Category 5

[Electra]

Wander startled at Monsoon's sudden pronouncement, her face twisting into an extremely pained expression. She'd been counting on them coming through the window into a dark warehouse to create confusion and uncertainty, the fact that they were two women heroes to possibly make the bad guys underestimate them. That was no longer on the table. "Nice of you to tell them how many of us there are and who exactly they're dealing with!" she hissed to Nina. Nina was obviously patrolling with Mark way too much. "Get to the truck and make sure they don't get away in it. Slash the tires if you want, but try not to get everything wet!" 

"Surrender now," she called out, drawing her bat and twirling it expertly, trying to salvage the situation. "You're going to jail either way, you get to decide what condition you'll be in when you're handcuffed." 

[Avenger Assembled]

"What?!" Nina was too smart to get into it with Erin in the middle of a fight, or for that matter when they weren't fighting. As much as she wanted to know what the bat-wielding hero's problem was, instead she closed in on the van and sure enough brought her sword down on the front tires of their ride. "Fools, your pitiful vehicle is no match for-dammit!" Her scimitar had cut through empty air, or rather through a tire gone suddenly insubstantial. When she caught sight of the driver inside going for what looked like a big, bulky hand-cannon she backed off, trying to move for cover behind the nearest boxes. 

As for Wander, the goon squad behind the van started to go for their weapons, but the leader, the only one in red body armor, laughed. "What do you think you're going to do to us, Slugger, give us a nice breeze? With the quantum displacement field in here," he added, banging on the side of the van, "we can grab whatever we want and there's not a thing you and Shouty Pants there can do to stop us." 

[Electra]

Wander laughed right back. "You ever heard of a cell phone, champ? I can run ten times faster than your car can drive, all while having a chat with any number of associates of mine. Your guns can't hurt me, and if I can't grab you myself, I'll just point you out to somebody who can.  You think you're the first insubstantial villain we've faced down? I was dealing with losers like you before I could buy lottery tickets." Just to test the theory, though, she suddenly raced forward, fast enough to blur in the dim light, and attempted to take out the bunch of goons with a broad sweep of her silver bat. 

[Avenger Assembled]

"Can your friends follow us...underwater!?" challenged the leader as Wander's bat passed harmlessly through his body, hands on his hips and with a thoroughly pleased sound to his voice even behind his gas mask and other gear. "We're master criminals and you're just some teenage punks! Light her up, boys!" It turned out the weapons the men were carrying couldn't hurt Wander, but even guns shifted partially out of phase with reality could shoot out blinding streams of burning-white light that fitzed out harmlessly once they reached the edges of the small 'clearing' of boxes where the van was parked. One blast found its mark - but as annoying as the bright lights were, they weren't enough to do more than put spots before the eyes of someone who'd walked on the bottom of the sea and lived to tell about it. 

Seeing this turn of events, and dodging fire of her own from the driver who'd stepped out to shoot at her, Nina tried something. She let herself fall backwards, right over one of the boxes, and from the floor yelled "Ah! My bloody ankle! This is the worst thing ever! You gutless, miserable -" It turned out that Nina knew a lot about cursing; perverse, foul-mouthed obscenities that verbally flayed open the sexuality, sexual equipment, and general personal hygiene of the criminals, shouting right over the boss's attempt to give orders to his men loud enough that finally one went over there with a stun rifle, leaned over the barrel, right into Monsoon's smirk. 

On the other side of the truck, Wander caught the man's hurk and Nina's perfectly calm, albeit slightly raspy, "I have you now." 

 

[Electra]

Wander cocked her head and studied the truck, then the men, her brain working as fast as it could. She wished Trevor had come along on this little expedition, but that would've defeated the purpose of getting to know Nina better. And really, she wasn't sure he was quite ready yet to be back on patrol. Being smart and fast and strong for a normal human wasn't enough if you weren't focused. Soon, though. The bad guys raced across the floor to check on their fallen comrade, their boots clanking against the concrete floor. Clanking? 

With one quick motion, Wander angled her bat so she held it horizontally, then dived for the group of baddies as though she were trying to steal third base, her bat in front of her and sweeping at their legs just below the ankles. 

[Avenger Assembled]

Between the two of them, Monsoon and Wander were able to corral the thieves - Nina by dint of squeezing her prisoner until he told them where the quantum displacement field controller was inside the van. That might have meant nothing (since she lost the ability to reach him once he was inside) if Wander hadn't already taken out the rest of the goons, knocking them down and leaving them helplessly dangling by their feet, upside down and dangling right through the warehouse floor! Faced with the prospect of being left dangling upside down with their legs firmly embedded in concrete, the thieves surrendered. 

"This is just a minor setback in a long legacy of crime," sneered the zip-tied gangleader, who looked pasty and unshaven underneath the full-face mask and goggles he'd been wearing. "You won't soon forget our names!" 

"What were your names?" asked Monsoon, a look of smirk on her face. 

"We are the mrmphprh!" The gangleader struggled, unable to open his mouth, and Wander could see the shimmering energy around his face that showed where Nina was holding it shut. 

"No no! Tell the world of your mighty deeds!" 

[Electra]

"Let him talk, Monsoon," Wander said with a negligent wave of her hand. "The police will be here any minute, he may as well get a head start on confessing. Everybody says they have a long legacy of crime, but usually what they mean is six months of robbing slushie machines at convenience stores. He probably needs to get the tip money he stole off the tables at a diner off his conscience before he goes to jail." She went back to looking at the now-deactivated controller, wondering if she could dismount it and take it back to the Manor for Trevor to look at. She'd already pulled the boots off the criminals, since they were obviously part of the set. 

[Avenger Assembled]

Monsoon looked like she was enjoying playing with her captive, but with a sneer she did as Wander asks. "Writhe, worm," she told him before turning and stalking away to study the device with Wander. She was no more a scientist than Erin was, but they could both agree this was a piece of high technology that should probably not be allowed to fall into the wrong hands, with both of them tuning out the complaints from the science thugs they'd arrested. (They actually did call themselves 'Science Thugz' "with a Z" shouted the leader, a name that made Monsoon mutter to Wander "Are you sure I cannot beat them some more, just a little?") 

Eventually the cops did arrive and the women gave their statements about how it was they came to be in the warehouse, a familiar enough ritual for Erin but rather an alien one for Monsoon. The cops seemed quite interested in Nina; maybe because she was a new hero, maybe because she was obviously not American, or maybe because she was clearly and audibly narrating the battle in a voice that carried across the street outside. Nina didn't seem bothered by this; instead she was in full swing, telling the story of the fight in the warehouse long after Wander had finished and even gotten a paper cup of coffee from the officer who had taken her statement. 

[Electra]

Wander let Monsoon have her moment of glory, figuring that any trouble the new heroine got herself into could be smoothed out later by her boyfriend or her embassy or some combination of the two. Erin was tired even though it wasn't very late, and she was ready to go home even though everything there was still weird and unsettled. But if she went home too early, it might make Trevor worried that there was still crime afoot, and that wasn't a worry he needed piled on top of everything else. So she sat on a waist-high retaining wall and sipped her coffee, occasionally exchanging a few words with one of the cops or technicians, even signing an autograph for one excited college-age fan who she assumed probably had just never met a superhero before. Finally Nina was finished with her report as well, and the cops hauled away the crooks and the van full of stolen loot and diabolical technology, leaving the heroines to the rest of their evening. "You good?" Wander asked neutrally.

[Avenger Assembled]

"I am good," said Monsoon, nodding as she joined Wander first at the top of the wall, then on a nearby rooftop to avoid any further autograph seekers. Once there, she seemed to deflate slightly - it wasn't so much that she shrank away from the press as she seemed to put some parts of herself away. "That felt so...normal," she commented as the crowd of onlookers below gradually faded. "There were low men, we gave them justice, and the authorities took them away. The last time I went patrolling with Mark, we fought legions of animated cuckoo clocks obeying the commands of a murderous William Tell robot to save all of Geneva. I think I like this better," she admitted. "So," she went on, looking over at Wander, "what is next? Do we hit the local burger joint and celebrate?" Like several phrases in Nina's English vocabulary, it sounded like something she'd picked up from Mark. 

[Electra]

"That does tend to happen when you patrol with Edge," Wander agreed dryly. "Way more interesting things happen when he's around, and that's really not always a good thing. But on the other hand, when he's on your side in a fight, you usually win." She watched the street for another minute, apparently satisfied by the progress the police were making in collecting the last of the evidence and leaving the scene. "I don't usually like to go out in public in the uniform if I don't have to," she admitted. "Sometimes I put a jacket on over it or something, but I haven't got one tonight. If you're hungry we could order in a pizza or something. Mark's not at your place tonight, yeah?" 

[Avenger Assembled]

Mark was indeed not at the apartment he shared with Nina, giving the space up to the two women that night. Erin had visited here before, though not often - Mark generally preferred to come visit his friends rather than have them come over to his place. Part of the reason for that was that his space was quite a bit smaller than Erin and Trevor's; a one-bedroom walkup in a row of small, recently-built apartment buildings that was actually at the extreme eastern edge of the Ashton suburb where he'd grown up. The apartment itself was decorated in what Mark liked to call a vigorous style; Martha Lucas' framed artwork hung alongside pictures of Rick Lucas and the old Freedom League. (It wasn't that Mark lacked pictures of the Liberty League, of course, just that he was careful enough about secret identities not to broadcast that.) There were also several new pictures of Mark and Nina themselves on the various walls, the couple at ice cream shoppes and parks throughout the city, and one that looked like the two of them at a mosque. There wasn't much visible wall anywhere a person could reach and hang or stick a picture. 

Once inside (the unlit rear window at the edge of the property being one reason Mark had picked the apartment in the first place), Nina excused herself to go freshen up and disappeared into the bathroom, leaving Erin briefly in a living room marked by a dollar store sofa dyed in a cheerful blue and white with an old-fashioned Arabian rug adorned with intricate patterns that caught the eye and seemed to pull the gaze inward laid down on the floor at its feet. The kitchen, which she could easily see by looking through the doorless entry, looked clean and polished - it wasn't hard to guess that neither Nina or Mark cooked very much.