Disclaimer: I do not own Sky High or its characters, settings etc, all of which belong to Disney.

A/N: This story continues after Phoenix Emergent – please read that one first or this won't make that much sense.

Prologue: The Guardians of the City

It's time to fast-forward a few years, past high school graduation and out into the world. Will followed his parents into the family business and joined Stronghold Superior Realty because it was convenient having a flexible cover job. Kate became a freelance photographer, also partially so that she could leave in a hurry every now and then to help save the day. Layla was studying ecology and hoping to find a job as an environmentalist that would also allow flexible working hours. Warren put his pyro-psionic ability to good use (albeit surreptitiously) as a firefighter and Ethan was working on his doctorate in Superhero Physiology. Zach was studying electronics, and he showed such a surprising aptitude that he began to design high-tech communication equipment for superheroes. Magenta became a computer programmer and could hack into almost anything, possibly even a Death Star (which had earned her the nickname R2-D2 from guess who).

When Warren graduated from Sky High, it was generally expected that he would go straight into the hero business with some (hopefully fireproof) sidekick trailing after him. However, he won his appeal to the National Council of Superheroes and spent two years on hiatus from hero work while he waited for his friends to finish high school. Thanks to Warren's success with the National Council, the whole group was able to buck the hero-sidekick convention by forming a crime-fighting team made up of The Eagle (Will), Knight-Fire (Warren), The Dryad (Layla), Flame-Archer (Kate), Fluid Genius (Ethan), Ultra-Violet (Magenta) and Lumo (Zach, who had finally given up on the idea of 'Zach-Attack' when it was pointed out to him that a secret identity is kind of pointless if you have your real name as part of your alter-ego).

They called themselves The Guardians of the City. The Commander and Jetstream still handled the national and international crises while Will and his friends took over protecting Maxville locally.

The group had also largely taken over the Stronghold's Secret Sanctum. When they first formed their team, Will's parents had allowed them a small corner at the far end, next to the pool table. In a couple of years they had annexed the area from the pinball machine to Jetstream's scientific equipment desk, which was soon replaced by Magenta's computer set-up. They'd moved the pool table into the Strongholds' half of the Sanctum because there just wasn't enough space for it on their side, what with Zach's work bench, Ethan's medical supplies and the new couches and coffee table. Poor Steve had had to put his precious trophy collection into storage.

This evening was a team meeting, apparently, although it certainly didn't look much like it. Ethan was updating his Heroes & Villains scrapbook on the coffee table and Zach was sitting on a couch, trying to sew his logo badge back onto his uniform. Warren, Will, Kate and Magenta were sitting on the floor playing Uno according to some variant rules, such as all four of them slapping the discard pile when Maj played a 9.

"Ow," complained Will as Kate smacked her hand on top of his.

"Sorry," she apologized, drawing two cards for being last.

Warren smirked lazily and gave her a significant look. It was one of the rules they'd made up themselves, that anybody who apologized to another player for any reason had to draw two cards.

"Hey! That's not fair," objected Layla from the couch behind Magenta as Kate sighed and drew the cards, "You set her up for that one."

"All's fair in love and Uno, apparently," commented Ethan without even looking up from his scrapbook.

"Which is probably why I don't play with you guys anymore," Layla observed with a wry smile. She was busy plaiting one of Magenta's purple streaks into a mini-braid, as she often did during team meetings. Warren had always thought that was something girls grew out of in junior high, but he supposed he should be grateful Layla didn't feel the urge to run her fingers through his hair, which fell a bit past his shoulders these days. At least, not in public.

Now where did that last thought come from?

Apparently Maj also had something to say on the subject of her hair. "Why do you always plait only my purple bits? Not that I'm criticizing or anything, just wondering."

Now it was Layla's turn to get curious. "How do you know I'm plaiting your streak? You can't see what I'm doing behind your back."

"I just know," she replied, "It's not a big deal. I mean, Warren knows where his streaks are too, don't you?" She turned to Warren who calmly separated each of the red bits from the rest of his hair without looking.

"That's so cool, man," said Zach, who still got excited over almost anything.

"Yeah, it's one of my secret super powers," Warren deadpanned.

Maj added, "I've got it too, only Boomer still made me a sidekick."

Zach muttered something less than complimentary about their old gym teacher and went back to his repairs. The Guardians' uniforms were quite non-traditional too. Shunning spandex completely, they all wore a black catsuit composed almost entirely from Kevlar 29, along with a long duster coat in each person's signature color. To add to their individuality, they also had a small badge with their personal logo just below the throat, which was what Zach was trying to sew back on. 'Trying' being the operative word, as he swore softly in Chinese (he had picked up a few words from Warren so that he could swear without getting into trouble with Maj) when he stuck himself in the finger with the needle.

Magenta looked at him as he held up his failed handiwork. "Oh, just give it here," she sighed, and tossed her cards in the discard pile.

"Hey, don't fold. I need an ally against these guys," protested Kate.

Zach held out his uniform but didn't quite hand it over. "Uh, what about Layla's anti-sexism rule about not expecting the female members to fix, clean or iron our uniforms?"

Maj rolled her eyes as she took it from him. "It's more dangerous to my sanity being forced to watch you mess it up completely, dear." After a number of years of their on-off routine, the two of them had finally decided to be mature and try a serious relationship.

Ethan was watching this interchange with amusement. "Hey, how many clever blondes does it take to change a light bulb?"

"How many?" asked Layla with a smile which disappeared when she found that her cup of herbal tea had gotten cold.

"None. He just pretends to be stupid so someone else will to do it for him." Ethan finished his joke with a grin as Layla handed her mug to Warren who wrapped a hand around it.

"Nice one, Popsicle," said the pyro, heating his hand just enough to re-warm the tea and then giving it back to Layla. "Hey Z, now that you've managed to get out of fixing your uniform, can you work on my sunglasses? I think the HUD got a bit fried when I hit the ground yesterday."

Warren handed over a pair of what looked like ordinary aviator sunglasses, and Zach took them to his workbench and started fiddling. The glasses, which played an essential role in the Guardians' field comms, were some of his finest electronic work. Apart from making them all look exceptionally cool and being a pretty effective disguise, the sunglasses also carried a microphone for comms and a mini-camera, and the lenses had a heads-up display (HUD).

"You made a bit of a mess of this, dude," said Zach as he snapped the narrow cover plate back into place on the ear piece after some careful re-soldering of the circuitry. "I'd really appreciate it if you, like, didn't do that again."

"Yeah, I'd also appreciate it if I didn't get shot again," Warren remarked dryly as he shuffled and dealt the cards for the next round. "You in, Z?"

Zach nodded as he handed the glasses back. And he had to admit, Warren's latest nickname for him wasn't too bad.

"Speaking of you getting shot," Will regarded Warren with a slight frown, "That's something we need to discuss – your forfeit for that little stunt."

They had worked out long ago that they needed some form of punishment to discourage team members from being too reckless unnecessarily. While legitimate heroics were obviously part and parcel of what they did, none of them were exactly immortal. If they were going to be an effective team, The Guardians needed all of their members alive and uninjured. So they'd developed the forfeit system, a light-hearted game that was played with complete seriousness. The forfeits usually involved something more embarrassing than actually painful, and were a strictly private affair – what happened in the Sanctum, stayed in the Sanctum.

Warren sighed. "It wasn't a big deal, Stronghold. I can take a hit, remember?" Not to mention the Kevlar 29 catsuit.

"That's not the point, Warren, and you know it," replied Will. "You didn't have to make like a human shield. You could have just pushed the Ambassador out of the way."

"So that whichever other politician was standing behind him could take the hit instead?" Warren pointed out.

"It was a split-second decision, Will, give him a break," put in Layla. "It's not like any of us has the power to slow down time."

Will glanced at Layla. She seemed to be siding with Warren a lot lately. Not that it was ever really a serious issue of rivalry between himself and the pyro, but he often got the impression that Warren and Layla were closer to each other than to anyone else in the group. In fact, Will couldn't help wondering…

"Okay, let's put it to the vote, like always," Kate broke his train of thought.

A quick vote later, and Layla was the only one who thought he didn't deserve a forfeit.

"And you can't escape this one with a lucky game of poker," warned Ethan. Warren had managed to win his way out of the last two forfeits he'd earned with some good cards and some even better bluffing.

Will grinned. "Warren, you can stop pouting."

"I'm not!" was the indignant response.

But actually he was, thought Layla. Of course, he had the lips for it. She wondered, as she often had, what it would be like to kiss those lips. Not that she was in love with one of her best friends or anything. Been there, done that. And it was purely coincidental that he happened to be one of the best looking guys she knew. No, it was just idle curiosity. Wasn't it?

Both her musing and the team's deliberation on Warren's forfeit came to an abrupt halt when the Red Telephone rang. Will jumped up to answer it as usual, and Layla was about to ask why he was always the one who got to do that. As usual.

This time Warren anticipated her argument. "Let him play the little receptionist if he wants to, Hippie."

Her response to that was cut off by Will putting the phone down and turning to them. "Guys, the city's about to be in trouble. We have work to do."

"Aw nuts!" exclaimed Zach, throwing down his last remaining card. "Just when I was about to win for the first time in, like, for ever!"

A/N: Welcome back to the second part of this story. As you can see, we have a romantic sub-plot, which I hope won't scare some people away too much … maybe if the non-shippers scroll quickly through the romantic scenes you'll still be able to enjoy the story… ;)