South Manhattan, Street outside of the "Channel 5" News Building: February 25th, 2014: 3:17 PM
The Heroes Legion stood out there in front of the Channel 5 News building, waiting for the Made-Men to make their move.
Mentally conversing with one another via M-Leaders telepathy, planning out their strategies.
That was one thing that they had over the Made-Men, they could make plans on the fly via telepathy...plus they had been working as a team doing actual training and team strategy.
The Made-Men may have managed to come up with this plan to mentally enslave the city via Television broadcast, but from what they saw in M-Leader's mind when he had contacted them mentally with his powers. They weren't really a close knit team like they had become.
Velocity had put it best when he saw Shriek abuse Spellbinder and Blind-Lure a moment ago in M-Leader's "Psychic vision" ability when he said, "A team huh? I'd give them three more days tops before they start attacking each other with the battle-axe there pushing them all around."
They figured that when the Made-Men made their way down here, their first plan of battle strategy would be to just attack the Heroes Legion on sight like they had last time.
The Heroes Legion on the other hand weren't going for the "Leroy Jenkins" ploy.
They weren't here without a plan of their own.
"Are you sure that you got that glorified Laser gun of yours to work?" Shadow Knight thought.
"Power neutralizer" Silicon answered mentally, "And yes, I did. I think."
"You think?!" Velocity exclaimed, "We're going into battle against a team of super powered yahoo's and he says he "thinks" our wildcard is ready to play!? We're in trouble!"
"Hey!" Silicon said annoyed at Velocity's remark, "I've crunched the numbers, and I'm certain the Power Neutralizer will work. There's just two problems."
"Which are?" Raven Ducard asked warily, she didn't like the sound of that at all.
"Well, since I had to put the M-50 inside it one the go while heading with you all to this latest fight we've gotten ourselves into. It will take a full twelve minutes for it to reach full power in order to be used on the Made-Men. Plus...in order for this to work in one shot. We need to get the Made-Men to stand still, bunched together in one spot for about.....twenty five and a half seconds." Silicon explained, laying down the downsides to that part of the plan. The usage of his newest invention: The power Neutralizer."
"WHAT?! Why didn't you mention this to us earlier when we were going over the battle plans in the Battle-Falcon on the way here, slick?" Atlanta chided.
"Sorry. I was too busy trying to get the M-50 crystal I snagged from the vault into the device at the time to really worry about it" Silicon said sheepishly, "I guess I got carried away in the moment of knowing how to make It worked I didn't stop and think about the finer details behind making it work."
"So we got to beat these guys, and somehow get them bunched together in one place long enough to zap them with that Power Neutralizer device?" Murdoch asked askance at the absurdity of the task that had just been unwelcomely added to the plan.
"Like I said. We're in trouble!" Velocity said in dismay.
"We've seen worse" Shadow Knight pointed out, "Let's just stick to the plan, and hope there are no further alterations to it while we do so."
"Better be ready everyone" Robo-Warrior warned, "If my thermal scanners are correct in their current readings on the main floor of the News building. Here they come!"
"Just when I thought it was going to be easy. Well I may not know about the plan being an easy thing to pull off now without a hitch due to us now having to wait till that damn thing is charged up. But I do know that there's a Knicks game on tonight in five hours, and I never miss a game. So I say...let's give these jerks the fight they won't forget. Let's get ready to rumble!" Velocity declared, pumped up for the soon to begin street fight between the Heroes Legion and the Made-Men.
The battle soon began by way of the glass windows and doors of the Channel 5 News buildings first floor suddenly shattering and bursting by way of a barrage of supersonic waves blasting through them from inside the building.
Blowing the front door to the building off its hinges and shattering the sidewalk and the asphalt as it traveled in a straight line down the street.
The supersonic wave that had burst out from the first floor of the Channel 5 News building nearly slammed into the spot where the Heroes Legion were assembled.
They all managed to dive out of the way before the ultrasonic shockwave hit them, but the wave did strike the building behind where they had been standing, blowing out the Shawarma restaurant station there in one blow.
It had also slammed into the Battle-Falcon, knocking it onto its side.
They all then heard Shrieks voice coming from inside the devastated first floor of the Channel 5 News building, she wasn't happy.
"Damn it! You have to be kidding me! I had them set up like sitting ducks and STILL they managed to weasel out of their much deserved deaths. Get them!" Shriek howled.
The scattered Heroes Legion then saw Mace, Inkwell and the rest of the Made-Men exit through the ruined front door of the Channel 5 News building in a running charge.
"I've got ink-girl" Silicon said determinedly, transforming into his liquid metal form.
He then shapeshifted himself so that he ended up slamming into the similarly empowered Supervillianess.
They became a ball of ink and liquid metal for a moment upon clashing into one another before they both shapeshifted their torso sections reformed and they began wrestling and trying to attack one another or capture (or in Inkwell's case: kill and maim) with their shapeshifting abilities.
Forming their hands and arms into weapons, or makeshift "restraining devices" to try and beat the other with.
Mace took a run at Robo-Warrior, intending to run the ironclad crusader over.
Robo-Warrior didn't even move.
When Mace got close enough, Robo-Warrior reached forward and grabbed the spikey Metahuman by the sides and tossed him over his back.
Mace went flying through the air behind the Robo-Warriors back and slammed into the shawarma restaurant that Shrieks sonic scream attack had just totalled.
He rolled through a couple walls until he came to a stop with his back (and its spikes) wedged deep into a concrete support pillar in the far back.
He then tried to move himself, but he was stuck like a dart on a dart board.
Or so it seemed.
"Nice try metal head" Mace said unimpressed, "But I have learned a few tricks on my own in prison. Like this...!"
Mace's back spikes that were stuck in the wall then instantly detached from his back, rapidly growing a new set of spikes from the ones stuck in the wall and the concussive force sent the spikey metahuman flying back through the air towards Robo-Warrior.
He slammed into Robo-Warrior, sending the both of them flying down across the street and into the lines of deserted taxi cabs that lined that section of the street.
Mace then grabbed Robo-Warrior around his armored neck, and raised up his fist near Robo-Warriors head.
He looked down at him with a sadistic look on his face, "And this. Rapid fire spikes from my knuckles. You've been a pain in the neck to me and my team, now it's time for me to be a pain in your neck Robo-geek!"
Robo-Warrior then watched as suddenly the spikes on Mace's knuckles detached and began firing into Robo-Warriors head section on his armor as fast as machine gun fire.
But to Mace's ire and disbelief, not only did Robo-Warrior not even flinch or scream in terror.
But his attack wasn't doing anything.
His spikes weren't even making a dent in Robo-Warrior's armor.
That was impossible.
He was able to fire those spikes out at a speed that would impale a herd of speeding rhino's in a minute and pierce through titanium alloy!
What the hell was this powerless losers "iron man" suit made out of anyway?
Robo-Warrior noticed his opponent's moment of indecision and took that moment to act.
One well place armored kick to the groin, and Robo-warrior was out of Mace's grip.
In fact, Mace was out of the game.
He was now clutching the spot between his legs, and then soon after that he collapsed in shock and pain straight into unconsciousness.
"I may not have balls" Cyber-29 winced, "But I certainly felt THAT. Now that had to hurt!"
"Thank god he wasn't spikey down there, I might have impaled my knee and ruined any chance of my getting into college on the football scholarship." Andy said in relief.
"You don't play football" Cyber-29 pointed out.
"Not yet. Tryouts at school start in spring." Andrew joked.
"Less joking, more fighting Andy" Cyber-29 chastised, "That was just one joker down, the rest are still fighting. Let's help pile them up alongside this "Ball-less" creep."
"Now who's making the jokes?" Andrew Griffin chastised, and then he jumped back into the fray that was ensuring in the middle of the street.
Shadow Knight was engaging alongside Raven Ducard with Shriek and Armory.
Shriek was blasting at them with her sonic scream attack, while Armory was chucking cars and whatever else he could grab to throw at the two of them.
Raven Ducard stood her ground in her defensive shield spell, while Shadow Knight stood his ground in his living shadow form.
The cars didn't make a dent in Raven's protective shield, neither did Shriek's sonic scream attack.
Shadow Knight just absorbed shrieks sonic screams when she directed them towards him into the Shadow Realm via his living shadow form acting as an access point to the shadowy dimension that was the powers....the cars that Armory threw as well.
"What's the matter? You little chicken wusses afraid to fight us?" Armory asked, unimpressed by the sight of the two Heroes Legion members playing defense against him and Shriek instead of fighting them both tooth and nail like he had been hoping to do since he was locked up with the rest of the Made-Men.
"No." Shadow Knight said simply.
"We're just waiting for you two to show us that we were right about you guys" Raven Ducard added.
"About what?" Armory scowled.
"Whether or not you guys really learned anything from the last time we fought, and learned to work with one another's powers to beat your opponents. Unlike you people, we are all a team..."
"And we've beaten worse bad guys than you lot and we're still here today alive and kicking ass, because we learned to work as a team. We learned to strengthen to other weaknesses, back them up in a pinch..." Shadow Knight began.
"Buy me a ticket to puke city" Armory said, disgusted by the whole "Saturday morning cartoon teamwork" spiel that the two of them were spouting, grabbing another taxi-cab to throw at them as he did.
"...and at combining our powers to set up traps. RAVEN, NOW!" Shadow Knight declared.
Before either of the two villains could react to this, Raven Ducard cast one of her spells.
One that she had learned recently, one that she didn't have to direct with her hands.
The Mirage Spell.
"Ars Arcanum Illusionous!"
Shadow Knight shielded his eyes when he heard Raven Ducard cast her spell, knowing what would happen if he had seen the light that shone out from Raven's body the second she said the words needed to conjure that spell.
Shriek and Armory weren't so lucky.
They saw the light of the spell, their goggles that they were still wearing so that they wouldn't be affected by spellbinders hypnotic gaze (and hopefully Shadow Knights as well) didn't protect them from the magic spell at all.
The two of them watched in disbelief as the world around them began to change.
The world was now sideways, and their perception had changed with it.
They both felt like they were falling to the side.
They couldn't fight with their perception having been magically changed, it was like their legs had been made into steamed asparagus and they were standing on a sideways plate!
Not knowing that things were fine, nothing had changed.
It was all an illusion.
There was nothing wrong with them or the world around them, it just seemed that way to their bewitched senses at this time.
While Armory tried to steady himself, Shriek, realising that this was probably one of the legion's tricks and she focused as much as she could on the two Heroes Legion member in front of her and Armory and tried to unleash another attack on them with her sonic scream ability.
But Shadow Knight and Raven weren't done yet.
"My turn!" Shadow Knight said, with a sly smirk on his face behind his mask as he did.
Shadow Knight then focused on the shadow that Shriek and Armory were casting underneath their feet, and opened up a Shadow Portal beneath them.
Shrieks sonic scream attack that he had absorbed into the Shadow Realm, exited out through that portal...slamming into both of them.
It sent both of them flying a good three stories into the air, both of them landing on the roofs of two taxi cabs a few steps away.
Crushing the Taxicabs roofs VERY well upon impact, turning the taxi's into crudely made convertible versions of themselves in the process.
Now any other person might have been killed or severely injured by that, but Shriek and Armory were Metahumans.
Same rules didn't really apply to them anymore.
They were alive, but badly dazed by Shriek's "redirected" sonic scream attack and still reeling from the temporary effects of Raven's debilitating "Mirage" spell.
Seeing that the two of them were out of the game for now, Shadow Knight and Raven turned their attention to the rest of the battle, trying to back up their teammates as they fought with the remaining Made-Men.
At this point, Murdoch and M-Leader were helping Silicon against Inkwell.
While Atlanta and Velocity were dealing with Voltaire.
Neither side was making any ground in their individual fights however.
Since Inkwell's shapeshifting ability revealed his own, Silicon might as well have been fighting a mirror.
Everything he could do, she could do better...and he wasn't making shout outs to musicals when he thought that.
Murdoch, though being the magically empowered demonic hellcat that he was, even found himself being overwhelmed by Inkwells shapeshifting hands which bound him up faster than he could slice through them with his demonic claws.
M-Leader's attempts to psychically "detain" the shapeshifting villainess weren't getting anywhere due to the fact that in her liquid form, her mind was shielded from outside psionic interference.
A fact that M-Leader had not known, until this very second.
He doubted that even Inkwell herself knew about this fact, but at this moment it really didn't matter if she did or not because she was winning.
Her efforts to resist him and his Psychic energy based attacks were putting a huge strain on his concentration, which was mostly being put into holding up the protective sphere of psychic energy he had around him.
Keeping her spikes and other weapons she morphed out of her liquid "Ink" like self to attack her attackers, in order to keep them from skewering him like a hotdog on a stick.
But under this much mental strain, it was like tensing a muscle...one couldn't do it for a long period of time under duress, and neither could M-leader.
He had to think up a new way to contain this foe of theirs before she overwhelmed the three of them.
Wait a second.
Contain?
That was how Raven Ducard had defeated her the first time they clashed with the Made-Men, after they had used M-50 to undergo further mutagenesis to transform themselves into the fully activated Metahumans they were today.
M-leader grinned in triumph, he now knew what to do.
"Silicon. Let her go of Inkwell and get away from her, right now!" M-leader ordered, telepathically to Silicon's mind so that Inkwell wouldn't hear him talk to the young metahuman about what he planned to do.
Element of surprise and all that.
Silicon, who at this point was trying to pry the coiled left arm of Inkwell off from around his neck, paused and looked at M-Leader askance upon hearing his order in his head.
"What?!" Silicon asked in disbelief, "But I'm starting to get her on the ropes!"
"Just do it!" M-Leader said sternly, "Trust me, I have a plan!"
"Okay, if you have a plan. That's all I need to hear. I just hope you know what you're doing...with whatever it is you're going to be doing when I let this girl go. Or...to be more exact, when I shapeshift my way out of HER grip." Silicon quipped, before shapeshifting his Liquid metal form off of and away from Inkwells own liquid form.
Inkwell, who had been currently engaged in a one-sided fight with Silicon and Murdoch the whole time...paused and watched in confusion as Silicon retreated.
Before she could attempt to follow after him and continue attacking him, she suddenly felt her entire liquid "ink" like form begin to become compressed into a small space in midair.
A space which was getting smaller and smaller....until to her shock and fury, she was now fully contained within an invisible "bubble" in midair.
She soon realised that she was trapped within a miniature version of M-Leader's Psychic shield ability when she saw the leader of the Heroes Legion had his left hand pointed at her and his golden eyes were glowing brightly with psionic energy.
She then furiously struggled to push against the invisible wall of force that made up the "bubble" she was now trapped within.
But M-Leader wasn't finished.
He then turned his attention to the area on the street where Atlanta and Velocity were fighting with Voltaire.
The electrified supervillianess kept blasting at them with her electric bolt attack, while also using her "living electricity" form to "zip" around out of the way of the two young heroes' attacks when they came her way.
M-Leader then contacted the two of them via his telepathy, "Velocity, Atlanta. Get out of the way!"
The two of them, upon hearing M-Leader's psychic voice sound off in their heads, turned around briefly to see the sight of the contained Inkwell being telekinetically thrown by M-Leader straight at their location.
Velocity and Atlanta realised what was about to happen, and Velocity activated his super speed power.
He grabbed Atlanta and sped the two of them safely out of the area, right before Inkwell landed right on where they had been standing.
They had been lucky enough to be quick enough (literally) to react to this and get out of the target area of M-Leader's psychic tossing of Inkwell....Voltaire was so lucky.
The liquid form of Inkwell slammed right on top of her and reacted negatively to the electricity that had been coursing through her body at the time.
Like water, Inkwell's body conducted electricity.
The two supervillianess's screamed in pain as Voltaire's electricity surged through the two of them, shorting out Voltaire and shocking inkwell.
The two of them then fell to the ground, motionless.
They weren't dead.
They had just been rendered unconscious by their powers canceling each other out in the most painful way possible.
M-leader looked around the area at the beaten or dazed members of the Made-Men who lay all around them here in the middle of the street.
The fighting had stopped, but victory was not yet in his or his teams hands.
They still had to deal with these crazy teenagers, and stop Spellbinder's broadcast.
"Silicon. Get the Power Neutralizer." M-Leader ordered, "It should be fully charged now."
"I'm on it....WHAT THE HELL!?" Silicon exclaimed when a hail of bullets began shooting through the air at him, passing through his liquid metal form.
The Heroes Legion all turned to face the direction the gunfire was coming from, and saw to their shocked surprise that the gunfire was coming from Sgt Hardcastle and a small platoon of S.L.E.E.T soldiers.
They all barely managed to duck for cover behind the overturned Battle-Falcon before the hall of bullets that had first struck Silicon managed to hit them as well.
Silicon, thankfully unharmed due to his having been currently in his liquid metal form at the time slithered his way over to where his teammates had taken cover, and looked back at the sight of Hardcastle and her squad trying to kill him and his teammates.
"Geeze, that lady doesn't know when to quit. First she tries to arrest us, now she's trying to kill us? What is she nuts?!" Murdoch asked, having transformed back into his normal cat form in order to both avoid the bullets and slip away behind the Battle-Falcon with the others unseen by the assaulting S.L.E.E.T soldier's corsairs.
"Yeah, why is she trying to kill us when we're trying to deal with the Made-Men's plot to mind control the whole city?!" Velocity added, completely exasperated by this latest problem. Just when he and his team were winning this thing and were about to deliver the final blow, this happens.
"Guys, they're not in control of their own actions" Cyber-29 spoke through the Robo-Warrior suit.
"What makes you think that?" Robo-Warrior asked his A.I co-pilot in question regarding Hardcastle's "kill squad" that had just showed up out of nowhere and began opening fire upon them all.
"I scanned their retinas and their brave waves just now" Cyber-29 answered, "Their eyes and brainwave patterns currently resemble the exact kind of symptoms that occur in a victim of Spellbinders hypnosis."
"How the hell did these guys get their hands on the acting commander of S.L.E.E.T?" Atlanta asked in response to this information Cyber-29 had given her and the others regarding Hardcastle and her unit's current lethal actions against them all.
"It doesn't matter right now" Shadow Knight said dismissively, "what matters is that we need to take them down before the Made-Men members who aren't currently knocked out recover from their injuries and resume the fighting."
"Oh it gets worse" Cyber-29 added, "my long range scanners are picking up a mob of New York civilians converging onto our position from the north and south end of this street. They will be here any minute."
"Escalation. You've got to love it!" Silicon said, shaking his head in dismay "They must be following Spellbinder's commands. They must have been watching the battle from the windows on whatever floor in the channel 5 News building they are on. They saw the Made-Men were losing and sent Hardcastle and whatever New York citizen who fell to her gaze on television to come down here and back her up."
"Then I say it's time we take Spellbinder out of the game" Shadow Knight said determinedly, "we take her out and its game over for this whole "puppet show" of theirs."
"Hey guys?" Silicon asked his teammates, "Does anyone else hear that?"
The Heroes Legion grew quiet in order to try and hear whatever it was Silicon was hearing over the sound of the bullets ricocheting off the overturned Battle-Falcon's armored chassis.
They could hear something approaching their current position, from the south behind Hardcastle and her kill squad.
It sounded like....the engine of an S.L.E.E.T APC Vehicle.
They then to their surprise heard the sound of something that wasn't the sound of a gun firing over the hail of gunfire that was pelting the overturned Battle-Falcon, and then it was swiftly followed by the sound of Hardcastle and her kill squad all giving out "ooof!" sounds and the gunfire slowly dwindled down until it stopped completely.
Curious about what had just happened, the Heroes Legion all peeked round the corner of the front bumper of the overturned Battle-Falcon to see for themselves the surprising sight of Hardcastle and her Kill squad lying down on the ground, unconscious...with these strange devices attached to their persons.
M-Leader recognised the devices as S.L.E.E.T technology, Stun discs...the kind that were fired from the guns of the Last Resort Squad, and General Arcane's favorite tool to use whenever he was in a pinch.
That was when he and the rest of the Heroes Legion saw them, The Last Resort squad and General Arcane!
They had just come to their aid and had handled the hypnotised Hardcastle and her kill squad upon seeing that she and her squad had been rendered compromised.
"General Arcane!" M-Leader exclaimed, greatly relieved to see his friend was now awake and all right.
"Figured I'd find you all here" the commander of S.L.E.E.T said with a dry smile on his face, "you all have always had a knack for getting into trouble."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Velocity asked, folding his arms annoyed at general Arcane's cheeky comment. He was the one who did the "cheeky comments" around here.
"I'm just glad you're okay" M-Leader said, "things kind of snowballed without you around."
"Yes. I can see that" General Arcane said unimpressed while looking down at the unconscious Hardcastle and her kill squad, "is it any wonder that I don't take vacations?"
"Well now that that's taken care off" Murdoch said eagerly, "can we please zap these jerks before the melee starts all over again?"
"Not...so fast... losers legion!" it was shriek!
The Heroes Legion, the Last Resort Squad and General Arcane looked in the direction that Shriek's voice was coming from, and saw that not only was shriek up and moving after being blasted by her own redirected sonic scream into the rooftop of a taxi cab alongside armory.
But she was now holding in her hands a remote detonator device, but a remote detonator device to what?
"Yeah. That's right" the deranged supersonic villainess said with a sadistic chuckle, "you all think your all hot stuff don't ya? But you're not the only ones who can come up with tricks and traps. I had this rigged up when we captured those brainless S.L.E.E.T soldiers. I had them link their explosives that they had on them just in case they ever needed them to this one detonator. This detonator. I also had my teammates take possession of one of the explosive these losers had with them and keep it on their persons...but I didn't tell them why I wanted them to hold the explosive on their person nor that the explosives were linked to this detonator. I did tell them that the explosives would be our last resort against you losers if you ever found us and beat us again. On myself, my teammates and the soldiers lying unconscious at your feet are enough plastique to level this entire area and the News Building. And if the mad screams I can hear approaching this area and getting louder by the second are any indication...the "Mongol horde" of mind controlled New Yorkers that Spellbinder is sending this way to back us up will go up in flames as well."
"You mean you tricked your own teammates into rigging themselves to blow?" Atlanta asked in horror at the extremes that Shriek had revealed she had gone to in order to ensure that if her side lost, so would the Heroes Legions.
It was downright insane!
"You nutcase. You'll kill yourself too!" Shadow Knight said to Shriek with absolute contempt in his voice.
"I don't care. Just as long as you all don't win this time. It will make my dear Gravitron proud of me when he learns that in order to join him in the afterlife, I succeeded in sending you all to hell! I may not have gotten to enjoy having New York answering to my every will and want...but taking you all down with me will be one hell of a consolation prize!"
The Heroes Legion watched in horror as Shriek got ready to push the button on the detonator, while the Last Resort squad tried to quickly line Shriek up in their guns sights in order to take her down before she could press it.
But before anyone could do anything at all, Velocity, suddenly activated his super speed/Hypertime ability, vanishing from everyone's sights as he did.
Now one would almost think that Velocity had turned tail and used his super speed power to try and snatch the detonator out of Shrieks hand, but Velocity was a brash speedster.
And as such, simply snatching the detonator out of Shriek's hand was too simple a task...and it wasn't the reason why he had jumped into "Hypertime" mode.
He had jumped into Hypertime mode to give himself some time to think, and since he could only dwell in Hypertime mode for a few minutes, he had to think fast.
Now, he could snatch the detonator...but that would leave Shriek able to attack back once the detonator had "vanished" from her hand.
He couldn't knock her out with a punch at this speed, it would blow her head right off of her shoulders.
Plus Silicon's device was still in the overturned Battle-Falcon, if they were going to use it on shriek, they might as well use it on the entirety of the Made-Men.
But outside of the ones who lay around the area defeated, Shriek, Spellbinder and Blind-Lure were still awake and kicking and would on their own be a pain to deal with, what with Blind-Lure and Spellbinders individual mind powers.
And he for one had enough of these Made-Men jerks to last him his whole lifetime.
He knew he could solve all this by way of Hypertime mode, but without a longer time to work in Hypertime mode (longer than five minutes) it didn't give him much time to do anything before Shrieks thumb pressed down on that detonator.
If only he could keep his energy going, if only he could supercharge his metabolism driven power enough to stay in Hypertime long enough to do what he wanted to do with the five seconds he had before Shriek pressed the button.
That's when he had an epiphany, he realised that he already DID have a way to supercharge his powers.
When they had last visited Atlantis during the Christmas break last year, he had taken a large souvenir sample of those "wafer" things that he had used to supercharge his metabolism fueled super speed powers to be able to go fast enough to hold back thousands of kilotons of water during Depth Charges first attack on Atlantis.
When he took that stuff, he had only used his super speed ability and not his Hypertime power to hold back that water.
If he took one of those Atlantean "power pellets" and used it to give his Hypertime power about four hours' worth of an energy boost.
The only downside was when it was all finished, he would be exhausted and unable to move anywhere for two hours...which is what would happen if he used one of the power pellets to temporarily boost his powers right now.
Velocity, knowing he had less than a minute before he would be forced out of Hypertime and loose his one chance to not only stop shriek but also put the Made-Men in the sights of Silicon's Power Neutralizer device, quickly popped his hands into his pocket and pulled out from the sack of Atlantean Power pellets he had in his jean jackets zipper pocket and popped one down his gullet.
He instantly felt the "buzz" of his metabolism receiving at least four hours' worth of from what was basically in his opinion the real life version of a "senzu bean" from that "Dragon ball Z" anime cartoon he used to watch when he was a kid, and once the "buzz" had passed...he went straight to work.
Focusing all of this extra energy on fueling his Hypertime powers, Velocity then while still in Hypertime, zipped down the street and into the Channel 5 News building.
The first thing he did however was look for Stephanie Walker, knowing how much she meant to his team leader and while personally hoping that the news reporter lady friend of his and the rest of the Heroes Legion was okay as well.
He found her, still in the janitors closet where M-Leader had said that she had told him was where she had taken shelter in during the Made-Men's hostile takeover of the building.
She had been tied up, but from the blank and contemptfull look on her face, he figured she had been tied up to prevent her from escaping if she ever managed to wake from the trance that Spellbinder must have put her under.
He gently grabbed her, and took her down to the street where M-Leader and the others were still frozen (from Velocity's perspective) in place, just starting to try and catch Shriek before she could blow herself and the Made-Men all around her up.
He placed her right beside M-Leader, and then he zipped on back to the Channel 5 News building.
This time he went looking for Blind-Lure and Spellbinder.
He found them in the broadcasting studio, and after being extremely thankful upon finding out that at this speed Spellbinders gaze didn't do anything to him.
He implemented the next part of his brilliant plan.
He positioned himself in front of the two metahuman villains, and then dropped out of Hypertime for five seconds.
From Blind-Lure and Spellbinders perspectives, the jean jacket wearing speedster appeared out of nowhere right in front of the two of them.
"Hello, goodbye!" Velocity quipped, waving his hand in a "hello/goodbye" type gesture to Spellbinder and Blind-Lure who were dumbfounded to see him there before them.
"YOU!" Blind-Lure exclaimed, and in a move that might be described as a "defence mechanism" he drew his bioluminescent tail and aimed it at Velocity, who vanished back into Hypertime before he could be "doped out" by Blind-Lure's lure tails infamous mind-numbing light.
Velocity couldn't help but laugh, his prankster side shining through as he saw Blind-Lure and Spellbinder freeze again from his perspective as he re-entered Hypertime.
He then went around the building looking for some duct tape, lots of it.
He returned, and then slowly began spinning the "frozen" spellbinder around in the spinning chair she was sitting in, while slowly wrapping her up in Duct tape as he did.
He couldn't help but think about how this was all playing out in normal time/speed.
Spellbinder would be spinning around in place like something out of a cartoon and Blind-Lure would be watching it all in shocked disbelief...or at least he would be if Velocity intended for him to stay there in the middle of the room on the precipice of unleashing his mind numbing powers onto where Velocity had once been standing a second ago.
For added measure, Velocity had also duct taped Spellbinders eyes and mouth so that she couldn't "zing" anyone on the airwaves nor give any orders to the people she already had.
He had no idea about the "mass mind link" she currently had on the thousands she had already "zinged" on the airwaves.
He then turned his attention to Blind lure upon neutralising Spellbinder, who upon no longer spinning around in real time would be to dazed and dizzy to control the people she had currently running a mobs to the street surrounding the building.
He grabbed the villain and took him down to the street level, and left him there with his lure tail poised and ready to fire.
He then repositioned his teammates out of the target area he had Blind-Lure currently pointing towards, he also moved General Arcane and the Last Resort Squad out of the way.
Then he (with great difficulty when he was working with Armory and Mace) moved each and every one of the defeated Made-Men members around the area until they were all piled in the corner where Blind-Lure was currently aiming at.
But not before he had taken the detonator from Shriek's "frozen" hands and placed her on the ground, and right underneath the "dogpile" of the defeated Made-Men members he had just piled up in that area.
He then went into the overturned Battle-Falcon and retrieved Silicon's Power Neutralizer gun device.
Once outside, he placed the Power Neutralizer gun in Silicon's frozen hands, and then turned to look at the now dogpiled Made-Men, and then he looked back at Silicon.
"I hope this thing of yours works, because once she realised what has just happened she's going to be so pissed off that you might only have one shot before she starts screaming."
Content with what he had done here, he got ready to drop out of Hypertime mode.
As he did, he watched as the rest of the world began to speed up again as he began to slow down to normal speed.
Upon entering normal speed, everything occurred just the way he had expected it to when he set up this scene, which in his opinion was the best "fake out" prank he had ever pulled off with his super speed ability.
From Shrieks perspective, one second she had been standing in that area of the street, holding the detonator and then the next she was suddenly underneath a dogpile made up of her worthless teammates...and the detonator was gone.
She was about to scream out in fury when suddenly there was a bright flash, and all her thoughts of screaming, revenge and killing the Heroes Legion were suddenly put on hold and her mind went blank upon seeing the flash of light.
She had been rendered temporarily "mentally stunned" by Blind-Lure's misfired and misled "Mind Numbing flash" attack.
As Shriek look on blankly into space, Blind-Lure, upon seeing that he had just "flashed" Shriek and was now no longer in the broadcast room protecting Spellbinder, grimaced in realisation to what he had just done.
"Opps." He put it mildly.
"You!" Shadow Knight declared, drawing his shadow gun in a defensive reflex move.
Blind Lure recognised the voice belonging to the "freak" who had blown of the original bioluminescent end of his "lure tail", and he instantly retracted his tail back into his overcoat, and pleaded "NOT THE TAIL! NOT THE TAIL!"
Shadow Knight fired his shadow gun, the shadow bullet struck Blind-Lure in the chest area and the force of the bullet sent him right off his feet, soon he was plastered onto the pavement in Shadow Knight's "miasmic cocoon trap" ability from the neck down.
Strangely, Blind Lure wasn't upset about being captured because they all heard him sigh in relief and say "Thank god! He didn't shoot my tail...the ladies love the tail!"
"What the heck just happened?" Atlanta asked surprised, "How did she....how did they?"
Velocity then fully emerged into normal time, and threw out his arms theatrically "Thank you, Ladies and Gentlemen. You've been a wonderful audience."
"Velocity, did you just...?" Silicon asked, realising that his Power Neutralizer had just inexplicable appeared in his hands during the last five seconds alongside the rest of the strangeness that had occurred with them and the Made-Men just now.
"Never mind little buddy. Just shoot the damn thing!" Velocity snapped, and then he felt dizzy and weak and fell to the ground, "whoa...major sugar crash... night night...zzzzzzzzz" and with that being said, Velocity inexplicably fell into an exhausted state of sleep right before his stunned teammates eyes.
What the heck did he just do that made him THAT tired?
Silicon, realising that somehow Velocity had not only defused the explosive situations that Shriek had presented to them five seconds ago but also had given him a window of opportunity to use the power Neutralizer on the dogpiled Made-Men, began getting ready to fire.
"I feel I should warn you. This is my first time testing this thing out on more than one target, I designed this thing to drain the M-Radiation from singular targets. And even then, M-50 has a charge of 50% M-Radiation while a fully activated Metahuman has a 100%...and there are five of them! I don't know what will happen if all of that is added to the M-50 crystal I have in this thing as "ammo"...heck I don't even know what it would do to the M-50 crystal even if it was being used on a single target..."
"Just shoot the damn thing!" Murdoch snapped, "I think she's waking up out of being "zonked" by Blind-Lure's tail."
Sure enough, it seemed Shriek's mental functions were begging to return to normal and her perception of her surroundings was returning.
Blind Lure must have set his "phasers on stun" or something and hit her with a low level flash of his bioluminescent lure ability.
Seeing the sight of Shriek starting to wake up easily convinced Silicon to drop the concern he had for his device's first field test, and just get ready to fire.
"Alright. But don't say I didn't warn you guys if things go south. Three....two...one!" and upon reaching one, Silicon activated the Power Neutraliser gun.
The Power Neutralizer hummed to life and then shot a beam of bluish energy (the same color hue as the M-Radiation contained in the M-50 crystal inside the device) right out of the tip of the gun, which struck the defeated Made-Men directly.
Shriek, by this time now fully aware of her surroundings again, howled in pain as she suddenly felt like her energy was being drained out of her body.
Silicon and the others watched in awe as (just like when Legion had stolen their own individual powers), the Metabolised M-Radiation in both Shriek and the Made-Men's activated M-Gene's was pulled out of their bodies by the beam of M-Radiation shot out by the Power Neutralizer, which was then carried back into the M-50 crystal inside the gun via the M-radiation beam.
The beam continued firing upon and absorbing M-Radiation from the Made-Men until there was no more M-Radiation to take.
The process of having her M-Radiation forcibly "ripped" from her M-Gene's was just as daunting to Shriek as it had been for the Heroes Legion when Legion has stolen their powers, and just like they had upon Legion finishing assimilating their powers...she collapsed into unconsciousness.
The Heroes Legion, General Arcane and the Last Resort Squad was surprised, while Silicon was just giddy upon seeing this.
The damn thing had worked!
Now the battle was truly over between them and the Made-Men.
But upon finishing its task of draining the Made-Men of the mutagenic radiation that was necessary to sustain their powers, something strange happened to the Power Neutralizer gun in Silicon's hands.
The M-50 Crystal, which now contained the combined M-Radiation of the entirety of the Made-Men (sans Blind-Lure and Spellbinder) it was undergoing a strange and surprising metamorphosis of its own.
It grew larger in order to compensate for the extra M-Radiation that it now had contained inside of it.
In fact it was almost completely protruding out of the containment area designed for it on the Power Neutraliser device, slightly damaging the container.
Silicon was amazed at what had happened, he never even once had ever hypothesised that the transfer of M-Radiation from Metahumans into a single M-50 crystal would do that...and mostly, he was just glad that the whole thing hadn't exploded due to this surprising side-effect.
"Will you look at this? I mean will you just look at this. This is incredible!" Silicon said, pointing towards his invention and the metamorphosed M-50 crystal in the center, "It worked. And it looks like it had an interesting side effect done on the M-50 Crystal that was the catalyst for the whole "power transfer" thing that it just successfully did. God I love it when these things work!"
"And I'm just glad it didn't blow up like what usually happens when your prototype inventions don't work" Atlanta pointed out.
"Chalk another one for the good guys, who feels like Chinese?!" Robo-Warrior asked, raising his hand for a high five with his teammates.
"Okay, Okay. Silliness aside everyone..." Shadow Knight said to his jubilant teammates, motioning towards the now depowered Made-Men members where they lay still piled on one another, "We're not done here yet. We still have some loose ends to tie up...Spellbinder (although something tells me Velocity might have handled that already) and breaking her current control over the people of this city..."
"Don't worry Shadow Knight. Spellbinder must be taken care of already, because according to my long range scanners...the mobs have stopped running towards our area." Cyber-29 assured.
"...Okay, so we only have ONE loose end to tie up" Shadow Knight shrugged, looking down at the defeated and depowered Made-Men, "What do we do with them now?"
That was a good question.
But right now, at this time, no one had the answer.