The full moon rode high in the cloudless sky as Blake led his family out of the downtown movie theater. They had just finished watching the old classic ‘The Mark of Zorro’. His eight-year-old son was talking excitedly.

"I wanna be just like Zorro and wear a mask and a cape and fight bad guys", his son declared. He punctuated his remarks by thrusting his invisible sword at imaginary bad guys.

Blake smiled. When Blake was that age, he too liked Zorro and had similar dreams of adventure. He never totally outgrew that and now he was passing it on to his son.

"Pow, pow and take that", his son continued clearing the way of ‘bad guys’ as they proceeded down the sidewalk. They halted at the intersection, having just missed the ‘walk’ signal. This did not bother Blake, for it was a very nice night so there was no hurry to get to the car.

But it seemed that other people were in a hurry. Looking across the street, Blake saw one man hurriedly rounding a corner crash into a man who was doing likewise in the opposite direction. Both men stopped and glared at each other.

"Watch where you’re going, you moron!" exclaimed one.

The other snarled, "You watch where you’re going, jackass!"

"Screw you!"

"Outta my face", one man shouted as he shoved the other.

The other pushed back. They shoved each other again, with increasing force. Blake sighed, for he knew where this was leading. As expected one of them threw a punch. This touched off a flurry of fists as it turned into a fistfight. After a brief exchange, one of the combatants was knocked back and down.

The standing man drew himself up, put his hands on his hips and declared "You fool, you cannot stop me!"

"Something is very wrong", thought Blake.

The downed man struggled to his feet and shouted, "I fight for justice!" Grabbing his shirt he ripped it open revealing a blue and yellow spandex costume underneath. Emblazoned on his chest was a big black ‘M’.

The other raised his hand, and cried out. There was a blinding flash of light. Now they were both in a costume, both identically clad in a blue spandex costume with a yellow V coming down from the shoulders, a big black ‘M’ on the chest, and the typical mask and cape.

"Metas!" Blake thought, now becoming very alarmed. He grabbed his kid with a vice like grip and pulled him back. Blake looked for a place to run, but the sidewalk was crowded with curious onlookers.

The meta who had just stood up, turned and grabbed a nearby mail box. With no apparent effort he tore it from the sidewalk and lifted it high over his head. He swung it at his opponent’s head, only to have it hit and bounce off the target’s force field. The force of blow as such that he lost his grip on the mailbox and it caromed off into the street. It crashed through the windshield of a nearby car, causing the car to swerve and crash into another. The other cars, brakes squealing slammed into it. Blake pulled his son behind himself, trying to shield him as the pile up grew.

The meta responded to the attack by firing blue bolts from his outstretched arms. The bolts hit the other square in the chest and knocked him up and over the other street into a large plate glass window of a clothing store. Pieces of glass sprayed over the nearby people, and they ran off, bleeding from numerous cuts. Some lay on the sidewalk, unmoving.

Suddenly an arrow flew by, hitting the ground by the standing meta. It exploded and a cloud of gas issued from it. Blake whipped his head around, and saw a winged meta, in the same costume as the other two, holding a bow and hovering above the street near the theater his family had just left. Blake pulled his family back around the corner out of the line of fire.

The winged one turned and fired at the meta emerging from the clothing store. The target deflected the flaming arrow and it disappeared into the store.

Blake’s situation was desperate. Across the street one metahuman was stepping out of a gas cloud unharmed while the nearby pedestrians fell to the ground grasping for air. Diagonally across the intersection another meta was striding forth from a broken window while a small fire started in the background. And behind was a third, apparently firing at anything that moved. The street itself was choked with cars as people abandoned them and fled.

Blake grabbed his wife and son’s hand and turned to flee when the intersection erupted, throwing chunks of the street into the fleeing crowds. The cause of the eruption was the emergence of a gigantic humanoid. This monster was at least five stories tall and though it wore no clothing, it’s rocky skin had the same blue and yellow pattern as the other meta’s costumes, complete with a giant ‘M’. It reached up and grabbed the flying meta. At the same time the meta emerging from the store grabbed the giant by the leg.

Blake was about to take his family and flee down the street away from the intersection and the metas, when from the direction of his intended flight, a flying car swooped down. It was basically a flying convertible, so he could see the four metas riding in it, all having the same costume as the rest. The car launched two rockets. The rockets screamed down the street. One hit the giant in the head, causing him to drop the flier. The other missed and continued on, impacting on a nearby building. There was a tremendous explosion as the rocket blew a huge hole in the side of the building. Blake could hear the screams and could see bodies falling out of the gaping hole.

The flying car was hit by blue bolts and spun out of control. The other meta pulled the giant’s leg, causing the giant to fall into a parking lot crushing the cars. A speedster flashed by and decked the blue bolt wielder only to then hit a patch of ice that yet another meta was laying down. The speedster slid past the frozen forms of the unfortunates who were caught up in the icy blast. Up in the sky, another meta was calling forth a storm. Another team of metas arrived on flying surfboards, others came up from the sewers and some swung in from ropes. They were coming from all directions.

The battle intensified. Energy bolts, laser beams, spells, and god knew what filled the air. Debris flew in all directions. Cars were thrown, lampposts ripped up, buildings collapsed. They were all fighting each other. There was no rhyme or reason to any of it. And in spite of the horrific energies employed, none of the metas took any serious damage. All it accomplished was the death of innocent people.

There was nowhere to run. Blake pulled his son to the ground and lay on top, trying his best to protect him. He closed his eyes and prayed.

The noise of the battle rose to an ear-splitting crescendo. Then silence. Blake waited a few anxious moments then risked a look. He saw nothing moving. He slowly stood up.

The scene that greeted his eyes was one of utter devastation. No structure was left standing - all was reduced to piles of rubble. The bodies of the innocent bystanders littered the area. Small fires and smoke dotted the landscape.

Then Blake saw the metas. They were all unharmed and now stood facing one another in a rough circle. They were preparing for one final attack. And in the center of the circle…

His son was in the center. Blake had no idea how he got there, but there he was. Blake tried to run to him, but he couldn’t move for his feet were tangled up in his wife’s dead body. Blake started to call to his son, but it was too late.

Blake didn’t know whether the metas were aiming at his son or each other. Either way, he had to watch helplessly as his son was hit from all directions by the unearthly energies. He saw his son, surrounded by a multicolor sphere of force, and lifted off the ground. The sphere grew brighter and brighter as the metas poured more energy into it. Blake screamed as his son was literally torn apart.

They killed Kenny.

"YOU BASTARDS!!", Blake screamed.

He woke up, jerking his head violently off his desk. His pulse was racing, his heart pounding, it took a few moments for Blake to calm down and get his bearings. He was at his desk, a new weapon design spread out on the desktop. He had obviously dozed off while working on it.

He rubbed his eyes, then took a deep breath. He looked up and his eyes fell upon the photo of his wife and son. A look of deep pain crossed his face. No nightmare, no matter how horrific could compete with reality. It could never compete with the reality of the 1991 battle between the Five Guardians and Morgoth. It could not compete with the stark fear of watching Crusader pick up his car and throw it. It could not compete with the horror of watching the police officer retrieve the bodies of his wife and child from the mangled car.

And no nightmare could produce the cold rage that was now his life. Blake glanced back down at the weapon design. Morgoth would never rob another bank, and the Five Guardians are down to two. But that was not enough. No one should have to go through what he had. It must stop.

He picked up a pencil and with an angry stroke, increased the power of the weapon tenfold.