The First United Savings & Loan was not only New York’s wealthiest bank, it was an institution.

Established in 1923, its reputation as a financial giant not only weathered the storm of the Great Depression, but spent the better part of the 20th century flourishing like a rampant weed.

The bank’s remarkable resilience was due in no small part to the tenacity of its famous founders, billionaire steel merchant John Francis Abbot, and legendary captain of industry Sir Ernest Caldwell.

In 1968, the bank erected a pair of bronze lion statues by the entrance to its opulent foyer. Every evening, when the sun would crown the Manhattan skyline in an ethereal grandeur, the magnificent felines would sparkle and shimmer like a pair of mythological wardens safeguarding the entrance to a vaunted treasure.

Locals christened the statues in memoriam of the bank’s founders. Abbot sat to the right of the rotating door, his flat nose and whip-like tail obscured beneath the shadow of the elegant marble architrave. Caldwell, the slightly larger of the two, sat to his left, his haughty posture rumored to perfectly mirror the captain’s notoriously prickly disposition.

In what fast became a New York tradition, passersby would rub the lions’ heads in the hope that the founders’ famous good fortune would, in turn, rub off on them. In a somewhat serendipitous development, time — and a steady stream of hopeful parishioners — turned them a burnished gold.

When Frank Nitty arrived at the First United one cool spring morning, he took the time to remove his fingerless woolen gloves and rub both the lions’ heads vigorously.

The security guard stationed by the door paid him no heed; after all, there was nothing unusual about a hobo trying his luck, and Nitty, with his long, tattered duster, heavy stubble, and cauliflowered ears looked about as hapless as a man who’d fallen asleep at the wheel of a stolen car and crashed it into the foyer of the 1st Precinct police station.

If the guard had paid closer attention, however, he might have noticed the sneer slowly creeping its way across Nitty’s thin, pale lips as he stroked Abbot’s head.

Alas, he saw nothing, not least until the butt of Nitty’s enormous assault rifle came rushing toward his nose.

◊◊◊

“Everybody on the floor! Knees on the ground! Hands up, eyes down!”

Nitty’s voice echoed off the basement ceiling. There was a scramble of feet as the hostages rushed to comply. Somebody fell to the floor, whimpering.

“Tie their hands,” he ordered his men. “You, what’s your name?”

“S — Sam,” stammered the security guard. His face looked like tenderized meat, the front of his uniform splattered with blood.

Nitty glared at him down the barrel of his rifle and raised his voice. “Everybody, listen up. Anybody tries to be a hero and Sam, here, goes home to his family in a doggy bag.”

The guard cowered at Nitty’s feet, his bottom lip trembling.

Nitty called back over his shoulder, “O’Connell, give me the good news.”

O’Connell’s grin practically shone like torchlight through the thick wool of his ski mask. “We’re in, baby! We’re in!”

Three feet of solid steel stood between Nitty and the First United’s famously abundant coffers. Nevertheless, his hand-picked crew made short work of it; the vault door swung open to reveal towers of neatly stacked bank notes.

Nitty’s mouth curled itself into a self-satisfied smirk. There was something about an old-fashioned robbery that stirred in him a longing for his youth, a time when a shotgun and a reputation for an itchy trigger finger had proved remarkably effective at solving all his problems.

Everything was going according to plan. The foyer had fallen easily; the bank’s security team had capitulated the moment he’d knocked out their captain’s front teeth. The rest of the staff (including a handful of early bird patrons) had surrendered with a minimum of fuss, being the sum total of two concussions, a broken arm, and twenty-three traumatized hostages.

Not bad for a morning’s work, he thought, yet the back of his neck itched with an odd sense of disquiet.

Looking up, he noticed the long fluorescent tubes lining the basement’s ceiling had begun to flicker. Beneath his ski mask, a wrinkle creased his thick, flat brow.

He studied his watch; his voice cracked like a whip: “Let’s move, dammit! Move!”

With a renewed sense of urgency, his crew began piling cash into large, black duffel bags.

“Remember the plan: two bags to a man, and keep your heads on a swivel. McElroy, I want you on point.”

“You got it, boss.”

“As soon as we’re clear of the hot zone, we separate. ‘A’ team takes the Midtown tunnel, ‘B’ team circles round the Navy Yard through Williamsburg, then we rendezvous at LaGuardia at 1100 hours. Keep the hostages close and the cops ain’t gonna touch us with a ten-foot pole. They get too close, you know what to do.”

“What about the Conservatory?” called one of his men.

Nitty scowled. “How many times I gotta tell ya? Conservatory response time to a Code Red is an average of six-and-a-half minutes. We’ll be long gone before one of those freaks even shows his face —”

“Does that mean I’m early?” a voice interrupted.

His head jerked around.

Standing in the entrance to the basement — or what was left of it, after Nitty’s men had blown the door clean off its hinges — stood the silhouette of a man poised with his hands on his hips.

Nitty snatched up his rifle. “You! Down on the floor. Now!”

The man stepped from the shadow and into the light; a shower of ice tumbled down Nitty’s throat into the pit of his stomach.

“Six-and-a-half minutes, you say?” said the stranger with a note of bemusement. His sleek, one-piece bodysuit hugged his muscular frame. “I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed. The Conservatory’s last internal review found that response time to a crisis worthy of a Category One intervention was an average of four minutes — rounded up, of course, for prudence’s sake.”

One by one, Nitty’s crew stopped what they were doing, frozen stiff at the sight of the tall, imposing figure standing between them and the basement’s only exit.

The stranger looked them over with a bored countenance, and with a glance at the hostages huddled on the floor, he said, “Gentlemen, I’ll ask this only once. Throw down your weapons and put your hands in the air.”

Nitty snorted. He squeezed his rifle and aimed it squarely at the intruder.

“To hell with you, Super. Move another inch, and my boys will fill you so full of lead you’ll sink six-feet under before ya momma’s even had a chance to pick out the suit she’ll bury you in.”

In answer to his summons, Nitty’s crew rallied. Dropping their bags full of stolen cash, they seized their rifles and simultaneously drew a bead on the stranger. The hostages shuffled nervously.

Undeterred, the Super took another step forward; Nitty’s men hesitated, their fingers trembling over their triggers. The Super looked vaguely amused.

“Just as I thought.”

At well over six feet tall, with broad, handsome features, there was no denying he cut a magnificent figure. Everything about him was impressive: his chin was cut from granite, his shoulders so impossibly wide they required clearance lights. His glistening, jet-black hair swept back from his forehead with such uncanny precision it appeared as if each strand was kept perfectly uniform by sheer force of will.

An oddly familiar scent accompanied him. Nitty knew it well; as an impetuous youth, he’d spent many a summer stealing cars and torching them for fun. The smell of burning rubber would often linger in his hair for days.

The Super reached inside his silver utility belt and withdrew a tiny bottle. Popping off the cap, he up ended it on the tip of his finger and dabbed its contents beneath his nostrils.

“Very well,” he said, returning the bottle to his belt, “objection duly noted.”

Nitty braced himself; every muscle in his body tensed as one as he anticipated the Super’s charge, yet the towering, statuesque man simply cleared his throat.

“My name is Agent John Henry Marshall,” he began in a thundering baritone that reverberated to every corner of the basement, “and I am a registered Guardian with the Office of the Preternatural Advocate. I hereby inform you that I am authorized by the federal government under Article B of subsection 1.4 of the Preternatural Charter to restrain anyone I suspect, beyond reasonable doubt, to be engaging in criminal activity. Furthermore, under subsection 3A, neither my employer nor I will be held legally responsible for any injury, trauma, or premature death that may occur to your person in the execution of my duties. Do I make myself clear, gentlemen?”

Nitty’s men glanced sideways at each other. O’Connell caught Nitty’s eye; they exchanged a knowing look.  

The Guardian’s voice echoed like a thunderclap:

“I said, do I make myself clear?”

Nitty bared his teeth and growled. “Do your worst, freak. You want to get all these fine, upstanding citizens killed, that’s on your conscience, not mine.”

The Guardian chuckled.

“Apologies,” he said, noting Nitty’s look of surprise, “but the mere suggestion you even have a conscience is terribly amusing. Well, then —” he clapped his hands — BANG! The floor quaked; Nitty rocked on the balls of his feet, “— what say we get started?”

“Wait! Wait!”

Nitty swung his rifle in an arc just in time to see one of his crew thrust his hands high above his head. Beneath his tangle of flaxen hair, the man’s face was deathly pale.

“I surrender! I surrender! Please! Spare me!”

Nitty stared in shock as the man tossed his rifle on the floor and stumbled forward.

“Agrippa, what the fuck are you doin’?” he hissed beneath his breath.  

The Guardian allowed himself a smug grin. “Well, well, let me be the first to commend you on a wise decision, young man. If only your colleagues shared your common sense.”

The flaxen-haired man dropped to his knees at the Guardian’s feet. “Please, sir! Don’t hurt me!”

Nitty’s snarl rose from the pit of his stomach and whistled through the gaps in his teeth. “You two-timing son of a bitch! Just you wait. I’m gonna hunt you down and boil the meat off your bones!”

Agrippa hugged the Guardian’s knees.

The Super reached down and gently patted the top of his head. “There, there. Nobody’s going to hurt you. Now, stand aside while I —”

Suddenly, Agrippa’s hands turned to jelly; with a wet, sucking sound, they wrapped themselves around the Guardian’s thighs in a thick globule of translucent, gelatin-like substance.

The Guardian’s words caught in his throat. His eyes turned wide with horror, but it was too late; Agrippa’s entire body abruptly transformed into one enormous, crystalline glob and engulfed him in a jello-like cocoon. His face — the only part of his body free of Agrippa’s hold — turned beet red as he struggled desperately to free himself.

“What — what is this?! Release me at once!”

A tremor rippled over the globule’s surface, but for all his bulging muscle, the Guardian couldn’t so much as lift a solitary finger.

Nitty dropped his rifle to his side and casually approached his captive.

“You got him locked tight?”

The silvery blob shifted; a large bubble slowly inflated atop the Guardian’s head, then — pop!

“How dare you?! I am a licensed Conservatory official! Any attack on my person constitutes an illegal —”

SLAP!

The Guardian’s cheek turned a violent red from the sting of Nitty’s open palm.

“Save your breath, pal. We heard you the first time.”

He set the point of his rifle on the floor and leaned on the butt like a walking stick. Reaching into his duster, he took out a crumpled pack of cigarettes, and with a casualness that contrasted starkly with his surroundings, he lit a smoke, took a long drag, and looked the Guardian up and down.

“A real live Guardian, how about that?” he mused. He flicked his ash at the Super’s feet and squinted through the smoke. “I figured we’d have to deal with a vigilante or two, but this? Gotta admit, I’m honored. Check him out, boys. It’s not every day we get a visit from Super royalty. Handsome devil, ain’t he? Just look at that suit,” he said with a mocking whistle, “slicker than a greased-up eel.”

He was right. The Guardian’s outfit was nothing short of sublime. It adhered to his impressive physique like a second skin, neither a crease nor buckle in sight. It was as though he’d been dipped in molten steel the color of freshly fallen snow, a white so brilliant that not even Agrippa’s blob could diminish its radiant aura. His shoulders, forearms, and boots were a rich shade of blue, yet the suit was remarkably unpretentious; aside from a pair of red chevrons on his left arm, its only other embellishment was an embossed Conservatory logo emblazoned across his upper-right shoulder, a simple, presidential-like seal.

“You wanna know somethin’?” asked Nitty conversationally. “You’re the first Guardian I’ve seen up close. I spend most my time tryin’ to avoid you fellas, but as my ol’ pappy used to say, ‘when fate throws a dagger at you, there are only two ways to catch it: by the blade or by the handle’.” His eyes shone with malicious intent. “Waste not, want not, am I right? Agrippa, show me his Halo.”

With a damp squelch, the blob raised the Guardian’s right arm. The Super watched in horror as the globule slowly retracted to his elbow and revealed a thick metal band encircling his wrist.

Nitty removed his ski mask and tossed it aside. Greed revealed itself in his craggy features as his gaze narrowed in on the metal band. “Well, ain’t that a peach …”

“Boss, we gotta move,” said O’Connell anxiously.

“Keep your wig on, Marty. If there’s a Guardian here, that means the cops will hold back until he gives them the all-clear. Ain’t that right, big boy?”

The Guardian leveled him with a cold stare.

“You think your little friend here can hold me forever?” he said. He tried shifting his head, yet couldn’t budge. “I’m speaking directly to you, glob. Release me now, or I’ll make sure you spend the rest of your life in a cell in Iron Mountain.”

Agrippa bubbled.

Nitty reached inside his duster and took out a strange, metal device that vaguely resembled a tuning fork.

The Guardian’s nostrils flared. “Don’t even think about it.” With a twist of the fork, then a dull click, the metal band slid from the Guardian’s wrist. “Stop! Don’t touch that! That’s government property!”

Nitty’s crew laughed.

“Don’t worry, hotshot. I’ll give it a good home.”

With a lapel in each hand, Nitty drew open his duster to reveal a leather bandoleer strapped across his chest. Attached to it were yet more wristbands: one was scorched black, another scarred with long, jagged gouges. The largest was a dazzling sterling silver, the smallest a vibrant jade. Each of them was glowing.

The Guardian’s eyes widened in shock. “Thief! Where did you get those?”

Nitty replied with a casual shrug. “I get around.”

The Super’s eyes narrowed. “No self-respecting Super would willingly part with their Halo. What did you do to them?”

Nitty grinned humorlessly; his teeth were stained yellow, the gaps between each one unnaturally wide.

The Guardian’s handsome features turned to stone.

“Monster!” he spat, and again, he struggled furiously against Agrippa’s hold. “Just you wait until I’m out of here. I’m going to tear you limb from limb!”

Nitty whistled. O’Connell stepped forward and drew a savage-looking gun from a holster strapped to his thigh. The tip of its barrel was as round as a balled fist. A thick black cable hung from the stock and attached somewhere behind his back. With a flick of a switch, an electric hum filled the entire basement.

The moment the Guardian felt the rubble beneath his feet begin to vibrate, he ceased his struggling.

“A Juke!” he gasped. “That’s illegal contraband. Not only are you committing a federal crime, you are in possession of a prohibited weapon!”

Nitty sighed irritably. “The next time this meat bag opens his mouth, give him the full blast.”

“Sure thing, boss.”

O’Connell adjusted a toggle on the Juke’s barrel; with a violent shudder, the hum became a fully electrified orchestra.

Nitty raised the Guardian’s Halo to the light, examining it with a practiced eye. It glowed with a strange luminescence, a white so pure it perfectly reflected his hoggish grin in the symbols etched in its surface. His calloused fingers traced each finely engraved figure with a loving caress.

“My, my, now that is a work of art, right there. I’ve been hankerin’ for one of these ever since I killed my first Super, ain’t that right, Marty?”

“She’s a beauty, boss.”

The Guardian’s eyes hardened.

“They make these special for you fellas, don’t they? A little bird told me about a Guardian down in Miami who had his old man’s dog tags melted down and set into the core. Ain’t that sweet? They’re the ones I like best, the ones with sentimental value. Missed my chance when he caught a fast train to hell courtesy of an MIM-104 Patriot missile. But this —” he turned the Halo over in his hands, marveling at its subtle, hypnotic glow, “— this’ll do just fine.”

“Over my dead body,” said the Guardian with a cold finality.

Nitty’s heavy brow wrinkled. He drew the Halo up to the tip of his nose and stared at it intently.

“What is it, boss?”

Nitty wagered he knew more about Halos than almost anyone. Aside from his bandoleer, he kept a small safe full of his lesser examples in an innocent-looking storage shed off the I-78 Express. They ranged from the modest to the gloriously vulgar. One he’d even ‘procured’ from a famous Super who’d starred in his own weekly variety hour in the mid-70s; it’d been dipped in 14-carat gold and studded with a dazzling collection of diamonds.

But this … this was something he’d never seen before. Secreted into the Halo’s metal surface was a tiny, circular indent; as he ran his thumb over the top, it submerged with a faint click.

He paused, then rounded on the Guardian with an inquisitive look.

“Hey, meat bag. What’s this here little button for?”

A smug grin curdled the Guardian’s handsome features. “Did you honestly think the Conservatory doesn’t plan for these kinds of contingencies?”

A cold shiver trickled down Nitty’s spine, not least because the basement’s temperature had suddenly dropped to below freezing.

“Clock’s ticking, boss,” said O’Connell over the hum of his Juke. “If we’re gonna make the rendezvous on time, we gotta m — m — move …” His voice trailed off in confusion as his teeth began to chatter; to his utter astonishment, his words had turned to a fine mist.

Nitty looked up. The basement lights had begun to furiously flash and flicker as though he’d suddenly found himself in the middle of a mid-90s rave. For a brief moment, the air itself seemed to sparkle with electricity, then —

PFFOOOOOOMMMPPPFF!

A burst of light illuminated the entire basement. It was as though lightning had struck the floor, but instead of an enormous thunderclap, Nitty’s ears rang with the slap of a wet towel. He stumbled backward in shock, almost tumbling over a hostage. Stars danced before his eyes, then the basement gradually materialized as if reemerging from a thick fog.

To the Guardian’s left, a dark, round silhouette manifested itself into the form of a fat little man sporting a pair of dark-blue overalls a size too small for his portly frame. In his right hand, he held a half-eaten sandwich.

“Done already?” he said to the Guardian through a mouthful of pastrami.

Behind his wire-rim glasses, the little man’s beady-brown eyes practically popped out of their sockets the second they registered the translucent blob encasing the Guardian’s body. His head jerked round, his fleshy jowls wobbling beneath his scraggly brown beard. The moment he locked eyes with Nitty, a chunk of Swiss cheese fell from his lips and landed with a splat at his feet.

Nitty mirrored his shock. His eyes flashed to the metal band wrapped around the fat little man’s wrist, and he sucked in a lungful of air:

“SUUUUPER!”

O’Connell swung the Juke and pulled the trigger —

THHHWWUUUMMP!

An invisible blast sent a violent shudder through the air. There was another flash of light —

PFFOOOOOOMMMPPPFF!

The little man vanished, then reappeared on the other side of the basement. The Juke’s wayward blast struck the wall; it exploded in a shower of concrete and dust.

“There!” shouted Nitty.

O’Connell spun on his heel.

THHHWWUUUMMP!

PFFOOOOOOMMMPPPFF!

Again, the little man teleported into thin air only to reemerge in another part of the basement. O’Connell was too slow; the Juke’s blast ripped a gaping hole in the ceiling.

Nitty howled with frustration. “Shoot the bastard! Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!”

O’Connell threw back his head and let out a primal scream; throwing caution to the wind, he braced the Juke against his hip and cut loose:

THHHWWUUUMMP!

PFFOOOOOOMMMPPPFF!

THHHWWUUUMMP!

PFFOOOOOOMMMPPPFF!

THHHWWUUUMMP!

PFFOOOOOOMMMPPPFF!

It was like watching some kind of strange, dystopian ballet. As O’Connell fired with reckless abandon, the little man simply teleported back and forth, his every move accompanied by a blast of blue light and a wet smack like the sound of a slab of meat being slapped against a concrete wall. With each miss, O’Connell grew more desperate, firing indiscriminately; the Juke bucked and writhed in his hands.

“Cobb! Get behind me!” yelled the Guardian.

PFFOOOOOOMMMPPPFF!

“No!” cried Nitty, but it was too late —

THHHWWUUUMMP!

The blast hit the Guardian front on. He rocked back and forth on his heels, teetering like a tower on the verge of collapse. Agrippa quivered, then to Nitty’s horror, the translucent globule slipped from the Guardian’s body like thick mud and pooled at his feet. The Guardian casually shook himself free. 

O’Connell furiously jammed the trigger — click, click, click. The Juke hissed, and with a wheeze like an old pair of bellows and a mechanical clunk, the barrel split in two and vented thick plumes of steam. He ripped the thick black cable from the stock and frantically reattached it — click, click, click. He gawked at Nitty, the whites of his eyes bulging with panic, yet Nitty was dealing with a dilemma of his own. The instant the little man had teleported, a putrid stench had hit him like a ton of bricks. The smell of burning rubber seized him by his nostrils, squeezed itself up his nose, and rammed itself down his throat like a noxious gas. Tears sprung from his eyes as if he’d spontaneously sprung a leak. He gagged violently, his rifle almost slipping from his grasp.

Agrippa’s gelatinous blob bubbled like a boiling pot as the pungent odor spread throughout the basement. The stench was so violent that one of Nitty’s men retched inside his ski mask.

The hostages coughed and spluttered, their confusion mingling with shock and fear. Stranger still was the sight of their hair — it was standing straight up; Nitty’s own greasy locks bristled like a steel brush.

The Guardian reached into his utility belt and reapplied the contents of the small bottle. He sniffed, then gazed at Nitty down the length of his aquiline nose with an imperious look.

“Citizen, you are under arrest for attempted bank robbery, assault, abduction, attacking a federal officer, and illegal possession of government property.”

Nitty swallowed his bile. Summoning the dregs of his courage, he roared:

“LIGHT HIM UP!” 

 Like a well-oiled machine, Nitty’s crew threw off the effects of the ghastly stench and opened fire. The basement boomed with the echo of automatic weapons. Shells spilled across the floor as they emptied their magazines into the Guardian. O’Connell tossed the malfunctioning Juke aside and whipped his pistol from his hip; he fired at the Guardian’s chest, screaming at the top of his lungs with each pull of the trigger.

Their bullets did nothing. Instead of reducing him to a bloody pulp, the Guardian simply grew. He expanded inexorably; their bullets were being … absorbed.

“Stop!” shouted Nitty. “Cease fire! Cease! Fire!”

 The basement fell silent, the air thick with gun smoke.

As the veil cleared, the Guardian shifted on his enormous feet — crack! The floor buckled beneath his gigantic heels. Nitty craned back his neck, and his jaw slowly dropped. As if he hadn’t already been impressive enough, the Guardian now stood three times his normal size, his washing machine-sized head scraping against the ceiling. Remarkably, his suit had grown with him, accommodating his sudden growth spurt with scarcely a split seam.

There was a long, stunned silence, followed by a dull thunck when O’Connell hurled his empty pistol at the Guardian; it bounced off his chest and landed harmlessly at his feet.

The Guardian’s gigantic head slowly swiveled atop his shoulders and stared down at him with a mildly irritated expression. Then, with a burst of speed that belied his enormous bulk, he leaped forward and struck.

For one brief, glorious moment, Nitty’s life of crime flashed before his eyes: robbery; extortion; murder; public indecency; grand larceny; vehicular assault; light grave robbery — then the Guardian’s gigantic fist connected with the side of his head and sent his brain ricocheting about his skull like a loose coin inside a tumble dryer. His feet left the ground — he was flying! — then he hit the wall with such incredible force that his body wedged itself into the concrete like a newly fitted lighting fixture. The moment before his eardrums burst, he heard gunshots, followed by the short, muffled cries of his crew.

Somewhere in the mire, a hostage sobbed.

The Guardian loomed tall over the ruins of the basement. Power emanated from his every pore. The muscles in his neck bulged like steel cables. Then, with a tiny whistling sound not unlike that of a deflating balloon, he began to shrink. The hostages’ awestruck expressions slackened at the sight of their savior assuming his original size.

There was a crunch of rubble underfoot as the fat little man emerged from behind a shattered pillar, his jowls quivering with anger as he marched up to the Guardian and shoved a short, sausage-like finger in his face.

“Seriously, Marshall?You called me into an active crime scene? Have you lost your fuckin’ mind?”

The Guardian casually swept a layer of dust from his shoulders. Stepping over a pile of debris, he bent down and retrieved his Halo from where it had spilled from Nitty’s grasp.

“My contract specifically states that Walter B. Cobb is a non-combatant!” the little man continued to wail. “Do you understand what that means, you over-sized dipshit?”

The Guardian took Nitty’s tuning fork from his duster and slipped the Halo back over his wrist, securing it with a quick adjustment. Tossing the fork aside, he turned to Cobb and peered down at him as if noticing him for the first time. “I’m sorry, you were saying something?”

“I could’ve been killed!” said Cobb furiously.

The Guardian rolled his eyes. “Don’t flatter yourself. Look at you — you’re perfectly fine. I’m speaking figuratively, of course; there is nothing even remotely acceptable about your appearance,” he added with a pointed look at the little man’s bulging waistline.

Standing, or rather slouching a full foot shorter than the Guardian, Cobb’s physique bore a remarkable resemblance to that of a wax candle left to sit on a windowsill on a hot summer’s day. His prodigious belly strained at the seams of his dirty blue overalls, while his neck appeared to be gradually sinking into his shoulders. But for his beard and a sparse smattering of hair encircling his crown, he was mostly bald.

A large chunk of flesh was missing from the top of his left ear, an old wound long-since healed. Nevertheless, it left his glasses sitting at a somewhat jaunty angle; he pushed them up his short, stubby nose and glared at the Guardian with unbridled rage.

“You’ve got no right to talk to me like that! Not you, not your buddies, not anyone, you hear me?”

The Guardian turned his back on him and addressed the hostages. “Anyone in need of medical assistance?”

A few trembling voices answered.

He reached up and pressed a finger to his collar. A small, button-sized disk detached itself, trailing a thin, opaque wire.

“Agent Marshall to HQ.”

A slightly garbled voice responded. “HQ to Marshall, reading you loud and clear.”

“Subjects have been neutralized. All hostages accounted for.”

He glanced down at Agrippa’s blob; it bubbled and burped. He appeared to be attempting to resume human form, yet the Juke’s effects rendered his efforts slow and cumbersome; it was like watching a sentient tub of jello learning to walk.

“Reconciliation officers are required on-site for the immediate extraction of an illegal Super. Inform the NYPD and the paramedics they may now enter safely.”

“Excellent work as always, Agent. We’ll have —”

Cobb yanked the radio out of his hand. The wire pulled taut so that the Guardian was forced to stoop; his nose wrinkled — the little man’s breath reeked of a particularly spicy pastrami.

“This is Cobb. Listen up. This asshole just had me teleport straight into a gunfight. This was a deliberate violation of my contract!”

The Guardian snatched the radio back. He straightened up and leveled Cobb with a look that suggested he was seriously contemplating turning him into a footstool. 

The voice audibly sighed. “Tell me what happened, Marshall.”

“As always, he’s being facetious. One of the perps removed my Halo and prematurely signaled Cobb that I was ready for extraction. An unexpected development, but one I played to my advantage — masterfully, I might add. Cobb, here, is merely upset that he was momentarily inconvenienced. Whilst stuffing his cake hole, no doubt,” he added, his eyes noting a stain beneath the collar of Cobb’s overalls that looked suspiciously like a Dijon mustard sauce.

“Inconvenienced? They shot at me with a goddamn Juke!”

The Guardian cocked an eyebrow at him. “What is it you want, exactly? An apology? Would you prefer I signaled you by some other means? Perhaps I could blow a high-pitched whistle, or employ a service bell. How about it, Walter? Would that be more amenable to your delicate disposition?” He raised his hand and daintily mimed the ringing of a bell. “Ding-a-ling-ling?”

A rush of color flushed Cobb’s cheeks as though he’d stuck his face in a furnace, but before he could unleash his anger, the voice interrupted:

“Walter, if you wish to make a formal complaint, you can talk to your handler when you get back to headquarters, but for now, it will have to wait. We have more work to do. We’ve got a bomb threat. Dallas, corner of Houston and Main by the Old Red Museum. You know it?”

Cobb grimaced. “Yeah, I know it,” he grumbled.

“City PD have cordoned off the block and a disposal unit are on standby. Clock is ticking on this one, fellas. Get your skates on and report back when you’re done. Oh, and Marshall?”

“Yes?”

“Be more careful with your Halo in future.”

A dark pall fell over the Guardian’s face. “Certainly,” he said with a stiff jaw. He released the radio; it retracted seamlessly into his collar.

Cobb’s jowls shook as though he were about to internally combust. “You are some piece of work, you know that?”

“Oh, spare me the performance. Let me give you some advice, Cobb. In order to convincingly portray moral outrage, one first requires morals.”

“Don’t push me,” he hissed.

A slight frown marred the Guardian’s perfect brow. “Or what? You’ll make another idle threat to leave me stranded in some inhospitable hellhole? Where will it be this time? The Sahara? Antarctica? New Jersey? Give it a rest, you despicable little man. We both know you’ll do no such thing. You don’t have the balls.”

“Try me, you fascist. Next time you put me in danger, I’m gonna dump you on a tuna boat in the middle of the Atlantic.”

“At least the stench would improve.”

Cobb glared at him.

The Guardian chortled.

“Look at you. Sometimes I think you actually enjoy being miserable. You know, I heard a fascinating rumor about this so-called ‘contract’ of yours —”

Cobb paled.

“— although it’s not really a contract, is it? Normally when a prisoner is given early release in exchange for indentured servitude to the government, it’s called community service.” He smiled coldly. “The Conservatory may have found a use for your powers, but don’t think for a second that makes you worthy of my respect. Your only job is to shuttle us Guardians from one emergency to another. As far as I’m concerned, you’re nothing more than a glorified taxi service. Frankly, I couldn’t care less if you get hurt in the line of duty. You are an embarrassment to the entire department. Take my advice: if you hate working for the Conservatory so much, then do us all a favor and go crawl back into your cell. I, for one, would be overjoyed at the prospect of finally being rid of that horrible little aberration you have the audacity to call a personality.”

Cobb stared back at him, then to the Guardian’s surprise, he smiled.

“My problem ain’t with the Conservatory, Marshall — it’s with you, and all your fat-headed pals running around acting like you’re God’s gift to humanity.”

He turned from the Guardian and began rummaging through the debris.

“Worthy of your respect?” he muttered beneath his breath. “Worthy of your respect? You’re kiddin’ me, right? What? You think just because you can blow yourself up to the size of an SUV that makes you special? I’ve had hemorrhoids that were more impressive — and less a pain in the ass.”

“How droll.”

Cobb grunted as he heaved aside a large piece of the ceiling. “I’ve known Supers who can topple cities, obliterate entire armies with a flick of their finger. Supers who’d hit you so hard they’d send you all the way back to the primordial ooze.”

Agrippa popped.

The Guardian stared down at Cobb with a bemused expression. “Next you’ll be telling me you’re best friends with Roy Caesar …”

Cobb looked up from the rubble. “Caesar?” he repeated. He kicked over a broken tile and swept through the wreckage with the toe of his boot. “Never met him, but from what I’ve heard, he’s a prick.”

The Guardian scoffed, then one of his eyebrows slowly curved into an arc. “… Really?”

With an exasperated sigh, the little man straightened up and wiped the sweat from his bald pate with the back of his sleeve. His Halo glinted beneath the basement lights; in stark contrast to the Guardian’s, it looked like a recently unearthed relic, its formerly blue veneer little more than a silvery haze besieged by patches of rust.

Suddenly, Cobb’s face lit up like a Christmas tree. He lunged for something at his feet, and drawing up his elbow as if he were pulling a sword from stone, he triumphantly held aloft the rather miserly looking remains of his sandwich.

“Gotcha!” 

The Guardian watched incredulously as Cobb clambered back over the debris and joined him by the hostages. The little man took his pastrami-on-rye and shoved it down into his breast pocket. Beneath the flickering lights, the Guardian’s features twisted themselves into a look of pure contempt.

“Walter, as a Guardian with over twenty-years experience, having been mentored by some the most powerful men and women ever to grace this uniform, I believe my words carry some weight of authority when I say that you are, without a shadow of a doubt, the worst Super I have ever met.”

Cobb reached out and took his hand. “The feeling’s mutual, jackass.”

PFFOOOOOOMMMPPPFF!