I fly through the Fortress as quick as I can, following the signs on the wall to the hanger. It’s probably best if I go right from the bottom of the Fortress rather than the top through the conference room again. The double doors slide open, showing me the most impressive collection of vehicles I’ve ever seen. I can’t help but stop in awe for a second to admire the various cars, trucks, jeeps and even light airplanes. There are several motorbikes, some kinds that I’d never seen before, including a few without wheels, which I’m sure are the hover bikes that were mentioned by Roadblock earlier. Two of those hover bikes in the fleet are missing, I notice.

I hear the loud whistling of the wind and see that the large, hanger bay door has been left wide open, so I fly out of it and into the sky. The wind picks up into my cape, giving me a small shiver. I look around the underbelly of the Fortress, seeing the smoke still spewing out of where the four anti-gravity pylons on each corner once were. There’s something else that I can’t help noticing.

Roadblock and Hightower are not working on pylons. In fact, I go as far as to do a quick fly all around four corners of the Fortress. There’s no sign of either of them.

Get down to the streets and clear those people! I hear Humanity Man’s voice re-play in my head like a bad recording. Right, right. People. The little people that I’m supposed to watch out for. It bothers me a little that I have to remind myself of that.

Like someone jumping head first off a diving board, I stick my arms down towards the streets and fly as fast as my powers will let me. Fortunately, they’re being generous as I can see the taller buildings of St. Mignola very quickly, then the shorter buildings, and very quickly after, the details of all the streets.

Far below and in fact, directly below me, I see a small waft of smoke billowing out of the middle of the street. My intuition tells me the worse and my powers pick up the speed of my flight. I slow down as I near the ground and lightly plant my feet onto pavement. Out of respect for whatever accident that happened, I land a few feet away.

There are several cop cars already surrounding the scene. I can’t see much past the sea of onlookers, but they begin to part and allow me to get by.

“Hey look, who’s this guy?” a person in the crowd asks as I walk closer.

“He’s got a pretty funny looking mask on. Looks kinda like Switchblade,” another one asks.

“You idiot, Switchblade doesn’t work in St. Mignola!” someone shouts.

I finally get tired of it, “It’s okay, folks. I’m The Altruist. Just got hired on by the Shatterpack,” I say in my attempted, deep heroic voice. For extra flair, I pull out the invitation card that Susan gave me yesterday.

The crowd parts a little further to give me some more working room. Now this, I could definitely get used to, I proudly say to myself. With the crowd still murmuring about me, I step towards the smoking carnage. One of the police officers takes a step away from the yellow tape. He sticks an open hand out, telling me to stop.

“What’s going on here, officer?” I ask.

“Roadblock, sir.

“A roadblock? Looks more like a car accident,” I say, looking over his shoulder and seeing a badly smashed up car among the wreckage.

“Er, no,” he pauses with a heavy hear, “It’s Roadblock, sir.” The officer looks over his shoulder at the same wreckage, “He’s dead.”

“Wh-what?!” I put my hand on the officer’s shoulder, gently pushing by him. I flash my Shatterpack invitation card at him, hoping it’ll be enough.

I leap over the police tape and see Roadblock. Or what’s left of him. Most of what I can see is the wreckage of one of the Sky Fortress’ hover bikes turning Roadblock into a sandwich between it and the smashed up car. I turn my head from left to right, partly trying to shake the cobwebs of another death while being my first day on the job and also trying to find something, anything that could help me.

I see a woman in tears, sitting in the back of an ambulance with a bandage around her head. Another police officer is writing notes in his book while he tries to understand what she’s saying. I nod my head to the officer who stopped me, who nods back as I make my way towards the woman.

“Excuse me,” I politely ask either one of them, “What happened?”

The officer interviewing her excuses himself and takes a step towards me. The police in St. Mignola are so used to working with SPECs that nearly all of them will help out a hero, as long as they don’t get in the way of proper police investigations.

“She says she was just driving along when Roadblock and his bike fell onto her car. We don’t know much yet but judging from the impact, we’re pretty sure he fell quite a distance,” the officer explains to me, still looking over his shoulder to check on the woman.

“When did this happen?!” I try to calmly ask but I can’t help but yell a little.

“From what others are saying, it looks to be about five or ten minutes ago. We’re still putting the information together.” He nods towards the woman. “If you don’t mind?”

“Right,” I say, “Of course. Thanks for your help.”

“Don’t mention it,” the officer responds, going back to the panicked woman.

The crowd behind me suddenly gasps in both awe and horror. Before I turn around, I feel a low grumbling like a small tremor. Both the officer and the woman turn their heads upwards. I finally spin around to see Hightower stumbling from around corner. The cause of the tremor was due to his enormous size. He was using the roof of one building to balance himself. His other hand was busy covering his left eye, which seemed to be covered in blood. I can’t help but notice that his hardhat is missing from his head.

“It’s okay, everyone, it’s Hightower!” I say to the people, who are pointing and gawking.

I quickly fly to the top of the building that Hightower is slightly leaning on.

“I-is Roadblock okay?” he stammers.

He drops to one knee, sending tremors around the block. The sidewalk cracks and breaks under the sudden weight. I see police officers running from around the corner, following him and sending reports on their portable radios that the “SPEC has finally stopped”.

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, he’s okay,” I lie. The last thing this city needs right now is a panicked thirty foot tall superhero who might wreck the place in his grief.

“Good,” he nods with a groan, “W-we were attacked while trying to do repairs. This guy was, he was huge. Wore this big black hood.”

“The Weapon—” I whisper.

Hightower nods again.

“He hit Roadblock first, smashing right through the hover bike. Kyle tried to leap to my bike for support, but that’s when the Weapon came for me. I-I powered up by instinct when he kn-knocked me off my bike. Managed a rough landing in the park a few blocks down. I don’t think anyone was hurt.”

I hope not, giving your size, man. I think to myself.

“Heard an explosion and came running as fast---” he groans again, “as fast as I could.”

“Your eye, is it—?”

“Gone. He hit me so hard that he busted it. I don’t remember much after I got knocked off my bike. B-but you said Roadblock was okay?”

“Y-yeah,” I lie again, “Look, can you shrink back down and get some medical help? Tell the officers to clear the area. We don’t know if Arcana can keep hold of…”

It was at that moment that the people around me screamed in terror. I first heard a sound that wasn’t completely unlike the pelting of hail. But the hail sound was followed by the sound of ceramics being shattered; hundreds of them, in fact.

For all around us, there was a small rain of clay floor tiles that looked exactly like the kinds from the Sky Fortress’s conference room.