We spent another night at the Day’s Inn. Baldwin mentioned that we should probably spend the next night at some place completely different, different price range, different city section, and different social aesthetic, in order to maintain operational security. Antonia agreed, but when I suggested one of the large, expensive 4-star places, She counter-offered with a hotel that rented by the hour or a campground cabin outside of town.

Baldwin, surprisingly, agreed with me. “Look, we work for our departments, where every penny has to be accounted for. Agents are expected to be frugal. I have spent more nights in no-tell motels than I care to count, and while that is fine for solo or surveillance work, those kinds of places are the very first place someone looking for a target getting shepherded by a department would look. It’s also considerably more difficult to bribe high-end places to look the other way. Sure, the doormen might be fine with passing a tip to some paparazzi about a celebrity showing up, but a lot of those places have high-security clientele, and a guy walking by with a body bag or a mac-10 is likely to get noticed. That won’t stop a meta, but it could give us plenty of warning, and I am fairly certain that a warned Alchemyst would be a very challenging target.”

I felt a little guilty, “I wasn’t even thinking of that, I just knew that the DMA was footing the bill, and thought I could rib Antonia with it a little. I figured I could talk about inviting Whatsername back to my presidential suite with a bed big enough for six and watch her get all jealous again.”

Antonia scowled at me and Baldwin grinned. Before she had a chance to open her mouth to deny it, though, he said, “Don’t even try. Look at your expression in a mirror. Like I told you, you are his handler right now, not his girlfriend. If you keep getting all stormy every time he talks to a girl, Your life is completely fucked, and you know it. The Gym? There wasn’t a person in there that wasn’t aware you were jealous of Aquantis the whole time he was talking to her. As the senior agent, I am telling you flat out, that kind of thing will get you, me, and him killed.”

She sighed. “Right. Professional.”

Baldwin nodded, “Professional and friendly. Maybe you get lucky and someone tries to bribe you to look the other way, giving you an early warning, or maybe they kidnap or kill you hoping to use you as leverage against him, but I will tell you right now, He’s a meta and a healer and will get a lot of attention. Think about it, if you walk into his bedroom tomorrow night and find him naked in a pile of women, can you be cool and friendly with a smile on your face and zero judgment? Heck, if he asks you to find him a girl of negotiable virtue to help take out his stresses, would you find the best, most pleasant, cleanest, and most beautiful one you could find for the job? Because if the answer is no, You need to request a reassignment tonight. You cannot do your job.”

He shook his head, “Yeah, I have seen that bodyguard movie. That sonovabitch gives every security specialist, both agent, and civilian, a horrible reputation. I’ve had to set up discrete liaisons plenty of times. I am well aware that, for example, prostitution or picking up a baggie of weed is illegal, but as long as it’s not a felony, it’s a way to help keep your principal safe. You are an agent, not a street cop, and you need to be worried about people getting killed, not your own morality or sex drive.”

Baldwin was looking really, really angry right now. “Provisional special Agent Andropoolis, take it from me as a fellow agent and someone that wants to see you succeed at one of the hardest jobs a woman can ever take, I have been in exactly your position, only yours is tougher because you are a woman and are expected to be driven by feelings and urges instead of competence, right or wrong. Get your shit under control, or get the fuck out of the business before you kill someone.”

He sighed and shook his head, watching Agent Andropolis carefully for a moment as she sat at the hotel table mutely. He seemed to calm down a little and said, “Honestly, no one would blame you if you decided to join up one of the new teams yourself. Being a department meta sucks, and you might even be able to do more good as a cape, even though your talents are really needed where they are. You’d make a damned fine cape, and you could do the relationship thing to your heart’s content. I normally wouldn’t have done this in front of the principal, but this manipulative son of a bitch told me he expected you to be making out with him in less than three days. At first, I laughed it off, but last night I knew he was right.”

Antonia looked at me angrily, but Baldwin scowled at her and she immediately schooled and smoothed her expression to a pleasant smile. “He wasn’t manipulating me, he was just being himself. But you are right. I was letting things get to me. I just felt so rotten about the Victrix thing, I was taking it too hard and emotionally, and was letting it get me into the wrong state of mind for my job. Thank you for your assistance, Agent Baldwin.”

Baldwin smiled a little, “Call me Adam.” At my startled grin, he shook his head and glared at me, “Shut it. My dad was a fan of Full Metal Jacket. You can call me Baldwin, principal.”

He added one last thing before we called it a night, “Antonia, just remember that if you do this often, sooner or later you are going to lose a principal. It happens, and they might be bleeding all over you, begging you to save them, and proclaiming that they love you while their heart stops. Hell, you might even be stuck on them when it happens. It will happen. You can feel guilty, you can hate yourself, but you have to just keep going and doing your job to the best of your ability. Some people just aren’t cut out for it in the long run, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Think about it.”

Unlike Aquantis’ assumption, we weren’t actually sharing rooms, but the three hotel rooms were connected with doors, with mine in the middle. Baldwin slipped through the door to one of the other rooms, leaving Antonia and me alone.

“I’m sorry.” Both of us said at the same time, and I chuckled a little and said, “You first.” While flopping on the bed that, like all hotels, was just a little too short.

She nodded, “I am sorry for getting possessive. In my defense, the way you were looking at Victrix before she hit you was like a kid staring at an ice cream cone. I am… oversensitive about the possibility of you getting taken. It was very unprofessional.”

I nodded, “Yeah, I am sorry for the whole trying to get you interested thing. Bear in mind, you are a pretty solid ten in most guys' books, and hit my interests in a lot of ways since I happen to like girls that are fit and smart. I guess I was being kind of manipulative, especially with the towel thing, but in my defense, I just spent two years in prison with nothing but guards and Axeface for company. You were kind of like an ice cream cone, but I will try not to act as much like a manslut around you while you are on this job.”

I chuckled a little and added, “If you switch to cape, though, fair warning, I like you, and I have a thing for bitchy girls. I’ll try to sweep you off your feet and into my bed before you can blink.”

I didn’t mention that my interest in bitchy girls extended, in my imagination, to wanting to get them into the playful position of no longer being able to bitch, but with Antonia, jokes about handcuffs and paddles could lead to her quite literally kicking the shit out of me. She was definitely strong enough to do it.

She nodded and got to her feet. “Fair enough. You were bad, I was bad. New foot and all that. I need to get to sleep. I know you can probably go days without, but my superpowers don’t extend to avoiding the need for sleep, and we have a big, and possibly incredibly violent, day ahead of us tomorrow. I tried to get them to let you have a pass for security reasons, but even though you aren’t supposed to be on camera, the senator has personally mentioned that he wants you there.”

I smiled a little as she cut off the lights and headed towards her own room, still kind of wishing that she tucked me in. I still hadn’t gotten over my mom and brother, and probably never would, but it was time to move past that and stop letting it rule my life. Unless I was up close and personal with Rainbow Warrior, I’d be more than happy to let it rule my life for the few minutes it would take to give him the Totem treatment.

I didn’t remember much, but I know that night I had very interesting dreams of the sort I hadn’t had since I was a teenager. They involved Mariah, Caroline, Victrix, and Antonia sans clothing while Calixte watched, tapping her foot impatiently and trying to get my attention so I would hold her hand and communicate with her. Unlike the others, she was fully clothed outside of the anatomically unlikely pile of bodies and wore an expression of impatient irritation as she watched the pornographic scene unfold. Fortunately or unfortunately, I couldn’t remember much except naked, sweaty bodies and a weight bench after the dream ended.

I woke up to a messy, sticky bed and had ripped the sheets and bedding off the mattress during my short sleep, and mentally apologized to housekeeping while bundling the bedclothes into a bundle and dropping them on the floor of the little closet to be dealt with after check-out.

I took a nice long and very hot shower, reveling in the hot water, and then cleaned up my face with the complimentary razor. I sort of wanted to cultivate the unshaven look, but you needed an electric razor to keep it clean, and the full beard look was not one that I wanted. It might work for Conner, might being the operative word, but I wasn’t ashamed of my freckles.

I had tried sleeping in a pair of sweat pants, but after two years of being rarely clothed except for company, it had proven impossible. Probably one of the reasons I had torn up the bed was that I was used to sleeping without covers.

I really needed to clean or get new clothes, as I put on the last outfit in my inventory, a pair of jeans and a probably inappropriate muscle shirt, and a pair of socks that were working on their second day. I was just glad I couldn’t get foot fungus, or it might have been especially unpleasant. At least I had a clean holster, the idea of putting on two-day-old underwear after a hot shower was repulsive. That reminded me that if I planned to get any fighting in, a cup was beyond a necessity. Hyde could probably ignore a jimmyshot, but it would drop me faster than a moldy sandwich.

I bundled up my dirty clothes and tucked them into a garbage bag inside my gym bag, and sighed. How did agents live like this all the time? Did they just head to a local laundromat on a long stake-out, no exercise, and eat nothing but takeout or delivery crap? Based on the Humpty Dumpty shape of a lot of long-term agents, I would bet that I was not too far off the mark.

I gently tapped on agent Adam Baldwin’s door, snickering to myself at the name. It was actually kind of cool, though, since I thought the actor was pretty amazing. I also tapped at Antonia’s door and wondered if there was some kind of rule the required agents to have humorous, inappropriate, or alliterative names.

I headed down with my bag, leaving the room to the attention of housekeeping as I grabbed a few items to keep me from starving, to be joined a few minutes later by Baldwin. “You know, I know you have enhanced stamina, but the rest of us need occasional sleep.” He said, grabbing a plate full of breakfast meats and joining me.

I shrugged, “Well, if I had a girl in my room I might have made a lot more of a night of it.” I joked, wolfing down today’s special warm plate, a big tray of corn beef hash and hash browns on the hot plates. More muffins, of course, and a bowl of cereal I’d already finished rounded out my light breakfast. “I wondered how you guys did it, I mean, the whole constantly on the move thing. I am on my last clean clothes, and I really need to spend the morning shopping and picking up stuff I need, like armor and sparring gear.”

He nodded, “If you stay at a hotel for more than one night, most hotels will clean and press your clothes during the day while you are out. There’s a laundry bag in the room closet, usually. It costs an arm and a leg, but it’s better than spending hours at a laundromat instead of working.”

I nodded, question answered. I had never spent much time in hotels, and almost never called on their services, and I had wondered what the mesh bag hanging in the closet was for, I had thought it was just a convenient place to stash wet towels and the like.

I plowed my way through hash browns and then swallowed, “If I am living out of hotels for a while I guess I had better get used to this.”

He shook his head. “Only here. In the other cities on the list Antonia informs me they already have safehouses with controlled security, but here the DMA was in sort of a rush. Don’t get used to room service.”

I grinned at him, “I haven’t even used room service yet, but if we do go to a posh placer tonight, I might take advantage of it.”

He nodded, “I would. It’s not like the secret service is paying for it, the DMA is flush, or they wouldn’t be tossing money at these projects. The Service is always having to scrounge for funding. Speaking of which, agent Andropolis won’t be joining us until about one, at the announcement. The DMA wants you on camera, and she’s going to go check in with the DMA offices and pick up a new set of tac armor and a more… neutral costume. No piping, generic dark green, with a half mask and web utility belt. I figure it will still be armored stretch neoprene to show off your muscles, since, you know, the super look, but even I have to agree that that prior thing was an abomination.”

I nodded, polishing off a bagel I’d snagged. Call me weird, but I preferred it as a butter delivery vehicle rather than with cream cheese. Cream cheese was for sweets and teasing girls, not spreading on a thick donut.

“Well, then, I guess you will be babysitting me this morning while I shop. Do we want to do the taxi thing or should we pick up a rental? I have at least four places I need to hit today before lunchtime, and most of them open up at ten except the Serve-Mart.

We wound up hitting five of them, and I was the proud possessor of a new hockey bag to add to my gym bag, an actual garment bag with a suit that had only taken about twenty minutes to tailor, pads, gloves, and other workout gear, some nicer clothes and several pairs of expensive, but necessary, shoes, and two phone numbers girls had insisted on slipping to me. I was still having trouble getting used to being an ice cream cone, but it was very nice. I also had a titanium athletic cup, which had wound up costing more than the suit.

Lunch was, no surprise, barbecue again. Keeping fit required a lot of protein, and the best kinds were smoked and dipped in a sweet and spicy sauce.

I was getting a little tired of saying Baldwin was right, but this time he definitely was. The suit Antonia offered me was vastly more tasteful, armored and vented neoprene with flex joints and reinforced stress points, and even had a little extra weight installed in the armored backs of the fists, about the same as a roll of pennies, to give my hits and backhands a little extra power. I think the stuff must have been custom designed because it fit me like a condom, and I noticed expansion joints in the pants area with a lot of extra unarmored material and knew what they were for, although I didn’t mention them to Antonia.

The belt was a standard web belt, but the lovely girl had gotten me a host of thick little glass vials and slightly larger and thinner globes, just perfect for potions and bombs, and they each had their own pouch and a set of thick plastic buttons on the bottom that would dispense whatever was in each slot right into the palm of either hand. There was even a heavily-padded and reinforced pouch that would be perfect for at least a dozen bombs and could probably survive an earthquake without disturbing the contents. The only real concession to design other than the black tac armor, which was designed similar to BMX armor over the forest-green suit, was a black belt buckle with a stylized ‘A’ in illuminated script on it. I even had a place for my silver flask.

I got most of the gear on in little time. The helmet would not survive a transformation, and if Hyde made an appearance the armor straps and chest piece would likely pop off in short order, but the expansion joints would give me feet of extra fabric coverage in every direction. My new titanium cup might not survive the experience, but needs must. If I had to use my last-ditch freedom effect, I didn’t want to traumatize the children. A bare chest the size of a pickup truck bed was fine. Billy club to the face was not.

It was almost time and two was late enough for most of the teams to arrive, except, of course, for Windfall. She was the only one I hadn’t met yet, and I was starting to get suspicious that she was intentionally avoiding me, but Grace assured me that her powers tended to make her arrival times rather unpredictable.

Aquantis was dressed in a lot more than usual, thin dark blue spandex with draping see-through scarves that almost resembled a robe over the form-fitting bodysuit. She was even wearing a small domino mask and had her hair bound up with a small band that almost looked like a tiara, with a sapphire in the middle. She smiled brightly and waved at me as I stepped out of the front door, and it was clear that the costumers had had their way with the teams.

Football pads and makeshift armor had been replaced with heavy tactical armor similar to mine, second-rate weapons with much nicer versions, and even Ballclub was sporting a brand new Stainless steel baseball bat, whose heft implied that it was not hollow. He grinned at me and stepped over, and said, “Hey, I spent all of this morning sitting zen, and managed to get my weight down to less than five hundred. At this rate, I will have to sell this stuff to dieters, and when I went all out again I was close to fifteen hundred pounds and my lift had almost doubled! Dude, you are a lifesaver. I could be class D by the end of the week.”

I grinned back and hit him on the back, actually managing to shift him a little. “That is amazing, man, I totally knew you could do it. Hell, with practice, in a few months the Protectors or even Prometheans might be begging you to join.”

He nodded, and Grace started trying to get our attention. Several of the more experienced team members were missing, and I knew exactly why. They were getting into position for what might be one of the best hunting opportunities they had ever seen.

“Behind us is the headquarters for our new Chicago-based team, the Great Lakes Defenders!” A woman was speaking to a camera in the parking lot as Grace made sure we all looked our best, the parking lot was mostly cleared out to leave an unimpeded view of the building, which was now decorated with a large D logo overlaid over a stylized map of the Great lakes.

The woman, who I would have considered gorgeous if I weren’t surrounded by Metas who redefined the word, continued. “The Northern States area already has the Northern States Protectors, who operate out of Indianapolis, but these new teams are being trained right here, in the windy city! In cooperation with law enforcement, Some very well-known local names have been officially sanctioned to assist with some of the troubles we have been having with local gangs, shipping issues, and of course, any natural disasters that may occur. I’d like to introduce the public coordinator for the team, Grace Petit!”

I didn’t like being out here, near the cameras, but the idea of going back into the building was, for some reason, even worse. I didn’t normally count on intuition, but a feeling was growing that something bad was about to happen. When Grace stepped in front of the camera, the feeling instantly grew to full-blown panic, as if some girl were screaming at me in my head to get the fuck away from the building.

I pushed the cameraman out of the way, and yelled, “Grace! Get everyone out of the building now! And out of the parking lot!”

I started shouting at the other members, starting with a Jasper. “Get everyone out now! Something bad is going to happen!” I pointed at Ballclub. “Grab those cars, you and Stern. Tip them up. Make a barrier!” I started herding people away past the cars to the edge of the parking lot. There was a trench at the edge, and bodily picking up team members and sliding them down the concrete sluiceway. More of them kept appearing as Jasper whipped them out of the building and behind the poor cars that were being hastily pushed into a barricade, and I suddenly saw Jasper and another young lady, one who worked in the cafeteria, flying towards me. A small, green smoking pebble had smashed into the side of the building and the entire building had erupted into a roaring explosion of green flame.

I managed to catch both Jasper and the small woman, and drag them behind the cars as chunks of flying building impacted the cars, starting to send one spinning until Ballclub reached out and stopped it with one mitt. The cameraman and the reporter were both behind him, on the edge of the embankment, the reporter screaming as the wreckage flew around us and rained against the cars like the drums of hell themselves.

Cadmium was a class B supervillain, a technopath that was seldom active. For some reason he was in the Great Lakes area, and had launched a single missile from his invisible fortress during the broadcast.

Galactica herself had been dispatched, but by the time she had arrived, Cadmium’s invisible fortress had proven its talents once again by being completely gone. Cadmium generally did not pull the supervillain card, relegating himself to selling high-powered metatech and lower-powered prototypes for vast sums of money. Why risk getting hit by a hero when you could get rich at least semi-legally? Why he had been in the Chicago area was a complete mystery since he usually sold out of Toronto. The idea that he might have sold his ghost fortress was dismissed out of hand, since he was said to keep his best tech for himself. He specialized in on-off weaponry that was often targeted at a particular metahuman’s weaknesses, and literally couldn’t give two shits about street-level class D and below metas, unless he could make an enormous amount of money cracking their defenses. But the mystery of his presence was cold comfort to the two people Jasper hadn’t been able to get out of the building in time.

There were a lot of injuries. Jasper tried, but he moved incredibly fast. Generally he didn’t destroy objects when he held them at speed, but when moving people, a stray brush of an elbow or finger against a doorframe while he moved them could lead to nasty fractures and bruising. I blew out almost my entire supply of quick-healing potions just making sure that everyone recovered, but now that I had a sweet dispenser and set of nearly-indestructible bottles, I was eager to make more. The pain and shock and trauma the victims had already gone through more than made up for the sacrifice. Jasper had pretty bad burns as well, but my potions were up to the task, although unfortunately, it would take him a week at a minimum to start growing his hair back out.

What seemed to be of greater mystery, was how I was able to know in advance that the plasma missile was going to strike the building. Blackhawk and the rest of the experienced heroes had expected some kind of a strike, it was sort of inevitable considering how much of a threat not one but two new teams was going to be to the local criminal underworld, especially considering the HQ’s proximity to the docks.

But my terrible feeling was a mystery both to me and to the team, one that was not resolved until a new teammate, one I had not met before, stepped off of a bus in a white uniform that looked more like an icon than a modern costume.

Like I mentioned, she was wearing white. A white leotard with a white half-mask that was almost elegant in its simplicity. Very few modern heroes wore capes, especially not floor-length capes that could wrap clear around them as a cloak rather than the half-cape some wind-aspected heroes wore to held catch a draft. Her half-mask allowed her auburn hair to flow behind the cape, and it was nearly down to her waist, an easy handle for a bad guy to grab at will that most modern vigilantes would keep tied up or trimmed off.

She also wore a short, sleeveless tunic over her leotard, cinched around her waist with a white leather belt. The whole outfit looked like a sort of 80s tribute to the 60s superhero aesthetic. She was small and slender, and the thing that threw the entire look off was the pair of thick, heavy glasses that she pulled on when she noticed ambulances pulling away from the parking lot. The glasses were of almost legendary thickness, and would have shown off her crystalline green eyes beautifully if they weren’t so thick that they made her look like she should have antennae and wings.

She looked around at the group, noticing several missing people, and smiled a little weakly, “Oh, I am so sorry for being late. Did the building survive?” She asked, peering towards the building which was basically, while not quite a smoking crater, not going to be hosting any dinner parties ever again.

Blackhawk, who had become ever-more agitated as he had questioned me about how I knew to yell for everyone to take cover, glanced up. “You knew?”

She nodded, “Yeah. I tried to call and tell you guys to get out, but my battery died again. Once the chances of the building getting smashed hit eighty percent, all I could do was try and increase the probability that someone would notice.” She started looking around, “Someone caught it, I know, I felt it. Did everyone make it out okay?”

Blackhawk shook his head, “No, Brent and Christine were in the basement fooling around in the purchasing office again. Jasper couldn’t get the door open when he was trying to get people out. He almost didn’t make it himself, but he grabbed one of the caterers and barely got out ahead of the explosion instead. Considering the wreckage, the purchasing office was gone the minute the explosive went off. We are assuming that they are gone.”

The woman had tears streaming out of her eyes as she heard, under the glasses. “I am so sorry. The price of last night’s raid was that my USB cable shorted, I think, and I didn’t check it. I had no idea it would cost lives, but I should have guessed when I increased the chances of Jackal’s gang’s guns misfiring, I just didn’t think it would demand lives to make up for the cops that got out okay.”

Blackhawk nodded slowly, “It was unfortunate, but sometimes we cannot always choose who we save. A class B hit the HQ, though, and there’s really just no way to stop it, even though we have someone helping us that certainly helped mitigate the effects.” He offered her a handkerchief from his utility belt and I resolved to get some of my own.

“Was that the same guy that caught notice?” she asked curiously, “I was trying to get you to notice since you had the highest probability of catching it in time, but it hit someone else.”

Blackhawk nodded, and took her hand, walking her towards me. “Yep. Windfall, meet Alchemyst.”

“Louis.” I corrected automatically. So this was the mysterious Windfall.