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.
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