Duke, Flint, Steeler and Lifeline all shudder as they check their emails the next Monday. Hawk had called a meeting for the next morning. Maybe they would find out once and for all what was going on. But why had he called for it in the gymnasium?
Lifeline was intrigued. Could it have something to do with the attack and rescue of the week before? He was starting to get bored, and he hadn't been able to figure it out on his own. He thought he'd seen Jamie Barney that night, but he wasn't certain of it enough to say anything. Maybe it was his subconscious using her as his heroine, because he was desperate to find out who they really were, and because she was so familiar and unique. The girl that he thought was Jamie was somewhere between five-eight and five-ten- too short to be Jamie Barney, whom he knew was six two and a half. And without seeing her coloring up close, he couldn't tell if he knew the girl or not, or who it was.
The girl that had gotten him out of the brig and then helped him escape was extremely familiar to him, but he just couldn't put his finger on what it was. He did realize, though, that she reminded him in a way of his own daughter, AJ.
Grand Slam hoped that it would be the unveiling of the rescuers from the week before. He really wanted to know who the blond-haired goddess that had caught his eye was. Flash, Short Fuze, Blowtorch, Tollbooth, Lift Ticket, Stretcher, Roadblock and Barbeque agreed with him. She had also caught their eyes, and they had all thought that she was really Laurel Abernathy, returned to help them reclaim the base.
Each Joe was gathered in the gymnasium where Hawk had asked them to meet him; some of them on stretchers and others in wheelchairs and most of them had bandages somewhere on their bodies. Hawk was pacing in front of the group, his left arm in a sling and a cast on his wrist; a handful of papers were clutched in his right hand.
"You all were rescued by a group of unknown people last week, right?" he asks, watching them all nod and knowing that it was the truth. "Would you like to finally find out who they really are?"
"Yeah, I would like to know," Beachhead stated. "I want to know who threw that punch."
"Yeah," Shipwreck started, "It was nice to have someone knock him out cold for a while."
Hawk called for the other team, who had been waiting in the wings.
"Some of you might recognize them, but the majority of you don't have a clue who those people were, right? Well, starting from the bottom of the pyramid, left to right, your heroes are as follows- Diplomat AKA DJ Faireborn, Crispin Hauser, better known as Mountie, Ritchie Provost- Phantasm, EJ Steen- Overdose, Serena Armbruster, or Apache, Wendy Six- Freefall, Ericka Freistadt- TNT, Jamie Barney- Shortstop, Cheyenne Provost- Illusion, and on the top, the one in charge of the gang, AJ Steen, better known as the Painkiller. Off to the side is Gauntlet, better known as Alex Falcone, Motherboard- Blair Parker, Volley- Mindy Breckenridge, Klutz and Hardhead- Thomas and Terrance Skoog, Gearbox- Lawrence Steinberg, Randi Pulaski also known as Powershift, Trinity Blais, known as Earthmover, Gregory Kelly aka Bonfire." He drags in a deep breath and goes through the rest of the list of Joe kids, "and last but not least, By-line, or Lindsay Michaels, Spearfish, better known as Sydney Willoughby, and Christine Abernathy- or Rottweiler." He pauses to take a breath, and it dawns on him what the last name was. "Christina Alicia Abernathy, what the heck were you thinking? I ought to beat your butt black and blue for pulling this stunt."
The kids break up the pyramid in true Joe kid fashion. AJ leaps off into a twisting forward flip, Jamie and Cheyenne do the same in a backflip, and Serena, Wendy and Ericka leap straight up and into a set of baskets formed by the guys on the bottom.