He looked bemused. "Well, there's something I never expected. Learn something new every day."
    "That's because you'd think people would be smarter than to sign up with them," Talon muttered.
    "How much of the world have you seen, young man?" J.T. inquired.
    "I'm constantly amazed, I know."
    "There's a henchman born every minute," Paul suggested.
    "Never underestimate the power of human optimism," Scott agreed. "'We can take 'em this time,' you should have heard that before. In fact you have heard that before."
    "We've probably said it before," I muttered. No one can accuse me of being overly optimistic, anyway.
    "Yeah, yeah," Talon sighed. "But 'we can take 'em 'cause we have surfboards with jets on the back?'"
    "Yeah, but they have Manta Master," Paul pointed out.
    We discussed the henchmen business for a bit. No doubt, as Paul said, the next step will be Super Villain Venture Capital making our lives hell.
    "What kind of defenses does this island have?" Talon brought us back to business. It was getting dark; they'd be starting the fireworks soon, and Masters hadn't shown himself yet.
    "At the moment, not very much," J.T. admitted. "But if he were going to be making a strike against us, he probably wouldn't be attacking the island. He'd be going after our boat. Our main equipment's still out there. Besides, it's a status thing." The boat in question looked like a high-tech relative of the Calypso. We boarded, turned on the floodlights and waited for the inevitable attack.
    "That's not good," the man on the sonar said after a while. "Sharks."
    "Looks like he's in the area, then," Scott replied. "There should be at least two less than there used to be."
    "Oh, I'm sure he has a limitless array of sharks."
    "Maybe you want to wait for him underwater this time? He wouldn't be expecting that," I said to Scott.
    "Yeah, except for the fact that I can't see."
    "Good point."
    "My seriously hostile environment package is currently serving a crime lord."
    "We'll get it back one of these days." Silverblood seems to be lying low these days.
    We heard the surfboards approach.
    "Battle stations!" Talon announced.
    "Boss, can we just kill these guys?" Sparky asked.
    "No," J.T. told him.
    "Yes," Phoenix muttered.
    "Stop that," Scott chided him.
    "A few corpses'd make 'em think twice about this whole mess."
    I'm really wondering what's got him so upset about this. Normally he looks forward to beating the crap out of these guys. One of the Windjammers got a spotlight on the approaching group. Twelve Blood Boards had escaped the yacht fiasco; only six were coming now.
    "See, they do have a few brains between them," I remarked. One of them was the one who seemed to be passing for a leader.
    "Did some of your guys get lost?" Scott called. "Would you like to go back and get 'em? We'll wait!"
    Manta Master swooped down from overhead, cackling. "Their presence will not save you, Mariner! I'll get you! I'll get you all! Ha ha ha!"
    "Asshole!" Talon yelled back.
    "Was he breaking the 'don't perform experiments on yourself' rule?" Scott asked J.T.
    "No, but he might have... oxygen deprivation, you dive too deep, neurons die...."
    "Oh. Where'd he get the sharks?"
    "Probably chemical stimulation of their hypothalamuses; it's possible."
    Phoenix Talon went for the Blood Board leader. "Banzai!!!" He leaped onto the surfboard behind him and swung the electrified bokken. There was a scream as the punk's shoulder blade and ribs shattered before he fell into the shark-infested waters.
    I gave Manta Master a nice hard telekinetic smack and was rewarded with a yell of pain—I don't like people who try to feed me to sharks. I suppose it's a personal failing.
    "You'll pay for that!" he shouted.
    Right. Sure.
    Phoenix Talon aimed for another Blood Board and shouted "Ramming speed!"
    "It's him, get him! Bobbie said if we focused all our fire on him, we'll get him!"
    "Bobbie's floatin' in the water, buddy!" another reminded him. "We should've left! I can't believe that idiot told them where he was going...."
    Phoenix Talon made his leap. Another Blood Board in the water. He threw out a line and looped a third, surfing right behind him and pulling them closer together. One of the Windjammers used a magnetic harpoon to haul Bobby out the water, and Scott rescued the other. Four remained.
    Paul gathered some of the electricity that was powering those floodlights and sent it crackling into the water near Manta Master, where it messed up the sharks a little bit but had no effect on their demented controller.
    Two of the Blood Boards turned and fled. "That's it, we're out of here!" The one Phoenix Talon was following tried to "crack the whip" and slam him into the boat; Talon let go of the line and ended up in the water with the Blood Board unlimbering a second energy pistol.
    "You think you can harm the Manta with electricity? Feel my power!" He fired a bolt of electricity directly at Paul.
    "Gonna start?" he inquired with a shrug, absorbing the energy.
    I missed the Manta Master as he began flitting back and forth erratically.
    "Ha, you think you can affect me?" he scoffed. "Nonsense! I am more powerful than all of you!"
    "You're an imbecile," J.T. remarked casually. "Did you know that, Emmanuel?" He picked up a 50-gallon drum of who-knows-what from the deck and hurled it at his ex-employee, who ducked. "Remind me to pick that up later."
    Not bad for a guy past sixty. Not bad at all.
    Phoenix Talon failed to blind one of the other Blood Boards, then he ducked under the water and swam toward the boat. A shark bumped into him, chillingly. There was more firing from the boat as the Windjammers finished off the Blood Boards and hauled them to safety.
    Scott's surreal length launched itself against the Master and missed, but Paul didn't. He used focused light this time around, and Emmanuel screamed as the beam of light at last penetrated his pressure suit—and him. He splashed into the water in the center of a rapidly expanding cloud of blood.
    "Oooh...." The Windjammers winced in unison as the sharks went into a frenzy. They threw Phoenix Talon a line. I flew over to the melee and tried to look for the Manta Master, but all that life-stuff in the water made it impossible for me to pick him out. I fished out his shredded mask and cape, but there was no sign of the man himself. Scott went down and groped around, but found nothing either.

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