Volume 2, Issue 2

"Palisade! What are they saying!" The Adept shouted. Up to the flying hero. Outside Langley Hall, five men wearing armor decorated in Chinese red and yellow, squared off against the current roster of the Infinite Seven: The Adept, mystical master; Cazmonster, cyborg werewolf powerhouse; Angela, vampiric hero; Palisade, bio-armored warrior; and a young woman named Sydney, possessed of the control over nature itself.

"Well," Palisade paused, his mind racing. He had no desire to explain the rather complicated state of affairs to his team: that he took the suit without his father's permission, when the Chinese government was trying to commandeer it. From the looks of those suits, they'd stolen some of his father's early mechanical adaptions based on the alien bio-suit. But that was a far cry from having the suit itself.

"I think they're looking for some political prisoner or something. Probably someone in the international program."

"Then they picked the wrong school!" Adept said. "No one's kidnapping political dissidents from American soil on my watch! Cazmonster, Angela; form up at the entrance. Palisade, Syd, make sure they don't get in through the hole they just made.

"What are you gonna do?" Sydney asked.

"I'm going to get their attention," the Adept said resolutely.

As the others moved into position, Adept moved into place behind and below the super-troops. He'd worked out a brief diatribe about how they'd come into his city and caused property damage and probably injury, but the instant the troops saw Palisade, the situation escalated beyond words. Two of the troopers blasted directly at Palisade and, by proximity, Sydney. Palisade was slammed back into the building. An aura around Sydney turned the Chinese bullets into flowers, which fell harmlessly to the ground.

"Okay," Adept said under his breath. "If that's the way you want to play it..." taking aim at one of the armored soldiers, Adept fired a mystic blast with as much power as he could gather. It was like shooting ducks in a barrel. The magical blasts affected the user's soul directly. Armor made as much difference as paper mache. The first trooper fell from the air like so much concrete. A slight grin curled Rick's lips.

Sydney was terrified. This was the first real test of her abilities. People were shooting at her! But so far, she'd passed the test. Closing her eyes in concentration, she felt her bond with the ground below. A massive chuck of earth pulled free from Langley's front lawn and plowed into the unsuspecting soldier from below, knocking him skyward.

Of the remaining three, none made for the door. Instead, they flew past Sydney into the room where Palisade had landed. Slowly standing and dusting himself off, Palisade took aim at the trio. "Okay," he said in Mandarin Chinese, "you want to see what the suit can do? Here!" Palisade fired several spikes from his suit. They were made from an odd bluish metal. The spikes landed into the armored suits, and began to erode the metal like water does to salt.

One of the troops slammed directly into Palisade, pushing him through two walls and into the floor's washroom. The second two troops followed behind.

Outside, Rick ran up the stairs of Langley, creating a portal where the main entrance was onto the floor on which the soldiers had followed Palisade. Cazmonster and Angela, who had been guarding the door, rushed in to find the hallway in complete disarray.

Cazmonster ripped into the hall like a shredder, powering into the restroom where he found two armored soldiers pounding on Palisade. "Hey, tinfoil!" Cazmonster shouted. One of the soldiers looked. Cazmonster opened his speakers, emitting an incredibly powerful sonic beam, shattering the eardrums of the soldier as he listened through augmented armor speakers.

Angela was on the distracted soldier in a minute. Pulling off his helmet to expose an agonized face, she bit solidly into the man's neck. His eyes rolled back in his head as he succumbed to the Feeding.

Rick and Cazmonster staired in amazement. "Um, Angela..." Cazmonster said quietly, "I think he's done." A hail of bullets came from the side, slamming into Cazmonster. Rick quickly ducked behind the bulky were-hero for defense. Leaning out, he fired a mystic blast at the assaulting trooper, who soon retreated out the window. The trooper attacking Palisade, seeing he was in a losing battle, grabbed his fallen comrade from Angela's arms and retreated out the window.

Palisade stood up and looked around at the devastation. "I hope petty cash covers this!"

Meanwhile, in Corsico, Italy, southwest of Milan...

It was late evening as the young man drove a street bike up the Via Vittorio Emanule towards the city. He wore nice American jeans, a pair of Fiorentini & Baker brown strapped boots, and a brown leather jacket over a white T-shirt. An burnt-orange helmet covered most of his head. Mikolaj Bannazewski had been in Milan for the past two months, arriving from Poznan, Poland. He'd heard this was a good place for someone like him to get involved with a more profitable enterprise.

He'd started working for Sindicato Milano just three weeks ago, mostly as an enforcer. Mikolaj had a skillset that allowed him to be quite intimidating to the locals, and he'd managed to collect certain debts owed Il Sindicato's with a minimum of actual violence. This made him a valuable asset because, though the local police were largely under Il Sindicato's control, the more they could conduct local business without trouble, the less attention they drew.

Turning off the main road, Mikolaj headed toward Villa Blanca, the hotel where he was to meet his capo. This syndicate did things different than most criminal organizations he'd seen. In fact, they were more like a secret society in some ways; the profits they made went into projects dreamed up by their leader, capo di capi, Benito Asante. He knew the details of only one of those projects, distribution of the drug known as Nex.

Casually parking his bike in a non-spot near the door, Mikolaj hopped off and headed for the door, removing his helmet to reveal very dark brown hair, cropped close to his head. On his right cheek was a thick scar, and his eyes were the same brown as his hair. He went to the desk and asked for Agostino Asante. Mikolaj spoke only halting Italian, and that with a thick Polish accent.

In the back room where they met, Mikolaj found Agostino. He was a young man, not much older than Mikolaj himself, a nephew of Benito Asante himself. The two men greeted each other, and Mikolaj dropped an envelope on the table.

"The takings from last night," he said in his poor Italian.

"Good, good," his capo nodded. "Anything unusual happen?"

"No, sir," Mikolaj answered. "It was an average night." Mikolaj noticed that Agostino's phone was sticking out of the bag he often carried. Taking note of that fact, he sat down.

After they had talked for a few minutes, another man leaned into the room. "Signore Asante, call for you on the hotel phone."

"Scuzi," Agostino said, and walked into the other room. As soon as he had left the room, Mikolaj leapt to his feet and grabbed Agostino's cell phone. Pulling a device from his pocket, he activated in and placed it near the phone. After a few seconds, he placed the phone back into Agostino's bag and put the device back in his pocket. He would analyze the stolen data later.