Disclaimer: I do not own Sky High or its characters, settings etc, all of which belong to Disney. Original characters and concepts belong to me.
Chapter 2: Curiouser and Curiouser
For the next few minutes, the only sound in the room was Magenta, who had been the first to recover, tapping on her keyboard. She paused after a while and frowned at her screen in confusion.
"What?" Will voiced what they were all wondering.
She turned to them. "Well, like Eye-Slice, Royal Pain has officially disappeared. But, while his NCS private file has been deleted, hers has been… hidden."
"How do you know that?" asked Ethan.
"It's complicated."
That didn't seem to be enough of an answer, so Zach helped her out. "If she tells you, she'll have to kill you," he told him and added to Maj, "Right?"
"Something like that," she agreed with an amused smirk, and started to work on trying to find the elusive file.
The others watched her work in silence for the next few minutes. Suddenly she jerked back in her seat with a gasp as her screen flashed and went black. Sparks flew from her external drives and other equipment as she desperately tried to unplug them in time, but it was too late. Finally, the lights flickered a few times and then the room was in darkness.
In Zach's greenish glow they could see Magenta staring at her equipment in shock.
"Uh, Maj? What just happened?" asked Layla cautiously.
"Spiked," whispered Magenta, not looking at her. "All these years of hacking and I've never been traced once, and now … now someone's spiked me."
Will asked quietly, "Who?"
"Whoever it was that hid Royal Pain's file."
She gave a quiet sniff and surreptitiously wiped her eyes, while the others pretended not to notice. This behavior was extremely disconcerting, coming from her. They would have expected her to be screaming and swearing, possibly even throwing things, not sitting apathetically staring at what was left of her system.
They shared a concerned glance in the dim light, and Zach gestured quietly that the others should probably just go. Layla squeezed her shoulder comfortingly as they quietly trooped to the elevator. Zach went over to the circuit breaker and flicked one of the switches so that the elevator would work for them. He would turn the rest of the power on after Maj had checked that it wouldn't make things worse for her already damaged equipment.
The others rode down to the ground floor in silence. It seemed that there was a lot more going on here than anyone had realized when the Mayor called a few hours ago, to say that there was a hostage situation in the Maxville Stadium.
Less than two weeks later Will was called to a meeting at the NCS Headquarters in Washington, along with other team leaders and city representatives from all over the country. As soon as he got back to Maxville, he assembled the Guardians in their HQ for an emergency meeting.
When they were all there, however, sitting and waiting for him to gather his thoughts with evident concern, he found himself just looking around at his team, not sure how to tell them.
Eventually he took a deep breath and decided to just get straight to the point. "We've been reassigned."
A moment of stunned silence greeted his announcement, closely followed by an outraged chorus.
"What?!"
"Why?"
"To another city?"
"All of us, dude?"
Will held up his hands for silence, and then carried on gravely. "No, we're being split up and sent to different cities." He waited for the irate response to that statement to die down, and went on. "It seems that the powers that be have decided to re-shuffle pretty much everyone. My folks are going to Hawaii – they're thrilled, of course – and Kate and I are staying here in Maxville. Warren and Layla, you guys are assigned to the western quarter of Miami, which is right by the Everglades, so you'd like that, right?"
Layla nodded obediently, but her smile was rather forced. She knew Will was trying very hard to help them see the good side of what was happening, but even living on the doorstep of a National Park was not going to make up for being separated from her friends and parents. Besides, she knew that Warren hated humid climates.
Meanwhile, Will was reading out the other reassignments. Ethan and Denise were going to two different hospitals on the East Coast, Zach was to become the sidekick of their old schoolmate Larry Slade, a.k.a. Hard Rock, in Geocity and Magenta was to be paired up with a hero called Valkyrie on the West Coast.
"But they can't separate us," Magenta objected. "We're engaged."
Will looked a bit uncomfortable. "Yeah, but it's not exactly official, is it?"
"She caught the bouquet at your wedding, dude," Zach shrugged. "How much more official does it have to be?"
"Look, I'm really sorry. I tried to organize some way out of it but there was nothing I could do. All they said was 'If you don't like it, you're welcome to quit'."
There was a moment's silence after that announcement, and then Zach spoke up, looking more serious than they'd seen him, possibly ever. "Maybe I will."
"Maybe you'll what?" asked Will.
"Quit." They all stared at him, astounded. "I'm serious. Look, the real reason I enjoy this business is because of working with all you guys. I don't want to play jester to some rockhead with no sense of humor, not doing anything more useful than fetching his coffee. I'd rather not be in hero work at all."
"Yeah, me too," said Magenta quietly. "I just looked up Valkyrie." She'd managed to get some parts of her system, including her hero database, up and running again. "She's allergic to animal fur and she hates the use of modern technology in hero work. What kind of sidekick would I be for someone like that?"
"This whole thing doesn't make sense," observed Ethan. "Usually superheroes are assigned in such a way as to play to their strengths. These postings seem to be almost playing to people's weaknesses."
"It's all a plot, man," Zach announced. "Super villains have infiltrated the NCS."
Before they could discuss Zach's latest conspiracy theory, Will's phone rang. When he answered it and found out it was Brett Simmonds, he put him on speakerphone so that the others could hear.
'I need to talk to you guys.'
"Go ahead. You're on speaker."
'Uh, in person. I don't think it's safe to – ' he paused briefly as if he'd just reconsidered what he was about to say '– uh, talk on your cell phone while you're driving.'
"Okay then," replied Will uncertainly. He hung up and headed to the elevator to escort Simmonds up to the top floor.
"He sounded like he didn't think it was safe to talk on the phone," Ethan said.
"Maybe he's afraid he's being stalked by a villain," Maj remarked.
"Or obsessive fan girls," suggested Zach in a weak attempt to lighten the atmosphere.
Warren just grunted at that. He wasn't really in the mood for humor.
The elevator arrived with Will and their guest.
"So, Brett, think someone's tapping your calls?" Zach greeted him in a tone that suggested he thought that the concept was a bit paranoid.
"Not mine. Yours."
Will frowned. "Do you know something we don't?"
Brett sat down. "No, I'm just guessing. But last time I didn't tell anyone when I was suspicious about stuff, it turned out I was onto something. So I'm just trying to learn from my mistakes, you know?"
"So? What is it?" asked Warren.
"I just wanted to warn you guys that Grey Arnolde doesn't trust you." He had their attention immediately. "I was hanging around after the meeting where we got our assignments, to ask really nicely for a different placement –"
Magenta interrupted, "Why, where did they stick you?"
"Some city I've never heard of where the average temperature is something like 32."
Warren winced in sympathy. Pyros did not go well with that sort of climate, needing to maintain a core temperature of over 150 to be able to power up. Suddenly the Everglades didn't look so bad.
Brett went on with his tale. "Anyhow, while I was waiting for a chance to speak to Arnolde, I managed to overhear him talking on the phone."
"Managed to?" asked Denise knowingly.
He shrugged a bit sheepishly, but didn't actually admit to anything. "Anyhow, I can't remember exactly what he said, but you'd better keep your heads down."
"Are you sure it was definitely us he was talking about?" asked Will with a frown. He couldn't think of anything they'd done to earn the disapproval of one of the National Council of Superheroes directors.
"Well, he was talking about someone 'causing trouble during that business under the Metrocity H'. I thought that sounded like you guys," Brett replied dryly.
"Wait a minute," said Ethan. "Then he must be part of that rogue group of the NCS who were behind the experiment."
"Sure looks like it."
"But there was an investigation after all that happened," objected Kate. "The operation was shut down. Surely he would have been exposed then."
Brett snorted. "No, he would have been in the perfect position to cover his tracks. He just had to make sure that there were some so-called 'agents' that got discovered to make the other directors happy, meanwhile the important ones stayed hidden."
Warren shared a glance with Will. "Remember what Amber's dad said when he thought I was destroying the research? Something about how high up it went in the organization."
"As high up as one of the directors?" Will looked doubtful.
"Apparently."
Magenta had a thought, and she asked Brett, "Hey, how do you know so much about this rogue group anyway?"
"I thought you'd got over mistrusting me," he replied.
"I did. This is me being curious, not suspicious."
He raised his eyebrows slightly, but wisely chose not to comment. Instead he answered the question. "Okay, it's like this. Not everyone goes straight into the field after graduating like you guys did. In fact, lots of heroes don't. My first assignment was at NCS HQ, doing general intern stuff like filing and running errands. When you're in that sort of position, nobody takes any notice of you. People talk about all sorts of stuff when you're in the room, as if you're just part of the background. And so I listened, and I learnt a lot."
Will asked, "Such as?"
"Nothing really specific like names and places, if that's what you're hoping for. More like an impression of what the group stands for, and all sort of crazy rumors about stuff they'd done. It was only after I got posted in Metrocity that I realized that the whole idea wasn't just an urban legend." There was a pause as they digested all that, and then Brett asked, "So, where did they send the famous Guardians to?"
"We got dismembered," answered Zach.
Magenta rolled her eyes. "Disbanded," she corrected him impatiently.
"Ouch," replied Brett in sympathy, to both responses.
It was a quiet trip home for Warren and Layla, each lost in their own thoughts. The silence continued upstairs and into their living room. He switched on the kettle and wordlessly offered her a cup of herbal tea, to which she nodded, and poured himself a mug of coffee.
She sat down on the couch and gave him a small smile when he joined her a few minutes later, handing her the tea. Taking a sip, she looked around at the apartment, thinking how horrible it would be to leave. Of course, it would be even harder for him, considering he'd lived here much longer, pretty much since he graduated.
Warren suddenly broke the silence. "Maybe Zach and Magenta have the right idea."
"What? To quit?"
"Mm."
It was awfully tempting, but she didn't think it was really an option. "Look, I don't want to move either. I also want to stay together with our friends. But it's the superhero's life to serve where we're needed, not necessarily where we want to be." Putting down her mug, she got up and started to pace. "If you think about it, we've actually been really fortunate. Some people get sent to all sorts of strange places, some people have to move as often as if they were in the military. We were really lucky to keep this posting for so long."
"No," he disagreed flatly. "We were lucky to get this posting. I'll admit that much. But we've kept it because we've done the job really well. Heroes usually get reassigned when things aren't working out for them in a particular place or because they've blown their secret identities. But re-shuffling everybody? It makes no sense."
She sat down and picked up her herbal tea again. "No, it doesn't," she sighed. "But that doesn't mean I'm quite ready to buy into the conspiracy theory just yet."
He sighed too. "But you can't deny that the reassignments play more to the heroes' weaknesses than their strengths, like Ethan said. It's too consistent to be a coincidence."
"Yeah, but how is quitting going to help? Or is it that you don't want to be at the beck and call of someone whose decisions you don't agree with?"
"Maybe Zach's latest conspiracy theory isn't as far-fetched as they usually are. Maybe that rogue group of the NCS has been infiltrated by super villains."
She frowned, thinking it over. "But what about the nicer assignments? Like the Strongholds in Hawaii?"
He gave a humorless smile. "Everybody knows Steve and Josie have been wanting to go on vacation to Hawaii for years but they've never got a chance. Can you think of a better plan to get them out of the way, if you were planning something?"
"I think you've been hanging out with Zach too much."
"Well, from what Simmonds said, we know that we're in the bad books of that rogue bunch. Maybe they consider us a threat, so they want to keep us away from something."
"What about Will and Kate?"
He was quiet for a moment. "Okay, so the theory has some flaws. I haven't had as much practice at this as Zach has."
"And what about us getting sent to Miami? I know you don't like the summer climate there, but being right at the Everglades would be great for me."
"Yeah, it would be great for you," he agreed slowly, as he thought it out. "It would be so great that, like the Strongholds in Hawaii, you might just get… distracted from hero work."
"Maybe," she allowed. He raised his eyebrows knowingly and she admitted, "Okay, probably. But you still haven't explained how you think that quitting is going to solve anything."
"Simple," he stated with a cunning half-smile. "They want to get us out of the way, but we're not going anywhere."
She gave him a look that clearly showed that she wasn't convinced, before getting up and taking their mugs to the sink. He came up behind her and gently slid his arms around her waist.
"Just think," he said softly. "If you weren't having to run off all the time to save the day, maybe you could get a full-time job as an environmentalist."
He knew she often felt bad that she was too busy with hero work to be able to really make a difference for the environment, which was one of her first loves, after all. She had to admit, this was actually sounding like a better idea than she thought it would.
After a moment deep in thought she nodded and leant back against him with a little sigh.
Their superhero careers didn't actually come to a complete halt as they expected, even though they were retired – officially. With a city like Maxville, there was too much trouble for just Will and Kate to handle on their own, and so one or more of Warren, Layla, Magenta and Zach sometimes needed to lend a hand in a covert manner. The only catch now was they had to be extremely careful about staying hidden from the public. The NCS had a tendency to frown on unlicensed hero work, as they considered private heroes only one step above villains, and the ex-Guardians were already under suspicion. So they were very sneaky, and they managed to get away with quietly helping Will save the day.
But elsewhere things weren't going so well for the superhero profession. The heroes were all in unfamiliar territory and, to add to their problems, Royal Pain's de-neutralizing bracelets kept making an appearance, worn by other villains who were supposed to be in jail.
Layla's cousin Bradley in Metrocity emailed them the front page of The Daily Earth which read 'The One That Got Away', with a sub-heading of 'Superheroes Still Unable To Recapture Loan-Shark'. Bradley's email added that he was positive Brett could have captured the escaped super villain in no time, and that it made no sense that he'd been sent away.
This pattern of failure was becoming awfully common in hero activity lately, and Zach's theory was looking more and more likely.
And worst of all, there was the danger that the public could start to lose faith in their superheroes.
