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

Feedback: The more the merrier

AN: To clear up confusion, when I refer to Edward Hyde, I'm referring to the Hyde from the movie- e.g. the eight-foot-tall engine of mass destruction. When it's Mr Hyde, it's the Hyde from the original novel by Robert Louis Stevenson- the evil, sadistic, manipulative dwarf

AN 2: Sorry about the delay; I had a serious case of writer's block with this chapter, not to mention all the other story ideas I kept coming up with in the intervening time

The Adventure of the Seven Legends

"You can't be here!" Edward Hyde yelled at his… 'predecessor' was the only term I could come up with to describe the being that now stood before us. At present, Holmes and I, the only two people who appeared fully aware of who this 'man' was, were remaining quiet, I at least trying to understand how two different versions of the same man could be interacting in this manner in the real world.

"What; you thought I was dead just because I was battered about and shot a bit?" Mr Hyde retorted, grinning at Edward Hyde as though he was somewhat disappointed in him not realising what had really taken place. "After all those times when Henry thought of me as being less than human, did it never occur to him that, as I was not exactly human, I might have certain… abilities… that went beyond the human norm?"

"I'm sorry; can we just back up here a few minutes for those of us who're just totally confused by the situation at present?" Agent Sawyer put in, accompanied by brief nods from Captain Nemo and Professor Hartdegen. "I mean, first of all, who the hell are you?"

This question was directed at Mr Hyde, who, much to my annoyance, merely smiled politely; once again, it felt as though his smile was that of a parent humouring the child who'd asked what clouds were.

I thought briefly about explaining the situation myself- I loathed the idea of giving Mr Hyde more opportunities to speak than were absolutely necessary- but something told me that it would be best, for the moment, if I allowed Mr Hyde to say what he wanted to say to us. The likely consequences of angering him, especially given what had happened to Sir Danvers simply for speaking to Mr Hyde when the man was in a foul mood, would most likely not be pleasant ones.

"Surely you are aware of the truth from the book Mrs Harker gave you for Christmas, Agent Sawyer?" Mr Hyde asked, smiling casually at the young American who led the League. "All this time, and you have never wondered about the discrepancy between the Hyde as recorded by Robert Louis Stevenson and the Hyde that you are personally acquainted with?"

"Pardon?" Captain Nemo said, looking at Agent Sawyer enquiringly. "I have never read the book myself, Agent Sawyer; are you aware as to the exact nature of this 'discrepancy' that this man is referring to?"

"Well… maybe, yeah…" Agent Sawyer said, nodding thoughtfully as he continued to look fixedly at Mr Hyde. "The only real difference between the Hyde we know and the Hyde in Stephenson's book was that the Hyde Stevenson wrote about was more of an evil midget than anything else; I guess I always just assumed that Hyde got bigger the more times Jekyll drank the serum until he turned into the model we know now…"

He looked critically at the creature before them. "What's that got to do with anything?"

"Simple, Agent Sawyer," Mr Hyde replied, grinning as he looked up at Edward Hyde, who was still staring at his 'counterpart' with a horrified expression. "I am the original Mr Edward Hyde."

Then, before anyone could react to that news, he had stepped back, allowing the three creatures that had attacked Holmes, Agent Sawyer and myself earlier to launch forward, mouths open in a loud roar as they glared angrily at the six of us. A part of my mind vaguely registered that the man who had been talking now turned around and dived back into the shop, but I, like my friend and my new 'colleagues', was now more concerned with the immediate danger posed by the creatures.

Edward Hyde, naturally, appeared to be perfectly capable of handling his opponent; although it had gained an early advantage by being the first one of the two combatants to strike, Edward Hyde was clearly the stronger of the two, and seemed as though he would have little to no trouble in dispatching his adversary. Holmes, Agent Sawyer, Captain Nemo, Professor Hartdegen and myself, however, were forced to simply try and stay out of the way of our respective opponents; I found myself facing the same creature as Professor Hartdegen, while Agent Sawyer, Captain Nemo and Holmes tried desperately to stay one step ahead of their own individual adversaries.

Fortunately, it soon became apparent that the creatures were incapable of learning from their initial mistakes in fighting; unlike Edward Hyde, who at least retained a human level of intelligence, it was clear that Mr Hyde had been telling the truth when he told us that his version of the serum came with a reduction of the intellectual abilities of the person using it.

It took the Professor and myself only a few moments to learn its favoured methods of attacking us- it seemed to favour simply punching us in the chests or trying to break our arms- and, having established that, it proved remarkably easy to stay ahead of it, despite its greater strength.

I noted, much to my surprise, that Professor Hartdegen even managed to land some damaging blows on his opponent as the two of us fought the creature, striking areas that I recognised vaguely as nerve clusters; evidently, the League believed in training all their members for combat.

However, our foe was clearly not impressed by Professor Hartdegen's attacks on it, and it did not even appear to be that debilitated by Professor Hartdegen's successful strikes; either the Professor's blows at the nerve clusters had missed, or this creature's nerves were so drastically different from human ones that such attacks had only limited effectiveness.

"We cannot win this!" I yelled over to Professor Hartdegen, as I narrowly avoided the creature's attempt to grab my skull and (I presumed; I could barely bring myself to guess at its possible motives) crush it like an egg. Glancing around, I noticed that, despite their best efforts, Agent Sawyer and Holmes had been apparently unable to defeat their respective opponents; both men were lying unconscious at various points in the alley, ugly bruises on their faces that made it clear they would not awaken to aid us any time soon. "We're outnumbered!"

"Indeed," the Professor said, a grim expression on his face as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small glass bottle of some kind. "Time for Mr Seeque to come into play, I feel."

Before I could inquire as to what he meant by that comment, Professor Hartdegen had swallowed the contents of the bottle in one gulp. Even as I watched in shock, his body suddenly contorted, a loud scream of agony tearing from his lips as his entire body seemed to bulge outwards, growing ever larger at an alarming speed…

Then, in a mater of moments, another creature resembling Edward Hyde stood in front of me, a wicked grin on its face as it glanced in my direction.

"Hello there, my good doctor," the creature said, the smile on its face leaving me unnerved despite my best intentions and the knowledge that it was still Professor Hartdegen under that mass of muscle. "Call me Joseph Seeque; pleased to meet you."

"The… the same here, I am sure," I stammered slightly, trying to control my instinctive fear at this large form before me; whatever else he was, Seeque was at least on the side I fought for, and should be treated as an ally rather than something to be feared.

However, before I could ask any further questions, Seeque had roared once and charged back into action, tackling both the creature Hartdegen and I had been fighting earlier and one of the creatures that had been struggling with the League's Edward Hyde. Glancing around, I noticed that Captain Nemo was holding his own against his foe, his sword delivering significant damage to the larger being's chest and arms despite its vastly superior size, while Agent Sawyer and Holmes were attempting to dazedly get back to their feet despite their own injuries; clearly, the creature that had been up against them had failed to kill them for reasons that were presently unclear to me.

As the battle against Edward Hyde and the unexpected addition of Mr Seeque continued, however, a possible explanation for the survival of my friend and our new ally became apparent to me. Although the creatures we now faced were indeed physically powerful specimens, they clearly lacked much training in matters of hand-to-hand combat, leaving them relying solely on sheer brute strength. Their blows may have been enough to knock normal men down, but I was prepared to guess that their blows had been mere glancing attacks rather than an all-out assault, hence leaving Holmes and Agent Sawyer dazed without sustaining any long-term damage.

However, as much as I was grateful for my friends still being among the living, reflecting on how that happy set of circumstances had come about was accomplishing nothing; right now, the rest of us had to deal with the more immediate problem of defeating these creatures before further damage could be done.

Fortunately, with the clearly unanticipated intervention of Joseph Seeque on our side- whether our opponent hadn't known about Hartdegen's willingness to use Doctor Jekyll's formula or simply didn't believe that the former teacher would use it again I never determined- our attackers were soon quickly disposed of; the combined strength of Edward Hyde and Joseph Seeque proved highly effective in knocking out two of the creatures, while Captain Nemo's adversary, despite his own great strength, appeared to finally sustain too much damage in his fight with the Indian swordsman, collapsing to the ground as he clutched at his scratched and bleeding chest.

"Yikes…" Agent Sawyer groaned from off to the side, as he and my friend studied the scene before them; bruises were developing on their heads, but they appeared to be relatively steady on their feet. My friend's constitution had always been a strong one, made even more powerful after the combat training he had taken over the course of our time together, and Agent Sawyer's time with the League had clearly made him just as capable of coping with pain as my friend was.

"Tell me about it," Hyde grunted as he studied the fallen forms before them, a grim expression on his face. "These creatures were bloody morons, really; good in numbers against amateurs, but against trained professionals…"

He shook his head in what could have been a gesture of either pity or mockery; it was hard to be sure. "It's not even a challenge."

"Quite," Captain Nemo said, before he looked around at our surroundings. "Now then, where did…" he began, only for his voice to trail off, his head cocked to one side as though he was listening to something.

Specifically, he was listening to the rapidly-fading sound of a series of rapid footsteps as someone ran away from the scene as fast as possible.

Glancing in the direction of the footsteps, I was only slightly surprised to see a slightly dwarfish form that could only be the other Mr Edward Hyde running away from the shop that his 'creatures' had just broken into, a bag of what appeared to be tools and other such equipment slung over his back; evidently he had collected what he had gone to the shop for while we were otherwise occupied. He was already some distance away, having presumably started running as soon as we began to fight with his creatures, but the bag on his back was clearly weighing him down, and his progress along the streets was limited.

"After him!" Agent Sawyer yelled, indicating the direction our target was running in. "We have definitely got some questions to ask that sucker!"

As we ran after the dwarf-like figure in front of us, only just visible in the dim light of the stars and the faint lights from the surrounding houses, I was greatly relieved that there were few people out at this time of night. Not only did it make it easier to track our quarry, despite his head-start and significant speed, but it also meant that we weren't forced to come up with answers to questions about Seeque and Hyde that would have been difficult to answer at best and nearly impossible to come up with in the first place. The faint thumping sound the two made as they ran alongside us may have doubtless attracted some attention from those inside the houses, but at the rate we were moving I doubted that anybody would manage to get a clear enough look at either of them as we ran.

As the race progressed, taking us further from our starting point and deeper into the murkier areas of London, I strained myself ever harder, determined to ignore the increasing exhaustion I felt and keep pace with my new allies, regardless of how much fitter they might be when compared to myself. Although Hyde and Seeque's larger bodies slowed them down somewhat, they nevertheless appeared clearly capable of keeping up an effective pace, and Agent Sawyer and Captain Nemo easily kept up an even pace as they followed our current target with a speed that would have impressed most professional runners. Holmes, I noted with little surprise, was easily keeping pace with the two League members as he ran after our opponent, while I averaged a somewhat middle speed between the three humans before me and the two 'enhanced humans'- for lack of a better term- behind me.

Regardless of our differing speeds, our small group eventually managed to gain some ground to catch up to Mr Hyde when he briefly stumbled while running past some of the more run-down houses in the area. I personally attributed his decreasing speed to the bundle he carried over his back- whatever it contained, it was bound to be far heavier than anything we were transporting on our own persons-

As we rounded the corner that Mr Hyde had just turned around, Agent Sawyer, Captain Nemo, Holmes and I raised our weapons as Edward Hyde and Joseph Seeque clenched their fists, each one of us prepared to strike at our adversary with whatever it took to put him down and find the answers we sought, only for us to see nothing but empty alley before us.

"What the…?" Agent Sawyer said, looking around himself in surprise. "Where'd he go?"

"A very good question, Agent Sawyer," Holmes said, nodding thoughtfully as he studied the scene before us. As my eyes grew accustomed to the dim light in this street, I registered what Holmes was seeing; although there were a couple of doors on either side of the alley, they were clearly locked and bolted, and had remained so for some time. The wall in front of us offered some possibilities regarding hand and footholds if a person attempted to climb up it, but it would have taken them a great deal of time to reach the top, so I found it unlikely that a human could have climbed it in the amount of time that Mr Hyde had been out of our sight.

Then I remembered that we were not dealing with a human being. He may have been capable of walking and talking, but in every regard that made humanity separate from the animals, Mr Hyde was little better than an animal, and hence would most likely possess some abilities that were beyond the capabilities of the rest of us. As he had said himself, he was not exactly human; why should he not possess some abilities the common man lacked?

"He climbed up the wall," Nemo stated simply, sliding his sword back into his belt as he studied the tall building before them. "That was only to be expected, I suppose; we should have remembered that we do not face a normal man."

"Well, so much for tracking him to his base," Agent Sawyer sighed, as he put the safety catch back into position on his pistols and put them back into their holsters. "None of us can climb up something like that in time to catch him up, and the only people who might be able to climb it would take too long to get here; looks like he gets away this time around."

"Great," Seeque growled, his shoulders slumping in frustration as he stared at the empty alleyway before us. "We come all this way, risk life and limb tackling a bunch of mini-Hydes, and then, when the time comes to actually take down the guy who started all this, we don't manage to catch him and we're left with squat in the way of answers!"

"I would not say we had nothing to go on in terms of answers, Mr… Seeque, I believe you called yourself?" Holmes said to the tall figure before him, continuing after Mr Seeque nodded in confirmation. "On the contrary, I believe that we have a very potentially useful source of information standing not a few feet behind yourself, even if he is presently reluctant to provide us with answers to what I do not doubt is a very personal issue for him."

Turning to look in the direction that my friend had pointed, the League members and I were relatively unsurprised to see who Holmes had been pointing at; the large, almost sheepish-looking form of Edward Hyde.

"Yeah…" Agent Sawyer stated, folding his arms as he looked critically at his teammate. "You care to fill in the blanks of this puzzle, Edward?"

For a moment, as he stared uncertainly at his leader, I almost believed that Edward Hyde would refuse to provide us with the answers we sought, but then he shook his head and sighed apologetically.

"Yes… I do remember a bit more about my last night in London than Henry and I've ever shared with anyone," he said, as he looked around at the rest of us. "Look, can we just… get back to the Nautilus and take this whole thing from there? We'd both prefer to only have to tell this to you all once; it's complicated enough as it is without needing to repeat myself."

"Ah," Agent Sawyer said, a grim expression on his face as he studied the powerful creature standing before us before he finally nodded in resignation. "OK then, everyone back to the museum base; Seeque and I'll track down the others and join you there when we've got them, OK?"

"Agreed," Holmes said, nodding at the young American as he turned to look at me and the others. "Come then, Watson; for the moment, there is nothing more we can accomplish by remaining here."