Agendas
Sorry for the late update. I had exams
Dan hated water with a deep passion. Once when he was eight he fell into the neighbour's pool during a party and nearly drowned. He didn't have a fear of drowning anymore but he disliked the notion of getting himself wet so when he arrived at the docks from one of his many secret passageways in sewers he was weary to the fact that one wrong turn with the bike and he would smell like the Hudson River for weeks. His suit had repaired itself while in the ring so Raid looked like the fight with the Minotaur had never happened. After parking his bike in the passage, Night Raid quickly sped from crate to crate, checking out the signs of last night's brawl. Set's men had left no footprints and the remains of the traps that he and Jake had made were gone too. By reviewing security footage on his tablet he found that Set had somehow shut off the feed just before he emerged from his small army.
Raid nearly flung the device away in annoyance. Set was good, too good, and probably had everything planned out until-.
Raid sat upright from his position on his bike. Set knew they were going to show so maybe on the off chance that the heroes escaped he would've figured that at least one of them would've come back to check the scene meaning that he'd been tricked again!
Raid sped away down the tunnels, checking every scanner for any signs of concealed vehicles or any spec opps on his tail but his scans revealed nothing out of the ordinary.
Great, he thought, now I'm becoming paranoid.
He took passage that led him to the port of the Liberty Island ferry then cloaked his bike and turned back into Dan. Dan paid for a ticket then stayed by the railings as the boat cast off. He used the binoculars in his pack to check how far the rig from yesterday was from the island. After making sure no one was watching him, Dan rolled a small ball across the deck then slung his pack over his shoulder. The ball let loose a smoke screen, distracting enough people to allow for Dan to vault over the railing. Transforming into his suit as he did so. As he fell he aligned himself so that he was able to run down the side of the boat then he increased his speed when he neared the water. To someone looking at him from off the boat, Night Raid's speed trail seemed to go from the boat then onto the water, leaving a wake behind him. He went towards the rig, when he got close he fired a grapple from his wrist and used it to reel himself onto the structure. No one had come back since the evacuation last night so Raid wasn't interrupted by anyone when he made his way to the cargo hold. He jumped down through the hole made by the Minotaur and landed by some of its fragments.
"What did I do," he whispered amazed by the destruction.
After watching some of the footage from last night, Raid examined the place where he had been thrown against the wall and had a flashback of that night. As he looked at the claw marks on the crate and the broken torso of Circe's beast he saw flashes of what happened. His anger. The bull's head coming off. Ripping through the pieces of its hide. Howling.
"What was I," he said, walking over to the claw marks.
Raid expanded his claws and compared them to the ones on the crate. They matched. He walked over to the bull's broken head and notice something strange. The bull's last horn was missing and it looked like it was simply cut off instead broken like the one he remembered. A flashback of him throwing it in a corner before charging the beast surfaced. Night Raid went over to the place where he figured the horn would've landed and found it laying inside a hoof print.
"This print," mused Night Raid, "it also appeared at the doorway and again near some of these crates but our fight didn't send either of us near these places."
Raid picked up the horn, placed it into his pack, then went to the control room. After inserting a flash drive into the server, he started reversing the time on the surveillance tapes to about half an hour before any of them had arrived.
"Hey," said a voice.
Raid turned, an arrow notched in his bow, but it was only Isis and she had her hands raised as if to cast a spell.
"What are you doing here," they said at the same time.
"You first," said Raid, not lowering his bow.
"I'm just looking for clues about what happened last night," she said, lowing her hands, "what are you doing here?"
"Same thing," he said, lowering his weapon and turning back to the surveillance tapes, "hey, does Circe always have a stone bull by her when she fights?"
"No, this was the first time but-. Wait a minute, why are you really here? You were there last night and, according to Osiris, you completely destroyed the Minotaur. Why would you need answers?"
"Because," Night Raid said smoothly, "I noticed something odd last night but I was to busy being attacked by bull twice my size to investigate. I'm here for answers and let's leave it as that."
She nodded and watch the video on the monster in silence, Raid hoped that she bought his story even though it was technically true. They watched as Circe and Sekhmet seemed to fade into existence be the entryway and made their way over to one of the crates in the centre of the room.
"Doesn't this thing have audio," asked Night Raid, as the two lionesses seemed to be talking but there was no sound.
"It's a spell," said Isis and she waved her hand over the console and Raid saw something like a ripple in the air come from her hand, "now we can hear them."
"What's so important in this crate that you needed to cloak us for," asked Sekhmet, "we could just as easily fought our way through the guards," she hefted her flamethrower, "or burned our way through them. Why all the secrecy?"
"My employer didn't want any of those heroes involved," replied Circe, tracing something in the air with her finger, "not yet anyway. Besides I prefer not to slug it out with Ra's team while I'm working. It makes it easier to concentrate."
A glowing golden symbol shimmered in the air for a moment then the door of the crate opened to reveal several large green barrels with a warning sign for hazardous materials plastered on their sides. Sekhmet opened one of them then recoiled in shock.
"What is that," she hissed.
"It's only clay," said the witch, "for now anyway."
She started chanting and the substance in the barrels broke out from their confinements then it swirled round and formed a lumpy egg shape. Circe stopped chanting then nodded to her partner who fired her flamethrower at the egg, engulfing it in an inferno. A loud noise, like thunder, came from the egg and it opened to reveal the Minotaur except it's entire body was golden. Before the two heroes could learn anything more from the video the lights went dark and the monitors cut out.
A purple sphere of light appeared in Isis' hand then hovered between her and Night Raid.
"What's going on," asked Isis.
"Something or someone has cut the power to the rig. Don't worry emergency power should kick in," said Raid. Red lights turned on and the monitors were flashing warning signs across their screens.
Night Raid started to download the tapes onto the flash drive just as they heard explosions coming from below them.
"Something's wrong in the engine room," said Raid, checking the readings on his lenses, "it looks like the rig is going to blow!"
Grabbing the drive, Raid took Isis' hand and they bolted for the door. Once in the hallway another explosion caused the catwalks, that lead to the exit, to be covered in flames. Before Night Raid could doze the flames with an arrow Isis thrust out her hand, sending a wave of purple energy forwards and dousing the flames clearing the catwalks. The heroes ran outside then another explosion rocked the structure, causing some of the ledges above them to fall off the building and right on top of them.
"Look out," yelled Night Raid, and in a blur he and Isis were out of harm's way.
Before Isis could say anything other than, "thank you-" Night Raid used his speed to take them both to the other side of the rig, farther from the fire, then they jumped into the water. As they fell Isis created anenergy slide to guide them softly downwards to the ocean then Night Raid picked her up and ran across the water just as the rig exploded.
The shockwave hit them, causing Night Raid to lose his balance and the heroes went flying across the water at three hundred miles an hour. Isis created a dome in their path and turned it on its side so that caught them in the air then it adjusted itself so that they were floating on the surface of the water. When the heroes had regained their sense of direction they saw that was left of the rig was in flames along with all the evidence to what Circe was planning.
"Sorry for tripping," said Raid, turning to Isis, " I'm don't really practice running on water a lot."
"It's alright," said Isis, wringing the water out of her hair, "I'm just glad that we got out f there before it exploded. Were you able to save the video from the security cameras?"
Raid held up his flash drive and said, "I don't know whether or not it was able to download anything of use but I'll check it later. I'm sure that I have the rest of the video with Minotaur in here."
"Ok," she replied, "hey, um, Night Raid?"
"Hmm?"
"You don't have to answer this but I'm curious to know. How are you able to run so fast without wearing shoes? I mean doesn't hurt your feet to push off the ground that at high speeds?"
His PDA beeped before he could respond. Raid checked his wrist to see that it was a reminder that he had set earlier that week and he slapped himself on the head.
"I cannot believe that this has happened twice now," he mumbled, "dammit, next I'll probably forgot my own birthday."
"Hey, what are you-" began Isis but Night Raid had already started to move at super speed. He dropped her off at Liberty Island then ran back to his bike on the mainland and began driving though the tunnels at high speeds. Dan figured that Isis could just teleport her way home so he didn't really think twice about dropping her off. His bike started transforming as he rode through the sewer tunnel so that it looked less like a black heavily armoured vehicle and more like a sleek deep blue motorbike.
Dan pressed a button on one of his handlebars that sent out a signal from the bike to a control box a few hundred metres ahead of him, activating a ramp leading outside. The ramp was originally built for evacuations from bombings during a war but nowadays used to get certain heroes where they needed to go fast and unseen. Arriving behind the mall Dan took off his ring, parked the bike, and entered the building, not knowing that a lone figure watched him from hidden camera in a truck.