Rue Morgue shifted to a smaller form and darted back up the tunnel. Phoenix Talon sprinted after him; Silverblood would survive the bomb just fine on his own. He was just nearing the surface when the explosives went off.
    Meanwhile, Thunderbolt faced off against Blitzkrieg, who was between him and the tunnel. The ground shifted beneath them, and Rue Morgue hurled himself free from the collapse, returning to his favored orangutan shape in mid-air. He landed on Thunderbolt's shoulders, shoved his huge hands through the electrically charged field without appearing to pay it any mind, and proceeded to try to pry the man's head off.
    "Since your teammate is already dead I will make this two-for-one day!"
    Thunderbolt grabbed the ape's wrists and pumped some more electricity into him; there was a smell of singed fur, and the two of them were staggering around like an unbalanced drunk.
    "I have another missile on-line!" Blitzkrieg announced.
    "Don't fire, you imbecile!"
    "Um, what should I do with it?"
    "Aim it down the hole, he might have survived down there."
    Blitzkrieg thumped over and peered in. "Looks pretty well blocked, I'll just—"
    Talon popped a flash in his eyes.
    Blitzkrieg lurched backward, launching the missile straight up. "I'm blinded!"
    Phoenix Talon climbed out and ran over to where Thunderbolt and Rue Morgue were struggling. Worse, the latter was changing form again; this time he was indeed a mountain gorilla, his weight crushing the hero to the ground.
    "Who's got a gorilla for sale?" Talon found himself singing for the second time that day, and with more reason. "Magilla Gorilla for sale!"
    Thunderbolt grunted in pain as Rue Morgue continued to pull and twist, and continued his electrical assault grimly. Finally, the ape had enough and let go, scrambling a few yards away before standing to his full height and letting out a roar, fists thumping his chest. Still wearing a suit, of course.
    Blitzkrieg was trying to clear his eyes, bringing another missile on-line. "Don't worry, I'll get them!"
    Phoenix Talon turned on his bokken and charged, forcing Rue Morgue to leap backward. "Magilla Gorilla, for sale!"
    "You prattling imbecile, why didn't you die?!" the ape demanded.
    "Didn't feel like it. I want to see you go back to Mind Lazer and tell him that his precious robot is under six feet of solid concrete." He ran at the gorilla, who was running toward him [speed lines!], brought the bokken down hard.
    He's charging a mountain gorilla, Thunderbolt thought in some bemusement. And he knew Talon had spent almost all of his physical resources in that attack on the Toy Man....
    The collision was monumental. Morgue was hurled backward by the massive electrical charge of the sword, but he managed to grab Phoenix Talon's arm, lift him high and slam him to the ground. The ape roared again. It seemed to Thunderbolt that bloodlust had shredded Rue Morgue's veneer of civility, and that he planned to spend a few moments jumping up and down on Talon's unconscious body.
    "Ah! My eyes have cleared!" Blitzkrieg looked around. A split second later the missile he had fired landed almost on top of him. He was hurled back against the car that had brought the two, and the impact detonated the missile still on his shoulder, sending him back off the car and into a concrete slab as shrapnel peppered Thunderbolt and Rue Morgue. The battle armor snapped and sparked as Blitzkrieg tried to get back to his feet.
    There was still some power in those batteries, though; Thunderbolt ripped more energy loose and blasted Rue Morgue with it. The gorilla staggered away from Phoenix Talon and then stopped, looking up with wide eyes.
    Thunderbolt didn't look, just ducked and rolled to the side without taking his eyes off Morgue.
    It was Silverblood, coming up from the rubble, pseudopods extending in all directions, seeking energy, as the hologram of Don Vincent wavered in and out, huge and distorted over the slender tower that was the robot.
    "Blitzkrieg! Now! Take control of him!" Morgue shouted.
    The man pulled something from his pocket. "It's a little damaged—I'm sure I can fix it!" He fiddled with it frantically. "Ha! Got it!"
    The hologram turned to look at Blitzkrieg. "What?" it growled. "Need power."
    Rue Morgue pointed at Thunderbolt. "He's got a lot of energy in him...."
    With an incoherent sound, the robot moved toward Thunderbolt. He fired at the thing Blitzkrieg was holding, but his bolt was deflected by the armor.
    "I don't know how much longer I can keep control of it!" the German called.
    Rue Morgue looked furious. "You promised me—"
    "That was before I broke it!"
    Suddenly the ruin was glaringly illuminated by a spotlight from overhead. In the chaos, no one had paid attention to a helicopter until it was quite close.
    "This is Arnold Chang, over the building that was collapsed earlier this in year, which was supposedly a headquarters of the supervillain team TECH. There currently seems to be some sort of battle going on." The light played over the scene for a moment. "It certainly looks as if Phoenix Talon is down, possibly dead. We're giving you more on this situation as it happens, but that certainly does look like a giant Mr. Vincent. We're not sure what's going on here, we'll try and interview Thunderbolt as things are going on."

    Back in Boston, Scott laid about him cheerfully, sending storm troopers flying in all directions. They would certainly have given the city's conventional defenses a bad time, but against him they were all but defenseless, although he did find that he was unable to absorb the energy their weapons fired; this would bear further investigation.
    "Hey Reilly?" he continued his phone call in the meantime.
    "Yeah?"
    "Would you like to send a paddy wagon or two down, we've got about twenty guys here that I need to have taken off. League of Nations storm troopers."
    "Oh, that'll be fun. Extradition ought to be neat." He sounded more cheerful than he had last time, but hadn't reached the manic stage yet.
    "You'll pick 'em up inside an illegal weapons facility."
    "That'll be fun. Are you anywhere near a television set?"
    "No, actually, I'm in the middle of the room beating the bejeezus out of them."
    "Scott, have you ever considered becoming a full-time police officer?" he asked.
    "I'm considering it, seeing as how I'm a full-time superhero."
    "It's just that you're so calm. Thunderbolt seems to be fighting a giant Don Vincent up at the old TECH facility."
    "Oh." He sped up his efforts. "Sorry about this guys, but I've got to put you down fast, your boss is causing trouble." To Reilly he said, "I can't really wait, then, I'm going to have to try and get up there. I'll turn the security systems off on the way out."
    He shut the systems down, jammed all the doors but one closed and left a note for the police on that one before heading out to the place of his own birth.

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