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Joselyn Knight bolted straight up in bed, gasping for breath and shaking a little from the dream she’d just had. She took several deep breaths to calm herself down, then brushed the long pink hair from her face and tried to calm down.

“It was just a dream,” she told herself, still haunted by her quickly fading dream. Unfortunately, she knew that it was more than just a dream. “Damn…”

Joselyn climbed out of bed, then quickly grabbed the pink bathroom from the back of her bedroom door. She didn’t even bother to put on her slippers as she opened the door and rushed down the hallway to her parent’s bedroom.

At sixteen, Joselyn was far too old to go running to her parents every time she had a nightmare, but this was a special circumstance. Her heart was still racing from the memory of this one, and even though she couldn’t remember all the details, she remembered enough to know that this was urgent.

“Wake up,” Joselyn called out as she loudly knocked on the door. “Dad! Wake up…” When that didn’t work, Joselyn held her hand out and a ball of glowing pink energy formed in it. She opened the door and stepped into the dark room, using her glowing orb to see by. As soon as she reached the bed, she shook her dad, “Dad. Wake up…”

“Huh,” her less than awake father mumbled, opening his eyes and looking at her in confusion. “What…?”

Joselyn’s mom woke a little more quick and sat up in bed, using her sheets to cover herself. “Honey,” she started, staring at Joselyn. “What’s wrong?”

“I had a nightmare,” Joselyn said in a shaking voice, which made her sound more like a small child than a teenage girl.

“A nightmare?” her mom asked, giving her an odd look in the dim light. “It was just a bad dream, honey. Go back to bed…”

“No,” Joselyn stated firmly. “It wasn’t JUST a nightmare…”

That was enough to get her mother’s full attention. “Was this one of THOSE dreams?”

“Not exactly,” Joselyn admitted with a shudder

Joselyn was psychic and sometimes had dreams about the future, though they often lacked enough context or important details to be useful. Because of that, she usually didn’t bother to worry about them, at least not very much. However, the dream she’d just woken from had definitely been different.

She took a deep breath before announcing, “I think this one is happening NOW.”

“Now?” her mom asked in surprise.

“Do you know what time it is?” her dad grumbled as he slowly sat up, still more than half asleep. He looked at the clock, then at Joselyn.

“It’s time to get up and save the world,” Joselyn answered firmly. Then before her dad could ask any more questions, she turned to leave the room, announcing, “I’ll get the coffee going.”

As soon as Joselyn stepped into the hallway, she realized that she must have been a little too loud in trying to wake her dad, because she’d woken both of her sisters as well. Twelve year old Katie poked her head out from the doorway of her own room, and just outside of the next door down, stood Evie. Evie was Katie’s twin sister, except that she was eighteen. The fact that they were twins, yet had such an age difference, was due to a complicated situation involving another dimension where time passed at a different rate.

“What’s going on?” Katie demanded curiously.

“Sorry I woke you,” Joselyn told her with an apologetic smile. “Go on back to bed.”

“What is going on?” Evie repeated the question.

Joselyn looked at her older sister, who used to be her younger sister until about a year earlier, and let out a sigh. Evie was eighteen, and old enough to be an official member of the family superhero team, Knight Force, when Joselyn herself wasn’t.

“I’ll explain once Dad gets in the kitchen,” Joselyn told her with a shake of her head.

A minute later, Joselyn was in the kitchen, getting the coffee pot going while Katie stood there in her own robe, looking both tired and impatient. Katie, who wasn’t about to be left out of whatever was going on, plopped down onto one of the seats at the kitchen nook and let out a loud yawn. Then their parents finally arrived, with their dad wearing boxer shorts and a worn out t shirt.

Joselyn watched her dad for a moment, noting that even at this time of the morning, when he was still half asleep, he still looked every inch a superhero. William Knight was tall and muscular, with the good looks that would be expected of someone who was called the White Knight. Of course, his dark hair was currently messy and he was in need of a shave, but those things could easily be fixed once he had his coffee.

“What’s going on?” Joselyn’s mom asked, still more awake than her father.

Ellen Knight, formerly known as Deception, had retired from being a superhero in order to focus on being a full time mother, but most people would never know that from her calm and serious demeanor. She glanced to her husband, then to her youngest daughter Katie, before turning her attention back to Joselyn.

“Something big is going on,” Joselyn announced, meeting her mom’s eyes. “I don’t remember all the details, but I know it’s bad. Very bad.”

“Details,” her dad said before taking a long sip of his coffee. He was already starting to become more alert.

Joselyn stared at her dad for a moment before answering. “Force is involved.”

That suddenly earned her the undivided attention of everyone in the room. Every one of them knew Force, a former superhero whose arrogance led him into a self-destructive spiral that had ended in his becoming a villain. Joselyn glanced quickly to her mother, who scowled deeply. Long ago, before she’d met Joselyn’s father, she and Force had been partners…and more. However, it was not the distant past that they all thought of, but the more recent past.

Just a little more than six months ago, Force had launched an attack on their family, capturing most of them in a twisted quest for revenge over imagined wrongs. Joshua was the only one to escape the initial attack, though the stress and terror had caused his latent powers to develop, and his entire body to change as a result.

Joselyn shuddered as she remembered that night, and the many hours that she’d spent hiding while her body underwent the excruciating transformation from Joshua to Joselyn. Afterwards, she’d managed to find her long lost Uncle Edward, the Black Sheep of the family, and together they’d rescued the others.

“Force,” her father stated, now fully awake. He looked at Joselyn with a worried frown. “When he somehow escaped from Mount Prometheus, we knew that he might come after you. You humiliated him, and he isn’t the type to ever forget that…”

“I know,” Joselyn agreed. “But he isn’t after me. Or at least, I’m pretty sure he isn’t…yet. He’s involved in something a lot bigger than that, and...” Then she paused, unable to look at her dad as she added, “I think he’s working with Loki.”

The mention of Loki’s name immediately caused Joselyn’s dad to go pale. “Loki,” he spat the name out a moment later, looking even angrier than he had upon hearing Force’s name. Force had kidnapped and endanger their family, but not long ago, Loki had slaughtered a superhero group known as the Seven…a group that the White Knight had once belonged to. Loki had viciously murdered his friends, and like Force, Loki had somehow escaped from prison.

“I…I think they’re working for someone else,” Joselyn quickly said, still shaking a little as she thought of the dream. “I don’t know who, but…” She paused to take a deep breath. “I had a feeling of overwhelming dread, and that if they aren’t stopped soon…the whole world is in danger.”

Joselyn’s mom gave her a reassuring hug before gently asking, “Do you remember anything else?”

“Just a couple birds,” Joselyn admitted. “Black birds. Maybe crows or ravens.”

Joselyn’s dad shifted his posture, and she could see that he’d gone into White Knight mode. He gave her a worried look, and then with a deep scowl, he went over to the phone and began making phone calls. Several minutes later, he grimly announced, “Joselyn is right…”

“What is it, Dad?” Evie asked with a worried look.

“Honey?” Joselyn’s mom gently asked.

For several long seconds, Joselyn’s father just stood there with a dark look on his face. “It’s Baltimore,” he announced. Only those who knew him best would have noticed how shaken he was. “A group of villains just attacked Baltimore...and erected some kind of barrier. Now almost a fifth of Maryland is completely cut off.”

“A fifth of the state?” Joselyn’s mom exclaimed in surprise. “Force is powerful, but even he can’t do that much.”

“It isn’t just him,” Joselyn reminded her mom, wishing her dream had been a little more clear.

Joselyn’s dad nodded at that. “And if what Joselyn says is correct, then this may just be the beginning.”

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Sam Johnson stepped through the restaurant doors, letting out a loud yawn as he did so. Sam worked from home as a freelance software designer, so he was usually able to sleep in a bit, then have a little something for breakfast before going to work in his home office. However, this morning, Sam wanted to shake things up a little, or at least get out of the house for a bit.

“Damn voices,” Sam grumbled, thinking of the voices that had woken him up in the middle of the night. His wife Anne hadn’t heard the voice, or at least he’d assumed she hadn’t since she hadn’t said a word about them, but that wasn’t really any surprise. Sam had known about them for some time and had yet to utter a single word about them to Anne

One day, Sam had been walking through Bison Park, when he’d seen a ball of light and suddenly heard voices speaking to him, and then had a strange vision to go along with that. The voices told him that a darkness was coming to the world, and that he’d been chosen as the one to fight it. This announcement had been completely ludicrous, and Sam probably would have assumed that he’d been hallucinating the whole thing, if it wasn’t for the fact that these mysterious voices had also given him powers.

In spite of the fact that Sam had never agreed to fight this darkness, and had been reluctant to use these new powers, he soon discovered that fate seemed to be conspiring with these voices to ensure that he did as they asked. After all, it hadn’t taken long before he discovered the location of this darkness…in his son’s school. The darkness was a supervillain named Baron Nevermore, who’d come back from the dead by possessing the body of a teenage girl, and who was infecting all the other students her dark corruption.

Sam shuddered at the memory of Nevermore, and how she’d transformed normal teenagers into monsters. Of course, some people might joke that all teenagers are monsters, but most don’t have fangs, claws, and a desire to murder you like the ones Nevermore had corrupted. He was just thankful that between himself and his young friends in the Slackers, they’d been able to stop Nevermore before anyone else had been hurt.

“I thought it was done,” Sam muttered to himself as he went and took a seat in a booth. “I thought it was over…”

Once Nevermore had been defeated, and apparently sent back to where she’d come from, Sam had been certain that it was over. He’d completed the mission that the voices had given him, and he’d been waiting until they realized this and took the powers back. However, it seemed that there was a reason they’d left those powers with Sam. The darkness wasn’t truly gone yet.

Then a few hours ago, in the middle of the night, the voices had awoken Sam with another vision and a message. “THE DARKNESS IS SPREADING AND MUST BE STOPPED BEFORE YOUR WORLD IS CONSUMED.” Between that, and the vision of the world being smothered in darkness and evil, Sam hadn’t been able to get back to sleep.

Just then, Sam noticed the waitress that had just stopped by his booth. “Coffee,” he announced, before he even looked up at her.

“All right,” the young woman responded. “Would you like anything besides the coffee?”

Sam finally looked at the waitress, who was about eighteen years old, maybe two years older than his son Todd, and she had long brown hair and a name badge that said her name was Julie. The girl looked extremely familiar, and it took Sam several seconds to realize that he knew her. However, he didn’t know her as Julie. He knew her as Channel…a member of the Slackers.

“Um,” Sam stammered in surprise. For a moment, he was about to exclaim, “I didn’t know you worked here,” until he remembered that none of the Slackers knew what he really looked like when he wasn’t using his powers. As far as Channel was concerned, he was just another middle-aged customer. Giving her a weak smile, he just said, “I’ll have the hash…”

While Sam ate breakfast, he kept watching Julie, wondering if he should say something or not. After all, they were part-time teammates, and Sam did think of her as a friend. Of course, it was hard to really be friends with any of the Slackers, when they had no idea that he was actually twice their age…and a guy. None of them knew him as Sam Johnson, only as a teenage girl named Glamour Girl.

“Maybe I should let them know,” Sam mused. After all, he’d fought alongside the Slackers and thought of them as his friends. Maybe it was time to let them in on the truth…that his powers transformed him into a girl whenever he used them.

When the bill came, Sam gave Julie a large tip, and he was still thinking about whether or not to reveal himself to her. Suddenly he heard a buzzing sound, which he quickly recognized as coming from a cell phone in silent mode. And it was coming from Julie’s pocket. A second later, a similar buzzing came from his own pocket.

“What the…?” Sam started in surprise, reaching into his pocket and pulling out two cell phones.

One of these phones was Sam’s personal phone, the one that his wife, kids, and friends used when calling him. The second phone was his business phone, though not for his software business. Sam didn’t actually have a cell phone for his software business, since he usually did his work on that over e-mail or the landline in his home office. This phone was reserved for Glamour Girl business…and it was the one making noise.

Sam looked at the screen, and it simply had a text message from Zero Kay, another member of the Slackers. ‘EMERGENCY. CALLING IN THE RESERVES. COME TO HQ ASAP.’

“Damn,” Sam muttered, getting up and hurrying out of the restaurant. He spared a glance back towards Julie, but she had already disappeared. “I guess I’ll see her there…”

Sam quickly climbed into his car and drove home, which was a short distance away so didn’t take very long. Once he’d done that, he slipped around to the back yard where he was out of view, and called on his powers. A rainbow of light suddenly began to swirl around Sam, infusing his body and transforming it. In mere seconds, Sam was gone and Glamour Girl stood in his place.

As Glamour Girl, Sam now looked like a sixteen year old girl, with pointed ears like an elf, and long golden blonde hair that glowed. She wore a green and gold costume that left her midriff exposed, and which included fingerless green gloves. In addition, her entire body was covered with a bright and swirling rainbow aura.

“Even after all these months,” Sam mused as she looked down at herself and her transformed body, “I’ll never get used to this.”

Then with a sigh, Sam shook her head, pulled the light around her body so that it not only dulled, but helped her blend into her surroundings like a chameleon, then flew straight up into the sky. Once she was high enough that no one would notice her, she released her aura and flew off, leaving a trail of brilliant colored light behind her.

It didn’t take Sam long to reach her destination, a somewhat run down building where the Slackers had their headquarters. Of course, Sam knew that calling it a headquarters was being generous, since the truth was, it was actually just an apartment where they all gathered and hung out. She wasn’t sure, but strongly suspected that the building’s owner was Chrome’s uncle, which was why they were allowed to use the place.

Sam stepped into the apartment and saw that more than half the team was already there. Chrome was a young black man with a shaved head. He was currently on the couch, sitting on the opposite end as a little girl, who might have looked cute if it wasn’t for her grayish skin, dull eyes, and the dried and crusted blood on her forehead.

“Hello, Deadbeat,” Sam greeted the ‘little girl’.

“Gorgeous Girl,” Deadbeat responded with smirk, waving to Sam with the beer bottle in her hand.

In spite of her appearance, Deadbeat wasn’t really a little girl…or even a girl at all. She was actually a guy, or at least, she had been when she’d been alive. From what Sam understood, Deadbeat was some kind of ghost, who had the ability to possess and animate any dead body she found. She went through bodies pretty quickly, as they were damaged or rotted away, so she usually looked completely different each time Sam saw her. However, the one thing that was always constant, was that she was very unnerving to be around.

“Chrome,” Sam said, looking to the young hero, who was currently playing some kind of hand-held video game, similar to what Todd owned. “What’s going on?”

Chrome looked up and shrugged. “You’ll have to ask Kay.”

“I want to wait until everyone gets here,” a girl exclaimed as she stepped into the room.

Sam looked at Zero Kay, a cute blonde with short hair and a blue and grey costume with white trim. Kay had a grim look on her face, so whatever was going on, she obviously thought it was serious. If Deadbeat had called for everyone to come to headquarters, Sam would have suspected that it was because of a poker game, and probably wouldn’t even have come. However, because it was Zero Kay, Sam had come as quickly as she could.

“I guess we wait then,” Sam announced, moving an empty pizza box off a chair and then sitting down.

The next to arrive was Nike, a young woman with naturally tan skin and short black hair. She wore a white costume with black trim, which included grey metal armor pieces on her shoulders and elbows, along with a matching belt. Then, from her back, she had a pair of gray feathered wings.

“What the hell is going on?” Nike immediately demanded of Zero Kay. She glared at Deadbeat, then at Chrome. “I do have things to do…”

“I’m sure Kay has a good reason,” Sam assured Nike. “And we’ll find out what it is, once Channel arrives.”

“Then we can find out now,” Channel announced as she came in through the door.

Instead of the waitress uniform that she had been wearing a short time ago, Channel was now back in her familiar blue and violet spandex costume. Until this morning, that was the only thing that Sam had ever seen her in, except when her clothing was changed by whatever spirit she was channeling at the time.

Channel gave Zero Kay a curious look and asked, “What’s going on? I had to leave work early for this, so it had better be important.”

Zero Kay looked annoyed that everyone was questioning her, but she didn’t let that bother her as she announced, “You know my brother is with Faction Zero…”

“Yeah, that has come up once or twice,” Channel responded with a wry smile.

Sam chuckled at that since Zero Kay liked to remind everyone that her big brother Shiver, was a member of a big league superhero team. Faction Zero had a MUCH better budget than the Slackers. Then again, a local bowling league team would probably have a better budget. There was a reason these guys were called the Slackers.

“Shiver called me a little while ago,” Zero Kay explained. “He said that something major is going on in Baltimore, and they’re calling in everyone they can to help…”

“Wait,” Chrome exclaimed, finally giving her his full attention. “Everyone?”

“Yeah,” Zero Kay responded with a nervous smile. “The Face is going to come pick us up in about half an hour…”

“The Face?” Deadbeat exclaimed. “That guy is kind of freaky…”

“So says the zombie girl,” Zero Kay responded.

“Don’t you get what this means?” Nike demanded, glaring at Deadbeat. She slowly looked around the room at everyone else. “This is our chance to show what we can do…to prove that we have what it takes.”

Deadbeat snorted at that. “Or we could stay here, and save ourselves the trouble.”

Sam stared at Deadbeat for a moment, then shook her head in exasperation. “You give zombies a bad name,” she told the lazy corpse, who responded by flipping her off.

“We already proved we have what it takes to play in the big leagues,” Chrome pointed out with a smirk. “Remember Nevermore? We kicked her ass…”

“I…I think this is Nevermore,” Sam announced, and suddenly had everyone staring at her in surprise.

“What are you talking about?” Channel asked, giving Sam a curious look.

Sam let out a sigh, hoping that she was wrong, but she doubted it. “Last night…I received a warning that Nevermore might be back…and making a big move…even worse than the last one.”

“And then this thing happens in Baltimore,” Zero Kay said in realization. “Shit…”

“And isn’t that where Edgar Alan Poe is buried?” Channel asked, while Sam nodded in confirmation.

“And we all know that Nevermore has some kind of Poe fetish,” Chrome pointed out with a scowl.

Sam slowly looked around the room and saw the worried looks on each of their faces, even on Deadbeat’s, and she was already dead. Then as one, they all exclaimed, “SHIT.”