Excerpt: N/A

It was a cold, clear, November morning, and the sun was just rising over downtown Toronto when the members of the Council of Correctness met to discuss their daily business. It was something they'd begun doing after the city council had put them on the official government payroll (a hotly debated decision, both on the side of the government and the side of the heroes themselves); once they'd all been able to give up their day jobs (well, Saint George hadn't been able to hold down a day job, and actually spent quite a bit of his time in various homeless shelters), they found that they missed the morning routine, the water cooler discussions about what had been on TV last night and how the United States was messing up their way of life and whether or not the Leafs had any chance of building a better team for next season.

However, the city wasn't quite enamoured of them enough to provide an actual space where they could meet – particularly with the rising cost of real estate in the current market. "Perhaps," they were told by Mayor Singh in the private meeting where they were officially 'hired', "something can be managed in the next fiscal year, at least a condo somewhere uptown." A few moments later she'd excused herself, pleading an important meeting with the head of the Green Police and the city's trash contractors. "You can let yourselves out," she said before she left, inclining her head toward the open office window across the room.

So they met every morning on the face of the Scotia Plaza building, high over the downtown core, before starting their various days. The building had been designed with a V-shaped cutout that spanned several stories, looking like two staircases to nowhere that met each other at the bottom; it gave the Council simultaneous visibility and privacy, and wasn't a half-bad vantage point over the other towers and spires that formed the heart of their home city. They'd have their coffee and Timbits (The Rocket, as the newest member of the Council, had the job of bring the food every day), discuss any joint actions that needed to be scheduled, keep an ear out for sirens (actually, they'd decided when forming the Council that there needed to be more than one siren before they'd investigate; otherwise they'd never have had a moment's rest) and scan the streets below for any sudden emergencies. Eventually, they'd drift off one by one to their own separate world, or at least city, -saving business.

Maiden Mystic levitated down from the clouds, shaking droplets of condensed moisture from the tips of her gossamer cape that fell down, shimmering, toward the ground below. She shivered as the wind hit her, and spoke a few words of instruction to the gusts to pass around, creating a sphere of stillness with her body at the center, and then gestured like a Greek god might when reaching for lightning bolts, only in Mystic's case she was reaching for the very stuff of sunlight itself to warm her further. If she'd been anywhere near street level, people would have had to shield their eyes as she surrounded herself with the sun's glow; as it was, only The Parliamentarian, always first to arrive to the morning get togethers, was there to see and shake his head, his mouth pulled into its usual slight frown, wrinkles stretching down to his jowls, one gauntleted hand held above his eyes.

"I hope you were following air traffic by-laws up there, young lady," he said dourly as her feet touched the Napoleon granite of the building's façade. "They've been shoving planes off the Island runway as fast as their regulations allow." Mystic nodded, about to speak, but when he insisted on scanning the path she'd traveled with telescopic vision she gritted her teeth and refused to look in his direction, particularly when he muttered an apologetic, "Looks okay." She had turned to face the window behind them (ignoring, as always, the gawkers from within the building), and when she saw the reflection of the older man hanging his head, she relented and was about to say something when there was a disturbance in the air and building, both trembling in a manner that anticipated the arrival of the rest of the group.

The Rocket was the first to arrive, a red and silver blur shooting up the building's side and over the lip of the edge, windows rattling in his wake. He carried Brick House in his arms – Mystic wondered again if the rumours that they'd been dating were true – and set her down carefully before zooming up and down the face of the structure, just because he could. "Hey there, sweetie," Brick House said, stepping down to embrace Mystic; they'd been good friends since before the team began, despite the disparity in their ages (Mystic, while maintaining the appearance and personality of a nineteen year old, was actually the incarnation of a millennia-old natural spirit, while Brick House was only forty-five).

When Mystic wrapped her arms around the other woman, she was surprised to be able to lift her off the ground (well, the building) without even trying; she seemed to weigh almost nothing at all. Brick House looked down and grinned. "I almost forgot; I always adjust my mass when Rajit is carrying me." She winked. "I think it might slow him down just a little bit if I dialed it up to max." Mystic laughed at this; it wasn't certain yet at this point just what max was for Brick House – she'd adjusted her relative mass upwards to several megagrams without any ill effects (to herself, at least), and during their average battle kept it at least to one. Meanwhile, she thought to herself, Rajit, huh? They must have something going on, if she's using his real name.

As if to put deed to her thought, the minute she released Brick House, The Rocket was suddenly there, leaning casually against her shoulder. "Ladies, ladies, I'm sure you're wondering why I called this little meeting today," he crooned, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, flexing the opposite calf when he did so, unable to stay utterly still. Despite the fact that it was the same joke he made every morning, down to the smarmy lounge singer inflection, Mystic smiled; Brick guffawed, using her laughter as an excuse to wrap her arm around him and pull him closer, their spandex-covered hips touching in a way that was almost too intimate. Mystic wondered if she should say something – there were people watching from inside the building – but she couldn't spoil their mood. Instead, she just smiled at them both.

Just then, the final two members of the Council arrived; Peregrine diving from heights that even Mystic didn't dare, feathers fluttering in the wind, and Saint George holding on to her feet, looking more than a little bit like he was about to lose the contents of his stomach. They were quite a pair, soaring through the sky – more than once, Mystic had wondered what people thought when they came into view, Peregrine's costume almost a realistic copy of her namesake's plumage, even her mouth and chin hidden behind a beak, and Saint George, every inch as if he'd just been plucked from the Crusades (which The Parliamentarian had complained about many times, insisting that the real Saint George had been a Roman soldier and would wear proper loricae, not cast-offs from a production of Camelot), sword swinging at his side and arms crossed firmly over his cross-covered shield as if faith were what was keeping him above ground.

When Peregrine set him down, he stood well back from the edge and tried not to let his gaze move to the city below. Mystic wasn't sure why he was still so nervous, every time – any one of them would save him if he slipped, and regardless, she'd seen him fall once when they were on their way to a battle and ran into a sneak attack of The PteranoDon's winged mafia; when machine gun fire raked across Peregrine's left wing, she had to let George go or they both would have plummeted. He fell at least two hundred feet to a construction site below (destroying, along the way, at least three floors of the new condo that was being built, which only led Brick House to remark after that it was 'nowhere near enough') and climbed out again none the worse for the wear, though it took a month afterwards before he'd worked all the dents out of his helmet and breastplate. But regardless of his apparent invulnerability, he never seemed to completely trust flying – he'd once remarked that the sky was the bailiwick of dragons, not men, and certainly the PteranoDon incident would only have left him more certain of that – and it was only for expediency's sake that he'd arranged with Peregrine that they would fly together for Council business.

"Hail and well met, friends," he greeted them, tilting up his visor to reveal a lined, wind roughened face and a shock of hair so blonde it was almost white, all only framework, however, to the piercing blue of his eyes, pure and so certain in the rightness, the purpose of his life's work (and if he was to be believed, it was a life that had stretched from the third century after Christ to now) that it bordered on madness. Indeed, to many it crossed that line altogether. Still, he was a formidable ally and a founding member of the Council, and certainly, Mystic knew, he had paved the way for her membership. Once you've brought a medieval knight on a quest from Big-G God into your organization, a nature spirit (to boot, a nature spirit who actually understands the usefulness of integrating yourself into contemporary culture) seems small potatoes in comparison.

She held up her hand in reply to his greeting, and Rocket and Brick said hello. The Parliamentarian nodded curtly at both Saint George and Peregrine as she settled down to perch on the step above them, then, following precisely the guidelines of proper Westminster procedure, called the meeting to order. After an additional call, made when The Rocket would not stay still and pay attention, their morning gathering actually began.

"There are three items with which we should proceed today, barring any emergencies," Parliamentarian began, somehow managing to give the impression that he stood behind a podium even when wind blown and precariously close to a sixty story drop. "First is the ongoing search for Doctor Nefarious' new headquarters. While it has been some time since he has dared to challenge—"

"Hey, wait a minute," Brick House said, toying with the laces on the bodice of the deep red singlet she wore, faux graffiti scrawled across the front. She elbowed Rocket, who was still leaning against her. "I thought someone was supposed to bring us coffee at these meetings. I'm looking down at my hand, and I don't see my coffee."

The Parliamentarian heaved a longsuffering sigh. "I believe what you meant to say, if you wish to interrupt my reading of the agenda, is 'Point of Order'." He hit his right fist on the palm of his left hand as if to bang a gavel, moving with the apparent slowness but actual force of an avalanche.

Brick was not impressed. "Whatever, Point of fuckin' Order. All I'm saying is that someone better get me my cappuci—" She stopped, suddenly, as with a blur of motion The Rocket returned (she'd yet to notice he was gone) and there was a brown Tim Horton's cup in the hand she'd been indicating. "Well, then," she said, taken slightly aback. "I guess that's okay." She reached around behind Rocket when he stopped beside her again, and he jumped slightly more than usual. "Point of Order un-Pointed," Brick said with a grin, and took a sip of her coffee.

"You don't rule on the Point of Order, I rule on the Point of Order," The Parliamentarian insisted, but his vehemence was somewhat blunted by the fact that he now held a French Vanilla Cappuccino in one hand and a honey cruller in the other, and much further so by the fact that Saint George was now insisting to Rocket that he'd been given the wrong order:

"Thou rogue! I ordered the claw of bear and a Hot Smoothie. A Hot Smoothie, not this devilish concoction!"