Back at base:
    "Dawn, honey!" Talon updated her on the morning's events.
    "Oh. That's bad." She gave him a worried look.
    "I'm calling in every bit of resource we can get, including Stu and Stan."
    "You're doing what? Why Stu and Stan, I thought you had Stu retire?"
    "I understand they have superpowers now. We'll have to talk about this a little later," he added.
    "They have what?!" If she wasn't taken by surprise, that was a really good act.
    "Rick's been saying they're superstrong. I asked them to come over, we'll see what they can do. But if they're good enough, I'm gonna ask you to put 'em in costumes and set 'em looking for theme villains. So I'm gonna take the boat over to Rowes Wharf and get 'em, I'll be right back."
    "Okay. Um.... Actually, can I come over with you?"
    "Sure."
    "Thanks."
    "See, the problem is that right now we got too many real threats in town to worry about all these damn theme villains. Now, I'm not going to send them out against the League of Nations, but I think they can take Count Bastard and the Jazz Trio," Talon explained on the way over.
    "What if the Toy Man shows up?"
    "The Toy Man counts as something they don't handle. The Toy Man should be gone. If he shows up... I'm hoping at least we knocked him out for a while, we won't be seeing him for at least another couple months. If he does show up again, I don't know what the hell we're gonna do. I don't know if I can pull that same stunt twice in a week." He shook his head.
    "I hope you don't have to."
    "He' s off our extensive list of problems."
    "Okay... remember I told you that problem was back?" she said hesitantly.
    "Yeah, I'm thinking about that, too."
    "Um... it's getting closer."
    Damn. "Closer like, next month it might show up, or closer like tomorrow it might show up?"
    "Closer like it's in the city. And the closer it gets, the more I feel like I've seen... felt parts of it around for a long time." She shook her head, frustrated by her inability to put more into words.
    Phoenix Talon sighed; this sounded bad. They pulled up the nearest open dock, and Stu and Stan climbed into the boat. "So tell me, what've you guys been doing?"
    "Nothin', really," Stan shrugged. "Just when we were getting into fights, well Stu-sempai wasn't, but when I was gettin' into fights, I was grabbing guys and like hurling them, and they'd go like twenty feet across the room just one-handed and I thought it was the board, but apparently no one else can do it so it's just me and Stu can do it too, so like I don't know, maybe we were exposed to some strange radiation at some point?" he rushed out.
    Talon looked at Dawn, who looked entirely guileless. "Yeah. Strange radiation. Let me explain what we're doing here. Right now, in the city we got these Wuxia guys, we got another band of supervillains called the League of Nations, we don't know if the Toy Man is going to show up, and there's other things that I don't want to get into. At the same time," he growled, "we got all these fuckin' little theme villains running around. Now I don't want you guys going up against the Wuxia or any of the really tough costumes."
    "You're telling us we can fight—" Stan was wide-eyed.
    "Maybe," he stressed. "We're gonna go over and check."
    "But you said right here," they both pulled out their Little Red Books. "No Weird Shit. Normal people should not fight weird stuff."
    "You're gettin' to the point where you're not normal people no more."

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