The deviant who called himself Shadowstalker was painting again.

  The longing rose up within him, beating through his veins and twisting his nerve endings. He wielded the paintbrush like it was a weapon and stabbed the canvas, attacking, hacking and slicing like he did to Roughhouse of the Lightbringers. His hands, rough where they were calloused, but lith and strong, were creating a new picture of his mind.

  He was painting in shades of red and white and black and gold, the paint spilling out of the tube like blood spilling from a wound. In the fantastical worlds of his paintings, he saw the reflections of his own mind, his deepest desires. He did not know why this happened, and perhaps he was just imagining it, but when he painted, it was how he brought what was inside of him to the outside.

  His studio was off to the right wing of his dormitory. The room was a mess, he thought guilty, with splatters of paint on the wall and shredded canvas lying in heaps in the corners. Empty coffee mugs lingered around the floor and on his desk, leaving small stained circles beneath where they stood. Grandmaster described his paintings as his own orchestra: every movement and color was so precise, like a flowing song, as if he painted a musical piece you could see instead of hear.

  Arkady painted and painted and painted.

  There was the tundra of his home Khabarovsk in Russia. The moonlight of the sliver of the clouded crescent shone down on the frozen city.

  There were two rivers flowing in the opposite direction, the currents rippling and correcting itself endlessly, but teeming with life as the two connected.

  There was a self-portrait hanging on the wall. His chest had been sliced open, and he was holding his own heart in his hands.

  Shadowstalker was aware that he was sweating, his dark curls sticking to his forehead as he tasted the salt and copper tang of blood in his mouth. Arkady knew that he should not be isolating himself here, painting and painting like he had been born in a roiling ring of blood and fire. He knew what he was supposed to be doing after a mission like their one in New York City: minding his teammates and friends, compiling stats, checking their deviant tracker called Reppertum, wrapping his open wounds, being around the team that he had grown to love and call his family.

  He should be with the Grandmaster, he knew. But Grandmaster was not here: she had disappeared, taken some time to be alone. She had probably isolated herself like he did, lost in the ways of reality that none of them except her could understand, going over all of the haunting things she had been confronted with by Phoenix.

  He hated seeing her like that, so shattered and traumatized, after their encounter with the new cosmic being and the Lightbringers. All Shadowstalker wanted to do was comfort her, hold her in his arms and destroy all her concerns and regrets and traumas. He wanted to erase her pain like the snap of a finger and be there for her, like she was always there for him.

  They were not defined by mundane, banal terms like “boyfriend” and “girlfriend.” It was more like a marriage, what was between them–the lines had always been blurred for them. What was between them was something there were no words for in human English or Russian. It was more like the term heniochoi kai parabatai, where they would, according to Plutarch’s Life of Pelopidas and Plato’s Symposium, soldiers in said “army of lovers” would fight more fiercely–“willing to rush into danger for the relief of one another.” Like in that book series Grandmaster like called Shadowhunters, Arkady mused.

  He was meant to want Grandmaster’s happiness more than his own, and he did. He did. But that happiness could not be found with him, and that thought made him feel as though he were being stabbed to death from the inside out.

  Shadowstalker hissed out a breath and wiped the sweat from his brow. He fumbled for his gold pain, because the longing was welling up in him like the tide at noon, pouring into the blood in his veins like the streams he had just painted. Only painting would take it away, make it all go away. And he couldn’t paint her without gold. He popped open the cap of the tube and–

  Legionnaires, together!

  Shadowstalker drew in a breath this time. It was the ancient, arcane presence of the deviant messiah, of the cosmic entity in this mortal coil, speaking to him through the structures of his psyche and of reality itself. He may have been imagining it–he was probably imagining it–but he could have sworn he felt a gentle pressure over his hand where it rested on the easel.

  The light was light, but as sure as a promise.

  Shadowstalker stood as he stretched. He would have to leave his paintings here to dry overnight and come back to claim it later.

  Later, then. Later he would come back to claim it.

  …

  Ash Altieur, also known as the deviant with the name Gauntlet, and his chérie Riven were both on the roof of the mansion. Riven’s hair was a wind-tousled riot of white and golden-brown curls that spilled past the middle of her back, like coffee and cream. She brushed the errant strands from her face, her emerald-green eyes bright and reveling in their last moments of privacy before their next mission together.

  “Come on, Ash. We’ve gotta go.” Her honeyed voice was thick with the sounds of moonlight and magnolias, but this southern belle was a steel magnolia, raised by the enigmatic shapechanger Camellia Raze–Divinity–and, despite her youth, was a battle on both sides of the angels for the rest of this lifetime and the next one.

  “Oh?” he drawled nonchalantly. His own voice was thick with a Cajun accent, reminiscent of the sounds of hot bayou nights, sticky summers, and the celebration of Mardi Gras. Like Riven, Gauntlet had done questionable things, his past shrouded in mystery and intrigue. He had been born on the streets of La Nouvelle-Orléans and adopted into the guild of thieves known as Eventide, and he was fiercely proud of his Cajun heritage as a result.

  “We’re needed. Grandmaster called a meetin’.” Riven offered him a glove-clad hand. Despite not needing any assistance to stand, Gauntlet wasn’t about to refuse that. He clasped her hand and let her pull him to his feet. Her grip was strong and firm, and she held on for a moment longer than necessary than most people would, Gauntlet noticed.

  “Why, thank you, chére,” he said, giving her a sweeping bow that would have caused a less agile person to tumble off the roof. “Say I race you dere to de ready room.” He smirked. widely, delivering the challenge with aplomb.

  “See ya there, sugah.” Riven grinned back at him and flew ahead, almost disappearing from sight, and Gauntlet smirked again before diving back into the mansion. The challenge was on.

  Riven may have been able to fly to the front door, but Gauntlet could simply use his natural agility and his expert tracking skills to overtake her. He chased past her to an empty corridor, and cut through the secret paths of the mansion, which he knew by heart. He saw Riven right up ahead and he sneaked up behind her on thieves’ feet.

  Before she could fly ahead, before she could even notice him, he wrapped his arms carefully around her waist and pulled her against him, inhaling her sweet scent of honey and magnolia blossoms, inhaling as deep as his own roots.

  Ash had been raised by Eventide, a thieves’ organization based in New Orleans, Louisiana. He had never met his biological parents. He had been abandoned on the streets of the French Quarter, and had been found by some members of Eventide, crying in an alleyway, and the strange thing was, he had been swathed with jewelry. Instead of stealing the valuables and leaving him for dead, Ash had been taken in as one of them and grew up in a street gang before being adopted by the patriarch of the thieves’ guild.

  His path was not one filled with light and radiance. He had learned how to pick pockets and handle a switchblade before his tenth birthday. He had lived his life taking nothing for granted, from his next breath to his next meal. The man best known as Gauntlet had been in the shadows his whole life, and that was where apparently you had to be to strike at the ones who deserved it the most.

  And when his dark path led him to becoming a secret agent for the vile Natural Selection, that was when his life changed for the worst. He would never be normal again. Everything he had tried to avoid came crashing down on him at once. He was so scared…

  In his dreams, he could still hear their screams, the cries for mercy. The slick wetness of blades passing through flesh, the open gunfire that rang off the cave walls. He had no choice, but it was still his fault…all those people were dead because of him. The Unseen Massacre. He had tried to save them, to stop the slaughter, but only managed to save that one girl, Anna…

  I got you, he had said to her, holding her close as she sobbed and reached out with small hands for her mother. I got you, petite.

  “I got you,” Gauntlet whispered to Riven, and he could feel the chills shooting up her spine. He leaned into her, feeling tingles radiate through his body at her touch, but sooner than he had realized, she had flipped around in their embrace and wrapped her arms around his shoulders.

  Her honeyed voice was thick with desire. “No. Ah’ve got you, Ash.”

  “Oui,” he agreed in a single breath. “You always do, chére.”

  Riven kicked her feet off the ground and bent her knees, rocking herself in his embrace as he held her closer to him. She was scintillating like stardust, and was tempted to kiss him with her head tilted back, her lips parted, her eyes half-closed. Her heartbeat thundered in her chest and her breath hitched in her throat when she realized he was reciprocating the feeling.

  That made Riven snap back to reality.

  What is the matter with you, girl?! Riven’s mind screamed at her. She couldn’t touch him. If she tried to kiss Gauntlet, he would be knocked unconscious, perhaps comatose. And if she held on long enough, she would kill him–all with a press of her lips to his.

  It all came down to that one fact–no matter how much angst she experienced, no matter how much she cried, no matter how much she rationalized with herself, she could never touch another human being.

  That was Riven’s deviant gift–or her curse. The uncontrollable absorption of energy from others: any man, woman or children through physical contact, like the touch of a vampire. With a single touch of her bare skin to theirs, she automatically absorbed their memories and their skills, whether they be as simple as bricklaying or as complicated as a mountain-level superpower, and if she touched them long enough, could take possession of their minds and their bodies–though that was a skill she rarely used. The absorption was an unconscious action over which she had absolutely no control, and one that manifested almost ten years ago, when she was twelve years old, when she was nearly assaulted by another boy in her hometown of Danielson, Mississippi.

  It was an accident, and she did not mean to do it, but as the result, Riven had been banished from her community, scorned even by the people who had been her closest family members and friends. The activation of her powers during what should have been an innocent moment turned into sexual trauma–and the unrelenting feeling of shame that resulted from it–left deep emotional scars and insecurities on the young woman.

  “We–we–we oughta go,” Riven stuttered, pulling herself back to reality and away from Gauntlet.

  The burning emotion in Gauntlet’s red-on-gold eyes, shining like the sunset, pleaded with her, for a moment, Riven could almost trick herself into believing that she could stay in Ash’s embrace.

  But that wouldn’t do either of them any good, she knew. There was no escaping this. She had fallen for him the moment she met him, and her heart was going to break no matter what choices she made. Either she left him so he could be free to pursue other women, or he would leave her when he got tired of the novelty of being with the “untouchable woman.”

  Gauntlet took a step away and ran a hand through his hair as Riven fled down the hall. That display was typical of his interactions with the soul stealer. Without knowing it, and without her intention, they concurred with the dark thoughts that he could not silence.

  He would never be enough for Riven, no matter how hard he atoned for his sins, and he would never be enough for the Star Legion. One day, they would all know the truth. Until then, he couldn’t lose what he had now. He couldn’t lose Riven.

  Sometimes, it felt like only Riven and Grandma?tre saw the possibility for good in him. When he was with Riven, he believed he could be a better man. But she didn’t want to be with him, because of reasons he could not fathom. It couldn’t have been about the touch, because he didn’t care about that. He didn’t care if he could touch her or not.

  But why did a dark presentiment sink into him like crystal at the thought?

  He could taste ash on his tongue as he went out in search of Riven.

  …

  Riven of a thousand spirits, Riven of a thousand minds, Riven of the Star Legion, was terrified.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  She felt ravaged by the memory of herself in Gauntlet’s embrace–she had been ruined, turned around and shaking, hurting and hurting so much. Heartbreak was imminent for both of them, and it was all her fault.

  When she imagined Gauntlet, she pictured his smile and his heart. He was the kind of person whose body temperature always ran warm because he was kind all the way through the inside, even though he hid it under a face of cockiness and swagger. In that moment, his strong arms had been wrapped around her lithe, muscular body, and for the briefest second, she allowed herself to imagine what might have been in another world, another life, if she were ordinary like she sometimes yearned to be–or at least for human touch.

  He would kiss her, but she would initiate the kiss. It would take him by surprise, but Gauntlet would quickly return it with even greater fervor. And who knew where things might go from there…

  A sudden crimson flush stained her cheeks at the thought. Get it together, gal, Riven scolded herself. What in the world had she been contemplating? The stuff of dreams–impossible dreams–that would be better off as nonexistent.

  Gauntlet should be with a woman who would be able to touch him. That thought broke her heart, but she knew that she should release him. Let him go. Set him free. Hand him over to a woman that could give him everything he wanted. Everything he deserved.

  “Riven.”

  Gauntlet’s rich, husky voice, his Cajun patrios marking every word with his New Orleans heritage, sent tremors coursing through Riven’s body like a silent earthquake. He seemed to materialize out of the shadows of the hallway outside of the ready room, his tall sinewy frame exuding a confidence that suggested he knew how good he looked. His shaggy auburn hair fell over his handsome, angular face that was dotted with stubble. As he approached, she caught his scent–a mixture of whiskey, laundry soap, and cloves.

  Closing her eyes, Riven turned away, creating a large space between them. She moved to a window at the end of the hallway and rested her head against the cool glass. She opened her eyes and caught Gauntlet’s reflection in the window pane. The burning red in his eyes pleaded with him, begging her to let him close.

  She could almost pretend he was holding her once again, like he had done just brief moments away. But she oughtn’t let him keep risking his heart. The sooner he moved on, the sooner his heart would heal. Perhaps it was time to face the facts.

  “You should be with a woman who could touch her,” she said softly. Their relationship was hesitant–if nascent–but they were trying to be a couple. She loved the moonlit walks, the hugs, the words of love. But she would not be mated to him. He always made her feel so special.

  Gauntlet looked like he wanted to say something, but Riven touched a gloved finger to his lips. “Lemme finish, Cajun. Really. Ah gotta say all this. You’re bein’ so good to me all this time, but this ain’t fair to you. It ain’t right to keep you from…from sex. You’re still human and have needs, and Ah have no way of meetin’ ‘em.”

  “Chére, we discuss dis before. We talked ‘bout it before we got together. We decided to try.”

  “We did try and Ah’m glad we did,” Riven responded.

  “We knew it wouldn’t be easy,” Gauntlet reminded her.

  “And it ain’t. But me, Ah’m used to not havin’ sex. You ain’t.” She sighed. “Maybe, Ash, we’re just meant to be good friends. Best friends. Ah’ll always love you and Ah know you’ll always love me. But we gotta let the relationship thing go. We ain’t never gonna be Thomas and Sienna and no use tryin’.”

  When Gauntlet spoke next, his voice was warm and homey and sent a shiver of want down through her body. “I know dat one kiss from you, flesh-to-flesh, might give me some serious hurtin’–but I’m willin’ t’ take de risk for you.” Riven was keenly aware of just how close his body was to her, as she felt her chest rise with her inhale and skin against his. Their lips were just inches apart. “Are you willin’ t’ do de same for me?”

  Riven flinched and pressed a gloved hand on her lips. “No…” she whispered.

  “What is it–”

  “Ah–Ah can’t–Ah want to, but Ah can’t. Ah’m so afraid–Ah’m so afraid Ah might hurt you like Ah did to Daniel, when Ah was little–and kissed him…it was the first and last time Ah kissed someone out of passion–and Ah’ll hurt you–if Ah hurt you–Ah know–Ah just know–Ah would want to die.”

  “Den we don’t kiss, Riv. Simple as dat. Maybe dat’s just fine right now for you an’ me. Maybe we both have t’ learn dere’s more t’love dan just de physical. Let me wipe dose tears from your eyes, belle. “ He gently wiped away her tears with his gloved hands. “Maybe dis will work even better in de long run, neh? Maybe we’ll both end up learnin’ what love really means. An’ I can’t think ‘bout anyone else I’d rather try to learn wit’, Riven.”

  …

  The main conference room in the Star Legion’s headquarters beneath the Academy for the Empowered was fully occupied, though the total number of occupants were few, considering the size of the estate.

  Video monitors in the walls projected global hotspots of human/deviant activity, and various other tracking systems of reactionary deviants and fanatic humans. Grandmaster paced back and forth, studying them intently as the others waited for the Teacher to come back from…wherever he was, all in different mental states.

  Tempest’s arms were folded across her chest, her startling blue eyes narrowed in feline-like slits against her pale, milky-white skin and her ink-black hair. With her white leather bikini suit and cape covering her back and fastened to her arm with gold bracelets, she was given the look of some exquisite, dangerous flower.

  Jameson “Jamie” Edgerton–the deviant known as Cryo–sat still at the marble table laced with steel in the center of the room, rapid-fire-drumming with the fingers on both of his fingers. Although he preferred to encompass his body in a spiky, organic-ice form, he was in his mortal form now, with spiky brown hair and pale skin. He was wearing a white uniform with light blue around the collar and down the outside of his arms and legs. From time to time, he would sigh or mutter to himself. Grandmaster could not help but smile as she watched him in the corner of her eyes. For Jamie, this behavior was amazingly restrained.

  Sienna Flynn, also known as Astra, was another story entirely. Astra bounded from her chair to the outer edge of the self-proclaimed “ready room,” checking her cell phone for updates from an assortment of networks and communication channels. She was wearing her blue bodysuit with a red cloak and emblem of wings on her chest. The circlet nestled in her golden hair glowed slightly, indicating that she was using her powers of telepathy, possibly to communicate with the missing Teacher.

  “Where is he?” Riven asked, looking around in mild confusion. The leather jacket she wore over her gold-and-green bodysuit gave her a faint resemblance to a fighter pilot: young, cocky, and restless. That first part was right. But Riven didn’t need a plane–or a bay full of bombs–to do as much damage as an aircraft. She could fly, she could hit, and she had a short fuse.

  Her Cajun was the opposite, at least on the surface. Ash Altieur–Gauntlet–leaned against the wall behind Riven, making standard playing cards appear and disappear between his fingers in a way that an ordinary person might fidget with a pencil. The long silver trench coat that had its own stories to tell concealed his costume–a red armor that covered his chest with blue pants and silver boots and gloves, with red gauntlets on his wrist.

  “Take it easy, Riv. I’m sure the Teach has a good reason for being late–and is about to tell it to us–hopefully,” Elizabeth “Betta” Wei–the deviant Phantasma–said. The dark-haired girl with mixed heritage of an Asian father and Spanish mother was the youngest of all Legionnaires at the age of fifteen. As all of them, she wore her costume: a mask that covered her mouth and gold-and-blue armor with a star on the chest and sheaths on the back for her katanas.

  Arkady Chernovik–Shadowstalker–unfolded out of the shadows in the dark corners of the room and stood next to Grandmaster, unable to resist smiling at her. She grinned back at him, and that grin widened when she noticed his cheeks flushing pink.

  “Yes,” Shadowstalker agreed. He reached for the intercom switch on the wall and snapped it on. “Time is wasting, Teacher,” he said without preamble.

  “I’ll be there in a moment,” the Teacher’s voice said back, filtering in through the room through the speaker, and Shadowstalker looked back at Grandmaster and her second-in-command, Sparks, with an apologetic shrug.

  “I know our team is transitioning into a democracy,” he said, “but at certain times, there are certain–how do you say–imperatives of logic that must be addressed.”

  When the doors hissed open and allowed the Teacher entry, Grandmaster could not have been more relieved.

  “Finally!” Riven exclaimed, and they all took their seats at the table in the center of the room. Grandmaster felt Morgrant’s gaze fall on her, and she straightened beneath it, then moved on to each of the Legionnaires.

  “We have an important task ahead of us, Star Legion,” Grandmaster said, standing up.

  Just one thing, Grandmaster, Sparks interrupted. The Teacher has a watchtower in outer space. Why don’t we move up there, along with the Transcendents and the other superhero teams of the world?

  Beside her, Grandmaster could feel Shadowstalker tense, and Grandmaster replied, “As new leader of the Star Legion, it was my call to move here, Thomas, instead of the watchtower. You’ve heard the phrase ‘don’t put all your eggs in one basket?’ I’m not crazy about the world’s most powerful heroes all headquartered in the same place. Talk about a ripe target. Besides, we can do so much more from here, on Earth. We don’t have a higher perspective on things; we see them as they are.”

  “Listen, Maggie, there are a few people in the Transcendents and the other teams who aren’t happy about this decision. A few of the Legionnaires too, if I’m being honest,” the Teacher murmured to her.

  “Well, it’s a good thing I’m not leading the Star Legon to be popular,” Grandmaster replied.

  Sure, but it wouldn’t hurt to work a little on team morale, Sparks said.

  “Which is what you would both do if you were team leader, would you?” Grandmaster said, anger inside. She had been broken to physical pieces in front of an entire crowd; her friends had seen her drugged and dancing; she had been raped and helpless by the most powerful deviant in the world. But one thing she would not stand for was having her authority undermined.

  “Except you did step down and make me team leader, Teacher, correct?” she continued. “And you, Sparks, it’s duly noted.” She locked eyes with them both for a long moment.

  “Yes, yes, of course, Grandmaster. Your decision, your call,” the Teacher said.

  “Good. Now that that’s settled, I want all of you to see a little part of what I’ve learned. Betta, if you could get the lights?”

  Phantasma moved to dim the lights and in a moment, all ten Legionnaires watched a replay of proceedings from the major news networks from the video projectors on the walls. Reporters erupted with a panicked meltdown of coverage about the tangible entities of psionic force that were opening up and stealing away deviants and mutates. Then the news shifted to the Phoenix, the Phoenix sitting atop mountains of rubble, melting them away to nothing; the Phoenix walking through a field of blood-soaked earth and bodies littered with robots; the Phoenix destroying nuclear arsenals.

  “We all know how this ends,” Grandmaster said when the projections disappeared and moved to bring on the lights. “Normally, if Phoenix were harmless, genuinely doing good for the world, then I would urge them to leave this alone. But we have seen evidence to the contrary that Aftab Ferrara, also known as the Phoenix, is slowly going mad from the power of the cosmic entity known as the Fire Source.”

  “The Fire Source,” Phantasma repeated. “You mean the firebird that destroyed a planetary system?”

  “Yes. Four million people on two planets, all annihilated. Most of them died peacefully in their sleep…but the rest were burned alive,” Grandmaster said. “I…made a choice to save a planet from a fate similar to the B’Kuns, and the Fire Source was released from the Black Hole Prison. Part of this is my fault, and in order to make up for it, we have to stop the Phoenix–stop the Fire Source–before it does any damage.”

  But Phoenix is doing good in the world so far. Will we be any better than him if we choose to attack first?

  “That is not what we are going to do, Thomas,” Grandmaster fired back, a bite in her voice. “But in our line of work, there is no such thing as coincidence–and the fact that several mutates and deviants have gone missing, starting around the time Phoenix got the Fire Source? I can’t help but see a connection between the two.”

  “I agree,” Tempest said immediately, nodding at Grandmaster. “Didn’t a human once say ‘power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely?’ And what is the Fire Source if nothing but the spark of creation itself, an endless well of energy? This power will corrupt Phoenix, and it is not out of the question to think that he is taking off several other high-powered players from the board.”

  “As Grandmaster was battling Phoenix before, I had the chance to read his mind,” Astra spoke her thoughts. “I wanted to understand. Perspective. Sometimes Aftab Ferrara is a saint. Other times, he is a violent bully. And above all, once, the power he wields destroyed a world. We cannot take any chances.”

  “I also concur with Grandmaster, Sparks,” Cryo said to Thomas. “We all know how this ends: with him going dark. It may take some time, but he already destroyed an entire province just because they didn’t surrender to him. He may not have killed them, but that land is ash now. How is any living thing supposed to be there? He ruined it. And that was only with a fraction of his power. No one else is doing anything, so we must. Phoenix must be stopped.”

  An electric thrill of dismay coursed through the Legionnaires. They had all been screwed over by people like Phoenix dozens of times. Nearly every time they had worked with people like him, they had been hurt. The waking world in which they lived was a killer of hope, a destroyer of things that one believed in. People were lost to the twisted philosophies of cruelties, its twisted malices.

  But Phoenix and his company were going too far, too close, too much. They were terrorizing and torturing innocent people under the guise of making the world a better place, just to gain a hint of fleeting power and making the world suffer for their actions.

  “I managed to track down some significant power levels in an area called Blue Springs, in Arizona,” Phantasma said, swiping on a tablet. “But the powers have been dulled, almost as if someone is blocking it. That must be where the missing deviants and superhumans are.”

  “I’m thinking of a multilevel investigation,” Grandmaster said. “Teacher, I want you to head to Washington D.C. and use the different government networks and agencies to learn more about this Eternity Corporation. Use whatever methods you can to trace any deviant actions that may have triggered such disappearances, and use our resources to do as much spin control with the media, economists, and politicians. The main priority will be to try to take the Eternity Corporation’s actions out of circulation and stop any more young people from getting hurt.”

  The Star Legion assented. Well-respected among the general public, Will Morgrant was the one member of the team to whom the authorities and the citizens might listen.

  “Oh, and Will? You must tell the government agents the truth eventually,” Grandmaster said to him. “I want you to tell them that you’re a deviant. There is no need for secrecy and simmering tension.

  “The rest of us will leave immediately,” Grandmaster continued. “I hope you’ve all been keeping up with protocol–your gear should be stored in the Celestial. With the ship’s VTOL abilities, you should have no problem landing anywhere.”

  In seconds, they were racing down the corridor toward the hangar, boots slapping marble. The Celestial had been fueled and readied, and they were aboard with the engines fired up in minutes after their meeting concluded.

  Tempest took the stick with Sparks in the copilot’s seat. Maggie sat in the back with the other Legionnaires. They lifted off, using the Vertical Take-Off and Landing mechanism that the Professor had mentioned. When they were clear of the Academy, they blasted south into the sky’s vast distances.