their aching necks. The scientist began wringing his hands. “Lightning can’t be predicted, really, in the strictest sense… perhaps a few more moments will tell.”

The grueling exhibit went on until JJ looked at his watch. “12:16. Lunchtime.” He and his friends got up. 

Mr. Gola nodded sadly. “Looks like this one didn’t pan out. Let’s go to lunch, people.” The students began filing out. The other museumgoers followed, leaving a very sad looking scientist staring up to the rod and the storm beyond. 

Back on the bus, Herbie walked toward his lunchbag. He was starving. When he picked it up, it was snatched out of his hands. “Thanks, dork,” JJ said. 

“That’s mine,” Herbie protested meekly. 

“Was. Now it’s mine.”

“Give it back, JJ,” someone said. It was Cat, suddenly standing at Herbie’s side. Someone was sticking up for him, and it was her. His face flushed. 

Jeremy sneered. “Oooh, the dyke’s in love with the dork. What a friggin’ surprise.”

“What’s the problem here,” Mr. Gola said from the head of the bus, standing up. “JJ, did you take Herbie’s lunchbag?”

“No sir,” JJ said. “This is mine.” 

Gola planted his hands on his hips and looked to Herbie. “Herbie? Is he telling the truth?”

Herbie hesitated and muttered “Yes, that’s his. I think I left mine back in one of the exhibit halls.” His shame was doubled as he felt Cat’s disgusted stare. He couldn’t face her.

“Better go get it then.”

Herbie stepped off the bus, beneath the thundering stormcloud. No rain had broken, and there hadn’t been any lightning yet. Herbie cursed himself and began walking to the museum with his head down. Behind him he heard “Ugh. Peanut butter and jelly?!” The sandwich Herbie’s mother had prepared for him landed outside of the school bus, where it was tossed from JJ’s window. Herbie looked at it, considered, and began to walk towards it. Maybe it was still good… 

Someone stepped on the sandwich as they passed. Herbie stood staring down at his sandwich with a filthy footprint in the middle of it. Peanut butter and jelly oozed out of the sides into the cracks of the sidewalk. Herbie’s jaw locked as he ground his teeth, and his face was the deep red of humiliation. His hands, firmly planted in his pockets, were coiled into fists.

_*Next:*_* Origin*


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## Mimic (May 11, 2006)

Looks like a good story, I will definately have to keep reading this one.


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## Dr Midnight (May 12, 2006)

When lunch was over, everyone went to the next exhibit. This was in a newly constructed wing of the museum, and wasn’t even functioning yet. Here, an immense machine reached up almost to the top of the one hundred foot-tall ceiling. The storm continued to churn as seen through the glass dome arcing over the machine’s majesty.

“The Transatomic Superconductor,” Mr. Gola announced proudly from his place with students behind the dividing rope. Museum guests were only allowed to see this project, which was currently in construction, from the safety of the entryway. The unlit behemoth was a tower of plastic, glass, steel, unlit diodes, and thousands of pieces that looked like they moved. The tower was capped by a chrome sphere that was maybe twenty feet in diameter. 

“This machine, when operational, may just change the course of science. It’s suggested that Transatomic Superconductivity will change the very air around its bulbous metal head at the atomic level. The implications’ full breadth are as yet unknown, but it’s believed that this could be the key to transmutation: shifting things from one base element to the next. The dream of alchemists of old.” 

“Bo-ring,” Jeremy groaned. 

Donovan said “Maybe this thing could change the air in your head to something useful, Mullen.”

Jeremy was about to reply to the burnout metalhead when he heard a snicker from the group. His head whirled and he saw Herbie cover his mouth. Herbie’s eyes went wide as he saw Jeremy’s gaze smolder over him. Jeremy mouthed _dead_ at Herbie. _Dead._

Mr. Gola said “The Superconductor won’t be operational until next year. We’ll have to make sure we come back and see it in action.”

The group filed out. Only Cat noticed as Herbie, walking behind her and slightly to her left, was suddenly gone. It almost looked like he’d been yanked back into the room as he was leaving. “Did anyone else see that?”

Back in the Transatomic Superconductor room, the doors closed and Herbie was slammed up against the wall. “You’ve got some nerve, dorkwad, laughing at me like that.” Jeremy’s eyes were wide and his teeth were bared.

JJ laughed. “C’mon, man, leave him alone. The worm’s nothing to get worked up about.”

Hammer said “Smash him, get him.” She was known for egging people into fights and watching with excitement as the fists flew. Mace, her disinterested rocker boyfriend, sneered smugly. Dick Jacques nodded agreement, pounding a fat fist into his hand. Beside him, Glenn Bristol giggled. 

“Looks like waste makes paste,” Mullen said. He pulled his fist back.

“Let him go,” Cat said from the door as she walked in. 

“Make me, feminazi.” 

“I’ll make you,” said Donovan as he came in behind Cat. Behind him followed Emerson and Gustav. 

Emerson said “_We’ll_ make you,” without much confidence. Gustav, behind him, said nothing. The look on his face could have been amused curiosity.

The two groups stared each other down. Hammer’s eyes moved nervously from face to face. Glenn’s tongue flicked in and out of his mouth. Donovan held a firm, steady gaze with Jeremy. JJ crossed his arms and stared at Emerson until he blinked. 

Finally, Jeremy broke. “You’re lucky today, nerd. As soon as your babysitters aren’t nearby, though… you’re done.” With _done,_ he pushed Herbie back against the wall. The scrawny youth flailed and bashed against a wall of levers and buttons. 

As he slumped to the ground, the buttons on the wall lit up. One of the levers had been switched. A humming noise filled the air. The sound of small mechanical cogs beginning to turn, then whir, then buzz. There was a faint sound that rose from a low drone to a strobe-squeal. The Transatomic Superconductor’s tower was working. The head began to glow, dimly, with a purplish light. The a peal of thunder filled the room, adding to the noise.

Both groups stared up at the Superconductor, having forgotten their squabble. Jeremy took a step back. The noise, and glow, was growing. 

Herbie, with his mouth hanging open, asked “What’s happening?”

The lightning bolt smashed through the skylight dome, into the chrome head of the Superconductor. Glass showered the entire room, and bright purplish lightning shot from the chrome sphere, washing over and through everything. 

For Herbie, there was only a crash, blinding light, then silence and darkness.

_*Next:*_* Different*


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## Rybaer (May 12, 2006)

Great to hear that we'll get to see this story concluded.  I thoroughly enjoyed reading everything up until the crash.


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## Dr Midnight (May 13, 2006)

Emerson was being shaken. He opened his eyes, very slowly. Someone was standing over him. It was a man in a blue worksuit wearing large orange-tinted glasses. He had receding silvery hair and a white mustache. “Hey, hey kid, are you alright?”

Emerson blinked. “Who are you?”

The man pointed to his name-patch: 

_Stan_​
“I’m the janitor. What happened here, are you guys okay?”

“I think so.” Emerson sat up, rubbing his head. What had happened? He was lying on the ground in the science museum. The others were awakening around him. 

“Did we fall asleep,”Cat asked. 

JJ muttered “Something about big… purple.” He looked around, and saw that his friends were gone. He was stuck here with the crusty geezer and the do-good squad. 

Donovan stood up. “There was a flash, and I remember falling. Hey… what time is it?”

Stan looked at his watch. “Uhh… looks to be 2:55.”

Gustav said “The bus leaves at 3 pm sharp, if I recall.”

JJ pushed through the doors. “Crap. Let’s go.” 

As they left, Donovan was last. He looked back to see the Transatomic Superconductor standing there. It was slightly misshapen, and some of the pieces seemed fused… it was melted together now, just a useless piece of slag. He put his headphones on and followed the others.

Stan watched them go, then turned and stared at all the broken glass littering the place. He sighed then got to work. 

The kids joined their classmates on the bus, which was idling and waiting for them. “Where were you,” Mr. Gola asked. “Emerson, you missed the exhibit on thermoreactive polymers!”

“Yeah, sorry,” Emerson said, genuinely sorry to have missed that. He moved to the back and sat in his seat. 

“You would be sorry,” JJ said as he flumped down into the seat. 

Steven Piercey asked “Really, where did you go? You were away from the group for a long time.”

Cat, who wasn’t in the mood, said “We were all smoking a joint in the bathroom, got a problem with that?” Steven’s mouth hung open in response and he stared in shock. 

Herbie sat down. “She’s kidding.”

JJ punched Jeremy’s arm. “Where’d you go, dickweeds? Left me all alone with the dice-rollers.”

Jeremy didn’t look at him. “Had to come back to the bus. Didn’t feel good.”

“Aww, need to change your pad?”

Jeremy glared at him. It was a look that said _I’m not in the mood. Back off._ JJ shrugged and put his feet up on the back of Herbie’s seat.

Herbie flinched back from the shoes that were six inches from his head, and as always, said nothing. He looked down at his hands, tucked safely away between his knees. Why was he such a scrawny nothing? He’d been pushed around and had to be saved by a group of other people that weren’t even his friends. In the end, he hadn’t even tried to begin to stick up for himself. Herbie thought about the failings of his life on the whole long ride back to Buscema High. 

Back at the high school, the bus released the kids, who went about their respective means of getting home. Jeremy had called his dad and the red sports car pulled up to take him home. 

“Dude,” JJ called. “Aren’t you going to practice?” 

Jeremy shook his head without looking back at him. He got in the car and sped away. JJ looked around and saw that his other friends had taken off, too. Wusses. He tossed his football to himself and headed off to the locker rooms.

Cat stopped by Herbie. “Hey, are you alright?”

Herbie seemed to freeze, then forced himself to speak. “Yeah. Uh. Everything’s good. Everything’s… cool. How are you?”

There was a honking noise, and they both looked and saw Herbie’s dad was waving to him from the burgundy, wood-paneled family station wagon. Herbie seemed to deflate, and he put his head down and walked away from Cat, who turned and began walking in the other direction. 

Claire Tibbits liked to keep a few things about herself more or less out of the public eye. Not that she was keeping secrets, but she felt her punk girl image might be threatened if anyone knew just how nice she really was. Today was Wednesday, and it was her day to volunteer down at the Silverage Animal Shelter. She walked, feeling the afternoon sun on her face and feeling fine. It looked like the storm had cleared away while she was unconscious. She hummed to herself as she walked, taking her time.

“Hi Cat,” Joanna the shelter manager said as Cat strode through the doors of the shelter. 

“Hi, how’s everyone?”

“They miss you… go feed them. Start with the dogs.”

Claire went to the dog cages with a bag of food. She opened the cage and said “Hi, Whipple!” Whipple the malamute puppy stood there and stared at her with his head cocked slightly to the side. “Aren’t you well-behaved today.” She poured him some food, patted his head, and closed the door.

Joanna stared at her as she passed. Cat stopped. “What?”

Joanna pulled out a box of tissues from her drawer and offered her a sheet. Cat stared at the box, confused. Joanna said “Um. You’ve got… you could use a tissue.”

Cat took one, and Joanna went about her business. Cat looked at the tissue then touched her nose. Her fingers came away slimy. Feeling mostly embarrassed, Cat wiped her nose with the tissue, threw it away, and got to work on changing the litterboxes. 

She got the bag of litter and began to change the litter in the trays under the kitten cages. Two Siamese kittens, about nine months old, looked at her from within. 

Cat finished with the litter and brought the bag back to the supply room. She walked in, put the bag down, then looked around. Something was wrong. Something about the room was different. She looked around, trying to figure out what it was. She felt her vision dimming. She held her hand up in front of her face and watched in horror as everything grew dark. She felt her way along the cabinets to the door and touched the light switch. She’d never turned it on. 

Joanna opened the door to find Cat clinging to the wall in the dark. “Are you… alright, Cat?”

“Yeah,” Cat replied anxiously. “I’m fine.”

Joanna nodded slowly, clearly not believing. “We got a new shipment of scratchy-things for the birds. Maybe bring give them a few… and take it easy for a while, okay?” 

Cat got a box of the scratching logs for the birds, feeling stupid. What was going on? She didn’t feel sick. She went to the bird enclosure and looked at the dozens of pairs of black, beady eyes staring back at her from the cages. There was no chirping, no squawking, no noise. She began placing the little scratching sticks inside the ancient cages that hung all over the room.

She saved the hardest part for last- the highest cage was too far up for her to reach. Luckily, she kept a few boxes and items handy in the room, and she had devised a simple system of building a set of stairs up to that last cockatoo cage. She placed the boxes and climbed up to see the cockatoo looking at her. She gave it a scratching stick and looked down so that she might begin climbing back to the floor.

At the top of her makeshift stair was a scale that the shelter used for measuring the weights of dogs and heavy shipping crates. She blinked. The red needle in the scale was pointing squarely at sixty-five pounds. 

Claire Tibbits was a very slender girl, but by no means was she sixty-five pounds. She hadn’t been sixty-five pounds since she was eleven, maybe twelve years old. As she looked, she watched the needle slowly ease on down to sixty-four, sixty-three… sixty-two… 

“Cat, you’re trembling,” Joanna said from the door. 

Cat nearly fell down, she was so startled. She realized that yes, her arms and legs were trembling. She climbed down slowly and said “I’m sorry, I guess I don’t feel very well after all.”

“Go home, get some rest,” Joanna said. “Besides being sick, you’re freaking the animals out.”

This surprised Cat almost as much as the scale. “I am? They’ve been nothing but quiet for me.” 

“Yeah, when you’re in the room. As soon as you leave they start barking and meowing and making a ruckus.”

“Sorry. I’ll head home.”

Cat walked home, clutching her bookbag to her chest and keeping her eyes on the sidewalk as she went. She had absolutely no idea what was going on. 

_*Next:*_* Different (continued)*


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## Dr Midnight (May 15, 2006)

Across town, about an hour earlier, Donovan Maddox was walking home himself. Unlike Cat, he didn’t concern himself with the world around him as he went, and kept himself focused on his music as he went. Today it was an Iron Maiden mix disc he’d burned that spring. 

He tuned out everything- playing children, bright green grass, sunshine. Only his basic motor functions were left on autopilot: walk, avoid obstacles. In his head, everything was either black, on fire, or made of gleaming steel as he bobbed his head to the galloping basslines. 

He didn’t notice at all when a man in a car pulled up and unrolled his window. The man waved at him twice, then honked. That worked. Donovan pulled down his headphones. 

“Sorry there young fellah, could you tell me the way to Yancy Street?” 

Donovan nodded. “Yeah, you’re actually right there. It’s that street, there.” He pointed. 

The man said “Um. That seems to be Acacia.”

“What?” Donovan looked. 

_Acacia Ave_

“Oh. Uh. I guess I don’t know then.”

“Okay… thanks anyway.”

The man pulled away. Donovan had lived in this town all his life, he was sure this was Yancy. He put the headphones back on and kept walking. 

He was a bit more distracted now than he was before, and the next sound to interrupt his world got his attention. It was a high-pitched drone, and it was getting louder. A plane flew overhead. Donovan looked up at it as he walked. Must have been an airshow nearby- it was a slick old WWII fighter, and in really good shape. The british Union Jack was painted on the underside of each wing. The plane flew off over the trees, and Donovan kept walking until he reached his house- a fairly large mansion on the good side of town that sprawled over what could be called an estate.

Inside, his dad greeted him. “Hi, Donny, how was school?” 

“Fine,” Donovan grunted noncommittally, still walking on the way to his room. Donovan’s dad was once “Mad” Max Maddox, an unsuccessful street magician from the seventies. He’d only accumulated his fortune when someone dropped a lottery ticket as a tip into his top hat on one bright 1983 afternoon. Max, now fantastically wealthy, opened the Maddox Amusement & Thrill Park in 1985. It always did great business, and the money kept coming in. Max could provide anything for his family, and strove to always give two things to Donovan: fine private schooling and advice. 
Donovan had not adapted well to the private schools- the other kids saw him as common street rabble and Donovan saw them as spoiled trust fund brats. There were a few fights, and Donovan was finally placed back into public schooling. As for Dad’s advice, Donovan didn’t really care because his father was a failure until he came upon found money- why take his guidance seriously? It seemed stupid to listen to someone who had followed their heart and failed, right?

“You had the field trip today, right?” Max asked. “How did it go?”

“Fine.” Donovan walked into his room and closed the door, then set the three locks he kept on it. Here in his room, he was in the only sanctuary that rivaled his headphones. He walked past posters of metal bands and a corkboard where he’d pinned up dozens of metal show ticket stubs. 

He approached an enormous Marshall stack- a speaker head with gleaming knobs sitting atop a wicked 4x12 cabinet. He dropped his bookbag and slung a guitar over his shoulders, hit the power button and waited for the tubes to warm up in the guts of the machine. He was still in a Maiden mood and began to strike some notes from one of his favorites. 

_Now I am cold but a ghost lives in my veins
Silent the terror that reigned, marbled in stone
A shell of a man God preserved for a thousand ages
But open the gates of my hell, I will strike from the grave._

He was getting into the song so much that he only noticed something was different in the room when all the light had gone a sickly green. He stopped playing and felt wind rushing against the back of his neck. He turned, slowly, and saw that his room with the twenty-foot ceiling was filled with a one hundred foot tall graven sphinx. The sphinx’s head bore a distinctive face- a snarling zombie with glowing green eyes. It looked down on him and he screamed. 

Just before he fainted dead away from terror, a thought went through his head: _That looks just like what I think of when I play this song._

Not far away, in a slightly less upscale section of town, Emerson had gotten home and greeted his parents warmly. His family life was a good one- his mother and father were both scientists that encouraged him in his own scientific pursuits. They were all very close, and Emerson had never had anything to hide from them. 

“Hi Mom.”

“Hi hon- dinner will be ready in an hour.”

Emerson went to his room and sat down at his lab table. Here, he was master of a small world of experiments- lately he’d be playing with some ideas on modular particle distribution. He sat down and got sucked into his work. 

It seemed like only minutes before he was called to dinner. He stood up, stretched, and walked downstairs. 

Mom gestured at him with an oven mitt. “Emerson, you know the rules- no lab goggles at the dinner table. Take ‘em off.”  

Emerson reached up and took off his goggles. They didn’t come off with that familiar feeling, though- these were different. He pulled off a form-fitted U of plastic and glass that had been wrapped around his face and looked at them closely. These weren’t his goggles- they were his glasses. That didn’t make any sense, though. They were distorted and almost melted-looking. Whatever had happened, he hadn’t felt a thing. 

He went and got his spare glasses from the bureau. When he came back, Mom said “Em, you look so tense. Are you okay?”

“I’m good. Really.” He considered telling her about the glasses, but didn’t know what he’d even say about them. He was baffled so far. 

“Why don’t you take dinner in front of the TV for a change? You could stand to relax.”

He shook his head. “I’d rather take dinner back up in my lab… science is fun. TV is all crap.”

She handed him a plate. “All right, honey, whatever’s best for you. I just get worried sometimes that you push yourself too hard.”

Emerson took his plate of food up to his room, anxious to get right back to his findings. He sat down and began reading up on Neutronic Dependence Theory, eating as he did. 

He put his fork down and reached to turn a page. The fork came with his hand and clunked against the book. Emerson, surprised, looked at his hand. The fork was stuck to it. Intrigued, he wondered if he’d formed some kind of basic seal against the metal with the folds of his hand, or if it was simple moisture cling. The fork wiggled and began to bend around his hand. 

Emerson shrieked and flicked his hand. The fork hit the wall and fell down, then lay still. He stared at it until he felt something. A paper clip from the table was nudging his hand, moving towards it like an insect. He pushed back from the table and stood up. 

The chair stood with him. His $75 OfficeMax chair was forming tight against him, and the arms were wrapping around his midsection like it was trying to hug him. Emerson began panicking and hitting the arms, feeling the synthetic leather backing creep up around his neck. The lamp on his table made a _ftt_ noise and a violet spark shot from the wire as the lamp strained towards Emerson. The cord gave way and the lamp rushed towards Emerson, who even in his horror was trying to figure out how this all was working. 

_*Next:*_* Different, Part III*


----------



## Dr Midnight (May 15, 2006)

JJ strode onto the football like he owned it, because of course he did. 

Jacob Jones was the star quarterback for the Buscema High Broncos and the most respected athlete in town. The cheerleaders all loved them and the other players tried to mimic his every move. He was the man and knew it.

“What up coach!”

“Jones, get up here. Warm up already.”

JJ ran through a few laps and waved to some of the girls that had shown up to watch the players sweat. 

When he was done with his laps he took his place among the other players on the field. “Right,” Coach yelled. “Take positions, you’re going to stand and take a straight tackle as well as you can.” He split the group into two halves, the tacklers and the tacklees, and set them to work. JJ was among the tacklees, and he planted his back foot as Charlie O’Hearn ran toward him. JJ leaned forward and readied for the hit. 

Charlie wasn’t the biggest guy on the team, and charged poorly. JJ barely rocked back from the tackle, and O’Hearn bounced back and slammed into the dirt. JJ gave the team his best smug grin.

Coach looked down at Charlie with disgust. “O’Hearn, go run at Penning for a while if you’re going to wear a tutu. Miller! Get up here and show Jones what a sack really is.” Charlie sulked off and Del Miller stepped into line. He was the biggest guy on the team. Not the most talented, fastest or smartest, but the guy could dole out a hit. JJ leaned forward and ground his foot into the dirt behind him as the six and a half foot Miller barreled down on him.

There was a jarring smash as the two collided. Miller’s head snapped back from the impact and he fell, slowly, back onto his butt. JJ had moved not an inch… he’d barely even been jostled. 

“Outstanding, Jones! Now that is how you take a hit!” Coach always yelled his approval like he was telling you to get off his doorstep and stop ringing his bell, you damn kids.

JJ felt great. No one ever took a sack from Del Miller like that. 

Del grimaced as he stood up. “Since you’re the star of the show today, Jones, why don’t you lead us in running the valley?”

Coach nodded. “Fine idea, Miller. Jones! Take position, you’re running the valley today.”

JJ’s grin withered. “The valley” was the valley of death, Coach’s special concept of a gauntlet. One player ran up the field, dodging tackles from the other players who were charging in from the sides. He swallowed hard and took position. The other kids all looked like they were eager to get a hit in on the glory hog. _Let ‘em try,_ JJ thought. _I’ll dance through them like Herbie through a field of tulips._

He started running. He got seven yards before someone flew at him from the left. JJ cut to the right, nimbly dodging the sack. Another tackle, from the right this time. JJ whipped around this one and kept going. He felt great- he was really in the red zone today. Three tackles, all in a line this time, one after another… he jerked out of reach of each of them. He kept going, whirling past several heaving slabs of athlete. 

He made it to the end. Almost no one made it all the way through the valley of death. He spiked the ball, hard, and turned around with his trademark smarmy grin.

Everyone was where they’d fallen on the ground. Some were propped up on their elbows, some were up on their hands and knees. Every one of them was staring at JJ with a bewildered expression. 

“What?” JJ blurted. “Never seen someone own a field of chumps before?”

Patterson took off his helmet. “Dude.” His face was serious. “Are you a mutie?”

JJ was stunned. “You’d better take that back, Patterson.” 

“Hit the showers, Jones,” Coach said. He wasn’t yelling, which was the surest sign that something was very wrong. 

“What’s the problem? I ran the valley, just like you said!”

“Showers, Jones. You’re done for the day. Out of my sight.”

“Whatever.” JJ turned and stalked away. _What was the deal with that? Jealous idiots._ If JJ had watched himself running from behind as everyone else did, he would have seen the way his waist bent as it angled away from the grasping arms of the tacklers. His entire body had warped away… just enough to notice that no human spine can move like that.

JJ got back to the locker room and threw his helmet at the wall. He ripped off his stuff and got into the showers. Good thing about getting kicked out of practice was getting to hog the water, he thought to himself as he turned three different showerheads toward him and turned on the heat. The water scalded away the drama of the day’s events and within a minute he was breathing easily. He closed his eyes and leaned on the shower wall, letting his head hang down, letting the hot water do its magic on his back. “Ahhhhhh.” He stood like that for at least four minutes.

And suddenly, he was falling.

His eyes snapped open and his arms reflexively flailed out to grab something. He was falling down a black cylinder. Water fell around him. He saw his hands reach up above, hands snapping at the air. The top of the cylinder he was falling through was capped by a dark cross, with a smaller concentric circle around the center. It looked exactly like the shape of the shower’s drain grate. 

A few miles away, Gustav Stammler had arrived at the Ferguson house. This was the exchange family he was staying with. Their son, Chris, was off in Latveria, doubtless enjoying the comforts of the country. He didn’t especially identify with this family, and their conversations were very short. That was all right with Gustav… he’d really not intended to spend much of his time in the states talking to people anyway. 

Gustav had had a good day. Almost every one of his days were good. He tended to keep to himself and watch people, and today was a terrific day to do just that. Mostly, he was curious about the incident that had occurred in the Transatomic Superconductor room. He kept turning that over in his head, examining it from different angles. Gustav was a very smart kid, even for the natural-born scholars of his homeland, and he liked looking at problems for a weak point and mysteries for a telling clue. 

Gustav picked up one of the three local newspapers he had delivered to the house daily and gave it a terse read. It was about the electrical storm from today. 

He put the paper down and headed downstairs, to the Ferguson family’s modest gym equipment. As he walked down the stairs he thought about the story and how it had mentioned that a bolt of lightning around 1 or so today had come from nowhere and struck some transformers around the town’s power station, damaging them and possibly bring on blackouts later in the evening. Gustav realized that he’d demonstrated amazing recall just now- he really hadn’t read the story for more than four seconds. He’d picked up the paper and given it only a scan. Now he realized he could remember each word. He’d always had an excellent memory but this was a new high watermark. He smiled to himself as he approached the machines. 

Gustav draped his towel over one end of the bench and stared at the weights, thinking. He was a perfectly fit young man, and drew more than a few stares from the local girls. He didn’t do it for them; he liked keeping his body honed. 

Something was occurring to Gustav. Currently, he bench-pressed maybe one hundred and seventy-five pounds. With a slight change to his approach, could he achieve more? He examined the bench’s layout for a moment, then placed a book under one end. He lay on the bench and angled his shoulders differently than he normally did, rolling them back against the bench before lifting. The weights lifted more easily than ever before. Success! Could he stack on more weight?

He slid thirty more pounds onto the bar, knowing it was unrealistic to hope for a thirty pound gain all at once, but feeling confident in his new approach. He lay down and lifted… and the bar came up. What was even more amazing was that he felt room for improvement. 

This time he put on fifty more pounds and adjusted his grip on the bar, to maximize his biceps’ pull against the ligaments of his forearms and keep the yaw of his arms’ bone structures at a more vertical tilt than ever before. He breathed deeply, visualizing the air going the surface area of his mouth instead of down his windpipe. This allowed him to hyperoxygenate himself with a simple trick that resulted in him taking more air in a single breath, and faster. 

His plan worked. The bar lifted, and without much straining. He pressed it once, twice, a third time against his chest and then set the bar back in its cradle. He sat up, amazed and quite pleased with himself over his discovery. It was-

Something happened, and all at once he knew three things: there was a slight drop in temperature on his left side, there was a shadow moving quickly against the north wall, and there was a noise like a spring being released within a plastic shell. These pieces of information quickly met and interfaced with each other in Gustav’s mind. Before he knew he had a solution, his body was reacting. His arm shot out to the left and caught the Nerf dart his foster brother had just shot at him. Gustav turned to look at the dart in his hand, marveling at what he’d just done. His mind had taken a problem and given him a means around it in the time it took a projectile to fly across the room.

His little foster brother was staring, open-mouthed, from the door at the gym’s other side. He dropped his Nerf gun, turned and ran. He had to tell everyone he knew about the coolest thing he’d ever seen. 

_*Next:*_* Discourse*


----------



## Dr Midnight (May 16, 2006)

Herbie was having one of the worst days of a life that was one bad day after another.

“How was the trip?” Herbie didn’t answer. His dad, who tended to not get the hint, asked again. “Herbie? How was the field trip?”

“It was great,” Herbie said, staring out the window. “I went with all my friends and saw amazing things all day. We laughed and had fun.” 

“Well that’s good! Sounds like a terrific time.”

Herbie was anxious to just get home and lock himself in his room for the rest of the night. He saw his dad put the left blinker on to turn onto Beecher Street. Herbie sighed.  His dad chuckled. “Sounds like someone forgot it’s Wednesday! Time for your allergy shots.”

They walked into the medical complex and met with the doctor. “Hiya, Herbie! Ready?” Dr. Kenning always treated Herbie like he was still eight. Herbie always tried his best to ignore it and project a manly image, but like with everything else, Herbie failed. 

Herbie rolled up his sleeve. Dr. Kenning got out a syringe and threw away the box it came from. He filled it with some solution in a small glass vial, and as always Herbie had no idea what was in it. 

The doctor stuck it in Herbie’s arm. The was a tiny noise, and Dr. Kenning held up the syringe. “The needle broke! I must have hit your bone. Well, I’ll be! My last syringe, too. Tsk. Lucky you, Herbie, you’re not getting a shot after all.”

Herbie’s dad asked “Is breaking a needle this way uncommon, doctor?”

The doctor shook his head. “Yes, for healthy young men. Herbie, your arms are so thin that there was no meat for the needle to inject into! You need to put some muscle on these things, kid. Eat a hamburger now and then. You’re so scrawny.” He smiled. He meant these things kindly, but this was the last thing Herbie needed to hear today. 

Herbie got up and walked out of the room. He reached the sidewalk by the time his dad caught up to him. “Herbie, what’s wrong?” Herbie kept walking, leaving his father standing behind him with a confused, hurt expression on his face. 

Herbie walked home by himself, feeling the wind rush by him in the afternoon sunshine. He thought about everything that had happened to him in the course of the last eight hours. 

It suddenly occurred to him that perhaps he should have let the doctor take the broken piece of needle out of his arm before leaving. He felt around the place on his arm where the needle had gone, and didn’t feel anything. Come to think of it, Herbie hadn’t even felt the needle’s pinching stab. Well, whatever. As long as the needle wasn’t embedded in his arm, he could manage. 

He reached an intersection. A car idled at the light. It was full of a group of sophomores from school. They looked at him, grinned and unrolled the window. 

“Hey, Herbie! Going for a walk? Careful, you might snap those broomsticks you call legs. Fag!” They laughed and one threw a half-full McDonald’s chocolate shake at him. It fell short, landed on the ground and splattered his shoes and pants. The car peeled away with all the kids inside howling with laughter. 

Herbie pushed the button for the WALK signal and waited. After a while, he noticed that the cars were all stopped- the light wasn’t working. He looked up at it and saw the light was dead. That was odd, it was working a minute ago. He looked at the button he’d pushed and now only saw a hole. He leaned forward and looked harder. The metal of the light pole had been punched inward, maybe two inches, and the metal held the shape of a finger. Purple sparks fuzzed and fitzed from the depression.

“Stupid thing was broken and I didn’t even noitice,” Herbie sighed. He crossed the street as cars began honking at each other, waiting for the light to change. 

Herbie got home, closed the door to his room and plunged onto his bed. He stayed that way, thinking hard and dark, until the phone rang around seven-thirty. He didn’t go to answer it- there was no point. It was never for him. Nothing was. 

A knock on the door. “Herbie?” his mom called, sounding concerned. “Phone call.”

Herbie sat up. A phone call? For him? He picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“Hi, Herbie? This is Emerson from school. Listen, is anything happening to you?”

Herbie didn’t’ know what to make of that. “What?”

“Umm… What I mean is- is anything odd happening around you? Weird things? Maybe since the accident in the Transatomic Superconductor room today?” 

“Yeah, kinda. Nothing really weird. Why?”

“I’ve… uh… well, I’ve been having a hell of a day, you could say. I called the others and they’re having problems too. We’re getting together at my place within a half an hour to talk about things and see what we can’t figure out.”

“Hmm. Does this mean JJ, Jeremy, Hammer, Mace, Dick and Glenn will be there?”

“JJ, yes. I can’t get a hold of the others.”

“I dunno… I don’t think I want to go.”

Emerson hesitated. “Alright, that’s too bad, I guess… I’ll tell Donovan, JJ, Gustav and Cat that you couldn’t make it.”

Cat? Of course… she was in the room too. Cat, with the pink pigtails.  “Wait. What’s the address?” Herbie wrote them down on a piece of scrap paper, then went to his closet to begin picking out an outfit.

_*Next:*_* Joining*


----------



## Dr Midnight (May 17, 2006)

Donovan finally showed up at Emerson’s house. He was the last to show up. He walked into Emerson’s room to find the place a mess- things were lying all over the ground, some kicked into heaps in the corners. The things all seemed to be everyday objects that were broken and bent out of shape.

The others sat around on bean bag chairs and Emerson sat in his lab chair, looking most like the person who’d just been diagnosed with something irreversible.  Donovan said “Emerson, this isn’t how I pictured you living. There’s broken stuff all over the ground.”

“It doesn’t go back to normal after it falls off.” 

Donovan screwed up his face. “What??”

“Never mind. Listen, now that everyone’s here, I think we all have things to say. Cat, why don’t you start.”

Cat began, telling of the things that had happened to her in the time since school let out earlier in the day. The others followed, and soon it was clear that they were all stricken with bizarre afflictions, none of which they were happy about, save Gustav. 

Cat tried her hand at rationalizing what was going on. “Clearly, we all have some kind of problem. Maybe some radiation sickness or something, or some marvelous coincidence of bad luck.”

Emerson said “I’m not sure what could have caused this, though.”

“You fools,” Gustav said, with that same half-grin on his face. “Don’t you see what’s happening? We were in the presence of a giant malfunctioning machine that changes things’ base elements when it was struck by lightning. We were fundamentally changed.”

The lights dimmed momentarily, then went back normal. No one paid attention to the disturbance.

“Someone better take care of this,” JJ said. “I don’t want people thinking I’m some kind of mutie and getting my rep soiled. I am NOT having it.”

“YOU’RE not having it,” Donovan growled. “If not for you and your clique of creeps, we wouldn’t even have had an incident today!”

“Don’t start, sphinx-boy, I had to climb out of a drain today. You ever climb out a drain?”

“That’s probably the second time you crawled out of a drain. The first was your birth.”

“Shut up, freak!”

Donovan picked up one of Emerson’s science beakers and hurled it at JJ. Emerson, without thinking, reached out to stop it. It was an instinctive reaction to having something of his imperiled. The beaker shattered in the air, before it ever reached Emerson’s hand. The shards shot to and around Emerson’s hand, whirling around it and clinging to it. In a moment, the glass pieces began re-forming with each other. The glass formed a perfectly smoothed, segmented glove over Emerson’s hand. He stared at it. 

Cat asked “What the hell are your powers, man?”

“I don’t know,” Emerson said. “I seem to attract things. I think I’m a magnet guy or something. I can make the things fall off, but they don’t fix themselves.” The pieces of glass fell off into the wastebin. Emerson looked down at his broken beaker sadly. 

Cat shrugged. “How is making things stick to you a power?”

“I don’t know, can YOU do it?” Emerson was in a foul mood, and this was about as close to getting really angry as he ever seemed to get.

Cat leaned down to scratch Emerson’s cat. “All I’m saying,” she offered, “Is that if we’re going with the angle that we now have superpowers, shouldn’t we be looking for great benefits and abilities? Conjuring sphinxes and making things stick to us don’t seem to offer us much of anything.”

Gustav said “Not every super power is beneficial. There’s a large number of mutants who are stricken with crippling deformities as a result of their mutation.” He looked at Cat as he made his point and his poise failed him briefly. “You’ve… uh… you’ve got some…” He gestured to her face. 

“What?” Cat at him with whiskers sprouting from her upper lip. 

Donovan said “Holy crap. We’re through the looking glass here, people… hip-deep in fricking Wonderland.”

“What!” Cat said again, getting paranoid. “What’s wrong??” By now two triangular, feline ears had grown from the top of her head. Her own ears seemed to have withdrawn, and smooth skin covered where they had been.

“You’re turning into a Cat,” Herbie said meekly.

Cat ran to Emerson’s mirror, stared into it for a second, and touched the cat ears on her head. She looked like she was about to scream… then that look melted away and she said “Cool.” 

Gustav said “Clearly, you’re adapting the physiology of animals you encounter. Very interesting power, there.”

Emerson looked away from her and gasped. Behind Donovan, Emerson’s room faded away into a woodlands path. “What is THAT??”

Everyone turned and looked. Something was appearing above the path. It was a big, toothy grin. Two green eyes opened, one winked, and the whole vision faded away. 

Donovan said “Whaaaat?” 

Gustav cleared his throat and said “Wonderland. That was Wonderland. You just made a reference to it a moment ago, and it appeared behind you. Perhaps you subconsciously create illusions?”

“Great,” JJ said. “The foreign kid is figuring out everyone’s powers. What’s mine, dork?”

Gustav’s answer to this was shocking- he sprang from his position with startling speed and slammed into JJ with both hands. JJ flew back against the wall and fell to his butt. “Aghhh! What’d you do that for, dick??”

Gustav furrowed his brow. “You’d mentioned being unable to get knocked down. I tried it, and it seems that isn’t the case.“

JJ got up, brushing himself off. “Make a run at me like that again and I’ll murdalize ya. Looks like your ability to guess everyone’s power is a bust… I could do better. Watch, here I go.” He put his hands to his heads and closed his eyes. “I’m getting that Herbie’s power is to be a mega gaywad and the biggest loser in Silverage.”

“I’m not a loser,” Herbie replied quietly.

“Oh please! Look at that outfit. You look like you actually dressed up for this. What, were you trying to impress Cat the super-dyke with your JC Penney pressed slacks?”

“Shut up. I mean it.”

“Do you think she could ever even LOOK at a monumental turd like you?”

Herbie’s face turned red and he screamed “Shut UP!” He reached up and brought a fist down on Emerson’s desk. KA-BRAKK!!! The desk shattered as if it were made of graham crackers.  Tiny splinters and dust fell around Herbie, who glared at JJ with a furious grimace. “Shut. Your. Mouth.”

The lights overhead flickered, went out, and came back on again after a moment. 

Gustav was first to break the silence. “Well. Herbie’s power is clear. You’re the strong guy. Congratulations.”

Emerson said “Okay. All right. We all need to calm down. Breaking my things isn’t going to help anyone, and right now we need to keep our heads clear.”

Another fizzling noise and a purple flare of sparks, and the lights went out entirely. 

Donovan looked out of Emerson’s window. “Looks like it’s all over town. 

Everything in the room was pitch-black… to everyone except Cat. With her feline eyes she saw everyone around looking about blindly. She giggled, reached out and plucked JJ’s Buscema Broncos cap right off his head. “Hey, what… my hat just disappeared!” She then put the hat on Herbie’s head, and moved back… just as Emerson switched on his flashlight. 

JJ saw his hat on Herbie’s head. He reached out and swiped it back. “Bad move, doof! Touch the hat again and you’re wiped.”

“I didn’t take it!” Herbie, still infuriated, reached out and pushed JJ. To his and JJ’s surprise, his hands went straight through JJ’s chest. A vaguely round section of JJ’s upper torso fell to the ground, neatly cut from his body by Herbie’s furious push. JJ then raised his arm to ward off the attack, and Herbie slapped it out of the air. The arm clumped against the wall and fell, where it kept moving. 

JJ stood there, with the others, staring down at the piece of his chest and his severed arm. There was blood, but none of it splattered or leaked. It clung to the flesh. There were visible ribs, and a cross-section of his spinal column. JJ said “Huh.”

Gustav said “I didn’t see THAT coming. Based on that and your previous experience with the drain, I’d say you have some incredible measure of body density control. You may well be invulnerable.”

JJ picked up his chest, sliding it back into the hole. “I was invulnerable before.” He picked up his arm and it snapped back into place. He wiggled his fingers. “Everything’s cool. Kinda hurt though.”

Donovan said “You’re Leper Man!”

“At least I don’t see scary monsters.”

“You will.”

The phone rang. Emerson picked it up, hushed everyone, and listened for a minute. “No, we don’t know anything about it either. …What? …Oh, nothing… Hey, is that a police scanner in the background? Let me listen. … … …Wow. Okay. Bye.” He hung up.

“That was Steven Piercey. He wanted to know if we knew anything about the blackout. I heard on his police scanner that hell’s breaking out all over town… the police are rushing about trying to stem the electrical shorts. Apparently crimes are breaking out all over the place as a result of the blackout. The police don’t even have enough manpower to stop the bank robbery that’s going on at Silverage Savings & Loan.”

Everyone let that hang in the air for a moment. Emerson’s eyes were excited. “Want to see if we can do it ourselves?”

_*Next:*_* Crimefighters*


----------



## Dr Midnight (May 18, 2006)

The group took JJ’s Trans Am (black with a gold eagle painted on the hood- a classic) down into the city. They pulled up near the Silverage Savings & Loan with the lights off and got out. 

Inside the bank’s darkened windows were the quick flickers of several flashlights being cast over the place. The kids crept up to the windows and peeked in. Aside from the occasional flashlight beam, the place was entirely dark. 

Cat’s cat-eyes had faded away over the drive here, and she was now fully human again. She looked around… no cat nearby to help her to change. Night vision would really help right now. Did she even need a cat to be nearby? She didn’t know. She clenched her eyes shut and thought about cats as hard as she could. Tabbies, angoras, calicos, Scottish Folds, manxes, Russian Blues- her eyes snapped open, bright yellow with black vertical slits. The slits widened as she stared into the bank. “Eight men… all in ski masks, all with guns. Working on the safe.”

“It occurs to me that some of us aren’t actually sure of what we can do,” Emerson said. “I’m pretty sure I can move their guns away from their hands. Let me try that.” He held his hand up to the window and willed the guns away from the robbers’ hands. The glass of the window began bowing outward to him. Emerson quickly stopped what he was doing. “Dammit,” he said, stepping away from the window. “If I’m not magnet guy, what the hell am I? Having things stick to you is one hell of a lame power. What am I missing??”

“You’ll figure it out,” Donovan said. “For now, I think I’ll try to scare them into wasting some ammo. It’s time for a radioactive zombie cop!” He concentrated on forming just that by the bank’s door, formed his hands into the classic metal sign… the pointer and pinky extended, with the other two fingers held down by the thumb. His hands glowed a dim orange and a radioactive zombie cop appeared in the doorway to the bank. 

It groaned and approached the thieves. They panicked and began unloading bullets into it. It fell after a while, dead from a head shot. 

“Good job,” Gustav said. “That seemed to draw some fire, as you suggested. Thirty-eight shots were fired, twenty-four hit their mark. I’d say they have some passing firearms experience.”

Cat gave him a look. “You were able to count the number of gunshots… and how many HIT THE COP??”

“Yes,” Gustav shrugged, nonplussed. “Herbie, they may be about to bolt for the door. How about giving them something to think about?”

Herbie walked around the corner to the main door, reaching out to grab a light pole on the way, to rip from the ground and use as a club. He found very quickly that though his strength had changed, his weight had not and that trying to pull the pole to him had only pulled him to the pole. He frowned and put both hands on the pole, bending it at an axis. He snapped the pole off and walked to the door, holding the pole as a giant baseball bat, ready to swing. 

JJ said “They don’t seem to be running quite yet… I’ll give them a nudge. He stretched out with his neck, so that his head went around the corner and through the door… low, as not to be seen. “HEY!” he yelled. “I’m going to call the cops!” His head then shot back around the corner to his shoulders like a tape measure. 

Emerson sighed. _Herbie’s really got super-strength. JJ’s got stretch-powers. Cat can adapt to animal forms, Gustav’s got incredible cognitive ability, and Donovan can cast magic. I can make stuff stick to me. This really stinks. _ He was so lost in his despair that he almost didn’t hear the creaking and groaning noises behind him. When he did, he turned around and gasped, just once. He didn’t have time to scream.

The crooks, frightened by JJ’s taunts, finally began advancing for the door. As the first one made it out, he was astonished to see a fifteen year-old kid standing there, holding a lamp post. 

Herbie swung, again forgetting that his weight was still that of a teenage weakling. The seven hundred pound pole’s inertia held it still against the counterweight of Herbie’s one hundred and thirty pound frame. Herbie managed to shoot himself off to his rear to bash off a building, leaving the pole to hang in the air for a second before it crashed to the ground with a jarring CLANGGGG! Herbie rubbed his head on the other side of the street and vowed to be more careful with things like that in the future.

Cat hurled herself at one of the crooks, hissing like a cat and wielding wickedly sharp claws. She knocked him to the ground and began tearing at him. The thug cried out in surprise and pain. 

The other robbers pointed their guns at Cat and were about to fire when an immense thunder of a noise distracted them. They looked off to the left and saw the other kids, apparently as shocked as they were, looking around the corner at something. Something huge. Something walking. Another thunderous footstep, then another. 

JJ groaned. “Oh no. Oh NO!!!”

Emerson stepped around the corner, wearing JJ’s car. 

_*Next:*_* Crimefighters part II*


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## Dr Midnight (May 19, 2006)

Screw it, no one's posting. I'm just going to put the rest up and get this thing out of the way.


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## Dr Midnight (May 19, 2006)

The black and gold Trans Am had entirely broken apart and covered the bookish young student, forming a ten foot tall creature that very strongly resembled a Transformer. The head of the thing was a metal mask lit with two red eyes. The arms were black and gold plated, thick, with ball sockets at the joints. The hood of JJ’s car was a breastplate for the thing, the eagle glinting in the streetlights. 

Emerson spoke, and his voice came, amplified, through the car’s speakers, which were mounted on his shoulders. “Okay. Powers not sucking so much now.” He picked up two of the robbers and chucked them into a nearby dumpster. The lid banged down over them. 

Donovan laughed. “Emerson, you ROCK!” He made the devil-fingers and they lit up bright orange. He created a roaring fire inside the bank, and the crooks that were now hesitant about coming out had no choice. Flames roared inside the building. “Oops. That was only supposed to LOOK like fire,” Donovan mumbled. 

The criminals ran out into the street, almost ignoring the heroes in their haste to escape the blaze. JJ reached back with fifty-foot arms, grabbed Herbie from the other side of the street, and whipped him right into the middle of the fray. 

Herbie began whaling away on them as soon as he landed amidst them. A lot of rage had been building in Herbie through the day, and he let the floodgates open. He pushed one guy into a wall, knocked the heads of two more together, and kicked upwards into a crook’s groin. The man’s face immediately froze in shock and turned a grayish-blue. He collapsed. 

_I killed him,_ Herbie thought. _I crossed that line the real heroes never cross. I don’t know my own strength yet, and I kicked him as hard as I could. I could have cut him in half._ Herbie shook himself from his funk and grabbed the villain’s body. Herbie was panicked. _Maybe no one’s even noticed yet. Maybe if I can just ditch the body, no one WILL notice._

A few of the robbers fired their guns at Cat. For some reason, she seemed the most likely target, mauling one of their own on the street. She arced back, dodging a shot, leaned forward to dodge another, then was struck above her heart. She collapsed to the ground and gasped. The would in her chest made slurping sucking noises as she tried to breathe. 

This was Gustav’s moment. He’d been carefully hanging back, weighing the time to act. This was the time. He quickly guessed how to best reach Cat, and leapt over the entire fray. He did two tight somersaults and landed, kneeling, beside her. He scooped her up and ran her away from the fight while he pondered what to do with her. 

Emerson grabbed a crook and held him up. The fist clenching the crook shot off of Emerson’s metal-plated arm and rocketed down the street, taking the crook with it. Emerson’s arm began reassembling itself from the metal pieces coating it. “Coool,” he said to himself.

Gustav took Cat into a nearby alley. She was dying… quickly. She’d been struck in the heart. “Cat,” Gustav said. “Can you hear me?” 

Cat only managed to suck in great bloody gasps of air. “Kcccchccckckk… kccchhhkccccckkkghh…” 

“Cat, listen. There are species of lizard that can regenerate severed limbs, to a certain extent. Your heart isn’t a limb, but can you focus on that power and make it work for you?” She stared up at him, pale, gasping, tears running down her cheeks. “I know it’s a longshot, Cat, but you’re going to die unless you can manipulate your power.”

Cat closed her eyes and grunted, turning her thoughts inward, focusing all her energy on her chest wound _Lizards. Geckos. Uh… Monitors. Ow. Iguanas._ Her wound spat a line of blood into the air. It landed with a clink… the bullet had spat with it. 

“It’s working, Cat. Keep going. Concentrate.” 

The wound didn’t’ close entirely, but Cat felt her heartrate slow down from its galloping pace. She could breathe again. “I think… I think I’m alright.”

“Amazing,” Gustav said. “You can use the power of animals in any physical context. You didn’t need the lizard to be able to repair his heart to fix your own. What else can you do, I wonder.”

She wiped some of the tears and blood from her face, mostly just embarrassed now to have been shot at all. “I dunno, but all of me is feeling like a horse’s ass.”

Back at the fight, the group was mopping up. JJ grabbed two downed mooks, reached up over a streetlamp with his elbows, then reeled his arms in. His arms acted as a pulley system, drawing the mooks up, who were then hooked on the streetlamp by their shirts. 

Donovan had turned all the crooks’ guns to cobras. The cobras now withered away to blackened, crispy looking ribbons. Donovan kicked them into the sewers, then drew the oxygen from the bank, extinguishing the fire.

Herbie darted around a corner, carrying the body. His face was flushed and sweaty. He dumped the corpse into a trash bin… just as a light flashed overhead.

All the heroes looked up to see someone atop the four-story bank building, beneath the train tracks. Someone with a camera. “Steven Piercey!” Donovan cursed. He pointed and Steven’s camera turned into a bumblebee. 

“Owww!” Steven grabbed his face. “Something stung me!” The bee flew away. 

“Did he see who we are?” Emerson asked quietly.

“I doubt it,” Gustav replied, helping Cat limp back to the others. “We’re lit from behind, down here. All he’s seeing are vague silhouettes. We’re fortunate to have all this corporate signage on the west side of the street.”

Herbie approached them. “How is she?”

“I’m fine… Herbie, you look like a nervous wreck. Were you that worried about me?”

Herbie stood still, unsure of how to respond.  

Gustav cocked his head. “What’s that? Does anyone hear that?”

Cat grew a pair of cat ears again and listened. “Sounds low. Rumbley.”

“Getting louder,” Emerson added. 

In three quick instants, Gustav put it all together. His face was grim. “It’s the train. The blackout occurred while it was moving, around its maximum speed of a hundred and forty miles an hour. Two miles north of this point, the track splits above a residential area. The train is usually going much slower by then. The switch is likely set to right, if I recall correctly. The train’s brakes are electrical, thus the train cannot slow down at the moment. At the speed the train is going, it’s going to jump the tracks and land in the projects… likely killing hundreds.”

The bank robbers and Steven Piercey were forgotten. Everyone turned their heads south and saw the train roaring their way, approximately five stories overhead, on an elevated metro-rail track. The Silverage bullet train was speeding out of control.

JJ shook his head with a fevered look in his eyes. “No, Gustav,” he said. “That’s not going to happen.”

_*Next:*_* Gotta Catch a Train*


----------



## Dr Midnight (May 19, 2006)

JJ began to stretch up toward the train tracks. “Herbie, grab my legs, I need an anchor! I’m going to try to slow the train or stop it- someone get to that switch!” Herbie planted his legs into the asphalt and grabbed JJ’s ankles. 

Cat concentrated. _Hawks, eagles, owls, pigeons, seagulls…_ Her arms elongated and flattened. Her delicate skin grew feathers that lengthened until her arms were wings. She flapped with a wingspan of about twenty feet and began to rise into the air. For a moment, the pressure of the situation melted away and Cat joined the elite .0001% of people worldwide that knew what it felt like to fly on their own. 

She lifted up into the air and tried to go faster. The train was coming up very fast, and she wanted to match or beat its speed. Cat the bird-girl was racing a bullet train on her first flight. 

JJ yelled “HOLD TIGHT, HERBIE!” as he stretched up all the way to the tracks. The train came at him at a frightening speed and THWACK! With the sound of a wad of bread dough hitting a hot sidewalk from a hundred feet up, the train hit JJ, who flattened against the glass and tried to hold on. 

The train kept going, stretching an already very stretched JJ out between a quickly moving train and an anchored, super-strong guy. Before JJ knew it, he’d been stretched out to about four hundred feet long, and his breaking point was found. He snapped at the midsection. His upper half launched out into the air before the train, like a rubber band shot off of a finger. His back half shot back and thwapped Herbie in the face, knocking him out of his holes in the asphalt. His upper torso flew out in front of the train, sailing through the air as JJ flailed helplessly against the air. 

Donovan tried to magically restore electricity to the train car. He managed to set the lights in the cars on, very dimly. There wasn’t enough power to manage the brakes, that was clear. 

Emerson, down on the street in his robot suit said “The train’s getting away… we’ve got to keep up with it and try to beat it to the switch. Stand back…” He held his arms up. “TRANSFORM!!!” Nothing happened. His giant metal arms lowered. “Crap. That would have been so cool.” He sloughed off his suit. It fell around him in hunks of bent, ruined pieces of what was once the star quarterback’s beloved car.

Gustav asked “Why did you take off the suit?”

“Because we’re taking this car. C’mon!” Emerson ran to a nearby car and opened the locked door by momentarily calling the door to his body, then letting it go before it hit him. The door opened with a chunking noise. “Can you hotwire this, Gustav?”

“Of course,” Gustav said as he slid in the passenger seat. Within two and one third seconds, the car was running. “Go!” The car took off down the street. 

That left Donovan standing there with Herbie and JJ’s legs and pelvis. Herbie got an idea and grabbed JJ’s lower torso, which wiggled helplessly in his grasp. He tied both feet to street lights on opposing sides of the street and began to back into the center, stretching it back. He kept pushing back and back until JJ’s legs were twitching with the strain… then Herbie released. He was fired up into the air like a bullet. He sailed right past Cat, right past the train, right past JJ and crashed into the ties on the track. 

JJ was still tumbling through the air. Herbie flew past him and he stretched his arms out towards the train. He grabbed it and pulled himself in. He slapped against the front of the train’s windshield for the second time, feeling like so much pulled taffy. “Urrrrgh…” Looking inside, he saw a terrified looking conductor manning the train’s operations booth. The man was so shocked by this odd goo-kid stuck to the train’s front that he almost forgot to keep trying the brake lever. 

Donovan called upon whatever forces he controlled and managed to cause a drag chute to sprout from the back of the train. The chute began slowing the train down… somewhat. JJ’s legs, tied to two lamp posts nearby, turned brittle and crumbled into pieces, then reformed. The legs walked over to Donovan, who said “The train’s getting away… how can I catch up?” The legs turned in the direction of the train and braced themselves. The meaning was clear: hop on. Donovan sneered. “I am not riding your ass.” The legs looked ashamed, if ever a pair of legs could look ashamed. 

Cat was catching up. She was beating her wings furiously and beginning to advance on the train. She realized that unless the train slowed much more dramatically than it was doing, she wasn’t likely to get much further than it, even with a set of wings like this. She got an idea. She concentrated hard and moved in front of the train as she grew a giant spider’s thorax. Calling on two animal forms was tougher, but she managed it. She began to unreel a line of web from her spinnerets, flying back and forth across the tracks trying to tangle the web around power poles and slow the train by any increment. 

Emerson and Gustav were in a ’99 Ford Camry, doing ninety miles up a city street. Luckily thanks to the blackout there weren’t many cars on the road, but still it was all Emerson could do to maneuver as well as he was doing. Years of video games had honed Emerson’s driving skill to a razor-keen edge. “This isn’t going to help us unless we can reach the tracks, somehow,” Gustav mused. “Wait… there!” He pointed. Coming up on the right hand side of the road was one of those trucks that carried several cars on two levels. This one was empty, and its rear ramps were resting almost at ground level. Emerson floored it. 

Herbie stood on the tracks, waiting for his moment. The train was flying at him very, very quickly. He hopped at the right moment and JJ caught him, placing him up on the roof. Herbie reached down and ripped a chunk of metal right out of the roof. He yelled down to the conductor. “Is there anyone else on the train?”

“No, it’s just me- we bring the train back to the yard at the end of the night… Oh, god, we’re going to crash!” The conductor panicked. “Oh my god, oh my god, I’m going to die and I’m seeing a giant bird-spider woman outside. Am I already dead?”

Herbie grabbed the guy and handed him off to Cat, who grabbed him with her bird’s legs, then dropped the shrieking man off on top of a nearby building. She flew on as he yelled something about being taken by a harpy. 

Herbie flattened the chunk of roof-metal he’d ripped as best he could into a disc and hurled it at the switch, which was now visible maybe a quarter-mile away. The end of the tracks was a half-mile away. The disc flew true and glanced off of the switch, which clanged halfway over. The switch was now in between settings… it would need to be nudged again for the residents of the neighborhood to be safe. The track to the right curved too sharply- only the track to the left would support the train at this speed. 

JJ reached out in front of him… he couldn’t stretch far enough to hit the switch in time. Herbie looked around for something else to throw, and there was no chance that Cat would make it in the few seconds they had left. JJ said “I need something between me and the switch! I can make it, if just…”

Then, a car launched up into the air, arcing gracefully from the ramp it had flown up from. Emerson and Gustav landed roughly on the tracks with a flash of sparks. The car wavered for a moment and kept going, three hundred feet out in front of the train. 

“Bingo,” JJ shouted. He reached out and grabbed the car’s roof with one hand, then released his grip on the train. He flew out over the car, streamlining his body as best he could. He reached far out in front of him and slapped the switch the rest of the way. KA-CHUNK! The tracks clunked into place, aiming the train’s path to the left. 

The train was now slowed to about fifty miles an hour, thanks to Donovan and Cat’s many efforts to reduce its speed. It curved around to the left, chasing the car, which was falling apart from the stress of driving across railroad ties. 

JJ’s upper body plummeted five stories down to land atop his lower body, which had run this entire way on long legs, waiting for him to rejoin. He landed perfectly, and with a SPLUP noise he was whole again.

Gustav leapt from the car, which was rapidly deteriorating. He flipped down to some power lines, which he swung around in three perfect loops before flipping down to street level.

Cat picked Emerson up from the car before it was bashed apart by the still-slowing train. She flew him to the ground. 

The heroes all regrouped on the street, worn and weary. “Y’know,” Donovan said, “I think we should get some costumes if we’re going to do this type of thing.” 

“Are we going to keep doing this?” Cat asked.

They looked about at each other. 

_*Next:*_* Issue 2: Welcome to the Community*


----------



## Dr Midnight (May 19, 2006)

Issue 2

The Buscema Broncos were facing their archrivals the Kirby Cougars, and the entire town turned out to watch the game. 

The suburbs of Silverage had emptied as parents, siblings, sports fans and bored teenagers showed up to line the bleachers. The cheerleaders were doing their best to whip the loyal Silverage fans into a screaming froth. Meager fireworks went off overhead in the sky, where you couldn’t see the stars through the atmospheric light bounced about by the field’s lighting system and the nearby metropolis. 

Five teenagers in particular sat on the bleachers. None of these kids had ever watched a football game before. Herbie Miller and Donovan Maddox played PSP against each other. Claire Tibbits stared around, completely bored. Gustav Stammler watched the interaction of sports fans the way anyone else might watch the activity around an ant hill. Emerson scribbled in his notebook. None of them were interested in the game at all… they had only shown up to watch over one of their own.

Jacob Jones ran out onto the football field to the cheers of hundreds of Silverage fans. He held his hands up and nodded as he joined the rest of the team. 

“He really does seem to know how to get the crowd excited,” Cat observed.

Gustav agreed. “He’s got performance skills.”

Donovan snorted his disdain. “Why are we here again, listening to the throngs of apes?”

“We’re watching JJ to make sure he doesn’t use his powers to cheat, and secondly we’re keeping an eye out for his clique- Hammer, Jeremy, Mace, Dick and Glenn. They haven’t shown up at school since the incident, maybe they’ll turn up tonight,” Emerson said without looking up from his notepad.

Donovan stopped playing briefly and glared at Emerson. “I know. That was rhetorical.” 

It was Saturday night, nine PM- exactly seventy-two hours ago the group had been fighting bank robbers on a city street, exhibiting amazing powers that they’d won at random in an accident at the Silverage Science Museum. Since then, the group had lain low, going to school and only discussing their experience in private, telling no one else, watching the reaction of the public. The arrival of a super-team in Silverage City had enflamed the town’s spirit. Everyone was discussing the team, what their names might be, what the team might be called. The major papers had decided, as a publicity stunt, to award the naming of the team and heroes (unless the heroes came forward first) to the one person who’d managed to get a halfway decent look at them. That honor would go to-

“Hi guys!” Steven Piercey bounded up the crowded bleachers to them. Cat was polite enough to greet him back. “Enjoying the game?” Before anyone could answer, he was onto his favorite topic. “So how ‘bout that new super-team? I get to name them. I’m writing a story about them in the school paper this week. Can you believe I got a picture of them in action?”

Donovan didn’t look up. “So where’s the picture?”

Steven frowned. “ I dropped my camera when a bee stung me.”

Donovan smirked to himself. “That’s a shame.”

“Yeah. I’ve got a new camera though, so I’ll be ready when they appear again. Hey, so let me run my name ideas past you.” He took out a notepad. “For the team name, I’m thinking either The Astonishers or The Silverage Six or The New Legends.”

No one answered. He looked at them. “C’mon, which do you like? Cat?”

“I dunno.” She looked out over the field, watching the game but not paying attention to much of anything.

“Herbie, you’ve gotta have an opinion.”

“Leave me alone.”

Steven sighed. “I guess I like The New Legends better. I dunno. Okay, what about this girl that can adapt to any animal form? I’m thinking of calling her Ani-Gal.” 

That got Cat’s attention. She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “That’s terrible!”

“Well, what would YOU name her?”

Cat smiled. She’d thought about this. “The Pixie.”

Steven thought about that and tapped his lips with his pencil eraser. “Hmmm. Y’know, I like that.” He wrote it down. “Then there’s this other guy, he kinda had orange-glow hands and cast illusions or something.”

Donovan said “Oh, like he was hexing things?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess.”

“You should call him Hex, then.”

Steven brightened. “Hey, good one! Okay… got it. Hex. Then there’s this guy that didn’t seem to do much, that I could see- he did a flip and picked up the Pixie, but I couldn’t make out much of what he really did.”

Gustav said “Sounds like a savant.”

“What’s a savant?”

“It’s a word for a hero that only acts when he’s needed.” Of course savant means nothing of the kind, but Gustav had a good idea that Steven didn’t know that. 

“That sounds like him. Maybe I’ll name him Savant.”

Gustav smiled. “A fine idea.” Lately giving people ideas and making them think they’d thought them up had come very naturally to him lately, and it pleased him every time.

Steven said “Oh, MAN! My FAVORITE was this big robot-guy. He was like a Transformer, which is the coolest thing ever. All black, shiny, glowing red eyes. I’m going to call him Robotror.”

Emerson looked aghast. “Robotror?!”

“Yeah. I think that name’s cool. Don’t you?”

“Uh. No.”

“What would you call him?” 

“Constructor!” Emerson shouted, forgetting himself. He was quite excited about the name he’d come up with for himself. 

Steven didn’t look impressed, but he wrote the name down. “I’ll think about it. Whoever he is, he’s out of commission for now- he left his robot suit behind! Some scientists are analyzing it right now. What about the stretchy guy’s name?”

Cat spoke up. She’d actually spoken to JJ earlier in the day, and he’d expressed interest in a name that didn’t actually have anything to do with his powers. How would she make this sound attractive? “Um. I was thinking… uh… Gridiron.”

Steven looked confused. “Gridiron? Why?”

“In days of old, a Gridiron was a… um. It was a thing that stretched really far. People would say ‘wow, that’s as stretchy as a gridiron.’ Yep.” She smiled the smile of someone who’s terribly embarrassed. Everyone was looking at her. Her logic hadn’t really worked. She’d need some help on this one.

“Yeah,” Herbie agreed. “I’ve heard that. Gridirons used to be the stretchiest thing around.” Cat thanked him with her eyes. 

Steven looked baffled. “I thought a gridiron was a football thing. I don’t know. I guess it sounds cool.” He wrote it down. While he was looking away, Cat shrugged at the others. 

Donovan mouthed _Stretchy as a gridiron??_ at her. She put her head in her hands and gave up.

Steven said “The last one was a real skinny dude that’s, like, super strong. I mean really skinny.”

Herbie looked up, annoyed. “We get it. He’s skinny.” 

“I have no idea as to what to name him. All the good strong-guy names are taken.”

“I’ve got an idea,” Herbie offered. 

“Oh yeah? What is it?”

“Super-Fantastic Wonderboy.”

Even Gustav’s eyebrows jumped. Donovan shouted “What??”

“Yeah. Super-Fantastic Wonderboy. What’s so weird about that?”

“That is the worst name ever. Pick another one.” 

“No, I like it.”

Donovan stood up and pointed. “You’re NOT picking ‘Super-Fantastic Wonderboy!’”

“Maybe I am, so what?”

Steven looked at them both. “Dudes, it’s cool, I can pick another name…”

“No!” Donovan yelled. “Herbie can come up with a better name, can’t you, Herbie?”

“I like Super-Fantastic Wonderboy!”

“What about Frenzy. Frenzy’s not taken. Go with Frenzy.”

“But…”

“No but! Super-Fantastic Wonderboy sucks ass and would be the laughing stock of the entire city.”

“He’s right, Herbie,” Cat agreed.

Herbie bent back to his video game. “Whatever. Frenzy’s fine.”

Steven thought _What in the world was that?_ to himself, but he wrote Frenzy down in his notebook. “Okay, maybe I’ll use that one. Whoever he is, it looked like he almost killed someone that night.”

Herbie’s eyes went wide. “Almost?? I mean- killed??”

“Yeah, kicked some guy so hard that he almost died. ‘Frenzy’ put him in a dumpster, almost like to get rid of the evidence. I called an ambulance and he pulled through.”

“Oh. Good.” Herbie didn’t meet the eyes of the others, glaring at him.

“Well, gotta go- I’ll think about these names. I like ‘em. See ya!” Steven bounded down the bleachers and walked away. 

The crowd screamed its approval. Down on the field, JJ had just scored another touchdown. He spiked the ball and waved to the fans. He hadn’t even used his powers. He turned around, grinning at them all. 

He stopped suddenly. Had he just seen- He shielded his eyes against the glare of the overhead lights and squinted. Yep- over by the buses, standing in the shadows was Glenn Bristol. 

Glenn was a small, wiry guy that stood about five foot three and always had a wry grin on his face. As cruel a sense of humor as you could ever hope for. He’d been a friend of JJ’s for years now, and JJ hadn’t heard from him since the whole clique had been caught in the accident at the museum. He hadn’t heard from any of them, and none of them had come to school or answered their phones.

“Dude!” JJ called, waving as he ran at Glenn. Glenn seemed to shrink back, but didn’t retreat. He looked much more nervous than he ever had before. “Where you been, gaylord?? You haven’t been to school in days!”

“I dunno. Things are messed up.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing. I guess we just ain’t been feeling so good, y’know?”

JJ spoke carefully. “How do you mean, you haven’t been feeling so good? Like what? Sick?”

“Kinda. Jeremy’s real sick, dude. He’s in the hospital.”

That shocked JJ. He’d been expecting his friends to show up again with cool powers like his. “What’s wrong with him?”

“The doctors don’t know. It’s unlike anything they’ve seen. None of us feel great… kinda different. It’s weird.”

“Different how?” Now he and Glenn were both studying each other very closely, looking for signs that the other would know what they mean by _different_

Finally, Glenn said “I dunno. We might actually leave school for good.”

“Leave school? Really?”

“School’s gay. I gotta go dude. You might want to visit Jeremy, they’re saying he might not make it much longer.” 

“Damn. I’ll go tonight. This sucks, man.”

“Yeah. I’ll, uh… I’ll see you later.” Glenn turned to walk away. 

JJ walked after him. “No, wait-“ Just then he heard Coach shout his name. The team needed him in a huddle. Glenn disappeared behind some buses and JJ turned back to the field. He felt a knot in his gut. Jeremy might be dying? The guy wasn’t the nicest dude around, but JJ had always gotten along well with him. Had he gotten some odd kind of cancer, not powers at all? Was that possible?

As he joined the huddle, a voice on the field’s loudspeaker announced that Steven Piercey had finally chosen names for the heroes of Silverage City. The entire crowd howled its approval as the names were announced in dramatic fashion. “Your Buscema Broncos welcomes Silverage City’s first super-team! The Pixie! Constructor! Frenzy! Savant! Gridiron! Hex! They are now to be known as… the NEW LEGENDS!!!”

The crowd went wild. They screamed like they’d never screamed for any football game, ever.

_*Next:*_* Visiting Hours*


----------



## Dr Midnight (May 19, 2006)

JJ caught up with the group after the game as they were hanging around the parking lot. “Hey! Was I awesome or what?”

“Good game, JJ,” Cat said. “As much as I hate to admit it, you’re impressive to watch.”

“Thanks. Looking good, Herbie- lost the glasses I see.”

Herbie’s posture changed, as if he were put on guard by this. He certainly wasn’t expecting a compliment to be anything but a set-up for a dig… especially from JJ. “What.”

“What what? Just sayin’.” 

Herbie had ditched his glasses and invested in contacts earlier that day. They felt funny in his eyes, but they didn’t hurt. He supposed that that might be the invulnerability helping out.  He fell in behind the others as they began walking. He wasn’t sure if Cat had noticed. She hadn’t said anything. He looked at her as he walked and sighed. 

Donovan said “So we’re going patrolling, right?”

“That’s the plan,” JJ replied. “I just gotta make a quick stop first.”

They walked by the opposing team- the Kirby Cougars’ bus idled as the players stood outside, discussing their defeat at the hands of the hated Buscema High. They stared at JJ as he walked by with the others. “Mutie,” one whispered in a hateful voice. 

“What happened there?” Cat asked. 

“Ehh, I caught them right after the game ended sneaking off behind school. I followed them and found that they were doing some vandalism.”

“What did you do? You didn’t use your powers without your costume, did you?”

“No, no. Kinda. Well. They surrounded me and beat me up. Thing is, though, that I was as hard as stone at the time. Broke a couple of their hands… funny as hell, I’ll tell ya.”

Gustav said “We must be more careful not to let people know about our abilities.” 

“Hey, I don’t know how they do it in Latwervia or wherever, but here we defend our own. What would you have done?”

They piled into JJ’s uncle’s battered pickup. JJ’s car had been left in bent, ruined pieces lying on the streets of Silverage. This old Chevy would have to do for now. 

Emerson asked “Where are we going?”

They parked in the visitors’ lot of the Romita Memorial Hospital. The group walked in. It was ten thirty at night, and no one was here except for the occasional orderly, nurse, doctor and janitor. “Excuse me,” JJ said to the desk girl. “I’m here to see Jeremy Mullen.”

“Visiting hours are eleven to seven weekdays, one to eight Saturdays.” She didn’t even look up.

“He’s a friend of mine,” JJ said. “I heard he might die.”

She stopped reading her paperback and looked up with a face that suggested this wasn’t moved. Not yet. “Mullen… let’s see… he’s in intensive care. Are you family?”

“Um. No.”

She paused. “One of you can visit for five minutes. Room 4C.”

“Sounds good. Thanks.” JJ turned to the others. “Wait here… I’ll be back real soon.” He walked up the hall to the elevators as the others took seat on uncomfortable imitation vinyl chairs. 

The halls on floor four were almost entirely dark, to further aid people near death in pursuit of a peaceful sleep. From each room was the sound of beeping and respirators. The smell of antiseptic wipes and cloying seafoam-colored plastic was everywhere. JJ shuddered. _Hospitals are horrible places._

He came to room 4C and stopped. He slowly turned the knob and stepped into the room. 

Jeremy Mullen looked as if he’d been in a very serious car accident. His entire body was bound in a sectional plaster cast. A respirator wheezed and beeped as it fed him air. An IV drip looked like its line was feeding back from Jeremy’s body- a thin wisp of greenish brown fluid floated in the IV solution. The only part of his body that was visible was the thin strip that had been left out of his head cast, showing his eyes. They were going a sickly yellow color in the iris, and even the whites were turning yellowish, like a morphine addict’s. The skin around his eyes was mottled and flushed red. He looked like he was stricken with a horrid rash. The skin had scabbed up in places and looked to be flaking off. 

JJ took a breath and steeled himself. “Um. Hey there man. I heard you’re not doing well, thought I’d come in and say hi.” Jeremy’s eyes stared at JJ. Small pink veins pulsed among the sick yellow of his eyes. He seemed to be contorting his face as if in tremendous pain. JJ swallowed and went on. “I don’t know what happened in that room with the Transatomic thingiewhatser, but it looks like it wasn’t good for all of us. I… well I shouldn’t really talk about that, but you know what I mean. I guess you had a bad reaction.” 

He paused and heard a faint dripping noise. Bending low, he could see that some kind of liquid was dribbling to the floor. It was soaking through Jeremy’s cast and looked like a thick, clotted gray-orange pus.

“Uhh… “ He straightened and smiled, trying to cheer the situation. “You missed a great game tonight. Brought you the game ball.” He placed the football on the nightstand and smiled wider. 

Jeremy’s breathing wheezed and coughed a bit, and his body shuddered. A nearby machine started beeping quickly and loudly. JJ stepped back as the convulsions wracked his friend’s body. Doctors rushed through the door, past JJ. “He’s going into a seizure- hold him down!”

An orderly took JJ’s elbow and pulled him from the room. “C’mon, gotta let the doctors do their work. Visiting hours are over anyway. Just go home, let us do what we can for him.” JJ nodded and walked back down the hall, looking more like a scared child than he had in years. 

He rejoined the others in the waiting room. Donovan looked up from a _Marie Claire_ magazine. “How was he?”

JJ tried to look like he wasn’t shaken, but it wasn’t really working. His face was drained and waxy. “He. Uh. He’s not doing well. Looks like he may not live through the night.”

“Interesting,” Gustav said. “I’d like to study him.” 

“I’m no philosopher,” Donovan offered, “but what happened seemed to be affected by our personalities and maybe this is just bringing out his.” He shrugged and stood up, yawning. The implication in his body posture was clear: _I won’t miss him._

JJ stared hard at Donovan for a moment. Cat and the others felt the uncomfortable tension mounting as it looked like a swing might be taken. Finally, JJ hissed “I don’t need to take this from you nerds right now. He’s my friend and he may be dying.” He turned and stormed out. 

“Real smooth, Don,” Cat sighed. 

“What? Jeremy’s a jerk and we all know it.”

“Tact. That’s what.”

Donovan rolled his eyes. “I guess. Are we going patrolling or what? Do we all have our costumes?”

Everyone nodded. They’d each brought their homemade costumes in their bookbags, and had been awaiting the opportunity to use them. Only Donovan and Emerson really didn’t need to carry a costume- Emerson’s powers made his costume for him, but he carried a small black domino mask to wear, just in case. Donovan had a different plan. 

They walked outside and rejoined a brooding JJ. “Okay, problem,” Cat said. “Do we put our costumes on and THEN patrol, or walk around until we see trouble and change?”

They all thought about it. Herbie offered “Spider-Man patrols in costume, I saw footage on a reality show.”

Gustav shook his head. “Spider-Man can patrol via his weblines, above the roofs of the city. We only have two ‘members’ that can fly; Cat and Emerson. The rest of us, what will we do? Walk around city streets in costume, drawing a crowd? Cat is right, we have a problem.”

JJ pondered that for a moment. “Daredevil just jumps around from rooftop to rooftop, can we do that?”

“Not all of us… Donovan and Herbie aren’t really agile enough to keep up with the rest of us that way. They might fall. We’re a team- we can’t just jump around like Daredevil.” 

“So what do teams do?” JJ asked, exasperated. “How do the Fantastic Four get around?” 

“They have millions of dollars and a skycar developed and paid for with said dollars. No, I think we need a humbler plan.”

“I’ve got an idea!” Donovan said. He began heading down the street. “C’mon!”

“Where are we going?”

“Where your everyday just-starting-out superhero can get what he needs: Radio Shack.”

_*Next:*_* Rubbing elbows with the big guys*


----------



## Dr Midnight (May 19, 2006)

At Radio Shack, Donovan used his credit card (his dad let him have one with a $5,000 limit, to teach responsibility) to buy the group a few items. He bought six walkie talkie headsets that were voice activated and one high-powered police scanner. 

He handed out the devices as they all stood in an alley. “This way, we can all keep in contact and know where there’s trouble. While we listen to the scanner, Pixie and Constructor can patrol the skies for trouble the police don’t know about, and alert us when they see something.” 

Pixie snuck behind a dumpster to change. “Nobody look!” When she came out, she had a green outfit with a bared midriff, gloves, thigh-high leggings and pink boots to match her pink hair. Over her face she wore a mask with large yellow goggle lenses. 

Savant suited up in a tight black suit that covered everything but his head. His face was covered only by a small domino mask. On his chest in bright yellow, red and green was a curious design that only he knew to be his Latverian family’s coat of arms. A makeshift utility belt ran around his waist and he carried a weapon of his own design, a telescoping staff.

Gridiron was wearing a football uniform with red and yellow colors. It bore the number 3. The only thing that separated it from a real football uniform was the black tinted pane of clear plastic that shielded JJ’s face from identification. He carried a football. He intended to see if he could use it as his weapon- make it his “Captain America shield,” as he put it. 

Herbie had given up on trying to design his own costume and offered the job to Cat. She’d gladly taken to the job and created for Frenzy a hand-tailored catsuit of head-to-toe sleek black lycra. The seams were a dark gray and gave the suit some texture. Twin white triangle-shaped lenses gave Herbie’s eyes a fierce look, and there was an opening in the mask for mouth and chin. Sadly, Cat hadn’t taken into account that Herbie didn’t have much chin to offer, and besides, clinging black lycra only accentuated just how thin and lanky the boy was. 

Donovan’s costume was entirely magical. With a wave of his hand, he was no longer a heavyset teenager- he was a gangly skeleton wearing an old-style magician’s outfit, complete with white gloves, top hat and red-lined cape. The cape’s high, pointed collar (“for that Doctor Strange feel,” he told the others) completed the look.

Emerson, for now, wore only a small black domino mask. His power was his costume, and he walked to a rusted-out old hulk of a car that had been abandoned in the alley. Within moments Emerson was Constructor, a ten foot-tall monster clad in pieces of well-molded metal. His eyes glowed as thin red slits from his robot’s face. “I guess we’re all set, then,” Constructor said. 

Hex turned on the police scanner. _-arjacking on 11th street, suspect is a white male driving a red sedan with-_

Some car sped by on the road. Frenzy, who’d been staring idly in that direction, suddenly bolted toward the road and after the car. 

Hex cursed. “Crap, was that a red sedan? FRENZY! COME BACK!” It was too late- Frenzy was off and running after the carjacker. 

A brief chase followed. At the end, the car broke down in the center of the street, having no wheels and a severely damaged body. The carjacker was welded inside the car to await police.

“Well,” huffed Frenzy as he finally arrived on the scene. “That sucked.”

“You took off running, Frenzy!” Pixie let her bird wings fade away, becoming her normal human arms. “We need to be more organized.”

Hex got off the immense white rabbit he’d been riding and let it jump into his tophat. “She’s right, Frenzy. We’re not much of a team if we act as six individuals.”

Frenzy looked away from them. “I saw trouble, I reacted. I’m as new to this as everyone here is.”

A taxi pulled up and Savant stepped out. He frowned to see the action had ended without his help, but he tipped the cabbie very kindly. “You’re the best, Savant!” cried the cabbie as he sped away, waving.

Savant sighed. “I simply must work on a better way to move from place to place.”

“We were just saying that we need to be better organi-“ Hex stopped and listened. Sirens were tearing up the street toward them, maybe a block or two away. “We’ve got a choice to make, and quickly. Do we leave the crook for the cops, or do we stay and greet our public for the first time?”

They stared at each other while the sirens got louder. “Let’s stay,” Pixie said with a grin. 

“Yeah,” Constructor said. He sounded excited. The New Legends posed themselves as heroically as they could and awaited the police. 

The police tore around the corner and stopped. The cops got out, holding guns in the air. “Hey… hey, Lou, it’s them! The… uh…”

“New Legends!” the other cop said. 

“Yeah!” All the policemen looked astounded as they stepped out of their cars. “Is that the carjacker?” asked one. 

“Yes it is, officer,” Constructor said in his manliest voice. It sounded deepened and amplified. 

“That wreck is the red sedan? That thing ain’t even got wheels!”

People were beginning to gather around. Even though it was eleven at night, the crowd was making quite a stir as the residents of the street came out to meet The New Legends.  

“Hey, you’re Gridiron!” one of two thrilled ten year-olds shouted. “Can I have your football?”

“No,” Gridiron replied, “But I can sign an autograph for you….” He took out a paper and pen. “…WAY UP HERE!” His arms stretched up maybe fifty feet, where they signed the autograph. The kids screamed with delight. 

Three more kids ran up to Constructor. “Constructorrrrr!” they shouted. “You’re awesome! You’re my favorite robot,” one said. 

“Um. Thanks.” 

“Can you sign an auto-graph for me?”

“Yes.” Constructor took some scrap paper from the car’s glovebox and began signing. 

“Can you pick up a car?”

“Yes.” 

“Do it! Pick up that one!” 

Constructor handed the autograph to the kid. “I’m not picking up that car,” he said, annoyed. 

Frenzy was watching these exchanges and feeling unsure about participating in the media-friendly side of being in a super-team when he was approached by someone behind him. “Frenzy, right?” 

He turned and came face to face with a gorgeous girl of maybe nineteen or so. That wasn’t so unusual- what was was that she was looking at Frenzy with interest. Her eyes were wide and she was smiling. No one ever looked at Herbie Miller. He swallowed and tried to speak. “Yeah.”

“You’re the coolest. You’re so mysterious! Who are you?” She twirled a curl of hair with her fingers and Herbie felt his mind twirl with that curl… turning around and around like a spoon in a bowl of oatmeal, and with the same effect. 

“Uhhhh,” was what he said seven seconds before he turned around and walked away. 

A reporter came up to Hex. “Hex, are you concerned that your skeletal appearance is going to cause a stir with parents’ groups?”

“No, and in fact we’re going after them next.” The reporter looked shocked at that. “I was joking,” Hex said. “I guess you can’t tell because my face is a skull. Not really expressive. He tapped his head with a hollow tap-tap sound. 

A few reporters circled Savant. “…and here we have Savant, whom we heard took a cab here tonight. Is this true, Savant, and what is your function within the team?”

Savant took the question in stride with a smile, but inside he cursed the American culture of rudeness. “I’m afraid I don’t discuss team tactics with the press- it gives our enemies that much more of an edge against us.”

“Do you have any enemies yet?”

“Yes… criminals.” This won an appreciative nod from the reporters and it would make a fine piece for the Sunday papers, but Gustav smiled to himself- he hadn’t actually told them a thing.

Hex decided that the group should leave the public wanting more, and he created an escape route. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he cried in a showman’s style, “We must depart… we have more work to do this evening.” He waved his hands with a flourish and a giant magicians’ box appeared. It was carved and painted with arcane glyphs. It was twelve feet tall and five feet to a side. He held the doors open for his teammates, and they stepped inside. Everyone seemed to fit, though that didn’t look possible. 

“We bid you all a very fond good evening from… the New Legends.” He closed the door and smoke began billowing up around the box. It obscured the box entirely, and when it cleared, the box was gone. The crowd cheered wildly. 

_*Next:*_* The Welcome Wagon*


----------



## Dr Midnight (May 19, 2006)

The group appeared on a roof, several blocks away. They stepped out and stretched. 

“That took a lot out of me,” Pixie said. “All that smiling and waving. I don’t think I could do that everyday.”

Hex said “We did well, though.  JJ, you really impressed those kids.” 

Gridiron shrugged. “When you play football, kids look up to you. You learn how to make ‘em happy when they come up to you for an autograph. I like seeing the smiles.”

“I tried. Couldn’t do it as well,” Constructor sighed. “I’m not good with kids.”

“Oooh, y’know what else you do when you play football? Endorsements! Damn, I should have been drinking a Pepsi for the cameras or at least wearing a Nike logo somewhere.” Gridiron looked excited as he imagined the possibilities.

“In the future, we should work more as a team,” Hex said, sitting against the building’s ledge. “Some day this week we shoud discuss strategies, and until then we’ll just take care to consider what everyone else is doing.”

“Agreed,” Savant said. “We should turn on the scanner and listen for more trouble.”

Hex reached into his top hat and removed the police scanner. *_zzzAND OH MAN, PIXIE’S GOT SOME LEGS ON HER, I TELL YOUzzz*  

*zzzYEAH? SHE’S GOT A PAIR OF STEMS ON HER, EHzzz*

*zzzYOU KNOW IT FREDzzz*_

Pixie looked aghast. “I’m FIFTEEN! Those pigs!” She meant “pigs” in two entirely different derogatory ways. 

“You don’t look fifteen in that outfit,” Frenzy said. She looked at him and he reddened. “I’m just saying.”

Another voice broke into the police scanner. *_zzzCUT THE CHATTER, WE’VE GOT A REPORT OF A 312, METAHUMAN OUT OF CONTROL AT THE OLD LIEFELD JUNKYARDzzz * 

*zzzWHAT’S THE I.D.zzz*

*zzzBIG, REALLY STRONG, JUST TEARING UP THE ENTIRE JUNKYARD APPARENTLY. NO I.D. ON A POSSIBLE SUPERVILLAINzzz*

*zzzROGER THAT. POSITION UNITS OUTSIDE THE YARD AT ALL EXITS BUT DO NOT MOVE TO ARREST. WE DON’T NEED ANY OFFICERS TRYING TO GO UP AGAINST THE JUGGERNAUT OR ANYTHING. LET HIM RUN HIS RAGE OUT, MAYBE SOMEONE CAPABLE WILL STEP INzzz*_

“Someone capable,” Savant said, standing up. “Sounds like us.” 

Constructor shook his head. “Wow. Going up against an actual metahuman. We’ve only fought humans so far.”

“Let’s do it,” Hex said. He conjured a large balloon, tied to a ten foot diameter basket that floated beneath it. “Non-flyers hop in. Constructor can pull us.”

Everyone stared at the balloon. “This,” Savant said cautiously, “Is the most undignified mode of travel I’ve ever heard of.”

Hex stepped into the basket. “I’m sorry, we could all just take a taxi.” The joke hit its mark and Savant climbed in along with everyone else. 

Constructor pulled them into the night sky. Pixie flew alongside them with her bird wings. She was growing very skilled at flying, and she seemed to enjoy it so much. 

They saw a pillar of dust rising from the ground in front of them, and a great crashing noise was heard from that little blotch of gray-brown earth down there. “That’s the junkyard,” Constructor announced. 

Pixie adjusted her eyes to those of a hawk and peered down, trying to see what was causing the mess. “Looks like a big tank of a guy- maybe seven feet tall, completely covered in a navy blue body armor.”

“Crap,” Gridiron said. “IS it Juggernaut?”

“No, too small. Still really strong though. He’s flipping cars all over the place. We’ll have to be careful.”

Savant spoke up. “Care to try that teamwork idea? I have a plan to hit him all at once. Listen…” He laid out his plan while Constructor brought them down low behind a stack of cars. 

When they stepped out, they could feel the rumbling of the creature’s thrashing through their bootsoles. It gave them each a nervous fluttering- this was going to be a real fight. 

“RARRRRRRGHHH!!!” the monster screamed in a deep, rumbley voice. It lashed out and smashed a semi’s engine block and it flew off into a pile of old refrigerators. “RRRrrrr…huh?” Lights were shining down on it from above. It looked up to see a robot flying down towards him with what looked like headlights beaming. The robot held out its arms and energy blasts bathed the creature, which was now a barely perceptible shadow inside of the bright orange-yellow blast. “DAMMIT!” it shouted. When the light cleared the body armor had melted in crispy black plates against the misshapen body. It almost looked like it had been made of plastic. 

It cursed to itself as it looked around for the robot. It was gone, and in the sky now was an enormous hawk-girl who was carrying a wrecked car with gorilla legs. The opposable thumbs released their grips on the car and it smashed down into the monster. “ARRRGH!” it screamed. “Wha-“ 

A wrecking ball was flying towards it at head level.

_*DING!*_ It was the sound of a manhole being used to swat a bowling ball out of the air. The blow sent monster flying end over end into an enormous tower of ruined cars, where it smashed. The pile fell around it.  Savant leapt out of the crane he’d used to control the wrecking ball with. The New Legends surrounded the pile, ready to hit the creature with everything they had. 

A large three-fingered hand rose up out of the pile of cars and waved. The deep voice shouted “Wait! Stop!” The crispy black beast clambered up, holding its hands outward. “Hold on, hold on hold on. Geez, when you guys hit you don’t ask questions first, huh?”

If Hex had eyes, he would have blinked. “What??”

“You take bait like pros, though, I’ll tellya.” It climbed out of the pile of cars and looked at them all with its hands on its hips.

Pixie looked very confused. “Bait? How are you ‘bait’?”

“We want to talk to you. Here, maybe this will help.” It wiped its immense hands over its face. A rough rasping sound came from it, like cinderblocks being rubbed together. The melted black plastic sloughed away to reveal dirty orange-red chunks of stone. It smiled at them, knowing that now they recognized it.

“The Thing?” Gridiron said incredulously. “The friggin’ THING?”

“The ever-lovin’ Thing,”  The Thing said. “Mama Grimm’s darlin’ boy in the flesh. We want a word with you if you’re up for it.” He picked some sort of communicator from his pocket and said “Got ‘em, Stretch.”

Frenzy lowered his fists. He seemed as awestruck as the others. “You who? The Fantastic Four?”

“That’s right,” The Thing said as he brushed the rest of the black stuff off of his body. 

“Awesome,” Gridiron said. He was the only one of the group who had ever met a real-life celebrity, so he was more prepared to deal with the shock. “I’ve got no problem talking to you guys. What do you want to know?”

“We won’t talk here,” The Thing replied as a high-pitched turbine sound in the sky got closer. “We’ll go to our place. More privacy.” The Fantasticar, the high-profile superteam’s means of conveyance, lowered to the ground. In it was a thin man with graying hair at his temples that everyone recognized. 

“Hi,” he said. “My name’s Reed.” He reached out and shook hands with everyone with one elongated arm. “Care to take a trip with us to the Baxter Building? We’d like to get to know you, and offer you our welcome into the superhuman community.”

“I can’t believe this,” Frenzy said to himself as he stepped into the car and took a seat. “I just can’t believe this.”

“Believe it kid,” The Thing said as he leaned back into a specially-made chair that fit his hulking mass. "This is all authentic." 

The Fantasticar lifted up into the sky. 

_*Next:*_* Meeting the Neighbors*


----------



## Dr Midnight (May 19, 2006)

The Fantasticar is constructed partly with extragalactic technology given to Mr. Fantastic as a birthday gift from the Silver Surfer. The result is a flying vehicle that isn’t limited by our laws of physics… at least not as much. The “Coencic Actuator” bends the rules of our reality and sets them aside for the time being, allowing the Fantasticar to travel anywhere from four times the speed of sound to close to half the speed of light. 

They reached the heart of Manhattan in no time and parked in the Baxter Building.

Reed gave them a brief tour of the Fantastic Four’s home. They wound up in the main lab area, a cavernous room that served as a living room and had something for everyone in the group. Here, Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, was slumped on a couch, playing xbox. He didn’t acknowledge them. 

Hex quickly took a picture of them all with his camera phone while Reed wasn’t looking.

“So,” Reed said. “The reason we’ve invited you here is that several metahuman organizations, chiefly the Avengers, like to evaluate the up-and-coming talent. Captain America wants to make certain you’re not a threat to national security. I think we can write that off. Thor is curious about your origin- he likes to know if any new heroes have mystical origins, as he does. Iron Man would like to know more about Constructor’s powers for his own research. For my own research, I’d like to know as much about your abilities as you can tell me… including your origins, if you don’t mind revealing them.”

The New Legends each gave descriptions of their powers to Reed. They kept their identities to themselves for the time being. Reed was very interested in how Constructor made his suits, but didn’t press the issue just yet. Hex hesitated and simply said “I can do anything.” He didn’t want to reveal too much about himself, it seemed. 

Reed said “I plan to put you through some tests if that’s your claim. Are you sure you want to say that?”

“In that case, I do nothing.” He walked over to where Johnny was sitting and watched as he played some new beta version of Street Fighter. Frenzy joined him. “Whatcha playing?”

“Street Fighter 4,” Johnny said without much interest. 

“Whaaat? There is no Street Fighter 4.” 

“Not yet,” Johnny smiled. “I get to play all the games while they’re still in development.”

“No way,” Frenzy said. 

“I’m playing.” Hex jumped onto the couch and grabbed a controller.

“Me too!” Frenzy joined them. 

Pixie turned away from them and told Reed “Ignore them, they’re idiots. Anyway, about our origin, we share the same.”

Reed’s eyebrows went up. “Really? Tell me more.”

Pixie laid out the entire scene for him, leaving out names and dates. She told about the Transatomic Superconductor and what had happened, then what followed that very evening. 

Reed typed everything into a keyboard as she spoke it. “All right,” Reed said. “The others that were in the room with you when the Superconductor was struck by lightning, have they developed similar powers?”

Gridiron said “It doesn’t look that way. All my friends seem to be sick or something. I dunno. My friend got really sick and wound up in intensive care with some kind of scaly-skinned body cast disease. It didn’t seem to be good for everyone.”

Reed seemed to think about that. “Was this at Romita Memorial in downtown Silverage?”

“Uh. Yeah.” 

“About a half an hour ago, a report came in of an intensive care patient going into some kind of rage. He apparently stood up and smashed through the wall, escaping into the night.”

“What??” Gridiron sat down. 

“Perhaps the Superconductor gave him powers after all. Maybe the ‘disease’ was some kind of incubation period.” 

“I guess.” 

“You don’t seem overjoyed that your friend is going to live.”

Gridiron said “No, no… I’m happy he’s going to live. I’m just worried that he’s got powers. He was never the nicest guy, y’know? He’s not the kinda person I think should get superpowers.”

“I see,” Reed said. He cleared his throat through the uncomfortable silence and asked “Would anyone like to give their secret identities for posterity?”

The New Legends all seemed to tense up. “Why would we want to do that?” Pixie asked. 

“I understand your hesitance, Pixie, but it’s really a help to the metahuman community to do so. We have a number of heroes’ identities on file, and it’s enabled us to contact them or otherwise watch out for their friends and family when they couldn’t.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Pixie said. 

Reed shrugged. “That’s up to you, but consider this. I now know that you were on a school field trip to the Silverage Science Museum when the Transatomic Superconductor was struck by lightning. You were all in the room and suffered from an M.T.E…. a metahuman trigger event.  I know that you, Gridiron, are a friend of Jeremy Mullen, who was among the people in the room at the time. It wouldn’t take much detective work to figure out who you are, and then the rest of you would follow."

He continued. “If you don’t want to give your identities, that’s up to you and I respect that. However, I’m going to keep looking into it. Knowing things like this forearms us against the occasional metahuman that turns bad, and helps us to keep our names out of the papers- at least in a negative light. Giving us your identities of your own free will means we can help you with legal troubles and aid you when we can if you’re falsely accused of a crime. Do you see?”

Pixie looked aghast. “Where does this information go?”

“Three places,” Reed said very matter-of-factly. “SHIELD, The Avengers’ metahuman database and my own computer here in the Baxter Building. All are impossibly encrypted. Your identity remains safe, but is shared with a few high-profile heroes and government minds across the country. We’ve never had a problem with the system.”

Pixie looked like she was going to argue the idea again when Gridiron took his helmet off. “My name’s Jacob Jones. JJ for short. I’m not sure I like these powers, but I’ve got ‘em and I’ve managed to help people with ‘em. One thing I do know is that I like the feeling of helping people. Never thought I would, but… it feels good.”

Reed typed. “It does, doesn’t it? Thank you Jacob. Anyone else?”

“BOOOM!” Johnny yelled from the couch. He had just beaten Hex with a deadly combo. “Old school beats new school! You just got TORCHED, son.”

Hex laughed. “I just got ‘torched’? Do you work on your hack dialogue when you’re not cheating? Step up and see if you can do that again.”

“Frenzy’s got next, sore loser.”

“Yeah, I’ve got next!”

“Dammit.” Hex handed the controller to Frenzy.

Everyone except for Hex wound up giving their secret identities to Reed. They discussed how they felt about their powers at length, and when that was done, Reed announced that it was time to begin tests on their powers. It was nearly 1:30 AM and everyone felt awake and deeply alive. 

Frenzy milled about as Pixie’s tests were conducted. The Thing approached him and said “Hey, kid.”

“Hi.”

“I, uh, wanted to talk at ya about what happened earlier in the week. I understand you kicked a guy hard. Real hard. Thought you’d killed ‘im and it turned out you didn’t.”

“Yeah,” Frenzy said, avoiding eye contact and shuffling his feet. “I didn’t mean to take him down that hard. I’m not used to this strength yet.”

“I understand. I’ve been there. Us strong guys, we gotta be smart about how we deal with normal people, y’know? We gotta pull our punches more and be real careful.”

“I know,” Frenzy nodded.

“I just wanted to say that. Now that that’s over… wanna arm wrassle?”

Frenzy paused. Arm wrestle The Thing? Who ever gets an invitation like that? Also, who ever is unsure that they’d lose? Herbie felt like he might be able to take him. He nodded. “Let’s do it.”

Reed, Johnny, Pixie, Hex, Constructor, Gridiron and Savant all gathered around to watch as The Thing and Frenzy squared off over a huge titanium block with a seat on either side of it. There was a deep, ground-in groove on Thing’s side, where he’d apparently done this a few times with visiting strong guys. 

“Come on, Frenzy!” Hex said. 

Gridiron nodded and pumped his fist. “Yeah, go Frenzy!”

Johnny Storm laughed. “Take him down, big ugly!”

Pixie said “I know you can do it, Herbie.” She touched his shoulder lightly. Herbie’s chest swelled- Cat had called him by his real name, and she believed in him. He tightened his grip on The Thing’s huge hand. 

“Ready?” Thing asked. “One, two… GO!”

The building thrummed briefly as the two heroes’ bodies locked up and their arms pushed against each other. Johnny and The New Legends began cheering raucously for their respective teammates. The Thing’s hand and Frenzy’s hand trembled. Neither moved. The arms strained. There was a stone-on-metal squealing noise as The Thing’s elbow scratched against the titanium block. He began to make some headway, pushing over on Frenzy. Frenzy grimaced and gave everything he had, and the arms came back up a bit. “Give it up… kid…” The Thing grunted through clenched teeth. “I’ve… GOT IT…” The clenched fists slammed down with a booming echo. The Thing had won. 

They stood up as the others clapped. “You did great, Frenzy,” Gridiron yelled.

“A respectable performance,” Savant added.

“Don’t worry, chuckles,” The Thing said, slapping Frenzy playfully on the arm. “Look on the bright side- you did better than Luke Cage did.”

Frenzy smiled.

_*Next:*_* Trouble at the Oscorp Building*


----------



## Dr Midnight (May 19, 2006)

After the evaluating tests were completed running on all of the New Legends, it was around 2:45 AM. Reed stood up from his computer seat and said “All done, JJ.” 

Gridiron released his arms from the twin rotating pillars, which for the last ten minutes had been completely stretching him out, trying to find his tensile breaking point. He had only broken twice, at a pull of around eight hundred pounds. He rubbed his sore arms and felt quite pleased with himself. 

Reed brushed his hands off and announced “I believe that’s it, everyone… it’s been fun, but we should really get you back to Silverage. We’ve got to get up at a semi-respectable hour tomorrow.”

Johnny looked up from the video game screen. “No we don’t… Huh?”

“Congress luncheon.”

“Ahh crap.” 

“So. With one further to-do, we offer a gift to welcome you to the metahuman community.” He pressed a button on a console and the wall opened up, revealing four mannequins wearing the costumes of Pixie, Savant, Frenzy and Gridiron. 

“Costumes made entirely of unstable molecules,” Reed explained. “Much like we in the Four wear. I noticed that yours look homemade… you’ll find that these will last longer.”

“Uh,” Hex said. “I don’t get one?”

“No, your costume is magical in nature.”

“What? How do you know that, I never mentioned-“

“I did a radiogenic scan on you. You don’t really look like that.” 

“Okay, I guess you’ve got me.” Hex shrugged his skinny skeletal shoulders. 

Reed went on. “And of course Constructor makes his costume wherever he goes, so that leaves the four of you. I upped the design quality, I hope you don’t mind.”

The four heroes looked at their new costumes in awe, then took them off to the restrooms to change into them. When they emerged, they looked fantastic. The suits were tailored exactly to size.

“One question,” Savant asked as he flexed his hand in the perfectly fitting glove. “We only put our costumes on for the first time tonight, a few hours ago. Until then, no one would have any idea that they would look like this. How did you assemble these costumes in that short an amount of time?”

“The answer involves quantum replicant theory.”

“Really? I thought that was all untested.”

“You’re familiar with the theory?”

“Oh, yes. I read about it last night. I don’t sleep anymore, you see. I’ve been doing a lot of reading, and at fifteen pages a minute I get a lot done. “

They got into the Fantasticar and headed back to Silverage from New York. By car it’s a three hour drive if conditions are optimal. With the Fantastic Four it’s a seven minute flight. 

“Where do you want to be dropped off?” Reed asked. 

“Back on Miller street would probably be f… wait! Down there, what’s happening?” Pixie pointed. Maybe three hundred feet below was the top of the Oscorp Technologies building, the tallest skyscraper in Silverage City. There were several men wearing black and carrying submachine guns through the access door on the roof. Four more stood behind, keeping guard. 

Savant thought for a moment.  “Looks like they were dropped off by a helicopter and waited until the shift change in security before moving in.”

“A break-in,” Hex said. “Coool. Looks like we’re going in… are you coming, Reed?”

Reed killed the Fantasticar’s lights (and most of its sounds as well) and hovered down to about a hundred feet over the skyscraper’s roof. “No, thanks,” he smiled politely. “It’s your city. You have to make a strong show of force. Go to it, and good luck.” 

Constructor, Savant, Pixie, Hex, Frenzy and Gridiron jumped out. Savant flew headfirst downward, tucking into a tightly and perfectly executed roll just as he hit a diagonal slope made by a cooling vent. He rolled four times to a crouch, whipping his staff out as he did. He hit one of the thugs in the back of the knees and he went down, cracking his head. He was out. 

At the same time, Frenzy landed solidly in front of a thug. His feet smashed into the roof, and his invulnerability saved him from the impact. Before the man could react to his attacker, his gun was bent upwards at the barrel and he was punched in the face. He went down immediately.

Hex floated down and reached into his top hat. He pulled out an immense, bright red boxing glove. It shot out on an extending contraption of crisscrossing slats and struck a thug in the face. The thug was knocked out from the blow before he hit the ground.

The one remaining thug alone had time to do anything. He fired on Savant with his submachine gun. 

Savant did a quick double cartwheel, tucking and flipping as bullets ricocheted all around him. He landed and spun in a quick backhand circle. He threw his quarterstaff and it flew the length of the roof to strike the thug in the chest, disabling him with yet another single blow. 

“Wow,” Pixie said. “You just dodged bullets.”

Savant shrugged. “All I really did was correctly estimate where his shots would wind up based on his angles and the gun’s rate of fire, adjusting for recoil and wind resistance. It’s all just simple probability, really.”

“The others went through this door,” Frenzy said, standing at the open door and looking in. “Stairs, leading down.” 

“Let’s go,” Hex said, “but be careful. The others have heard gunfire, they know we’re here.”

Frenzy, the least likely to be hurt by bullets, went down first, with the others following close behind. He stopped and they flattened against the wall as gunfire tore up the stairs they almost walked down. “Big room, a lab,” Frenzy said. “Pillars and lab tables with those propane gas outlets on top. Four thugs hunched around behind them firing this way. An open safe vault door at the back of the room. Entire left wall is made of windows.”

“See, this is exactly what I was saying a few hours ago about strategy and teamwork,” Hex said. “Nice work, Herbie.”

“Thanks. What do we do?”

“Propane, eh?” Constructor asked. “I’ll draw their fire.”

Pixie groaned. “A pun. Ugh. Are you going to be one of those pun-quipping heroes?” 

“You’re no fun.” Constructor lurched into the room, blasting an enerby beam from his hands as he did. He hit the desks and columns of fire burst from the melted propane spigots. The thugs started shouting and panicking, firing wildly. Bullets bounced off of Constructor’s hull. 

Savant flipped into the room and hid behind a desk, waiting to make his move.

Pixie crawled up the wall, becoming a chameleon version of herself as she did. She sprouted a tail and slowly ambled along the ceiling with her tongue flicking out… then her skin mottled and turned the color of the ceiling panels, rendering her effectively invisible to the casual eye. Her new unstable molecule costume turned the same colors she did. 

Hex leapt into the room, conjuring forth a mass of swirling cream pies from his top hat. They whirled through the air in front of him. The tin pans of the pies blocked several incoming bullets. 

Savant was mere feet away, crouching by a table. “I notice you’re going with a magician angle. Pranks and tricks. Why?”

“Hey, I’m keeping things thematic. Slayer could make songs about adorable puppy dogs, but they don’t.” Hex pushed outward with his arms and the pies blasted out, smashing several of the thugs in the face and temporarily blinded them.

Frenzy ran towards one that was still firing. He took several bullets to the chest- each bullet bounced off harmlessly. “Awesome,” Herbie muttered to himself. He slammed into the thug with both arms and smashed him into the wall.

Gridiron’s fist shot from across the room, cold-cocking a thug. The gun clattered to the ground.

Savant pole-vaulted over the field of lab tables toward the thugs. He landed and cracked the thug’s face with his quarterstaff. He was twirling it and moving toward the next thug when something flew out of the open vault door. 

It was jet black and sleek. It tumbled like a ball through the air and punted off of Savant’s face with two feet, jumping from there through the rest of the room to land twenty feet up on the far wall with a _SPLAP_ sound.

It was a small humanoid shape, sticking to the wall with its feet and hands, facing the rest of the room. Its hands were oversized and its fingers were plump at the ends like a tree frog’s. The thing was covered entirely in a shiny black suit with only two white circular eyes staring at them from the face. The head swayed to the left and right, like a cobra’s. 

“Well well,” the thing said. “The New Legends. Silverage’s new heroes. I didn’t think you’d catch up with the competition so soon. Not that we’re not ready…” He yelled. “HAVE YOU GOT IT?”

“I’ve got it,” a female voice called back from the vault. “Just a moment.” The wall adjoining the vault door burst apart in a shower of cinderblock, dust and shattered drywall. 

When the dust began clearing, a woman was standing in the huge hole. She was holding a technological device of some sort- putting it into a fanny pack at the small of her back. “Oooh, The New Legends!” She was wearing tight leggings and a ratty black leather jacket. A domino mask covered a small portion of her face and blonde hair spilled over her shoulders. “Shall we show them who we are?”

The thing on the wall seemed to chuckle. “Certainly. New Legends, you’ll regret the day you crossed THE CREEP…”

The woman held her arms up and slammed them down into the ground. They landed with a boom- her arms had tapered up to immense metallic meat tenderizer shapes… anvil heads about five feet wide. She clanged them together. She laughed. “…and HAMMER!”

There was a pause as each side waited for the other to move. “Bring it,” Frenzy said. 

The room exploded with action.

_*Next:*_* Slugfest*


----------



## Dr Midnight (May 19, 2006)

All at once, several things happened. 

Pixie dropped from her position on the ceiling, directly over one of the gun-toting thugs. She knocked the gun out of his hand as she changed quickly from lizard to girl to girl with gorilla arms. She picked the thug up and hurled him at a glass wall separating gas testing chambers. He flew through three glass walls in total before he rolled to a stop. 

Hex pulled out a voodoo doll that happened to look just like another of the thugs. He stuck a pin in it and aimed its arms. The thug’s gun arm came up and fired a long burst at the Creep, who was so surprised to have his own henchman turn on him that he didn’t manage to dodge in time. The wall around him erupted in bulletholes, and he took several hits. 

The Creep grunted “Go, Hammer! Get the device to him!”

Hammer’s smile faltered. Would she really have to run out on a good brawl like this? She turned and ran for the immense wall of windows that looked out over a skyscraper drop to the street. 

“The Tenderizer’s getting away with the… the thingie!” Hex yelled. 

Pixie and Savant started sprinting for Hammer before she could crash through the window. They only had two, maybe three seconds. 

Constructor fired an energy beam at the Creep, who nimbly cartwheeled along the wall to dodge it. 

This gave Gridiron time to wrap his arms around two pillars and push back with his feet. He stretched, held, then released, firing at the Creep like a tight ball of putty. He altered his density to that of stone so that he was effectively a cannonball rocketing through the air. The Creep, distracted by Constructor’s fire, didn’t notice Gridiron until it was too late. He was struck in the gut by a rock-hard sphere that was traveling at maybe forty miles an hour. 

*Ka-THOOOOM!!!* They crashed through the wall into the room beyond and rolled three times over on the ground. An arm rose from the roiling cloud of dust, stretched twenty feet up to the ceiling, and slammed back in. THWACK! Again. THWACK!! Gridiron was in his element. 

They separated as the Creep flipped to a crouch, ten feet away. Gridiron slurped up to his feet in one quick fluid curl. The two circled each other. 

Gridiron lashed out with a  fifteen foot punch that the Creep side-flipped over, kicking Gridiron in the face as he did so. The Creep landed crouched against the wall and sprang back out. Gridiron dodged the punch by turning his entire upper body to the consistency of really thick oatmeal. The Creep splashed through to the other side and landed in a series of complex flips that evaded Gridiron’s immense, sweeping haymaker punches. 

Gridiron’s arms shot out on either side of a pillar that stood between them and grabbed the Creep by the ankles. He yanked hard and the Creep was flying crotch-first at as column of stone. He reared back and punched through the pillar at the last moment. He landed against Gridiron with a double kick that sent him flying back against the wall. The Creep backflipped gracefully to his feet and swayed, ready for the next attack. 

Gridiron stood and dusted himself off. He tilted his head to his left shoulder, then his right. _Crack, crack._ He lunged at the Creep. The Creep jumped high, avoiding Gridiron’s grabbing arms- which was the very idea. Gridiron quickly reached up, where he’d expected the Creep would go, and grabbed him solidly. He flexed his rubbery arms and slammed the Creep to the stone tiles of the floor, shattering them with the blow. 

The Creep gathered his legs under him with frightening speed and jumped to Gridiron’s shoulders, where he slapped his large-fingered hands against the heroe’s football helmet. 

All at once Gridiron gulped for air and it felt like his lungs were not only fully exhaled, but what little air was there was made of swamp water. He felt like he was emptying. His face pulsed with writhing veins as he felt his blood cells die by the thousands. He couldn’t scream. It ended mercifully when the Creep released his grip and flipped through the room’s window.

Forty seconds ago, in the main laboratory, Gridiron and the Creep bashed through the wall. The remaining heroes turned their attention to Hammer, and to keeping her from escaping. She was running toward the window in long strides. 

Pixie scrunched her eyes and concentrated on something new. She held out her arms and ordered them to turn into spitting vipers. Her fingers flattened and grew scales in the span of half a second. Teeth folded out and eyes opened, and Marjorie Tibbits’ daughter had vipers for forearms. She wasn’t just thinking of vipers, though. She was also thinking of spiders. 

The vipers spat and a thick webline shot out from each mouth, thwapping firmly onto Hammer’s back as she ran. There was a fierce moment of triumph for the Pixie. That was the hardest thing she’d ever tried to do- combining two animals’ talents to get one effect. The moment was gone as Hammer’s mass wasn’t even slowed by Pixie’s thin frame. Pixie was yanked off her feet and trailed behind Hammer like a cat toy. 

Hammer smashed through the window and launched out over a one hundred and ten story drop. She began to fall. 

Savant, close behind her, jumped after her. He began climbing, hand over hand, down Pixie’s weblines. He quickly reached Hammer and tried to pluck the gadget from her pack. He loosened it and almost had it... Hammer noticed him there and swung back with an immense arm that he barely ducked beneath. 

Just then, a violent jolt- the weblines had gone taut. Hammer grunted as she was jerked to a stop. Pixie, above, was gripping the two weblines in her mighty trunk. Her new elephant form had outweighed Hammer’s and stopped her fall.  

The loosened technological gadget shot out of Hammer’s pack and continued to fall. Savant wasted no time and jumped from Hammer. He pressed his arms against his sides, trying to create as little wind resistance as possible in his fall toward the gadget. He devoted some part of the back of his mind to worrying about how to stop falling, and would get to that when the time came. 

Hammer, at the end of the weblines, swung backward and bashed through the windows on the floor below Constructor, Hex, Pixie, and Frenzy, who watched the fall from above. “That is so Die Hard,” Hex mused. 

_*KSSHHHHHH!!!*_ A window up behind Savant shattered outward and something black was arcing out into the night. It was the Creep, and he was quickly making sense of what he saw before him. He began to fall even more rapidly than Savant, as he could make a sleeker, smoother form. He began to catch up with Savant around the sixtieth floor. Both hero and villain began straining forward, still maybe ten feet from the falling gadget, reaching as far as they could. They weren’t quite close enough to fight.

Constructor said “He’s not going to make it… he needs help,” and fell forward through the shattered window like a high diver, with his arms tapering above his head. As he came to point downward, the rockets in his metal boots fired to life and he shot toward the street at an incredible speed. He began catching up to the Creep and Savant. He grabbed Savant around the waist and held him, giving a final boost to his rockets. 

This boost gave Savant the push he needed, and held by Constructor, he reached and snatched the falling gadget from the air. The Creep cursed as the two New Legends began curving back upwards with their prize. He continued to fall. 

There was a streak of something through the air, and the Creep was gone. The streak arced up and flew past the building close to where the other New Legends stood- it was too fast to catch any kind of glimpse of what it may have been. Pixie felt the weblines go slack- whatever that streak had been, it had taken both the Creep and Hammer. 

Pixie dropped the webs, turning human again. Her legs trembled. “Whatever, I don’t care. I just want to go to bed.” The others agreed. Now that the battle was over and the adrenaline was subsiding, a very human weariness was settling over them like a shroud. 

Sirens on the street, flashing lights. Soon the police would arrive on the top floor with guns and questions. The heroes weren’t in the mood. They left the device and flew several blocks away, landing on street level in Silverage’s famous Stark Square. The first hints of daylight were in the sky and the heroes were bone-tired. “Is everyone all right to find their way home?” Constructor asked. “I could drop everyone off.”

Before anyone would answer, the lights of all the billboards and neon signs fluttered and dimmed. The immense monitor at the center of Stark Square stopped showing an ad for Samsung products. The picture flickered to snow then showed a hulking figure, silhouetted black against a dull red, from the shoulders up. There were odd angles jutting from it, as though it had bones or horns protruding from its shoulders. Its eyes were glowing red slits. Its gravelly, booming voice rang out over the monitor’s sound system.

“Heroes of Silverage City. Hear me. I will not tolerate your meddling, and the time of your doom is upon you. The item you took from me was the Transatomic Subreplicator. I do not need it to achieve my goal, but my plans are now delayed. Enjoy the little time you have left before my work is revealed. This is the age… of The Unholy.”

The screen went dead. “We’ll be ready,” Savant said. The others nodded, feeling beaten up but confident. They began to find their ways home. 

_*Next:*_* Issue 3*


----------



## Dr Midnight (May 19, 2006)

Issue 3

Constructor was smashed in the face. 

He flew forty feet back, straight through a light pole, embedding himself partially in the mortared walls of the Silverage Post Office before falling to one knee. He quickly stood and brushed dust off of his armor- today he was wearing a Silverage police car. “In the service of the people” was the slogan painted under the town’s golden seal on the door. 

The New Legends stood ready to fight. They were battered already- the fight had been on for a full two minutes now and everyone would have a bruise or two in the morning. They really didn’t look any worse than the enemy of the day.

Across the intersection were three men, all costumed. One wore purple and green insectlike body armor. One wore a green and yellow costume that was set off with a lightning bolt theme, including a star-shaped face mask. The last wore a solid green suit that had a thick, swinging tail at its rear. 

They were The Beetle, Electro and The Scorpion, respectively. Each was a recognizable supervillain, though none had recently had any great success in the world of crime. They’d each faced off against Spider-Man in their prime but they weren’t real threats- they were considered nuisances among the superhumans of New York City. Perhaps that’s how they found themselves in Silverage City hijacking an armored car- they thought the typically hero-less town would be an easy gig. More likely, they wanted to test the new kids in town.

Savant, ever looking for a tactical advantage, decided to test Beetle’s armor. He theorized that the joints couldn’t possibly protect his body that well, as there had to be some greater allowance of give. He did a double somersault forward and lashed out with a kick that struck Beetle in the side of his right knee. The metal buckled a bit. The Beetle grunted in pain. 

Electro fired a blast of lightning at Constructor, who dodged quickly. Savant was hit hard with Scorpion’s clublike tail and was sent caroming into a nearby car. The hit was a good one- Scorpion had almost broken three of Savant’s ribs. 

Hex stepped up and took off his top hat. “Hey, Scorpion! You’ll regret that one.”

“I doubt it, noob,” the seasoned super-crook grinned as he swung his tail from side to side. “Take your shot, though. I’ll wait.”

Hex reached into his top hat with his skeleton hand and brought out… a sleek black cat. It purred as it was placed on the ground, then darted off in front of Scorpion. It ran past him and disappeared behind a building. Scorpion watched the cat run away, muttering to himself. “What the hell?”

Then, a truck hit him. CRUNCHHHhhhh_*BGSHHHH*_ It struck a wall with Scorpion flattened against the grill. His modified body chemistry and armor protected him from any real injury, but he was hurt. Badly.

Hex placed his top hat back on his head with a flourish. Some people in the crowd that dared to get close enough to watch began to cheer. 

Taking advantage of the distraction, Constructor flew at Beetle with his rockets. He smashed Beetle back against a panel truck and attempted to weld him right to the metal with concentrated heat blasts from his palm emitters. 

Scorpion was crawling from the wreckage of the truck when a roar shook the downtown intersection. A tyrannosaur with pink pigtails was lurching towards the green villain.

The Scorpion wasn’t as badly hurt as he seemed, and leaned back, dodging the immense biting T. Rex teeth. He used this motion to counterbalance his tail and send it whipping around into The Pixie’s jaw. CRACK!!! The thirty foot tall tyrannosaur rocked back on her feet from the blow. A tooth had been knocked free and flew into a nearby phone pole, where it stuck as if thrown by a master knife thrower. 

The Beetle was wrestling with Constructor- two power suit heavyweights were going at each other with down and dirty streetfighting moves. Constructor was grabbing Beetle around his waist and attempting to pick him up when Beetle hit him with both hands clasped as a golfer swings a club. The blow knocked Constructor up over a low building and into the distand.  The Beetle grinned behind his mask. 

Gridiron swilled a Pepsi for the crowd, then wiped his mouth with a refreshed “Ahhh!” He held the can so that the logo could be seen. Dropping the can, he reached out with elongated arms and grabbed Electro from across the street. He then turned and leaned forward, pulling his arms over his head and Electro with them. He slammed Electro against a fire hydrant. The hydrant cracked but didn’t burst, as Gridiron was clearly hoping it might. 

Electro responded with a fierce arc of lightning that Gridiron dodged by coiling his body around it. He didn’t’ see that behind him, Frenzy had chosen his moment. 

Frenzy swung with a roundhouse punch… at the fire hydrant. The punch completely shattered the hydrant into flying metal pieces and a jet of water shot high into the sky. Electro’s back was to the water but he wasn’t yet touching it. 

The Pixie regained her balance and lunged again for Scorpion with her immense tyrannosaur jaws. This time she saw the counterstrike coming and timed his swing just right. She pulled back and snatched his tail out of the air, taking him with it. She shook her head back and forth like a terrier with a chew toy and released her bite, flinging him seventy feet southwest through the wall of an evacuated Starbucks. He smashed and rolled through debris, landing comically in a chair. He was out cold. The tyrannosaur with pink pigtails roared its defiance at the intersection of 87th & Main. 

Gridiron whipped a long arm around Electro’s body, binding the villain’s limbs in place. He turned his arm hard and snapped if off at the elbow, leaving Electro effectively tied up… but still dangerous. 

Savant walked up and gently pushed against Electro’s chest with his staff, tipping him back into the vertical jet of water. As he touched the water he screamed and there was a crackling sound like bubble wrap in a deep fryer. Lightning sizzled around him as the blast of water shot him up into the air, already reddening and unconscious. 

Frenzy ran up to the Beetle, who braced himself for the attack. The Beetle had seen on the newsclips that Frenzy was the strong member of the group. Beetle was no slouch himself- with his power armor he could lift up to around two tons. He planted his feet and readied for the slugfest.

There was no slugfest. Frenzy’s skinny frame conceals a degree of strength only known in maybe two hundred metahumans worldwide. Frenzy’s brutal running punch knocked The Beetle up into the air, where his body smashed into a wide green road sign and froze there as if molded into the sign. 

The Beetle began to stir. “Okay, so you’re tough. I’ve fought tough guys like you before. Only trick is to stay out of your grasp. Stay in the air. Blast you from…” he stopped and looked up in time to see something blurring towards him from the skyline. It was Constructor, flying with both fists out as fast as his rockets could push him.

Constructor shot straight through the sign, taking The Beetle with him to the ground and below. The pavement exploded as the two pierced it. Dust and asphalt flew into the air. From below, in the sewers, there was a sound of metallic thunking, as if two metal men were embroiled in a fierce fistfight. There was a sharp clang, like a frying pan on the fender of a Peterbilt, and silence. Constructor hovered out of the smoking hole in the ground, dangling a limp Beetle from his hand like a bag of garbage. 

The crowd screamed and cheered- the home team, The New Legends, had won the day against a few supervillain tourists. The Legends gathered the super-crooks for the police and listened to the cheers of their city. 

“Want to take some questions?” Pixie asked with a smile. The news crews were swooping in like vultures to carrion. 

“Why not,” Gridiron answered. “We saved the day, let’s get some face time.” 

The others agreed. It had been one week since the incident at Oscorp Technologies… one week since choosing names, revealing costumes, and fighting their first throw-down with other superhumans. It had been the best week of any of their lives.

Gridiron cracked another Pepsi, took a sip and smiled for the cameras. 

The first reporter to outsprint the others to the scene shouted “Savant, Channel 4 news! As the leader of the New Legends, what do you have to tell the people of Silverage about your plans to deal with ‘The Unholy’?”

Savant almost frowned, but caught himself in time. A week’s worth of investigation hadn’t turned up any information on this “Unholy” or the people they’d fought at Oscorp. Some research into the Transatomic Subreplicator had told a few details, but pursuant to his better judgment (and Oscorp’s wishes), he wasn’t about to reveal these to the media. 

“We have everything under control,” Savant said calmingly. “We cannot reveal our plans at present, but rest assured that we have things well in hand.”

“Should the citizens of Silverage evacuate? Can you tell us anything for our own safety?”

“We will protect you. Don’t worry.”

Hex cut in with “What kind of threat could ‘The Unholy’ be anyway? They don’t go to church on Sunday. Big deal.” This won a healthy round of laughter from the appreciative crowd. 

“Hex,” one of the reporters said. “Action 10 news. What do you say to parents’ groups that claim that your skeletal appearance is inappropriate for children?”

That took Hex aback. “_I’m_ inappropriate for children?? Have these parents ever been inside a high school?”

Gridiron cleared his throat and announced “Man, that battle sure was tough. I’m glad I had my Nike game cleats and the refreshing power of Gatorade.”

A man with a mustache said “Constructor, Channel 7 news… What do you have to say to rumors that you were photographed by Steven Piercey, the boy who named you, during your first uncostumed outing?”

“We understand he lost his camera, so there’s really nothing to back up his claims.” 

“But do you deny he took the photos?” The man asked. “Just forty minutes ago the police returned to Steven Piercey a camera that had been found in a brownstone flowerbed. It had his name on it.”

Frenzy stiffened noticeably.  “What?”

_*Next:*_* Confrontation*


----------



## Dr Midnight (May 19, 2006)

Savant quickly took control of the situation. “Young master Piercey found his camera, eh? I wouldn’t worry too much about that. We are and have always been very cautious about revealing our identities.” 

The press seemed to accept this as truth.

All at once, the reporters put hands to their ears and listened. They were all hearing their various producers call speaking to them through earphones. They looked excited and rallied their cameramen, moving away from the Legends towards their news vans. 

Pixie pouted. “Was it something we said?”

“It’s not us,” Constructor said. “There was just now a police call that came in about a major theft that was discovered.”

“How do you know?”

“I get the police band wired straight into my earpiece with this suit… the benefit of wearing a cop car.”

At that moment, a police sergeant who’d been taking down the details of the defeated supervillains approached. His face was dark and somewhat irritated. “Hey, is that one of ours you’re wearing?” 

Constructor faltered. “Uh. Let’s go!” 

Hex conjured a flying carpet that he, Frenzy, Savant and Gridiron rode on as Pixie and Constructor took to the sky. The cop below yelled about how cars like that come out of the taxpayers’ pockets and tend to not grow on trees. 

Inside his car suit, Emerson blushed. He hadn’t really taken much time to consider just where the cars had been coming from lately. He’d have to be more careful in the future… the cars were useless once he sloughed off his armor.

“Where are we going?” Hex asked. 

Savant thought. “Steven’s probably headed to the site of the robbery to cover it. We should intercept him there, get the camera back before he gets a chance to develop the film. Where’s the robbery?”

“Where it all began,” Constructor said as they picked up speed. “The Silverage Science Museum.”

As they circled in over the Science Museum, they could make out a commotion below. Police cars and news vans were crowding the parking lot, and a large throng of officials were around the back area. The New Legends flew lower and saw that the entire west wall of the new wing was completely shattered outward. The people below looked up and some began pointing. Most began waving. 

“Anyone see Steven?” Constructor asked. 

Pixie looked with an eagle’s eyes. Her eyes scanned over each face, looking for the familiar features of the diminutive newsman. “Nope. Don’t see him yet.”

They flew into the destroyed exhibit hall and looked about this room was familiar- this was the Transatomic Superconductor room. The room that housed the scientific marvel that had given them their powers. The marvel that was now missing. 

A twenty foot wide circle of ripped-free bolts and cables showed where the Superconductor had stood. It had been torn from the ground and, judging from the two immense clawed footprints that sank deep into the concrete leading to the hole, carried out through the wall. Something with two legs had smashed in, picked up a twelve ton hunk of machinery and walked out. 

The police in the room looked annoyed to have people just walk into the crime scene, but on the other hand it was the city’s new superheroes and no one was really willing to say anything. They were told that there wouldn’t be a problem as long as they didn’t tamper with anything. 

Savant followed the deep tracks outside- the creature or whatever it had been had three-toed reptilian clawed feet with a “toe” on either side of each foot. “The tracks only show up once it’s picked up the machine- it’s not that big. Maybe four hundred pounds at most. It’s incredibly strong, though- maybe stronger than you, Frenzy.” Outside, the tracks continued to the blacktop parking lot, grew deeper at the very end and disappeared. “The tracks disappear- it jumped. Carrying a twelve-ton Transatomic device, it jumped from here. Pixie, can you scan from the skies and find where it might have landed?”

“Gotcha.” Pixie sprouted her ever-handy hawk’s wings and took to the sky. She landed shortly afterward. “Nothing nearby. I could fly a wider perimeter, try to-“

“We should try to find Steven,” Frenzy said. He was shifting from foot to foot. He looked nervous.

Savant thought for a moment. “Frenzy’s right. We should probably take care of that first. Steven’s not here, so it looks like he went straight home from the police department.”

“Crap,” Frenzy said. “We have to get there. Let’s go.”

The New Legends flew off for Steven Piercey’s home. The suburbs weren’t far away, and they streaked across the sky to reach the bright yellow house at the end of Bluebird Terrace. 

Once there, they hid in a nearby grove and discussed what to do. “We can’t just burst in wearing our costumes,” Savant suggested, “So Herbie you should change to plainclothes and try to get inside and destroy the film before he develops it.”

“What if it’s too late?” Pixie asked.

“Let’s try to avoid thinking of that,” Savant said grimly. “Go.”

Pixie changed herself into a field mouse and scurried up into Herbie’s pocket while he walked into the house. He didn’t spot her. 

Herbie knocked on the door and a kind looking model of the classic nuclear housewife opened the door. She looked genuinely surprised to see the bookish young man on her doorstep. “Oh! Hello! Are you a friend of Steven’s?”

“Uh, yes,” Herbie said as he shuffled his feet. “Is he here?”

“Of course, come in, come in! STEVEN, YOU’VE GOT A LITTLE FRIEND!” She looked thrilled. “Steven doesn’t get that many playmates over, he’ll be so happy to see you! He’s in his darkroom, last door on the right. 

Herbie wasted no time and strode right over to the door. He didn’t even knock- he just turned the knob and opened the door. 

The red light of the room washed out with the white light of the hallway. Steven stood with his back to the door. A row of photos hung drying on lines above a few tubs of red-lit liquid. Herbie cleared his throat. “Uh. Hi Steven. So I heard you got your camera back.” 

Steven turned away from the photo he’d been staring at and faced Herbie. The photo was fading into gray from the light of the hallway, but the image was unmistakable for just a moment more- it was Herbie, dumping an unconscious man into a large trash container. Behind him stood Constructor in his black and gold Trans Am suit. 

The look on Steven’s face was deadly serious, like nothing Herbie or anyone else at school had seen before. “Yeah, Herbie. I got my camera back.”

_*Next:*_* The Steven Problem*


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## Dr Midnight (May 19, 2006)

Donovan, Gustav, Emerson and JJ waited outside in a copse of trees, listening to the conversation through their earpieces. The consversation they were getting from Herbie’s transmitter had them all holding their breath as they hung on every word. 

“That’s you in the picture,” Steven said. “I can make everything out clearly now. That’s you and Constructor is made of JJ’s car.” The boy’s face was white and calm. He gazed at Herbie. “You’re Frenzy.”

Herbie shifted from foot to foot. “Now, Steven, let’s not jump to… um… there’s an explanation.”

“You almost killed that guy. You thought you did, and you were ditching the body. Did you think no one would find out?” A cloud of disgust passed over Steven’s expression, then it passed and the elated calm returned. “So it’s you and JJ… he’s Constructor? Who else? What happened? Can I be a superhero too?”

Herbie tried to speak up. “Listen, Steven…”

“How cool! I want to help. I don’t have powers, but I can be your human sidekick… or like that guy that helps The Punisher. Micro or whatever.”

Herbie sighed. “At least the photo’s destroyed. No one will believe you.”

“Right, like I don’t still have the negatives. So how about it? Can I be a hero too?”

“No Steven. We went through a one of a kind accident and became different.”

“An accident… was it the thing at the science museum?” Steven’s face lit up as he put together the pieces in his head. “Of course! Cat… Emerson… Donovan and that Latverian kid. Along with you and JJ. Wow. Wait.” His brow scrunched as he thought. “If JJ’s Constructor, then who’s Gridiron? Seems it makes sense if he’s the football-themed guy, right?”

Herbie set his jaw and raised his voice. “LOOK, Steven. You’re going to keep this to yourself. I mean it.” 

Steven blinked at him. “Are… are you threatening me?”

“If I have to. We can’t have you spreading this around.”

“There’s such a thing as freedom of the press, Herbie. What kind of a hero would you be if you beat me up to keep me silent?”

Herbie stepped forward, clenching his fists. “I never asked to be a hero.”  

“What are you going to do, kill me and toss my body in a dumpster? I don’t think you’ve got it in you, Herbie.” 

Just then, something jumped out of Herbie’s pocket and landed on the floor. It was a field mouse with tiny pink pigtails. It grew into Cat, who glared at Steven menacingly while at the same placing herself between him and Herbie. 

Steven scowled. “Are you here to threaten me too?”

“You can’t tell people, Steven,” Cat said. She couldn’t quite bring herself to muster the threatening tone that Herbie was managing, but she tried. 

“Then I want powers,” Steven said. His voice went soft and he spoke like a child talking about Christmas morning. “I want to know how you got your powers and I want some too. What happened in the room at the museum?”

“Lightning struck the Transatomic Subreplicator. It was a once in a lifetime event and at any rate the damned machine’s been stolen by now. We couldn’t give you powers if we-“

Steven interrupted again. “Wait- the science museum.” He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Wasn’t JJ’s group with you when the incident happened? Mace, his girlfriend, Dick Jacques, Glenn Bristol, Jeremy Mullen?” 

The sudden change of subject threw Cat, but she regained her footing quickly. “Uh, yeah. They’ve been MIA since the incident.”

“I saw them last night. At the science museum.”

“What?”

“Yeah! Everyone except Jeremy. I was doing a story on night watchmen at the museum and I passed them by. It was maybe nine thirty, they were standing outside in the parking lot. Something was in the back of Mace’s pickup. Something really big. It was making noises. Almost sounded like it was… breathing. Or something.”

Cat thought for a moment. “Steven, what else were they doing? Did they look like they were…”

“Can we talk about them later? I want powers! I want to join the New Legends!”

“Steven. I already told you. We can’t give you-“

A flash of orange-colored light and suddenly Donovan was standing there. Steven gasped, then grinned. “Donovan! You’re Hex! Oh, it makes so much sense now.”

Donovan smiled. “What Cat means is that she can’t give you powers because I’m the one who gives out the powers. Isn’t that right, Cat?”

Cat looked confused, but played along. “Yyyeah. That’s right.”

“Well then. As a member of the Legends, it would be in his own best interests to see to it that those negatives were destroyed. Maybe if he gives them to me, I can see clear to giving him his powers.”

Steven’s eyes went wide. “Really?”

“Really. Of course, it’s up to you.”

Steven walked over to a drawer and took out a small strip of film. He handed it to Donovan. Donovan placed it in his pocket and said “And the backup negative, if you don’t mind.”

Steven looked disappointed. “Oh. Of course.” He fetched that too.

Herbie leaned toward Donovan. “What are you doing?” he whispered.  “You don’t give out powers.”

Donovan simply kept smiling as he took the backup negatives from Steven. “Okay, ready?” 

Steven looked like he’d been told that he’d won the lottery. His entire body wriggled with nervous energy as he stood there nodding vigorously. “Yeah, hit me! Oh man. Oh man!”

Donovan took out a magician’s wand and waved it twice with a flourish.  He tapped Steven’s forehead with the wand and Steven fell to the floor, sound asleep. Donovan held the negatives in his hand. They were consumed in a flash of orange fire. The three New Legends walked out of Steven Piercey’s darkroom. “He won’t remember a thing when he wakes up,” Donovan said. “He’ll think it was a dream.”

Cat grinned. “Well done. I almost… oh!” 

Steven’s mom was standing between them and the front  door, looking delighted. “Well, another friend of Steven’s has dropped by… and a GIRL! Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness! Oh, blessed day! Would you kids care for some nachos?”

“Yes ma’am, we would, thank you,” Donovan replied. Steven’s mother turned to the counter and began preparing some nachos. She was about to ask them questions about themselves as Donovan’s wand tapped the back of her head. She sank to the floor, asleep. The New Legends quietly left the house. 

Some minutes later, Steven walked groggily into the kitchen and saw his mother rubbing her eyes, awakening on the linoleum. “Mom, I had the most wonderful dream. I dreamed that the New Legends were here and that they wanted me to join them.” 

“Oh, Steven,” his mother said sadly as she stood up. “I dreamed that you had friends.”

_*Next:*_* The Unholy Agenda*


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## Dr Midnight (May 19, 2006)

And now, the first actual UPDATE in two months...


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## Dr Midnight (May 19, 2006)

As the group walked from Steven Piercey’s house, Gustav ran a hand through his hair. “All right. That was quick thinking, Donovan. Sadly, we’ve only solved the least of four problems.”

Donovan snorted. “Good to know. Okay, what are the other three?”

“Well, it looks like Jeremy Mullen may well have become something beastly after all. If he’s at all like Herbie’s said, he may apply his new powers to ugly ends. We need to find him.

“The third problem is the supergroup we encountered at the Oscorp break-in. They haven’t resurfaced, which coupled with what ‘Unholy’ threatened means they’re working on something big. That something is most likely linked to the fourth and biggest problem: The Superconductor. 

“Its theft is a possible catastrophe. This ‘Unholy’ character could have anything in mind with it. There’s really no limit to the ill that could be done with such a device.”

Cat hugged her shoulders. “Like what? It changed us into superheroes. That’s not all that bad.”

“With proper calibration it could turn us into mud. It affects material reality at the atomic level. It could turn the seas into stone and the air into fire. It’s also not inconceivable that the Superconductor could be calibrated just so, so that our enemies’ powers are magnified ten thousandfold. They could become gods, in a manner of speaking.”

Herbie asked “The Unholy’s goons tried to steal that thing last week- it had ‘transatomic’ in its name, right? Could that doohickey have been used to modify the Superconductor?”

Gustav nodded. “I’m betting it could. The only thing that’s working in our favor at this point is that there are very few places out there where one could run a Superconductor- the power supply needs are too great. Only a handful of locations throughout the state are equipped to run that much electricity at once.”

JJ said “What are those locations?”

“I don’t know, offhand. If we can get to my computer, we can find out.”

They went to Gustav’s home. “Nice place,” Cat observed. “Do you live here alone?”

“No, I am an exchange student. I have exchange parents and an exchange annoying brother.”

“So where are they?”

“No idea. Maybe out at the Wal-Mart or McDonald’s or some other appalling U.S. mainstay of commerce.” He led them to his room. The room was sparse, with his American counterpart’s decorations placed neatly aside. The bed was made and the walls were bare. 

“Not a very fun room,” Emerson remarked.

Gustav sat down at the computer desk and began typing. “Fun does not interest me. Here I can tap into the main electrical grid and cross-reference locations with the amperage required to run a Superconductor. I just need a moment.”

Gustav typed and paused, typed and paused. Browsers flashed by on his screen. He opened them and closed them in a rapid shuffling movement, taking information from one page and applying it to the next. The process gained speed and before long the others could barely see a page before it was replaced with another. 

“You can’t possibly be reading those,” JJ said.  

Gustav’s reply was detached and very calm. “I can, and am. Silence please.” 

A moment later and he had a short list of seven locations throughout the state. “There we go… but which one?”

Emerson thought for a moment and piped up. “Gustav, can you access local seismography sites and data?”

“Of course, but why…” A smile spread on his face as he understood. “Find the small-scale richter nudge that would be caused by something so heavy landing after a jump of that range and triangulate the likeliest of the locations. Genius, Emerson.” Emerson smiled proudly as Gustav’s fingers flew back into action over the keyboard. 

Donovan’s phone began buzzing in his pocket. He took it out and looked: DAD CELL.  He sighed and considered declining the call, but with all that had been happening over the last week he really hadn’t seen his father at all. Checking in now and then would surely be a good way to keep the old man off his back out of questions. He took the phone out of Gustav’s room into the hall and answered the call. “Hi.”

“Hey there kiddo- how’s stuff?”

Donovan shrugged. Not that his father could see the gesture, but somehow it wouldn’t have felt right not to shrug at the question. “I dunno. Good I guess.”

“Gonna be home later tonight?”

“Uh, not really… we’re studying late again.”

“You’ve been doing a lot of studying lately.”

“If you say so.”

“..and you haven’t been home for more than ten minutes all week.”

Donovan rolled his eyes and shuffled his feet. “I’ve been busy.”

“Don, I’d like for you to be home later. I want to talk to you about all these late hours you’ve been keeping.”

“Oh c’mon!”

“We haven’t had a good talk in a while, kid. Look- you’ve been acting weird lately, and over the phone is the only way you’ll talk to me at all- We need to discuss how things are going.”

“Whatever. I’ll be home in a half hour I guess.”

“No good- I got a call about some clowns getting into the park and running around. It’s supposed to be closed for renovations so I’m heading over. I’ll be home around eight. I’m pulling into the lot now so I gotta go… see you soon kid.”

“All right.” Donovan shut the phone and groaned. He walked back into Gustav’s room. Gustav’s computer monitor showed a location on a map with blinking red words: MADDOX AMUSEMENT & THRILL PARK. 

“That’s it,” Gustav said. He tapped the screen. He turned around. “Donovan, doesn’t your dad own that-“

Donovan whipped his phone open again and called his father’s cell phone. He didn’t even wait for his dad to say hello before he was yelling. “Dad you have to go, stay away from the park, there’s-“

“Hiya Donovan,” The voice was not his father’s. 

Donovan froze. “Where is he?” 

“We have him. He’s safe. That was good advice: ‘stay away from the park’. I’d follow that advice. Best way to save your dad is not to come.” The phone line clicked dead. 

The others were looking at him. Donovan had gone pale. He slowly closed the phone and put it back in his pocket. “They have my dad. They say the best way to save him is not to come.”

Gustav immediately shook his head. “If they’re taking a hostage at such an insecure location, hat means they’ll be putting their plan into action with the Superconductor soon- tonight, perhaps.”

Cat looked around the room. “What do we do? We can’t go and endanger Donovan’s dad…”

Gustav shook his head again. “If we don’t go, we could be endangering everyone else. If the Superconductor is improperly used it could vaporize the entire northern hemisphere.”

JJ said “We should focus our efforts on getting to the southern hemisphere.” Everyone stared at him. “It was a joke. Relax. So what do we do?” 

Donovan set his jaw. “We suit up.”

_*Next:*_* Throwing down*


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## Reis_Thunderwood (May 19, 2006)

I'll post instead of lurking.  I didn't read this the first time through, and I must say I was seriously missing out.  Nice story!

Reis.


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## Richards (May 20, 2006)

Great writeup as always, Doc.  Fantastic to see an update -- I missed this Story Hour!

Johnathan


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## Serenity (May 22, 2006)

Hiya Dr. M

Love the story hour.  Thought I'd quit lurking in the shadows and say hi.  Can't wait to see what happens next.


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## Rybaer (Jun 20, 2006)

Just an enthusiastic bump...hoping we'll still get a chance to see this through to the end.  Great writing!


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## Dr Midnight (Jun 21, 2006)

Yeah, I'll find time. I've only got maybe two more posts to make. It's just hard getting moving when you've got everything else in life rolling along at a fever pitch... including... including.... THIS! www.rpgshirts.com


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## Peterson (Jun 23, 2006)

Can't believed I missed this the first time.

It rocks!

Thanks for reposting this, Dr. Midnight.  Anxious to see how it all plays out.

Peterson


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