Author: linkmaxwell
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Paragon City was now in Hour 15 of the Council Crisis, as it was now being called. Although it was now late at night, the city's valiant heroes still fought to restore law and order against the tide of chaos that was roaming the streets. Although the fighting between the 5th Column and this strange new organization had originally made other villain groups retreat to fortified locations, the rival gangs had become bolder. Now, looting and destruction were becoming even more widespread. Reports ranging from Skulls and Hellions engaging in running gun battles through the alleyways of King's Row to Dreck, himself, leading a mob of Freakshow on a looting spree through Brickstown were coming in. Meanwhile, rescue efforts were reporting that the numbers of 5th Column soldiers was slowly dwindling. It seemed inevitable that this "Council" would eventually come out the victor in this contest.
The inside of City Hall was a scene of absolute chaos. Thermablaze was constantly being pushed and jostled by the various Hero liasons and City workers that were moving information from the myriad Response Teams to the planners in the offices. Cell communications had blacked out five hours after she had arrived at Atlas Park. For the past eight hours, then, reports were made using military-grade radio equipment set up at each checkpoint around Paragon.
To make a bad situation even worse, heroes were still disappearing. Hospital records were showing that almost a quarter of all heroes who activated their emergency teleportation devices were failing to make it to the nearest hospitals. Experts from all over the city had been called in to examine this chilliing phenomenon, while an emergency broadcast had been sent to all checkpoints, telling heroes to disable their teleportation systems temporarily. This decision came after many agonizing hours of debate, and could put large portions of the hero population at risk. Still, the possiblity of capture of heroes for unknown reasons was eventually decided to be the greater of two evils, and heroes were now manually rushed to the hospitals.
Thermablaze was getting tired of all of this. In the past day, she had managed to grab only a quick sandwich. Her computer had a map of all the Triumphant Heroes' locations, and it was her responisbility to not only keep the city aware of them, but to also send messages to her team when they reported in. From what she had heard, the team was going pretty strong. Father Nature had been shot earlier in the day, but the bullet missed all vital organs. He had been taken to the hospital, and was back on the streets already. Alchemist's team didn't have much to report on, but they had already set up a base camp of their own in the Gaspee, underneath one of the canal tunnels. She didn't have any doubt that Darkpool was behind this tactical maneuver.
Although her job was necissary, Thermablaze still felt that her abilities could be put to use better out there... with her teammates. What happened next, then, was a godsend-in-disguise.
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Brid yawned as she looked at her watch. Noting the time, she reluctantly got out of her warm sleeping bag. The only light in the tent came from a lantern Krygon had managed to scavenge in a Council base they had raided earlier that day. In fact, most of the equipment at their makeshift camp had been "liberated" from that raid. Although she didn't think that they would be out long enough to need it, Darkpool had cautioned the team that this might be a long strech in the field, and they should have a safe place to rest and refit for each raid. Alchemist eventually agreed with the ninja, and they had set up a tent in a tunnel under a block of apartments. Darkpool said that this was where he usually met with a contact code-named "Agent 6."
The camp had managed to attract the attention of the Golbal Heroics Supergroup, who had also moved to make the tunnel an unofficial headquarters.
Darkpool poked his masked head into the tent, derailing her train of thought.
"Ready to go?" he asked, the phrase sounding more like a statement than a questing.
"Can't a girl get any privacy?" she jokingly replied, even though they had taken to resting in full costume.
"Sorry, Bride, no time for formality. Krygon has something big, and Alchemist wants us to go as backup. Mr. Madagascar here," he said, motioning to the GH hero currently reading a paperback novel, "will watch the camp."
Brid reluctantly nodded and crawled out of the tent. Within a minute, the team was making its way to Krygon's location.
While Brid and Alchemist took to the skies, Darkpool managed to use his incredible acrobatic skills to jump from windowledge-to-windowledge, swinging from flagpoles, and using the entire terrain as a large jungle-gym. In all the time she had known the ninja, it never ceased to impress her that all of Darkpool's skills were natural, that this was a person at the peak of physical performance.
It was only a few seconds before she saw him hit by a red ball of plasma. Instantly, she stopped her flight and screamed out loud as she watch Darkpool's body fall 15 stories and hit the ground with a sickening thud. Both Brid and Alchemist raced to their comrade. As Brid started to put her hand on Darkpool's body, to use her healing energies to keep him alive, the culprits came around the corner of the apartment building. Four massive Council robots stood with cannons pointed at the heroes. Before either Alchemist or Brid could react, the robots opened fire. As Brid started to loose conciousness, she overheard one of their attackers reporting in...
"TARGET NEUTRALIZED. SECONDARY TARGETS NEUTRALIZED. PREPARING FOR EXTRACTION."
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