New Tartarus Prison was a massive facility with walls of black marble.  Guard towers surrounding the facility were operated not by soldiers but by the Cerberons, their black, mechanical eyes scanning for any attempt at escape…or rescue.  Within those black walls were several supervillains kept in holding cells.  A man named Atomic, who could unleash nuclear energy, was kept in a metal room that siphoned his radiation.  A woman named Mismatch, with three different abilities, had her hands covered with metal spheres at all times as she waited behind bars.

            In the same hallway as them, one supervillain called Deathstare was covered in a white full body suit that even hid his face.  He had to move around blindly, as these were the necessary lengths to suppress his powers.  The suit hugged his skin and could only open when the guards allowed for things such as eating, and when that happened, he was put under close supervision.  Right now, he lay in his cell, surrounded by darkness as far as he was concerned.  He was incredibly bored, as he was most days trapped in this place.  Little did he know what was about to happen.

            Nearby, hidden in the hills outside the prison, a man sat in a jeep, typing on a laptop, though ready to drive away at a moment’s notice.  He was a handsome, dark haired man with horn rimmed glasses who was completely and utterly focused on his task.  With his laptop, he controlled very small drones that crawled up the prison walls like insects.

            Infiltrating through the air vents, these robots managed to get to the main server rooms and plug themselves into the system like mobile computer chips.  This allowed the man to examine the security firewalls directly.  The more he learned, the more he began to frown.  Finally, he placed his finger on a communicator in his ear.

            “Draego,” he said.  “Can you hear me?”

            A muscular man with tan skin stood on a hill.  He wore a simple black, sleeveless, backless t-shirt with black pants.  His dark, wavy hair framed a handsome face with a strong jawline.  With piercing yellow eyes, he overlooked the E.H.O.D. facility with concern.  Apart from his yellow eyes, his bare feet were the strangest thing about him.  When he heard the other man try to contact him, he put his finger to the communicator in his ear.

            “What’s the word, Cipher?” said Draego with a deep, powerful voice.

            “Well, Draego,” said Cipher.  “I’m in the system, but you’re not gonna like this.  I can force a system reset for the Cerberons, but it will only disable them for five minutes.”

            “That’s it?” said Draego. “That’s the best you can do?”

            “Dude,” said Cipher irritably.  “You should be thankful I can get you that much.  The E.H.O.D. programers might not be me, but they’re good, and have billions of dollars in taxpayer money backing them.  I guarantee the exploit I’m using will be gone by tomorrow if we go through with this, and within a week, they’ll have countermeasures for my drones.  Maybe if I had a month, I could come up with something better, but that’s a pretty strong maybe.”

            “Wish I could give you a month,” said Draego.  “Guess this will have to do.”

            Dropping his hands to his sides, Draego clenched his fists as he began to transform.  Green scales began to grow across his skin, and his face began to elongate.  Horns pierced out of his head as two flaps of skin formed on his back.  Claws extended from his hands and feet as the pupils in his yellow eyes went from circular to a long slit.  The flaps on his back extended to become two giant, green bat wings.  When his transformation finished, he looked like a hybrid between a man and a dragon.  Even his ears resemble holes like a lizard, his communicator embedded in the skin next to it.  Draego put his fingers to the communicator and knelt into a crouch.

            “Tell me when you’re ready,” said Draego, his voice even deeper and guttural. 

            Cypher waited a moment, then said, “Three…two…one…go!”

            Draego knelt, then jumped up, fire forming from his feet as he flew away like a jet, using his batlike wings to steer.

            Meanwhile, the New Tartarus control room technicians became confused when the Cerberon units underwent a random system reset.  When they detected an object approaching the facility at high speed, someone hit the alarm.  Red lights flashed, and the alarm blared, waking everyone in the prison.

            Moments later, Deathstare jumped when the ceiling of his cell exploded, rubble falling to the floor.  Draego fell through, landing with a crash on the ground.  Guards wearing black body armor, their faces hidden with visored helmets, immediately turned and aimed their guns inside the cell.  They fired, but the bullets sparked off Draego’s steel hard scales.  Draego lifted his wings to protect Deathstare, the bullets hitting the hard leathery flesh and falling to the floor.  A fireball formed on each of the dragon man’s hands, and Draego threw them, making explosions that blasted the guards away.

            “What’s going on?” demanded Deathstare.

            Draego didn’t answer but walked over and gripped Deathstare.  Deathstare struggled until Draego ripped the suit off his Deathstare’s face.  Deathstare, a narrow faced man, went from frightened to pleased.

            “Oh,” said Deathstare.  “It’s you.”

            “Let’s finish getting that suit off,” said Draego.

            Draego ripped the suit from Deathstare’s torso, leaving his upper body bare, but it was then that reinforcements arrived, black clad soldiers crowding the area in front of the cell.

            “Get behind me!” shouted Draego.

            “I got this!” shouted Deathstare, stepping in front of Draego and pointing his back at the guards.

            As the guards raised their guns, fissures opened in Deathstare’s skin, revealing human eyes on his back.  When the first guard fired, one of the eyes on Deathstare’s back tracked the bullet, glowed, and unleashed a green blast that hit the projectile, making it fall to the ground, flattened.

            Soon, the guards unleashed a barrage of bullets blocked by beams from the eyes on Deathstare’s back.  Each eye could track each bullet with one hundred percent precision, and not a single projectile was able to get through.  Deflected and flattened bullets fell, clinking to the floor.

            A moment later, Deathstare raised his arm and made an eye appear on the back of his hand.  As the eye beams from his back blocked the bullets, the eye on Deathstare’s hand shot the guards, blasting them against the wall one by one.  When the guards were down, Deathstare closed the skin, covering the eyes all over his body.

            “Yep,” said Deathstare with cocky satisfaction.  “Still got it.”

            “I told you to get behind me,” said Draego sternly.

            “Dude, come on,” said Deathstare.  “I haven’t gotten to stretch my eyes in ages.”

            “Whatever,” said Draego.  “We gotta go.  Jump on my back and hold on tight.  We don’t’ have much time.”

            Deathstare held on to Draego’s neck while his legs held onto Draego’s torso.

            “Aren’t we a bit old for piggyback rides?” said Deathstare.

            “Shut up,” said Draego irritably.

            With Deathstare holding onto him, Draego leaped up, blasting fire from his feet to shoot himself away.  The pair then sped away from the prison, and by the time the Cerberons came back online, they’d hopefully be long gone.

            After running his program, Cipher had already turned on his jeep and gotten out of there.  Draego could see Cipher’s jeep fleeing below, a red-orange dot appearing in his heat vision.

            “So,” said Deathstare, raising his voice over the sound of Draego’s jets, “Where are we going?”

            “Remember that heist we were always planning?” said Draego.

            “The Fugori Crystal?” said Deathstare.  “What about it?”

            “It’s being moved,” said Draego.  “It’s out of Fort Knox and out in the open.  We’ll never get a better chance, so we had to act now.  Cipher found the crystal’s route and the best spot to ambush it.  It will pass through a city without much superhero presence, just some rookie everyone hates right now.”

            “Oh,” said Deathstare, amusement in his voice.  “Yeah.  I heard the news.  You mean Partition City.”

            “Yeah,” said Draego, satisfaction in his voice.  “That’s the one.”