Episode 8

Blinded By The Light

The battle between the Outlaws and The Replacements in the cargo hangar continues to rage. Downtime detects the imminent approach of the Watch with his danger sense and Shark orders the Outlaws to evacuate. Graviton tackles Feral Cat, knocking him out. Diversion tries to cover the Outlaw's escape with a blinding light field, but Dementia uses her mind scan to lock-on and ego blast the light-using villain into next week. In retaliation, Graviton charges Dementia--she hurtles, unconscious, through the wall of the hangar (without the benefit of her telekinetic force field).

The Watch arrive, Cypher and Feral Cat recover; and on her second attempt, Seven turns Shark to stone.

The last Outlaw standing, Graviton picks up the damaged private jet to use as a weapon. Cypher leaps to Graviton and knocks him out with her taser grasp; as his grip on the jet slips, Cyclone stretches his wind powers to their limits and prevents Graviton and Cypher from being crushed under the weight of the plane. Bowman uses a grappling arrow to pull the now defenseless Graviton away, and save him from being crushed to death.

A Strange Request

Bowman notes that Commissioner Mcmillan, the police and the press will arrive at the scene any minute and asks the Replacements to slip away with Tarpit. Bowman claims to know the young villain and to vouch for him as a misguided youth who simply fell in with a bad crowd. He urges the Replacements to take Tarpit to Ravenswood Academy. The team grudgingly agrees.

Ravenswood

The team is met at the gate of Ravenswood Academy by Firebrand and Killswitch. Firebrand leads them to the school's library, where they meet Jack Overton (Nightraven) and Doctor Destiny (in an idealized, astral form).

Exhausted and starving after a very difficult battle, they are less than enthusiastic about chatting with the former members of the Golden Age team, the Defenders of Justice. From the conversation, however, they learn the true nature of Ravenswood Academy, the origin of the Watch, and of the antagonism between Nightraven and Captain Freedom. They are also given an open invitation by Overton to act as part of the school's rotating faculty.

At Overton's request, Hot Rod brings the hungry team a plate of Hotpockets (the academy's kitchen is already closed for the evening), and utters some of the more memorable lines of the episode: "Here are your hotpockets. Their still hot, right? You know why? Because I'm a fucking speedster . . . I used to be somebody!" He complains to Overton about being called from his quarters at ten at night to serve food to guests.

After Feral Cat receives a tip from Agent Halifax about an attack on an armored car on the interstate outside of Toledo, Ohio, the team departs.

Crime Scene

The Replacements arrive at the scene of the armored car attack; local police are already on the scene and ask for their autographs.

Examining the wreckage they determine that the drivers were killed by plasma blasts and that there were no fingerprints left behind, only metal fragments where the doors were torn off.

Inside, they find clasiffied Department of Defense documents relating to a new generation of chips to be used in battle computers and spy sattelites. Cypher, who along with Doctor Turcotte, was the primary developer of these chips. She speed-reads the documents and learns that, without her knowledge, a small number fo the chips had already been put into production. She also learns that about the military's plan to use the chips not only in sattellites, but in battle computers. Apparently, the handful of chips produced from her prototype wer stolen from the armored car during the attack.

Feral Cat uses his heightened senses to discover traces of scorch marks from samll jet propulsion units on the pavement.

The Gumshoe discovers a tiny piece of vegetable matter in the compartment that contained the chips. Doctor Manhattan arrives at the scene and demands that the Replacements leave the scene immediately for reasons of national security.

The team leaves, but Gumshoe cons the local police into letting Cypher have access to traffic camera records of the accident. Cypher introduces a virus into the Toledo police mainfraim that removes any trace of the group's acquisition of these records.

I Dream of Robots

Consulting the traffic tapes, the team learns that the armored car was attacked by a group of four advanced robots. Dementia recognizes the robots from her dreams; in the dreams the robots work for the armored dictator (possibly a version of Doctor Destroyer) and guard major checkpoints in Millenium City.

Leafpeeping

Examining the piece of vegetable matter, Cypher determines that it is part of a pine needle from a tree only found in the area in a Michigan national park. The teams decides to investigate the park for more clues . . .