The last thing Slick Salazar remembered was defeating the Virtue Collective. It was a plan he'd been building toward for the last year or so, and to make it work, he'd had to exploit the weaknesses of every member of the Collective. Salazar's own superpowers were impressive, but those do-gooders always seemed to prevail in matters of brute force, so he'd come up with a special solution to deal with each of them individually: A freeze ray to counter Fleetfoot's super speed, a calculated EMP burst and super-magnet to shut down Titanium Titan's high tech power armor, steel cables laced with the mythical golden fleece to bind and subdue the godly Athena, and of course, a deadly thought virus to neutralize the mind of Nightfox, the team's brilliant tactician.

As satisfying as those solutions had been, though, Salazar had saved the best for last. After defeating the other four, only the team's leader, Mighty Man, stood in the way of Salazar's victory, and after so many years of suffering defeat at the hands of that self-righteous, spit-curled fascist, Salazar took tremendous pleasure in ending his life with a knife composed of tritium, the one material capable of piercing Mighty Man's invulnerable skin.

With the death of Mighty Man, the Virtue Collective's defeat was total, and Salazar's victory was complete... Or so he'd thought.

When he came to, he found himself in a totally nondescript room with no windows, no doors, and a single lightbulb overhead for illumination. With him in this room was a person he didn't recognize.

"What's going on here? Where am I? What have you done to me?" Salazar demanded.

"Tranquilizer dart." The stranger said simply. "You were so preoccupied with your victory that you didn't notice me lining up the shot."

"Where have you taken me?" Salazar demanded.

"We're one mile underground, encased in a steel cell wrapped in concrete." The stranger explained.

Salazar sneered. "Do you imagine this little prison of yours can hold me?" He laughed contemptuously, then threw a punch at the nearest wall.

Nothing happened.

Salazar looked at his fist, then at the wall. He punched again- nothing. He tried another wall, to no avail.

"You may as well stop trying. You can't damage these walls." The stranger said. Salazar crossed the room and grabbed the stranger by the shirt collar.

"My punches can level mountains, you little pissant!" He roared in fury. "What have you done to my powers?"

"I haven't done anything, you're as strong as you ever were. You just can't break these walls." The stranger explained. "That's my power, you see- I stop collateral damage. As long as I'm here, you can't destroy anything."

Salazar grinned cruelly, his eyes glowing red. "As long as you're here, eh?" He mused. A pair of laser beams erupted from his eyes, lancing toward the stranger... Only to bounce harmlessly off of him.

"It's kind of funny, the way my power works..." The stranger went on, seemingly unbothered by the lasers. "It protects structures, but also people. Innocent people, I mean- whatever it is that controls how my powers work, it considers innocent bystanders to be collateral damage, too. Which means I'd always be protected, as long as I didn't willingly put myself in harm's way by joining the Virtue Collective. So I never did." The stranger's face hardened into one of deep contempt. "I wish I had. I should have been there, helping them fight you..." He sighed. "It's too late now. I couldn't save them... But at least I can save everyone else."

Salazar clapped sarcastically. "That's a wonderful story... But you seem to have forgotten that I'm stronger than you. Even if I can't hurt you, you can't hurt me, either. We're in stalemate."

"Yes, we are. And that's where we'll stay."

Salazar's face fell as he began to realize the implications of what the stranger was saying.

"You... You don't mean... You can't mean-"

"I do." The stranger smiled, looking strangely serene. "Get comfortable, Slick Salazar. You and I are going to be down here together for a very, very long time."