Ballroom Blitz: Chapter 1

Are you ready, Steve? Aha.

When Tanya was in high school, dozing through too-easy lessons and ducking through a cracked and shambling school system, her teachers had always stressed a number of silly, idealistic adjectives a successful group of people would need. Teamwork, leadership, organization, perseverance, obedience, yadda yadda yadda.

As she suppressed the mighty need to walk over and punch the slight Egyptian boy in the head, she though that Mrs. White may have had a point.

Andy? Yeah! Mick? OK.

She hadn't asked to be the leader of the team, really. It was just something that had happened. Somebody had to keep this motley group of teenagers who skipped off to the clubs at the slightest stretch of peace, who couldn't leave a decent message, who were, in her opinion, often too stupid to live, in line.

Take Uro, here. 6,000-year-old Egyptian prince with a vast array of sand magic at his disposal. Couldn't figure out how to take advantage of a situation if you drew him a diagram. Or Aira, the Girl who Could Not Wear Pants. Wind manipulation, flight, never realized every time she went in the air she gave the whole city a free show.

Jing was like a soothing breeze next to them--a tall Chinese android with a penchant for fire. Soft-spoken, he was always a step behind her. It was nice to have someone around she didn't want to punch, but he worried her sometimes, with his little white lies and disquieting segues. She hated worrying.

Oh, well. There were more appropriate ruminations for the middle of a street brawl, she thought, kneeing a thickset man in the face.

Alright, fellas, let's go!

Chaos reigned supreme on Tyler Street. It was standard superhero fare, really--some moron gets too big for their britches and decides to stir up a mob for the evil plan du jour.

Except this particular moron was actually four morons dabbling in witchcraft with a major Rowling fixation mind-controlling a large crowd of innocent people to tear the lawmen's heads off.

And in case you've forgotten, Tanya, Uro, Jing, and Aira were the lawmen.

Oh it's been getting so hard
Livin' with the things you do to me, aha

A hand tangled in her hair, pulling her back and almost off her feet.

"Oh, I'm gonna rip your face off with my teeth for that," she snarled, reaching back and grabbing the man's lower jaw with a swift pop. The hand loosened, and she shoved him at a rabid soccer mom, knocking her down like a candlepin.

"Uro!" she called over the melee. The Potterfans were obviously not experts at their craft; the crowd ripped into each other as often as not, making the avenue a sea of violent, roiling flesh.

Oh my dreams are getting so strange
I'd like to tell you everything I see

"Why won't you--" she was cut off as a short, hairy man barreled into her, throwing them both to the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of her. As she struggled to draw a breath, the weight on top of her lessened as the man found himself pinwheeling through the air, courtesy of Jing's Big Damn Rocket Boot.

Oh, I see a man at the back
As a matter of fact his eyes are red as the sun

"What are they doing? Where's Uro?" she gasped, pulling herself up on him. Aira had gotten a clue and was attempting to contain a number of them behind a swirling shield of wind, and while it certainly thinned the herd, it left her totally occupied. Jing left them a bubble of breathing room with ease that made her jealous of his super-strength.

"Uro is--" he cold-cocked a muscled man, his tone perfectly even "--at the other end of the street, Miss Tanya. He conjured his dogs and went to the fight."

"I'm going to kill him," she groaned. "Wait, I'm not going to kill him. I'm going to drag him back to the tower by his stupid white hair and sit him down with a Risk board until he listens."

And a girl in the corner let no one ignore her
'Cause she thinks she's the passionate one

She threw up her hands. "Augh, just forget him. Get us to the wizard wannabes, and we punch them until I'm not mad anymore."

"You know, Miss Tanya, transference isn't really the healthiest of--"

"Just get us there!"

Oh, yeah, it was like lightning, everybody was frightening

God, she loved Rocket Boots. She held onto Jing, and one elongated leap later, they were party-crashing. Black magic ceremony-crashing, to be accurate, but really, what's the difference?

And the music was soothing, and they all started grooving
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah

The four morons responsible for this mess were older than she'd initially thought--ranging from mid-twenties to late-thirties, each holding a notebook that was probably full of nasty hurt-inducing things. A balding man stepped forward, apparently speaking for the group. "You can't stop us!" he cried, waving his notebook. "We have tapped into the power of Antioch, and--"

"Oh, shut up, Milton. I don't do the banter thing, and I don't care about your stupid books," Tanya snapped, cracking her knuckles. "Right, who wants to be first?"

And the man at the back said
Everyone attack and it turned into a ballroom blitz

It was probably rude of Tanya to use Jing as a robo-shield, but she knew one of them would take a boulder to the head a lot better than the other. He dodged and returned the rock to its owner as she snapped a smoke grenade off of her belt and flung it into the center of the four, but not before a thin column of flame roared out and nearly melted her face off.

Magic. She'd take a thousand machine-gun wielding gangs over one decent wizard. As least with guns, you knew all the capabilities. With magic--

--a dozen snakes slithered out of the smoke.

And the girl in the corner said
Boy, I wanna warn ya, it'll turn into a ballroom blitz

Jing set about toasting the snakes as Tanya steeled herself and tackled one of the unsuspecting mages. She was good with poorly-thought-out dangerous things that later looked amazingly heroic like that. Flailing around in terror, the woman screamed gibberish that sounded vaguely Latin, and there was a concussive blast directly beneath them, sending the world into mad spins.

Ballroom blitz, ballroom blitz, ballroom blitz
Ballroom blitz

For several moments, Tanya wasn't sure of anything; the ground wasn't even nice enough to stay still as she tried to stand, only succeeding in drunkenly falling off her knees. The sky was nice, she decided, laying back and trying to remember how to breathe.

A burst of sand bisected the blue sky, hitting something she couldn't see with a solid thud. A second later, a tanned face leaned over her apprehensively.

I'm reaching out for something
Touching nothing's all I ever do

"Er, Tanya? ...you're alive, right?" It probably wasn't a good thing that her first coherent thought was to throttle him, but she quashed her impulse and stumbled to her feet, coughing. Her head and the side she'd landed on ached terribly, but she couldn't feel a break. The mage, at least, was worse off; she'd knocked herself out good on the pavement after flinging them up.

Right. Take stock: Uro next to her, Aira off doing...something, and Jing playing molten dodgeball with the remaining two mages.

Oh, I softly call you over
When you appear there's nothing left of you, aha

"Uro, I need you to get a shield ready. Kill your whatsits, you're gonna need the material. When I drop, cover in front of and above us, but leave a foot or two between the bottom of it and the ground. Got me?" He was done playing around, evidently; he simply nodded and Tanya watched the sand between the cobblestones migrate towards him, like iron filings to a magnet.

She grabbed the fallen witch's notebook. I'm going to need to invest in some batarangs or something, she thought as she started running and pitched the spiral-bound at the head wizard's skull.

"Hey, Milton!"

Now the man in the back
Is ready to crack as he raises his hands to the sky

He spun and redirected his fireball with ease, and Tanya dropped like a baseball player sliding home, momentum carrying her into his legs. There was a whump as Uro smothered the fireball, and a number of very satisfying cracks as Tanya broke Milton's nose. Perfectly executed.

She sighed and sat back on her heels, shaking some of his blood off her glove. "Christ, I think that blast cracked a rib."

And the girl in the corner is ev'ryone's mourner
She could kill you with a wink of her eye

Jing tied up the last wizard (he'd surrendered, wisely enough. Jing supposed he was a Ravenclaw), and surveyed the groggy crowd. The mind control spell had faded when the wizard lost consciousness, and Aira was assisting the confused and injured.

"Well, I think we did good," said Uro, copying Jing. "For our first time out, and all."

Tanya looked at him, looked at the mob of lost Sunday shoppers, and shook some more blood off of her glove. She sighed.

Oh yeah, it was electric, so frightfully hectic
And the band started leaving, 'cause they all stopped breathing

"When we get home, I'm got some concepts to introduce you to..."

It's it's a ballroom blitz, it's it's a ballroom blitz
It's it's a ballroom blitz, yeah, it's a ballroom blitz