There were a lot of questions and Ironbolt had few answers. While they had managed to beat the response time of Seraph and get the jet out of missile range, they were hardly out of danger yet. Any minute now, the hammer might come crashing down.

Ironbolt was acquainted with some of their contingency plans. Psychics, teleporters, and bombs to start. But those were only the ones he knew about. In truth, they had no choice but to run like hell and pray for the best. Though he hadn't told the Wards that.

Flying over the Atlantic Ocean now, he set the ship to autopilot and disengaged from the helm. While still keeping an eye on all their scanners and cameras using his HUD display and ample spare attention, he decided it was time to set the story straight. He'd kept them waiting long enough for the full details.

In the back, Dupe and Fortitude were a morose sight, sitting cross-legged in the cargo bay floor. The only thing that raised their spirits was seeing Ironbolt coming out.

He realized what he had done to these two kids. Their lives were now in his hands. But Ironbolt considered it the morally superior state to be in, despite the risk. He applied the golden rule in his mind.

If it were me, he thought, I signed up to be a Hero. We all did. And I would have wanted to know the truth about Seraph. I would have wanted to join the fight against them, no matter the cost.

And join they did. He just regretted how little time they had to decide. Unlike him, others suffered from regret, and he could see the inklings of it on their faces now. "Hey you two," Ironbolt announced. "We're almost there. So, we should be much safer now."

"That's good," Fortitude nodded, trying to smile. "Where is it that we're headed?"

"The Mediterranean. There, Avenger has a camp situated on an old oil rig. We'll use it as our base of operations while we figure things out."

Dupe tentatively raised his hand as if he were a nervous schoolboy. "Speaking of that..."

"I know," Ironbolt said. Moving down to the floor, he lowered himself to their level. He eased the tension of his authoritative position, trying to relax them. "What you have to understand is that intel is very limited in this situation. But we're doing the right thing."

"Can you at least tell us like, who we're up against?"

Ironbolt reached back into his pocket and withdrew something. Presenting it for both of them to see, he held out a single black and white photograph. It featured two men, one bowing to kiss the ring of the other.

Immediately, both of the Wards recognized the man kneeling as Nemesis, the King of Africa. Among all the Six, he could easily have been chosen as the most prideful. He was known to consider himself the ultimate warrior, holding tournaments for his own throne which he never failed to keep. Yet he kneeled to this other unknown man. He kissed their ring like a lowly subject.

"We know this other man only as the Seventh King," Ironbolt told them. "We have the most sightings of him in America. Specifically, coming in and out of Seraph Headquarters..."

"That's..." Dupe hesitated, but he could not hold back his disappointment. "...That's all the proof you have? Don't get me wrong, if that picture's real, there is something seriously fucked up going on in the land of Class Zeroes. Some underground players that we don't know about, sure. But that doesn't prove that Seraph is in on it..."

"There is more-" Ironbolt started to say. His attention, however, was pulled to a noise outside. A light thud against the wing of the plane.

Fortitude caught the turn of his head and followed his line of sight. Unlike the other two, she sat furthest to the aft, allowing her to lean back and see-through one of the side windows. There was nothing outside that she could see, though. Just the dark and turbulent wind.

Neither did the cameras reveal anything to Ironbolt's inspection. Perhaps it had just been some poor seabird... at ten thousand feet, he noted.

The second thud was not so subtle. It shook the entire plane with its impact, and immediately they knew this was nothing to write off.

Ironbolt rushed to his crates at the back of the plane, already digging in for the equipment he would need. "We've got trouble!"

As he weighed his options coldly and quickly, he caught sight of the figure at last. The feed outside was grainy and difficult to make out, but a particularly dense cloud layer had managed to reveal their attacker. As it washed over his invisible form, it gave the outline of a beastly man.

Metal deformed in slow motion as it started to tear into the side of the plane. Looking back at all of his hard-gathered equipment, Ironbolt sighed and made a difficult choice. He didn't have much time to tell the Wards what they needed to do. First, he would have to deal with their immediate problems. One by one.

Using quick-input commands via his internal display, Ironbolt ordered the ship to do an immediate nosedive towards the ocean and begin equalization of pressure. He had to stop the craft from tearing apart when the beast inevitably broke through. And, he would have to apologize to the Wards later for their bruises.

They were thrown like ragdolls towards the back of the ship, screaming. Luckily, Ironbolt's crates had been tightly secured, so as not to go moving as well and crush them. He had braced on the cargo's side, ready for the change in gravity so that he could stay planted.

Killing two birds with one stone, the maneuver also dislodged the beast from outside. Whatever it was, it had gone spiraling off into the nighttime sky, lost on the wind.

This bought Ironbolt just enough time to explain to his painfully slow students what they needed to do. "It'll be back!" he shouted. "Get into the side compartment and get out your parachutes. You have to abandon ship!"

"What is that thing?!" Dupe cried, struggling to sit up against the G-forces and carry out his orders.

"It's one of the Lich's Chimera," Ironbolt said. A ruined corpse stitched together from so many pieces of dead Supers, like Frankenstein's monster. Each limb would have its own Power along with many other possibly stolen organs stripped from the fallen Heroes on the front lines. All mashed together onto the body of a teleporter and the brain of a tracker.

A creature specifically designed to find and kill them on behalf of Seraph...

I don't have the brute strength to put this thing down, Ironbolt knew. None of us do.

Another thud sounded outside, this time jerking the plane and threatening to completely rip off its wing. The Chimera could be seen only by the deep grooves it tore into the metal with its claws outside. It was trying to keep from falling off.

Soon they would be at a safe altitude for the Wards to jump and the plane would level out. They had their parachutes on in preparation. The timing of all this would have to be cut deadly close.

Finally, the beast tore a hole in the side of the ship. To their eyes, a spontaneously widening gap in the jagged steel opened. All of the air seemed to rush out of the room in that minute. The ship barely held together.

In under a second, Ironbolt had already taken action. He opened and retrieved from one of his crates a large energy weapon, situating it firmly in a two-handed grasp. With iron sights instantly lined up at the opening of the hole, he channeled his Power and let loose.

Overwhelming energy concentrated to form plasma in the barrel and rip forward into the air. Hitting the invisible monster in the threshold, however, its effect scattered. Like water off a duck's back, the white-hot matter simply rolled over its target, cooling unusually fast in the process.

It's not just invisibility, Ironbolt realized. They knew his abilities, and so they had created a tool befitting the challenge. The invisibility was merely a side effect of greater energetic resistances.

Thinking much more practically, Ironbolt resorted to the next logical move, testing its protections.

He chucked his weapon at full force towards the thing, sending it out at over a hundred miles an hour. At last, this had a measurable effect. The impact sent the Chimera flying away, freed once more from the ship to disappear.

This time it returned with a little more anger, not hesitating to press the attack.

There was a burst of air as it flew by over the wing, not even bothering to attempt a landing there. Instead, with its line of sight now open, it teleported directly in front of Ironbolt and into the jet's cargo hold. Its hand had appeared almost instantaneously around his throat then, giving absolutely no time for a reaction.

That was when he felt the effect of its Power. With one hand it had teleported and with the other, it had sent out a wave of aching pain through Ironbolt's entire body.

His flesh was drained by the ability and for the first time in his life, he started to perceive the world in normal time. Everything became terrifyingly fast, like lightning striking before his eyes.

As Ironbolt pulled free of the hold, he fell back and sputtered to suck in air from a nearly collapsed airway. His gaze darted back and forth in confusion over the hold.

Fortitude had gotten into one of the crates before he had realized, and she brandished a weapon that she knew nothing about. Recklessly, she fired it at the creature and hoped for the best.

Two spikes flew out and buried themselves deep in the Chimera's body. They did nothing though. Without Ironbolt to send a current down the line of thin metal wires that connected them back to their origin, they were a chargeless taser.

"We won't leave you behind, boss!" she told him, overcoming her fear.

Still holding ignorantly onto the weapon, it served as no more than a means for the monster to throw her across the room. As it saw the wires, it only took one sweep of its arms to knock her aside.

Meanwhile, Ironbolt scrambled for the back of the plane, ducking low behind his crates.

"You don't want to do this!" Dupe announced, extending his straining arm out towards their enemy. His sent out his influencing Power with all his might.

Silently, the mindless Chimera raised its own arm and prepared to teleport. The effect had done nothing but annoy the beast. While it was just barely visible, still doused in remnants of cooled plasma, its warped face was covered with murderous intent.

"You have to get out of here!" Ironbolt told them. As he stood up, he saw the Chimera's attention return. That was good. It meant he was the primary target. He would need its attention, as he was the only one that could pull off the plan.

Slowly, Ironbolt's speed was returning from its draining. He was regaining his focus and cunning. He only needed his Wards to listen now. "I know what I always say, but don't be a Hero this time!" he said, helping Fortitude to her feet as he did.

The moment she stood, Ironbolt intuitively decided to duck, and his timing was perfect. The Chimera had gone for the exact same move as before, attempting a teleport. Yet, with his change in position, the space it desired to occupy was no longer open. Instead, he was there, and this caused a violent spacial conflict.

Shunted out of its target-space, the Chimera was sent flying backward by the rejection, impacting a panel across the room. This bought Ironbolt all the time he needed to smash the cargo-bay door's open-button. He watched then as his reluctant Wards were sucked out. Gone with the wind and getting to a safe distance.

Making sure to avoid its hands, Ironbolt went for a careful burst of strikes then. He zipped up, delivered twenty fast punches with bone-smashing ferocity, and then retreated just as rapidly.

"Guh... No good, master," a voice went out. A gurgle of blood and phlegm from the Chimera. "No good..." it groaned.

Ironbolt could hear what sounded like bones knitting back together. Strange crackles that should have ended as he let up but only got louder. It was a good assumption that the Lich would round out his monster's Powerset with healing, he reasoned.

But Ironbolt had already won. He only had to place the command in his system. A distress call and a sequence activation. Then, he decided to do what he did best.

Run.

Faster than a blink. Faster than it could possibly think to teleport in pursuit...

Ironbolt launched into a sprint, propelling himself out of the still open ramp and into the open sky. He came out speedier than a bullet, letting out a shockwave that was rivaled only by the explosion which came next.

Every battery pack and ounce of fuel inside the ship went off in synchronicity. Altogether, it generated a glowing blue light over the water. A massive, expanding orb of crackling fire and electricity which lit up the night.

Even at top speeds, Ironbolt had barely escaped the heat of it all, his boots burning uncomfortably in flight. He hadn't taken any chances. He timed his jump down to the millisecond, making sure the Chimera would be caught inside when the self-destruct went off.

Nullify that, he smirked.

With the open-air surrounding him and a long fall ahead, Ironbolt could see his two Wards beneath the blue sun. Their parachutes had successfully deployed. They were safe, he nodded, and so he could rest easy for now.

His landing wouldn't be pleasant, that was for sure. But Ironbolt was tough enough to survive it. This would only be the first of their trials, he knew.

Having broadcast their location to Avenger just before the ship went down, help would be on the way. Though their call would be unexpected, Ironbolt had no doubt that his old friend would be thrilled to answer it.

Avenger had always hoped Ironbolt would turn vigilante. He said it was where all the real work got done. Today, he got his wish.