Mystery In Wayne

The security guard at the I.E. DePaul plant in Wayne waved the armored car through the rear gate. It was a regularly scheduled arrival - payday was every Wednesday, and the car always arrived at around the same time. As the car rolled through the gate, heading for the payroll office, the guard aimed his flashlight out the window and flicked it on, then off again. In the nearby woods, a sentry spoke a code word into his walkie talkie, and a mile away, a motor which had been barely turning over, revved up to full power. With a whup whup whup the big Sikorsky copter took to the air, and headed towards the plant at top speed.

Each week, the armored car took a different route and came through a different gate, but it always parked in the same place, where DePaul security guards surrounded it. Before the week's payroll could be carried into the payroll office, the chopper was overhead, and something heavy dropped from underneath the bird and smashed down on the back of the truck. The driver and guard managed to open their doors and dive to the ground.

In the chopper, the pilot slapped the switch that sent electricity into the giant magnet, and fed full power to the big blade. The armored car was easily lifted by the big cargo copter, which was designed to transport Army tanks. The guards on the ground fired upwards, but the copter's armor protected it - and within seconds, it was out of range. A perfect operation!

Or was it? One of the guards heard a grunting, and they turned and near the fence, saw what appeared to be a person, pulling on a band or rope stretched between two poles. The guards yelled and ran in that direction, but suddenly the figure stopped struggling backwards, and leaped straight into the air. The elastic band snapped taut, and the figure was catapulted into the air towards the fleeing chopper. The band detached from the poles, and seemed to be reeled in. The figure seemed to scrunch in upon itself into a more aerodynamic shape, then, when it reached the peak of its trajectory, it appeared to sprout wings - and it flew away after the now distant copter!

Suddenly, a few minutes later, there was a thump with jarred the bird, and something unearthly flowed over the windows. Though he couldn't see, the pilot was used to flying in the dark - and he knew that if he continued to fly a compass course,, he would get a radio signal when he got near their destination. As long as whatever that was stayed outside, he wasn't too worried. He had other things on his mind.

But the other two men in the chopper weren't pilots, they were gangsters - and they panicked! One terrified thug fired two shots through the window, and watever had covered it vanished instantly. He didn't have long to enjoy his triumph, though. The shattering glass, followed by powerful downdraft blowing through the pulverized windshield immediately caused the pilot to lose control.

He was well trained - he flipped a switch, and an explosive charge severed the cables, dropping the armored car to smash to the ground, then slapped the big blade into neutral, and clambered back to the hatch, where he jumped, popping his chute almost instantly.

The gunmen weren't chopper-trained, and they weren't wearing 'chutes, so they were forced to fall with the big chopper as it autogyroed into a pond. They were both knocked unconscious, and neither expected to awaken - but when they did, they were strapped to stretchers in the back of an ambulance, with police guards. Something had pulled them from the wreckage and left them on the shore for the police to find.

The pilot turned himself in the next day. He was ex-military - shortly after his discharge, he'd run up a huge gambling debt in a crooked poker game - and he had been offered two choices - a sudden, unfavorable change in his health, or fly this one 'mission'. He received a suspended sentence when his testimony helped convict the various crooks involved in the operation - including the phony security guard. The pilot went back into the military, and later served with distinction in Vietnam.

The honest security guards from the DePaul plant told about the person who somehow catapulted into the sky and flown after the fleeing copter - and the two crooks who had been in the copter told their story as well, about something flowing over the windows of the chopper, from the outside! But it had been dark, and nobody had seen anything clearly, and eventually the story was dismissed. And life in Wayne, Maine, went back to normal…

Spring 1964 A Lady Victory solo story

It was dark, and Lady Victory was hidden in the shadows in a neighborhood near the now abandoned DuPaul chemical facility in Chicago. Something in this neighborhood was capturing and maybe eating animals - and she wanted to put a stop to it before whatever it was maybe started eating children.

It had started unnoticed by the neighbors, who didn't really miss the squirrels, pigeons and rats until later - in fact, when the alley cats stopped howling at night, it seemed like a good thing. But them family pets started to disappear - and now people were afraid to go out at night!

Bonnie was staking out a dog - or what appeared to be a dog. But she couldn't be sure of protecting the animal - so it was really an animatronic dog, a remote controlled robot, built by her partner Red Rocket. Sparky had chased some pigeons towards the fence surrounding the boarded-up DuPaul facility, and then found a bone - and was now lying contentedly in a dark corner, worrying that bone to shreds. She hoped something would happen soon, or Sparky was going to have to head for home.

When it happened, it was so unexpected that she didn't react right away. Something - a rope? a snake? reached over the fence, wrapped twice around Sparky's neck, and jerked the robot back over the fence. If Sparky had been a real dog, she doubted that he would have had time to do more than yelp once. The… tentacle? wrapped around his throat would have silenced him, and the jerk was violent enough to break the neck of a real dog.

Bonnie had seen a lot of weird things in her career, but this tentacle baffled her. It had to be intelligent or intelligently-controlled. What it resembled most was an impossibly long, incredibly pliable human arm! Maybe magic could create something like that - but she didn't have time to ponder.

She switched her costume to internal air supply and burst from the shadows running at full speed, and smashed into the fence shield first. The shield burst easily through the chain fence where she had previously cut some of the links, and she was in the abandoned factory, running as fast as she could to catch up with whatever was dragging away Sparky's 'corpse'.

The enormous fenced facility, over a mile on each side, had been gradually abandoned under pressure from the city government after a hostage crisis in 1953. The hostage takers had threatened to blow up the plant, and official estimates suggested about a quarter of the city populace could be killed by the explosion or sickened by the toxic chemicals such an explosion would release. Civil authorities had started an evacuation of Chicago, and chaos had ensued.

Fortunately for all involved, the villains had been killed or captured in a battle with the fledgling super hero Captain Democracy, working with Captain Spinelli and a Homicide unit of the Chicago Police. Both Democracy and Spinelli had ended up in the hospital. While Spinelli had recovered completely and was now rising through the police ranks, seemingly destined to become Commissioner of Police before long, Captain Democracy still needed crutches to walk. No more super heroics for him…

There had been rumors of people living in the old plant. In a square mile totally jammed with tanks, buildings, towers and vats, crisscrossed with a maze of pipes, cables and open conveyor belts, they would sure have a lot of hiding places. And without regular maintenance, a lot of buildings, scaffolding, pipes and cables were starting to deteriorate.

Nobody official would go onto the abandoned facility, due not only to the danger from the failing physical infrastructure - by now, who knows what hazardous chemical toxins might have been released? There were, of course, plans to demolish the whole place, but it was always judged 'too expensive'.

Lady Victory was aware of the dangers and had taken precautions. She was wearing a variation of her normal costume which entirely covered her, and included a full face mask with built in 4 hour air supply. She was on the clock!

As soon as poor Sparky had cleared the fence, a second tentacle had ripped the body from the head and both were being carried towards a dark alley between two a battered shed and a giant chemical tank. When Lady Victory burst through the fence, both tentacles immediately disappeared, along with the mangled robot. Bonnie switched on her infrared goggles, and the world changed from a dark place to a weird landscape in ghostly shades of gray. She rounded a corner and stopped, stunned by what the infrared goggles showed.

In front of her was a giant living… something. If you put a dozen mannequins into a jumbled heap, and partially melted them together into a blob, the result would look something like the monster she was facing. She was right - the tentacles were arms - grotesquely elongated and seemingly boneless - mismatched, but clearly arms - and there were more than just the two she'd seen originally, sticking out in all directions. Legs stuck out of the blob at all angles, some of them pointing into the air, and there were heads sticking out at random as well. Bonnie felt sick - she had never seen anything so hideous or disgusting in her life!

The many mouths of the blob gibbered in frustration when it realized that the dog was mechanical and not suitable for eating. It screamed in a dozen different voices, and chills ran through Bonnie's body, and then it threw the head and body of the robot at her. She easily dodged the smaller missile and blocked the larger with her shield.

"Two can play at that game!" she hurled her shield, and it hit the beast in the side. Instead of rebounding strongly as she had expected, it sunk in somewhat and then popped out, and fell, yards away from her. Before she could react, one of the long flexible arms whipped out and wrapped around her, and started pulling her closer.

She was surprised at how weak the pull was. But, a half a dozen other arms were now snaking towards her - and she wasn't going to be able to fight all of them. Instead of fighting the pull, she sprang forward, and the other arms missed - and she used the slack she'd created to dive for her shield.

She slammed the edge of the shield into the tentacle that was wrapped around her, hard enough to shatter bones. But nothing broke. She almost expected the tentacle to shear off, but instead it stretched under the impact, and released her.

"That'll teach you to keep your hands to yourself, buster!" She quickly backed away.

The beast changed tactics, picking up nearby rocks and debris and hurling rocks, shattered pipes, bones, chunks of wood and who knows what else at her. She could have dodged the individual missiles easily - Hoyt Wilhem, the knuckleball pitcher for the White Sox, threw harder than this thing! But there were always a dozen or so flying at her and even protected by her shield, she was taking hits. The armor cloth in her costume protected her easily enough, by stiffening under impact to distribute the blow, but it inhibited her movements, and she stumbled and fell. If the monster had been so inclined, it could probably have captured her.

Instead the hail of debris stopped, and she could hear the monster running away.. Well, 'swarming away' is probably a better description. Its arms and legs all stretched in the direction it wanted to go, and then the body followed. With that many limbs for locomotion, it moved more rapidly than she would have guessed. It quickly reached some pipes and scaffolding, and the elongated arms reached up and it started climbing. By the time she got to her feet it was out of sight.

She was able to follow by turning her sound sensors up to max, but her IR vision was virtually worthless. All around her, there appeared to be low level chemical reactions occurring and in IR, all she could see was splotches of light. She was just about to switch back to visible light when the ground collapsed beneath her feet.

She did a quick twist in the air and managed to get her head down, feet up, with the shield extended in front of her, and then she hit!

And splashed into some kind of liquid. Thicker than water, it supported her easily. But as soon as her shield had touched it, some kind of reaction had started, and so much heat was being released that it totally blinded her IR vision. She switched to visible light and triggered the powerful spotlight on the back of her right gauntlet - and screamed when she noticed that her shield was dissolving!

Bonnie let out a terrified scream. She could see a ladder on one of the walls of this pit, and she was up it in seconds. She was able to see that the titanium alloy of the shield was not being affected, only the paint and epoxy coating. And her armor cloth costume seemed to be immune as well. Not for the first time, she was thankful that the Third Reich had not been able to get this miracle synthetic fabric into production before the end of the war!

She could hear what sounded like an angry crowd approaching her, and she looked up in that direction. The beast, moving faster than she had seen it before, burst from the tangled rubbish not 30 yards from her, heading her way! It was screaming in what sounded like terror and fear.

"Oh, spit!". Unlike her partners, Bonnie didn't have any super powers, or super weapons built into her costume. There was no way she could keep this monster from smashing into her and tumbling both of them back into the pit of caustic liquid! But she could try! Without a thought that she had earlier been fighting this hideous beast, she would try to save its life.

She threw her shield as hard as she could. It was no longer finely balanced or streamlined, but she couldn't possibly miss. But, like before, it had almost no effect. The beast might have slowed momentarily. She dialed up the volume on her built-in PA system and shouted "STOP!" Windows shattered, and any human nearby would have been deafened for hours! At the same time, she blasted her searchlight at the maximum 8,000 candles - a beam so bright it almost felt solid!

The monster was already in a panic, but the noise and bright light somehow got through to it. It tried desperately to change directions and if it had been even as agile as she had seen it before, she thought it might have succeeded. But instead, it lost its balance, and crashed to the ground, rolling towards her at the same high speed. She couldn't get away, and the impact was like the entire Chicago Bears defense had smashed into her at once. She flew backwards, and smashed into the far wall of the pit.

The armor cloth of her costume absorbed much of the impact, but she still was stunned. As she fell into again into the caustic reservoir, she saw the monster tumble into the pit as well, and there was an explosion of greasy yellow flame.

Some time later, still protected by the miraculous synthetic of her costume, she dragged herself up the ladder and out the tank. As she emerged, she saw a celebration going on. It looked like something from a Grade B monster movie - the oppressed farmers of a small Eastern European village, having just slain the terrible monster, dancing around a bonfire, waving their axes, pitchforks and other improvised weapons, and cheering their victory.

The celebration stopped when Bonnie climbed from the tank. In dead silence, the mob watched. The caustic fluid dripped from her, each drip exploding when it touched the ground, surrounding her in flares of fire and a wreath of smoke. She thundered as she walked!

The appearance of this flaming, booming ghost from out of the deadly pit was too much for them. They must have thought she was a demon, or spirit of vengeance, and they turned and ran screaming. In instants, they had vanished into the rubble and ruins behind them. And she was too beat up to pursue… Instead, she found handfuls of trash and wiped down her costume, at least until it didn't drop any longer, and placed a radio call to her partners.

Her costume gave her fantastic protection from harm, but it wasn't magical. The various impacts tonight had taken their toll. She had bruises over most of her body, and once her adrenaline wore off, it was a struggle to stay conscious. She managed to tell the whole story to her husband, Red Rocket, and then passed out. It had been a hell of a night, and she was happy to let it slip away.

Bonnie awakened in her own bed, and boy did she feel awful. She was a mass of bruises, that hurt like fire whenever she sat up, and incongruously, she was starving! There was a buzz of activity in the next room - she heard her husband Todd (Red Rocket) Drake speaking with Tomas (Tom Atomic) Thomas, maybe about politics, and young Jack Drake was yelling as he chased the puppy who was barking in excitement. She realized that once again, she'd lived through a dangerous case!

"Hey, you two mad geniuses!" She tried to yell, but it was more like a squeak. They heard, though, for their conversation stopped and they came into the room. Todd, bless his heart, was carrying a tray with coffee, soup and sandwiches. She ate while they talked.

"You don't think one of you might be able to put some shock absorbers into my costume, do you?" she asked. "It seems sort of, well, dumb to have an invulnerable costume, and then get shaken to death inside it! It was like being the olive in a martini shaker. Probably worse, in fact - no gin!" Todd moaned - he hated gin. But at least she was well enough to wisecrack!

"We ought to be able to adapt the gravity regulator in some way" Tomas had perfect recall, and could read at superhuman speed. He subscribed to seemingly every publication and read everything. He was trying to remember offbeat theories. "Hmm - what about that paper EE Smith wrote on the relationship between gravity and inertia?"

Then he remembered that Smith had been universally ridiculed, so much so that he had retired from theoretical physics and started writing science fiction. Still, combined with the work of the famous physicist Paul Dirac, maybe there was something here…

"Table it for later, Tomas!" She knew he wouldn't forget it. "What did I miss?" It turned out that she had missed a lot.

"We drained the pit - and found the remains of over a dozen human skeletons, jumbled together. That beast started off as human!" Todd began. "We did a sweep of the entire facility, and found that it was home to at least 200 people. Most of them didn't have anywhere to go home to, though some were just in hiding. Some of them lived in the old buildings, others built makeshift shelters in partially protected areas. The city is trying to figure out what to do with them right now. They are spread throughout homeless shelters and other facilities throughout the city, and some are receiving medical attention. City attorneys are trying to figure out who to sue to recover expenses."

Tomas joined in with a sort of malicious smirk. "What makes it more complicated is that the city actually bought the property from DuPaul about 6 years ago - so DuPaul claims that absolves them of any responsibility. Then, the Mitch Wackney Company bought it from the city about 6 months ago as the site of the next Wackney World. But their attorneys claim they wouldn't have purchased if they'd know about all the squatters, so it's not their problem. Typical political mess!" Tomas hated politics. To him, it was easy to tell right from wrong, and politics was no more than the art of shifting blame.

Todd continued the story. "Anyway, do you remember that really big lightning storm a few weeks ago?" Of course she did - it had lasted for hours, and there had been hundreds of lightning strikes throughout the city. "At least one of the big abandoned chemical tanks seems to have been split open by lightning that night, and dumped a flood of who-knows-what electrified chemicals into one of those camps - with horrible results for the people caught in the flood." He shuddered. "At least, that's our best guess. There isn't much left of the skeletons, though, after sitting in that pit for a few hours. But the small animal disappearances started shortly after the storm."

"Is that what was in the tank I fell into?" Bonnie wanted to know.

Tomas actually shuddered. "No, that stuff was MUCH worse. That was a drainage tank, and all of the storm drains throughout the facility dumped in there. So every time it rained, anything that got washed into the storm drains ended up in that tank. There was probably 40 years of toxic sludge in there, plus the more recent stuff. Lucky it didn't catch fire or explode spontaneously." He brightened a little. "We took care of it, though. Drained it into a big stainless steel tank, and Master Man threw it into the Sun. Who knows what might have happened if that stuff had leaked into the water supply?"

"What will it do to the Sun?"

Even the second most powerful man on Earth knew better than to laugh at Lady Victory. "No problem - it will actually vaporize long before it reaches the Sun. Probably break down into component atoms and get blown away into interstellar space by the solar wind."

A bunch of facts and observations clicked together in Bonnie's head. She was, after all, an important part of DMT, the best detective agency in Chicago. And her realizations devastated her.

"You know, that poor monster was sick and starving!" Both her partners were startled by the pain in her voice. From their faces, she could see that they didn't believe her.

"Those people had some way to feed themselves before the storm, right? Maybe they stood on corners and begged, or did odd jobs, or stole, or just dug through trash bins. But once they got melted together like that, whatever they used to do for food, they couldn't do it any more. Would you give a quarter to a 12 headed monster on a street corner? Or let it wash your dishes in return for a meal? Anyone that saw it was more likely to try to kill it than help it!"

She was right, of course. They were used to that - she almost always saw things from an unusual perspective, and they were usually astonished when she filled in the details for them.

"And, even though together they were joined together into a monster, they were still human, and still had a human respect for life. So they caught and ate small animals and stayed hidden. When the wild animals ran out, they started eating pets. But they never harmed a single person!"

"It fought you!"

"I was hunting 'it'" she pointed out calmly. "THEY" she emphasized the word, just in case her partners still didn't get it "…didn't hurt me. In fact, they ran away when they had a chance to hurt me. And then they ran into the other squatters, who joined into a lynch mob, and killed them." She wasn't angry, only very sad. She knew scientists, including her partners and some of their Super Squad teammates, who could probably have helped these poor people.

"It was incredibly irresponsible of DuPaul to just abandon that facility without making sure it was safe!" she felt a surge of anger. "Regardless of what their lawyers say, they are the ones responsible for this tragedy!"

"Well, the city owned the property for years - and never even bothered to see if it was dangerous." Todd pointed out. "The city has some responsibility as well!"

"Not to change the subject or anything" Tomas interjected, bored with politics "but we fixed your shield." Bonnie hadn't noticed it, but her shield was laying on the big easy chair in the corner. Tomas handed it to her and she examined it.

"Looks the same…" She flipped it over. "New straps - nice!" She grabbed it by the edge and tried to raise her arm, simulating a throwing motion. "YEEOUCH!" she lowered her arm. "Guess I won't try that again for a while. But the balance feels the same, and the weight, too. Thanks, guys!" The two stood there, smiling, and didn't say anything. Suddenly, she got it… "OK, I'll bite - what is it I'm supposed to notice?"

"The straps are now made out of the same material as our costumes, and they are attached with titanium rivets - so they won't be melting again." Tomas was proud of his work.

"And, imbedded in one of the balance weights are a miniature radio transceiver and a locator beacon. So if your helmet radio ever conks out, you have backup - and if the shield ever gets lost, we can use a radio tracking device to find it." It seemed unlikely that the shield could 'get lost' - but one of Bonnie's enemies had once stolen it and it had required some first class detective work to track it down.

"And that's it, right? No other 'improvements'?" she asked suspiciously? Todd was always fiddling with everything.

"That's it!" he responded virtuously.

"I guess that pretty much wraps up the case of the missing pets, then? Funny how something small like that can uncover such a mess!" Tomas shrugged. It happened to super heroes all the time. "Good job, Bonnie!"

In her mental filing cabinet, Bonnie filed this one under 'pending'. 12 people, at least, had died. And even if the legal situation was ambiguous, somebody was responsible.

Halloween Hullabaloo

"Ladies and Gentlemen, I am proud to introduce the guests of honor for the 1964 the Justine Literary Association's gala Halloween Hullabaloo! Please welcome the real, honest to goodness super heroes, Red Rocket and Lady Victory!" Two colorfully costumed figures stepped out from behind a screen onto the stage. The audience - about 200 people, applauded and cheered. Most of them had on similarly colorful costumes. In fact, there were more than a couple other Red Rockets and Lady Victorys sprinkled through the crowd, although Tom Atomic, Shiva and Kali appeared to be the most popular costumes. "With this year's theme of 'Men and Women of Mystery', I'm sure they'll feel right at home!"

Lady Victory took the microphone. "Thank you, Chairman 'Adamant'. I must say, the JLA are looking extremely sinister tonight!" The sponsors of this annual fund raising party , the seven members of the Justine Literacy Association of Justine, Maine, were wearing the costumes of the fictional villainous super group, the Jailbirds and Legbreakers Assembly. The villainous JLA had become famous as playing pieces in the popular new board game, 'SuperYou'. Lady Victory and Red Rocket enjoyed this even more because SuperYou was the first commercial entertainment product released by their entrepreneurial friend, Tomas Thomas (aka Tom Atomic). The heroic game pieces been modeled after members of their own team, the Super Squad.

"Thanks, Lady V! Tonight, we'd also like to welcome our new corporate sponsor, the IE DuPaul Chemical Company, from nearby Wayne, Maine! Ladies and Gentlemen, most of the colorful costumes you see around you tonight were created using various synthetic fabrics, all donated by DuPaul just for this occasion." The crowd cheered again, somewhat more subdued. It was a lot easier to cheer for super heroes than some faceless corporation, and most of the crowd was anxious to "get this party started!"

"Tonight's open bar and the evening's Grand Prize are also donations from DuPaul".: This announcement brought the cheers out - and the Chief Publicist for DuPaul, who was wearing one of the better Shiva costumes, smiled to himself. Some of the locals were starting to grumble about the effects on both the local economy and ecology produced by the giant chemical facility in Wayne, and this event would generate some needed good will from the locals.

'Adamant' (the costume adopted by the President of the Justine Literary Association, that of the most powerful villain in the Jailbirds and Legbreakers Assembly) waited - he wasn't quite finished, and he loved being the center of attention.

"And finally, thanks to all of you, as your generous donations will help us purchase new materials for the Justine Library and Museum."

Chairman Adamant was smugly satisfied that finally, this year, the Halloween Hullabaloo would be the biggest, most talked about event in Justine. Bigger than any previous Hullabaloo, bigger even than the best past Spring Fling ever produced by the Justine Social Alliance. Yes, this was the year the JLA would forever transcend their 'junior partner' status when compared with the older JSA!

The other members of the JLA knew what always came next. A photo opportunity! Adamant handed out antique goblets made of pure gold, (another 'one up' on the JSA!) and filled them with champagne. The JLA members raised their goblets in a toast.

"Now…" Adamant paused for effect "Let's get this party started!" The goblets clinked together, and a dozen flashbulbs popped. This picture would be on the front page of the Justine Weekly Journal and would probably hang in city hall!

Before they could touch goblets to lips, Adamant crashed to the floor as if unconscious. Lady Victory quickly bent down to examine him.

"Stay away from him!" F'ant O'mah screamed, and slammed her viciously with a backhand. Lady Victory flew through air, whirling, and smashed through a wall, hardly slowing down. Party guests started screaming and running for the exits.

No unpowered human could hit anywhere near that hard. Lady Victory's costume would probably protect her, but Red Rocket wasn't thinking rationally right now - that was his wife! He turned his gravity regulator to emergency max overload and flew forward, smashing into the Lunar Lawbreaker with a thunderous noise that shattered nearby windows. She had no time whatsoever to react as the two of them crashed backwards through a different wall and into a kitchen, where they smashed into some storage cabinets. Cans and boxes cascaded down around them, and glass bottles smashed and drenched them with their contents. Red Rocket stood - but F'ant O'mah was unconscious.

His electronics suite was faster than whatever crashed into him next - but before he could react to its warning, some invisible force smashed into him, and he was being pummeled savagely. His radar showed that he was being hit by something moving impossibly fast - no, two 'somethings'. He had long ago realized that the best way for him to fight someone that much faster than him was to plan ahead, so before they could seriously harm him through his armored costume and protective force field, he thought a specific command into his gravity controller.

In a circular area around him, for just a nanosecond, gravity jumped to over 20 g's, and then 'dropped off' to a constant 5 g's. Two costumed figured, who had just been moving too fast to see, were slammed violently to the floor. Then the floor crashed down into the basement, where they were pinned to the concrete, along with the unfortunate F'ant O'mah. The male in the Breakneck costume didn't move, while the female dressed as Vanquish was squirming weakly. She was tough! Red Rocket was, of course, unaffected by the gravity shifts he had created, and he quickly sprayed all 3 villains with a cocoon of fast-setting, super strong, epoxy.

He flew back into the ballroom and was welcomed by the sight of Lady Victory engaged in combat with 3 other costumed opponents. It looked as if at least 6 of the Justine Literary Association had somehow morphed into the JLA villains whose costumes they were wearing. He wished he knew more about SuperYou. He hoped Tomas hadn't made these villains invincible!

Another costumed figure was hurrying the last civilians out of the room. Good, because he was tired of holding back!

The 3 villains were battering Lady Victory and keeping her off balance. Aquon was pulling softball-sized spheres of something solid from the big aquarium and throwing them at the heroine. The exploded with about the force of a quarter stick of dynamite, Red Rocket thought. Not enough to hurt her through her armor, but enough to prevent her from attacking. As she ducked a lasso thrown by the Ghast, Balefire blasted her with a flying battering ram created out of sickly-looking yellow energy. She blocked this with her shield, but it knocked her backwards into a wall - just as Rocket slammed into the trio of villains, scattering them like bowling pins.

"OK, I've HAD it!" Lady Victory sprang to her feet and threw her shield directly at Balefire's head. "You want me pinned to a wall, buy a poster!" She charged after her shield at full speed. Balefire blocked the shield with a hastily formed force field around his head, but he was unable to fend off the charging Lady Victory, who slammed her shoulder into his stomach. He folded over her shoulder and gagged.

"Hey! Now I know why your uniform's that awful pukey color! " she mocked him. "So you don't have to wash it later!" She dumped him on the ground, and glared down at him, fists on hips. "Buddy boy, I sure hope you try getting up!"

"When she gets like this, guys, the smart bad guys just surrender!" Rocket quipped, as he swung a punch at the recovering Ghast. "But you don't look that smart…" The Haunted Heel blocked, and launched a vicious sweeping kick at Rocket's head. His force field protected him from major harm, but he was knocked backwards - the villain must have some kind of armor reinforcement in his boots! RedRock used his gravity control to regain his balance, and aimed a focused high intensity ultra-sound beam at the Eidolic Evildoer, who dropped to the ground, screaming as he covered his ears and writhed in agony.

"Hey! Save me some fun!" yelled a woman. Her voice was unknown to the heroes. Her shout was followed by an unusual sound, like the twang of a giant bowstring. and a large blue ball, perhaps the size of a truck tire, flew into the room at high velocity. It thudded into Aquon's head, dropping him to the ground. The ball rebounded high into the air, and as it came down, it changed form to a woman in a light blue costume. She managed to slam a kick to head of the Terror of the Sea as he tried to rise, and he fell motionless to the floor.

"Thanks for the assist. Who are you?" Red Rocket wanted to know.

"Why, um, err, you can call me... Elastique!" she smiled.

With so many unknown super powered villains making their unexpected debuts tonight, Red Rocket and Lady Victory weren't inclined to immediately trust this super powered newcomer. They approached her warily, alert for a trap. Unfortunately, the villains took advantage of their divided attention.

The Ghast turned his agonized writhing into a weapon against his foes. He managed to pull a handful of small capsules from his utility belt, and used his twists and turns to throw them throughout the room. They burst and filled the room with dense gray smoke.

There was some kind of irritant in the smoke, and the heroes bent over, coughing. Lady Victory and Red Rocket sealed their costumes and switched over to internal life support. She grabbed Elastique, who was by now screaming in agony. "I've got the heroine, you get the crooks!" she radioed to her partner and ran towards the door.

Rocket switched to infravision and discovered that the smoke must be hot - and the glare from the smoke blocked everything else. He smoothly switched to echolocation - which didn't work either. The Ghast's own natural echolocation produced high frequency noises that confused his systems. The Ghast seemed to be just as blind as he was. But he had been prepared for the smoke. Louder than possible for any normal human, he screamed.

"Balefire! Get us out of here!" Although the heroes couldn't see it through the smoke, thin ribbons of pale yellowish green flame streamed from Balefire's power band (which looked sort of like a set of brass knuckles on his left hand), stretching out to engulf each of the villains. Then, the 7 of them lifted skyward. As they burst through the ceiling, the Ghast tossed an incendiary grenade into the hall. Red Rocket was occupied saving civilians, and the bad guys disappeared.

Once they were out of the building, Elastique recovered quickly. She kept the crowd back, while Lady Victory rushed back into the building to make sure there was no one else remaining inside.

Red Rocket stayed inside, and used his advanced technology to disperse the cloud of noxious vapor. The hot smoke rose towards the ceiling, leaving the area near the floor relatively clear. Rocket floated in the middle of the room, and expanded his force field to maximum radius. It just about reached the walls of the room, but this also reduced the strength of the shield to something like the skin of a balloon. He then slowly contracted the field. He didn't get all the gas, but he got a lot of it, and he hoped the rest would be diluted enough to be safe. As its surface area shrank, the field grew stronger, allowing it to contain the growing gas pressure.

When the field had contracted to about a 10' diameter sphere, the pressure was so high that Rocket couldn't move, though his costume prevented him from being squished. But his gravity controller responded to mental commands. He blasted straight upwards at max power, flashed through the hole in the ceiling that Balefire had made, and within a few minutes, was in the thin upper atmosphere. He released the field, and the deadly vapor dissipated. In another couple of minutes he was back on the ground, where the three heroes did what they could to help the combined fire departments of Justine, Wayne, and nearby Downer's Ford.

Police Chief Mark Murphy kept a close watch on the heroes. It was particularly easy to watch Lady Victory and Elastique - who was she, anyway? Murphy had never heard of her before, but he had a personal interest in Red Rocket. And he knew from experience that super heroes usually disappeared before the police report was written. So he made sure to approach the three of them as soon as Fire Chief Vincent assured him that the fire was now under control.

"Hey, heroes, before you run off! How about a word?" The three heroes turned to greet the man in uniform. He introduced himself. "Mark Murphy, Chief of the Justine PD. Thanks for your help here!" He turned to Red Rocket.

"You likely don't remember me, Red Rocket. We almost met in New York, back in '45, when the X gang broke your arm." Most people didn't remember that Todd had been Bulletboy for a short time in the mid-forties.

Elastique had overheard. "Where'd they get that name, the X gang?"

"The bones in a skull and crossbones look like the letter X" Lady Victory explained. She'd often heard Rocket tell the story of his last adventure as Bulletboy.

"I'm sorry, Chief - I don't recall…" Todd started, but Murphy interrupted.

"Yeah, well…" the Chief seemed sort of uneasy "I guess you were sort of, well, unconscious at the time."

A light dawned in Rocket's head. "You were one of the kids that kept them off me till the Bullets got there?" Almost 20 years ago, and he remembered it like yesterday!

Bulletboy had been making his first solo patrol of Fawcett City. If his partners had known he planned a solo patrol, they would have stopped him. So he hadn't told them. After all, he wasn't a little kid anymore, he was a teenager now - and a super hero. There were other super teens who worked alone, why not him?

It hadn't worked out that way, though. He had tried to stop a bunch of thugs from beating a kid to death, and they'd swarmed him under. They held him down to keep him from flying away, and his normal 13 year old kid strength wasn't enough to break free. A couple of other neighborhood kids had tried to come to his rescue, attacking the thugs with baseball bats. Fortunately for all 4 kids, Todd had been smart enough to call his partners as soon as he realized he and his unexpected allies were being overwhelmed.

Everyone ran when the Bullets showed up - and they all got away clean (that night!) because his partners were concerned about getting him and the victim to the hospital. He'd ended up with a broken arm, and his parents had discovered his secret - and they forced him to give up being Bulletboy. He never had found out the names of the kids who probably saved his life. Until tonight!

Murphy interrupted his reminiscing. "Yeah, me and my friend Melvin were comin' home from the talkies and we took a short cut through the alley. We'd never really helped anybody before, and it felt good to stand up for what's right! Helped me decide to join the Marines, and later the NYPD. I realized there was no chance I'd ever make chief in New York, though - too many guys all looking for one job. One of my old Marine Corps buddies told me Justine was looking for a new Chief. I threw my hat in the ring, and, well, here I am. You helped turn my life around, hero!"

"And you saved mine, Mark!" The two men shook hands again.

"So, guys, when are we going to get through with the mutual admiration and get started catching these bad guys?" Lady Victory asked with phony impatience. She was actually pretty touched by this story, too - without Murphy's courage, she wouldn't be married to Todd, and she might not even be a super heroine herself!

Based on a radioed warning from Red Rocket, Shiva, the group's current leader, had called an emergency meeting of the Super Squad at their New York headquarters, two hours hence. Since their Super Squad mini-jet could get them to NY in about 45 minutes, Red Rocket and Lady Victory decided to stick around for a while and start their investigation at this end. Chief Murphy supplied a conference room at the police station, and Elastique joined them.

Lady Victory took the lead. "Too many coincidences tonight for me!" she exclaimed. She turned to Elastique. "Coincidence number 1, Stretch" Elastique winced at the nickname, but she didn't protest. She was a little overwhelmed to be in the presence of such famous heroes.

"How is it that a brand new totally unknown super heroine happens to turn up at exactly the same time and place as 7 brand new, totally unknown super villains? "

Red Rocket interrupted quietly. "Let's make sure we keep track of our assumptions, Lady V. We actually saw 6 super powered villains - the 7th was unconscious the whole time."

Lady Victory could have been annoyed, but she wasn't. Uncataloged assumptions were as bad as unexplained coincidences. She nodded, and turned back to Elastique. "OK, Stretch, you're on!"

"You're not going to believe this, but one night I fell asleep in a fairy ring. I had a really strange dream - and when I woke up, I found I could stretch my body."

"Who ever heard of such a crazy thing? Do you expect us to believe that?" Murphy interrupted angrily.

"Hold on, Mark! You can't just discount magic. What about Captain Marvel, or Ibis, or my old foe Wizzo?" Red Rocket had seen magic many times. He didn't like it - but he had been forced to accept it.

Murphy looked stubborn. "You can't expect me to believe in fairies! Magical creatures? Give me a break!"

Lady Victory pointed out "What would you call Shiva and Kali? A 7 foot, blue skinned man with 4 arms and 3 eyes, a four-armed woman with flames for eyes, and you have trouble believing in the fey folk?" She turned back to Elastique. "Please go on. When did this happen?"

"A couple of years ago."

"So why are you just making your first appearance now?" Lady V asked.

"Well, after I discovered my powers, I secretly practiced using them. I eventually realized I didn't want to be a super hero, so I just stopped. Tonight, I saw some people I know in danger, so I helped you."

Chief Murphy looked thoughtful. "A couple of years… that could explain a couple of the department's open mysteries. Last year, a payroll robbery at the DePaul factory just sort of fell apart. Did you have anything to do with that?"

She nodded. " That was just before I changed my mind about being a super hero."

"I wrote that one off as 'Maxie the Gnome' dropping a little bad news on the bad guys" said the Chief.

"Who's Maxie the Gnome?" Rocket wanted to know.

Elastique smiled as she responded. "A local legend. Maxie brings luck, either good or bad. If you win the lottery, for example, we say that Maxie dropped you a little good news."

"Isn't a gnome a kind of a fairy?" Lady V asked, a twinkle in her eye.

"Hey! It's just a local legend, like she said. Kind of like Bigfoot! I don't believe in it!" the Chief was indignant.

"Most legends have some basis in fact, Chief." Rocket winked at Lady Victory - the two of them had actually met Bigfoot, a couple of years ago, on Super Squad business. They'd asked her to join, but she was mystically linked to the land, and couldn't survive anywhere except the Pacific Northwest. As well as being very shy...

Flustered, the chief changed the subject. "So, Red Rocket, why are you and Lady Victory here? I can't believe you came just for the Halloween party - after all, you've passed it up the last 5 years. And the invitation from the Brooklyn Reading Club the 5 years before that."

"I wondered why two groups I'd never heard of were so persistent about inviting me to their Halloween parties. That was your doing?" Rocket asked the Chief.

"Sure was. When I learned you'd been Bulletboy, I figured, what the heck. You'd probably never show, but it was fun, telling folks I knew you when... Boy, I've got an even better story now!"

"Actually, Chief, we're really here because of an accident at the abandoned DePaul chemical facility in Chicago last month. Figured we might learn more if nobody knew why we were in town. We planned to do our snooping tomorrow. Looks like it will have to wait." Rocket continued. "An unknown chemical spilled and gave a bunch of vagabonds super powers." He didn't mention the horrific melding of a dozen people into a single hapless monstrosity.

The chief looked puzzled. He kept close track of news stories involving their 'good corporate neighbor', but he hadn't heard anything about an accident on their abandoned Chicago facility, or super powers. Rocket filled him in "We kept that part of it secret."

Lady Victory was watching Elastique, and for just a second, she turned white as a sheet. The Delectable Detective was sure there was more to her story than a fairy ring. They would have to have a little girl to girl chat later. She turned back to the guys.

"OK, so there's a link between DePaul chemicals and unexpected super powers. That ties in - all the JLA members are wearing costumes made from DePaul synthetic fabrics. But, so were most of the other folks at the party. Why the 7 members of the JLA and nobody else?" Lady Victory wanted to know.

Elastique was feeling feisty after Lady Victory had all-but-accused her of being a villain. "They were all on stage, they were all dressed as members of the Jailbirds and Legbreakers Assembly, they all joined in the toast..." her eyes opened wide "they were all holding those antique golden goblets! That's the only difference between them and the other people on the stage! Nobody else had them."

Now the Chief turned white! "Good Night! Probably a half dozen of my men have touched those things since then. If it's the goblets, we could be swamped by super villains any second!" Very cautiously, the 4 headed for the evidence room. They didn't encounter any super villains. If the goblets had been the source of the mysterious powers, they seemed to have lost their charge. Still, the Chief cleared the evidence room, and using a fireplace tongs, cautiously placed the 7 goblets into a lockbox and then locked the box into a safe.

Before he closed the box, they carefully inspected these goblets - without touching them, of course! They were highly decorated by a very skilled craftsman, encrusted with what Lady Victory said were real gemstones. "How did a literary association that has to hold a Halloween fund raiser every year just to stay alive come into possession a virtually priceless set of antique goblets?" Lady Victory wondered?

"I'll find out!" Chief Murphy promised.

"Chief, please call us at Super Squad Headquarters with any new findings." Red Rocket requested. "Either Lady Victory or I will call you back within a half hour, any time, day or night. And one of us, at least, will be back once we've taken care of the JLA." He held out his hand. "We've got to go." They shook hands, and he turned to Elastique.

She wasn't interested in shaking hands. "I'd really like to see this through!" she insisted.

The flight to New York would give Lady Victory time to find out more about Elastique. Before Rocket could respond, she jumped in. "That would be great! Let's get going."

Rocket trusted his partner's instincts. The three headed to the small Justine airport, where the heroes had left their mini-jet. Rocket carried Lady Victory while Elastique showed off another aspect of her power, by launching herself into the air and then changing her form. She flattened and sprouted wings, and she kept up with Rocket easily. The scientist in Rocket admired the efficient flying wing shape she had adopted. The lady had good control of her power.

Exhausted by carrying his teammates on a hypersonic flight, Balefire barely reached their destination. He controlled tremendous power, but using it at such a high rate imposed a terrible toll on his body and spirit. He dropped them in front of a beachside cliff just outside Happy Harbor, Rhode Island. Concealed in that cliff was the entrance to the Secret Stronghold of the Jailbirds and Legbreakers Assembly.

The JLA was abuzz about what they had seen - and not seen! - on the quick flight.

"No Nuclear Winter! The clouds that have shrouded the sky ever since Mr. oh-so-great Atom Ant threw Manhattan into the Sun are… gone!" Vanquish said, bitterly. The new Manhattan volcano had been erupting violently ever since then, filling the sky with dark soot.

"You'll pay for that, witch!" Adamant had recovered enough to stand up, but he was still mysteriously weak - fortunately for Vanquish. Adamant had killed others who had mocked his name. Still, if she could avoid him for a half an hour, he would have forgotten the insult. Adamant was not the brightest bulb on the string, by a long shot!

"Somehow the Moon is back again, too!" It was strange to hear wistfulness in F'ant O'mah's voice. The Moon, her home, had been destroyed in the war between Lunarians and humans, and she was the last of her race.

"Stay alert!" warned the Ghast. "We don't know what we are going to find here, but it's almost certainly not our Secret Stronghold!" He had noted that the nearby town of Happy Harbor still existed. In his memory, Happy Harbor had been destroyed by an atomic explosion in the short but violent war between Earth and the Moon.

He was right. There wasn't even a cave entrance. "So what the heck is going on?" Breakneck demanded. As they normally did, the JLA turned to the Ghast for an explanation.

"Obviously, this isn't our Earth" he started off. "This world shows no traces of our existence." He hesitated, a little worried about the reaction to his next words. "I think the reason for that is that we don't… actually…" He was having problems forcing out the next word. He took a deep breath and tried again. "I don't think we actually exist!"

"Farging ghost! You might not exist, but I sure do!" yelled Adamant, as he swung a wild backhand blow at the Ghast. Even though he was expecting something of the sort, even though Adamant was still somewhat weakened, the Ghast couldn't match Adamant's super speed, and the blow sent him spinning backwards until he splatted against the cliff, then collapsed onto the beach.

Every bone in his body must have been broken. He wailed in agony as he collapsed, but then he dragged himself to his feet, and the others could see his body regaining human form. As a ghost, somehow mystically bound to human form, he could recuperate in seconds from injuries that would kill normal humans, although he felt pain as strongly as any human. No one knew if he could be destroyed; no one other than Adamant was insane enough to experiment.

The Spectral Shadow unleashed a blood-curdling howl that frightened even Vanquish, who was also a creature of Hell. "Your ersatz 'soul' will burn forever in real hellfire!" he roared as he sprang forward. He withdrew a plastic sack from under his cape and pulled out something the size of a marble and extended it towards Adamant.

The Abhorrent Android felt himself weakening and quickly took a step backwards. The marble was auronite, the only substance that could harm him! Adamant had never revealed his weakness to anyone, but there were very few who could keep secrets from the Ghast. Such a small amount wouldn't kill him right away, but he was still woozy from his earlier exposure in the banquet hall, where there must have been a couple of pounds of the deadly substance.

Balefire reluctantly created a pale yellow-green energy barrier between Admanat and the Ghast. Breakneck and Aquon stepped in front of the Ghast, and Vanquish and F'ant O'mah confronted Adamant. Either their bodies or the barrier blocked the effects of the auronite, and for a second, Adamant, the most powerful member of the JLA, and the Ghast, supposedly the weakest, glared at each other, restrained from mortal combat only by their reluctant companions. Then the Ghast laughed!

"Fools! I have ALL of your souls in my hands!" The bag opened wider, and more than one of the other villains felt a moment of their own secret weaknesses. That sack, if sundered, might very well destroy them all!

Smugly satisfied, the Ghast returned the auronite to the sack, and the sack to its place of safekeeping. "Remain silent while I explain. I'll keep it simple so you can all understand."

"Even a dotterel mind must realize that this is not 'our' Earth, agreed?" None of the others commented, so the Ghast continued. "Therefore, something must have drawn us here. My innate sensitivity to magic tells me that we were drawn here by a powerful magic spell."

"So what's that crap about not existing?" Breakneck was always the most impatient one.

"How old are you?" the Ghast challenged him contemptuously. "What is your real name? Where did you grow up, and what are your parent's names?"

"I'm 29, my name is Jack er ah FLASH!" Breakneck had started off confidently, but as he searched his mind for his last name, he started to falter. "Western New York…" and he ran down.

"Can't recall your parents' names? Seems a little strange, doesn't it?" He whirled to face Balefire. "What about you?" He took a step backwards and addressed all of them, "Do any of you recall any details about your life? Not just generalities - real details, like the name of the first person you killed, or the first time you broke the law?"

Nobody said anything, as each member of the JLA examined his or her memories. Prior to their 'debut' at the costume party, none of them had the detailed memories that a 'real' person should have.

The Ghast watched with interest as each of his teammates tried to come to grips with the idea that they had never existed until a few hours ago and that everything they thought they remembered was false. Some of them handled it better than others, as he knew they would.

"Maybe the magic spell that brought us here gave all of us amnesia?" Aquon rationalized, a theory the Ghast had considered - and then discarded as extremely improbable.

"What difference does it make?" Vanquish asked? "We're here now!"

"Easy for you to say, witch!" F'ant O'mah screamed at her. "You're only an animated pile of mud anyway. You were never real in the first place! He's saying that my entire race never lived!"

"A race you can't even remember!" Adamant sneered. "What difference can it make? A warrior lives in the present! Memories of the past are nothing but useless baggage."

"If none of our past is true, then you never captured Mainline!" Breakneck spit at Adamant. "You've no hold over me, any longer!" In his memories, he was enslaved to Adamant, who threatened to kill his lover, Mainline, if Breakneck didn't do as he was told.

"But you've no need to hate him, either!" the Ghast reminded him. "None of the things you remember actually happened!" He was wondering how much of his identity was dictated by his phony memories. How much would his non-existent past control his future?

Though Breakneck was faster than Adamant, he was neither as ruthless nor as cunning - and was caught off-guard when the Abhorrent Android grabbed him by the neck. Breakneck vibrated at high speed and attempted to pass through the hands that were gripping him, but Adamant's armored skin resisted him. Adamant laughed. "This is my hold over you! This is your new reason to hate me!" He threw the petrified speedster at the cliff wall. Only the fact that he was already vibrating allowed him to pass through the wall and avoid death.

"OK, big brain!" Aquon turned to the Ghast. "If some magic spell created us back at that party, why do we have any memories at all? Where do our powers come from? Why do we think we're the Jailbirds and Legbreakers Assembly?" The Ghast was really surprised - he hadn't thought any of his teammates had the wit to ask that question. Obviously, he shouldn't trust his memories of them any more than he trusted his own!

"Can any of you remember being someone else?" the Ghast asked. His teammates looked blank - obviously they could not. Yet, somehow he did. He found the answer in the memories of his unwitting 'host'. "We're characters out of some sort of a game!" Before they could explode again, he added a dire warning.

"One more thing - the magic that created us imbued these costumes with our essence - our identities and powers. If you remove the costume, you will cease to exist - vanish back into the void whence we came!"

Lady Victory spent about half the flight to New York in the passenger compartment with Elastique, then came forward to the flight deck. Red Rocket could see that his wife was bemused. "Penny for your thoughts?" he greeted her as she strapped in.

"Actually, it will cost you a lot more than a penny. But you can pay me later" she grinned at him. "You won't believe what she does for a living!" He couldn't tell if that was envy or disdain in her voice.

"If you tell me, I'll have to believe it." he responded. "So, tell me!"

"You know that new super-model - the really trashy one who only uses one name - Slinky? That's Elastique's other identity!" Red Rocket did - she was all over the social news recently.