"Stop."
    Just a touch of mind control, just enough to halt his blow. Phoenix Talon's face darkened into a frustrated snarl.
    Thunderbolt turned his own gaze to Wu Tung, redirecting the power Wu Tzu-Shi was pouring into him. The energy blast left afterimages in everyone's eyes, Wu Tung shaken and clearly hurt, his costume half-burned away and his expression one of pure fury as he bent his mind to take control of the man who had just injured him.
    Scott concentrated on Chang Yen, lancing out a tendril of himself that just grazed her. She slipped up behind Phoenix Talon with her blade ready for a deadly slash—only to be parried again. Ninja-trained herself, she had grown used to having all the advantages, and was clearly getting annoyed.
    Yen Chu-Hsia just as clearly thought that situation was getting worse with every passing second. His seven-foot-tall glowing form dropped his two unconscious comrades once more as he began looking for the pyramid. "Where is it? Where'd it go?!"
    Wu Tung snarled, "Just attack them, you idiot."
    "He's an energy absorber, he's an energy absorber," he pointed out. "He's just pissy. No."
    Talon, pissy as noted and never one to give up, tried again and finally succeeded in opening a shallow gash in Wu Tung's leg. The Wuxia leader hurled himself up and out of the way, and decided to stop messing around.
    "Why I bother to engage you on your level I'll never understand. It's far easier and more satisfying to have your own comrade kill you. And you, you idiot," he added to Wu Tzu-Shi in Mandarin, "aim for the android!"
    "Where is the android?"
    "The big grey cloud!"
    Pure heat poured into Scott, further damaging his systems, but nothing that couldn't be worked around for the time being. Meanwhile, Phoenix Talon felt Wu Tung's thoughts wash through his mind, commanding him to stand still. Thunderbolt, helpless to do otherwise, fired a weak blast of flame, then shook off Wu Tung's control. Phoenix Talon was still immobilized and finally easy prey for Chang Yen. He collapsed, bleeding heavily.
    Scott was forced to turn his attention to Wu Tzu-Shi, staggering him back several feet with the force of the blow, but he could still feel the deadly heat beating against his "skin." Thunderbolt put a hand into the power flow between Scott and the Wuxia member, absorbing it handily and sending a massive blast of flame up toward Wu Tung.
    "I may have lost control of you for the moment," the man was in the midst of saying, "but—what?!" He hit the ground unconscious.
    With the odds looking slightly better, Scott returned to Chang Yen. She'd been keeping an eye on him, though, and dodged handily.
    "It went here somewhere," Yen muttered to himself, rummaging through the debris. "Damn you, Needle, I was trying to help you people...."
    "Thunderbolt, duck!" Scott yelled, watched his teammate throw himself out of the way of the sword's sweep. "I'll make you a deal," Scott offered, wincing as Wu Tzi Shi continued his assault, "I'll take the invisible ninja, you take him!"
    Thunderbolt high-jacked some more energy and threw it back at Wu, bringing the two of them into a deadlock again for a moment, as Scott lashed out at Chang Yen. She almost slammed into the force field, stopped herself barely in time, and glared at him.
    "Ha!" Yen found the pyramid and slapped the top. The force field went down. Sirens were shrieking toward the battleground.
    Chang Yen made one of the swift, abrupt flights they all excelled at so much, coming down directly at Thunderbolt. This time, Scott's warning wasn't enough.
    That left Scott and three of the Wuxia.
    Wu Tzu-Shi continued his battering. "Ha! Your teammates have all fallen! We have defeated the Revolution!"
    Yen glanced around and appeared to disagree. He knelt over Liang Hsiang, trying to bring her back to consciousness. "Wake up, wake up. Otherwise we don't have any chance to—"
    "Defeat the Revolution?" a new voice filled in. "You fools! You haven't defeated the Revolution! How can you think you defeated the Revolution when we're right here?" Silhouetted on a nearby rooftop were all four.
    "What—How—"
    "Did you think that we'd actually fight you directly? You have no idea what we're capable of. Just flee!"
    Scott tried to get a swat in as the remaining Wuxia picked up their unconscious teammates and took the offered advice, but missed Wu Tzu-Shi. Then a voice came from behind him.
    "Hello again, Mr. Silver."
    It was the Toy Man. Scott felt something hit him and start spreading through his body. He drove a tendril into the nearest power source, hoping to fight off whatever it was.
    The Toy Man strode over to Phoenix Talon, hands clasped behind him, holding his billowing cloak back. "You can struggle all you want, but the programming plague I've just put inside your body should deal with you in a few seconds... oh, that's a rather nasty cut, we can't be having that, can we?" He snapped his fingers. "Pick up your simulacrum, would you?" The Phoenix Talon from the roof jumped down and put the real one over his shoulder.
    Scott stretched out to whack the top of the pyramid again before he succumbed.
    
    We awakened in the unexpected care of the Toy Man. I noted first that my hands were bound, and some sort of wire looped around my waist and chest. There was a plastic wall in front of me, and a quick glance around the room proved that we were all so restrained.
    Of course. I sighed to myself. Toy packages.
    The Toy Man himself was striding around the room in front of us. Albert was strapped to a nearby table, so that was one worry we could cross off the list.
    "Ah good, you're awake," our captor noted. "How are you all feeling today?" I took a quick look inside and determined that my ankle was okay and I felt something approaching well-rested, but that whatever I'd done to myself in the effort of putting the force field back up was going to be giving me twinges for a good while to come. I wondered how much time we'd lost. "I've done all I can to restore you all to pristine condition," he explained.
    "I take it we're about to become collector's items?" I asked in resignation.
    "You already are collector's items." He brought the lights up a little, revealing the "cardboard" backing each of us was fastened to. "Mr. Silver, I'd appreciate it if you'd try not to break out of yours, any violation of your box will send a lethal electric charge through everyone else's. You might think that's not a very big deal for Thunderbolt over there, but the restraints you're currently under are preventing the use of anyone's powers. I just wanted to have an opportunity to chat with you."
    Oh God, not this again. Why the hell do they always want to talk?
    "You see, I just fail to understand how our positions are that particularly dissimilar," he went on. "You wish to be heroes. Heroes require villains. I wish to be your villain."
    "So you shouldn't resent us beating the living crap out of you," I retorted.
    "And I don't! It's part of the scale. It's the attempting to kill me that hurts, it does." He glanced reproachfully at Phoenix Talon, who merely glared.
    "You shouldn't have thrown a Smurf at him."
    "Was the Smurf too much?" he asked with apparently sincere concern.
    "I think so. I can hear his teeth grinding," I noted.
    "I think you probably hit too much at 'the most cunning and dangerous villain I've ever faced.' I think that crossed the line," Scott suggested.
    "It's a simple equation. I work with you. It's not that big a deal. Besides, I thought that there was decent chance those people might kill you," he added. "As the entire world knows, no one can kill you except me. So all I'm asking for is this understanding. No more pointless killing. I've already done what I can to help you, the people who are operating out there have absolutely no sign of professionalism," he sniffed. "So in a few minutes I'll be letting you go."
    We stared at him stonily.
    "Why do I have the feeling I'm not going to be thanked for my assistance?"
    "Probably because you're not. Sorry," I added.
    "Scott, I expect you to at least understand," he appealed.
    "Actually guys, there was probably a good chance we were about to get ourselves dead," he admitted. "That last bit there, I don't think I could have stood off the three of them that were still awake before they could have killed at least some of you. Not to mention the fact that the energy projector was about to completely cook me."
    "So we have an agreement?" Toy Man prompted.
    "No killing?" Scott clarified.
    "No killing."
    "Works with me," Thunderbolt shrugged.
    "Sure," I chimed in. "Besides, it obviously didn't kill you, so I don't know what you're complaining about."
    "Actually, you came closer than I care to admit."
    "Well that makes two of us, then," Scott informed him. "You came closer than I care to admit."
    "I'm sorry about that, I hadn't expected it to be quite so... emphatic."
    "Being cut in half?!"
    "I didn't think that your entire body would be through when it occurred, or at least the majority of it. It was a miscalculation; it won't happen again."
    "Well that's good to know." I rolled my eyes. Tested my powers, found that he'd been lying, got a lock on his peculiar aura.
    "Mr. Smith should be returning to consciousness in a few minutes; I'll be long since gone by then."
    "Good, because he I think might try to kill you." I glanced at Talon, who had been wearing the same granite expression throughout the conversation.
    "I suspect that he might. Well, I have no doubt that we'll run into one another again...."
    Phoenix Talon went nova again. I'm not sure if it was conscious, if he'd also realized that Toy Man had been bluffing, or if he'd just been pushed farther than he could bear. The plastic melted, the beam striking Toy Man in the midsection before Talon collapsed. I followed up with a flood of fatigue poisons that sent him into unconsciousness. Once Scott had determined that the life support systems keeping Paul's brain alive in there were still functioning properly, we repaid the Toy Man for his kindness by not letting Phoenix Talon kill him.
    "What a shitty day this has been," I muttered, going to wake up Albert. As we'd thought, he'd confronted his suspect only to be shot from behind by an unexpected toy, and had spent the past few weeks unconscious. We found the way out, which turned out to be up. Phoenix Talon was barely conscious, and kept muttering, "Kill him, kill him again," but the rest of us seemed to be much recovered.
    "I have to say, that was somewhat embarrassing," Albert mused.
    "Not nearly as embarrassing for you as it was for us, trust me," I told him. Nothing like having to be rescued from a gang of villains by "the most cunning and dangerous" etc.
    Scott called Reilly for a pickup.
    "Where are you?! We were afraid you were dead."
    We looked around. Somewhere outside the city, one of those half-built abandoned tax shelters that were supposed to have been vibrant mini-malls some day.
    "How did you get there?"
    "I don't know, I was unconscious. We've got an unconscious and partially liquefied Toy Man here."
    "Great. Can you get Thunderbolt downtown please, quickly?"
    "Probably, why?"
    "Fire. Big one. Last place we saw you."
    Turned out that we hadn't actually lost much time; couple of hours, during which the fire had raged almost entirely unchecked.
    "We'll get right on it."
    "The building that the League of Nations weapons shop was in? There was an explosion near it, apparently, and that set off their explosives, and it caught from there."
    "We'll be there promptly," I told Scott to pass on.
    "Did you get the Wuxia?" Reilly added hopefully.
    "No," Scott told him. "No, they got away, although all but one of them was beaten mostly unconscious and only one of them was actually okay. Now we just gotta find them."
    I flew Thunderbolt back to the scene of our recent defeat while the others remained to guard the prisoner. From what Scott had said, the Wuxia weren't in any better shape than us, so we were willing to gamble that they probably wouldn't be anxious to resume hostilities right away.
    A full block and a half of Cambridge was on fire. The repeated formation of the pyramid had severed a couple of gas lines, and those had eventually caught, and then the League shop had gone up, with all of the exciting unlicensed explosive things they'd been storing there. Thunderbolt and I spent a frantic half hour absorbing flames and getting people out of the way, respectively.

| Top |