1.8 Assassins Part 1

After a first hectic week and a half of our superhero career, things seem to settle down. No more supervillain battles and people begun to begrudgingly treat us seriously now. The roles within the League of Heroes sort of settled down as well.

The Walters, Charlie and Helen haven’t formed a reserve role as per such, but I don’t seem to interact with them in the field much despite Helen being my cousin and Charlie and I spending a lot of time in the lab together. It doesn’t help that Helen has a part-time job and multiple college courses outside of the League as a legal adult. The Walters are still the youngest members of the League that means they stay out of a lot of it and the sheer size of the Bulk armour means that Charlie is rarely able to use it non-destructively.

Lucy is our speedster while James is our telepath. I’m the tech guy whilst Vance, Stefan and Skyler are frontliners. Samuel is our heavy hitter and Narszara is our ultra-heavy hitter.

As for leaders, the role sort has fallen between Sam and me.

Not that we’re leading much. Most of what we do is simple stuff. Villains seem to be keeping their heads down as they have usually done in the past. Not much supervillain action except for what the other teams face since all of the country’s major villains are locked up in prison.

Can’t say I don’t prefer it that way. Not having someone trying to pound your face into the ground is rather pleasant.

Not that you would ever think for some strange reason.

No, what we have been doing is basically helping out the police. Helping subdue violent suspects, stopping high-speed chases, using the League resources to identify criminals and that sort of stuff. Most of the time it is overkill, but sometimes things can get really dangerous.

For example, that was this guy in a Ford that went over 100 Mph and drove along the pavement outside a school. Sam stopped him when he used his telekinesis to pick up the tireless and banged up vehicle. The man even tried to run after he jumped out of the floating car.

He got two metres before Sam picked him up as well.

The trial over that is still ongoing.

Speaking about trials, Vengeance’s trial has finally started today. Not that I’m worried about it as under local laws regarding supers, it is an open and shut case. They are a lot stricter on the supers that kill non-supers than those that don’t.

An alert starts flashing on the main screen as I work on a new upgrade to the Sentinel armour. I’m trying to make a sort of wrist mounted grappling lines or something like that. Just in case I lose the rocket pack in the middle of a fight again. Plus grappling lines are pretty cool.

I look up at it. It’s an internal alert activated by a subroutine in the base computer set up by Granddad and recently reactivated by me. Using a variety of resources such as police radio, news reports and more recently social media, it sends out alerts to base or Leaguers on patrol.

I activate to see if it’s worth my time.

Several information displays pop up on the screen, giving the majority of information such as locations and danger assessments.

This time it’s a meeting between members of two hostile gangs on the outskirts of Salisbury. An 87% chance of violence with a 72% chance of armed violence. I should probably check it out just in case.

A superhero showing up has recently proven to be an extremely good deterrent from resisting arrest.

I suit up. I’ve given up on trying to speed up the process of putting on the Sentinel armour. Between my normal life, superheroing, school and my other projects, I got too much to do and just isn’t really worth the time and effort.

“This is the Sentinel,” I say over the League comm, “I’m checking out the latest alert.”

That’s our new standard thing to do, broadcasting over the League comm when we’re responding to an alert so the others know.

I fly out. It’s about midmorning so a lot of people look up as I fly overhead.

Not that I’m bothered. Personally I don’t care either way what people think when I go out in the Sentinel armour.

The police are already arriving and the gangs have already engaged each other in combat when I arrive over the scene.

There are six police officers and twenty six gangsters, eleven on one side and fifteen on the other. About half of the gangsters have sharp blades such as knifes while the rest have blunt objects such as bats and golf clubs.

Five of the gangsters already down on the ground and I can’t say that none aren’t seriously hurt.

Good thing I showed up when I did because I doubt it would have been long before someone died.

I turn on the armour’s PA system.

“This the Sentinel,” booms my voice as I lower myself closer to the ground and into sight, but still remaining in the air, “Surrender yourselves to the police! I will deal with any attempts to resist or flee.”

Thankfully the majority of them comply as the police move in and more arrive. Three of the gangsters do try to flee however

I lock onto them with my HUD and send out three electro-spyders to take them down. All three drop as they are electrocuted.

For me, the funny thing is that all of this is illegal. The League of Heroes is private organisation and unlike the Defenders, Highlanders or Guardians, its members count as civilians, not government authorised agents.

In practice, we’re been around since the late forties, even longer if you count the League founders working together in WWII. So people consider it normal for the League to what it does and there would be an uproar if an official or politician tried to stop us.

It’s also the same reason we don’t get sued. While there aren’t a lot of official laws regarding what we do, there are certainly a lot of unofficial rules.

So here I am, having just illegally taken down three men whilst technically being unprovoked and the police are grateful for my help and the people will cheer me on when they hear about it.

A high alert flashes up on my HUD.