The first thing you need to understand is that this world is not yours.
It looks a bit like it on the surface, maybe, but you could hardly turn on the television or open a newspaper without being confronted with something that would make you scratch your head and go “That’s impossible.”
Your world has a California, and that California has a northern half, but there is no city of Crescent Bay within it. It was the eastern cities, with their crime and corruption, which first made superheroes acceptable. It took Crescent Bay to make them fashionable. This is a city of mythic proportions, the city of the Pantheon of Heroes, the DELPHI Institute, Aquarius Oceonagraphy, and the Pandora Foundation… modern-day gods and titans who steal the fire from the very heavens for the benefit of man.
Allison Powers has long dreamed of taking her place among those legends. Recent events actually placed her shoulder-to-shoulder with some of her idols, when she found herself targeted by a nefarious plot not because of her impressive psionic gifts but because of a subtler twist of her mutant genes.
She and her new allies won the day, but now she must wonder how much of her success she earned and how much is due to the attention her unique genetic structure has drawn to her. Even now, as she sleeps in her bedroom in the seaside condominium she shares with Amphitrite, the mutant goddess of the waves, some part of her is conscious of how fortunate she is to have befriended the daughter of one of the Pantheon’s founders.
Was it luck? Was it destiny?
Or was it something else?
The seeds of doubt have been planted, and her sleep would not be untroubled… even without the recurring figure of a man in a tophat haunting them.
About fifteen hundred miles from the slumbering form of Allison, there is another place you wouldn’t find on a map of your world, a place that is intimately connected with one of the more shameful episodes of this other world’s divergent history.
Nebula City, Kansas… the unlikely home of a half-dozen heroes bound together by ties of fate and family: Evelyn Everett, reigning scion of the family which founded Nebula City and the heroine known as Storm Siren… Minerva and Athena Wisdom, twin daughters of an Amazon queen and half-sisters of Evelyn’s deranged cousin… Beau and Ford LeChamp, the brothers Thunderhead and Thunderclap… and “Clever” Claire Clevenger, Beau’s girlfriend and the ward of the Wisdom sisters, who feels a bit overburdened with brains.
These are the city’s heroes who exist in the public eye, though Nebula City is home to many other strange goings-on. A mysterious figure prowls the rooftops in the regalia of a samurai warrior. A motorcycle courier on a custom bike delivers important packages to their final destinations. A trio of musicians, sisters possessing the souls of great cats…
“Actually,” interjects Lily, “only two of us are great cats, technically.”
“That’s right,” agrees Willow. “I am an awesome cat.”
“What did I tell you guys about interrupting the narration?” Dandy says. “Please, continue.”
Three musicians, sisters possessing the souls of various cats, take to the streets to fight monsters and supernatural menaces when they aren’t rehearsing or performing.
“Which is all the time. I mean, seriously, are we even a real band in the story?”
“Lily!”
On the east coast, we come to the city that was ground zero for the superhero phenomenon: Star Harbor. Its masked and caped denizens are far too numerous to give even a cursory list, though special mention must be made of the Champion League, the locally based but globally active team of powerhouses unmatched even by the west coast’s Pantheon.
However, as impressive as their feats of high-flying heroism may be, our story is more concerned with actions taking place a little bit closer to earth.
On a rooftop, three blocks away from the Juniper Hill nightclub, three neophyte vigilantes have just rendezvoused: Dani Harris, a young would-be hero trapped in the form of a beautiful adult woman by a magic ring… Adonis, a man whose exquisitely sculpted muscles reveal a hidden truth about his nature… and Perfection Jones, a woman with no powers but her brains and her determination.
They’ve spent the night hunting for information about an arsonist. Arson is a dangerous crime in and of itself, but a bit more was at stake than the churches that had already been burned to the ground.
Somebody wanted the whole world to burn.
The heroes had very few leads. The most solid of these was a name: Vittorio Palozzo.
“So, did anybody recognize the name?” Perfect asked.
“They all did, but one guy reacted really strongly,” Dani said. “I let him run out of the club and then got around in front of him. When I pulled the sword, he turned and ran screaming like a little girl.”
“Right into me,” Adonis said.
He made a gesture like he was cracking his knuckles, though no sound came. Though his mind was human, the muscular body it occupied was entirely synthetic. This artificiality lent an unsettling level of symmetry to his otherwise perfect features. The general impression he conveyed was of an action figure brought to life… an impression that was aided by his penchant for pants that looked painted on and open vests that left his bare, hairless chest exposed.
“I hope you didn’t do anything… excessive,” Perfect said. She’d taken her black mask off in order to check on the electronics within it, though her hair was still hidden beneath the matching beret. Her crimefighting uniform was a thing of simplicity: sleeveless black fitted shirt, black tights, and black gloves with her custom batons recessed in the armored wrist guards.
“Nah, I just lifted him up and held him off the ground while the Blue Ghost repeated her questions,” Adonis said, jerking a thumb at Dani.
“Yeah, um, I don’t think I want to be the Blue Ghost,” Dani said. The name seemed slightly apt, with the blue glow which suffused her body tinting her skin, clothes, and hair. “That’s just what people apparently called me.”
“We can work on that later,” Perfect said. She’d only recently settled on her own code name of Black Rabbit. “So, what did he know about Vittorio Pallozo?”
“He said Palozzo had shown up a while back and made a big deal out of going legit,” Dani said. “He wouldn’t tell anybody what was up, but this guy…”
“Did you get his name?” Perfect asked.
“Um, shit,” Dani said. “No, sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Perfect said. “Just for the future… it’ll be nice to know where to go for follow-ups, you know?”
“Okay,” Dani said. “Anyway, though, apparently he was buddies with Vittorio from way back, and he told him in, you know, confidence, that an insurance company was offering him a contract as a private consultant.”
“I thought that sounded fishy,” Adonis said. “An arsonist working for an insurance company? But I shook him a bunch and he still swore it was true.”
“It’s not actually that far-fetched,” Perfect said. “It’s like how crackers sometimes get jobs with software companies, and burglars have been known to go into home security. Did he know what company Palozzo was talking about?”
“No,” Dani said. “Palozzo wouldn’t say, apparently. Didn’t want to, um, ‘queer the deal’? Is that a real saying? It’s what our guy said, anyway. Palozzo told him he’d get the whole story later, once he had everything in writing.”
“And let me guess… he never saw him after that?” Perfect asked.
“No, he came back again, and paid off his bar tab and a bunch of gambling debts,” Dani said. “Flashing a load of money around… but he wasn’t talking about going straight any more, and he told our guy… again, in private… that the deal was, quote, ’something else’. He said it was the easiest money he’d ever made and there was no way anything could be pinned on him.”
“‘Something else’… well, that’s nice and vague,” Perfect said, pursing her lips thoughtfully.
“That’s right,” Dani said. She dropped her head. “Sorry.”
“What for?” Perfect asked.
“That we didn’t find out anything else,” Dani said. “Anything useful.”
“Dani, you found out what there was to find out,” Perfect said. “Even the best detectives can’t just pull clues out of the air.”
“They can if they’re psychic,” Adonis said. “Or if they’re magic.” He looked at the silver ring on Dani’s finger, with the big, glowing blue jewel. “Hey, couldn’t you have scanned the place with your ring?”
“My ring doesn’t ’scan’,” Dani said, though truthfully she’d never fully explored its capabilities. It conjured useful items for her, items which mostly matched her video-game-and-anime-fueled imagination. When she’d craved excitement, it had given her a compass for finding it. She probably could whip up a more sophisticated information-gathering device, if she’d thought of it. “Anyway, what good would it have been to scan the bar? It isn’t like Palozzo was there.”
“So how’d you make out?” Adonis asked Perfect. “Did you learn anything at your bar?”
“Palozzo definitely didn’t burn any churches in Star Harbor,” Perfect said.
“Who did, then?” Dani asked.
“Don’t know,” Perfect said. “But the Dock Shadow’s eliminated him as a suspect.”
“You didn’t tell us you were meeting with him,” Adonis said, unrestrained awe for the legendary vigilante filling his voice.
“I wasn’t,” Perfect said. She frowned. “I guess he was in the neighborhood? Anyway, he says the bombs were Palozzo’s work, but they were used by somebody else… somebody a lot sloppier. Put that together with what you guys learned? Somebody paid him a bundle to make a bunch of bombs, or to be taught how to make them. Then he either went underground to avoid taking the heat for them, or perhaps more likely, he was put underground.”
“This is kind of what we already thought,” Dani said. “It doesn’t seem like we’ve accomplished much.”
“We had a theory,” Perfect said. “We’re finding evidence which supports that theory. That’s progress. Anyway, even without the information on Palozzo, I didn’t come away empty handed. Look what the Dock Shadow left for me.”
She held up a strip of black cloth. Star Harbor being a very dark city at night, it was a bit hard for Adonis and Dani to make it out… even considering that they both had enhanced low-light vision.
“What is that?” Dani asked.
“It’s a sample of his blackout cloth,” Perfect said.
“His what?” Adonis asked.
“The thing about the Dock Shadow’s costume is, it’s actually black,” Perfect said.
“So? So’s yours,” Dani pointed out.
“No, mine’s actually a very dark blue-gray,” Perfect said. “You don’t find true black pigmentation outside of specialized industrial or scientific applications, and certainly not in ordinary textiles. His costume, though, absorbs almost one hundred percent of the light that hits it, though, which makes it harder for criminals to pick his form out of the darkness around him. It makes him harder to spot, harder to hit.”
“So why’d he leave you that?” Adonis asked.
“Probably to see what I’d make of it,” Perfect said.
“A headband?” Adonis said, looking at the strip doubtfully. “I mean, seriously, what can you do with something that size?”
“I don’t know,” Perfect said. “But I think that’s the test.”
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