***** And Now… Back to the Story *****
“You mentioned your security team – shouldn’t we notify them?” Mary wanted to know. She knew from Freddy’s stories about the Legion that there were some specially-trained commandos headquartered in the next door building.
“I kinda hate doing it – she attacked the Legion, and we should handle it,” Peggy admitted reluctantly. She saw that Mary was about to object. “But I’m not sure what the two of us can do without our powers against someone in that suit of hers…”
She moved aside a dozen books on a bookshelf, pressed a hidden button, then moved some books on another shelf to reveal a hidden panel. She pushed the button behind the panel. For an instant, all the lights went out, and there were a lot of distant banging and crashing noises before they came on again.
“That resets all our security systems – and locks all the external doors. For now, it takes an override code to get in or out. That will alert the security team and bring them running – and they know the codes!” She smiled. “It also locks down the hanger on the roof - Ginia and her minions are trapped!”
There was the sound of a deafening explosion above them. “Or maybe they’re not. Come on, Mary!”
Peggy ran across the room and touched a small keypad, discreetly hidden behind the curtains next to the bay doors to the balcony, which quickly swung open. On the balcony, she looked up and a large flying vessel was just taking to the air from the roof of the Legion clubhouse.
“They blasted their way out of the hanger! We can’t let them escape – hurry, get in!” She hopped into a strange machine the size and general shape of a bathtub. “It flies – we have to follow them!”
Mary dubiously stepped into a square cockpit and sat down. A belt automatically clenched cross her waist, and then the strange flier rocketed straight up into the sky with tremendous speed!
“Dickie calls this the ‘Sky Bug’. Some of his other inventions are built in, too. It’s faster than the fastest jet plane!”
Ginia’s strange plane was already a mile ahead of them, but they were well above it, and Peggy started it zooming in the same direction, west-northwest. “I wonder if she’s got a hideout somewhere in the mountains?” After a few minutes of following the fleeing flier, gradually creeping closer, she added, “It doesn’t look like they know we’re here. We should figure out a plan of some kind!”
“So tell me more about Dickie’s inventions – anything we can use?” Mary asked.
“Maybe…” Peggy admitted thoughtfully, then started ticking things off on her fingers… “The landing marker paint – a spray gun that shoots out fluorescent paint, so he can mark off a safe landing spot during the day and find it easily at night…” She continued, ticking off a half dozen other clever inventions on her fingers, and the girls made some plans. Most of the plans were contingencies in case they one they liked best didn’t work out.
“OK – first things first – rescue Zonia and Bingo… we could go with them and tell the team what we’ve found out, but who knows how long it will take them to recover? And besides, none of our powered teammates can get close to Ginia’s power drain suit without losing their powers – and maybe giving her more. I hope this works! Bingo’s genie the Yama Lama said the tokens would work for the Legion’s leaders, and I’m second-in-command – but I’ve never actually tried to use it on someone else!”
She reached a hand out to Mary. “Take my hand, and let’s see if this works!” Her face screwed up in serious concentration and she touched her Legion insignia on her chest with her other hand. “Except us – SKAT!!!!”
Then explained to Mary… “SkAT is the bug out code word for emergencies – the magic insignias instantly send all Legionnaires back to the clubhouse from wherever they happen to be when one of the leaders says the word. If that worked, we just freed Amazonia and Bingo and sent them back to Philly. And robbed Ginia of her current power source! Which doesn’t mean she is powerless…”
With a quick pull of the Bug’s joy stick, she initiated the rest of their plan.
The Sky Bug zoomed ahead, easily overtaking Ginia’s flier. It was weirdly shaped – a large wedge, with jet engines mounted the ends of two stubby wings which also featured circular wells through the wings in which large propellors were mounted horizontally, a windshield set into the front of the fuselage. Peggy dropped the Bug down onto the nose of the plane, and reversed the magnet that allowed it to fly, locking it to the skin of the plane. “NOW”.
Mary aimed the paint sprayer at the windshield, and a few instants later, the windshield was covered with a thick, viscous layer of faintly glowing paint. Almost instantly, the plane began slowing down, as the pilot couldn’t see where they were going.
“Good work, Mary!” Peggy released the Sky Bug, moved to the top of the fuselage, and began forcing the plane lower and lower. The Sky Bug’s magnetic power was apparently greater than the plane’s lifting power… and suddenly, a hatch in the top of the fuselage opened, and Ginia, in her power-absorbing battle armor, climbed out. By now the plane’s forward motion had completely stopped, and the propellers in the stubby wings that allowed it to hover were fighting a losing battle with the Sky Bug to remain aloft.
“OK, Phase 2!” Peggy yelled exuberantly, and the Bug leaped back into the air, rising like a rocket at maximum power! She a small circle to pick up some speed, and then they were diving, still pushing the Bug faster and faster, aimed directly at the now-stationary plane and the armored figure standing on top of it. “You’re ON, Mary!”
Mary stood – and then dived off the Bug, arms outstretched in front of her, and as she arrowed away, Peggy slowed the Sky Bug to a hover. Mary had never tried flying before in her Mary Blomfield form, but she used every trick she’d learned as Mary Marvel to line up on Ginia Chesapeake. When she was sure she couldn’t miss, she shouted her magic word: “SHAZAM!!!”
There was a boom like an explosion, and the magic lightning struck, and Ginia’s power absorbing armor instantly rendered the zooming Mary Marvel almost unconscious… and then her invulnerable body smashed into the villain at more than 180 miles per hour! Even though Ginia’s armor saved her from serious injury, the electronics in the armor was destroyed!
At the exact instant of the impact, the closely-watching Peggy Shane completed her own magic words: “Heart of Gold!!” There was a brilliant flash of light, an instant behind Mary crashing into Ginia and Peggy was replaced by Golden Girl, who flashed out of the hovering Sky Bug to catch the two falling figures before they reached the ground.
By the time they landed, Mary was well on the road to recovery. “OK, time for my initiation challenge!” she whispered, a little huskily. “You guard Ginia, I’ll get the rest of the crew!” She zoomed upward toward the hovering plane, while Golden Girl tore Ginia’s now powerless combat armor to shreds.
‘It’s a LOT easier to fly in my Marvel form!’ Mary thought to herself. ‘It was all I could do to fly in a straight line, but now I can do… THIS!” The jet engines in the nacelles on the sides of the wedge were coming back to life, even though the windshield was still globbed over. Mary smashed one of them, then looped down and under the plane, then up and through the other nacelle, then did some joyous loops and barrel rolls, and ended up flying accurately through the open hatch.
Ginia’s peons were armed with pistols, and they quickly surrendered when they initially saw their bullets bounce – even though they were unfamiliar with Mary Marvel, they knew what the other Legionnaires were capable of, and they wanted none of it!
*****
It turned out that Ginia Chesepeake had indeed been the world-record breaking athlete, though before that, she’d been, well… totally unknown. She’d discovered a device with the ability to tap into a Legionnaire’s powers about a year ago. Her original invention had been small and weak, enabling her to break athletic records within a couple weeks or so of exposure to a Legionnaire, but as time went on, her body developed a limited immunity to the energy, as well as a dependence on it. She needed more and more energy, more and more often.
She developed her exo-skeleton to retain a larger and larger ‘charge’, and eventually reached the point where she couldn’t draw enough energy via line-of-site contacts with the heroes, and decided she needed to capture and imprison them all – while she looked for a longer-term energy source.
This story resolved some private puzzles from the Legionnaires, each of whom admitted having ‘weak spells’ over the past year – but none of them had told any of the others, as these weak spells always passed in a few hours, and… “Who knows for sure what is normal for guys like us?” Bingo asked the almost rhetorical question. “Everyone has an off day now and then!”
*****
It was the next day. Mary had fretted about missing a day of her life, but the Legionnaires assured her she would pop back into her world at the same date and time as she’d left – so while she’d remember the visit, and would have her Legion insignia to show for it, there would be no other evidence the trip had really happened. But they were still discussing yesterday’s adventure with animation!
“I was NEVER so scared in my life, than diving out of the Sky Bug going almost 200 miles per hour!” Mary Marvel exclaimed vehemently to her new friends.
“Yeah – what if you had missed?” Dynamic Boy asked, sounding a little star-struck. Was it her bravery?
“I wasn’t so worried about ME missing, as I was about the magic lighting – either being a little late, or missing me entirely!” she replied. “I was pretty sure if I changed into my Marvel form, the Strength of Hippolyta, which is what makes me so indestructible, would be enough to protect me either from smashing into Ginia or crashing to Earth.”
“Seems like a dumb idea to me, even though it worked,” Bingo spoke grudgingly. “S’pose you didn’t destroy her power-stealing machine? Then you would have been powerless and her prisoner!”
“We had a plan for that, actually,” Golden Girl sounded a little smug. Bingo was often snotty to his teammates – and the women most of all. “If I wasn’t sure Mary had wrecked her invention, all I had to do was remain as Peggy and SKAT! again, this time for everyone, and we both would have popped back here with you guys – and now that we know about Ginia’s device, we would have figured out a way to fight it! And we had a dozen of Dickie’s best inventions to fall back on if THAT didn’t work.”
“Oh… um… err… well, I guess maybe it was pretty smart after all,” Bingo conceded reluctantly.
“I’ll say it was – it was BRILLLIANT!” That came from Wonder Boy, the current Legion leader. “It never occurred to me that we could use the Legion insignia bug-out feature like that!” He was enthusiastic in his praise. “I’d totally forgotten that you, as second, could activate that feature either. Or that it could be used selectively. I always thought of it as our ultimate fail-safe, like when the whole team bugged out just before that atomic bomb went off in the Saraha – but never thought it might be good for rescuing kidnapped Legionnaires. Those things are even better than we thought!”
“You’re welcome!” Bingo said loudly – and then everyone stopped and looked at him. He always claimed that he had asked the Yama Lama for all the features in the magical insignia, but everyone knew that Golden Girl had done most of the asking. A few seconds later… “I’ll tell the Yama Lama you said thank you.” That was a little sheepish. “So, we’re adding another bird, huh?”
“Oops – thank you, Bingo! We have open business to conclude, team!” Everyone looked at Wonder Boy. “I move that we waive the standard initiation feat and immediately accept Mary Marvel into the Legion!”
“Second!” “Aye!”, “Heck Yes!”, and then the rest of the shouted votes ran together.
“Any nays?” Wonder Boy didn’t expect any – and he was right!