Iris gratefully accepted a fruit drink from a neighborhood resident.

Her deep purple costume, all one piece from her toes to her neck, was soaked with sweat - perhaps she should have created a summer costume, like the Atom wore.

She shook her head and sat down on one of the toppled palm trees that she and Atom had been clearing. This was so unlike Indiana - it was much hotter here in the gaze of Haleakala, "The House of the Sun".

She took a long drink.

Heh - appropriate name.

"Good idea, brah," a tall Hawaiian woman said as she walked up, brushing back her long dark hair. "Keep hydrated, you know?"

The Atom wore a high-necked, one piece swimsuit in white, with a multicolored Atom symbol on the chest and a rainbow colored stripe around her waist. Her white gloves and boots, topped with a similar rainbow stripe, were draped carefully over a battered folding chair.

She seemed perfectly comfortable to walk around barefoot, even though Iris could feel the heat from the pavement right through her boots.

"Is good, right?" the villager asked as he poured Iris a refill.

"Uhh, yes," the short-haired woman thought for a moment. "Brok' da mout."

She hurriedly looked over at her bemused teammate.

"'Tastes delicious'," Atom smiled. "Good - bit more emphasis on the first syllable.

She turned and looked at the old grocery, its second floor collapsed but the first still standing.

"Okay, I think we have to declare the top floor a total loss - but I think the store can still be saved. If you can just send the rubble somewhere I'll do what I can to reinforce the walls and "

Whump!

A woman in white suddenly appeared with her arms around Iris!

"Emmy! Keona! You're all right!"

"An den, Bolt?"

She flashed over to the Atom and hugged her, too.

"Uhh, sorry," Thunderbolt said with a tinge of embarassment as she pulled back. "I was just so worried. Why didn't you guys answer?"

Almost instinctively, the heroines' hands flashed up to the tiny silver halos on their necks.

"Funny," Atom said, screwing up her face. "They're dead."

"Yeah, well, long story," sighed Thunderbolt. "Least you're not."

Atom and Iris looked at each other.

"Sorry, sorry," T-bolt said, her breathing coming much more slow and self-assured now. "My imagination's been running overtime ever since Geist - eh?"

She noticed a group of villagers staring at her.

"Um, hi. I'm Thunderbolt."

"We know who you are... haole."

T-bolt paused. She wasn't exactly sure what that word meant but the tone was unmistakably hostile.

"What'd I do?" she asked Atom quietly.

"We don't need you, wahine," a mustachioed man in a true Hawaiian shirt said. "We have the Atom. And Iris. They been here nearly a week, and you just show up now? Look good on cameras, perhaps?

"Oh, lolo," Atom muttered. "She - "

"Thanks, Atom, but I'll handle this," Thunderbolt said out of the side of her mouth.

"I know you folks hold the Atom in high esteem. Iris too. That's why I didn't come out here - I knew they would handle the clean-up just fine. I did come out here because Dr. Geist and Photon and Cyberscream and a few others attacked my friends."

"Holy - " breathed Iris.

"I flew nearly four thousand miles at top speed to make sure they hadn't gotten to my other friends. So, cut me a little slack... "

A wide smile spread across her face.

"...akamai."

The man paused, then nodded and gave a brief smile.

"Geist?" Atom asked, aghast. "She's still alive?"

"Ohh, yeah. She assembled an all-star team. Battleaxe. Darkmage. Gadget Jack," she began ticking them off on her fingers.

"No wonder you were worried about us," Iris shuddered.

"Considering they nearly killed us, yes," Thunderbolt said offhandedly. "Made a mess of the HQ.

"Geist figured out a way to mess up the communicator links. Encantida's trying to get them back up."

"Whoa-w-w," Iris breathed.

"Is everyone, you know, okay?" Atom asked, handing T-bolt a fruit drink.

"Thanks," she tipped the odd-shaped bottle toward her Hawaiian host. "Bruises, burns, broken bones... nothing too serious."

She paused, then nodded to the villagers, who had resumed their work.

"Folks really think you're the bomb, huh?" she said with a smile.

The Atom smiled, too, slightly embarassed. "Well... I do spend quite a bit of time here..."

"Hey, I'm happy for you, Keona. Really. 'God's gracious gift' - your name fits you, far as these folks are concerned."

"Sheesh. Can't you be," Iris asked good-naturedly, "just a little jealous?"

"Nah. You've been doing good work. You're probably better known here, and in the Carribbean, than I am."

"Heck, this is the third time I've been out here this year. Hawaii's sure gotten hit with a lot of storms."

"That is because," boomed a voice, "the land cries out - and I have heard!"

Thunderbolt, Atom, Iris, and two dozen locals looked up to see a native man with an oversized witch-doctor type mask standing in mid-air. He wore black swim trunks with a fire pattern on the legs, and tiny tendrils of fire flew from his fingertips.

"Uhh... is this supposed to be a supervillain?" T-bolt asked.

"I guess so," Atom said under her breath. "I've never seen him before."

"For too long Pele's precious isle has been covered with grand buildings of stone and steel, for the pleasure of haoles!"

"That's his costume?"

"This is Hawaii, you know."

"For years the haoles have covered her beaches, her mountainsides, her forests, with structures and pavement... "

"Um... aren't we going to stop him?"

"From doing what - talking? He's making some good points."

"There's that word again! What's haole mean?"

Atom shrugged. "It just means non-native-Islander. Particularly whites. Just hang loose."

"Now from the rock of this land have I been reborn - to clean Pele's land, to return us to the ancient ways! I, Keaukepo, god of rain of fire!"

"Ke-au -?"

"Pele's brother."

A deep rumbling arose from beneath their feet. Indeed, the entire town shook as Haleakala, fully three quarters of the island of Maui, awoke from its centuries-long slumber.

"Now," said the Atom calmly, "we can attack."

"Weren't you the one who said to hang loose?" Thunderbolt twisted her body to leap up after the flying Hawaiian - but Atom grabbed her shoulder.

"Terri - you have to redirect the volcano's eruption."

She hesitated.

Angel Flight rules stated that the heroine on the scene was in charge.

"Gotcha."

"Ninety-seven percent of the East Maui cauldron lies below the surface. That's 7,200 cubic miles."

Meaning just plugging the crater was not going to work.

"I'd suggest cutting a trench south-by-southeast, away from Kaupo."

"I'm on it,' said the streak of white and purple.

"Meantime," the Atom grunted, and white spheres of energy began to surround her. "Iris, get the people to safety, while I... "

The spheres began to cascade around her, leaving colorful energy trails that started off red and ended in purple. Then - she began to grow.

"... deal with this kolohe."

Now some twenty-five feet tall, the Atom towered over the small town and even the trees.

That got Keaukepo's attention.

"The Atom! I had heard Hawaii's famed heroine was home. Do you also wish to cleanse this land?"

"Uh, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to stop," she said. "I understand what you're saying, I really do, but you're going to hurt a lot of your own people. It's a different time, a different world."

The self-proclaimed god paused for a moment.

"What I have decided, I have decided!" he proclaimed, gesturing with his hand and sending a flume of flame soaring up into the sky. "Do you dare challenge the powers of a god, tita?"

"Oh, olu olu," the Atomic Angel muttered. "No ahk."

She began walking toward him, taking twelve-foot strides.

"All right, moke," she said, colorful flares surrounding her as she grew to thirty-five feet. "You like beef? Fine!"

The Atom charged up the rocky slope, the ground shaking a little with each mighty footfall. Usually just growing to twenty feet or so was enough to cause most criminals to blanch and surrender; bullets stung but didn't penetrate her skin, which also tended to impress upon crooks to give up.

Unfortunately, this guy didn't seem to get the message - though she honestly couldn't tell, what with the huge wooden mask and all.

Just as the Atom reached out to grab him, Keaukepo raised his arm - and the ground exploded beneath the Atom's feet! Rock and lava blasted the girl nearly off her feet!

Keona groaned and struggled to shake off the effects of the blast - but she stood there, slumped, unable to move or raise her head or her arms.

She only stood there for a moment, before a second blast of fiery rock struck her square in the chest. With a low moan the Atom crashed over onto her back and lay still.

Keaukepo floated over the unconscious Angel. Raising his arms, he shouted, "You challenged a god - and lost! Now I will make you maki die dead!"

"Hey!" a voice came from his right.

He turned, to see Iris, standing on twin circles of purple-tinted white energy, rising up toward him.

"She's already unconscious! You don't have to hit her again!"

Atom was strong as all get-out, she thought, but her defenses were about as good as a sick cat's.

Not that her own, she noted as the fire-god turned toward her, were anything to write home about.

"Ah. Iris. I have heard of you. A pacifist. Unwilling to fight."

"So you can read. Or perhaps you watch some television - perhaps you aren't quite as 'old-god' as you pretend to be."

Keaukepo's flesh turned fiery red, and streams of fire flowed from his hands skyward. "Careful, wahine - you toy with forces beyond your understanding!"

"Oh, I understand pretty well," Iris said, positioning herself between the god of rain of fire and the unconscious Atom. "I've faced some fairly frightful foes before. But one thought keeps coming back to me...

"A man who would strike an unconscious foe is a coward in any language."

Keaukepo's body blazed with fury. "You - you - you will both die! Hawaii's greatest heroine, and the puny pacifist! You shall - "

Iris' violet eyes narrowed, and she rapidly made some gestures with her white-gloved hands, seemingly drawing a circle out of space.

"Go. Away," the blonde said, shaking.

There was a blinding flash as the circle suddenly opened like Iris' namesake, forming a portal that swallowed Keaukepo just as he brought down his arms. The portal's iris snapped shut, and shrunk into the heroine's hand.

Then Iris slowly, ever so slowly, lowered herself back to earth.