Jack liked flying. There was something about having the wind in your face as you glided along. He wondered if he had something faster than the Falcon. He wanted to go faster than what a bird could do.

Marvel had a host of characters who had flight as their secondary transport power, but the way the watch worked, he could pick Nova and blow up the planet.

That would be a big oops.

The Angel had been a big enough surprise. He had thought he was getting a winged guy. He hadn’t expected a power to change the face of the world. He had lucked out not killing himself and Josie.

The Falcon knew which way was north. Instinct pointed the way. He supposed it came with the bird body. He was high enough he could see the lake in the distance. He checked the time on his watch. He needed to head toward the ground.

He dove in a long glide toward a road he had spotted heading up to the water. He figured that he could walk a little ways to let the watch charge again, then transform back to the Falcon and fly the rest of the way to Lake Myra.

Then he would have to ask for directions to the doomed village.

That should be a lot of fun.

Maybe he would get lucky and the towns around the lake posted signs for travelers. That would help him a lot. If he found one of those, that should help him get to his destination, give him time to look it over, and get back to Josie.

Meeting Ken and getting some answers for his questions would be a bonus, but he was more concerned about Josie. He had Doctors Strange and Druid in his call list. He might have to use them to find out what was going on.

He liked to think he was a tough guy, but she was tougher than he was. Just having to sleep like that said she had caught something from the fantasy land they were in. He didn’t like that at all.

He landed on the road just as the timer ran down. His bird body exploded away to let him start walking on human legs toward the lake.

He checked the counter on his watch as he walked. He had a bit before it was

recharged. He wondered what recharged it. Was it his body movement? Was it something in the air? Was it stealing his soul like a warlock, or devil, or devil

warlock?

He had Warlock on the watch. He bet himself that he wouldn’t get a kooky alien if he used that body.

He wondered how common bandits were in this neck of the woods. He hated to run into some robbers while his watch was recharging. He supposed that he must look like a poor target. Everyone would think he was broke.

Rich people and merchants used carriages. Poor people walked, or rode horses out of Disney’s Sleepy Hollow.

Gunpowder was smarter than his rider.

Jack found a sign. His village was to the left. He wondered how far to the left it was. He needed someone to give him an idea of the distance.

He walked to the closest village. He noted the docks on the lake. Fishermen would have no need for a landlubber like him. He kept an eye open for the local watering hole. Someone there would know where Accordly was. Then he could fly there and try to figure out how to save it.

That was probably more in Josie’s bag than his.

He was a lot better at blowing stuff up than being able to put the stuff together in the first place.

He should have waited until he talked to Ken and found out more information.

He saw a place with a sign that said Workman’s Rest. He decided that would be the place to ask directions. Then he could move on.

Jack walked into the saloon. One old guy ran the bar. A younger guy wiped the tables. They looked enough alike to be related. He waved at them as he headed for the bar.

“How’s it going?,” Jack asked when he hit the long wooden counter. It looked like it had come off a boat. “I was wondering if I could get a drink and if you could give me directions to a place called Accordly.”

“Why would you want to go there?,” asked the Bartender. He gave Jack a glare with his sunken beady eyes.

“I got a call,” said Jack. “Someone needed a hand up there. I come up from Hawk Ridge in the south.”

“The walled city?,” asked the Bartender.

“It still had them when I left,” said Jack. “I’m just hoping to look the job over, then talk things over with my partner. If the job is legitimate, we might look into it. Right now, I just need to find the place and figure out what’s wrong up there.”

“Accordly is about ten more miles down the Lake Road that you came in on,” said the Bartender. “There’s a big rock on the lake right before you get there. As for what kind of trouble there might be, I have no idea. People are saying that lights dance in the sky over the town at night. If there’s any trouble with that, I don’t know how you are going to fix it.”

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“Lights in the sky?,” said Jack. “That could be anything from something burning in the ground, to lightning because people are touching something they shouldn’t.”

“People are giving Accordly a wide berth until whatever it is stops,” said the

Bartender.

“I can see that,” said Jack. “Who wants to get mixed up in something no one

understands?”

“That was my thought too,” said the Bartender.

“Let me have a pint of whatever you got,” said Jack. “Then I’ll have to hit the road. I have to try to get back to the city to talk to my partner before something comes up.”

The Bartender grabbed a mug. He went to a barrel on a cradle and opened the spigot to let the beer inside drain in the wooden cup. He handed the cup to Jack.

“It’s on the house,” said the Bartender.

“Thanks,” said Jack. He sipped the beer. “This is really good. If I had any friends, I would tell them about this. This is really good.”

“Thanks for that,” said the Bartender. “Good luck up at Accordly.”

Jack put a silver piece down on the bar after he finished his beer. He headed

for the door. He waved at the men as he stepped out in the street and turned right.

He wondered what kind of hero he could use to figure things out.

He decided to test out heroes to see what each of them did as he walked around the lake. That should give him an idea of what each of them could do. He could just switch bodies on the same charge until the watch ran out of power. Then he could walk around Accordly while he waited for the recharge. Then he could head back to Hawk Ridge to check on Josie.

He started with the Avengers. Captain America immediately went into his fighting cue. Scarlet Witch also went on the list. The Vision had vision powers, good for detective work, but not for anything else. Thor was the closest to his comic book counterpart. The rest were twisted around their names into something else.

Makkari and Ikaris were good movement heroes, even if they were weaker than their sources. All that mattered was that he had a speedster which meant he could get anywhere in a few seconds.

Quicksilver, the nominal speedster of the setting, was a blob of living metal to the watch.

His experimenting carried him to Accordly. He looked the town over. It looked

perfectly ordinary to him, like every other town he had passed through to get there. He didn’t see why it would be destroyed while the others still stood.

He needed to spend more time looking around, but he had to get back to Hawk Ridge. Maybe Ken knew something he didn’t.

Maybe he was supposed to land in Accordly instead of the big city. The locals would have told him what the problem was, and he would have already fixed it with his watch. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to help Josie at all.

He wasn’t going to do that. If he didn’t have Josie, he didn’t have a reason to help anybody.

He put on Makkari and ran back to Hawk Ridge. He smiled when he was at the wall in a couple of seconds. It was a little more effort than flying, but it was also way faster. He switched and used the rest of his power to fly to the Bell Tower.

He entered Josie’s room through the window and switched back. He frowned. She was gone with no note. The door was still barricaded. He checked the timer on his watch. It would be a bit before it was back to full power.

Who did he have he could use as a detective? Mister Fantastic? Daredevil? The Punisher, maybe?

The watch topped off and he decided to try Wolverine first. Becoming a bad tempered quadruped with a great sniffer told him people had come into the room from the window. They had taken Josie out while she was asleep.

One of them was still close according to his snout. He looked over and realized one of the kidnapers had stayed behind as a cover in case he came back and started asking questions.

They hadn’t known he would be able to identify them from the way they smelled.

Score one for Team Reed.

Jack switched to a couple of forms, settling on what he could get from Beast. He leaped across to the other window. He would have been embarrassed by what was going on, but he was already angry, so embarrassment at catching two people in the act of intercourse was mitigated.

The man had quick reflexes. He almost reached his sword where it lay by the bed before Jack grabbed him in a furry paw and yanked him in the air, and then slammed him against the floor.

Jack checked the numbers on his furry arm. He had time to ask some questions before he had to switch back.

“Where is the woman from the next room?,” he asked. His voice had a lot more growls than he liked. “Don’t lie. I know you took her.”

He slammed the man against the floor when he didn’t answer immediately.

“They’re selling her,” said the woman. She had the bed sheet wrapped around her. “They took her to sell her. They take women and girls, drug them, and then mark them. Then they sell them. Once they have been marked, they have to obey anyone designated as their master.”

She stood and turned around. A flower decorated her back.

“Where?,” asked Jack.

“I don’t know,” said the woman. “Somewhere by the wall.”

“Do you know where?,” Jack asked his victim.

“No,” said the man. It sounded like no. It was hard to tell because something like a gorilla had him by the neck and was squeezing tight with long fingers.

“Then I don’t need you,” said Jack. He flung the man out the window. “I’m going to find my friend, then I’m coming back to burn this place down. It’s up to you whether you want to tell everyone to get out.”

“Some of them don’t know,” said the woman. “We’re not allowed to tell people.”

Jack realized that picking something that wasn’t human looking had given him the free answers he needed. Could he break the slavery control with one of his heroes? He thought he could.

“I’m coming back,” said Jack. “If my friend is hurt, I’m going to be angrier than

what I am now. Maybe we can take the tattoo off your back.”

“I’ll wait,” said the woman. She picked up her dress. “What do I say about this?”

“Tell them the truth,” said Jack. “Tell them that they kidnaped someone who has a friend that will rip up this town to find her. And if she’s hurt, I’m going to be really mad.”

He climbed out the window. He ignored the crowd around the guy he had thrown out of the window. He had places to be, and not a lot of time to get there. He paused on the roof to switch to the Vision with the time he had left on his watch. He scanned the city. He found Josie chained to a wall in some building pushed up on the wall.

He supposed that was to let them smuggle women out of the city and put them on the road to other places.

That was over.

He switched to Makkari to get to the building. He still had time. He switched to the Scarlet Witch and hexed the door into a corroded mass that crumbled out of his way. He paused at the fragments of bone he discovered in the first hallway.

“Josie!,” he called out. “Can you hear me?”

“Up here, Jack,” came the reply. “I’m upstairs.”

Jack jogged up an open wooden stairwell. He should have known that Josie wouldn’t be the one that needed rescuing.