Triumph, Volume 6, Issue 3

Aaron woke up in the dark.  His body was getting more achy with the passage of time.  More villains.  More accidents.  More injuries.  When Jyoti had recently been awarded her doctorate in Physics, he'd gone into semi-retirement as Dragonfly.  Chicago had other heroes; he'd met several of them.  They could carry on the legacy.  He was in his mid-30s, and his body had already seen more damage than most people do in a lifetime.  Popping his left shoulder from that horrible fall fighting the Dream Machine all those years ago, Aaron looked at the clock.  Four AM.  Time to head over to Heroes and make open shop.         

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A hundred miles away and several hours later, Professor Jyoti Singh finished up her 3 o'clock class with a quote from Neil Degrasse Tyson: "We are part of this universe; we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts, is that the universe is in us." 

As the class cleared out, the young Indian woman gather her stuff and prepared to leave.  The last week had been relatively quiet; no more need for Damsel, though Jyoti had paid attention as Sidhe began canvasing the quadrangle on patrols.   As Jyoti prepared to leave, she spotted a student leaving from a rear seat that caught her attention.  Those thick, red locks.  Jyoti flashed back to days before when Damsel had helped during a bombing on campus.  That woman.  That was her!  Sidhe, also known as Mina Brooks.

As she left "Theoretical Physics 110," Mina considered whether the class was really for her.  Something about the professor, Singh, captivated her, but the subject matter was way over her head.  Stepping into the hall, the young woman caught sight of someone she hadn't expected to see.  It was the blond stetchy man.  The frat-boy hero she'd noticed at the protest weeks before, helping out in the aftermath of the bombing.  A warm, tingly feeling centered on Mina, and she couldn't help but smile. 

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The sky was gray as Will Sutton walked on the east side of campus toward the Phi house.  Finally.  Classes were starting to get in the way of the Rubber Band's social life.  Dammit!  he'd started thinking of himself as "Rubber Band."  After the attack at the protest, he'd been "outed" to his fellow fraternity members as a stretchy hero, and he'd tried to take it in style.  But honestly, he felt like he could do more with these powers than be a mascot for a frat. 

And then there was the red-haired girl.  Her eyes haunted him.  She was so different, he couldn't put his finger on it.  But he'd been looking for her all over, hoping to catch sight of her.  The hero of his dreams. 

As Will crossed the street, he felt a tremor under his feet.  Suddenly, the world was up-ended!  The concrete flew into the air, and Will knew before he hit the ground that it would hurt, big time. 

But he also knew he would bounce. 

The others on the street, the commuters in on West Street, had no such luck.  Their cars flew through the air.  People screamed in fear as the world erupted under them.  And from the eruption, a large, bipedal lizard stood in the middle of the street.

Will did what he could to mitigate the damage.  He grabbed hold of cars and tried to pull them to the ground safely.  Will stared at the giant lizardine image in shock.  It looked like Gozilla. 

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Out of the corner of her eye, Jyoti watched the scene unfold on West Street.  She knew it was mere blocks from her home in the former Triumph HQ overlooking Stevenson.  Strapping on her wings, Damsel left the suite via the same balcony Dragonfly had flown out of years before, and zipped southwest.  

As she lowered into the scene, she noted Will using his elastic powers to help the civilians escape destruction.  

"Well, we meet again!" Damsel called out to the blond teen.  

Will looked into the sky.  The Indian chick.

"Hey, yeah, nice to see you.  What's up?"

"Evidently, we're fighting a giant lizard!" Damsel shouted.   "You keep doing you!  I'll fight this thing!"  Jyoti tossed a humming bomb at the lizard as it moved toward downtown. 

The humming bomb, of course, didn't limit the creature's movement significantly.  Not that Jyoti thought it would. 

"Hey, Bungee!  See if you can create a trip wire!" Jyoti shouted. 

Bungee, Will thought?  Well, whatevs.  He reached out to a light pole anchored across the street and looped his arms around it a dozen times. 

Will felt the strain as the creature pushed against his arms.  At that instant, Damsel threw a humming bomb at its feet.  Instinctively, will pulled backward.  Mech-godzilla began to stumble and fall toward the ground.  In seconds, it exploded into thin air, a green, grid-like after-image being briefly visible before disappearing. 

After a few minutes of helping bystanders, Damsel and Bungee met on the side of the street as Stevenson's emergency vehicles arrived to help.

"Hi," Jyoti nodded.  "Well done, young man."

"Hey, thanks!" Will said, drawn out of his arrogance briefly by the compliment. 

As the two conversed, a young woman descended from the air. 

"You!" the red-haired woman commented.  Damsel and Bungee looked up at the red-curled, green and grey garbed woman approached. 

"Looks like we're all here!" Damsel added as the woman lowered herself to the ground.  She missed the quick exchange of looks between Sidhe and Bungee. 

"Not all!"

From the sky dropped a large, wolf-like beast. electronic blips appearing across his chest. 

"What?  So I missed you guys the first time.  What's the plan?" the man commented.  Damsel, Bungee and Sidhe exchanged looks.  What was the plan, indeed?


Four heroes sat in the lounge area of the former Triumph Headquarters, now the private residence of one Jyoti Singh.  Standing near her new television, a modest 52" version that had replaced the ancient monstrosity that had been there before: Singh, now in the guise of Damsel, the superheroine former kid-partner of Dragonfly, paused the video.  Will Sutton, AKA Bungee, as she had dubbed him, sat uncharacteristically nervous on the couch next to the beautiful, if tall, young woman with thick red locks, known as Sidhe.  Sidhe sat upright on the couch, her ankles crossed in her gray boots, her kelly green cape draped beside her. She felt a strange warmth inside sitting next to Will, and had moved slightly to "see the screen better" (but really to move her hips closer to the blond, sculpted hunk).       

Finally, the last arrival at the scene an hour ago in downtown Stevenson, Lil Monster stood next to the pool table, his thick, dark hair interrupted every now and then on his chest by a random readout or LED light.  Jyoti was glad the floor had been reinforced to support Cazmonster over a decade ago, or else it might not hold the similarly sized being she saw before her.  

On the screen before them was a recording, or rather, two recordings, of the events of an hour ago.  The first was from the point of view of a traffic camera at an intersection a block away from the "incident."  The second, inset on the screen in smaller size so that both were running simultaneously, we from Damsel's contact lens camera.  

   

Triumph, Volume 6, Issue 2

“This is Brooke Hall, Channel 3 News Stevenson.  This is a scene of devastation not found in the Middle East, but instead in the Mid-West.”  The area behind her, on the campus of Central Illinois University, was in utter disarray.  No buildings were seriously damaged, but large sections of cement were flipped over and thrown yards away; entrances were closed by crime-scene tape, and blood was clearly visible on several surfaces.  

“Yesterday evening, a protest of trans-gendered use of restrooms relating to their identified gender was interrupted by an explosion which injured several students and faculty.  This showdown between liberal and conservative values wasn’t the main event for the afternoon, however, as unknown parties had seemingly planted a bomb in the vicinity of the protest.”

On the television, a video replayed portions of the explosion, shot by protesters and counter-protesters who had filmed the incident on their smartphones.  “An unexpected, but certainly welcome, turn happened when three masked and powered heroes showed up to help, a sight not seen in Stevenson for several years.  Several protesters were transferred quickly to the University Hospital by this woman…” an image of the red-haired Sidhe in her gray costume accented in green, including flowing green cape, appeared on the camera, whisking a victim off into the sky, “while others were rescued by the intervention of this stretchy hero…” Will winced at the term as he saw his picture on the TV in the Phi house.  Mojo smacked him in the arm.

“Yo, man, you rocked it!  Saved those people!”  Will sighed.  Mojo was his brother by fraternity, and he loved the lug, but lug he was.  

Back on the screen, Brooke’s face briefly reappeared.  “A surprising appearance by this woman completed the scene.  Damsel, kid partner to Stevenson’s own Dragonfly, flew down out of the sky to coordinate the heroic efforts, using the well-known ‘humming bomb’ created by Dragonfly to demolish concrete and allow access to victims of the tragedy.”  

“Braa, you the shit!”  Mojo said, smacking Will Sutton’s hand.  

Will pushed the hand away.  “Ah, I’m just a rubber band,” he said, immediately regretting the statement as several of his brothers were listening.  He knew the odds of his NOT being renamed “Rubber-Band” or some similar by his fraternity brothers were really low.  Will looked at the screen and thought.  He couldn’t get that red-head out of his mind.  That curly red hair, that strength, it seemed to permeate his thoughts.

And the Indian woman.  There was no doubt she knew exactly what to do.  She was a normal person, seemingly, with no powers like himself or Sidhe, but Will was certain that without her direction, several more people would have died last night.  

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Mina Sanderson was so engrossed in the poem she was reading, she almost missed her television debut.  Looking up from the depths of her Victorian soul, she watched as Sidhe, the Celtic Spirit-powered superheroine transported several victims of the bombing to University Hospital.  She smiled.  Somehow, the hate the protesters brought her way was less important than the fact that she’d saved lives.  And that she’d found others like her.  Damsel, in particular, had impressed her. Trained by a past generation of heroes, the commanding  young woman demanded respect by her very presence.  Though their interaction had been brief, Mina felt that she could follow Damsel into battle, no matter the threat.  

Mina looked up across the lounge, and returned to her studies.  As she did, she tried hard not to think about that frat boy with the stretchy powers.  She’d locked eyes with him several times during the emergency; he was sooo hawt.  But Mina knew what types like him thought of people like her.  After all, he was there to protest her rights, in the first place.  But…

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Andre Lee watched the whole coverage of the hero adventures from yesterday.  He couldn’t believe he’d missed the opportunity.  Damsel!  The kid partner of Dragonfly, one of the original Stevenson heroes!  And some people his own age, too.  He sighed and continued through the security check in toward his room in Langley Hall.

“Yo, Dre’!” a voiced called.  Andre looked up from the screen, pulling the laptop closed as he did so.

“Whatup,” the very short-haired African American young man answered to his classmate.

“You rollin’?”

"Not for a couple hours. Got studying."

"Man, there's a party to be had! Put them books down in your room and get dressed, brainiac!"

Dre sighed again, then smiled. "Okay, give me twenty."

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Jyoti sat looking out over sunset in downtown Stevenson, a cocktail in her hand. Thinking. It had been an unexpected evening last night. Unexpected to reveal her presence in Stevenson so soon, unexpected to confront terrorist violence in the mid-sized town, unexpected to meet too fledgling supers. She'd opted not to contact either of them after the event, but instead to watch from a distance. And thus it was she'd followed both of the young people home from the air, learning more about their lives than they probably would have preferred. She'd felt a little creepy doing it, but Dragonfly had taught her that people like them, normal people playing in the superpowered world, had to be very, very careful. Information was a shield and a weapon.

She took another sip and picked up her phone, considering for a minute calling Aaron. Nah, she thought, setting the phone down beside her and watching the sun sink further. He's probably busy running inventory on meats and cheeses, or slicing vegetables for tomorrow's shift. Heroes Deli in Chicago. Comfort food.

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Epilogue

The Machine had no senses.  It could see, but it could not perceive.  It could not hear, not feel.  Sampson had been able to do these things, and it was that tie that had made the bridge to Earth, from the Demon Dimension.  The Entity chuckled.  How silly humans were.  Demon Dimension.  Hell.  These terms were meaningless in explaining the complexity of The Entity’s home.  And they were woefully insufficient in explaining his need to get out.  No one rules in Hell, he thought sarcastically.  But on Earth, he had been a king, thanks to Sampson and his Nightmare Engine.  

The Engine now stood before in The Entity; it was time to give it another try.  Once again, he entered into the sooty, oily domain of the Nightmare Engine and accessed the subroutines the evil genius Sampson had built into it.  The Engine transcended space, and even the dimensional barriers, and with a shock, The Entity realized he had found himself back where it all began several years ago. This was Stevenson.  This was home.  It was time to say hello…

  

Triumph, Volume 6, Issue 1

16 years ago, Jyoti thought as she walked through the suite overlooking downtown Stevenson, Illinois.  Hard to believe it had been fifteen years since her mentor, Dragonfly, with Cazmonster, White Diamond and the others, had formed a team of young heroes that would come to be known as Triumph.  The team had stayed together through many challenges, battling the diabolic Professor Sampson, the extra-dimensional entity known as The Anti-Man, the secret criminal society The Milan, and even an alien invasion.  

11 years ago, Dragonfly, having moved to Chicago, took her on as his partner, the brash young woman known as Damsel.  Three years later, Jyoti moved to Los Angeles to start her own team of young heroes, Triumph West, which stayed together throughout her college years.  And then, like all the other times, even those had ended.  Jyoti was now in her late 20s, and her life had just taken a turn.  She'd just become a professor of physics here at Central Illinois University.  The place that had started it all.      

This suite wasn't the first headquarters of the group that was initially known as The Infinite Seven, then became Triumph.  In fact, it was the third.  The first was a sealed off section of a residence hall.  There were only a few of them then; Dragonfly, the winged martial artist; White Diamond, the gleaming human laser; Wrecking Ball, the telekinetic powerhouse; Cazmonster, the Cyber-werewolf, and Adept; the mystic.  Then, they'd found the hidden underground base.  A mysterious but convenient elevator linked their college dorm, Langley Hall, to the underground base.  It was during this time that Palisade, Triumph, The American Attitude, and Angela the vampire had joined the group's ranks.  After the destruction of that base during an alien attack, Stephen Chen's father had provided them with this HQ, a suite overlooking Stevenson and CIU.  

The team had grown from here, and the individual members moved on.  And then, it had been shuttered; there was no more "Triumph" in Stevenson, nor seemingly a need for such.  Jyoti sighed as she examined the common room, pushing a cue ball across the table at the 9 ball wistfully.  When Jyoti had arrived in town, it had been easy for her to secure a key; police chief was Barry Stilles, formerly known as The American Attitude, owned it.  The young Indian woman pondered for a brief moment whether or not she was thinking clearly, whether putting on the wings again was the right choice.  That, after all, was the reason for the visit to this suite: to examine its potential as a headquarters for Damsel.  

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There were protests on campus, of course.  Mina had seen these before.  People were always afraid of what they did not understand.  The red-haired young woman was unusually tall, with startling blue eyes and a confident stride that told the world she knew who she was.  She thought briefly about getting involved in the situation, but people had a right to protest, and right now, she had a Victorian Poetry class that wouldn't wait, and she just loved Browning.

A sudden thunder crack behind her told Mina she might be missing that class after all.  Everyone on the quadrangle turned to look as people hit the ground toward the front of the protest.  Some sort of explosive had just gone off, and people were screaming and running all around.  People, except for Mina.

Stepping aside in an alcove of a nearby building, Mina looked to the sky.  She'd bonded with the spirits years ago, long before she'd been called Mina.  Calling upon the spirits of the wind and the oak, the water and the campfire, Mina was transformed; the template of Sidhe, the spirits of nature, formed around her.                

Now cloaked in a "costume" of grey and green (Mina wasn't 100% sure why the representation of ancient Celtic spirits manifested like a superhero costume; she suspected it was her intellect translating the concept into something meaningful to her), Sidhe took to the air.  She rapidly covered the space between the building she stood near and the locus of the bomb, and surveyed the situation from 20' in the air.  She was searching for people who were either in need of urgent help due to being pinned, or people who were injured seriously but looked safe to transport.  Finding a likely individual, she swooped down onto the crowd and picked the solidly built young man up.  

Ironic, Sidhe thought as she returned to the skies and aimed toward the University Hospital, rescuing people protesting against my own rights.  Hearing the people below her yelling for help, Sidhe shouted back, "I'll be back in a minute; I'll make sure ambulances are on the way!"

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Pushing himself to his feet, Will Sutton watched the young woman drift toward the sky with his friend.  An unruly lock of brown hair fell into his youthful face, which was currently covered with dust.    

Of course, Will himself was unhurt.  His elastic powers meant that the explosive had knocked him back like everyone else, but the exploded rock shrapnel had done him no harm, nor had his head been injured by literally bouncing off the pavement.  

Months ago, Will had considered putting his newfound abilities to use as a superhero, but stretchy heroes invariably became jokes on the internet and in the news.  As such, he'd kept his powers hidden, though prepared to use them at a moment's notice.  

Standing and examining the situation, Will looked for a way to help.  There.  A construction crane on the two-story building nearby hung over the crowd.  They'd been lucky it hadn't collapsed onto the protestors.  Will stretched his arm up and over the crane (a distance of 70’ or more), and grabbed a slab of sidewalk that had landed on a couple of the other protestors, his hand stretched out for an extra-large grip surface.  Onlookers watched in shock, but Will knew what he had to do.

"Hey, guys, grab onto my arm!  Help me lift this thing!"  A few of Will's fellow frat brothers, throwing off the pain, and one large African American woman, answered the call.  Grabbing Will's "rope" arm, they pulled with all their might.  The rock barely moved, but it was enough; other onlookers were able to move the injured out from under the rock.  

Will's brothers looked on him in a combination of awe and humor; Will knew he'd never live this down.  But at least he'd helped some people.  Will was busy helping others as best he could when Sidhe returned.  He watched the red-haired young woman lift away one of the injured he'd freed, flying off as the ambulance sirens began to close on the scene.  You had to admire a girl like that, Will thought.  Like to meet her sometime...

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It took Jyoti a few minutes to don the wings and yellow and green costume of Damsel after she heard the explosion, and she felt more than a little out of place doing it.  It had been quite a while, she reflected, and she'd honestly been hoping to avoid a public appearance in costume for the time being. But the situation demanded it.

Jyoti briefly inspected her old costume and sighed.  The design was behind the times, and made for a woman much younger than her.  It still fit, but it didn't "fit" her.  Well, she thought, more on that later.  Damsel grabbed her equipment bag, propped the window to the balcony open, and took to the skies of Stevenson.

It felt amazing to take to the air again!  And here, the birthplace of it all!  Here, where over 15 years ago, Dragonfly, Cazmonster, The Adept, White Diamond, Angela the Vampire, and Palisade had first formed a group called The Infinite Seven!  A group that would eventually change its name to Triumph, after its first member to fall in battle.  As she streaked toward an unknown situation, the hesitance Jyoti felt was outweighed by the exhilaration.