Late afternoon on Friday June 2nd saw a gathering of masked individuals on the lowest level of the residential district. Courtney was among them, a simple stringed facemask concealing her identity. Her clothes were new, and she wouldn't wear them for any other occasion. If she was going to get into this weird Achilles thing, though, she'd probably need something better.
Out of the five people gathered, only two looked like they had proper 'hero' outfits. One was Achilles in his trademark blue cape, while the other was a guy in a more subdued grey costume with a hood and no cape. Then there was another woman, with a colourful scarf tied over her hair, a paper plate for a makeshift mask and a simple sweater and jeans. The last one looked like a kid, with what looked like a pillowcase set up over his face and an old sheet for a cape.
Courtney sighed internally. What in the big blue sky was a child doing here? Something had to have gone awry; his parents wouldn't have possibly okayed this. Would they?
No matter. That was for the military to handle. Officers belonging to Pena and Barron's squads surrounded the area, ready to intervene in the case of any illegal activity. They were already after Achilles and Jumper (who might have been the guy in the grey suit), but seemed to have decided to leave them be for the moment.
They won't come after you, she told herself over and over again. She'd talked with Barron last week about this meeting. Told him she'd gained some sort of weird ability like the other two. Asked if she should get involved to try and curb the ripple effects. Barron had thought long and hard before telling her to go in, but tell no one else. She'd be his inside person in case the group got sophisticated enough to hide significant amounts of activity from the military.
As of now it wasn't a worry, but it would be easier to have her in from the beginning than try to insert someone later when others may get suspicious.
Achilles stepped forward when the chimes in the city indicated four o'clock and cleared his throat. Everyone turned their eyes to him.
"Hello, prospective members of the Legion. It's a pleasure to meet you. As you all know, I am Achilles, the hero assembling this team. We'll work together to combat crime and suffering in our city. Now, my power, as my name implies, is invincibility. No blade can scratch me, no raygun can pierce me. Now I'd like to go around the circle and have everyone introduce themselves. Just your hero name and powers will be fine."
He gestured towards the circle, and the kid in bedsheets jumped up.
"I'm Light Master! I can shoot rays from my hands." He demonstrated with a very long flourish that ended with his palm pointed towards a wall, and a beam of light shot toward it. Achilles laughed and applauded.
"Very impressive! I welcome you, Light Master. I look forward to working together."
Seriously? The voice seemed to indicate that this was clearly a child. Why in the big blue sky, why the hell, why why why would anyone let him put himself in this sort of danger?
Was Achilles thick in the skull?
Regardless of the thoughts she wanted to scream, Courtney kept quiet as Achilles glanced around the circle again.
"Am I correct in guessing that that's you, Jumper?" he asked, nodding at the guy in the grey suit. He looked like the right build, and Courtney had wondered the same herself.
"Yeah. I'm here for now," Jumper muttered, taking a step back. "I'm still not sure about all this, but I figured I'd show up." The smile behind Achilles' mask practically glowed like a streetlight.
"I'm so glad to see you! And to see you have a good uniform. Jumper here is my first teammate, who's been working with me for a couple months now. You probably remember him from the Phantasma incident, when he was wearing a paper bag on his head."
Jumper, even through the mask and hood, looked like he wanted to die of embarrassment. Courtney almost laughed. The poor kid seemed to keep getting dragged into Achilles' shenanigans. At least he seemed to want to be here, at least a little bit.
Next Achilles looked between Courtney and the other woman. The paper plate lady took a step back, respectfully gesturing to Courtney, so she sighed.
"Hi. I don't really have a fancy codename or anything, but I can go fast I guess." She shrugged and was ready to step back out of the spotlight when Achilles gasped in horror.
"No name? How tragic! Hm...you're a woman, yes?"
"Yeah," Courtney groaned. This seemed like it'd be a headache.
"And you go fast...what does that mean, precisely?"
Courtney thought how to explain for a moment, then decided it'd be easier to just demonstrate. She took a breath, and time slowed to a crawl. Next she ran as fast as she could until she was behind Achilles and turned to plop a hand on his shoulder. Gently, of course. Momentum, as she had learned in her practice, was a dangerous thing.
"I do that," she said. Achilles jumped around in surprise. Everyone else also seemed startled. Jumper himself didn't seem to be expecting it and hopped a full six feet in the air before landing hard on his rear end.
"Incredible!" Achilles exclaimed, seemingly ignorant of poor Jumper's predicament. Luckily, he seemed to bounce back up pretty quickly, as if it hadn't hurt all that much.
"So yeah." Courtney glanced away as Achilles started muttering quickly to himself, with interjections from the mini Light Master.
"Going that fast...if we take a name from the myths...I don't know. Who was fast? Oh! Cheetahs were fast animals, right? Maybe?"
"She was like a bolt of electricity. Y'know how sometimes the current zoops over a gap in the wire before the techs can fix it?"
"Wonderful idea, Light Master! Electric perhaps? No, no, we need something better...Lightning! Those old movies with storms in them, and the lightning shooting across the sky. That's exactly it!"
"Perfect! So she can be Lightning."
Courtney stifled a groan. She seemed to be Lightning now. Yippee. She shuffled over to Jumper, who seemed less hyper than the children - one small and one man-sized - bouncing excitedly at the other end of the circle.
"At least you got something decent," Jumper murmured to her. She barked out a laugh and glanced at him.
"Did he pick your name?"
"No. I just didn't want to be Icarus, and Jumper was the first thing that came to my mind." He pulled the hood slightly lower over his face. Courtney grinned.
"Can I ask where you got the costume?"
Jumper hesitated before answering.
"A shop called Little Fancy. Achilles recommended it. I think he and the owner know each other somehow. At least she seems to know a lot about him - the him under the mask anyway. It's on the second floor of the Business District, near the left-front corner."
"Nice. Thanks. I might have to drop by there if I do this at all." Jumper chuckled.
"The owner's a good person I think. She didn't even ask for my name since Achilles had it paid for." He looked away awkwardly. "Not that I tried to take advantage of him or anything. He just handed me a receipt one day and told me to go there. I put it off until after the Phantasma thing, but..."
"Gotta be the responsible one?" Courtney asked sympathetically. Jumper didn't seem all that old to her, and here he was cleaning up Achilles' messes.
"Something like that," Jumper replied, his voice barely audible.
"I'll be responsible too. Don't worry." Courtney gave his shoulder a good clap to try and reassure him. Jumper didn't seem to see it coming and buckled under the force.
"Sorry," he quickly said as he righted himself.
"No, I'm sorry. I guess I don't know my own strength sometimes," Courtney replied just as fast.
"Heh. It's fine. It doesn't hurt or anything. Actually...if you have time sometime I'd kind of like to experiment a bit?" He looked so cute the way he looked up at her Courtney didn't even think before agreeing.
They quickly worked out details for a meeting - this one late at night.
Olivia sighed heavily as she stared at the ragtag group of idiots. No, not all of them were idiots. Jumper had at least half a brain, and that Lightning woman seemed to have more than a singular brain cell. Achilles and Light Master, however? One shared brain cell. It made her furious. Furious enough she would have liked to suffocate Achilles then and there.
But she couldn't. Jumper would probably be onto her in seconds, and that would be that. With all the military around, she'd also wind up in a cell - and escaping would be harder than it was the first time.
When Achilles and Light Master - everything about the kid's situation so utterly foolish she wanted to vomit - finally remembered she was there, Achilles asked her for an introduction. She took a breath and spouted the lie she'd constructed to get close to them.
"Weaver. I can create ropes out of my wrists." She demonstrated by using some sleight-of-hand to toss out a long pink cord she'd hidden in her sleeve. The lifeless end of it landed on the ground as Achilles marveled.
How foolish could he be? At least killing him would be simple if she could get him alone. But before the meeting could progress, a figure appeared in the alleyway. His clothes were deep purple and green, with a golden mask. The underclothes were green, with a purple toga-like outfit overtop of it.
"Achilles. I've been waiting to meet you," he said as he walked into the circle. Achilles, not sensing the danger, greeted him with the same joy in his voice he'd had all day.
"I'm so glad to meet you! What's your name, and your Miracle?" he asked.
"Paris. And my Miracle is one meant specifically to destroy you." Pale green mist started rising from the ground beneath Paris' feet.
Paris. He'd been trying to contact Olivia for a while now. And here he was, trying to steal her prey.
What. The. Hell.
