It was nearly nighttime in Champion City. Brilliant orange tones painted the bottom of the darkening sky, which was thick with clouds. People gathered in the roads with their heads craned up - not watching the beautiful sunset, but instead the dozens of caped superheroes soaring above. Like birds headed south for winter, they all flew in the same direction. Nobody knew what was going on.

Except for one.

Scott pedaled through a quiet side street, the wheels of his bike bumping on the uneven pavement. He had pulled the hood of his jacket over his head and zipped it up to hide his tee shirt. The last thing he needed right now was to be called a name by some stranger.

He locked up his bike in front of a random pub. The young man had only turned 21 a couple months ago - he'd been living on his own and working as a reporter since he was 19 - and he still hadn't acquired much of a taste for alcohol. But he walked in and sat down at the bar anyways. TV screens lined the walls, most of which were tuned into sports games.

"Hello!" the bartender, a cheery redhead maybe only a little older than he was, greeted him with a smile. "Can I get you anything?"

"Uhh..." he tapped his finger. He still had his hood on, so he pulled it off. "Do you have beer?"

"This is a bar, sir." she replied, only the slightest hint of condescension in her tone.

"Yeah, I'll have beer then." he said, quickly tacking on more detail so he didn't look stupid again. "Just, whatever's cheapest."

The bartender poured him his drink, then left to attend to another patron. Scott sipped it slowly, glancing around anxiously. Even if he was on the lowest possible tier, he was still technically a public figure. Did anyone here recognize him?

He shook his head. What was he so worried about? Even if someone did know him, no one would know what had just happened. Scott straightened himself out, took deeper sips, and began to ruminate on his situation.

People in this city loved superheroes, but to a degree, they feared them as well. Scott was no different, in fact, he was on both extremes. It had been exhilarating to meet Futureman, even if he was glued to the floor as a hostage. But at the thought of being a witness to the guy's murder... he imagined being strapped to a chair in a windowless room with Champion or Warmaiden, a single bare lightbulb swinging from the ceiling, them cracking their knuckles and telling him to spill everything. That was why he had run.

Scott liked to assume that heroes were good people, but given that his whole job was to rake up dirt on them... he could easily see them not being so nice if he was involved.

"Special news report!"

At the sound of those words, Scott swiveled around to look at one of the wall-mounted TVs. The bartender had a remote in her hand and was turning the volume up, her wide eyes just as fixed on the screen as everyone else's.

Footage of the bank was playing. Nobody in Champion City was a stranger to that kind of destruction, but the ticker was what had caught their attention: "FUTUREMAN PRESUMED DEAD IN ROBBERY GONE WRONG."

Quickly chugging the rest of his beer, Scott decided it was time to go home.

---

"We're going to find Bombshell." the imposing figure of the second Champion stood stock still, his powerful arms folded over his broad chest. He fixed his burning stare on the horizon. "And she's going to pay for this with her life."

Police tape cordoned off the ruined bank from the throng of onlookers. Some were civilians, some were police or reporters, but the bulk of them were heroes, who had arrived to pay respect. Already a small mountain of memorial flowers had been placed on the half-shattered marble steps.

Three heroes had been allowed to enter the crime scene: the unmistakable red, white, and blue Champion II, the young Latina speedster Streak, and a dark-skinned man who everyone recognized as the billionaire supergenius System, despite the fact he was in simple street clothes and not his iconic black power armor. Together, they were three parts of what had used to be the Big Five.

"Andrew..." System stepped up behind his fellow Fiver, putting a hand on his shoulder. "We have a code."

"Don't touch me, Bryan!" Champion shoved him away. "You think I don't know about the code?"

Streak rolled her eyes. Champion noticed and stomped right up to the girl, who he had two heads worth of height on.

"Got something to say, rookie?" he barked. Luiza Lopez might've been known for her quips, but she kept her sharp tongue still. "Yeah, that's what I thought."

"If you're going to be difficult." System said sternly from across the room, speaking as if he was scolding a child. "Then you can leave. We have an investigation on our hands."

"Investigate all you like." Champion caught his glare, then flew off to the front of the crime scene. The number one hero's boots touched down on the stairs, right in front of the pile of flowers. News cameras turned his way, and he gestured for the mayor and police chief to join him at his sides.

"This is an official announcement from Champion!" he shouted, drawing all the eyes that weren't already on him. "Effective immediately, Champion City is on Code Black: complete and total lockdown."

Gasps rose up from the crowd. Reporters pushed their way to the front of the pack, waving microphones and shouting questions.

"Is Futureman really dead?" one asked. Champion's normally stoic face twisted into a grimace that just barely hid his bubbling pain.

"Yes." he said, struggling not to choke up. "And Bombshell is responsible!"

Back in the bank, System watched the impromptu press release unfold, running a hand over his bald head in disbelief. He turned to face Luiza.

"Might as well try to salvage this." he said. "Stay here."

Striding up to the front of the crowd, he positioned himself in front of Champion and held out his arms. "Everybody, everybody!" Back in the bank where no one could see, the number one hero would've tried to push him away again - but with a thousand cameras on them both, he just stood in place seething.

"Our investigation is ongoing." he said. "But yes, we do believe Bombshell played a role in Futureman's death. We also believe she may be in possession of Futureman's suit."

Questions kept being shouted out. "What's so important about that?"

"Futureman preferred to keep this a secret." System kept calm. "But, here it is: like me, he was just a normal person under his suit. The costume he wore is, in reality, a highly advanced nanotech superweapon. With it, anyone could be a top tier threat."

That got the crowd talking, worried murmurs and gasps filling the air. System raised his voice to be heard above the chatter.

"It is imperative that we locate Bombshell, but keep in mind that if she has the suit... she's infinitely stronger than she was before. In order to prevent possibly making things worse, we need to take the time to -"

"Lock this city down." Champion cut in, finishing the sentence for him. System shot him an angry glance. "No planes taking off, no cars driving out, shut down the magnet trains and the bridges."

"C-can you do that?" the mayor stammered, quietly enough that the news cameras picked his voice up. Champion leaned in to his ear.

"It's my name on the city, not yours." he whispered forcefully. Then, in a mighty shout, he addressed the crowd once more.

"Heroes, to action!"

With his famous catchphrase, he soared off. People cheered as more and more of the superheroes in the crowd took flight to join him. System watched them fly away, sighed, and turned his attention back to the gaggle of press.

"You all can leave. We wont be answering any more questions at the moment."

That only made them ask more questions, but he walked off and left the reporters to the police. Streak had done as told, waiting for him inside the building - though she didn't look happy.

"Hey, just wanna say... I trust your judgement on things generally, Mr. Masters, sir." she walked to his side, following his slow strides with impatient steps. "But was it a good idea to, y'know, tell everyone about his suit? On live TV? Do we really need to get the public riled up?"

"Champion already did that." System said. "And besides, a superweapon on the loose is not something we should hide from the public. They have a right to know."

"I didn't!" the young woman threw her arms in the air. "Nobody ever told me anything about his stupid costume!"

"I said before, Futureman didn't want people to know the source of his powers. He only trusted Champion and I with that information."

Luiza wanted to say more, but knew it was pointless, so she instead just let out a groan of irritation and kept her motor mouth shut. Talking to System was like playing ping pong against a brick wall: a good way of getting nowhere fast. For a while she stood still, tapping her foot a few thousand times a second in boredom as she watched System inspect the crime scene.

They knew the explosion that tore apart the front of the bank was the first to happen, thanks to eyewitness testimony. While they had footage up until the explosion, that initial blast had burnt out all the security cameras in the bank and around the street. It was in line with the effects of Bombshell's unique bio-explosive, and left them with almost nothing on what had gone down inside the bank afterwards. All the witnesses of the first explosion had fled at the sight of her.

Minus the destruction, it was a large bank just like any other. This neighborhood was well off - pretty much all of Champion City was - so the counter where the tellers stood had no reinforced glass shields like you might see in a poorer city. When they first arrived, System and the police had found an elderly woman in the back, but she was in no condition to give any information about what had happened, babbling uncontrollably when spoken to. System had managed to get her information from the bank's database and handed it off to the ambulance that took the old woman away, and a while later a cop had informed him her grandchildren had already met her at the hospital.

"I think..." he murmured, crouching down. He inspected one of the two explosive globs Bombshell had left behind. The presence of the substance was what had first tipped them off to the villain's involvement. "I think it's possible that Bombshell doesn't have the suit."

"Why's that?" Streak asked, seeing the gears turning in System's head.

"There was another person there." he said. "Besides the teller. There's footprints in this gunk that don't add up."

"So what if there's another witness?" she asked. She'd worked with System a while, and knew that he only ever said a fraction of what was going on in his brain. "Useful, sure. But what's that got to do with the suit?"

System spotted something on the ground, a small black chip he couldn't believe he had missed before. It was an SD card, like one you'd find in a camera.

"She wouldn't know anything about the suit being his power source." System said, picking up the chip. "No one did. She wouldn't have any reason to take it."

"Maybe as a trophy?" Streak proposed.

"It's possible. But I don't think so. Doesn't match her history. She's taken heroes down before and she's never done anything like that."

"Well, maybe she figured it out."

"Maybe." he said, tossing the SD card over to her. She caught it with a lightning quick hand, turning it over in her palm.

"What do you think we'll find on this?" the young woman asked. System shrugged.

"No clue. Let's bring it in to HQ."

While the other superheroes of Champion City cracked down on the streets, System and Streak headed off to base.