Panzer rubbed her temples hard. Nova had always mentioned getting bad headaches, but she wasn’t sure if that was why her head wouldn’t stop pounding, or if it was all of the bitching from the “hired help.”

Leap leaned against the table next to her, eating popcorn out of a bowl.

“When…” Panzer stammered, “when did you have the time to make that?”

“Make?” Leap parroted.

Panzer arched a brow at her.

“Stop this, or I will,” she menaced.

Leap crammed another handful of popcorn in her mouth and gestured to the lieutenants continuing to argue, muttering something like “All yours” around the puffed kernels.

Panzer pushed herself off the table and strode forward, interjecting when Go Loud prodded a wide finger in the middle of Radio’s chest.

Panzer grabbed a hold of the digit, put her hand on the back of Go Loud’s elbow and acquainted his face with the floor.

“Oooooh…” Leap hissed from behind her, mimicking a studio audience.

Panzer stood quickly, her boot on the back of Go Loud’s head, Angry Daddy pointed at Radio and Techno, and Longeye’s Revolver at Shadow.

“Alright kids, listen up, we have a job to do. I don’t give a shit what the lot of you are goin’ on about, but that stops. Now,” Panzer menaced.

Go Loud grumbled and struggled beneath her boot, so Panzer twisted the toe into his scalp.

Leap appeared at her side.

“I suggest you all listen, I paid for the lot of you. Make yourselves useful or I’ll let mum here do what she wants with you, and I have a feeling it’s gonna be messy,” Leap commented.

Shadow was the first to speak up. She was an athletically built woman, but petite all the same. She had dark hair, dark eyes, and a gymnasts frame.

“Me and Loud here were just saying that this op sounds like a smash and grab, going in quiet and trying to leave the same way would be best, but these fucks over here keep insisting on using GSO systems to get the job done for us, but we know that won’t work because it has never worked!”

Shadow was yelling by the end of her explanation, which elicited the beginnings of another shouting match. Even Go Loud attempted to participate, face as buried in the floor as it was. Panzer pointed Angry Daddy up towards the ceiling and squeezed the trigger.

The boom silenced the room.

“Your turn,” Panzer said looking at Radio and Techno, “don’t make me get Daddy here involved again.”

“I was simply suggesting,” Techno started, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose, “that we hack into the systems at the facility we aim to rob so we can keep an eye on things inside. We have had success with that in previous ops, contrary to what - “ A pointed look from Panzer interrupted the instigatory remark, “contrary to what was assumed that I meant… because I misspoke?”

Panzer nodded approvingly.

“So,” she started, looking back at Leap.

“What’s the plan?” Isto asked, looking over at The Supplier.

“Sorli is likely being held in the basement of Central HQ, right here in town. When I peeked at the town roster, Psycher had last checked in there. Once we’re past the perimeter, the only things we’ll have to keep in mind are the other heroes on site.”

“Do we know who -”

“Arclight, Atreyu, Ray, and Presto the Magnificent.”

“We get past the perimeter, make a beeline for the basement, deal with Psycher, get the boy out and then?”

“And then we tell him everything, Isto. Like you promised.”

“Alright, great…”

“And then I murder Pres-”

“Sounds good to me,” Leap agreed.

“Sounds good to you?” Panzer questioned, “Go to the park and have a good time is about as thought out as that plan is.”

“A plan is a plan?” Leap answered.

“Look,” Panzer said, rolling out a top down blueprint of the building, “Grimm is in the basement, with that bitch Psycher, if I’m right. Atreyu and Arclight were both in town last I saw the roster, so a plan of ‘sneak in, grab boy, sneak out” doesn’t really inspire the most confidence when we have the top hero in the known world, his number two, and any number of street-level heroes on site that don’t need to sign in. We need to take this just a bit more seriously.”

Panzer’s headache was getting worse.

Leap sighed, “I am taking this seriously, I just…”

“Wasn’t thinking straight when you pulled a team together?” Panzer finished the thought.

Leap smirked sheepishly back at the woman.

“Okay, that’s okay…” Panzer told herself more than the people around her, “Alright then, power inventory, around the room, go,” she instructed, pointing at Shadow first.

The lithe woman stepped forward, “The name gives it away pretty easy, I can create and erase shadows, making it easy to get into places undetected or make sure that the shadows don’t get used against us. I have precise control, I can literally pull the shadows from a man’s brow over his eyes.”

“Good, that’ll help, you?” Panzer pointed at Go Loud.

The man was built like three luchadors smashed together, with the decorated mask to match, “I clap really loud, am hard to hurt, and break things good… I also heal fast.” he explained.

“Straightforward, I guess that’s where the name came from?”

“Shadow and I are a team, she keeps me in the dark and if things go sideways, she unleashes me. It is a very effective strategy.”

Panzer nodded and looked toward Radio and Techno.

“I can interface directly with any technology I can touch, hence the gloves,” Techno, a bookish looking man offered as he stepped forward, “Radio and I are a package deal, she can set up a sort of neural communication network for a few hours at a time, but can’t speak. If I can connect to a communications channel, she can piggyback that and weave it into her neural network so we can keep an ear on enemy comms, is that all right?” Techno asked.

Radio nodded, her loops of aqua locks bobbing with the motion.

Leap piped up, unprompted, “I can teleport to anywhere I can see, can remember, or can think of clearly, but that’ll bush me quick. I can teleport with as many people as I can hold, but again, real tired, real fast when I do that. I’ve got the reflexes of a mongoose and the attitude of a honey badger,” she finished with a smirk on her lips, “your turn.”

“Like a literal mongoose?” Shadow asked.

Leap winked at her, “Stay tuned.”

Panzer drew in a deep breath, “I’m an inheritor.”

The blank stares, except for Radio’s now dinner-plate sized eyes, told her that no one really knew what that meant.

“I was given powers beyond my own,” she took in a shaky breath, “my ‘powers’ are rapid calculation of projectiles, I can tell where bullets, knives, anything that flies through the air intended for someone else is going to land in under a second.”

“And the powers you were given?” Leap prodded.

“Reload gave me his power to do just that, reload physical ammunition, Juice gave me her super strength, Blockbuster’s pinpoint invulnerability, Com-com’s heightened senses, and Nova’s well… Nova,” Panzer listed, “this revolver was Longeye’s, it’ll shoot straight as long as I can see what I’m aiming for, the .45’s were Hemi’s and you’ve all met Daddy, one way or another.”

Panzer looked at her hand cannon almost affectionately before holstering it across her back.

Everyone was gaping at her, slack jawed.

“What?”

Sorli stayed low to the ground and slipped out the door of the interrogation chamber. It was eerily quiet in the halls despite all the noise he had just made.

“What the hell?”

Shouldn’t there be guards swarming the room? Guns and grenades and -

Sorli crept around a corner only to find that his path branched in five different directions. He stood up straight.

“No…” he dashed back and forth through the different paths and to the point they split from, “No no no…”

Three of them were dead ends.

He took three long steps and launched into a soaring sidekick. The impact echoed through the space, but the wall remained whole.

“Mother F- “ he nearly shouted when his ears picked up the sound of a door sliding open and closed on the far East wall, then North, West, and South. Despite the supersuit, the hair on the back of his neck and arms stood on end.

“Grimm Raven,” Atreyu’s voice echoed from all sides, “you aren’t leaving here, not in one piece. My hounds will see to that.”

Sorli ground his teeth, “You’ve got a jacked up notion of fair play, Atreyu, and it’s really starting to piss me off.”

“You’re a killer and a liar, you’ll be tracked and hunted as such,” Atreyu’s voice boomed, “you are not deserving of fairness, of honor. You are only deserving of the judgement you will receive at my hand, through the hounds or my bow.”

Sorli heard the doors open again, this time much, much closer.

“Or,” Sorli could hear the smug smirk in Atreyu’s voice, “through my soldiers.”

A seven-foot tall viking, chain shirt, fur kilt, a brutal axe, horned helmet and all, barreled around the corner, howling with rage and surging toward Sorli.

“You’ve got to be kidding me…” Sorli lamented.

The rune on the back of his sword hand blazed to life again, but this time, the raven crest on his chest burned too. Lines of burning runes spiderwebbed out from his chest and covered the entirety of his body. They didn’t burn into his skin and scar, like the rune of Tyr had, it was almost like they floated between the suit and his skin.

The massive warrior swung his double headed axe down at Sorli’s neck. Sorli lunged forward and held up his forearm to intercept the handle he drove his fist into the middle of the berserker’s chest, then pushed off with his back foot and collapsed his arm, making a second impact with his elbow.

The viking soared away from Sorli and impacted the far wall, the head of his axe buried in the floor in front of him with a splintered handle sticking out of it.

Sorli looked down at his arm, the runes Algiz and Uruz were layered on top of each other.

Wait… since when could I read these?

“That’s one, Grimm Raven, ninety-nine to go, then the hounds.”

Sorli’s chest swelled, the fatigue of his torture being whisked away by rage.

“Come get some!”