Disclaimer: I don't own any of the League, Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, or the villain; they all belong to their respective creators, and I'm just borrowing the characters for a bit

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The Adventure of the Seven Legends

The rest of the League could not have been more surprised if the entire world had suddenly changed into angels and forgiven them all for their sins, real or imagined. All six of them instantly turned to look at Dr Jekyll, Holmes, and myself, although I noticed with some confusion that the tall, muscular individual lacked any real expression of surprise or otherwise on his face as he stared at us. Indeed, the only person who did not seem overly confused by this turn of events was Jekyll himself, who looked at Holmes and myself with an almost resigned expression.

"I should have expected this, I suppose," he said, as he studied Holmes and myself. "After all, you two were skilled investigators; I should not be surprised that you eventually deduced the true nature of my link to Edward Hyde. I presume you are the ones who gave the story to Stephenson to publish?"

Holmes nodded in response to the query, although his expression remained present as he studied the good doctor.

"Yes, we told the story to Stephenson a month or so after that final night, although we requested he change certain details to conceal the part Watson and I played in the case," my friend explained. Then he glared at Jekyll in confusion. "But, if you do not mind my asking, how are you still here? Watson and I were convinced that you were dead…"

Jekyll shrugged slightly, an apologetic look on his face.

"I wish I could help you, gentlemen, but I cannot," he said, regret evident on his features. "That last night in London is all a blur to me; I recall being in my laboratory, and then, the next thing I recall, I was standing in a boat on the way to Paris, where I remained until…"

He indicated Agent Sawyer. "This gentleman managed to capture Edward Hyde and bring us both into this League that you see before you."

"Wait a minute; can we have the full story here, please?" the man in the long black coat and white face paint asked in a distinctly Glaswegian accent, raising his hands and looking at the three of us in confusion. "You guys know each other?"

"Indeed," Doctor Jekyll said, glancing over at his new friends with an expression that was just as sheepish as the one he'd possessed when facing us. "When my friend Mr Utterson first learned about Hyde, before anyone else knew that he and I were the same person, he believed that Hyde was blackmailing me for reasons unknown, and hired Mr Holmes and Dr Watson to investigate Hyde to determine what hold, if any, he had over me. They were later hired to investigate Hyde's murder of Sir Danvers Carew, but after that, well…"

He shrugged helplessly. "As I said, I cannot really remember anything about my last night in London, so I regret I am ignorant of what took place then."

He glanced over at Holmes and I sadly once again. "If Hyde or I did anything to hurt you that night, I am sincerely sorry for it. It was actions like that which are the reason Hyde and I remain with this League; both of us, in our own way, seek redemption for what we did in that time of our lives."

Exchanging a glance with Holmes, I was relieved to see that he seemed to agree with my own decision; that we would not fill in the blanks that apparently existed in Doctor Henry Jekyll's memory unless we had to.

After all, what practical purpose could be served by informing this man that Holmes had been forced to kill him when he himself lacked the courage to kill himself…?

"Anyway," Sawyer said, looking around the table and speaking in a loud, commanding manner that diverted all attention back to him, "we're not here to discuss the past; we're here to focus on stopping these crimes in the immediate future."

He glanced around the table at the others. "You guys have been going over the information Mycroft gave you about that note, right?"

"Indeed," the Indian man- who could only be the notorious Captain Nemo- said, nodding politely at the young spy. "Unfortunately, we have had little luck with determining who our opponent is; Doctor Jekyll is unable to think of anyone who may have been wronged by Hyde who would also know about his identity as himself. Even with the publication of the novel in question, it is unlikely that anyone would believe the story to be true, and even so, this is a remarkably elaborate attempt to attract attention when revenge is the sole objective."

I was briefly about to enquire as to what they were talking about, but then I realised that it would have been a foolish statement. With the names of at least half the League now know to us, it seemed obvious that the 'Doctor J.' whose presence was requested in the notes left at the crime scenes was Doctor Jekyll himself.

"Have you considered the possibility that the clue to our adversary's identity may lie in how he signed himself?" Holmes added. "Can you think of anyone who may have anything to gain in the event of your death or disappearance?"

Jekyll shook his head. "I already considered that possibility; all my money was left to Utterson after… well, things began to go wrong," he said, leaving it at that. "It is unlikely he would be behind these attacks; it must be someone else who had something to gain from my absence or my work, but nobody fits that regard."

"Couldn't it be someone from the Fantom's base?" the man with the slight scars asked, looking over at the doctor enquiringly. "I mean, you said yourself that your serum was duplicated before you could all arrive; couldn't someone have escaped the destruction and taken a sample of the serum for themselves? Well, besides Moran, obviously…"

"Moran!" Holmes and I said in shock, spinning around to look at Agent Sawyer in surprise.

"Colonel Moran was involved with this 'Fantom' that brought you together?" Holmes said, looking at the young American in surprise. "But he was last seen in prison; how could he have escaped? And why was he following another criminal leader after the failure that resulted when he served Moriarty?"

Sawyer sighed as he looked around at the other members, the seven members of the League apparently coming to some silent agreement before Sawyer turned to look back at my friend and I.

"Well, if you're helping us investigate the aftermath, you might as well know how this whole mess got started," he said resignedly, as we all sat back down again. "You see… the Fantom was one of your old foes.

"He was Professor Moriarty."

If I had been more collected myself, the expression on Holmes' face would have been priceless. In all our time together, I could count the amount of times I have seen Holmes look genuinely surprised on the fingers of one hand. This was another such instance, but I was unable to fully appreciate, given that I was just as confused.

"Don't ask me how he survived his last encounter with you, because we honestly have no idea," Agent Sawyer continued, as he looked over at the two of us while he took his place at the head of the table. "All I know is, having survived his fall off the Reichenbach Falls, he took the identity of a disfigured genius called 'the Fantom' and began gathering scientists together to create weapons of war, including Moran among the various soldiers he brought together."

Holmes smiled slightly as he listened, the expression on his face betraying his somewhat grudging respect for his old nemesis.

"A truly elaborate scheme," he said thoughtfully. "I doubt that any but Moriarty could have pulled it off."

Then he looked at Agent Sawyer inquiringly. "But how did you come to oppose him?"

"Well, you remember how I said that we were originally brought together just so that some guy could use our powers for his own ends?" Sawyer explained, as he sat back in his chair. "Moriarty was that guy."

"Yep; the guy had it all planned out," Mr Skinner said, smiling over at us as he took up the story. "Painted some cock-and-bull story about being an agent of Britain, brought us all together, and then used his inside man to collect samples of blood, skin and serum from Mina, me and Jekyll respectively; also took photos of the Nautilus so it could be copied by his own science whizzes later on."

"A potentially effective plan," Holmes said, nodding thoughtfully as he turned over what we had been told. "But what went wrong?"

"Well, a few things," Mrs Harker said, taking up the story. "For one thing, Mr Skinner and Dr Jekyll were both more heroic than the professor was expecting them to be, and were able to avert his attempt to destroy the Nautilus while his double agent escaped with the samples. For another…"

She smiled as she patted Agent Sawyer's hand affectionately. "Well, he was evidently not expecting Tom to join our team; when we were all prepared to give up, Tom encouraged us to keep on trying, no matter how impossible the situation appeared."

"A commendable attitude, Agent Sawyer," I said, glancing over at the young American to give him an approving nod. "In many of my Afghanistan campaigns, we would have failed were it not for men like you."

"Thanks," Agent Sawyer said casually before turning back to the story. "Anyway, we were able to track Moriarty to his fortress, and then we divided up to blow the place to pieces; Mina killed the double agent, Skinner planted a few bombs, Nemo and Hyde tackled the soldiers, and I… took on Moriarty."

The young spy shrugged in an attempted nonchalant manner as he looked at Holmes and myself. "At the end of the fight, we managed to destroy the fortress, and I took Moriarty out while he was trying to get away, but, as we later learned, Moran managed to escape, using the various samples that had been stolen from Jekyll, Skinner and Mina to mutate himself into some massive… Beast, for lack of a better term, with all our powers and his own abilities with a gun."

I opened my mouth to put a question forward, but Mr Skinner shook his head. "Don't even ask it; this definitely isn't Moran back for revenge. Whoever wrote this note, the guy's made it clear he only wants Jekyll; Moran made it pretty clear that he wants to kill all seven of us, rather than just focusing on a single specific member."

Holmes nodded in agreement. "And this arrangement does not match Moran's methods," he put in. "If Moran wished to attract attention from a specific individual, this note is hardly a foolproof means of doing so. There must be another who is behind this, but the identity of this individual is maddeningly elusive."

"Do we have any information pertaining to this individual's identity that we may be capable of using?" the tall man whose name had not yet been revealed to me put in. I noted his slightly foreign accent and rather unusual way of speaking with some confusion, but decided to ignore it; this was not the time to begin to question him about such a trivial detail as an explanation for the way he spoke.

"Not enough, I regret to say," Holmes said, shaking his head. "Based on the information Mycroft gave me regarding our opponent's pattern of movement around London as he commits his thefts, it seems logical to assume that he has a good experience of the city as a whole, is well aware of how to organize large groups of people over a long-term basis if he can organise the amount of people needed to carry out these crimes, and must have a large knowledge of mechanical science if he feels he is capable of constructing the weapons that he has acquired the plans of."

"Sounds about right," Mr Skinner said, nodding in agreement of my friend's assessment. "Fits the pattern I'd formed of the guy, at least."

"Really?" Holmes said, looking over at the invisible man curiously. "And how did you reach that conclusion?"

Skinner shrugged. "Just took a few ideas from my own time as a thief; gives me a decent bit of insight in the way they work," he said casually. "May have quit the lifestyle, but that doesn't mean I've forgotten how they work."

Holmes and I nodded in understanding; after our time spent working with Shinwell Johnson on some of our more unusual cases, we were hardly one to begrudge a former criminal for choosing to provide the law with assistance.

Coughing to draw our attention back to him once again, Agent Sawyer waited until all eight of us were looking back in his direction before continuing to talk.

"Well, with those points about our foe in mind, I think our next move should be to try and figure out where the hell this guy's hiding in this city," the American said, as he looked around the table at his fellow League members. "We should split into groups, each group having at least one member who knows London well."

Scanning the table, he quickly seemed to come to a decision. "Mr Holmes, Skinner, Jekyll, you three are the London experts of the group; you'll be the 'leaders' of the groups. I'm with Holmes and Watson, Skinner's with Terry and Mina, and Nemo and Hartdegen go with Jekyll. In the event of discovering anything that may be our foe's base, or encountering individuals who belong to our foe's 'group', you are to avoid engagement unless they provoke the attack first, and contact one or both of the other groups as fast as possible; we want to contain and question them, not to kill anyone. Understood?"

We all nodded in agreement, and the young American stood up from his chair at the head of the table.

"Right then," he said, indicating the door, "let's go; the more time we give this guy, the more chance he'll pull off whatever he's trying to do."

As we began to walk back towards the room where we had entered the Nautilus, Holmes and I hung back slightly to discuss the matter of Doctor Jekyll out of earshot of the rest of the League.

"Should we tell them the truth?" I asked my friend, glancing over at our seven new acquaintances to make sure they couldn't hear us; I knew from fighting Dracula that vampire hearing was sensitive, but fortunately Mrs Harker appeared to be far enough away form us that she couldn't hear us. "About our confrontation with Jekyll that last night, I mean?"

Holmes shook his head. "It would appear to serve no purpose, Watson," he replied, as we turned another corner on our way to the exit of this remarkable vessel. "It would appear that Doctor Jekyll cannot explain what has happened to him, whether because he genuinely cannot remember or for another reason that I am unable to deduce at this point, but it can do us no good to press the issue. If he cannot remember, than us forcing him to do so may cause severe mental trauma, and if there is another reason, he will simply refuse to tell us. No, we shall leave it for now, and focus on the matter at hand."

I could only nod in agreement. I had to admit, I agreed with my friend's assessment; if Doctor Jekyll simply did not wish to tell us how he had survived that night, we could not force him to do so, and if he was genuinely ignorant of the events of that night, pressuring him to recall them may do more harm than good.

Still, as Holmes and I kept walking, we both knew we were thinking the same thing.

How could Doctor Henry Jekyll, last seen by us in the form of the malevolent dwarf known as Mr Edward Hyde, have survived getting shot three times in the chest, at practically point-blank range, without so much as even the faintest recollection of it…?

AN: The above occurred in 'Doctor Jekyll and Mr Holmes' by Loren D Estleman; basically, Holmes and Watson, having spent the past few months investigating Jekyll and Hyde, track Hyde to Jekyll's study as Jekyll uses the last of his serum, and Jekyll reveals his tragic history to them before forcing Holmes to shoot him to stop Hyde once and for all.