Eyrie Productions, Unlimited presents CITY OF HEROES: Starting Over (Revised Version) Benjamin D. Hutchins Based on "City of Heroes" by Cryptic Studios and NCSoft Excerpts from "Ulysses" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (c) 2004, 2008 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited THURSDAY, MAY 25, 2002 PARAGON CITY, RHODE ISLAND Paragon City was in chaos. The city had seen troubles before, of course; as one of the nation's busiest hubs of superhuman activity, it seemed to be constantly under siege by one villainous factor or another. In all previous cases, though, the city's many costumed heroes were equal to the task of holding the danger at bay. Citizens were often inconvenienced, but rarely were the hardships they faced serious. People living on the hurricane-prone Florida coast or in the Midwest's Tornado Alley routinely faced bigger problems from the -weather-. This time was different. This time the enemy came from a completely unexpected direction, in such numbers and with such power that Paragon's heroes seemed helpless to halt their advance. The alien invaders called the Rikti were tearing the city apart, and their wake was littered with the remains of heroes who had tried to stop them and paid the final price for their efforts. Adam Banks sat in the living room of his small apartment in Kings Row, watching the invasion unfold on his television set with a feeling of dull, detached horror. Banks was an old man - he'd turn 97 in June - and he'd seen the city weather storms, even invasions, before. He knew in his bones that this one was different. " - thorities are urging all citizens to report to their designated underground shelters," the face on the television was saying while footage of the aliens devastating Independence Port played in the corner of the screen. "The Statesman has requested that any heroes not already involved in battling the aliens do not engage them independently. Instead, all heroes who are able should report to Atlas Plaza to be made emergency members of the Freedom Phalanx. We go live to City Hall now for the Statesman's comments." The screen fuzzed for a moment, and then the girl's face was replaced by the familiar hoplite's helmet of the Statesman. Even through the eyeholes of the helmet, Banks could see that the man - Paragon City's greatest living hero - was tired. That shocked the old man a little. Statesman hadn't even looked tired after the Freedom Phalanx drove back the Moon Men in '86. "Mayor Morales and I have agreed to a general amnesty for the city's at-large supervillains and unsanctioned vigilantes," the hero announced. "I call upon them now to join Paragon's heroes in driving back this invasion. All of our lives are at stake and millions more. The Rikti attack reveals all of our previous rivalries and enmities for the trivial matters they are." Statesman looked straight at the camera, his eyes intense, his voice even graver than usual, as he said, "Anyone with superpowers or special equipment within the sound of my voice, -please- come to City Hall at once. Paragon City needs -all- of her champions if she is to survive this onslaught." Another brief burst of static - WPCC was letting the production values slide a bit, under the circumstances - returned the anchorwoman to the screen. "That was the Statesman, speaking live from City Hall in a call to all the city's remaining parahumans. All ordinary citizens should report immediately to their designated shelters - " Banks switched off the television and sat looking at its blank screen for a moment. "Well," he said to himself, "here's your choice, Banks. Are you an ordinary citizen?" He looked down at his hands, wrinkled and age-spotted but still straight and strong. He'd been extremely lucky, he knew. He looked twenty, -thirty- years younger than he was. His mind was still as sharp as ever, and his body wasn't what it had been, but it was still a hell of a lot more than a lot of people who made it to the age of 97 had to work with. "'Though we are not now that force which moved Heaven and Earth, that which we are, we are,'" he murmured to himself. Then he got up and went to his bedroom closet. Ms. Liberty, sidekick to the Statesman and another of Paragon's most instantly recognizable heroes in her own right, stood beneath the huge statue of Atlas taking names. "The Black Destroyer," said the beefy young man before her. Under normal circumstances, Liberty might have rolled her eyes. She wasn't an old woman by any stretch - indeed, she had some way to go before she was out of her teens - but she -was- a rather old-fashioned sort when it came to the hero game, and the names and looks the kids were coming up with nowadays sometimes made her feel older than she was. Now, however, was not the time for pangs of existential angst. "Powers?" she asked briskly. "Come on, kid, we haven't got time for the marketing routine," she added as the Black Destroyer started to flex his prodigious muscles. "Just tell me what you do." The Destroyer blinked, cowed by the force of her personality. "Uh... super-strength and invulnerability, ma'am," he said meekly. She nodded, then pointed to one of the groups mustering at a corner of the statue platform. "Group C, with the Back Alley Brawler. Move it!" "Yes, ma'am!" the Destroyer said, earning a tad of respect from her - he was a punk in leather pants, but he knew how to snap to when he had to. He even saluted before running over to join the tanker group. "Name?" she asked the next one in line, a girl in not very much red spandex. "Firestreak!" the petite redhead replied. "Mutation Blaster with fire powers, Security Level Four!" Liberty cracked the faintest hint of a smile. "Security levels don't mean much today, kid," she said. "You're with Positron in Group A," she added, pointing. "Roger that!" Firestreak replied, dashing toward the golden-armored hero and his growing task force. "Name?" Ms. Liberty asked of the next hero in line before she turned to look at him. Once she did, she was startled by what she saw. In the brightly-colored, leather-clad, spandex-bedecked chaos that was Atlas Plaza today, the hero who stood before her now was a stark anachronism: a tall, thin man in an old-fashioned silvery-grey business suit, cuffed trousers, black dress shoes, white shirt, black necktie, the works. He had a long grey cloak thrown back over his shoulders, and a grey scarf covered his face up to his nose. His eyes, too, were hidden by a pair of goggles with round green lenses. On his head he wore a broad-brimmed duster hat. On the left breast of his suitjacket was embroidered a logo Ms. Liberty hadn't seen in a long time, a stylized icon of the scales of Justice. Bowing deeply, he said in a smooth, dark voice, "The Silver Spectre, at your service." Ms. Liberty's cornflower-blue eyes went wide. She almost blurted his name - his real name - out loud before catching herself and leaning close. "Adam!" she whispered. "What are you doing?!" "Marcus said it himself," Banks replied. "Paragon needs all her champions." "Adam, please," Ms. Liberty said. "You've been retired for decades. You're an old man." "Dammit, Liberty, I'm not going to cower in a bomb shelter while aliens tear my city apart!" Banks hissed, his hushed voice full of emotion. "I can't let you go out there," Ms. Liberty said firmly. "You'll get killed." "'Death closes all, but something ere the end, some work of noble note, may yet be done; not unbecoming men that strove with gods,'" Banks replied. "If it's my time, it's my time. I can think of a lot of worse ways to go." Seeing that she was hesitating, he leaned a little closer, fixed her eyes with the gaze of his green goggles, and added, "You can't ask me to stand by and do nothing while my city's invaded. Think of where we are!" Ms. Liberty opened her mouth as if to retort, then glanced up at the huge statue towering over them. Atlas. A founding member of the Paragon City Justice Guild; one of the city's greatest Golden Age heroes, who fought alongside the likes of Megan Duncan's grandmother Monica Richter, the original Maiden Justice... and this man right here before her, the once-legendary Silver Spectre, whose jacket still bore the Guild's famous scales. Mighty Atlas... who died in 1941 defending Paragon City from another invasion, one that came from across a sea of water rather than one of stars. She hung her head with a deep, woeful sigh. "... Group D," she said in a small, wretched voice. "Adam... be careful." The Silver Spectre smiled, just a little, though a person who didn't know him as well as Ms. Liberty - a person who hadn't grown up knowing him as "Uncle Adam" - wouldn't have spotted it. "Today's not a day for careful men, Meg," he said, and then turned and strode toward the group of heroes forming around the feline heroine called Mynx. Kids these days. Ms. Liberty stood looking after him a moment, marveling at the upright confidence in the old man's stride. He already knew he's going to get killed, she told herself. He's accepted it... "Ms. Liberty?" said the next hero in line, giving the red-and-blue-clad heroine a look of concern. "Are you OK?" Liberty snapped back to what she was doing. "Uh, yes. Sorry. I was just... thinking. Your name?" "The Spitting Cobra!" ... Sigh. "Silver Spectre?" Mynx said quietly as she and the other heroes of her group crouched behind a shattered brick wall in Galaxy City. "Yes?" the Spectre replied. "I just want you to know... it's a real honor working with you," the tiger-striped heroine said. "Ever since I joined the Freedom Phalanx, I've been hearing about the original members of the Justice Guild. Statesman says that even with the Phalanx, the city wouldn't have survived without the Guild. I've come up hearing stories about you, and the Scarlet Sultan, and all the rest." The Silver Spectre smiled. "Thanks," he said. Then, shaking his head, he added, "No offense, Mynx, but I sure wish the Sultan were here now. We could really use his help." Mynx grinned. "None taken - but I think you'll find we've got his niche filled pretty well." Becoming businesslike, she turned to the brick-red-clad young man next to her and said, "Phlogiston, are you ready?" "Just say the word," Phlogiston replied. "OK. Just like we planned it on the holotable," Mynx said. She turned in place, polling the other members of her task force with her eyes. Everyone nodded. Mynx turned back to the wall, peeked above it, and gauged the progress of the approaching Rikti scouting party. They had to keep the invaders away from Freedom Court, where the headquarters of the Freedom Corps was being used as an extension to the nearby hospital. By ambushing their scouting parties down here in the Constellation Row warehouse district, the heroes of Mynx's group might keep the main body of the alien force from realizing the region's importance. "Ready... " Mynx said, holding up a hand. Then she swept the hand down and cried, "GO!" The plan worked. With the Rikti scouting parties cut off and wiped out, the main Rikti force was unaware of Freedom Court's importance until the Corps was able to reinforce the area so heavily that it would have taken a full-scale assault to penetrate it. With even their colossal forces already stretched thin trying to take the whole city, the aliens put the area on their low-priority list and left it alone... thereby sparing hundreds of thousands of human lives. The plan worked... but the cost was high. Mynx sat on the front steps of Freedom Corps Headquarters, bloodied and filthy after the day's almost endless fighting. So many dead... Phlogiston cut down by a burst from one of the aliens' plasma weapons as he struggled to keep them all encircled within his ring of flame... Razorflash shot out of the sky as she dove on their central group... Triggerman's rifle exploding in his face, dousing him in the fuel of his own flamethrower. So many. She looked down at her hands, as dirty and bloody as the rest of her, with the aliens' ichor crusted on her claws. In one of them, she held a pair of goggles with a crack across one green lens. A huge, burly black man with dreadlocks and metal gauntlets came out of the building, tramped up next to Mynx, and sat down. "Hey," he said. She turned her head. "Oh... Brawler, hey," she said. "Whatcha got there?" the Back Alley Brawler asked, then realized the answer to his own question. "Oh. He didn't make it, huh." "He wasn't afraid," Mynx said, not really as a reply, in a small voice. "He was old and tired, not as fast as he was, not as strong as he was... most of his skills were gone... no one would have blamed him if he had just reported to the shelters with everyone else. But... he just wasn't afraid. He wasn't afraid to face them. He wasn't afraid... to die." She closed her hand on the broken goggles. "He saved my life." The Back Alley Brawler raised an eyebrow. "Oh?" Mynx nodded. "One of them stunned me. Those damn plasma rifles they carry. It stunned me, and then closed in. I guess it wanted to finish me off with its hands. I could see it coming, but I couldn't move, couldn't get my head together enough to do anything... and then... he just -appeared-, standing in its path. He'd lost his hat, his cloak was in tatters, his costume was filthy... but... he was the most incredible thing. Just standing there, with his fists on his hips, like he was stopping an ordinary mugging. "'That's far enough, pal,' he said, and the thing... snarled at him, the way they do... and went after him instead of me." "And killed him." "No," Mynx said. "He beat it. He -beat- it, with his -bare hands-. It wasn't pretty, and it wasn't fancy... but when it was all over, he was standing and the alien wasn't. Did you know he was -97 years old-? My God, what he must have been like in his prime... " She trailed off, looking down at the marble steps by her feet. "Then one of the others got past Blockhouse and shot him. He didn't even see it coming. He was turning to me to ask if I was all right, and... pow." She bounced the fractured goggles once in her hand. "He was alive when I got him back here, but... nobody ever recovers from injuries like that." The Back Alley Brawler put one big armored paw gently on her shoulder. "A lot of good heroes have died today," he said. "And this city will remember every one." Mynx nodded, tears tracking the grime on her face. "I know," she said. "But... to fight alongside a member of the -Justice Guild-, and have him die saving my life... " The Brawler nodded. "Yeah. It's tough." "How's... how's Megan taking it?" "Pretty well, considering." The white-coated young doctor jumped back, eyes wide, as the young woman in red and blue overturned a heavy slab of rubble that he had been using as an impromptu operating table as though it were a toy. "Now you listen to me, Doctor," Ms. Liberty said, her blue eyes boring into the doctor's slightly widened black ones. "That man is one of the greatest heroes of all time, and you are -not- going to just stand there and let him die. Not on my watch!" "Please, Ms. Liberty, be reasonable," Dr. Maxim Netrinov replied in his faint Russian accent. He wasn't frightened. It took a lot to frighten Netrinov; a genuine child prodigy who was now barely older than the teenage heroine confronting him, he was a pioneering figure in superhuman trauma medicine in this, the most traumatic of cities, and anyway, he knew Ms. Liberty very well. She'd never hurt him, or damage any important piece of gear, but once she got going she might knock over a few heavy objects nobody needed for anything. "Be -reasonable-?!" Liberty shot back. "Mr. Ba - er - the Silver Spectre's injuries are fatal. There's no averting that. If he'd received them in a car crash or a fall down some stairs, he'd be just as doomed. I'm sorry he fell in the defense of Paragon, but he's far from alone in that, and others in that group can be saved. By attempting to treat him, I'd just be prolonging things for him and taking resources away from others who would stand a better chance of surviving." Ms. Liberty glared at him, knowing he was right but unable to accept it. It would've been one thing if Adam had just died out there, like scores of others, but he hadn't - he was still alive, however faintly. Losing him in battle would have been hard, but letting him slip away in a place of safety was just too much for her to bear. Turning, she noticed a silver cylinder standing in the middle of what had been the Freedom Corps lobby, next to the statue of Nebula Woman. "What about that thing?" she asked, pointing. "The Rikti machine Captain Wonder brought in?" the doctor said, his eyebrows rising. "We don't have the faintest idea how it works. Reports from the field indicate that they do wonders for the Rikti, but we're not even sure what its -power source- is, let alone how it would react to humans." His dark eyes twinkled with merriment Ms. Liberty couldn't help but find slightly annoying, even though she knew full well that Netrinov's Russian temperament was well-suited to finding humor in the darkest situations. "But I'm certainly game to give it a shot, and it's not as if his situation can get much worse." Ms. Liberty looked from it to the makeshift bed where the Silver Spectre lay, pallid and broken. Would Adam want me to take this kind of risk with him? she asked herself, but before she even finished the thought she knew the answer. "Let's do it," she said. WEDNESDAY, JULY 28, 2004 The first thing that came to Adam Banks's mind when he regained consciousness was the old line about whether anybody got the number of the truck. Instead of saying it, though, he raised his head up and tried to figure out where he was. Wherever it was, it wasn't the wrecked streets of Constellation Row. In fact, it looked - and smelled - like a hospital room. He listened, but heard nothing of the chaos and confusion he would have expected in a hospital during a major alien invasion. There was no one else in the room, either, which didn't make any sense. Surely every hospital room in the city must be piled six deep at a time like this. After a few seconds, the room's door opened and a nurse looked in. When she saw Banks sitting up in bed and looking back at her, she gasped, dropping the clipboard she carried. Without saying anything to him, she turned and ran down the hall. "Doctor Paransky! DOCTOR!" After an hour or so of medical poking, prodding, and fussing, during which nobody answered a single one of Banks's questions, he was informed that he had visitors. The visitors turned out to be a couple of women in garish costumes, which was par for the course in Paragon hospitals. Still, when superheroines visited people in the hospital, they usually weren't members of the Vindicators, as the formerly junior members of the Freedom Phalanx had become known after the war. "I can't believe it," Mynx said, her eyes misting up. "You actually pulled through." Banks grinned. "It'll take more than some bug-eyed alien to put me down for good," he said, but they both knew it was bravado. He was well aware that he'd come damn close to checking out. In fact, when he'd hit the street, he hadn't expected ever to wake up again, at least not in this world... but here he was. "I never thought I'd get a chance to do this," the striped heroine went on, smiling. "Do wha - " Banks started to ask, but then he was too busy getting kissed. "Thanks for saving my life," she said when she released him. He blinked at her for a moment, then regained his aplomb and grinned again. "Any time," he said. Ms. Liberty didn't kiss him (which was just as well; too many weird associations there), but she did give him a hug and call him a crazy old fool, which he appreciated. "Not so much any more," Mynx pointed out with a little smirk. Banks raised an eyebrow. "What're you talking about?" he asked. "You haven't seen yourself yet?" she asked, surprised. "Go see! Go see!" she said when he shook his head with a baffled look. She pointed him at the bathroom. He got out of bed, surprised by how steady he felt - heck, he hadn't felt -this- good in -years-, since well before he got blasted by the Rikti - and then caught sight of his arms and hands. They looked... -wrong- somehow. No - not wrong - they looked... He all but lunged into the bathroom, then drew up short when he saw himself in the mirror. The man looking back at him was a tall, broad-shouldered, lean but powerfully muscled man with the bearing of a fighter. He had a chiseled face with a strong chin, an aristocratic nose, and keen blue eyes. Except for his snow-white hair, there was nothing about his appearance to indicate that he could've been more than 25 years old. Adam Banks stared disbelievingly at a version of his face he'd last seen at the start of World War II. Ms. Liberty and Mynx went to the bathroom doorway. "You look just like Grandma's old snapshot of you," the former observed. "Except for the hair." "What in Sam Hill... ?" Banks wondered. "The doctors... didn't think you were going to make it," Mynx explained. "Ms. Liberty convinced them to test a captured Rikti healing machine on you. You stabilized, then went into a coma... and here you are." Banks turned to look at the two heroines. "How long was I out?" "More than two years," Ms. Liberty told him. "Today is July 28, 2004." "The invasion?" "Over. The Dawn Patrol came over from England a few days after you went down. Between that and the way Marcus banded together Paragon's superhumans, we were able to drive them back, though it took months even then." "How many lost?" She glanced down. "Too many," she said. "You and Mynx were the only survivors from her group. Me, Marcus, the Brawler, Valkyrie, Positron, Blue Steel, a few others... we're all that's left. Hero 1 of the Vanguard led the group that went through the portal to the Rikti homeworld and shut it down. He... he didn't make it out. None of them did." Banks nodded gravely. "I knew Neville in passing," he said. "A good man. I'm not surprised he'd do that." He sighed. "And the city?" "Rebuilding," Mynx said. "We try to keep a veneer of normality on it for the public's sake, but it's really still a war zone, especially outside the government district. Superpowered gangs, old villains back to their old tricks, new maniacs... it's never been like this. We've got a -flood- of new heroes, but they're all... well, -new-. I've never -seen- so many rookies in Paragon before, and there are only a few of us senior heroes left to train them." "And of course the Rikti are still out there," Ms. Liberty added. "We blunted their invasion, but there's no way we got them all. They're lying low... for now... but they'll be back." Banks nodded. "Then we'll have to be ready for them," he said. Then, seeming to notice that he was wearing one of those hospital smocks with no back, he added, "What does a guy have to do to get some clothes around here?" Ms. Liberty stood in one of the holographic playback rooms at Freedom Corps Headquarters, conferring with a man in the colorful uniform of a Freedom Corps superhero trainer. "I'm sorry, Ms. Liberty," he said, shaking his head. "That's the best I can do." She nodded. "I understand. It was to be expected. Thanks, Jeff." "No problem." She turned and left the room, then headed down the hall to a conference room. "You don't have to say anything," said Adam Banks, still dressed in the Freedom Corps warmup suit he'd been issued. "I know it myself, who better? I was terrible. I've lost almost everything I used to have. My head still remembers what to do, but my muscle memory's all but gone." With a rueful chuckle, he added, "And why shouldn't it? They're practically new muscles, after all." Ms. Liberty nodded. "I'm sorry, Adam. There's just no way I can put you out on the street at anything like your old security level. Not in this condition. Maybe if you train for a year or two... " "Paragon doesn't need me in a year or two, she needs me now," Banks replied. "I agree, you can't put me out there at my old level in the shape I'm in. I'm no better than a rookie. So treat me like one. Reactivate my license at Security Level 1 and let me earn my spurs again. I'm game for it. I want to -do something-. You can't ask me to sit around home, especially now that I've got such a -chance- staring me in the face." Ms. Liberty stared at him. "You're willing to start all over again from -nothing-?" "Why not? I'm a new man, after all," Banks said with a grin. "Well said, Adam," another voice interjected. Liberty turned to see the familiar blue-and-red costume of the Statesman. "Good to see you again," said the city's top hero, crossing the room and extending a hand. "I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to see you when you came out of retirement." "Hello, Marcus," Banks replied, standing and shaking the Statesman's hand. "Don't be. I can't have been much to see - a crazy old man bent on getting himself killed." "That's not how Katherine tells it," the Statesman said with a grin. "Look, if you're serious about starting over, we'll make it happen for you. It's the least we can do. Right, Megan?" Ms. Liberty smiled. "Who am I to countermand the Statesman?" she asked. Statesman chuckled, then tilted his head as his helmet radio brought him a message. "Oh, damn," he said. "I have to go. It's great to have you back on the active list, Adam. I'm sure I'll see you around town." Banks grinned. "Count on it," he said. Once he was gone, he turned a more personal smile to Ms. Liberty. "Did you really think I'd sulk about having to start over?" She chuckled. "Well, it won't be easy," she said. "I know -I- wouldn't want to do it." "Trust me," Banks told her, "if you were in my position, it'd beat the alternative." Another figure appeared in the doorway. "Your gear's ready, hero," said Mynx with a smile. The Silver Spectre emerged from the fitting room with his scarf down around his neck and a smile on his face. He'd been given the option of going with a whole new look for his new career, but why change something that worked so well the first time? Granted, the new suit only -looked- like his old duds. Under the Golden Age styling, it was cutting-edge. It was made of materials that resisted staining to an astonishing degree and equipped with the full range of amenities granted to every licensed hero in post-invasion Paragon, including a multi-band radio communicator and a Medicom unit, a small device which monitored its wearer's vital signs and would teleport him immediately to a Rikti-technology-based reconstitution unit in the nearest hospital should he fall in battle. "No two-year coma with these units," Ms. Liberty assured him with a smile. "Your case helped the science boys work out a lot of the bugs. In a way, you made these units possible." "For which every hero in Paragon has cause to thank you," Mynx added with a wry grin. "Apart from that, you've got your ID card, the instruction manual for your multicomm, and a copy of the FBSA's regulation guide. It's pretty much the same set of rules you remember, with a few new changes," Ms. Liberty noted. "Mm. Shame they've outlawed jumplines. It's going to be tough getting around the rooftops in Kings Row without them." "They're so tricky to use," Liberty said. "Too many young heroes were turning themselves to street pizza trying to get around like the Black Bat." The Spectre nodded. "Well, I'll make do. How do I look?" "Like a figure from a storybook," she said with a grin. Mynx stepped forward and extended a hand. Hanging from her fingers by its strap was a pair of green-lensed goggles. "I had these fixed for you," she said. The Spectre smiled, took off his hat, fitted the goggles on, and put his hat back on. "I thought something was missing," he said. "Doc Decoy made these during the War, y'know, to replace my original pair. Back then, night-vision optics this small were right out of a pulp science fiction magazine. Today, I imagine the kids all have 'em implanted in their eyeballs," he added wryly. "Grand-dad has asked heroes below Security Level 20 not to wear capes in honor of Hero 1," Ms. Liberty said, "but I could probably get him to make an exception for you." The Spectre shook his head. "no special treatment for me, Meg. I'll earn my cloak back, just like I'll earn the right to rebuild the Justice Guild. Unless you kids don't think this town is big enough for the Guild -and- the Phalanx?" he added with an arch little smile. Ms. Liberty laughed. "It'll be an honor," she said. Then, sobering, she added, "Good luck out there, Adam. It's great to have you back." "Keep in touch," Mynx said. "I'd love to work with you again once you're back up to speed, assuming I'm not too busy training all the kids," she added. "You guys will be seeing me pretty regularly," he said. "After all, I have to come see one of you to log my security promotions." "That's true. Well, I hope to see you soon and often, then. And hey - call me if you feel like some downtime, too. I know some great restaurants in Skyway City." The Silver Spectre chuckled, then drew up his scarf to hide his face. "I'll do that," he said, and his voice was different - lower-pitched and a bit hushed. It was a trick a lot of modern heroes didn't bother with any more. "In the meantime," he went on, "it's time I got started teaching some lessons of my own." Mynx glanced at Ms. Liberty, who just smiled at her. "What lessons?" Mynx asked - but when she turned back, the Silver Spectre was gone. "... Wow," she said after a second's befuddled blinking. "I guess he hasn't lost -all- his skills... " That night, a pair of young toughs from the Hellions gang cornered a young woman in a business suit in the alley behind the Up-N-Away Burger across from Atlas Plaza. Paradoxically, this area, one of the hubs of heroic activity in town, was also one of the relatively few places in which low-grade thugs from the gang that controlled Paragon's east side felt free to roam. There were a lot of heroes in Atlas Plaza - but they were usually too busy training or networking or even having friggin' superhero -raves- to go out and stop muggings in the streets around City Hall. "No, please, let me go!" the woman - a lawyer or maybe an accountant, judging by her neat blue suit and leather briefcase - pleaded. "Sorry, lady," one of the Hellions sneered. "I want what you've got." "You're going to wish you'd let her go," a voice said. The Hellions looked at each other, then glanced around the alley. "Who said that?" one of them said. "It's a mask!" the other cried, pointing. A tall figure in a suit and hat stood on the fire escape above them, arms folded, gazing balefully down at them with two round, glowing green eyes. "Tell the other punks you see in jail to watch out for me," he said. "I'm not going to jail!" one of them snarled, drawing a Bowie knife out of his vest. "Yes," the man in the suit replied, "you are." Then he vaulted the fire escape railing, dropped down between them and their intended victim, and immediately flattened the knife-wielder with a swift and powerful standing kick to the head. The other dropped back and hauled out a sawed-off shotgun. "I take you down and I'm -somebody-," he gloated, then raised the weapon and fired. The man in the suit slipped out of the blast's path like moonlight. Before the Hellion could correct his aim or even really register where he'd gone, he was smashing a punch into the gang member's face with a fist like a sledgehammer, then rocking back on one leg in a martial-arts stance. Before the Hellion could figure out what was going on, he was engulfed in a storm of kicks, the heel of the silver-clad man's dress shoe smacking into him again and again from one side and the other, battering him almost senseless. He got off one more blast, and then the man in the suit dropped into that standing kick again and laid him out him like a cast-off sack of oats. The man stood over the two fallen gangsters for a moment, then turned to their intended victim. "It's OK, ma'am," he said politely. "You're safe now." "I've - I've never met a hero before," she replied, flustered. "What are you called?" He bowed to her with a flourish and said, "The Silver Spectre, at your service." She finished gathering her wits and smoothing her suit, regained some of her poise, and smiled at him. "Nice costume," she said, and went on her way. The Spectre stood and watched her get to her car, then chuckled and melted back into the night. It was going to be a long, hard road, starting over from almost nothing... but that had been a decent start. It was good to be back. THE END