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Cade Wilson, AKA Leo, leader of the Zodiac, stood at the enormous window in his office and stared down at his city, twitching his striped tail nervously. Despite his moniker, Leo was a tiger, not actually a lion. There were no lions. Supposedly there had been a clan of Nojin lions in pre-historic times, but if so they had long since died out, and there were no archaeological traces. The Spiral Corporation, the company that performed morphic surgery for humans that wanted to be furs, and vice-versa, had a policy against performing surgeries to make people into lions, but had never made their reasons public. Even so, the position of Leo was traditionally held by a cat. Leo's predecessor had been a cheetah.

It had been raining a lot lately, and the streets were still wet. There had been a bit of flooding, but not much. That wasn't the real problem anyway.

There was something wrong with Leo's city. He had known it weeks ago, but there had been a certain element of tension welling up in the city lately. No serious violence other than a few scattered fist fights that were just as quickly broken up, but Leo knew it was only a matter of time before something pushed it over the edge. He hadn't had this feeling in years - not since the days leading up to the war. He'd spoken with Aries about it and she'd felt it too, but neither of them could think of a thing they could do about it. They were the only members of the Zodiac that had been active before the war; the other five hadn't become heroes until afterwards. They were the lucky ones.

It was a horrible ominous feeling that had everyone jumpy. The citizens were on edge and Leo knew in his gut that the culprit was his daughter's new friend, a caracal who called himself Igberaga.

Not that he had any evidence. Nuru Igberaga had given no indication that he was anything more than what he presented himself as: a smug, carefree, rich kid from the Empire, and Leo fought off the feeling that he only suspected the caracal because he was a boy and he was Sahara's friend. Probably, but hopefully not, her boyfriend. It was just a feeling he had. There was something off about Igberaga.

Of course, Sahara would have nothing said against him. She, by all accounts, liked the little tosser.

Leo tried to turn his attention away from the streets and onto the rain clouds that loomed over the city. They served as a somewhat poetic representation of the tension, but it was only part of the growing clusterfuck of problems.

Deep Sound, the sonic hero, had been killed during a horrifically planned raid on a criminal auction that turned out to be a sting operation that Erhaben had already been running, and fully four other heroes - Beacon, Night Chameleon, Ring Jet and from his own team, Gemini - were missing. The investigation was on-going but it was all in all a complete disaster and Leo was waiting for the blame to land squarely on his shoulders. Never mind that Gemini hadn't acted on Leo's orders. Never mind that Leo had no idea what either Gemini and his friends, or Erhaben, whom he hadn't spoken with in years, were planning. He was having that kind of week. The mayor had spent a fair amount of time shouting at him and the Chief of Police, sometimes over the phone, sometimes in person, and he could practically feel Captain Sloane's disapproval all the way from the other side of the country.

Leo had only recently been promoted to leader of the Zodiac and wasn't having the best time of it. He still had five unfilled seats - Taurus, Aquarius, Virgo, Scorpio and Pisces - and half the filled ones were unusual choices that had raised more than a few eyebrows when Leo had selected them.

On top of this, Apex had been spotted down near the warehouse district, which was at once the best and worst thing that could happen. The best because Apex was a very visible villain, and a victory would be reflect extremely well on Leo's tenure as team leader. The worst because despite his noted lack of basic hygiene - he was quite often covered in the blood of his last victims - Apex was notoriously difficult to track, and even more difficult to apprehend. He had a remarkable talent for avoiding getting into fights he couldn't win, and was always more likely to run than fight. If he managed to snag a victim people would start to question whether Leo was really suited to lead the Zodiac.

When it rains it pours. Leo thought to himself, then chuckled. Everyone told him he was old fashioned considering how young he was. Leo didn't think he was that young; they had celebrated his thirty-first birthday not so long ago, but then again, he was definitely the youngest Leo in the team's history.

His predecessors had all been over forty when they'd first taken the job. It had actually been something of a controversy when the previous Leo had retired and promoted him, as Cancer had expected to get the job. The Zodiac had nearly fallen apart because when he quit the team over it, he took all the veteran members with him, with only Aries standing by Leo.

He sighed, wishing Aries was here right now. She always had a way of cheering him up, but she had more important matters to focus on at the moment than Leo feeling sorry for himself.

Leo had sent Aries and Capricorn to investigate the warehouse district. So far they'd turned up a number of would-be mad scientists, drop-outs from the prestigious Cambridge University a few cities over, who had sworn to wreak their terrible revenge on it, but no Apex. Apex wasn't one to wander; if he was there, he was there for a reason and Capricorn and Aries would find out what. With any luck they would stop him from taking his next victim.

Cancer was off on his own. A lot of magical items had surfaced in the area and Cancer swore that there was a big throwdown brewing over something he called Sidus Novum. Magic users - that is, people who employed the use of magical items, as there were no remaining mages as far as anyone knew - were flocking to the city in droves according to Cancer. Leo wasn't sure how much he believed him, but he wouldn't be surprised. It would just be one more problem for the pile.

Officially, Cancer had only been recruited for his keen mind and detective skills; the super-community, heroes and villains alike, were divided on just how much to tell the rest of the world about magic. The Registration knew. Captain Sloane, without being so explicit, had made it clear that the Registration knew all it cared to know about magic and as long as it didn't get out of hand, the word on it would be "mum".

Libra was out of town on a poorly timed photo shoot and wouldn't be back for days. Saggitarius had holed up in her workshop, agonizing over her latest invention, which she swore up and down would solve all of their problems, but which Leo suspected was about as likely to be a popcorn popper knowing the scatter-brained inventor. Gemini was still missing, not having had the common decency to materialize out of thin air right beside Leo in the last ten minutes.

Leo had set up a cork-board in his office. Another point for old fashioned, but he liked it. The board was crammed full of image cut-outs and newspaper clippings from all over Europe, many of them connected by different colored bits of string.

It was perhaps not a good reflection of Leo that the board was not an attempt to track Apex, to try and make some sense of the villain's movements. The board was instead filled to the brim with pictures of Igberaga.

Nuru Igberaga never went anywhere alone. He had bodyguards, always flanking him on either side; two large tigresses that rarely spoke but were extremely quick to act. And he was always grinning and he always wore those stupid sunglasses and no one could track him.

Saggitarius had tried attaching tracking devices to him, but the tigresses always somehow instantly divined its existence and removed it. She'd tried using video surveillance, but always lost him in the crowds as he wandered the city. As far anyone could tell, he didn't seem to move with any destination in mind. There was only one place he could be found with any consistency: Pops' Bar, a tiny, out-of-the-way watering hole with cheap beer and cheap music, but a pleasant atmosphere and a genial owner. Sahara had been going there a lot recently.

Any attempt to use extra-normal means to find Igberaga came up empty. Leo had brought in several telepaths and they had turned up nothing other than to say that Igberaga was "somewhere in the city" and couldn't be more clear than that.

Not one of Igberaga's throngs of fans could say where he was at any given moment, despite how high profile a celebrity he was and how little care he appeared to take to conceal his presence when he did appear. It was infuriating.

There was one picture of Apex on the board. Leo didn't think there was any connection between Apex and Igberaga, but he wasn't going to rule anything out. They were both from the Empire, what little that mattered, though different areas. By all accounts, Apex was Egyptian, while Igberaga was Ugandan.

"When it rains it pours." Leo muttered to himself again. As if the sky were mocking him, it actually began to rain at that moment.

---

The next day Leo woke up early to the sound of his phone ringing non-stop. He grabbed it off the nightstand and checked the id. It was the Zodiac building.

"What is it?" He said into the phone as he tapped the answer button. He listened for a moment and then his blood ran cold, which was a feat for a fire manipulator like Leo.

In what seemed like hours to Leo, but was actually only about twenty minutes, he stumbled into the conference room as fast as physically possible. He blanched at the person sitting at the head of the conference table his team usually sat at. It was a mouse. White fur, black t-shirt, red domino mask. Not just any mouse, but Erhaben.

To his right sat Exabyte, the French genius hyena, who had been part of Erhaben's team for some years and was generally considered Erhaben's right-hand man.

Leo had first met Erhaben about three years previous, around the time he had recruited a young super named Ethan Packard. Leo, who back then was still going by Taurus, was with his mentor, the previous Leo at the time, and they'd gone to Spika to ask Erhaben to join the Zodiac.

It had been not long after an encounter Erhaben and Skyline had had with Hell Painter, a Luxembourgish supervillain with the ability to impose his art on reality. Hell Painter had painted a pair of portraits to alter the two heroes and, being an incredibly petty individual, had foregone debilitating changes in favor of humiliating ones: he had colored all of Skyline's normally light grey fur hot pink and changed Erhaben into a rat, in the process disabling his shapeshifting powers.

Erhaben had been furious. Rats and mice, at least rats and mice in Germany, were two groups that could consistently be relied upon to be at eachothers' throats, and as prideful a mouse as Erhaben was, he'd taken it extremely poorly. Hell Painter spent nearly a month in the hospital and was even now still locked up into the deepest, most secure section of Belvedere for his own safety, even after a thinner that could undo his portraits' effects was developed. He had expressed no great desire to ever set foot outside the prison ever again. Erhaben probably couldn't break into Belvedere. Probably.

Naturally, Leo's mentor had rethought his decision to ask Erhaben to join in favor of someone less volatile.

"It's not my fault!" Leo blurted out, shielding his head with his arms, as if expected Erhaben to leap out of his seat and attack him. "Gemini was acting on his own!"

Leo may have been a tiger, but he was secure enough in his own power to admit that Erhaben intimidated him, even though the latter was a mouse.

Erhaben patted the air in a placating gesture. "Calm down, Leo. I'm not here to point fingers." he said patiently. He wasn't smiling, which wasn't a good sign, but he didn't look ready to jump anyone, so Leo's heart slowed down a few notches and he sank into the nearest unoccupied seat. He wasn't out of the woods yet, but as long as Erhaben wasn't looking to blame someone it was a good start.

"There's something wrong with your city, Leo." Exabyte said.

"I've noticed." Leo said tersely.

"Do you have any leads?" Erhaben asked as he fished a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. He lifted the pack up to his mouth so that he could grab a cigarette out, but Exabyte reached over and snatched it out of his hand. Erhaben glared at him but said nothing.

"I've got people investigating some leads as we speak." Leo said. He didn't ask for help. He couldn't if he wanted to: It wouldn't do for him to go crawling to a more experienced hero for help on his first major case. He was already under a great deal of scrutiny.

"We just came to touch base with you. See if you knew anything about what happened."

"I knew what Gemini was planning." Leo said. "He asked for permission to join a team of other heroes to bust a criminal auction. I figured we could spare him for a few days while we're still keeping track of the problems. I had no idea you were already targeting the auction."

"That lines up with what Night Chameleon told me." Exabyte confirmed.

"So you know where the missing heroes are? Where is Gemini?" Leo asked.

"I don't know." Erhaben admitted. He turned to his right and asked, "Exabyte, where is Gemini?"

Exabyte looked up from the mobile device he had started fiddling with and looked surprised. "Why would I know?"

"He was with Night Chameleon when they attacked you." Erhaben said.

"No, he wasn't." Exabyte protested. "Night Chameleon was alone."

"You were supposed to be keeping tabs on everyone at the auction."

"I was supposed to be keeping tabs on the guests. No one told me to keep track of the heroes that were going to crash it and start wrecking my lab. You replaced the head of security, what's your excuse?"

"I was trying to talk sense into Ring Jet."

"Let me get this straight." Leo said, cutting into their argument. "You lost four heroes?!"

"Of course not." Exabyte said, sounding offended. "We only lost three heroes. I know exactly where Night Chameleon is."

Leo rubbed his temples, trying to fight off his growing anger at Erhaben. Then he stopped and looked at Erhaben. Then he said, "Erhaben, you know that I have the utmost respect for you and the work that you do, don't you?"

"Of course." Erhaben said warily. The tension in the room had shifted, and he was suddenly staring into the eyes of a very angry tiger.

Leo's mouth began working at high speed as mind struggled to catch up to what he was saying. "I want you to find Gemini, and Ring Jet and Beacon and I want you to release Night Chameleon from where ever you're holding him and I want you to do it as soon as possible, because if you don't, I'm going to beat your ass so hard Hell Painter will feel it, then I'm going to burn all the fur off your body, and tar and feather you. Do I make myself clear?" Despite his bluster, Leo was screaming on the inside. If he had had a chance to think about what he was doing before doing it, he would never have said that to Erhaben.

Even so, he was so relieved when Erhaben gave a curt nod, then stood up from his seat and walked out of the room without saying another word, that he nearly fainted. Exabyte followed after him, similarly speechless, patting him on the back on his way out, impressed with him for standing up to Erhaben. This was a victory for Leo.

Leo very calmly waited until he was sure Erhaben and the others had gone, then he very calmly walked to his office, where he very calmly closed the blinds and locked the door. Then he very calmly grabbed a throw pillow from the couch in the corner and very calmly screamed into it. It was a hell of a day and it was only just getting started.

He laid down on the couch, hoping to catch up on lost sleep. Also hoping that when he woke up the dream would be over and the world would be right again. When he woke up, the tension in the city would be gone, and so would the rainclouds and Igberaga, and Apex would be in prison, waiting for transportation to Belvedere, and there would be new heroes just lining up around the block, waiting to be interviewed for spots on the team.