[u][b][H3][color=SteelBlue]Blue Paladin IX[/color][/H3][/b][/u]

Kid Flash zipped off pretty quick, sounding pissed off about [i]something[/i], though what it was he never really said. Something about Paladin speaking to much, though if that's all it took to get Speedy Gonzales' dander up then Mal was really unsure if he was the kind of individual you'd like to have the fate of the world resting in his hands. Seemed too unstable by half.

Whatever. His issue was his issue, no point two people getting worked up over nothing. Blue Paladin IX got back to the task of patrolling the skies, scanning for the anomaly that had gotten away from him earlier, all while helping the evacuation process in any way he could, a job Kid Flash had left half finished. He was just in the process of escorting a little old lady out of the fifth floor bedsit she had been left stranded in when he glimpsed a speck in the distance, bounding away from San Fran towards the harbour. Curious as to what it was he zoomed in, only to see Superboy bounding away towards the Titan Tower.

[I]What in the world. . . [/i] He could hardly believe his eyes. These so called superheroes where abandoning the city in it's time of need, leaving the weak and the defenceless to fend for themselves. Yes, Mal had heard the other Titan's distress calls, and he could understand the worry that Superboy must have felt for his team-mates, in dire peril while he was removed from them. But is that an excuse for abandoning the city to it's horror? A city wholly unprepared for that which assailed it, while he ran off, playing cavalry to a group of teens with enough power to level cities? Teens that had picked this life of danger for themselves? 

No, it wasn't. They were supposed to be heroes, and heroes saved people. They didn't leave them while their cities burned. 

Well if the Titan's weren't going to do it then Mal would just have to pick up the slack on his own. Gritting his teeth he abandoned the search for the anomaly for the moment, knowing that he'd need all his concentration levelled towards the task at hand, stopping a city from devouring itself. [i]Easy.[/i] He quickly devised a plan, and instantly began to act upon it. Admittedly it was a stop gap effort, but it wasn't the only one he could think of that wouldn't end with complete and utter mayhem. 

Using his scanners to identify an area of the city that had been completely cleared of live innocents, he designated that as the 'paddock'. Then he spent the next ten minutes moving the undead to the paddock. The easiest method was to fly just out of reach, and use himself as bait to lead them where he wanted them. Though he was surprised by how few there seemed to be. According to even his most conservative calculations there should be at least several hundred more of the zombies. Then again, as problems went 'Not enough zombies' was hardly the worst one in the world. Maybe he'd judged Kid-Flash and Superboy to harshly, and they had managed to save more people than he'd first thought. Seemed he owed them an apology. 

He had the zombies corralled, and was just about to enact the second portion of his plan when the call came through, a stern, tightly clipped voice that still carried a great depth of paternal fury, one that Mal knew all too well. 

“Malcolm, what the hell do you think you're doing?”

[color=steelblue]“Oh, hi dad. How's it going?”[/color] Malcolm was going for non-chalant. He was in trouble anyway, might as well really tick the old man off. In for a penny, in for a pound. For his part Edward Summerhold didn't lose a shred of control. That's the benefit of years of military training. 

“Jesus wept, Malcolm! You're still treating this like a game! Think of how dangerous this is, you could--” Edward sounded like he was going to continue, but Mal cut him off.

[color=Steelblue]“If you're going to say 'could be killed' then don't bother finishing that sentence. Instead think of how dangerous it must be for all the thousands of non-genius inhabitants of San-Francisco, who don't have the added benefit of wearing super-advanced, multi-billion dollar armoured suits.”[/color] Mal imagined could almost hear his dad's forehead vein throbbing all the way across the planet. He was gonna be in trouble when he went home.  

“That's it, shut him down Glen.” There was no response, or at least not an audible one. Glen, Mal's uncle and the principal designer of the Paladin, was a brilliant scientific mind, and a man who much preferred potent action to useless words. He would be launching override codes and puppet sequences into the Paladin's CPU, aiming to order the Father Box to open a portal that would return the Warframe back to the relative safety of South Wales. . . .Or at least he would have been if Mal hadn't planned for that eventuality. 

“Ooh. . . We're no strangers to love. . . ” The opening lines of Rick Astley's hit single, 'Never going to give you up', began in the background, providing the perfect counterpoint to Mal's dad's flustered swearing. 

[COLOR=Steelblue]“Oh come on old man, you honestly thought I wouldn't realize you'd put a kill code in the armour!”[/color] Edward didn't reply, or at least not constructively. Yup, Mal was definitely in trouble when he got home. He couldn't help the wide grin that stretched from cheekbone to cheekbone. He'd definitely earned it. 

He cut the line to his father and uncle, and got back to the task of saving the world.