Digger drew stares in the lobby of the Marriott. It wasn’t often you saw someone wearing a poncho outside of Clint Eastwood in a spaghetti western.

Val had told him the meeting was to be low-profile, which basically meant no costumes. But Digger never wore civvies anymore. The Driller Beam Generators were too bulky to be hidden under sleeves and didn’t look right paired with jeans and a T-shirt or some such. So he always went out in costume and just covered up with a poncho when he needed to lower his profile.

Val waited outside one of the meeting rooms, absolutely stunning in a grey business suit with a short skirt that showed off her long, shapely legs. Red hair cascaded over her shoulders and hung almost to her waist. Digger whistled at her as he drew near. “Wow, Val. You look almost like a person.”

“Don’t insult me,” Val said,

“Come on, could we change the channel or something?” Digger asked.

“Leave it on,” Val said, enjoying Digger’s discomfort. “I like it.”

The four of them–Valkyrie Princess, Doctor Jolt, Digger, and the new hero, Thompson–were seated around a table in Digger’s favorite bar, the Traveler’s Tavern, where the TV mounted to the wall above the bar was currently showing a cartoon. An old man with gray hair sticking out at crazy angles and wearing a stained white lab coat cackled hysterically at his prisoner, a heroic figure in chains wearing a costume almost identical to Digger’s. Dinosaur skeletons loomed in the background all around them.

“And now Digger,” said the mad scientist on the screen,

“Hey, Charlie?”

Charlie Peters turned to see Zann Avogadro standing in the hallway next to Kim Yang and Dan Ricardi, Kim’s boyfriend. Charlie swallowed. Zann Avogadro, the prettiest girl in tenth grade, wanted to talk to him. “Oh, uh, hi.”

“That’s not the same shirt you were wearing on the bus,” Kim said.

“Hello, Clay, I’m standing outside Eurobank in the heart of downtown, where all hell has just broken loose!”

The reporter is pretty and well-kept, a typical TV talking head, but there is nothing typical about the scene behind her. At least twenty police cars surround a building with gaping holes where huge glass windows used to be. Muzzle flashes strobe from the dark depths of the building; machine gun fire chews at the cruisers as cops huddle behind the vehicles for cover. A beam of red coherent light flashes into being, connects one of the cars to the bank for just an instant, and then the car explodes.

The reporter’s face wears a practiced look of Deep Concern, but the white knuckles gripping the microphone betray her true panic. “Twenty minutes ago, police units responded to a silent alarm here, where they found…”

She yelps as the ground belches under her feet, pitching her to the side. Pavement buckles and cracks, forming a raised line that extends toward the bank.