Disabling Anna’s car was easy.  Izzy knew she had no idea what she was doing under the hood, and he merely unclipped her battery.  Callie had tried to teach her cars once, but Callie’s method of learning things, a trial and error approach that leaned overly heavy on her ability to see into the future if she’d done it wrong, was difficult to teach, and Callie wasn’t exactly adaptable.

“I can show her a thing or two, Izzy had offered.

“Get your own protégé.  Don’t you have a little sister you can teach shit to?”

“Psh, Mira’s smarter than both of us.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it.”

“One day.”

Callie had only met Mira once.  He truly wished it could have been more.  If there were more people like Callie on the LC, he might have let Aegis and Stephanie try to recruit Mira.

But Callie’s actual protégé was his current problem.  Between her inevitable hangover and the car problems he’d introduced, he had plenty of time.

Finding her next target was child’s play.  He gathered the information he needed easily enough, and walked right in the front entrance of the warehouse.  There were enough smalltime drug operations that no one considered the chances of a real, bonafide super hero walking in on them to be a realistic possibility.  The automatic weapons they carried as a precaution were useless as he strode in, firing at them before they could even think about drawing on him, launching them across the room.

Barrage laid out the guards, moving deeper.  A dealer charged him, drawing a knife.  Izzy ducked under his clumsy swipe, kicking his legs out from under him and grabbing his throat, throwing him at the floor with enough force to crack the concrete.  

He heard the cock of a shotgun, and he threw up his hand, pushing hard.  The force blocked the spray of shot, throwing the scatter and shooter back into a wall.  Izzy made a gun with his right hand, pointing around the room and firing.  A second later came three distinct thuds of bodies dropping.   He listened for a second, and then fire over his shoulder.  Another heavy thud followed shortly after, and he nodded.

A man popped out of hiding and chucked a grenade.  Barrage rolled his eyes and fired twice, throwing the attacker back and  knocking the grenade upwards.  It exploded, disintegrated a ceiling tile and most of several others before the debris dropped to the floor.

Trivial.

He listened again, hearing the blasts and thunk of a heavy door being blasted in.  Barrage pulled his hat low over his eyes and waited.  

The heavy clunk of footsteps preceded the arrival of the Silver Centurion.  The suit was as impressive as the night before, sleek, streamlined, powerful, but tonight Barrage didn’t hide.

“One of you LC assholes again,” the Silver Centurion’s voice spoke.  

Yep, definitely a guy, Izzy concluded.  “A very different asshole.”

“Oh?  Is this your all’s good cop, bad cop rout-”

“Shut the hell up.  And yes, Siren is a very good cop.  And I am a very, VERY bad cop.”

The Silver Centurion took a half step back, taken aback y the venom Izzy spat.  “You seem-”

“I said shut up.  Our job, it’s to take you in.  But Siren is willing to hear you out.  Me, the next time I see you, I’ll blast your tin can wearing ass out of the sky without batting an eye.  So you talk to her, or I will rip that suit off of your still warm corpse with my bare hand.”

“Jesus-”

“I don’t give a damn about him either.  Are we clear?”

The Silver Centurion was speechless.

“I said ‘are we clear?’  Because I can take you out right now.”

“Yes.”

“Good.  And it goes without saying, I wasn’t here.”  Izzy gestured around to all the unconscious drug dealers.  “This was all on you.”

“I got it.”

“Good.”  Barrage turned and started walking away.

“Thank you…”  There was a hesitance in the Silver Centurion’s gratitude.

“Don’t thank me.  Just talk to Siren.  Otherwise, I’m coming back, and I’ll make you wish you had talked to her.”

Barrage turned and left before the Silver Centurion could respond.  A thin smile crossed his lips.  That had been surprisingly cathartic.  Siren could take it from there.  She was right, she probably didn’t need him, but he’d been sent to help her, and he’d done just that.



The Silver Centurion took a deep breath, resisting the urge to take off his helmet.  He’d been told that his armor would withstand a lot of magic and supernatural forces, but after running into the Legend, he was not in hurry to test his suit’s resilience.  He had very little doubt in his mind that Barrage would kill him if he felt he had to, and the armor would at best slow him down.

He waited, fighting the impulse to just leave.  He’d never felt so powerless since getting the armor as he just had.  The Legend had waltzed in, seemingly just to emasculate him, and left him basically served up on a platter for the other one.  He could only silently hope that Siren actually only wanted to talk, and wasn’t some cruel follow up to the act he’d just gotten.

As he debated with himself, Siren came running in.  The heroine was out of breath, and a quick body scan revealed that her heart was racing, and an x-ray showed she had two broken ribs.

“You,” she said, her breath labored.

“You expecting someone else?” he asked.

“No, I was just-” she couldn’t finish.  She looked terrible.

“You’re late,” he tried, one last attempt to see if she was actually working with Barrage.

“Gimme a sec.  Had to run.  Car’s bein’ dumb,” she said, her breath still coming in ragged gasps.  So she was either a good actress, or she actually had no idea Barrage had been there first.  He wondered vaguely if her car problems were related, and he suspected they were.

“You alright?” he asked.

“Yeah.  I got shot last night.  My armor, not quite as good as yours, I’m sure.”  She was still catching her breath, but she managed to stand up straight and tall.

“I’m sorry,” he offered.

“For what?”

“That you got shot.”  He genuinely was.  He hadn’t noticed the broken ribs last night.  Her appearance in itself had been rather distracting, and the idea of someone on the LC getting hurt frankly hadn’t occurred to him.  They were Legends after all.

“Not the first time.”

“Still, I could have handled it.”

“Yeah I see that.”  She glanced around, obviously mistaking the downed drug dealers for his own work.  “I was trying to get your attention.  Seems I have it.”

Not just her, but her silent partner.  Still though, he was intrigued, whether he felt cornered or not.  The good cop was certainly appealing, given the circumstances.

“You do,” he answered.

“Why is that?”

“Hmm?” he asked, stalling for time.  Barrage had made it clear; he wasn’t there.

“What’s different about tonight?” she asked.  “Why wait around?  You could have called the cops and gotten out of here.”

Realistically no, he couldn’t have, and the chances of getting blasted out of the sky were great, but he settled on one certain conclusion.  Siren was not working in conjunction with Barrage.  The issues between them were not his, and he could hear her out.  “You seemed like you might be worth hearing out.”

“I promise you, I am.”  Her cocky smile, despite the heavy make up on her bruised face and the mask, was reassuring.

“You asked for five minutes last night.”  It seemed like a good way to salvage the bond.  “You got that much.  What does Siren of the LC want with me?”

“I’ll tell you right now, the LC wants o shut you down.  Something about stolen military technology.”  Not a surprise to him as she stated it.  Not true, not really, but not a surprise.  “But I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt.  I want to hear you out before I take that armor from you.”  

As far as offers went, it certainly beat ripping it off of his still warm corpse.  He considered her, glancing around again, scanning the room for Barrage, but the other Legend was gone.  

“Shall we take this somewhere a little more private?” she asked.

Still he hesitated, waiting for the suit’s scanners to be sure Barrage wasn’t lingering nearby.

“If you can hear me, get up.”

His eyes darted around, curious about what she was up to.

“I guess here’s private enough.”

Right, her power.  If they could hear her, they’d half to obey.  None of the drug dealer’s Barrage had laid low moved.  “Neat trick,” he said.

“It comes in handy, occasionally,” she said, smiling.  He watched as she reached up, and to his surprise, she took her own mask off.

“My name is Anna Carillon.  If you take that helmet off and we have a conversation like two human beings, I promise I won’t use my power to make you do anything.”

She was cute, without the mask.  Not that she wasn’t with it on.  Even through the thick layer of makeup barely hiding her bruises, there was something-

He pushed that aside.  “You could be making that up,” he offered, distracting himself from her genuine human display.  That’s what it was.  Without the mask, she was just a person, trying to talk to him.

“I could, but I’m not.”  A cocky smile crossed her face.  “I’ve got time, but I’d rather not drag this out.  I had a rough night land night, and I’ve-”

He waited as she looked around again, tempted to interrupt, but he kept his mouth shut.

“Actually, I know they’re out right now, but they could wake up at any time, or someone else could walk in.  Can we take this somewhere else?”

He smiled behind his mask.  Maybe it was an act, some ruse, but her human vulnerability got to him.  He chuckled in spite of himself.  “Roof access is this way.”  He pointed down the hall.

“That’ll do.”  She followed him, and he resisted the urge to look back, listening to her breathing as she followed him.  

He’d been pretty much alone since he started this venture.  He had his suit’s generous designer, but his presence in the field was non-existent, and just hearing something human that wasn’t a threat was refreshing.  

Still, she sounded pretty bad as they finally climbed up to the roof.  “Are you alright?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“You’re tough, but you should get that checked out.”  His advanced scanning systems again displayed the damage to her ribs on his screens as his suit x-rayed her.  He reached forward, finding the hidden latches and unlocking the helmet.  He pulled it off, tipping the helmet forward before pulling it off.

“The name’s Wesley Brightfeld.”  He hadn’t called himself Wesley since middle school, it had always been Wes, but suddenly, as he revealed himself for the first time since he adopted the suit, Wes seemed like not enough.  He was just glad he hadn’t thrown his middle name, Theodore, in there.

She stared at him, he mouth slightly agape.  It was, again, kind of cute.

“I’m sorry, but should I know you?”

He cleared his throat, looking for a good response.  She probably wouldn’t, but it had gotten him pretty far.  “Fifteen minutes of fame really goes to your head,” he offered.  “For awhile, it seemed like everyone knew me.”

“I’m sorry.  I’ve been busy.”

He nodded.  “Yeah, I read up on you after last night.  Seems you were.”  There was quite a bit of information to be found on the LC’s most recent addition.  A lot of wild speculation, and nothing that had really prepared him for the girl who had literally chased him down and bared her true identity to him just for a conversation.

“So, what should I know you from?” she asked.

“I won the lottery.”  It was only a small part of his story, but enough for introductions.

“Like, literally?”

“Literally.”

“Oh, congratulations, I suppose.”  He recognized the tone of someone ignorant to the siren’s call of the lottery, so to speak.

“Thanks.  It was the largest jackpot ever.”

She looked at him skeptically.  He might as well tell her.

“Two point four billion dollars.”

Her jaw dropped.  “Jesus H. Fuck.”