A/N: I had to make these chapters shorter. It was hell trying to import the long ones into the Doc Manager.
The Origin of MASK
Chapter 20: Masquerade Rock, Part 4
By Jelsemium and/or Qweb
On stage, the attackers in their goggles, Gloria and Hondo in their masks, and Brad, with his ubiquitous polarized sunglasses, were still on their feet. The Venom agents were, of course, still operational, but confused. This was definitely not in their script.
"Now what?" Vanessa screamed.
Mayhem's brilliant analytical mind instantly came up with a plan.
"Everyone, clear out!" he ordered.
The attackers were too close for effective Kung Fu. Gloria jumped the nearest in an attempt to gain some fighting room. The two behind him didn't even pause; they just swept the struggling pair off of the stage and into what in other times would be the orchestra pit. Gloria twisted and managed to land on top. The bruiser beneath her was knocked cold, while Gloria was only winded.
Hondo was quickly surrounded, not that it did any of his attackers any good at first. The big man hadn't won his Golden Gloves with his good looks. He grabbed the first two in line and cracked their heads together with enough force to take them both out. He turned his attention to the third one on his side when several of the others hit him from behind. The butt of a gun intersected the base of the schoolteacher's skull and Hondo was out of the fight.
In the rafters, Buddy and Ace were likewise still on their feet. Buddy started to go to aid Brad when he noticed that the stampeding Venom agents were headed straight for the exit, heedless of the unconscious usher lying in the doorway.
"Ahh, Dusty!" Buddy exclaimed.
The mechanic looked around for some way to aid his friend and spied an assortment of ropes and cables.
Mayhem ducked as some nutcase half swung and half slid to the ground in front of Venom. Vanessa narrowed her eyes, but the technician ignored them and grabbed the usher that was obstructing Venom's exit and pulled him out of the way.
"Thanks," Vanessa said snidely. "Whip, on!"
The energy whip tore the technician's protective goggles off and he slumped over his unconscious friend. Venom tore out of the building, not even pausing to grab the box office receipts. An oversight that Mayhem would kick himself for later.
"Wonderful, now it's only three of us against nine armed maniacs!" Ace muttered when he saw Buddy go down. Fortunately, he was trained for emergencies.
One of the attackers spotted something moving in the rafters and opened fire. Ace easily avoided the ill-aimed burst, but he realized that if any bullets went flying out into the audience, it would be curtains for a lot of people.
He leaped forward along the catwalk, kicking himself for his bad sense of humor and yelled down to Gloria.
"Your mask!" he cried, remembering the demonstration she had given. "Put up a force shield around the audience before somebody gets hurt!"
From her position, Gloria couldn't see the top of the stage, there was no way she could protect Brad along with the audience. Cursing luridly in her mind, she did the only thing she could.
"Aura: ON!"
The yellow nimbus angled up from floor to ceiling, cutting the audience off from the flying bullets and debris. Also, she feared, cutting Brad off from any help.
Ace made it to the rafters over the stage just as Aura cut off his retreat. Looking down he saw a rather remarkable sight. Somehow in all the publicity about Turner's singing and racing and fundraising, somebody overlooked the fact that Brad Turner was also into judo and karate.
Brad's first two attackers would have to read about the rest of the fight in the papers, their eagerness having brought them too close. The remaining seven circled more cautiously, not daring to use their weapons for fear of hitting each other. Ace didn't expect their level-headedness to last for very long. So he dropped onto one of the attackers.
Two against six still didn't look very good, so Ace bounced off of his "volunteer" landing pad and attacked before the others could recover from their shock.
Ace plowed into the goon standing next to him, the former test pilot didn't have any kind of a "belt" in the martial arts, but the Air Force didn't spend all it's money just teaching him how to fly.
The attacker just behind Ace realized he could shoot at Riker without hitting any of his cohorts and lifted his gun to do so.
"No back shooting in my video!" Brad cried.
The goon turned just in time to catch both of Turner's feet in his stomach. The goon doubled over and went flying off the stage, only to crash into the forcefield and bounce back over to Brad. The ex-Army Cav pilot couldn't pass up such a target of opportunity, so he let loose with a roundhouse swing that bounced the dazed goon off the forcefield again.
The sight of their friend bouncing around like a handball was rather distracting, but the leader of the armed squad rallied quickly.
"Snuff them, you turkeys!"
Ace looked up from his unconscious foe and dove for Brad just as the quartet opened fire. The bullets missed as Brad and Ace flew off the stage. The gunmen corrected their aim and missed again as Brad and Ace bounced back on stage and rolled behind their attackers.
The second volley of bullets screamed off of Aura's forcefield and ricocheted back among the gunmen, dropping one of them. The other three dove to the ground in a panic, losing their guns in the process.
Brad and Ace grinned at each other with a touch of malicious glee. They grabbed two of the uninjured thugs by the necks and enthusiastically banged their heads together. The leader saw his last men go down and frantically grabbed for a gun. Brad grabbed his left arm and leg while Ace grabbed his right arm and leg.
"Make a wish?" Brad asked his friend.
"Why, Mr. Turner!" Ace said in a shocked tone. "Where is your sense of chivalry?"
Ace turned to the front of the stage. "Aura, off!" he said happily. "We saved one for you."
The yellow glow disappeared and Brad and Ace tossed the ringleader down to a very frustrated and infuriated Gloria.
"Thanks, guys!" Gloria said as she finished him off.
"Anytime," Ace said courteously.
The press had a field day about the violence at the charity concert. Especially when it was discovered that Brad's agent, Chad Frankel, was the one who had hired the assassins.
"But I still don't understand why Frankel set you up like that." Gloria said.
They were sitting around the pool at the Trakker estate with the main body of MASK waiting for Matt, Bruce and Alex to show up and explain their "training camp" idea. Brad and Ace had been introduced to all the other MASK agents and were being told the history of MASK in return for the story behind all the recent headlines.
Brad sighed. "Greed. Charity shows just don't pay him as much as he would have gotten from holding all the royalties of my last video and being executor of my estate. Not to mention all my insurance money."
"I'd have thought that he'd have waited until the concert was over," Buddy observed absently.
"That was the plan," Ace informed him. "But the lead assassin got the 'brilliant' idea of padding his role. So he jumped the gun."
Loyal employees Ace and Dusty had accompanied Brad when he filed charges against his former agent, so they were "in the know" as far as gossip was concerned.
"It still doesn't make sense," Gloria protested. "Why would he go in with Venom to rob the audience and set you up to be killed in the same night?"
Brad shook his head. "It turns out he didn't know anything about Venom. He was just so engrossed in his plot to kill me that he never checked their credentials at all."
"Oh. So what's going to happen to them?" Buddy asked.
"Well, they're all being held without bail and the preliminary hearing will be held sometime next month," Brad said. "I don't think anyone will bring up Venom, 'cause nobody really saw them but us."
"Sounds reasonable," Calhoun said in his pleasant baritone. "But where are you going to get a new agent?"
"I doubt that will be a problem," Brad said drily. "I've already got several dozen offers."
Dusty was still worried about an earlier problem.
"What are we going to do about that technician that sold Venom information on Spectrum?" he asked. "We can't let him get off scot free."
"We won't," Buddy assured him. "In fact, I have the perfect solution for that snake in the grass. It's absolutely horrifying, and perfectly legal."
"And what is it?" Jacques asked.
"Turn him over to the IRS. I sincerely doubt he reported any money he got from Venom."
Everyone laughed.
"Amigo, you have an extremely nasty mind," Julio said with admiration.
"Thank you," Buddy said modestly.
Gloria grinned wickedly. "Speaking of extremely nasty, I still owe you for leaving me behind with those love-starved Venom goons."
"You said you could take care of yourself," Buddy said defensively.
"I certainly can. How would you like a Kung Fu lesson to prove it, grease monkey?"
"That's an excellent suggestion," Matt said from behind them.
The others turned around as the three founding fathers of MASK approached them. Calhoun and Jacques rose to their feet politely.
"We're to be trained in martial arts?" Calhoun asked curiously.
"Among other things," Alex said. "We all have our specialties, things we can teach each other that will be useful to our 'cause.' Some of us have already done some training together. But now it's time for full scale training."
"We don't have time to make everyone an expert in each other's field," Matt continued, "but we can learn enough to survive, I hope."
"Birds of a feather flock together," Bruce put in. "But birds of different feathers must be taught to fly in formation."
"Huh?" Buddy asked.
"Come again?" Dusty requested.
Matt laughed, "He just means the most important thing we have to learn is how to be a team, if we want to beat Venom."
"So what are we waiting for?" Jacques asked.
"Nothing," Matt said. "Let the war games begin."
In the next episode:
The trail that started with a toy leads to all out
"War Games"