In the simple basement of an apartment building, something crept up on the five friends inside.  No wall could keep it out, and no alarm could have warned the friends.  They didn’t even notice when they were simultaneously knocked unconscious.

* * *

A helicopter hovered two hundred feet above the street.  Sirens were going wild, and people were running, screaming from the Republic’s Bank.  Three people stood in the helicopter without parachutes or even seatbelts.  The Triumvirate was ready to, as they say, “save the day.”

Tim wasn’t Tim when he did that sort of thing.  He was Ironarms.  This is because he was capable of changing his own molecular structure at will.  He was particularly fond of the denser metals.

Ethan wasn’t Ethan, either.  He was Superglue.  It was a name he came up with himself, and it was more of a joke than anything, considering he was faster than most people could track with their eyes.  Sometimes, he could manage to gather enough static electricity while he ran to effectively “taze” someone with a simple touch.

And Chloe wasn’t Chloe.  She was High C.  She was particularly feared for her ability to turn rubble around her into projectiles after shattering it into bullet-sized chunks by pointing at it.

The three had started fighting crime almost a year earlier, when they still had Gary and Anthony were still with them.  As far as the three knew, Gary and Anthony were dead.  A lot had changed since that time, however.  They had gotten smarter, their powers had developed greatly, and they got sponsored by the military.  Their capacity for stopping criminals, from the petty to the organized, was unparalleled, until the members of “The Guild” started to show up across the country.

The Guild was a group of people who proved to the world that the Triumvirate weren’t the only ones who had been gifted with super powers.  Their numbers almost reached a hundred before the Triumvirate and the military started to pick them off and put them in prison.  Thankfully, most of them had relatively useless abilities, which made the job much easier.

Then there were those who made the job much, much more difficult.  The most prominent members of the Guild were Ankh, a man who claimed to be a triumvirate all on his own, Toxifect, a girl who took “biohazard” to a whole new level, Forever, a boy who wouldn’t let his entire city grow up, Blood Diamond, a lady with a thing for geology, and a brilliant man with sanity issues that the others lovingly called Snuggie.  Those five seemed to be in charge of many pawns, all of whom had their own super powers, but they all denied leadership when questioned during their short captivities.  All of them said that there was a single person who gave them their orders and helped them develop their powers at an incredible rate.  They wouldn’t reveal this person’s name under any circumstances, referring to him instead as “Him,” “My Liege,” and occasionally (disturbingly, rather) as their god.