"Look, man. I think she likes you," Zack said, leaping from one building to another in rapid succession.
"Nah. Why do you think so?" Jake replied, doing the same with his super speed.
Stacya dove from building to building like an Olympic swimmer, then with her ability to turn land into water, swam through them in a matter of moments.
She stayed silent to let the conversation flow.
"'Cuz of the way she was acting, man! Now, I didn't hear what she said, but..." Zack continued with a smile while leaping onto another building.
"Well, I don't know about that. Why are you even talking about SilverBlade having a crush on me? Do you really think I care? I haven't even found Ivy yet," Jake followed up.
"Well, yeah, but it's been three weeks since the incident. I mean, maybe it's time to..."
"Zack!" Paulina cut him off. While the others leapt from building to building, she chose to fly. She had finally fixed her rocket implants, and now was the time to test them.
She stayed quiet for most of the conversation, but it seemed Zack was taking it too far.
"No, it's fine, Paulina. Zack's right. We've been searching every night for two weeks now, and maybe I might never find Ivy," Jake said reluctantly. In truth, he didn't want to say it at all, but at this rate, he was losing hope.
Every night since the meeting with the Super Society, Jake, Zack, Stacya, and Paulina had searched the whole city for Ivy but found nothing.
Milten said he'd offer his services, but Jake didn't trust him enough to believe he'd really be of use. A man with so many secret agendas isn't the type to help out his subordinates.
Luthor had a family to return to. Hell, he had a son with the same problem Ivy had, but Jake didn't have the heart to ask him to help out in the search.
Max, on the other hand, was too untrustworthy to involve.
With the fruitless searches, the thought of losing her was always at the back of his mind, and he needed a distraction from that. This mission was exactly what the doctor ordered.
A group of mumans had found an old abandoned children's hospital in the outskirts of the city and holed up there. The police went to investigate but were attacked. That's when the city called the Danger Squad for help.
It's about time, too. The team hadn't had a mission since the gang bust three weeks ago. All they did was train and have fun together. Well, Jake, Zack, and the girls. Luthor was doing secret assignments for Milten, and Max was not the social type.
Still, it was nice to finally get a decent mission. A distraction would do Jake a lot of good, and he knew it.
But before he could dwell on the thought, they arrived at the hospital. They all stood right on the lawn right in front of it.
"Look at the place. So desolate," Stacya said, jumping out of the liquified lawn.
"Well, the place was attacked by some villain named Bomber a while back. Captain Rocket put a stop to him but couldn't save the hospital. Some of the kids couldn't get out in time. That event really messed him up," Zack explained.
"Focus, guys. We have a mission here. There are mumans in that building, and we need to kick them out," Paulina ordered and stepped forward.
"What do you suppose they could be doing in there?" Stacya asked Zack as they began to follow Paulina.
"Maybe some kind of new gang like the Kobra Klan. Milten did say we'd be expecting more muman activity soon. Maybe now's the time," Zack replied, warming up as he walked.
"What do you think, Jake?" Stacya asked again.
Jake was silent. He thought about the kids caught up in that blast. The parents who lost their children. How they must've felt. How he felt...
"Jake?"
"Oh, Stacya? Uh, what were you saying?"
"Oh, forget it. We've got to catch up to Paulina."
"Codename Sharkwoman, Blue Shadow. We're in enemy territory now," Zack, the Green Guardian, said smugly.
The trio then walked faster to catch up to Paulina. In a moment, they were right at the entrance.
The front door was covered with old, broken planks of wood, as were the windows. The building itself was old and decrepit, just the kind of place you'd think would be a safe haven for evil spirits.
Zack doubled the size of his arms and lifted the wooden planks off the door. Then the rest made their way inside.
"The inside is much more decrepit," Stacya said, taking the place in.
"It's been abandoned for 10 to 20 years now. I'm shocked it doesn't look worse."
Old and rusty hospital equipment was scattered on the floor; chairs, tables, and walls were covered in moss and rust; and broken lights, fans, and other electronics made the place a good example of how truly abandoned it had been.
"Well, this place sure lives up to the hype. I'm already creeped out."
"Don't tell me you believe in ghosts, Za... Guardian," Jake said with a chuckle.
"Oh, hell no. But you gotta admit it gives you the heebie-jeebies," Zack said with his arms crossed and looking around.
"I get the heebie-jeebies looking at myself in the mirror. This is nothing," Jake retorted, pointing to his exposed canine teeth laid bare due to his lack of a lip. Zack hadn't noticed it before, but after a good look, Jake's face resembled the skull of some kind of blue and black demon.
"Again. Focus, guys. We need a game plan here."
"Well, you're the super-smart cyborg lady. What's the plan?" Zack said, patting her shoulder affectionately.
Oh, how she melted when he did that.
"Well, since it's the four of us, with Luthor and Max on that secret mission, we won't be expecting backup, so let's try to stick together here."
The three listening to her responded, "Right," in unison and followed Paulina, who was making it out of the main hall to a long corridor leading to the treatment rooms.
As Jake followed them, he turned his head and noticed something shining at the other side of the hall. Something that drew his attention way more than he thought it should've.
"Uh, guys, I gotta go," Jake said nervously.
"Go? Why? We need you. You're our heaviest hitter," Paulina objected.
"Come on, guys. You're not that weak. We trained together. You're all stronger now. Have some confidence," Jake said with a smile that felt sincere, but his monstrous features made it hard to tell.
Zack smiled as well thanks to the comment.
"No, Blue. We have to stick together..."
"Wait, baby," Zack interrupted her. "Jake's got a point. We're much stronger than we were during the gang bust. Don't you want to test your power?"
"Ooh! I do! I do!" Stacya said, raising her arm like a child would.
"Ugh... fine," Paulina relented. "But Blue..."
Before she could say anything else, Blue Shadow had disappeared into the other room.
"Don't worry, Paulina. Blue is as strong as the three of us combined! He'll be fine. Come on. We've got some investigating to do," Zack said, holding her by her shoulder to comfort her. Paulina nodded in agreement and led the way, laser cannon fully morphed out of her left arm.
Paulina opened the first door to her left to reveal a large room. Although it looked relatively clean compared to the rest of the building, it bore a scent so strange even Paulina's cybernetic database was unable to recognize and catalogue it.
Stacya squinted her eyes and plugged her nose at the smell. Her Atlantean senses burning, she didn't bother to join the two as they entered the empty room.
Zack chuckled and followed Paulina inside. Paulina, on the other hand, was more cautious than she had ever been.
"What's up, baby?"
"I have a bad feeling about this place. It's like all my sensors were cracked up to eleven."
"You sure it's not the smell? Damn, that's nasty. Never smelled anything like it. Is this what Atlantean farts smell like?" Zack mused and burst into laughter, much to Stacya's annoyance.
"Zack!" She shouted angrily.
"I'm kidding, I'm kidding. But seriously, what the hell is this smell?"
Paulina was still silent. She decided to do a scan of the whole area to see if the mumans were hiding somewhere. Once she turned them on, though, she was shocked into silence.
"Baby? What's wrong?" Zack asked, noticing Paulina's distress.
"N... no! It's all around us! They're all around us!"
"Who?!"
"The mumans!"
Just as she uttered the words, a blue gas enveloped the whole room. In the blink of an eye, the entire room was covered head to toe in the gas, blinding all three of them.
"Ba..."
Zack couldn't even finish the word as his head hit the floor with enough intensity even Paulina could feel it. She bent down to check on him and saw he was knocked unconscious with a concussion.
Something hit him from behind.
But what?
Suddenly, Paulina felt something smack her all the way to the corner of the room with the force of ten invincible sledgehammers. So much sudden force nearly got her to shut down.
With her remaining strength, she activated her scanners and detected the muman presence around her. She already knew the gas itself was a muman of some sort, but what the hell hit her and Zack? Could it have been the gas muman?
Or a new one entirely?
Paulina then sensed Stacya swimming under the gas and heading towards something. Could she be attacking the muman that knocked Zack out?
She leapt out of the liquified tiled floor at something in particular, but suddenly she stopped mid-air.
Some kind of rope-like substance held her in place. Paulina increased the intensity of her sensing capabilities and noted a small figure with rope-like substances coming out of her body.
Strange...
These substances radiated the same energy Jake seemed to radiate.
Stacya struggled to escape the grasp of the muman's rope to no avail. She did manage to reach her back and pull out her secret weapon.
The Spear of Selene.
Well, half of it anyway. The half she managed to obtain from her battle with the Atlantean Operculus.
She pulled out the weapon from behind her and let out an electric shock that disoriented the small muman restraining her.
Just as she fell to the ground and planned her next move, her head hit the ground with the same intensity Zack's did. Although she wasn't fully unconscious, she couldn't move an inch.
Suddenly, her arm raised and she started to levitate.
Paulina quickly reasoned that whatever hit her lifted her off her feet and was getting ready to strike her down. This thing, whatever it was, had complete immunity to her life sensors.
What the hell was it?
Paulina didn't dwell on the question for long and focused her attention on her hand, which she morphed into a laser cannon. She aimed the gun at Stacya and moved it a little to the left, in hopes she wouldn't hit her.
Putting all her power into the laser, she shot a large, concentrated blast of light at whatever held Stacya. The Atlantean dropped to the floor in an instant, and something collided with the nearest wall with the sound of a crashing truck. Stacya tried to reload her gun but found her systems too badly damaged to do so. She tried to get up instead. To grab Stacya and Zack and get out of there.
Sadly, she couldn't, as her body was too badly damaged from the hit.
She was too badly damaged to do anything. All that from just one hit.
What the actual fuck was this thing?
She noticed the rocks and pebbles around the area she sent the creature flying to started to move. Meaning the thing was getting up and getting ready to counterattack.
Paulina tried getting up again.
Too damaged.
Paulina tried charging another blast.
Too damaged.
All she could do was let out a distress signal. If she was lucky, Jake would get here before the thing reached her to finish the job.
If she wasn't, she's dead along with the others.
Seems she was lucky that day.
Just as she was blacking out from the damage, she noticed an unmistakable energy signature heading right for her.
Then, like a crack of lightning, a blue streak of energy burst into the scene and drew its fist for a devastating punch.
Jake had arrived.
He punched the creature with enough force to get the whole building quaking like some kind of tremor had hit the place. The walls and floors shook with enough force it felt like the whole structure was on the verge of caving in on itself.
To say Jake had grown stronger was an understatement.
He held his position for a few seconds, his body shaking immensely like he was trying to keep himself from flying off. She assumed the creature did the same.
Suddenly, he flew backward by a few meters while the supposed creature collided with the wall again.
She guessed Jake had clashed with the creature.
At least, that's what Paulina theorized.
"Ok. That was pretty good. But now I'm pissed. So big guy, are you still gonna go? This gas is meaningless 'cuz I can still see you," Jake said, cracking his knuckles and getting ready for an attack.
"No... I... we surrender. Omniboy. Turn off your gas."
Paulina heard the voice coming from the impact zone Jake sent the thing flying to.
It sounded like a child.
Suddenly, the blue gas cleared, and Paulina got a good look at her surroundings.
She saw Jake helping Stacya up as she slowly awakened from her concussion.
She saw an enraged Zack punching the ground in frustration. She wasn't surprised. Being knocked out in one hit like that brought back some painful memories.
And lastly, she saw their attackers.
One of them was a skinny, 5-foot-tall, blue-skinned male in tattered clothes and worn-out sneakers. He was probably the one with the ability to turn gaseous.
Another was a 4-foot girl covered head to toe in red bandages with two small, blank holes where her eyes were supposed to be. All Paulina saw were glowing red dots. Way too similar to Jake's eyes, but in a different color.
She was probably the girl with the energy tentacles.
And the last was a 7-foot-tall golden robot. It had some kind of retro-futuristic design, akin to that of the age of steam. He must've been the heavy hitter.
Was he entirely robotic? Was that why she couldn't sense him?
But then it dawned on her.
These were all kids...
"Ok. You all have some explaining to do," Jake said with a much softer tone.
To be continued...