Life was hard, being a Troll. The enlarged teeth usually hurt, there was a constant headache from all the substance abuse, and you typically had one hero or another beating the tar out of you and throwing you in jail. In fact, the only reason to really push through it all was for the occasional rave in Skyway city.
Jaborg, a Supa Troll of some reknown, was on his way to such a rave when he encountered a whole new reason it was bad to be a Troll that day. Courtney Cross.
It looked a bit ridiculous as an overweight girl standing at about five elven held an arm behind the back of a glowing green behemoth that was easily pushing the eight foot mark. But as funny as it looked, neither of the two were laughing. Courtney's eyes were on fire behind the frames of her rectangular, tinted sunglasses, and she twisted Jaborg's arm back even harder when she spoke.
"TELL ME!" She commanded in an incredibly hostile voice. Jaborg grunted in pain, and his stinted, slurring voice barked in something that was between a mumble and a moan.
"Me no know!" He groaned, aching. He tried desperately to reach back with his other hand to grab her, but she was keeping her head too low. He tried to push off with his heels and crush her against a wall, but as she leaned over him, using her weight to her advantage, it was too much for him to bear. "Me no know foochure!"
"FUTURE!" Courtney barked, and jerked the arm back and forth to emit another howl of pain. "C'mon! You mutated freaks see everything! You mean to tell me none of your clan members from the Rogue Isles heard about a large bounty for a hero named Clobber-Girl?"
In his desperation at knowing nothing, and a fear unlike that which he ever experienced in the face of any hero, Jarborg simply sobbed stupidly. Realizing it as the noise of a dry source in fear, she grunted and pushed him roughly onto the ground, cursing.
"Worthless trash." She muttered, and couldn't resist kicking him hard in the ribs. "Not worth my time." She spun on the heel of her thick soled combat boot, storming off towards the train station. She had heard that sobbing noise quite a bit in the past few days. Trolls, Skulls, Freakshow, Warriors...anyone she knew of that might know something. Any of the street gangs that did mercenary work, that might've heard of a recent big score. She had made a name for herself as a particularly cruel "hero" amongst them, in particular to the Skulls, who currently had a Bone Daddy in the hospital under intensive care. For all her trouble though, nothing turned up.
She was on the train back to her home in Croatoa when her cell phone rang, and she dug it from the pocket of her leather jacket.
"Crossing. What?" She murmured. The voice that returned was muffled a little, both by the cell phone's disturbance, and the odd helmet that the speaker often wore.
"Miss Crossing, I'm calling to give you an update on a lead regarding Miss Summers." Noisemaze's voice came over the line. "We may have found a lead on the bounty hunter that kidnapped her."
"Tell me. Now." Courtney replied shortly, practically growling. Noisemaze had a tendency to use too many words to say far too few, and at the moment she wasn't in the mood for it.
"Well, I'm not sure how reliable the information was, you see..."
"Tell me."
"It came from a source that didn't quite speak English as well as we would've hoped..."
"Tell me."
"I believe she was a type of tiger hybrid, if you will..."
"Just tell me already, will you?!" She finally yelled into the phone, and in a flurry of anger threw her fist into the seat in front of her. Thankfully it was vacant, as there was a loud cracking noise as the seat bent far more forward than it was ever meant to be.
"Oh, oh! Y-Yes, of course!" Noisemaze stammered in reply. "Well, it appears she was taken by someone large and, I believe, rocky. And his name is something similar to 'Racecar,' keeping in mind the linguistic barriers I faced." Courtney nodded to herself, and mumbled into the fine.
"Fine. Headed to Bloody Bay now." She sighed and snapped her phone shut, watching as her stop in Croatoa came up. Looks like she'd be in for a long ride back to Paragon City, it was enough time to catch a nap before running into Bloody Bay. As the train rolled past her fog-ridden home she propped her feet up on the broken seat in front of her, lowered her head, folded her arms, and hoped that it wasn't to late to save Tera. Her Tera.
