Mr_Grey

--The Jade Moon--

"Uh huh," Randall grunted as he pushed himself off the wall, "You said that one's the airlock, right?"

When Lk'Onik indicated for him which door they could work on opening, he flexed his hands.

"Anybody who can tear metal doors apart, I suggest we get to work on doing just that..."

He looked to Toy Dispenser.

"Lasers, right? Maybe they can help cut through all of this. Now, look, I know that I'm not planning this out too well, but we need to get to work on getting the Hell out of here and getting on to our mission. The sooner, the better. If anybody's got any better ideas, I'm all ears. For now, though, damage seems to be the best bet."

He walked up to the door and gave it a rap with his knuckles. Listening for a moment, he grinned.

"Doesn't sound indestructible."

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

--Peregrine Island--

Mad Matt McGinty noticed the frenetic behavior of the personnel. Considering that patience would be the best bet, he sat down on a stack of sandbags with his legs crossed and balanced his scabbard across his knees.

"Somebody's bound to notice me sitting here..."

Paused before the Talos Island ferry to Peregrine Island, Matt arched an eyebrow at a Ferrari that passed him by. It wasn't so much the vehicle passing as...

He had a nasty feeling about it, and Cory had taught him to trust those feelings. When he pulled his motorcycle into the ferry, he called his mentor in the mystical arts.

"Simmons," he barked when he got the answering service, "Quit yer canoodlin' and get on patrol! I got a car for ya to keep an eye out for... Black... All Black Ferrari... Scary looking-"

*Beep*

"If you would like to-" Matt clicked off the communicator before the message finished.

"He'll figure it out," he grumbled.

----

Cory sighed as he felt the electric pulse from his cellular phone. Accursed little time leeches... He'd say he was better off without it, but humanity had ways of developing other means of similar communication.

"I'd be covered with sticky notes if it weren't for that damn noisy thing," he muttered.

"What was that?" his girlfriend, Gertrude Youngs, asked from the kitchen.

She was making something... special... she said. Judging from some of the explosions and smells coming from her cooking, Simmons was glad he had several antidotes on hand within his robe.

"A friend, my dear," he replied, "It seems something incredibly important has come up... I suppose it would be about the right time, the feeling is in the air, you know?"

"Sometimes, Cory, I don't understand a single word you're saying. I don't remember any portents for tonight..."

"Sometimes, things can't be known through portents," the young wizard chuckled, "Sometimes, you need to feel for the subtle ebbs and flows of Fate..."

"Is that what yer father taught you?"

"Yes, my dear... My father taught me to feel magic like a flowing river, not as an ephemeral substance to be plucked at and twisted to one's desires... More often than not, if you simply alter the path of the river slightly, you can achieve the results you require just as or even more easily than 'plucking,' and there is less chance to lose yourself to corruption and the like..."

"So that's why you've mastered your arts in a fraction of the time my sisters take to learn their skills?"

"Part of it, yes..." Cory quirked an eyebrow, then grunted, "As much as I'd like to partake in your 'binding potion,' I'm afraid I'll have to withdraw for the evening."

Gertrude looked at him, astonishment evident in her eyes, if not her face.

"It was the blackberry extract... It was a bit much."

"I see..."

"We'll talk about this later," Cory astonished her again with a smile, "For now, I have friends I need to help."

----

Matt pulled up to the Portal Corp parking lot with little incident. There were a few moments where Carnies tried to stop him, but the motorcycle seemed to have a tertiary effect on them, and they often ran screaming from the wake left by his "Fear Engine" (or maybe they were just startled by how ugly the vehicle was).

Pulling into the parking lot, he wove around the possessed scientists (Randall and Kip had already warned him about them) and brought himself into the courtyard. Letting the engine idle for a few seconds, he looked around the crowd.

"Who here," he grunted as he cut the engine off (it seemed to sigh in relief), and pulled his katana scabbard from its mount on the bike and rested it on his shoulder, "is Unai Kemen?"

This is disturbing, excellent work.

Keep it up!

Krazy, we hadn't met by that time, buddy. Besides, Riggers are a little more complex than Masterminds... For instance, I put a lot more effort and resources into the heavily armored van (with rocket tubes!) than I did into the drones (of which, there were only three and they looked nothing like the robots in CoX; more like go-carts with chainguns and rocket pods).

I also doubt you name your robots Wild, Bear, and Quicksilver.

Those were names of pets I had that I figured were able to take anything in a fight.

Incidentally, their fates are feral (probably deceased), deceased (old age), and fat and lazy (Mom's cat, now) respectively.

----

Sadly, those were my favorite PnP moments. The region I'm in doesn't really have much of a PnP crowd, and the one guy I've met who's at all interested in it is a little dim.

He attacked a savage wolf with a level one fighter when he had two hitpoints left...

Wyat: "I attack the wolf!"

Me (DMing): "Wyat... It's a savage wolf... It's not likely to get killed, even if that is a magic sword..."

Wyat: "Attack the wolf!"

*Roll, Miss*

Me: "The wolf attacks back..."

*Roll, Critical Hit*

*Damage roll irrelevant at this point.*

Me: "The wolf slashes open your torso and starts devouring the bits inside. Congratulations, Goku, *grumble* you've died."

Wyat: "Go back to town and heal!"

Me: "..."

Mad Matt McGinty was busy working on his motorcycle in the Skyway City shop owned by the lamentable Lou. Lou, having been assisted repeatedly by McGinty, was all too willing to let the scrapper work on his monstrosity of a vehicle in his shop.

"Dammit!" the mechanic shouted over Matt's ratcheting, "The Clockwork kidnapped my daughter again!"

"That's becoming something of a problem, isn't it?" McGinty shouted back as he finished up, "Want me to help her out while I take this baby for a test drive?"

"No, no..." Lou grumbled, "I'll just get on the horn with Athena Currie... Get some new hero on it. You've got enough on your plate as it is... What's your security level now?"

"It's no problem, Lou, I love to help. And actually, it's..."

His communicator started warbling out an alarm. It was the emergency alarm.

"...Uh... Let me jsut get that real quick..." Matt trailed off as he grabbed the communicator and held it up to his ear, "Hello?"

"Yes..." an unfamiliar voice said on the other end, "Is this... Mad Matt McGinty? (What the Hell kind of name is that?)"

"Yes it is, and it's mostly the name my father gave me. Who's this?"

"This is Unai Kemen..."

"I don't think that gives you a right to criticize my name!"

"Okay, okay... Look... I was told by Randall Grey to call this number and ask for this man if he ran into trouble on a mission for us... And he said you'd be... Enthusiastic... To help."

Matt arched his eyebrow.

"He tapped me? Not Kip or his son?"

"I don't know. He just said to get a hold of you. We need you to come down to Peregrine Island, Portal Corp... I'll explain things to you there."

When the line cut off, Matt stared at his communicator for a moment. Behind him, he could hear Lou chatting with Currie.

"Electric-based, huh? Sounds good, sounds like it'll take those Clockwork for a ride they'll never forget. Thanks, Athena. Next time you need your car inspected, I'll do it for free. Bye."

"All set?" Matt asked his friend.

"Yeah. Who was that?"

"Unai Kemen... Said my boss might be in trouble."

"Well, you better get on it," Lou clapped the scrapper on the shoulder, "Take that beast with you."

He was indicating the motorcycle. It was a nightmarish contraption, now. A blend of magic and technology, it was the terror of the city streets. A chaingun was mounted above the headlight, the headlight was powered by a gem called a "Spark of the Sun" (clicked on, it harmed undead!), the back was weighed down with rocket pods, grapple guns, and jump jets, an the whole chassis was wrapped in armor! The armor was chiselled and painted to look like some sort of Japanese dragon or lion or something...

The engine itself was powered by something called a Monster Heart, supposedly the crystallized heart of a Drake, and it's exhaust was often a bright blue like out of a Sky Raider Raptor Pack. The tires themselves were supposedly made from Salamander Scales, and were enchanted anyway to resist wear and tear. Then there were the shocks, which were top of the line, nearly military-grade devices that the scrapper was only able to get through one of the contacts he made in Talos Island.

Matt mounted the machine and kicked it on. It let out a roar like some sort of angry animal, but it was like no animal Lou had ever heard, and it made him uneasy. McGinty just smiled wickedly, though.

"Good luck getting your daughter back," he said to Lou as the garage door opened, "Hope that hero pans out."

"Athena said the guy's bringing a whole crew to do it, and they're largely electric based. I've got a really good feeling about this."

"Well, if there's any trouble, let me know. We'll send somebody to teach those Clockwork not to mess with kids."

"Thanks!"

The door opened and Matt tore off, leaving a fiery trail behind him. A Supa Troll plodded into view and he used the big dumb animal as a ramp to hop up onto one of the Skyway City overpasses. Seeing the Supa Trolls were out again, Lou shut the door as soon as Matt was out.

----

On the highway, Matt made for Talos Island. He knew that from there, he could make a B-line for Peregrine Island. The drive, however, would give him time to think.

"Why did Randy tap me for an emergency?"

----

As soon as Kemen called MCGinty with the emergency number, Kipland Durj, second-in-command of Grey's Army, got a text message.

"Kip, it's Randy. Something bad happened, I don't know what, yet, I'm recording this beforehand. Anyway, I need you to lead the super group from now on. I've been meaning to promote you to General for a long time, it's just we hardly ever see each other, and when we do, I'm too drunk. Well, if you go to the registrar, they'll know what the deal is. Good luck boy, and if you get the chance to help me, don't [fricking] hesitate! I may be an old man, but I still have things to do!"

"Dammit," the martial artist grumbled, "Why does Randy keep giving me heart attacks before I'm thirty?"

----

Charlene Daring-Grey also received a text message...

"I'm sorry. hon, but I won't be in for dinner. Something really bad came up, and I just had to do it. I don't know what to say about it, because frankly, as I'm typing this, it hasn't happened, yet. When it does happen, I won't have time to get all this set up. I'll probably send something to Sarah, telling her I love her, because I don't have enough options to have something get sent to everybody who needs to know what's up. Char... I'm running out of space... I love you. You're the light of my life, and I swear, I'm doing everything I can to make it back to you. I lost you once and it nearly killed me. I can't let you go through the same pain. If I can't make it... Well, know that I at least made them pay for it. Goodbye."

Charlene tried to dial up her daughter, but she couldn't see through the tears welling up in her eyes.

----

Cedric and Roland Grey, Randy's sons, also received messages.

Cedric's message wound up being almost like a warcry.

"Hey son, it's your dad. I'm in trouble or dead. Don't stop fighting on my account, in fact, fight harder. Sooner or later, you'll get an opportunity to help me or avenge my death. When that happens, I expect nothing less than a swath of destruction as you heap dead bodies in your wake. Good luck, boy. You kids make me proud. I love you."

Roland's 's was a bit different...

"Son, the coming time may be more of a burden for you than it ever had to be. You never had to come here, never had to stay, but you did, and the things you've done for me... Well... I can't begin to thank you enough. Attached with this message is a bank account and a code to access it. I know that money's a poor substitute for not having your dad around, and I wish you and I connected better in life, but... Roland... I love you, son. I'm proud of you, too. The world is yours, my boy. Make of it what you will."

The two brothers looked at each other as they finished reading their messages. They happened to be eating lunch at the time at Hero Burger. Their eyes narrowed.

"What do you think?" Cedric finally asked.

"Mom."

"Yeah, let's go get mom."

"Snuffy?" Roland arched an eyebrow to his brother as they stood and threw on their jackets.

"She's got Joe."

----

In fact, she did. When she got the call from her sobbing mother, she had already taken a day off and had convinced her boyfriend to do the same. She'd gotten the text message from her father shortly before he left.

"Sarah, I love you immensely. Your mother and your brothers won't know where I went, or what I did. But you'll be the one to know, and I want you to tell them. I had to go to the Rikti homeworld and try to finish an old fight. I didn't know that it would come to this, but that's the short of it. Now, I'm preparing to head out, and I need to wrap this up. Sarah... I love you. I never told you kids that enough, and I'm sorry I spent so many evenings off on side projects or hunting monsters (talk to Kip, he'll explain). Tell Joe I still hate his rotten guts, and that I'm expecting him to be a good father for my grandchildren. If they turn out like him, I'll be so [ticked]. Good luck, Sarah. I trust you to decide when is the right time to tell the others."

Curled up on the couch with her husband, she suddenly started crying. Joe hugged her closer and they just sat quietly in the house, waiting for night to fall and a new day to begin.

Nodding to Lady Grey and Night Protector respectively, Randall turned to Kemen and handed him a small paper print-out (about half the size of the average yellow "sticky" note) from his communicator. On it was a number.

"If anything bad happens, you lose contact with us, whatever... Call this guy. He's the only one I can think of that would do everything he can to rescue me and the rest of the team here. Even if it meant forcing you guys at sword-point to turn the portal back on."

----

Waiting for the Rikti advisers to figure out how to escape what was supposed to be a warehouse of some sort, Randall leaned against a wall.

Already, this was shaping up to be a nasty trip. He'd heard something about being redirected and computer invasion... If that was the case, too many people knew what was going on and had figured out a way to affect the situation.

Why they'd want to help Nemesis was beyond him, but it probably had to do with money. Most people didn't realize they were working for the Mad Brass King, anyway.

Leaning where he was, however, he was a little weirded out when the wall practically melted away. It was strange... It didn't seem like a melting...

"I gotta stop looking at this like a construction worker," he grunted, "I'm here to fight..."

He peered through the opening and his heart sank slightly when Lk'Onik exclaimed where they were.

"The Jade Moon," he muttered, "Sounds like entirely the wrong place to be."

Not wanting to be caught off guard in a place like this, he flexed, and the rock armor sprouted from his skin. Crystals protruded from the stone as well. Rooting poured from his pant legs and stuck into the steel. Again, he felt the odd sensation of "life" seeping into him from the rooting, like a mountain grown from the earth.

Even here, with this alien technology, he felt a connection to the very materials of it. Even here, he was protected by the raw materials of the world.

Here, however, there was something odd... Something was coming through the connection. People often said things like "if these walls could talk..." well, they spoke to Randall... Not in words, per se, but more through feelings, sensations...

Something was unsettled here.

Dross wasn't going away. The Outcasts had brought the heroes to a leaning skyscraper, and the walking pile seemed to be patrolling the base of it.

"We should just turn these guys over to that... thing!"

Cedric and Sheldon's eyebrows raised slightly at the fire-type Outcast who seemed to run things in their little hideout. He wasn't happy that one of the scavenging/scouting teams had brought the Dross to their doorstep, and when it turned out it was largely because they had brought heroes with them he almost literally blew his top.

"Now, hang on," the scout leader tried to calm the other down, "These guys say there's a truce..."

"You're gonna trust them?" the Lead Scorcher shouted, "May as well turn ourselves over to the cops, or just jump out the window and let that freak tear us apart!"

"Now hang on!" Cedric stepped forward with his arms out to his sides, "I think you're missing out on the important issue here..."

"Which is?"

"The big [fricking] monster outside!"

"That you brought here!"

"And how long do you think it would have been before you were finally discovered?" Sheldon interrupted their argument, "You really think your fate is any different now as it would be then?"

"That's not-" the Scorcher was angry, but his voice faltered a little.

Sheldon continued, "We're in a bad situation here, and dividing ourselves and pointing fingers is only going to make it worse. If you want, we could probably thrash everybody in this room except the ones who want to work together and survive this day..."

The Scorcher closed his mouth and stepped back.

"Now, look," Cedric pulled Sheldon away and took over the conversation again, "Nobody wants to thrash anybody, and nobody wants to get thrashed..."

He gave a pointed glare to his friend.

"Now, look," he went on, "This is a bad situation. We've got what is essentially a giant monster to fight... When heroes fight giant monsters, we usually have to pull together a few teams of us to take them down... Even the smallest of them, like Babbage's little brother, the Paladin..."

"We're not heroes!" a Chiller shouted.

"Why not? You've got powers, you've got attitude... You guys ever know Ashen Roast or Blizzard Front?"

Unsurprisingly, few of them did. The ones that did said something to the effect that they were "traitors to the cause."

"Cause? What cause?" Cedric was incredulous, but pressed forward to the point, "Look, we don't need to fight over the details, the point is that you guys all have the potential to be heroes, to be something more than you are..."

"Get it into your head," the Lead Scorcher shouted at him (it seemed he liked to yell), "We're not good guys!"

"Well then get it into your head that if you don't get up off your [butt] and do something, you're all gonna wind up dead bad guys in here!"

Cedric breathed heavily a couple times. Sheldon let out a small sigh, but said nothing. The tanker had the floor, and now the Outcasts were attentive again.

"Look, we can take this Dross, we can take it! All we need is a plan..."

Now, Sheldon piped up, "I believe I have one..."

----

"I'm sorry," he whispered to his walking tank.

He hadn't even given it a name. It was just a prototype, a working prototype, but a prototype nonetheless. He had been hoping to turn it over to Freedom Corps, or Portal Corp, or some major company... Not Crey... He'd heard enough about them.

"Sheldon, can we hurry this up?" the Brick barked at the inventor, "I mean, we only have so much time..."

Sheldon looked up at the opening he had torn into the side of the building to fit his machine in. They'd busted into the narrow portion of the building, the part Dross couldn't get into.

"You were meant for more than this," Wallace continued as he walked around to the canopy, "But you served admirably, my dear."

"Is anybody else creeped out by this?" the Brick turned to his companions, "I mean... Why is he talking to his car?"

"It's a bit more than a car, man," a Chiller replied, "I kinda wish I had one..."

"Still, you get what I mean."

"Eh, let it go," a Match finally waved it off, "He worked hard on it, of course he's a little sentimental."

"I guess," the Brick sounded unconvinced, but he dropped the issue.

Sheldon, however, didn't. He'd been grappling with the issue for several weeks up to that point. Most inventors invent to solve a problem they were dealing with. Sheldon invented to solve things that might happen. He also invented out of greed (such as his pet mutant gerbil, Felix), and out of compulsion (the Ryat series androids were more or less made to see if he could do it). These were not the hallmarks of a law-abiding inventor. They were the hallmarks of...

Wallace flipped a switch inside the canopy and red lights started flashing along with alarm klaxons. He closed the frame of the shattered glass and walked back over to the Outcasts, his gloves humming as they gathered up a series of nanites from the various pockets dotted throughout his lab coat to help him with his next task.

"Okay, boys," he said to the Outcasts gathered with him, "Let's take a walk."

----

Cedric bounded from room to room, supervising the Outcasts as they worked at weakening a section of the building. Ice-types would freeze a certain section of the floor, fire types would burn it, stone types were hammering everywhere. The only ones who didn't seem to eb doing anything were the lightning ones, but it was more or less because there wasn't much they could do.

"We basically make power for the building..." the Lead Shocker told Cedric, "We're the generator."

"Wow," the tanker actually sounded impressed, "I bet you guys are normally a lot quieter than a gas powered one, huh?"

"Heh, yeah... Except when we've had bean burritos..."

"The ones from Taco Town?"

"Yeah..."

"Alright, then I got another idea..."

----

Sheldon marched out with the Outcasts in tow. He had the walking tank hovering behind him, it looked almost like a balloon on a string with how he had it levitating. The Outcasts fanned out in groups of four and scouted about for Dross.

They didn't have to wait long.

Dross came around the corner with Babbage hot on its trail. It was a little strange, it looked as if Babbage had been fighting a small army...

A series of rockets flew through the sky (it was probable they were fired by Praetorian forces) and connected with the Clockwork monster. Sheldon shrugged off the mild distress he felt at seeing the big machine go down. Sure, it would have been nice to have the assistance, but there was just as much of a chance that Babs would have attacked them when it was done fighting Dross.

"It would have been no different than Croatoa," he muttered as he prepared to get to work.

The Outcasts took positions behind wreckage. They didn't have many effective weapons, in fact, they had little to no explosives. They did, however, have some hard-hitting special abilities, such as the big rocks the Bricks liked to throw and the fireballs of the Scorchers. Behind cover, they'd at least be able to hide from Dross's assaults for a moment.

Sheldon's job was to give them that moment. With a gesture of his hand, the walking tank started orbiting around him. As he continued to trace a circle in the sky, the vehicle kept picking up speed. As it hit terminal velocity, Sheldon took aim and threw the impromptu boulder at his Praetorian.

Dross felt the impact as a new piece of wreckage suddenly nestled into it. The walking wreckage turned to Sheldon and seemed to almost chuckle.

"Well?" Wallace intoned and arched an eyebrow, "What are you waiting for?"

Dross started stomping toward him, and Sheldon kicked on his kinetic energy siphon device. Striking the monster in the toe, he barely slowed it down, but the energy he got allowed him to keep just out of harm's way every time it threw it's arms out to try to crush him.

"Sorry... Too slow... Better luck next time... Oh, you almost had me there... Are you even trying?"

Dross was under the leaning building now. Sheldon whistled, and the Outcasts attacked.

----

Above Dross, Cedric cleared the Outcasts out of the weakened rooms. Licking his lips, he prepared to smash into the ice with his axe.

"Unless, of course, you've got another one of those energy blasts for me..."

Sorry, brother. You're gonna have to make do with what you've got for now.

"What a gyp..." Cedric muttered.

Taking a deep breath, he jammed one of the hooked chains into the corner of the doorway and gave it a tug. Figuring he was safe (enough), he edged out into the middle of the frosty rooms and hefted his weapon.

"You shockers ready?" he asked.

"Yep," they replied, "That [jerk] is going to learn the hard way why you shouldn't just wrap yourself in steel..."

Cedric grinned and smashed his axe into the floor.

A bit of ice dust flew up into the air, but other than that, there was no reaction.

"What?" Cedric shouted, "Oh, come on! We had this place groaning under what we did to it!"

"Maybe we need to make all the ice shatter!" a Match suggested.

"No we don't need to do anything like that..."

"Or maybe have all of the stone-types smash the walls down..."

"Then they'd probably fall down with everything, we're trying to minimize casualties, here, guys..."

"Maybe..." the Match piped up again, "Maybe fire?"

"Dammit!" Cedric stomped on the floor, "No fi-"

There was a loud groaning sound.

"Rr?"

The floor fell out underneath Cedric and kept falling away. His chain held, and he wound up hanging over Dross's head. Or rather, where Dross's head would have been if it weren't for the piles and piles of concrete, steel, ice and old rotten furniture that had just been dropped on top of it.

"Whoo!" Cedric shouted triumphantly, "Now we just have to..."

While his chain may have held, it seemed the doorframe wasn't up to the task. With a loud snap, it broke away, letting Cedric fall.

"Don't-stop-on-account-of-me-I'll-be-oof!"

He slid off Dross's shoulder as the monster tried to recover.

----

When the pile fell on the monster, Sheldon shouted to begin the attack. The Outcasts launched their respective assaults at once, and when the dust cleared, Cedric's body fell against Dross's shoulder.

"Woah, that wasn't part of the plan," Sheldon started walking forward, not entirely sure of what he was going to do to help his friend.

Fortunately, Cedric had something else planned. The various Electric-type Outcasts suddenly came pouring out of the hole, flooding the air with shocking bursts and charging Drosses girders and rebar. The monster let out a pained roar as it fell back and momentarily lost cohesion.

While the Outcasts let out a triumphant cheer, Sheldon realized what it was. Dross was in there somewhere, getting zapped, and he was just reshuffling the wreckage around himself to pull anything made of rubber near him.

Dross was still human.

"Fantastic," Sheldon shouted as he reached Cedric, "Come on, we gotta get out of the blast radius!"

"The what-whose-it?" Cedric tapped the side of his head as his friend pulled him off the ground, "Oh... Oh!"

They ran, Sheldon launching a speed boost into his friend (accidentally causing him to overshoot the retreat by nearly a thousand feet), and as they reached a safe distance, the inventor stopped, turned, and knelt down with his left wrist in front of himself and his right hand poised over it.

"Time to say goodbye," he whispered and hit the blinking red button that revealed itself as his left wrist panel popped open.

----

Dross knew who Sheldon Wallace was. He'd been helping Neuron study the surveillance and had made sure to check for anybody who looked like him. It was a little odd finding his opposite with a group of androids, or overseeing a reconstruction project, or even utilizing his kinetic and gravity control technology to personally fight the various enemies throughout the city.

The fool, he thought to himself in those days, He should be a millionaire, or at the very least, a man of power and influence... Not this scraping worm, groveling at the feet of those who are his lessers...

He'd had a rough time at life. The Praetorians were by far a very difficult group to work for. Survival of the fittest often led to Dross saying goodbye to colleagues and co-workers in the most violent of ways. Sometimes, he thought he was the next to go, when it would often turn out to be a test to see if he could defend himself.

That was how he learned how to gather wreckage about himself and turn it (at first) into a protective shell. As time wore on and he refined his inventions, he turned his armor into his weapon, a giant monster to enforce the will of Tyrant.

His father had called him mad. He kept shouting it, even as Sheldon, laughing, stomped on him with feet made of concrete.

He wondered if Hector still lived in this world... Likely, the foolish old man had been killed in some sort of accident. Considering the saccharine nature of this Earth... The one the inhabitants called Prime Earth (foolish cretins...)... This Sheldon Wallace may have tried to save his...

Ow.

The building collapsed on top of him, and all Dross knew was rage. He remembered flailing about wildly, struggling to escape from the materials that smashed into him, but suddenly he was assaulted from all sides. He could sense metal fusing together, rocks smashing apart some of his concrete defenses...

Then there was lightning. The sudden jolts he felt from the arcing electricity brought him back to focus, floating as he was in the center of the behemoth's torso. He yelled in anger and frustration, echoing it throughout the assembled parts.

Growling, he relaxed some of his control and pushed the steel away. He had a few cars mixed somewhere inside the wreckage, so he clenched his fists and tore away their tires. A few seconds later, and he had rubber protection from the electric arcs.

As he regained his focus, he looked to the mirrors that served as his viewscreens. No need for high tech when all it takes is careful angling to for a good view. What he saw was his opposite and some crazy military-looking guy with an axe running away. As he gathered the body back together and started to follow them, he saw Sheldon do something that caused the army man to rocket into the distance, then he just stopped, turned around, and crouched.

"You fool," he muttered, "Now you die."

He raised the behemoth's fist into the air and prepared to let it slam into his enemy. Then there was a flash, and everything went black.

----

The Outcasts started cheering and whooping as Dross fell apart. Cedric and Sheldon approached the wreckage and clambered up on top of it.

"You think he made it?" Cedric asked, "That was a pretty nasty boom..."

"About the same strength as a blockbuster bomb," Sheldon agreed, "And knowing me, yeah, he probably made it."

They found the unconscious form of Sheldon's other sprawled on a piece of concrete. It seemed he had been keeping himself inside a chamber of concrete and steel. There were the broken remains of a few molten tires.

"Makes sense," Cedric arched an eyebrow at him as he pulled a tag from his belt and placed it on the villain's forehead, "Alright, time to tell Posi that it's safe to launch an assault."

"That's good," Ryat66 shouted as he leaped down to them, "I'm glad I found you guys. There's trouble..."

"There's always trouble," the tanker sighed as he pulled Sheldon's opposite out of the wreckage, "Let's gather these guys, get out of here and maybe put in a few good words for 'em..."

He shook Dross.

"Not this guy, though. He's got himself a date with a three-by-five prison cell, cold showers, nasty food, and the only way out... is suicide..."

"What about Arachnos coming by and taking him away?" Ryat66 chirped, "Or maybe the Praetorians will bust him out..."

"We'll burn that bridge when we get to it," Sheldon chuckled, "Come on. Outcasts! Time to go!"

Shadowrun.

The team had just wiped (as happens rather often in Shadowrun) due to exceptionally bad intel, and we wake up in a peculiar room. The contact (Silk, made and played by our GM, and who had subsequently gotten us most of our info), walks in and asks how we're doing. Everybody gives their grunts and groans, some even express thanks for his quick retrieval. I (playing a Rigger named "Jake"; played him essentially like a Robots MM, only with a big armored van instead of a secondary powerset) had a bit of a different reaction...

Me: "Silk... Is my gun nearby?"

Silk: "Yes, of course. It's on the nightstand."

Me: "Is it loaded?"

Silk: "...Yes."

Me: "With my bullets or your bullets?"

Silk: "Yours."

Me: "Good. Good. Now, I'm going to have to ask you to stand very, very still."

Silk: "Why?"

Me: "So I can SHOOT YOU WITH IT! TWICE!"

Kip let out a brief chuckle, almost as if he doubted the capability of the "multitudinous" Twilight Radiation. He scratched at his face under the eye patch, but thought better of whatever it was he'd considered, and withdrew his hand.

"Alright," he grumbled as his eye stopped glowing, "I'll stand down. Somebody's got to know when to stop growling..."

Psycho13 relaxed a little, then turned to Twilight.

"Well, Twilight, this is Kip... A tall drink of water in a shot glass."

"You're funny."

"Yes, well... Up until recently, what was fueling my slaughter was the thought that nobody I knew from my past was alive... Now I've come to learn that he's here, so I can calm down, now..."

"No, please," Kip smirked and folded his arms across his chest as he leaned against the wall (a bit of dust crumbled off the side of it), "Don't let my existing keep you from slaughter. By all means, continue. Heck, I just killed three guys tonight, and have executed many more in previous nights..."

"Cool..." Baker rolled his eyes and turned to Twilight, "Well... I guess the bloodbath continues..."

Kip glanced outside as there was a hovering sound of a ship flying by. No bombs... They must not think anything important is nearby... Or maybe they were circling for another pass...

"Maybe we should get moving," he muttered.

Randall pulled a flask from his jacket and took a sip. The flask itself was about the size of a normal person's canteen. Turning to Lady Grey, he nodded as he closed and put the flask away.

"Regular motley crew you and your own have assembled here. Will your people still be recruiting, or is this push the only one we're making?"

Kip glared at the newcomer. His unpatched eye narrowed and he assumed a defensive stance. Psycho13 reacted in much the same way.

"What the Hell are you doing?" the regenerator nearly shouted.

Kip picked up on Psycho13's tone rather quickly.

"Know this guy, do you?"

"Not well..."

Durj turned to Twilight and his right eye started to glow a dangerous shade of red.

"That doesn't bode well for you, shadow man... You've got a very short amount of time to explain why you're here and why I shouldn't be kicking your head inside-out."

"He can do it, man," Psycho13 stood between them, but with a wide enough berth for Kip to have his clear shot, "I've never seen it, but I don't doubt it... He does crazy things."

There was an odd flicker at the edge of Kip's eye patch.

"Yeah," he muttered, "Crazy..."

Game: WoD: Mage
Individuals: Myself (referred to as Me or [Grey]), GM, another player referred to as [Chipsy].

Me: "I try to start my car."

GM: "It doesn't start."

Me: *grumble* "Hokay... WAIT! I do a search of the vehicle!"

GM: *slightly evil grin* "You find a wire leading from your ignition switch to somewhere under your car."

Me: "Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!" *sigh* "Get out of the car and look underneath."

GM: *rolls eyes* "Okay. You see a tan block-"

[Chipsy]: "Uh-oh... C-4..."

Me: *slight pause* *Eyes brighten* "Reach under the car while saying 'Why, oh, why would somebody build a bomb out of fudge?"

GM: *evil grin melts* "FUDGE!?"

Me: "Peanut Butter to be exact."

[Chipsy]: "Heh."

There's a moment's pause as Hunter glares at me. Finally, his face smooths and he says...

GM: "Roll it..."

Me: *Roll*

GM: "Difficulty of... Seven..."

Me: "SUCCESS!"

GM: "..."

Me: "Hee-hee! Somebody gave me some fudge. I had one success, so how does this stuff taste?"

GM: "..." *blink* "You... You're eating it?"

Me: "It IS peanut butter fudge..."

GM: "One success... Okay, it's kind of 'plasticky' and it has a blasting cap in it..."

Me: "Oop, better take that out of there. 'Meh, I've had better. You want any of this, Eddy?'"

[Chipsy]: "No thanks."

----

Same Game, later...

GM: "Do you know why that didn't draw paradox?"

Me: "Kind of... It was because I never declared it was plastique."

GM: "Right... Technically, there was nobody around to tell you that your vision of the world where a guy was dumb enough to make a bomb out of peanut butter fudge was wrong."

----

Later... Same Game...

Me: "I turn the fence into pretzels..."

GM: "Oh come the [sex?] on!"

[Chipsy]: "What is with you and turning things into food all of a sudden?"

Me: "I don't know! It's this character, guys... He's... Weird in the head..."

GM: "PARADOX!"

Me: "How bad?"

GM: "One point... You've got a whanging headache."

Me: "But the fence is made of pretzel?"

GM: "YES!"

Me: "Then it was worth it."

GM: "PARADOX IS BAD!"

Me: "But it wears off, right?"

GM: "I... Rgh... [Grey], you're driving me to drink... Get me a Dew, 'sensuous.'"

Me: "But I'm not standing..."

GM: "You turned a fence into pretzels, take this as a penalty for being so stupid."

Me: "Stupid?"

GM: "It was an electronic fence! You have Forces! You could have zapped the keypad and shorted out the system, causing an emergency opening! It could have been explained as a really strong static charge, or a tazer..."

Me: "Ah, but there's no guarantee that would've worked."

----

An explanation on "sensuous..."

It's taken from the Jeff Foxworthy joke about how the word "sensuous" means something different in Redneck terms.

Sensuous in the dictionary has multiple meanings, most of which deal with the senses, feeling, and enjoying feeling, etc.

Redneck "Sensuous" is actually more of a phrase...

"Ah figgered Ah'd drop by sensuous up..."

We turned it into...

GM: "Hey, sensuous up, grab me a Dew."

Everybody else: *mild cacophony* "Yeah, sensuous..."

Me: "Dammit dammit dammit! My mistake was getting up..."

Psycho13 blurred past several patrols. Keeping to the back alleys, and nearly getting blasted by falling bombs a couple of times, he worked his way to the apartment where Randall Grey used to supervise.

It was here, underneath the basement of the apartment building, that the ugly old man had built his super group's base and keyed it to the Universal Portals scattered throughout the zones. He kept it a secret for a long time, until he accidentally wound up revealing it to his family and friends after a massive attack by the Praetorians. Psycho13's Brutal Warriors Order learned of it from Cedric over a few choice card games.

The building was, like much of the rest of the zone, in ruins. Industrial support still existed, but only to facilitate the rest of the city's basic necessities, like water and power. Residences were expendable.

People dying produced more terror.

"Kip?" Psycho13 whispered as he worked his way through the rubble, "Durj, is it you?"

There was a sudden rushing sound, and "Caleb" turned just in time to see Kipland Durj's foot connecting with his jaw.

"Aughl..." he gurgled as he sprawled away.

Kip picked himself up off the ground after his successful dropkick and assumed a stance akin to a crab, with both his right arm and leg forward, with the arm bent at a ninety degree angle so the forearm pointed skyward.

Psycho13 pushed himself off the ground and looked at Kip as his jaw fit itself back into place.

"Ow," he rasped, "What the Hell, man?"

"You can't be Baker," Kip rasped at him, "I was at his funeral!"

"Yeah?" Psycho13 stormed up to his old friend, "Did you see my body!?"

"Yes!"

This took Psycho13 back a bit.

"We sent Ryat87 down to recover 'you' after it was clear 'you' were dead," Kip explained in the silence, "You'd know that if you'd done your research, Mayhem scum!"

At a loss for words, Psycho13 just shook his head and nearly made his eyes bug out of his head.

"And now," Kip started sidling closer, "I put you out of my misery..."

The "one-eyed" scrapper shot a kick at Psycho13's head.

"No!" Psycho13 shouted as he caught Kip's foot with the flat of one of his blades, "This can't be right!"

Kip stepped back, but he continued his assault. Psycho13 ducked, dodged, deflected, and healed back what he could, but in short order, he would have to defend himself. He would have to fight back.

"Kip, I don't want to fight you!"

"It's a little late for that!"

Psycho13 drew his blades.

"I was hoping it wouldn't come to this," he muttered, "But if the only way I can get you to stop is carving little pieces out of you, I guess I'll have to do it."

"You're pretty damn good... You almost sound like him... But you can't be him..."

"Solitude has made you mad, old friend," Baker sighed, "I should know. I've been there. Kip... Please... Reconsider..."

"Die, doppelganger!" his friend shouted as he charged forward with greater determination.

"I see," Psycho13 muttered as he felt his metabolism suddenly accelerate, and suddenly, he was moving much faster than normal.

Kip got close, but Baker ducked aside and cut him on the shoulder. A puff of black-purple smoke appeared and there was an unusual amount of resistance. Kip continued unabated, and drove his foot into Psycho13's chest, sending the other scrapper flying into (and through) a crumbling section of wall.

Before Kip could get any closer, however, Psycho13 was smashing his way through the rubble and punching Kip in the face with the butt of his knife. A flurry to the chest later, and he whirled through the air, bringing his right foot cracking across Kip's face.

Kip snapped himself back up and caught another "whirl kick" to the chest. The angry scrapper lie still afterward, despite having plenty more fight left in him.

"Well?" Psycho13 hissed, "We can't keep this crazy crap up, old friend... Now, you either believe me, or we're going to keep going on like this..."

"I believe you... For now..." Kip groaned.

"It was the kick, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, the kick."

Randall picked himself off the sandbags with a grunt and made his way for the ramp up to the platform before the portal entrance. He tapped a few more buttons on his communicator...

"I got a few more things to add to my last will and testament," he growled, "Char gets the house... Cedric the booze... That sort of stuff."

He tapped the communicator a few more times before turning to the rest of the assembled.

"No, this is not an indication of how I feel this whole operation is going to turn out. None of us would be here if we didn't think we had what it takes to come back from this alive... However... It would behoove you to do get your affairs in order and ensure that your possessions and loved ones are taken care of in the surprising event of your demise..."

He unconsciously rubbed the fingers of his free hand together.

"You never know what will do you in, and who knows if we'll still have the Red Cross Express keeping us in critical-yet-stable condition when we're on the other side."

Pressing the "Send" button, he sighed. That would go to his lawyer, who would keep it safe. Since that was all the way in Kingdale, New York, there was a low probability the poor guy would get hit by anything or anybody.

"I already had this one on hand, minus a few issues I hadn't gotten around to, yet, when I was doing work for Portal Corp before. You still never know when you're going to wind up stuck somewhere... I'll understand if the rest of you need to take some more time."

He took position next to the ramp as he rummaged through his pockets, making sure they had the various items he'd need... Quik-Med, Berzerk, Focusyn...

(He set the yellow-labeled Focusyn cartridges on the ground next to the ramp. He didn't need it, but somebody else might.)

...N-R-G, and Armor-Plus (the purple-labeled ones...), all in cartridges with jet-loaded syringes for quick use in the battlefield. Each product was, sadly, from Crey Pharmaceuticals, but even an evil corporation has its strokes of benevolence. The concoctions themselves were single-use nanotechnology and chemical combinations that produced near-instantaneous results, results that largely were similar to the names of the products themselves.

Berzerk, for instance, made heroes and rogues that used it much more powerful in battle.

"I should be just about ready," he finally grunted when he was satisfied. He clicked the various devices he'd acquired from his super group's tech man. A Defensive Matrix, an Aggressor Matrix, and a Focus Matrix (hence the lack of need for the Focusyn). Each device ran off BTUs and emitted nanites capable of enhancing the capabilities of Randall's nearby allies slightly, and every little bit helps in situations like this. The machines themselves were nigh-perpetual, as they kept recirculating themselves through their power plant every couple of minutes. The emitters all seemed to be working, so he shut them down and let them regain their potency.

Finally, he closed his eyes and felt for that odd little bundle of energy... He could almost feel the "stone" waiting to engage when he "flexed." A gift he'd learned of shortly before the Rikti War, though he couldn't remember exactly who or what had given it to him, he was able to grow bizarre, rock-like growths across his body (and within it) that protected him from the assaults of just about everything. The whole sensation still felt like a new muscle, just waiting to flex, hence his terms for it.

Satisfied, he turned to Dark Watcher and Lady Grey and gave a thumbs-up.

"All good here."

My money's on things being messed up on the other side... he thought grimly, Just a hunch.

((You guys do realize nobody's said who's in charge of what yet, right? So far, Randall's been told he's in charge of a group, not the whole group (though, if Borea throws that at him, he's gonna be so [ticked]), but he's the only one who's been told.

EDIT: Scratch that... Thanks to a PM from Devious, Randall is slightly [ticked]. However, don't expect him to be turning any of that on any of your characters... There's plenty of enemies out there for him to work his frustrations out on. No "Gone with the Blastwave" tactics here.))

Randy noted each of the individuals as they introduced themselves with a curt nod from his seat on the corner of a sandbag wall.

Ineffable was a new face for his memory, and he seemed to be one of those "interesting" meta types. He'd have to keep an eye on that one.

Night Protector, the bubbly, perky girl who reminded him of his daughter, except for that bit where she seemed to lose her nerve suddenly. He hoped that wouldn't continue being a problem. He so disliked "time-bomb" personalities... Not so much the person, but the situations they caused.

Danica... He'd heard of her. It was hard not to know of one of the more celebrated heroes of the city. She was probably asked to lead if he didn't show (as he had a notorious streak of not doing as the authorities requested).

Toy Dispenser and Solid Shot he'd met a couple of times in his career, and they were quite memorable. The rogue, Toy Dispenser, he met, oddly enough, through pure chance and strange circumstances involving the newly dubbed "Rikti War Zone," where they helped a crew of heroes and rogues deal with some of the top leaders of the new invading forces.

The hero, Solid Shot, was introduced through his second-in-command when Kip couldn't provide proper support against the Knives of Artemis and called in his boss to mop up. Then the girls didn't know what hit them.

That didn't mean he knew either of them very well. Still, they seemed decent in a group of faces he wasn't entirely sure of.

The others who kept quiet or curt... He had to resist the urge to groan. People were already keeping secrets, scheming, and possibly trying to figure out a way to pull off a major scam through this operation. And those were just the quiet ones. People could hide more than enough by yammering on, they only ran a risk of letting something slip. It didn't mean they would...

Dammit, now he was thinking like Kip...

"Well, I'm pleased to meet all of you," Grey grunted finally, "Now, Dark Watcher, if you would be so kind as to explain to us the exact nature of why we're here? I was given a quick gist of what's going on, but I'm a little fuzzy on the particulars."

He paused for a moment and rubbed his chin.

"Unless, of course, we're waiting for others..."

((EDITED to reflect some things Devious made clearer to me))

((Randall Grey: Big, ugly Stone Armor/Super Strength Tank, not a villain.))

The big man looked down at Night with a bemused expression on his face. He took her tiny hand within his big, meaty paw and gave it a gentle shake.

"Well, hello, there. And now, I'm reminded I better call my daughter and tell her I'm going to be okay..."

After releasing the young lady, he pulled his communicator from a pocket in his jacket and started walking to take a seat. He was tapping into it a bit more than normal for a phone number. he must have been sending a text message.

"I'm in charge?" Randy grinned, "Heh, wow... I can already see tomorrow's headlines... Look How Far We've Fallen, Omega Group 2... Led by Randall Grey, the Drunk. Man, I almost wish I could be here for that."

Inside, however, he was steaming.

Damn that Wild... I'm gonna have to take a few rounds outta him when I get back. "I need you to pose as a Freedom Corps informant to keep my superiors off both our butts," BULL[you know]! Who the Hell wants to lead a suicide mission like this? Let alone a motley crew like this is sure to be?

It would have helped if he had some assurance that Power Breaker would on the team too. It would have helped mitigate his troubles in dealing with the rogues. However, the recently vindicated Brute was busy spending time getting his family affairs in order... It seemed Old Man Harris didn't survive the last Rikti bombing...

"I guess I'll be busy, though," he muttered as Borea gestured to the meeting area and those surrounding the Portal.

Stepping heavily, he regarded the assembled meta-humans as he absentmindedly thumbed the lapel of his jacket (Current Outfit). He arched an eyebrow at them; some he recognized, others he did not.

Could've been worse. They could've all been green.

"Hello," he rumbled his voice through the clearing, "I'm Randall Grey."

"Oh man... I think I know that guy..."

Psycho13 traced the picture on the monitor with his finger.

"A beard... an eye patch... Good lord... Kip, what happened to you?"

He looked to the others and nodded to them.

"Thanks. I gotta go, now. I gotta help them, maybe get Kip in on this outfit you got going..."

He sprinted for the teleporter.

"Engineer! Energize!"

The portal opened and Psycho leaped through. He reappeared inside the King's Row Tram Station with the others, but he didn't stick around.

"Be-back-in-a-little-bit!-Got-a-friend-to-save!" he shouted in his machinegun fashion before rocketing to the northeast.

He had to find the remains of the Grey's Army Base... It had to be where Kip was staying...

Honestly, Worlds Apart sounds best of all.

Randall approached the Portal Corp campus. By now, his buzz was gone, and the roast beef sandwich was a quiet memory coursing through his veins and nourishing his body.

Flashing his security level card at the assorted security personnel, he made his way for the portal.

"Excuse me," a young lady with blond hair and what seemed to be white and purple martial arts robes held a hand up to stop him, "May I see your identification, please?"

"Here you are," the large tanker handed over the card and waited patiently.

Borea wasn't surprised by much, but what she saw on the card at least caused her to have a startled and bemused expression for a few seconds.

"Mr... Grey?"

"Yeah," Randy replied as he took back his card, "I was told you Vanguard people need some support in a special mission."

"Grey?" she still seemed a little perturbed.

"What?" he shrugged, then his face got uglier as he grinned and his face's wrinkles got deeper, "Ah... That's right... No, I am not now, nor have I ever been a blood relative of or otherwise related to the Lady Grey."

"Ah..." Borea resumed her usually placid appearance, "Yes, I see in our reports that Freedom Corps has requested a position for you."

"Hot [dung]," he barked as he followed the Vanguard officer she assigned to lead him to where the other gathered individuals were waiting to be briefed.

Psycho13 shook his head grimly.

From the footage, it didn't look like any of his friends from Grey's Army made it to this bleak future either. If only...

A slight motion caught his attention on one of the screens.

"Hey!" he shouted as he rushed to the monitor, "Can you rewind this?"

----

The motion he caught was of an end soldier of a line being dragged behind a wall. What he didn't see, however, was Kipland Durj snapping the neck of yet another Mayhem trooper who had gotten too close.

It had been a rough number of years for the resilient scrapper. When the Masters of Mayhem showed up on the scene, most of his allies had already retired. Some, like Cedric Grey and Matt McGinty, stood and fought.

Kip had, too, and the memory of his friends' deaths still haunted him at night.

Which was why, this night, he decided he wasn't going to sleep. Not to mention the carpet bombings, Kip just felt like tonight was a night for hunting. Hunting spiders in new paint...

"A little twist and-" he intoned as he quietly snapped the trooper's neck, "And a little bit of the fire in my heart flares up again."

"What the Hell?" he heard from around the corner, "Where's Bob?"

"Williams!" another voice shouted, "What the Hell are you doin' outta line!?"

Two of the troopers appeared at the alleyway entrance. Turning on their thermal scanners, they checked for anything out of the ordinary.

"You think a Resistance fighter got him?"

There was a loud crack, and the soldiers turned to see their pointman crumpling to the ground. Judging by the way his head was lolling around, his neck was snapped.

"Halt!" the fire team leader shouted as he drew his weapon and fired a few rounds at the corner of the next alley, "Come on, Jones!"

The two pursued their quarry, their thermal resolution helping them know that this way he went left, that way he went right. Every so often, the leader fired off another round, but didn't seem to hit anything.

"Sir, we should call this in!" Jones shouted as he struggled to catch up, "We could outflank him with help..."

"No! This one's mine!"

They rounded a final corner and their thermal resolutions winked out. Cursing, the leader ordered them to switch to Night Vision. With every contour of the alley bathed in a bright green glow, they could see the outline of their quarry standing himself up on two fire escapes that flanked the alley and rose into the sky.

"Hi there," Kip chuckled down at them, "Too bad you boys are having a notoriously bad night..."

There was an explosion behind Kipland, and the light in the night vision goggles suddenly flared to a blinding level.

"Augh!" the fire team leader shouted as there was a sudden crack next to him, followed by the sound of carbon-based armor clattering against concrete.

"Jones! Jones!"

He stumbled around a little, but found nothing. His partner and communications specialist was now a broken heap on the ground, struggling to breathe against the pain of having his clavicle broken.

"Jones!" the fire team leader shouted before tripping over his ally's prone form.

He almost shot Jones in retaliation, but Kip's foot stomped on the wrist before he could get the shot off. With a twist of his foot, the weapon rolled out of the Mayhem trooper's grasp.

"You and your friend get to live," Kip growled down at his captive, "If only to tell your bosses that a reckoning's coming. This was and is a city of heroes, and you freaks done gone [messed] up by [ticking] off both sides of the conflict here... No force that has come before has been able to stand against all this world's super powered beings unleashed on them..."

"I assure you, I will assemble a hunting party and we will wipe you from the fa-"

Kip's eye beam blast tore through the fire team leader's faceplate, scorching through the brain and killing the Mayhem minion instantly. Kip stepped over to Jones.

"I don't need to repeat myself, do I?"

"No," Jones gurgled, "They'll kill me, but they'll know what you said."

"Damn straight."

With that, the former scrapper stalked off, seeking the ruin of his old super group's base.

Randall Grey glanced over the glasses in his cabinet. The bottle in his hand remained closed, and his fingers drummed on it expectantly.

It had been a long time...

"I think this will do..."

He pulled a shot glass from the cabinet. One shot. That was all he needed for celebration. His friends and family had engaged in numerous successful operations across the city against the villainy that corrupted it, and, best of all, his friend, Ray Harris, had finally been vindicated in the eyes of the law.

It took rescuing Faultline and Fusionette, but he did it (and without pause). Helping a group of Longbow escape a collapsing building probably helped, too.

Good enough reason to...

The phone rang as he started tugging on the whiskey bottle's cork. Grumbling, Randall set it down and walked across the hall to answer the ringing annoyance.

"Randall Grey?" the voice on the other end asked.

"Yes..." the tanker growled as he recognized the voice, "Agent Wild. Mind telling me why it is you're interrupting me?"

"Interrupting you from what? Surveillance has you pegged as about to catastrophically jump off the twelve step program."

"You boys watch me?"

"It's the only way we can keep the Malta Group off our favorite heroes' backs," Wild quipped on the other end, "It's not like we're planting evidence or harassing you like some sort of conspiracy theory..."

Randy walked back over to the bottle, popped it open, and poured himself a shot.

"Don't do that... Please?"

"First off," Randall downed the alcohol and set the glass in the sink, "I'm a might too big for one shot to have much effect. Second, I never went through any program. I stopped drinking on my own... Things are going well in my life, and I'm takin' tonight easy..."

He closed the bottle. Good stuff in that bottle. It'll be good to hold onto it.

"I understand, Randy," Wild's voice suddenly hushed, "But... Well... I have a proposition for you."

"What's that?"

"Look, Freedom Corps has been told to get a hold of any and all heroes they can convince to send through the portal they just put up in Peregrine Island. Now... While I qualify for 'hero' status, I already know I'm no match for what's on the other side of that thing..."

"But I am, and you're assigned as my liaison, right?"

"Look, Randall... I wouldn't have tapped you under normal circumstances..."

Randall didn't interrupt during the slight pause. The whiskey was having a subtle effect, it was making his brain feel like he was swimming, but only slightly.

"Grey... I don't like all this 'we're watching you,' crap... Freedom Corps and Longbow against Arachnos, that I can handle. Those guys are definitely not on the right track. But Vanguard? We're all supposed to be heroes, right? We're all supposed to be protecting the innocent... Well... You're the one guy I can trust to send somebody over who won't be trying to screw everybody else over. Plus, you're probably the only person I know who can take a hit from the Honoree..."

"You heard of him, huh?"

"Yeah..."

Randall drummed his fingers on the counter top. Already, his buzz was fading.

"Well?"

"I'm thinking."

Grey popped open another cabinet and pulled down a loaf of bread. From there, he started opening the refrigerator and gathering other ingredients.

"Tell me where to go," he grumbled as he started making himself a couple of roast beef sandwiches.

"Holy God..."

Cedric stood before a bizarre wreck. It seemed as if the Council had erected a crude, yet normally effective, fortification in the southwestern corner of Baumton. There were corpses and wreckage of Praetorian troops littered all around, but what was far more distressing was the condition of the fortification.

Something massive had smashed its way through the walls and torn the soldiers holed up there apart. A couple masked faces looked out to Cedric, but huddled back once they realized they'd been seen.

"It was a terrible thing that happened," a voice said behind Cedric.

Turning slowly, Cedric noted the Outcasts who had lumbered up behind him.

"You guys ain't gonna try to fight me now, are ya?"

"No... But you should know that this area isn't safe. We can't even trust the ground we're walking on..."

----

Sheldon pursued the invaders doggedly. There was something about the tank he drove in. Something about the raw power of being nigh invulnerable...

"This must be how Randall feels all the time," he whispered as he fired a few rounds at the retreating enemies.

Climbing the trashed streets that rose in the center of the destroyed zone, Sheldon started wondering at his plans. With a careful strategic bombardment, he could quite possibly...

He stopped thinking when he noticed the wall of wreckage in his path. Oddly, just a moment ago, it hadn't been there. When Sheldon began his climb up these streets, there hadn't been a wall of...

A wall that seemed to be pushing itself off the ground.

"What was that Cobalt said about my Praetorian?" Wallace muttered to himself, "Oh yes... Dross... Nobody knew if he still existed, or had become some sort of kinetic energy being that liked to cobble together monstrosities from random debris..."

A giant monster stood before him now. Much like the Babbage or the Paladin, only far more misshapen, what could only be Dross prepared to punch Sheldon's walking tank off the side of the hill.

Which it did.

Crushing the left arm armaments of the tank, the monster's swipe sent the machine sprawling and Sheldon could feel his lunch starting to come back up. He counted a few twirls and twists before everything went black and all he could hear was crashing.

----

Positron shook his head sadly as he watched the monitors turn to static one-by-one. The strange monster that must have been what kept the Babbage at bay for the Praetorians in Baumton had just appeared out of nowhere.

"That's a new trick," he grumbled to Ryat66, "I'm sorry, but it seems your friend is gone..."

"Not yet," Ryat66 replied almost cheerfully, "Sheldon's a lot more resilient than most people give him credit for."

"I hope so," Positron sighed, "We may wind up having to nuke that region of the city with a neutron bomb..."

"No way!" the android shouted at him, "under who's authority!?"

"Trust me, it's not my idea. The generals figure that if we don't knock out their last uncontested insertion point soon, the Praetorians will simply swarm through the city..."

The android stared back blankly, a faint whirring being emitted from somewhere within his cranium.

"If we can start a push, they'll have to abandon their plan, but if we can't bring up an assault in the next hour... Baumton won't be habitable for a month. The military leaders figure that's acceptable when compared to losing the city to the Praetorians because 'we were too soft.'"

"Smacks of conspiracy to me," the android grumbled, "Isn't there a counterstrike going on, though? A way to knock out the portals?"

"We haven't heard from the strike teams," Positron started heading out to the heroes, "Valkyrie... Get prepared to raid Boomtown. Select the heroes from this group you think will make a decent shield. I'll set up a support team."

"Verily," the heroine replied, "Tankers and Scrappers, to me!"

Ryat66 tugged at Positron's arm. When the hero turned angrily on him, the android responded with a simple crossing of his arms over his chest.

"Give my creator a little more time. He's better than you're figuring."

"He has until we have our teams ready," Positron replied authoritatively, "Now get out of the way."

"Will do," the android started walking toward the Boomtown entrance, "I'm certain Cedric's gonna need some support."

----

"Holy [dung]!" Cedric shouted as he watched Sheldon's tank tumble through the zone, "Don't worry, buddy, i'm coming!"

He rushed over and wound up stopping the vehicle with his axe. He could hear his Praetorian grunt in the back of his mind.

"Doing okay in there?"

Yeah... Life's just peachy. Mind warning me next time you try to stop a truck with my face?

"I make no promises."

"Sheldon!" Cedric shouted as he started trying to roll the machine over, "Shel! Come on, man, speak to me!"

His communicator warbled.

"I'm okay, Ced... Who're your friends?"

The Outcasts rushed up behind Cedric and started helping him push the machine over. The stone-type Outcasts seemed to help the most, their strength somewhat better than the other collected individuals. Once they got it over, Cedric helped Sheldon get the canopy open.

"Oh crap!" a stone Outcast shouted, "He's headed this way!"

"Dross" (as Sheldon figured) was indeed heading their way. In fact, he was heading straight their way, not lumbering down the streets or anything divergent. He was leaping off the side of the hill like any super leaping hero or villain.

The metal pieces of its body seemed to spread out momentarily, then compressed together upon landing. Various girders, chunks of concrete and wreckage from old vehicles riddled its form. Dross. Waste. Refuse from a bygone time that was never properly cleaned up. Now, it was the fuel of a monster that didn't even seem to need the modicum of form and function of a Clockwork machination.

"Come on!" Cedric shouted as he jerked Sheldon by the shoulder and snapped him out of his reverie, "The Outcasts have a building here they hole up in!"

Sheldon lifted the vehicle into the air with his Gravity Control gauntlets and nanotech robots, and started chasing after them. Cedric looked askance at the smashed machine, wondering at what further use it could have, but pressed on. They headed for a building that leaned out over the ground, Dross hot on their heels.

----

A portal ripped open over King's Row. Blue Steel took position on a nearby rooftop, expecting another heavy tanker-type Praetorian. It was weird how the Praetorians had just tossed the monstrous creatures at the city, like they were nothing more than weapons...

All day, it had been a nasty war. It seemed like every time he splintered one push into his corner of Paragon City, another showed up on the other side of King's Row. He was glad for all the support he'd gotten from the low-level heroes and PPD Hero Program cops.

A number of times, though, he was utterly on his own. Sometimes, he pulled off maneuvers he never even knew he could do, like the time he threw his shield, it stuck into a wall after knocking out a row of Praetorian troops, and he leaped onto it, fending off the Heavy that was chasing him with little more than his nightstick and a taser. He was tired of having to live up to a reputation that he largely felt was undeserved, but damn if it didn't seem sometimes that he was the warrior god the newer heroes made him out to be.

Randall Grey fell out of the portal, hollering and cursing as he realized he wasn't winding up on the street but was crashing into a rooftop. A gout of flame followed him, but it didn't last as the portal's generator was destroyed by the charges he'd planted.

"Are you alright?" Steel asked when he got to the Granite-form Stone Tanker, "I'd have probably done something nasty to ya, but my communicator registers your slightly singed Hero Identification..."

"I'm good," Randall grunted as he pushed himself up, "I'm good... I didn't see my Praetorian out there, but I heard some pretty nasty talk on the counter attack chatter..."

"You took out the King's Row facility?"

"A main one," Randall sighed as he dusted off the last of the rocks that used to be his granite armor, "And don't tell me I'm uglier now than I was with that stuff on. I know I'm uglier now."

"Heh, well..." Blue Steel checked his communicator for any chatter from the neighboring zones, "Are they going to be able to push through here any more?"

"Probably," Randall scanned the horizon, "but not a lot at once. Not anymore."

"Well, you wanna help me deal with a sudden push from Galaxy City? A whole bunch of Praetorians seem to be rushing this way really fast..."

They got there in just enough time to find the SWAT officers arranging a shield formation akin to a phalanx. One turned to the newcomers and saluted to Blue Steel.

"Sir, would you like to take the center? We've been getting word from the Brawler that they're rushing this way... He seemed... Happy about it... like he was having a good time..."

"Odd..." Blue Steel took the offered position, "...Back Alley Brawler doesn't normally like shunting problems off on others..."

"Shunting," Randall almost chuckled as he looked over the riot shields, "That's a good word for what's going on... Look."

The Praetorians were in fact heading their way. A large mass of them, cobbled together from all the various general types. Behind them, though, was just as motley an army. Androids, cyborgs, aliens, mutants, and small (almost cuddly) monsters, with Back Alley Brawler at the lead, cheering and whooping all the way.

The Praetorians didn't look as happy...

"Hey, this looks like fun!" Steel suddenly chuckled.

Psycho13 rolled his eyes.

"Right, sorry... I've been told I have problems with manners, and I have some... experience... in dealing with conspiracy theories..."

He wiped his hands on his pant legs. His palms seemed to get sweaty in situations like this.

"When I'm in a situation that smacks of it, I tend to want answers, and fast..."

"I'm getting kinda' tired of being jerked around like that," Psycho13 grumbled, "Oh wow... A different base?"

Looking around, he started pacing. Every so often, ever so subtly, he would expand his pace so he could take in more of his surroundings.

"So, who are we waiting for?" he asked as he gave a rather pointed glance at the locked door; then, when he was answered, "Who's she? What's so special about this place? Why does she need the door locked? Is she torturing the prisoner? Is she conniving with the enemy? What!? These are things we should be considering! People who lock doors from those who are their allies typically are keeping secrets the allies should know about!"

He arched an eyebrow to the guy who seemed to bring them to this base.

"Well? Am I wrong? Who's running things here?"