The Song of Eternity
Canto 7
A Normal Life
Verse 6
To adjust to new life,
Something must be found to live for,
For all of them.
Damon grumbled as he pushed open the door to the detective agency and moved to the coffee pot to get a cup. He ignored the others sitting in the office as he sipped the hot drink and swore to himself. "Damn kids," he grumbled as he finally sat down at his desk. "Don't you have somewhere else to be?" he asked Logan who was sitting in front of Vincent's empty desk smoking a cigar.
"Nothing comes to mind," Logan laughed. He had been coming to the agency every day for the last week, since it had opened. He found it more comfortable than the mansion and could smoke without being nagged by Xavier or the kids. "How's the history lesson going?" he asked Elena who didn't look up from the book she was reading.
"I understand the basics, just trying to brush up on current events now. It seems that people have started to theorize the existence of mutants following your stint with Galactus," she commented. "You might have brought about your own destruction by saving this world."
"That's the chance we took," Logan replied as he took a bite out of a donut.
"It was not a stint. We nearly died," Damon reminded Elena.
"You have nearly died more than you care to remember. Get over it," she said angrily.
"Any word from Valentine yet?" Logan asked as he sensed the rising tension in the room. He knew Damon did not like anyone and that Elena knew what he really was and used to fight against him. He knew that Vincent was all that kept the group together.
"He called before I left to say he was on the road already," Damon explained. Vincent had gone to New York City to meet with the Avengers for some reason he would not tell the others. He had left Damon in charge of the twins when he was gone. "I finally got the damn kid to take his sleeping pills yesterday, but they made it nearly impossible to wake him up this morning."
"What's your take on those kids? What are they hiding?" Logan asked. He had been hanging out at the office hoping to gather some information on the twins as well as to quench his boredom.
"Nice try Logan," Damon replied. "Whatever secrets they may or may not have are between them and us. You can know if they tell you some day," he explained as a UPS truck pulled up to the curb in front of the building. A deliveryman got out and brought in two medium sized boxes.
Elena signed for them and pointed out the sender to Damon and Logan. "From Vincent," she explained as she pulled out a cell phone and called Vincent's number. "What's with the boxes?" she asked, then listened intently as Vincent's voice explained in Old Midgar tongue. "Understood," she replied as she tossed one of the boxes to Damon who stashed it behind his desk.
"What's with the secretive packages and ancient languages?" Logan asked.
"You'll either figure it out for yourself or have to ask Valentine when he gets back later," Elena responded before heading back to her seat.
"You have to admire his perceptiveness, he knew you were here and would hear what he said, so he made sure you couldn't understand it," Damon laughed.
"Yeah, good for him," Logan grumbled.
Later that day, around noon, Vincent turned off the Bayville exit and smiled when he notice the town was still standing. "Always a good sign," he commented. He slowed the car as he passed by the bank and looked through the tinted windows with his enhanced senses. "Perfect," he sighed as he picked up his phone and dialed. "Get to the bank now," he said before hanging up and dialing in a second number. "Bank robbery, get over here," he said before the voice on the other end shouted at him. "Just ditch him," he replied before hanging up.
He parked on the opposite side of the street of the bank and waited until a silver car parked behind him. He left his car and quickly put on a dark pair of sunglasses and walked back to the driver's window. "Well, isn't this a pretty picture. What's he doing here?" he said as he nodded at Logan in the backseat.
"He heard what you said on the phone and tagged along," Damon explained as he got out of the car, dressed in a familiar suit and shades.
"What's going on anyway Valentine?" Logan asked as he and Elena got out as well. "Some meeting of the million year old club?" He joked as he looked over the three of them, dressed in identical clothes.
"Hardly. This is the rebirth of the Turks," Vincent explained from behind his dark sunglasses, dark blue suit, white shirt, and tie. "They were a group that were used for less than honorable missions in our time. Elena and I were members. Anyway, we three are not ones to hide our talents like you and the X-Men. When in New York I got an official order from the Avengers, making us official members, a subgroup actually. This is all dependant on us minimizing property damage and casualties though," he stared at Damon.
"What are you looking at me for?" Damon replied.
"So Logan, if you will just stay out of the way, we will handle this," Vincent ordered as he walked across the street with Damon and Elena close behind. "The bank is being robbed, I saw it as I drove by. There are somewhere between ten and twenty robbers with machine guns and twice that number of hostages. Do not kill them unless they are going to kill a hostage," he ordered as he looked over at Damon again.
"Got it already. Give me some credit, I can hold myself back from killing humans," he laughed.
"Be that as it may, Elena and I will go in then front. You will stay here, keep police out and chase down any of them that try to escape," Vincent explained as he stopped in front of the entrance of the building. "Show the police that ring that was in the package and they'll do what you say."
"What about a back exit?" Elena asked as she pointed down an alleyway.
"It is taken care of already. Time to go to work, lady and gentleman. Let's show them what the Turks are all about," he said as the three of them put their fists together as a sign of respect. Vincent turned around first and walked straight into the bank followed closely by Elena.
"Freeze," a masked man with a gun shouted at Vincent who looked around and took in the situation quickly. He kept walking towards the man, stopping as the gun's barrel was an inch from him. He looked out the sides of his eyes counting fourteen attackers, all of them with their guns pointed at him, not at the hostages. "Who the hell are you supposed to be?" the man with the gun asked.
"We are the Turks," Vincent replied as he slowly extended two fingers from is clenched fist, hoping Elena saw them.
"What the hell is a Turk?"
"You are all under arrest. Surrender, or we will be forces to incapacitate you," Vincent ordered calmly.
"You might not see it from behind those glasses pal," the man said as he pointed his gun at Vincent's face. "But you two are a little bit outnumbered here," the man joked as the rest of his gang laughed along with him.
"Outnumbered, yes. But outmanned or outclassed, never," Vincent said as he performed a back flip, kicking the gunman in the face, knocking him to the ground as Vincent sailed backwards toward a large marble pillar. He landed and dashed behind the pillar as the gunmen opened fire on him.
Elena took off toward the hostages a second after Vincent jumped into the air. She ignored the fact that he should be losing his superhuman powers after being separated from Chaos and tackled the man guarding the hostages. "Move and you die," she threatened as she pressed her pistol to his head and pulled the gun away from him. "People, stay down and out of the way and you'll get out of here fine," she assured them as she continued to hear the bullets being shot at where she assumed Vincent was.
"Whoa, keep it back," Damon said as he tossed a policeman who tried to run into the building back off the sidewalk. "Boss man says to keep the cops out until this mess is cleaned up," he said irritably as he heard the bank fill with sounds of gunshots. He laughed as the policeman pulled out his gun and pointed it at him. "Same side moron, we're government sanctioned," Damon frowned as he pointed to a ring with a blue A on it.
Vincent calmly pulled out the Agememnon and waited until there was a stop in the firing. He immediately ran from behind the pillar he was hiding behind, shooting at the robbers as he dashed behind another pillar. He smiled when he heard a few cry out in pain. "Surrender and you will not be harmed," he ordered as he pointed his gun around the pillar and blasted in their general direction.
Elena smirked as the robbers bolted towards the rear of the building. "Is there a back exit to this place?" she asked one of the terrified tellers who nodded in affirmative. "Damn it Vincent," she swore as she stood and began to fire after the fleeing robbers.
"Quickly Elena," Vincent ordered as he made his way over to her and they began to usher hostages out of the deserted lobby.
"There's a back exit Valentine!" she shouted as the last of the hostages left the bank.
"And from the lack of screaming outside, I believe that the exit has been blocked by our comrades," Vincent explained as he pulled out his gun and aimed at the hallway the robbers went down. "Get ready, they will be making a break for the roof, try not to kill any of them," he ordered.
"Damon blocked it on his own?" Elena asked as she fired at the legs of the first robber to reenter the main lobby.
"That's a good one," Vincent laughed. "He's chasing down the getaway vans by now," he smiled as he opened fire on the robbers as they ran up the staircase.
Two vans sped out of an alley and past Logan. Logan watched as Damon noticed them and took off at an inhumanly fast run after them. He watched as the vans rounded a corner and left his sight and Damon half scaled, half jumped up the wall of the closest building and disappeared onto the rooftop.
Damon ran from rooftop to rooftop quickly, using his camouflaged wings to glide easily between buildings. He smiled as he glanced down at the fleeing vans. "Ahhh, the thrill of the hunt," he said to himself before leaping from the building to the top of the lead van.
He landed with a thud, denting the roof of the van with the true form of his demonic extremities. The van swerved suddenly as if trying to throw him from the roof. He chuckled and clawed his way through the thin roof and grabbed the driver by the neck. "Pull the e-brake now," he growled. As the man pulled the break, Damon gripped him tightly and leapt back to the second van, taking the first driver with him in one hand.
He put his feet forward so he crashed through the windshield, landing in the front seat. He hauled the unconscious first driver through the window and tossed him into the backseat. "Turn it around and take it back to the bank," he ordered the terrified driver.
Vincent and Elena walked to the stairs and began to haul injured robbers out the front of the building to the waiting police officers. "What about the ones on the roof?" Elena asked. "I think there were four of them," she added as she tossed a man with a leg wound to the sidewalk.
"There are five of them, there was a short one behind a larger one," Vincent corrected her. "They are being taken care of as we speak," he added as he listened and heard gunfire on the roof.
The five uninjured robbers bolted out onto the rooftop of the bank in a panic. "What the hell are we gonna do? We're surrounded by those freaks!" one shouted.
"Surrender is always an option," came a voice from on top of the rooftop exit. The surprised robbers looked up to see two other men, dressed in blue suits and sunglasses. The only difference was that these two had blue skintight masks covering their hair and parts of their faces (think Gambit with sunglasses and hair covered).
"More of them! Fire," one man shouted as the two dodged behind the stairwell, away from the hail of bullets. "Circle around, they don't have guns or they would have used them," he ordered as his men circled around and came back to him empty-handed. "Where are they?"
"Always relying on guns, pitiful," came a voice as one of the men in suits talked to them from the opposite side of the rooftop. The men whirled to fire at him, oblivious as the other Turk grabbed one of them and dragged him off behind a vent, out of view. "Bet you wish you could hit me," the other joked as the bullets bounced off an invisible barrier a foot from him. "Tell you what, drop the guns and you can fight my friend behind you. Beat him and you can leave," he gestured at the other Turk.
"One on one until we beat him?" a robber asked.
"Hell no, that'll take to long and be unfair. Just go all at once, he won't mind," the Turk laughed as the four remaining robbers dropped their guns and encircled him.
He stood calmly as they moved about him. As the first one attacked from behind he ducked out of the way at the last moment and caught the man's fist, throwing him into a second of the robbers. He performed a back flip and landed behind the third of his attackers, immediately chopping him in the neck ,taking him down. He straightened up and adjusted his glasses as he looked at the last robber.
"Try this on for size," the man shouted as he created an energy blast, sending it straight at the Turk.
"We got ourselves a mutant," laughed the other Turk as the energy dissipated before hitting his partner. "Of course, he already knew that. That's the problem with people today, always relying on their strengths. They can't deal with it when their strengths are useless against a superior foe," the Turk laughed.
The robber tried to create another energy blast but just stood there in disbelief as his powers failed him. "A little piece of advice for you, don't be using your powers once we leave. The police might not take to kindly to your disposition," the Turk explained before his partner knocked the robber out with a blow to the head. "Thugs, not even a challenge," he commented as they dragged the bodies to the front of the building where Vincent and Elena were staring up. "Hey, boss man get ready to catch them!" he shouted before hurling the first robber over the edge.
Vincent looked up angrily as the fifth robber was safely deposited on the ground. He looked back up at the two Turks on the rooftop. "You two are done, get out of here!" he shouted and waved his hand at them.
"Vincent, are they who I think they are?" Elena asked as she heard a scream from the rooftop and a few bloody black feathers drifted to the ground. "I guess so," she answered her own question as Damon pulled up and threw the two drivers to the sidewalk in front of the bank.
"Two getaway drivers. Alive, I might add," he boasted as he looked over the pile of robbers being taken away by police and stretchers. "You got the whole household into the act, eh Valentine," he mentioned as he sniffed the air.
"Yes, they need a mission in life as much as we do," Vincent replied as he saw some policemen heading toward the three of them cautiously. "You two get out of here, head back to the office, I'll handle this situation," he ordered.
"Right, catch you on the news then Valentine," Damon added before heading away and hopping into the running car Logan had waiting.
Later that day on the six o'clock news Logan, Xavier, and most of New York State sat and watched clips of what happened at the bank that day. "There were five individuals, members of a group called the Turks. They single-handedly stopped the robbery and captured all involved parties," a reporter commented as it showed a video of Vincent and Elena inside the bank shot through a window. "Two entered through the front, scattered the robbers, and rescued the hostages in less than two minutes. They later incapacitated nine of the fourteen robbers with gunshots that killed none of them. At the same time, a third member of the group captured the two getaway drivers and returned them to the scene as the final two members of the Turks tossed the remaining five robbers from the rooftop to waiting police below," the video showed the two masked Turks from a distance throwing the unconscious robbers to Vincent.
"A later statement from the leader of the group was as follows," the reported explained before the video cut to Vincent talking to a police officer in front of a camera.
"I suppose an explanation is in order. We are the Turks. We are sanctioned by the Avengers to protect the people of this nation and this world from those who would harm them. There are five members to my team and we all wish to continue our normal lives without incident. This is a message to those who may cross us in the future. No matter who you are, you do not stand a chance against us. Any one of my team could have done the job the whole team did. Do not cross us," he finished before turning and walking to his car and leaving.