III
Richard yanked the control stick hard right to bank his sleek two-seater jet, maneuvering between the support stanchions of one of the Skyway City district's many elevated highways.
"You are...what they say...showing off," Hyppolyta, sitting in the seat beside him, admonished in her soft accented voice.
Richard grinned. "I'm showing off for you, baby."
Lyta shook her head. "I'm not impressed by reckless flying, love."
"It's not reckless when I know what I'm doing." He pitched the aircraft into a climb. "Oh, wait, did we return that DVD to the Video Hut?"
"I think it is still on the kitchen table."
"Oh, man, we're gonna have to pay a late charge now." He adjusted the range of the radar scope. "Anyway, what did you think of the movie?"
"An inaccurate portrayal. The siege of Troy did not happen that way."
"What, were you there?"
"No, but I had heard what happened from first hand accounts of warriors who were. It would be like Ben telling you what is truly happening in Iraq without the distortions of the storytellers."
"You mean reporters."
"I mean storytellers."
"I'll concede your point."
"And I had met Achilles before he joined Agamemnon's army. While Achilles was a handsome man, he did not have Brad Pitt's blond hair."
"Now you're just nitpicking."
"What is 'nitpicking?'"
"Never mind."
Richard barrel-rolled the jet, earning a startled cry from Lyta. He banked around and peered out the cockpit's canopy at the nearby elevated highway. Cars and pedestrians alike traversed its surface, but no sign of any further Troll activity.
He passed over the highway and dipped low to pass underneath the adjacent highway. As he climbed once again, he eased back on the throttle and performed a shallow bank to give himself and Lyta a clear view of the surface of the highway they had just passed under.
The jet suddenly jerked, and a globe of electrical arcs enveloped the aircraft.
"Crap," Richard said through clenched teeth. "I think we just drew the attention of one of those Clockwork fellas." He thumbed the communicator activation switch. "Blue Wolf to Liberty Brigade, mayday. Struck by Clockwork Tesla cage. Losing altitude. Mayday, mayday, mayday."
Richard fought the frozen controls with his cybernetically-enhanced super strength, hoping to at least glide the falling aircraft away from densely populated areas. In a district like Skyway, however, there were few places to safely land—crash—a disabled jet.
"The way I look at it, baby," Richard said, "we have two choices. We can ride her down, or we can eject. And I can give you two reasons why we shouldn't eject. First, if we eject we can be pretty sure she'll crash somewhere where she'll cause injury. Second, when we clear the plane we'll pass through that Tesla cage, and I ain't too keen on doing that."
"So we have but one choice."
Richard lowered the landing gear. "Yeah, we're riding her down. Hang onto me, baby, this is gonna be a rough one."
Lyta snuggled against him, sliding her arms around his torso. Richard activated his personal force field. The field enveloped both Lyta and himself.
He succeeded in maneuvering the plane over one of the elevated highways, giving less distance between them and a landing surface. The aircraft hit pavement hard and bounced up. It came down again with the squeal of protesting rubber, and Richard simultaneously put the thrusters in reverse and jammed the brake pedal.
The plane came to a stop at the edge of the elevated highway, its nose hanging over the parapet. Just as the jet came to rest, the Tesla cage faded away.
Richard opened the canopy and emerged from the cockpit to inspect his plane's damage. As he dropped to the pavement, he noted hordes of Clockwork robots advancing on the two heroes from both directions of the highway.
He put a finger to his cowl over his communicator earpiece, activating the comms. "Uh, guys, you might want to hurry. We're down on State 302, and it's Clockwork central down here."
Lyta emerged from the cockpit with bow in hand. She had one of her acid arrows nocked, and she sighted down its shaft at the first Clockwork cog coming from the north. Richard looked to the south, his eyes locked on a Clockwork Tesla knight.
---
"There have been tales of super-powered beings since the dawn of human culture," Kari explained to her Anthropology 101 class. "Who here hasn't heard of the super strength of Hercules and Beowulf, or the invulnerability of Achilles, or the super speed of Atalanta?"
One student noticeably missing from the classroom was Celia Clarkson, the victim of the Eco-Activist's assault by tree. According to the dean, Celia had missed several of her classes as she and her parents met with lawyers.
One of Kari's brighter students, a pretty blond-haired girl named Jenna Starr, raised a hand. Kari gestured to the girl.
"I thought we're seeing so many super-powered people nowadays because Statesman and Lord Recluse opened Pandora's Box," Jenna said.
"That might be the catalyst for the modern era of super-powered beings. When super-powered beings began popping up left and right after that event, other powerful individuals saw the potential of their own stable of super-powered beings, so organizations like Crey Biotech began experimenting with creating their own."
"My dad is a techno-hero," said a young man in the back of the room. "He wears this really cool gadget suit created by my mom. His powers have nothing to do with Pandora's Box or Crey or any of them."
"Technology-based heroes are indeed common in Paragon. My husband—" She wanted to kick herself. "—knows two such heroes. Being an engineer, he's sometimes called upon to work on their equipment."
"Mrs. Grant," said another young male student, "is it true you came in first runner-up in the Miss America pageant?"
"That's not on topic."
"But it is a cultural question, and this is an anthropology class."
"Yes, it's true."
"Then who was the winner?"
"Miss Georgia."
"Whoa, then she must have been, like, a total fox or something, because you're totally hot."
Kari was glad now that Celia wasn't in class. The militant young woman would have spouted something about the objectification of women or some other mantra like that.
A quiet chirping began to sound from the communicator earpiece she wore hidden under her long raven tresses. She glanced down at her watch, saw she had fifteen more minutes before the scheduled end of class.
"That's all I really have for you today," Kari said. "Make sure you read Chapter 17 before we meet again next week."
The class stood up and began to file out. Kari turned toward the whiteboard as she slid her hand under her hair to touch the earpiece, activating it. A computer voice from the Liberty Brigade headquarters central mainframe broadcast Blue Wolf's distress call, giving his location coordinates.
"Ms. Grant," said someone from behind her.
Kari turned around and looked into the blue eyes of Jenna Starr. The young twenty-one-year-old girl, eight years Kari's junior, was not only a smart girl, but she had an infectiously positive attitude about life. Of course she had a lot going for her—beauty, intelligence, a pleasant personality, a cute boyfriend on the Paragon City Fire Department.
"What can I do for you, Jenna?"
"If both your parents have super powers, can you inherit powers of your own?"
"That's a question for a biology professor, Jenna. My field is anthropology. Do your parents have powers?"
"No, but my boyfriend Jack has super-powered parents. They're both mutants, which means their powers are genetic, so it stands to reason Jack should inherit something."
"Does he have powers?"
"Not that either one of us can tell."
Kari quickly scrawled a name and office number on a Post-It note. "Here, look up Dr. Vincent McQuay. His field is genetics. Tell him I sent you to him. He can give you a better answer than I can."
Jenna took the Post-It. "Thank you, Ms. Grant."
As the girl left the classroom, Kari gathered up her materials and stuffed them into her book bag. She headed to her office and locked the door behind her. Tossing her bag onto her desk, she opened her closet door and pulled out a suitcase she had hidden in the back.
She stripped off her skirt and blouse, revealing the blue and yellow Miss Michigan costume she wore underneath. She opened the suitcase and pulled out her blue and yellow boots and gloves, kicking off her pumps. Placing her mask on her face, she opened her office window and leaped out, soaring into the air.
---
"You have a meeting with Mr. Chalmers at two o'clock also," Regina Miller, Ben's administrative assistant, added.
Ben groaned. Rupert Chalmers was the only lawyer on the payroll of Grant Technologies, and that was only because the bureaucratic climate of today's business world was so byzantine due to government over-regulation that he needed the bloodsucker just to keep the firm compliant.
Chalmers was good at his job, but that didn't mean Ben enjoyed his company. Chalmers was a trifle grating in person.
"He probably wants to talk about the patent we have pending," Ben said.
"He thinks the engineers who worked on it should be there with you."
"All right, make sure they get a memo."
"Dr. Strader is out of his office at the moment."
"I know, I sent him out on a product evaluation errand. Blackberry him on the meeting with Chalmers."
"Yes, sir."
The earpiece Ben had tucked in his ear began chirping.
"I think my wife is trying to get ahold of me," he said.
"I'll give you some privacy, sir."
As Regina stood and left Ben's office, he tapped the earpiece to activate it. The Liberty Brigade HQ's central mainframe began transmitting Richard's distress call as well as the coordinates of his emergency.
Ben ensured his office door was locked and the Do Not Disturb sign unmasked. He opened the secret door to his secret elevator and hit the button marked with a down arrow. The car descended until it came to a stop at a floor below the basement, a level that most who worked for Grant Technologies didn't know existed, the Liberty Brigade's base of operations.
He quickly donned his red, white, and blue armor and red cape. He set the base's teleporter to the Skyway City district and stepped into the chamber.
He materialized in Skyway, overlooking the vista before him in the noonday sun.
---
Richard's fist went clear through the cog's metal chest, and the mechanical being dropped to the pavement. He whirled around and clobbered a Clockwork oscillating fan with an overhead blow, driving the hovering robot down to the pavement. As the Clockwork attempted to rise from its prone position, Richard pounded it with a haymaker, sending it flying away. As it landed about ten feet away, it shattered into innumerable metal pieces.
Meanwhile, standing at his shoulder, Lyta fired off several types of arrows—those with acid bulbs on the tips, those with explosive tips, those with netting, flaming tips, flash bang tips—all in an effort to keep the multitude of Clockwork from massing their attacks on her husband.
"I think we torqued off the Clockwork King when we rescued Lou and his family the other day," Richard remarked.
"Indeed," Lyta agreed. "This does smell of a planned ambush."
Richard already felt fatigue setting in as his arms continued to pound on the Clockwork minions. He dug deep into his reserves to tap into more energy, but even that, he feared, would not be enough.
The pavement under Richard's feet suddenly shuddered. A few seconds after, he caught a glimpse of a blue figure descending. As it landed about three hundred yards down, the pavement shuddered again. The blue figure rose until it reached the zenith of its arc, and it finally landed amidst the mass of Clockwork attacking the Straders from the south.
The newcomer, over a foot shorter than Richard's own six-foot-two frame, was covered from neck to feet in blue chitin. His bare head had flesh literally as white a paper, with white horns extending from his temples. He grasped a huge double-bladed battleaxe in his fists, and as he landed he became sheathed in a layer of ice.
Frost Axe—the mysterious being from a place that even he himself didn't know, brought to this world by accident when a group of college kids monkeyed around with a ritual they shouldn't have—had found a home with the Liberty Brigade about six months ago.
The chitinous hero waded into the mass of Clockwork, swinging his axe in wide arcs. Pieces of Clockwork flew everywhere.
"Heya, Frosty," Richard said as he pile-drove a cog into the pavement.
Frost Axe only grunted, his full attention on destroying the robotic horde.
Energy bolts lanced down from above, peppering the Clockwork attacking from the north side of the downed plane. Ben hovered overhead, firing his pulses in a nearly constant barrage.
Richard, however, was spent. He slumped against the fuselage of his plane, held up partially by Lyta as she simultaneously continued her rain of arrows. She had nearly depleted her supply, however, even with the stock she had available in the jet's storage compartment.
Kari arrived now, hovering at her husband's side. She aimed her fingertips toward Richard and directed the power of her amulet at him. Richard suddenly felt new energy rush into him.
He renewed his attacks, pounding and clobbering the Clockwork.
Their numbers seemed endless, however. Where had this horde come from?
"Hey, Ben, where's Derek?" Richard asked.
Ben sniped a Clockwork cannon knight. "In Washington. He and a bunch of other representatives from various supergroups are meeting with the Secretary of Homeland Security."
"What for?"
"Less talking, more fighting," Lyta admonished.
"Yes, dear."
Ben grunted as a Tesla cage enveloped him, and he dropped to the pavement among the mass of Clockwork. Unable to move inside the globe of electrical arcs, he was vulnerable. And neither Richard nor Frosty could defeat the foes fast enough to get to him.
Kari cried out in alarm, lowering her altitude, but even as she swept the Clockwork with her lightning bolts she was helpless to do anything for Ben.
Surrounded by Clockwork, with a multitude of attacks directed against him, Ben slumped prone and disappeared among the clicking and whirring Clockwork swarm.
"Ben!" she cried, unleashing a stream of electrical energy.
The Clockwork began focusing their attention on her now, and Richard and Frosty both stepped up their attacks to divert the enemies' attention away from the blue-and-yellow-clad heroine.
Richard watched in awed amazement as another figure winked into view after the brief flash of a teleportation field. Dave Grant teleported three of his robots—his two battle drones and a protector bot—onto the scene before unlimbering his pulse rifle.
Crap, Richard thought. Could this get any worse?
Dave and his two battle drones opened fire.
On the Clockwork. Pulse blasts and lasers swept through the mechanical foes, clearing Kari's path to Ben's side. She descended to the pavement and drew upon her magic, reviving her unconscious husband.
Ben clambered to his feet and took Kari by the arm. The couple leaped into flight and hovered overhead, Ben's energy blasts joining those of his brother's and the drones'.
The last of the Clockwork finally fell, and the heroes were on the brink of complete exhaustion.
Ben descended to the pavement and approached Dave. The two armored brothers stood face-to-face, neither speaking.
Dave touched the control panel on his forearm, and his trio of robots rocketed away. He cased his rifle and leaped into the air, soaring away. Ben would have followed, but his armor was still recharging its power cells.
"How did he know?" Richard asked, leaning against the fuselage of his plane.
"He's hacked into the Brigade's comms system," Ben said. "It's the only explanation."
"We'll have to update the firewalls then. Hey Frosty."
Frost Axe turned his strange eyes toward Richard. "Yes, Richard?"
"You can turn off the ice effect now. My wife's getting cold."
Frost Axe relaxed his aura, and the sheath of ice around him quickly vaporized. "My apologies."
"No worries. It just gives me an excuse to warm her up."
"I am not that cold," Lyta said, "but how will you warm me up?"
Richard slid his arms around her bikini-clad figure. "Like this."
"I see. On second thought, I believe I am cold."
---
After the meeting with the Secretary of Homeland Security, Derek departed from his fellow super-powered delegates and went to Capitol Hill, where he sought the offices of Representative Cheryl Hunt, a Republican from Rhode Island representing the district in which Paragon City was a part.
"Hi," Derek said to the aide manning the front desk. "Congresswoman Hunt is expecting me. Dr. Derek Nox."
The aide checked the computer, and she nodded. "Go right in, Dr. Nox."
Derek thanked her and entered the office. As he closed the door behind him, the congresswoman stood from behind her desk. She was attractive, in her late thirties, with fiery red hair.
What Derek sensed most keenly, however, was her Kheldian life force. Like Derek, Cheryl Hunt was a warshade.
The Nictus who had merged with Cheryl had done so out of malice. Kar'tor had sought Cheryl out when she was an ambitious Paragon City councilwoman, and had merged with her with the intention of infiltrating the human government. The Nictus's plans fell apart, however, when Cheryl's integrity and sheer force of personality grafted into Kar'tor, instead of vice versa, and the warshade was born. Unlike most warshades, Cheryl lived almost exclusively in her human form.
Derek crossed the room, and Cheryl stepped out from behind her desk to meet him halfway. The two warshades enfolded one another in a tender embrace, and their lips met.
"How did the meeting with the Secretary of Homeland Security go?" she asked.
"He asked us for our expert opinions on what it would take to keep Arachnos from breaking out the inmates in the Zigursky Federal Penitentiary. All those super powered villains running loose poses a national security hazard. Especially if they decide to ally themselves with any of the numerous terrorist outfits."
"So, is Sister Psyche as beautiful in person as she is on camera?"
Derek thought about the Freedom Phalanx's chosen delegate to the meeting with Homeland Security. "I'd be lying if I said no. I felt a little uncomfortable around her, though, knowing that she's a mind-reader."
"Let's not talk shop for the remainder of your visit."
"Agreed."
"Come with me. They're serving a marvelous buffet in the Capitol cafeteria."
---
Ben still ached from the fight with the Clockwork, and he leaned back in his chair. He didn't know what had exhausted him more, though—the battle with the Clockwork or the meeting with Rupert Chalmers that had just concluded in his office at Grant Technologies an hour ago.
He felt a little more relaxed at home, in his den, even though he was working. The computer monitor on the desktop before him showed the image of the schematic of modifications he and Richard had been working on for his powered armor.
Kari came into the den clad in one of his t-shirts, her usual sleepwear. She stood behind him and leaned down to slip her arms around him. He reached behind him and laid a loving hand on her soft, smooth thigh.
"Come on, you deserve a nap," she said.
"It's four o'clock in the afternoon."
"What are you doing there anyway?"
"I'm adding a new setting for my energy emitters, but I have to find a way to tweak the power expenditure so I don't deplete my power cells with one burst."
"What does it do?"
"It's a high-yield point-blank energy blast. It should help in close quarters fighting like what we experienced today."
"Well, come to bed. You'll think better after a power nap."
"Go on ahead. I'll be in shortly."
"I sleep better with you next to me, you know that."
A red flashing indicator on the monitor screen caught Ben's attention, and he minimized the schematic to bring up the alert window.
"Oh no," he murmured. "Another bank robbery by a super-powered thief. It's our old friend with the green thumb."
Kari disengaged herself from her embrace and headed out of the den. Ben closed down all the programs he had running and began the operating system's shutdown sequence. He left the den for the master bedroom, where Kari waited in the teleporter hidden behind a false wall at the back of the walk-in closet. Within seconds, they were in the Liberty Brigade headquarters.
They changed into their costumes and returned to the base's teleporter, where Ben set the destination for Atlas Park. They materialized at the base of a statue near City Hall.