Squadrons Delta Major and Minor had already been deployed and were engaged in a widening sweep of the Red Light District when they were redirected toward the far north-east district of Halosburg. This lay beyond the immediate boundaries of Universe City, and was a good fifteen miles away. They were the closest troops to the coordinates given from the central command station back at the Securities building. There were a total of thirty guards between the Major and Minor squadrons, twenty in the former and ten in the latter.

By the time Squadrons Epsilon and Iota Major and Minor were activated (following the same distribution of guards and bringing the total to ninety) the coordinates had changed slightly. The exact position of Brittlesmith had been vague at first, as though the tracking signal were being diffused, but then there was movement and the polarity increased dramatically. The projected path led back into the city, which was odd. The guards at the front would be upon them within four minutes.

Twenty rover pods took the point, followed closely in the skies above by fifteen attack fighters. Farther back, assuming against logic that the insurgents somehow were able to break through the offensive barricade, ten heavy assault roamers - the equivalent of occupant tanks - barred further entry into the city. Each of the land-based vehicles was manned by two to three high guards, ninety guards total. There was no defense on Earth that could possibly withstand such a formidable onslaught. This was the most logical conclusion.

Perdendosi were the epitome of logic and intelligence. By their own definition they could be nothing else. Their plans were calculated and dictated by reason. Given the severity of the situation, Overguard Farewayth had responded appropriately, and possibly even overcompensated. But if so, she erred on the side of caution. There was no logistical reason for any more guards to be deployed.

And still one more attack fighter joined the fray -- it was manned by none other than Sinclair himself. An illogical choice of pilot, considering his rank, and an unnecessary addition of force, but still he would not be denied. He had commandeered the flyer, which was not yet fully armed, so he could join the expected onslaught. He was prone to taking the outcome of events beyond his control personally and the abduction of Brittlesmith had him acting true to form.

It galled him that any lowly human would lay hands on one of his people, especially one he would call friend. Farewayth knew there was no talking Sinclair out of his decision. If anyone could see to it Brittlesmith was returned, Sinclair could. He was now at the rear of the attack. Farewayth remained at the Securities complex, monitoring and directing everything, hopeful yet pensive.

"Lone vehicle coming inbound toward Universe City, heading south-west on William Penn Highway," crackled the voice over the carrier wave. "Moving at 92 miles-per-hour and increasing. Vector readings indicate the presence of Overguard Brittlesmith's tracking signal within a .008 percent probability."

It was him. He was being transported. Or was he?

"Confirm target with long range bio-sweep," commanded Farewayth. "Lock all weapons on target. Stand ready but do not fire until signaled."

"Do not fire. Affirmative."

Monitors in the command station loomed with distant, grainy images taken from above of an automobile moving directly toward the Perdendosi armada. It was now close enough to see them, and vice-versa, but it wasn't giving any hint of slowing down. If anything, it was accelerating. The lower corner of the screen flashed with numbers estimating its rate of speed. It was close to 100mph, all the more amazing considering the roads were again being doused with rain.

Invisible pulses emanated from the attack fighters, trained on the car barreling at the rover pods below. They scanned for Brittlesmith's specific bio-molecular material but were unable to penetrate the StarSteed's™ chassis. "Bio sweep reading inconclusive," responded the team leader.

"Get closer and try it again. All of you." demanded the overguard.

This time a cross-section of beams pummeled the unsuspecting car, which still raced directly at the oncoming horde, unafraid. Its speed increased and the on-screen numbers advanced. It crossed the 100mph mark and kept going, battering rainwater to mist upon impact.

The clouds above gathered and growled.

"Inconclusive," reported the team leader a second time.

"Again!" Farewayth stared at the obstinate speck on her giant screen, so small and non-threatening yet as defiant as David against Goliath. She wanted to peel back the lid herself and see who drove this vehicle. Surely this human (if it was a human) was mad. "Make a full pass; do the sweep from on top of the vehicle if you have to. I want confirmation!"

The fighters in the lead pushed off from the rest and zoomed over the StarSteed™, leaving themselves vulnerable to possible attack from the enemy. But they had to get the most accurate reading before they launched the attack, even if it meant their lives, which were nothing compared to Brittlesmith's.

There was a slight pause. The car continued onward, doing nothing to the fighters above. But now it was within striking distance of the lead rovers. If they were going to bombard the insurgents, it would have to be now. Otherwise, if Brittlesmith were aboard, they had seconds to veer out of the way and allow the abductors to pass. The car was also getting too close to the rover-pods for the attack fighters to lay down cover fire. They waited for an answer from the team leader.

The crawl reached 105mph. A clap of thunder boomed.

"Bio sweep negative," came the results. "Overguard Brittlesmith is not aboard the vehicle." The last readings had found their mark and shown only two humans in the car. More precise details were to come but the guards heard all they needed to know. The humans were clever in finding the tracking device, and were brutal in removing it. Now they'd pay for their insolence.

Farewayth said, "Engage weapons. Fire at will," and the first missiles flew.

Then at 11:40pm, air ionized between the opposing forces and the most spectacular emerald lightning bolt broke free from the heavens.

THE SECONDARIES ENTERED the Chamber Hall at 11:33pm to find it unattended yet in a heightened state of activity. They had made it there in record time, completely undetected by occupant or domestic policing. Now they stepped gingerly through darkened rooms and pathways, guided only by the drone of the music. If it weren't such a sacred place, they would have cut and run.

"Hello?" called the woman with a faint laugh. The only lights came from opposite corners across the inner sanctum of the Hall. "Ven? Yoo-hoo?"

The man called to fscked. "Hey baby -- we playing hide-and-seek? Or is it tag? Or maybe Duck-Duck-Goose?"

Their words echoed off the steel-plating of the walls, and they continued to call out, more to each other than anyone else. They had a way of amusing themselves. An ominous red glow came from one end of the room, and a blue glow came from the other. The four round monitors that housed the Lords' likenesses were empty and silent. There was the steady pulse of machinery at work from the vicinity of the red glow, so they decided to check it out. Cautiously. They had never been this far into the core of the Hall.

The woman swayed for just a second while stepping over some scattered cords and he reached to steady her. Then his hands reached a little too far south of her petite form while doing so and she slapped them away.

"Hey! Just watch it there, pal!" she warned, exasperated. They went through this routine a lot.

"I'm just trying to be helpful," said the man, trying his best to summon the halo above his head. He wasn't even able to muster a flicker. They walked on.

At the window of the studio the two leaned over and peered inside. Brittlesmith was still unconscious on the bed. He was a strange sight, obviously not human, but still not too far removed. His amputated finger had already begun to grow back. In days past it would have been nearly healed, but now it took much longer. The Perdendosi no longer had the physical resources they used to. They hoped to rectify that.

"Whoa." said the man in a hushed voice. "That's creepy."

"Who the Hell is that?" asked the woman, not expecting an answer from her companion.

((He's one of the Perdendosi high guard)), said the Lords, startling the duo. ((And he's the reason Ven is gone.)) The windows to the Chamber once again held the images of the maestros, which bubbled from Lord to Lord as before.

"Where'd he go?" asked the man, approaching them. He was reverent but still full of swagger.

At Ven's workstation, the ever-flickering, ever-bickering images of the Children were displaced by an intercepted transmission from the air above William Penn Highway. A lone advancing speck was facing down a battalion. Suddenly the speck was lifted from the wall, growing in size and made multi-dimensional until it was positioned in the air in front of the duo. They were allowed to glimpse inside it and see a determined fscked, teeth gritted and knuckles locked on the steering wheel. Ven remained unfazed, even though by all appearances they didn't have a prayer in Hell of getting out of the situation.

The woman immediately recognized the location and the two bolted for the door.

((Wait. This is what you were summoned for.))

The blue glow intensified and strobed. They both hustled to the other side of the Hall and saw the infocomm still revolving on its turntable.

((We need to be able to read the data on this. Take it to one of the other Children to be translated and decoded.))

The man smiled with enough wattage to brighten the room. It was infectious enough that his companion did so too. "I know just the gal," he said and scooped up the comm.

Now they were allowed to leave. They departed the structure and ran to her car; it was a modified 1968 Chevelle, navy blue with red trim. Even in the rain and dark of night, it shone brilliantly. It was the woman's pride-and-joy. The man vainly covered his head with his jacket, clutching the infocomm tightly as he opened the passenger's side door. The woman slid into the driver's seat and was about to key the ignition when she and her friend felt a familiar tingling. It vibrated the air and ground around them for just a second then was cast off, as though they had just avoided an electric shock. They had.

Their attentions were reflexively yanked to the clouds several miles south-west, in the direction they would soon be headed. Whatever it was that just surrounded them had leaped the miles and cracked open the sky above the distant road with a tremendous electric green flare of lightning. It was more fierce and powerful than anything they'd experienced before - with the sole exception of the Acid Bath. It was composed of the same energy, which was why it felt so familiar.

Through the underbelly of the car, they could feel another set of vibrations emanating from beneath the Chamber grounds. The woman gunned the engine and took off before it could build, peeling out into the falling rain.

FSCKED KNEW EXACTLY what she was doing. She didn't want to lead the Perdendosi out into the middle of nowhere; they needed deep cover, the kind that only a cityscape could provide. It would be their only chance of evading the guard.

It wasn't until the attack fighters had flown over and past them that she realized her gambit was paying off. The occupants were unsure if they actually had Brittlesmith in the car or not, so they might let them pass. It was possible she and Ven might be able to make it into the city or closer to it, without a shot being fired.

And then a shot was fired. So much for that possibility.

In far less time than any normal human would need to react, fscked swerved the wheel hard to the left, crossing the passing lane completely. It didn't matter; there were no other civilian cars on the road that she could see. The missile missed her car by only a few feet, blasting a crater into the road and utterly confounding the shooter. Other shots were fired by the attack fighters in the seconds before the hover pods were too close to allow them to continue. Fscked again managed to avoid being hit, dodging each strike as though there were marks on the ground guiding her. This all happened within the space of seconds.

The Children's pulses soared and adrenaline flowed, and the interior of the car was lit by the glow of their eyes. They weren't afraid to face the enemy, but they knew the odds didn't look good. fscked threw Brittlesmith's finger out the window, defeating any enemy weapons navigation systems that might hone in on it. Then their skin suddenly tingled in a vaguely familiar way.

There was a buzz in the air, just for an instant, and green lightning exploded from the sky to the ground, incinerating both an attack ship and a hover pod in one strike. A majestic thunderclap followed immediately, and Ven and fscked didn't even need to cast their beaming eyes heavenward to know what was there. They could feel it. The thunder faded into what sounded like...laughter.

The faces of Praga Khan, Deb, Oliver and Nikkie were composed of dark stormclouds roiling above Universe City. There was music in the storm - there was music in everything - and there was Acid in the music. Their Children could feel their rhythm and their souls and the Lords of Acid were about to take control.

Lightning blazed through the sky and struck the ground again and again, flinging hover pods and downing fighters at each turn. The attack flyers banked out of the way and gave a wide berth to the highway. They raced past the immediate battlezone and were ordered to reform from the rear, several miles distant. The only fighter that didn't continue on was Sinclair's. He remained close enough to follow the action, even with Farewayth shouting orders into his earpiece for him to fall back.

fscked barreled through the path that the Lords were clearing for her Steed. The car's materials were dense, but dents and nicks were being impressed in the surface. It would hold though, she was sure of that. She still had to put it to the real test of its worth, which remained ahead two miles or so.

"Reach under your seat!" fscked yelled to Ven. "There's something there I need!"

He fumbled for a moment. "What am I looking for?" asked Ven, loudly.

"You'll know when you've got it!" she responded.

His fingers stroked the smooth grip of something, and he pulled it from its hiding place. It was a Giordano 100-charge laser gun, alien-looking but made on Earth. Originally sub-contracted from a domestic manufacturer, it had initially been produced for the Perdendosi, but found unsuitable for a host of reasons. Chiefly, the discharge level was too loud for their tastes and production had been halted - but not before a few found their way onto the black market. Their decibel level didn't bother Member 53; she thought it was a clever little device.

Ven handed it off to her and she aimed it at the remaining oncoming hover pods. About two-thirds of them were behind her and had either been destroyed or swerved in a 180 to pursue the Steed. She held the laser gun out the window, rain water splashing her face and sizzling against her eyes, and fired into the oncoming pods. It was difficult to shoot and steer at the same time, but she still did it. Her shots weren't especially accurate, but they didn't need to be. She was continuing to clear a path to the Bethedger Bridge, and anything she didn't blow off the road, the Lords did.

Weaving left and right and left again, and taking full advantage of the absence of traffic, fscked artfully dodged the remaining hover pods and their missiles. The Lords had thinned the Perdendosi ranks considerably and intermittent strikes still covered their Children's tails. A trail of wreckage was strewn across the highway in their wake, and the storm began to taper off. Fscked and Ven would soon be back on their own.

Hover pods continued to fire at the escaping Steed. Now it was Ven's turn to roll down his window and produce a trick from up his sleeve - or in this case, his pockets. He reached in and pulled out one of the orbs that the Lords had given to him before they'd departed the Hall. He'd understood the mechanics within seconds. It was simple.

He pushed a button on the top: that was the timer. He spun and held another button while aiming it: there was an audible ping when the orb recognized its target. He pushed another button on the side: that activated it. Then he released it from his hand and it produced gyro-wings and spun through the air, streaking straightaway toward the hover pod in the middle of the road.

The result went as expected. The majority of the hover pods were now decommissioned. Loudly.

"Nice work," complimented fscked.

"Yeah, well I'm just trying to narrow the gap in our scores," said Ven.

She allowed herself a smile, but never took her eyes off the road. "Yeah, but I still got you beat!"

The hover cars that still followed were now too far behind to be a threat. Above, Sinclair had watched the entire scene unfold, and was beside himself with fury that the humans were getting away. Of course, they didn't know they were only racing toward the next wave of opposition. If he only had any missiles left, he thought, he'd have struck them down right then. For the moment though, all he could do was watch.

At this time, fscked and Ven did notice the complete absence of attack fighters giving chase. The Steed never slowed down, but this was strange, like the calm before another storm. Just ahead was the Bethedger Bridge, and just beyond that lay the Liberty Tubes which spilled out into a stunning view of Universe City. Even from here, you could see the sky-rises shining like the cloud-obscured stars.

But below it, on the opposite side of the bridge was another mini-fleet of guards, these manning heavy assault roamers. They were like tanks, but much faster and more mobile. The guards steadied their nerves for the approach of the insurgents. They had seen the broadcast of what just took place farther out of town.

"Ven," began fscked, throwing her empty gun into the back seat, "I need a hole. There!"

She pointed toward the railing on the right side of the bride, maybe four-hundred feet away. Her car was about to begin crossing the bridge in seconds. This group of guards would not let them get as close as the first had before opening fire, and there was no more rain falling, meaning they couldn't expect another assist.

Ven produced a second orb, prepped it as he did before and let it fly. It whisked ahead, too small a target for the enemy to lock onto, and blew a fiery hole into the railing. By the time the smoke cleared, the car was close enough to be a threat.

"Open fire!" commanded Farewayth. Sinclair watched, awaiting the most satisfying of retributions.

The missiles streaked forward yet again - and fscked swerved to avoid them. And she used this momentum to carry the car through the hole Ven had created. Before the Perdendosi's spellbound eyes, the Terrans surrendered the bridge and plummeted toward the water below.

fscked was about to find out if the money she'd invested in her submersible car was well spent. It wasn't until they were halfway down and Ven was screaming at her that she remembered: she'd never told him her car could go underwater.

Oh well.