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!
Chicago night, early November…
Dragonfly and his new partner in training, Damsel, zip past the Drake along Lake Shore Drive, following a police chase from the air.
“Keep an eye on the front car,” Dragonfly shouted, “while I zip down and see if I can disarm the guys from the back. Whatever you do, don’t get separated. If the car loses the cops, follow from a safe distance if you can, and radio back!”
Dragonfly swooped down, leaving his young partner to follow behind. “Right,” she nodded. “Keep an eye on them. Don’t get involved.” Jyoti, the young niece of Dragonfly’s girlfriend, flew a little closer to the first car, to keep a better eye on them.
Meanwhile, the former Triumph founding member flew low to the street, hoping to stay out of the gang-members’ sites as he flew up toward them. The police dropped back slightly to let Dragonfly in. Suddenly, all hell broke loose. The air around Dragonfly was filled with shotgun bursts, and he barely avoided being shot as several pellets ripped through one of his wings. Swooping up, he got out of easy range as the police started shooting.
Fine, Aaron thought. You want to play it that way, here. Pulling his humming bomb from it’s pouch in his belt, Dragonfly laid on the speed toward the vehicle. Zipping from side to side to avoid being shot, he got parallel with the rear car, and tossed the device into the passenger’s side window, then flew directly upward.
The humming bomb had been set on a very low setting, but it still had the desired effect. The driver’s steering became erratic, and the car swerved, smashing a barrier before skidding to a halt. Police surrounded the car, with one of the officers giving Dragonfly a quick solute. The young, brown-haired hero smiled, and then flew back into the sky.
“Damsel, I don’t see you. Where are you?” Dragonfly asked with concern. Somehow, the lead car must have peeled off onto a side street without his noticing. No answer came from his young partner.
Dammit, Aaron thought. That kid is going to get me into trouble. He flew higher to get a better view of the area. The roads here were almost impossible to see unless you were looking straight up them, due to the number of tall buildings in the area. And the background noise was at a high enough volume that even gunfire wouldn’t be easy to identify.
Aaron closed his eyes to concentrate, but when he opened them, he was confronted with a strange kid in a hoodie floating on a platform of energy right in front of him.
“Omigosh! You’re DRAGONFLY! THE DRAGONFLY! This is so amazingly cool!” The kid said excitedly. Aaron cocked his head and wrinkled his brow. This was...unexpected.
“Dragonfly! Lose something?” The young woman before him glowed dark red, with hair and eyes of fire, but he recognized her from her recent TV appearances.
“Magma!” Dragonfly said, flying closer to his former teammate. Damsel flew up right beside her.
“Looking at her, I figured she had to be with you,” Jan said.
Aaron looked over at Damsel. “Why didn’t you answer my call?”
Damsel bit her lower lip nervously. “I...I dropped the two-way when I flipped around to avoid the shooting.”
“WHAT shooting!!!” Aaron shouted nervously. He’d asked her to follow the lead car discreetly, not get into a gunfight.
“They were getting away! You and the cops had missed the turn-off!”
“I wanted you to NOTIFY me! All you had to do was tell me what street you were on,” Dragonfly growled.
“I thought I could handle them, alright?” Jyoti said defensively. Aaron sighed.
“We’ll talk more about this later. Mamga, I don’t suppose you know what happened to the car she was chasing?”
“Sorry, Dragonfly. I missed it,” Jan admitted.
“Well, we might as well pack it in for the night,” Dragonfly said. “You’ve got school tomorrow, and the police will either find these guys or not. We’re not going to add much to the search effort. Not without staking out the entire River North neighborhood for hours.”
“But I want to meet your friends!” Jyoti protested. “This is Magma, from Triumph? Hi, I’m Damsel.” The young Indian girl held out her hand, which Magma shook.
“Nice to meet you. I didn’t realize Dragonfly had taken on a student. This is Dreamweaver.”
“Hey!” Dreamweaver gave Jyoti a friendly greeting.
“The rest of my team is streetside,” Magma said.
“Your team?” Dragonfly asked curiously.
“Uh, yeah. Transcender and I decided to re-form Triumph. So far, it’s just us, Dreamweaver, and Ace.”
Aaron nodded in approval. “Glad to hear someone’s carrying on the name.” He took a moment to remember the hero behind the name, who’d died as part of an alien assault on Stevenson. It was after that battle that The Infinite Seven renamed themselves Triumph, in honor of their dead friend.
“Let’s head down to meet them,” Dragonfly said. “It’s kind of chilly up here.” The four heroes had been talking high above downtown, amid skyscrapers, with a gust of cool November air coming in off the lake.
Diving down into the neon-laden streets of River North, Dragonfly, Damsel, Magma and Dreamweaver soon met up with Transcender and Ace.
“You’ve bulked up a bit,” Aaron said to Transcender. A little over a year ago, he’d been the youngest, somewhat scrawny member of Triumph in Stevenson. The young man before Aaron now reminded him a lot of himself at 18. Young, sure, but solid. He could tell his young partner Damsel had noticed, too. Her dark eyes were locked on Transcender’s biceps.
“So, what brings the new Triumph team all the way from Los Angeles?” he hasked.
“We’re looking for a missing person, a young woman named Stephanie Williams,” Magma said. Trascender showed Dragonfly a picture of a young woman, definitely not a child, but still young, maybe his age or a little older.
“Not that I’m judging, because Damsel and I work in real world cases all the time, but you guys have a lot of special powers that lend themselves to fighting the extraordinary. Isn’t a missing persons case a little more FBI?” As Dragonfly spoke, a small crowd gathered around the team, and they began walking to avoid getting hemmed in.
“This one’s a little different,” Transcender spoke in a quieted voice as the walked, while Dreamweaver began talking Damsel’s ear off behind them. In the back, Ace walked with her head down, her long blond hair obscuring her face. She seemed quite uncomfortable with all the pictures and videos being taken.
As the walked, Aaron noticed that they were slightly out of sync with the people around them. Transcender’s doing, obviously. He had the feeling a lot of the photos being taking were going to be poor quality because of this effect.
“The girl was abducted by an end of the world cult called The Graystars.” Aaron looked startled at the mention of the name.
“Say again?”
“A group called The Graystars. Near as I can tell, their headquarters is in California, but there’s a safehouse here in Chicago. That’s why we’re here.” Transcender sensed something wasn’t right.
Aaron shook his head negatively. “You’re mistaken,” he said bluntly.
“No, he’s right,” Jan said, defending her partner and boyfriend. “We fought them off in the High Desert. One of them let us know they’d had the girl there, but they moved her here. He warned us that coming here would be dangerous. They’d be ready for us.”
Aaron thought about it for a minute, then said again, “You’ve misunderstood something. I’m sure of it.” Jan and Martin both waited for him to explain. Dreamweaver, Damsel, and Ace all just sat back and listened to the discussion.
“I’ve trained with the Graystars. They’re a doomsday cult, true. But their focused on stopping these events from occurring. In particular, they worked with me on hunting down some rogue demons that escaped when Professor Sampson freed a bunch of them in Stevenson a couple years ago. They don’t kidnap people. They don’t even take acolytes without a rigorous series of tests. If they took this woman, they have to be protecting her from something, not harming her.”
Jan thought about the fight in the desert, and looked up at Martin, concerned. “They could have been trying to protect her at the old motel. Maybe they thought we were working for whoever they’re afraid of.”
Transcender nodded. “Yeah, we didn’t exactly work out who was who before the fighting broke out,” he admitted.
“We were on our way to the safehouse when we ran into you and Damsel,” Jan said. “Maybe if you come with us, we can work this out.”
Aaron nodded. “I think that’s best. but I’m a little concerned. The Graystars don’t get involved in minor events. As you said, they’re a doomsday cult. If they’re involved, it’s something big, and I’m not sure I want Damsel involved.”
“Dragonfly!” he heard his young partner whine, a few milliseconds sooner than he expected. “You can’t cut me out of this! This is your team! I want to fight alongside Triumph!”
Aaron sighed. “This is NOT my team,” he said gently. “This is Magma’s team, and we’re not a part of it.” He saw the disappointment in her face grow, and he knew at that moment that being part of something bigger than Dragonfly and Damsel would do a world of good for the girl’s confidence and, quite frankly, for her training.
“But,” he added hesitantly, “it appears they could use our help. Okay, Magma, we’ll go with you and try to get this sorted out.
“But Damsel, this could be the beginning of something very bad. When I tell you to get out, fall back, or go home, hell, if I tell you to go have a latte and forget about it, you DO IT, got it?”
“Got it, sir,” she said. It was a little jab back at him; Jyoti knew Aaron hated being called sir, or referred to in any way as old.
A few minutes later…
The trip to the South Side was quick, considering most of the team of heroes could fly. Magma carried Transcender, while Dreamweaver carried Ace. The safehouse was on the 3rd floor of an old brick building which had been abandoned for years. The sides of the building were colorfully decorated with urban art from the last 50 years, some obviously produced by more skillful artists than others.
The heroes landed on the roof. “How do we get in?” Magma asked. Aaron just pushed his hand in a backward motion, gesturing for her to hold position. He took off his Dragonfly mask; these people knew his real identity.
An instant later, there were suddenly a dozen gray clothed, shaved men and women standing all around them. Dreamweaver prepared a blast of energy, and Damsel drew her Kris sword. Ace simply tensed her muscles for action, while Magma and Transcender held still, trusting Dragonfly’s assessment of the situation. After all, he had been one of their instructors in the arts of being a super hero.
“I’m Aaron, known as Dragonfly. These are my friends. I’m known to your Khenpo. I come in peace...despite appearances,” he said, noticing Damsel’s drawn weapon. He unslung his own blade, still sheathed, and set it on the ground in a gesture of peace.
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