She watched her father as he puttered about his lab. One of the lights had burned out just an hour before, but he was never one to notice such things, even though now the room was barely lit by one overhead light and a Bunsen burner smouldering in a corner. If he was even aware of the weaker light in the room, he did not attribute it to a source. And, no doubt, he had forgotten about the Bunsen burner entirely.

She worried for him. At his age, it was not good to strain his eyes by working in an uneven pool of light and shadow.

Professor MacCreary glanced up, peered at her above his rectangular glasses, and gave her a little grin. With that little gesture, she was reminded that as preoccupied, as "absent-minded" as he could be, he never fully forgot her. Since his beloved wife's death a year ago, in truth, she was all he had.

He scribbled away, some new formula, some radical concept. In time, when he had finished it to his satisfaction, he would show it to her, and ask her opinion. He valued her opinion greatly.

She cocked her head. A sound came to her from just outside -- outside this stable at the back of the professor's property that had been modified into his work area. For a moment she heard the cough, the growl, of a car, then it was still. Then she heard the clump-clump of car doors. The professor did not hear it, of course. Even had he been listening, she doubted he would have heard it. His senses were not as keen as hers.

"Father?"

"Mmm? Just a minute, Berta," he said, not listening.

She was not sure why, but she felt a vague...unease. The hour was late. Who would be visiting at this hour? Who, when they rarely had visitors even during the day?

Footsteps mounted the old wooden steps that led up to the lab over where horses had once been housed. The steps were outside the door. Heavy. Many.

"Father?"

"Not now, Berta, I'm almost..."

The sentence was never finished. The door crashed inward, and men piled in. Scruffy men, some dressed in pinstripes, their faces hidden beneath fedora hats.

"Are youse Professor MacCreary?" asked the leader, a toothpick hanging ungainly from out of the corner of his mouth.

"What?" demanded her father, sluggishly adjusting to this unexpected intrusion. "Who are-? What? Yes. Yes, I am he."

"Youse is he?" repeated the leader, then he winked at the man beside him. "Dis is 'he', Stinky."

The man called Stinky laughed. "Well, yer lordship, we've got a carriage outside if you'd be so as kind to gets in. Ain't that right, Lou?" he winked back at the leader.

She was not sure why they felt a need to mock the professor's proper grammar, but it was obvious, despite their feigned politeness, that they meant the professor no good.

As yet, she noted, they had not noticed her sitting quietly in the corner.

"Go? With you?" demanded her father. "Don't be absurd. What is the meaning of this intrusion?"

"The meaning is that if youse make too much trouble, prof.," said Lou, the leader, pulling a black pistol from out of his jacket, "I'm gonna put another eye in your face to go wit the four y'already got."

With a rustle of fabric, more guns came free to gleam grotesquely in the weak overhead light.

Unable to stomach anymore, she was about to rise, to protest, when she heard a grunt, a snarled curse, and heard the sound of flesh hitting flesh. Suddenly one of the goons came flying through the doorway, forcing Lou and Stinky and the others to scramble into the lab, whirling about, faces twisted in confusion, fists clenched about their guns.

And suddenly, a figure stood in the doorway. A tall man, in jodhpurs and a loose white shirt, a purple mask hiding much of his face. Around his neck he wore a scarf. "Lou Piper, I'm disappointed in you. If I expected to find anyone here, I expected Luger-waving S.S. agents. But homegrown rats like you, betraying not just your country, but simple human decency?" He shook his head. "It's enough to make me sick at heart."

"Them krauts paid us to put the bag on the prof here," snarled Lou. "That's business. Fitting you for a pine box, Mr. Amazing, will be nuthin' but pleasure." He opened fire, his pistol sounding like thunder cracks in the little room.

Mr. Amazing ducked and snatched up the wastepaper basket by the door in one fluid move. Even as more thugs started blasting away in his direction, the wastepaper basket went crashing into the room's sole overhead light, plunging them into darkness.

"If killing me is your idea of pleasure, Lou, you definitely need another hobby."

"Get him," roared Lou, blasting away, unaware of something that she thought was obvious as she observed the conflict: in the darkness, the flashes from their guns made the goons far more obvious targets than the man called Mr. Amazing. A fact Mr. Amazing took full advantage of. While Lou and his gang fired blindly into the darkness, Mr. Amazing slammed into them, sending them dizzily down onto the floor in various stages of insensibility.

It was, quite frankly, amazing.

Though they were nearly blind in the darkness, she could see quite clearly. Her father was huddled on the floor, momentarily safe, while Mr. Amazing sent Stinky spinning with a right cross. Stinky hit the far wall, and as he lurched forward, he accidentally tore the blackout curtain from the window. Then he staggered against a table and sent the Bunsen burner crashing onto some papers. Moonlight from outside spilled into the room simultaneous with a fire catching. The two threw off light. Not much, but enough to tip the scales a little.

"There! Get him, Bobby!" Lou hissed.

A huge shape shouldered out of the shadows like a mountain on legs. Mr. Amazing whirled, and she could hear his heart accelerate, just a little. His tone of voice, though, betrayed nothing. "What's this?" he quipped. "Stealing gorillas from the zoo, Lou? Have you no shame?"

"Wiseguy!" growled Bobby, arms thick as tree trunks trying to close about Mr. Amazing and crush him to pulp. Mr. Amazing ducked and delivered a couple of quick, hard punches into Bobby's abdomen. Bobby groaned but managed to straighten, forcing a grin in the half-light. "Y'ain't so tough, fruitcake. Not if that's the best you can do. I'm gonna-" His sentence was never finished as an uppercut sent his teeth together with an audible clack! He reeled back for a moment, like a drunken bull, then shook his head and swung faster than she would have believed.

Obviously faster than Mr. Amazing had expected, because the colourfully dressed figure went somersaulting over a work table, scattering papers and beakers everywhere. He caught himself just as he was about to tumble into a raging fire -- distracted by the fight, she hadn't realized how out of control it had grown in the old, dry lab. Suddenly she spied the one called Lou grab her father by his arm and roughly yank him to his feet.

"Come on, professor, let's us skedaddle while Bobby makes something amazing outta Mr. Amazing."

"What about Bobby?" asked Stinky, rubbing his jaw and wincing.

Flames were crawling across the wall, and the whole room was scorched with yellow light and sweat cascaded down Lou's features. "Y'want to stay and help him, be my guest."

Her father struggled helplessly as the gunman raced for the door. Stinky looked around at the erupting inferno, then hurriedly followed his leader. The rest of the group, likewise, staggered outside, leaving an oblivious Bobby and a desperate Mr. Amazing to continue their struggle in the burning lab. She rose, enraged, angry as much at herself for having delayed becoming involved as she was at them. But her father had long cautioned her to remain unobtrusive, to not reveal herself to people. Now, it was obvious she had little choice.

She started for the door, then stopped, torn. Her father was being kidnapped, taken from her. Every part of her being demanded that she race to him. But Mr. Amazing was clearly at a disadvantage, perhaps in far more immediate danger. She did not know him, did not know why he had come, but clearly he had sought to protect her father.

He blocked a huge fist swung by Bobby, then kicked out, as hard as he could. Bobby winced, breathing just a little heavily. Mr. Amazing's heart was pounding, he was clearly reeling. If he had seen Bobby earlier, he might have paced himself, reserved more of his stength for this fight. As it was...

She looked at the open door, then back at Mr. Amazing. Back and forth. Then, in a single bound, she leaped the length of the room and was at Bobby's side. She caught one of his huge hands effortlessly and whirled him to face her. Bobby gawked as he saw her for the first time, his mouth dropping open in total shock. He barely had time to stammer, "Wh-what the hell?", before she shoved, sending the big man off his feet and flying through the window in a cascade of shattered glass and wood.

Then she turned and raced after her father...through the burning flames.

Pvt. Marty Mortimer jiggled the nob on the general's door, satisfying himself that it was locked. As a matter of routine, he put his flashlight to the frosted glass and shone it inside, watching for any incongruous bumps or movements. Of course, he wasn't sure quite what to do if he ever did see anyone lurking about in the general's office at this time of night, since he himself wasn't even cleared to go in. Still, he didn't really expect that to ever be an issue.

The war was a long way from this lonely Canadian Forces Base just outside of Toronto. Marty couldn't wait for the orders that would send him over seas himself. He just hoped the war wouldn't be over before he got a few licks in.

Drumming the flashlight against his thigh, humming the tune to "Music, Maestro, Please" under his breath, he sauntered down the hall, ignoring the shadows that formed like puddles behind him.

After a moment, one shadow moved.

It slithered across the floor, then spread up one wall like a silhouette thrown by the form of a woman. Except, of course, there was no woman to cast it. The hall remained empty save for the moving shadow.

The shadow stopped before the general's door and then did something even more peculiar. The head of the shadow-that-was-cast-by-nothing did a double take, as if making sure no one was around. Then it dropped to the floor and slipped under the door like a slip of black velvet.

Inside the general's office the shadow, still maintaining the silhouette of a woman, spread out over the floor. Then, eerily, it began to swell. It rose up, a form of three dimension taking shape, and a lovely young woman in a pink bathing suit and boots picked herself up off the floor.

The Silhouette had arrived.

She went to the door, pressing her ear to the glass for a moment. The soldier was long gone, she decided. Moving to the general's desk, she turned on his lamp.

According to Dennis Welbeck, MacCreary had long ago submitted a paper on his formula to the army but, in true bureaucratic fashion, the brass had yet to fully realize what they had. Welbeck figured it was best not to give them the opportunity to rectify their ignorance.

She wasn't entirely comfortable with all this, and she knew the others felt the same. Here she was, breaking into an army base, stealing classified documents. Morally and legally, she was in a lot of trouble. She should be using her abilities against her country's enemies, not those who were trying to defend Canada.

But Welbeck had touched a nerve with his comment about "super-races".

For behind the mask of the Silhouette, the raven-haired beauty and scourge of the underworld, was Dahlia Messensinger, a Jew. What the Nazis represented was just a monstrously exaggerated form of a demon that dwelt even in the land of the Midnight Sun. Maybe the war would finally wake people up, force them to confront their own prejudices. She hoped so, but she was well aware that the battle was uphill and the slope slippery. Jewish refugees had been turned from Canada's shores, and anti-Semitism dwelt not too far beneath the surface. Prior to the war, fascist rallies had been staged in Quebec and other parts of the country.

No, she told herself, Welbeck was right. Super-races were something best restricted to the pages of pulp magazines. Besides, she was here, not just to keep it from the Canadian military, but to make sure it didn't fall into the hands of the Axis. Mr. Amazing had gone to secure the professor himself, she just had to destroy the man's report.

As she jimmied open the general's filing cabinet, she wondered how much Welbeck knew about them. More than he admitted? His comment about "knowing the dangers of super-races" -- was that directed at her? Of course, Blacklight had seemed to stiffen, too. Was he also a Jew?

She shook her head to herself, then brushed a raven lock out of her eyes and began fingering through the off-white file folders packed tightly together. Such thoughts were for another day, she assured herself. Whoever Blacklight was behind his mask was no business of hers...unless he was some notorious gangster like Red Ryan risen from the grave. She allowed herself a small smile at that thought.

Then she frowned.

The file before her was marked non-descriptly with the stencilled letters CA-1000435. It meant nothing to her. But underneath was the word: "MacCreary".

She flipped open the file, angling the papers so they caught the light spilling from the desk. She skimmed over the text, gleaning just enough to verify that this was what she was looking for. A scribbled notation at the bottom, saying "worth looking into", told her they were none-too-soon. Of  course, knowing the army, there were probably a thousand dossiers that a lower clerk highlighted as being "worth looking into". That didn't mean anyone would, but still...

She looked around, trying to decide whether she should steal the file, or just destroy it here. Destroying it would take time, even assuming she could find a match, and might alert any guards with the smell of smoke. Taking it away was equally dangerous. If she was caught empty-handed, she was a trespasser. If she was caught with this file in her hands, she was a thief and a spy.

She turned as the decision was suddenly wrenched from her hands.

The outside wall erupted inward, deadly brick and stone flying everywhere, and smashing the Silhouette against the far wall.

>Next: More on Mr. Amazing's mysterious benefactor, and the Silhouette faces a deadly threat from...the Fuhrer's Finest (you didn't think the good guys were the only ones with super-powers, did ya?)