Triumph: In memory of their fallen companion, the heroes of the Infinite Seven have chosen to rename their group Triumph! Dragonfly, aka Aaron Majesky - winged martial arts master; The Adept, aka Rick Pennington - master of mystical movement; Cazmonster, aka Caz Greenbaum, super-strong cyber-werewolf; Palisade, aka Steven Chen - Biosuit powered defender; The Gray Robe, aka Sydney Koenig - Druidic mistress of the Earth; and The American Attitude, aka Barry Stills - Hyper-sensory, skateboarding streetfighter.
“Palisade, calm down!” Dragonfly said, grabbing the biosuit hero by the arm in an attempt to get his attention. Palisade simply pulled away from Aaron’s grasp.
“We’ve got to find her!” he said, entering a bunch of commands into the computer interface.
“Right,” Aaron nodded, looking at his old friend. He was right. If they had any chance of finding Angela alive, they needed to take it now, whatever the risk. Aaron began working on a program to coordinate with Steven’s GPS searches.
“Guys, guys! Aaron was right before! We ALL need to calm down and think!” The Adept pronounced.
“What the hell’s to think about?” Steven Chen asked, continuing his work on the computer.
“How about the fact that Sampson just opened a portal to hell in the middle of CIU? We have absolutely NO guarantee he won’t do it again in 5 minutes, and you want to bug out looking for Angela now?” The Adept stared at Palisade resolutely.
“I love her,” Palisade said simply.
“I know,” The Adept said as Palisade and Dragonfly continued their work on the computer. “I know, Steven. But we’ve got a whole town to protect here. We can’t just head out to save one hero who, quite frankly, left on her own.”
“Whoa, big man,” Caz said, standing though he still felt ill from the earlier battle. “That’s yet to be seen. According to Palisade, she left with Dre. That means she could be under his control. Plus, she’s our friend. Bad choices or no, we need to help her.”
The Gray Robe stood by The Adept’s side. “Guys, Rick’s right! As much as I like the little blood-sucker, we don’t even know that was really her! It could be some sort of trick. I say we handle this Sampson thing first, and then the whole team can investigate this.”
Aaron leaned over to look at Palisade’s latest search grid before punching in some variables. “Stella, run program A-7. Use maximum priority and pop open a couple more processors on this one.”
Dragonfly returned to his seat while Palisade continued manual searches.
“We’ve got a while before we need to decide. We can all get some rest here and stay on high alert. If something comes in on Angela before Sampson tries something, we can discuss it then. For now, I say it’s bed time.”
“Agreed,” The Adept said, and headed up the stairs to the walkway on the second level. This level had several rooms available for the heroes to use in cases when it wasn’t convenient to flit between “home” (or dorm) and the HQ. Except for Steven and Aaron’s rooms, they’d yet to be used.
Each of the heroes went to his or her own room and rested on the incredibly comfortable bed. Everyone, that is, except Palisade, who continued manual searches as well as monitoring Aaron’s program. Caz fell asleep immediately, his system still fighting the demon poison from earlier. Aaron was not long behind him, having physically taxed his body to the extreme during the battle. The Adept, who had taxed his soul rather than his body, opted for meditation over sleep, at least initially. Syd went onto the open area of the room, which held a small garden of trees and flowers. She slept there, under the stars. Barry, the American Attitude, played video games for about an hour, and then fell asleep with the controller in his hands.
The Adept was the first to emerge into the common area, right around 5 AM; he went directly to the meeting room, but there was no sign of anyone. The monitor showed the message: “Search complete. Location found.”
Everyone came running into the walkway when The Adept activated the emergency siren. “What the HELL is that thing!” The American Attitude said, plugging his ears and still wincing in obvious pain.
“Oh, sorry.” The Adept turned the siren off, now that he was sure he had everyone’s attention.
Scanning the room, it was just as he suspected: everyone was here, except Palisade.
“Steven’s gone off in search of Angela,” he said in exasperation. At this, Aaron ran over to the computer to check the location.
“Chicago! They’re in Chicago. That’s close enough, you can portal us there and we can take care of this quick! Then we get back, finish our day, with one or two of us on guard here in case the Professor comes back, and done!”
The Adept shook his head negative. “I don’t know, Aaron. Something’s wrong here. Palisade’s been looking for her for months, and now suddenly here she is? Just after a major attack by Sampson, who we haven’t heard from in over a year? I don’t like it.”
“Well, I love it,” Cazmonster said. “Let’s go! We get Angela and come home. After that, Sampson wants to hit us, he can bring all he’s got!”
“Guys, I think I have a compromise here,” The Attitude said, sticking his little finger in his ear to try to stop the residual ringing. The others turned to him.
“Don’t look so shocked. Okay, here goes. I’ve been training with the Extraordinary Response Team. It’s a special forces kind of subset of Stevenson’s SWAT.”
The Adept shook his head again. “I know about them, Barry. There’s no way those guys can hold off Sampson, even for a little bit. Milan shock troops maybe, but not Sampson. He’s too powerful.”
“Yeah, I hear you, A,” The Attitude agreed. “But there’s more. We’ve been keeping tabs on some new heroes here in Stevenson, a couple Freshmen and a highschool student. I know how to get in touch with them. We could recruit them to stand watch while we’re gone, sort of provisional Triumph members.”
“Whoa,” Syd said. “That’s really a stretch, don’t you think? IF Sampson comes and we’re gone, you MIGHT have some kids who MIGHT be able to fight him off AND LIVE long enough for us to get back?”
“Hey, I don’t like the idea of putting them in danger, but we were all there once, not so long ago. They’re out there doing this on their own anyway. Maybe if we bring them into the fold, we can teach them something. Maybe they’ll live longer.”
“Okay,” Aaron said. “Can you get us their profiles? Tell us what you know about them? That might help with the decision.”
“Can do, DF. I’ve got it all here on this USB drive.” Barry plugged the drive into the computer interface. “Stella, open files in folder “Triumph Junior”.
Cazmonster smirked. “Triumph Junior?”
“Working title, big guy,” the Attitude said. Immediately, 3 files popped open, complete with images.
The first was a young black man dressed in an army jacket, cut-off gloves, jeans and a black T-shirt. “This young man is William Brown. He doesn’t have a code name yet, but he’s been hitting the street beat weekly, fighting the sort of low end drug and gang crime we used to hit more often in our early days. He’s super-strong, somewhere near Palisade’s level, heals fast, and is an obviously trained fighter. Oh, and he’s not bad with that shotgun he carries, either, though to my knowledge he’s never killed anyone with it.”
“Continuing on, this,” Barry said, pointing to an image of a young woman with straight, light blond hair, “is Magma. She’s very aptly named, having the ability to generate and control busts of lava. She can also fly.”
“How the hell have I not heard of someone shooting lava around Stevenson before?” Aaron asked suspiciously.
“Weeeellllll, she’s only been active once, to my knowledge. And it wasn’t exactly high profile.”
“What did she DO, Attitude?” Cazmonster prodded.
“She burned down a building by accident. The Stevenson PD was looking for her in an arson case, but when they learned she was a costume, they pulled back...” Barry said.
“At your request,” Aaron completed.
“Okay, yeah, at my request. But she’s got potential, she just needs to learn better control. And a chance to get some experience.”
The Adept sighed. “What about the third one? I guess he’s the youngest?”
Barry nodded. “You guess right. This is Transcender, aka “Dorado” Estevez. He’s got the most interesting power of the three. He has the ability to control time and space.”
“Huh?” The Adept said uncharacteristically.
“Well, in really small ways. Right now anyway. He can act on the future, make minor changes to his environment, like make guns disappear and such, and he’s got some sort of ‘temporal shadow’ that can act in his stead, be in another place and time from where he is. We don’t know much more, and right now neither does anyone else.”
“No doubt,” Aaron said. “All the more reason it might be a good thing to get to him first.”
“My thoughts precisely, DF.” The American Attitude turned to the others. “So, what do you say?”
The Adept still seemed hesitant. “I don’t know, Barry. It seems risky leaving the city in the hands of these guys, even for just a short while.”
“Let’s vote on it,” Aaron suggested.
“Okay,” The Adept said. “I’m against.”
“For,” Barry said quickly.
“For,” Aaron answered.
“Against,” was Syd’s reply.
“Great. No pressure, guys,” Cazmonster said. “Okay, For.”
“That’s it then,” The Adept said. “We head out to Chicago to find Palisade and Angela, while Barry stays here and gathers his “Provisional” members, and informs the ERT.
“Hey, wait!” Barry objected.
“You didn’t think we could leave them on their own, did you? It was your idea, Bar,” Syd pointed out.
“But...”
“No buts. He’s right, Barry,” Aaron said. “They need a leader and organizer, and you know more about them than anyone else. Gather the newbs and get them in formation. We’ll be back soon, hopefully with both our team members in tow.”
With that, the portal opened onto a North Chicago street, and Dragonfly, The Gray Robe, Cazmonster and The Adept walked through.
The American Attitude sighed, but a grin soon crossed his face. Looking at the pictures on the computer, he said softly “Okay, guys, let’s see what you can do.”
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