9:45 p.m., Harmony City Beach

The upper class suburb was quiet tonight, the affluent neighborhood kept calm by gravitas and money. The mansions that lined the beaches were marks of the wealth that pervaded the area. They looked out to the sea, useless sentinels.

Of equal vigilance was the party of kids on the beach, teens with too much money and too little discipline. The party had been in full swing for two hours already, fortunes and hearts being made and destroyed with adolescent ease. It seemed that nothing could disrupt this obscene dance, yet one teen noticed something disturbing the water.

"Look at that," Tyler said, pointing it out to his friends. Frowning, the young man waded out a little further, even as his girlfriend, Chardonnay, said, "T, I don't think you should do that. What if it's a shark?"

"It's not a shark," he said. "If it were, we could see the fin by now. It wouldn't stir up the water like that without showing a fin."

"Then what is it?" Chardonnay asked.

"I don't know, but I'm going to find out," Tyler said, moving into water past his waist. "Whoa! Something touched my leg!"

"T, come back!" Chardonnay wailed helplessly. She bounced and flung her arms about, making a little scene.

"No, it's ok, it's gone... wait... it's burning... oh, god!" Tyler turned and staggered back toward her, his face a rictus of pain. Shrieking, Chardonnay fled the water, leaving him to flounder in the waves.



Abigail sat primly at the desk. Her paperwork was done for now. Until more arrived or the phone rang, she had nothing to do. So she waited.

When the emergency phone rang, she answered efficiently, "Harmony City Defense, please state your emergency." She listened to the screaming voice on the other line, then hit the button to summon the on-duty team, the Blue Team. She noted the details from the caller and advised, "Vacate the area for a safer location. You will have a response soon." She hung up and went to meet the gathering team.

Omega appeared in the lobby and waited. After a moment he appeared to gain an irritated expression. He moved directly to the desk. "If you will allow it Ms. Abigail I will interface with your computer and download the call log." He extended his hand his finger extended into a silvery metallic tendril.

Kallen showed up next, dressed casually as always, and smiled. "Okay, what is the emergency?" She noted Omega doing his merging with technology thing and sighed. He did it in public too and it freaked out some of the regular people when they saw it.

Primax came hopping into the room, getting his suit on past his thights. His muscles glistened int he artificial light and his hair was still wet from the pool.

"What's up? What's the emergancy and how late are we?" he grinned. Emergancies always happened 'as' the heroes arrived in the comic books, but in real life, they arrived usually once the crisis was already in full swing.

With a might flex of pecs, he got his sleeves on and swung the cape around to the rear. He was ready.

"Do as you require for optimal functioning," Abigail said, still smiling cheerily. She turned to the others. "A young teen girl at a party in Harmony City Beach has called; something is attacking the youths indulging at the gala. It is in the water. I advised evacuation before terminating the call. The youths don't know what is attacking them, only that one young man is currently injured and possibly drowning."

Omega touched the desktop computer, though in truth contact was not required as the connection was established via radio. Still he found that even as alien as it was to see him plug into a USB port people were less surprised than when he simply accessed data wirelessly. It took no special effort to search through the computer and locate the call logs. He committed them to his memory and disengaged.

"Okay. What's the hold up? Let's get ready to go there."

Somethoughts do occur to his knowledge-absent head ... beach house ... night ... on the beach.

"How do we get there? Will this GPS-thingie guide us?"

Still, being heroic, he rises slowly off the ground and heads toward the door outside (hoping its not a fire exit). Someone was in trouble.

Omega tilts his head and looks at Primax, "What is a GPS thingie?" At a look from Brightstar he nodded, "What is your maximum velocity? I have a maximum velocity of two hundred and fifty miles per hour. If you both can keep up you need simply follow me, I have already mapped out the optimal route."

"I fly faster then that, but I'm not sure how much faster. Good thing is I can carry you both until we arrive on scene," he grins.

Primax looks to Omega as if he's ready to make true on his offer. Besides, hugging Brightstar sure did have it's upside.

Brightstar nods. "Then let us go."

She joins Primax in the air and nods to Omega. "Lead the way." She follows behind him closely.

Omega nodded and led the way outside. As soon as they were at the street he took off running, rapidly accelerating to over two hundred miles per hour as he led the team to the beach, and the current emergency.

Primax follows along easily, eventually learning that he can't really communicate while going over a 100mph. Occassionally he swings side to side playfully and showing off a bit that he can fly much faster. Beyond that, he eagerly awaits their next, almost-solo case.

It's not a long flight. Before long, the stretch of water between Harmony City and Harmony City Beach appeared, then they were crossing over it via a bridge, at least in Omega's case. They headed for the ritzy neighborhood that the call had come from, and even before they were there, they could hear the screaming.

A car tore away from a house, screeching from side-to-side before stablizing and taking off at high speeds. The heroes went to the back of the house, to find that the situation had escalated. What appeared be piles of trash at first glance quickly resolved themselves into some kind of creatures, made of soft, slick bodies. It was clear that they were attacking the party-goers.

Kallen wasted no time, she flew into range and cut loose with a blast at one of the creatures.

Primax swarmed into the mass of alien creatures, trying to rescue the partiers farthest out from further danger. He wouldn't have minded wading into the monsters first. Normally he would have relished it, but the cries of those in danger and hurt drew more of his notice.

Save lives then kick ass. He tried to make that his new mantra ... and it didn't hurt that it was a beach party.

Still moving at near maximum velocity Omega plotted a course that would allow him to most effectively aid the group. As he closed the last few yards he slowed from nearly two hundred and fifty miles per hour to a more reasonable speed and hit the first creature with a devastating kick, transferring his remaining momentum to the impact.

Brightstar's energy beam had no effect on the monster, but Omega's kick seemed to hurt the one he targetted.

Primax herded several attractive party goers away; one grabbed his arm and shouted, "Don't hurt them! Only one is bad! The rest are our friends!"

As if to bely her words, each of the unimpeded creatures targeted a hero and shot a blast of seawater at them.

Th attack slams into Kallen, knocking the wind from her. She'd never been hit that hard by a jet of water.

The attack tripped him up and slammed him under the churning surf. Had he been drownable, he would have been panicking. Instead, mighty hands dug into the crystal, white sand and propelled him back to the surface. Primax's chest inhaled a breath of storn beach air and his head whipped about, model-like as he got the hair and salt water out of his hair.

He stood up, a collassus standing amongst the waves.

"One is the Big Bad!" he shouted up to Omega and Brightstar. The other are just students."

With that, he launched himelf into the surf and tacked the middle creature. Ripping it up out of the water, he began flying it back to the beach.

With all the precision of a computer Omega pivoted on one leg and altered his momentum changing his direction of travel to bring him toward the next nearest active creature. He closed distance and rammed a fist into the thing with pile driver force.

The two that had been targeting Brightstar left off her to go waddle off after fleeing party-goers, those stragglers still visible at the edge of the beach.

Primax got a good grip on his and spun once, using his momentum to put a good arc on it as he tossed it into the ocean. The creature flew out, easily flying over three football fields in length. The splash was lost in the other noises. It had been very spongey and a little slimy.

The two remaining squirted their jets of water at Omega, to little effect.

Primax left throught the surf to catch another one of those that had attacked Brightstar and slipped past him. His fingers reached through the slime and ichor to grain purchase. It was all he could do to not pound it. Heck, why not pound the moster? A powerful monster-bashing fist rose up and blunged into the waves!

Omega's fist caused the blobby creature to ripple but there seemed to be no other effect. Seeing Primax toss another creature out to sea Omega side stepped and delivered an aimed kick at the creature with the goal of sending it flying into the sea.

Omega's kick rolled the creature a couple dozen feet toward the ocean, but their spongey bodies just took too much of the impact for it to be really effective.

Primax's opponant went limp in the water, its body going still.

One of the creatures jetted water at Omega again.

The blast of water shot through the air with the force of a hammer but at the last moment Omega twisted and the jet flew by without impacting him.

Ballon finally regains her wits after getting hit and turns her energy bolts on one of the creatures attacking the students.

Letting his second squishy sea-creature victim loose in his hands, for an instant Primax is caught up in the quanrdary that this might have been a student at one time ... then he sees other students under attack and hesitation vanishes. He leaves the battered monster to float on the surf while he takes off after one of the two chasing students. He leaps up out of the water and plunges downward once more ...


... hitting the monster.

Omega took a pair of long stride forward and stomped down on the fallen creature hoping to burst it and be able to move on to the next target. As he did he inquired to Primax, "Are we authorized to exercise full lethal force?"

Omega’s attack doubled the beast’s body around his feet, but it was just too spongy to do much damage. Hopefully Primax would authorize lethal force; that might have a better effect on these creatures. Primax’s enemy took the blow, but it quivered like jello afterward. Brightstar's seemed to feel her attack.

In retaliation, Omega and Brightstar found themselves facing jets of water from the ones they had attacked.

Brightstar gets hit by the jet, but keeps her wits about her this time, coming out of the blast of water glowing brightly and with a severevely pissed look to her eyes.

"That's getting reall Goddamn old...."

She lets fly with another blast of energy.

"No, some of these might be students," Primax yells out. "Try and hold back as much as you can."

He grabbed the stunned creature he had and threw it up on the beach away from the scrambling student bodies.

The blast of water washed over Omega with little effect. "And yet they are no longer what they were and may yet cause more harm." Still Omega maintained his current form and attempted to hit the creature again.

Primax grabbed and heaved the creature, and it sailed into the air. The young man didn't know his own strength and the creature spun away - far away - becoming a dot on the horizon before dropping into the water.

The remaining creature showed a modicum of intelligence and raced for the ocean. It didn't seem to like three-to-one odds.

Seeing Primax having things well in hand Kallen turns to the one trying to escape and lets fly with another blast.

Primax looks embarrassed, but only for a second.

"We need to capture as many of these things as possible ... I think. They could be students from the party."

He doesn't even know in the rush that he is repeating himself. He lunges toward the last one in the vicinity, once more trying to throw it to the beach.

Omega lashes out with a foot at the blob before him attempting to find some part of it that is sensitive to his blunt impact.

It took some time, but slowly the team had a pile of unconscious spongy moss-creatures on the sand. Of the first one that Primax had tossed, there was no sign. Of course, he’d gotten a pretty good throw; even if it had started back immediately, it might not make it back for a while.

Primax’s bizarre claim regarding the former identity of the blobs might be true; close examination of the moss-creatures turn up scraps of rent cloth and personal jewelry tangled in their plant-like fibers.

The young dynamo looks to Brightstar, thinks better of it, and then looks to Omega.
"What are we going to do? We need to find a way to turn them back. Any ideas? You're the smart one."

Kallen nods. "Isn't transformation one of Vixen's abilities? We could try to find her and get her here and see if she could reverse the effect."

The team remembers that Vixen does do something like transformation, so perhaps she can help. At the very least, the gang is going to need access to the HQ lab for testing and the like.

Primax looks at the mutants for a few seconds then makes up his mind.

"Omega, Brightstar, if either of you can carry one, I'll carry the other four as we go back to get Vixen ... or someone else who can figure out this mess."

He proceeds to start piling them up on his massive shoulders one, two, three, and finally four.

"I'm ready to go now."

Kallen looks to Omega and smiles. "It's all you big guy." She smiles as she rockets into the air and back towards base. Already she calls ahead. "This is Kallen on Blue Team, Is Vixen at the HQ at the moment?"

Omega shrugs and lifts the two blobs up and begins to head back toward the base. "This seems to be of undeniably questionable intelligence. We do not know the nature of these creatures, or their regenerative capacity. Would it not make more sense to bring Ms. Vixen here where we can contain them with minimal further interaction with the city and citizenry?"

"Don't ask me, Metal Man. I just make this shit up."

As they began pulling away from the sand and surf,
"Omega, I'm a Public Relations major. We aren't renowned for our clinical thinking. If you have a good idea, you got to step up. You know - make your voice heard. Won't hurt my feelings none."

Brightstar nods. "Omega it ma not be the best course of action but we have facilities at Headquarters that we can contain them in until we can find out more about them, not to mention access to the rest of the team's expertise."

"If we left them there they could revive and begin attacking again."

Working together, the team got the blobs back to HQ to be dealt with there.

After hearing knocking at the door, Vixen grunted. "I'm coming, I'm coming. Keep your pants on." Vixen opens the door to her laboratory, wearing goggles and a lab coat over her furry form. "Now what's - "

She stares, for long moments, at the blobs the team was carrying. "Uh. Oh my. Okay. Uh. What are those?"

Kallen smiles. "We think they might be some of the party-goers from the disturbance we responded to. We were wondering if you could try your transformative abilities on them to turn them back."

"My... transformation abilities."

Vixen looked to Brightstar and then to the blobs. My transformation abilities. "You're saying these used to be people? I don't know... I mean... we should study them first. I might make things worse for them. Are they in any danger? Are they dangerous?" She sniffed at them, wondering if that strange 'magic' scent - she hated the word, but nothing else fit - was attached to them.

There was no tell-tale tingle of magic.