"So, here's the deal. The Silver Swords are one of the most well-known, internationally recognized, superhero groups. This is seriously the big leagues." Jason walked behind 'Todd'; the Marketing agent who represented, among others, the Silver Swords, down the long hallway to the small building that the team stayed in. He didn't like Todd. The marketing man seemed... far too eager. The fake tan, the slicked-back hair... not that he was jealous, having been shaved bald so they could put the telepathy-resistance net in place and sporting just stubble...

He stopped at the front door. There was a VTOL craft parked on the roof; one of dozens the DMA employed to deliver strike teams to locations; there were six other buildings he could see from here with a similar craft on the roof. Some would carry just a single massively heavy-hitter, like Spike, and a team of normal but extremely competent soldiers. Others, a whole team of metas, usually, also, with a few normal soldiers tagging along. Often, there would be additional crew assigned as needed. They could reach any location in the continental US within an hour; and locations here on the east coast, where most supervillain activity in the US occurred, far more swiftly.

The door... was heavily armored, and looked like a bunker; the whole section above-ground made up of clearly bulletproof glass panels and concrete. He could feel a mister running; the DMA had hundreds of them running all around the campus, spitting out some chemical blended with water, then sucking it back up and misting it out again; that required any speedsters entering the area to run along specific paths to avoid problems.... in theory. In practice, all the good ones had some way around it. There were probably tons of other defenses he couldn't see.

"I'm not sure he's gonna have me on this team long-term. Weren't we supposed to meet to talk about... branding? My hero name?"

"I've got a few candidates for you, and the lab has got a prototype armor suit for you to try out as well, but I figured if you're gonna work with these guys, you might want to hash it out with them." Todd smiled. "Final decision is up to you, but if you're gonna spend, hopefully years, working with these guys, might be best not to pick something offensive."

As the bunker door slid open, a sight Jason hadn't seen outside of TV screens greeted him; the tall, powerful form of Imperious, wearing athletic pants and a sportsbra, with a towel over her shoulders, wings folded against her back. She looked the perfect image of an angel; with curly golden hair, pale skin, even golden eyes; there were a few people like that out there, but she was one of the most famous. She was also barefoot, and just as tall as Jason; built like an athlete.

He tried to keep his eyes on her face, and keep his mind out of any awkward channels, as he extended his hand. "G'day there, ma'am. Name's Jason. Apparently I'll be working with you."

She nodded slightly. "Well then. Come on in. Not everybody's down here at the moment, but Silver is, and Excalibur is upstairs, working on his armor. Have you got a callsign yet? Oh, and welcome back, Todd."

"Nah. Todd figures I should hash it out with you guys, pick something that meshes? What they called me in the desert isn't the best option."

The angel glanced back at Todd, and looked Jason over for a few seconds; Jason was wearing ordinary clothes, part of a recent shopping trip; a 'Lightning vs. the Lord of Iron' t-shirt, depicting the statue of liberty smashing her torch into a building, with Lightning running up her arm. He'd gotten a few weird looks at the store when he'd bought it, alongside a whole stack of similar ones; he'd actually bought a 'Silver vs. the Black Death' shirt before he'd found out he was going to be coming here, and felt it might be offputting to meet the man wearing a shirt that showed a picture of him in his prime.

"That's a bunch of nonsense. We were all established heroes, with our own names, before coming in. Excalibur's the only one with a sword-themed name."

Jason shrugged. "You're right on that, I suppose. I was thinking of going with something sniper-related; though there's so many Deadshots, Killshots, Deadeyes, Nightstalkers... not a very creative bunch. Maybe a biblical figure. Any warrior angels or demons that don't have a hero named after them yet?"

Todd smiled. "Well, sort-of! All the real 'Warrior' angels are taken, but there's at least a dozen angels who nobody has picked. There's Arakiel, Berburos.."

"That'll work. Arakiel. Don't suppose I can get a jetpack with whatever suit they give me?

Todd stopped. "You... seriously just went with the first one I offered?"

"The name doesn't really matter too much. Either I make an impression and it gets out there, or I don't and nobody cares. I'll stick with that. And working alongside a real angel.." He nodded at Imperious. "Makes it seem fun."

She laughed. "Oh, I'm not a 'real' angel, if there are any such things." She was walking downstairs, into a massive workout room. This chamber was the size of the whole building, and had a jogging track circling it; as well as an assortment of weights ranging from impressive to horrific; a block with handles the size of a truck lay in the middle of the floor. "I'm an alien. Well. I was born in New York, but my species isn't from here."

Jason stopped on the stair, blinking. "Wait. Like the Jotun?"

"Well. No." She waved her hand in front of her face; and her features became distorted. Inhuman. The nose changed to slits, the eyes grew larger. "This is what my species looks like, unadapted. The locals call us Shifters, because we can meld our bodies. Tons of us like to really get into shadow and illusion magic to work with it; its how I got so focused on light magic and why I learned to shoot lasers." Her face shifted back to the pale, beautiful form. "It's classified, because they don't want to cause issues, but there's a bunch of us here."

"Huh. Cool. You all have wings, strength, flight, magic, or are you a Shifter equivalent of a mutant?"

A man will dull grey skin was laying back on a bench, working through a steady routine with a set of dumbells, a bottle of gatorade beside his head as Imperious settled into a chair not far from him. "Nah. We don't mutate like humans. We're genetically engineered; most species are, up there." She gestured at the sky with her right wing, before it folded back down. "Our ancestors were refugees, saved by a human named 'Odin' and his adopted sons, Thor and Loki. I think Loki is one of my people, actually. Or is. We're not all the same, but, well."

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She flexed her arms. "By Shifter standards, I'm what you would consider elite. If we had olympics, I'd win the functional shifting medal every year. I'm not so good at copying someone else's face, but I can make muscles and claws that beat out most metas, and I'm pretty good with magic. Not... amazing. But Artificer got me a flail that helps me channel light magic, and before that, I had one of Silver's swords. Oh... and there's like nine more of my people working for the DMA."

Jason blinked. "Silver's swords? So.... they all belong to Silver?"

The man on the bench laughed as he kept slowly working. "They all -were- me. My mutation was more like a curse. You ever watch the terminator movies?"

Jason sat down at the table beside Imperious, staring at the man; who was, apparently, Silver. The one who had once been a front-line warrior among the Silver Swords, back when they had all had weapons of gleaming, flowing, silver, and now was the only one so equipped; still deadly up close, but usually staying in the background. "Well, yes. But how was it a curse?"

"Being made of liquid metal isn't like the movie; and thats what I was. Like a solid blob of flowing molten mercury. I could get fairly solid... but never as solid as, say, a good tungsten carbide blade. If it were even a little realistic, Arnold would've made the T-1000 splatter every time he hit it."

He chuckled, setting the weights down. "Every bit of that flowing metal was me. I could see and hear through it, and when Imperious here swung her sword, I could make it catch the enemy sword; and start burrowing into their flesh. And if someone let me get close? I could do the same thing. Pour my arm down their throat, into an ear, anywhere, and just turn it back solid and shred them. And, well. Most sorts of attacks couldn't hurt me. But. I couldn't feel anything. Taste anything. They had to feed me a cocktail of weird chemicals to keep me alive, and it almost always hurt just to exist, especially if I was one big solid blob; apparently I had to spread out to absorb oxygen right."

He sat up; his eyes appeared to be pure silver globes. "But... they cured me. Sort-of. Cloned me a body, based on my old genes, and now the old me is just the blood of the new me. I can feel, taste, really enjoy life again. Buuut.... now if I get my head blown off, they'll have to grow a new clone, which will take months, if it works. So... I'm not as big at up-close work as I used to be."

"Holy shit. Thats... is everybody on the team all... odd and complex like that?"

Imperious laughed, and clapped him on the shoulder. "Coming from the guy who has a third eye, can see the future, and has better than any olympic athlete stamina and durability because he got boosted up with some healing by the patron saint of death magic?"

"Well. I suppose so, yes. Is Excalibur really just a guy in a super-suit, or is he like... super-strong? Everybody's always arguing about it online."

"First off. Excalibur is like you; he almost got his ass killed, mutated, and one of Shadow Master's clan healed him to help him recover. Her name was... Dark Sorceress or some such nonsense, you should ask him. Second... he's actually a telekinetic. Like... insanely strong... but really short-ranged. If somebody catches him by surprise, he's no tougher than you or me... but if he knows its coming, he can hold up a hand and stop a railgun spike in midair. He moves the armor around with his powers; all it does is give him sensor info, and keep him alive while he goes toe to toe with some of the strongest people on earth."

Todd chuckled. "Well. I don't really need to be here for all this, but glad we're all getting along here. Arakiel... I can work with it. Are you wanting to lean into the angel, holy warrior thing? I want to put together some mockups of the next ad."

"The next ad? For what?"

"Action figures! There's an official 'Silver Swords' line of action figures, and with you coming on, we can release a new line! Excalibur and Imperious are the two top sellers, so they get most of the profits, but I'm sure the 'Arakiel' figure will do great! Just... need to get the armor sorted out first."

Jason nodded. "I should talk to the team." He glanced at Imperious. "See what capabilities would be most useful, and then talk to the armor people."

"Just make sure it looks cool! And if it could have alot of silver, that would be great. Now that they don't mostly have the swords, we do tons of silver in the layout to help with branding."

"Alright, Todd. That's enough for now. We'll call you after we've got him all sorted."

The marketing employee waved and calmly stepped out, leaving the trio in the workout room; as a fourth man started stepping down the stairs, from, apparently, the rooftop.

The tall, lanky hispanic man ran his fingers through his hair as he reached the bottom floor; much like the rest of the team, wearing simple athletic wear. "Ahh, Mister Bennet. The boss tells me you're our latest recruit. As of about six hours ago. He gave me the short, that you're a precog. Which could be useful, though I'm not sure how that'll really play out in the field. I've been fixing the armor since before I got the call. What sort of field experience do you have?"

Jason inhaled for a moment, and shrugged. "Spent multiple tours in the desert. Been in dozens of firefights. Taken out a few metas and lived to tell the tale.... and got hospitalized three times, demoted once, skipped over for promotion more than that. They called me 'Kamikaze', because I got the job done without much concern for my own well being, and took risky approaches. I'm decent with my hands, fists, and a knife, and one of the best the army has to offer with a rifle. Or, well. Was. After my mutation, I'm probably the best the world has to offer with a rifle, though I'm not sure how much of a difference it makes up-close."

Imperious chuckles. "And he's another one that got amped up for a healing. The Shadow Master himself got him back up on his feet with life to spare."

"And that, yeah."

"Interesting. Well. Hopefully being able to see shots coming will help keep you out of the hospital. We'll need to see what you're capable of. I was told they're already working on armor for you?"

Jason nodded. "Of course. Nothing final; apparently they've got about five sets they're putting together. The only thing they all have in common is that they've got a helmet that looks in all directions."

Excalibur studied Jason for a moment; eyes lingering on the T-shirt, shaking his head. "Alright then. Impy, mind grabbing some paintball guns and pugil sticks? We're going to see what our friend here is capable of. Terminal, you here?" She laughed, and took a quick, hopping step; gliding a few feet as she entered what seemed likely to be a storage room.

A speaker mounted on the wall let out a crackle. "Affirmative. Running laps and eating at the moment. Just let me know if you need something, nobody has any calls out." The voice sounded distorted, digitized.

"Alright. Boxing globes, pugil sticks, paintball guns. We'll see how much good foresight does for you, and Terminal can drop by when she likes to see how well you can handle a speedster."

The angellic figure of Imperious stepped back out of the closet; carrying paintball guns, padded sword-like sticks, boxing gloves; an armload of training equipment that she laid out on the rack, as Silver and Excalibur both looked it over. Silver picked up a pair of padded swords, while Excalibur simply strapped on some boxing gloves; and Imperious grabbed a double-ended pugil stick. "We'll start without guns. See what you're made of."