Knock knock.

“Come in,” Lynx said.

The door opened and Lady Sapphire walked into the apartment.  “Megan, are you doing anything?”

Megan was lying on her couch, reading a book.  “Nothing important.  You need me, boss?” she asked, setting the book down.

“Yes, I’d like you to accompany me to DC.”

Megan did her best to hide her look of disappointment.  “Sure thing.  I don’t need to get dressed up or anything?” she asked, eyeing Lady Sapphire’s professional blue skirt and jacket.

“No, I just need you to be you.”  Stephanie had briefly considered wearing one of her old robes, but had settled on the more professional, less intimidating look.  She’d debated on which Legend to bring with her to add that wild, intimidating factor, and while toying with the idea of both Pegasus, with her massive wings, and Mammoth, with his giant, neanderthal appearance, she’d opted for Lynx, who, while was only a 5’9’’ girl with a shaggy bob, Megan Buckley had what her coworkers fondly referred to as “resting murder face.”

“I’d be happy to, boss.”  Megan looked notably less disappointed.  She got up, and the long heavy chain coiled up next to her slowly unraveled and began crisscrossing itself across her torso.  She threw on her ragged bomber jacket over the chains, zipping it up and leaving just a hint of the deadly, telekinetically controlled chain hidden beneath.  “So I’m your muscle, eh?”

“Until I figure something better out, yes.  Are you alright with that?”

Lynx laughed.  “Aye, I’m fine with that.  Not like you need muscle.  But if you want someone to make those jackasses in Washington piss their pants, I’m yours.”

“I appreciate it, Megan.”

“Anything for you, boss.”



***22 years ago***

The Sorceress of Sapphires pulled her blue robes tighter around her, the heavily falling snow piling up on the silky material.  She touched a point on the chain link fence above her head and at her feet.  The points glowed blue, and she connected the energy in the middle and threw it wide, opening a hole in the fence.  It closed behind her as she walked on top of the two foot deep snow, making her way to the big grey building sitting in the middle of the North Dakota wilderness.

A park ranger had gotten in touch with her newly formed Legendary Consortium.  He believed his fellow rangers and the local authorities were being paid off.  People were going missing, and the strange facility that had popped up seemed to be at the center of everything.  Someone had heard alarms coming from it, and the park ranger had gotten word to her.  It was just the kind of thing she and Aegis had formed the Legendary Consortium for.

Stephanie Royal breathed into her hands, molding the steamy breath into a ball, and she whispered into it.  The snow fell harder, a whitewash obscuring her arrival from the cameras positioned around the building.  She tread easily on top of the snow, leaving no trail, right up to the wall.  The doors were half buried in the snow drift, and no one had been out since the blizzard had started.  The park ranger had said that there were always people in uniform out and about the outside of the facility, patrolling.  It stood to reason that they wouldn’t set up shop in North Dakota if they weren’t prepared to brave a little inclement weather.  

She levitated off the snow, floating up the wall.  The windows on the second floor were reinforced, bulletproof Plexiglas.  Same on the third and fourth floor.  She landed on top of the roof, walking swiftly across the surface of the snow.  The snow was shallower around the door leading out onto the roof, and suspiciously lumpy.  She padded up towards the door, glancing around before she turned her hand over and blew across her palm over the snow, slowly blowing it away with magical force.  Crimson stains were revealed before a body was uncovered.  Keeping one eye on the door, she knelt over the body, weaving a spell.  She felt the violence and brutality of the fatal wounds, the panic seeping from his pores as he made his final steps up the stairs and outside before he’d collapsed and died in the snow, not four hours ago, well after the alarms had gone off.

He was trying to escape, and had only met the storm.

Lady Sapphire drew a window on the door, granting her sight inside through translucent blue crystal.  She could see the blood trail coming up the stairs.  An explosion of jagged sapphire crystal inside the locking mechanism destroyed it, and she pulled the door open until it ran into the body, and she slipped quietly inside.

The blood trail of the man who’d made it to the roof was only the beginning, and as she backtracked, she found more bodies.  It was quickly clear that the man on the roof had been lucky.  Each corpse was more ravaged up than the last, faces smashed in, bones broken, bodies crushed and broken by powerful, blunt force.

The sorceress was almost too distracted by the carnage to notice the figures moving into position down the hall from her as she examined another body.  She snapped up and stepped to the side as automatic weapons fire roared through the corridor.  A bullet grazed the fringe of her hood as she stepped behind a corner, more shots whizzing past her.

“Lower your weapons.  This is Lady Sapphire of the Legendary Consortium.  Consider this your only warning to surrender.”  She was already conjuring more sapphires.  No one ever surrendered.  One day, her name and organization would command respect, but today was not that day, and she was prepared to do things the way she’d done for a long time before she and Aegis had started their little group of heroes and allied themselves with the United States government.

The two terrified members of the private security team fired as Lady Sapphire stepped back out from behind the wall.  The arrival of the lady in the blue cloak was pretty low on their list of weird occurrences after a day that they would both describe as hell, and right now they were shooting at anything.

The bullets slowed to a crawl as they encountered a blue, rounded shield of force suspended in the air between an array of floating blue crystals floating in front of the woman in the blue cloak.

“Drop your guns and tell me what happened here,” she said, catching the first bullet as it passed through the molasses like barrier of force and fell, robbed of all its forward momentum.

They stared at her, wide eyed, as she approached.  One curled his finger back around the trigger and squeezed, determined not to let go until she was dead.  The other ran the other direction.  After the things he’d seen, the woman wielding magic wasn’t so much as a surprise as it was an extra element he was not prepared to deal with.

Stephanie sighed and muttered a quick incantation.  She tapped the barrier in front of her, and it vibrated before a pulse of blue light and energy shot forward down the hall, throwing both men to the ground and knocking them out.  She almost destroyed their guns as she walked past them, but then she considered all the dead bodies, and figured robbing them of a method of defending themselves once they woke up was a little too cruel.



Megan rolled up her window after they passed through the security checkpoint.  “I can just drop you off by the door…”

“And take a nap in the car?” Stephanie asked her.

“I mean, I’m not that tired, but I’m sure I could.”  She smiled hopefully.  Playing chauffeur was one thing, but actually going into the Pentagon with Lady Sapphire was another.

“I’m sure you could, but you’re coming in with me.”

Megan hid her disappointment.  It wasn’t really unexpected.  “Sure thing, boss.”

She walked at Lady Sapphire’s shoulder, just behind her.  She was accustomed to stares; she never wore a mask or concealed her identity while she was working, and even now she had her jacket unzipped just enough for the chains slung across her body to peek out.  But here she was hardly given a second glance before the attention turned back to Lady Sapphire.  The sorceress, who frequented the Pentagon regularly, still commanded everyone’s attention.  

They walked through security, Lynx’s chains setting off the metal detectors, but Lady Sapphire said she was fine, and they were allowed to pass.  They walked up to the elevators, one of the doors just starting to close.

“Hold the door, please,” Lady Sapphire said.

Neither the general nor the two bureaucrats in the elevator made any move to stop the automatic doors from slowly closing.  Megan’s hand went to her jacket zipper.  She looked at Lady Sapphire, who gave her an almost imperceptible nod.  

Megan yanked her zipper down and shrugged her jacket down her arms in one fluid movement.  The chains glided across her torso, one end rearing up like a snake poised to strike, and then the claw on the end of the chain launched forward, sliding between the elevator doors just before they closed.  The chain pulled taut, and pried the metal doors back open.

Megan eyed the crowd of security personnel that had appeared, guns drawn.  The chain slowly recoiled back to her and wrapped its extra length back around her body.

Stephanie didn’t take her eyes out of the elevator.  “Put your guns away.”  No one moved.  “Do you really want to explain why you got into a firefight with the LC because none of you gentlemen would hold the door for two ladies?”

“At ease,” the general in the elevator said.

Megan threw her jacket back over her shoulders and zipped it halfway up again as the men holstered their guns, and she followed Lady Sapphire into the elevator.  The two men in suits shrunk back against the back wall, and she eyed the shorter of the two, a middle aged man with a bad comb over who looked like he’d just barely managed not to shit his pants.  She flashed him a wide, predatory smile.

“I’m sorry,” the general offered.

“Thank you,” Lady Sapphire said as the doors opened back up and she got off on their floor.  Megan followed her, tracing her fingers over the deep grooves her claws had left in the door.



***22 years ago***

There were cells.  Massive Plexiglas viewing windows occupied one whole wall, giving complete view of the rooms, decorated with child sized furniture.  Lady Sapphire’s fists clenched as she made her way past room after room.  She went in the first and examined it in detail.  The unmade bed, simple toys, stuffed animals and blocks, pages with drawings in crayon.  They were keeping kids here.  In rooms with glass walls in a facility with armed guards and tight security.

And something had gone very wrong.

There were eight rooms.  All very clearly recently used, likely that very morning.  

The last room’s window had a large spiderweb of cracks in the center of it.  She could see just how thick the glass was, two inches.  Something had hit it very hard, from the inside.  The furniture was strewn all about the room and upended.  There was a blood splatter on the wall across from the door, right at head height for an average adult.

“What in god’s name were they doing here?” she asked out loud.  Her eyes flitted to all the security cameras.  She concentrated and hovered up to one, taking it in her hands and whispering incantations, trying to map out the wiring and find the security control room, but the wiring was too complicated for her to trace, way too many electronics in the walls and ceiling for her to accurately map out the building.

“Are you like us?”

Lady Sapphire whirled in the air, summoning her power in the palm of her hands as she held them out, prepared to unleash.  She stopped as she saw a little girl, maybe ten, twelve at the most, standing at the other end of the hall.

Stephanie lowered her hands and gently lowered herself until her feet touched the floor.  She pulled back her hood and held her arms out to her sides, open handed and palms up.  “Hello.  My name is Stephanie.”

The girl eyed her.  She was wearing blue pajamas.  Stephanie noted that there was more than a fair amount of blood spattered on them.  She held a bloody stuffed animal in her arms, clutched to her chest.  

“Are you hurt?”

The girl didn’t answer.  She looked too good for all the blood covering her to be her own.

“I’m going to get you out of here, okay?  Take you somewhere safe,” she said, slowly approaching, getting a better look at the girl.  Her pale complexion didn’t come from blood loss, but from a lack of sunlight.  Her brown hair was a bit matted with blood, but still had a healthy sheen, and she definitely wasn’t malnourished.  Stephanie caught herself thinking at least they were taking good care of them.  What was going on here was unforgivable, but she had to take the small miracles right now.

She knelt in front of the girl.  “Can you tell me your name?”

“…Megan…”

“Okay Megan.  I’m going to protect you, and I’m going to get you somewhere safe.  But first can you tell me what happened here?”

“Miss Chandler pushed him too far?”

“Pushed who too far?”

“Billy.”

“Billy?  Is he another kid?”

“No.”  The girl shook her head.

“No?  Is he an adult?”

She shook her head again.  “He’s a monster.”

A chill ran down Stephanie’s spine.  She reached her hand out and put it on Megan’s shoulder to try and comfort her.

A wave of psychic force washed over her mind as she touched the girl, and Megan shrunk away from her.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay!” Stephanie said as the girl stepped back.  She tried to shake off whatever it was.  The girl was unlike anything she’d ever encountered, and it definitely wasn’t magical in nature.

She held her out again.  “It’s alright.”

Tentatively, the little girl reached out with one hand while she clutched her toy tighter to herself with the other.  She paused, seeming to feel Stephanie bracing herself, and the sorceress forced herself to relax and calm down.  Slowly, Megan put her small hand in Stephanie’s, and the sorceress squeezed gently.  This time, there was no psychic assault, though the girl was still definitely very different.

“Listen to me, Megan.  I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you, alright?”

“Okay.”

“I promise.”

The girl looked down at the floor and hugged her stuffed animal tighter.

“Does your friend have a name?” Lady Sapphire asked, smiling.

“Fluffy,” she said, letting the sorceress get a better view of the bloody stuffed lynx.

“I’m going to get Fluffy out of here too, and we’ll get you both cleaned up.”

“Thanks, Stephanie.”



“Look, Stephanie, given the circumstances, I think you owe it to us to consult us before making a decision like bringing on someone like Siren.”

Her cool blue gaze leveled on the fat, sweaty director of the Department of Enhanced Oversight.  Colin Wallace was perspiring more than usual, Aegis’s death having given him the courage to throw his considerable weight around with her, if only barely.  

“Excuse me?  I owe you?”

“Well,” he cleared his throat.  “Given her history, and what with everything that’s happened recently-”

“Tell me, Colin, what exactly happened?”

His eyes flittered around the room to his aides, one in particular.  She would deal with him in good time.

“Is it that my partner and co-founder of the Legendary Consortium died?  Is that it?”

“Well, yes, a real tragedy-”

“Is it that we were attacked and compromised by a witch using Siren’s powers?”

“That’s actually-”

She slammed her palms down on his desk, leaning across it.  “Where Siren was instrumental in her defeat and incarceration?  Does that about sum up ‘everything that’s happened recently,’ Colin?”

His eyes flicked again to one of his aides.  She whirled on him, annoyed.  “What is your name?”

“David Thompson,” he answered, meeting her gaze.

“And what exactly do you do here?”

“Well that’s hardly relevant-” Colin started.

“Are you registered?”  There was a time when she had personally overseen the registration of anyone practicing the arcane arts, but over the years she’d slowly relinquished that responsibility to her team.  But she could still sense the mystical residue all over him.

“He works for me,” Colin said, even as the aide was fumbling in his back pocket for his wallet.

“And since he’s practicing magic, he’s under my purview.”  She barely even glanced at his registration as he pulled it out of his wallet with trembling fingers before turning back to Colin.  Her voice was still calm and level as she continued, “The fact that you thought you needed him is ridiculous.  That you thought he might actually be able to do anything is insulting.  I am not here to be insulted.  

“Aegis is dead.  I’m not.  The LC is mine, and my decisions are final.”  She turned and walked out, head held high.



***22 years ago***

Lady Sapphire held onto Megan’s hand as they walked back through the facility.  Further attempts to get the girl to talk about the monster or the other kids or Miss Chandler had only gotten the girl to clam up.  She’d get her outside and get a message off to Aegis and get backup to come and pick her up.  She hated leaving knowing there could be more kids, but she’d promised to protect the girl, and that came first.  She’d be able to summon up a shelter once she was outside that would hide her and protect her from the elements, and then she could come right back.

Stephanie found the garage, carefully trying to steer the girl away from any of the bodies still strewn about the facility.  The girl froze suddenly, her little hand squeezing Stephanie’s tightly.  The sorceress could feel that strange psychic energy again, but she held on.

“What is it?  Are you cold?”  The garage was freezing, and the girl was walking in her bare feet across the cold cement.  Lady Sapphire started to take off her cloak, but the girl wouldn’t let go of her hand.

“He’s here,” she whispered, staring across the garage.  Stephanie followed her gaze, but unaided by magic, her eyes couldn’t pierce the darkness.

“Who’s here?”

“Billy.”

Lady Sapphire whipped off her cloak and wrapped it around Megan as she knelt in front of her.  “Hey.  I’m going to protect you.  Can you stay right here for me?”

The little girl nodded her head.

“Keep my cloak around you.  It will keep you safe.”

She nodded again.

Lady Sapphire stood up and turned, but the girl grabbed her hand again.  The strange power ratcheted up her arm to her brain.  “You can’t save him.”

“I wouldn’t be so cert-”

“He’s a monster.”

“I’m just going to go check it out.  I have some experience with monsters.”

Megan watched her go, clutching the cloak tightly around her.  The lady was nice.  She liked her.

A faint blue glow emanated from the sorceress, and she made her way around the jeeps parked at the far end of the garage.  “Hello?” she called softly as she navigated around the closely parked cars.

Quick, rapid panting came from behind the last jeep by the wall.  Stephanie skirted around it, keeping a wide berth as she peered around the front to see a boy hunched against the wall.  Like Megan, he was still wearing his pajamas, now bloody and torn.  His short blond hair was tousled and matted with more blood.

“Hey,” she said softly.  “Are you Billy?”

The boy’s head snapped up, and he stared at her.  The sorceress stumbled backwards as she looked into his deep brown eyes.  There was no humanity left in those eyes, no soul.

“It’s alright,” she said, calming herself down as she took a few slow steps forward, holding out her hands.  “I want to help-”

The boy screamed, and he reached out and put his hands on the jeep next to him.  

“It’s going to be okay.”  She could feel it, the same wild psychic force she’d felt when she touched Megan, but much stronger, wilder.  Her eyes widened as the jeep levitated up off the ground.  The boy screamed again, feral, and shoved the jeep towards her.  She reacted quickly, diving out of the way as it landed where she was standing, bouncing before it slammed into the back of another.

She was already casting a spell as she rolled to her feet.  A wave of blue light washed over the boy.  It should have stunned a fully grown man in peak health, but the boy just screamed again, and ran towards another jeep, touching it and lifting it as if it were nothing.

Lady Sapphire threw up her barrier again as he hurled it at her.  The jeep slowed as the front bumper passed through the barrier, hovering three feet off the ground as it tried to pass through the magical barrier.

“Ehhnn,” she grunted as she struggled to maintain the spell.  The side of the jeep nudged one of the crystals surrounding the barrier, and it cracked.  She managed to maintain control for a second as the jeep lurched forward, and then one by one all six crystals holding the barrier shattered.

The jeep lurched forward, the magic holding it back snuffed out.  She grabbed the front end as it slammed into her chest, too late to try and get out of its way.  Her feet skidded across the smooth concrete floor as she was propelled towards a wall where she’d surely be crushed.

The jeep snapped to a sudden stop, and Lady Sapphire kept flying backwards, slamming hard into the wall behind her.  She slumped the floor on her butt, the wind knocked out of her.  She coughed, looking up to see a chain wrapped around the front of the jeep.  She followed the chain, and saw Megan standing by the wall where the other end of the chain was anchored to a bolt in the wall.  The lynx was hanging limply from one back paw in one of her little hands, and the other hand rested on the taught chain.

“Get- get out of here,” Lady Sapphire shouted at the girl.

“It’s alright, Stephanie.”  The girl’s voice was cold, calm.  She dropped the lynx and grabbed the chain with both hands.  “I’m a monster too.”

Lady Sapphire was too stunned to react as the girl roared, a high pitched, shrill yell filled with rage.  But it was human rage.  The wall shuddered and the jeep rocked as the chain moved.  It unraveled itself from around the jeep and recoiled back to the girl.  

Stephanie started to shout a warning as a massive metal toolbox sailed through the air towards the girl.  The boy’s scream came from the other side of the room, and Megan roared in response, flicking the free end of the chain out.  It snapped around the toolbox and hurled it to the side with terrifying force.

A jagged crack ran up the wall and dust fell from the ceiling as the chain ripped the bolt out of the wall.  With another scream from the boy, a metal desk sailed towards her.  The chain coiled in the air in front of her like a shield.  The edge of the desk crumpled on impact and the chains rattled.  Megan cried out as the chains fell to the ground and she slumped to her knees.

Lady Sapphire was already levitating again.  She kicked off the wall and soared over the garage.  “Stop this!” she spoke, her voice booming and powerful.

The boy locked eyes with her and screeched.  She waved her hands, and a solid casing of sapphire began forming over him, starting at the floor beneath his feet and moving rapidly upwards.  “Calm down!” she commanded as she felt the psychic feedback as he tried to fight the encroaching crystal.  He wouldn’t be able to break it-

The blue crystal shattered into a million specs of crystalline dust.  The shock was intense and her concentration broke.  The sorceress dropped out of the air like a stone onto the roof of a jeep.  She lay there, stunned, until she felt the jeep move beneath her.  She rolled off the top just before it slammed into the ceiling, nearly crushing her.  “Aagh!” she cried as she sprained her ankle on landing, having to roll quickly out of the way as the jeep fell back to the floor.  She turned just in time to see the boy holding another jeep over his head.  She wasn’t fast enough to get out of the way this time, and she couldn’t stop it.  She started throwing up a barrier anyways, to buy herself some time, when a chain flew out of nowhere and wrapped around the boy’s throat.  It cut him off mid scream as it wound tightly around his neck, and it suddenly jerked him to the side.  He was pulled off his feet, and the jeep suddenly dropped out of the air.  Lady Sapphire winced as she heard the sickening crunch of bone.

Her breath came in ragged gasps as Megan walked around from behind the jeep, dragging the chain behind her in one hand.  She’d picked her stuffed lynx back up and hugged it tightly in the other hand.

Stephanie scrambled to her feet, ignoring the pain in her ankle as she rushed over to the girl and hugged her tightly.  “I am so sorry,” she said, hot tears dripping from eyes onto the girl’s head.

“You don’t need to cry for him,” Megan said.  “He was a monster.”

“You poor girl.  I’m crying for you.  These people did this to you.”

Megan looked up at her, a worried look crossing her small features.  “I’m not like him.  I’m only a monster sometimes.”

Stephanie knelt in front of the girl, getting eye level with her.

“Can I tell you a secret, Megan?”

She nodded.

“I’m a monster sometimes too.  I’m going to make the people that did this to you pay.”



The walk back to Megan’s car was brisk and silent.  Megan opened her mouth a couple of times ask how it went, but she quickly shut it again and kept quiet.

Stephanie tried to open the passenger door just as Megan tried to remotely unlock it, tripping the lock again.

“Sorry,” Megan said, clicking the button again.  And again Stephanie tried opening it a moment too soon.

“Sorry.  Give him a sec, he’s a bit slow.”

Stephanie didn’t wait, the window glowing blue as she put her fingers on it, and then they passed through the glass and she jerked the lock upwards and opened the door.  The sorceress yanked it open and got in.

Megan watched for another moment before she climbed in the front.  “I, I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help.”

Stephanie sighed and looked over at her.  “Why do you think I brought you, Megan?”

“Honestly, I have no idea.  Intimidation, I guess.”

Stephanie laughed.

“It’s not that funny.”

“No.  While I appreciate it, and you left quite the impression, I picked you because I didn’t want to come here alone.  Aegis rarely came with me to deal with this stuff; I can do it on my own, but now that he’s gone, everyone thinks I’m vulnerable.  I’m going to have to keep proving myself over and over to keep the whole world off our backs.  And I can do it, have no doubt about that, but I just want for when I’m done posturing and over asserting my power, is to have someone to drive me back home, because I’m exhausted.”

“I can do that.  There’s still probably better choices.”

“I trust you.  You were the only one who managed to hold their own when we were attacked.”

Megan nodded.  “In their defense, we weren’t exactly in our right minds.”

“I know, and I know it was for the best, and I should have done more to prevent that from getting so out of hand.  But still, seeing the team I built defeated like that, it was a blow.”

“To be fair, I think we were holding back.  I know I was.  Little LeBlanc don’t play, but if I’d been trying to, I’d have put her down.”

“You’re not going to tell anyone I said this, but I find that very reassuring.”

Megan kept her eyes on the road as a smile crossed her face.  “Thanks, boss.”

“Now, if you don’t mind, I think I will take that nap in your car that I didn’t let you have.”

“Go right ahead.  There’s a blanket and pillow on the floor in the back.”

Stephanie leaned into the back and found the old woolen blanket and pillow on the floor.

“Sorry they’re a little dirty.”

“They’re perfect,” Stephanie said, fluffing the pillow and putting her seat back.