Stacy immediately gasped in surprise as the strangely dressed man teleported the team away and reality changed instantly.
Brian had tried to get both her and Chris an invitation to join them. He’d even offered to have them both ‘suit up’ to preserve their identities, but the organisers of the V.E. Day celebrations had refused. They had wanted only publicly known team members to be on view on that stand with members of the London Watch gathered on another stand close by and the war heroes of the Crown Guard, those still alive, on the higher platform located opposite them.
Instead, they both watched from the crowd at street level, though admittedly from the very front and next to the Balance’s stand.
The sudden appearance of a raggedy-looking individual standing behind the team came as a shock. Then the team vanished. Brian, Mary, Akira and the new bloke who claimed to be an alien (sans the anticipated green skin and waggly antennae on his forehead) disappeared and the world metamorphosed into a hell on Earth.
Stacy and a quietly belligerent Chris Terazzo (No, use his codename – Singularity – he’d earned it), stood shoulder to shoulder on the side of the park as the black armoured troops of SHADOW marched past them. The celebration had been organised to celebrate VE day; Victory over England day. The day that the Overlord, Oberst Geistmann, then possessing the body of an albino gorilla, had led the beetle-like armoured troops of SHADOW to victory 85 years ago, before conquering the rest of the British Empire.
Now possessing the body of a fit, virile young man of pure Aryan descent, he stood surrounded by his super-powered agents of the Eugenics Brigade on a stand opposite.
The parade had seen the survivors, the victors, of the campaign to wipe out the rebel vampire nests on Mars march past. The newscasts claimed the Überkrieger Kommandos had killed the rebel leader, the vampire tyrant Boire, but as no corpse was on display Stacy thought that was unlikely. If he had been killed, Geistmann would have displayed his remains for all to see.
The crowd was silent as the battle-torn troops matched past, only cheering when one of the guards threatened to open fire on them. The parade had now reached the mounted ceremonial guards on the back of their dinosaur ‘steeds’.
Both Stacy and Singularity’s watches vibrated silently against their wrists. It was time. Death Metal appeared in the crowd opposite, pushing her way to the front and gestured, even as the guards noticed her unusual actions and immediately opened fire. The volley of bullets suddenly changed direction and headed back towards the people who had fired them. This slaughter gave Singularity the opportunity to manifest a black hole in front of the Eugenics Brigade, as the Overlord cowered behind his super soldiers. A stay bullet hit Chris.. Singularity.. in the arm, just as Stacy manifested her crystalline body as a shield, and the black hole collapsed, but not before decimating the Brigade and showing Geistmann’s true colours for all to see.
It was time to leave. The newscasts were now dark, no longer broadcasting Geistmann’s propaganda parade. A number of smoke-emitting arrows fired from amidst the crowds began to clear a path through the now panicked civilians as the archers of the Agincourt Irregulars unleashed their homemade weapons before retreating back into the crowd, their bows and empty quivers discarded.
Stacy grabbed Chris and dragged him towards the drain cover being held open by an elderly man, Jeeves she thought his name was, and vanished into the relative safety of the sewers. Once down, they headed through the darkness towards the nearest gateway to Lady Door’s realm of London Below.
There would be a series of executions, mostly of innocent civilians, for this, but the price was worth it as they had successfully decimated the Eugenics Brigade and had shattered the Overlord’s image as untouchable and invulnerable.
The Resistance had again proven itself as still having teeth even after all these decades. If only they could go back and change time…
Superhero Adventures, UK Style 