Mr_Grey

Added a short chapter to Grey's Army.

It sort of continues where the one portion left off in Cimerora. This scenario takes place after Romulus has been defeated by as-yet unrevealed (likely never-to-be revealed) heroes and rogues, and Power Breaker is showing characters around.

I included Abrahms' character for a spell again. I figured that, as a loyal reader, he'd get a kick out of showing up a couple times.

"...So, that's the state of things since a group of heroes and rogues took down Romulus," Power Breaker finished as he punched a Cimeroran Rebel Surgeon into submission, "The rebels keep fighting because others in their leadership have assumed control and it's just proving difficult to push them out of the surrounding mountains so we can clear out certain... Items."

"What items?" Kip asked as the weak punches of the soldier under his choking grasp faded, "What are you talking about?"

"There's..." the Brute grimaced, "Look, I'm not one of the guys at liberty to say, so I'll just leave it that there are rumors of the Fifth Column out here and some kind of facility they set up."

"The Fifth Column?" M. I. Abrahms shouted, "I'd heard rumors myself, but... Really? Could they really be out there?"

Power Breaker's eyes rolled and he eventually nodded.

"Their numbers have gone way down since their boss fled through time to escape the group that laid the smackdown on him, but there are a few still out there trying to remove the evidence of their involvement."

"And everybody else?" Nester asked as he scattered out nanites to patch up their wounded, "What are the heroes and rogues still doing out here?"

"Magic trinkets!" Harris chortled as he held up a wriggling tentacle, "This place is like a gold mine of things like gems, crystals, ghostly crap and stuff like this regenerating flesh!"

"Ew..."

They continued their patrol down the beach and Power Breaker explained that as certain knowledgeable individuals tried to puzzle out the ominous messages of the mysterious "Letter Writer" that had thus far confounded the Menders and the Midnight Squad, other meta humans continued to try to help pacify the rebels or profit from the magic items they often found littering the area. He, however, preferred the tranquility. Here, the nanites in his body couldn't reach out for the Internet, though there was an unusual resonance they were catching that enabled him to communicate over distances, but he was certain things would be fine.

"Nothing ever stays fine in this world, Ray," Cedric corrected him, "I doubt it stays fine in any world."

"You've got a point there, buddy. Well, here we are."

The entrance to a cavern loomed before them. The collected heroes and rogue appraised it and determined it was like most of the other caves they'd already seen.

"Marcus Valerius thinks there might be a rebel General and his troops in here," Breaker explained, "I think it might be a good idea to clear it out... I mean, it would be a nice thing to do..."

"Heh, a guy from the Isles talking about doing something nice," Abrahms chuckled, "It's not quite everything, but it's getting there."

Yeah, for writing (and most things), practice makes perfect. Heck, take a look at my Grey's Army thread. I've been using that to chisel at my skills since it started.

Ugh... When I think about how much I want to delete that first post...

Of course, because of how forums work, that would probably delete the whole thread.

I have one thing to note...

The Restructurist Faction is the Rikti group opposing the Traditionalists, not the Reconstructionists.

New Grey's Army. Zeke has some trouble involving Catherine, his ex-wife/current girlfriend.

Zeke ran through the motions of his morning routine. It felt good to be able to take his time every so often. These little breaks in the action were good for a body, and the improvements in his home life were good for the soul.

Androm saw things differently, though. He saw all of this relaxation and the lulls in conflict as time when the enemy was gaining the advantage.

"Peace to the Nictus is just time to reload their weapons..."

"I'm not going to let that bother me," Zeke thought back as he washed the traces of shaving foam from his face, "I'm not a soldier, Geizzer. I'm a carpenter."

"Or they're building new ones..."

Zeke shook his head as he decided to make breakfast. He wasn't about to allow Androm's paranoid notions ruin his day off. He passed by his bed on the way to the kitchen and saw his ex-wife was just waking. Catherine still looked like an angel after all these years.

"I'm going to make pancakes," he told her, "Is that alright?"

"Yeah," she replied as the cellphone in her pants on the nearby chair started beeping, "What? Who could be calling me now?"

"I'll see you in a little bit, then, hon."

He was finishing the first of the flapjacks when she asked if it was alright if she opened the window. He gave her the affirmative and slapped the pancakes onto a plate. After applying butter and syrup and admiring the classic appearance, he set the plate on a bed tray and started heading for the bedroom.

When he got there, he was surprised at what he found. Catherine was clad in her pants and a sports bra, and there was a sword in her right hand. Her left hand held a small crossbow and she was pointing it at him.

"I'm sorry," she whispered before the bolt was launched at him, impacting with the door frame.

"What the Hell!?" Zeke shouted as he tossed the tray away and dove for the bathroom, "Cath! What are you doing?"

"She's trying to kill you, obviously. This is kind of disappointing... I expected better..."

"Zeke, please don't make this harder than it already is..." she said somberly, her voice cracking a little with emotion, "I didn't want it to come to this, but I don't have a choice..."

"Come to what?" Zeke pushed himself back to the bathroom as she paced carefully toward him with her sword, "Cath, I've seen weapons like that before... Tell me... Tell me you're not with the Knives..."

"They saved me after the War, Zeke..." her eyes were moist with tears, "They taught me how to be strong..."

"And what does that have to do with killing me?"

"Nothing... But..." she paused as he wriggled into the bathroom, "But I have my orders."

Zeke shut the door and took a breather. Knowing she could still hear him, he shouted out to her.

"Cath, in a second, I'm going to come back out there. Now, you can either calm down and we can discuss this, or you can be out that window and we'll deal with this some other time."

"Talk about this!? Talk about THIS!?" she shouted back, "This isn't you losing your job or me sleeping with another man... I've been ordered to [frick]ing kill you, Zeke... And if I don't..."

The door splintered apart in a black-purple explosion. The force of the blast threw Catherine across the room and slammed her against the wall, smashing her crossbow to bits and stabbing her sword into the faux-wood paneling. She wound up collapsing back onto the bed, and when she looked up, she saw what made her husband a hero and a target of the Sisterhood.

A roiling dark mass of black and purple haze stood in what used to be the bathroom doorway. A pair of glowing white eyes glowered down at her from where Zeke's head would have been, and tendrils of haze seemed to emit from the bright eyes.

"I was afraid you'd say something like that," a strange, deep, hollow and resonating voice issued forth from the haze, "I was hoping things would turn out better, for Zeke's sake, for yours... Now... Now we fight."

"What the hell are you!?" Catherine screamed before bounding up and wrenching her sword from the wall, "Where's my husband!?"

"Ex-husband," the voice replied, then switched back to Zeke's voice, "Oh, I'm still here, hon. I just let Androm say some things because I felt it would be pretty dramatic. And it was."

The Warshade's voice chuckled as Catherine bounded for the door. She hadn't understood why the Sisters had told her to kill Ezekiel before, but she understood now. He was a monster or something... Probably had been since she'd hooked up with him under the orders of the Knives of Artemis a little under two years ago.

"Where do you think you're going?" Zeke shouted as she bounded down the fire escape, "I thought you wanted to finish this!"

"Get away from me!" she shouted back, "Leave me alone!"

"You started this, though!" the smoke-like haze drew back into Zeke's body and his humanity was restored as he yelled down to her during the pursuit, "Cath, whatever this is about, we can talk about this. We don't have to fight now or later, we can-WOAH!"

Another bolt streaked through the air and collided with the fire escape's supports. It ricocheted and stuck into a wall next to Zeke's head. He looked across the street to see a pair of green-clad Knives on the roof of the opposite building. Apparently, the success of the mission was paramount.

"Not wise to stay out in the open," Androm muttered, "Not when I can do this..."

Zeke reached back like he was hurling a soccer ball. An orb of dark energy coalesced in his hands and he threw the blast at the two women. A dark explosion erupted between them, exploding laterally instead of spherically, and sent the girls flying to the street below.

they were able to slow their descents with acrobatic maneuvers off of lamp posts and clotheslines, but in the end, they hit the ground hard. Zeke made it to the ground rapidly as well, but it was because of the peculiar dimensional warping his Warshade enabled him to do. He was at the ground, waiting for Catherine by the time she made it to the end of the fire escape.

Her reaction, however, was decidedly violent as opposed to surprised. She screamed and took a few swipes at him with her katana. Zeke ducked and tried to avoid the assault, but was more than thankful that the shields that wrapped around him in a protective orb were able to soak up most of the damage.

"Catherine, stop!" he shouted, "I know how this must look to you, but I am still the man you knew! I'm still the man you loved, walked out on, then came back to! This... This thing is a part of me, too, but it is not what you've been living with this past year. It's not who you're trying to kill! Which you can't, by the way. Not with such crude methods..."

Get down!" he heard a young man shout before he was tackled to the ground.

A peculiar energy blast slammed into a nearby dumpster, pushing it back a few feet. It would have hit Zeke, and from the sensation he was getting from just the wake of it, he knew what the round was.

A quantum round.

Rolling and looking over the head of his would-be savior, he saw the young woman with one of the aggravating weapons on the rooftop he'd just blasted her friends off. Cursing, he pushed the man who'd tackled him aside and rolled away from another blast before planting himself against the far wall of the alley.

"Looks like your friends knew who and what I was, though," he told Catherine, "Makes ya wonder, doesn't it? Why didn't they give you that gun, huh? You could have sniped me from a rooftop, too..."

"Zeke, stop!" Catherine staggered into the side of the dumpster, "Please..."

"You'd never have to talk to me..." he continued.

"Stop..."

"Never have to care."

"STOP IT!"

"Guys!" the young man pulled a pistol from under the left breast of his jacket, "Could we finish this spat later! Snuffy! I need some help!"

Joe fired a few rounds of his pistol at the young woman with the quantum rifle. A crossbow bolt spiked into the ground next to him and he fired a few more rounds at the other two that had finally recovered from their plummet from the other apartment building's roof.

"Hey there," Zeke chortled to the cop, "How's the marriage going? Catherine, you remember Joe, right?"

"Hi..." she muttered to him.

"We met at the wedding," Durnan rolled back deeper into the alley, "Mind telling me why you've got a sword and you and Mr. Durj were trying to kill each other?"

"Zeke would never do such a thing, boy. In fact, he never attacked her... He hit a door upstairs and she wound up thrown across the room from the blast, but that was about it. He hasn't done anything to directly harm her..."

Joe glared at the two, focusing first on Zeke, then on Catherine, then back to Zeke. A crossbow bolt slammed into his knee, but bounced off nearly harmlessly.

"Ow! Dammit!" he shouted as he started firing back at the Knives that were approaching, "Can't! You! See! I'm trying! To! Handle! A domestic! Disturbance!?"

The two advancing women ducked and dove out of the way, barely dodging past an oncoming car that swerved and squealed as its driver tried to get out of the firefight. Finally, a beam of energy hit Joe and he rolled away, grunting from the awkward pain of being hit with a quantum round.

"Joe!" Sarah screamed from nearby, "Why you sonova..."

There was the sound of another woman screaming and a sickening splat. Zeke heard the twang of a pair of crossbows as the other two women started shooting at the out-of-view psychic. The bolts bounced back harmlessly, though.

"You really think you can take on a psychic?" the white-haired girl shouted as she came into view, grappling with one of the mercenaries, "You really think you can take me on!? Come on! Show this country girl what you've got!"

The other woman tried to take a swipe at Sarah, but she ducked the punch. This was just a diversion, however, and the mercenary tried to sweep the heroine's legs from underneath her, but Sarah braced her leg fast to the ground and her opponent's foot stopped at her heel.

Without saying anything else, the white-haired girl ducked down, slammed her shoulder into the abdomen of the mercenary, lifted her up and slammed the green-clad woman's back to the cement.

"Woah," the other girl replied, "I... Uh... Bye."

The mercenary ran off and Sarah, growling and cursing under her breath, walked over to Joe and helped him back up. She looked him over and nodded, knowing that the buffer she'd placed on him had resisted even the quantum round.

"Good thing it didn't hurt your jacket," she said as she dusted him off, "I hope you didn't mind the music."

"It's fine, babe. I love the Beatles..."

"What was happening here?" she asked after they hugged, "Mrs. Durj? Why are you dressed like that? Why do you have a sword?"

Zeke and Joe turned back to the woman, and she took a few steps back.

"Well?" Zeke asked, "What's going on, Cath?"

"I-" she shook a little and stumbled away a little more, "I gotta go!"

And with that, she ran off. Zeke turned to Sarah and Joe and shrugged.

"Oh my God," Joe whispered, "Zeke... Is she... Was she with them?"

He gestured at the unconscious woman groaning on the sidewalk. Sarah was busy placing a police drone beacon on her.

"Something like that," Zeke replied, "What were you two doing here?"

"We were coming to invite you to lunch," Snuffy replied sadly, "What happened?"

"I'll explain some other time..." Zeke muttered just as sadly, "If you don't mind, I think I'll hang out with you two for a while. Just let me go get a new shirt and my jacket..."

Kind of. I intended for Abe to be there. Hence my reaction to your question earlier...

Alright, I'm somewhat back into the flow...

I've posted another chapter for Grey's Army. The characters are finally getting into the Midnight Squad.

"Okay, let's try this again," Roland growled as he and Kip got into his jeep, "We already lost a week because of those shenanigans with Levi and the Order..."

"You know we're taking responsibility for that?" Kip asked.

"For what?"

"That new crater they put into the Folly. Freedom Corps linked them with Grey's Army and we decided that since they work with us anyway, we'll just assume the responsibility. Crey sent your dad a bill for the reconstruction."

"That's all they've got?" the portly hunter asked as he started the engine, "Jebus. Sounds like someone's ticked about all the 'Paragon Protectors' he smashed through various walls and ceilings."

"Well, they could do a lot of things, but they know it's excessively unwise to upset people like Randy. Heck, he stomped another hole out there in defiance. I think his words were..."

"Looks the same," Roland nodded.

"So..." Kip wiped his hand over the dashboard and ran his fingers along the door seams, "Matt did a good job patching this thing together, huh?"

"Well, he had that Lou guy helping. He said the only thing he couldn't get out of Boomtown was a decent windshield. That cost me 'G', but otherwise the jeep's in tip-top shape."

Kip looked incredulously at his friend.

"A 'G'!??"

"Well... I figured, since it's a crazy world..."

"What?"

Roland smiled and patted the dash in front of his steering wheel.

"Good thing I had a diesel packed into this baby. I had Matt put a little extra plating into this baby... The windshield is bullet proof glass, too. Up next, I'm going to try to get a reinforced bike rack for the front, but I'm really going to utilize it as a ram."

"Like a cop car?"

"Yeah."

Roland glanced at Kip. He expected his friend to like the fact that he was starting to get into the whole notion about being a hero, but the incredulous look on the younger man's face was not the desired reaction.

"Oh, come on!" he shouted as he put his view back toward the road, "First, everybody's harping on me because I'm not taking this seriously. Now everybody's getting scared because I'm taking this seriously!"

"I think you need to stop seeing her, Roland," Kip intoned, "She's muddling up your brain, making you feed into all this crap!"

"You feed into all of this crap!"

"This life was thrust upon me, Roland! It was thrust upon your father, your mother... I think people who seek this work, like Cedric and Matt, are sick in the head! Why would anybody want to be shot at, stabbed, slashed or burned!?"

"You're wrong, little man. She has nothing to do with this. In fact, I haven't even seen her in the past week or so. No... What brought me to this decision was what happened last time I was driving."

"Yeah, but that was a B.W.O. thing," Kip shrugged in confusion, "They weren't after you..."

"Precisely. They weren't, yet I wound up suffering anyway. You wound up having to finish Levi's fight. It served as a lesson for me."

"Which is?"

"It doesn't matter what I choose to do, there are others out there who pose a threat to everything I hold dear. Regardless of my belief, they will cut me down, either deliberately or in the crossfire."

"And last week it was almost the crossfire," Kip nodded, "I had that happen to me a couple times when I was climbing through the ranks. The Malta Group, for instance, would be tearing down the street, shooting down every hero that moved just to cover the fact that they were after some other guy... Often that other guy was long gone by the time they arrived, too."

"That's crazy..."

They stopped outside a building in Skyway City and Roland plugged a few numbers into his communicator. Shortly thereafter, Kip's older brother showed up, hovering down from above. Fortunately, he was dressed in his "official" attire, and not some sort of bizarre angelic ensemble.

"Get in the car, you hanyak!" Roland shouted out his window, "Cripes, we're a week late a and he's playing around!"

"The Squad has patience," a deep, breathy voice said from behind them.

Roland and Kip whirled around to see their group's wizard sitting patiently in the rear seat. He was dressed in his "black and gold" formal robe and his eyes had a pleasing shine to them.

"Jebus, Cory," Kip muttered as he resumed his seat, "You about gave me a damn heart attack..."

Nester took the other rear seat, then leaned out the window to wave to Mindy. She blew him a kiss, then tapped the side of her head and he nodded before pulling himself back into the jeep.

"Guys! Misty's gonna be having her kid this week!" he almost shouted, "Just so you know..."

"Oh man," Kip almost gasped as he remembered his newest brother and his wife, "Good lord, how long has it been since she got pregnant?"

"Comic book nine months, I guess," Roland replied.

"Actually, it's something of an anomaly," Nester mused, "See... Normally, the gestation period for a human female is around nine months. However, Misty seemed to take forever... After that psychic incident over at your place, Kip, I'm positing that our new nephew's extended time in development was because of his awakened psychic abilities."

"That's unusual," Cory mused, "I wonder if that makes the child a mutant or a natural psychic..."

"Most of the doctors are leaning toward the first option."

"And what do you think?"

"I'd throw my vote in for natural. The only thing that links Aaron or Misty to anything remotely psychic is..."

The jeep suddenly got deathly quiet, save for the sounds of the diesel engine. They all had the same thought, that if the Carnies found out one of their wayward sisters had birthed a psychic, they may try to lay some form of convoluted claim on the boy. Roland broke the silence with a simple expletive.

"Dammit."

"Well, it's okay," Kip's breath was a little rapid, but he seemed to have a handle on his composure, "Now we know something that has a good chance of coming down the pipe. All we have to do is plan for and deal with it when it hits."

The rest of the companions nodded eagerly at this notion. Thus far, there hadn't been a single problem they'd come across that couldn't be solved with gratuitous violence. All kidding aside, Roland and Cory's enthusiasm was particularly subdued.

----------

The group parked in a lot near the Steel Canyon campus of Paragon University. There, they met up with other members of the group, Mattock McGinty, Cedric Grey and the Ryat androids, Sixty-six and Ninety-nine. Once they were arranged, they went to meet Montague Castanella, the man who introduced heroes to the enigmatic group, the Midnight Squad.

"Greetings," he said, "Please, take a seat in the next room and I'll be with you shortly. I really wish you guys had been over earlier... I'd have liked to get the results of your Lost Curing Wands..."

"Mine was broken," Mad Matt grunted, "It was one of those mass-produced ones... Didn't work out too good."

"Oh dear... I trust there was no excessive damage done!"

"Meh, a Pariah got a headache," the katana-wielding scrapper shrugged, "No big deal."

"Mine didn't cure Rikti," Kip added.

"Sh!" Montague hissed, "People aren't supposed to know about that!"

"Well, just so you know."

They made their way into the next room and found a number of different heroes. They were diverse, hailing from all corners of the world and numerous security levels. There were some members of the new Freedom Corps-sponsored group, the Redeemers, but it seemed to be largely independent heroes. One big man caught Roland's attention and he nudged Kip in the shoulder.

"Who's the big guy with the red hair. Looks like my dad."

"Oh, that's Mike Abrahms. Calls himself M. I. He's just a big guy that bad guys keep choosing to fight. See, he's a good example of what I was talking about earlier. Some people have heroism thrust upon them."

"Others are looking for an adventure!" Cedric chortled, "Cripes, I wish more people helped with that stuff in Eden... The forest just keeps growing back..."

"Why don't we just make that place into a lumber yard?" his little brother grumbled, "Maybe this 'Hamidon' would pull his forces back in disgust."

"Heh, maybe he'll send a real giant tree to wreck us," Matt chuckled.

----------

It was a strange presentation. At this point, Castanella was informing the heroes up front about the Squad's capabilities to travel into the past. A few heroes asked about the relationship they may have with the Menders, but Montague dodged such questions with typical "all in good time" rhetoric.

The rest of the meeting involved the history of the Midnight Squad. Cory often had a lot to ask about, as apparently his parents were once advisers and researchers for the clandestine mystics, and he wanted to know if they'd ever contributed anything major.

"Why yes," Castanella replied, "They provided an excellent treatise on the connection between Ogopogo, the brief sightings of the Lake Champlain monster and Salamanca's own 'Sally.' They also helped fill out our demonlogica due to your father's rare capability to peer into the infernal depths without going mad."

"The ability isn't rare," Simmons corrected, "It's just rarely cultivated."

"Yes, well... Without further ado..."

He ushered the heroes out of the meeting chamber and over to a neighboring building. Cory nudged Kip and Roland and indicated the design above the door they approached.

A young man before the door stopped Cedric and asked how his Latin was.

"Are you kidding?" the crude Tanker shouted, "MY LATIN KICKS [BUTT]!"

"Uh..." the young man stuttered, "Okay... I... Uh..."

"Lay it on me, man!"

"Alright... What's your favorite phrase?"

"Semper Fidelis!" he shouted, "No! WAIT! I-!"

He grinned at the young man and whispered something.

"You're not the first Marine I've heard that from, sir," the Latin student replied glibly, "But you passed... Eventually... Go on in."

Si vis Pacem Para Bellum. As a movie put it, "To make Peace, Prepare for War." It was an ominous passphrase, and it caused Roland and Nester to look at each other worriedly. Life was about to become very troublesome.

Inside, they were shown something very familiar.

"Oh crap," Abrahms muttered, "A Pillar of Ice and Flame..."

"Where did you guys get this?" Cory asked.

"While we've brought your talents into the Midnight Squad, we still have our own secrets to keep. Certainly, you don't expect us to divulge all of our secrets, much less this one."

"Well, for a big secret, it's sort of out in the open," Nester commented as he peered into it, "Or can these things be built? What is it, copious amounts of Nevermelting Ice and Unquenchable Flames? Maybe toss a Chronal Skip, a Temporal Tracer and a Temporal Analyzer in for good measure?"

Castanella stared at the young man dubiously for a few moments before responding with a simple "Shut up."

Despite his momentary loss of cool, the heroes chuckled briefly.

"Alright, gentlemen..." the Squad elder member had a quick chuckle himself, "Now... let me show you where heroes like you and rogues from the Isles are struggling to reaffirm the fabric of Time..."

He extended his hand toward the crystal and asked the others to do so as well. As each one pressed his hand against the Aspect of the Pillar, they vanished in a flash of golden light. After everyone was gone, Montague nodded and pulled his hand back. Hopefully, the people in Cimerora would be able to explain things better.

----------

"Greetings, gentlemen," the Midnight Squad member greeted them as Nester spewed forth his lunch, "Oh dear... That's the first time that ever happened."

"Hang on," the heroic field medic replied as he tapped his glasses, "Ah dang it... It seems the chicken I had for lunch wasn't too good for me..."

"Well, I'm sure the reclaimators we have here should be able to help you," the mystic replied as he guided the young man back to the specially stylized devices.

"These things look kind of magical," the hero muttered as he sat down and the rings started to raise up and he was washed in energy, "Oh! Nice!"

"Think of them as being similar to being blended versions of the magic and technological versions readily available for your bases. Feeling better?"

"Yeah!"

"Alright, then let's get on with the rest of the..."

"GUYS!" a familiar voice shouted from the opening of the cavern, "I was wondering how long it would take you to get here!"

"Breaker!" Cedric shouted back, "Dude! How long you been here?"

"Long enough to help do some damage! Come on, guys, I'll show you some kick-[butt] spots to bust up some of the rebel Romans!"

"The what?" Kip asked.

"Come on! I'll explain while we kick [butt]!"

The heroes let out a cheer and bounded after the brute. The Midnight Squad member sighed as he tried to explain the enchantments placed upon them that would enable the heroes to communicate with the Cimerorans, but they were out of earshot by the time he finished. It was almost depressing, but every so often he was surprised by the random hero who stood by to listen.

"I'll let them know," Cory Simmons chuckled as he strolled by, "Thank you for helping my friend."

"Thank you for demonstrating some patience," the mystic replied before resuming his post to wait for the next batch of meta humans.

Eh, Devious and I tend toward it sometimes, but largely only as commentary.

"Oh-ho! Did you see the way that guy got bent backwards? That can't be comfortable."

When we use the ((O.O.C.)) concept, we usually tend to use it for above-board, as opposed to on-board, activity. The "players" are interacting, not the characters.

There's a difference between

((Guys, I'm gonna be out for a few weeks...))

and

((Okay, so what I'm doing here is kicking Bob in the chest, but I wanted to make it sound better than that...))

Sometimes, we use the parentheses and out-of-character moments to clarify the actions of our characters, but only if requested. Most, however, don't clarify, and their cryptic answers only further mystify the readers as to what's going on.

Typical military training lasts a period that lasts roughly half a year. Normal Soldiers of Arachnos (Wolf Spiders, for instance) probably have a similar training regimen.

I don't agree with the "lack of free will" of the Bane Spiders, largely because if there were a perfect Hive Mind running the Banes, then they would NEVER stop chasing you once you'd put enough of their number in the hospital. You would log in and there would be Banes running at you from around the nearest corner.

If there is a Bane Spider Hive Mind, it is FAR from perfect.

The very descriptions of the various Bane Spiders indicates that they're just really ruthless Wolf Spiders given special training.

Crab Spiders are probably just Wolf Spiders with special equipment training. Their description even describes them as Arachnos' SWAT (Special Weapons And Tactics) force.

Now, when it comes to the Widows, I would say their initial training regimen is a lot like that of the Knives of Artemis. Rigorously physical, the girls are trained in their late teens or early twenties to be able to stand up to the world's threats. This process could take women of such caliber about a year of dedicated training (which, with how most military organizations work, this is a believable concept; it's not like they really have or are allowed to have anything else to do).

Now, no woman is brought into the Widows without having some form of psychic capability, but the stronger ones are shunted into the Fortunata Corps. The rest are placed into the Blood Widow/Night Widow Corps, where the focus remains on physical training over mental training. Psychic training is a gray area, but I would say it works in much the same way as Occupational Schools in the military, and in the course of a quarter-to-half of a year, they're trained to be a warrior unlike what they were before.

Or, it could also work as it does for the VEATs, and that the characters are thrust out into the world and run through the Gauntlet of Real Life. After a few months of keeping the peace in the Rogue Isles or going on "Special Ops" (Bloody Bay, Siren's Call), they finally prove themselves to learn some of the secrets of the specific schools. However, their training doesn't come along as regimented as their peers.

Perhaps this is why players are able to function as Bane Spiders or Fortunatas, their personal training experience is far-removed from their fellows, but they're similar enough so as to still be considered within those schools of training.

Finally posted the end of the BWO's Heroside base. I'm including it in Grey's Army because it signifies when the separate group ends and they start to work with Grey's Army and Brother Mauthe more closely. I hope it was something of an enjoyable read, but know this: These guys aren't done yet.

Nobody really paid much attention to the large, pale-skinned, business suit-clad men who approached the various blue portals across the city. Nor did they take much heed of the black-and-white clad "ninjas" that followed them. Each one presented a device that gave them access to the network of hero bases dotted throughout the city and, after they found the one they were looking for, they casually stepped into the blue field.

They must have been heroes. Right?

What the group found in the base they'd chosen were empty rooms and empty corridors. However, there was a conversation deeper in the complex. The twenty agents and sorcerers (ten of each type) worked their way deeper into the base, cautiously searching the rooms and finding that they were empty save for a few cots and pillows. It seemed as if they were the guest quarters for anyone purchasing the base's services.

In the middle of the base was a large chamber that most other heroes crammed full of teleportation pads. However, in this base, it simply held a large, square fighting ring in the center. The agents didn't seem shocked by it, nor did their sorcerer support, and they calmly stepped around it without a word.

When they made their way to the back room where the conversation was taking place, they found a computer surrounded by four large speakers. On the laptop's screen was a group of individuals matching the descriptions of some of the meta humans they were looking for. They were playing a game of cards.

"I fold," the man with a dirty blonde goatee muttered, "You're too good at this game, James."

"Maybe I should try my hand at the Giza," the one wearing metal skull ornaments replied.

"Hey guys," the one matching the description of Charles Reynolds muttered, "Looks like our guests have finally arrived."

The group turned to the camera and seemed to be looking at the agents and sorcerers of the NHS. They set down their cards and stared impassively at the intruders. A heavy-set blonde surreptitiously lifted James' cards and looked at them while Charles spoke.

"I was hoping one of your bosses would have come with you to see that the job was done properly, but it seems that the directors are still too chicken-[dreck] to do anything themselves. Pft. No wonder I was so blind to what they were doing to me. I was playing with the new toys while they sat back and watched their profit margins. Well, now they get to watch as one of their projects nose-dives into the red..."

One agent approached the computer and glared into the camera.

"This is Agent Curtis, One Zero Nine Three. You are slated for execution. Where are you?"

"Where you can't find us," a skinny young man replied as he handed canned drinks to his friends, "Once we found the tracker in that old laptop, we knew all we had to do was set it off to get you guys to come running."

Agent Curtis said nothing. As the two groups stared at each other through the live feed, the BWO group grew slowly larger as absent members were roused from whatever recreation they were engaged in so they could witness the exchange. Eventually, the whole group was present to witness the end of this.

"And now, we're going to get rid of yet another squad of you dopes," Chuck finished, "You see, we got a little help from some friends..."

-----------

--Earlier that week--

"Alright," the Air Guard Engineer explained as he placed a set of bombs that seemed to have gas canisters attached to them, "these are some nasty throwbacks to our days as Sky Raiders. They emit a highly flammable gas that a concentrated spark will set ablaze. I've seen this stuff work, and it's kind of pretty... A bright green flame envelopes most of everything. The burst lasts less than a minute, but it incinerates everything to a near-useless state."

He started placing the charges under the ring.

"You guys sure you don't want to save this thing? It looks like a lot of effort went into it."

"A lot of effort did go into it," Draven replied, "But we want to make sure these guys think we still intend to come back here."

He sighed as he looked at the ring. It was the third one they'd made. The first blasted apart by Sky Raider Skiffs, the second destroyed with the Rogue Island base, and now this one was soon to go as well. He hoped Paragon City officials didn't mind the spectacular nature of it, but they were trying to make a point the New Horizon Syndicate wouldn't soon forget.

"What else are you loading into the ducts?" he asked.

"We're throwing some C-4 into the air ducts, putting them on support studs that only really hold up the ceiling. When this thing goes, you'll probably want to send someone in to put a new support beam in here, but I don't think it'll be necessary."

"Why?"

The engineer shrugged.

"According to my GPS, we're under the Folly. Only a few people come out here, and they aren't the type to report a new sink hole to the city."

"You know where we are?" Dale asked as he walked by with a cardboard box of stuff he'd gathered, "How do you-?"

"Global Positioning," the engineer grinned as he waved his watch at them, "Oh, I get it. You guys deal with so many weird contraptions, you forget about the normal ones. I'm not knockin' ya, it happens to me, too. Yesterday, I forgot how to set the clock on my DVD player, can you believe that?"

"But you know where we are," Draven stroked his jawbone, "Something seems a little, I don't know, dangerous about that."

"Well, I don't know exactly where we are," the engineer clicked on his communicator and muttered into it, "John. Yeah, it's me. I'm almost done here... Maybe another hour or so. Where am I again? Ah. We're under the northwestern section of the Folly, guys, but that's as close as I can call."

"And now we know!" Psycho13 chortled as he sped past, "Thanks!"

----------

--Grey's Army Base--

Chuck pressed a button on his remote control. He and the rest of the BWO crew watched as a cloud of green flame rushed up behind the NHS interlopers and consumed them before the feed went dead. They cheered briefly before turning to each other to determine what else there was to do.

"I say we investigate other old Committee businesses," Reynolds explained, "We're bound to find out where this New Horizon is based and then we can take the fight to them!"

"It sounds like a plan," James muttered, "But maybe they'll just leave us alone now, you know? I mean, everything's even now, right? Sure, we're still alive and all, but look what it cost us to fight them off. If we left them alone, you'd think they'd figure we got whipped bad enough."

"Except for one thing," Draven had his sword balancing on its tip on the floor as he twirled the weapon around lazily, "We've got Chuck. As long as we have him, we have evidence of their criminal behavior. Now, we're not really law-enforcers, but we've had our fair share of what some locals call 'hero work.' It won't be long before the Syndicate sends another round of goons after us."

The group looked amongst each other and the rest were looking to their two leaders. Draven and James looked to each other and sighed.

"We'll have to duel to see where we go with this, won't we?" James sighed, "It's not like we can just play a game of cards or put this to a vote. I mean, who here cna truly be considered unbiased?"

"Lord knows I just want to have this over with," Levi muttered, "I've been through too much. I don't... I don't even know what I'm saying half the time anymore, guys. One second I'm all manic and happy, the next I'm like this, all mopey... Then there are the nightmares... I remember what it felt like when they did this to me... I want them to pay, I want this over with... It's all too much."

"Your brother has a point," Solo nodded to James, "He deserves some revenge."

"But I don't want you guys to suffer for me," the regenerator added, "It's my revenge."

"Well, you're suffering as it is, man," Draven patted his shoulder, "I mean, we just nuked your music collection."

"Nah, I saved the songs on a second hard drive. What I need now is a transmitter, then I'll have the ultimate MP-Three player again."

"We almost went to prison because of those [butt]holes!" Matt suddenly shouted as he waved at himself and Daren, "An entire stadium, down in flames just so they could mess with us like we were puppets! No! I am not going to let them get away with that!"

"That was years ago, Dirty," James interrupted, "With all the times we've talked to the cops, if you two were supposed to be arrested it would have been done by now."

"Well, that's a good point, Jimmy," Daren chuckled at the glowering his skull-clad friend gave him, "Frankly, I'd like to hear what my brother has to say about this..."

"I say we haul this stuff to the derrick and get back to our transport business," Dale shook his head, "Sorry guys, but I don't feel like fighting a war. Besides, now that we aren't moored to the Big Two, we can really branch out our services."

"I meant Dustin," the stalker murmured, "Where is he?"

----------

--A Sunken Hole Just North of the Old Rikti Crash Site Gate--

The cyborg that was once Agent Curtis 1093 pulled itself out of the rubble and looked at its body. Flesh was hanging off its metal-plated skeleton, it couldn't see out its left eye, but the right eye was able to compensate for the lost depth perception.

Curtis wasn't like a lot of other agents, he was one of the more heavily reinforced types. He had an autonomous artificial intelligence, indeed, it may have been the actual personality of the corpse his cybernetic components were built into; but he wouldn't know that personally since his mind had been programmed to obey the will of the New Horizon Syndicate.

A group of Freakshow Tanks were standing at the edge of the pit and looking down at him. They must have thought he was another hero, because they started launching grenades and circular saw blades at him. When the smoke cleared, however, Agent Curtis stood in the center of the pit, holding one of the blades in his right hand.

"Normally, you'd all be dead by now," his mechanical voice emitted tinnily from his throat, "But I have better things to do right now, so get lost."

"No way, cape!" one tank shouted as he trundled down into the hole with him, "You just ruined our basketball court, you're gonna pay for it with your... Your... Hide?"

"I bet his parts would make some pretty cool implants!" a Swiper shouted.

"Yeah!" the Tank laughed before the saw blade the agent threw sunk into his forehead and he dropped to the ground.

The rest looked on, horrified, as Agent Curtis pulled the impromptu weapon out of their friend's head and turned to the others. He reared back to throw and they scattered. There was an electric sound as the Tank behind him somehow came back to life.

"That's unusual," Curtis muttered as the young man grumbled and held a clawed hand near his head, "I could have sworn this thing cleaved into the right half of your brain."

"Well, that's the beautiful thing about Excelsior," the Tank barked, "It can fix ANYTHING! You just have to have enough of the stuff."

"Well, your friends ran off. If you don't want me chopping off the top half of your head with this thing, you should do the same."

The Tank nodded and ran off. He'd gotten the hint that this was no hero he was dealing with. When he was gone, Curtis clicked on his transponder and sent a signal to the nearest NHS Retrieval Unit.

"Mission failed. Special Unit heavily damaged. Support teams wiped out. Base destroyed. Targets escaped. They knew we were coming."

There was a rumbling in the rocks and Agent Curtis whipped around, popped a panel open on his chest and reached into the compartment there to draw an energy pistol all in one smooth motion. He fired a couple rounds into the dirt. In a world like this, one could never be certain what would be coming out after you.

When the ground stopped shaking, Curtis let out a sigh of relief that he didn't have to fight a Devouring earth monster. However, as he turned around, his relief was replaced rapidly with anger and alarm. Dustin Simms, King Slater in the BWO, stood before him with a black spiked mace in his hand. Curtis fired a shot, but crystalline armor suddenly spiked out of the tanker's body and deflected the energy round. More armor followed in quick succession afterward, including the thick dirt that wrapped around his legs and rooted him to the ground.

Slater smashed the pistol aside with one swing of his Black Mauler, then smashed the cyborg back with a backhanded attack. Curtis kipped himself off the ground, but Slater was gone once he landed on his feet. When he whirled around, scanning anywhere he thought the tanker could be, a rumbling caught his attention and he came back around to find Slater rising from the earth behind him.

The tanker caught a hold of Agent Curtis' throat and slowly started lifting him into the air. It wasn't super strength that enabled the young man to do it, but raw determination.

Seeing an opportunity to extricate himself, Curtis chopped into Dustin's elbow, but this only succeeded in causing him to be brought closer to his enemy's face. Slater growled, smacked him on the side of his head with his mace, then lifted the machine straight into the air. Curtis had a dim memory of this sort of maneuver before he was brought crashing back to the rubble.

Before the agent could get back up, Slater lifted the Mauler and smashed it into his metallic skull. He repeated this two more times as he held the enemy down. Though a contender wasn't meant to perform his own "three-count," Slater made sure the falls were steady, even and fair. Agent Curtis just never seemed inclined to "kick out" of the count and wound up losing to pinfall.

"That's why you're not a contender," the tanker chuckled to the prone body.

A humming sound alerted him to the floating limousine behind him. The windows were tinted, so he couldn't see who was inside as it started to fly away. So, he picked up a rock and threw it at the rear-passenger window. A moment later, the vehicle came back down and Slater stared impassively for its passengers to reveal themselves. The door opened and Angela Greene stepped out with a sigh.

"So, you are behind this."

"Where's Charles?"

"I'm not telling you that," Dustin tapped the Mauler against his calf as another large, business suit-clad man exited the limousine on the other side.

"Well, then at least let us have that corpse," she implored the tanker, "One, we will fight you for it, and two, we need to know who ordered him to hunt you and your friends down."

"I think I'm staring at her."

"You are such a simple-minded fool," the red-haired woman growled, "If I were to be seeking your destruction, I wouldn't be so obtuse as to utilize the personal resources of New Horizon. I would have hired rogues from out of the Etoile Isles."

"I'll remember that," the tanker grumbled.

"Look, Slater, I want to know who's behind this as much as you do."

"That has nothing to do with Chuck."

"In order to know what I'm looking for, I need all the information I need!" she shouted.

"Well, you're gonna have to make do with this wreck," Slater kicked the body aside a little, "He should be a direct line to whatever is doing all of this."

She and her apparent bodyguard watched the young man walk away. When he was safely gone, the two looked at each other and shrugged.

"I was expecting a fight," she fixed her hair a little in relief, "I guess we're just lucky it was him and not one of the others. As I understand it, they tend more toward the 'Scorched Earth' policies."

"I'll get the head," the large agent said as he started pulling the cranium off the comatose body, "You activate the charges once we're safely away."

"Yes, sir."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

((This is the end of the separate BWO stories. I wanted to see if I could run this as a parallel story, but in the end, the characters just didn't inspire me with enough material. They more or less satisfied a few ideas in my head (such as hitting Tyrant with the drop ship, fighting the Thunder Nimbus and even the battle with the Rikti during the second invasion). Afterwards, the characters ceased to really have much of their own character in my head and started to be relegated to being little more than support characters for my other, more favored projects.

For the further adventures of the Brutal Warriors Order, please continue reading Grey's Army, as they will show up in that story thread from time to time. I hope you've enjoyed reading this broken narrative, even if the storyline was a little borked at times (I really wish I could have included the rooftop battle scene between the BWO and the forces of Chuck Reynolds, but other situations at the time forced me to rush past it and refer to it in passing). I hope the action was enough to keep your interest, as the major point behind this thread was to help me with my action writing.))

Nobody really paid much attention to the large, pale-skinned, business suit-clad men who approached the various blue portals across the city. Nor did they take much heed of the black-and-white clad "ninjas" that followed them. Each one presented a device that gave them access to the network of hero bases dotted throughout the city and, after they found the one they were looking for, they casually stepped into the blue field.

They must have been heroes. Right?

What the group found in the base they'd chosen were empty rooms and empty corridors. However, there was a conversation deeper in the complex. The twenty agents and sorcerers (ten of each type) worked their way deeper into the base, cautiously searching the rooms and finding that they were empty save for a few cots and pillows. It seemed as if they were the guest quarters for anyone purchasing the base's services.

In the middle of the base was a large chamber that most other heroes crammed full of teleportation pads. However, in this base, it simply held a large, square fighting ring in the center. The agents didn't seem shocked by it, nor did their sorcerer support, and they calmly stepped around it without a word.

When they made their way to the back room where the conversation was taking place, they found a computer surrounded by four large speakers. On the laptop's screen was a group of individuals matching the descriptions of some of the meta humans they were looking for. They were playing a game of cards.

"I fold," the man with a dirty blonde goatee muttered, "You're too good at this game, James."

"Maybe I should try my hand at the Giza," the one wearing metal skull ornaments replied.

"Hey guys," the one matching the description of Charles Reynolds muttered, "Looks like our guests have finally arrived."

The group turned to the camera and seemed to be looking at the agents and sorcerers of the NHS. They set down their cards and stared impassively at the intruders. A heavy-set blonde surreptitiously lifted James' cards and looked at them while Charles spoke.

"I was hoping one of your bosses would have come with you to see that the job was done properly, but it seems that the directors are still too chicken-[dreck] to do anything themselves. Pft. No wonder I was so blind to what they were doing to me. I was playing with the new toys while they sat back and watched their profit margins. Well, now they get to watch as one of their projects nose-dives into the red..."

One agent approached the computer and glared into the camera.

"This is Agent Curtis, One Zero Nine Three. You are slated for execution. Where are you?"

"Where you can't find us," a skinny young man replied as he handed canned drinks to his friends, "Once we found the tracker in that old laptop, we knew all we had to do was set it off to get you guys to come running."

Agent Curtis said nothing. As the two groups stared at each other through the live feed, the BWO group grew slowly larger as absent members were roused from whatever recreation they were engaged in so they could witness the exchange. Eventually, the whole group was present to witness the end of this.

"And now, we're going to get rid of yet another squad of you dopes," Chuck finished, "You see, we got a little help from some friends..."

-----------

--Earlier that week--

"Alright," the Air Guard Engineer explained as he placed a set of bombs that seemed to have gas canisters attached to them, "these are some nasty throwbacks to our days as Sky Raiders. They emit a highly flammable gas that a concentrated spark will set ablaze. I've seen this stuff work, and it's kind of pretty... A bright green flame envelopes most of everything. The burst lasts less than a minute, but it incinerates everything to a near-useless state."

He started placing the charges under the ring.

"You guys sure you don't want to save this thing? It looks like a lot of effort went into it."

"A lot of effort did go into it," Draven replied, "But we want to make sure these guys think we still intend to come back here."

He sighed as he looked at the ring. It was the third one they'd made. The first blasted apart by Sky Raider Skiffs, the second destroyed with the Rogue Island base, and now this one was soon to go as well. He hoped Paragon City officials didn't mind the spectacular nature of it, but they were trying to make a point the New Horizon Syndicate wouldn't soon forget.

"What else are you loading into the ducts?" he asked.

"We're throwing some C-4 into the air ducts, putting them on support studs that only really hold up the ceiling. When this thing goes, you'll probably want to send someone in to put a new support beam in here, but I don't think it'll be necessary."

"Why?"

The engineer shrugged.

"According to my GPS, we're under the Folly. Only a few people come out here, and they aren't the type to report a new sink hole to the city."

"You know where we are?" Dale asked as he walked by with a cardboard box of stuff he'd gathered, "How do you-?"

"Global Positioning," the engineer grinned as he waved his watch at them, "Oh, I get it. You guys deal with so many weird contraptions, you forget about the normal ones. I'm not knockin' ya, it happens to me, too. Yesterday, I forgot how to set the clock on my DVD player, can you believe that?"

"But you know where we are," Draven stroked his jawbone, "Something seems a little, I don't know, dangerous about that."

"Well, I don't know exactly where we are," the engineer clicked on his communicator and muttered into it, "John. Yeah, it's me. I'm almost done here... Maybe another hour or so. Where am I again? Ah. We're under the northwestern section of the Folly, guys, but that's as close as I can call."

"And now we know!" Psycho13 chortled as he sped past, "Thanks!"

----------

--Grey's Army Base--

Chuck pressed a button on his remote control. He and the rest of the BWO crew watched as a cloud of green flame rushed up behind the NHS interlopers and consumed them before the feed went dead. They cheered briefly before turning to each other to determine what else there was to do.

"I say we investigate other old Committee businesses," Reynolds explained, "We're bound to find out where this New Horizon is based and then we can take the fight to them!"

"It sounds like a plan," James muttered, "But maybe they'll just leave us alone now, you know? I mean, everything's even now, right? Sure, we're still alive and all, but look what it cost us to fight them off. If we left them alone, you'd think they'd figure we got whipped bad enough."

"Except for one thing," Draven had his sword balancing on its tip on the floor as he twirled the weapon around lazily, "We've got Chuck. As long as we have him, we have evidence of their criminal behavior. Now, we're not really law-enforcers, but we've had our fair share of what some locals call 'hero work.' It won't be long before the Syndicate sends another round of goons after us."

The group looked amongst each other and the rest were looking to their two leaders. Draven and James looked to each other and sighed.

"We'll have to duel to see where we go with this, won't we?" James sighed, "It's not like we can just play a game of cards or put this to a vote. I mean, who here cna truly be considered unbiased?"

"Lord knows I just want to have this over with," Levi muttered, "I've been through too much. I don't... I don't even know what I'm saying half the time anymore, guys. One second I'm all manic and happy, the next I'm like this, all mopey... Then there are the nightmares... I remember what it felt like when they did this to me... I want them to pay, I want this over with... It's all too much."

"Your brother has a point," Solo nodded to James, "He deserves some revenge."

"But I don't want you guys to suffer for me," the regenerator added, "It's my revenge."

"Well, you're suffering as it is, man," Draven patted his shoulder, "I mean, we just nuked your music collection."

"Nah, I saved the songs on a second hard drive. What I need now is a transmitter, then I'll have the ultimate MP-Three player again."

"We almost went to prison because of those [butt]holes!" Matt suddenly shouted as he waved at himself and Daren, "An entire stadium, down in flames just so they could mess with us like we were puppets! No! I am not going to let them get away with that!"

"That was years ago, Dirty," James interrupted, "With all the times we've talked to the cops, if you two were supposed to be arrested it would have been done by now."

"Well, that's a good point, Jimmy," Daren chuckled at the glowering his skull-clad friend gave him, "Frankly, I'd like to hear what my brother has to say about this..."

"I say we haul this stuff to the derrick and get back to our transport business," Dale shook his head, "Sorry guys, but I don't feel like fighting a war. Besides, now that we aren't moored to the Big Two, we can really branch out our services."

"I meant Dustin," the stalker murmured, "Where is he?"

----------

--A Sunken Hole Just North of the Old Rikti Crash Site Gate--

The cyborg that was once Agent Curtis 1093 pulled itself out of the rubble and looked at its body. Flesh was hanging off its metal-plated skeleton, it couldn't see out its left eye, but the right eye was able to compensate for the lost depth perception.

Curtis wasn't like a lot of other agents, he was one of the more heavily reinforced types. He had an autonomous artificial intelligence, indeed, it may have been the actual personality of the corpse his cybernetic components were built into; but he wouldn't know that personally since his mind had been programmed to obey the will of the New Horizon Syndicate.

A group of Freakshow Tanks were standing at the edge of the pit and looking down at him. They must have thought he was another hero, because they started launching grenades and circular saw blades at him. When the smoke cleared, however, Agent Curtis stood in the center of the pit, holding one of the blades in his right hand.

"Normally, you'd all be dead by now," his mechanical voice emitted tinnily from his throat, "But I have better things to do right now, so get lost."

"No way, cape!" one tank shouted as he trundled down into the hole with him, "You just ruined our basketball court, you're gonna pay for it with your... Your... Hide?"

"I bet his parts would make some pretty cool implants!" a Swiper shouted.

"Yeah!" the Tank laughed before the saw blade the agent threw sunk into his forehead and he dropped to the ground.

The rest looked on, horrified, as Agent Curtis pulled the impromptu weapon out of their friend's head and turned to the others. He reared back to throw and they scattered. There was an electric sound as the Tank behind him somehow came back to life.

"That's unusual," Curtis muttered as the young man grumbled and held a clawed hand near his head, "I could have sworn this thing cleaved into the right half of your brain."

"Well, that's the beautiful thing about Excelsior," the Tank barked, "It can fix ANYTHING! You just have to have enough of the stuff."

"Well, your friends ran off. If you don't want me chopping off the top half of your head with this thing, you should do the same."

The Tank nodded and ran off. He'd gotten the hint that this was no hero he was dealing with. When he was gone, Curtis clicked on his transponder and sent a signal to the nearest NHS Retrieval Unit.

"Mission failed. Special Unit heavily damaged. Support teams wiped out. Base destroyed. Targets escaped. They knew we were coming."

There was a rumbling in the rocks and Agent Curtis whipped around, popped a panel open on his chest and reached into the compartment there to draw an energy pistol all in one smooth motion. He fired a couple rounds into the dirt. In a world like this, one could never be certain what would be coming out after you.

When the ground stopped shaking, Curtis let out a sigh of relief that he didn't have to fight a Devouring earth monster. However, as he turned around, his relief was replaced rapidly with anger and alarm. Dustin Simms, King Slater in the BWO, stood before him with a black spiked mace in his hand. Curtis fired a shot, but crystalline armor suddenly spiked out of the tanker's body and deflected the energy round. More armor followed in quick succession afterward, including the thick dirt that wrapped around his legs and rooted him to the ground.

Slater smashed the pistol aside with one swing of his Black Mauler, then smashed the cyborg back with a backhanded attack. Curtis kipped himself off the ground, but Slater was gone once he landed on his feet. When he whirled around, scanning anywhere he thought the tanker could be, a rumbling caught his attention and he came back around to find Slater rising from the earth behind him.

The tanker caught a hold of Agent Curtis' throat and slowly started lifting him into the air. It wasn't super strength that enabled the young man to do it, but raw determination.

Seeing an opportunity to extricate himself, Curtis chopped into Dustin's elbow, but this only succeeded in causing him to be brought closer to his enemy's face. Slater growled, smacked him on the side of his head with his mace, then lifted the machine straight into the air. Curtis had a dim memory of this sort of maneuver before he was brought crashing back to the rubble.

Before the agent could get back up, Slater lifted the Mauler and smashed it into his metallic skull. He repeated this two more times as he held the enemy down. Though a contender wasn't meant to perform his own "three-count," Slater made sure the falls were steady, even and fair. Agent Curtis just never seemed inclined to "kick out" of the count and wound up losing to pinfall.

"That's why you're not a contender," the tanker chuckled to the prone body.

A humming sound alerted him to the floating limousine behind him. The windows were tinted, so he couldn't see who was inside as it started to fly away. So, he picked up a rock and threw it at the rear-passenger window. A moment later, the vehicle came back down and Slater stared impassively for its passengers to reveal themselves. The door opened and Angela Greene stepped out with a sigh.

"So, you are behind this."

"Where's Charles?"

"I'm not telling you that," Dustin tapped the Mauler against his calf as another large, business suit-clad man exited the limousine on the other side.

"Well, then at least let us have that corpse," she implored the tanker, "One, we will fight you for it, and two, we need to know who ordered him to hunt you and your friends down."

"I think I'm staring at her."

"You are such a simple-minded fool," the red-haired woman growled, "If I were to be seeking your destruction, I wouldn't be so obtuse as to utilize the personal resources of New Horizon. I would have hired rogues from out of the Etoile Isles."

"I'll remember that," the tanker grumbled.

"Look, Slater, I want to know who's behind this as much as you do."

"That has nothing to do with Chuck."

"In order to know what I'm looking for, I need all the information I need!" she shouted.

"Well, you're gonna have to make do with this wreck," Slater kicked the body aside a little, "He should be a direct line to whatever is doing all of this."

She and her apparent bodyguard watched the young man walk away. When he was safely gone, the two looked at each other and shrugged.

"I was expecting a fight," she fixed her hair a little in relief, "I guess we're just lucky it was him and not one of the others. As I understand it, they tend more toward the 'Scorched Earth' policies."

"I'll get the head," the large agent said as he started pulling the cranium off the comatose body, "You activate the charges once we're safely away."

"Yes, sir."

You write a bio for a character to serve as their background, nothing more. You're an RPer when you act like that character (You: "We must save this hostage from the Freakshow!" ; Another Player: "Dude, chill out. It's just a game."). If you just put in a story because you think it's a cool or neat idea, then kudos to you. You're now an AUTHOR. You've done a character write-up.

Uh... Bama... It might have been purged from the forum. It has been a while since you updated it, after all...

I've posted another section to Grey's Army. I'm starting to merge BWO with G.A. so I can tell a more combined story.

This one starts out innocent enough, with Roland Grey and Kipland Durj on a "Sunday Drive" to Kip's apartment building. Everything goes to Hell when they "deer smack" their friend, Levi "Psycho13" Baker as the regenerator flees from a New Horizon Syndicate Agent.

--Two Weeks Pass...--

"Hey there, Kip," Roland barked out his passenger-side window, "Hop in, I'll give you a lift!"

The scrapper nodded and hopped in through the open window. The burly young Grey arched and eyebrow at the smaller young man, but drove on once Kip had buckled his seatbelt.

"So, where ya headed?"

"Oh, just back to my apartment... After two weeks of dealing with the Midnighters and their 'Cure for the Lost,' I'm mentally and spiritually drained."

"Tried to use it on Amy, huh?"

"I had to try," Kip sighed, "She even let me do it, but it didn't work. It just coated her in a green glow and dissipated after its last charge."

"I'm sorry, man."

Kip shrugged and gazed down the street as they rode along. At the next red light, he started sniffing loudly.

"Roll... Are you wearing some sort of flowery cologne?"

"No."

"Then what the Hell am I smelling?"

Roland's eyes arced up and to the left briefly before he answered.

"Well... I had to help Ms. Liberty with some grocery shopping."

"What?" Kip looked to his friend incredulously.

"Some Hellion torched her car while she was on patrol. She could have used her super leap to get to the store, but how was she supposed to carry all of those bags without them breaking on her?"

"Good point," the scrapper muttered in between blowing air rapidly out of his nostrils, "Gah, why does this stuff always smell like chemicals to me?"

"Well, I also helped her get around and find another vehicle. She just got it a couple days ago."

"So, you know where she lives?"

"No. I'd drive back to my apartment, she'd take her stuff back to her place then bring the jeep back. Last time, she filled the tank for me."

"That was nice of her," Kip was rubbing his temples at this point, "You're... You're not falling in love with her or anything, are you? What you just described sounds incredibly excessive for a friendship."

"It's no more than I'd expect of a friend in an emergency, man. I mean, you, Nester... I could see you guys helping me like this, too."

"Would she?"

Roland glanced at Kip and shrugged.

"It's never come up. It has for your brother and me, back home, in our senior year. It was winter, and-"

There was a shout and a shape leaped up onto the hood of Roland's jeep. He barked out a curse and hit the brakes as the skinny body rolled up over the hood and dropped next to the driver's side window.

"Was that Levi?"

Roland looked out his window and saw the regenerating scrapper lying on the asphalt. His leg was bent at an odd angle, but it didn't look broken. What was distressing, though, was the tip of a knife blade sticking out of his chest.

"Hey, Bake," he grunted down, "You dead?"

"No man," the skinny man replied, "Not yet."

"Need help? I could back up and run you over a couple more times."

"No... No. You've helped enough."

There was a flash and the corner of the cab next to Kip exploded, causing the short young man to shout in surprise. Roland started cursing and slammed his foot against the gas pedal, causing his jeep's tires to squeal and the machine hurtled forward.

"What the Hell is going on!?" he shouted.

"I don't know!" Kip replied almost hysterically.

"I was talking to him!"

Roland nodded back out the window, where Psycho13 had jabbed a pair of blades into the rear driver-side door. His legs were dragging on the asphalt and suffering a severe case of road rash, but that didn't seem to be bothering him as he held on for dear life. Eventually, the scrapper gained his footing, started running alongside the jeep, opened the door and hopped inside.

It was at this point Kip noticed the gaping hole in his friend's hip.

"Jebus, man, what the Hell happened to you!?"

"What's going on?" Roland repeated angrily.

There was another flash and a bright bolt of energy melted through the rear window, sheared off Levi's ear and dissipated as it struck the windshield, causing the glass to warp.

Roland shouted as he tried to peer through the suddenly hazy glass, but stopped having to as Kip reared a leg back and kicked the whole thing out. Cubes of glass blew back into them, and the heroes squinted to keep any of it from getting into their eyes.

Suddenly, there was a thump on the roof and a pair of footprints dented inward. Psycho13 was screaming about his slowly reforming ear, Roland was struggling to keep the jeep on the road, so Kip knew what he had to do.

The Grey's Army "Colonel" pulled himself out of the vehicle through the passenger-side window and looked up at the New Horizon Syndicate Agent aiming a weird looking pistol at him. Kip's eyes glowed suddenly and he shot the weapon out of the cyborg's hand, torching some flesh off the fingers at the same time.

"Target unidentified. Sending image to database-"

Kip vaulted himself onto the roof of the car, rolled on his shoulder, and planted his foot in the agent's belly. Sweeping his other foot around, he tripped the man off his feet and the agent was smashed against the grill of an approaching freight truck and crushed under the machine's wheels and heavy weight.

The martial artist braced for an explosion that he half-remembered hearing about, but it never came. Something must not have routed properly in the machine's body and the explosive charges didn't go off.

"You guys okay?" he asked as he pulled himself back in.

"I gotta remember what you just did, man," Levi shouted as he covered the sticky mass that would soon be a perfect copy of his lost ear, "That was a ballsy move. Definitely ballsy."

"What the Hell just happened!?" Grey once again found himself barking.

----------

"So that's the story," Daren finished explaining what had happened in the past two days to cause the BWO rogues to be permanently stationed in Paragon City and powerless.

Worst hit, so far, was James Baker, who still had the Skulls of Rage hovering only a few centimeters from his chest and shoulder. Sure, he could go out in public and most would mistake him for some form of "dark, brooding hero," but the downside was that most people would see him as some dark, brooding hero, and the local criminals would probably take pot shots at him. The moment James' electric armor sparked up, it would be over for him, and Police Drones would zap him to the Zig faster than he could blink.

"That's terrible, man," Kip muttered, "What are you guys going to do?"

"I've got a plan," Levi chuckled as he and Charles Reynolds were messing around with the laptop connected to the device in his inner ear, "Here we go, here we go..."

"Yes, this should do nicely..." Charles looked up to the rest of the BWO, "Alright, boys... I really hate to do this to you, and I'm surprised I actually mean that, but we need to move anything you guys intend to keep out of here and somewhere you think is safe. Then... Then the fun begins."

"You're gonna blow this place up, aren't you?" Draven asked.

"It'll be controlled," Levi explained, "We'll get some of the Air Guard to help us set the charges... We're not gonna end up with a sink hole like they did in Cap."

"We didn't exactly have a plan," Matt muttered, "It just sort of happened."

"Arachnos is still searching through their records for whomever's base that was," Justin intoned to Kip and Roland, "I sure hope that deal you made with 'the Doctor,' works out."

"The Doc says she'll take care of everything," Kip replied confidently, "Peebee's providing the connection she needs to crack into their networks as we speak, so everything should be gravy in a couple hours."

"Well, not everything," Roland growled, "There's still the matter of how we're getting my jeep fixed."

Kip refrained from saying "Ask your girlfriend." He'd heard similar implications more than enough when he'd been hanging out with Roland's sister from elementary school through to high school. He'd made his jabs in the past, but now it was unnecessarily juvenile (instead of playfully juvenile, as it was when he and Round's dad first started ribbing him).

The battle in the BWO Red Staging Area has come to a close. There's still the BWO Blue Staging Area to deal with, but it won't be quite so drawn out.

The metahumans fought back desperately, but the NHS soldiers continued to press their advantage. With each wave, the hole in the far wall opened a little more and even more supremely powerful minions would break through at a time.

"They must really want us dead!" James shouted as he picked up the chair and hurled it at the invaders.

"One of us," Chuck growled as he put the helmet of Justin Steel's power armor on, "We'll make it a fight they won't soon forget, though!"

"Why are you in my suit?" Justin asked as he loaded new magazines and cartridges into his rifle, "I've still got the ammunition for the rifle."

"Because you forgot your activation word," the former chairman's chuckle sounded tinny as it rasped out of the emitters, "I have a master phrase, however... Reynolds Delta Factor Five!"

The armor's eyes suddenly flashed gold before blinking out again. There was an electric buzz as the armor's servo motors and actuators fired up and ramped the suit's strength capabilities up to superhuman levels. An energy bolt crashed into the armor, but dissipated harmlessly.

"Ha! Too bad you can't use the same phrase, Justin. It's keyed to my voice."

"I do well enough with my chemicals and poisons," the mastermind replied as Mr. Remington tossed him another bag from the storage room, "And now my combat repertoire is replenished..."

Reynolds chuckled again as an android leaped up onto the ring and bounded for the rogues, its armor crackling dangerously as it emitted an electric field. Before it could crash into the BWO's defensive line and possibly kill some of Steel's mercenaries, though, the armored up Reynolds dove at it and connected his fist with the machine's jawline, popping its head clean off. The electric field faded immediately, and Reynolds stood on the ring, firing concussive energy blasts into the onslaught.

"This is going nowhere," Bioserj finally gasped as he broke some blue crystals in his hand to replenish his rapidly depleting energy, "Charles! Do you still have what they were tracking?"

"No!" the armored man replied as he and Rage tossed invaders aside left and right, "I flushed the damn tracker down the toilet when I pulled the tooth!"

"Good," the corrupter sighed as he slapped Justin Steel's chest, just over the man's heart.

"What are you-?" the mastermind asked as his Arachnos MedCom activated and he and his mercenaries disappeared.

"What the...?" Mark shouted as Serj jumped past him and activated James and Chuck's transponders as well, "Serj, what are you doing!?"

"Saving your lives," the Russian replied as he body tackled Mark and activated his transponder last, "Good luck, my friend..."

Mark disappeared, wondering at what his friend would do. Hopefully, Bioserj would just port out to the Arachnos facility, but the situation looked grim.

--------

Matt Jones was struggling with the black-dressed girl trying to drag him to the Port Oakes portal. He vaguely remembered her as being James' girl, but he couldn't, for the life of him, understand why she was breathlessly dragging him to the Staging Area.

"Ice!" Darla shouted as they reached the portal, "I panicked and I sealed them inside!"

"What are you talking about?" the brute asked, "I don't-"

His sentence went unfinished as she was snatched up into the energy field and he was dragged in with her. When they tumbled into the entrance room, Ice saw that the lights were out and the room was lit only by his fire armor and the torches standing next to the doorway that would normally have led to the "Ring Room" if it weren't blocked by a wall of ice.

"What have you done!?" he shouted at the young woman.

"They were shooting at me... I panicked... I've never used so much energy before! I don't even know what I was trying to do, but it sealed up the doorway!"

"Well, that's why I'm doing this," Dirty Ice drew his sledgehammer and it started to get coated in rocks and dirt, "Step back, Darla..."

There was a green glow on the other side of the ice while the Brute smashed away at it. There were some white flashes that followed the green glow, but Matt didn't pay attention as his hammer worked its merry work. At first, the frozen water refused to give, but after another, brighter green glow, cracks spiderwebbed throughout the construct. Darla threw her fire blasts at the wall and the brute's fire armor further melted the ice and another green blast turned the wall into slush.

Dirty smashed through and roared loudly at the agents, androids and ninjas that were working their way in. The ninjas had held back during the initial assault, but as the rogues suddenly disappeared, they filtered in quietly to help finish off Bioserj.

The corrupter was lying face down at the foot of the steps. Darla gasped and Matt turned back to push her into the portal. He then grabbed the wall and his hands sunk into the brick wall. The agents were recharging their weapons and the Soultakers were getting into poses to hurl all sorts of darkness at him. However, they weren't expecting the brute to throw a whole wall at them. Matt wrenched his arms at the invaders and the bricks, mortar, and even a few broken pipes burst toward the NHS operatives.

While they were able to shrug most of the hail of debris off, the invaders weren't prepared for the rest. The structure of the base was now so sorely depleted, it was collapsing. Matt reached down, rolled Bioserj over and pressed his beacon, sending him to wherever, as the corrupter said he never went to the Arachnos reclaimators anymore.

Then, as the ceiling started to fall and the blue portal started to fade, he jumped to the exit and hoped he made it out okay.

-----------

Darla was looking around worriedly as the portal refused to admit her to the BWO Staging Area. She hoped the brute was able to make it out, but things looked even worse as she left the second time than they did the first.

Suddenly, there was the sound of a thunderclap and Dirty Ice fell from the sky. Whatever had happened, he hadn't quite made it back to the blue portal, but he also hadn't wound up trapped in some forsaken pocket dimension.

"Augh!" he hit the pavement and groaned for a few seconds before saying, "Almost didn't make it..."

"What happened?"

"I buried the base," he grunted, "Then, on my way back, the portal back there must have shut down and the connection to here must have cut off instantly... I was floating there for the past two minutes, watching you click that comm of yours, trying to get back... Then -BOOM!- here I am."

"We should find the others," the dominator mumbled, "Will you please help me? The Arachnos bases scare me."

"I may be a jerk," Matt chuckled, "but I'm not a [much worse word for a jerk]. I'll come with you."

----------

"What the Hell happened here?" a Wolf Spider asked as he and his patrol came across a sink hole near the bridge to Aeon City in New Haven.

"It looks like the sewer collapsed," the Huntsman replied, "We better see if we can get some engineers out here to fix it."

"There's somebody down there!" another shouted.

A New Horizon Syndicate Agent, his suit in tatters, his left arm broken and the skin on half of his face torn away to reveal the metal and plastic skull underneath tried to pull himself out of the rubble. When the cyborg saw the Arachnos patrol, he drew his energy pistol, which was somehow still active, and started firing. The agent's targeting was way off, however, and the Wolf Spiders were able to avoid getting shot easily.

"Kill it!" the Huntsman shouted and his troops acted immediately.

Pistol fire and assault rifle round slammed into the pinned interloper. Bullets ricocheted off hidden armor and the body held up oddly well under the withering assault, but it couldn't last forever. The NHS Agent exploded suddenly, throwing fire and shrapnel everywhere and the soldiers hugged the dirt as they looked to their commander, who still stood defiantly.

"What the Hell was that, boss?"

"I don't know," the Huntsman replied as he holstered his assault rifle, "At first I thought it was a Crey Infiltrator or something, but now... They don't explode like that."

"What do we do?"

"Same as we always do when we run across a meta human event. File a report..."

There MUST be!

The next portion to the BWO's endgame is posted now. Things are looking bad for the Red Siders of this unusual pack of meta humans.

Darla let out an ear-splitting scream and started bolting for the entrance room. As she ran, she threw the ethereal energy pent up inside her at the floor and articulated the blast to make a frozen tunnel to protect her escape. An energy blast from a NHS Agent's pistol smashed into the frozen walland melted a hole straight through, causing the young woman to duck down and slide across the floor, screaming.

Raging James, however, charged for the agents tearing through the wall and yanked the pistol out of the hand of the one that had just fired on his girlfriend. Sure, he'd only known her for a couple weeks, but even if she were one of the crazies of the Isles (which he doubted) she hadn't done anything to deserve getting shot in his hangout.

His follow-up to yanking the pistol outof the Agent's hand was to grab him by the collar,yank himout of the hole, and toss him against the ceiling. The next one he yanked through the hole and into the ring.

As soon as the first agent hit the floor, it shoved itself up and took a swing at the brute. Rage caught the punch to the side of his head, but he didn't go down. The one he threw into the ring drew a pistol and fired a shot at him, but the energy bolt dissipated as it hit.

"Get yourself a better weapon!" James shouted as he swung around and cuffed the first agent across the face with a backhand, "It's gonna take more than that to stop me!"

He tackled the first agent into the wall and started going to work on its body. The second agent took a fewmoreshots at him and stopped suddenly. It wasn't that something had stopped the pale-faced goon, it was that the cyborg's targeting system had determined the weapon was ineffective.

However, when it went to turn to melee fighting, something unusual happened. A dark cloud wrapped around the business suit-clad man and coalesced into a set of inky tentacles clinging to his torso. Solo Stryker crouched down and hefted the man into the air, smashing him into the ceiling, before slamming his back against the stone floor of the ring.

Rage gave his friend a thumbs-up in congratulations before he was bowled over by another pair of agents storming in through the hole. These were followed by more agents, but by this point, the rest of the Brutal Warriors were armed and firing on the invaders.

Mark Shadow and Justin Steel's mercenaries sprayed ammunition at the agents. Steel threw corrosives and venoms at the cyborgs, which played havoc on their biological components while Mark's acid mortar lobbed more corrosives on them.

Eventually, there was an explosion. The BWO members were getting used to them, and in this case, Rage was ready for it. He threw a severely damaged agent into a cluster of other agents and the resulting blast sent him hurtling over the ring to his friends. Bioserj radiated a wave of healing energy and crouched next to the brute to see if he was alright.

"I'm okay," James grunted as he pushed himself up, "Just keep that glow going and I'llbe right as rain."

"I have a better idea," the Russian corrupter-class rogue chuckled, "Hee-yah!"

He threw a purple spray into the midst of the agents and their bodies started to fall apart under the withering fire of Mark Shadow, the mercenaries and Justin, who'd run out of assault capsules of poisons. However, he'd chosen a poor "anchor" (to use the terms of fellow rogues), and the cyborg exploded quickly, breaking Serj's connection and disrupting the radioactive infection, and there were more cybernetic agents on the way.

"This is getting dangerous," Justin shouted over the tumult, "There are cracks in the ceiling, waters spraying through the walls, and while these guys aren't blowing up nearly as bad as the guys we've run into in the past, they are blowing up. If this keeps up, the ceiling will collapse down on top of us!"

"Indeed," the brute grunted, "It's time to head out!"

But as they looked to the exit, they saw it was sealed up with ice. The others looked to James, who was just shaking his head sadly.

"We can fight our way through the sewer," Mark barked, "Come on!"

The agents were coming through again and they were met with a hailof bullets followed by Rage's flying body. The brute tackled several of the cyborgs into the far wall of the sewer maintenance tunnel, but he was grabbed from behind and thrown back through the hole. As he looked up to see what had grabbed him,he noticed a groupof large androids pushing through the wall that radiated electricity just as he did.

"This is bad, guys..." he muttered as an acid grenade hurtled overhead to explode against the machines and the bullets resumed.

The Ryat Rogue androids weren't what Rage was referring to, however. During his trip through the air, he'd seen the rest of the maintenance tunnels. They were swarming with androids, cyborgs and what looked to be ninjas, but he knew they were "Soultakers."

They were in trouble, and they had no way out.

I've turned to the Brutal Warriors for a bit... I mean, we all know how heroes currently get into the Midnight Squad, so while Grey's Army is working on that, I'm turning my attention to how the Brutal Warriors Order membership finds themselves in a heap of trouble that certainly threatens their lives.