The Rubble of Langley Hall’s lobby, April, late evening...
It was nearly 4 hours later when Barry Stills, AKA The American Attitude, was able to drag himself from the concrete and steel walls of the Langley Hall restroom he’d been thrown into. The aliens were long gone, and the other members of I-7 gone with them, in chains. As he made his way to the surface, his skin torn and bloodied, a hand reached out to take his. Holding on, he felt himself pulled to safety. Standing before him was Dragonfly, one of the founders of I7 currently on hiatus and living in Chicago.
“Attitude! Take it easy, over here...” Dragonfly helped the fallen hero to a seat. All around, police checked the damaged building, but it seemed I7 had evacuated all the students before the battle in the lobby was completed.
Aaron talked to Barry quietly. “What happened?”
“There were dozens of them, aliens that looked like Palisade, same powers. Their ship wiped out the HQ. Triumph was in it...” Barry paused, but that last line was still too painful. He couldn’t continue for several minutes. Eventually, Aaron pressed him.
“Go on.”
“They landed several troops, and came at the lobby. We ran inside, and while The Adept, The Gray Robe and I got everyone out, Cazmonster and Palisade tried to hold them back. They couldn’t.”
“Where are the others?” Dragonfly asked urgently.
“Captured. Everyone except Angela, who’s MIA. And me...” The Attitude said quietly. A medic came over and began to look Barry over for signs of more serious trauma.
Dragonfly spoke with the police for several minutes, and eventually wandered back over to Barry.
“So what’s the plan, DF?”
“We find that mother ship. If we go in low, we might be able to avoid detection to get close enough to use this.” Aaron held a small crystal in his hand, which glowed with its own inner light.
“And that is?” The Attitude asked, a little of his usual uncivil attitude returning in his voice.
“This,” Aaron began dramatically, “is a spell-crystal, given me by The Adept, in case I should ever need to rescue him. It hones in on his location and gets me within a hundred yards or so. I’m hoping it will take you too.”
“Now we’re talking,” The Attitude said.
“Well, time’s wasting,” Dragonfly said. “Let’s go.”
Finding the mother ship didn’t take long. Dragonfly held The Attitude under his arms and flew across the sky, staying low enough that Barry had to dodge a few powerlines. The ship was hovering over a field on the edge of town. Several military helicopters flew nearby, but kept their distance.
Landing in a small grouping of trees, Dragonfly put his hand on Barry’s shoulder. “You ready?”
“Let’s get it done.”
Dragonfly pulled out his sword, and held the crystal in the other hand. Speaking the magic words The Adept had taught him, a portal opened immediately to their left.
“Let’s go!” Dragonfly and The American Attitude squeezed through at the same time. They found themselves in a dimly lit hallway heading straight and also curving off in two directions.
The Attitude listened for a moment, letting his super hearing gather information. “This way. I hear human heartbeats.”
Dragonfly lead the way, with the Attitude skating behind him. He activated a switch on his staff, which turned on a cattle prod on one end. “To your left!” The Attitude warned.
Dragonfly spun and dropped to one knee, plunging his sword directly ahead. One of the alien creatures seemed startled as it looked down, a sword penetrating its biosuit and protruding from the other side. Twisting his sword and pulling up, Dragonfly removed the weapon and watched the alien fall dying to the floor.
A second immediately jumped out from behind the first, and slammed a spiked fist toward Dragonfly. The hero immediately parried the attack, though it wrenched his shoulder. He’d forgotten how strong these bio-suits were. Over his shoulder, The Attitude slammed the electrified end of his staff into the creature’s face. Momentarily stunned, it suffered a fate the same as the first.
“Keep moving. We need to keep this close to avoid them firing those spikes at range.” Dragonfly hovered up and raised his legs to keep a narrow silhouette, while The Attitude dropped low. They were coming to a dead-end door ahead when a spike flew past the Attitude and wedged into the wall. It soon began to melt, along with the metal from the wall.
“Looks like they’re done with toxins,” Dragonfly said. Turning, he slid a humming bomb along the floor until it rested near the alien. The creature stepped back from it cautiously, but not quickly enough. Barry covered his ears as the device sent sonic shockwaves all the way back to the end of the hall. The alien itself staggered back, dropping to it’s knees.
“We need to get through that door!” The Attitude said.
“Good thing I came prepared!” Dragonfly produced a small quantity of plastic explosive from a pouch in his costume.
“Where the hell did you get that?” The Attitude exclaimed.
“National Guard armory. I figured they wouldn’t mind me making a withdrawal, all things considered.” Stuffing the plastic into the crack on the side of the door, the heroes moved back toward the alien, who was not starting to get to its feet after the sonic attack. A few seconds later, an explosion sent the door flying inward.
“Our friend’s getting cranky,” Dragonfly said. “Let’s get inside and get the others!”
Ducking into the room, the heroes found a large chamber. In the center was a black domed device with several things that looked like electrodes pointing out of it. On each was one of their friends, except for Steven Chen, who was tied up to the side.
“Attitude, get Chen,” Dragonfly ordered. Flying in toward the device, he found Caz. The electrodes seemed to be plugged into smaller ones on their friends’ bodies. Looking down, Dragonfly noticed several aliens working in stations behind the giant dome.
“Barry, we got company!” he shouted. No telling what removing these deviced from the heroes would do, but unfortunately, Aaron reflected, they were running out of time.
“Sorry if this hurts, Caz,” Aaron whispered, his friend barely conscious. Dragonfly cut through the electrodes, and Caz dropped to the floor. Three aliens moved around from the side to stand near Caz as he struggled to his feet. Dragonfly launched three shuriken which did very little except to draw the aliens’ attention to himself. That’s fine, Aaron thought. That’s all I wanted.
As they turned their attention to him and launched a flurry of spikes, Caz started to change. A split second later, a very angry Cazmonster stood before them. His claws slammed into the throat of an alien, penetrating his biosuit. Pulling with all his might, he ripped the alien clean free of the biosuit and, screaming a powerful amplified growl into the creature’s face, tossed it off into the air.
The other aliens stepped back, a stench coming from them that might have been urine. Unfortunately, they didn’t notice The American Attitude. Zipping across the floor, he launched himself into the air, cattleprod side of his staff held out like a lance.
Meanwhile, Dragonfly had freed The Adept, who opened a portal under him and dropped safely through it to the floor below, covered by a computer terminal. The aliens still behind the dome fired several spikes at Dragonfly, who dodged or parried each one expertly.
As two aliens skirmished with Cazmonster and The American Attitude, they found themselves suddenly fired on from the rear. The Adept’s mystic blast dropped one in a single, powerful shot. The other distracted, The Attitude knocked him to the floor with his staff, and the creature soon found Cazmonster’s foot on its chest.
Steven Chen, meanwhile, had gone to the biosuit that Cazmonster had evicted the alien from, and began the bonding process. Dragonfly had freed The Gray Robe and helped her to the floor. The team now faced six more aliens in biosuits. One apiece.
The odds were not in the aliens’ favor. A few dozen of them had defeated five heroes trying to protect an entire dorm full of people. One on one, with the heroes on the offense rather than defense, the battle went quickly.
The Adept let out another burst of mystic power, rendering yet another of the aliens unconscious. Cazmonster grabbed two, and shoved them essentially through each other, forcing their spikes to penetrate each other’s biosuits. The Gray Robe discovered, to her delight, that the aliens housed several plants in this room; those plants became additional enemies for the remaining aliens.
Meanwhile, Dragonfly was locked in single combat with what appeared to be an officer. He was certainly more skilled than the others, and with greater power than Dragonfly, he kept the hero at bay, occasionally almost hitting him in a vital area with a deadly spike. He threw Dragonfly back, at one point, and the hero slammed against a wall, stunned.
“Hey, cousin!” Palisade yelled. “You can fight me!” The two bio-suited beings, one human and one alien, tumbled over each other and wrestled to a standstill, until finally, the Attitude plunged his staff into the creature and they subdued it.
“Nice upgrade, Palisade,” The Attitude said, noting the sleek and more evolved appearance of Palisade’s new biosuit.
Dragonfly came running over as the group of heroes gathered.
“Nice as this reunion is, guys, we need to get out of here. I’m sure reinforcements are coming.”
“After you,” The Adept said, opening a portal back to Langley Hall. Soon, the heroes found themselves gathered in the 7th floor dorm room of Caz Greenbaum and Rick Pennington.
“We need to act fast!” Palisade said. “I know why they’re here. They wanted to destroy the suit and all the evidence, so we couldn’t use our knowledge against them.”
“But why didn’t they just kill you?” Aaron asked. “Certainly you’re the only one who knows anything about them or the suits.”
“Because I wouldn’t tell them where I kept the backups.”
“Backups to what?” Aaron said suspiciously.
“Backups to all the data I’ve collected on the biosuit, including information on how to destroy them.”
“And where is that data?” Aaron asked.
“In a server in the chemistry building. And Aaron,” he added, “that same building has my lab experiment for this semester. The substance I need to destroy the biosuits.”
The American Attitude smirked, and Cazmonster growled approvingly. The Adept provided a portal, and soon the heroes were inside the chemistry lab.
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