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.
And introducing: Bill Brown (no alias), super-strong urban defender; Magma, aka Jan Graylin, lava blasting demolisher; and Transcender, aka “Dorado” Estevez, controller of time and space.
The situation was chaos. In the middle of downtown Stevenson, a new villain calling himself Spider Lord had picked this day to debut, and a spectacular debut it was. The streets were swarming with small be very venomous spiders of various types, from black widows to brown recluses to various types of tarantulas. This, in turn, lead to the streets also teeming with hundreds of screaming, running, panicked people, cars sliding on a road slick with spider gue, and several downed civilians needing to be rescued. A perfect job for Triumph!
But the team was down a few core members that day; in fact, ALL core members, with the exception of The American Attitude, who was having a really frazzled time. Wiping sweat from his brow with one sleeve, he swept in on his skateboard and pulled yet another bitten civilian to safety. EMT crews were standing by a couple of blocks away.
“Dammit, Magma, I said I a barrier across ALL the escape routes! The people can take refuge in the BUILDINGS. We need to keep these spiders contained here! Ouch!” The Attitude shouted as searing hot lava burned through his leather jacket and scalded his back.
“Sorry,” Magma said, hovering over him. “You had one on your back. I’m on the blockade!” As she swooped off, the thought crossed Barry’s mind: What was I thinking?
Meanwhile, the members of the ERT were on these street in full armor, trying to herd civilians into relatively safe buildings while the “heroes” took care of business.
Heroes, Simons thought, blasting away at an unnaturally large tarantula as it tried to follow a young couple into the cafe he was guarding. These guys weren’t heroes. They were unskilled kids! Triumph picked a fine day to take a vacation. At least the ERT was on the scene, he thought with pride. He and the rest of the squad were doing what they trained to do, for the first time. And, despite the risk to all the civilians out here, he had to say it was a rush.
On top of a nearby demolition site, Bill Brown felt out of his league, and then some. He was used to fighting four guys with guns in a dark alley. Crazy spider men and swarms of creepy crawlies were a different matter. He’d decided early on that he’d be better of throwing “bombs” than trying to punch spiders, so he’d climbed this building, a cordoned off old four story brick structure due to demolition, and started lobbing bricks from the decaying roofing down at areas with large concentrations of spiders and no people to be hit. Got another one, he thought, seeing a new beast crawling out of the gutter now smashed under his last brick.
Turning on his two-way radio earpiece, he contacted the team. “Attitude, we got to take out the big man, or this show’s never gonna end!”
“I realize that, Bill,” Barry said, smashing several of the critters against the wall with his skateboard while stomping on several others. “We’re having just a little trouble getting to him.”
“Don’t worry, boss,” Bill heard Transcender break in. “I got it.”
“Transcender, no! Hang back until I get a strategy here!” Barry answered. But no response came.
As Transcender approached the villain, the spiders around him all fell completely still for a moment. This effect followed him like a bubble. It required Transcender’s concentration, however, which is what he did not notice the human-sized spider clinging to the wall beside him as he approached Spider Lord.
The spider lept on the young man; while it was momentarily stunned by the Transcender’s temporal field, its mass knocked the hero down, jolting his concentration, and the effect fell. The spider was immediately on top of him. Additionally, he had drawn Spider Lord’s attention.
“Ah, my first meal of the day,” he said. Reaching under his thrall, he grabbed the young hero by the neck and lifted him, preparing to take a bite. The Spider Lord was as horrific as his progeny, a bulk of a man dressed all in black except for a white skull covering his head, and dark, beedy eyes underneath. The young manipulator of physics couldn’t overcome his fear enough to call on his powers.
Bill, seeing his new teammate in trouble, threw himself over the edge of the building, bounded off an overhand, and landed on his feet in the street. He ran at the speed of an olympic athlete toward Dorado, but was soon intercepted by the large spider. Grimacing, Bill turned his shotgun on the creature and let loose with both barrels. The monster staggered back, clearly injured but not dead. It reared up to bite Bill.
At that moment, The American Attitude flew off the 2nd story roof of the building the spider had been crawling on. He bounced off the spider’s back on his skateboard, letting loose with one of the ERT’s high caliber firearms into it’s head. The creature fell to the ground, dead.
Interrupted by the arrival of the Attitude and Bill Brown, Spider Lord tossed his prey aside and prepared for a fight. Unfortunately, he did not understand Transcender’s powers.
“Stand down, Spider Lord; it’s over,” The Attitude said, training the firearm’s sites on the villain. Unphased, the bulk of a man lunged at The Attitude; he was phenomenally fast. Barry pulled the trigger, but the large but quick man was already under his aim, coming in for the tackle. At the instant, though, time seemed to slow. Transcender had recovered his senses. He could not stop a mass as large as Spider Lord’s, but he could slow the time around it just enough so that Barry could dodge out of the way.
The Spider Lord fell in a lump on the ground as time returned to normal; Bill leapt on top of the man and pinned him to the ground. Spider Lord’s strength was easily the equal of Bills, and he started to pull a reversal of the pin, but as he did, The American Attitude swung his staff. The Attitude felt a curious increase in the weight of the staff on the downswing, and as it made a loud crack against Spider Lord’s back, and the man fell back and screamed in pain, he understood why.
Barry looked over at Transcender. “What did you do?” he asked in a voice of mock gentleness.
Transcender shrugged. “I increased the force of gravity around the end of the staff, just for a second.”
Bill held the Spider Lord down, but he no longer seemed to be struggling. Out in the streets, the remaining spiders seemed no longer under his control, and were running naturally about, seeking hiding places in the dark. The ERT, lead by Simons, was herding the beasts down the street toward one of Magma’s dead ends. Magma continued to fire streams of lava at the creatures to further control their movements, then rejoined the others.
“Hey, team!” she said, almost jovially.
The Attitude sneered. “Hey, Magma. You seem to have missed the main event.”
“Sorry, I was busy making those barriers you wanted and...” she began to apologize.
“It’s alright,” he said, putting his hand on her shoulder. “We managed to handle the situation, despite some impetuous action from your fellow junior member, Transcender.”
Bill, who had been on his cell phone when Magma arrived, hung up the phone. “Okay, the EMTs are on their way.”
Magma looked shocked as she saw Spider Lord writhing on the ground, defeated and in obvious pain. “Oh.”
Barry dimly heard his own cell phone ringing, and pulled it from his jacket pocket.
“Attitude. It’s your dime,” he answered.
“Attitude, this is Dragonfly. We’ve had some problems...”
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