Triumph - The Protectors of Central Illinois University, the city of Stevenson, and beyond! Or so it was. Join us now, as we peek into the altered lives of the heroes of Triumph, and witness the spark of a new era!
Jan Graylin sat at the conference table in the temporary headquarters of the new Triumph. The room was tucked away in the back of a mostly completed administrative building on UCLA’s campus. Obviously, this room couldn’t work long term; eventually, the building would open and the room would see other uses. But for now, this is where Triumph met.
Jan chuckled to herself. Triumph. A big name to live up to for two “second stringers” and two newbies. Not really even close to enough heroes. But it was what they had, and it would have to do.
Jan looked up as someone moved into the room. Her face lit up as she saw a well-built young latino man, Martin.
“Hey, Jan,” he said, coming over and kissing her on the cheek.
“Anything interesting?” she asked. She’d called Martin Estevez the night before, asking him to look at the crime reports across the area for anything unusual.
“Maybe. A missing person. Cops can’t find a lot, except that witnesses have tied it to a cult known as ‘Graystars’.”
Jan shuttered. She remembered her own experience with kidnapping; she’d been taking, briefly, by ninjas during one of the original Triumph team’s last missions. She was beaten, tied up and used as bait for the rest of the team, in a failed plot to get Dragonfly’s sword. She felt for anyone who was taken, even for a short time.
“Any more information?” she asked hopefully.
Martin shrugged. “I got a little bit of info on the Graystars after jumping into a time bubble this morning and digging for about 4 hours.”.
“What’s a Graystar?” Ace asked as she walked into the room. She wore casual clothes, running pants and a sweatshirt. Even so, her stance showed her powerful muscular form. Jan wondered, once again, what this young woman had done to become like she was. Was she born that way? Some sort of intensive training?
“They’re some kind of cult,” Jan answered. “I don’t know much; Transcender will brief us as soon as Dreamweaver gets here.”
Transcender told of all the information he’d gathered regarding the Graystars, an enigmatic cult of neo-Shaolin Buddhist monks whose recruitment methods occasionally bordered on those of the Hare Krishna of the 1970s. Evidently several of a the gray karate-suited monks had been seen harassing the missing young woman, Stephanie Williams, just before her disappearance. The police hadn’t turned up any evidence pointing toward their participation in her disappearance, but a private investigator, Shondra Borrego, who had been hired within hours to find the young woman, had already disappeared.
“Well, everybody,” Martin asked, “What do you think?”
Ace spoke first. “It’s a longshot. Kung Fu cultists kidnappers? Sounds like a John Wu film.”
“Maybe,” Jan said thoughtfully. “Still, the police obviously aren’t doing any investigating on this angle. And we don’t have any cosmic rifts or mad scientists to fight this week. Maybe we should look into it.”
Dreamweaver was characteristically silent. He knew the others were older and more experienced than him. The young man, every bit the fanboy, was just happy to be participating in this group.
“Did you learn anything to get us started, Transcender?” Jan asked.
“Only this: the Graystars are hard to find. I had to dig off-line quite a bit to figure out that they had purchased an abandoned motel in the High Desert, northwest of Barstow.”
Ace shrugged. “Let’s go check it out.”
The trip was awkward. Transcender had to hold on to Magma’s back, placing a fireproof blanket between them to avoid getting burned. Ace held on closely to a 14 year old kid, Dreamweaver, who was incredibly happy that an attractive older woman was hanging on to him. But finally, they took a north onto a deserted county road off 18 west of Barstow, and came upon a slightly less deserted motel an hour after sunset.
“Wow,” Martin intimated. “Welcome to the Hotel California.” The place was grim, secluded, and more than a little creepy. Lights were on inside, but it was obviously candles only, no electric.
“Well, they kept the light on for us,” Magma nodded, setting Transcender on the ground and landing beside him. Dreamweaver pulled his flight disc up to the sand and let Ace step off, after which is disappeared and he dropped the few inches to the ground.
“Let’s go see what’s what,” Transcender said. He had created a temporal shield around himself, basically guaranteeing that he wouldn’t be shot by snipers, or hit by any other sudden, unexpected attack. The bullet would enter his time horizon, and stop, at which point he could safely dodge or remove it.
Ace was more practical. She drew a long blade, forged by modern technology and lined with super-sharp diamond particles. A pistol ,equipped with high-mass blanks guaranteed to break bone on impact, was strapped to her side. Magma and Dreamweaver simply walked.
The four approached the building cautiously. Their plan was to case the building from the outside to try and determine if Stephanie Williams was inside. Transcender and Ace would be in charge of that portion. If she was, they’d incapacitate her kidnappers and rescue her. If not, they’d find out where she was.
As Ace worked her way soundlessly around the western side of the building, Transcender moved east; he’d altered his temporal bubble so that sound he made would not be heard until several minutes after he made it. But covering such a large area in such a specific way was a huge strain on his abilities, and he was, aside from silence and the abilities of his own body, powerless. Looking in the near the front desk, he saw a bald man, wearing the characteristic Graystar uniform, resting in the hotel’s tiny lobby, focusing on the words of a book. Transcender moved on.
Meanwhile, Ace had checked several windows, listening for a few seconds at each one to try and ascertain what was happening inside. Her augmented senses gave her the ability to notice the slightest of noises inside such small rooms, out here in the quiet desert. but she heard nothing by the occasional shuffling of people in the night.
After the two had swept the entire property and met around back, they moved back around to the west together.
Dreamweaver and Magma sat on the other side of a small ridge, a water break where huge streams would flood through the desert when heavy rains came. Dreamweaver looked over the ridge, bored. He’d had no idea there would be so much sitting patiently involved in super-heroing.
“They’re coming!” he whispered to Jan. Just then, he felt something hit him in the gut like a cannonball, and Dreamweaver doubled over in pain.
Magma was quicker, activating a bolt of plasma and launching it into the desert darkness. Unfortunately, before she could act, the cultist had kicked her solidly in the head, and she grew dizzy. There was a faint smell of burning flesh as the flesh on the monk’s foot charred against Magma’s super-heated skin, but he didn’t scream.
“Transcender! They’re on to us!” Magma shouted. In a split second, or maybe 30 seconds enveloped into a smaller piece of time, Transcender appeared. Jan was still staggering from the hit to her head. Looking left to right, Transcender searched for the attacker.
“Let me help!” Dreamweaver shouted. Suddenly, the entire ravine was lit up like Broadway. Two Graystars stood ready to face the heroes.
The martial artists advanced, throwing attack after attack, but the heroes were not to be challenged by normal people. Within a few seconds, Magma, Transcender, Dreamweaver and Ace had incapacitated them.
“Well, considering the hostile welcome, I think we can assume they have something to hide,” Ace said snidely, flipping her hair out of her eyes.
“Okay,” Magma said. “They want a fight, we’ll give it to them.” She absent-mindedly rubbed her sore temple as as she spoke.
“Triumph, attack!”
The heroes descended on the old hotel. Within a few minutes, they’d defeated every cultist on the property. And the hotel was on fire. The monks had put up a good fight, but there were only twelve of them. Transcender was nursing two broken teeth from a kick to the jaw, and Ace, having confronted her enemies hand to hand, was heavily bruised,
Dragging out the last of the monks, Dreamweaver turned off his floating disc. “Okay, what now?” Despite his small stature, or maybe because of it, Dreamweaver had avoided any significant bruises in the fight. In fact, he looked completely unaffected.
“Now,” Jan said, “we ask them about Stephanie. Nicely. At first.”
Transcender leaned over the first Graystar to stir. “Hey, bro. Got a couple questions to ask you...”
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