The Defender

Defense

I really don't mind being the "little brother" of the group. Even though all of them are so much younger than me (except maybe Martyr), they treat me like a sibling. If only they knew I was 218. But I'm not going to tell them for a while. It's just getting good.

Thunder and I land on the top of the helecarrier, Thunder stopping the flow of electricity going through his body and I turning back into my normal self. I shake my hair out, blackbird feathers falling everywhere. For some reason, I always get feathers in my hair after I change. It's weird.

We walk around the many hallways of the flying ship, chatting about whatever comes to mind. There hasn't really been any criminal activity lately. I'm guessing because no supervillain wants to go up against the son or daughter of another supervillain. There have been some minor things that have come about, but we've pretty much been idle. We've tried sneaking into the forbidden wing, but were greeted happily with rubber bullets.

"Hi!" Paralysis calls, waving to us. We walk over to her.

"What's up, Para?" Thunder asks.

"A new crime wave," she replies. "And this one's not minor."

"Finally!" I yell, throwing my hands in the air. "We finally have a good workout."

"Follow me and you'll see who it is," she whispers. She darts away like a shadow, leaving us to follow her. We track her shadow trail down to her room, where's there's a laptop with a bunch of blurry pictures on it.

"What are those?" Thunder asks, intrigued by a picture of a scarlet blur intermixed with green.

"They call themselves the Wild Things," Paralysis says, double-clicking a picture and making it larger. I sit cross-legged next to her and look at it. It's a black claw print with a camouflage circle around it. It's spray painted onto a wall. "This is their emblem."

"What kinds of crime have they done?" Thunder asks.

"Stealing. And lots of it. They've taken lots of bio-med components and blueprints of artificial organs, mostly hearts and lungs." I scroll through the pictures, looking for certain things that may confirm my suspicions. I can hear Paralysis and Thunderclap getting into an argument behind me, but I ignore them. Finally I have enough evidence to validity my suspicions.

"They're all animals," I blurt out. Paralysis and Thunder stop arguing and look at me.

"What?" Paralysis asks.

"All of the criminals look somewhat like animals," I reply. "Look." They sit next to me as I bring up a picture of an orange blur. I point to a squiggly line sticking out behind it. "This could be a tail of a cat of some sort." I scroll a few pictures over, to where a hulking creature with white eyes stares back at us. "This I know is a werewolf. It's obviously got fur, and you can see a hint of fangs." I scroll a few more over to the scarlet and green one. "This one has a long, sleek tail, maybe a lizard's. And its pupils are vertical. Definitely a reptile of some kind."

"Is that why they're called the Wild Things?" Thunder asks.

"Yeah," I reply.

"Good observations," Paralysis compliments.

"Thank you," I reply, going back to the main screen.

"So...what are we going to do?" Thunder asks.

"We're going on a hunt tonight," I reply. "So charge up. We've got an animal to catch."