Mr_Grey

Business went back mostly to normal for the Redeemers. They were brought in to help usher civilians away from a few bank robberies and they were even called in to clear out a few Council cells when other “freelance” heroes couldn’t be available. They had a respectable position, but they were starting to notice that they weren’t being given any respect.

“Can you believe the way that precinct chief was glaring at us?” Blizzard Front ranted from the back of McBain’s van after a foiled robbery, “Like we only beat those guys up because they beat us to the punch…”

“We’re gonna deal with that a lot,” Garm replied as he gazed glumly out the passenger window, “We’re still monsters to a lot of the people we’re trying to help now.”

“Maybe that Tom guy had the right idea,” Ashen Roast muttered, “Maybe we should investigate a case on our own, show that we’re willing to go above and beyond our duties to protect these people.”

“No, that’s not our job,” the Caliban replied, “We start going out looking for trouble, it’s going to find us. Then we’ll be in a heap we don’t want to see. Trust me, guys, there’s plenty enough out there.”

“Cripes, Garm,” Briggs growled, “You keep talking like that, I’m gonna start calling you ‘Whipped Dog.’”

----------

Back at the base, Mider Caid was poring over a document Azuria had sent him to research before it was time for his next mission. It was something about a goddess named Merulina, but it wasn’t making any sense to him. He wondered if it made any sense to anybody.

“Why do we gotta wait for you, cape?” he heard behind him.

“Why, Johnny, I didn’t hear you knock.”

The former Freakshow Swiper growled some insult in the back of his throat, but the wizard preferred to ignore it. He laid the parchment back onto the desk and walked past the scrapper-class “hero” to head to the main floor of the base. Johnny didn’t take kindly to the slight and followed angrily after.

“Why are you here, huh? You ain’t a thug like us!”

“Johnny, either you’re better or you’re not,” Mider intoned disinterestedly, “If you have doubts, don’t try to take your frustrations out on me.”

“What makes you think-?”

Slag slipped on a small patch of ice and his feet shout out from underneath him. He slammed against the concrete hard and started holding his head in pain. He’d be fine in a few seconds, but the pain was still there.

“I don’t need to put up with your insubordination,” the wizard explained as he kept walking away, “Either you straighten up, or I’ll put in with Mort to get you transferred. I’m sure there’s a group of testosterone-drunk idiots who still pine for their old days of villainy among us somewhere…”

“You really shouldn’t push him,” the former Skull, Somber, muttered as he walked over to the surprised Slag and started to help him up, “He’s not kidding. Some of us are still on probation.”

“I know,” Slag growled and showed him his bracelet, “I’m one of them.”

It was an experimental system, tags that would zap the wearer to the Zig if he ever got out of line. It was controlled by a monitoring team in the Galaxy City Freedom Corps building that waited for the word from the Redeemers’ various team leaders to activate the tags and zap the apparently unreformed criminals back to incarceration. There were a few Redeemers wearing the bracelets, and Somber scratched his wrist absent-mindedly at the thought of how close even he was to receiving the same treatment.

“I think it’s stupid,” Johnny muttered as he picked at the device, “Haven’t I paid my debt? Am I not a fine, upstanding member of society!?”

“No,” the former Skull replied, “Johnny, you’re scary.”

“Shut the Hell up, twig boy!”

“Hey!” Mider shouted from the other end of the main floor, “You two coming or not? We’ve gotta clean up a Hellions cell!”

“Fantastic,” the man standing next to him barked in aggravation, “Maybe this time I’ll be able to burn the face off an old friend the same way Johnny got to cut an old buddy’s hands off…”

“Calm down, Cinder. They may be old friends, but they’re breaking the law. Our orders are just to go in and get the artifact they stole from the museum. If we can, we’ll arrest their boss…”

The former Hellion grumbled and headed out the door. They didn’t have their own transportation, instead relying on the teleporters and their own travel powers. While they argued, the Strik brothers and Olive were already well on their way to the hideout.

It was a sad state his group was in, Mider Caid realized. Despite their failure last time, the group was hardly any closer. The Striks remained with themselves, Olive never said anything and Johnny was still a belligerent and bellicose malcontent. Only Somber Graves and Cinder Burst ever really spoke with him, but they hardly had much relevant to say. They were still teenagers, and were busy trying to either get back into school or get the materials necessary for a G.E.D. They couldn’t help him anyway. The others in the group needed a show of leadership and confidence from Mider, he just didn’t know if he could do it.

“I spent so long wishing I was doing this,” he muttered as he followed the former Freakshow scrapper and the Skull Bone Daddy, “Now I wish I was a MAGI clerk again…”

The next day found Garm and his crew taking the new guy to Atlas Park. They had to meet with their main liaison to get Thomas formally inducted into the group and get him on the payroll. With any luck, it would keep Crey off his back so they could get back to work.

“I would think we’d investigate my problem,” Redshadow muttered grumpily from the back of the van.

“We’re not detectives,” Garm countered, “We’re soldiers. We patrol for bad things happening, and we deal with them. We don’t crack open criminal hangouts unless we’ve been told to.”

He also didn’t want to mention that it helped to show companies and groups that you’re not out for revenge when you join a group like this. They were composed of nobodies and disillusioned malcontents from groups that looked very unkindly to what they viewed as betrayal. The troll actually mused that it was probably more disbelief than anything that had kept all of their former compatriots at bay for so long.

“That doesn’t make sense!” the former Protector almost shouted this time, “We’re supposed to be heroes now, right!?”

“One would suppose…”

Briggs brought the van around a corner and started driving past the main plaza of Atlas Park. A new crop of heroes was being welcomed into service by Ms. Liberty. The squat driver had to resist the urge to wave a lewd gesture out the window at her. He still didn’t like any of the “proud, cape wearing” heroes and heroines. They always looked like they had something to hide. Still, Garm would’ve been ticked and the new guy would be shocked, and Briggs didn’t want to hear them complain, so he reigned himself in.

“We didn’t even get a reception like that,” Garm chuckled, “Still, it’s better than being thrown in a slammer.”

“Well, what do we do?”

“We told you, man,” Doug clapped the swordsman on the shoulder, “Patrol! We take down those purse snatchers and mobs of baddies while the other, regular heroes aren’t!”

“Making us something of a costumed sweeper team,” Briggs growled, “Something ain’t right about that.”

“Not everything can be a grand, epic adventure,” Garm sighed, “Which is probably a good thing.”

He absent-mindedly rubbed his shoulder where the Freak Swiper had slashed a week earlier. The others couldn’t tell because of his jacket, but a puckered scar sat there now. It caused Garm more than a little distress. His powers were starting to fade.

He could still lift and hurl boulders, punch through brick walls and all manner of other things, but slowly, as the Superadine wore out in his system, he would lose it all. He wondered just how far it would go. Would he keep the tusks and horns? Would he lose more than his enhanced muscles and be left a wiry, skeletal frame? Or would he look just like his old self, a stupid punk wearing his mom’s tattered leather jacket and torn jeans because he thought it made him look tough?

Briggs pulled the van into the parking lot of the Freedom Corps center they were told to meet their liaison in. It was time to sign up Redshadow and find out who he would be working with. Garm hoped it wasn’t his crew. He had more than enough hitters. He needed another support agent, or Genji’s brain was going to fry.

Inside, it was the same rigmarole that greeted them every time they walked in. It didn’t matter which one of their crew walked in first, the “newbie” they had manning the door would always freak out and bring his assault rifle to bear as soon as he saw the former Outcasts or Trolls. He would think it was some sort of raid before one of his superiors ordered him to stand down.

Sometimes, they got a few shots off, so Garm or Doug had taken to walking in first anyway. The Trolls could take the hits. Doug was about to take point himself, but Tom beat him to it and walked into the Freedom Corps building like he did it every day.

Once Doug walked in, there was shouting and yelling and he casually waved off the rookie with his I.D. The private’s face seemed to drain of color as another Freedom Corps agent walked into the lobby to shake Garm’s hand.

“It’s good you guys can keep out of trouble sometimes,” Agent Wild chuckled, “So, this is the new guy? Where’s his uniform?”

“I burned it,” Tom replied as he shook the other man’s hand, “It didn’t seem right to keep, you know?”

Wild nodded and led the group into a back office. Thomas had all of his necessary information memorized still, so the paperwork was a breeze. Everybody was glad about that the brain work Mortiganen, Genji, and the peculiar plant-like girl, Olive, were able to restore the young man to working order without damaging his gray matter. There was still some time to check and see if everything was still in working order, but for now, his memory and motor functions were all intact. On the plus side, Mort said they’d tweaked whatever it was that killed other Protectors, so he should be safe from whatever the killswitch’s trigger was.

“Alright, so, I’ve got your record stating you’re a Dual Blades, Willpower Scrapper,” Wild muttered as he looked at his computer’s monitor, “Funny, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Protector like that…”

“I think they’re experimental right now,” Thomas chuckled, “I guess my escape proves why.”

“Makes sense… Are you using your original swords?”

“Nope. I don’t know what happened to them, but they gave me a pair of these ninja swords, like on that old kids cartoon show with the talking turtles.”

“And is there anything you can tell us about Crey? This is kind of important.”

“Sadly, no. My mind’s a big fog from my days working as one of them.”

Agent Wild nodded and printed out his new identification. It had his new designation as “Protector Redshadow,” and he was assigned as a “Roaming Redeemer.”

“What’s that?” Garm growled.

“It means he can pursue his own leads,” Wild replied, “You’ve got enough people in your group, it’s about time some of you were out investigating.”

It was times like this that Garm was glad he didn’t grind his teeth. He’d have clipped the tip of his nose off with the ends of his tusks.

It was sort of like a gong sound when the heavy body hit the store window. Almost a minute later, the door opened and Briggs was dragging the three unconscious thugs into the street while the store owner yelled at him.

“How was I supposed to know it’s bulletproof glass?” he barked back, “Come on!”

“You could have killed that idiot!” the clerk kept shouting, “And what if you’d cracked it?”

“It looks fine,” the troll unceremoniously dropped the bodies in a heap on the sidewalk and turned to the young man, “Besides, any damage incurred while a hero is saving your place of employment can be charged to the perpetrators. I know this because it happened to me in the old days!”

The clerk was about to say something more, but stopped suddenly. With a devious thought, he walked back into the store, stroking his chin. Briggs didn’t like the look of that. He figured in a couple days, he’d be getting a call from Chris Jenkins.

Before he could dwell on the question any further, the police arrived. They were about to try arresting him with the thugs, but he remembered to show them his identification card that indicated he was a hero. Although the cops stared dubiously at the card (in fact, they scanned it almost ten times before Briggs got fed up and snatched the card back from them), they grudgingly admitted that he was a super-powered citizen who’d helped stop a criminal act.

“I just wish you guys would leave these sorts of crimes to us, you know?” one officer commented as they started reading the would-be robbers their rights.

Briggs waved them off and started heading down the alleyway to where he parked his van. There were some Clockwork robots gathered around some bum sitting on a box and he waved them away. At first, the machines looked like they were going to do something, but they took one look at the ugly green man, did a double-take, and skedaddled before he could smash them to bits.

“I thought they weren’t supposed to be scared,” he grumbled, “Being robots, and all…”

The bum groaned loudly, and Briggs looked down at the guy. He was wrapped in a dirty blanket, so much that he had covered up his head to disguise his features. For some reason, he was doubled over and clutching at his abdomen while he grunted and coughed.

“You okay?” McBain asked, “Do you… Do you need a lift to the clinic?”

It was weird. Ever since he’d gotten off Superadine, he’d had this nagging concern. It wasn’t for anything about himself, no, he felt fine. However, ever since a protracted battle with Ice Mistral early on in the Redeemers’ inception, and having to save people’s lives, he’d found it was getting harder and harder to ignore people in need. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the idea of helping people, but the whole responsibility of it was so foreign to him that he didn’t know how he should feel. The best he could figure to do was to ask people if they needed help and hope he did the right thing if they answered in the affirmative.

“No…” the man replied in a whisper, “No hospitals… They’ll get me…”

“His mind has been broken,” a voice called from the end of the alley, “His life has been shattered. The rest of his kindred search for him, scattered. They must not find him, they must not win. You have to help him break from his sin.”

“What?” the troll asked, “Who are you? Come over here where I can see!”

A disheveled bum walked into view. It was the Can Man, Briggs knew of him through reputation. Trolls had tried roughing him up before, but they’d been soundly corrected by Synapse and Mynx repeatedly to never make the attempt again. Now, it seemed he helped heroes, but it was usually the higher-end, more popular or more powerful ones. Briggs could only wonder why the disheveled man was helping him.

“You saying this guy’s important?”

“Every life is important, even if it’s false,” the Can Man replied, “This one was not the original bearer of his soul, yet it makes it no less true.”

“I thought you were supposed to talk in rhyme, not in riddles…”

“Help him this day, and he will show you your way. There is a long fight ahead, many will be dead. The world needs its strong to combat what is wrong. You stand in the shadow, between the dark and the light, will you make the choice that you know is right?”

“So, it’s rhymes and riddles now?”

Briggs’ eye twitched with annoyance and the buckshot caught in there burned anew. He started digging at it and pulled a couple pebbles of tungsten alloy out. There were still some in there, but the burning sensation had lessened. When he looked to the end of the alley as his vision cleared, though, the Can man was gone.

“Okay,” he muttered as he turned to the bum next to him, “Well, I guess he was referring to you, little man. Let’s see what makes you so special.”

He picked the man off the box he was sitting on and pulled back the blanket from the head. He almost snorted when he saw the familiar uniform of the Paragon Protector and his broken helmet.

-----

“Well, this is unusual,” Mortiganen commented as he looked over the man they had sitting on the stretcher, “Mr. Redshadow… You should be dead.”

“What?” the man asked, “What do you mean?”

“You’ve suffered an aneurism,” the wizard replied, “You should be feeling a massive headache, but something complicated happened, and your bleeding from your nose has been relieving the pressure from your brain.”

“That sounds bad.”

“It could be, but it gives me something to work with. Genji, get somebody, anybody, with medical experience over here. I don’t want to leave anything to chance…”

“Sir?” the former Tsoo sorcerer asked.

“Hurry, we don’t have much time!” the pale-skinned old man barked, “I want to get this right!”

He turned back to Redshadow as he pulled a large black book from where it hung on his hip. He laid the tome on the stand next to the stretcher and started flipping through the pages with a dexterity far superior to what his gnarled fingers conveyed as possible.

“What are you doing?” the Protector wheezed.

“Saving your life,” Mort rasped, “And hopefully acquiring one of Crey’s favorite projects for this group here… This second task is notoriously difficult, young man, as I have experience with the Protectors, and they are known for never giving quarter, and any that have been captured mysteriously wind up dead…”

The old man took a hold of Thomas’ head and glared into the injured man’s eyes.

“They die of brain aneurisms, normally; some of heart attacks. I’m going to make sure nothing like that happens to you, and I’m hoping you’re grateful enough to pay us back with your service.”

Thomas nodded. The man was intense, and more than a little frightening. However, he could sense that Mortiganen seemed to have his best welfare in mind. At least, for the moment…

They didn’t catch him. He had to dive into the filth of the sewers and get lost in all the twisty passages there to escape them, and he himself got lost. It wasn’t until a week later, after fighting through Lost, Vahzilok zombies and Hellions that he found his way out of the sewers and back into the streets of Skyway City. Reeking of sludge and filth, he made his way first to one of the rivers. A set of Trolls watched him like he was insane, but they didn’t do anything to stop him.

The filth washed easily from the surface of Redshadow’s uniform and he was glad the smell went with it. Once he’d finished rinsing the outfit as best he could, he turned to his own body. After a week of rolling in waste, it felt good to have reasonably cleaner water to rinse off with.

-----

“Okay, Synapse, I’ll see you tomorrow,” Mynx called as the last of the day’s training wrapped up, “Those guys you had investigating the Clockwork show up yet?”

“Nah,” the super speed hero replied, “They were pretty green… I’d have thought a veteran would have shown up to help them or something… Maybe I should go check up on them.”

“Maybe…”

Mynx started heading for the Yellow Line. She had a party to go to in the club, Pocket D, and she didn’t feel like taking the long way to either the Founder’s Falls Entrance or the Talos Island entrance. She was just debating whether or not she would go to Overbrook to avoid having to go to Kings Row when she saw him. It was a Paragon Protector with a broken visor. He was standing on the walkway between her and the railway station.

“I know who sent you!” she shouted as her claws popped out from her fingertips, “I’m not going back to Crey today!”

“Wait!” was all Thomas could get out before she dove into him.

At the base of the bridge, just under the station, Mynx looked to see she’d stabbed into the Protector’s abdomen. As she tensed to have to fight more, however, he simply grunted and tried to push her off. There was something strange about how he did it, though. It was too gentle for a fight.

“Help…” he said weakly, and she recoiled in shock.

Thomas looked at the girl and had a passing memory. It was something about getting bowled over and she was standing over him afterward, but it was all foggy.

“Help… Me…”

Mynx seemed to notice there was either something different about him, too.

“Wait…” she said as she pulled her claws out of him, “Just… Just hang on, let me get some help…”

The catgirl bounded off of him and started dialing into her communicator, calling for any heroes with healing magic, technology or medical training who could help. Most were already involved with teams fighting crime or had to get their equipment ready before they could arrive, others were simply dismissive. A lot of heroes didn’t care if a Paragon Protector died, anyway.

“Come on, come on!” she shouted into her communicator, then started turning back to Redshadow, “You’re that guy we saw a week ago, right? That one with the swords… I… I should have known something was up…”

But when she looked to where she’d left the broken Protector, he was gone.

-----

“Alright, boys, listen up!” Garm shouted as he called the meeting to order, “Mort’s busy with research over at the Midnight Squad, so I’ve got the helm tonight.”

“You sure?” Johnny Slag asked, his voice issuing mechanically from his throat, “I thought you were on suspension.”

“Suspension’s up,” Garm grunted, “Only lasted a week.”

“Even after that stunt you pulled?” the former Freak Swiper asked.

“Yep. Now… We’ve got some business coming down the pipe… There’s an A.P.B. out for a Paragon Protector… Crey’s trying to tell us that it’s their responsibility to ‘bring this dangerous rogue in,’ which, for any of you with experience with the Protectors, means he’s not a bad guy like the others are.”

This got a chuckle from the crews gathered in the meeting hall.

“Still, we don’t know how cool or uncool this guy is, so if you see a Paragon Protector in a disheveled uniform and a broken helmet, approach with extreme caution, alright? That’s the only heads-up I’ve got out of Freedom Corps…”

Doug smacked his forehead suddenly and Garm turned to him. The ogre looked agitated with himself and when asked what was bothering him, he explained.

“I saw him. I saw him earlier today. I was trying to get some information on the Family’s shipments when we saw this guy crawl into the river under us.”

“Alright,” Garm nodded, “That’s not bad, Doug. We’ll patrol the area, see if he comes back… The rest of you, you’ve got your assigned patrols. Get to it.”

The other former rogues nodded or grunted their compliance and started shuffling out. Garm’s crew got together, and the Caliban stopped his head count when he noticed a particular member wasn’t around.

“Where’s Briggs?”

-----

The squat green man was used to people staring at him. It came with being a Troll. However, he wasn’t used to people thinking he was just like everybody else. This is why it was such a surprise that these idiots in ski masks went through with their plan to rob the convenience store he was shopping in.

“I told you,” the leader of the group shouted, “Down on the floor!”

“Get that gun out of my face,” Briggs growled, “And get the Hell out of here before I make you regret this!”

The thug squeezed the trigger and the store’s patrons screamed. The thugs shouted for everybody to calm down, but the one who shot the Troll was feeling particularly smug about what he’d done.

At least, until he turned back to examine the body. Briggs was digging some of the buckshot out of his eye.

“That’s gonna be stuck in there,” he grunted as he squeezed the eye shut and glared at the man with his good one, “Probably for a few days. You’re gonna pay for that, bucko.”

"You okay, Tom?" Henry asks, "You seem down in the dumps."

The young man shakes his head and snorts.

"I came to this city thinking I had an edge..." he looks at his curved blades and scrunches his face up in disgust before continuing, "I didn't mean that as a pun! I thought, with my sword-skill, ambidexterity and agility, I'd be on the fast track as a major hero here! Then I got here, and it seems almost every other hero has got two blades of some kind."

"You came here to be famous?"

Wong arches his eyebrow and grins. He notes the hero's disappointed expression and shakes his head amusedly.

"Relax, kid. Ambition's not so terrible a thing in this business. Sure, the major players like Statesman and Sister Psyche look down their noses at those of us trying to make a living, but in this day and age, it’s time we recognized just what kind of a lucrative position up-and-coming heroes like you are in.”

“Well…” Tom seems apprehensive, but he’s still open to the sales pitch, “I didn’t come here for money, but it would be nice to be able to pay my rent…”

“Look,” Henry reaches over and takes the hero by the shoulder while slipping him a card, “I’ve been watching you street-sweep the Hellions around here. I’ve also been paying attention to your broadcast traffic, and I’m glad you finally came to me. You’ve got talent, kid, and I think it’s time it was both recognized and properly honed. Now, I’ve been getting word from Crey about a job they want someone of skills like yours for. If you’re not up to snuff, they’ll get you the training you need.”

“Crey?” he looks at Henry with a bit of trepidation, “Are you sure? I mean, with what’s been in the news…”

“Hey, the Countess is in prison, it’s a brave new Crey…”

----------

Thomas Redshadow woke up coughing blood. He pushed himself off the floor and wondered where he was. There were Crey guards strewn about everywhere. Some of the men were groaning and others were just unconscious. There wasn’t the tell-tale scent of gunpowder, so he had no idea what had happened.

“Maybe it was some kind of gas,” he gurgled as he pushed himself up, “Oh… Where am I?”

That was when he noticed that his vision was severely hampered. Half his vision was obscured by blood. The other half was fractured and yellow in some parts. Reaching up to the visor he was wearing, he started pulling bits of glass away from his face. As he plunked the third piece away, stopped.

“Wait… I don’t wear a helmet…”

He sat back and looked at himself. He didn’t recognize what he saw. His home-made outfit of armor-imbedded leather was gone. It was replaced with a bizarre blue-and-yellow uniform that he recognized as that of the Paragon Protectors.

“I’m not a…” Thomas stopped.

He wasn’t a Paragon Protector.

Why was he wearing one of their uniforms? What was he doing in a Crey facility that seemed to have just suffered an attack?

What was going on?

“Is everybody alright?” he called over to one of the guards picking himself back up.

“I think we’re okay, Protector,” the guard grunted, “What hit us?”

“I don’t know…”

Redshadow pushed himself off the floor, wobbled a little from dizziness, then lurched to the door.

“I’ll go… I’ll go check and see what’s outside.”

He didn’t turn back when the guard asked if he was alright. He didn’t turn back when he was half a block away. He didn’t turn back when he heard the guards shouting for him.

He had to get away and find out what was going on.

----------

Henry was looking over his reports when he heard the hero walk in front of him. He nodded to him and reached for his communicator to find a list of objectives that needed doing in Atlas Park. However, the tip of a blade touched his wrist and he looked up to see a man in a bloody Paragon protector uniform glaring at him through a hole in his visor. A pair of steel-blue eyes pierced into his and the man’s mouth was held in a thin line. A trickle of blood was running down the man’s nose and the white of his left eye was extremely bloodshot.

“Who are you?” Henry Peter Wong asked the Protector, “And why are you threatening me?”

“Crey needed somebody of my skills,” Thomas Redshadow said coldly, “Why can’t I remember most of this past year?”

Wong’s eyes widened as he recognized the man. The last time he’d seen him, he was boarding the Yellow Line for King’s Row and the Crey offices there. He remembered the hero because when he never heard from the man again and when he had asked around among his contacts in Crey, they thoroughly chilled him to the bone when they replied that they’d never heard of the hero and that it would behoove him to never ask again.

Wong knew what that meant, and it made him sick to his stomach that he had led this man to a fate worse than death. What was worse…

“I was trying to help you,” he whispered.

“Right,” Thomas’ expression didn’t change, “Do you mind-?”

There was a shout that came from the Universal Super Group Base Portal just behind Wong. The Hero Corps representative turned to see a band of heroes come barreling over the edge of the podium holding up the statue to take down the Paragon Protector harassing the man who had helped a lot of them at the beginning of their careers. He tried to raise his hands to stop them, but the cry of “Badge!” went up and they seemed to be blind to the idea that this wasn’t what it looked like.

When he turned back, Thomas Redshadow was already long-gone, leaping into the distance with a band of heroes giving chase.

“I’ll see what I can do to help you,” Henry pulled his communicator from his belt and started dialing for Colleen Saramango, “We’re getting to the bottom of this.”

Somber wasn’t exactly praying. He was begging the forgiveness of the souls whose energy he was about to pull from. They were all throughout the city, the spirits of the dead, from all throughout history, from all across the world (a fact which perplexed the former Skull). He’d always been able to see them, to communicate with them, and, after some practice, to command them. Now, he was asking them to forgive him, because he needed their help to stop this psychotic Freakshow Tank that was about to turn all of the heroes into puree.

They answered him. They answered loud and clear. Somehow, he had found just the right group, and a teaming mass of screaming souls came pouring through the wall, blazed through Blender, and unleashed a torrent of dark energy across Mountain Crag and Cinder Burst. The two jumped up with a roar, while Blender seemed to have gotten dazed and his arms were no longer facing forward. Crag took advantage of the momentary distraction to summon a large stone hammer from the concrete below them and stepped in close to slam the heavy weight against the Tank’s face.

The big Freak stumbled, but came back with his arms starting to spin again. Vines shot from the floor and wrapped about the twisting limbs, holding the blades in place. Blender lurched, and almost got a shout out before Martin Sanders punched his bugged out eyes back in.

The fight wasn’t over yet, however. Blender thrashed free of the vines holding him down and took a swipe at Sanders. A large boulder, thrown by Doug, hurtled through the air and smashed into the thin frame of the arm, causing the spinning to stop. The other arm was being held down by Crag and Garm, with the Caliban trying to break the Tank’s blades off and the former Outcast trying to break the arm at the elbow. Blender tossed them off, but wasn’t ready for Ashen Roast, who came flying over the other heroes to drive a fiery blade into the villain’s face.

His head on fire, Blender started screaming and running around, thrashing violently. He turned at the wrong angle and wound up with another blast of fire in his face. Doug finished him off with another boulder, but he rolled this one across the floor like a bowling ball.

“Okay,” the Tank gasped as he lied on the ground, smoldering, “I’m done.”
---

The other groups had either recovered and overcome their opponents or ported to the hospitals. The latter groups were an unfortunate case, as the criminal organizations they were against were able to move their operations elsewhere. They weren’t dealing with anybody as bloodthirsty as Blender, so it wasn’t a complete loss. Still, Martin started taking information on the various cases the groups were working on so Freedom Corps agents, contacts and informants could be on the lookout when he got the information back to them. While they went through that, the others went about their business.

“I want in on your crew,” Johnny Slag growled at Garm, “I’m sick and tired of being pushed around by a pansy…”

“Hey!” Mider shouted, “It wasn’t my fault you got your butt handed to you by your old friends! If people would listen to me-!”

“You wouldn’t want in on my group anyway,” Garm chuckled, “Our scrapper is his brother.”

A hand clapped onto Johnny’s shoulder roughly. Before Slag could react, Gregory had yanked one of the tubes out of his arm and kicked the former Freakshow Swiper in the back of the knee. The dark-skinned, green-haired man looked back at the man angrily while he righted himself and reattached his arm tube.

“You’ve got a bad attitude, Freak-boy,” the rough-shaven man rasped, “I suggest you un-“

“Caid, beat it,” Mortiganen’s voice resounded through the chamber, “Garm and I have some discussing to do about what it means to be suspended.”

“Now, hang on,” Martin tried to interject on the conversation, but the wizard dismissed the liaison with a wave of his hand.

“You have your hands full, transient. Besides, your counterpart is quite vexed with you. I suggest you prepare yourself for a loss in pay.”

Sanders just shook his head and went back to his work. Garm folded his arms over his chest and settled in for a long talk about how “the rules apply to everyone.”

---

“That must be the pizza…”

The Mob Specialist started walking toward the door, but the Paragon protector standing next to it held a hand up and waved him back.

“It’s alright, Sergeant,” the generic hero said calmly, “I can get it.”

“Yeah, but…” the man smiled, “Okay, cool. Thanks, Blades.”

The Protector chuckled a little as he reached for the handle of the door. To him, just because he was one of the Crey Corporation’s elite didn’t mean he couldn’t do simple things like acquiring pizza from the door. Besides, it was probably better public relations to show that the Paragon Protectors were willing to do menial tasks as well as providing security for major facilities.

However, when he opened the door, two things hit him at once. The first was the aroma of the pizza, which was apparently a supreme-style. The second was Synapse’s body, hurtling through the doorway and sending the Protector flipping through the air so he would land hard on his head. There was an audible crack as his visor smashed against the concrete, but by then, half the facility had been wiped out.

“Come on, Synapse!” Mynx shouted as she followed behind her mentor, “Leave some for me and the new guy!”

“I’ve been here for two years,” the dark-skinned wizard with red-dyed hair holding the pizza box mused, “I’ve been here for some of the most pivotal events, alongside many other ‘rookie’ heroes. It’s not fair to call me a new guy, especially since you were using me for this pizza scam…”

“Ooh, ‘I make the pizza hot,’” the catgirl snarked, “’I’m really important. Stop calling me new meat.’”

“Oh, knock it off, Mynx,” Synapse chuckled as he zipped up to the two heroes and reached into the pizza box, “Cory’s a great guy, and this pizza thing was funny… Too bad I went and cleared this place out before they could blink.”

Mynx looked down at the Protector on the floor and nudged him with her toe.

“You kinda missed this one, boss.”

The wizard knelt down and tapped the weapons at the Protector’s side.

“He… He has swords? That’s new…”

“Let him be,” Synapse muttered, “I got the files out of the cabinets that we need… We better move on.”

“Will you two still need me?” Cory asked.

“Oh, yeah!” Synapse said as he reached into the box again and pulled another slice from the pizza, “You really do keep this thing hot!”

Olive felt like she was in a dream. It was just like when she was trapped inside the body of one of the Devoured. People didn’t understand what that was like… Not unless you were a former victim who survived, and there were scant few of those. In the support group she was a part of she knew five others, just humans, and they all had such a terrible fear of plants of all kinds that she had to wear makeup to conceal just how altered she really was.

Her misery at being unable to truly connect or help those people or herself was going to have to be pushed aside. She knew what had led to this moment, and she had to figure out how to get out of it. One twitch of her wrist and she would be able to-

She felt herself get hefted into the air and something was digging into her arm. Somebody was shouting harshly, and suddenly there was light everywhere. When her vision cleared, she saw the Freakshow all lying all the ground, pushing themselves up, and there was fire everywhere. She cringed away, until she felt a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

“Relax. It’s mine and can’t hurt you. The floor’s yours for now,” her team leader, Mider Caid, murmured, “Better hurry, that good feeling you’ve got doesn’t last much longer than a minute…”

“It’ll be a good minute,” she replied before she flexed her forearms and a number of special seeds were deposited into her hands.

She hurled the seeds into the midst of the Freaks. One leveled a shotgun on her but his blast went wide when a burning vine shot out of the ground and batted his arms aside. He looked up in terror at the fiery, sinewy thing and screamed as it wrapped around his waist, lifted him into the air and, in the same motion, slammed his head to the floor. Other burning vines did the same to the other Freaks with varying results.

One turned his shotgun on the vine facing him and blasted it apart. No sooner did he do this than Danny Strik leaped over the machinery, his katana drawn in an aggressive manner, and deftly slashed through the gun. The ninja followed up his attack with a handle strike to the nose and a knee to the gut that put the thug down. Another Freak, this one armed with a submachine gun, started firing short bursts at Danny, and he twirled his sword about to deflect the rounds.

“No way!” the man screamed as he swatted the weapon, “Come on you piece of-!”

His sentence was interrupted by the glowing fist of Tommy Strik, who happened to have been a follower of the Green Ink training. He wailed on the gunner for a few more rounds before finally leaping up, whirling in the air, and dropping his fist right down on the goon’s head. The Freak bobbed his head up and down a little before falling over in a heap.

A couple of the Freaks tried to escape, and they ran into their old friend, Johnny Slag. He was flicking his claws in and out of his wrists absent-mindedly, but when one ran by him, he kicked his foot out, tripping the man, and slashed out the Excelsior feed tube at the same time. He glared at the Smasher and looked over his one cybernetic arm.

“One-on-one, punk,” he growled, “You don’t stand a chance.”

The smasher rushed at him, his big hammer arm in the air, ready to strike. However, this was just what Johnny wanted as he sidestepped and let his opponent crush a nearby crate. He then smashed his claws through the wrist and severed the heavy weight from the arm. The smasher stumbled backwards and fell on his rump, looking up at the extended claws Slag kept pointed at his eyes.

“Why’d I become a hero, you ask?” he growled, “I like the upgrades.”

The front doors to the factory smashed in, signaling that Martin’s crew had arrived. In a blur, the Freakshow goons were defeated and piled up in a neat pile next to the machinery Mider Caid and his crew had previously been taking shelter behind. Thinking it was over, they started to attend to their injured and wounded.

“You did really well there,” Mider said to Olive, “Are you okay?”

“I don’t ever want to be knocked out like that again,” she muttered back.

“We’ll work on making sure of that,” the wizard favored her with a rare smile, “Any chance you can get any of these guys back on their feet?”

He gestured to the remaining unconscious. Crag and Cinder remained on the floor. Unfortunately, Olive shook her head.

“I have spores that can heal, but none yet to help revive friends.”

“Does anybody have any Lazareen?” Martin asked.

“Yeah!” a voice shouted from the machinery as cyborg bodies started tumbling off the pile, “I got your Lazareen! Right here!”

The heroes watched in mild concern as Blender pushed his massive bulk out of the wreckage of his goons. There was something different about him, though. Steam hissed out of his appendages and they looked “fragile” for lack of a better word. Suddenly, his arms popped open and an array of blades were spinning from the points where his forearms should have begun.

“Something I’ve always wondered about heroes,” he growled sadistically as the blades sped up, “Will they blend?”

He was like a walking buzzsaw. Worse, he was his namesake. They were tough, even Garm had earlier demonstrated that Trolls could stand up to Freaks when he took a Swiper’s hooked blade to the chest and promptly broke the man’s cybernetic arm off at the shoulder and started beating him with it. However, this was worse than anything anyone ever faced before. This would be like taking a Nemesis Mole Machine’s drill to the face. Worse, there would be no way to stop him before he seriously hurt somebody.

“Ideas, anyone?” Martin asked as he took a stance.

Somber pulled the scrapper back and knelt next to Crag and Cinder. As Blender started to approach, the former Skull started muttering. If Sanders didn’t know any better, he would have sworn it sounded like a prayer.

Garm couldn’t stop laughing as they arrived in Brickstown. The look on Mortiganen’s face was absolutely priceless before the magic in the teleporter fired up and they zipped away and tumbled into the stone-and-mortar city.

However, when he looked at his communicator’s map to see how much distance they had to travel to the first pack of Redeemers to rescue, he cursed. They weren’t able to requisition McBain’s van for this trip, and the big guy had, in fact, turned down coming.

“Willy hears ya,” he grunted with his head under the hood after the Caliban kicked him in the leg after asking for the third time, “Willy don’t care.”

Which had prompted the use of the teleporter in the first place. The trolls didn’t care much for the only ones they had set up, stylized magic rings with hovering stones inscribed with runes. They distrusted magic, even though most people thought they were produced through mystical means. However, as the mystical versions were the only ones available, and Garm had already pointed out that leaping from their warehouse in Skyway City all the way to Brickstown would be a serious pain in his ankles, that was what they had to do. They also had to do it fast, before Mortiganen stopped them.

“I don’t see this being much easier,” he grunted as he limbered up, “At least I didn’t have to jump over to the train station.”

“Time’s wastin’, G,” Doug got a running start and jumped into the distance, “I always hated this part!”

It wasn’t the jump that bothered them. Their legs had enough muscle density to propel them almost as far as a lot of the better-known heroes in the city. However, landing was usually painfully difficult. Heroes had training when it came to how to properly leap across long distances. Trolls, and a lot of the criminals in the city, often had to go through a crash course.

And crash is what Doug did. He’d miscalculated in his jump and wound up banking off the ledge of an apartment building. There was a loud curse that echoed through the alley he landed in, but shortly thereafter, he was back with the rest of the group. Doug fared slightly better, but he still winced every time he landed from the pain in his ankles or he would land awkwardly and tumble across the roof before righting himself and pushing on.

This went on for nearly a mile before they finally arrived at the first base where their compatriots were pinned down. Taking a breather outside, they could hear the sounds of fighting just inside the door. It sounded like a lot of loud metal crashing together.

“Fantastic,” Genji sighed, “Freaks. I’m starting to wish Briggs came with us.”

----------

It wasn’t the first time Mider Caid wished he was back behind his M.A.G.I. desk, and it wouldn’t be the last. The cell had been empty and his crew took the opportunity to root through everything for any evidence they’d need to make their arrests stick. However, what they hadn’t counted on was the sudden arrival of the cybernetic monstrosities, complete with a full complement of Tank-types and their Tank Swiper leader, simply named “Blender.”

The freaks caught them split apart, and the first one to find them was the team’s scrapper, who happened to be a former Freak named Johnny Slag. While he was no longer a Freak, he was a regenerating cyborg, and his refined combat prosthetics enabled him to still stand up to his former associates for a few minutes.

Unfortunately, those few minutes didn’t help as much as necessary. The former rogues weren’t used to working with each other, and they rapidly fell apart. The wizard tried to rally them together, but they distrusted him even more than the others.

The former Tsoo ninjas, the Strik brothers, ducked into their own little corner early on. Hiding behind some machinery, they were able to create a bottleneck effect that allowed them to face two or three of the smaller Freaks at once and kept the larger Tank Freaks at bay. Mider worked his way to them, followed by a former Skull named Somber. Somber, despite having run with such a nefarious crowd, was a surprisingly timid young man. Caid could only surmise that the other magician had learned of a terrible price for wielding his dark arts, and preferred to fight with just his two hands if he could.

The rest of the crew, an Outcast named Crag, a Hellion named Cinder and a plant-like heroine named Olive wound up tread underfoot as the Freaks pressed their advantage. They weren’t dead, as their MedCom beacons were still registering their connection to the grid, but they weren’t in good shape, either.

Pinned down behind the machinery, Mider tried to regroup the remains of his crew. He was terrified, and he didn’t know if the distress signal he’d sent had made it to the Redeemers’ base. However, they still had to try to get through this.

“Alright, now listen!” he hissed, “I told you guys to follow my lead, and you balked! Now look where it’s gotten us?”

A staccato of gunfire and a hail of bullets against the machinery punctuated his statement. The Freaks were toying with them, now.

“Well, gracious leader,” Danny Strik rasped, “What do you suggest? They’ve got the guns, they’ve got the numbers, and they’ve got-“

“We’ve got your woman!” Blender shouted, lifting a clenched claw that held Olive by her arm in a painful, pinching grip, “And unless you come out from behind there, we’re going to see just how far we can push these nifty little MedCom devices! I bet we could pluck all this green girl’s limbs off before she finally croaks!”

And with that, Mider had a plan. It wasn’t a very good plan, but it was something. It gave them an opening, it gave them a surprise, and it gave them a momentary edge. Muttering an incantation, he walked around the machinery, grunting a few words as bullets tagged him, but he kept his focus. He could hear Olive groaning as she fought against the pain in her arm and it caused him to shrug off the Swiper that came too close. He walked up to Blender and placed his hand against Olive’s ankle.

“Boom,” he rasped before fire enveloped them all.

"Now, just so we have this straight," the wizard, Mortiganen, whispered hoarsely as he looked over the report, "You engaged in a high-speed chase on a busy freeway, caused a small pile-up, and then proceeded to run the leader of the criminals over with your van... The witnesses were not pleased."

"Hey, it's not my fault he reverted back to human form right before I hit him..." Garm chuckled back, "But it was funny watching him scream obscenities right before I did..."

The two leaders of the Redeemers stared at each other for a few minutes. Garm could swear the room had gotten darker and colder.

Mortiganen used to be a bona fide super villain, with such a magnitude of power that no crew was necessary. However, the market for freelance dark wizards dried up in recent years. Also, with the Mu and the Circle of Thorns aggressively expanding (he noted this, it looked like they might be gearing up for another war) and groups like the Legacy Chain and Midnight Squad becoming more prominent and with such elements working against him, Mort figured it was a good idea to look into more legitimate employment, and there were few markets open for one of his skills.

Fortunately, the dark wizard took his job very seriously. He was employed to uphold the law, so he was going to uphold the law. Since most of the world didn't really know him (a fact that irked him something fierce; he used to do battle with and work alongside the Midnight Squad before the Rikti War for goodness' sake!), he didn't have to worry about angry reprisals from old compatriots that were afraid he'd sell their secrets or old foes looking to settle a grudge. His knowledge of the world and his capabilities as a natural leader was what led to the former criminals electing him leader of this unusual experiment.

Now if only the loser of that competition would be more compliant. Of course, he knew Garm only thought he should learn to lighten up. He wondered why the Trolls held so strongly to their ambivalent view of the world, even when they were supposedly cured of their Superadine addictions.

"Well, Agent Wild wasn't pleased," the wizard finally intoned, "As our liaison, he caught a lot of heat for your little stunt. As it stands, you and your crew are suspended for a week. Barring emergencies, of course."

Garm smiled and nodded. He was expecting something, anything, and in fact had prepared for worse. The fact that Mort was being lenient showed that he was probably rubbing off on the guy.

Mortiganen twirled his mustache and narrowed his eyes at his second-in-command.

"Suffice it to say, Garm, it is not alright to run criminals over with your van."

"Got it," the Caliban chortled, "So, what did D.A.T.A. have to say about that gear we recovered?"

"Just interdimensional monitoring equipment..." the wizard shrugged, "Nothing incredible. Well, incredible in our point of view..."

----------

The Redeemers were not a premier super group. They weren’t the Freedom Phalanx, they weren’t the Vindicators, heck, they were barely affiliated with Freedom Corps. However, with the influx of heroes in the city, there were a fair number of criminals that were looking for an easy way to avoid “getting their heads punched clean through their butt cheeks.”

Most of them went solo, joined up with the various disparate hero groups, or just tried to go back to normal lives. Along with information on their former compatriots, they brought equal parts hope and contempt to the groups. Many civilians recognized former Trolls or Outcasts for what they were, and the crisp demeanor of former Council or Fifth Column troops often revealed the former allegiances of some heroes much too quickly. Many civilians simply didn’t trust that “villains” could be rehabilitated. However, somebody in the ranks of the F.C. decided it was time to pull off the same concept as a public relations stunt, and some freelance reformed criminals were brought into Freedom Corps’ “Redeemers” super group, or “Vindicators Lite” as the media called the project.

After his debriefing, Garm mulled over the day’s events and some of the brief history he’d had with the group. More often than not, his compatriots had dealt with angry mobs hurling produce at them (rotten and not) after successful missions against bank robbers or terrorists. He knew that it was going to be a long road, but sometimes he really wished more people would just live with the moment and realize they’d just been saved by a slightly unorthodox group of heroes.

For now, however, he wanted to relax with his partners and friends. It was surprising how easily his old crew, Briggs McBain and Doug the Ogre, had settled into working with the former Tsoo sorcerer, Genji Lucas, and the Outcasts, Ashen Roast and Blizzard Front. He thought it was funny that Briggs, of all people, had helped settle the fire tanker’s issues with his best friend’s homosexuality.

“Is he trying to date you?” he murmured to himself in a half chuckle as he walked into the impromptu cafeteria of their converted warehouse base, “No. Then what’s the problem?”

“What’re you muttering?”

Garm looked up and took note of the red and white uniform of a man who worked as their liaison to Freedom Corps. They had a few, for accountability purposes, but this was their in-house man, Martin Sanders. Martin normally wore street clothes, so his being in uniform probably meant he was about to go out on patrol. The “capes-and-spandex” look really didn’t suit him, though.

“Just musing about my crew,” the Troll Caliban answered, “What’s up?”

“A couple crews got pinned down in Brickstown,” the former bum grunted, “I’m about to grab my team and attempt a rescue. Want in?”

“Sure. We’re still amped from our tumble this morning…” Garm stopped, and then bit his lower lip.

“What?”

“Well, we just got suspended by your partner, Wild, and Mort was all too happy to comply.”

Sanders chuckled.

“You think I’m gonna let that stop you? We’ve got friends in trouble! Come on!”

The Council van crashed into the side of the highway and ground to a halt. The rusty green van following it screeched to a stop just next to the broken-down machine and the back doors popped open. Four costumed heroes dropped out and approached the other van.

"Alright, guys," the first hero said calmly as he walked to the back door, "Let's make this nice and easy..."

"Dammit," a large, green-skinned man growled to the man in the passenger seat of the van he'd just exited, "Doug, did you have to blast their tires out like that? Look at how they crashed into the guard wall here! I'm pretty sure this comes out of our per diem!"

"We get paid for this?" the Ogre asked as he started to exit the van, "Cool."

"Kind of," the Caliban replied, "We're compensated for our expenses, the food we need to eat, and there are a few perks, but we don't make much more than the average cop... Heck, we probably make less. You never noticed?"

"I only remember some F.C. toadies bringing meals to the meetings."

Garm slapped his forehead and growled something to himself. He had to go through this with the other members of the group every couple of weeks, he'd thought Doug was smart enough to figure out the payroll system for himself. Heck, even Briggs had done that.

They were the Redeemers, and this was just one squad of the whole super group. Their numbers fluctuated every day, but they usually had between seventy-five and a hundred former rogues that claimed membership. Currently, they were a tad on the low side, some members had died, others were found to still have outstanding warrants and had to postpone their "heroic" activity until they'd completed their sentences, and some either quit or reverted back to being criminals. Some, however, were true believers of the cause.

"Why are we doing this again?" a man dressed like a Tsoo Sorcerer, Genji Lucas, asked as he prepared his arcane rites, "It can't be for fame..."

"Because we prefer being out here instead of prison," the Caliban growled, "Jebus guys, we've been at this for five months, I'd think you'd get the idea by now."

"Oh, we get it," the first hero commented, "Genji just misses the old days when he could electrocute information out of people."

"Or threaten to turn them over to the Circle, Greg."

"Hey!" the scrapper shouted as he banged on the back door of the Council van, "You guys still alive in there? What's taking so long?"

Gregory Caid was answered by a burst of gunfire perforating the doors and his body. He shook violently as he fell flat on his back.

"Ah, dammit," Garm muttered as he rubbed the bridge of his nose, "They never do it easy."

"You Trolls think you can stop us?" the Adjutant shouted as he hopped out the back of the ruined doorway, "You have... Oh. These guys."

"Yeah, these guys," the former Troll replied, seemingly unconcerned for his fallen friend, "Now stand down or we'll manhandle you."

"Fire!" the masked man shouted and more Council troops emerged (it was funny how many they could pack into the back of a van), leveled their weapons on the heroes and fired.

Garm and Doug took the brunt of the attack, Genji diving behind them and muttering an enchantment that would raise a small fog to protect his allies and the other hero, a former Outcast named Ashen Roast, took to the sky, dropping suddenly on the van's roof. The troops prepared to fire another volley, but the orange-skinned young man took a deep breath and blew a gout of flame at the terrorist soldiers, breaking their ranks and causing them to start firing in all sorts of directions.

The former Trolls pressed the advantage, tackling two of the soldiers and punching them in their faces to knock them unconscious. Another came out of the van, but Doug caught him in mid-air and chucked him into one of the troops they hadn't tackled.

The Adjutant moved to kick Garm in the cheek, but his knee gave out as Gregory pushed himself up in a crab walk and kicked him in the back of the leg. When the man fell into his lap, the regenerating scrapper wrapped his legs around his foe's waist and his arms around his neck.

"Time to meet the Sand Man," he muttered as the Adjutant struggled to breathe, "Don't worry, you're not going to-"

The Council soldier suddenly roared and turned into a large, bloodthirsty, rampaging wolf. It wasn't the first time the gathered heroes had seen the phenomenon, but it was never fun whenever it happened.

"I'll take Heads," Garm muttered as Ashen automatically threw a coin to his and Doug's feet.

The coin came up "Tails."

"Alright!" the Ogre cheered as he scrambled up and threw his arms back in a quick stretch, which accidentally caused him to backhand the Marksman behind him, "Time to get this-"

The War Wolf punched him in the face, sending the large green man tumbling into the back of the Council van. It then swiped at Ashen and Garm before grabbing the van and trying to topple it over the side of the overpass.

However, something was stopping the large hairy beast. AS it tried to throw the van over the edge, it felt something tugging at the front of the machine in the other direction.

That something was Briggs McBain.

Briggs was another former Troll, like Doug and Garm, but he was much (very much) shorter than his compatriots. He was, in fact, shorter than the infamous Julius. However, what he lacked in height, he more than made up for with muscle mass.

"Somebody bop the dog on the nose!" he roared as he yanked the truck back and pulled the man-animal off balance.

"Done!" Doug shouted as he delivered a hard jab straight to the former Adjutant's snout, his fist wrapped in stone so it delivered much more of an impact.

The War Wolf fell backward, but before it could hit the ground, Garm and Gregory caught it, lifted it, and tossed it over the edge. Looking down, they watched the wolf bounce off the side of one building and continue down to the streets below and the "Land of the Lost."

"Oh boy," Ashen murmured, "He's gonna come back and he's gonna be ticked."

"Finish detaining the rest of these guys," the Caliban sighed, "I'll get ready for their boss. Briggs? Are the keys still in the ignition?"

"What're you doin' with my baby, G?"

"Nothin' it wasn't redesigned for."

Ugh... I can't believe that took me so long...

I've been running a story in the Scoop. It's called "The Redeemers," and involves a number of my ancillary characters.

I'm putting an archive in the Roleplaying section because of how the two chapters got mixed up in this last issue.

Link

((Some Scoop Readers have indicated that they would like an archive of some kind for this story. At first, I figured that it would be unnecessary (as previous issues of the Scoop were still available to read). However, with the incident that happened during the first week of December due to the lack of a Scoop the week before, I feel that an archive may actually be necessary now.))

Concept Introduction

The Redeemers was something I stumbled upon as I wrote Grey's Army. Various characters I'd made were bumming around, doing random hero work, and I figured it was time I gathered them up and put them to work together.

Two of them were former Outcasts, and one had worked with the Council as an undercover Longbow agent. Realizing that they had experience with villain groups, and that they wouldn't be the only reformed super-powered criminals to "turn cape," I figured I would slap them all into a hero group together.

And suddenly I had a small army of characters to deal with. I could use Freaks, Trolls, Outcasts, Hellions, Skulls, Tsoo, and in extremely special circumstances, Family members, Council and Nemesis soldiers, Arachnos troops, Crey's Paragon Protectors, Devouring Earth and maybe even Praetorians. If I wasn't already writing Air Guard, I would probably have thrown some Sky Raiders into the mix, but that's a different concept to me altogether, so I tend to keep them out of it.

Base of Operations

Unlike most heroes whose bases are kept in some ethereal "Basespace," the Redeemers are actually based in a warehouse in Skyway City. If you know the corner of the War Wall where it juts east toward the Talos Island gate, you probably know the warehouse well. It's the one next to the building you enter during the Synapse Task Force (don't worry if you've been in both, sometimes they get pushed out by the Clockwork while their crews are on patrol, much to their annoyance).

Characters

Trolls

Garm

Garm is a former Caliban. As a Troll, he terrorized neighborhoods in Eastgate (the Hollows) and Skyway City. However, for one week, he and his crew couldn't get their Superadine shipments and for a brief moment, he had a moment of clarity. When Atta finally got them a new shipment, Garm didn't partake. As he slowly regained his memory and sense of who he was, he decided it was time to leave.

To his surprise, two of his closest friends as Trolls decided to come with him...

As a Redeemer, Garm has been elected as "Second-in-Command." When the boss, Mortiganen, isn't in, he's in charge. Since he's still got some excessive testosterone in his system, he doesn't mind too much, but his leadership lacks long-term planning.

When he's on patrol, he maintains a crew that's a nice mix of Tsoo, Trolls, Outcasts and the hero Gregory Caid, who worked undercover against the Council. He likes to think that the mix shows he's at least a good enough leader to bring these former enemies together in a cohesive group, but he knows he's lucky to have people like Ashen Roast and Caid, who have helped immensely with the transition.

Since Garm's been off Superadine, he's been losing his powers. For the moment, he's still incredibly resilient and strong, but as the weeks wear on, he knows he'll have to give up the fight at some point. He hopes that when it happens, he doesn't learn the hard way, which is from the wrong end of a shotgun.

Doug the Ogre

A peculiar ogre, Doug is notable for a shock of red hair that pokes out of the back of his head. She's not too keen on telling Garm why she wanted out of the group, but the fact that as a human, she was female instead of the genderless green freak might have something to do with it (she took the name "Doug" because she knew it would be better if the other Trolls thought she was always a guy).

Doug serves as a tanker for Garm's crew. With rock growing out of her body at will, she probably serves the role even better than Ashen Roast.

Doug's losing her powers just like Garm. However, for some reason, the rate isn't as fast. Some would say it has something to do with the "petrified" state of her physiology, that maybe her hardened skin has made her metabolic rate slow down.

Briggs McBain

Briggs is a monster. Shorter than even Julius, Briggs more than makes up for his lack of height by being a small mass of condensed muscle. All that power in such a tiny frame has caused an unusual circumstance for the Troll enforcer, in that he's a lot more powerful than he should be.

Briggs has been known for beating the tar out of whole crews of Outcasts, Trolls, Tsoo, Frost Family hit squads and even a squad of Nemesis soldiers. He joined the Trolls after beating the tar out of one of their Calibans for trying to wreck his car.

Garm still doesn't know how he convinced the burly little beast to join him. In all fairness, Briggs doesn't even know why he did it, either, but he figures it had something to do with how bored he was getting with the Trolls. At least if they sent a crew to beat Garm and Doug up or even kill them, he'd get a chance to deliver a beatdown on Atta.

But the attack didn't come and Garm presented him with a different adventure. For the most part, Briggs appreciates the supergroup of former rogues for the opportunity it provides him to trick out his new van. Otherwise, he could care less if her were beating on criminals or heroes, or just kicking back in his apartment and going brain dead from television or videogames.

There is another peculiarity McBain has from his trollish counterparts. He's not getting any weaker. As the weeks go on, he's actually only getting stronger since he got off Superadine. If asked, he replies "No, I'm not working out," and shrugs disinterestedly when pressed about the information. He's not going to submit to examination, either, so it'll be a mystery left unsolved for a long time.

Outcasts

Ashen Roast

Ashen Roast is a tanker. He didn't start out as one, oh no, but he learned how after helping a group of refugees out of Boomtown. He rather liked helping people more than victimizing them, so he quit the Outcasts and signed up with the FBSA and Freedom Corps' Redeemers shortly afterward.

Ashen doesn't do much to distinguish himself. What has proven to be a source of entertainment for the rest of the group, however, is his trepidation around his best friend, Blizzard Front.

Blizzard Front

An ice blaster, Blizzard is no stranger to being different. When he was kicked out of his family and beat up by a group of classmates for his sexual preference, he was surprised the Outcasts led by a strange man named "Nor'Easter" was willing to let him in. Nor gave Blizzard some artifacts that altered his skin and made him able to throw ice. During the course of his time with the Outcasts, his homosexuality rarely came up as they were often fighting for their lives against other gangs.

When the Redeemer recruiter revealed his secret to Ashen, however, he was surprised that it suddenly became an issue. Aside from the fact that the recruiter erroneously believed he was in a relationship with a man he saw as a brother, Ashen had fears that Blizzard was "constantly checking him out." Blizzard assured him this wasn't the case, and that his preference wasn't actually about anything sexual, but that he had decided to spend his time with men because they made more sense to him.

It took a long time for Ashen to accept his friend for who he was after that. The odd thing, for which Blizzard is extremely grateful for, is that the tanker finally learned to at least let the issue go to the wayside when Briggs McBain shared his indifference to the subject with the fire tanker. Somehow, this helped put things in perspective for Ashen, and he's learned to let the issue go.

Mountain Crag

Crag's career as an Outcast ended a couple years ago, when he was professionally embarrassed by an up-and-coming katana-wielding hero. After his stint in prison for artifact smuggling, he was working as a city landscaper in Kings Row when another group of Outcasts crashed into him and he wound up with some stolen materials on his person.

Despite how it could have gone, he was able to make a statement with the cops indicating how it was all a terrible mix-up. While he was in the precinct, he saw an advertisement for the Redeemers and decided he'd throw his hat in. He was tired of trimming trees for the city.

Tsoo

Genji Lukas

Genji left the Tsoo after his mother died. He gives a number of varying reasons, but in the end, that's what did it for him. She had known what he was, even though she didn't know why. Because of this, she had come to hate him for the violence he committed, even though he was trying to learn as much magic as he could so he could try to cure her cancer.

Once she was gone, he didn't feel he had a reason to stay with the Tsoo anymore. His leader, Iron Tiger, didn't agree and sent the Strik brothers to assassinate him.

This caused him to lose three potent Tsoo members instead of just one...

The Strik Brothers, Danny and Tommy

Danny and Tommy Strik are actually Daniel and Thomas Kim, but they changed to the moniker of Strik to sound more dangerous. It turned out they were actually quite competent fighters, and nobody in their group questioned their name.

When they were sent to make an example of Genji Lukas, however, they decided they'd had enough. They were tired of roughing up shopkeepers for minor artifacts and shaking down perfectly normal people. They didn't like letting their skills go to waste so some hero could come along and bust their heads open.

So, Danny with his sword and Tommy with his empowered fists left the Tsoo and turned directly to the FBSA. In return for leniency, they turned Iron Tiger in to the authorities and were assigned several hundred hours of community service instead of prison time. They decided to turn their community service over to the Redeemers.

Freakshow

Johnny Slag

Johnny is a Redeemer lacking redemption. He saw a quick way out of prison and signed up for another chance to bring more hurt to people. While he's ticked that he can't get regular Excelsior injections like he used to, the super soldier serum they've got him hooked on is good enough to keep him alive and regenerating.

He also likes the new snazzy cybernetic arms and the retractable claws built into them. It's so much lighter than having to carry around half a wrecking dump.

For now, though, the only thing keeping Johnny in the Redeemers is a bracelet. It's queued into the MedCom system like his hospital beacon, but if it ever gets activated by his team leader, he'll be sent straight to the Zig for breaking his parole.

The Devouring Earth

Olive the Undevoured

Olive's a special case. As a young heroine, she was captured by the Devouring Earth and turned into one of their field commanders, a Greater Devoured. Once she was extracted by a team of scientists and magicians, she found that her powers had been substantially altered and she would never look human again.

Depressed, she was almost suicidal when she learned of the Redeemers from a flier on a bulletin board outside her support group. Wondering if this group would give her half the chance she was looking for to find herself again, she jumped on the opportunity.

Sometimes, when she sleeps, she still hears the Hamidon calling for her, as it does for all its children. Fortunately, her regular visits to the support group keep her wistful glances toward Eden in check.

Skulls

Somber Graves

Somber was a young Bone Daddy. He was granted the rank early on because he already had a powerful connection with the nether realm and was talented at using its denizens to his benefit. However, what the other Skulls didn't realize was that he was also communicating with the restless spirits of the families of the people his gang harassed daily.

After his cell was broken raided and arrested, he turned to whatever rehabilitation he could get. He practically jumped at the opportunity to join the Redeemers and repair the damage he did as a Skull.

Hellions

Cinder Burst

A former Hellion, Cinder thought the gang would teach him some cool magic that he could use to really make some noise in the world. What he found instead was a group of petty thugs that didn't know whether their butts were punched or bored when it came to the dangerous forces they dabbled in.

After an ally accidentally burned himself to death because he was trying to summon an Inferno Demon, he decided he'd had enough. Cinder turned himself over to the police and was working through his third month of community service when he heard about the Redeemers from his parole officer.

Crey Industries

Thomas William Redshadow

A former Paragon Protector, Thomas was hit by none other than Synapse himself in order to begin his path toward redemption. Hitting his head rather hard, his mind reverted to his old personality, apparently obliterating his memories as a Protector. With a year of memories lost or turned to fog, he tried to look into his past only to find Crey trying to reacquire him and heroes trying to put him in the hospital.

After Mynx tore open his abdomen thinking he was trying to get revenge on her, he was found by Briggs McBain, who brought him to the Redeemers where Mortiganen helped save his life and remove the bizarre psychic presence that was inflicting damage upon him. If a vein hadn't popped in his sinus, he would have suffered from an embolism and died to protect Crey's secrets. Because of the wizard's work, he wouldn't need to worry about it ever again.

Thomas has a unique honor among the Redeemers. He's a solitary investigator, allowed to go about alone as a hero without a crew watching over him. While this causes some friction between him and the other Redeemers, they don't know the real reason for this assignment is so Longbow can use him as bait against the Crey organization.

Others

Mortiganen

Mortiganen was a thorn in the side of the Midnight Squad. He means that as a literal description of his status as a villain. He was never more than a mild annoyance for them, and they often had to help clean up messes made by the unforeseen consequences of his research.

In all fairness, he did research many consequences and prepared for them accordingly, but sometimes his work attracted the attention of powerful demons and demigods that had fallen from grace, and those were whims no mortal and most immortals couldn't even begin to fathom.

His contributions to the magical community were small and easily overlooked. Cheaper spell scroll inks and materials, many minor particulars on various outsiders and monsters, and even a handy concoction for making potion brewing less repugnant without altering the effects.

However, because of the trouble he'd caused and the fact that he never did anything unless he expected some kind of payoff, Mortiganen found himself classified along with the rakish elements of the world. Unaligned and on the wrong side of the law, he realized it would be a short time before the Circle of Thorns or the Mu mystics tried to embroil him in their newest conflict. Neither side appealed to him, so he applied to his old acquaintances in the Midnight Squad for help. They pointed him in the direction of Freedom Corps who turned him in to the Redeemers.

He was surprised when they elected him the leader of the group. However, he's not about to let the power go to his head when he has a responsibility to perform. If there's one thing he hopes people remember him for, it's that he's a strict professional. His profession happens to be that he should be a hero, so he works to direct his group in the defense of this city.

Gregory and Mider Caid

Gregory Caid was born without magic. For most kids, that's perfectly fine. For the Caid family, a family of wizards, magicians and sorcerers, that was not perfectly fine.

His parents feared the magic had left their bloodline, but they didn't let that fear cloud their love for him. However, when Mider was born, and it turned out that he had an abundance of mystical potential, the attention quickly diverted from the athletic child and focused strongly on the new one.

His parents tried to keep their attention on them evenly, but with Mider's growing power and their need to keep tabs on his actions as they threatened far more than an average rambunctious kid, Gregory seemed to be left out.

This was why Longbow turned him toward undercover work in the Council when he signed up in an effort to prove himself. They used his family history as a sob story to convince the Council that he was a desperate man and the Cor Leonis ate it up.

Mider, however, joined the ranks of MAGI. Because of the close work between Freedom Corps and the FBSA, he found himself relegated to the role of "clerk" officially (because his relationship with his brother was "suspect"), while unofficially he helped in major experiments and research. It's actually a point of shame for Mider that he was partly responsible for the ease of the theft of the Wheel of Destruction, since he was in the vault in Galaxy City, researching the device when the Banished Pantheon cult attacked, but Azuria assured him that she thought the cult had been beaten back enough to not make such an attempt, so she held some of the blame for herself.

His brother, however, had done such a good job posing as a Council soldier that he'd been promoted to Archon status. When Gregory was on the verge of discovering the source of some mystical ammunition another Archon was experimenting with, a hero group crashed his cell and arrested him. After he gave whatever information he could, Freedom Corps set to work to reinitiate him as a hero.

After a few months of working as field agents, Mider and Gregory were informed of the Redeemers project by some of their friends, so they signed on to help out. Gregory found himself attached to Garm's crew, but Mider, in a stunning turn of events, found himself in charge of his own crew.

Martin Sanders

A former hobo, Martin was abducted during the course of the Rikti War. The Rikti started experimenting on him and found out the hard way that he wasn't about to become one of their monstrosities anytime soon. They also found out what it feels like to come face-to-face with Hades himself, though Sanders doesn't remember that part too well.

After helping usher a group of refugees through Boomtown for two years, he and the refugees were rescued and he was initiated into Freedom Corps. Partnered up with Mider Caid, he did some general patrolling before being brought into "clerk" status. While working as a paperwork pusher in an official sense, he still had a lot of physical work to do, so his patrolling resumed. Agent Wild helped him with the transition and when the Redeemers were formed, he helped the gruff man work as liaison for the group.

Agent Wild

Agent Wild works as a liaison for numerous groups throughout Paragon City. He hates when people think he's Agent Wilder, who tends to use and abuse the people working for him all in the effort of doing damage to the credibility and infrastructure of Arachnos. Wild feels he's more honorable than that, and if Arachnos is to be taken down, it'll have to be done in a stand-up fight, not with back-alley tactics.

As the major liaison for the Redeemers, Wild maintains a long professional distance from the group, preferring that they earn their place on their own merit rather than being considered a stable for misfit Longbow troops.

Finally added a new chapter to Brutal Warriors Order. Kip discovers the addition the BWO have made to the Grey's Army base and is not pleased, but they're his friends so he's more or less just peeved that they lost some extra space for the duration of the group's stay.

We also learn a little more about the Committee's rise to power and how it earned a place as the major benefactor of the New Horizon Syndicate.

Jared Simms arrived in the Grey’s Army base and sighed. Kip was standing in front of the arrival point, his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes quirked to indicate that he was extremely aggravated.

“What the Hell did you think you were doing?”

“What do you mean, Kip?”

The scrapper grabbed him by the shoulder surprisingly roughly and dragged him further back into the recent expansion of the base. They passed through a rather simple teleportation room and into what would have looked to be a storage room… Except it wasn’t. On the far wall, there was a platform overlooking a podium with the BWO’s “Buzzsaw” symbol hovering in front of it. On the north wall was a set of tapestries, each one with a different letter marking them as “B-W-O.” The southwest corner was stuffed with collapsible office cubicles next to the podium, with a set of chairs lining the south wall and capped with a wooden desk that had a phone on it. The north floor had a set of cots strewn haphazardly about. Dominating the center of the room was a platform, a platform with four corners that had barrels stacked on top of gray polymer (Kip assumed it was carbon fiber) boxes.

It was an arena, just like they’d built in their other two bases. Kip didn’t understand the logic. In fact, he believed there was no logic. His friends were a pack of unruly teenagers, still, and they had little to no clue what they were doing.

“This, Jared… And what’s with these torches?”

Jared looked to the torches lining the entrance ramp and shrugged.

“We had to set up our operation somewhere, man.”

“You-“ Kip stopped and collected his thoughts before continuing to berate the red-coated young man, “This isn’t an operation, Jared. This is the same juvenile crap you were pulling in high school…”

“Lay off, man,” Simms barked back, “Don’t you think I know that? But you tell Matt and James that they have to hole up in here, near-godlike power coursing through their veins and tell them they can’t use any of it or they’ll wind up locked up in the Zig because they ‘con bad guy,’ and try living with them then!”

“So, what? This is where they vent?”

Jared nodded and shrugged. Kip looked at the ring and shuddered a little.

“Look, man, it’s not all bad. We kept our stuff t this corner room, here, and you guys still have the rest of your base.”

“Yeah, but we had a purpose intended for this room,” Kip muttered, “We were going to put some of our gear in here, and Sheldon was probably going to build us another robot…”

“Oh…”

“Forget it, man, it’s fine… If Randy weren’t so involved in that new microbrewery he put in the old power room, though, he’d be on your [butts] about this.”

Draven nodded. From the main room, they heard conversation. More people had arrived and they walked over to see what was up.

Justin Steel and Charles Reynolds met them in the new teleporter room on their way to the “BWO office.” The two were discussing contracts and the recent funds they received from Freedom Corps for the efforts of Dirty Ice, Mark Shadow and Justin. Steel looked up at them and grinned a little.

“I take it you weren’t informed of our intentions to utilize a portion of your base as our new office,” he muttered.

“No,” Kip replied, “But so long as you don’t go blowing this base up, it’ll be fine. There’s a building of people on top of us, and it won’t do to be having it come crashing down.”

Kip rapped his fist on one of the pillars that helped support the weight above them.

“That’s what these are here for. To keep them up there while we’re down here.”

“We understand, Kipland, now, if you’ll excuse us, we’ve got some contracts to negotiate with the rest of the boys…”

----------

“You’re not going to believe this,” Chuck explained as he handed pages to each of the gathered members, “Ashwin Lannister, from Hero Corps, he called us up and offered us some information… A small medical cybernetic company…”

“Working for Hero Corps means inevitably working for Crey,” Project Whirlwind interjected, “you sure we want to commit to this?”

“Well, we will when you learn who it is. Jonas Silver…”

The rest of the Brutal Warriors looked blankly at Reynolds. After half a minute, he realized they didn’t know whom he was talking about, so he explained.

“Jonas had a small medical supply company… Back home, he ran an ambulance service, but that was just one of his endeavors, the one that financed his investments. His investments, however, were what paid off in the end and wound up being the driving force behind the Committee. He had his fingers in all sorts of technology companies, and after a while, he’d bought majority and merged a number of them into Silver Medallion Medical Supply, a company that specializes in prosthetics and brain-computer interfaces. It’s very likely that it’s the research his company did that made the agents we’ve been fighting possible.”

Psycho13 didn’t seem to be taking the backstory too seriously, though.

“No way, man. There is no way some small company from Bum-[frick], New York is going to be able to become an economic powerhouse that easily!”

“That’s how the Committee worked, Levi. In order for them all to rise up above any future possible competition, they aided and assisted each other. To cut costs on transport, my father would ship materials between his dealerships in his cars. He did it for all the other companies, and they were able to steadily bring themselves to prominence in their respective fields because one of the heaviest costs to a growing company was practically cut down by two thirds for all of them. That’s why my dad was on the Committee, and why I inherited his seat…”

“And since they didn’t need you anymore,” James chuckled, “They got rid of you.”

“Yeah… Anyway, you don’t have to believe it for it to be real. That’s the funny thing about business, there’s so much going on that you can’t see and they grow or fall so fast…”

“Well, what does Hero Corps want us to do?” Draven finally gasped, exasperated.

“They want us to look into their next shipment. Endo-skeletal prosthetics.”

----------

As the group prepared, James pulled Jared aside. He seemed concerned, but the scrapper couldn’t begin to imagine what about.

“Have you talked to Wild?” Rage asked.

“No. Should I have?”

“Jare, what are we supposed to do? We can’t keep braining each other in here…”

“You could always hop on the Dream and get out of here.”

“Yeah, Matt and Mark don’t want to do that all the time…”

“You could always hop on some of those mercenary missions, make some good money for beating the crap out of people…”

James looked back to the others to make sure they weren’t listening, then leaned close to Jared.

“Look, they turned Levi into some kind of freak, and I want in on the revenge. That’s my brother, man.”

Draven nodded and shook his head at the same time.

“Look, man, we’re just running an investigation, maybe doing an interview or two. We can’t call up Wild for every little instance, otherwise he’s gonna get ticked and probably look into either suspending our licenses or even getting us locked up…”

“He can’t do that…”

“I know, but he’ll still make a hassle for us and then where will we be? We won’t be able to patrol Paragon, the hub of civilization without having to check when and where we can step… Everything that happens in the world travels through here at some point, and I’d rather not feel like I’ve had my feet cut out from underneath me because we irritated the guy in the authority we deal with.”

James nodded and walked away. His agitation at the situation was clearly evident in the heavy way he walked back to the office. Draven closed his eyes and sighed. There wasn’t much helping their situation. They didn’t have a base in the Rogue Isles and even if they tried to establish a new one, they’d be either heavily scrutinized by Arachnos or just as easily found by the New Horizon Syndicate. Here, at least, only a few people knew where the Grey’s Army base was, and the Syndicate hadn’t thought of asking any of them (not that it would do them much good, anyway, and the more heroes knew of the Syndicate’s presence, the worse it was for them).

The best they could do was investigate the Silver Medallion and hope they got a lead. With any luck, it would be enough to give his "red-side" friends some walking room. James, especially, needed the leniency, as those skulls on his chest and shoulder couldn't be covered up or removed, and it just wouldn't do for him to be attacked by super-powered hooligans and not be able to defend himself.

Trying two at once, Blue? That couldn't have been the absolute end for Blue...

I'll have to read this tomorrow. Must sleep now.

I threw in a new chapter to Grey's Army. It's... It's a bit of a bad one.

Nester learns a terrible secret about his girlfriend. That's... That's really all I can say.

Nester walked into his apartment and sighed. His day was only just beginning, but his day’s adventures had brought him to Skyway City, so he figured he’d drop by for lunch. He could hear Mindy humming, but as the door closed, she stopped.

“Hey, Min-min,” he announced, “I’m hooked up with this crew that’s investigating the Malta Group… Nothing major, really, just some political strong-arm cells…”

There was no answer and he started to make himself a tuna fish sandwich.

“…I get why Aaron kept telling me to be careful about them, those Sappers are some nasty troops… But the Invigorator nanites do a decent enough job keeping the Tankers and Scrapers going… So long as they fight through, the rest of the team’s been able to recover… It’s been painful, but…”

He looked up as he slapped the bare slice of bread onto the spread-upon slice. He expected her to say something by now. She normally talked to him about details of the costumes, anything that she could use as inspiration for her work. Curious, he went out into the living room and his eyes boggled when he saw her.

It was an outfit he knew well. The Knives of Artemis were notorious among the heroes of the city. They were tough to fight and even tougher to talk to. Worse, yet, Nester’s family was already having an issue with them, with his mother currently working for them in some clandestine operation that had yet to rear its ugly head.

“I hope this is a joke,” he half-chuckled as she stared at him, the goggles she was about to wear held before her face, but slowly lowering, “Or maybe it’s an outfit you’re working on for Serge?”

She didn’t answer, but she stared at him. Mindy’s eyes were wet with tears, her lower lip was quivering. He hoped it didn’t mean what he thought it did.

“I’m sorry, Nester.”

Well, there was always hope for the next girlfriend. However, Nester didn’t want another girlfriend.

“Mindy… How? How long?”

“Since before we met, Nester,” she replied, dropping the goggles by her hip with a sigh, “It’s been a long time… I don’t remember what it was like without them watching over me… I think… I think I was lost, alone and frightened…”

“You’re not alone anymore, though. “

She looked in his eyes. Nester had pulled off his green-tinted shades and pocketed them so she could see them more clearly. What she saw there was concern and confusion. She slowly drew her sword and sniffed back some of the tears.

“Yes, Nester…” her voice almost cracked, “Yes I am…”

He understood immediately. They’d ordered her to kill him. Whether it had something to do with his adventures against the Malta Group earlier that day or was part of some larger scheme, he couldn’t begin to guess. What he did know, however, was what he was going to do next.

“Mindy,” he whispered as he reached behind his back, surreptitiously clicking an alarm button on his communicator before he reached into his back pocket, “Before you do this… Grant me one last request…”

She held her blade before her, ready to strike, but she paused as requested.

“I owe you that much,” she barely whispered.

Nester showed brought his hand before him and extended a box to her. Kneeling down on one knee, he opened it and showed her the ring he’d been trying to woo her with for much of the past year.

“Will you marry me?”

She didn’t answer. She stood there, silently, unable to decide what to do. She had let him know, in no uncertain terms, what was to happen next and he was still willing to be with her.

The living room windows smashed in and two more Knives of Artemis surged into the apartment. Nester could hear another in the bedroom.

“Again, Sister Jakobsen has failed us,” one growled through her mask, “We’ll have to do this ourselves…”

“Unless Sister Jakobsen succeeds, here and now!” the other shouted, “Mindy! Do as you’ve been ordered! Execute this pathetic man!”

----------

With the primary team swarming the walls of the apartment building, the secondary team was standing by and observing from the rooftop across the street. The noises of the busy traffic below could still work its way up to them.

“It makes me wish we were back in training,” the mercenary growled as she watched the situation across the street through her sniper rifle’s scope, “Cities make me sick… They’re filled with noise, pollution… Men…”

“Keep your focus, sister,” another muttered, “We’ll be out of here soon enough.”

“I don’t see the importance of this,” a third sighed, “So what if she fell in love? Is that really so terrible?”

“Her affection for that twerp makes her weak,” the Hand in charge of them snapped, “As it would make any of you weak! She has to sacrifice him to get her strength back!”

“And if she doesn’t?”

“You’re looking down the barrel of a sniper rifle. You figure it out.”

----------

Her sword clattered to the floor. Mindy dropped to her knees, tears streaming down her face as she grasped Nester’s outstretched hand and the box it held. They leaned in to each other, their foreheads touching as they embraced for one last moment.

“Wake up Wolfgang,” Nester muttered as he held her close.

“What?”

Though it pained him to do it, he let go of her, leaned back and put his shades back on. She looked at his frowning face and understood. He was ready to fight.

“But you can’t…”

“Enough of this,” one of the Knives drew her sword, “Kill them both!”

Nester was only half paying attention now. He was more engrossed in what the heads-up display of his shades was telling him. Still, that didn’t keep him from responding.

“You’re going to wish you hadn’t come here,” he growled.

“And what’re you going to do?” the other Knife snarled (not that he could see it behind her mask), “You’re just a Defender class… Your weapons are weak!”

“Only when I’m helping a team,” he replied as his shades flashed.

Reconfiguration: Complete. Offensive Mode: Initiated. Would you like to run the Tutorial?

“Nah, I think I’ll just wing it!” he shouted as his gloves flashed brilliantly and he hurled a miasma of green vapor in a wave at the women.

Though the wave flooded the room, he’d angled his throw so that Mindy would remain safe. The other two Knives, however, were not, and were promptly thrown through the window to the rushing streets below.

The other one in the bedroom rushed into the living room, and before Nester could turn his newly focused energies against her, Mindy was up and firing a crossbow bolt into her former compatriot. The woman shouted, staggered, and fell against the doorframe, staring angrily at them both. Before she could pick herself back up, Nester fired a powerful cosmic burst into her chest, knocking the wind out of her.

“We have to get out of here!” Mindy shouted, “Nester, I-“

She couldn’t finish. There was a whizzing sound and a high caliber bullet smashed into the wall next to them. They were under fire and they could hear the rest of the first team kicking at the front door.

Ducked behind the kitchen counter, Nester turned to his girlfriend and grinned. She looked to him and the look on her face showed that she was startled.

“I never guessed being with you would be so adventurous,” he replied with a chuckle.

----------

“Fire!” the Hand shouted, “Keep firing, you imbecile!”

“Ma’am!” another mercenary shouted.

“Shut up! If you’re not on a rifle, shut up!”

“Ma’am!” yet another shouted, “We’ve got-!”

Her words were cut off when a thunderous roar interrupted them. The Hand looked up just in time to see some sort of hideous machine come crashing down onto the rooftop with a wild-maned rider wildly swinging a katana about.

“I am the rocker!” Mattock McGinty shouted, “I am the roller! I am the out-of-controller!”

He jumped off the motorcycle and kicked the nearest mercenary into the wall of the roof. The other girls shouted angrily at him and started firing their crossbows and swinging their swords, but he deflected them all with mad glee. He didn’t just defend himself, though, he fought back, too. He was a wild man, and wholly different from many of the heroes they’d faced before. His willingness to stab into the Hand of Artemis’ belly before shouldering her over the side proved that. They’d never seen any hero so quick to use truly lethal force before.

“Whoooooooohooooooooo!” they heard from above as Cedric Grey dropped into the fight with them and started smashing Knives left and right, “You girls done started a war you ain’t never gonna forget!”

----------

The sniper fire stopped and Nester looked up over the counter top. His shades showed him that his backup, indeed, his teammates up to this point, were currently busy saving his butt. He looked to the apartment door and saw the deadbolt splinter as an explosive was used to destroy it.

“Time to go!” he shouted, “Don’t look back, just run!”

He and Mindy bolted through the living room and rushed for the window. As they made it out, he felt something sharp jab into his shoulder. Before he could concentrate enough to consider what it was, he felt another hit him in the center of his back. Fortunately, his torso plating knew what had happened, and reacted appropriately.

A green wave of energy blazed out of him, covering him and Mindy in a bright glow that soothed and healed their injuries. He looked over to her as he grasped her hand during their descent. She was gasping for breath and he realized he may have only barely saved her life. He reached over and embraced her, holding her close as his hover belt activated and he felt the thrusters in his sneakers kick on so they could fly more quickly.

“I’m fine,” she said as he looked to her briefly, “That glow… Your Healing Wave, right? It got the bolts out of my lungs…”

More bolts came flying at them, but their path seemed to warp and twist. Nester smiled as his shades informed him that the nanites of his defensive matrix were keeping them safe. A shuriken came dangerously close, though, so he started pulling away from his old apartment and toward his friends.

“Hey, Nester!” Cedric shouted as his swipe sent one of the mercenaries hurtling through the air, “Can you believe how easy this is? Everybody keeps telling me these girls train for years, and they still haven’t got half the guts as a three-month Marine!”

“Didn’t you also keep training while you were in? Wasn’t that five years?”

He shoved one of the mercenaries aside and arched his eyebrow thoughtfully. Finally, with a shrug, he raised his axe into the air and it started to glow. As the Knives regrouped, he waved the weapon at them and a brilliant beam of energy wafted across them, sending them sprawling over the side. Some caught ledges, others tumbled into the dumpsters or fell onto Trolls.

“Awesome!” the tanker chortled as Nester and Mindy landed next to him, “I’d call this a job well… Uh…”

He and Matt stared rather pointedly at the woman. Nester saw their reactions, and decided it would be best to stand between her and them.

“Guys, now guys…” he stammered, “She’s… She’s not one of them… Not like them…”

“Yes I am, Nester,” she stopped him with a hand on his shoulder, “And they have to turn me in…”

“We have to, man,” Cedric intoned, “I’m sorry.”

“No!” Nester shouted, “We can work something out!”

“There’s nothing to work out!” Matt barked, “We tried to arrest her, showing how untrustworthy we heroes really are, and she was forced to run back into the arms of the Knives!”

“It doesn’t have to be-!” Mindy started to plead, then turned to the katana-wielding warrior and quirked her eyebrow, “What?”

“I gotta do everything myself,” McGinty growled before shoving Nester aside and punting Mindy over the side of the building while shouting “This is Sparta!”

“No!” the defender shouted as Cedric caught and righted him.

“Matt, what are you doing!?”

Mindy, however, could only let out a scream as she fired a crossbow bolt with a line attached to it. The bolt slammed into the ledge of the roof of Nester’s apartment building ad she swung to safety, landing in an alley and tumbling into the shadows. Nester watched her disappear, tears finally burning into his eyes as he realized he didn’t get a chance to say goodbye.

“I’m sorry,” Matt said, “I had to make it look like it did…”

“No you didn’t,” Nester rasped, “We could have done something… Something else… We could’ve talked to Aaron, his crew could have taken her in!”

“This way they stop trying to kill you! At least long enough until your mother catches wind of it and puts a stop to it!”

“My mother could have started this!” Nester shouted back, suddenly realizing why Kip was so resolute against her, “Oh my God…”

“That’s a pretty terrible thing to think, man,” Cedric murmured, “I think you need to take a step back and reconsider it. If your mom wanted you dead, I think she’d at least do it personally. Besides, your dad said she wasn’t doing what she wanted when she left, but what she was told.”

“In any case, they’re leaving,” Matt pointed across the street, “We better do the same.”

Nester nodded and started flying away. He bid his groupmates farewell and Cedric let him go. After a lunch break like that, Nester was going to need a vacation.

----------

That evening, the Knives of Artemis celebrated. In a clearing of Eden, they had set up a temporary circle of tents. The day’s “pruning” would make sure the Devouring Earth would leave them alone for a while. As added insurance, herbicides were placed in special traps to keep the monsters at bay. While the afternoon’s events weren’t exactly as they had expected, it was still a victory. They had regained one of their most proficient agents, and had struck a blow against the vigilantes.

“Welcome Sister Jakobsen back into the fold!” Sister Diana announced to the Great Hall, “We have regained our errant Hand.”

“Please forgive my prolonged absence,” Mindy announced, her voice schooled into submission, “I was suffering a momentary lapse in judgment.”

“You were just getting yourself some action,” another Hand chortled, “Nobody’s gonna fault you for getting laid!”

This was met with raucous laughter. As modern-day amazons, it was to be expected. Mindy surprised herself by joining them in the mirth.

Sister Maude arrived, then. Her torso was bandaged and she still wore an I.V. harness on her shoulder. Mattock had damaged her severely, and she glared at Jakobsen fiercely as she struggled to sit down.

“You really should be in bed,” Mindy said with genuine concern, but Maude thought she was messing with her.

“You should really be missing your head!” she snapped, “We lost soldiers, good soldiers, loyal soldiers, all for this tart!”

“Now, now, Maude,” Diana intoned, “That’s no way to react to your Sister.”

“It’s because of her and those men she spent the better part of two years with that this mission was only partly successful! Now that hero doctor lives and she’s responsible for it! If Sister Hannah hadn’t taken her cyanide pill as the machines sent her to the Zig, we would know the true story behind that crossbow bolt in her shoulder!”

Mindy leaned back in her chair and glared at her accuser. She’d already explained that one of the girls Nester had shot out the window had shot Hannah on her way out. It was an accident. She was lucky both had discharged their weapons without realizing it and that the police had already confiscated the arrows from where they’d hit the walls. Not only that, but the ones who’d smashed through the apartment door weren’t terribly good shots in their haste to kill her and her boyfriend, their projectiles had also struck the walls of the apartment. It left just enough room for her story to hold water, but she had to hope they didn’t have agents in the Skyway City PPD forensic team, or she’d be in trouble.

She didn’t doubt that the Malta Group had an agent or someone in power there, but they tended not to share information with the Sisterhood. They just paid them to do certain assassinations or security jobs and left them to their own devices afterward.

“I’m not going to explain myself until I’m blue in the face,” Mindy said darkly, “You can shout and grumble all you like, I told you what happened. If you didn’t want the drones taking her, maybe you should have had the Alpha Team do a better job of cleaning up the scene before they left.”

“Enough!” Sister Diana interrupted them, “I’m not going to hear anymore of this bickering. Mindy, you can calm down, Hannah, stand down! This is a time of celebration!”

With that, the rest of the Knives dug into the banquet. Mindy ate her meal quickly and tried to surreptitiously slip away from the party. A few girls caught her up in the raucous dancing, but she was able to slip away once the crowd had gotten thick and drunk enough.

However, when she was at her tent, she felt a hand on her shoulder. She knew it wasn’t aggressive, but it didn’t exactly feel friendly.

“Hello, Sister Catherine.”

“Sister Jakobsen,” the other woman replied smoothly, “So, tell me… Did you finally accept my son’s proposal?”

Mindy lightly brushed the pocket of her trousers and grinned. There, nestled snugly in the depths of the pocket, she could barely feel the simple circular strip of gold metal. Catherine shared the grin with her and ushered her into the tent.

“Well now, we have to discuss how we are to go about our future…”

That just sounds weird, Imp...

Sounds like the AVs have turned into Sega Dreamcasts... They're thinking!

Or drinking...

Or stinking...

Something.

I'd like to also make a comment about the Scoop now compared to the Scoop from a year ago.

Our current crew is nowhere near that large. We simply cannot cover as much news as what happens in a week.

Well, we could, but then we'd be paying our real life money to work for a fantasy life job.

Frankly, I'm not that dedicated to my hobby.

Posted a couple more stories today...

First up, I capped off that one about Ransack Rick because, to be honest, that character simply unsettles me. I think the problem is that as I'm writing, I try to put myself in the character's head for a moment, but Ransack's was so brutally alien to me, I felt ill for just after such a brief moment.

Still present, however, is the fact that I have something worse in mind for a character. This one's inspired by my own nightmares. I hope the basis of the narrator of this segment enjoys it. Or maybe I shouldn't, as it's a product of my darkest wild imaginations.

The other is the Air Guard. My poor, neglected Air Guard. I hope the Mission Architect allows us to generate our own groups... I'd like to make the Air Guard if I can and give them some adventures to terrorize the Redside with.

For now, I'm just putting the Air Guard on a mission to settle a few anomalous bandit runs in West Libertalia (oh man, now here's a storyline goldmine!).

--Months Later: West Libertalia--

Sergeant Johnston glared at the burned-out hole that used to be a bandit layer. Once again, they were helping the West Libertalians with their plights. As a beacon of democracy in the Third World, the U.N. was treating the small nation as a very favored child.

Captain Carter was already mining for information as to who had sent these particular thugs. It could have been anybody for any number of reasons. It could also have boiled down to the bandits being worried about the harsher penalties in the neighboring nations.

If they’d known they’d meet a firefight like this, they probably would have stayed wherever they came from, or quit.

“Sergeant,” the captain called from the hole, “I’m not gonna knock ya for clearing this den, but next time I’d go with something less explosive.”

“We don’t have tear gas, sir,” Johnston replied, “And flashbangs won’t even begin to cut it.”

“Alright, we’ll make do with the grenades then,” Carter sighed, “You’re doing good work out here. No need to look so nervous.”

The sergeant nodded and went to check on his fire teams. Carter, however, pulled up the pieces of some maps and tried to puzzle them out. They were of the local area, to be sure, but that last fragmentation grenade had shredded just about everything in the den and killed anybody who could have told him what was going on. Still, from what he could see, things didn’t seem to be shaping up too well.

“It looks like the different bands planned out which regions they were going to hit beforehand,” he muttered as he noted the different colored markings, “This red one is where we are now… There’s Red Sands… Blue and green… Haven’t heard about these areas getting hit yet… Maybe this was a timetable…”

“Sir!”

He looked up from his musings to his agent, Special Corporal Houston. Rachek had chafed at the rank Carter had given his agents, but he allowed it because only four men throughout the Air Guard would receive the rank (unless things were worse than Carter already noted). The four young men had proven quite capable in matters of internal security. The one thing Carter wasn’t able to fix was Jamieson’s squeamishness to body disposal, but the others, especially Austin, more than made up for the loss in effort. Still, Carter recognized that the big man would do what was necessary when he absolutely needed to, so he didn’t sweat the issue.

“What have you got for me?” he asked his second.

“We’ve got a working radio.”

“Are they talking?”

“Not right now, sir, but we caught a few phrases earlier…”

Houston repeated what he could remember. Carter recognized it as a severely broken Swahili mixed with some French and Portuguese. There was definitely an outside element involved, but he couldn’t begin to be clear on what it was. The phrases themselves were gibberish, but it sounded like whoever it was had attempted to make contact with the bandits they’d just wiped out. They would probably try to contact them again, but it was exceedingly doubtful.

“Alright, pack up everything and move. We have to get this stuff to our camp in Red Sands and hope we can figure out these fragments of map before it’s too late. Johnston!”

The sergeant turned to the Captain and raised his head as a show that he was paying attention.

“Form up and let’s move! We’re done here, unless you’ve got something else for me!”

“All clear!” the dark-skinned man replied, “You heard him, Corporals! Gather your fire teams and equipment and let’s move out!”

----------

Red Sands had proven to be a very gracious town to the Air Guard. After their previous work defending the village, the denizens were more than willing to let the group set up a base camp within their walls. The community itself had fortified with the materials from the destroyed camps and was now a powerful “junk town” that served as a hub for local trade. A few neighboring warlords eyed the community greedily, but now that it was not only watched over by the Libertalian government but was also a point of interest for the Air Guard and the United Nations, they steered well clear of it.

At least, they did. Carter didn’t like what he figured he’d puzzled out already. So far, it looked like somebody was orchestrating the regional bandits to make a concerted assault on the community. What would result would be a pitched battle, which would normally draw forces away from somewhere if the West Libertalian government was the only force involved out here.

At this point, his paranoia was going into overdrive, however. If they only expected the West Libertalians, then it had to be a local threat… Possibly someone from East Libertalia. The neighboring nation was hardly stable, and any one of the warlords there was cunning enough to come up with a plan like this to raid the West’s military stores. However, if it were local, they would still expect Red Sands to call the Air Guard when things started to look fishy.

So it begged the question: Why would somebody want the Air Guard to come out here? If that was the aim, who would do it and what did they intend to accomplish? It couldn’t be the Sky Raiders, they were still reeling from the loss of their Sky Ships and Nemesis was bearing down on them hard. However, Nemesis still had the resources to pull something like this. Still, Carter figured the Brass King had such a flair for the dramatic, he’d wait until he had his own airship to blast the Thunder Nimbus out of the sky.

He considered the Malta Group or the Council. West Libertalia did have wealthy diamond reserves, and both groups could make great use of them. Still, the Council was never one to be this underhanded, preferring to work their own espionage so as to avoid mistakes or treacherous third parties. The Malta Group would simply send in their agents to assassinate key shareholders to replace with their own.

“I’ll have to wait until I have more information,” he muttered as their seven-ton truck pulled into the village and stopped in front of their command tent, “For now, I’ll just shuffle these fragments into the cartography sensor and see what I can come up with.”

He caught Sergeant Johnston and told him to make sure his men got all the rest they could. He didn’t know when they’d be heading out, and it would probably be very soon. The sergeant nodded his agreement and instructed his men to fall out to the hotel once they’d checked their weapons to the armory tent.

The armory tent was a tent in name only. It was actually a titanium alloy bunker with Kevlar padding inside for shock absorption. Inside were several Kevlar-plated containers that held the weaponry they used from mission to mission. Staff Sergeant Hunter was a ruthlessly efficient armorer, and he ran a tight crew. When the Guardsmen had to fight, their weapons would work if Hunter had anything to do with it.

Some of the Guardsmen were still stoked from the fighting, so when Hunter informed them they had to clean their weapons before returning them, they took the opportunity to calm their nerves. Sergeant Johnston tried to remind the armorer that his troops needed rest, but the Staff Sergeant was quick to remind him and the other troops that they’d get just as much rest completing this relatively minor chore. In any case, he and his team wouldn’t be able to clean all of their weapons for them, so they would be better off doing the work themselves.

“Many hands make light work,” as the saying went.

Carter, however, made his way to the Intelligence tent. He had to determine what the map fragments he held had to do with the local area. He delivered it to the Cartographers and they informed him that they would have something within the hour. He hoped it wouldn’t be too late by then.

I suppose at this point I must intervene. You see, as entertaining as I find Richard’s progress through life, I must say he really is quite predictable. Exhilarating, but predictable. It’s like watching people get sucked into the void. You know they’re going to explode, or just flash-freeze in a still statue, but the end result is always the same: death.

Still, I needed Ransack (as he called himself) to serve a purpose. So, when Lord Recluse sent a squad to smash into the Zig and get a scan of the cells meant to hold him and the rest of the scum of the Earth, I added a little incentive to the pot. Fortunately, he also had the soldiers break some more freaks from the zoo, so the change of plans would remain unnoticed.

The two men who made it to the Lockdown had little clue as to what the prize I sent them to gather would do to them. If they had, they probably would have thrown my money back in my face and informed their superiors of my presence. It wouldn’t have done them any good to do so, but they would have tried to have the hounds sent after me. However, greed won out, as it tends to with these simple creatures (especially when I presented so much to them up front and promised twice more if they returned with my Richard) and they went blindly to the job.

The flight crew didn’t consider what it was that Ransack was picking his teeth with. How could they have known that he’d killed the soldiers, eaten them, and used the blade of one of their staffs to whittle down a bone?

Do you see what I mean? Entertaining, but ultimately predictable.

I was somewhat surprised that he was willing to sit patiently throughout the whole ride to the region called the Etoile Isles. I suppose it had something to do with the propensity of scantily-clad women in the Flier with him. While he has the urges of normal men, I felt that his conflict with real super-powered beings had somewhat softened him to the idea of dealing with them again.

Ah yes, the Etoile Isles… I have cousins in the area, but they’ve long-since let their “godhood” get to their proverbial heads and wound up bound in some way or another. Fortunately, we have others throughout the field…

…But I digress. As for my subject, Rick spent a few days learning the ins and outs of the renegade nation. He brushed a little close for comfort to the Themari chap, but moved on to his own ends to deliver some of his own brand of pain to the local rocket pack thuggery. I may have to deal with that other dark individual one day. He has potential, but it’s potential meant solely for himself, and not the greater work.

Within the span of a week I found him beating the ever-living snot out of one Vince Dubrowski. I have no idea what the perceived slight was, but when the crude vagrant was about to use the broken, bloated man for a lavatory, a full complement of Arachnos troops, led by one Operative Fulkerson, interrupted him and reminded him who the true power in the Isles was.

Certainly, the hit squad wasn’t powerful enough to stop him, not by any means, but Ghost Widow and her legions wouldn’t be far behind. After that, Black Scorpion, and Mako after that. Scirocco would have brought whole storms crashing down on his head and if it had to come to it, Recluse himself would have stopped my Ransack with as little effort as his lighter-side counterpart, but with all the fonts of unbridled power allowed to roam free throughout those islands, I doubt it would have come even close to that end. My word, the empowered denizens of that blighted place surprisingly band together to wipe out all sorts of extremely powerful creatures. They’d certainly do the same to this pitiful speck (which he certainly became in that moment).

Richard “Ransack Rick” Jordan turned himself in to the authorities, and Mr. Dubrowski still lives to this day (albeit, with a somewhat more wary eye toward the meta-humans). My subject has become a plaything for Recluse, and Recluse has already sent him on his assignments. However, he will always truly be mine, for I’m the one who gave him his power…

…As for who I am, well… You’ll have to wait for another day…

((I’m going to end this here… I didn’t realize what writing a character like this would do to me personally. I started feeling somewhat ill after writing just that last one and it’s not even a terribly explicit piece. Such monstrous characters truly sicken me, as I greatly dislike such a dissonance from basic humanity. Still, there you have it, my take on what evil is… It has a total disregard for not just society but humanity as a whole.

The next time you’ll see Rick will be in Grey’s Army, but it will be a while yet.

Also, I'd like to thank Samuel Tow for his style of writing in that Salvaged Meaning thread of his. It really helped me get a handle on the narrator of this piece, though my character has a more pointed purpose to his efforts, whereas his narrator is (at this point) simply an observer. However, it was the aloof nature that struck me, and it really helped me write this minor segment to explain Ransack's escape and proliferation without having to delve the recesses of my mind and dredge up the demons I do not wish to be.))

Ugh... I just finished writing up a chapter that I kind of wanted to write for a while.

Roland Grey finds himself teaming up with Mynx to search for Ms. Liberty, who's apparently been missing for the past week and a half!

Roland was walking to the Kings Row Yellow Line Tram Station when Mynx stopped him. Sarah had just got done explaining that their dad was finally out and about and ready to work through his funk. This, of course, was celebrated with a big dinner (that Charlene surprisingly cooked; but then, cooking was cathartic for her).

Unfortunately, everything they discussed was promptly torn from Round's mind when the red-headed catgirl appeared in front of him and shrieked in his face. Taking a step back, the hunter blinked and rubbed his ears as Mynx advanced on him, her claws popping in and out of her fingertips as she flexed her hands in and out of fists.

“Is there a problem,” he grumbled as he backed to a nearby doorway.

“Where is she?” the heroine shouted at him and when Roland shrugged, she followed up with “What did you do to her?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he finally replied, “Is this about Ms. Liberty? I haven’t seen her for… Huh, going on a month or so. Isn’t she training heroes over in Atlas Park, though?”

Mynx’s claws retracted back into her fingertips and she straightened her posture. This was good for Roland, as it meant she believed him and he had a bad feeling as to where conversations like this usually led; he was by no means prepared for a fight. He’d probably get a punch or two in, but she’d probably tear him to shreds, then sprint over to the hospital to tear him up some more. That being the case, he was glad she believed he was telling the truth.

“You can keep a secret, right?” she asked after peeking furtively up and down the street, “That’s not always us… It’s a little trick borrowed from Nemesis… Sometimes we place a ‘hard light’ hologram or a realistic automaton at our designated greeting post so we can go ahead and work throughout the city or the Rogue Isles… And we’ve had to leave Sidechick’s in Atlas Park for the last week and a half!”

“What made you think I had something to do with it, then?” Roland was shouting now, “What the Hell kinds of paranoid thoughts are rattling through that brain of yours when you think of me? What the Hell is the reason why you’re always so [ticked] off at me?”

“Where do you come off?” she shouted back, “I work with her! I’m by her side at the worst moments this city has seen! I’ve been through untold torment at the hands of the people plaguing this city! I’ve made a name for myself as a heroine! You? You’re just some slob she met at random one day and now…”

“What?” he asked when she seemed to just trail off.

“You must work magic in the sack, because you ain’t much to look at.”

The portly young man closed his eyes slowly with disappointment and shook his head. He was getting so very tired of this debacle.

“I thought we settled this…” he started to growl.

“Settled what? You two keep insisting that nothing is going on between the two of you, but every day she comes into the Vindicators base reeking of you, she’s suddenly acting so laid back, relaxed and,” she seemed to bite her lower lip as she folded her arms over her belly, “…Happy."

“There are other means to that end. Does this look like the face of somebody who’s been that lucky?”

“Could be. You said you haven’t seen her in a month.”

Roland just shook his head at the catgirl and started walking away. He didn’t have time for this and he wasn’t going to let it bog him down. If Ms. Liberty were missing, it was probably one of three groups involved: Arachnos, Nemesis, or the Malta Group. Of the three of them, his family and friends had ticked off the Malta Group the least. Members of Arachnos had informed Roland personally that Recluse had his father in mind because of that stunt he pulled to get Sheldon back. The worst they’d dealt with Nemesis, however, was a series of odd Fakes that all thought they were the real deal.

Frankly, Roland would have preferred just leaving the score card at that. They had one megalomaniac after them, and, in all likelihood, he’d lose interest when more important people became involved in his games. However, that didn’t mean he was going to just sit still and let his friend be tormented while he knew something was wrong.

As he boarded the car, he felt a hand grip his shoulder and he looked back to see Mynx following him. It was then that he noticed she was wearing more of a street-attire outfit rather than her classic striped spandex (which he wondered at, personally; Kip often mentioned it had fur, and she seemed to have a thin layer of the stuff on her exposed “skin” as it was). He also realized he’d only recognized her because he’d been close enough to get a good look at her face.

“So you’re following me now?”

“We’re not finished, boy-toy.”

“You call me that again,” he growled, “I will drill you into the [fricking] wall.”

Mynx was about to say something more, but apparently thought better of it. Instead, she just smirked at him and he could see her tail twitching behind her.

Damn, he thought to himself, Now she knows she bothered me.

They remained silent for the train ride to Atlas Park. It was a long time to be quiet. Roland was wondering how the heck anybody ever thought this was actually a quick way to travel when they arrived at the Atlas Park station. He figured it was just the fact that the heroes on the go always had something to do, and filling that time with planning always seemed to make the trip go by faster.

He was out in the parking lot and entering his jeep when Mynx finally said something.

“Why are you driving when you could just hop to your apartment?”

“Because I don’t take my equipment everywhere I go,” he barked back, “I have a life outside being a ‘caped crusader.’ I don’t even have a cape! I’m hardly a crusader! I have a few patrols I do the rounds on, then I go back to my apartment to get berated by the tenants because I’m the superintendent and they all did something horrible to their walls, their plumbing, and sometimes even their windows. Now, I can’t go carrying all the stuff I need for that job with me on just my back, unlike some heroes. I’m not super strong, I’m not super anything. I need my jeep to get about with my supplies, and I’m not going to be wearing those [fricking] leggings when I drive!”

“You don’t need to yell,” she smirked dismissively again and started trying to open the passenger door, “Um… Would you unlock this, please?”

“Why? You coming with me? Why ride in my jeep when you could ‘just hop over’ to my apartment?”

“Don’t be a smart[butt], just let me in!”

----------

“Look, Roland, I don’t hate you and I’m not irritated by you…”

“You have a funny way of showing it…”

“Much,” Mynx continued, “But you need to understand where I’m coming from. I’m Ms. Liberty’s friend. I’m one of her many close friends. I should be someone she comes to when she’s having trouble! You… You’re just some schmuck.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” he agreed, “But take it this way… She talks to any of you about problems she’s having with any of you, and that’ll drive a wedge into the group. That’s the last thing you need at this point in your careers, what with all the different people plaguing this city.”

Mynx glared at him for a few seconds.

“Hey, they’re your words, not mine.”

“So that’s what you do for her, huh?” she asked after a few minutes at a red light and a sixteen-wheeler was trying to turn, “You let her vent and try to help her see things another way?”

“Yep, that’s me. Ms. Liberty’s personal worry sponge. Just dump your sorrows and wake up refreshed tomorrow.”

“What does she do for you?”

“What?”

Mynx quirked an eyebrow at him and smirked again.

“What,” she rested her head in the palm of her hand, “does she do for you?”

“Nothing, I guess…” he muttered, “Not that I can see, anyway. Frankly, being her friend has made my life more difficult. But then, that’s true of my other friend, too, so frankly it’s going par for the course.”

“Bull. She has to be doing something with you. Guys don’t put up with-“

“You’d be amazed what I’m able to put up with, cat.”

Mynx stared at him for the rest of the trip. When they arrived at his apartment, she was wondering what the fat man’s angle was.

“Why are you following me, anyway?” he asked as they walked up the stairs.

“I want to see what it is about your apartment that has her so entranced.”

“It’s my couch,” he replied, “Hellions usually burn everything they get their hands on. They’re fascinated with fire. But this couch… One of the first cells I busted up while I was investigating whether or not my mother was still alive had this couch. The boss refused to burn it, he even pleaded with me to try to let him keep it in the slammer; that’s the effect it had on him. When I dropped it by MAGI, a clerk there told me it had a rare enchantment on it to make it more comfortable. A friend of mine tried the same trick on another couch, his own furniture, and my bed. He had varying success.”

“So…” she seemed disappointed, “Your couch?”

“Look, when… You know her real name, right? I feel silly calling her by a moniker.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, when Megan drops by, she actually uses my furniture. I know for a fact she dropped by a couple times while she was dating one guy or another just so she could decompress all the weird crap in her life. I suppose when she smelled of the other guys, it wasn’t as strong as me because either, ‘A,’ she didn’t use their furniture for nearly as long or, ‘B,’ the other guys didn’t use their furniture. People have a nasty habit of not living in their homes, after all. They just use them as places to keep their stuff.”

As they walked into his apartment, he gestured to the couch. After a couple years of use, it didn’t look like much. There wasn’t much that made it look too different from all the other brown couches out there. Still, the enchantment on it seemed to have done wonders for its longevity, because it didn’t look to be in too bad shape, either.

While Roland went into his bedroom to retrieve his bow and other equipment, Mynx took a moment to inspect the seat. Pressing it with her hands didn’t do much to persuade her of what he was talking about, so she actually sat down. At first, she didn’t notice any difference between it and other couches, just like her visual inspection indicated. However, when Roland returned, she had completely rolled over so she could rub her whole back on the plush surface.

“It feels like my bones are repositioning,” she purred, “In a good way… Like a massage…”

“Yeah. You know, Meg actually was berating me until she sat in that thing.”

This elicited a chuckle from the catgirl and she reluctantly pushed herself up. Roland offered her a sandwich made from some leftover roast beef. She shook her head and he shrugged as he made himself one for the road.

“You fell into helping me on this pretty quick,” she muttered as they were on their way out.

“My friend’s in trouble,” he replied between chews, “I thought that was the whole reason why you shrieked at me earlier.”

Without anything to really go on, they followed the trail of people in the know throughout Paragon City. A few gave some unusual looks at Mynx, as she never seemed to be the sort of heroine to take on a sidekick. Roland also seemed the last sort of person to be a sidekick to Mynx (most bets were placed on any number of other catgirls or few catmen throughout the city). Eventually, they were directed to Anton Sampson, who had informed others that he was looking for some heroes to investigate some unusual Nemesis activity.

He pointed them in the direction of the portion of the city known as the Abandoned Sewers. Mynx bristled at the idea of going down there, and Roland wasn’t too keen on heading into a city’s waste disposal system that had its lack of attention and maintenance advertised, but they really didn’t have much of a choice.

“Roland, I’m sure you’ve been to Perez Park and have seen those hideous monsters that swim in the lake…”

“Yeah. There’s more down there?”

“Yeah… And they’re bigger.”

“Fantastic,” he grumbled as he started drumming his fingers on his quiver, “So, fire and lots of it?”

The Hydra Men weren’t the only problems that deep under the sewers. There were also Rikti and Circle of Thorns minions lurking behind every corner. Mynx carefully picked their path and anything they couldn’t sneak around, Roland was pretty good at blinding with arrows that made a bright flash along with a startling bang.

Eventually, they found the lair of the Nemesis troops Sampson said were behaving strangely. In this case, it seemed that an entire Nemesis cell had stopped communicating with its “neighbor” cells, and the rest of the Army was plotting to go in and wipe out the renegades. Sampson wanted to know what the problem was before Nemesis wiped it out, and Mynx was hoping this anomalous behavior was indicative of her friend’s presence.

They crept into the section of abandoned sewer and eased past the sentries. Something had to have been going on, because the guards weren’t being terribly alert. All attention seemed to be centered on a platform in the center of a very deep pit. It was as if the floors had rotted out of this section, leaving a few scant scaffoldings, exposed pipes and a lot of green sludge flowing into the bottomless depths below. Everything was lit by hanging construction lights and powered by some sort of odd “steam-tech” generator. Roland noticed that it was surprisingly quiet for a generator and wondered if he could snag it on the way out.

Mynx brought his attention back to the central platform, however, and what he saw there made his heart fall. It looked to be a Fake Nemesis standing before a modified Warhulk that was holding up someone.

“It’s her,” he murmured, “Got a plan?”

“Not one that doesn’t involve all of these guys raining bullets on us,” Mynx replied, “At least… I think we could work on knocking everyone else here out of commission before Nuts ‘N Bolts, over there, realizes that we’re here… Nothing flashy, boy-toy.”

Biting back an angry retort, Grey followed her as she leaped from pipe to pipe. As she reached the soldiers, she would perform a quick trip attack and send the men hurtling to the depths. A few would be able to avoid her initial strikes, and he silenced them for her with a freezing arrow or an aimed shot that would break open their suit’s pipes. Some yelled, but they were hardly ever loud enough to shout over the roar of the effluence flowing into the pit with them. Fortunately for them, they were often landing on the pipes and not in the foulness below.

“Good thing there’s already crap coming out of that,” the hunter commented to the catgirl when one soldier landed a little close for comfort, “Too much for any noise to come out, anyway.”

“Stop!”

The voice resounded through the pit, and they both turned to the center. The Fake Nemesis was staring at Mynx. Her bright hair stood out against the junk and it had just happened to look in their direction. Soldiers were trying to see what their leader had found and some that noticed her presence were readying their weapons.

However, the Fake Nemesis waved his troops down.

“Come here, my precious precocious feline,” the brass machine bellowed, “And bring your friend, too.”

“I came alone,” she replied as she stepped to the edge of the pipe, “I’m here for-“

“I know why you’re here. You want her back. Now, do not presume me a fool, kitten, for I know you had assistance. Step forward, please.”

“There’s nobody back there.”

The machine seemed to sigh as it held its face in its hand. Without looking up, the Fake waved for the Warhulk to step forward. It walked up and presented the struggling Ms. Liberty to Mynx. With her arms clamped in the monstrous war machine’s clawed hands and extended away from its body, the Vindicators leader was unable to utilize her martial skills Roland could see the heroine panic for a moment and decided it was time to get it over with.

“Alright… Alright…” he shouted as he revealed himself from behind an elbow of pipe, “Let her alone.”

----------

They were brought before the two large machines. Mynx refused to be led by the arm, and a couple soldiers found the pipes and hoses still slashed for their trouble. Roland, however, had no problem either way, and let the soldiers take him along as they saw fit. They took his bow, but left him his quiver since it was empty. Mynx, however, kept her claws, as they were a part of her. One soldier took their communications equipment, however, and Roland was hoping they wouldn’t notice the yellow light showing that Nester was trying to call him.

It was expensive getting those communicators replaced and this Fake would probably break it if it got the inkling that it should.

Now that they were closer, they could see that Ms. Liberty was, for most intents and purposes, relatively alright. Her Girdle of Hera was still on, which meant that either nobody else knew where she got her powers from (indeed, it was a rather generic-looking article of clothing), or the soldiers were unable to remove it. For a brief moment, Mynx wondered if Roland knew about that.

Once they were all situated, the Fake waved the soldiers back to the entrance. They had to keep their senses sharp, especially now that so many were incapacitated.

“I hope you have a plan,” the catgirl hissed to Roland, “Her life’s in your hands!”

“Oh, kitten, don’t be droll,” the big machine chortled as they stood before it, “I fully intend to return your darling damsel of danger the moment the Phalanx pays the ransom for her. If I am to fund my criminal empire, I’m going to need significant capital.”

The two looked to each other, perplexity evident on their faces, but they let the machine rant on.

“Now, however, I might get a significantly larger amount, so long as the two of you play nice. I already know who you are, my pretty little Mynx… However, I’m not familiar with the company you keep…”

The Fake leaned in close to Roland and looked into his eyes.

“Who might you be?”

“Roland Grey.”

“Grey? Really?”

“I’m not related to the woman in charge of Vanguard!” the hunter almost shouted, “It’s just a coincidence! She’s not gonna shell out money for me.”

“Hm…” again, the Fake mimicked human behavior by stroking its chin, “Just a hair’s breadth away from destiny, eh?”

“And yet, I still seem to suffer for it.”

“Nemesis,” Liberty muttered, “if I get free from this, I swear to God! I’m going to punt your head into that crap!”

Roland looked over at the communicator in the hands of the one remaining guard. The blinking light hadn’t stopped. In fact, the message screen indicated that more people were trying to get in touch with him.

That’s not good, he mused, Soon, Dad’s gonna come tearing down here… Jebus… I wonder if he’ll just belly flop his way down-OH!

The Fake seemed to notice his eyes widen at the communicator, and walked over to snatch it from the soldier. Peering at the screen, the big machine seemed to be a little confused before it finally turned to Roland and asked a question. Roland, however, was more concerned with reaching his hand into his quiver and withdrawing something to help them. Not a lot of people knew that his quiver tapped into a rented section of space that was practically filled with arrows of various types that his friend Sheldon developed and tossed in there. He just hoped he had enough time to pull this stunt off.

“This Randy… Your brother?”

“Father.”

“Ah… I should have figured… He seems old, but the hair… Only recently gray? He simply must be a meta… Kipland…”

The machine turned to the portly young man. Its posture made it look like it was looking at him for the first time. Mynx turned to Roland, too, wondering what the whole change in attitude was about.

“I know who you are, now,” the machine said, its voice tinged with wonder.

“Oh no,” Roland grumbled, “Please… Not one of you guys…”

“Yes… You and your brutish group are responsible for the destruction of my brethren!”

“No…” he felt the bomb in his hand and had to force himself not to smile, “Not that… Which one are you?”

“Three, actually,” the machine seemed to beam with pride, “I say… What should I do with you?”

“I’m sorry,” Mynx raised her hand to interrupt them, “What the Hell are you talking about?”

“Oh, nothing too impacting,” the Fake replied nonchalantly, “I’m just one of the first ten Nemeses… Any one of us could be the real one… Me, I’m more practical. I already figure that I’m not the real Nemesis, but that’s not going to stop me from carving my own empire out of those who’ve spurned me…”

“Wait…” Grey waved with his free hand as he shuffled his quiver and concealed grenade behind himself, “Wait… Kip said you’re already dead…”

He was trying to unscrew the grenade from its arrow. If he still had the arrow on it, it could mess up his trajectory.

“Oh that… Yes… Well… Whomever told him that was probably thinking about another Nemesis…”

“Bull[crap]!” Roland shouted as he felt the arrow pop off the grenade, “I am so sick of that excuse! When will you bastards die!?”

“Haven’t you heard?” the machine was finding the whole situation immensely amusing, “Nemesis is forever!”

“Not quite forever,” Mynx muttered as she looked over to Roland, desperation about to force her to act.

Then she saw him apparently scratching his butt.

“What do you think you’re-?”

Roland pulled the grenade from the quiver and tossed it between the legs of the Fake. Nemesis Three looked down, but shrugged when he saw that the weapon had passed harmlessly away.

“What was that supposed to-“ the explosion interrupted it, and the Fake looked back to see what happened, “…Do? Oh no… This won’t do at all.”

The Warhulk and its prisoner had been knocked over. Ms. Liberty started kicking hard into the top of the machine to escape. With very little effort, she had torn herself free of one claw and broken the modified one off its arm. Then, before it could explode, she gave it one good, hard shove and the large mass rattled over the side of the platform.

“Indeed,” Megan hissed, “Your head is still attached to your shoulders. This will not do at all!”

The big machine started to draw its staff to defend itself, but it was too late. Ms. Liberty had been planning this for some time, and she wasted no more of it getting in close and drop-kicking Nemesis Three in the face. It didn’t exactly knock its head off, but it did stumble back. When she landed, she delivered a hard side-kick into its belly, and this sent it toppling over the edge. However, it was able to grab a hold of the side of the platform and stay aloft.

Roland pulled another device from his quiver and flicked it on. A loud hum reverberated around them and he nodded to Mynx. Smiling, she crawled over and raked her claws through the exposed fingers of the Fake Nemesis, sending it screaming into the filthy depths before it could bring its staff up to bare again and take any of them off the platform with it.

“What are you guys doing here?” Liberty asked the other two, “I mean, Mynx, or… Roland? Okay, I expected Mynx, but… Roland?”

“Coincidence,” the pudgy man sighed, “Mynx thought-“

“I thought Roland might have some leads on your disappearance, too,” the catgirl interrupted, “I asked him to help, and he wanted to make sure you were okay when his resources were exhausted.”

Roland shook his head. Ms. Liberty nodded, knowing that she’d get the real story from one or the other. She turned to Grey and gestured over the side.

“What’s your deal with him? How do you know his story?”

“Kip’s taken one out… The guy who makes my arrows took down another. Nemesix and Nemenine. Weird machines… The first one was wholly convinced it was the real Nemesis, the second was a depressed psychotic when it realized it wasn’t. They’re some messed up machines… And we thought there were only a few. Hopefully, that was the last.”

“Hopefully,” Ms. Liberty almost shuddered, “I don’t think I like the idea of a desperate Nemesis. They do some crazy things when they’re backed into a corner.”

Then she collapsed. Mynx and Roland both went to help her up, but she waved them both away.

“Come on, Sidechick,” the redhead muttered, “I know it’s just a crash, but let me help you!”

Ms. Liberty looked up weakly to her friends and nodded. While Mynx fished her boss’s arm around her neck and over her shoulders, Roland picked up his communicator and started keying up and Ouroboros Portal. Mynx led her exhausted friend through the golden aperture, pausing briefly to get her communicator from Roland. When they were gone, he took a moment to look around.

Despite the fact that he was alone, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched. He looked to the hole in the wall to see if any of the soldiers were staring at him, but they were conspicuously absent. Seeing the portal start to flicker, he decided not to dwell on it too much longer and walked through the portal.

Status Reports
Star Strider Force
Name: Randall Grey
Global Contact: @Mr Grey
Reporting on Assignment: Protector
Level of Alien Threat: [High]

Report Details:

When the Rikti forces deployed in the city, I set myself up on the Kings Row Crowne Memorial Hospital. Specifically, on the roof. Other heroes took the ground. Me? I took the blaster cannons to the face and chest so they wouldn't have to.

Analysis of Current Situation:

Despite the previous battles with the Rikti and the ongoing efforts against Hro'Dtohz and the Honoree in the Rikti War Zone, the bombing runs are just as methodical and destructive as they ever were. I guess we could at least consider the fact that they're not worse to be some form of victory, but that would be accepting of too little.

Suggestion of Action:

Frankly, I believe the time has come to take the battle to the enemy. I know that the Rikti are merely one of many problems currently plaguing our world, but we hold within our hands the means to finally end this conflict, once and for all. With the Traditionalists on our side, we could move into the Rikti homeworld and convince them of their error.

Otherwise, we'll have to keep on with our current plans, simply weathering the storm of bombs and raiders. As we go on with it, innocent people are going to die and their families are going to blame us for not taking care of it.