Jake gave a slight frown at the snippy response that Ardent initially gave. "Run around really fast, huh. Thanks for the guidance. Why don't you use your powers to tell if it's going to rain tomorrow, Mr. Weather Balloon?" It was not a great retort, but it was something. Jake was not one to lose a battle of words, even if it were not explicitly declared.

Ardent locked in and advised the speedster to patrol the area for any threats on the ground. This made some sense. The aerial view was much wider, but Jake was much more mobile when solid ground was underneath him; he was still not really a great climber. "Sounds good, birdboy." Birdboy. Good one, Jake. Write that one down for later.

Just about then, Wiseman's voice began to sound out into his ear. Apparently, the genius hero had already dissected the droid and determined that it was the handiwork of a certain Professor Gholem, a member of the Fiendish Five. Jake, though not the studious type that would spend his free hours trawling through HERO's collected files on villains, had heard of the name before. They were dangerous, and they were sneaky. Jake's least favorite type of villain. At least the grandstanding "I'm Going To Take Over The City" type of villain was fun to fight against. They smack-talked, they had some type of fun gimmick, they made things interesting. These Fiendish Fucks were the shadowy types that took a shot at you and then sunk back into the shadows. Annoying, unfun, and frequently lethal. A cocktail of frustration for Blast.

Wiseman's briefing was long. Almost as long as some of Hugo's briefings. He had definitely thought this situation out, and to Jake's credit, he did try to listen. But his attention span for long strategy breakdowns was pretty limited, and by the time Wiseman started talking about recommendations to counter individual matchups, Jake had completely tuned out. All of them sounded extremely punch-able, outside of the Jellyfish guy, and Jake didn't plan on going for a swim anytime soon, anyway. He would just head out, scope out the area, and find the bastards before they ruined anything. Easy-peasy.

Though Jake was not interested in Wiseman's speech, the Director clearly sopped it up, as he responded shortly after Wiseman concluded with his own thoughts. "Excellent work, Wiseman. This is an unusual type of operation for the Five. They are rarely large-scale disruptors. But they will do whatever the job calls for." A brief pause. "This could be an excellent opportunity to finally get the weeds at the roots. I'm going to try and get some more hero support at this location, and law enforcement is already converging on the area." This time, a slightly longer pause. "Be very careful. These are a group of very capable killers. One lapse in concentration could mean fatalities. Don't be foolish."

"Loud and clear, bossman. Don't get killed. Blast heading out." The hero bolted through the back door in a burst of speed, put on his goggles, and then really took off.

Blast's super-speed allowed him to quickly survey the area around the Center, but to no avail. He was hoping that the Fiendish Five would be standing right outside the convention center, and that he would be able to plunk them all down like dominoes, but the streets around the center still seemed just about the same. Jake looked left and right. Nothing suspicious. This whole operation seemed a little bit unusual for what were supposedly a bunch of sneaky assassin types. With all the eyes on the city, it would be impossible to just waltz into the convention center while either covered in knives, dressed like Jesse James, sporting a bunch of combat drones, or looking like a character from Spongebob. Jake looked up at the crowd, still gathered around the parade that was just about finished; they were currently cheering as the massive Hugo Powers balloon ("actually terrifying. Whose idea was that?") passed by and a Wild West-themed parade float followed. There was no way that they could get through this massive crowd of people undetected, especially with them knowing HERO was on notice, unless-

Wait, Wild West-themed parade float?

If Jake had thought about the strangeness of the old-fashioned parade float a second later, or didn't have superhuman speed, he would surely have been a goner. Fortunately for him, though, he was just fast enough to avoid the bullet that was fired towards him, dodging just to the left and causing the bullet to lodge into the sidewalk. The BANG! resonated through the area, and the civilians, of course, began screaming and panicking, and the parade came to a halt. The Hugo balloon even began to fly away as the people who were responsible for keeping it tethered down panicked. That was going to be an ecological disaster, but there were obviously much bigger fish to fry.

Jake looked back up to see the villain they were in pursuit of, Doc Holliday, staring him down, revolver in hand. He was standing right in the middle of the parade float advertising the Dodge City Cigar Lounge. That was all the information that Jake could discern, as Doc Holliday still had 5 more bullets chambered. Jake darted backwards as the villain fanned three more shots, forcing the speedster hero to take cover behind a mailbox. He tapped his watch, speaking into it.

"This is Blast. Don't know if you heard, but they're here and they don't seem to be in the mood to negotiate. Cowboy Bebop is in a particularly feisty mood. I'll try to re-engage him when I get the chance- AGH, SHIT! FUCK!"

Jake's report was interrupted as a bullet seared cleanly through the mailbox and caught the tip of Jake's shoulder. Jake cursed a few more times as he rolled away from the skewered mailbox and hid now behind a sturdy-looking bench, his hand gripped tightly around the wound. Luckily, Doc Holliday couldn't see through metal, so the magic bullet or whatever had only caught a little bit of flesh, but it still stung like a motherfucker. Jake winced. Guy had bullets for every occasion, apparently. They weren't a group to be trifled with, that was obvious. Jake hissed into the watch. He assumed revolvers had 6 bullets, so he would have at least a moment of reprieve. "Hey, Birdboy, could use that weather report at some point. I'm target practice out here."

Doc Holliday casually loaded six more bullets into his chamber as he looked down at the scene below him; the shouts of a hero isolated within a sea of confusion, screaming, and panicked running. The sounds of cursing meant that he had gotten his target; a particularly difficult one to hit, but one that would be a bit easier now with an injury impeding him. Like an injured deer. Heroes really weren't that much more complex than animals, anyway. In this case, maybe less so. At least deer didn't give their position away by yelling. But the villain wasn't particularly interested in that particular target ant the moment. He'd finish the kill later.

The villain looked over at the float he was standing on. He had reserved a spot in the parade a month or two ago; the perfect Trojan horse for his plan. It was a nice-looking parade float, too. It had a nice mockup of an old-style saloon, with some cactuses, barrels, and tumbleweeds artistically placed atop the platform. It would've been good advertising, had it not been a way of smuggling drones right up to the doorstep of their target. Doc almost felt bad. But the job always came first. Still looking at where the speedster had run off to out of the corner of his eye and holding a revolver in one hand, Doc raised a finger to his ear. "Well, drop the bots, Professor. We're in position."

Just like that, the entire parade float deconstructed itself. The sides of the platform popped open, the barrels on top of the platform popped open, and the walls of the fake saloon toppled as well. Inside all of them were copious amounts of robots of various kinds. Spidery looking robots, like the one that Hugo had wrecked but larger and more menacing-looking, crawled out from the inside of the float, scuttling towards the convention center. Meanwhile, a number of small aerial droids, with spherical bodies, mounted guns, and little helicopter blades, accompanied the land-bound spider droids and floated slowly towards the center in tandem.

"Remember the plan. Isolate the target and get what we need." Doc Holliday pulled back the hammer on one of his revolvers, squinting at the park bench. "I'll keep 'em busy out here."

"Leave it to Doc to have all the fun, huh?" the woman known as Lady Blade muttered. She was currently crouched in the thick network of beams that made up the roof of the convention center, a good 40-50 feet from the ground. She nodded to herself as she heard her boss give the order. Now was the time for action.

The woman dropped from the ceiling with remarkable grace and poise, and just like a cat, she landed on her feet, her knees buckling to a crouch as the knife-colored Asian woman looked up at the people she had landed next to. A guy with an eyepatch and two kids. Easy enough. The woman casually drew a combat knife from her jacket, twirling it around her fingers with impressive expertise. "If you hold still, this'll hurt less," she said with a sadistic grin, and though she seemed to almost be tempting the trio to fight, her stance indicated she was far from relaxed. This was a trained killer.


The gunshot rang out right when Hugo was about to get on-stage. He was almost thankful. At least it didn't interrupt him mid-speech. The Director tapped his watch as he looked out at the panicking crowd. "Hold your ground, heroes. I'm going to get the mayor out and coordinate the evacuation. Once the civilians are out, I'll make sure these bastards don't get away."

Powers took a second look to see a number of robots crash through the front door of the convention, the spidery-looking robots scuttling forth as a few aerial drones hovered above head. Powers patted his tuxedo. This would be the last time he listened to the Mayor and didn't bring at least a sidearm with him. "And watch out for the robots."

Emily waved politely as she was approached by another new addition. Freakshow was her hero identity (a very interesting one at that, but HERO generally didn't intervene with the self-naming process, even when it bordered onto the self-deprecating). "Hey there! Luna, right? I didn't have you listed down here, for whatever reason, but you're welcome to participate." The Assistant Director gave a pleasant smile, though that expression of fondness was soon wiped off her face by the commentary of the mushrooms. She had wished Hugo was here to deal with the thing, but unfortunately, that wasn't really much of an option at the moment.

Luckily, Evangeline came in with the big assist, for which Emily was quite grateful for. "That's right. Part of being a hero involves cooperation. It involves learning about other people, how they synergize, and how to best respond to different kinds of situations as a group. Maybe you have a bit of difficulty adapting to how we do things, but this is an excellent simulation of that in a danger-free environment." Emily did her best to put on her friendly smile. "Give it a chance, alright? This may not seem productive on a surface level, but I assure you it will prove in handy later. I promise."

Getting shot, as it happens, hurts. Really bad. Even though Jake had not had the misfortune of getting shot somewhere very serious, he was still bleeding quite profusely. Luckily for him, Ardent was approaching to offer some assistance, which meant that Doc Doolittle or whatever his stupid name was would have another very difficult-to-hit target to deal with. Jake peered over the bench as he heard the familiar sound of a hero moving at high speed. That had to be him. Jake looked down at his shoulder, which was now covered in blood. "Holy...I have this much blood?" he said to himself in a quiet, comic tune, chuckling to himself to distract from the fact that the blood was coming out much more than he would have preferred.

Having actively-bleeding open wounds and breaking the sound barrier didn't seem like a particularly useful combo, but Blast wasn't about to let Ardent get filled with bullets by this random cowboy wannabe. Even if it hurt like hell, he was going to go for it. Before he could make his move, though, he was approached by what looked like a normal civilian in blue sweatpants, sneakers, ginger hair, and most importantly, a Blast merch T-shirt. While Blast commended the civilian's fashion sense, he did not commend the fact that he was running into a gunfight. "Hey, pal, appreciate you coming to check on me, but this is kind of, and by kind of I mean extremely, dangerous. I would recommend you get out of here, pronto."

The civilian then pulled a First Aid Kit out of his backpack. Jake understood. He's some wannabe hero guy that I guess is a big fan of me and also knows first-aid. That's nice of him. Maybe a little stupid, but nice.

Then, the guy began to glow. Well, that theory's gone. Maybe he's a vigilante like Ardent, but with way better taste?

"...Alpha reporting sir. Sit rep. Is the bullet still lodged in your shoulder or can I heal it now?" the man asked, with a tone and language use that reminded him of the Director. The guy might have been some type of healer. Maybe he was associated with HERO, and Jake had totally forgotten about him. That would've been unfortunate; guy was a big fan, clearly. "Umm, thanks for the help. It's not lodged at all, just bleeding." Jake glanced down at his shoulder. "Badly. You can patch it up. Thanks for all this, by the way. You with HERO? Or are you some type of...y'know, "independent warrior of justice" and some shit?"

Jake was very much doubting his vigilante theory. Unaffiliated vigilantes, by his experience, were usually characters with big powers, gusto, and all the patience of a charging rhinoceros. Kind of like Ardent. Speaking of Ardent, Jake craned his head over the top of the bench to get a glimpse of how the fight was going down...

Doc Holliday immediately turned when he heard the loud taunt. Having been in the villainy business for a long time at this point (and having been a hero before that), Holliday was like teflon when it came to these types of callouts. The way he saw it, they could make fun of his demeanor and persona all they wanted, but he was still quite alive, and many of them were either spending the night in the hospital or the morgue. So instead of retorting, he offered a simple "hmmph" and turned to face the threat, his revolver spinning like a disc in his right hand. He assumed that his shot had bought himself at least a moment of time to focus his attention on the flying threat. Even if he didn't, he trusted that his ally's drones would prove to be worth their sticker cost and provide some level of protection.

It was lucky he did that, because the flying man launched down directly at him in an attempt to dive-bomb him. It was almost cute to see him go for such a head-on attack, and in a vacuum, it made sense. Most people could not see a target moving down at them at ludicrously fast speeds. Ardent would turn 90% of the villains he faced into red pulp with the speed and strength of his attack.

But Doc Holliday was not most villains. He had some of the sharpest eyes in the world, and he had spent years honing his craft. He had spent a year in Africa shooting peregrine falcons out of the sky in the savannah, and he had fought more than his fair share of winged, flying, floating, and otherwise airborne combatants. This was, for the most part, par for the course for the man.

This guy was moving faster than your average superhero with big, useless swan wings, but Holliday also saw a hell of a lot faster than your average supervillain with a gun, and so he simply aimed his already-cocked-and-lifted revolver and pulled down the trigger, firing a single bullet at the man. The bullet he had chambered was the same bullet that he had fired at Blast; it was filled with a special type of plasma that could cut cleanly through most metals. Holliday was hoping that this one would do enough damage to knock the annoying hero clean out of the sky, and let him re-focus his attention on the recovering, earthbound speedster behind the metal bench.



Hurtling down towards his target, Ardent's eyes narrowed as he watched Holliday turn around and take aim. They had only just locked eyes, but this was already the moment of truth that would decide the direction of their fight. The enemy had taken his shot.

Ardent's entire body twisted, spiralling through the air as he psychokinetically pulled his head and torso out of the line of fire. A normal bullet would have been nothing, but if Holliday had ammunition that could melt through a mailbox, it was too risky to take a direct hit to the vitals.

The moment of impact brought white-hot pain as the bullet made impact. It hit Ardent's arm, just as he was preparing to throw his punch. Even from a mere grazing shot, the power and heat of the plasma was overwhelming, digging a groove nearly an inch deep into the meat of the arm as it scorched through reinforced flesh, only barely deflected into curving away and burying itself in the nearest wall.

Ardent clenched his teeth, hissing with pain.

...Doc Holiday can and surely will shoot Ardent out of the sky...

Up against a guy like this, getting shot was a given. It was really the out of the sky part that David took issue with. With his power, he could prevent himself from flinching or doubling over in pain. He wasn't even going to slow down. If Holliday was used to chasing down injured deer, he wasn't ready for this.

For anyone watching, the exchange was instant. Simultaneous. A bullet, glowing with plasma, cut across Ardent's arm, letting loose a spray of blood. At the very same moment, Ardent's fist, unerring, met its mark, crushing bone into innumerable pieces. The villain's upper arm was destroyed, his shoulder rendered a broken wreck in the blink of an eye as he was hit with an attack that carried enough force to send him to the ground.



Doc Holliday knew he would land his shot, but he had not anticipated the hero pushing through the shot and landing a blow of his own, and the villain was certainly punished for his miscalculation. The bones in his arm loudly snapped as they were fractured in too many places to count, and his revolver was launched from his hand, landing a safe distance away on the asphalt of the road. The hit also sent the villain literally spiraling; he was thrown back across his own float, being launched through a couple of tumbleweeds and hitting his back against a (presumably fake) barrel of whiskey. His arm was mangled and, to those who had not been in their fair share of fights, very much offputting by the way it was bent the wrong way.

But Doc Holliday, though old, was also gruff, just like his idol; and though he had been in his fair share of fights, and had taken his fair share of hits, he was also extraordinary resilient for a guy who looked like he worked in Splash Mountain. And besides his toughness, which while not superhuman was certainly impressive, there was one other fact that the H.E.R.O. documenters had failed to mention in his villain profile.

He was ambidextrous.

No sooner had his back slammed against his fake booze than he had tugged his other revolver free with his left hand, and with masterful dextrosity he flicked back the hammer, aimed, and fired the weapon right at Ardent, releasing a special type of bullet from the barrel. This bullet not loaded with plasma, but rather, was laced with a heavy dose of sigillium that would, with luck, quickly spread and take quick effect. The bullet was very expensive, but Doc Holliday paid the big bucks in order to have these types of tools in these types of moments. Ardent may have gotten him here, but he would not get anybody again.



"Fuck, that hurt!" Ardent winced as he remained in flight, not quite touching down on the platform after landing his hit.

Although the enemy appeared to be down, he wasted no time. The blood that had sprayed from his gunshot wound stopped in midair before hitting the ground, reversing direction to return inside his arm, following after him as he flew. Having landed a decisive hit, he needed to maintain the offensive and secure the takedown. However-

While Ardent had surprised the villain with his unexpected endurance and commitment to attacking, those roles were now reversed. He had considered the possibility that Holliday had backup weapons, but hadn't been expecting him to be prepared to draw one within hardly a second of having his arm broken. The hero's face tensed as indecision nearly took over. Why was Holliday so confident he could win after even his plasma bullets had failed? What sort of ammunition had he been keeping stored away in his emergency gun?

Ardent trusted his instincts. His power may have seemed simple on the surface, but it afforded him a few good tricks beyond flying and punching hard. All pieces of his body were under his control. With a wave of his arm, the blood that had been about to return into his wound flew forwards, ahead of his flightpath. Blast's use of the mailbox and bench for cover had proven that while Holliday's aim was impeccable, he still needed to see his target. And so the blood flew straight for the cowboy's eyes.

His movements masked by the splash of blood, Ardent evaded, snapping to the right as soon as the bullet left the chamber. Expensive as it was, it sailed harmlessly through the air and out of sight, its true threat left unknown. The hero circled around Holliday before turning towards him again, aiming to reengage before he had even wiped the blood from his eyes. He might have shouted something about how Castleburg wasn't big enough for the two of them, but Holliday didn't seem to be impressed by those sorts of lines. Ardent would have to settle for beating the hell out of him instead.


It would be a great disservice to Lady Blade to say that she was not fast; she had incredibly quick reflexes and was an extremely talented assassin. But it would be fair to say that she might have bitten off more than she could chew in this particular situation, as unlike her Western-themed partner, she was not capable of dodging bullets. And though she had successfully avoided being sucked into the ground by Terraformer, she was not able to avoid the junior Professor Gadget's onslaught of plasma blasts. She did just barely weave out of the trajectory of the first two, but the third one caught her squarely.

Like some type of wicked ballerina, she spun and contorted from the hit as her body temperature plummeted. She knew she was about done for. But she could even the odds.

With her last vestige of strength, she drew a knife from her belt and chucked it at the assembled group of heroes. Due to a significant lack of strength, the knife didn't really soar, instead kind of awkwardly arcing into the floor like a very poorly thrown frisbee. It was what happened afterwards that was more alarming; several lights that were positioned on both the handle and the blade of the knife began to pulse red, and the knife began to emit a loud, periodic beeping noise. Almost like a bomb. Scratch that, exactly like a bomb.

"Goodnight..." Lady Blade whispered before collapsing onto the ground. She may have been defeated much more easily than her compatriots, but it seemed she was willing to go out with a bang.

Emily nodded at Freakshow's request. "It looks like everybody is...kind of doing their own thing. Which I guess means everything is going according to plan." The Assistant Director looked down at her hero watch, which strangely still had the time listed as just before 1PM. Strange. "I'd relay a message from Hugo, but it looks like we're having some technical difficulties. This sometimes happens when ALISA is re-routing her focus away from running our stuff and towards chess. Or predicting the end of the Bachelor." Emily chuckled quietly to herself. "I'll take care of this problem. Why don't you stay here and make sure nothing goes horribly off the rails?"

Emily walked away from the little gathering area by the shore, but she had only walked a minute or so (just another to take her to where the rest of the group near the beach could only just see her silhouette) when she paused. Something was off. A strange, cold sensation, like the temperature had just dropped a good few degrees. Somebody was here.

Emily turned quickly, her powers flaring up just in time to see a pale man in a dark coat looming over her, holding what appeared to be some type of stun baton. Emily's signature crystals flowed from her hands, forming a spiky, crystalline, makeshift shield in front of her, and blocking the baton, encasing it, along with the man's hands, in a layer of crystal.

"Sharp reflexes, Butterfly," the albino man said with a wide grin.

"What are you doing here?" After a few years of heroing, you learn that responding to the villain's taunts gets you nowhere.

"I'd worry less about that and more about what's happening behind you."

In this case, not responding to the taunt didn't do poor Butterfly much good, as from the waters behind her launched what can only be described as a thing. A thing that vaguely resembled a person, though a person with grayish-purpleish skin that was remarkably translucent, a bulbous, jellyfish-like head protrusion, and a number of long purple tendrils hanging from his back. Before Emily could do much of anything, the thing had laid two of its tendrils upon the Assistant Director. Whatever was in those tendrils clearly packed a punch, for as soon as they made contact with Emily's skin she gave a spasm and then collapsed to the floor, the crystals she had formed around her hand shattering and freeing the albino man, who promptly folded up his baton and put it inside his coat.

"The good old one-two. Gets them every time. How was your scouting, Jellyfish?"

The mutated, Leftover-ish man's voice was haunting, almost ghostly, with a layer of pervading sadness added on top of that. "It went...well. From what I observed, mostly junior recruits. They should not pose much resistance. Is Professor Gholem's device is operating as intended?"

The albino man smiled, opening his left palm to reveal a small, black, circular object, only a few inches larger in diameter than a coin. The device was small, but was currently emitting a signal that was scrambling all communications across the entire island. Gholem may have been a coward, but he was a genius coward, and a very helpful one at that.

"Working like a charm." The man closed his palm. "Let's wrap this party up before we go after the real target. Wouldn't want a teenager walking into HERO One and messing up our process."

The jellyfish-like man nodded solemnly, taking a couple steps with his slimy, bow-legged lower limbs. "If you wish. I should have enough moisture for an hour or so, so let's not waste too much time."

The other man once again procured his stun baton from his coat. "You know me well, partner. We won't."