by The Eurostar
The sky is a deep blue dome, the sea green as jade, and the palms dance in the breeze, while Grissom Montag does his daily workout on the strip that joins the Complex to the outskirts of Puerta Mibela. In less than one hour, the memorial function for his fallen teammate Chance will begin, and he doesn't want to be late. But first, he will have to do his routine check over the security system of the Complex.
As he jogs toward the Vanguard Headquarters, the sight of a tall, curly haired woman standing next to a Ferrari with an obvious flat tire warms him up. He take a look at his wristwatch and smiles. There is still plenty of time.
The instant of stillness, surprise, and fear for the Vanguardians lasts for just that amount of time, one instant. Suddenly, all the Vanguard members jump at the four Leviathan clones.
Grimm, the death avatar, field leader in the absence of Danny Hearn, charges at the nearest of the reptilian giants, hammering his double-headed axe like mad. Banshee, Brianna Finnula, takes flight, waving her big, white wings fast, and screaming her deafening cry at the sight of another monster. Priest, firing a torrent of bullets from his guns, runs toward another of the big lizards, ready to come into contact with the beast to steal its energy. Ozzy Baxter runs, heading down toward the fourth, ready to hammer it with his nigh-invulnerable body. Drake Marshall switches places with the otherdimensional dragon, Drax, who roars at the sight of the Leviathans, ready to scar them with his long claws. Tayden, the fallen angel, sends peaceful, calming thoughts to the brains of the beasts. Adem Different, the alien detective, directs the other people gathered for the funeral, like Leslie Kline, Dr. Henry Quantos, Shirley Francis, and Charley Montoya, to safety.
Phil Smith, the meta-agent with telepathic abilities, simply stops and begins to watch the battle, puzzled. The charge of the Vanguardians is powerful as they fall over the four monsters like furies, but to no avail. The beasts aren't affected by anything, not the axe, not the cry, not the claws, not the gun-blasts, nor the sheer impact of an indestructible body. Phil frowns, and watches the beast's answer.
The monsters' tails wave in the air like whips, sending the Vanguardians scattering all over the cemetery. Then they begin to run, roaring madly in a big, frightening display, frightening and useless. They have fangs, they have claws, but they don't use them.
Phil nods and yells, "They're fake! They have no brains patterns. THEY DON'T EXIST! Stand still!"
Grimm stands, pointing at the beasts. "They don't exist? They have tail whipped all of us, minus you who sits here! Get your ass in gear, Smith." Grimm jumps away, landing directly on the back of one of the big lizards, beginning to rodeo ride it.
Phil shakes his head and, guns in his hands, runs to a group of trees and from there toward the group of people cut off from the exit by the monsters' presence. From there, he sneaks into a crypt, looking for peace and tranquility.
There, he sits and focuses his mind. The thoughts of fear hit his mind like a roaring thunder, fear of losing life, fear of suffering. Coming from the people gathered by Adem, they are loud and primeval. Phil concentrates harder to bypass them.
Behind that wall, Phil finds the scattered thoughts of the Vanguardians comprising strategies, instincts, fears, sense of inadequacy, just plain tiredness. The sea of feelings carry Phil away, sympathetic for his friends. He gives little mind-pushes to reinforce the wills of some, to help focus some others. Then the sense of his effort comes back to his mind. He has to focus harder to find the mind behind it.
And finally he finds it, a mind pattern like he has never sensed before, a mind full of the images he witnessed before. A perfect replica of what is happening above ground, closed in the mind of one man. A virtual reality world. Phil has found the target, the spot to close in on. A simple mind-shake, and the images simply turn off.
Phil runs above the stairs to leave the crypt, but, through the eyes of the people he mind-probes, see the lawn, the scattered tombs, the puzzled Vanguardians, and a single figure lying on the ground, dressed in a gaudy orange costume.
And suddenly a rush of adrenaline kicks in as the thoughts of new people enters his brain, focused minds, thinking in unison. "Regroup, regroup!" Phil shouts at the Vanguardians, coming out of the crypt entrance, but too late, as five new colorfully dressed men appear on the ground, taking Smith's friends by surprise.
Grissom Montag looks at his wristwatch and smiles. The laser scanner peeps at his iris, and then a metallic voices announces, "Welcome, Mr. Montag." The British man walks toward his own apartment, where the security monitors are located.
"Hi, Griss," says Tobias Christopher, the speedster still sporting a cast on his leg after the battle in Antarctica.
"Hello," responds Grissom, entering his door. Once inside, his fingers begin to dance over the keyboard. He inserts a CD, again types a few keys, waits for the CD to come out, and puts it in one of his many pockets. Then he redirects some satellite cameras to take a look at how the ceremony is going. His eyebrows arch up at the sight. "Fuck!" he exclaims and runs out.
The Vanguardians' reaction, this time, is quicker. The strange costumes, the masks, the ability to fly don't make a lasting impression. They have been attacked, and they need to defend themselves.
Brianna screams, and Grimm throws his axe, but both are stopped by an orange force field. Ozzy charges, only to be pushed back by a giant baseball club, produced by the gauntlet of the one dressed in blue.
Brianna charges again, just at the moment that Priest begins to fire. Grimm's axe flies to hit Priest's gun to deviate the bullets, while Banshee beats her wings faster to gain altitude. "Are you mad?" yells Priest, and no one understands if he is talking to Bree or Grimm.
Ozzy gets on his feet and charge again, only to stop at the curved face of the force field, which glows an orange hue. Ozzy looks at the faces of the people on the other side, fiery, hard faces. He sees motivation, skills, and discipline, and he begins to hammer the bubble with his fists. "Come out, alien bastards, come out!" he yells, frustrated.
Priest runs to the force field, tossing aside his guns and opening his palms to touch it. As he does, the force field begins to flicker even as Priest's body starts to grow to huge proportions, four, five, six feet taller. At one point, Priest screams and gets pushed away from the field. He is ten feet tall now, but the bubble is intact.
"Ozzy... stand back!" orders Phil. Baxter quickly recedes for five or six feet, while Phil gets two steps further, frowning, his right hands going to his head, and the force field falls as one of the mysterious men, the one with the red cape, falls to the ground.
"A fucking telepath!" roars Smasher as the force field fades.
"Get airborne!" shouts Zed, taking flight, followed by Smasher.
Monolith charges at Priest, who, affected by the gravity, is unable to get afoot, while a cloud of rotating, razor-sharp discs, thrown by Disco, make the other Vanguardians retreat momentarily. And then, a rain of fire comes down the sky as Smasher dives down, blasting lasers from his bare hands.
Above, Zed points his gauntlet at the scene, creating a blue ambulance from out of nowhere, and two all-blue paramedics jump out the back doors to take Rhyme Guardian and the Cadet inside. The ambulance takes flight and disappears.
Johnny Monolith kicks Priest in the belly, throwing him toward Drax, making him fall over the ground. Smasher's personal force field reflects Brianna's scream toward herself, making her losing her senses. Grimm's axe hits Monolith's skin, causing lava to erupt. Disco Stave, who had disappeared, jumps down one of the trees, holding his battle staff, and attacks the telepath, making his guns fly away. Phil Smith responds with a bare-handed attack, so Steve responds with the same skill, knowing that while the telepath has to fight, without concentrating, he can't attack his mind. Then Smasher, passing low on one of his flying raids, hits the telepath on the head, causing him to pass out.
"Can't you make them tranquil, Tayden?" asks Adem, worried over the way things are turning out.
"I sense no evil in them, Adem. I don't know why they are attacking us, but I know they believe they are doing the right thing."
"Right. In fact, they are trying to defeat us without doing much harm. But why?"
As Smasher lands right in front of Grimm, ready for a final duel, Grissom Montag arrives at the cemetery, followed by a tall, dark-skinned woman. "Hey, guys, sorry if I am late." His words die in his throat as the scene of the battle becomes evident to his eyes. "What the hell...?"
But his incredulous expression widens as he sees an exact double of himself running in and shouting, "I got it! Let's go!"
Grissom hears the woman who had followed him exclaim, "Perfect, honey!" And then he sees her whispering something. A moment later, the mysterious attackers literally fade out of the cemetery, leaving the Vanguardians with a lot of questions.
An empty, abandoned military base in Thunder City, U.S.A., one hour later:
"And with you, all of you are good as new!" says Rhyme Guardian to the Caped Cadet after having used his healing powers to cure the wounds of the various MBL members. "And you, F7, can change back, I guess!"
Agent F7, looking exactly like Grissom Montag, grabs his own face with both hands and tears it away, revealing an odd, featureless mask beneath. "One of my best creations. And in so short a time."
"Yes, good work. Putting a miniature camera on Lorena's necklace to film Montag's iris was a smart idea."
"It was the only place where I was sure he would have looked," replies Agent F7, smiling.
"The man is a pig," notes the Lioness, "with a lot of class, but a pig nevertheless."
"And that worked for us. Agent, what did you find?"
"Sadly, just a confirmation." The British agent pushes the CD in the drive of the laptop, sitting on some wooden boxes. "See here."
His seven teammates go behind him, looking at the 17-inch-wide screen of the laptop, bought in Washington days before.
"See what I have found? Rants about metahuman superiority... tests of admittance in the MBL, with DNA evaluation... the plans for the Disneyworld massacre. Vanguard is the public face of the Metahuman Brotherhood for Liberation!"