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A Face in the Crowd

"Oh, God…" Sawyer muttered, as he gradually blinked his eyes open. "What was I drinking last night…"

Then his memory came flooding back, and his eyes widened in horror.

"Oh no…" Sawyer muttered to himself, as the full scale of the problem began to sink in.

He'd been captured?

But why?

And by who?

"Ah, good; at least one of you's awake at last," a voice said. Looking over in the direction of the voice, Sawyer saw a tall figure, dressed in a dark green dressing gown that came down to cover his feet, and brown gloves, with bandages wrapped around his entire head and sunglasses over his eyes. "I have to admit, I was getting worried; I wanted all of you awake sooner rather than later, and you were all already trying my patience."

All of us…? Sawyer thought to himself, as he nervously looked around at his surroundings. This guy couldn't mean that he'd actually managed to capture…

He groaned.

He had captured the other members of the League! He, Jekyll, Hartdegen and Nemo were all gathered around the centre of a large warehouse, tied to four of the wooden pillars that seemed to be holding the roof up, while Mina and Terry were lying off to one side, each one attached to metallic bars that appeared to be only recent additions to whatever kind of building they'd found themselves inside.

Sawyer and the others near him seemed to only be held down by rope, as far as he could see, but Mina and Terry were tied to their pillars by chains; evidently, whoever this guy was, he knew that Mina and Terry couldn't be kept tied down by normal means.

"Damnit…" Sawyer muttered to himself, as he looked back at the man. "Who are you, and what do you have against us?"

"Oh, don't play the innocent with me, Agent Sawyer," the man said, glaring at him angrily. "You should know that blasphemers always get what they deserve in the end; did you really think you could get away with paying homage to a false idol?"

Sawyer blinked in confusion.

"Uh, if this is about Nemo worshipping Kali, he's the only one who does that, and surely he's allowed to pay homage to the gods he was taught about growing up-" Sawyer began, but was stopped from saying any more by the man suddenly walking over to him and punching him in the face, before grabbing his head and turning it to face him again.

"I don't refer to those idiotic Indian gods, Mr Sawyer," the man said, sounding like he was speaking through clenched teeth underneath his bandages. "I'm referring to the erstwhile Mr Rodney Skinner; did you really believe you could get away with it?"

He chuckled slightly as he released his grip on Sawyer's head and stood back. "Didn't you read the Bible when you were a child?" he asked, mockingly. "One of the Ten Commandments was 'Thou shalt not worship false idols', and you broke that one fairly often thanks to Mr Skinner."

"What the hell…?" Sawyer said, staring at the man in confusion. "Are you saying you think Skinner was a god?"

"NO!" the man yelled, walking towards Sawyer and hitting him in the face with a powerful punch; Sawyer thought he heard something crack, but a quick inspection with his tongue revealed that all his teeth were still intact and his jaw felt fine.

"He was NOT a god; he was a false idol to the title of Invisible Man!" the voice yelled at Sawyer, as he dazedly turned his head to look back at his tormentor. "And you… all SIX of you… worshipped him as though he were the real thing!"

Giving in to temptation, Sawyer rolled his eyes; he couldn't believe he was hearing this!

"Look, Mr Whoever-you-are," Sawyer said, trying to sound as though he wasn't patronising the man, "I don't know where you got this idea from, but the League didn't regard Skinner as a god, and neither did he; he just thought of himself as being a bit… colour-challenged, for lack of a better term,"

"YOU LIE!" the man yelled, grabbing Sawyer's shirt and hauling him up so that they were nearly nose-to-nose. "The Invisible Man is a god among men, any fool can see that! He must be worshipped! Anyone who spends time with him cannot fail to worship him! But there is only one real Invisible Man- the first Invisible Man- and you must all be punished for your blasphemy against me!"

Sawyer was about to reply to that comment when his brain finished processing the man's last words, and he suddenly felt very confused.

"Um… against you?" he asked, looking at the man in confusion. "Could you explain what the hell you're going on about?"

The man seemed to calm down slightly at that, and chuckled as he let Sawyer fall back to the ground and stepped back, reaching up to his head as he began to remove the bandages from his head.

"You want to know my motives, Mr Sawyer?" he asked, raising an eyebrow as he paused briefly to put his glasses into the pocket of his dressing gown, the bandages now almost slumped around his head. "Then here you are."

With one tug, the bandages were pulled off the man's head, to reveal…

Sawyer stiffened up in horror.

There was nothing underneath the bandages.

But if this guy thought that there should only be one Invisible Man, and that the one was the first Invisible Man…

"Damnit…" he muttered under his breath, before raising his head to look at the guy again. "Hawley Griffin, I assume? Rumours of your death were exaggerated, I see… or don't, as the case may be."

"Indeed," the man said, grinning. "At least you know the name of the man who has come to deal out divine just-"

"Oh, just shut up already!" Sawyer yelled; now that he'd gotten what he wanted to know out of the man, he wasn't in the mood for hearing some psychopath blab on about his so-called 'genius'.

Griffin- Griffin!- lunged forward, punching Sawyer again before grabbing his jaw and spinning him around to face him again.

"You dare tell a god to SHUT UP!" Griffin yelled at Sawyer. The young spy was nearly closed his eyes in an instinctive wince at the volume of the yell, but refused to give Griffin the satisfaction.

"Yeah, I dare," he said, looking back at Griffin with a glare. "And you know why? Because you're not a god; none of the invisible men are! You're all just some guys with a bit of a better talent for staying unnoticed in a crowd who have to figure out ways to stay warm when you're in action in winter! I mean, for God's sake, you never even figured out a way to make your clothes invisible with you; how the hell do you expect to be regarded as a god when you get a cold whenever it's even slightly chilly?"

"SHUT UP!" Griffin yelled, punching Sawyer in the face with such force that the spy's head was forced back, cracking his head against the post that he was tied to and causing an unpleasant crunching sound to come from his nose.

Blood streaming down his face, Sawyer glared back at Griffin, trying to conceal the pain he was feeling at the moment.

"Is that all you can do to me?" he asked Griffin mockingly. "Hit me a lot? Real godlike behaviour, that; where's the thunderbolts and the plague of boils?"

Griffin seemed about to punch him again, but then stopped, and Sawyer heard the faint sound of a chuckle, as though he was remembering something funny he'd read once.

"Oh no; I've just had a better idea," he said, as he turned away from Sawyer and began to untie his dressing gown, throwing the tie off to one side…

As he began to walk towards Mina!

"NO!" Sawyer yelled in horror, as he realised what Griffin was intending to do. He couldn't let that happen…

But there was nothing he could do!

"Leave her alone!" he yelled at Griffin, as the invisible man reached towards Mina's skirt.

Griffin looked over at Sawyer, and smirked.

"This is divine retribution, Mr Sawyer," he said, sounding way too cocky for Sawyer's liking; he was reminded of the Shark's confidence that his forces could handle the League, almost a month ago. "Your old friend tried to usurp my place in the pantheon, and you aided him. You must all be punished."

He began to raise Mina's skirt…

And the, with no warning, the door of the room burst open as though Hyde himself had kicked it open and a man walked in, dressed in browns trousers, a yellowed shirt, a black trilby, black gloves, and a long leather coat that flapped behind him like the wings of a giant bat.

"LEAVE THEM ALONE!" the figure yelled in rage, and Sawyer could have cheered at hearing that voice.

It was Skinner….!

Albeit a still-visible Skinner, Sawyer noted, with a mixture of disappointment and relief; the ex-thief's face seemed a shade darker than he'd seen it last, but that could just be attributed to dirt that had hit him when he knocked something over.

On the one hand, at least Skinner hadn't had to give up the normal life he'd wanted so much, but on the other hand, would he actually have a chance against an invisible foe as just a normal guy…?

Then Griffin turned to face Skinner, and Sawyer swallowed.

Whatever way it turned out, this wasn't going to be pretty.

"Excellent," the other Invisible Man- Griffin, Skinner reminded himself, this guy's the original, he won't be as easy to stop as Reed was- said, sounding extremely confident as he looked at Skinner. "The very man I wanted to kill all along."

Skinner swallowed.

Had he had the right idea doing this? After all, it had seemed to work, but what if things went wrong? Griffin did have more practice at this than he did…

But this was his family the bastard was trying to kill. Maybe not his biological family, true, but in many ways, these guys were closer to him than his family when he was growing up… after all, would they have risked everything for him?

No.

But the League would have.

How could he do less for them?

"You want a fight?" he said to Griffin, as he shifted into a combat stance.

He glared at Griffin under his pince-nez.

"Bring it on," he whispered.

Griffin's armless sleeve launched a punch towards his head, and Skinner ducked to the side to retaliate with a kick to Griffin's chest, already going through every possible combat strategy he could think of…