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Chapter 19
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Mary and Kyra didn’t have a dining room table. They barely had any sitting furniture. When it came to dining of any sort, they had eating-ware that could be flung off the bed at a moment’s notice. They had made plans to buy more at some point, but it wasn’t a priority for the two of them.

Today, they enjoyed breakfast in bed. The dirty dishes were on a tray at the foot end of the mattress. The only clothes Mary and Kyra had on was their underwear.

A rarity in these parts.

Mary grabbed Kyra’s sexy waist and kissed her on the lips. “Breakfast was delicious, honey.”

“Thank you, love,” said Kyra.

“I’m sorry you didn’t get to make the dinner you had planned last night.”

“If only there were some cool storage device for food and ingredients so we can make something another night. We’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it.”

“Who’s worried?”

Her phone went off in the other room. Mary could have kicked herself if her legs weren’t presently tangled with Kyra’s equally smooth legs.

From the sound of it, Mary’s phone was receiving a text message. It could have been any number of people at this point. Maybe it was the school telling her something she needed to know for Monday, if there was going to be a Monday. Perhaps it was the supervillain-run, fake health insurance company that called random people expecting money they didn’t actually owe; someone needed to track and shut them down already.

She kissed her girlfriend on the lips, and again on top of one of her boobs, before slipping out of bed begrudgingly. Mary took the tray of dishes with her to the kitchen, where her phone sat on the counter.

The message read: “Emergency League meeting 2p.”

It was 1:35. Real smooth, Walter.

Judy couldn’t remember the last time she had had a chocolate-covered banana. Having one in her mouth right now was just beyond words. She might have done the embarrassing thing and moaned about it in front of everyone in the room, but too bad.

“Is there something special in those things?” asked Jackie.

Meanwhile, Tatiana snickered in her seat. Taking the laughter as a challenge, albeit a playful one, Judy aimed for the empty soda can next to Tatiana, and shot a thin bolt of electricity at it. The can went flying.

Tatiana whipped her head between where the can landed, where it had been previously, and at Judy a couple times.

“Nice shot,” said Jackie.

“Yeah,” Tatiana said, “but try not to push yourself too hard there, Judy.”

She could have said so many things there. Judy elected to stick her tongue out, and continue eating the treat that her mom had left her. Sure, Tatiana and everyone else was right to worry about her, especially after what had happened this morning, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t show how much better she was feeling already.

While Judy enjoyed her chocolate-covered banana, she wondered when the meeting was going to start. She could hear Mary and Kyra coming up the walkway to the front porch. The only person not accounted for that moment—aside from her mother, who had to take care of some things—was Warren.

He had said that he needed to check on a few things around the house. Often times, when Warren said that, he ventured into a room that Judy had never seen, even when a part of her was inside of the computer overseeing the League’s base. For that matter, she’d never seen a third of the mansion until she came back to the world of the living.

Yet, there was the one room. It was warded against portals and teleportation. It was out of sight of any camera in the house, and out of range of any microphone. The only reason Judy hadn’t gone in there yet was because she respected Warren enough not to venture in there without his knowledge. It crossed her mind that, if no one saw Warren in the next five minutes, she might have to go looking for him and start there.

Three sets of footsteps drew near. Two of those sets came from the League’s queens of sarcasm, walking hand-in-hand. Behind Mary and Kyra was a man they were teasing on the way inside the room.

Mary said, “Hey, guys, look who we found on the driveway.”

Everyone who at least knew who he was said their hellos to Peter. Peter waved.

“Who’s he?” Jackie whispered to Judy.

Judy said, “He owns this house.”

“Oh.”

Peter looked over at both of them and smiled. “Hello, young ladies. I don’t think we’ve met.”

He took a hand each from Jackie and Judy, and kissed them. Judy felt charmed by his behavior, but she couldn’t help but notice something was odd about his hands.

“Careful, Peter,” said Mary. “The one on your left is my sister.”

Kyra chimed in, “And the one on your right might still count as necrophilia.”

“Kyra.”

Peter pulled away without any sign of fear or disgust. “It looks like you’ve got a big gathering here today. Where’s Warren? Oh, never mind, I think I know where he is.”

“I’m right here,” said Mortar Mage, coming up the steps from the cellar. He didn’t wear his costume around the house very often, let alone with the fancier work gloves he only put on when he meant business. “I wasn’t expecting you back in town today.”

“Big news. SAM hit a million subscribers in the US today.”

“That’s great news. You could have told me this over the phone or by email.”

“When do you listen to news about our circulation when I contact you that way? Besides, I came back to Paragon because I wanted to celebrate. What do you and your friends say to going out, tomorrow night?”

There was a short, tense silence about the room before Wyatt said, “Um, well . . .”

“That serious, huh?”

The hologram played back both news stations’ points of view during the appearance of the Vanquishiri. The woman in the anthropomorphic spider mask finished her speech, and the group walked forward, except for the two lumbering figures in shiny, black, skintight outfits and tiki masks. It was hard to call what they did walking.

A pair of heroes entered the scene as the cameras zoomed out. At least one of them was new and unknown to Walter’s memory.

In a split second, one of the Vanquishiri zipped across the screen and punched one of the heroes. The hero flew back. The two figures in the tiki masks attacked the other hero. The hero struggled to fend them off while the muscular man went after the one he hit. Seconds later the hero still on the screen panicked and fled.

Everyone saw why the next second as the muscular man dragged the other one back into view. With a malicious grin pointed at both cameras, he tugged and dislocated the squirming hero’s arm. Then he threw the hero to the ground, and stomped on his back.

The transmission feed cut off from both networks as soon as the man’s foot sank into the hero’s back. The projection changed into four portraits as best taken from those news feeds.

Mortar Mage indicated from the top left. “Devon Tartakovsky. He is a historian and archaeologist whose credibility in both fields plummeted as of late when he started to research the war that happened four years ago. He was last seen alive a few days ago.
“Here, we have a man named Vincent Desrochers, with the villain moniker Black Rift. With a power to turn almost any fluid into coffee, you’d think he would have had it made, but he chose to keep his power secret until a trail of caffeinated corpses led to his home in Oregon. He was beheaded by another villain with a laser sword.”

He moved his pointer to the woman on the bottom left, and looked over in Judy’s direction with a sad set of eyes. Walter could see her take a deep breath, close her eyes briefly, and nod back to Mortar.

“This woman in the mask,” Mortar said, “if what we’re led to believe is correct, is Judy Tanimoto. She was a hero, named Pixeletta, right here in Paragon City until the age of fifteen when her life was taken from her. Her powers included electrokinesis and the ability to enter computer systems from up to thirty feet away.”

“Whoa, wait a minute,” said Peter. He was looking from the secondary image of Judy and the Judy sitting on one side of the room. “How could she be dead? You mean to tell me she was that woman in the creepy mask?”

“It’s complicated. She should be resting in peace, if not alive and clear of this situation, but now there are two people who look like an older version of her. The one using her body is here on the screen, and the one sitting here with us is the real Judy made recorporial.”

“That’s insane.” Even saying that, Peter kept his calm as if trying to register this all in his mind rather than lash out over something being difficult.

“I know.”

“How? Pardon my asking, but how did she die?”

Judy said, “I wish I knew.”

“What?”

“I don’t remember the last day of my life. Nobody’s told me, and it’s not in the system. I feel like I should know it, but it’s like a burnt page from a book. That page is missing, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get to see what was on it.”

“Probably for the best,” Mortar Mage said. “You might not be ready to know yet. The mere trauma of knowing could destroy you.”

“You don’t know for sure!”

“I don’t want to take that chance. I lost you once; we all did.”

“Fine.” Judy crossed her arms.

Walter said, “Why don’t we move on? We have one more person to go over.”

“Right,” Mortar Mage said. “The last one is Harvey Stone. No alias. It was believed that he was related to the leader of the Arachne Regime. His power was that of compulsion. It was easy for him to hide it except for when we saw his wake. People lined up to die or perform egregious acts because he spoke to them. The higher-ups of the Arachne Regime either feared or loathed him, save for the one on top, and he worked for their organization until the day he died, more than five years ago.”

Mary sighed and groaned. Curious; it was as if she had expected to see the man’s face, though she had clearly not wanted to.

Jackie said, “I heard of that awful man.”

“You have?” said Mortar Mage.

She nodded. “How did he die?”

“I killed him,” said Judy. “I thought I saw my best friend die, and I burned him to a crisp.” There was no sadness in her voice. No trembling. All there was, was anger and calm.

“I thought heroes don’t kill people?”

“We try. I’m not sure I ever got over it, until now. Now we need to know why we’re all back to life, if you can call it that. We need to stop them before they do any more harm. Sitting here, I thought I would kill him again and again if I have to, until he stops coming back.”

“Judy!” said Tatiana.

“I won’t. It’s not going to fix things, or make me feel any better, if I hunt him down myself.”

Kyra said, “That’s probably for the best. I already fought him once. He’s strong; not as strong as the big guy, I’m sure, but still powerful. He can multiply into multiple bodies as well.”

As she explained this, Walter imagined everyone was piecing it together as he had that she was referring to the night that Judy’s body had been taken from her grave. That, in addition to the masked woman’s words and the strength shown by the muscular man, indicated that the Vanquishiri Bahitians came with their own powers.

Somewhere out there, this villainous group was either wreaking havoc in an unknown corner of the world, they were planning something, or they were waiting for the time to strike. But, why wait? They showed that they were powerful enough to strike now, but Walter’s contacts told him that the group left after the feed ended.

Jeff said, “Now what? We do have a plan, right?”

There was a ring at the doorbell. Walter noticed the curious, stunned look on Wyatt’s face as the resident psychic faced the door. Walter got up, volunteering to answer the bell. He opened the door, his friends and allies ready at a safe distance to attack if the need arose, because they couldn’t see who was behind it otherwise. There slouched a woman with red hair, blood and bruises, and a costume that had seen better days.

“Not the house I wanted.” She collapsed in the doorway.