“I need Legacy.”

The man once known as Sgt. Steel stood in the Pit surrounded by the members of the Minuteman White team, also known as the Legacy.  Now known only as Dr. Frederick Holland, the man looked his 100 plus age, a serious change from the last time the team had seen him only a few months back.

Nat rose from the end of the couch, his normal position while conducting Legacy business and gently urged Dr. Holland to take his seat.  Wren rose as well and moved to the wet bar where she poured an amber liquid into a short glass.  She presented it to the doctor who swallowed it without hesitation.

“What can we do for you, Dr. Holland?”  Asked the leader of the group.

“I need you to rescue my great great granddaughter.”

“Tell us.”

“J, my great great granddaughter is a Meta ... I knew she would be the day she was born.” Holland began.  “My daughter was a Meta, her daughter was a Meta, it only followed J would be as well.  I had no idea what her powers would be and I was stunned when together, we figured them out.”  Dr. Holland scanned the room.  “She can heal anything short of death with a touch.”

“Oh, my …” Wren covered her lips with her fingertips.

It took a moment for the import to sink in to the other members.

“Exactly,” Holland said.  “People would pay anything to use her and many would kill to control her.”

“And only the rich and powerful could afford it,” Wren observed.

“Yes …”

Nat said, “Who knew about her?”

“Me, and her father.”

“What happened?” Nat asked.

“They were on a climb, both are serious climbers, and she disappeared from the side of the cliff, he fell to his death.  People reported seeing a helicopter … some said someone came down a line and grabbed her,” he told them.

“Any idea where she is?”

“It took months, a lot of money, and a little forced persuasion,” he said darkly.  “But I tracked it down to an organization called Perseverance out of Salt Lake City.  They’re some kind of survivalist cult.”

“I would guess an enslaved healer would be an asset should the world end,” Wren commented.

“Police?” Nat asked.

“I’m afraid of a police raid,” Holland replied.  “Think about Waco.”

The FBI raid on a cult compound had been a cock up that cost the lives of seventy-six a decade before.

“So you need something a little less lethal,” Nat said.

“My … experience,” Dr. Holland admitted, “has always been more overt.”

For a moment the old man regarded the 16 year old kid to whom he and Marksman had entrusted the Legacy.  Unlike the girl perched on the couch at his hip, he did not recognize the almost sly smile that crept onto the boy’s lips.

“I got just the thing,” Nat said with utter conviction.  “Here’s what we do …”

 *****

The dark grey van met the private plane on the tarmac at Salt Lake City’s South Valley Regional Airport just before midnight the following day.   The van’s driver saw what he expected, a group of rich teens in for the skiing at Snowbird.  Snowboards, skis, luggage all disappeared into the back or were strapped to the roof of the van while the ash-blonde knock-out with the strange eyes, in tight black ski pants, signed the paperwork and accepted the keys.  With a fifty in his pocket, he walked back to the office thinking more about the girl’s ass then the fact all seven had been dressed in black.

Wren had already memorized the route to Seer’s vantage point and within an hour the van had been tucked under a copse of trees on the backside of a ridge some 1500 yards out from the ‘compound’.  Inside, Deb Ange, code name Seer established a mind link with her teammates.  It was not unlike a highly secure communications system do to the requirement that the users actually verbalize to communicate.

“Okay, Fuji, you’re up,” Nat said over their shared link.

Fuji Yamakaze, code name Mountain Wind, cracked her knuckles and stared up into the night feeling the wind on her face.  She smiled and pulled the cold air down from the upper atmosphere.  It collided with the warmer air at the surface.  Existing clouds flattened at the top and the first streak of lighting struck nearby followed by rain in buckets. 

Josh Temple, Code name Tempest grinned.  “Just like a real life mage, Fuji!”

“Go, Josh,” Nat pointed at him and the boy vanished in a bolt of lightning. 

A moment later the compound below them disappeared as the power sputtered then died.  Several of the team held their breath expecting a backup generator but nothing happened.  In several windows the reddish light of emergency battery powered lights flashed on.

“Deb, what do you have?”  Asked Nat.

Deb said, “Closed.”  Immediately the team shut their eyes and Deb’s ‘Point of View’ clarified.

The fence loomed out of the darkness and they passed through it like smoke.  Ahead the front of the main building, a slightly run-down two story affair came and went and they were inside an entry hall illuminated by red lights.  Two men stood talking.

“Find her first,” Nat said when Deb hesitated to listen to the exchange.

“Got it,” she replied and the view blurred as she ‘flew’ through every room in the building … no girl.  They had also found nine more men and three women.  The men were just showing signs of rousing from sleep.

“Basement,” Deb said, and for a brief instant they went blind.

The girl was lying on a pallet made of blankets, a jug of water and a plate of uneaten food within reach.  A bucket acted as a chamber pot and she was shackled to the wall by the steel ring and chain around her throat.  She was dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt but was barefoot.

“Okay, Deb, back upstairs, keep an eye on as many as you can.  Extraction team, let’s go,” Nat commanded.

Zach Toran, code name Laze, stood in the middle of the extraction team and used his control over light to change the small team to something resembling a rain squall.

“Set,” Zach reported and the team moved off through the rain.

“Whose idea was the rain?” Slater Monroe, code name Psiblade, groused.

Nat Ryan, code name Goliath, raised a hand, “That would be me.”

As they approached the fence, Slater peeled off and took up a prone position behind a small rise.  He was to provide ‘cover fire’ in the team’s return, and should any target present itself, he would take them out with a couple of quick ‘Psi Blasts’.

“I’m gonna be soaked to the skin,” Slater grumbled.  “And there’s a puddle forming here.”

At the fence, the now pared down extraction team paused and Nat wrapped an arm around Zach and the final member of the team, Christiana Gilchrist, code name Venatrix.  With a barely perceptible flexing of his legs, the trio cleared the face and landed within ten feet of the building.  Nat release both and studied Deb’s POV overlay of his own sight.  Just inside the door, two now armed men were about to step outside.

“Chris, they’re yours.  Zach follow me and blind anyone we meet on the way down.”

Both acknowledged with a nod.  Chris pulled the door open just as one of the men inside took hold.  The unexpected move brought him into striking range and Chris caught him under the chin with a front kick.  This resulted in the man being propelled into his partner and both going down.  Before the partner could clear his head after it bounced off the floor, Chris was on him.  One punch, he was out.

Nat pushed through the door and straight for the kitchen as Chris stepped into the living room.  Two women, one in her mid-forties, the other in her teens stared at the massive young man that pushed them aside to get to the door to the basement.

“NO!!” The elder screamed and pulled a pistol from the small of her back.

The shot was hurried but it bounced off Nat’s bicep without leaving a mark.  Zach popped a flash in the woman’s face and she though she tried to wipe her eyes, she did not drop the gun.  The next two shots went over Nat’s head as he slid down the stair rails.  There was a second flash and the girl, too, was rubbing her eyes.  Deftly Zach snatched the pistol from the woman.

In the living room Chris became a whirlwind, twisting and spinning, delivering a punch here or a kick there.  In under thirty seconds, seven more where down of the count.  She went after the remaining two and the other woman.  The bathroom door opened as she approached and her hand shot out catching the woman on the chin.  She staggered backward and landed in the tub, out.

Nat hit the floor and in two steps knelt beside the girl who looked justifiably terrified. She pressed her back to the wall and tried to get her fingers under the collar. The huge young man dressed in black grinned. 

“Grumpus sent me,” he said.  “Let’s get out of here.”

She flinched as he reached for her throat but steadied.  Using both hands he took the collar between forefingers and thumbs and pulled gently.  The steel pulled away like tin foil and she reach up to rub her throat.

“We need to move now, so I am going to carry you, okay?” he said.

She nodded and tried to swallow the dryness in her throat.  If she had weight a ton, Nat would have picked her up as easily.  With his record of squishing things he’d been worried at first until Wren suggested he treat the girl like a surf partner.

“Coming out,” he warned over the link. 

“Still missing two,” Chris reported.

Above in the kitchen Zach was trying to fend off wild blind swings by the woman and get the girl to sit her ass on the floor.  When Nat appeared at the top of the stairs Zach gave up and bolted for the front as planned.  By the time Nat reached him, the two of them looked like the woman and the girl running from the house.

“Venatrix, bail!”  Nat ordered and the girl complied … by diving through a window. 

Shots followed her and she angled toward Zach’s illusion.

“Single file, in front of me,” Nat snapped and the trio lined up, heading for the fence.  “Mountain Wind!”

Fuji, unnoticed in the lowering clouds swooped in behind her fleeing teammates and send a tornado-strength blast of wind at the cyclone fencing.  Posts bent under the force and two sections laid down, allowing Chris and Zach to cross without have to resort to Nat carrying them.

A stream on bullets kicked up a line of dirt and Nat angled his back toward the fire.  Three rounds thumped into him but he didn’t even slow.  Once clear of the compound, the extraction team raced past Slater who took a second to send a serious case of vertigo at the lead man chasing them.  He staggered, tripped and sprawled into the mud.   Slater caught up to Nat a moment later.

“Only saw one left and I don’t think he’s going to come after us,” Slater reported. 

Deb said “No, doesn’t look like he has the stomach for a fight after seeing Chris tear through his friends.”

“Fuji?”

“Got it, boss, I’ll keep high cover,” she replied.

To some meta-humans a 1500 yard dash wasn’t all that much but by the time they reached the already idling van, Zach, Slater and Chris were just about spent.  Nat, didn’t even have the good grace to pant once or twice to make them feel better.  They piled in, Slater, Zach and Josh in the last seat, Deb, their prize and Chris in the middle seat.  As Nat closed the passenger side door, Wren accelerated away into the rain.

A couple of miles later Wren pulled to a stop to let Fuji in.  She was ‘forced’ to sit on Zach’s lap, a double bonus in that she liked having him holding her and she managed to get him soaked all over again.

At 5:05 a.m., the van stopped beside the plane and the team unloaded.  The girl, J, hadn’t said a word but when Dr. Holland met her at the top of the stairs, she collapsed in sobs into his arms.  Fifteen minutes later the plane lifted off and headed west.

***** 

Somewhere over Nevada a red eyed J Watson came out of the sleeping cabin dressed in a pair of Chris’ jeans and one of Wren’s blouses.  Her long, black hair was damp from a shower and her flawless face was untouched by cosmetics.  At maybe 5’ 8” and 120 pounds she radiated kawaii, the Japanese word for ‘cute’.  Zach, as usual, couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

“Fuji! Someone with less boobs than you!”

J crossed her arms over her chest and scowled at Zach.  Fuji, on the other hand had no problem with whacking him upside the head and he spent the next couple of minutes trying to rub it off.

“Come on over here, J,” Dr. Holland said solicitously.

They sat side by side, holding hands.

“Tell me what happened?”

“They cut daddy’s rope,” she said with a little catch in her throat.  “They said they were gonna cut mine too and I told them go ahead!  Then one hit me with something … I woke up in that basement.”

“Did they say why they grabbed you?” her grandfather asked.

J nodded but said nothing.  Dr. Holland started to say something but turned to Nat instead.

“J,” he said “This is Nat Ryan, Goliath, the leader of Legacy.”

Nat smiled.  “Very pleased to meet you,” he said.

“You guys are all meta-humans?” she asked.

Chris raised a hand, “Not me.”

“Chris is something exceptional,” Nat admitted.  “But no matter what she says, she’s Meta, just like the rest of us.”

“What are the plans now, Dr. Holland,” Wren asked.

“I would like to join your Legacy,” J said.  “And your Minuteman Project.”

“Miller’s gonna shit a brick,” Zack said, then ducked as Fuji took a swipe at his head again.