Sixes had us ditch our ride a couple blocks away from our destination. The heroes' operational building was a black fortress, easily six stories tall, towering over most the rest of the city. It had no windows and only one entrance, at least that we knew of. Its figure was an imposing symbol of order and authority for every villain to see. But right now, it looked more like a monument to their victory in my eyes.

The faces of the building had been painted over with red. They bore the mark of this new gang coalition, an inverted peace symbol with two eyes placed to either side of the dividing line and beneath the upward branches, inside the circle. I'd seen it once before on the news a few days ago, but back then it had been associated with a simple spree of shootings. Only now did its full meaning come to be apparent.

I bet we'll be seeing a lot more of this sign, I thought to myself.

We were standing on the street beside a raging fire with our eyes transfixed on the spectacle. The headquarters were scarred, but not destroyed. It might have been possible for us to get inside, yet not while it was still under siege. A handful of villains were gathered around attacking, and they showed no sign of slowing down.

They beat us here, I realized grimly. But that didn't mean we had lost completely. The stronghold still stood.

Whatever the engineers had made the structure of the operational building out of, it was confusingly strong. I saw a car thrown up into my sightline, halfway towards the top of the building, only to bounce off its walls like it was nothing. By the looks of it, they'd tried lighting it on fire, beating it with force, and even dousing it in acid; but as soon as the black veneer was pierced, a strange grey metal waiting beneath refused to yield. It refused to even dent.

I'd been by this building countless times before and noticed how deeply inset the front doors were, but I never imagined they were hiding walls like these. My psychic senses had always penetrated through, and that much hadn't changed, although I had been fearful to look too closely inside back then. I worried that they'd have some instrument which might let them know they were being spied on, and at that time I still labored under the belief that they had no idea about my existence. Thus, I wanted to keep it that way.

With that silly idea dead, though, I took a good long look through those impenetrable walls. Sizing up the situation showed me several interesting things.

There were more people inside than I suspected was normal. Down in the basement especially, which was just a single shallow story beneath the groundline, I saw over a hundred people crammed into one room. Clearly, they'd allowed civilians to enter for their protection and to deny the villains hostages. My intuition was that only a few heroes had been left behind to hold down the fort, and if they were who I thought they were, up by the building's peak, then they themselves were beginning to doubt that mission. Their spirits were dark with confusion, telling me that from their perspective, things were looking bleak.

My precision was getting much better at a distance, and sizing a scene up, even one as complicated as this, didn't strike me as too difficult.

This was precisely how I had already figured out that we were being watched.

"This is unfortunate," Sixes said of the villains, "but not unexpected."

I had to keep up appearances by acting naturally. I didn’t want what was likely a villain to spring into action before I could get my bearings. "You, uh, expected this?"

"Yeah, didn't you?" He was looking all around as he spoke to me. Perhaps he had already realized what I had, or perhaps it was unrelated? Regardless, it didn't make sense to me why he would make his searching so obvious.

I went on, trying to keep my cool all the same. "I thought we planned on getting inside, though? This is a major problem."

"What?"

"It's just that I didn't think you'd come out here if it was dangerous." Meanwhile my mind was homing in on its target, despite the distractions. It was just one person, but the amount of confidence in their aura as they perched on the rooftop behind us told me for certain... they were powerful, and they knew it.

Sixes looked at me sideways. "I'm going to look after you, but I thought we had an unspoken agreement to get into the mire together. Don't make me spell it out for you, Headcase. That ruins the point."

Yes, obviously, I thought. It's not like I didn't know what I was getting us into. I just needed to make conversation a little while longer, but he wasn’t helping.

"Headcase!" I heard someone shout. "Did I hear that name right!? I didn't recognize you!"

"What the hell?" As I turned, I confirmed that those words had come straight from the aura watching us. Speaking was a man wearing a cheap plastic tiger-mask on his face and clad shirtlessly in a spiked leather jacket. A real weirdo in the flesh.

"Stumblebum!" I called back enthusiastically. It was such a relief to see him again.

"Ah, there he is," Sixes sighed. "I smelled that bastard from a mile away."

In a flash, Stumblebum teleported into our midst, swaggering as he usually did. "Fucking hell," he said to Sixes, "you smelled me? Really?"

"Yes. All of my senses are enhanced. You just happen to trigger that one very badly, despite the rain even."

My unkillable friend nearly busted a gut as he let loose a stream of laughter. I made sure to check back on the villains attacking the heroes' building, but they were far too preoccupied with their own task to hear us this far away over the fire and the downpour. We were safe for now to chat.

I just smiled until I was able to get a word in, and then I expressed my gratitude. "I'm so glad you found us."

"I'm just out here looking to pick off any of their reinforcements, so it's a total coincidence," Stumblebum said. "I didn't want to get any closer to the main action up there, 'cause, uh, well Carrion scares the absolute shit out of me. But I thought, ya know, hey, they're really sweating over that wall, so they'll probably call for help soon. I can swoop in and knife the 'B' squad, then. Easy peasy."

"That's smart," Sixes nodded. "If they're not making any progress, just let them waste time."

He had mentioned that Carrion was here, the number one villain in our city in terms of body-count. That explained why one of the auras I saw up ahead was so misshapen. I'd never had a run in with him before, thankfully, and so I'd never seen what his nervous system looked like. Not many people possessed one that you could recognize in just a glance, but this was certainly the exception. Its form was a sprawl.

Normally the only things I could determine quickly were, age, body proportions, sex, and the state of mind. Of course, the rest could often be deduced from just these.

"What else do you know?" I asked Stumblebum. “Where are the heroes?”

He pointed off south. "They’re off fighting the Unmakers. That's what they're calling themselves. They set up their squat right in the middle of the razed portion of town, where the rampager did the worst of his damage. They've got some people with them I don't recognize, though. Gotta be out-of-towners on loan for the takeover, I’m thinking."

"They might have the support of another occupied territory," I said.

"That's almost definitely what that means," Sixes agreed. "This is even more serious than we thought."

"Yeah, well, you haven't heard the worst of it." Stumblebum took a seat on a nearby trashcan and pulled out one of his knives to play with as he spoke. "They apparently knew right where to hit us to make it hurt, too."

"Get right to the point," Sixes demanded.

"Yeah fine, I won't beat around the bush," he said, looking to me. "The whole city is going up in flames. These Unmakers had classified schematics of our infrastructure apparently, so were's in a complete radio silence. No power and no water, either. I don't doubt you've probably already noticed this."

"With an attack of this scale, at least we might see a showing by the Saviors if we're lucky," I said.

Sixes spoke from beside me and dashed those hopes. "They won't move a muscle until the politicians are one-hundred percent sure this attack is just localized to New Marion, and not an attempt to draw out our state's protection. We’re all we’ve got for now, Headcase. Remember that."

Stumblebum was not willing to go even that far. "Yeah, about that, hoss. I'm already running half on empty just from making my fucking jumps around the city. We lost our Big Five already so all we've got are kids his age and younger. No offense there, Headcase, but it's not exactly your primo fighting force."

None taken.

Stumblebum went on. "Wonder Boy and Processor are inside the stronghold, best I was able to tell. Bombardment has the rest of the tween-heroes tied up trying to take down the villains' hideout and find their leader. God knows if it's somebody local or if it's one of these out-of-towners. My money would be on Liberosis but he's kind of a pussy, I mean... not that that helps. Yeah. Just, uh... we're fucked either way, is all I'm saying, because what we've got left is nothing but the rogue's gallery to call on, and I'm pretty sure half of them already skipped town..."

Sixes had nothing to say with this information. He was deeply lost in thought, weighing up our resources.

Finally, I had to take a seat of my own to think as well. In the distance there were still explosions sounding. Far off rumbling was a constant fixture as heroes and villains fought at every turn. All along I'd had it in my head that we were going to group-up with the good guys, rally our offense, and put the bad guys down once and for all. Yet, that was not how things were shaping up it seemed.

This was America, I had thought. It was the land of incredibly well-paid and well-trained supers. By that force alone, not so much a cosmic law of righteousness but a well-dressed application of force, was it usually expected that our team would prevail. Not any longer, though.

Today, we were on the back foot.

I just had to readjust my thinking for this reality. I wouldn't... couldn't allow myself to freeze up now. After all, there was yet, deep beneath the surface of my mind, that insatiable hatred which had powered me through before. I felt it drawing nearer again, making me capable of things I never thought possible. Making me into someone my cowardly self wouldn't recognize. Someone who could act when he was needed.

Little by little, I began to turn my mind away from fear and back to strategizing. I remembered who I wanted to become and I acted accordingly.

We have the tools, and that’s why they tried to kill me.

They need to cut out all the wild cards, because their plan will have been carefully rehearsed using only the factors they knew of at the time. Half of any large-scale fight between supers is about positioning the right pieces with the right powers in the right places. Even the strongest of supers could be made to look weak against someone who's a bad match-up for them. Having the element of surprise, then, makes them think they've got all the cards.

But people like me can put a monkey wrench in their entire damn plan.

Once I was certain, I said my piece, and my voice was steady as it could be. "I'll do whatever I can to help. It's in for a penny, in for a pound, right?"

Sixes, as usual, was on a similar page. "They may be confident, but many of them will have no experience with an operation of this scale. We have that to our advantage. If their plan gets thrown off at any one of a dozen key points, it’s likely they won’t know how to recover."

Stumblebum flipped his knife and caught it, stowing it safely back on his belt then. "That's all I wanted to hear from you two. Not everybody can be immortal you know, so I like to make sure the choice is clear; your odds are a dumpster fire. I call that informed consent! But with you, Headcase, I know I don't really have to ask. You've got that same look on your face I saw with the rampager. I'm thinking about the time you threw yourself at a madman drenched in human gore, remember? Just try not to do that again. It was scary for me."

I gave him a wry grin. "No promises."

But I felt a hand settle on my shoulder. "He's still in my protective custody," Sixes countered, being far more serious about the circumstances than I was. "Therefore, I'm going to make sure he stays in his lane this time. That’s not his choice to make."

I didn’t bother to argue, because in all actuality, I had zero intention of doing anything as reckless again. With those limitations noted, I began to set about doing what I had no right to do, yet what I was beginning to love more than anything.

Coming up with a plan.

In straits like these, it would have to be a good one. This fight was no longer just for New Marion, but for the future of the whole country. I wouldn't allow them to set a precedent with my city for their tyranny. Never my city.