"...And We'll Puff..."

By Steve Seinberg

The Black Spider, as it turned out, hadn't been the only one to overindulge upon catching sight of Roulette's fine selection of quality, imported beers. While Derrick Coe had been hitting the stores of Hite trundled in from Korea, the German superman known as Captain Nazi had been getting himself around quite a few steins of Spaten Munchen. His hyper-metabolism prevented him from ever really getting more than mildly and briefly tipsy – and truth be told, he had nothing but scorn and disgust for anyone who used inebriation as a recreational activity, something he considered as yet another sign in others of weakness due to inferior breeding – but he did like to support products from home that could further foster righteous German pride. However, lack of any real sense of drunkenness or not, all that liquid had to go somewhere...

So he was just stepping back out of the men's room a few corridors away from the main viewing area (Captain Nazi didn't like using the restrooms in view of others at these kinds of congregations if he could help it, as he felt that even implied admission of bodily functions on his part was indicative of too much crude humanity) when a red rocket came crashing through the wood paneling at a bend in the hallway, and hit him square in the swastika on his chest with the force of a meteor.

He'd been completely caught off-guard, and had no chance to brace himself, so the impact carried both he and the incoming projectile through four walls, two rooms, two maintenance passageways, and about fifteen thousand dollars' worth of furniture that Captain Nazi still wouldn't have deigned to use as firewood regardless of price tag, before they came to a thunderous collision of a halt against the fifth wall, a reinforced titanium alloy affair that was part of the House's outer shell. Only then did the Aryan man-mountain see that the thing that had struck him was actually his old, much-loathed enemy, the American known as Captain Marvel.

"Well, well, look who it is," Marvel simpered. Captain Nazi detested simperers, and Marvel was like their collective essence personified, as Nazi saw things. "I'd love to chat, Nazi, but I have an appointment in the main arena."

Captain Nazi puffed up his chest, which was even grander and more imperious with muscle than the American's, Nazi was sure of it, and was about to deliver a scathing rejoinder...when Marvel cut him off and grabbed Nazi around the throat with both hands – Nazi would deny it later if asked, but he hadn't expected such fast and direct action from the amiable simpleton that even Marvel's own countrymen referred to as 'the Big Red Cheese.' Marvel did grab him though, and said, "You know what? Why put it off? We can catch up on the way..."

And using Nazi's own semi-invulnerable body as a battering ram, Marvel took instant flight, punching through eleven more walls, grinning all the while as Nazi had to absorb the parade of impacts, before they erupted out into the main arena chamber.

Nazi was still trying to gather his wits, still a bit dazed, and Marvel took advantage of his confusion to drop both of them down between the two lesser human combatants in the ring. Nazi was dimly aware that Marvel had interposed them between the two fighters as a means of blocking the thrown weapons of one of them, thereby shielding the other – he could distantly feel small pinpricks of contact against that grand, imperious chest of his, and understood after a moment that a human-strength arm was throwing regular human-style knives, and he'd been inserted into their flight paths. He was also aware in an equally distant way that the crowd on the other side of the transparent security wall of the arena didn't seem to be as focused on them as he might have expected. In fact, he could almost sense the further reaches of the crowd, the watchers toward the rear of the bleacher section, all turning away in a sort of wave to reorient on something behind them, as if some disturbance or phenomenon off that way was superseding the spectacle of the main combat, and this even despite the presence of the Americans' cut-rate Superman and the great Captain Nazi himself doing such unexpected battle.

And then Nazi was finally asking himself just what exactly Marvel might be doing there in the first place anyway, when Marvel's seemingly gargantuan fist fell out of the sky at him, eclipsing the world...

Derrick Coe had done very, very little to attract the attentions of his peers in the ranks of the super-villainous beyond simply taking on the name and mantle of a previously established costumed criminal. Beyond that, however, he hadn't killed or defeated any of the super-cops that were the bane of existence for their kind, and he hadn't pulled off any other remarkable capers or feats worth repeating or reverse-engineering. He made up for all of that, however, with his turn as a Paul Revere for the super-crook set at the House the day the JSA came calling – sounding the early alert about the heroes' uninvited arrival enabled a fair amount of his contemporaries to beat feet, and live to fold, swindle, and mutilate another day. This would yield unexpected benefits for many months to come, and Coe would find himself free-lunching off of that one act more than he ever would again off of any single other super-villainous achievement in his lifetime (and if people wanted to selectively overlook the fact that in issuing his warning he actually came screaming in like a pants-wetting little boy frightened by monster-noises at summer camp, that was perhaps understandable...).

And it wasn't a total success from the get-go, as Coe did have some convincing to do. He first ran across a small cluster of the Flash's arch-enemies, and couldn't make them listen for the life of him.

"Hey! Spider-Twink! Your betters are talking here, run along." The Weather Wizard glared at him, skinny by himself, but the wand he held in one hand crackled with the fury of a thousand natural disasters all waiting to happen.

"He's right," Captain Cold added, jerking a thumb toward the arena. "Why don't you go watch the fight."

Coe shuffled his feet for a second, and then decided the hell with these self-important jackasses – they'd understand what he'd been trying to say when Power Girl and Captain Marvel came around the corner and fed them their own teeth. Shame he wouldn't be around to see the looks on their faces, but he had his priorities straight – namely, getting the word out to people who would listen.

He started to race down the first aisle he came to, to scream at the crowd from its front, but unfortunately, the ravenous sea-beast called King Shark was practically glued to the glass up there, and Coe wasn't getting near that thing. He pushed on to the next aisle, and then dashed into the midst of the throng, where no one paid him any notice whatsoever. He waved his arms, unable to make himself heard over the roar of the crowd, and then literally began jumping up and down. The tall, refined sadist called Phobia gave him an amused glance, but even she was clearly taking him for a loser wannabe-villain who simply couldn't handle his suds, and no one else would even spare him a quick once-over.

Finally, in desperation, he pulled out his long sniper rifle – the House security had confiscated his ammo upon arrival as they did with most of the patrons – and swung it around like a baseball bat, bringing the stock around perfectly to connect squarely with the temple of one Slade Wilson, otherwise known as Deathstroke, the Terminator...one of the three or four single most-feared assassins on the planet. He gave the utterly unprepared Wilson two more line-drive swings to make sure the man stayed down, knowing that he was possibly signing his own death warrant in the long-term, if not for the immediate future, and then he grabbed the slumping Terminator like a hostage, and applied his rifle across Wilson's throat, keeping the man's air supply cut down to a minimum, and hopefully fending off his recovery long enough to say what he had to say.

And he was indeed finally getting some attention. Several faces were now turned his way, eyes goggling. Who would be insane enough to attack Deathstroke, and in front of a big gathering of his peers to boot? Most of the crowd didn't even know who Derrick Coe was, and had heard of the Black Spider only vaguely and in passing, if at all, but whoever the guy was in the fancy ski-mask, he was clearly crazy enough to merit at least a little bit of focus...plus, most of the crowd now watching were hoping to see Wilson wake up and go into action. A chance to see something like that up close and personal when not directed at oneself would possibly be even better entertainment than the fight now playing out in the arena.

Coe gathered his breath, and then screamed at the assembly: "It's a raid! The Justice Society is here! We're being raided!"

The onlookers blinked at him, but otherwise made no moves.

"Don't you morons understand! JSA in the House! We're being raided!"

Again, nobody moved or spoke, and if it hadn't been for the noise from other sections of the crowd still oblivious to Coe's antics, and the fact that they were all several hundred yards beneath the Mojave desert, it was almost one of those moments when the noises of distant crickets could be heard chirping away.

"Look, you dimwits, would I have been dumb enough to attack Deathstroke-the-freaking-Terminator in front of witnesses without a damn fabulous reason? The J! S! A! Is in! The damn! House!!"

Unease finally began to ripple through the crowd. An evil-looking, pointy-eared woman nudged a man in a parody of the Flash's costume – it was mirror-image and the reverse color-scheme of the famous garb worn by the world's most preeminent speedster – and said, "Zoom – perhaps you might take a look to see what this suicidal clown is yammering about. Can you verify...?"

Professor Zoom was now standing in the aisle, and quick gusts of wind in one direction and then the other indicated that he'd just retraced Coe's steps and returned before the harsh warrior-female, known as Fatality, could even finish her request.

"He's not kidding!" Zoom shouted. There seemed to be something new happening in the arena now, but most of them had shifted their attentions to Derrick Coe and Zoom, who was indeed verifying, and at the top of his lungs. "There's about half a dozen JSA powerhouses duking it out with the Hybrid back that way! He's telling the truth: the JSA is in the House! It's a raid!"

Pandemonium began to spread like wildfire, taking tentative root for a second or two, and then pretty much exploding into full-blown bedlam.

Word spread outward in all directions around the main arena. A good handful or two of the more powerful and/or more violent villains headed off in the direction that the JSA was said to be, all spoiling for a chance to crack some super-hero skulls, while most fled along other vectors, looking mostly for the teleporters. In the ensuing chaos, almost none of them noticed the odd flicker in the lighting that washed across the entire facility before settling. Almost none of them noticed locking mechanisms at various junctures and doorways springing open, or electric eyes going dull and blind, or powered equipment suddenly depowering. No one was especially intent on the technological integrity of the House at this point, and so Mr. Terrific's carefully constructed viral programming swept through like a computerized plague.

Meanwhile, a man in black with an electrified skull logo on his chest and a ludicrous yellow diamond mask that extended at the top-points well above the crown of his head grabbed Derrick Coe. "What's your name, fella?"

"I'm the Black Spider!" Coe was still gripping Slade Wilson in a choke-hold with his rifle, deathly afraid to release the man for fear Wilson would immediately wake up, catch his breath, leap to his feet, and break Coe's spine.

"I'm Bolt. I'm a teleporter, and I figure we owe you for the warning. I'm gonna shunt a bunch of these guys out of here, and collect some heavy IOU's, but I'll start with you – I do got my code of honor, even if it is kinda pale and I don't take it out of storage very much."

"No!" Coe declined vigorously. He nodded his chin at Wilson. "Take him first! And tell him I said to do it. Tell him I'll work for him, I'll do hits for him, whatever the hell he wants! Getting out of here won't mean squat if I have to run from the Terminator for the rest of my short-ass life!"

Bolt cracked a quick smile, noting that it never occurred to the rifle-wielding hit-man to just kill the unconscious Wilson here and now, and be done with it. "Okay, I guess I hear where you're coming from. I'll be back – stay here if you can, and I'll get you next if you're still here a few minutes from now." He wrapped his arms around the still unconscious Deathstroke, and with a flash of light, the two of them were gone.

Derrick Coe toyed with the idea of trying to find where Roulette had squirreled away his ordnance, but decided against what would probably be a fruitless search. Better to at least give Bolt a few minutes and see if he was as good as his word. He backed himself against the arena wall, brandished his long rifle out in front of him like a cudgel, and told himself that no one who came for him could possibly be as scary as Slade Wilson, and whoever got up in his face, friend, foe, or otherwise, they'd be getting at least one good smack to the chops before they put him to rest.

Villains scattered in all directions, and he watched, almost hypnotized, like he'd been somehow dumped inside a violent kaleidoscope. Drunk off his ass only a scant few minutes before, Derrick Coe realized that he didn't feel even the slightest bit tipsy anymore. Glumly, he tightened his grip on his rifle, and mentally dug himself in to wait...

The holding cells were too well fortified to allow for much in the way of ambient noise to filter in from the rest of the House, but its few occupants understood that something was up rather quickly once Terrific's virus really went to work in earnest. For one thing, there was that tell-tale flicker throughout the lighting, which had otherwise been rock-steady for days. Probably more important, however, was the fact that the electrical tendrils that buzzed and crackled across the doorways of each cell, signifying a fairly hostile shock-field that would all but smoke anyone foolhardy enough to test it, suddenly just winked out.

The young Asian swordsman called Claw had actually been staring with great animosity right at the doorway to his cell, so he saw the powered barrier go down immediately. Roulette and company had left him his enchanted gauntlet, as it had actually grafted itself onto his arm when he first found it, and would have required amputation of his forearm to remove it, but they'd taken his sword, and he wanted it back. He knew from dimly remembered experience that when they'd ushered him to the arena, one of the Hybrid had punched codes into a doorway down the hall and then stepped into something that looked like a weapons locker, disappearing from view for only a few seconds before returning with his sword. He made a beeline for the storage vault now, and was slightly surprised to see a weary-looking, fairly unimpressive Caucasian man in his mid-twenties shuffling toward it ahead of him wearing nothing but what Claw at first took to be a Roman toga. The man had emerged from another cell closer to the weapons locker than Claw's had been, and seemed to be aware of Claw, if distantly.

He reached the vault first, and registered slight surprise to see the locking mechanism dark and ineffective, and the door to the cache popped slightly open. He turned back toward Claw, tear-tracks obvious in the dirt on his face, and several bloody trenches scratched there as well, obviously self-applied, and he said in English, "I will only be a moment."

As Roulette's security goon had, the man disappeared for a bare moment, rummaged around, and then there was a flash of light and sound so mighty that Claw found himself in a fighting crouch with one forearm screening his eyes before he even knew what was happening.

The man strode back out of the vault, but if not for the same torn toga-garment, Claw would not have believed this to be the same person. Where the man entering the locker had been a bit thin, not especially brawny, and even a trifle pot-bellied, this one was hugely muscled, so fit he looked like he could have taken bites out of the foot-thick weapons vault door. He now had some kind of furry gold cape fastened over his shoulders, and was pulling a helmet with huge ram's horns down onto his head.

"I know that you were imprisoned as I was, and made to fight. I wish you great vengeance. Take note, however: I am not unskilled as a tracker, and I claim certain quarry as my own. The woman called Roulette is mine. Refrain from interference in that, and we have no quarrel." Claw shrugged at him, and the gigantic brute nodded. "Good. Then take what you will now, friend – and happy hunting to you."

And without another word, he took flight, launching himself sideways like a human air-strike, punching an enormous hole in the nearest wall, and Claw could hear a series of receding crashes telling him that the transformed man was now repeating the process, taking the shortest path between two points with no regard for the local architecture, and judging by his direction, he had some destination other than the arena in mind.

Claw rubbed his head for a moment – his head now wonderfully unclouded and free of the outside thought-interference and emotion-control it had been afflicted with for days now – and went to find his sword, after which he did look forward to some very happy hunting indeed...

Tap had been hopeful for a few minutes, despite what he heard from Roulette over the ear-piece he always wore during arena entertainments, silently keeping his fingers crossed that the Hybrid could overcome whatever invasion force Michael Holt's teammates had assembled...but when Captain Marvel came smashing into the battle area with a bruised and only semi-conscious Captain Nazi in tow, and then Tap's ear-piece went dead, he decided a new plan would be in order.

He was for the moment ensconced comfortably in what amounted to a private "owner's box" that Roulette maintained for herself, Tap, and any staff and guests they wanted to bring in so that they could all watch the fights up close and personal – the box adjoined the main ring, but was also separated by a good eighteen inches of the transparent miracle alloy Roulette had stolen from Batman. Usually, the box was as safe from attack as any place in the House, but once all the powered systems other than life support went down – simultaneously as Tap's ear-piece fell silent – he began to feel more like an animal cornered in a snare. Not all of Roulette's guests had great love for her, and an uncomfortably large number of them knew that Tap was an absolutely vital part of her operations – without her pet goblin, she would be forced to employ other far more expensive and time-consuming means of dampening powers and controlling emotions on-site. This made Tap feel a bit like a walking bullseye, and he didn't like that one bit.

He dropped his mental hold on Mr. Terrific and Mr. Terrible, not wanting to waste any more energy on them when he might have much bigger fish to fry at any moment, and he pushed his way through a portal that actually gave way into a small passage that led into the arena itself. Captain Marvel had at least for the moment succeeded in punching his Nazi adversary into whatever dreamland the long-dead Fuhrer permitted his adherents, and was tending to his teammate, who was down on one knee, looking a bit dazed, and none too happy. Speaking of bigger fish to fry, Tap saw, among the increasingly frantic throngs outside the clear walls, the always blood-crazed creature known as King Shark – exactly the kind of House-guest whose path he wanted to avoid crossing at all costs. He wavered for a moment, and then made his decision.

The collapse of the House's technological safeguards, coupled with the brief announcement of an invading JSA force, led him to believe that the hero group had somehow found a way to compromise the facility's systems and defenses. Having heard nothing further, and also having seen no sign of the Hybrid since they'd been dispatched to greet the intruders, he had to assume the worst. He ran down odds in his head – something every employee of the House became proficient at very quickly – and decided that his best bet would be to throw in with the good guys, to offer them aid in return for protection during the chaos and then immunity from legal prosecution afterwards.

He ran toward Marvel and Terrific – Mr. Terrible had already gathered up his knives and fled the area – with his hands raised in that universally-recognized "Don't shoot me!" gesture, and began shouting out his offer to switch sides if they'd cover him. He kept one eye on the spot where he'd last seen King Shark, and after getting Captain Marvel's attention, shouted that he would help quell the disturbance by shutting down every nearby villain's access to his or her super-human abilities if Marvel would give his word that Tap would have the JSA's protection.

Marvel was just opening his mouth to answer, when something hit Tap from behind, something cold that bore him down, and immobilized him, and his head received a good hard crack from something hard as he fell. He found himself struggling on the arena floor where he'd helped Roulette put so many others to death, caught in the grip of something chill and terrifying, making him shiver uncontrollably, his breath suddenly coming out in frosty gasps that he could see in the air. Someone crouched down by him, and his impact-addled brain registered light blue skin, and female curves...he could almost hear his mind trying to work with slow-going adding-machine clicks, and he finally understood that he had been attacked from out of one of his blind spots by Louise Lincoln, the merciless sub-zero slayer known as Killer Frost.

"Selling us out at the drop of a hat, huh, Tap? Hey, Marvel! Here's an imp-sicle for you to and your JSA buddies to suck on!" she called out, laughing pure malice.

"No," choked out Tap, and "No!" shouted Marvel, but Louise Lincoln already had one cold blue hand over Tap's face, and Tap's world sealed over beneath a caul of frozen darkness, no air, no light, and only the fading twitches of his very last thoughts...

The effects of Tap's demise were felt almost immediately in several locations throughout the House.

Most noticeably, and arguably most importantly, the JSA's wrecking crew squad found themselves momentarily without opponents as the Hybrid all fell to their knees, hands to their heads, and groaned aloud at the overwhelming feelings of release flooding through them. They all but swooned, truth be told, and the JSA fighters had a few seconds for stock-taking and breath-catching, looking around at each other in puzzlement.

Hippolyta looked through the gaping hole in the wall that she'd originally created when grappling with the winged blue saurian creature, and saw her teammates looking back at her in a sort of group shrug of mystification. It was almost like someone had gone to a control panel marked "Hybrid," and thrown the master off-switch.

"Well, we know Roulette was mind-controlling them," said the Black Canary from the epicenter of a circle of pure sonic destruction; House wreckage was strewn all around her as if a bomb had gone off where she was standing a few seconds before, her "Canary cry" super-scream having slagged every bit of machinery and physical infrastructure within ten meters of her. The plush lounge they'd first forced their way into was just a memory, as were most of the adjacent hallways and the nearest rooms in each direction. Plumbing from what had once been the restrooms was issuing forth sad little fountains of water, and electrical cables dangled from the ceiling, spitting sparks at the onlookers. "If it was all being done by that little goblin character, it could mean he's down for the count."

The metallic Hybrid member was stirring, and trying to stand. "Yeah," he croaked out. "Tap. It was all Tap. Don't feel 'im in my head no more." He put a hand out toward Power Girl. "So sorry. We didn't mean...we couldn't break 'is hold. I'm so sorry..."

The blonde titan looked confused as to what to do; she wasn't much on comforting people. "Hey, it's...don't...it's okay. Just let your heads clear."

"Can't," the metal man demurred. He gestured toward the remains of the outside hallway. "Company comin'..."

Now that he'd called everyone's attentions to it, they could sense footsteps headed their way. Power Girl could feel her teammates gathering up around her, and could even tell that the Hybrid, now freed up from Tap's mental domination, were trying gamely to rally themselves and stand alongside the JSA members. Their speedster, who likely had the quickest metabolism and recovery powers, was looking almost one hundred percent as she stood alongside Liberty Belle, and the blue winged humanoid stepped back through the breach in the wall right behind Hippolyta as she closed into formation alongside Power Girl. Sandy Hawkins was trying to help up the girl in rags that he'd been struggling against, and Power Girl took a moment to give a hand up to the metal man. Just as a rather colorful assemblage of villains came out of the ruins of the hallways toward them, a thick red mist appeared between the two groups, a figure materializing in it.

"Crimson Avenger!" somebody yelled, and Power Girl saw the Avenger bring her mystically-charged guns to bear on the small crowd of super-criminals, and even as the Black Canary yelled something at her about no lethal force, the young black woman discharged both of her pistols, quickly making it evident that her target was a large male figure nearly as metallic-looking as the Hybrid guy at Power Girl's side. There was a tremendous explosion that rocked them all, JSA and Hybrid alike, and especially the villains who had been grouped right around the figure, and the criminals were blown in all directions by the blast. Power Girl realized belatedly that the metal figure was actually a metahuman goon that Superman had brawled with in the past who went by the name of Shrapnel due to his explosive powers. The Avenger had apparently recognized him right off and used his nature against the group of thugs, several of whom did not get back up after the shockwave of the explosion had passed, Shrapnel included. The rest regained their standing positions and surged forward past the fallen grenade-man, and the battle was joined.

Power Girl and the metal Hybrid guy went back to back, and she found herself trading body blows with another Superman foe, a super-strong demonic-looking brute who was called the Atomic Skull, largely because his head seemed to be skinless, and glowing green with virulent radioactivity. As they waltzed, she could see other combats playing out all around them, and she even saw a few villains survey the situation and then calmly take their leaves. The scaly-skinned Killer Croc, for instance, seeing that his hated enemy the Batman was nowhere in evidence, simply lost interest, and walked off back the way he had come. Similarly, the towering figure of another of Superman's rogues gallery, the terrifying Silver Banshee – impossible to miss a woman who was nearly seven feet tall, and equal parts curvaceous sex and gruesome death – looked around placidly for her nemesis, and upon seeing that the Man of Steel was not a part of the raiding party, fell out of her fighting stance, and prepared to depart. Karen Starr, Power Girl, still engaged with the Atomic Skull, but outfighting him, happened to catch the Silver Banshee's eye just by chance, and remembering that the sepulchral creature was, among other things, a teleporter, could only watch as the imposing crypt-siren faded from view, actually waving at Karen as she disappeared. "Good riddance," muttered Power Girl, and then shifted her weight, pivoting hard, and flipped the Atomic Skull up and over her head, and then back down, literally embedding him in the cracked floor of the place.

She dusted off her hands, satisfied when the Skull didn't rise anew, and went to choose her next target. She took in a crazed view of the proceedings, small one-on-one battles dotting the smoldering landscape, and saw events playing out as if from the eye of a hurricane:

Liberty Belle and the Hybrid's speedster, Touch 'N' Go, teamed up on a yellow blur and tackled it, forcing it to resolve itself as Flash villain Professor Zoom, who then screamed in slow motion as the Latina girl in the blue-black body-suit grabbed him and began leeching away his massive storehouse of kinetic energy...

Hippolyta threw most of a broken chair whistling past the lizard-like Pteradon to stop the alien Fatality dead in her tracks as she'd been bearing down on him from behind, and Pteradon returned the favor by grabbing Fatality's long pole-ax and thrusting it past Hippolyta to gore the oncoming Cheetah, who shrieked in rage and pain, but found herself incapacitated as the halberd opened her up from hip to armpit, exposing ribs and tearing muscles and connective tissue as it went. Hippolyta finished her off for the moment with a massive blow to the head, a right cross that would have decapitated all four heads from Mt. Rushmore...

The Black Canary was circling a man holding a glowing crowbar, who was circling her in turn, when a young Asian with a metal hand stepped up from behind, and ran the man through with a sword that seemed to be glowing just as intensely as the now-impaled man's crowbar was. Power Girl saw the Asian youth grinning a feral grin as he spat upon the fallen and bleeding villain he'd just speared...

The Sandman was keeping the ground rumbling in his vicinity, and felling any of the villains haughty enough to think they could challenge him, while trying to allow the pale Hybrid wind-witch beside him to recover her bearings. After repelling several waves of oncoming bandits, Sand saw that the villains all began turning toward other focal points for their various rages, leaving he and Scirocco to take the fight to them...

The Crimson Avenger was everywhere, flipping and somersaulting and teleporting in her red mists all around the battle area, and periodically would unload her guns into Shrapnel whenever he showed signs of recovering and rising, or one of his cronies got close to him, and fresh explosions rocked the place because of that every few minutes...

Karen turned at one point, and found the Hybrid's metal man, Prometheus, clutching a furry, lupine creature called the Hyena in a headlock, and unloading one tireless punch after another into the man-wolf's head, which was bleeding profusely from pretty much every opening it came equipped with, and looked to be in danger of having several more added to its inventory. Power Girl had to grab his arm and stop him. "He's done! Move on to someone else!" For a moment, she'd thought that Prometheus was about to oblige by socking her next, but then he nodded, dropped the Hyena – who fell in a heap, like a sack of garbage – and strode off into the thick smoke-clouds that had begun to issue forth from the person of Shrapnel after the fifth or sixth time the Crimson Avenger had lit him up...

Karen Starr tossed her head, moving hanks of her thick blonde hair back out of her eyes, and waded into the crowd of wrong-doers again, deciding to back up her leader, the Black Canary. She had no idea how the rest of the JSA might be doing elsewhere, but she took the toppling of both the mind-control and the main systems as good signs. She was prepared to dig in for the long haul, and just hoped that Terrific and the stealth squad were doing as well as their more invulnerable counterparts...

Next Issue: "Operation: House Arrest" continues apace, as the villains all experience their various fight-or-flight responses...Mr. Terrible meets a blast from the past...and Roulette fields a blast or two from the present...