The Stormcrow, A Superhero's Tale Options

[Acadian]

The Air and Space museum. Wonder what Bismarck wants there? Whatever it is, it seems that he may have found it.

Silverlight is engaged in a classic duel between the forces of light and darkness – literally.

And a mystic motorcycle archer! Bowbiker? No, his name is Hwarang according to the ever-so-handy Cray.

And what do you get if you cross a next gen terminator with a bullet train? Mercury the metalman! Very cool images you conjure with your descriptions.

That Crow-chick from out of town quite helps to turn the tide with her deadly wings.

Let’s hope Silverlight can shed a little light on what’s going on at the museum!

[SubRosa]

Renee: January does not care if people are making bootleg Stormcrow shirts and the like and selling them for their own profit. Just so long as the money is not being used to fund Nazis. If people are using it to pay their rent or buy dinner, then more power to them as far as she is concerned. That is just one more way that her identity is doing some good in the world.

Silverlight does live right next door. So she's definitely going to be surprised, but happy, to see January turn up.

Hwarang the character was inspired by a K-drama called Hwarang, about the historical hwarang. That is where my picture of him below comes from.

I love the name Metro Man! Maybe that will be a comic book character in January's "real" superhero world, like Nightman, Superious, and Miss Fortune.

You know what, I had not thought of Mercury being descriptive of how he can control and reshape metal. I just took the name from the RL train that he was inspired by. I saw a picture of that once, and knew it had to be a superhero. From there I decided that rather than being a guy who wore powered armor, instead his metal control ability would *be* the power in the armor.


Acadian: You can be sure that Bismarck does not want to just get some pics of the airplanes. He's got a goal, find two lost puppies, that will level two cities in atomic fire. We are finally circling back to the events that started out this story.

I expect you will like the bow-biker. He is the result of a lot of time spent working out an arcane archer I had. Once I narrowed down that he was going to be a Korean hwarang, I was going to make him a horse-archer (since that is what the historical hwarang were). But then I thought, it's the 21st century. He should have a modern ride. So instead he has an electric motorcycle from the Technocracy.

Mercury is definitely metal. He is inspired by a couple of podcasters who are also big train nerds. They did a 9 hour or so series on the Penn Central Railroad and its bankruptcy. I think that is where I first saw a picture of the New York Central Mercury train, and knew I had to turn that into a superhero somehow.

We have some more fighty posts, before we finally get down to answering the question of what the baddies are up to in the museum.






The Atomkrieg were inspired by the real life Atomwaffen Division

Hwarang is based on Park Hyung-sik

MiG-17


Book 12.21 - Broken Arrow

"These hombres you are tangling with are the Atomkrieg," the elder hacker went on. "Bad dudes. Not big fans of you by the way. They burned an effigy of you on the steps of an Alabama courthouse a few months ago, after your fight with the National Socialist League at Motor City Pride. The local police took selfies with them while they did it."

"Their leader is a cyborg named Bismarck. He's that guy you saw earlier on the ground. He's a telekinetic, is strong, and heavily armored. The one in the air throwing down against Silverlight with elemental darkness is Reinhard. Watch it, he's a rumored to be a mage. Besides the regular goons, there's three more metas to look out for. One's a vibration emitter called Blitz. He can literally shake things apart. Another is Skorzeny, who is their commando. He can turn two-dimensional. He's good at hiding, and slicing things apart with the edges of his hands and arms. The last is a big guy named Tirpitz, classic brick. Oh, and Duck!"

January did not think, she simply did what Cray told her to. She did the splits, and splayed out her legs at a ninety degree angle to either side of her body. That dropped her down to the floor just in time to feel a whoosh of air pass by overhead. She caught sight of something big and metallic flashing past. It looked like a fist, but was far too large to be that.

She rolled back in the direction that the attack had come from, pulled in her legs, and shot them up into a double kick. She felt her boots crunch into something hard. She followed through with the motion, and leaped to her feet. She put on a half twist in the air as she did so. That put her face to face with what could only have been Tirpitz.

Everything about him was oversized and overdone. He stood about seven feet tall, and January wryly imagined that he might have been the same in width. His frame burst with muscle, and was suffused with a soft glow that January suspected was a force field. His head was encased with one of those coal scuttle helmets that the Germans had worn in the Second World War. But this one had a solid steel mask that covered the entire face as well, which was painted with a full white skull. His hands were sheathed in a pair of massively outsized metal gauntlets that shone with energy. Each knuckle was the size of a tea saucer, and was shaped like a skull.

Four of those skulls were coming January's way. She chose not to dodge or block. Instead she stood there and took it, just to see what he had. Granted, she cheated. She called upon Earth and suffused her body with that element's ideal. She was stone, she was the mountain, she was adamant. Nothing could harm her now.

He hit hard enough that the shockwave of the strike shattered a glass case beside them, and sprayed broken shards across the early radar screen displayed within. But the blow merely glanced off the side of January's face, as did his follow up to her gut. He came in for a third punch, but by this time January had a good idea of his strength.

She let go of Earth, and instead became Water. She flowed under his left cross, and continued going low. She crashed a fist against his stomach a moment later. She found that the faint glow around him was definitely a force field, for it prevented her from actually touching his body. He merely grunted in reply. She could have sworn that the skull painted upon his helmet smiled down at her.

He brought both fists straight down at her in a double blow. But she rolled aside, and he merely gouged out a massive chunk of the marble floor. She replied with a kick to his knee. But while this was usually the weak spot in any opponent, he merely grunted again, and appeared entirely unfazed.

"Long Live Death!"

January turned her head to see a pair of henchmen across the space level their rifles upon a single woman. The other heroes appeared to be too occupied with other foes to deal with them. The two neo-Nazis were likewise too far away for January to reach. Well, reach with her hands at least.

She called upon the sky. It answered by transforming into a blanket of gray clouds that rumbled with force and sheeted rain. This would be something new for her. She had never done it indoors. So she had to concentrate. She stretched her arms up to the firmament overhead, and pulled down very deliberately and precisely. She focused upon exactly what she wanted from the elements, and then willed it into reality.

The sky responded with a jagged bolt of lightning. The electricity lanced down, and crashed through the glass ceiling overhead. That shattered a wide plate of the transparent material, and sent shards of it flying down below. January hoped that would not hurt anyone. But broken glass was better than bullets.

The lightning continued down, and forked out into two distinct bolts of energy. Each of these slammed into a neo-Nazi. Both were thrown from their feet. Sparks flew around their bodies and smoke curled from their uniforms. Their rifles clattered away with metal bent and polymer melted off.

Of course all of this left January wide open to Tirpitz's next attack. She did not even have time to turn back to face him. Before she knew it, he hit her in the back of the head like a truck. She went flying forward and crashed face-first into the wide stone tiles of the floor. The world spun around her, and lights danced before her eyes.

She tried to scrabble to her feet, but she could not climb up. The floor seemed to slide out from under her boots, and she could not tell up from down. Then she felt herself lifted up into the air, only to come crashing back down a moment later. Granite tile exploded around her, as she sank down deep into the floor.

She tasted blood in her mouth, and felt fire rise inside her. This bastard was not going to be the end of her. Not by a long shot.

She kicked out hard, and felt her foot impact something. Then a strong hand clamped down upon her ankle, and flung her through the air. The next thing she knew, she saw the SR-71 coming up in front of her. She was about to crash through it!

She snapped out her wings. Their tips dug into the granite floor, and gouged deep furrows into it. Her feet came down a moment later, and again, cut more trenches into the wide stone tiles. She slowed, and came to a halt just inches from the legendary Blackbird. She took a moment to kiss the fingers of one hand, and then press them lovingly against the black hull of the famous spy plane.

She turned to see that Tirpitz was charging after her like an enraged bull. He was clearly intent upon slamming directly into her and carrying them both through the great plane. January smiled, he was telegraphing his attack from a mile away. That gave her plenty of time to respond.

She twisted slightly, so that her left side faced the neo-Nazi. Then she reached out with her left hand, and curled her fingers inward to beckon him forward. It was half invitation, half taunt. But its only real purpose was to distract him from what her right hand was doing on the other side of her body. It reached down into her belt, and pulled forth a party favor.

"There are no Nazis in Valhalla," she snarled at the oncoming brute.

He was almost upon her. Just before he could reach her she leaped skyward in a forward somersault. As she did so, she tossed her toy right in front of the Nazi's face. The flash pack went off an instant later, and sent brilliant strobes of light out in every direction. The flashes were so intense that even though January had screwed her eyes shut, she still saw bright afterimages against the back of her eyelids.

That was enough to stagger and slow the charging rhino of a Nazi. Still in the air, January reached down and wrapped her arms around the tree trunk of his neck. She continued through with the motion, and pulled him up off the ground with her. That sent them both spinning through the air back the way he had come from. But this time they ended with January slamming him down belly-first into a new crater in the granite floor.

He was slow to rise to his feet this time. January was quicker. She had some pent up anger to work out, and this guy was the perfect target to unload it upon. In her mind's eye she replaced that coal scuttle helmet and skull mask with the face of Patricia Fine. Lightning burned through her veins, and she bared her teeth in a predatory grin. It was time to end this.

She stepped up to the neo-Nazi, and rested one hand on his shoulder. She used that as a springboard to lift herself into the air above him. She came down a second later and unleashed Ragnarok. She led with her elbow, and it crashed directly into the top of his armored skull.

The Nazi's force field winked out in an instant, overwhelmed by the force of the blow. His helmet and metal mask shattered immediately afterward. That revealed him to be a man with a shaven head, a bristly five o'clock shadow, and a swastika tattoo right in the middle of his forehead. His blue eyes rolled up in his head, and he collapsed into a heap on the floor.

January turned to see another neo-Nazi that Cray had warned her about: Blitz. He was a skinny man dressed like his comrades: in a black uniform, helmet, and half skull mask. His body was a blur however, as if the space around him was shivering or shaking at some insane speed. He was not armed with a rifle. Instead he gestured with one hand, and that blur of motion lanced out from his fingers.

This beam of energy leaped out across the museum, and tore up the granite floor in a long furrow beneath it. No, it was not exactly energy. It was not like the lasers or arcane bolts that Silverlight could fire. Rather it was a disturbance in space. It seemed to cause matter to shake apart, perhaps even at a molecular or atomic level, so far as January could tell.

January followed the line of the oscillating beam, and saw that it reached out for Hwarang. The Korean-American zoomed across the floor of the museum on his motorcycle. He still fired from his arcane bow as he rode. A single one of these arrows struck the floor amidst a trio of the ordinary neo-Nazis. It exploded in a shower of blue and white energy, which quickly spread across the surface of the wide stone tiles. Frost wafted up, and January realized that it had created a sheet of ice. The Nazis slipped and slid in an almost comical fashion, and spilled most unceremoniously from their feet.

The archer looked up too late to see that Blitz's attack was homing in upon him. It sliced through a display panel about surface-to-air missiles, and then through one such missile that had been placed on exhibit. Thankfully it did not possess a warhead or fuel, so the metal skin of the weapon simply shredded under the attack with no further harm.

January was in the air by then, and she winged her way to intercept the Nazi. But an instant later his energy beam finally caught up with Hwarang. That trench he had gouged through the floor rose up to meet the center of his bike. Steel tore apart under the oscillations, and went flying in all directions.

The motorcycle lifted up as if it had exploded. Hwarang seemed to make use of the motion to leap forward off the bike. He somersaulted through the air and came down on top of a parked MiG-17. He ran across the fuselage of the craft, and drew his glowing, semi-transparent bow back to his ear.

He loosed, and five arrows shot from the string all at once. They spread out horizontally, and bent out in a wide arc, each arrow equidistant from the next. Halfway to Blitz they all bent back inward, and came homing in upon him from front, left, and right all at once. The Nazi tried to roll out of the way. But he was too slow, and all five arrows slammed home into his body at once.

The arcane arrows sliced through Blitz's oscillating energy shield as if it did not exist. They bit into his torso an instant later, and sent him straight to the ground. January wondered how much of those arrows were physical at all, or if like the standard arcane bolt it was primarily astral in nature. As Silverlight had explained, strike the aura, and the damage ground down to the physical body. As the saying went: as above, so below.

January altered her course slightly to swoop down upon the three Nazis who flailed about on the new sheet of ice. One went down when a golden arrow vanished into his body, then another. She was just about to dip a wing down to clip the last one, when a final arrow finished that terrorist off as well. January noted that all of them were still breathing, even though none showed any obvious wounds. So clearly those had been sleep or stun arrows of some kind, a handy tool for a super to have in one's kit.

At the same time though, January silently criticized herself. She had just wasted her time on henchmen that the other hero had been able to take care of on their own. That was inefficient and just poor teamwork. But then again, she supposed a lack of synergy was inevitable given that she had only just met the archer a few moments before.

January looped around and came down to land beside the glass canopy of the MiG-17, just a few feet from the Korean-American. The archer nodded to her, and then cast his eyes across the exhibit. So far as January could tell, that had taken care of all the Atomkrieg except three: Reinhard, Skorzeny, and their leader Bismarck.

[Renee]

Yeah, that'd be sooo D.C., "I'm Metro Man! ... Now please watch your step, when exiting the car."
Who is Superious, if you don't mind? What sort of abilities and powers?

Ah yes, mercury's the only metal which is fluid at room temperature, as you know. Which is why it's used in thermometers. Anyway, let's see what's up this week. By the way, your YouTube link for Mercury led to a 3-second Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure clip!

They burned an effigy of Jan??? And the police proudly stood by??? How dare they. mALX and I had some long PM talks about the south by the way, since she's from Tennessee, and I've never seen anything racist when I used to travel in the south, not like in the movies, especially. But she confirmed that definitely, such things exist (in modern times, I should note). There are such things as entire towns where the law might look the other way (or worse) when such actions occur.

Blitz's superpower does sound rather cool, certainly unique from any others, so far. Too bad he's on the other side.

Whoa... Skorzeny can turn into a slideshow! Wicked! But again, too bad he's on the other side. What can ya do? Damn, the fight isn't over! I assumed since Cray's on the comm that it is.

Lemme catch up to this in a few. Someone knocking at the door.

and a swastika tattoo right in the middle of his forehead.

Manson did it first. You're just a copycat wannabe who won't be remembered in the long run.

A Reverse Arrows spell! The part when the ice sheet makes them all fall over is great. If only...

This post has been edited by Renee: Apr 16 2024, 06:25 PM

[Acadian]

An exciting fight for sure - well described and action packed.

‘I’m gonna let him hit me full on in the face to see how strong he is.’ Surely, Stormcrow must have learned that trick from Rocky Balboa!

She does get flung around a fair bit here. I chuckled when she mentally pictured Patricia Fine’s face on her big foe, Tirpitz. That reminds me of a scene from ‘The Waterboy’ when Adam Sandler similarly pictured his nemesis on the face of another football player and rage-stomped him.

Precision guided lightning! Well done, Stormcrow!

The human vibrator dude blew apart Hwarang’s ride! The mystic archer barely missed a beat though as he showed what his bow could do.

Still more baddies to take out though it seems. Fight’s not over yet.

[SubRosa]

Renee: Superious is just a Superman clone, like Nightman is a Batman clone. They seem like good names for comic books characters. They are a little silly and light-hearted, like the other fictional characters in January's world, such as Jet Gladiator or Wolfstone the Barbarian.

There is nothing about that which is unique to Tennessee. That's all over the US. Law enforcement has a association with the KKK. There have been times where police departments directly deputized mass groups of KKK members. The same goes for other right wing fascist groups. Whenever fascists march, the police protect them. The Battle of Cable Street is a prime example from the 30s. But it is no different today.

Yep, Manson did it first. One thing I don't want to do is make Nazis look cool. Because in real life they are not. They are pathetic, and always have been. Everything about them is stolen from other people, like the swastika. It was a holy symbol from South Asia for thousands of years, used by the Hindus and other religions. Then the Nazis appropriated it. They do the same with Norse Paganism. Even the term red-pilling that modern neo-Nazis love, was literally stolen from the Matrix movies (which were made by two trans women).


Acadian: Ryo did point out that January went to the Rocky Balboa school of fighting a little while ago! Seriously though, being the team tank really does inform her decision-making process. Putting herself in the line of fire is what January always does.

You know the old saying: "If you can't be with the one you hate, hate the one you're with." Wait, well, maybe that's not the old saying. But working out some anger issues on a deserving target is always a win-win scenario.

Blitz could have had a lucrative career in porn, or followed Richard Gere's footsteps as an American Gigolo. But no, he chose to use his powers for evil...








U2 "Dragon Lady"

F-4 Phantom


Book 12.22 - Broken Arrow

She could see Reinhard floating in the air above, still locked in his duel with Silverlight. As before, the diametrically opposed abilities of the pair continued to result in a stalemate between them. Both of them were effectively out of the fight, having cancelled out one another's ability to determine its outcome.

This meant that she, Hwarang, and Mercury would now have to tip the balance themselves. With all the ordinary henchmen now taken care of, they had a golden opportunity to do exactly that. The three of them would simply scratch all the other Nazis off the list, then join in with Silverlight to take down Reinhard in the end.

January could not make out Bismarck however. An F-4 Phantom was parked between her and the last place she had seen the man. With its distinctive upturned wingtips and the downward angled horizontal stabilizers on its tail, that was a plane that January recognized. It was one of Avery's favorite planes to fly in his Air War World videogame.

She took a moment to push her senses into astral space. The auras of everyone within the exhibit instantly glowed with brilliant life, while planes, displays and artifacts faded into near total obscurity. That confirmed what she had guessed. The mundane neo-Nazis were all down, along with Tirpitz and Blitz. The auras of the latter pair were aglow with the violet threads of meta-humanity. However, Reinhard overhead showed the golden threads of a mage stitched through his own astral self. So Cray had been right about that.

Bismarck's aura was a curious thing. Large parts of it had faded to near blankness, like all the machines around her. Unlike the artifacts on display however, she felt energy that sizzled hot and strong through the mechanical parts. It was not electricity or plasma. January was quite familiar with what those felt like in the astral by now. This was something much more exotic. She wondered if it might be quantum foam? Avery had once told her that Zero Point of the Sentinels used that in his powered armor. Yet the meat portions of Bismarck's aura were laced with violet, which betrayed his meta-humanity. So from what she could gather, he was both a meta and a cyborg at the same time. That was interesting.

There was still no trace of Skorzeny at all. Unless he could cloak his presence in astral space, he must have been elsewhere. Perhaps he had some other mission to perform? Or maybe he had a falling out with the others, and he'd been given the old Ernst Röhm treatment? Nazis were catty bitches after all. Sooner or later, they always turned on one another.

Between her and the Atomkrieg's leader were a pair of smaller, weaker auras. They were huddled within the cockpit of the F-4 Phantom. It had two seats, laid out one in front of the other. Each aura hunched down in a separate chair. But Bismarck seemed to pay no attention to them. Instead she could see in the astral that he was intent upon something else. It might have been that same parachute she had seen him studying before. Now that her awareness was in astral space, she could tell that he was projecting some sort of power onto it. Or perhaps divining some sort of information from it. There was definitely a transfer of energy and information going back and forth between them, though to what purpose she could not guess.

"So... fancy bumping into you here," Hwarang said out of the corner of his mouth. All the while his eyes scanned the museum for more targets. For the moment Reinhard had moved out of view, having flown behind the U-2 spy plane that hung from the ceiling overhead. "You're the Crowgirl right?"

"At your service flower knight," January quipped. She saw the energy of his aura stir momentarily with surprise. She also noted the distinctive violet stitching of a mage throughout his astral being. So as she had already suspected, he was definitely a magician. More specifically, he was an arcane archer. January had not known that was a thing. But as Blood Raven had been wont to note, the world was indeed a wider and stranger place than anyone imagined.

"My pal Ôkami loves K-dramas. So I know what a Hwarang is. You're a long way from Ancient Silla."

"And you're a long way from the Dragon City," Hwarang smiled in return.

"I was just in the neighborhood, and thought I'd drop in." January shrugged. Then she went back to business.

"Our bad guy is down there, on the other side of that plane." She now pointed out Bismarck to Hwarang. "But we've got friendlies in the cockpit."

"You can see that?" the Korean said. "I can't get a shot from here."

"You should have come to Silverlight's astral sensing class a few days ago," January smiled. Then she nodded up to the U-2 hanging overhead. "How about from on top of that?"

"Oh, that will do nicely."

January leaned forward and cupped her fingers together to form a saddle with her hands. The archer stuck a foot within and leaped skyward. January gave him a super strength assist, and sent him rocketing up skyward. The modern flower knight somersaulted in mid-air, and came down lightly upon one wing of the great old spy plane.

January did not waste any more time watching him. She lowered her eyes to Bismarck, and the two auras in the F-4 Phantom between them. She dropped her astral perception in order to better focus on the physical world. Then she leaped out from the MiG-17, toward what she imagined was one of its old rivals. She came down lightly in front of the cockpit of the Phantom a moment later, and saw two teens huddled within.

She glanced over at Bismarck. He still stood within the same shattered display case, and continued to pore over that old parachute. Now she could see a holographic map of North America and the Atlantic Ocean spread out in the air before him. A thread of glowing energy rose from the parachute, and connected to the map. She could see it move across its surface, and create a small dot wherever it touched. It was as if the parachute was trying to pick out a specific spot on the map, but could not quite make up its mind where.

January looked back down at the two teens beneath her. Right now they were more important. They were too close. She had no idea what powers the Nazi leader might unleash if she engaged him straight away. They could all too easily be killed, even if by pure accident. That was a chance she could not take.

She bent down to grab the forward canopy, and tried to figure out how to pull it up. The teen inside the front seat shook his head with terror. He reached up to grab the glass dome, and pulled back against January's efforts. January could not blame him for not wanting to leave his hiding place, not with a supervillain just a few feet away. But it was not helping either. They could not be there when the fighting began once more.

She wished she could say something to the teens to reassure them. But Bismarck would hear it if she did. At the moment he appeared engrossed in what he was doing. But surely he would put it on hold if he noticed a superhero next to him. Nazis were not known for their restraint after all.

So January pushed harder on the canopy. She did not exert her full force. She did not want to destroy it. It was a priceless historical artifact. Not to mention the noise would certainly attract Bismarck's attention. But it appeared that the teens inside had locked it shut from inside. That forced January to gradually push harder and harder, hoping to force it open without wrecking the thing.

She wished that Ôkami was here. He could have faded through the hull of the plane, and faded right back out with the two civilians. It would have been nice, neat, and without a sound. But apparently her current, ersatz team did not include a rogue to handle such subtleties.

January heard hard, metallic clomping ring out from beyond the tail of the interceptor. Her head jerked up to see the author of the noise, though she had a sneaking suspicion that it was something railroad related. Sure enough, a moment later Mercury stamped out from behind the plane. His silvery armor glinted in the light that streamed down through the glass ceiling high overhead. His train wheels and passenger car had vanished, and the metal that had formed them had once again taken its original places around his body.

Talk about a complete lack of subtlety.

Bismarck looked up at the clamor, and his eyes set upon both January and the Philadelphian hero. The neo-Nazi raised one hand to January, and before she could react, a gray-white haze extended from his palm. It enveloped her a moment later, like a giant, glowing blanket. It felt like a giant invisible hand had clapped down around her body. Yet while she could still move her arms and legs, it was all to no avail. Nothing she did could pry the energy field from her body.

That gray-white force picked her up, and in an instant it violently jerked her sideways and down. That sent her toward the floor, and straight at Mercury. He did not see her coming until the last moment, and by then it was too late. January crashed directly into him. She felt the metal of his armor dimple under the impact. But it held, even if he went flying back head over heels.

He and January went careening across the floor in a most undignified heap of arms and legs. January imagined it must have looked like bowling for superheroes. They crashed through a display of cockpit instrument panels, only to skid to a halt amid a group of mannequins clad in the uniforms of various nations.

"Watch where you're going!" the armored hero snapped.

"Hey, it wasn't my idea!" January shot back. She pushed a dummy clad in an old Soviet uniform off of her. Then she tempered her response. "That guy's a telekinetic."

"Stormcrow, you and Mercury need to concentrate on Reinhard." Cray's voice was a calm, mellow tonic in her ears. "Leave Bismarck to Silverlight and Hwarang, he shouldn't be able to stop their magical attacks."

"Got it coach," January nodded as she rose to her feet. Apparently Bismarck had released her from his telekinetic grip, for she was once again free to move.

"Who are you talking to?" the railroad-themed hero asked, as he clambered to his feet.

"My fairy godfather," January quipped.

She idly realized that she never would have come up with such a smarmy one-liner just a few months ago. She had indeed leveled up quite a bit since then. She hoped that Cray at least appreciated the joke.

She was about to relate what the hacker had suggested to the other superhero, when Bismarck took the matter out of her hands. He turned off that energy field that he had created around the parachute. Now that he was finished with it, he tossed the piece of life-saving equipment carelessly aside.

Bismarck looked up and shot skyward. As he flew up, he reached out with both hands. That gray-white energy field reached out once more, and wrapped up the unconscious forms of Tirpitz and Blitz. They rose up in the air with him, plucked aloft by his telekinetic grip. However, the other terrorists sprawled out around the museum did not accompany them. Whether that was because Bismarck could not see them, or because he had reached his limit and could lift no more, January could not tell.

"Damn, we've got to move!" January leaped after the Nazi leader and unfurled the wings from her back. But he was too far away for her to reach. Without thinking she called for the sky overhead. Once more it turned dark as coal, and a blanket of storm clouds instantly raged overhead. Then the elements answered January's call, and a ragged bolt of lightning crashed down through the glass ceiling.

The silver white energy slammed full into Bismarck. The thunderclap that followed the blast caused the remaining windows to shake, along with the displays down upon the museum floor. But when January's eyes cleared from the bright flash, she saw that while Bismarck was a little singed, he continued to rise up in the air. He seemed otherwise unaffected by the blast.

In fact, she saw her electricity play around his frame for a moment. He smiled, and his eyes glowed brightly. The energy seemed to fall down into his body like water going down a faucet. Then his eyes turned to brilliant scarlet, and an instant later one beam of ruby light after another blossomed forth from them. These new lasers lanced up and around, and sliced through the wires that held the nearby U-2 spy plane aloft as if they were made of string.

"Speckt!" January cursed.

The U-2 was directly above that F-4 Phantom on the floor, the plane in which those two teens were still hidden. As if that was not enough, Hwarang still stood atop one of its wings. Now the archer fought to maintain his balance as his footing literally dropped out from under him. The five-missile finishing shot he had been just making against Bismarck wobbled far off course, and burned its way through the ceiling of the museum instead.

January dove for the falling plane. Even as she did, she knew that she had unwittingly caused this. Bismarck had clearly absorbed her lightning, converted it to laser energy, and finally emitted it back out once more. She had given him the ammunition he had needed to not only interrupt Hwarang's finishing move, but also to scratch the Korean-American off the playing board for what remained of the fight. Not to mention the falling U-2 now threatened to kill the two civilians that still remained below. It was a perfect storm of ineptitude on her part.

But there was no time for self-recrimination. That could come later, in the after action report. She had lives to save, before it was too late.

She called upon Air to impart greater power to her flight. She swooped under the plummeting surveillance plane, and then looped back upward. She hit the hull face-first. But at least that was intentional. She spread her arms as wide as she was able, to get the most purchase she could against the plane. Finally her wings beat furiously, and she pushed up against the weight of the falling aircraft.

A few months ago she had struggled to hold a car aloft from the edge of the Ambassador Bridge for more than just a few minutes. In the end both it - and her - had plummeted straight down into the Detroit River below. The spy plane was not very big, at least as far as planes went. In fact, it looked quite spindly with its narrow fuselage. But it had to weigh far more than that car ever could.

But as January had so recently noted, she had leveled up since then. She was not the same woman that she had been before. She had learned, exercised, and grown; both as an aerialist and as a magician. Now she poured all that she had learned into her flight, and willed herself to hold the U-2 aloft.

Air give me quickness in body and wit. Let the weights of the world fall from me.

The solid black aircraft slowed its descent as January called upon the classical element of Air to further refine her power. But it still did not stop. The floor was coming up closer and closer under her. Then Silverlight appeared beside her, and joined her on the bottom of the plane. Wings of pure light spread from the other heroine's back. They did not flap like a bird's did, as January's did. But she could feel the power within them nonetheless. They altered reality around the lunar heroine, and held her in the sky through the force of her will.

Out of the corner of her eye January saw Hwarang fall to the floor. He went down back first, and fired his bow skyward again and again as he dropped. But if his arrows hit anything, January could not tell. The bulk of the spy plane lay between her and the Nazis, whom she imagined must be making good their escape through the glass ceiling overhead.

The U-2 slowed further, but even together, the two heroines could not completely arrest its descent. Then January saw Mercury below. He had created those train wheels around his feet once more, and he rolled up behind the F-4. He pushed against the tail of the plane. After a heart-stopping moment, it went lurching forward. January could imagine she heard the man's armor chugging like a train. But maybe that was all in her head. In any case, the Cold War interceptor slid out of the way, even as January and Silverlight brought the U-2 down to a soft landing where it had sat moments before.

Mercury had cleared the Phantom out of the way with seconds to spare. He took the time afterward to remove his wheels once more, and caused the metal to flow back up like liquid into the rest of his armor. But then his frame altered again, as the metal flowed straight down under his feet, and pushed him skyward. It formed what was essentially a pair of wide stilts under his boots. That lifted him to the same height as the cockpit of the interceptor. He touched the metal rim of the canopy. January heard the bolts that had locked it shut pop open, as if through the will of Mercury alone.

Then the single canopy seemed to split apart, and revealed that it was in fact divided into two halves: fore and aft. From each a curved section of glass rotated up from rear-mounted hinges. That allowed the occupants within to finally make their way out of the long, narrow cockpit.

January and Silverlight moved out from under the U-2, once they were sure it was safely down on the floor. January breathed a sigh of relief. That had been close. But they had all managed it by working together. She paused to look skyward, but saw no sign of the Nazis. They had clearly made good their escape.

"Sister, you have excellent timing," Silverlight observed. She leaned in close, and wrapped up January in a brief hug.

January heard the distant wail of sirens as Silverlight pulled away. But for the moment, the exhibit space was otherwise quiet now that the battle was over. Hwarang appeared to be uninjured from his fall. His magical bow vanished from his fingers, and he stepped up alongside Mercury. One at a time, the armored hero passed the teens down to the Korean-American. The two students were white as sheets, and shook profusely. January did not blame them. They had nearly been pasted by the falling U-2 spy plane.

It was the oldest villain trick in the book. Endanger civilians to distract the heroes. It always worked too, and January knew it would continue to do so. She would always place the lives of people like those two teens over "winning" any day.

She stepped over to see if she could help. But found that the other two heroes had things well in hand. Still, she put on her usual post-battle smile for the public, and tried not to show any winces or make any groans from her latest set of bumps and bruises. Tirpitz could pack a wallop, especially when her guard was down. She would have to ask Silverlight if she had anything for a headache...

"Well, that could have been better, but could have been a lot worse too." With the last civilian down and safe, Mercury's legs shrank down to their normal length. The Philadelphian took in the scene around them. The exhibition hall was a mess. The floor was chewed up in numerous places with trenches and craters from the battle. Melted and broken glass was scattered everywhere, and numerous display panels and cases lay in ruins.

But there were no dead or critically wounded people that January could see. In fact, her previous astral sensing had already told her that the hall was empty, save for the last two civilians from the F-4. They were already headed to the door. All the planes had made it through intact as well. So that was something.

"Everyone goes home alive. That's the important thing." Silverlight declared.