“Intelegant, come fight me, you coward!” shouts the leader of the skeleton army filling New Baru’s streets. The debuting villain, self-named Death Raiser, has been standing there for about an hour now. Despite his army of a hundred, he hasn’t attacked or asked for anything beyond Intelegant.

  Up until this point Intelegant had been working, coming up with an excuse, going home, getting all her stuff ready, and driving into the city. Only now is she ready to deal with this wanna-be villain.

  “I’m no coward,” Intelegant says from under the parapet, the raised edges of the roof, as she says it she pops up. She originally planned to do a surprise attack, but this felt more like her villainous persona.

  “Get her,” Death Raiser tells his minions.

  “Hey!” she says. “That’s not how this goes. You can’t just attack me. We have to talk for a little bit. That is the fun part, after all.”

  “I have no desire to entertain your insanity,” he says dismissively as his army begins to ascend the building she’s standing on.

  “Your minions aren’t alive, right?”

  He gives Intelegant a face that shouts, ‘Of course they aren’t alive, you idiot.’

  “Geez,” she mutters. “You’re no fun.”

  “Nothing about this is funny. I’m going to kill you like I killed this town’s hero.”

  She pauses. She doesn’t have time to formulate a response before the first skeleton soldier makes it to the top of the building. Intelegant kicks it off, easily taking care of it, but after she’s done that to a tenth one they start to get onto the roof. As she is fighting, Death Raiser leaves. He doesn’t even announce it!

  Intelegant pulls a group of daggers from her pockets. She continues to kick skeletons as she throws the knives at the rest.

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  It doesn’t take her long to realize that the knives are useless. Even if she manages to embed them in the bones, they don’t react.

  She takes out her freeze ray and begins using that to keep them at bay, and she doesn’t stop kicking but it’s futile. Even though the ones she knocks off the building hit the ground, break, and disappear, there are too many. The freeze ray won’t work forever. It barely carries what it needs to freeze Naturalist!

  Surrounded by an army that does not know pain or fatigue, she chooses to retreat.

  She deploys a grappling hook, latches onto an adjacent building, and pulls herself over. She doesn’t normally use this tool because it damages the buildings, but she doesn’t have a lot of choice right now.

  Intelegant runs after Death Raiser.

  This time she’ll get the drop on her opponent.

  She runs, jumps, and grapples across two miles before reaching the other villain.

  When she finds him he’s on the ground, surrounded by the skeletons. Again, she hides under a parapet and takes a second to come up with a plan. She pulls something from her pocket. It’s a small package full of tranquilizer darts. She always carries those, even when she’s not a villain.

  She pulls a single dart from the package before putting it back. She hides the dart in the palm of her hand before grabbing the grappling hook again and aiming it at the ground beside Death Raiser.

  Boom!

  The end of the hook flies towards the ground.

  Crack!

  The hook latches into the street beside where the other villain stands.

  Intelegant jumps off the parapet, and is pulled toward the hook.

  She hits the ground rolling. Rolling toward Death Raiser. She knocks him down. She tries to stick him with the dart, but he’s a little too fast. He grabs her wrist as the skeletons begin to react.

  As the first skeleton hand grazes her, Intelegant kicks and hits what’s between his legs.

  He freezes, eyes crossing.

  The skeletons pause too. She seizes the moment and slips the tranquilizer under Death Raiser’s skin. Once she’s done that, she aims her grappling hook to a different roof. Before shooting it, she gets a better grip on the other villain and then:

  Boom!

  She’s out of there, running across roofs and swinging across streets. All with a passed-out villain in her arms.

  As Intelegant makes her escape, Death Raiser’s skeleton army dissipates, vanishing in the absence of their creator.