Louis placed his hand on Becky's shoulder. "Not long now, sweetheart."
His six-year-old daughter smiled up at him and looked back down at the jar of change and small bills. Her lemonade stand had done well this summer, and they were opening an account in her name, so she could deposit the money "where it would be safe."
Well, at least where it was insured.
Letting his mind wander a bit, he took stock of the room. Two men and a woman were all here becasue they had missed payments on their credit cards but wanted to dispute the charges anyway. A good half dozen people were here on business transactions. Several more were here to deposit or withdraw money. Who still did that these days?
A chill crept up his spine. A Powered person was nearby. Several of them, moving with purpose. They were getting closer. Silently, but with no power behind the thought, Louis urged them to pass the bank by. So long as he never activated his powers, supers left him alone, but you never knew when some young hotshot wanted to try to make a name for himself. And he had Rebecca to worry about.
The presences stopped outside the bank, and Louis sucked in his breath abruptly. They weren't supers. They weren't here for him. Louis knelt down, "Sweetheart?"
"Are we next?" She asked, looking up from her locked-down smart phone. Her intelligent green eyes swept to the counter where people transacted their business, then back to Louis. "What's wrong daddy?" She really was perceptive for such a small child. She must have that from her mother. He would know if she shared any of his gifts.
Louis didn't respond immediately. He took Becky's hand and brought her to the corner of the lobby, out of the way of the main doors. The presences were already making their way in, he had bare seconds. Louis could have gotten out before anything went down, but there was no way his daughter could make the same kind of exit without coming to harm. The fear made the temperature immediately around him drop a degree, but he reined the emotion in, reinforcing himself with the love he felt for this wonderful little girl.
"Honey? Remember what mommy has taught you about Danger Time?" Louis thought it a silly phrase but his wife insisted it was the best way to teach Rebecca about the importance of ducking and covering without doing irreparable harm to her developing psyche. Louis had argued that he had two PhDs to her one, but she had argued - successfully - that neither of his were in Psychology.
Becky's eyes widened, but she nodded. Her eyes scanned around her and she jumped under the heavy bench along the wall. The jar of money was left, forgotten by Louis's foot. Good.
The powered people were nearing the tellers now. Six of them. Four men, two women. Louis cast his consciousness around the building once more. Two more, one was already neutralizing security guards and the other was warming up a helicopter on the roof of the nearby hospital. One of the women raised a hand a seven bolts of lightning struck the cameras around the room with a loud sizzle and the stink of ozone. Bank patrons screamed in surprise and fear, though the tellers reacted more calmly for the most part.
"Nobody move!" One of the men shouted, needlessly. "This is a robbery!" Louis had already dubbed this one Captain Obvious. The steel plates covering his knuckles and lack of firearm marked him as a Brawler. The blonde woman was an Electric. The flame tattoos and plain old stereotyping made the redheaded woman a Pyro. Gentle pressure on Louis's senses told him that at least one of the men was an Obfuscator. That left two unknowns in front of him, a wheel-man and a combat type of unknown nature.
"Everyone on the floor!" Bank patrons and employees alike hit the deck, especially as one of the men with bleached white hair brandished some kind of sub machine gun at roughly head level. Louis went prone and gave a quick wink to Becky on the floor beneath her bench.
"Freeze!" The cop announced his presence from the door, pointing his pistol at the general center of the six superpowered robbers. Young, dumb, looked like an athlete who had dreamed of being a hero but never got any powers. He should have just opened fire. Not that it would have done any good, but it would probably have made the young man feel better about how he died. Louis's heart sank when he realized what would likely happen next, but he could do nothing to stop it.
One of the men smirked, and raised his hands in mocking surrender. "Sure thing!" The air around the officer seemed to snap, dropping in temperature fast enough to cause small thunderclaps as the pressure changed. The officer froze solid in less than a second.
The redhead rounded on the man and smacked the Freezer across the face. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" She demanded, glaring daggers at him. Fire danced between her fingertips, confirming Louis's suspicion that she was a Pyro.
"What?" The Freezer rubbed his face. "He had a gun!"
"On six of us you fucking moron!" The Brawler looked well and truly pissed. "Every cop in this damn city has biometrics that feed to a central computer. Now he's iced. He's dead. Now every cop in the city knows something's up." In the distance Louis could hear sirens. Long ago, everyone had learned not to confront even normal robbers inside a crowded bank. Hostage situations were never good, for anyone involved, and policy had long been to simply let the villains get away and engage later, when there were fewer civilians in danger.
But killing a cop? They'd be out for blood. And now the supers would be alerted. Louis closed his eyes. He needed to concentrate for this. He cast his consciousness out into the city, keeping half an ear on what was happening a few dozen feet from his prone form. He was looking for a particular presence in the mass of humanity filling the city around him. Supers glowed brighter to his senses than normal humans and hers was almost as familiar to Louis as his own reflection.
His apprentice, his protege, an Empath nearly as gifted as Louis, was reacting to the emergency notification that an officer of the law had been killed after drawing his weapon. Trisha, or “Seeress,” had betrayed him to the supers over a decade ago. She had fallen hard for Ben “the Blur,” a Speed type hero. At the first hint of the presence of Louis's mind Trish's defenses went up. Louis was given the impression of a massive forest, inhospitable and unnavigable, filled with thorns, poisonous plants and bramble. He launched no mental attacks, left the angry forest of her mind unburnt. He supposed this was a reasonable reaction since the last time they had communicated this way he had attempted to burn her brain back to the cerebellum.
Louis sent up the mental equivalent of a white flag and deliberately opened his defenses to her. “Trish. I need to talk to you.” It seemed hours passed, but telepathic communication worked like that. In reality it was less than half a second. The forest parted, a path forming, though the trees and wicked thorns were poised to slam that path closed at the first hint of trouble.
“What do you want Louis?” Trish had grown since he had last communicated with her. It made sense, he supposed. She had been nineteen when she had left his service, and she had filled out from a sleek, athletic girl to a more womanly figure. He eyes burned with barely contained rage - probably for him – and there was a hint of fear in them too.
“I'm in the bank that is being robbed.” He said, keeping his defenses down and keeping his thoughts peaceful. “They have a Freezer that took out the cop.”
“What? Why are you at the bank?” She shook her head, “Just keep down. Teams are mobilizing. They acted first and fast. We're not going to be able to let them just waltz out, it'll be too much of a shit show. They also killed off the bank's internal security.”
“Becky is here.” A hint of steel crept into his thoughts, and to Trish it seemed that a gleaming shield grew out of Louis's left arm.
“Look, the Keepers have mobilized-”
“Who the hell are the Keepers?”
Trish licked her lips, “The Peacekeepers? They're the team that replaced-”
“The old fucking B Team?” Louis's image sighed and put his head in his hands. “What happened to the Crusaders?”
“After you killed Black Templar, they just kind of drifted apart.” She sighed. “Ben's still active, but he is in Europe today. I don't know where the others are.”
“What about my observation team? You had two heavy hitters watching-” Trish was already shaking her head.
“We pulled them over a year ago.”
“What? You pulled my minders?” Louis felt stunned. He had assumed they had just gotten a proficient Obfuscator to mask the presence of his superpowered minders, there to keep him from reverting to his evil ways.
“We thought you knew. Your doctor's evaluations say you've really changed.”
“My doctor is my wife!” Louis said, a little more forcefully than he had meant to, and Trish flinched back. The forest bristled in response.
“I thought you would be happy,” Trish snapped, “You said once that their presence was grating. And she is also Black Templar's daughter! If she thinks the man who killed her father is safe, then who are we to argue!” Cancer had killed her father, Louis had simply helped the old man go out with style. He wasn't about to tell Trish that, however.
Louis wasn't sure how he felt. Sure, the presence of a superpowered hit squad ready to make an attempt on his life had seemed irritating but . . . “There's no one keeping tabs on me?”
“Black Templar's alert system is still active.” Louis nodded. Buried far beneath the city, in his sanctum, Black Templar had an AI program that monitored every know spectrum of electromagnetic output and watched for Louis's powers to activate. Something about his abilities gave off a unique signature and Black Templar had figured it out, automating an alert and city wide alarm any time Louis had utilized his more impressive powers. The only thing he could really do was telepathic communication and empathetic reading without over a million people knowing it instantly. “Are you really upset that the minders are gone?”
“Since they might have been in place to help keep my daughter safe, yes. Yes I am.”
“Louis, the teams will be there in a few minutes . . .”
“Trish, I will act to protect my daughter.” Louis sighed, “Let everyone know. If they get twitchy in here, if this looks like its about to go haywire, I will act.” He closed the telepathic connection. He was back in his body. Louis could feel Trish's consciousness had followed him back, asking to talk, but Louis had his defenses up. Where Trish had a vast forest, vicious and filled with pits and snares, Louis simply had a fortress. Walls and towers of obdurate will. His wife insisted that it was ego, but Louis preferred will. Trish could not break through to him.
Louis turned his attention back to the would-be robbers. Around the corner, back in the building, the Freezer and Pyro alternated blasting the door to the vault, heating a cooling the metal rapidly. A third man was with them. Captain Obvious, the Electric and the man Louis assumed was the Obfuscator covered the lobby. They were joined by a Phaser. He appeared first at the top of the stairs leading up to the bank's administrative offices. His blade was wet with blood, and he wore some kind of sneaking suit like a modern ninja. From the top of the stairs he vanished in a puff of smoke, and reappeared standing on top of a teller's station. “What's the hold up?”
Captain Obvious snarled, “Door's taking longer than we thought. Or the temp factors are worse than advertised.”
The bloody blade pointed to the still-frozen police officer. “How did this happen?”
“Moron Freezer.” The Electrical said.
“He's forfeited his share for that.” The Phaser said, and Louis had a feeling that the impetuous Freezer had forfeited more than that.
“Cops incoming.” Captain Obvious said, his shoulders flexing and straining. He was getting ready for a fight.
The Phaser looked around the room. “Gather up the hostages. Time for Plan B.”
Louis let out a mental sigh. That was his cue. He reached within himself, to where his emotions and powers lay, and flexed. Deep beneath the city, in the abandoned lab of a fallen Super, an AI watched, and waited. When Louis reached out to his powers, flexing “muscles” that had long lain dormant, the AI sent out the alarm.
Back in the 1950s, some senator had decided that his hometown could be a prime target for Soviet bombers. Never mind that the city was improbably far for most bombers and there were several good targets between them, the senator had been the chair for several important committees, so an air raid system had been installed. The system itself hadn't cranked to life in over a decade – the last time Louis had made an appearance in fact, but the sirens worked. There was one on the roof of the bank.
The grating, yet mournful sound of the air raid siren was not sufficiently dampened by three intervening floors of building and Louis spend a minuscule amount of power preventing the high pitched sound to assault his hearing. He also closed off Becky's. She didn't need to hear what was coming next anyway. The would-be bank robbers looked up as the siren cranked to life.
“The fuck is that?” Captain Obvious asked, staring intently at the ceiling.
“I thought banks had silent alarms!” The Obfuscator shouted as the sound rose louder.
All throughout the city, air raid, tornado, police, and fire alarms began to sound. Supers all over the country began receiving messages and orders from Black Templar's AI. Many of the active supers hadn't been around when Black Templar had encoded the computer, but the AI was active in learning and categorizing Supers. Louis had borrowed the AI's categorizing system himself. Most “lone-wolf” supers were issued instructions to pair up with National Guard units, teams were given sectors of responsibility.
"This can't all be for us," Electric said, walking to the window and looking out. The streets were empty, likely the police had blocked them off further away. Captain Obvious grabbed a remote from the teller's desk and flipped on one of the lobby TVs. Four reality channels and a talk show, he landed on a news station.
Louis allowed his senses to feel the city around him more completely. Police snipers were getting into position on surrounding buildings. A helicopter, not the one belonging to the band robbers, but a police model, circled the block. A Speed type Super, one Louis was not familiar with, flitted in and out of traffic, gathering reports from various police presences.
Louis turned his attention to the threat at hand. The Obfuscator was his first target. The man was sweating, likely stretching his powers to the limit to hide or alter the faces of his allies as well as shut down any telepathic communication. Sadly for him, Louis had mastered techniques to circumvent those powers before he had even launched his career in super villainy. He began a gentle feedback, turning the Obfuscator's own damping field against him, building the energy slowly so that the pressure did not spike and give the man any warning.
"-though some are claiming it is a false alarm, we have Super confirmation that the Revenant is active again!" The news-pretty anchor was saying, her reading of the teleprompter less smooth than it could have been. "Units of the Army and National Guard are on their way, and the Governor has declared a state of emergency. The governor's office will issue a statement soon, but in the meantime he urges everyone to remain in their homes and stay calm."
"Holy shit," Exclaimed the Brawler, "the Revenant is back!" Louis reinforced the hearing dampening on Becky's ears. She didn't need to hear that kind of language at her age. A telepathic glance told him she was playing on her phone again. Children.
Louis dedicated a corner of his mind to maintaining the feedback field against the Obfuscator and turned his attention to the most direct physical threat. The Phaser, then the Electric, then the Brawler. If he could draw the Electric into attacking him and . . . Louis smiled. It had been so long since he had felt this alive.
"Well, this is interesting." Phaser nodded at the TV. "If they're busy chasing their tails over him, we can probably waltz right out of here once the vault is open."
As if to mock the Phaser, the TV cut to an outside view of the bank. The news lady continued, "Sources indicate that the alarm was triggered from within First Metro Bank several minutes ago! Police were responding to the termination of an officer's life signs when it happened." The anchor turned to an austere, older gentleman in a uniform. The heading called him a retired general. They began asking him inane questions and he fed them inane non-answers.
"Well." Electric said, hurling a bolt of lightning into the TV, bathing the room in a shower of sparks. "Every Super in the city and the fucking National Guard is heading this way. How the fuck did that happen?" Electric turned to the Obfuscator, "You gettin' anything Darrel?"
The young man swatted his hand near his ear. "No. But I . . ." He trailed off, shaking his head.
"Frank," The Brawler said, quietly to the Phaser, "Fuck the vault, we need to get out of here."
The Phaser held up his bloodied blade, "We've come too far. We have a good team. We'll make demands, they'll cave." Louis felt his stomach grow cold when the Phaser pointed his blade at Becky underneath the bench, "We put her out in front of us and they'll never try anything."
Louis surged to his feet, placing himself between the villians and his daughter. "I think not, Frank."
The Brawler looked incredulously at Louis. "Hey, how the fuck did he know your name? Hey, Darrel?"
The Obfuscator did not turn around. "Persimmons?"
"What? Darrel, man, what the fuck?" The Electric reached over and spun the young man around and gasped. Blood ran freely from his eyes.
The Obfuscator chuckled. "Summertime." He focused briefly on the Phaser. "Mommy?" Blood bubbled out of his ears and he fell like a marionette with cut strings.
For a half second, there was complete silence in the bank lobby. The Electric looked from Darrel's still form to Louis, her face contorting with rage. A raw shriek tore from her throat as she launched a massive bolt of lightning at Louis.
Energy that raw was something Louis loved to play with. He wrapped it around himself and briefly toyed with the idea of hamming it up a bit, screaming and jerking. But no. He had a job to do. A daughter to protect from these incompetents. He sucked every stray joule out of the Electric he could find and redirected the energy into a blast that hurled her and the Brawler into the hallway. Drained of energy, the Electric slumped over, unconscious or dead. The Brawler blew through the drywall into an office, out of sight.
Louis kept enough energy to form into a flickering blue sword, his will keeping the frozen lightning solid enough to block the stab that came at his spine as the Phaser appeared behind him. Parry, spin, parry, spin, leap clear, blast behind him. Then the Phaser tried a complicated series of cuts, meant to overwhelm Louis's defenses.
Louis took the opportunity to slam his will into the Phaser's blocking off his access to his powers. Louis parried once more, and the Phaser tried to disappear. His face was a study in confusion when his body remained firmly in place. "You know what I hate about you Phaser swordsmen?" Louis asked, now going on the offensive. Three strikes, the Phaser barely parried any of them. "You never learn footwork. Your drills suck. You're carrying a damn katana and using it like a saber or rapier." Louis's left hand darted out and punched the Phaser in the nose, breaking it and spattering blood on the black sneaksuit.
The Phaser brought up one hand to his nose, slashing blindly with the other. Louis struck at the wrist holding the katana and broke it, in the same motion weaving the blade under the Phaser's raised arm and punching into his chest. A twist, and the Phaser clattered to the floor. "Fucking amateur."
A roar came from the office that Captain Obvious now occupied. He punched his way through another section of wall, leaping through and slamming his metal covered fists together. He cocked his fist back and ran straight at Louis. Absorbing the power from the frozen lightning, Louis sent a bolt of pure force into the Brawler's leg, sending the man spinning to the floor.
"Have you really not put this together?" Louis asked, watching him climb to his feet and resume his charge. The arcing fist and churning legs slammed into the stone floor, missing Louis by a mile. Well, it had hit Louis's projection of his form square on, but Louis himself was ten feet away.
"You killed Frank! You killed Darrel!" The marble floor cracked and split under another tremendous blow. "I'll crush you!" Four more projections of Louis met the same unspectacular fate, flickering out of existence as the Brawler hammered the ground where they stood.
"Uh huh. I'm over here, moron." A projection assumed a wrestling stance. "Bring it!"
Another roaring, thundering charge. This time, the Brawler hurled himself through the air, passing through the projection's waist. Had it actually been Louis, he thought it would likely have been like being hit by a car. As it was, the big man's momentum carried him through the bank's glass doors and into the street.
Bright red dots appeared all over the Brawler as snipers from the surrounding buildings trained on him. He thrashed his way to his feet, roaring like some kind of prehistoric beast. A megaphone-amplified voice thundered down, "Get on the ground and put your hands on your head!"
Louis turned his attention to the back of the bank as the Brawler apparently failed to comply and a volley of rifle fire ended the career of the most deserving man Louis had ever encountered of the title "Captain Obvious." His mind found the Electric. She was alive, and unconscious. She would live and Louis put her in a more restful sleep, ensuring she would not wake for eight or nine more hours.
Quietly, Louis walked toward the rear of First Metro Bank where the three final would-be Super Villains waited. The Pyro and Freezer were taking turns blasting at the door, though a quick scan told Louis everything he needed to know. The core of the door was ceramic. The whole thing was built to largely be Super-proof and Louis assumed that his treating the banks like his personal ATM in the old days might have something to do with it. They would get through using a temperature shock method around the time the sun went cold. It would be easier just to go through the ten feet of concrete and steel plating than get through that door. If the last man was an Earthmover, they could probably get through.
Louis rounded the corner to find the last man blasting the door with vibrations each time the two temperature changers hit the door. Louis sighed. Back in the day he may have made them henchmen. Their power levels weren't too bad and they were certainly stupid enough. They were all absolutely focused on the bank vault. Louis shook his head and prepared to melt their brains, but paused, and concentrated.
"Hey, morons." Louis said loud enough to be heard over the sound of the powers being hurled at the vault. The trio turned toward him, surprised. The Pyro hurled a bolt of fire at him before he could hurl any more abuse at them, verbal or otherwise. It went wide, but set the sleeve of his jacket on fire. Louis captured the blast of ice the Freezer shot at him and channeled most of the cold into the flames on his jacket, though the bleed off chill caused ice crystals to form in his hair.
The next fireball, Louis caught, spun around himself and hurled back toward the Freezer. The Pyro abandoned her maneuver and sucked the fire back into her hand. The trio then fired several blasts, close together. This, however allowed him to guide the fire and ice blasts together, neutralizing them.
The wave of force that followed the elemental blasts washed around him, and Louis absorbed it well, but the followup blast caught him right in the chest, and hurled him back down the hallway. His back slammed into the floor, knocking the air out of him. Louis scrambled to one side, narrowly dodging another firebolt. The power of another force blast redirected the following ice back down the hall, toward the Pyro. The redhead acted quickly, creating a shield of pure heat that absorbed the intense cold from the ice blast.
Louis bared his teeth in a fighting grin and swiped at the trickle of blood flowing from a small cut on his brow. "You yahoos ready to give up yet?"
The Pyro laughed, and the Telekinetic shook his head. "Look, old man," the Freezer started to say, and decided to restart, "Who the fuck do you think you are? I mean, we're three Supers. You got some decent counters, I'll give it to you, but you just can't take us."
Louis chucked, "I don't have to take you, I just had to keep you from escaping."
The wall behind the trio of villains seemed to disintegrate and it was accompanied with a sharp series of detonations and flashes of bright light. Louis kept the energy from stunning him, but the Supers at the end of the hall weren't so fortunate. They grabbed at their heads in time for two Brawlers to come wading through the hole in the wall, massive fists swinging.
They wore some kind of uniform, reminiscent of the uniform of the Crusaders, but with subtle differences. These must be the Peacekeepers. Louis cast an experienced eye over the people entering the hallway through hole in the wall. A Phaser slapped cuffs on each of the surviving villains with practiced motions, an Obfuscator keeping their senses scrambled, an Empath keeping their powers locked down. Each of them had a silenced sub machine gun on a strap, telepathy dampening headbands integrated into some kind of optics. Louis allowed himself to sink to one knee, and panted a little.
"Louis?" The voice from behind him was wary, like how you talk to big dogs you aren't sure about.
Louis turned tiredly, and grinned at Ben. "Trish get a hold of you?"
The Speed type nodded, relaxing slightly. "Rebecca is with Lady Shrike." The Blur looked uncomfortable for a moment.
"Well? Spit it out."
"Um, why can't she hear?"
Louis laughed out loud, drawing the attention of the team at the end of the hall. "I blocked her hearing because I didn't want her listening to all this crap." He concentrated a moment. "There, fixed." Louis listed to one side, and faster than thought, Ben was supporting him. "I guess this took a lot out of me."
"Well, come on old man. Your adoring public awaits." Louis leaned on Ben's shoulder as they made their way back to the front of the bank.
"Old?" Louis snorted and looked at the Speed type, "Ben, I'm fourty three. You're what, three years from that same sad fate?"
"Four, and I'm sure I'll find something to keep me useful. Pick up a paper route or fifteen." They both chuckled at the idea of Ben delivering papers. Knowing the speed type, he would accidentally hurl papers through windows or even walls, but that could be interesting in it's own right.
They neared the lobby and Louis straightened up and wiped blood off his face. "I got it, thanks Ben. Don't want Becky to see her dad limping too bad." Before they got to the lobby, four of the Peacekeepers joined them.
A helmeted Brawler nodded to him, "Sir." Louis passively picked up surface thoughts. They weren't sure if they were an honor guard or simply a guard, but the Peacekeepers were here to make sure nothing . . . untoward happened. They were also glad to be wearing their dampening halos, so that Louis couldn't read their minds. For his part, Louis was glad they hadn't updated their design much from the one he had created when Trish had left his service.
Many of the bank patrons and staff had already been evacuated from the lobby. The bodies of the Obfuscator and Phaser were being photographed, weapons and items being marked with tiny yellow numbers on cards. The Electric type was strapped to a special gurney and being wheeled to a waiting helicopter. Louis assumed a similar scene was taking place in front of the vault since only half of the team that had entered through the hold in the wall was with him.
As they came into view, the few people left began cheering for Louis as he came back into view. This was something genuinely new for him. To these people he was simply a hero. Not an ex-villain, not a terror, a freak. Louis smiled sheepishly gave them a little wave. Their cheers drew the attention of waiting emergency personnel. An EMT tried to sit Louis down to treat the cut in his head, but he waved the man off and approached one of the more famous Phasers in the country. Rebecca sat in her lap, smiling at him.
Lady Shrike inclined her head to Louis, but he could tell that she was still not sure of him. That was fair. Both of their bodies bore scars from their many duels. In fact, he recognized many of the older Supers around the room. It was a gallery of his old enemies and many of them looked at Louis through new eyes.
"I knew you'd save us daddy!" Rebecca shouted over the noise, hopping down from Lady Shrike's lap and running over to him. Louis knelt down and picked her up, giving his daughter a kiss on the cheek. Louis nodded to the Phaser type, mouthing a "thank you" to her.
Rebecca hugged him hard around the neck, burying her face in his shoulder. "Daddy, you smell like smoke." Unsurprising, since the entire left sleeve of his jacket was burned, and Louis did allow the EMT to begin cutting the cloth away to treat the mild burn beneath.
"Sorry sweetheart." Louis said, holding her tight. The emergency personnel joined the bank patrons and staff cheering for him, even the Peacekeepers grudgingly clapped. They saw a hero. They saw a father, bloody and bruised, but still standing after giving his all in defense of his daughter. The Revenant smiled. It was good to be back.
