Drake was looking up, toward the sound of the voice, when everything around him plunged into utter blackness. He was unable to see anything, even the sleek silver form of Soundstage. Instinctively, he dived to his right, rolling and coming to his feet against the base of a small tree. He cursed as he heard Soundstage call to him.

“Pattern Sigma!” the armored booster ordered, her voice amplified unnaturally in the darkness.

“Pattern what?” Drake demanded, slicing around himself at random with his claws. He had no knowledge of the intricate battle tactics that might be in use by Soundstage and her usual partners.

“Damn it! Just go south!”

“I don’t know where south is,” he replied. Despite the situation, he could not help but be amused at the futility of her commands. Some of us ain’t got no built-in compass, he thought. “How about I just take off ‘til I find daylight?”

“Yes, run,” urged the voice that had spoken to them. It was deep and sonorous, reminding Drake of a funeral director at work. “You make it all the sweeter when you do.”

“About as sweet as your mama’s—” Drake began to taunt. His words were cut short when a heavy boot crashed into his jaw. Trying to roll with the impact, he lashed out with his claws, finding only air.

“Run. Run away,” whispered the unseen attacker. Each word seemed to come from a different location, and Drake slashed ineffectually wherever he thought the speaker might be.

“Soundstage! Get me a fix on this monkey!”

“All sensors are blind,” came the response. A thudding sound announced that their assailant had found the booster in the battle suit as well. Drake was reminded of the first time he had dealt with Soundstage, when he had been blinded in Austin, and the memory was not a pleasant one. He knew that they needed to get out of this situation, and soon. As usual, he approached the solution with his own blend of subtlety and tact.

“Shoot anything that ain‘t me! This is gonna get worse before it gets better!”

“Yes, it will,” said the voice, once more close by Drake’s ear.

Nodding his head, Drake took in a long, deep breath and exhaled mightily. He felt the flame pass across his lips and teeth, but saw no evidence of it at all. It was as if the flame did not exist.

“It…,” whispered the voice, accompanied by a brutal kick to Drake’s ribs. The reptilian booster grunted and folded forward, trying to grab the leg as it moved clear.

“Will do…,” it continued from another point, following up with a ringing blow to the side of his head behind his ear.

“No good,” the voice completed, coming from above him and to his left.

Massaging his ribs, Drake stood erect once again. He felt dizzy - not from the attacks, but from the disorienting effect of being enveloped in the total blackness. Another dull clanging sound came from off to his right, and he had a partial fix on Soundstage by the sound. Cautiously, he began to edge his way back toward her. If they could pair up, he knew, they could at least defend against multiple angles.

The horrific scream of Soundstage’s boot jets igniting echoed from the nearby cabin, and Drake used the sound as a triangulation tool, comparing its proximity to the mental picture he had developed before the darkness fell around him. He imagined that he was closer than he wanted to be, and if the attacks by the unseen foe had not allowed those within the cabin to be alerted to their presence, certainly the boot jets would.

As if on cue, he heard a voice from the direction of the home. They had been detected, and the voice was one that Drake recognized with no difficulty.

“Eclipse! What do you have?” demanded Thrash. The words were barely audible over the jet noise.

“Lizard and a tin can,” replied the voice. “Although the metal one is headed up.”

“A lizard?” Thrash roared, ignoring the inclusion of Soundstage. “Let me see!”

The sudden return of light was painful to Drake’s eyes and left him shielding them with one hand as he felt protective membranes slide into place. The world around him had form once more, but it was blurred by his own body’s responses to the change in illumination.

“Drake! Down!” shouted Soundstage. He obeyed without hesitation, dropping to the ground and rolling to his left. A muffled curse along with the thumping noise of another body hitting the ground sounded from where he had just been. At a guess, he would figure it to have been the leaping form of the one Thrash called Eclipse.

“Well, well,” Thrash said, her voice coming from ahead and to Drake’s right. As she continued, he heard her footsteps growing closer in a sprint. “If it ain’t old Drakey. How you been, ass munch?”

The last words were accompanied by a powerful kick to his midsection. All the air rushed from Drake’s lungs in a huff of sulfurous breath. A second kick slammed home a heartbeat later, striking him in the same spot. He rolled with the impact, letting it carry him away from the assault for the moment. His vision was clearing as his eyes adjusted to the brightness and he felt the nictitating membranes snap back into their sheaths.

He was indeed closer to the cabin than he would have wanted to be, and Thrash was towering over him. Her twisted grin drew tight as she flexed her muscles, driving a straight right fist into his muzzle. He felt a front tooth snap. Pushing up with his hands, he threw himself into a crouch, then suddenly lurched upward, using the armor on the top of his head to strike the woman in the face as he rose. There was a satisfying crunching sound and she was thrown back a pace, hand coming up to protectively cup at her mouth and nose. Blood trickled from between her fingers.

“Not bad,” she said, snuffing to clear her nose.

“Better than you,” he countered. He snapped his head from side to side, letting the vertebrae crack noisily. “I been waiting on this ever since you hit my brother.”

“What? The retard? I knock some sense into him, did I?” she taunted, grinning malevolently.

“Keep talking, slick. I’m gonna put my foot so far up your ass you’ll think you’re a Muppet.”

“Then let’s go,” she said, leaping forward. She dodged a quick left jab, slashing at Drake’s neck with a stiffened hand. He accepted the hit and drove a giant green fist into her ribs.

Soundstage was having her own problems. Though her vision was not obscured as Drake’s had been, and indeed was better than normal due to internal compensators that kept her sight from being affected, she was beset on two sides. To her rear, the booster Thrash had called Eclipse leaped from concealment within the trees to attack her, while to the front stood a giant of a man in a leather ‘X’-harness. Evening sun glinted from his shaved head. It looked as though it had recently been waxed. His eyes were brown and bloodshot as he glared at Soundstage. He reached out and gripped her by the shoulders. His eyes bulged out even further for a second. Without any other warning, he slammed his forehead directly into her chest armor. The heads-up display in her visor registered the force in foot-pounds of energy and she grimaced as she realized just how much strength the man had.

“Let’s crack this can open, shall we?” Eclipse asked, his tone almost casual. He thrust his hands forward, fingers outstretched. Two bolts of energy, blue-black and sizzling with traceries of silver, shot out to hammer into the back of her armored suit. Chips of metal flew away as they bit home.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Soundstage said as she reached up to grip the wrist of the massive man who held her. It was unclear which of the two she addressed.

Drake followed up with a left cross, not letting Thrash have the time to regain her wits. She slapped aside the blow with her palm, turning the block into a side-armed strike that he in turn blocked with his own forearm. Three more sets of punches came from each of them, none connecting as their defenses stayed strong.

“Gonna take you down, Johnny Law,” Thrash threatened, dropping to one leg and spinning, her other leg lashing out as she did so. Drake hopped over it. Rather than respond verbally to her taunt, he let his tail flick forward to slap her across the face. The red imprint it left behind was satisfying to him and he allowed himself a smirking grin. Thrash brought up her hand to feel the point of impact, her eyes widening.

“You touched me with that filthy tail!” she shouted, right hand crossing in front of her and gripping the hilt of her sword. It emerged from the scabbard with a ringing tone. Drake noted at a glance that it was a match to the one that she had lost in the mall battle. That particular weapon was now in one of the Department’s evidence lockers. He remembered seeing it in Monster’s chubby hands and the thought of his brother suffering at the hands of this woman doubled his resolve to finish her.

“How do you think I feel?” he shot back. “It’ll take me hours to wash off your stink.”

“I’ll wash you in blood, you ugly green maggot,” she told him, starting forward. She held the weapon out in front of her, twitching the tip back and forth in a series of teasing flicks. Each one came a little closer to touching Drake, but he stood his ground. His grin was growing by the second, and it looked as malicious as ever it had.

“Let’s have some fun, then,” he said. “Come on, slick. I got something for you.”

Soundstage held onto the wrist of the enormous man with both hands. Tiny actuators inside her gauntlets strained as she applied more and more force, making high-pitched squealing noises as they did. The man’s face turned red and he slammed a meaty fist into her side as he pulled against a grip that had grown to be stronger than he could have expected.

“Let it go, ya crazy bitch!” he shouted, hitting her again and again. Where his forceful blows centered on her flank, the armor was denting and beginning to flex inward.

“Not quite yet,” she responded, grunting slightly as his punches struck home. She knew that she had to take this man out of the fight if she wanted a chance to deal with the one that was currently behind her. Eclipse was blasting into her spine once again. The impacts were like sledgehammer blows.

There was an audible crack and the big man’s eyes went wide with pain. Soundstage’s fingers flexed open, releasing his broken wrist as she did so, and then closed again into a fist of her own that snapped out in a quick straight line to land squarely on the tip of his chin. Metal and bone met with a crash of sound. The man’s lips split and fresh blood flowed as he took a step backward to cradle his wrist in his hands.

Pleased that the armored woman was occupying herself with his partner, Eclipse readied a third strike, summoning energies from deep within and channeling them through his hands. His target was the same damaged spot on her back that he had fired into twice already. He could see hints of metal colored differently than her armor and his hope was that he could punch through to the woman inside.

Thrash laughed aloud at Drake’s declaration, ignoring the narrowing of his eyes and the dangerous glint they carried. She slashed with the tip of her sword, cutting a whistling path through the air within inches of Drake.

“Ain’t getting away so easy this time,” she said, flicking the blade in a backhand sweep that threatened to open his belly.

“Look like I’m running?” he replied in a voice that was a gurgling growl of sound. He slapped down with one hand, knocking the blade toward the ground. Before Thrash could recover it, he stepped inside her guard and grabbed her sword hand in his own huge mitt. He gripped it with enough force to make his muscles stand out along his arm.

“Hold tight, sweetheart,” he urged, bending at the waist. The reason for the gurgling noise became suddenly apparent as he opened his mouth. Spittle ran from his mouth in a stringy mass.

“Sick!” she shouted, trying in vain to disengage his grip. “What are you…Oh God NO!” she screamed, her voice deafening in his ears as the reptilian booster brought his plan to fruition.

Soundstage spun on one heel in response to the latest assault by Eclipse. Every nerve in her back felt on fire, and she knew that this time he had managed to breach her armor, at least in part. She had small amber warning lights flashing in her heads-up display. She began to wish she had gone with the enhanced plating that she had contemplated when Drake suggested this little jaunt into the wilderness.

“Would you please stop doing that?” she demanded, lashing out with her left hand. She used the palm to strike Eclipse in the chest, driving the booster back a couple of steps. He laughed and started forward again. She noted that his eyes were a beautiful shade of green even as she swept out a right cross that closed one of those orbs with a jarring impact. In response, he waved a hand and everything around Soundstage went black again.

“And that, too!” she protested. She lashed out with a boot, kicking him away and hearing him tumble through some brush.

“You hurt me, little lady,” Eclipse said. From the muffled tone of his voice, Soundstage gathered he had one hand pressed to his face. “Nobody gets to do that. I’m gonna crack that suit and chew you up like a peanut.”

“Not today,” she said with a chuckle. “Figured you’d do the darkness thing again, so when I hit you, I planted a transmitter.”

“A what?” he demanded.

“Homing beacon. Guides these,” she said. A hissing noise erupted, sounding like a hundred thousand teakettles all boiling at once. A curse tumbled from Eclipse’s lips as he - able to see in the darkness he generated - witnessed the newest attack from the armored woman.

Drake exhaled with force. A column of flame spat from his mouth, enveloping the blade of Thrash’s sword in bright red-orange fire. The spittle ignited as well, and it lent a demonic air to the visage of the dragon that crouched before her as the flame hung quivering from his lips. Thrash screamed anew as the heat traveled through the metal she held. Hand clutched in the powerful talons of her foe, she could not escape the pain. It went in seconds from mildly annoying to irritating to painful to agonizing. The blade had turned white and still Drake breathed fire onto its surface. The studded leather glove that had protected her hand was charred and smoking inside his tremendous grasp.

Kicking and screaming, she used her boots in alternating blows to try to force him into releasing her. They impacted with a series of thudding sounds on his scaled form, but held as she was, she was in no position to get any real strength behind the assault. Her cries were drowned out by a sudden shrill hissing noise, and still she screamed.

Drake stopped his onslaught as the blade of the sword began to droop toward the ground under its own weight. He thrust her arm away from him with a grimace, letting her fall to her knees as she lifted the arm to her chest.

“I told you I‘d get you, slick. Nobody touches my little brother,” he snarled. He reached behind his hip for his handcuffs. Gripping her wrists, he efficiently bound her, ignoring as best he could her piteous cries and the way they reminded him of the injuries he had once inflicted on the booster called Broadsword.

Eclipse lost his concentration, dropping the darkness field he had generated. An expression of raw horror masked his features as he threw himself backward and to his left.

A cloud of smoke obscured most of Soundstage where she stood, the cloud resolving into a series of small contrails as the fifty finger-sized rockets arched away from her back and arrowed toward Eclipse’s location. Borne on tiny tongues of flame, they homed in on the transmitter patch she had stuck to his chest. Eclipse spun and turned to run, opening the distance by a few feet at first, but steadily losing ground with every step as the miniscule warheads tore through the air. He grabbed a tree trunk and used it to suddenly change his direction, turning to face the oncoming swarm. His hands came up and a bolt of energy flashed from each of them. Five of the rockets exploded in flight with flashes of light, a puff of smoke, and sounds like heavy-caliber gunfire. The rest continued on their unerring flight, and he let out a whimper.

Satisfied that her attack had been properly launched, Soundstage turned back toward the big man in time to catch a vicious right to the side of her head. Sensors went to static for a second as the immensely powerful blow struck. Alarm lights flared to life in her display and she felt a moment of disorientation as the suit shifted power from one system to another in an attempt to compensate. She was vaguely aware of the staccato detonations of the mini-rockets behind her, but her attention was focused on the threat at hand.

“Thought I was that easy?” demanded the monstrous man as he bore down on her stumbling figure. His left hand hung limply but his right was drawing back for another strike. Without warning, a pair of durite handcuffs bounced off the side of his head and he turned to see Drake grinning at him. Blood and still-flaming spittle dripped from the pointed teeth.

“Only easy one is your girlfriend, here,” Drake called, gesturing to the crying form of Thrash. The man’s eyes bulged from their sockets and he stopped dead in his tracks as he saw the pitiful sight.

“THRASH!” he yelled, starting to take a step toward the woman. Soundstage struck from his right, her speaker systems coming online with a screech of sonic power. Blood ran from the man’s nose and ears as he was caught in the ferocious blast. His skin actually rippled under the force. He clapped his hands to his ears, wailing in agony as the damaged left hand made contact with his head.

The volume continued to increase until the effect was physically palpable across the entire clearing. Leaves fluttered on their stems. Every window in the cabin shattered. Peripheral vision within Soundstage’s helmet showed Drake turning his back and covering his own sensitive ears. That sight stopped her, and she discontinued the attack. She did not give the giant man any time to react, though, lashing out with a metal-shod foot and kicking him in the side of the head. Bloodshot eyes rolled up in their sockets and he collapsed, unmoving, to the ground.

Drake stood, groaning and rubbing at his head with the palm of his hand. “What the hell was that?” he demanded. “It wasn’t that bad when we fought the fifty-foot guy!”

“New amps,” she explained, chuckling. “Work pretty good, huh?”

Drake wiggled a finger in one ear, shaking his head. “I think my brain liquefied.”

“No loss there.”

He laughed, then pointed with a talon at her damaged form. Her armor was dented and even torn in several places. Smoke had left soot in ragged patterns across the brushed metal, and some liquid he could not identify was running down the outside of her left leg.

“Hell, girl, what happened to you?” he teased. “You look like you spent three hours in a mosh pit.”

“I feel like it, too,” she said. “By the way, you’re gonna owe me for a shitload of repairs.”

“Me? I’m just a poor civil servant, ma’am,” he responded in his best ‘official’ tone.

Soundstage laughed as she knelt to pick up Drake’s cuffs. She carefully applied them to the unconscious hulk of a man she had battered, trying to keep him secure but not to further aggravate the broken arm. Drake did not fail to notice the difference in the manner in which she attached the restraints, as compared to the harsh and unforgiving method he had used. His gaze lowered slightly as he thought about what that meant for his own humanity.

“Thanks for the distraction, Drake,” she said, pointing to the cuffs. She paused for a second and then continued in a dry, sardonic tone. “Of course, you could have shot him with one of those great slabs of steel you see fit to carry. Saved me a lot of trouble?”

“Yeah, but then I wouldn’t have been able to make fun of him,” he protested, easily falling back into the old pattern of banter. “You know, the whole ‘easy’ line. He went and fed me the set-up for that one. I couldn’t resist. Kind of sad about it, though. I had a ‘your mama’ comment ready to go.”

“It is hard to beat the classics,” she acknowledged.

“So…your rocket launcher thingy worked okay?” he asked, jerking his chin toward the tree line. Smoke was still trailing upward.

“Seemed to,” she said. “They ran a little slower than I thought they would, but I guess they got where they were supposed to go. May have to adjust the booster charge. No pun intended,” she added.

“So you blew him up, then?”

She waved off his concern. “Nah. Microrounds. They make a lot of noise, but they’re not much worse than a small pistol cartridge. They carry a hell of a drug load, though. Tranqs, mild hallucinogens, emetics, convulsives, plus a few nasties I can’t talk about until the pharmaceutical boys get a chance to patent their creations. All told, you’ll live through it, but you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

“Had me worried for a minute there,” he admitted.

“Well, you said this was a retrieval op. I left the lethal stuff back in the garage.”

“Remind me not to look around in your garage.”

“Don’t look around in my garage,” she said automatically. Her gaze traveled toward the sobbing, barely conscious form of the swordswoman where she lay. “What’d you do to her?”

“Got some back for Monster,” he said, his tone dark. “How come every time I run into some monkey with a sword, they seem to get burned?”

“Genetic memory?”

“Genetic whootchy?”

“Memory. Dragons and knights? Swords against fire breath?” She spun a hand in the air before her, beckoning him to follow the line of thought. “Any of this making sense?”

“It would if there had been dragons back then.”

“Who says there weren’t?”

“Ummm…I don’t know. Everybody?”

“Come on, Drake,” she urged. “Of all people I’d think you would believe in dragons.”

“Ain’t a whole lot left I do believe in. Except of course Bigfoot.”

“You’ll accept Bigfoot, but not dragons.”

“Hell, yeah. I seen me a Bigfoot once.”

“And I’m looking at a dragon now. What’s your point?”

“No point at all,” he said, reaching down to hoist Thrash to her feet. “Just making conversation.”

“You’re trying to steer the conversation away from the possible existence of dragons.”

“Ain’t trying, so much as succeeding.”

“That’s fine,” she said, with a tone that left no doubt it was definitely not fine. “We’ll come back to it later. I’m thinking while we’re back at the house and you’re hammering the dents out of my armor for me.”

“All right. You get that to happen and we’ll have us a nice long chat about dragons,” he said with a laugh. “Right now we’ve got prisoners to deal with. I’ll make a call, see if I can rustle us up some transport. Figure you don’t want ‘em bleeding and stinking up that fancy jet that brought us out here.”

“That’s a fact. Get something roomy if you can. I don’t want to be too close to these three.”

“Maybe a big-ass cargo chopper,” Drake mused, unceremoniously depositing Thrash on the ground beside the unconscious man. He started toward the smoking trees. “We can just duct-tape ‘em to the walls. Ain’t our fault if they fall out while—”

“Three!” Soundstage called, interrupting his monologue. “There’s three of them!”

“Yeah. Believe we established that.”

“There were three people in the house.”

“And one that was already outside,” Drake said as realization hit. “Son of a bitch.”

Soundstage stared hard at the cabin for a moment. “Nothing on thermo,” she reported. “Looks like they took off while we were fighting.”

“Great. That’s gonna look real good on the report.”

“You want to go looking for them?”

“Naw. Not right yet. Whoever it was, they’ll keep. Let’s see if we can’t get these monkeys back to a cell. Maybe with a little ‘incentive’, they’ll tell us what the hell is going on.”

“Yeah. ‘cause, that’s real likely,” Soundstage said with a chuckle.

“Oh, now, have a little faith,” Drake said, laughing outright. “Remember who you’re dealing with.”

“I remember. It’s the same guy who’s gonna be fixing my armor when we get home.”

“Really? Your home or mine?” he asked, dialing the number to call for transport. As he lifted the instrument to his ear, he heard Soundstage make a final jibe.

“Why, Drake! Is that a proposal?”