With Justice For All - part 5: One Good Turn Deserves Another
by Viking

When Last We Left Our Heroes...

Intent upon their respective missions, the heroes did not think twice about the four cars that screeched to a halt on the cross-streets adjoining the situation that they sought to contain. Nor did they notice the gangsters that emerged from each of them... until they had brought their weapons to bear and fired icy blasts at each of them.

"Moons of..." Mentor cried out, but did not get a chance to finish. He was cut off mid-sentence by a frigid blast that encased him in a block of ice. Minute Man was also caught unawares by the surprise assault, and was sent sailing through the air by a concentrated beam of cold. Liberty Lad, with his highly trained senses, instinctively launched himself into a series of flips and tumbles that allowed him to dodge the first wave of cold rays. However, one of the gangsters, showing unusual foresight, turned his freeze ray on a fire hydrant near Liberty Lad. The force of the blast shattered the hydrant, and the surrounding area was quickly drenched. The dampened streets subsequently became slick with ice from the continued exposure to the freezing rays, and Liberty Lad's feet went out from under him at the completion of his latest handspring. He skidded across the now-icy streets and crashed into one of the buildings. Bullet emerged from a restaurant, having defused the last of the bombs, only to skid in similar fashion upon setting foot on the icy sidewalk. Sliding across the ice at a few hundred miles per hour, he crashed into another building with such force that even he felt rattled. "Did Nuclear Winter join the party?" he wondered dimly as he struggled to regain his balance.

Pinstripe finally emerged from one of the cars, cackling at the apparent success of the ambush. Still carrying his Tommy gun, he provided supporting bursts of fire at the vulnerable members of Freedom Force. The few Patriot City citizens that had not yet been freed of their artificial rage came to their senses with the sudden escalation of the battle, and desperately sought what cover they could find to avoid the withering crossfire.

Indeed, the fight was going poorly for Freedom Force. On either end of the street, eight gangsters wielded an assortment of freeze rays, firing alternating bursts to keep the members of Freedom Force pinned down and unable to recover. Combined with the gunfire of Pinstripe and the remaining six members of the Jury, Freedom Force was taking a severe beating.

Fortunately for the heroes, assistance was soon to arrive. No more than a block away, Law rounded a corner and approached the battle. The sounds of screams and gunfire were not hard to follow once she had finally reached the vicinity. Though her blindness prevented her from fully taking in the nature of what was going on, Pinstripe's unmistakable savage laughter left no doubt in her mind as to who had ambushed her friends.

"Alright, Sarah, let's take this two-bit gangster down!"

Law smiled grimly, saying nothing. Order had summed things up quite nicely. Charging a group of gangsters from behind, she let into them with a flurry of slashes. Three of the high class thugs fell before they were aware of what had happened. The other five gangsters in the immediate vicinity quickly regrouped in a circle just outside of Law's reach, and prepared to concentrate their fire on her. Sensing the incoming attacks, Law flashed her sword in a dazzling display of skill, catching each cold ray harmlessly upon it. As her would-be aggressors waited for their weapons to recharge, Law willed herself to transform into her counterpart.

The thugs, though just outside the range of Law's sword, were not beyond the reach of Order's mighty hammer. Order spun with increasing speed, his hammer outstretched. Each of the five gangsters was sent sprawling as they met the unstoppable force of Order's massive mallet. Order smirked as he came to a halt. "Guys, that's why you never want to fall into a vicious circle," he remarked.

With the disruption of half of Pinstripe's goon squad, Liberty Lad had sufficient respite to get back on his feet. Seeking to give Minute Man and Bullet a chance to recover, Liberty Lad lobbed a stun grenade down the other end of the street to be received by Pinstripe and his lackeys. As his grenade detonated, Liberty Lad jumped to the rooftops above and turned his attention to the remaining half of the Jury.

Liberty Lad found himself between a pair of Jurymen, and smirked. "You know what the only thing is that's worse than coming up with a bad costume?" he quipped. Waiting just a second, he delivered his punchline. "Copying a bad costume!" True to form, the Jurymen became infuriated and started firing at the nearest targets. As Liberty Lad had already begun leaping to the next rooftop, the nearest targets happened to be each other.

Meanwhile, on the streets below, Liberty Lad's stun grenade had disrupted Pinstripe's goons sufficiently that Minute Man and Bullet were able to regain their footing. Minute Man slowly and resolutely made his way to the disorganized thugs, while Bullet glided across the ice and stopped at the frozen Mentor. Hammering at the ice with the speed and force of a jackhammer, Bullet soon freed the alien mentalist from his icy imprisonment.

One of the thugs, noticing that Minute Man was steadily advancing on their position, hastily brought a freeze ray to bear. Ice began to solidify around Minute Man, but the patriotic paragon focused his strength until his would-be prison cracked and crumbled around him. "Looks like I'm finally warming up to your toys, Pinstripe!" he called out.

Pinstripe chewed his cigar in frustration. Glancing at the rooftops above, he could see that Liberty Lad had downed another two Jurymen and was steadily advancing on his position. Now that Freedom Force was no longer flanked, the odds seemed to be tipping against him once more. Pinstripe retreated to one of the cars while shouting to his cronies. "Boys! Time to blow this popsicle stand!" From inside his car, Pinstripe took the bundle of dynamite he had been saving for such an emergency and touched the fuse to the tip of his smoldering cigar. "Literally..." he chuckled to himself.

Pinstripe's thugs quickly piled into the cars, muttering assorted curses. Minute Man's eyes narrowed in frustration as the cars accelerated, only to widen in horror as he saw the object left behind. In the middle of an icy street, Minute Man had nowhere to leap to, and could not retreat quickly enough to escape the explosion that came a few seconds later.

Minute Man sailed through the air, down the length of the street, and past the stunned stares of Mentor, Bullet, and Order, until he plowed into one of the cars left by Pinstripe's unconscious thugs. Metal crumpled and glass shattered from the impact.

On the rooftops above, Liberty Lad was distracted with horror as he witnessed Minute Man's short-lived flight. Such was his concern that he was momentarily unaware of the two remaining Jurymen who lobbed a pair of their own grenades at him. Intuition urged him to somersault away at the last moment, and saved him from being at the heart of the ensuing blasts. Wincing at the minor scorching that he did receive, Liberty Lad blinked away his tears and turned towards his assailants. "Okay, jerks, you get that one for free!" he snarled angrily, and hurled energy grenades of his own in return.

Similarly distraught at what had just happened, Order instinctively transformed so that Law could tend to the fallen founder of Freedom Force. Noting the extent of Minute Man's injuries, Mentor quickly interjected.

"Law! Surely you do not mean to shoulder the entirety of Minute Man's injuries by yourself!" he exclaimed.

Law turned to Mentor and Bullet. "Only if the two of you are unwilling to assist me," she remarked.

Catching on to Law's plan, Mentor and Bullet hastily nodded assent and gathered around the unconscious Minute Man. Law concentrated on the life force within herself and her two allies, willing a fraction of it to flow from each of them to the Minute Man. Unaccustomed to the sudden loss of vitality that Law's healing induced, Mentor and Bullet each gave an involuntary cry of shock. This did not stop their grateful smiles as they saw Minute Man rise from the car's wreckage, however.

Minute Man shook his head to clear the dizziness as consciousness returned. "Where's... Pinstripe?" he muttered.

"Out of sight, but not out of reach!" Bullet declared, and tore down the road.

"Does that guy even have a plan?" Order wondered.

As it turned out, Bullet did indeed have a plan. Travelling at his high velocity, it was not a difficult matter to locate Pinstripe's car. "Now for a game of cat and mouse..." Bullet thought.

Bullet ran right up to Pinstripe's car, matching its speed with a slow jog of his own. He peered in the windows and quipped, "Scuse me, fellas, but do you know you're exceeding the local speed limit here?"

Pinstripe scowled at the Bullet and barked at the driver, "Run that chrome dome down!" The car swerved to sideswipe Bullet, who simply darted ahead of the car. Though Bullet could have left the speeding car in the dust, he deliberately kept his speed down, and stayed just ahead of it in teasing fashion. Soon, Pinstripe and his thugs were leaning out of the windows, firing bullets and freeze rays at the speedster. Bullet dodged them all, but just narrowly. "Gotta make this look good," he thought. When Pinstripe's car followed him around a corner, he smiled in satisfaction.

Meanwhile, Mentor telepathically communicated with the assembled members of Freedom Force in answer to Order's unspoken question. "Bullet has located Pinstripe's car," he noted. "We must be prepared to converge on it when it passes north of here!"

Liberty Lad, having finished his battle with the last of the Jurymen, quickly began making his way north, leaping from rooftop to rooftop. Law prepared to head north as well, but stopped short as both she and Order realized that they had also had heard Mentor's telepathic instructions.

Had Law still possessed her sight, she would have seen a rare smile upon Mentor's face. "I hope that you did not find that presumptuous," he remarked. "Unless, of course, you would prefer to maintain your independence?"

"N-No!" Law stammered, surprise causing her to lose her composure for but a moment. "Order and I have worked things through. It's good to be back." She smiled warmly at Mentor before heading north.

Minute Man, the only one to see Mentor smile, chuckled softly. "That was resolved nicely, Mentor. I was hoping to avoid an awkward situation when they came to rejoin us."

Mentor nodded. "I am glad that you concur. But are you well enough to face battle once more?"

Minute Man lifted the ruined car in response. "I think I can manage," he responded. Looking down the street, he saw a silvery blur that could only mean that Bullet had chosen that moment to break away from Pinstripe's car. Realizing this to be his cue to act, Minute Man hurled the wreckage down the street.

From inside his own car, Pinstripe cursed as the Bullet sped away. "Faster, you no good punk!" he snarled. "This ain't no time to be driving defensively! We got an open road, it's not like we're gonna hit..."

Pinstripe was abruptly cut off as the car thrown by the Minute Man landed squarely in front of his own. The driver braked desperately, but could not keep from smashing into the obstacle in the middle of the road.

Bullet made a speedy U-turn and raced back to the site of the crash. Pinstripe and his goons were exiting the vehicle, though only Pinstripe seemed unshaken by the collision. Realizing that not all of Freedom Force had yet gotten into position, Bullet called out to the collection of gangsters. "All right boys, this is for all of you who wondered what it's like to fly!"

Spinning rapidly in place, Bullet created a small whirlwind that he sent towards Pinstripe's henchmen. The miniature tornado sent each of them flying high into the air, only to fall heavily back to earth. Bullet smirked. "Of course, the first time you fly, the landing is always a pain!"

Perched on one of the rooftops, Liberty Lad followed up Bullet's move by tossing an energy grenade at Pinstripe. Though the superpowered gangster could ignore the fury of Bullet's tornado, the incoming detonation definitely got his attention.

"I shoulda finished you off a long time ago!" he shouted to the teenage crime fighter. Pinstripe sent a spray of bullets at Liberty Lad, who made a quick backflip out of their way.

Meanwhile, Law advanced on Pinstripe's position. She began to adopt a defensive stance, but felt Order's insistent thoughts from within. "Sarah, let me take another swing at this guy!"

Law was hesitant about either of them being able to have much of an effect on Pinstripe, but nevertheless acquiesced. "You're sure about this?" she queried.

"Absolutely," Order reassured her. A transformation later, and Order was soon bearing down upon Pinstripe.

Almost dismissively, Pinstripe glanced in Order's direction. "And just what do you think you're gonna do with that oversized mallet, muscle man?"

Order decided to let actions speak louder than words, and drove his hammer into the ground. The force shook the ground and cracked the street up to where Pinstripe was standing, causing him to lose his balance and sprawl on the ground.

Temper flaring, Pinstripe focused his firearm on Order as he regained his footing. "Okay pal, you may have hurt my pride, but that's all you hurt! You still can't do nothin' to me!"

"He does not have to!" Mentor's voice rang out from behind Pinstripe. Distracted by the separate attacks, Pinstripe had not noticed Mentor as he had maneuvered into position. Mentor sent a concentrated beam of energy at Pinstripe, which caught him square in the back and sent him pitching forward.

Pinstripe didn't have far to fall. Order grabbed him by the front of his suit and hoisted him into the air. "Let's see you worm your way out of this!" Order thundered. "This time, there's no shortage of witnesses!"

Struggling futilely against Order's grip, Pinstripe caught a glimpse of the citizens of Patriot City as they slowly emerged from shelter. Pinstripe scowled as he saw fear turn to resolved determination on their collective faces. Spitting the mangled stub of his cigar at Order in defiance, he growled, "Yeah, yeah, you can stow it, you punk! You can bet your funny costumes that you haven't seen the last of Pinstripe! My boys always will always come through for me!"

Order kept his cool. "If they're anything like these goons, I'm not worried," he replied.

Pinstripe was about to sputter another retort, but was cut short as Mentor assaulted his consciousness with another psychic knife. As Pinstripe drifted into unconsciousness, Mentor remarked, "Your diatribe, like your evil, is unwanted here."

Liberty Lad descended from his perch and jogged up to the group, grinning. "Not a bad day's work, then! We saved Patriot City again, and Pinstripe falls into our lap as an added bonus!"

Order's face darkened. "I'm not so sure that's such a good thing, Liberty Lad. The only way Pinstripe could have shown up with all of his goons like that would have been if he had been tipped off. And the only ones who knew about the bombs were the Judge and Jury. This whole scene stinks of a set-up."

Silence descended upon Freedom Force as its members grimly considered the truth of Order's words. Their contemplations were interrupted, however, by a communication from the Freedom Fortress.

"Looks like there's no rest for the weary," came the Ant's voice through the shared telepathic link. "I've just gotten word that Delta Labs has suffered a break-in, courtesy of the Judge and Jury!"

A few minutes later, Minute Man and Mentor were landing the Freedom Flyer near Delta Labs. Liberty Lad, Order, and Bullet had stayed behind to assist the arriving policemen in cleaning up Pinstripe's hit squad and the defused bombs in the assorted restaurants.

After exiting the Flyer, Minute Man and Mentor approached a nervous-looking bespectacled man in a white lab coat near the entrance to the research facility. "F-Freedom Force!" he stuttered. "H-how... how good of you to come!"

"Calm down, friend," said Minute Man in reassurance. "We're just here to help. We heard about the break-in. Is there anything you can tell us, Mr... Timms?"

The researched looked puzzled, and then looked down at the ID badge that he was wearing. "Oh! Y-yes. Of course. Rupert will be fine, though." Rupert Timms adjusted his glasses and ran his fingers through his hair. "Well... I was waiting for the police to arrive, but... well... I guess you might as well have a look around."

Rupert led the pair into the building. White-coated scientists passed them in the hallway, whispering as they passed. Though confusion and tension were hanging thickly in the air, the researchers seemed generally to be continuing with their work.

"What was the nature of the break-in?" Mentor inquired. "Can you tell us what their objective was?"

Rupert froze in the hallway, and then ran his fingers through his hair again. "We-ell... they seemed rather interested in some of our experiments... Actually, quite a lot of our experiments. I fear this will set us back terribly..."

Noting Rupert's hesitation, Minute Man pressed the issue. "Well? What were you working on that they stole?"

Rupert cringed, indecision plain upon his face. "I... suppose I'd better show you..." He led the heroes down a series of hallways, and finally into a large room. He winced as he heard simultaneous exclamations of "Stars and Bars!" and "Rings of Reznor!"

Indeed, the contents of the room were rather startling. Though the room was vast, it was nevertheless filled with computers, diagrams, and tables that formerly were used for experiments. What was startling, however, was that several researchers now lay on the tables, apparently wounded. However, the researchers suffered not from bullet wounds, but apparently from alternating cases of burns and frostbite. Other members of the staff were treating their wounded fellows to the best of their ability.

Minute Man's voice was a mixture of concern, shock, and outrage. "Have you called a hospital? These people need immediate medical treatment!"

A cool, clipped voice sounded behind them. "Indeed they do, Minute Man, but I believe that their best chance of treatment will be here. Delta Labs takes care of its own."

Minute Man and Mentor turned round to face a tall, middle-aged man whose stark white hair was combed precisely and severely. He peered at Rupert disapprovingly over his own steel-rimmed spectacles. "Timms, I believe I told you to wait at the front doors for the police to arrive?"

Rupert shrank into his lab coat and nervously wiped the sweat from his brow. "Yes, well... s-sir... F-Freedom Force arrived, and..."

The newcomer silenced him with a wave of his hand. "And so you took it upon yourself to show them around?" Seeing that Rupert was turning several new shades of pale, the scientist sighed dismissively. "Go outside and cool your head, Timms. Wait for the police. If we receive any other auspicious visitors, tell me."

Rupert gratefully backpedaled out of the room, almost tripping over his own feet as he did so. His superior turned to address Minute Man and Mentor. "You must pardon Timms - he lacks the cool head of a proper scientist. I am Dr. Leo Drake, director of research activities at Delta Labs."

"I had discerned as much," observed Mentor, "but why do you feel that your fellow researchers are best treated here, instead of a medical facility?"

"Because, during the break-in, these people were most unfortunately harmed by their current projects. Delta Labs has developed treatments for just such an emergency, and to a more specialized extent than a mere hospital."

Minute Man's eyes narrowed as he looked disapprovingly at the computers and diagrams. "And just what sort of research were you conducting here, Dr. Drake?"

Dr. Drake sighed in mild exasperation. "In case you hadn't guessed already, Minute Man, weapons research." Seeing that Minute Man was about to interject with another burst of outrage, Dr. Drake gestured for him to refrain for a moment longer. "And you really are in no position to criticize us for it. It would quite rude, especially given what these labs have already provided to one of your members."

Minute Man brought himself up short, puzzled. "What do you mean by that?" he asked suspiciously.

Dr. Drake's eyebrows raised in genuine surprise. "You mean you really don't know? It was in this research facility that one of our brightest, Tom Taylor, designed the armor that came to be worn by Man-Bot."

To be continued...