Chapter 1
"Workforce"
"This is an outrage!" Chameleon Boy screamed at the computer screen.
Triplicate Girl took a careful look around before replying. "What, a worse outrage than having to take on a police watchdog?"
"That scumbag McCauley-"
Lightning Lad looked up from where he was sharing a quiet conversation with Saturn Girl. "What about McCauley?"
Cham screamed again and stalked out of the room. Saturn Girl got up and looked at what had gotten the Durlan so frustrated. She frowned at what she saw and spoke into her ring.
"Will everyone please report to the common room immediately?"
On second thought, she reflected, it would have been easier to use the meeting room. Blok and Colossal Boy took up most of the standing space and Dawnstar's wings just kept getting in the way of the people behind her. She made a mental note to herself about future gatherings of the team.
Imra began, figuring it was pointless to wait for Cham to stop muttering unflattering things under his breath.
"Chameleon Boy has brought some… awkward news to my attention."
A couple people turned to look at him. It seemed as if he didn't notice.
"Leland McCauley-" her pause was intentional. There was a universal dislike for RJ Brande's business and ideological rival; though no one felt it as strong as Cham. "has created a sort of alternate Legion."
"What, suddenly we aren't good enough for him?" Bouncing Boy asked.
"Nothing's good enough for McCauley." Phantom Girl retorted.
"I'm not sure he's allowed to do that." Karate Kid said.
"It doesn't matter if he's allowed to do it," Saturn Girl said. "The fact is he's done it. That alone wouldn't be enough to call this meeting, though. The United Planets has sanctioned the team. They have all the political and legal powers we do."
There were times it was very uncomfortable being the only telepath in the room. This was one of them. It didn't matter that most of it was in different languages. The feelings always crept through. She resolved to teach her teammates how to shield their emotions for the umpteenth time since founding the Legion.
Once again, it was Element Lad who asked the question that needed answering. "Has anyone told the Legionnaires out in the field about this?"
In a way, Cosmic Boy was glad that Saturn Girl was the new Legion Leader. He couldn't wake up and take on those duties each day knowing how he'd failed. He had been the leader during the crisis. As leader, he responsible for those under him. He was responsible for their safety and their health. He'd failed them. Some days it seemed all he did was fail those around him, ever since he failed his family so long ago on Braal. Somehow, none of them ever noticed. Brainiac 5 never noticed; only in his head could Cos admit to himself that he'd also failed the one he'd blamed for his problems.
Of course, the universe didn't care how he felt. Crime went on even during, he'd learned, the imminent end of the universe. That would be why he and a small team were out investigating Dream Girl's latest flash of prescience. She said that this warehouse district was going to be attacked. She said that it could very well be completely destroyed. So far, nothing had happened yet.
"You know why I hate stakeouts, Cos?" he heard over his ring.
"Get off the line, Garth."
"All that happens is that you sit there, getting all worked up, and then when you can actually do something about it, half the time the bad guys get away."
"Well, if you paid attention instead of complaining to the mission leader, maybe you'd catch the bad guys some of the time."
"Why are you in charge again?"
"Saturn Girl though it was a good idea."
"Makes her better than you, huh?"
Rokk just gritted his teeth. Ever since Imra had gotten elected leader, Garth hadn't laid off on him about what he thought was the reason the position changed hands. It didn't matter that Shrinking Violet couldn't stand Invisible Kid's attitude and Invisible Kid hated the way she insisted that physics was much more practical for the Legion's purposes than xenobiochemistry. They were the only people who could even come close to Brainiac 5's genius on the team.
"Cosmic Boy, suspicious persons coming up on your left."
At least something had gone surprisingly well since the Coluan had left. Chief of Science Police Lon Norg had either decided to let go of his hatred for the Legion, the organization that had "stolen" his son and his source of power; or he hadn't counted on his Liaison being somewhat sympathetic toward them. Shvaughn Erin was dedicated to her job, and quite serious about the protection of civilians; but best of all, she had never said anything derogatory about anyone on the team that any of them had been able to tell.
"Thank you, Shvaughn; I see them."
Scavengers. Typical.
"Lightning Lad, you circle around behind. Shvaughn, you go in on the left. Shrinking Violet, Invisible Kid," –if Cos had lost his job for teaming up those two, Imra deserved some of the blame for keeping them together-"come up front slightly from the right. I'm going in on top."
Before anyone could move, however, the ground in front of the Scavengers exploded.
The fragmented pieces of earth rose, turned on the tech-gangsters, and started chasing them around.
Invisible Kid could see the people causing the mayhem from his position. The explosion had come from a strangely armpit-less teenage boy with a red mohawk. There was a black-haired girl in a red and white outfit driving the giant clumps of dirt and rock around. The boy yelled something, and more young people suddenly appeared. A girl with light blue-purple hair picked up two Scavengers and knocked their heads together. It wasn't until one being, seemingly made of mud, blasted a trio of the gangsters with sludge that he realized who these people were.
"Hey Vi!" he called. "We've got amateur heroes here!"
Shrinking Violet was already halfway to the skirmish. The Legion had dealt with enough would-be heroes, mostly rejected applicants, trying to impress whatever team members happened to be nearby. Most times the worst that happened was the bad guys got away. Sometimes, however, catastrophe happened. To date, the Legion of Substitute Heroes were the only successful group to come out of such an experiment.
She knew she wasn't going to make it in time to prevent anything from going wrong. Yet more people were arriving. There was a girl in gold and black with giant dragonfly wings descending in a strange fog of some sort of gas, and she could see a blue-haired boy diving into the fray from the opposite direction.
None of them had noticed the position the Scavengers were maneuvering into. In a few moments, they would all be blown back into the surrounding buildings.
Invisible Kid caught up to her. "I'll go straight in!" he shouted over the din. "You go up and over; there's some more of them in the alley there!"
Salu nodded and jumped into the air. If she had aimed this right, she could get the bug-girl out of the way of the explosion.
Cosmic Boy grabbed the latest newcomer trying to gain entry into the fight. "What are you people, crazy?" he yelled at her. He was having trouble keeping her from escaping and jumping into the middle of the commotion. "Don't you know better than to run into a situation you know nothing about?"
That was when the backwash energies from the Scavenger's explosions hit them all. Cosmic Boy and the girl were closest to the epicenter. He was left holding a decapitated body.
Shrinking Violet had managed to pull the girl down out of the sky. She wouldn't listen to what Vi was trying to tell her though, and kept beating her wings so fast their hair whipped around their eyes. "Will you stop for a minute! We're all in danger here, can't you see th-"
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the main Scavenger reach for the teleportation button. She also saw the blue-haired boy from before. Salu dove to the side, dragging the other girl and the boy down to the ground.
Invisible Kid was finding the sludge that the mud-thing had thrown around to be very, very sticky. Somehow he managed to wade through it and grab hold of the other person. The mud-thing turned its head and looked at him strangely. The teleportation energy went right through it.
Lightning Lad was furious. These wanna-bes were costing them a capture! He confronted the boy and the girl in the alley. "What do you think you're doing? Can't you see you're just getting in our way?"
The armpit-less boy snarled back at him. "Can't you see your getting ours?"
The girl looked dubious and slowly lowered her arms. Garth whipped his head around and saw that the dirtclods were now at about chest-height around the grouped Scavengers. The explosion was going to be worse than any of them had thought.
"No, bring those back up!" he turned on the girl. She flinched. "They're going to-"
His breath was knocked out of him by the rain of earth and the explosion at his back.
Shvaughn Erin had had enough riot training to know that you didn't want to dive right in. The tall, heavyset girl with the light blue-purple hair was closest to the edge of the group. She automatically switched into her cop mode.
"You are impeding an official operation! Stand down!"
The girl turned and she could see the giant blue blotch that covered one side of her face. Shvaughn spared a moment's thought to try and remember if she still wore her badge. The girl just looked confused by her presence. "But the Legion's here-"
Shvaughn hoped that the explosion would lose some of its power before it hit them.
"No, I don't believe anyone has told Rokk that there are some new people on the scene." Saturn Girl said. "Does anyone have any idea where McCauley's team is now? News releases, anybody?"
Star Boy spoke up. "Who are these people, anyway?"
"Does anyone know?" Saturn Girl asked. "Cham?"
Cham got up and pushed some buttons on the computer. "There're pictures around here somewhere…"
Posed pictures, obviously taken for the news, popped up. "That's them."
"They expect those people to replace us?" Nemesis Kid asked scornfully. "There's only thirteen of them! They could never cover the entire galaxy!"
"Dawny, move your wings…" Dream Girl struggled out from behind the mass of white feathers. Her eyes widened. "Hey! I know that guy!"
"Which one?" Saturn Girl asked urgently.
"That one! The guy with the red mohawk and no armpits!"
Invisible Kid wiped the muck out of his eyes and looked down in horror at the head that was slowly rolling to a stop at his feet. The rest of the Legionnaires were struggling to their feet, trying not to let go of their charges.
"Owww…" groaned Lightning Lad. "I feel like a wall fell on me."
"It did." Shrinking Violet said in disgust. She pulled on the formerly-floating dirtclod. It didn't move an inch. The girl in red and white looked sheepishly at her and raised her arms again. Salu jumped back as it rose high into the air. "Hey, why is all that gas still here? The explosion should have dispersed it."
"It would only do so if the backwash provided sufficient outward force to move the atoms of gas far enough apart that the unaided eye would be incapable of perceiving it." The boy with blue hair said. He coughed and started to brush himself off. "In this case, though, you are correct, there was enough force to have dispersed the gas."
"How could you tell?" she asked suspiciously.
"I observed the number of Scavengers and calculated the force it would take to move them, then-"
"-correlated the force with amount of backwash that particular transportation model makes when it's activated." Salu finished for him.
"Precisely." He said smugly.
"Hah!" she spun on Invisible Kid, who was still transfixed by the head. "See; Norg? Even they know physics- why is that cloud moving against the breeze?"
Cosmic Boy had managed to completely miss the entire exchange. A body. He was holding a headless body. He couldn't protect his own team, now he couldn't even protect some amateurs who didn't know when they needed to stop and think. He just kept getting worse and worse…
The body jerked. The other arm came around and pushed his hand off its shoulder. The legs moved and the body staggered around, its hands held out far to the sides. It tripped and fell over some debris, making a loud crash. Everyone turned to look at it.
Invisible Kid heard a faint muttering from somewhere nearby. He looked around the rubble that covered the area, searching to see if someone had gotten trapped under one of the collapsed buildings. "Shvaughn…?" he called doubtfully.
"What?" she called from over to his left.
He heard it again.
"Will you … pick me… up?"
Lyle stared at the head at his feet. He coughed suddenly. The gas cloud had floated down and surrounded him.
The gas by the head thickened and formed an arm. A discorpreal hand grabbed the head by its muck-caked hair. Slowly, a petite, brown-haired girl in a short red kimono materialized. She seemed to float in the air a moment, then touched down to earth.
"Finally!" the head groaned, spitting out some of the mud. "Thanks, Gas Girl."
"Hey, Konk," Gas Girl shouted to the failing body. "I've got your head!"
"Wait a minute," said Bouncing Boy. "You know these people?"
"Not all of them," Dream Girl retorted. "Just that guy."
"Mind enlightening the rest of us?"
"That's Marak Russen. He was always trying to get me to go out with him when I was operating as Madame Mysterio." She pulled a face. "I have never met a more prideful, obnoxious, incompetent small-time 'hero' than him."
"So these guys are a bunch of local heroes?" Phantom Girl hazarded.
"I think so," Star Boy said. "That one," he pointed at the girl with the dragonfly wings. "I think she became a hero on Xanthu after I left. Her name was… Wonda? Londa? Lonna? Something like that."
"Well, she was never a hero." Matter-Eater Lad gestured to the picture of the girl with the blue-blotched face. "Taryn went to my school before I left to study law."
"Wonderful." Saturn Girl groaned. "McCauley managed to find people we knew."
Konk settled her head back onto her neck. "Remind me to spend my next paycheck on a neck guard, okay Tal?" she said to Gas Girl.
"Who are you people?" Lightning Lad finally managed to bluster.
The mud-thing opened its mouth to speak, but the blue-haired boy beat it. "We are the Workforce. We were assembled to defend the United Planets from harm that regular people-," he shot a superior glance at Shvaughn, who glowered at him. "-are incapable of dealing with. We exist to keep the galaxy from plummeting into utter ruin and prevent any crises from obliterating it."
"That's our job." Cosmic Boy reminded him.
"And we never sound so pompous when we explain it, either." Lightning Lad said.
"I am Duplicate Boy, of Lallor," the blue-haired boy proclaimed. "This," he gestured to the girl with the insect wings. "-is Insect Queen from Xanthu. Behind me is Atmos, also of Xanthu."
The boy with the mohawk scowled. Duplicate Boy continued. "Gas Girl is from Lallor, Konk from Xanthu, Life Lass-" the girl in the red and white outfit looked uncomfortable at being singled out. "-is from Lallor. Sludge is from Antares."
"My dad's the Senator there!" the mud-thing piped up. "He's really proud of me!"
"Calorie Queen is from Bismoll."
"Lovely place," she told Shvaughn, who was still standing next to her. "You should visit."
"Look, I admire your… enthusiasm," Cosmic Boy said. "But you should really leave this sort of thing to us. We know how to handle it."
"Sure you do," Atmos sneered. Cosmic Boy glared at him and Duplicate Boy just smiled indulgently.
"We do know how to handle 'this sort of thing'," he said. "If we didn't, the United Planets wouldn't have endorsed us, would they?"
"They did what?" Lightning Lad asked incredulously.
"The United Planets backed Leland McCauley's decision to establish us as a team."
"McCauley did what!"
"Are you deaf?" Duplicate Boy asked him pointedly. "The United Planets has decided that there needs to be a new order."
"We've been doing fine!" Shrinking Violet protested angrily.
"If you were doing 'fine', then why did the galaxy have to be reconstituted and why are you missing a member; who, I might add, is now a former member who left the team in disgrace?"
Cosmic Boy stuck out a hand to keep Violet back. "We were never notified of this."
"Who needed a notification?" the other teen asked him. "You've got that SciPol dog tagging along on almost every mission. No one trusts you anymore."
He turned to the rest of his team. "Let's go."
Saturn Girl turned as the Lightning Lad entered the room, covered in dust and dirt. "What happen-"
She stopped as Invisible Kid walked in, dripping a thick, sticky-looking muck.
"I thought you were fighting Scavengers!" Imra continued.
"We were," Garth protested. "And they wouldn't've gotten away if it wasn't for some wanna-be douchebag heroes messed up the mission!"
"Who?" Saturn Girl had a sinking feeling that she already knew.
"I dunno, a bunch of random losers from Xanthu and Lallor-"
"Hey!" Shrinking Violet exclaimed, seeing the pictures. "That's them!"
Imra sighed as she turned to Cosmic Boy. "Would you mind telling us more about them? We couldn't figure out too much."
He just stood there and gave her a look.
"We were just about to call you," she told him.
Star Boy said goodnight to Dream Girl as he went into his rooms.
She headed toward her door, ready to go to bed after the harrowing day. It looked as if the Legion wasn't going to be able to get rid of this Workforce. They couldn't even identify all of the pictures. There were too many unknowns for her taste.
Hopefully her dreams would carry some answers.
Princess Projectora was first on the scene, Saturn Girl right at her heels, when Nura woke up screaming.
"Nura, Nura!" the princess said urgently. "What did you see?"
"Orando…" she turned to look at the other girl. "Jeckie! You have to get to Orando, quickly! Your people are in danger!"
"From what? From who?"
"The planet…" Nura said vaguely. Imra was already half out the door and signaling for the rest of the Legion to get down to the ship.
"What about my planet, Dream Girl!"
She looked at Jeckie with wide, unfocused eyes. "It's being destroyed."
Princess Projectora dragged her friend out the door with her, running for the landing bay and the ship.