The Hangman who had caught Marcus swung the rope end of the noose toward Water. He froze as it touched his neck, the rope tying itself into a second noose. However quickly he thought he could change, Water ended up in human form.
They’d taken us all out.
Well, all of us except me, and I’d decided to pretend otherwise. With any luck I’d get some useful information and maybe get the chance to surprise them.
Continue reading In the Public Eye: Part 55
Legion HQ felt full. Three of the four Elementals plus Future Knight, Red Bolt, and Tomahawk were sleeping on the floor. All of the new League (except Vaughn and Marcus) plus Jaclyn’s grandfather, Larry, and Mindstryke, Daniel’s dad.
Mindstryke had showed up just after we’d all sat down at the main table. He looked tired.
“I had to settle my dad down. He thought it was 1965 and the original League was still fighting Red Lightning. I didn’t know he still had one.” He held a ring in his hand. The gem flickered.
Continue reading In the Public Eye: Part 47
I stood.
Not far from where the others were stuck to the street, Daniel, Haley, and Marcus were fighting Water and doing about as well as they would fighting a puddle.
Haley stood in the middle of the road, directly in front of the elemental. Marcus stood just behind her, having shifted into a vaguely demonic shape complete with batwings and wide blades instead of hands. Daniel stood on the sidewalk.
Haley slashed the humanoid’s middle, leaving ripples, but no wound. She ducked a punch then flipped backward, allowing Daniel to take a shot.
Continue reading In the Public Eye: Part 46
My grandfather’s property (and that of all the neighbors on his side of the block) went up to the edge of Veterans Memorial Park. I followed the chain link fence that separated private property from city property.
I slowed down as I got closer to where I’d seen the shot. No point in running into somebody’s line of fire.
Three houses away from my grandfather’s house, I heard Daniel in my head.
Nick. Stop.
I stopped.
Continue reading In the Public Eye: Part 44
Kids don’t really know adults. What I remembered of Jaclyn’s grandfather from the picnics was a man who spent a lot more time laughing, telling funny stories, and coaxing me into racing Jaclyn. I think I only ever won one race. He gave me a forty-nine foot head start out of fifty feet and even then it was a near thing.
As a crimefighter though, he had the old school, “fight the criminals, and run from the cops” approach.
Continue reading In the Public Eye: Part 42
As I ran toward the table in the middle of the main room, I wondered just what else putting HQ on high security did. What if it sent an alert to other hero groups? I didn’t feel like explaining all this to Guardian or the Midwest Defenders.
Glancing at the screen, I saw Travis, Haley, Marcus and Cassie crouched at the forest entrance, in costume and looking nervous.
Continue reading In the Public Eye: Part 41
Having watched the recording, I understood why the mayor had slipped under everybody’s radar for so long. We had video right here of him planting commands into the brains of an entire team of heroes while simultaneously having almost no evidence of it.
The fact that everybody had stopped and started talking on his cue pointed in that direction, but not inarguably. It was purely circumstantial evidence.
Continue reading In the Public Eye: Part 38
“Looks pretty bad, doesn’t it?” Vaughn said. “You’d never believe it, but my grandfather’s personal stuff never burned.”
“It must be the only thing that didn’t,” I said.
A layer of dark soot seemed to be everywhere, mixed with bits that crunched when I stepped on them.
“Nah,” Vaughn said, “The side tunnels didn’t burn. That’s where I found the stuff that I handed over. Let’s go.”
“Why are we going this way then?”
“The tunnel I used to go through collapsed during the rainstorms we got near the end of August. This is the only other one I know about,” Vaughn said.
I couldn’t see anything. Was I supposed to go down there and locate the gun by the flash from its muzzle? If I was lucky, the gun was fixed and capable of firing in only one direction. If I was unlucky, it had the ability to track targets. My armor did well against bullets, but I didn’t feel much of an urge to test its limits.
Continue reading In the Public Eye: Part 32
Hardwick House sat on a hill near the middle of downtown. It began, not especially humbly, as an enormous mansion back when Percival Hardwick made his fortune as a lumber baron. His heirs added on to it in a peculiar mixture of styles. The first section used the thin spires and intricate woodwork of the Gothic style. A later addition to the house had added an eight story tower and the extensive stonework of the Medieval Revival style. The final section of the house had been added in the late 1920’s — six, flat roofed stories, each story less wide than the story below. The final story ended in the shape of an Egyptian pyramid.
Impressively hideous, it absorbed almost half a city block when you included the grounds.
Continue reading In the Public Eye: Part 31