Talyesin's Tales

During the worst prison break in Action City history, Squirrelman and the Crimefighters' League join forces with the Sterling Squad, TeenSupreme and Holly Ween of the Weirdsville Nine to plot their best course of action.

Doc, Ace and Powerband went to Washington to investigate the Department of Metahuman Affairs' database being hacked into and the secret identities of thousands of powered individuals being compromised.

Red Bolt, Forerunner and Quique left the Sterling Spire to super-speedily track down any leads concerning Dr. Hi-Q, the only person who can stop the clone of the metahuman mass murderer Harvest from awakening.

As the costumed crimefighters were planning, the Sterling Spire came under attack.



Starring!

Matt Mattheson ......... as Squirrelman
Kimmy Sinclair ................ as Ragdoll
Rick Duncan ........................... as Ace
Lisa Dumont ................... as Physique
Anna Kimble ................. as Darklight
Stephanie Cooke ............. as Blue Jay
Jay Allen ........................ as Red Bolt
Mike Washington ............. as Dragon
Trevor Andrews ............... as Phenom
Jessica Wagner .............. as Rapunzel
Katie McCormick ............ as Superia
Hank Scott .................. as Powerband

Reed Sterling ....................... as Doc
Julia Sterling ................... as herself
Joe Sterling ....... as SuperTwin Red
Jerry Sterling .... as SuperTwin Blue
Jeannie Sterling .............. as Zephyr
Carmine DaCosta ....... as Forerunner
Curt Connor ......... as Livin' Lightnin'
Molly O'Malley ........... as Glory Gal

Cassandra Kent .............. as Princess
Chrissy Fenton ................. as Fantasy
Alexandra Spelling ................ asHex
Courtney Anderson ........... as Glitter
Juan Juarez ........................ as Resize
Andrew Carson ............. as Go-Getter
Jane Smith ......................... as Quique
Ronnie Schuler .......... as Monkeysee
Donnie Schuler ........... as Monkeydo

Holly Weintraub ....... as Holly Ween



"Oh damn, I missed," Gemstone smirks playfully, hovering there in midair. She's ripped out a chunk from the side of the Spire, three storeys high.

She aims her crystal-studded arms at us, and beams of light start blasting the conference room. Good thing for us she's the 'play-with-them' type, because it gives us a chance to scatter outside the room, mostly to one of the skybridges that connect the lower levels to the main tower of the Sterling Spire. She may have alien crystals imbedded all over her body giving her meta-level powers, but we've got the better part of three teams of masks running in the red on adrenaline and itching for a fight.

Curt's the fastest to react, turning into electricity and flying straight at Gemstone. His lightning gets refracted through her crystals, though, and it looks painful for the both of them. Curt turns back to human and looks dazed, falling. Blue Jay dives after him, wrapping her legs around him and pulling out of the fall.

Meanwhile, Jerry, Joe, Superia, Princess, Go-Getter and Phenom have tackled Gemstone from six different directions, all of them pounding on her. She goes nova, blasting them all off her, and Dragon swoops in hard, all claws and fire blasts. Fantasy, Glitter, Molly and Rapunzel get busy catching our big guns.

Physique grabs the conference table and launches it at Gemstone just as she's shaking Dragon off, nailing her so hard the table explodes into splinters. Resize grows to about a hundred feet tall and throws a punch at Gemstone, but she just grabs him and throws him into the air. He shrinks to normal size and Superia catches him.

Hex, Darklight, Julia and Holly Ween cast some kind of darkness spell around Gemstone. It stops her rays of light from hitting our people, so they all pile on her in midair, punching and kicking and slashing. Ragdoll, Rapunzel, Monkeysee, Monkeydo and I can't do all that much but watch. Jeannie comes out from the Spire, over to me.

"The crystal on her forehead, it's the source of her power!" Jeannie says.

"Molly!" I call to her. "The crystal on her forehead, take it out!"

Molly nods, reconfigures her ultra-tech gadgets into a sniper laser rifle in a couple seconds and takes aim.

"Everyone get clear now!" I yell into my nanobead, hopefully loud enough for the non-Leaguers to hear. Must be, because everyone scatters and our sorceresses disspell their darkness cloud.

Molly takes her shot, shattering the crystal. Gemstone freaks out, total seizure, then starts falling. Glitter catches her in a cloud of sparkles and floats her inside the Spire.

"Well, that was fun," Phenom says, stretching out the kinks. He's got a split lip and his outfit's scorched.

"Jerry, Joe, can you guys get the field up or what?" I ask.

"I dunno," Joe says.

"If we had a couple of hours," Jerry adds.

"We don't have a couple hours," I say. "Does the Spire have hard point armour? Blast shields, that sort of thing?"

"The core of the Spire does, the living quarters, power supply, all that," Jeannie says.

"Okay, activate it," I say. "We've gotta get outta here. The Spire is a great big target for every nutjob out there."

"And go where?"

"We hit the streets," I say. "Jerry and Joe can keep us connected to the police reports. Working all together we can mop up problems a lot faster than separately."

Julia, Hex, Holly and Anna come back from locking Gemstone in one of the Spire's containment cells. Hex is saying, "I don't get it. Why are they leaving?"

"I dunno," Holly answers. "But Jacques and Veronique are heading back to Montreal, I know that much."

"Well, yeah," Hex says. "But did they say why?"

"Something about Downtown not being safe for their kind any more."

"Their kind?" Julia asks.

"They're vampires," Hex explains. "Friends of ours from The Crescent Moon Club."

"Waitaminute, whoa, pause the vid," Phenom says. "You're friends with vampires?"

"Sure."

"Why not?"

"Because, I dunno, they're unholy bloodsucking creatures of the night?"

"That's just bad press," Holly says. "They're not all bad."

"And they're heading for Montreal? In Canada?"

"Sure," Hex says. "Montreal's crawling with vampires."

"Worse than New Orleans, actually," Anna adds.

"New Orleans and Weirdsville combined," Holly says.

"Okay, swell," I interrupt. "Something Downtown is scaring away the vampires. Great. Sorry for your friends, but this is not exactly a priority for us at the moment."

"It is for the Weirdsville Nine," Holly answers. "And that means me and Alex."

"How many teams are you on, anyway?" Princess asks Hex.

"I'm not on Team Title... or the Crimefighters' League," she smirks, "yet."

"Okay folks, we need to get going!" Go-Getter says.

"He's right," Ragdoll says to me.

"I know," I answer. "Look, Holly, you and Hex help us out now, and the Crimefighters' League will help you out with your vampires' problem later."

"And Dr. Necro?"

"And Dr. Necro."

"Deal."

"Jerry? Joe? What's ACPD saying is the biggest problem right now?"

"The turf war between the Lungfish and the Do-badders is getting lots of attention," Joe says.

"Means ACPD is distracted by that," I say. "We put that down, the cops can focus on the rest. Let's go."

A couple of borrowed Sterlingcars sorts out our transportation problem for the non-fliers and we're on our way.

Before we reach Dock Street, though, we've got to stop Professor Paleo and his cyborg velociraptors from slicing and dicing the commuters along Perez Boulevard. Adding laser eyebeams and tail spikes and enhanced A.I. to vat-grown prehistoric super-predators is pretty much my definition of mad science. They're vicious and fast as all hell and tough as nails, and that loony has bred three dozen of them, all of them have Kung Fu uploaded into their brains. It's not pretty, we get as good as we give, and it's a hard fight later before they're down for the count.

That brings us close to Ditko Park, the Circle's soulgate is open and... things... are pouring out, things with tentacles and fanged mouths and clawed talons and no real shape or form but filled with hate and malice and terror. That's not much fun either, I sprain my ankle pretty bad landing from a jump that pulled Ragdoll and Monkeysee out of a thing's tentacle. None of us is feeling too great after that one, which we barely managed to force the things back and our sorceresses close the soulgate and we take out the Circle priests.

So we're not in great shape for the Sky Barons' attack on us as we're almost to Dock Street, where we can see smoke from the rioting where one side has started firebombing the other. The Sky Barons start off kicking our asses, hitting us hard and fast from every which angle, but an emergency landing on a nearby rooftop gets us clear of the Sterlingcar and then we're free to hit back. Dragon gets zapped pretty hard when three of those jetpacked assholes hit him with their storm rifles all together. Superia catches him and lays him on the roof, which pulls the three Sky Barons in and they get clobbered from all sides by the non-fliers. I particularly remember the look on this one guy's face as I ripped his faceplate and helmet off and shorted out his jetpack midair. I know someone's going to catch me, but he's not so sure he can say the same.

It's night and rain has started to fall by the time we wrap the Sky Barons up. We're battered pretty bad, but Superia and Princess work together, glowing this healing white light, and we're back in the game. Starving, mind you, something Physique reminds us all of when she says she needs to eat or she'll pass out. So we hit the nearest Burgerman. I think the girl at the counter just about faints when two dozen masks walk in the front door.

"Eleven Dynamic Trios, four with cheese, two with bacon and cheese; three Stellar Salads, one with chicken; four Fantastic Fish'n'chips; five Supersizers; nineteen orders of Freedom Fries, ten Power Onion Rings; six Terrific Taco meals with Human Scorch sauce; fifteen Cokes, eight Diet Cokes, three Seven Ups, two Dr. Peppers, and three Chocolate Shakes of Doom," she reads to us. "You want desserts with that?"

I spring for it, taking the bill as a business expense, which I suspect is going to be important to document in the coming months, since with our I.D.s compromised things like our taxes are about to get even more complicated than before.

We scarf it all down, desserts included, fast enough to give Red Bolt a run for his money, which makes me think to call him and see how they're doing.

"We managed to recruit about a dozen speedsters," he says over the nanobead. "We're hitting our sources and stoolies as quick as we can, we had some leads that didn't pan out but did keep us busy for a bit. We're grabbing something to eat and we're going to head out in a couple of seconds."

"Keep the-"

"-bill, yeah, I know."

"You and your speed force keep in touch, okay?"

"You got it."

I turn to the teams.

"We ready?"

"Just waiting for Lisa to finish," Joe says, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

Physique sucks up the last of her third shake and says, "Let's do it."

We hit Dock Street hard and fast, taking on any gangers we see. There's even some clockrockers out on the streets, looking for some meatsacs to terrorize. We rescue a squad of ACPD from a burning warehouse where they'd been lured in and pinned down by crossfire. They tell us where the rioting is the worst, and that's where we head, dropping in from above and taking them all out before they even knew what hit them. I take a bullet in the shoulder, just a graze, zigged when I should have zagged, and I'm not the only one wounded. We put down the riot, battered and bloody and torn. It's past midnight by then. Some of them just wouldn't give it up, but it's done. By the time it is, though, most of the escapees have gone to ground or been caught again. The ones that are left and still making trouble, the cops can handle.

We head back to the Spire. Powerband and Ace are arriving just as we get there.

"Nothing we could do," Ace says, giving us all a look that tells us we look like we've been through seven kinds of hell, which isn't far from the truth.

"That tech is so far beyond anything I even understand," Powerband explains. "Doc starting going on about nanites and nanotech, though. He'll be there until he figures it out."

"Okay," I say. The day is catching up to me. "Alright. Assuming we survive the night and no new crises start up in the morning, we'll tackle the thing that scares vampires tomorrow. Deal, Holly?"

"Sure, anything that scary is something I'd prefer to tackle during the day, anyway."

"Right," I say. I look at my team and say, "Since our identities were compromised today there's no guarantee that our homes are safe... I'm going to suggest we camp out at our headquarters, just for the night. I'm assuming you've all taken steps concerning your families and friends and whatever?"

Lots of tired nods. We're too beat to argue about this, so we say our goodbyes to the Sterling Squad and TeenSupreme and head out. I give Red Bolt a call and tell him to meet us there.

When we're landing on our balcony Red's waiting for us. He looks about as tired as I feel.

"Still no sign of Hi-Q," he tells us.

We step inside and my twitchiness starts acting up but I'm so dead tired I chalk it up to nerves and adrenaline withdrawal. Big mistake.

"Somebody get the lights," Physique says.

"Allow me," answers a voice I don't recognize.

The lights go on and for a split second there's no one there but us, but then they appear, shimmering into view, all around us. We're surrounded.

There's more of them than there are of us. I don't recognize them all but the ones I do recognize don't fill me with a warm fuzzy feeling.

Pandy Monium. Speed Freak. Baron Blackheart, standing by the light switch, smirking. Umbra and Stonewall, from Downtown. Peregrin. Maniak. Pixie.

Arachnid.

Ace looks at me and says, "We're gonna need a bigger team."