Three Of A Kind (IC)

[Azuth65]

Wisp nodded solemnly, "My allowance will not survive this night. A moment of silence for the pre-paid credit card my parents sent me here with would be appropriate I believe." She bowed her head, her bangs shielding her face.

After a moment she brightened, "So, where to first? If you guys don't mind, I'd like to swing by whatever book store the mall has while we're here. I just finished The Gathering Storm and I need my Wheel of Time fix."

[Avenger Assembled]

The mall parking lot was quiet when the kids arrived there, though as usual the Millennium Mall's lot was packed with cars on such a nice spring day. After all, Easter was coming up soon and who wouldn't want to pass up a chance to shop for pretty Easter things, buy delicious candy at marked-up prices (smart shoppers know that you buy your candy after Easter, when they sell the good stuff for cheap now that candy season is over), or sit on the lap of the Easter Bunny? Rumor had it that the Mall people imported a special Easter Bunny from upstate New York, a particularly charming fellow much loved by children everywhere. It had been in all the papers. (It had been a pretty slow week in Freedom City, honestly).

In the lead, Zap pushed open the revolving doors and the glass exploded in their faces with a deafening roar, sending shards of glass blasting through the air and cutting the teens; Wisp and Zap both had cuts and bruises on their faces, while a shard of glass the size of a pencil lead was visibly sticking out Crow's shoulder, having gone right through his coat. It could have been so much worse; if a nearby support pillar inside the foyer, still emblazoned with the pitiful remnants of an ad for Orange Julius hadn't taken the brunt of the blast, they'd all be much worse off!

Inside the mall through the broken interior doors, they could just make out a group of civilians down in the food court through which they'd been about to enter, bound together in a frightened little circle and menaced by a strange-looking man in a white face mask, and an eerily smiling figure in blue and brown. Sitting on a throne in the center was a familiar-looking figure; the infamous Angel, debutante heroine turned sleazy villain, and by her side was a half-visible man in spotless white linen robes with a massive lapis lazuli at his throat. Angel on the throne, fired up her surfboard and said, "Oh, geez, we've got company! Somebody get the new pigs in the pigpen, it's almost partytime!"

[Azuth65]

By the time Angel finished 'partytime' Vicky was picking her targets. Finding her teleportation sluggish, she forced some more of her will into the process and was able to move as effortlessly as she always did. Appearing behind the hoverboard riding villainess Vicky's backhand came from the cloud of red and white smoke in a flash, spinning the woman off her board and to the ground where she lay bonelessly, unconscious.

Her next move brought her to the guy who looked like a reject from The Mummy. Her punches felt like she was punching a brick wall even as she came at him from several angles. Her follow up moves against the other combatants, while not as effective as she would have liked, carried her exuberance of her first knock out with them.

[Avenger Assembled]

As Wisp made her triumphant debut onto the stage of justice, the assembled hostages gave a cheer! As an unconscious Angel crashed to the ground, tumbling ungracefully down the steps that had once led the way to the Easter Bunny's throne, Guy Fawkes made a disgruntled noise. "Ah, for the love of...you see, mummy-man!" he called out to Heka. "I told you!" He ahemed at that, and dropped into 'character'. "Villain viper vamooser," he called in the direction of where Wisp had ended up, "If you can face a foe without fleeing, come find one who can fight!" And with that, he nimbly pulled a blade from his sleeve, hurled it at the neon sign overhead, creating a cascade of sparks down below that let him disappear into the welter of overturned stands by the fountain.

[Quinn]

Morgan snarled as he shook his head to clear the fuzziness, distinctly pissed off at whoever did this. The shard that was making his shoulder hurt like crazy didn't help much either. For a moment, he pondered bullrushing in and giving that snide Fawkes idiot a good punch to the jaw.

Yeah, right, rush in like you used to, get your ass handed to you instead of thinking. That's a smart move...

He spat a curse in the old Gaelic as he turned on his heel and sprinted out the door, obscured by the smoke and debris from the bomb. It alleviated the considerable irritation considerably when he saw Wisp level Angel with a single punch on his way out, of course, but he had to move fast. No way he was leaving his dates in the center of that madness. Fortunately, Logan was well-aware of the kind of situation that could erupt in FC, and he already had the bag containing Crow's outfit in his hands when the teen sprinted from the door. The dwarf hurled it from the car window, and Crow rapidly yanked his costume out, throwing the hooded sweater with his marker over his torso and the black jeans on over his regular ones. Plated gloves next, then the bandanna around his face. Hood up, then rune coat on, and Morgan Crowe was once again Crow. He rapped out instructions as he quick-changed, the cheerful mean replaced by a focused fighter.

"Get the car a few blocks over, and call the cops. Tell them a pack of terrorists is threatening the Bayview Mall, metahumans are in combat with them, and explosives likely rigged at different entrances. And keep yourself outta trouble, old man." "Gotcha. Want me to call up some favors and bring in the cavalry?" "No, we got this. And I don't want any more havoc than this is gonna be. Stay safe, Log."

He winked at the dwarf, before vanishing into thin air. Logan sighed and hit the ignition, the car's tires screeching as it peeled out of the parking lot at top speed.

[Avenger Assembled]

As his 'leader' was knocked out, Heka jerked his head back at the last minute, just ducking a powerful blow from Wisp. When she'd gone, he shook his head and rose in the air, his mystic wrappings floating around him as he began to chant in the ancient languages of the Blood Pharoahs. When he was done, a smile crossed his lips as he called, "They are only children! Destroy them!" And with that, deliberately ignoring the hand-to-hand fighter who'd failed to strike him, he swooped down on Zap and fired a blast at her through the broken remains of the glass doors: sending shards of glass sizzling along a road of terrible Apepian sorcery as they blasted straight into the heroic young woman!

[Lone Star]

Zap, still struggling to stand, was able to let a gasp from her lips as the eldritch blast hit her like a freight train. She held her hand up to raise her force field, but the blast already flipped her back before she could activate it. The young heroine screamed out in pain as she skidded back further from the scene. Zap tried to get up, but to no avail. She lay there, catching her breath as she looked on at her teammates fighting. Some first night out this turned out to be...

[Avenger Assembled]

Before she could get up, a figure in a white shirt with glowing red eyes appeared right next to her in a ripple of air, a malevolent smile on his face. "Oh, don't get up on my account, girl!" A malevolent grin on his face, Blackfire stamped down on Zap's chest, pinning her to the ground with a strength and weight much greater than human. This was no man, the teen quickly realized; this was a machine in a human's skin. "Listen to me!" he called to the other heroes. "My name is Blackfire, and your friend here is my prisoner. One little step, and I can put my foot right through her rib cage. Surrender now, and you can give our demands to the pigs outside." Sure enough, there were sirens coming, but now that they had costumes and power, the teen heroes were supposed to help the cops, not the other way around!

[Azuth65]

Wisp's eyes burned in rage at Heka and Blackfire. The fact her the sclera of her eyes were black while her irises were red lent themselves nicely to the image of her anger pouring off her in waves. With a burst of smoke and yell of rage she activated her teleportation to appear before the terrorists, her limbs a flurry of punches and kicks that while packing more 'oomph' behind them than last time were clumsier and much more easily dodged or blocked.

[Avenger Assembled]

Wisp left herself so vulnerable, in fact, that she barely had time to notice the masked man erupted at her from the wrecked Dippin' Dots stand. "Give you a glorious gutting, girl!" called Fawkes, his twin flashing blades just missing the teen teleporter's tender flesh as their slashing edges whizzed close enough to her face that she could feel the whiff of air. If not for her preternatural speed, she might have been cut like a varsity quarterback with a broken leg. Fawkes cursed as he missed, rolling up from his dive and back on his feet, still ready for action. It looked like a dark time for the plucky young heroes...

[Quinn]

A dark time indeed, until a dark-coated figure appeared from literally nowhere. Crow was irritated he couldn't go straight for Fawkes, but Heka was the most impending danger; Wisp could easily handle herself, and Blackfire would shortly learn the hard way why you don't physically touch someone who controls electricity. The teen descended straight towards Heka, before he had teleported in he wondered if some kind of battle cry like his dad had was in order, or like the Next-Gen or Young Freedom used. Something heroic and mighty! Something memorable! But the fact was, in this situation he could only yell one thing.

"Boot to the head!"

And the Egyptian villain then became intimately acquainted with the feeling of steel-soled boot meeting immortal skull, sending him reeling as the teen vanished again with a laugh.

[Lone Star]

Zap struggled against the massive weight of Blackfire, but managed to remove a hand from underneath him. While the robot was watching for her teammates, she found a perfect moment to strike. Here's your big chance...try not to screw it up. She held her hand out, and allowed bioelectricity to flow through it, causing it to spark and glow with the power. Screaming a battle cry, Zap slammed her fist into the side of the robot's ankle, hoping to knock it off guard. "Take this, you motor monster!"

She struck the robot's ankle, and it seized up, as its metal exterior flashed with electrical power. She quickly slipped from under the robot's massive foot, and dusted herself off. "Who else wants some?!" she shouted.

[Avenger Assembled]

"Feh, enough of this!" spat Heka as Diehard swung and missed at Wisp. "This plan has failed, and I, for one, do not wish to spend yet another evening washing my robes clean of our peerless leader's vomit!" He began making gestures in the air, muttering ancient arcane words of mystic power. "I shall meet you all again," he promised the teens as glowing sigils of pyramid power surrounded the Fearsome Five and they began to fade away. "But next time, it will be under our terms..." A few moments later, and they all were gone, even the unconscious Angel. With the bad guys gone, a cheer went up from the now-rescued hostages.

"Hooray! We're saved!"