:Chase:

             "Oh, no you don't, mister! I'm not letting you run off and try to defeat that Nemesis guy. You're going to stay right here and help me with this news story." Lacey yelled at me through gritted teeth and a playful glint in her eyes.

            I sighed. "Come on, Lacey! I've fought off super villains before, and this time we'll all be together for it."

            "And that's exactly why I need you to help me finish my story. Allen needs the rough cut by seven and I still need a direct quote from my source."

            "Well," I get an idea and scoot a little closer to her, wrapping my arm around her waist, "it does help a little when you personally know 'the masked vigilante' who's protecting Stonewall."

            She laughs at my antics and tries to push me away. My hold stays firm and she pouts up at me, "I'm still extremely angry at you."

            Lacey attempts a fierce look, but only succeeds at looking like a cute kitten who wants to play.

            (Being five foot two and puppy dog eyes had a little to do with it.)

            (And also the fact that she couldn't hurt me if she tried.)

            (Physically at least.)

            "This article is my baby. I've been working on it for months. Allen thinks that I've been chasing down leads like crazy to find out more about you," she gives me an evil glint, "but I've really just been reading your diary."

            I fake horror. "Oh, no! I can't believe it! You didn't find the page with all the little pink hearts, did you?"

            Lacey laughed at me sarcasm and then turned her look serious again. "I'm serious, this article depends on your cooperation. Without you, my article would be nothing."

            "Don't do that. Without you it wouldn't exist. Give yourself some credit, like maybe twenty two percent of the credit."

            She scoffed at me. "Twenty two percent of my baby?"

            "You can make an argument for about fifty."

            "Oh, so I see. I thought I did all the 'ground work' for this article. It is going to be my name on the front page, is it not?"

            I chuckled at her as I finally let her go. "I'm going to pay for this in some way later, aren't I?"

            "You have no idea." She smiled mischievously.

            "Oh, god!" Peter spoke up from the corner. "Please stop with the flirting and cute banter if you aren't dating!"

            Lacey and I had been getting even more immeasurably closer since we'd been working together on my Blue Archer stuff. So close, in fact, that my feelings towards her had grown too much. I couldn't be the Blue Archer and be with Lacey, I knew from experience now that super villains use your weakest links against you, including the girl you'd had a crush on since grade school.

            Peter had started to notice my conflicted feelings about two weeks ago. He'd approached me after a long night of vigilantism, after Lacey left for some shut eye.

            "Dude," he'd sat on the counter, "why don't you just tell her?"

            "Tell her what?"

            Like I hadn't known. We'd both known what he'd been talking about.

            "You love the damn girl, don't you? Don't you want her to know that?"

            I'd sighed. "People like me . . . I'd just hurt her more."

            "I see the way she looks at you," I'd perked up at his words, "whether she knows it or not, she loves you too."

            "But this job . . . this life . . . I can't put her through that again. She deserves someone who isn't a sarcastic asshole who dresses up for Halloween every damn night. No matter what I do, she'll always be in harm's way with me. I can't protect her and be a hero at the same time."

            Peter had given me a long and hard look before he'd decided on his next words. "Maybe that's what you think, but you're wrong. Either way she's in harm's way and either way you're going to protect her. No matter what you do, you'll always love her, and that will never change."

            I still remember that conversation like it was yesterday. He'd since been giving Lacey and me some space. I expected that he hoped I would forget my arguments and get together with Lacey.

            (He called us his OTP, which I'm not sure what that means. Two years stuck on a disserted island can do that to a person.)

            (He also called Connor and Arabella his OTP, even though he barely knew them.)

            Lacey blushed and gave me the harshest look she could manage with her now rosy cheeks. "I'm serious. I don't want you fighting off super villains, especially with my super powered best friend. You could get hurt."

            It never ceased to amaze me how much she worried over me. I mean - it was like she forgot that I was a trained vigilante that could hold my own against super villains.

            "Yes, but without me they wouldn't function properly. Every all-star team up needs it's arrow slinging verified hottie." I smirked as a smile grew on her face.

            "But-"

            "Ahh, no buts," I stopped her, "I'm going to go meet up with the team and you're going to write your awesome article while Peter goes to his boring day job."

            "Hey, my day job is not boring." Peter says, offended.

            "Yes it is, don't lie to yourself. Who's even an accountant nowadays?"

            "Boys," Lacey comes in between us, "no fighting unless you're fighting off a super villain."

            Twenty minutes later Lacey had left for her job as a journalist for the local paper and Peter had left for his. I was on my motor cycle, on my way to meet up with the rest of the 'team'. I was told to go the big hulking building near the river's edge, which I'm guessing was MASKED's head quarters.

            I hadn't been told a lot about the 'League of Legends' since Agent Argent explained the whole ordeal to Connor and me. I assumed that this meeting today would explain more to us about the whole saving the city deal.

            (I still wasn't sure how Agent Argent broke into the 'Archer Cave')

            When I arrived at their headquarters, I was surprised to see how nice the inside looked. I walked over to the front desk and, seeing that no one was there, reached over and took the map lying on the counter. I figured that I might as well go and find where everyone is myself.

            I took off towards the west corridor and ended up discarding the map. I knew that eventually some agent would direct me in the right direction.

            I walked for about thirty seconds before I finally found another agent. I was wearing my Blue Archer suit, so I knew it wouldn't be long until someone stopped me.

            "Umm, are you lost . . . sir?" the agent, who looked no older than twenty five, asked me.

            "Sure, do you know where Agent Argent is?"

            He struggled a bit with his words, which was to be expected. I was very intimidating in my costume. I also stood at six foot one, which tended to scare people.

            "Bush!" Agent Argent yelled from down the hallway. "Send him over, he won't bite."

            I winked at the agent and walked past him to where Agent Argent disappeared behind door number two. I walked in and was surprised to see everyone else already there.

            Connor was sitting quietly in a chair, talking to Ricardo. Connor was wearing his Marvel suit, the mask discarded at the table. Ricky had a small metal suitcase sitting at his feet, which I'm guessing was his outfit. Arabella was sitting with Cassandra on the other end of the table. She was wearing her usual black while Arabella was in seemingly day to day clothes. Arabella apparently didn't own a super suit, yet.

            I stood at the end of the table, leaning against a railing that looked out over the next floor of the agency. Agents at computers and a big monitor showing a world map with red lights all around it where just a couple feet below me.

            "Well," Agent Argent entered our not so private room, "now that everyone's here, we can begin. I expect you've all been debriefed before your arrival by either me or a friend, so all that's left is strategy planning,"

            "Strategy planning?" Arabella asked, confused.

            "Yes, it's the reason we've asked you all to come today. Not only are you some of the most powerful supers we know, but your also some of the greatest minds."

            I inclined my head to over the railing. "Are the red dots signifying what I think they are?"

            She sighed. "Yes, those represent every city that we currently know has a super missing. The bigger the dots are, the more the super was worth to the city."

            Cassandra let out a low whistle. There were more dots than I'd expected there to be. About twenty dots fluttered in places all around the screen. The dot above Iris City, California was particularly larger than most of the others.

            "Well," Connor spoke up, "if we're strategy planning, I think we should talk to all of Nemesis's acquaintances that we know of. Who do we know of anyway?"

            "So far, the only people we know of to have had contact with him, however blunt, are Archer Waters and the Terror Trio. Archer only met with the guy twice, both times his voice was mechanically engineered and his face hidden. We've already figured out that Crabbe and Goyle know nothing of his plans and Venom won't talk."

            Ricardo perked up in his chair. "Yeah, but have you had any of us talk to them yet? I mean - are agents the only people who've had contact with them?"

            "Yes, but what does that have to do with anything?" Agent Argent asked.

            "Well, Venom is smart enough not to talk to any sort of authorities, but she won't be able to resist taunting a super, particularly ones like Chase or Connor, seeing as they've fought her multiple times. What if you let them go and talk to her instead?"

            Me? Talk to the crazy chick who drank the Kool-Aid?

            "You have a point there, Ricky," Arabella says, getting more interested.

            "You're kidding me, " I speak up, "she's bananas. There's marbles in her brains. First Nemesis makes her what she is today by almost killing her in her own laboratory and then she decides to help the guy achieve, what? World domination?"

            Connor looks over at me, "She is crazy, I'll give you that, but we still need to understand Nemesis better. And, to do that, we need her help."

            I sighed and looked back out over at the map. I watched as one glowing red light started to get bigger. I knew that the longer we waited for this guy, the more these cities couldn't last without their supers.

            "Fine, but where will the rest of you all go? You aren't going to just sit on your butts and plan all day, are you?" I say.

            "Why don't we pay a little visit to Iris City? I hear that rumors are spreading about robots causing havoc in the projects." Cassie speaks up from her perch at the other end of the room. She'd been filing her nails while we were arguing, but now she carried an air of superiority over all of us. I guess that had something to do with her half cat DNA.

            "Sure, but I'm going to need a proper get up if we're searching leads on Nemesis." Arabella points out, "We don't need him knowing any of our identities if we run into him."

            And we don't want him knowing that the girl he wants is right in front of his face. I added to myself, as I'm sure the rest of the table did.

            "Of course, Arabella, but we aren't going to make you one. We don't really plan on you being in the public eye at all." Agent Argent said.

            (I didn't know that she had another expression besides a harsh stare.)

            I saw the sadness spread on her face and I couldn't help but to think that even letting her be on this team was like signing her death warrant.