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Chapter 28
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Mortar Mage carried a box into his lab. It had the vile with the aelshinyx sample he’d taken before the big crystal had been taken away days earlier. It held supplies for powerful spells he had not performed in a long time. It held a book, the only one he had, that detailed potent soul magic in all its grotesque grandeur.

If it wasn’t for the smugglers the League had taken down last night, the Circle would never have had so much power in Paragon, and their strongholds and artifacts wouldn’t have littered the city after they were gone. That was the only conclusion Mortar Mage had. If it wasn’t for those smugglers of artifacts, the Vanquishiri wouldn’t have been so powerful now.

Blaming anyone didn’t change what he had to do to fix things.

He set aside his materials and set down the book before opening it. Mortar flipped through a few pages before smacking his own forehead and looking in the back for an index. What? No index! This search for the right spell was going to take a while.

Orange lights flashed in a few corners around the lab. He looked at them with a blank stare. Those meant something. Then he remembered.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

The President strolled into the Oval Office after spending an evening at another lavish party, telling people the nation had lots of work to do. He undid his cufflinks while perusing the stack of papers that found a new home on his desk while he was away. More bills, more policies.

He chuckled to himself. Tonight, he had had a little fun at the party by passing around a napkin with various scribbles and the title “I Am Awesome Act.” He let the news pundits from both sides see it, knowing that at least a third of them would overreact to it. At this point, that was the real joke.

Someone knocked on the door. “Mr. President. We have a potential situation.” The man held a thick folder. It was a shame the man didn’t look spooky or mysterious, or carry a cigarette. There were some things the president never wanted to change.

“What kind of situation?” he asked.

“It’s about Paragon City.”

“Paragon? Is it another Event?”

The man handed over the folder. “It appears to be a bit of everything, sir. Everything but her.”

Documents summarizing recent events and an anonymous tip took up the whole of the folder, barring the few necessary pictures to push the point. Otherworldly crystals, superpowered criminals of the highest caliber breaking out of a major facility, grave robberies, classified reports involving a series of gang war outbreaks, sightings of a young woman brought back from the dead, and another appearance from them.

Diamond Grace kicked another of these freaky foot soldiers to the ground. Or was it the same one? It was hard to tell with how they dressed and moved so much alike. The ones with the bigger masks chased down people in the streets, while the ones in smaller masks kept marching.

She heard Trash Knuckle laughing behind her. He seemed to be having a time of his life trashing the larger-masked creeps.

Where were these things coming from? Diamond Grace hoped the answer could be found and resolved quickly. She feared how much of a disaster this night could become if the presumably human things weren’t dealt with.

Off to the side, she saw a random hero and villain she’d never seen before duking it out, their powers tearing through the air.

Multiple tiki-freaks, or whatever they’re supposed to be called, jumped Diamond Grace at once. She braced for impact, knowing that her limited fighting skills that she had learned from watching her father duel a punching bag would only get her so far. She was going to knock down what she could before they wailed against her ice armor.

Then someone moving at a blinding speed kicked into the side of one attacker, and then swung a weapon of some sort against another. It was Adamast Cross, and she was beating down the tiki-freaks with a parasol as if it were an average day in the park. Diamond Grace literally couldn’t grasp what she was seeing.

“Welcome to the party,” cheered Trash Knuckle. He charged again at the marching tiki-troopers.

Adamast rested the now-open parasol on her shoulder. “Swell. Here, take this.” She tossed something tiny to Diamond Grace. It looked like a device that she could put in her ear. She had used one of these earlier today, and knew that the earpiece could resist heat and cold to a certain degree. “It’s set to the main frequency everyone in the League is using; us and every other cape in the city, actually.”

Diamond Grace said, “Cool. Look . . . out.” She had tried to warn her sister against an attacker, but Adamast punched the large tiki mask in the nose, like they both learned from their father, with hardly more than a glance. It busted open the mask as the freak went flying backward.

“And we’re a-moving.” Adamast smiled and ran off.

Once her sister was gone, Diamond Grace stepped close to the freak that Adamast had punched. She recoiled with a hand over her mouth when she saw its face. It was like a patchwork quilt of human flesh, its eye sockets burned out.

What the Hell were they fighting?

Swan Diva landed on the pavement, and she and her daughter let go. Long ago, she had hoped to treat it as a flying lesson, but this was never that time. That time might never come, and she learned to live with that fact.

“Alright, you know the plan,” Swan Diva said.

“Yep,” Pixeletta said, “help the civilians, call if someone shows who I can’t handle alone. Good luck.”

Pixeletta ran off to some frightened civilians who were likely on their way home from work, shopping, or eating out when the shit hit the fan. Luck? Swan Diva never needed luck. But she was grateful for it.

She turned and wasted no time yanking a “Slow” sign out of the nearby sidewalk. Swan Diva used her flight to charge and swing at a group of tiki mask bearers marching in the streets. Her first swing thrust a few bodies into the air and resulted in a man shouting “Whoa!”

It was Captain Patriot, the younger, who was descending mid-flight. “Careful, there. You might kill someone.”

“They’re already dead.” Swan Diva took another swing. "Reanimated corpses, I’m told.”

“Hey, you kinda look like Swan Diva. Has anyone told you that?”

“Has anyone told you that you look like your father?” Another swing. Then she backed away quickly when one of the tiki mask bearers raised its arms in fury, growled an unearthly sound, and a wisp of vapor arose from the pack on its back. “Look out!”

The one reanimated corpse marched at her at a high pace. Captain Patriot grabbed and lifted the mask bearer, and it exploded in his hand. The blast knocked him sideways, but he remained unscathed. Knowing his father, he could have taken a whole lot more than that.

“What was that?” Captain Patriot asked.

“They’re carrying explosives,” Swan Diva said. “I know you can take it, but most of the city can’t.”

“You’re well informed about this. I would like to know what I can, you know.”

“If you haven’t already,” Swan Diva hefted the sign in her hand, “switch your receiver to the Alpha signal.”

“Alpha signal?” He winced a second later as though someone was shouting into his ear, though brief as it was.

As Swan Diva dived back into the action, a woman’s voice came through on the earpiece. Boy, did she sound (not) pleasant? “Did someone say something about the Alpha signal?”

June Ur, a costumed hero for the past eleven months and some weeks, missed a vital attack against his opponent, a minor villain wanted for random car bombings around the city. The villain’s own attack threw him backwards into a shed outside a hardware store.

The shed was demolished, and if he didn’t get up fast enough then so was he. Someone had to bring down Carjack Carl. June Ur pushed himself up with a groan, and flopped back down on his ass when a pregnant woman in a costume took the villain down in a series of attacks that looked like a gymnast’s worst nightmare.

“Woo,” said the woman, who now looked down at and touched her belly, “I better not catch you doing what mommy did, sweety, or I will ground your ass.”

She looked up at June Ur as he finally managed to get up and grab his hammer. Holy shit, it was Princess Undercut.

“Hello,” she said. “do you have a radio receiver on you, per chance?”

“Just the one in my ear, sorry,” he said, making a point to breathe.

“Perfect. You’ll probably want to listen in on the Alpha Signal while we detain the bad guys and evacuate those who need it.”

“Alpha? Evacuate? Huh?”

“One sec.” She pulled out something that looked a bit like a buzzer someone would use as a joke when shaking hands. She clicked it next to June Ur’s ear while bearing a gentle smile on her face. Then she walked away, and vanished in a flash of large sparkles.

Walter was the last to leave the mansion. He knew that before he headed out he’d need to get a message out across the channel without any disreputable fellows with precognition listening in.

A few voices joined the Alpha Signal. A couple were more curious than others, and one was a verbal dissenter judging by the way she spoke. Oh, she was a hero, if Walter’s suspicion was correct about her identity, but this was a reserved channel.

“Good evening, everyone. While we’re asking questions and doing our best to save the good people of Paragon City, let me explain what this is. We are entering a situation where the villains will be many and powerful, where droves of reanimated corpses will run rampant to kill and destroy, and quite possibly minor villains will step in and make a choice to be a part of the mayhem or to make things right with whatever conscience they may have left. On this channel, which was constructed in response to the great invasion five years ago, we have leaders, willing and able, so that we can coordinate in our efforts and prepare for the worst. This is not a drill. By tonight’s end, there could be very little city left, or no world at all, unless we work together. I wish I could tell you more than that.”

“Who are you?” asked the woman whose voice was now draining of the cold attitude she was known for.

“My name is Walter Dallevan. I am the man responsible for a league of heroes you might have heard about, and a chief strategist for soldiers, costumed heroes, and diplomats alike. Tonight, I am one of you, fighting by your side to save our city.”

So now it began. He walked out of the house, whispering a goodbye to the computer, and made for the motorcycle in the driveway that Mortar Mage had left just for him. On a night like this, getting around on foot was a timely endeavor he could not take.

He rode for the main of Talos to the south. He watched the sky as people fought with their various powers. He listened while people pointed out collapsed buildings in Steel Canyon where a few survivors needed digging up, and while villains above rank 7 were spotted.

One hero said, “Hello, is this working?”

“Loud and clear,” another responded.

“Good. I’m by Kingston and Siren’s. There are a lot of people stuck in traffic over here. My team’s doing what we can.”

“Good work. We’ll send someone your way to assist when we can.”

“Hello, are you here to help? We need to get these people to safety. Wait, what? Ahh!” The hero’s piercing scream was accompanied by a woman laughing, and she kept on laughing through a gushy, crunching sound that followed. It was akin to a watermelon being crushed if it had a harder exterior. The sound cut out in a pitch of static.

Walter stopped his bike at the side of the road. He got up, wishing he only had to offer his condolences to the unknown hero who had lost their life.

There was a barricade of police officers shooting at the foot soldiers with the larger masks. Behind them was a muscular man just folding his arms with a malicious smile across his face. Walter vaguely knew his face as the villain who had died in Oregon.

The man’s eyes turned to Walter.

She grabbed Captain Patriot and pulled him out of the way when she caught a glimpse of a giant robot taking aim at him. It fired a massive laser that shook the whole area and took out some of the marching mask bearers. The laser swung left after Swan Diva and the national icon for a few seconds before dissipating.

“Friend of yours?” she asked.

“If it is, I’m not sending them any Christmas cards,” Captain Patriot said.

A voice from within the robot spoke out through an amplifier. “I will bring the world to its knees, Captain Patriot.” His voice was nasally like a stereotypical nerd.

Swan Diva said, “You didn’t break into his house and juggle his book collection, did you?”

“Hey now,” Captain Patriot protested.

The voice said, “First you, then the city. Ah-hahaha!”

“Oh, one of those,” both heroes said.

She dropped the other hero at the robot’s feet, and then flew where the neck should have been if the giant robot were anatomically correct in even the slightest sense. With one punch after another, she struck at the metal body. Her super strength wasn’t enough.

Meanwhile, the good Captain was undoubtedly having as much luck trying to penetrate this thing, and the group of tiki bearers was drawing closer.

If only there was a way to knock out two birds with one stone.

Wait, what was she thinking? Pixeletta, a girl known for her mischief as well as her heroics, was her goddamn daughter. Of course there was a way.

“Get behind it!” she yelled.

Swan Diva flew down and met Captain Patriot. She wasted no time pushing behind one of the robot’s stiff legs. She jerked her head, looking from the Captain to the other leg, and he caught on. Her strength, or even his, might not have been enough to make a dent in this thing, but just like a tree branch could trip a person, the two of them combined could hopefully move the overgrown contraption.

It budged.

The robot fell forward.

The nasal, idiotic, would-be villain screamed as his toy crushed the zombie-like abominations belonging to the Vanquishiri. His momentum shattered the pavement, and now there was at least one new crater in the northern side of Steel Canyon.

It was too bad this wasn’t enough to completely deter the mask bearers. Some even began to climb onto the backside of the robot and continue their death march.

“Is there no end to these undead freaks?” Diamond Grace asked over the earpiece. “If we don’t end this, we’ll all get tired and overrun by these things.”

Walter said, “Don’t tire yourselves out too much. Let someone from the evacuation efforts trade if they’re able, so you can catch a respite.”

The cold smile from the muscular Vanquishiri held. Walter was unsure if the bodysnatching, banished god had heard him or not; he gave no indication. He didn’t even dignify the fact that his group of masked foot soldiers had fallen, or that the police were threatening to shoot him if he didn’t get on the ground.

Somewhere, another hero called out for help, only too late in the face of a villain of some higher rank. It was as though the villains were too being directed.

“This is War Lagoon,” came a welcome voice. “I have found one of them.”

“Prepare to die, hero!” said a man’s voice.

Ohm Wire said, “We have a hostage situation here at City Hall. I can’t even fake invisibility to get past the creepy guys with the big masks.”

It was then that the muscular Vanquishiri laughed. His voice filled the air. Walter put a name to it from what he had heard earlier.

Nervaeus said, “Fight, little ants. Fight as long and as hard as you can. I told you, tonight is your night of reckoning. We will show you how hopeless it is to resist before I, Nervaeus, crush you.” He crouched, and then he jumped on top of a building, leaving a caved hole in the ground where he once stood. “Tonight, darkness falls forever upon this world. See even now as the sky darkens, signaling the end.”

Walter looked at the deep black covering the night sky, which had already lacked any fair visibility due to the city’s light pollution. The air rumbled.

“I’m not so sure that’s what Nervaeus thinks it is,” Walter mused aloud.

Tiny lights appeared in the darkness. It was the underbelly of something huge. One of the alien races had just dropped by for an invasion.

It fired a flaming ball of light at one of the Talos skyscrapers.