Disclaimer: None of the League here are mine, and Eilidh and Fiona belong to themselves and their names are used here with their permission. The same applies for Sarah and Jeremy Nivern (Although Sarah's the only one of the two I like) and Gash.
Feedback: Much appreciated
Stallion: Thanks. The speedster in question should be appearing soon, so watch this proverbial space for him.
Charlie Nelson: Glad you're liking my choices for the League so far. To answer one of your points, it isn't known for certain whether Mina destroyed Dorian's picture after she used it to destroy Dorian, so I'm just assuming she kept it. Oh, and thanks for suggesting I bring the rest of the Buffy and Angel crew into the League at some point; I'll be using that idea in a later fic.
Lady Moon3: Your guess is correct; the villain has been to what many people call 'the undiscovered country, from whose borders no traveller ever returns' and returned. As to who he is, well... See if you can guess that before he takes his mask off.
Sean Malloy-1: I hope this was soon enough.
AN: Remember, when I call the bad guy 'Im Ho Tep', I don't mean he IS Im Ho Tep- as the Doctor said in the last chapter, this sort of thing isn't the style of the genuine Im Ho Tep; the villain just took on the name to inspire fear.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 2004
In a darkened room, Sarah and Gash stood still, giving only the slightest shiver as they looked at the back of the chair where their boss was sitting. They weren't looking forward to hearing what he had to say when he learned they'd failed.
Come to that, he may have found that fact out already...
"I see that the League are still alive," the man calling himself Im Ho Tep replied, as he swung around on his chair to talk to his two remaining assassins. "Therefore, since you two are the only ones who have actually returned, I shall assume that everyone else I sent along with you is dead. Correct?"
Gash and Sarah nodded meekly.
Im Ho Tep groaned a little, his right hand clasping his forehead. Then he picked his black cane, got up off the seat, and walked towards the two assassins with a harsh glare in his eyes.
"If it weren't for the fact that you have served me well since you started to work for me," he said, looking Gash directly in the eyes, "I would kill you where you stand."
Then he stepped back and smiled slightly. "But, if nothing else, your experience has taught me something that shall prove useful."
"Which is?" Sarah asked, trying not to be intimidated by her superior.
"That the League are remarkably talented in the use of their powers," Im Ho Tep replied, as he turned around and walked back towards his seat.
"Therefore," he added, as he settled himself back down and looked back at Sarah and Gash, "I shall need to enlist a League of my own, who can match this one strength for strength. You two shall be two of the members, given that you are capable of matching certain League members well enough when it comes to unarmed combat, and I have another six people in mind already."
Gash raised one inquiring finger. "Uh, boss? Not meaning to be rude or anything, but there are nine guys in the League... aren't there?"
Im Ho Tep groaned and looked down at Gash. "It is a good thing I don't depend upon your brain in this little enterprise," he said, growling a little. "The general assumption you should make if you had an at least average IQ is that I shall be a member of this League, but I shall only assist you when there is no other option."
He reached into his pocket, pulled out a piece of paper, and pass it to Sarah. Gash looked at it from over her shoulder, and Im Ho Tep smiled as he saw their eyes widen.
Sarah looked up at her boss, a confused expression on her face. "But... but half of these guys..."
"Are dead?" Im Ho Tep replied. "I am aware of that face, but it's easily solved. A simple combination of science and magic, and they shall live again."
"And... hang on..." Gash said, looking from one name on the list back up to Im Ho Tep. "No offence intended, boss, but how are we meant to bring Angelus back? I mean, we can't exactly resurrect him; his body's still as alive as it can get."
Im Ho Tep smiled beneath his mask. "That's my little secret," he said, grinning at the two assassins. "Just bring me Riley Finn, formally of Iowa and Sunnydale, and I'll bring Angelus into our little League of... no, it doesn't sound quite right for a criminal organisation."
"Pardon?" Sarah asked, but she didn't look up, as she was still looking in partial disbelief at the list in her hands.
"I don't think that 'League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' will work as a name for my little group," Im Ho Tep said, as he sat back in his chair and clasped his hands together. "Tell me, as the name for a group of super- powered evil-doers, what do you think of the name 'the Syndicate of Incredible Criminals'?"
Gash smiled. "Pure genius, boss," he said.
"Thank you," Im Ho Tep replied, smiling at his followers. "Oh, and by the way, I have a theory that I know what the League's next move will be. Tell Kate to head over to the Las Vegas Police Department, and have her keep an eye on the computers."
Noticing Gash and Sarah looking at him curiously, he just gave them a small smile. "My reasons are my own," he said, in an enigmatic manner that always made his employees slightly infuriated. "Now go."
A couple of hours later, in the Las Vegas police department, a door swung open and then shut itself, apparently without anybody entering the room. It could have been mistaken for the wind, but the night was so still that wind was definitely not an option.
Fortunately, nobody was in that area of the department at present, given that the main door was some way away from the main reception. Besides, the person on duty at present was nearly half-asleep, so they probably wouldn't have noticed the door open even if the door had been right in front of the reception.
Glancing around herself, Fiona couldn't help but wonder where the hell she was meant to go now.
She wasn't even sure how she'd been persuaded try this stunt. The Doctor had tried to hack into the police department's records from the League- mobile's computer, but the computer still had a couple of kinks in it that he hadn't worked out yet. So, until he got the necessary extra components installed,
Getting into the place had been easy enough, but she hadn't anticipated that she wouldn't be able to find somewhere quiet later on. She couldn't even look for the morgue and see if they'd found the bodies of the League's would-be assassins; it would appear that the police didn't like to put up signs.
"Try going left."
"What?" Fiona said, looking around herself in shock. Who said that?
"I did," the voice said again. Fiona blinked in confusion...
And suddenly, she saw a shimmering form in front of her. The form was sky- blue in colour, partly transparent, and dressed in a leather outfit of some kind, but Fiona recognized the face at once.
Eilidh.
"What the hell are you doing here?" she whispered to her teammate, all the time looking around to make sure nobody heard them. "And why do you look like that?"
"This is my astral form; my mind sent out of my body," Eilidh explained. "I've done it a couple of times before, and figured this seemed a good time to do it again. After you'd left us, it occurred to the Doctor that you might need a guide through here, so they had me memorize a map of the police department, cast a mental net to see who was where in here, and then I transferred my astral form here." She smiled a little at her new friend. "Don't worry; you're the only one who can see me, unless I want anyone else to."
"Cool," Fiona whispered, before she turned around and looked down the corridor in front of her. "So, let's go. We have a computer system we need to access."
After a couple of close calls and wrong turns (Las Vegas really had a remarkably large police department), Fiona and Eilidh finally found themselves in the station's records room. A few computers were already on, but most of those had someone working on them. However, there was one in the corner that didn't have anyone on it at present; it appeared that the person who'd been on it before had left briefly to go to the toilet or something.
Fiona smiled, relieved that their gamble had paid of. Sitting down in front of the screen, she pulled up a menu and selected the option to look at recent cases. The warehouse slaughter was on the top of the list, so she opened it up, with Eilidh's astral form looking over her shoulder the entire time.
The evidence wasn't all that encouraging at first. Evidently the vampires had dissolved into dust after they had died, given that there were only five bodies listed as having been found in the warehouse. However, there was enough information there for her to get some ideas regarding which body had been which assassin.
Starting with Jeremy, she accessed the database to see if there were any references on his prior career. She noted that it wasn't really anything impressive- adopted along with Sarah (No clues as to what had happened to his biological parents), trained himself in various martial arts when people started ignoring him, and eventually he and Sarah became some of the world's most lethal assassins, and then they were hired in Paris by a man who'd called himself 'the Fantom'.
"Hold on a minute..." Eilidh whispered to Fiona, from over the invisible woman's shoulder. "Unless I've made a major mistake, 'the Fantom' was the name of the original League's first adversary. You know, it was the alias that was used by Professor James Moriarty?"
Fiona nodded a little as she listened to her friend- or, at least, processed what Eilidh was telling her. After all, if Eilidh was only a telepathic representation of her real self, technically she couldn't be talking to Fiona in any real sense.
"It was," she whispered back. "But it makes even less sense to think that Moriarty's behind this than it did to think that Im Ho Tep was behind this. I mean, at least Im Ho Tep could be around in the present day, being an immortal and all; not only was Moriarty only a man, but he was shot in the back by Tom Sawyer, if I remember the files correctly. There's no way he could have survived that."
"You know, we're talking about the impossibility of people coming back from the dead when we're working with a vampire," Eilidh commented.
Fiona nodded. "Point taken," she said. Then she realised that Eilidh couldn't see the nod. "I agree with you." Then she shut down the file she'd been looking at, got up from the computer, and walked away from the room, leaving everything pretty much as she'd found it. "Let's go. We've got somewhere to start our investigations into what our opponent is starting, so we need to get there soon."
"Agreed," Eilidh said, drifting on behind her friend.
"Next stop; Paris!" Fiona smiled, as she started to walk down the corridor towards the exit of the station.
In one corner of the room that Fiona and Eilidh had just left, something stretched and smiled at the conversation it had just overheard- or at least, what parts of it there were to hear from the point of view of an outsider.
Evidently, the psychic had been doing that astral projection thing the boss had mentioned, otherwise there was no reason for the invisible woman to be talking to herself. Unlike Sebastian Caine, Fiona Brand wasn't insane, and she wouldn't think out loud in a public place while she was invisible.
Smiling, Kate walked out of the corridor and headed outside to where she'd left her coat. It was at times like this that she was grateful that her boss had managed to find a way to turn clothes invisible, so that his invisible men and women could spy on people without getting cold.
Picking the coat up, Kate pulled out her phone and dialled her boss's personal number. As soon as he answered the phone, she spoke.
"They're going to Paris."
Kate heard Im Ho Tep chuckle at the other end. She shivered a little, despite the warmth of her clothes and the night itself.
Even superhumans fear the unexplained, and, no matter what else he was, Kate's boss was still an enigma to all who knew him.
"I thought as much," he said to her, after he'd stopped chuckling. "Report in at once; I have a plan for stopping the League, and you are involved in it."
Kate smiled. "Sure thing," she said, terminating the call and heading off into the back streets of Las Vegas.
Soon, the League would fall. Her boss would ensure that fact; he had never failed in achieving his desired goals yet, no matter how long it had taken him.
And after the League had fallen...
The world would do likewise.