Five Days Ago

The Volcano

"I have to go first? Alright, alright… A while ago Priest and I were working in Gotham, there was this guy who was helping us; he was kind of stuck up, a law and order type of guy. He didn't take a shine to either one of us. He accused me of killing a witness that was going to put away a dirty mayor a few years ago. I denied it, I told him I was somewhere else at the time, and he believed me. I was lying... I was in Gotham several years ago, killing that witness, and I did it for fifty-thousand dollars.

"Now that guy, he wasn't going to hand me to the cops, he wasn't going to hit me, he wasn't going to shoot me... He was obligated to help me and I didn't have to do a damn thing for him, I could've flaunted the fact that he was helping someone responsible for things that he strives to defeat. And normally I would, I mean I've never felt ashamed in my life about anything... until that moment.

"So I guess I'm in for the redemption, like everyone else... No, that's not right, I don't believe in redemption. Redemption is worthless, no matter how good you do, it doesn't change the fact that you were someone who did something to cause more shit in an already shitty world... But I have to do something."

"That makes barely makes sense." said Priest, "By barely, I mean not at all."

"Shut up, Priest."

Now

Metropolis, Delaware

"Everybody on the fucking' floor!" yelled Mona through her ski-mask, raising her shotgun upward and firing at the ceiling of the First National Bank of Metropolis.

With strength and precision, Shaun punched a security guard in the jaw, and with the resulting momentum aimed a spinning kick to another's jaw. Before he reached down to pull out both their guns. O'Brien jumped behind a desk and stopped a clerk from sounding the alarm.

Screams of panic sounded through the place as Mona jumped onto a teller's table, kicking a guard in the face with her heel and firing the gun once more into the ceiling. All the time O'Brien, Shaun and Kroenen who was doing as Lucy psychically bade him were dispatching of the guards, Lucy herself was aiming a shotgun of her own at the cowering crowds, like Mona, all of the present Minutemen were wearing ski-masks.

"This is a robbery." shouteded Mona, "We want the money. We don't won't to kill you, but we don't mind! Do not fuck with us!!"

Four Days Ago

The Red October

Al-Sheikh tossed Mona an American passport, she caught it and looked into it as Al-Sheikh tossed others to the rest of the minutemen, all the time mentioning their names followed by their new alias,

"Sax. Kate Harding."

"Collier. Mike Gallagher.:

"Priest. Frank Rose."

"Wagner. Anna Kluge."

"Jarrah. Ali el-Tiqritti."

"Eel. Charlie Murphy."

"What about the Nazi gimp?" asked Priest as he inspected his passport, "Wait… this says I'm 5'6"! You robbed me of two inches!"

"A forged passport isn't going to help Kroenen blend in." said Al-Sheikh and extinguished his cigarette, "We'll be in Metropolis by morning, local time... You will scope the bank and calculate the police's response time, familiarize yourselves with the city, memorize your escape routes. You will do all your prep and proceed with the plan in four days."

Now

Metropolis

"Motherfucker," cursed Mona as she aimed her shotgun at Priest, who was dressed in a suit, posing as an average customer, "Are you trying to be a hero? Wanna die, hero?"

According to the plan, Priest faked an attempt to attack and disarm Mona. The attempt failed, just as it was supposed to.

"Please! I'm sorry! I-" said Priest, feigning panic.

"Go to hell." said Mona as she pulled the trigger, firing into Priest's chest and sending him flying back.

Priest stifled the urge to make any sound as he hit the ground hard, despite the excruciating pain of a shotgun blast at point-blank range. He tried his best to remain motionless as he lay there, and hoped no one would notice his pained expression.

Customers looked on in horror as a life appeared to have been taken before them, a young woman fainted and several screamed. An old man closed his eyes, kneeled and prayed with a rosary in his hand. The staged faux execution achieved its intended goal; to force the crowd into an obedient terror.

"Sayid," said Mona quietly, "Priest just went down. What's the situation?"

One block away, in a park van, Sayid sat looking at a computer screen displaying satellite footage, and listening to Mona through a headset.

"The silent alarm has not been sounded. The skies are clear; the alien is none the wiser."

"Good."

A minute later, Shaun dragged the manager to Mona. He was a bespectacled man of his forties, rightfully very nervous.

"Tell me," said the bank manager as he was held at gunpoint by Shaun, "Tell me what you want... Just please, don't kill anyone else."

"What do you think?" Mona said, "We want the money."

On the floor, Lucy stood among all the scared hostages, holding her shotgun and listening carefully. Not for voices, but for something else.

It came to her in an instant; she spun around and aimed her gun at someone on the floor.

"Don't think about it!"

The hostage looked at her blankly.

"I know what you're about to do. We told you not to do it. Why didn't you listen? GET UP!"

Kroenen to come to them, the gas-masked abomination reached into the hostage's jacket and took out a massive revolver, before Kroenen knocked the hostage out.

"Anna? Everything alright?" asked Mona.

"Everything is under control."

Mona turned her attention back to the manager.

"We want these bags filled, all unmarked bills, all twenties."

"Whatever you say."

Six Days Ago

The Yellow Submarine

Al-Sheikh sat in Nemo's office, drinking tea with the Captain as they discussed matters of great importance, while the submarine was being prepared to sail for Gotham.

"We will need to investigate Senator Regan McNeil's involvement with the League," said Nemo, "Particularly her connection with Josephine. We may perhaps have to intervene, sabotage her campaign to make sure she doesn't get elected."

"That's not impossible, though will be undeniably troublesome." said Al-Sheikh, "Might I ask you why you keep referring to Wilhelmina Jekyll as Josephine, especially when you know her real name and knew her by that name a long time ago?"

"I prefer to dissasociate the person I knew from the person she has become..." said Nemo as he set his empty cup down, "The person I knew, while an unfaithful wife and a dishonest person was also caring and had the welfare of mankind in high regard."

"What do you suppose changed her?"

"I do not know. Perhaps it was simply time... I myself have changed in the over a century and a half that I have lived, for instance, I did not imagine a hundred and twenty years ago that I would be sitting in my submarine sipping tea with a Muslim man, no offence."

"Oh, none taken."

"Are you sure this will work?" asked Nemo, "This team of yours, the minutemen. Why do you call them that, incidentally?"

"Because they will need to be prepared to do whatever needs be done at any given minute. Also, like the American minutemen, they will be dealing with extreme situations at a minute's notice. But honestly, It just happens that having such an impressive name helps with morale." said Al-Sheikh, "It will, for a time. But... failure is inevitable, somewhere along the line something bad will happen."

"Like what?"

"The things that could go wrong are too numerous to count. The loss of a team member could rip the rest to shreds, not to mention the specimens we have in this unit. Take miss Wagner for instance, I have reasons to believe she may not be as balanced as she might seem, I fear the control she keeps Kroenen under might have a negative effect of her. And then there is Mister Priest, of course..."

"Yes, I know all about him. So tell me, why these seven?"

Al-Sheikh took a sip of tea as he prepared to explain.

"In assembling this unit, I had decided to select individuals with skills that would complement each other, so that together they may be able to deal with any given situation. I used the original 1899 League as a template.

"Take O'Brien for example. Though not an invisible man, his abilities make him able to evade detection by bending his body into the shape of any mundane size with equal mass. He could listen in on a meeting by posing as a piece of furniture. Overlooking his abilities, O'Brien has less than reputable skills as a thief, much like Rodney Skinner; Safecracking, for instance.

"When selecting this unit's Mina Harker, Priest was the obvious choice, though he lacks her knowledge of chemistry as well as her ability to go out in sunlight. When I came to select this team's Dorian Gray, It was just as obvious that I had already found him. Like Gray, Priest is well traveled and knowledgeable of numerous languages, as well as possessing a wealth of experience that includes training in this field of work. There is another reason which I'll explain shortly.

"In Henry Jekyll's stead, I chose Lucy Wagner. While the doctor had a grasp on psychology and human behavior that enables him to guess people's motives and such, Miss Wagner can have direct access to people's psyches.

"As for our Hyde, it was an odd coincidence that he was connected to our Jekyll. Like Hyde, Kroenen is a killing machine, a murderous animal held in check by a physically lesser, more gentle individual. However, unlike Hyde, there can be no reasoning with Kroenen should he escape Miss Wagner's control. Should something happen to miss Wagner, Kroenen will be the worse loose cannon you can imagine, and is certain to lash out against his teammates. That's where Priest comes in; on his first mission with the US government, he was tasked with stealing an artifact known as the spear of destiny from the Nazi regime. During that time he came in contact with Kroenen and managed to live through it. I think he could do it again, but I hope that theory is never put to the test."

"And I suppose Sayid is my analogue?"

"Sayid is a very competent man. Though not an inventor, he has a kind of cognate affinity when in it comes to machinery and electronics. Putting that aside, Sayid is a trained soldier who has seen war, just like Priest. I expect them both to be driven toward seeing that a new doesn't break out. Then there is his experience in intelligence gathering."

"I hope you are not referring to his stint as a torturer." Said Nemo, "Torture is the last thing we would ever turn to."

"I hope we never do," said Al-Sheikh, "But we need to be prepared for that if it ever happens that were left with no other choice.

"Finally, for our Quatermain, Mona Sax was the only choice. She could probably give the great white hunter a run for his money. She also has experience with planting and disarming explosives as well as martial arts training. Add to that her former profession as a tech support which would allow her to support Sayid wherever he may need it, and you will find that she is a perfect candidate."

"And why did you choose her to be the Minutemen's field leader?"

"It was a choice between Jarrah, Sax and Collier. All the others were inexperienced. At first I was inclined toward Priest, having more experience than all others. However, he seems to lack discipline."

"An understatement. Priest has the stubbornness of a teenaged control and the impulse control of a rabid gorilla."

"He also seems to be drawn to pain, as evident by all the occasions where he was injured, situation where injury could have been avoided.

"Next was Sayid. He spent almost a year on an island in the tropics with a number of survivors of a plain crash, during which he was responsible for providing security for his fellow survivors, and protection from hostile elements that lived in the island. However, he has not spent enough time in Europe and America, places where we are expected to operate the most.

"As for Miss Sax, from what I've read in her files I would assess that she's an intelligent, calm, collected and calculating young woman, capable of strategic planning and lateral thinking. Would you agree to my assessment?"

"Definately. She's saved Priest's life numerous times and has never under-performed, she was mostly the brains behind uncovering Josephine's identity."

"Though lacking certain experiences, she has Priest and Sayid to provide counsel. Also, to be frank, I think Priest thinks highly of her. I believe he is more likely to follow her lead than he is to follow Sayid's."

"You've left out Shaun." Said Nemo, "I suppose he's our Sawyer. Why did you enlist him?"

"He's been trained by Priest and Miss Sax in armed and unarmed combat, I hear he's been an excellent pupil."

"Yes, but its not like we need any more capable fighters on the team. With Kroenen and Priest alone you can confront an army."

"True..." said Al-Sheikh, "I suppose I needed someone who has lost something, to remind them of what kind of enemy they're up against."

"You wouldn't be trying to get revenge for your late wife vicariously through him, a man who has been in your shoes, would you?"

"I… feel sympathetic toward him; that is true. But as I have assured you before, my emotions are out of the equation."

Now

Metropolis

Jimmy Olsen looked with fright at the crew of five criminals that had taken over the bank, then shifted his eyes towards the body on the ground by the wall. They had been there only three minutes and already they had killed someone and dispatched of the entire security team. Their leader was currently talking to the manager, while the other woman and the man in the gas mask seemed to be surveying the crowd' another crew member was guarding the silent alarm buttons to keep the cops from arriving.

Olsen knew that they could, and would kill anyone and everyone at any given moment, as their leader seemed to be a psychopath who seemed to have no problem with blowing away that man who tried to attack her. Someone was sure to die unless someone would intervene. And there was only one man could help them.

Jimmy Olsen slowly reached for his watch, that silver Timex given to him as a gift a few years ago. It was a special kind of watch, one capable of summoning a force of unstoppable righteousness.

He pressed the winding knob on the side and put his hand down, knowing that he had done with job undetected. Almost, anyway.

"What did you just do?" asked Shaun as he cocked his shotgun and aimed it at Olsen.

"I didn't do anything!"

"Bastard!" cursed Shaun as he kicked Olsen in the ribs, then reached down and tore the watch from his ribs.

"What is it, Mike?" asked Mona.

"This little shit-bag did something; he pressed something on this watch!"

"I swear I didn't do anything!" said Olsen in panic.

"Anna? Is he telling the truth?"

Lucy approached Olsen and cast one look at him.

"Probably, but I wouldn't know. He has a barrier."

"Damn!" cursed Mona.

"Please, don't hurt me!"

Mona looked with disdain at Olsen and then called for Shaun.

"Mike, take the manager and this little shit, let them drag the dead hero into the cage and lock up after them."

"On it." said Shaun as he aimed his shotgun at Olsen, "Get up, you."

While Shaun forced Olsen and the manager to drag Priest into one of the vaults, Mona spoke quietly, "Sayid?"

"Yes, I'm here. I heard what happened. Do you think it's a signaling device of some sort?"

"Maybe, though I don't know what kind of signal device could a kid lie that have. But I'm not taking any chances. What do you see?"

"Radar readings are normal, nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe it was..."

"Sayid?"

"There's something coming in fast. It is airborne, too fast and large to be a bird, flying in too low to be an airplane, it must be-"

"Yeah, I know who it is." said Mona, "Start the van."

"Charlie!" Mona called out.

"Yeah?" said O'Brien.

"The silent alarm is not a problem anymore." said Mona, "We need you to do that thing we talked about."

"Awesome!" said O'Brien as he jumped from where he was onto the other side of the counter.

"Don't forget the helmet." said Mona, "Superman is coming, go kick his ass."

Next Chapter: Superman vs. Plastic Man. Also, Priest scares the living daylights out of Olsen. Featuring Lucy's confession.