The Brutal Warriors Order (Story: Chronicle)
By
DeviousMe,
Posted on: 2007-03-19 12:02 in Roleplaying
"Welcome," Manticore helped Rachek out of the water.
The Sky Raider had spent the last of his flight hovering slightly above the water. After he passed Terra Volta, however, he wound up catching the eye of a very hungry Lusca. Though he was faster, he still wound up taking a hit from the giant octopus's ink spray, and it made flight from there a lot more difficult.
"At least now I know the skiffs can take a quick dive," he grunted as he reached back for his duffel bag, "Thanks."
"I'm glad you agreed to this," the red-clad hero replied, "I wasn't sure if you would..."
"I'm here to listen, first. You tell me what's up, and I'll decide whether or not I'm going to continue."
"We could arrest you."
Rachek pulled his machete out of the bag and made sure it shone a reflection in the available light. He tapped it to make sure Manticore noticed.
"It's a fight you wouldn't soon forget, Red. Nobody wants that. Where's the pretty one?"
Sister Psyche stepped out of the shadows, then. She was followed by three other figures. One looked to be dressed in the same red-and-white garb as a typical Freedom Corps or Longbow hero, but his style was completely off. The other two seemed to be stark opposites, one tall and lean, the other squat, but stocky.
"Meet Agent Wild," Psyche explained, "He's providing extra hands to your group."
"This here is Gregory Caid, former Archon of the Council and a Freedom Corps deep-cover agent," the red-and-white clad man clapped a hand on the lean man's shoulder, then turned to the other, "And this is Martin Sanders. He... He's a former denizen of the region known as Baumton..."
"I also waged a small war against the Lost," the hobo grunted, "I didn't realize I would be fighting the-"
"I won't be going with you," Agent Wild interrupted, "It's bad enough when Longbow agents get captured by Arachnos, I can't be getting caught on what this is going to be."
"What is this going to be?" Rachek grunted, "And this is all we're getting? Some fighter heroes? Any chance we could be getting some support?"
"My brother's gonna meet us at the transport," Gregory explained, "He's a magician. He's got some skill at keeping people alive... Crowd control spells, too."
"Excellent, excellent... So... What's going on here?"
"Well... To begin, I'm certain you know about the ongoing struggle between Freedom Corps and Arachnos," Sister Psyche began.
"I know enough," Rachek shrugged, "They're Red, you're Blue... you guys are busy trying to keep this city from tearing itself apart, they're trying to take over the world... Essentially you're all the same thing, just different methods."
"Well, we don't control this city or much of anything of how this country works," Manticore corrected darkly.
"Right," the Wing Commander honestly didn't have any argument against the hero.
"Well, over the years, Arachnos has surveyed our city, gaining information on various heroes and heroines who help to protect our citizens and serve the public trust," Psyche waved at the two men to gain their attention again, "At first, we didn't know what any of this information gathering had to do with Arachnos's plans..."
"That changed yesterday. A small fleet of Arachnos flyers invaded the city... Some of them inserted super-powered villains that caused all sorts of mayhem and robbed some banks, others... Others conducted some kidnappings."
"Kidnappings?" Rachek arched his eyebrow at Psyche, "Of people?"
"Yes... Of super-powered people."
"I don't believe you. Why didn't the authorities and other heroes try to... Oh yeah... The mayhem..."
"Now, the various friends of the heroes are working to rescue their fellows, but this has proven to Manticore and myself that something a little more drastic is required."
"So why me?"
"Because, Old Man," Gregory clapped a hand on his shoulder, "You're tough!"
"Actually," Agent Wild explained, "You provide a cover. You're going to be working with super-powered individuals, and you'll be coordinating with some of the denizens of the Rogue Isles to commit some espionage against Arachnos. We need you to find their databases and destroy them."
"You do realize they don't let Sky Raiders into their bases, right?"
"But they do allow you on their islands," Manticore explained, "You even have a base out there..."
"Under Duray's control," Rachek grumbled, "They won't be letting me use it for cover."
"You shouldn't need it," Psyche explained, "We just need you to help them get into the facilities on Sharkhead Isle and Mercy Island..."
"Mako and the Widow... Oh, you're making me really drool over this mission."
"What's the matter, Old Man?" Caid jabbed the captain in the ribs, "Too slow for a challenge?"
The Sky Raider simply glared at the scrapper.
"I'll do it, but on one condition..."
"Name it," Psyche answered before Manticore could be belligerent.
"I want all the charges against my men and me to be dropped."
"No," Manticore almost shouted, "You guys can be tied to all sorts of-"
"You want into the isles? I got contacts in there... Super-powered punks that owe me, businesses I helped out... I also know some of the best insertion points on those coasts. You're right, with my help, your crew will be able to get in and get out with a minimum of fuss. But I'm not helpin' ya until my price is paid."
"We'll do it," Psyche answered, "We'll work something out..."
Rachek narrowed his eyes at her. He was certain she intended to renege on the deal, but he was certain to-
"I'll take your word on it, then," he grunted, then pointed at Psyche specifically, "Your word. Got me?"
"I understand," she replied.
"So... What else are we waiting on?"
There was a whirring sound. Looking up, Rachek almost did a double take as a humanoid machine fell out of the sky, its left arm extending into a set of propellers like a helicopter would have. The rest of the body was brown, brassen and covered in winder keys.
"The Inevitable?" he asked, "I saw on the news that this thing was torn apart!"
"The builder repaired it," Psyche explained, "He... He loaned it to us for this."
Something didn't sound right about that. Rachek had heard the story from the transient leader, Brother Mauthe, who'd heard it from Power Breaker, who had heard it from Randall Grey. While he was certain details had been omitted, he knew that the inventor had vaulted the body up so the Clockwork King wouldn't be able to get at it again. Still, here was the body, complete with its head.
"Giving him a chance, too, huh?" Rachek grumbled, "Alright... That makes sense, too, I guess..."
"This is your tank," Manticore explained, "When things hit the fan... Well, you know."
"Right, right..." Rachek grunted, "Okay... Well, let's kick it."
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
The arrival to Sharkhead Isle did not go smoothly. Arachnos troops happened to be on patrol as the group rowed ashore, and Rachek was certain they'd gotten a radio call out. While Mider Caid, Gregory's brother, seemed to think the Sky Raider had sold them out, the rest of the group chalked it up to simple bad luck.
"I can assure you, young Caid," Sanders grumbled, "the Wing Commander did not betray us."
"How do you know that?" the wizard almost shouted, "He's no better than the rest of his pathetic band..."
"Of pirates?" Rachek finished, "You know, boy, if I didn't know how wrong you were, I'd probably have put a bullet in your gut. Good thing for both of us, huh?"
"I'd prefer it if you didn't threaten my brother," Gregory grinned wolfishly, "I had to act like I hated him for so many years... Even wound up ruining his rep a little. I don't intend to do anything so horrid again."
"Right, right..."
Their trip to the Arachnos fortress was, thankfully, largely uneventful. They had the fortune of the Ghost of Scrapyard marching through the city and gaining the attention of the numerous super villains between them and the base. They were almost discovered once, until one of Brother Mauthe's minions showed up and provided them a decent cover.
"Wing Commander Rachek!" Brother Ringo shouted as he casually tossed the remains of his drink aside, "You're handling a job personally, I see?"
"Ringo..." Rachek noticed the Arachnos troops approaching, "What're you up to?"
"I've been granted leave to do my own thing, ya know?" Ringo was dribbling some kind of fluid on the ground between them and the troops as he approached, "Mauthe sends me into the Isles to gather supplies, keep tabs on things, and keep an eye on old friends."
"Cool. How'd he hear about me?"
"Mauthe said he had a dream and told me to go."
"Ah."
Rachek figured the rest out from there; essentially, Sister Psyche had found out he and his crew would run into trouble, so she employed some form of insurance policy that wouldn't raise eyebrows. The two exchanged some more coded small talk, Ringo giving Rachek some quick pointers to getting around Sharkhead without attracting the notice of Arachnos or the Cage Consortium. As the troops got close enough, the arsonist gave the captain a clap on the shoulder.
"Alright, Old Dog, you get on with what you were up to. Me? I'll handle this..."
Something glowed in the young man's hand and he threw some fire at the accelerant sprinkled throughout the roadway. Fireworks exploded out of the ground, and the young man started throwing flames all around, lashing into the troops despite the fact he was still badly outnumbered. Despite the fast-fading element of surprise only lent Ringo a few seconds of advantage, he didn't seem worried. Snapping his fingers, he was suddenly assisted by trash piles exploding, revealing more of Mauthe's troops, each armed with small but lethal weaponry. The Arachnos troops had no chance.
Rachek led the others through the streets. They wound up having to deal with a few Button Men, but that was fairly easy going. Eventually, they found the door Ringo had told Rachek about, unguarded, just as the arsonist had said.
"Where are they?" Mider asked as he looked around.
"Regenerating in an Arachnos medicenter, probably," his brother explained, "Mauthe's got himself a small army, huh?"
"The meek truly do make a decent army," Rachek replied as he messed with the door's controls, "and Mauthe has given them something to believe in."
"Yeah, but what?"
"Hard work, a piece of the world for themselves, a future where you don't wind up dying entirely in obscurity..."
"But Mauthe's brotherhood is entirely obscure!"
"Just his personal aides and his soldiers. The Nameless or whatever they call themselves, are the only ones who wind up being obscure..."
"Strange behavior, still," Mider shuddered, "Plenty enough people have espoused Mauthe's ideals before. All of them fell to corruption, becoming little more than cult leaders."
"I don't have anything to say about that," Rachek grunted as the door opened, "Mauthe strikes me as the kind of guy who can avoid that kind of corruption, but I've been wrong before."
The small group wormed its way through the fortress, dispatching Arachnos troops left and right. Rachek was able to keep mostly to his assault rifle, but wound up having to switch to his machete a couple of times. He was actually quite impressed with Gregory Caid, who exhibited super-human skill with the martial arts he must have learned from the Council. Sanders, however, seemed to be just an average street brawler, bludgeoning his way through the fight like a common thug. It was still an effective method, however not very impressive.
Mider Caid and the Inevitable stayed in the back. In fact, the Inevitable contributed nearly nothing to the fight. Sometimes it would extend its arm out, catching a fleeing trooper by the neck and dropping him cold. Other times, it would extend its propellers and prevent a hail of bullets from finding their mark (namely, the rest of the group), but it never actively participated in the fight.
"Damn, at least the other Caid withers the enemy and keeps us alive," Rachek grumbled as a bruise on his shoulder faded almost immediately when Mider applied his healing magic.
When they found the database it was mostly unguarded. it would have been better, however, had it been just normal Arachnos troops.
"Shadowshock," Rachek grumbled, "Who's your friend?"
"Jazt," Gregory answered, "Former archon of the Council..."
"Ah, the treacherous Caid..." the withered looking man rasped, "I remember you... You leaked to the heroes what I had planned..."
"Not nearly fast enough it seems," the scrapper replied, "You still acted on your plan... Doomed as it was."
"What are you doing here, Shock?" Rachek interrupted.
The blue-skinned brute shrugged.
"I go where the money goes. Today, I got hired for security detail... I don't think the withered husk ever leaves, though..."
"Enough of this!" Jazt shouted, "They are intruders! We must destroy them!"
"Sorry, Rachek..." Shadowshock grunted as he pushed himself off the wall, "I gotta take you down."
"And I gotta keep you from doin' that," Rachek replied.
Jazt rushed for Gregory Caid. The scrapper took a flurry to the chest and he wound up backing away from sheer surprise. Jazt had never been that fast before. His brother shouted, throwing fire in the brute's way, but the dark aura of invulnerability seemed to be able to withstand the damage done, not to mention he was able to continue moving freely. Rachek fired a few rounds at Shadowshock, the other brute disappearing into the shadows, but the Wing Commander was certain of his aim, and continued squeezing off rounds at his foe.
It was then that the Inevitable began to contribute to the fight. An arc of red electricity made its way for Rachek, but the propeller blades shot out between the Sky Raider captain and the tenebrous blob of darkness that was Shadowshock. Following shortly after, the clockwork golem leaped through the air and crashed into the blue brute with an electric punch of its own.
Jazt was having trouble with Martin, however. Sanders was another wielder of the dark energies applied in hand-to-hand combat, and he too had a long-standing flurry attack. The two squared off, smashing into each other unrelentingly. Each one had roughly the same defensive rates and the same damage resistance. However, Jazt had the advantage of an extended lifespan. His body tensed, and suddenly a lot of the damage martin had inflicted disappeared.
"As you can see," the brute chuckled, "I am the superior in this match!"
A foot smashed Jazt in the face. It was a strange foot, a wolf's foot. Martin turned back to his partner, who had suddenly morphed into a man-wolf thing.
"Well... It seems the super soldier program still had an effect on you..."
"I'm just glad I didn't get all distorted," Gregory grinned, "I'm still lean and mea-OW!"
Jazt smashed a fist into the wolf-man's chest to resume the fight, but now he was definitely on the losing end. So, he hopped back and called for Shadowshock to take his place.
Shock had no problem with that, and let the former archon take his place. Jazt probably came out the loser of that deal. The near-vampiric brute launched his assault and wound up getting half of his arm lopped off by the rotating blades of the Inevitable's propeller.
Shadowshock didn't keep fighting for long. He knew a losing situation when he saw one. They were outnumbered, outmaneuvered, and definitely outgunned, and he only fought long enough to break past Mider Caid and escape down the hall.
"Coward!" Jazt shouted, waving his stump angrily, "I will finish this myself, and claim all the glory!"
Rachek put a bullet through the brute's head, instantly causing his emergency med-porter to kick in. The Brute disappeared in a flash of crimson lightning and the group was left alone.
"Thanks for finally stepping up!" Rachek shouted at the construct.
"I..." it said in a feminine voice, "I wasn't entirely sure how the body worked... I'm sorry..."
The group stared at the Inevitable for a few moments.
"What..." Gregory Caid, his features returning to human, approached the machine and peered at it closely, "Who are you?"
"It wouldn't be safe for me to say," the Inevitable replied, "Just... I'm one of C.K.'s friends... And I was hoping to help out with this... They've got information on me, too... I can't let them... Let them..."
"Oh..." Mider whispered, "I know who you are! You're..."
"Someone who wnats her identity left secret," Martin grumbled, "Come on... Let's smash these computers, yank out their hard drives, and smash those to bits."
"Or I could just shoot them," Rachek shrugged, "Hard drives are tough, but they're not that tough. It's just too bad these don't have a 'shoot here' dot."
"Shoot here?" Mider and the Inevitable both asked at the same time.
"In the Army and the Marines, they've got radios that go out with the patrols..." the Raider explained, "Now, in case the patrol got ambushed and was getting overwhelmed, the radio guy's job was to take his pistol and shoot out the radio's hard drive."
"Why?"
"So the enemy couldn't listen in on American radio chatter. Now, to make sure there wasn't a mistake, each radio had a dot with an arrow pointing at it marked 'Shoot here.' A single bullet through the hard drive made the radio unusable to the enemy... At least in the field... In the old days..."
"Now, they can recover information from all sorts of thing, even fire damage," Martin grunted, "Smashing the damn things to splinters is about the only effective measure we've got."
"Or..." the Inevitable charged up an electric bolt and blasted one of the black and red servers, "I could give each of them a power surge."
"Better hurry, whatever it is," Greg shouted to them from the room's door, "I can hear the troops on their way to punish us for this..."
"You guys get working, I'll keep the troops busy," Sanders started heading for the exit, "Take a back way out of here, if you can..."
"What about you?" the Inevitable asked.
"I can't go on," the dark scrapper replied, "Next is Ghost Widow's tower, and she'll recognize me for what I am. She won't hesitate to kill me, even though our destinies have nothing to do with each other, she just knows someone like me is on the way to put her to rest."
"What are you?" Greg asked his partner.
"We're wasting time... You better get cracking."
And so they did. Rachek pulled some grenades he'd taken from Wolf Spider Huntsmen and popped them into the machines after the Inevitable poked holes into them. The machines were electrocuted, exploded, and the Caid brothers burned and smashed the machines just a little more for good measure.
In the background, they could hear Martin Sanders waging a small war with the Arachnos shock troops. It didn't sound like it was going well.
"We should help him," the Inevitable said sadly.
"He made his choice..." Gregory shook his head, "Besides, he sounded like he knew what he was doing..."
"This panel leads into the sewer," Rachek smashed out a grate and turned to the others, "We better hurry..."
Mider Caid actually seemed to be the only one that had any objections. They would have argued for longer than ten seconds, but the sound of Martin's yelling stopping abruptly got the group moving.
----
"We got him..."
The troopers stood over the body of the crazed maniac that had assaulted their base. This was what put Jazt in the medicenter? Where was Jazt's partner? How did this guy scare him off?
"Probably hopped up on drugs," the Longfang leading them explained, "Lots of heroes and Destined Ones use supplements to boost their reflexes, or increase their damage resistance... Most commonly used are the 'Greens,' which are little cartridges full of chemicals and nanites that give a quick boost to the healing process..."
"Wow..."
"Wasn't enough for this guy, though," the Longfang kicked Martin in the head, "See? We took him down so fast he couldn't even med-port out. Every so often, boys, we take one down."
Martin's hand reached out and gripped the Longfang's heel. Before the troopers could do anything, the life force was drained out of their platoon commander before it was drained out of them as well when a cloud escaped the scrapper and enveloped the group. They were left dazed and wandering, lost in a sea of nightmarish hallucinations.
"You shouldn't have stayed so close," Martin's voice echoed hollowly out of his throat, as if he weren't entirely there, "You should know better than to give the wielders of the dead life to feed from."
Martin then proceeded to tear apart the troopers. He didn't kill any of them, but he did hurt them badly enough that they had to go to the medicenter. Upon finishing, he reached for his communicator.
"I'm compromised," he said into it, "One to teleport out."
A flash later, and he wound up on a Longbow cruiser floating several miles away from the island. Agent Wild met him, handed him a cup of water and asked for a report.
"One database down, boss... One to go," Sanders replied, "They're going to need some kind of a distraction..."
"Well, we can't send in air support," Wild replied, "Limited resources and all that..."
"Maybe not Chasers, maybe not flying..." Martin got a mischievous grin on his face, "Come on, Wild... You and I both want to help Randy out... How about the two of us hit Fort Cerberus and hit it hard... Make them come after us so Greg and the others can break into a base low on manpower."
The Freedom Corps agent screwed up his face as he considered the idea. It shouldn't prove too difficult, just rush in, smash up the place a little... Maybe if they pulled up a few of the Longbow forces on the beach up to help out...
"Alright..." he sighed, "Let's do it."
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
"Hey Bob... I've been wondering..."
"Yeah Gus?"
"We work for Arachnos, we get these snazzy outfits, and we basically have the run of the islands, right?"
"Yeah."
"So, what's with all the evil overtones? I mean... We could be altruistic, too, for just as much effort... Maybe even less. I feel like I'm making an effort to be evil, you know?"
"I know, Gus. It does feel strange."
"Maybe we should put it in the suggestion box..."
"Remember Lewis?"
"No..."
"Lewis, wiry guy... Kinda whiny..."
"Oh yeah."
"Yeah, he was the last guy to use the suggestion box."
"...Oh..."
"Yeah... Ghost Widow's Tower was full of his screams for about two minutes."
"Wait... Wasn't that about the same time the Boss Lady went on that convalescent leave?"
The two Wolf Spiders looked out to the horizon from the wall of Fort Cerberus.
"Yeah," Bob finally answered, "She must have devoured his soul... And it made her sick. Man... Even the undead need to worry about what they eat."
"Well, if I were a zombie or a ghoul, I'd want to eat quality brains, you know what I'm saying?"
"Gus... Why do you keep doing that?"
"Doing what?"
"Taking the conversations in weird directions... Saying things you should really knock on wood on... There's no wood here, Gus."
"W-"
"Stop."
"Okay," Gus looked over the edge again.
The Wolf Spider was rewarded with a vicious kick to the face as Agent Wild leaped up. The Freedom Corps Agent then turned to Bob, who was only able to get out a "Ah, crap" before being punted over the side of the fortress wall.
A patrol of Wolf Spiders was making its way to the pair to subsume and relieve the troopers of their duty so the dawn shift could move in. Upon seeing the intruder, they prepared their pistols to put the agent down.
A flurry of blows put down three of them. The others turned too late to find Martin Sanders emerging from their shadows and pummeling them into submission or draining their life away.
"Clear... Begin the attack," Agent Wild said into his comlink.
The Longbow troops on the beach below appeared at the wall, then. Sanders and Wild had equipped each of them with minor anti-grav packs, and with some careful maneuvering they were able to find the best positions to enable them to vault over the walls into the base.
"Alright!" Wild shouted to the operatives, "Our priority is to cause a distraction... So let's make some noise!"
----------
"What the Hell?" Rachek asked as he could have sworn he was hearing explosions from above.
They were looking across a grated bridge that led to the basement entrance to Fort Cerberus. It was the location of the second database of hero information, and the end of their mission.
For a second, Rachek was figuring things would be more difficult. There had been a number of Arachnos troopers waiting on the other side of the bridge, but at the last second, they put their hands to their helmets, listened for a few seconds, then shouted "Yes, sir!" before rushing up to the main sections of the fortress.
"They must not think this is a major access point," Gregory Caid arched an eyebrow, "Something seems dangerous about that kind of thinking."
"Either that, or they think something else is going on..."
The sounds of gunfire and explosions resumed, louder than before. There were even some echoes rattling through vents and various drains that led into the section of sewers they currently inhabited.
"I don't now who it is, villains or Longbow," Gregory muttered as he pushed himself up and started heading across the walkway, "But this is too good an opportunity to pass up."
The rusty, grated walkway overlooked an oddity in the Rogue Isles. The oddity being the impossibly deep pit that made up this particular chamber of the sewers that ran under Mercy Island.
"This reminds me of some of those old videogames," The elder Caid brother chuckled, "Remember those, Mider?"
"Those things rot the brain," the wizard replied.
"Come on, boys, less chatter, we've got work to do and not much time to do it."
Greg made it halfway across the bridge and stopped again. He turned to Rachek, who was about to say something, but he felt it, too.
It had suddenly gotten a lot colder.
It wasn't cold like a temperature drop. It was cold in a way that permeated your very soul. It was cold in a way that was wholly unnatural.
"You don't think-" was all Gregory got out before a dark tendril wrapped around his waist, picked him up, and tossed him screaming over the edge.
Rachek dropped down and unhooked the latches holding the shield generator strapped to his back. The machine activated in mid-fall, initiating its hover just centimeters from hitting the deck. Rachek glared up darkly at the source of the dark cloud that had tossed the scrapper.
"Yeah," he grunted at his fallen ally's unfinished question, "I do think."
Ghost Widow floated in the air above him and to the side of the bridge. Her hair whipping around furiously, she glowered down at the hero and the Sky Raider. Again, it seemed to get colder in the room.
"I'm not ready for this," the wizard whispered to Rachek.
"You fools!" the Arachnos general shouted down at them, "Did you really think you could sneak into my domain (my very home!) without me noticing? I know of your endeavors, and I can assure you that you will meet with failure!"
"Well, are ya gonna keep talking or are you gonna do somethin'?" Rachek shouted back.
There was a thunderous roar at the other end of the bridge. The Wing Commander turned to see the Widow's favorite bodyguard, the Wretch, standing there.
"You're not worthy of my-"
"Yeah, yeah," Rachek drew his machete and started advancing on the brute, "Heard it a hundred times, it always sounds the same..."
"You cur! Paolo! Finish him..." she smiled wickedly, "...Slowly..."
"Slowly..." the Wretch grumbled as it advanced on the Sky Raider.
Anthony Rachek was not a pushover. He had lived a long time doing dangerous work. A lot of his fellows even wondered at his choice of uniform, which was a dark blue that was normally chosen by the secretive society known as the Malta Group.
Rachek was not a member of the Malta Group, however, by any means. Instead, he wore the outfit for a different (yet related) reason. He wore it to commemorate his last meeting with a Malta Group Gunslinger. He wore it every day as a constant reminder of what happened to people who always thought they had everything under control. He also wore it to remind the Malta Group not to mess with him.
That Gunslinger had fared poorly. He had drawn on Rachek at the worst possible range: melee range. Normally, a Gunslinger would have had no problem hitting a target like the Wing Commander at that distance. However, Anthony Rachek was quick and pragmatic, and knew that to most easily finish the fight, he just had to cut the operative's outstretched hands off.
He also kept the modified hunting pistols, one of which he drew, aimed at Wretch's midsection, and fired. A bullet of ice exploded, slowing the oncoming brute, and Rachek shifted his stance, bringing his sword arm closer to his target.
His back was turned to Ghost Widow now, but she was no longer his concern. Mider Caid took a few tentative steps away from the opening in the wall. As the undead witch glowered down at him, the Inevitable emerged. This was unexpected, and it actually drew a look of shock from the Widow.
"What is that?"
"Death by Clockwork," Mider Caid answered sheepishly as the Inevitable leaped at her.
The propellers extended and the construct was flitting in the air around her, firing electric bursts from its right hand. Energy was energy, and Ghost Widow actually felt the jolts of lightning lashing at her from all sides. She screamed and returned the assault with her own dark attacks.
The effect, much to the villainess's aggravation, was severely muted. The Inevitable was a construct, not a living being, and the dark energies did little to harm it. There wasn't even a brain inside the head.
-----
On the Longbow freighter offshore, Penelope Yin winced. She could feel some of what the machine she was directing was going through. Sometimes, she wondered why all of those tanks did what they did.
-----
Rachek hacked across the Wretch's right wrist before the brute could complete his next swipe. He then brought the blade across the belly before shoulder tackling the massive mutant. The tackle was largely ineffective. The Wretch looked down and laughed a little at the older man.
There was a clicking sound as Rachek shifted his assault rifle from his back to his left hand. The holstered the pistol and gripped the assault rifle pistol grip in one seamless motion. As the Wretch tried to figure out this subtle play at misdirection as the Wing Commander squeezed the trigger and emptied the magazine into the monster's torso.
The Wretch responded by roaring and swatting the rifle aside, only to get slashed across the throat. Suddenly, the momentum dropped. The Wretch gripped his neck and looked worriedly at Rachek. The Sky Raider responded by uppercutting him in the jaw with the hand guard of the machete. The big body was wrapped in lightning and disappeared before it hit the steel grating. He wasn't dead, but he wouldn't be in good condition at the Arachnos reclaimator.
"PAULO!" Ghost Widow shouted.
Suddenly, the Inevitable was gripped in a force greater than any Ghost Widow had used before. The witch slammed the machine against the wall, and turned her attention on the old man.
"I always figured as much," he chuckled hollowly, "You've still got a heart, even if you're not attached to it..."
Ghost Widow didn't actually say anything. Her scream was wordless. A cloud of various kinds of dark attacks erupted from her, all aimed at the Wing Commander. Rachek had only one option.
He leaped off the side of the walkway backwards, barely escaping getting blasted into oblivion by negative energy. The cloud covered his escape, but now he had to worry about the landing...
Mider Caid bolted for the other side of the walkway. Unfortunately, Ghost Widow noticed him instead of turning her attention back to the Inevitable. A dark explosion erupted next to him and when the darkness cleared, the young wizard was gone.
Still not satiated, Ghsot Widow pulled the Inevitable from the wall and smashed the construct against it repeatedly. Satisfied with the damage done, she brought it close before eroding the steel parts by rusting them away. When she finally dropped the broken hulk, it crumbled to pieces in mid-air. A shower of parts rained down below, the echo of their clinks and clanks bringing a satisfied smile to the villainess's cold lips.
The shield drone still hovered over the walkway. Realizing its proprietor was no longer around, it gave a few sad beeps and exploded violently. The platform gave a few creaks and groans before falling away from its supports. The grated steel platform hung dangerously from the edge of the opening the strike team had emerged from, but did not fall.
----------
"Agh!"
Rahcek awoke lying on a pile of garbage. That didn't mean he was at all in any good condition. He could feel his left arm throbbing, and his back didn't feel to be in any kind of good shape.
"Yeah" he grunted when he checked, "Broken."
His right arm had landed on top of him. Somehow, that had kept the same thing from happening to it. His machete was off to the side, stabbed blade down into the garbage. His rifle was laying to his left, seemingly still in good condition.
"Not likely," he grunted.
"I thought I heard something," someone growled.
"Caid," he croaked, "I was hoping you survived..."
"Barely," the wolfish man helped the Sky Raider up, "And not without some... Alteration."
"Is that permanent?"
"I don't really know. I should hope not... I was rather popular with the ladies..."
"I could probably heal you," another voice said, the younger Caid brother, "But it will take time..."
"No... No..." Rachek took a pack from his cargo pocket, "Bandages... Enough to make a makeshift sling. Look, boys, this job's a bust. You better get the Hell out of here before they realize you didn't wind up in their med-porter prison."
"Right," Gregory agreed quickly, "I've scoped out a few good grates that might get us back up there..."
"No, I meant get the Hell out, now."
"We can't do that, the mission isn't over..."
"I never said it was," Rachek finished tying the knot of his makeshift sling with his teeth and his right hand.
He was fortunate. The left hand could still move and grip. That made this next part easy.
"What are you doing?" Mider asked.
"I'm lashing myself back together, boy."
"I should at least pop your arm back in place," Gregory offered.
"Hit it."
Racheck bit into the knot again. Before Mider could stop his wolf-man brother, the scrapper had taken a hold of Rachek's arm and set the bone back in place in one quick motion. The old man roared into the knot and a few tears escaped his eyes, but he recovered from the pain quickly.
"It helps when it goes numb..."
He gave his left hand another test. Somehow, he was getting a modicum of control.
"Heal me a little," he grunted and Mider glowed briefly.
The feeling returned to his arm. It was now a dull throb of subtle pain, but he could control his left hand again.
"You can't take them on your own," Mider warned, "They'll tear you apart."
"Wrong. They'd tear you apart. Me? I got a secret on them that will tear 'em a new one... I just need my machete..."
He picked the weapon out of the trash and sheathed it. Then, turning to his assault rifle, he started checking it over. It had landed flat in soft stuff, maybe he was luckier than he thought. Giving it a quick shake first, he strapped the weapon around his neck and under his right shoulder. When he checked to make sure the pistol was still on his right thigh, he gave a thumbs-up to the Caid brothers.
"You boys get out of here. This mission is over for you. You go on back to the F.C. and tell them I went on and finished the job."
"How will we know you succeeded?" Mider hissed.
"You'll know."
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
A trail of rapidly fading bodies lay in her subject's wake. Every corridor, every turn, every chamber, the Sky Raider had twisted, brutalized, torn and blasted his way through the Arachnos forces that stood between him and the database. Now that he had arrived, he faced the same great challenge that had nearly ended him earlier.
"I don't know how you made it this far," Ghost Widow glared at the cracked and bandaged form of Wing Commander, Captain Anthony Rachek, and laughed, "You can barely stand! You think you're getting into this database!?"
"Yeah," Rachek holstered his pistol, "I am."
With one fluid motion, he drew his machete, twirled it around for momentum and hurled it at the arch-villainess. It landed square in her abdomen, stabbing through and pinning her to the hatchway leading to the database. It would have, anyway, if Ghost Widow weren't a ghost...
"That was pathetic!" she cackled, "Maybe it's a good thing for the Sky Raiders I'll be putting this old dog to sleep..."
But Rachek wasn't listening. He was pulling on his wristguard. A panel emerged and he grumbled to himself, though Ghost Widow could hear.
"This won't kill you, but it'll get you out of my way long enough for me to finish the job."
He pressed the single red button on the panel and the machete exploded. It was a little known fact that Rachek had the weapon custom made, and even fewer knew of the actual custom options the Captain had incorporated. The most expensive option, and the one he had hoped to never use, was a small, experimental, nuclear device. It was essentially like mounting a sword on a hand grenade, a grenade capable of vaporizing a seven foot area (as the commander had, of course, toned down the weapon's effectiveness for such use).
Rachek was thrown back by the blast, and he could swear he felt something in his back crack from the impact wit the floor. Ghost Widow fared poorly. She was scattered across the base, her form unable to maintain its cohesion as the massive energy force disrupted her ethereal composition. Energy was energy, after all.
As the last of the Arachnos leader's screams died away, Rachek pushed himself up. It felt like his back was on fire. Something was definitely broken.
"Oh my God," one of the Arachnos technicians shouted as he looked out to the corridor, "What... What do you want?"
Rahcek drew his pistol and cocked back the hammer. After spitting out a tooth, he growled.
The technician ran back into the database chamber and out the rear exit, followed rapidly by the few others who were trying to help him transfer information to a different database.
"Three percent complete," the Sky Raider grumbled as he looked at the screen.
He leveled the muzzle at the machine and pulled the trigger. Fire exploded into the server, but Rachek didn't stop to watch. He marched through the chamber, blasting anything that whirred or beeped. Ice and fire tore through the machines, polymers and glass flew through the air. When he was done, that three percent of information on the heroes of Paragon City was all Arachnos was going to keep.
He started chuckling to himself as he reloaded. Certainly, somewhere down the line, that three percent was going to cause problems. For now, however, the super-powered populace of Paragon City was safe. He and his men would be free.
"At least, I hope so..." he grumbled, "But I've never known heroes to back out of their word..."
There was a clicking sound behind him. He turned to see a squad of Wolf Spiders, fresh from the Reclaimators, all with pistols drawn and sighted in on him. W.C. Rachek chuckled.
"What the Hell took you guys so long?"
"My God, he destroyed everything," one of the troopers breathed, "Fire!"
A bullet tore through the soldier's chestplate, and Rachek barked.
"Last I knew of Arachnos ranking, boy, you're not in command!"
"Kill-" the Huntsman started shouting the order to execute, but was interrupted by the sound of Sky Raiders porting in.
One of them slapped something against Rachek and the Wing Commander disappeared. The rest unloaded their assault weapons at the squad before following their target back to the Thunder Nimbus, floating two miles offshore in the water.
----------
"Are you alright?"
Captain Hostetler, another freshly promoted Raider, greeted Captain Rachek in the hospital bed of the airship. The vessel was moving again, now for the Wing Commander's fortress.
"I'm good..." the grizzled old man croaked, "Just... How did you guys know where to find me?"
"Captain Anderson called. He gave me your transponder codes and we've been monitoring your progress. We got a little worried when your health levels went critical and we registered your broken arm, but we couldn't bring you in with the med-evac. Figuring we had to come in closer, we dropped to the water and sailed closer. We saw your health wax and wane after that, I guess you were showing the spiders one Hell of a show!"
"Yeah, they won't be forgetting that anytime soon."
"Well, when you suddenly flatlined, we feared the worst. But... You're not dead..."
"My transponder was in my machete. I had to blow it up."
Captin Hostetler arched an eyebrow at his superior, but smiled.
"Wow... I guess it's that kind of crazy thinking that makes you Wing Commander."
"Where's Captain Martinez?"
"It's not his shift today, sir," Hostetler replied as he looked to the doctor, "How's he doin'?"
"Some broken bones, maybe some organ bruising, but nothing that looks too permanent," the medical officer replied, "Not bad for a fifty-year-old man."
"Yeah-heah," Rachek coughed, "Not bad for anyone."
----------
"So, why'd you do it?" Captain Anderson asked, "I mean, you didn't have any stake going in... You could've told the psychic c-"
"Watch it."
"Lady... You could've told her to stick it where the sun don't shine."
"I could have," Rachek took a few puffs on his cigar, savoring the flavor, "But then, I wouldn't have known."
"Known what?"
"I wouldn't have known what's been bothering me these past couple years. Sure, it's been fun, hittin' the city, stealing stuff, makin' money... Or even the mercenary work, shootin' guns, blowin' [stuff] up..."
"Sir?" Anderson had never heard his friend talk like this before, "That sounds really... Juvenile."
"That's exactly my point," Rachek growled, "We, you and me, Anderson, we joined Vigilance to help people. To protect them. Duray did, too."
"So?"
"So? That's the whole point! I wanted to see if I could do this! If I could do something to help people instead of just my own wallet!"
"But you did ask for something in return..."
Rachek nodded. Psyche had told him in a psychic conversation while he recuperated that Longbow records were being updated. Not all of the crimes were forgivable, and some of his men were still being charged with things he was certain they didn't do. For that, he was coordinating with his own book keepers to find the real individuals responsible so he could clear their names. If their names couldn't be cleared, then Rachek intended to have them shipped out of his units.
The things they were accused of... The Wing Commander didn't want anybody that cruel in his command.
"Yeah... But we're gonna need it in the future, Bruce. We're gonna need those pardons."
"Why?"
Rachek sat back silently and enjoyed his cigar. Anderson looked at his old friend sternly, but his face eventually softened.
"I'll check in on ya tomorrow, Old Man. Get some rest."
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
The Rikti War did not treat the Brutal Warriors well. Solo Stryker found himself ferrying heroes and rogues across the globe whenever Vanguard resources got strained. He felt it was his civic duty, after all, and Vanguard paid well.
However, on one run, he wound up getting caught over Skyway City by a dropship raid. The Rikti didn't feel like sharing the airspace.
Drones filled the sky. Mr. Smythe and Mr. Weston drained mini-gun fire into the swarms, taking down a few. It was odd that the Rikti would unleash so many low-quality machines to supplement their numbers, but Psycho13, in a stunning stroke of epiphany, stated that they were likely a rapidly mass-produced fleet of the drones, which would be more inexpensive, and likely not as tough as the advanced models more powerful heroes usually found themselves up against.
In fact, Psycho13 was heading for the exit hatch as he explained that.
"What are you doing?" his brother shouted.
"I'm going outside for a bit," the scrapper replied before checking his knives and unwrapped his hoodie from his waist, "I need some fresh air."
"Are you crazy!?" Project Whirlwind shouted, "You've seriously flipped your lid, haven't you!?"
"Maybe," the young man replied as the ship shook, "But I'm not going to just sit here, waiting to die while Daren tries to fight back the forces trying to pin us down. I've got a bad feeling here... I can't just wait here. If you're not strapped in, I suggest you hang on to something."
With that, he plugged in the emergency override code and caused the starboard exit hatch to open. Stepping out onto the ledge, the rushing air and blasting machine gun drowned out whatever words could be said to him. Nobody tried to stop him, though.
"I've always had a problem with heights," he said to himself, "Let's see what happens when I give myself no choice..."
He released his grip on the brace bar and was yanked off the platform made by the lower section of the hatch. First, he busied himself with pulling his tan hoodie on. Then, he drew his blades. Wielding them backhand style, he brought them stabbing down on the first drone that got too close, puncturing through the armor, and shutting the machine down as he damaged its internal workings.
Before it could explode, he pulled the blades out and backflipped away, flopping onto another drone and getting blasted in the hip. His skin started regenerating immediately.
"That!" he stabbed the thicker blade into the blaster socket and used the leverage to wrench it out of whack, "Hurt!"
Solo, in the meantime, couldn't turn back to pick his friend up, no matter how much Ragin' James shouted into the intercom. He had to focus on deterring the Rikti Dropships from blasting him out of the sky. The forthcoming energy blasts that lanced into his shields indicated that was going to take quite a bit of convincing.
He fired the central chaingun at them, and cursed as it seemed the bullets bounced harmlessly off the armor. he recognized this was a failing strategy, so he turned instead to the missiles and rockets he had in stock. He had six missiles, and enough rockets for five full salvos of twelve rockets apiece. He targeted one of the rods that the energy beams wrapped around before firing and launched a missile.
The explosive impacted, and actually tore the rod away. The ship broke off from the game of "Chicken" and Solo fired a volley of rockets ate the next ship before breaking off and heading for the rally point he'd been told to drop his human-ish cargo off.
He noted that the emergency override had been keyed again, this time for the back hatch.
"Levi's gonna be [ticked] when he finds out somebody decided to take his bike for a joyride."
Mark Shadow had the same thought as he unlatched the locks holding the bike in place. After hitting the last one, the vehicle started getting dragged out of the cargo bay. He hopped on it, made sure the sling for his assault rifle was secure, and turned the bike on.
The engine buzzed on without a struggle and the Corrupter Class started firing rounds into random drones. He decided that his friend was right, and had no intention of jsut dying inside Solo Stryker's tin can. He couldn't help but shake the feeling that something bad was about to happen.
However, he got alarmed when he started getting chatter. He answered the questions with the bike's radio, wondering at the "column" he kept being told about.
Looking back into the sky, he saw what the heroes talking to him meant.
"Solo!" he shouted into the radio after switching to the first channel, "You might want to take a look at your rear-view!"
Solo wasn't too pleased with his friend at that moment. That open rear hatch caused a lot of drag, and it took focus either away from his piloting or Dale's engineering controls to get it shut again, because they had to override the emergency override. Since there was no way he was going to stop piloting, Dale had to do it, which meant Solo had to focus on not getting shot or the shields would probably go.
"Mark, I don't really give a-"
"Check your rearview!" the Corrupter shouted over him.
Solo didn't have a rearview. Instead, he asked Dale to run a radar check, and Ragin James looked over Mr. Weston's shoulder out the port gunmount to see that a swarm of heroes was following the vessel, firing blasts left and right, up and down, and all the directions in between.
They were using the BWO Dropship as their spearhead, letting its shields take the brunt of the Drone aggression and fire. Then, as the machines recharged and grew confused at the vehicle's retreat and the batch of new targets approaching, they would fire blasts into their midst, some of which were powerful area-of-effect attacks that took multiple targets out of the sky.
Solo switched radio channels to talk with the swarm's (they called themselves a column) commander and coordinated. It was a little difficult to explain to the man that he had to make a delivery of troops to a certain point, and that for a while he couldn't function as their spearhead (the idea of leaving the fight for a moment to get something accomplished seemed to be a foreign concept to the tanker), but he eventually was able to organize a proper egress from the battle.
Upon hitting the drop-point, Vanguard troops emerged from the vessel while Rikti forces swarmed around. A bomb landed nearby from a dropship, but failed to explode. Solo took care of that with his chaingun.
"Alright, everybody out?" he asked into the intercom.
"Rage ran out and grabbed a fifty-cal!" Dale shouted back, "Here he comes!"
James didn't re-enter the vehicle. Instead, he leaped up on top of the ship and braced himself with his newly acquired weapon and a box of shells. The ship rose and quickly resumed its role as the shield of the hero swarm.
-----
Next to the hospital, an Assault Suit materialized and blasted a police drone out of the way. When a Rikti energy beam struck it, however, it turned, the pilot curious as to what had caused such an unusually errant shot.
A damaged drone crashed into it, and Psycho13 flipped up over it, stabbed his blades into its shoulders, and flipped the machine back with his continuing momentum. He wound up essentially snap-suplexing the machine into the pavement, and the other police drone finished it off.
Scraped and bruised, bloodied and battered, the scrapper stood and surveyed the battle raging all over the city. Some passing heroes noticed him and asked if he'd like to help them out. After a brief consideration, he agreed and started following.
-----
Solo didn't get to pilot the ship much longer. As the battle raged, something slammed into the bow.
Witnesses would later tell him that it looked like some form of lean-and-men Lost wearing a red-white-and-blue spandex outfit. Some could have sworn it looked like Hero-1, but that would have to be impossible, as Hero-1 would never work for the Rikti...
All Solo knew was that his eject system suddenly activated and he was sent hurtling through the air. When he came to, he saw the ship falling away. A hero caught him out of the air and started helping him down to the ground. He could see Ragin James firing at something behind his view, but he was so disoriented, he could barely keep his eyes open.
-----
"Mr. Simms," Justin Steel intoned as they were being strained by the centrifugal force of the twirling vessel, "Might I suggest that you regain control of the machine?"
"Daren's got it," the tinker replied, "DAREN! WHAT THE [frig] IS TAKING SO LONG!?"
"He's gone!" Mr. Kolt shouted as he crawled to the engineering controls, "Come on, Dale, let's get this thing stable!"
The ship's engineer finally agreed that they had to do something and helped Mr. Kolt to try to turn the lift pods back on and turn them in an appropriate direction to stop their wild fall. Eventually, the forces acting on them slowed and stopped, the ship now simply descending rapidly.
"Can't you make us stop falling!?" Draven shouted, "Come on, man! What the Hell?"
"No, I can't make us stop falling, we are crashing, Jared! The thrusters are still going, and if I do keep us from falling, we're either going to crash into a building or a War Wall. Which do you prefer?"
"Everyone who can fly, bail," Draven instructed, "Everyone else... Oh my God..."
Mr. Smythe and Mr. Weston emerged from the gun mounts, both obviously sickened. The glass canopies of the mounts were not clean.
"Every flyer take someone who can't fly and-" Draven tried to continue, but Dale cut him off.
"Too late! Brace for impact!"
-----
Near the statue of Dauntless, the Rikti closed on the weird machine that obviously was using some of their technology to stay aloft. Or at least, it had been, until the Honoree punched it out of the way on special request. That had been a risky endeavor, and there were rumors rumbling through the psychic network that some of the city's main heroes had been mobilized to deal with their former ally.
However, this machine, which had been a thorn in the Rikti's side for this bombing run, had to be dealt with, the technology recovered, and those that had utilized it captured. The Headmen kept their rifles leveled on the wreckage as they approached cautiously.
The Chief Soldier that led them surveyed the damage. It was possible the heroes and rogues inside had survived. It was also possible they'd been med-ported to the hospital. He called out to see if anybody would respond.
"Query: Survivors?"
Mr. Smythe crawled out of the open hatchway and collapsed on the ground in front of it. He lied there, gasping for breath and begging "No more... No more..."
A pair of guardians approached and began assessing his medical condition when the minigun in the starboard port suddenly barked and cut down two Conscripts before turning toward the Soldier and bowling him over. Smythe drew his own assault rifle and fired sporadically at the Rikti next to him, clearing the path for Draven to fly out of the wreckage and chop left and right with his black-bladed sword.
Matt Jones emerged with a yell, and smashed his hammer into the nearest Rikti he could find. they were a bit taken aback that a man could be on fire and fighting with such vigor, but they were still shaky on magic and spirituality, so they had no knowledge that the Stone of the Salamander was helping the Brute weather their blasts.
Out of the sky, Ragin James dropped down on a Mentalist, smashing the spent machine gun against the alien's armor. He then wrapped his arms around the Rikti's waist, lifted him up, and jerked back, smashing the alien's head against the ground. It landed mostly on its shoulders, just like most people do, but getting its head snapped into the dirt didn't tickle.
As the Soldier batted Draven aside and leveled his blaster at the Scrapper's head, however, the fighting stop.
"Surrender. Alternative: This One: Demise!"
The meta-humans stopped fighting. Even Dirty Ice, who had proven repeatedly that he didn't care what ultimatums their enemies presented, he normally kept on fighting. Unfortunately, here, a lot of his fight was taken out of him, and he backed away easily.
The Soldier was pleased at the success, despite the damage done to his unit. He turned to Draven and shook his Bladerifle for emphasis.
"Failure: Certain. Surrender: Comply. Prepare: Transformation."
"No thanks," the red-coated scrapper replied darkly, "I don't want to wind up looking like you."
"Defiant: End. Death: Imminent."
"Right," Solo Stryker rasped.
A skull appeared from out of nowhere behind the Soldier and bit into him, causing the platoon leader to stagger in pain. As soon as the bladerifle moved, Draven sat up, grasped his sword and flew at the Soldier, stabbing the blade into his abdomen. The alien's exhale signaled the end of the fight.
Ice punched the Infantry soldier next to him in the face, his fist suddenly wrapped in rock and the other meta-humans followed suit. Psycho13 was suddenly with them as well, chopping into numerous aliens with his mismatched blades.
"Good to see you made it," James told his brother, "What took you so long?"
"Last I saw you guys, you were in the air. I had to sift through the chatter to find out what happened," Levi explained.
Another approaching group of Rikti found themselves shot up by the hoverbike's main gun and a batch of rockets.
"That's nasty," Mark Shadow breathed as he noticed the devastated dropship, "What're we going to do now?"
"Good question," Solo muttered as he glared at the wreckage, "Anybody see what the make and model of that mountain that hit us?"
"It looked like one of us," Rage explained, "You know, a Hero or a Rogue. But he was gone as soon as he came. It was weird."
Bummed out, the Brutal Warriors picked themselves up and started making for the hospital. They weren't battered enough to warrant going on the med-porter network, but they were beaten, bloody, and exhausted. The only silver lining was that the bombing raid ended. Two of the dropships had been destroyed, the others driven off. The heroes congratulated each other for a job well done.
Few took notice of the broken men who'd spent the past few hours as their shield.
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
--Mid-Atlantic: Roughly 15 Miles Off Coast of Talos Island--
It wasn't so much a storm, but there was lightning and rain, and that was enough. The water was surprisingly calm for such weather, however, and that suited the boat's pilot just fine. The lightning flashed once more, and he could see his destination.
A lonely derrick, converted into a small base.
Something was wrong, though. There were no lights... No signs at all of life within the structure.
Where were the Brutal Warriors?
Brother Ringo peered through his porthole worriedly. It had been an arduous trip across the Atlantic. It was difficult to find friendly ports and "Air Guard" fortresses to restock supplies in, or to dodge the air and submersible traffic between the Etoile Isles and Paragon City.
"Please don't make me have to go there, guys," Mauthe's arson expert almost whimpered as he pulled the ship up to the nearest pillar, "I can B.S. my way past Arachnos officers, but those F.C. guys have got bugs way up their butts..."
----------
--Independence Port--
The tugboat pulled into the port the day after the storm. It's seemingly solitary occupant, the pilot, was busy combing his hair back as he coasted to the dock. The harbor foreman shouted at him as he approached and Brother Ringo opened the window to shout out to the man.
"I'm out of gas and my radio's broke!" the Etoile native hollered, "Come on, man! Gimme a break! I was stuck out there in that thunder and lightnin' all night!"
"You were out there by yourself!?"
"Well... No..." Ringo pulled a lever and the hatch to the sleeping quarters opened.
A massive man in a heavily scuffed black leather trench coat emerged from below decks with a thick, heavy rope. Brother War glowered to the foreman before tossing the cable to the man on the dock.
"Much obliged," his deep voice reverberated between the two as the foreman helped guide the tugboat to its mooring.
Ringo and War were the only two occupants of the vessel, though they used their birth names (or what Ringo thought was War's birth name; no one could tell anything about that massive, grim man) to identify themselves. Unfortunately, the Freedom Corps soldiers approaching were a clear indication that their Etoile Isles tags had been identified.
----------
"Let's go over this again," the Warden sighed as she rubbed the bridge of her nose, "You guys are here, looking for heroes?"
"Yes," Ringo leaned back in his chair, exasperated, "Look, Ma'am, you're just wasting our time... Yours as well... If you would just run a scan of our identification, this should all be cleared up!"
"I will scan your I.D. when I have you safely behind bars, villain!" the Warden barked.
"Are you so bored, that you have to make work for yourself, picking on innocent shippers?" a young man's voice asked from the doorway.
"Draven!" Brother Ringo shouted and moved to stand.
He winced visibly when the handcuff keeping him to the chair proved to be tougher than his wrist.
"Ow..."
"Sit down, Ringo!" the Warden shouted, "Draven Erickson... What are you doing here?"
"Their boss called me... Mauthe just found our number here, guys," Draven produced a key and started unlocking the two minions of the errant mastermind from their shackles, "Sorry about all the trouble."
"Hey, it's good to know everything's alright, man!" Ringo clapped the red-jacketed scrapper on the shoulder.
"How did you get a key for our handcuffs?" the Warden stood, dumbstruck, and within a second of tapping into her psychic abilities to strike down this insolent "hero."
"I hang out with a lot of different girls," Draven replied with a smug grin, "Pretty ones, who like to be reminded of it. Sometimes, they let me keep souvenirs after... well..."
"We should go," Brother War rumbled as he was released, "Ma'am, we shall be under this individual's care until our time to leave this city."
"Not if I have anything to say about-"
"Then check this writ," Draven produced his communicator and the Warden glared at the writing.
Her face changed to shock when she looked up at Draven.
"This can't be right..."
"It is," the scrapper replied, "Now you can return to your normal duties, Warden."
-----------
--B.W.O. Staging Area: Exact Location Unkown--
They emerged from the portal to the sounds of intense fighting. Two warriors were locked in combat a little further into the warren, and Draven was leading the two soldiers right to the source of the noise.
In the very next chamber was a massive stone slab. It was a squarish sort of thing, with a stone pillar at each corner. Ringo arched an eyebrow at the design. It reminded him of a wrestling ring. The fact that two people were currently fighting in the middle of it, while a guy in a striped black and white armored suit refereed, no less, only served to strengthen the appearance.
King Slater was dueling Dirty Ice while the other Brutal Warriors and a few scattered heroes looked on. Ringo could recognize Ashen Roast, Blizzard Front, and even the Freedom Corps Agents, Wild and Sanders. He wondered briefly if there was any money involved in this before Slater caught a heavy stone mallet head with his face.
There was a resounding cheer through the chamber as the referee separated the combatants and asked his brother if he was okay.
"You're sure, Dust?" Dale's voice emitted from the speakers on his helmet as King nodded, "Okay..."
Ringo and War looked to each other as they noticed the blood dribbling down the tanker's face. Draven gestured for them to find a place to sit, and they climbed up on the rickety wooden balconies for the better view.
Slater marched slowly into the middle of the ring. The rules were simple. First one knocked out of commission or out of the ring lost, then the next contender would move in. That meant Matt couldn't run away, not that the brute wanted to...
Dirty Ice darted close, swinging his heavy, stone wrapped mallet hard for Slater's chest. King Slater caught the weapon with the Black Mauler, swinging it back to cuff the brute across the face. Blood spurted from the blonde brute's mouth and he was spun violently around as he crumpled to his knees. Matt was cross-eyed, and before Dale could separate the two, King cuffed his opponent on the back of the head, finishing him off.
Matt disappeared before his face hit the ground, ported to a medical facility built into the side of the entrance chamber. King Slater had won yet another round, but his victory was short-lived. Project Whirlwind hopped from his perch on one of the viewing balconies, landed on a pillar, and back-flipped into the ring. He then spun around and blasted Slater with a face full of lightning.
Dustin gritted his teeth and growled. He then raised his hand toward his opponent, and squeezed it into a fist. A hand of stone grew out of the stone ring's surface and grabbed a hold of the defender-class hero. It then slid across the surface of the slab, bringing Whirlwind closer to King Slater until he was within striking distance. Slater dispatched his opponent with a maneuver known throughout professional wrestling as a "choke slam." Whirlwind lost his breath as his back slapped against the surface of the ring and he was teleported to the medical facility.
A series of spikes hurled through the air and plunged into Slater's back. Bull-Thistle hopped into the ring and pressed whatever advantage he could against his stone-encrusted foe. It wasn't enough, and Bull-Thsitle wound up meeting a similar fate as Dirty Ice, with the plant matter being torn from his face. It was strange to see there was a human face under there.
It was barbaric, but it was viscerally entertaining as well.
Ragin' James turned out to be the one to finally defeat Slater. He came into the fight swinging, and never relented. Slater's Mauler made a cracking sound as it struck the brute's forearm, but didn't break the bone. James fought Slater back and back, the two trading blows, Slater slowly being worked toward the edge. At the edge of the ring, however, the tanker refused to budge, and being rooted as he was, James wasn't likely to move him. Apparently, his backing away had been a ruse. That was fine by Rage, however, as he ducked down under a swipe aimed for his head and popped back up with a vicious uppercut that smashed Slater out of his rooting and cast him into the spectators made up of the already fallen.
James's victory was short-lived, however. Solo Stryker emerged from behind with a double-hammer-fist wrapped in thick, seemingly solid darkness that almost knocked the young rogue off the side of the ring. Rage dropped to one knee, but whirled around, catching his new opponent with a fist to the groin. Solo crumpled, and James grabbed him by the ankle, swung him about, and tossed Stryker over the side.
"Anybody else?" the skull-clad warrior bellowed.
"I've seen enough," Agent Wild shouted before anyone could answer, "You boys may get a kick out of this, but I've got other things to do than keep an eye on you. You're done for the day, alright?"
The Brutal Warriors looked to each other and nodded. Draven tossed a gaudy looking belt to Rage and smirked.
"Next time," he chuckled, "You're mine."
----------
"So, the dropship went down," Solo finished his long explanation of where the Brutal Warriors had been, "And nobody cared. We didn't have the money to get a new one... And we couldn't get insurance for a 'flying death machine,' so there was nothing forthcoming to replace it."
The ring now served as their resting area, and the various individuals were sprawled out wherever they could rest comfortably. Ringo and War sat before Solo, who was sitting in the middle of the ring, holding a "green pack" to his hip. Of course, the recent injuries the meta-humans had sustained were hardly the concerns of Mauthe's soldiers.
"That sucks, man!" Ringo shouted.
"The last time we were in that base..." James muttered drunkenly, "We were getting Bioserj out along with whatever perishables and electronics we could carry on a Vanguard transport. At least they gave us an inch."
"So, what are you guys going to do now?" War asked over his whiskey glass.
"We're giving up the transport business," Solo grunted, "We were barely making any headway with it, anyway."
"Besides," Draven muttered, "We're getting all sorts of offers from Rachek's Air Guard to assist with his airship designs and support his troops. He says he's been running into some weird traffic coming out of Europe, and wants our help handling it."
"So, essentially, you're quitting because you have no ship and you don't know what to do now?" Ringo asked with a quirk of his eyebrow.
"Essentially, yeah," Draven muttered, "We haven't the means, nor the inclination to reproduce the dropship, in any incarnation."
"Well, that's no reason to quit!" Ringo shouted, "Guys... I don't think you understand this, but there's a significant population that needs your help! I mean, why do you think Mauthe sent War and me up here? Why do you think he called you guys? You know, we can't survive on island fruit alone!"
"I thought you guys had a farm..." Psycho13 said as he stroked his chin.
"Well, yeah, but farms need to be resupplied. You guys were primarily how we intended to do that."
"How the Hell did you get here?" Solo asked, "Why can't you just use your boat?"
"Getting here cost money we can't afford to lose," Ringo grunted, "Mauthe's in the process of coordinating with Longbow and the Air Guard to jury-rig some operations and make them look like heists and hits... It's all effort for a show of force that we really don't need to be doing, you got me? Now, if you guys can't support us, then we're going to have to run more of those ops to stay afloat, and with every one we rig up, we stand even more chance of being found out. I tell ya, the peeps down at Sharkhead are getting mighty suspicious about Sea Witch still hanging around!"
"I think I get your point..." Solo grumbled.
"Look..." the pyrotechnics expert rubbed his temples, "I love you guys, you know that. You've got a look on life that's just plain weird, and it's fantastic. Now... I have to go back to my boss with an answer, and I'm begging you to put your out-of-the-box thoughts back out of the box, where they belong, and come up with a solution better than 'I quit.'"
The group sat in silence for a few moments. Ringo was lucky that they'd had their fill of fighting for the day, because Solo didn't like being told what to do. Finally, the Referee cleared his throat and raised his hand.
"I have an idea... Show me your boat."
----------
--Independence Port: Brother Ringo's Boat in Drydock--
"Mother-" Ringo bit off the curse as he looked at the ticket he'd been given, "Damn goose-steppers... They keep finding a way to [frig] with you."
"It's even signed 'Warden Shaw,'" Brother War chuckled, "I think she likes you, Ringo."
"Shut the Hell up," the shorter man growled.
"Yes..." Dale Simms shouted after inspecting the vessel, "I can work with this... Alright, let's pay the fine and get her back in the water. We gotta get to the base and scavenge out some of the generators..."
"You're turning my boat into your transport?" Ringo asked dubiously.
"Yeah. What's the problem?"
"It's... It's the only thing I have left of my father."
Dale pressed his lips together and nodded, but his posture remained a clear indication that his mind was unchanged.
"You don't necessarily have to leave the boat, Ringo," the defender finally said after a few seconds of consideration, "I don't think any of us know how to pilot one properly, anyway."
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
((Nyeh heh heh - I like where this is going. 
))
"If I had Force powers, vacuum or not my cape/clothes/hair would always be blowing in the Dramatic Wind." - Tenzhi
Characters
"Do you feel pain?" Solo asked Psycho13 as they left the pizza shop.
The regenerating hero still had a knife sticking out of his shoulder. He looked quizzically to his friend, who was carrying a stack of four boxes.
"Oh!" he finally shouted as he pulled the weapon out of his arm, "No, not really. Some things, yeah, if they're different. But after you've basically felt your bones turn to fire and your eyes felt like they were going to crawl out of your skull and strangle you with the optic cord, no... You don't feel much pain after that. Thanks for the assist, by the way."
It was all Solo could do, a chair to the back of a goon's head. The Skulls thugs had come into the parlor and tried to rob the place, they didn't think the two guys in plain clothes were as much of a threat as they were. In a flash, Levi had drawn two blades from behind his hood and was carving into the gray jackets that were the signature of the low-priority gang.
Their black-jacketed leader, who thought his shotgun would help, blasted a scattering of small holes into the skinny scrapper. He rolled his eyes and shouted something about birdshot "only being good for pigeons around here" before cutting the weapon in two. Unfortunately, one of the goons hadn't been terrified by having his outfit lacerated, so he jammed his knife into Psycho13's shoulder, and was promptly smashed in the back of the neck by Solo Stryker's chair.
Since it wasn't a use of a super power, it didn't alert the police drones.
"It was nice of those guys to let us have the pizzas for half price," Baker chuckled as he slid the knife into his belt, "Here, let me take two of those."
----------
"Here we have it, boys," the Dale announced from the back of the modified tugboat, "A fusion-powered fishing boat..."
"Why must you introduce us to things that will only make us die?" Project Whirlwind asked with trepidation.
Despite the misgivings of the phrases, however, the machine itself was actually quite impressive. Brother Ringo and the Referee had spent their time when the machine was in dry dock to clean off the barnacles, rust, and repair various holes and imperfections. King Slater and Ragin' James helped out where they could, but the arsonist and the defender were in a peculiar fugue state when it came to the work, and the two often found themselves simply watching the art of madmen at work.
From the Brutal Warriors' ocean base, they acquired and retrofitted to the boat with a four-barreled anti-aircraft gun (mounted on the aft) and a rocket pod (mounted on top of the pilot canopy). A pair of anti-personnel pop-up turrets were stolen from the Council by Draven and Whirlwind, and were subsequently mounted at the forward corners of the ship's piloting cabin. Finally, the group had placed a salvageable minigun (harvested from the dropship's wreckage) on the bow with a gunner port built from enough pieces from ports of the dropship to fully protect the weapon's operator.
"What the Hell is this thing?" Sheldon Wallace asked as he peered over the design, "It looks like this thing started life as a tug boat, but became a monstrosity over the years..."
"My father built this boat," Ringo explained, "he wanted a trawler, but all that was available was an old leaky tug... He took my older brother and me, and we carved it up into this shape... Excuse me..."
The wild-maned young man sat down for a second. Brother War sat next to him and the two spoke in hushed tones. It seemed to be a comforting conversation.
"His family must be dead," Psycho13 explained, "Possibly killed by Arachnos, hence Ringo's work with Mauthe."
"No, it wasn't Arachnos," Ringo intoned, "It was the Frost Family. They sent goons to harass everybody in Crimson Cove. My dad refused to pay. He tried to appeal to Arachnos for help, since they were, you know, the authority at the time, but they didn't do a damn thing."
"...And the Family killed them..." Psycho13 finished glumly, "sorry, man..."
"I took matters into my own hands afterward," Ringo shrugged, "I rigged up one of the Family's warehouses with blasting cord and enough stolen fuel to run every boat for three days. I don't know what's in Superadine, but it must reek, or those guys were used to the smell of diesel and gasoline. [Dreck], considering how the whole place smelled, I'm surprised I didn't wind up taking the whole island with me. In any case, I torched the building to the ground. The building went up so fast, exploded... There wasn't time for anybody to scream. Somebody survived, though..."
Ringo took a drag from his cigarette and rubbed his shoulder unconsciously.
"He shot me in the arm, the thigh, the shoulder... I dropped my cocktail and it rolled aside before I could hit him with it. Still... I had other situations in mind... it was what my dad loved about me, that I always have a contingency in mind... As the hitman closed to finish the job, he stepped into the patch I'd soaked as the building burned. I flicked open my lighter and jammed it into the grass in front of me... When I came to, I was being taken care of by some of Mauthe's crew. They said the other guy from the explosion didn't make it, but my hair should grow back soon enough..."
This actually elicited a chuckle from the group.
"I got my revenge, my dad's revenge, my brother's... But this boat... Thinking about it, working on it... Driving it... It just brings up all those memories again..."
"It's okay," Dale gripped the other man's shoulder, "Everything will be alright. You'll see."
"It's as close to a trawler as we could make it, Mr. Wallace," Ringo finally declared, "Now, it's like the HM Trawler Force, a trawler that was outfitted for war in the early twentieth century. Yeah, I didn't know that, either, but some of the dockworkers around here are pretty old, and they've got lots of stories to tell. When we started mounting weapons on it, they told us about the British boat. Sad story, kind of, where the boat gets shot up by Germans and sunk, but, hey, this thing's gonna be tougher than that."
"We can only hope," Sheldon replied, "I'd hate to think that steel I donated to you guys goes to waste on your first mission."
"Hey, we shouldn't even have to worry about anything like that," Draven explained, "The vehicle itself is currently classified as a mercenary craft, and we've still got the licenses for all of those weapons... Arachnos and Freedom Corps prefer to use their air fleet to move across the planet, and when Arachnos uses their submarines, they're not going to call attention to themselves by blasting a seeming commercial boat out of the water. We should be fine, so long as the power core doesn't detonate."
The group turned to Dale Simms, who raised his eyebrows at them and shrugged. He hit a switch nonchalantly on the control panel and the boat started up with a loud roar at first, which turned into a low hum. The machine sat in the water, running calmly.
"All aboard?" he asked, "We should be clear to go from here on out..."
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
"The base is in shambles," Dale grunted when he got off the ladder and collapsed exhausted on the deck, "Looks like the giant octopus has been letting off, though."
"Huh, I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks," Draven muttered, "So, the last storm made a mess of things..."
"Well, the deck's covered in seaweed, and the whole place looks like Hell, but it pretty much looks like it just needs a good cleaning and it'll be all fixed up."
"What about the equipment we left behind?" James asked.
"Some of it's wrapped in weeds... Some of it got rusty..." Dale sighed, "If we intend on saving any of it, we're gonna have to work on it all today."
"Alright. Levi and I can get started on that. What about you guys?"
"We've still got that work order with Mauthe we gotta deliver," Solo replied, "We'll be back tomorrow if this rig works out the way Dale said it would. Think you guys will be done by then?"
"Sure," the metallic skull wearing brute replied, "Just leave us some food and we'll be good to go."
----------
--Brother Mauthe's Island--
"Thank you, thank you," the mastermind class rogue said with relief as he inspected the tools, food, and clothing the BWO delivered, "This is perfect... Ah, the books..."
"Apparently, some rogues don't do what Westin Phipps tells them to do, but the books have got to go somewhere."
"Yes... Phipps..." Mauthe's voice lowered, "Miss Francine Primm's execution is coming soon... Someone will have to do something about that."
"No," Solo was near hyperventilating, "That's not what we do, we do not get involved in world politics, and those black and red boys are definitely using her for a political end..."
"Relax, I wasn't referring to you and your own, Solo. You're but boys, yet. No... I was just musing aloud..."
"You're a strange man, Mauthe..."
"A socialist has to be," the mastermind chuckled, "if he hopes to survive, especially in a capitalist society."
"You're a communist?"
"Sort of," Mauthe replied, "I believe in the idea, but have yet to have found a practice of it that can be adequately applied to a nation or civilization. For now, it barely works on this small community, but it will falter at some point... Humanity has been unable to evolve past its greed, and eventually, almost everyone succumbs to the green-eyed monster."
"Those that don't?" the stalker asked, concern coloring his voice an ugly shade that didn't suit him, "What happens to them?"
"Well, they either get killed by the overwhelming tide of the unevolved, or they rise above the adversity, and become the heroes you and I look up to. Statesman wasn't always a good man, but he is now, understand?"
"Hm."
The camp was coming along nicely. Brother Mauthe was certain that he and his troops had been sold out a number of times, either to the Circle of Thorns or to Arachnos, but whatever strange taboo was on the island was keeping both groups from coming after him and his people. King Slater remarked it was probably whatever was in the temple.
"Indeed," Mauthe sighed, "Someday soon, very soon, I'm going to have to organize a search party to look inside there... And I'm worried what we'll find."
"Perhaps you'd like to gather a group of heroes about ya," the stalker suggested, "Perhaps make sure you've got the strength and forces to make sure whatever you find down there won't make it back out."
"If you can find them," Mauthe replied, "If you can find them."
----------
--Brutal Warriors Order Main Base--
"Cripes," Psycho13 shouted as he kicked another seaweed off his foot, "Maybe we should have tried to bring a fire tanker up here to clear this place off..."
"Ashen Roast has better things to do," his brother replied as he hauled another disconnected turret into storage, "Besides, we can handle this."
"I know," Psycho13 busied himself with loosening the couplings, nuts and bolts of the next turret, "But I meant any fire tanker, or somebody with fire... Anybody with fire..."
They had dismounted half of the remaining turrets when the Thunder Nimbus passed by. Staring in awe at the massive ship, they wondered briefly whether or not it was about to fire on them. When a patrol of Air Guard troops teleported onto the deck with them, the brothers were slightly relieved.
"Greetings," the troop leader said to James, "I'm Sergeant Smith. One of several hundred, yes, I know."
"I'm James, this is my brother... Psycho13."
"We haven't seen any activity in this place in a while, we were wondering if it was abandoned."
"No, not quite. We still have the deed, and nobody's asked us if we intend to sell..."
The sergeant looked around the base and clucked his tongue. He looked a little silly, still in his Sky Raider outfit and that ridiculous, flimsy teleportation harness, but his posture that of a man proud of his work. It seemed better on him than a Sky Raider, one had to worry about the criminals with that kind of posture, even the criminals that worked with them.
"Maybe you guys should sell it to the Guard."
"No, no sale," James replied, "You guys are thin as it is."
"Yeah, but we keep getting new volunteers every day. Military, mercenaries, even Arachnos and Freedom Corps troops who want a different life... Though we're pretty sure those last two are just spies the Blue and the Red are trying to seed into us."
"Right," Rage shrugged, "Sorry, though. Decision's not ours to make."
"Right. Right. Thing is, this is probably one of the best vantage points for miles to cut back the travel going on between the Rogue Isles and Paragon City... We could put it to a lot of good use."
"Hey! You guys got flamethrowers?" Psycho13 suddenly shouted, "You could help us clean off this deck!"
"Sorry, Psycho," the sergeant sighed, "We have to conserve whatever fuel or ammunition we've got right now."
"Dang," the scrapper grumbled before going back to his work glumly.
"Well, it looks like you boys are closing up shop," Smith quirked an eyebrow at their labor, "You sure you're not in a position to sell?"
"Yeah," Rage lifted a turret and balanced it on his shoulder.
He turned to the soldiers and their wide eyes made it evident that they seemed either impressed or intimidated. He grinned a little at that. Sometimes the super power thing was easy to forget.
"I'm sure."
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
--Paragon City--
"So you just left him there!?"
James Baker was livid. The Brutal Warriors had just helped Ezekiel Durj run an operation in the Rogue Isles. While the operation itself was a success, Zeke was holding the crystal imprisoning the kheldian at the moment, the group had to leave behind the older Baker brother when Silver Mantis and the Freakshow stormed the cavern.
"I didn't want to leave him," Zeke replied, "But for some reason, once we were at the entrance, I couldn't pull him to my location. Look, James, if it hadn't been for Levi, we wouldn't have made it out of there ourselves."
"But you still-"
"He's gone, Rage," Draven cut him off, "Now we gotta work on a plan to get him back."
"I-"
"I don't think we should try what Randy did last year," Solo sighed, "Especially since this time we don't have a flying death machine to help. Don't worry, Zeke, we'll handle this."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah," James muttered, "We've got this."
----------
--St. Martial: The Iron Hammer, a Freakshow clubhouse--
"Okay..." the silk-over-steel voice sighed in the dark, "I have a few questions I have to ask before we go any further..."
Levi Baker opened his right eye, the left was swollen shut, but in five minutes he'd be able to see out of it again. He was hanging from a chain by his wrists, were were shackled on a separate chain that had been looped through a ring at the bottom of the main one. His body was covered with lacerations, bruises, and an assortment of implements were still stuck into his body, some surgical, some not.
Silver Mantis was reading from a device not unlike a hero communicator. It just had a few alterations that made it more in sync with Arachnos appearances. She was tapping her lower lip as lights flashed over her face.
"Okay, here's one I don't know," she finally said, "What were you guys doing in the Nerva Archipelago?"
"Taking in the sights," Psycho13 choked out in reply, "Exploring the culture. We got yanked into that cave by the wizards and had to fight our way out. Not everybody wants to mess with your bosses, you know?"
A false statement, leading to a true one, is a true statement. It is one of the ways to lie and be honest at the same time.
Baker knew he couldn't let Arachnos know why Zeke was there. His own involvement in the situation wasn't necessarily important. A hired sword was a hired sword, and there were plenty of those in the Isles.
Silver Mantis tapped her cheek as she considered what the young hero dangling in front of her had said. She wasn't inclined to believe he was telling the truth, but his friends had left him to die and he was aware of the fact. He didn't have much reason to protect them.
"Then what was that glowing crystal?"
"Hell if I know, I thought the gray-haired guy who hired me was keeping it as a souvenir."
"Hired you... You're with one of those groups that transports heroes to the Isles, and rogues to the states, right?"
"Uh..."
"I already know, Psycho13," Mantis smiled a thin, tight-lipped grin that would make normal people's blood run cold, "Before, your group was just a tiny lump in a sea of [crap], so my superiors figured you could be left alone. Even when you stole a Flyer, Lord Recluse left you alone. If you're lucky, he may just think that your fight with one of our subs was just tragic accident."
"How nice of him," the scrapper replied as his left eye opened up much more quickly than he'd expected, "Oh... Yay. Now I get to see you in your full, unabridged ugly."
A spike was driven deep into his stomach.
"Oh... Well, I'm not hungry anymore. Ope, there it goes, hungry again."
The torturess looked askance at her subject and blinked. Regenerators were a surprisingly fun lot. You could do untold damage to them, and in a couple days they'd be perfectly fine. She had never seen one that reveled in it so much. It was like...
"Didn't that hurt? Any of it?"
"Honestly, no," Baker grunted, "The process that made me what I am hurt worse than anything I've ever suffered in my life, before that or since. Nothing really hurts anymore."
Silver Mantis set the communicator down on a nearby table and approached her subject. When her hand grasped his face and she turned it so she could get a good look at him in what scant light there was in the basement below the Freakshow hideout, he could see her eyes were glittering with what looked like glee.
"Let muwee gesh... Yoo lock uh challenge?"
She nodded.
----------
--Paragon City--
"Here's the monitor he left in his room," Dale explained as they gathered in the office of the BWO's Paragon City Staging Area, "It's a Committee rig... Remember that MP3 system he had rigged up? He loaded it into this. He's been listening to music since that incident in Boomtown."
"Crazy son of a-" Project Whirlwind sighed, "How can anybody do that to themselves?"
"Well, we did it to him," Draven shrugged, "The little speaker in his ear that he's using is what we stuck in there. I wonder..."
He pushed his cousin aside and started working at the keyboard of the monitoring system. Dale rigged a mouse up to it and the group waited tensely as their leader cycled through the lists of music in the machine. Finally, Draven found a folder that had been oddly colored red and labeled "In Extreme Emergency Only."
"I don't get it," Justin arched an eyebrow at the contents, "This is all just music made by female pop singers."
"I know," Jared replied as he copied and pasted the contents into the playlist, "Somebody get me a microphone."
----------
--The Iron Hammer--
"You really did a number on him," H4nnib@l chuckled at the hanging scrapper, "And he's still alive!"
"Hook him up to an I.V. and I'll be back to finish this. I gotta report to my bosses that what they did doesn't impact Arachnos, blah-blah-blah. I was just starting to have fun, too."
"Can we go a few rounds on the punching bag?" T1r0ne asked.
"No, Ty. I want him fit and healthy for tomorrow. If any of you losers touches him, I'm going to see who can last longer under my... Ministrations..."
The Freakshow may have been a pack of nihilists, but they knew a good threat when they heard one. H4nnib@l and T1r0ne raised their clawed arms in surrender and backed away as the villainess left the room.
"You got lucky," H4nnib@l finally growled at the scrapper, "I've seen Silver break a man in two over her knee! She's just playing with you now!"
"Yeah," Psycho13 gasped back as the wound in his belly closed, "Playing..."
A Meat Doctor came into the basement then. She had an I.V. on a stroller and was ready to hook it to the poor victim's arm as ordered. She jammed it into his arm exceptionally non-gently and left. The scrapper turned to the bag and was surprised to find it filled with clear fluid. Judging from how his body was reacting, it wasn't just salt water, but a nutrient solution.
"How silly," the victim sighed as the lights went out, "I'm being tormented by my own vices. I always wondered if I'd get hit by such an irony in my life."
---
Two hours later, the Heavy metal song in his head faded. Psycho13 woke briefly as the song switched over. There was a strange click, and he realized it wasn't going to be another song.
"Levi, it's Jared," the recording explained, "We're working on a way to get you home, but we can't go getting ourselves marked by the spiders. Now... I hope you understand when I do this to you, but you need to be stronger than you think you can be..."
"No!" Levi shouted, realizing what was to come next "No! No! NO!"
The first song played, a briefly famous Russian pop duet. Psycho13 couldn't feel much pain, but he could swear he felt his brain getting scarred. He spasmed wildly, shook violently, and tried desperately to wrench himself free of the chains holding him up. Nothing worked, but it wouldn't have helped him anyway. The music continued, unabated, and even if he did get free, he wouldn't be able to dig the speaker out of his ear.
For the umpteenth time since he'd helped Draven implant the damn thing, he cursed himself for his foolish short-sightedness. With nothing left to do, he started to scream and thrash. The I.V. fell out of his arm, but he'd already drained the bag. He tried to get the attention of the Freaks, to try to get them to make some kind of disruption for his poor, compartmentalized mind, but they steadfastly refused to go down into the basement.
"Damn," H4v0k growled over his cards, "She must really like him."
"I didn't hear her come in," his brother, H4nnib@l, intoned, then pointed with one of his claws at one of the cards being held in front of him by a lesser Freak, "That one, Tim. Funny... She usually makes more of a show of it."
They played their game long into the night, the screams of the hero below serving as a soundtrack to their squalid decadence.
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
--St. Martial: The Iron Hammer--
"You must have really done a number on him," H4nnib@l growled when Silver Mantis arrived the next morning, "I almost didn't get any sleep last night, I could hear him screaming two floors up!"
"I..." the villainess looked askance at the owner of the iron Hammer and made a sound akin to an angry cat, "I wasn't here last night, I had some other schemes I had to work on."
"Then what the Hell was-?"
"You let someone down there with him? You idiot!"
"No! We posted a guard and everything!"
The two stormed to the basement entrance and found a tired, shotgun-toting guard by the name of R4nc1d. The Freak set his gun down and stood to greet Silver Mantis, but was promptly slapped aside. The villainess then proceeded through the door, breaking the lock through sheer angry force.
"Ah, what the Hell, man!?" R4nc1d shouted, but not at her.
"Did you let anybody down there?" H4nnib@l shouted, "Anyone at all!?"
"Just the doc, and I went down with her to make sure nothing funny happened, just like you said Han! It was the weirdest thing, too... He'd stop screaming as soon as the door opened. He wasn't even panting, wounded, nothin'..."
"He's a Regenerator, you idiot! They heal fast!"
"Don't call me that, Hannibal! I hear it one more time, I'll blast your damn face off! I know what Regenerators do, and they don't heal anywhere near that fast. Not a mark on him, this I swear!"
The two Freaks descended the steps and found Silver Mantis examining her victim. Psycho13 looked up to them, humming and grinning. It was an unsettling thing to see.
"Damn, that is one scary looking hero..." R4nc1d intoned.
"I'm living a lie," the scrapper suddenly intoned, "and it's not the best thing for me. But anyone and everyone is gonna hear another story."
"What?" Silver Mantis turned him to face her and he continued.
"I'm building a house... Of murderous intention. To keep it all from coming down, I've gotta focus my attention. 'cause confidence is key... when violating trust... I'm making sure that I believe I'm doing what I must! "
His eyes were blazing as he stared back into his tormentor's. The steel infused woman backed away cautiously and turned back to the two Freaks bearing witness while the imprisoned scrapper continued to sing his demented solo.
"...Which is attempting to kill... the little boy inside... But as hard as I try, the child will not die! nanananananananananana... NOW I'M BURNING ALIVE! Just like you! Oo-wee-oo! Oo-woo-oo! Oo-wee-oo! Oo-woo-oo. Now I'm burning alive! Just like you!"
"Yeah!" H4nnib@l started clapping his claws together, producing a murderous cacophony as he cheered the prisoner's singing, "That [frig]ing rocks, man! This guy's all tied up, but he's giving me a freaking adrenaline rush!"
"Who was that?" R4nc1d asked.
"Bes Worland," Psycho13 stopped swaying to the music and grinned that odd grin of his as he answered, "Burning Black Light. The song's called Lie."
H4nnib@l turned to his minion and the shotgun-toting Freak nodded enthusiastically.
"I'm on it," he said as he started sprinting for the stairs to tell their resident hacker to get a hold of copies of the song.
However, the real action was still in the basement.
"Don't encourage him," Silver Mantis intoned with a slap across the scrapper's face, "Everybody knows Metal is where it's at."
"Well, it's an industrial blend," Baker argued, "I just like Bes, I guess..."
Silver Mantis smiled that tight-lipped smile of hers and turned back to her duffel bag of implements. She started rooting through it and H4nnib@l checked to make sure Psycho13's restraints were still tight. There were minor cuts and scrapes on his wrists where the shackles were, but they were in a state of constant healing and tearing. Otherwise, everything was still fine.
"Leave, Hannibal," Mantis finally said, "I want this session to be more... intimate."
"Lucky me..." Psycho13 actually seemed shaken.
----------
--Skyway City--
"Where's Matt?" Dustin asked as Jared admitted him into his apartment.
"How should I know?" the normally red-coated scrapper replied, "I haven't talked to him in a couple days."
"I haven't been able to find him. I was gonna take him ad James to the Rogues and look for Levi."
"Well, where's James?"
"He's in his apartment, packing to go."
Draven planted his fists on his hips as he considered what his cousin was telling him. He didn't like the fact that they were just going off and doing their own thing without consulting the rest. If they didn't listen to their leader, what the Hell was the point in having the group in the first place?
"Look, Slater, Levi was my friend, too, but we can't just rush into this."
"We rushed into it for Sheldon!"
"That had never been done before! It can't be done by us again! Not now, anyway. We need to find a quick way, in and out, to just yank him away from the big dogs and hope, vainly hope, they don't think we're the ones that did it!"
King Slater almost reached over and hurled his cousin across the room. It was maddening, the idea of leaving their friend to be tortured. Worse yet, it wasn't the first time he'd been tortured, and the fact that they knew who had him this time and weren't doing anything to help him made it worse.
"Once we're out of options, Dust, I'll raise the sword and lead the charge myself," Draven finally said as he saw the anger in his larger cousin's eyes, "You think I'm not hurting, too? He was my best friend, man! I could trust him with anything. Anything!"
They stood there silently for a few moments. Nervous with the issue hanging over them, they started looking around uncomfortably.
"Look," Jared finally said to break the silence, "How about we call Mauthe, Bioserj and Power Breaker, get them to keep their ears out and see if they can find anything?"
"Sounds good, man."
The two started leaving when Dustin's brother, Daren, appeared at the door. He looked freaked out, but calmed visibly when he saw the reason for the open door wasn't that his cousin was violently disappeared.
"Have either of you guys seen Dirty?"
"No."
"Damn, he's already gone, then!"
"What?" the other two asked at the same time.
"Dirty left me a voicemail, said he was headed to the Rogues to find Levi!"
----------
--Sharkhead Isle: Freak Club "Break n' Smash"--
The Freaks had no idea why this Brute was tearing through their ranks. The door had been kicked open and the stone hammer started smashing. Whenever too many Freaks got close, the brute stomped into the ground and the resulting earthquake disoriented many of the villains before they were smashed into by the heavy hammer.
"He's on fire!" one shouted before getting hammered aside.
Matt Jones, now with a space between himself and the ring of Freaks and Mad Freaks in the club, set his sledge hammer's pommel into the floor and looked about. Scowling hard to demonstrate his contempt, he pointed at the Freak Tank standing in the back.
"You! You look like the one in the know! Tell me where Silver Mantis is, I know she hangs out with you losers!"
"Buddy, I'd love to have her around, she's fun," the Tank replied angrily, "But she ain't been round here, ever. We've been told we're not edgy enough for her..."
The brute looked askance at the surrounded jagged scrap metal structures. He had to resist the urge to roll his eyes at the music that sounded like cars crashing into each other. Either the other Freaks were lying to these guys and wanted them to keep going overboard to keep Silver Mantis away, or she had really insane tastes.
"Well," Dirty Ice took note of the angry stares of the very aggravated Freaks that surrounded him, "I guess i'll be leaving you guys alone, then..."
"Oh, no," the Tank rose and lifted his hammer-like arms, "Stay. We've got so much to make up for..."
"Yeah, I don't want to do that..."
-----------
--St. Martial: The Iron Hammer--
Silver Mantis couldn't settle on what she wanted to use first. Every time she found the one that suited her mood, the scrapper would change songs and start singing something else. Now he was singing something that made no sense and was horribly off-key.
"I'm going to... Africa. Yes ma'am I'm a brick-was pres-i-dent linc-oln... okay-mittens. There's a dog, in the vent. Chicken Necks? I pick Ken-Griff-ey Junior-I... fell-out-two-times! na-nana-na nana-na nana-na nana-na, na na na-na na-na na na! na-nana-na nana-na nana-na nana-na, na na na-na na-na na na!"
"Will you stop!?" the villainess shrieked.
"I'm pedaling... Backwards this... Snowflake-tastes like-fishsticks, we're a to-tem-pole..."
She stabbed one of her spikes deep into Psycho13's abdomen. This didn't stop him, he didn't even miss a beat, just started smiling more broadly.
"...Dying tickles..."
Silver Mantis's jaw slacked open as she wondered whether or not the scrapper's mind was truly broken.
"I heard a... Frankenstein... Lives there-she's touching my special air-ee-ah... Go ba-nan-uh!"
He was now lolling his head back and forth...
"Ralphie! Get off! The stage! Sweetheart! Oh-oh, say can you ROCK! I'm a pop sensation! I'm a pop sensation! Salmon gutter! na-nana-na nana-na nana-na nana-na, na na na-na na-na na na! na-nana-na nana-na nana-na nana-na, na na na-na na-na na na!"
The cybernetic dominatrix turned back to her implements, looking for something that would end this madness. As she rooted through the bag, the scrapper continued his crazed singing.
"I'm Idaho... You smell like... Dead bunnies-that's where I saw the lep-reh-caun..."
She held up a meat hook...
"Fun toys are fun."
She put it back in the bag.
"Chocolate... Microscopes... You're not it-that is so nineteen-ninty-one..."
Some blood suddenly escaped from his mouth and Silver Mantis couldn't help but stare in a form of curious terror. She worried suddenly that she actually had damaged something beyond repair and wanted to make sure she hadn't accidentally killed her subject. As she reached for the spike lodged in the scrapper's belly, he grinned.
"I bit my tongue!"
His voice had changed to a high-toned haggard growl, but was slowly turning more manic as he continued.
"Ralphie! Get off! The stage! Sweetheart! Oh-oh say can you ROCK! I'm a pop sensation! I'm a pop sensation! Yvan eht nioj! Yvan eht nioj! Yvan eht nioj! Yvan eht nioj! Yvan eht nioj! Yvan eht nioj! Yvan eht nioj! YVAN EHT NIOJ!"
She'd been so intent on his face, she didn't notice that Baker was now holding his right hand with his left so it put a lot of pressure on the thumb.
"My sash says AQUAMAN!" he finished the song and broke his thumb into his palm.
With a hard wrench, he yanked his hand through the shackle and pulled his arms down, whipping his left arm about to catch his tormentor in the face with the free-swinging chain. Silver Mantis staggered back, more out of surprise than pain, and watched as her subject pulled the serrated spike out of his belly.
"I went through a lot of anguish last night," Psycho13 was shaking with rage, "And now, I'm asking you, would you kindly hand me my medical transporter beacon so I may return home?"
"Baby, that is just not going to happen."
"I see you've made your decision," despite how much he shook, his eyes never strayed the smallest micrometer from her, "Now to make you regret it!"
The villainess smiled. This was going to be more fun than she expected.
((Lyrics from Black Light Burns' Lie and the Bloodhound Gang's Ralph Wiggum. I just heard Lie this morning and instantly became obsessed, and I had this scene orchestrated to Ralph Wiggum in my head since a week and a half ago. The various "na-na" and "oo-wee-oo" moments are Psycho13 making a noise akin to the instrumental between lyrics.))
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
--Break n' Smash--
Matt had sorely overestimated his capabilities. The freaks worked him to a corner and he viciously swung his hammer at them, batting them around. The freaks didn't let up, however, and as they fell unconscious, each one was somehow reinvigorated and awakened by their Excelsior Injectors.
"Get him!" the Tank Smasher leading the Break n' Smash freaks shouted as they closed and raised their weapon arms as one.
The attacks slammed a few feet from Dirty Ice's head, however. There was a grunt and a pair of glowing purple eyes appeared in front of him.
"Are you alright?" the deep bass voice asked from what looked like the middle of nowhere.
"Breaker?" Jones asked as he pushed himself out of the corner, "Uh... Yeah..."
"What the Hell was that!?" the Tank shouted, "This isn't pro wrestling! Near misses don't [frig]ing count! Kill him!"
"No..." the cloaked brute between Matt and the Freaks rumbled, "You know you've got to back the [frig] up... Back up of of me. Now!"
The eyes flashed brighter slightly and the freaks backed away. Unfortunately, the Tank urged them forward again, which only caused Power Breaker to sigh in consternation. He then raised his hand and gestured.
Red lightning erupted from the spires that jutted from Breaker's torso and launched at the surrounding freaks. The goons were instantly wrapped in cages and stuck in place.
"Look, fellas, I don't want to be here, you don't want me here, let me just take my little fat friend and go."
"No! He wrecked our club!"
"Like you weren't about to do it yourselves," Power Breaker snorted, "I've seen how these things turn out."
"Enough of this!" the Tank shouted, "I'll handle him!"
"Yeah!" a Juicer Chief cheered, "Kick his [butt], Sea Bass!"
"You're kidding..." the brute sighed as 53@ 8@55 hopped over the electrified ranks and brought his hammer arms out to the sides.
Power Breaker then raised his fists and brought them down hard. The force, combined with the peculiar energies that radiated from his flesh, allowed him to tear the Tank's arms out at the shoulder joints. Some of the controlling mechanisms shook as 53@ 8@55 screamed impotently. When he still tried to rush the brute, Power Breaker simply punched him in the chest, knocking him back into the crowd of lesser freaks.
"Get an original name, punk," Breaker growled, then, turning to the other freaks, "The rest of you get out of my way."
----------
--The Iron Hammer Basement--
As the sounds of heavy metal and hard thrashing pounded above, the sounds of metal striking metal rang below. Psycho13 knew he was sorely outclassed, and was using every ounce of desperation he had to keep the metal-wrapped villainess at bay. Wrapping the chain of the shackles around his left forearm, he used it as a guard when she raked her steel spikes against him. The spike she'd hit him with earlier, he stabbed into her shoulder.
It promptly slunk into her and was gone from his grip. Before he could think about it, spikes exploded into his armpit, upper arm and the upper right portion of his torso. The spikes withdrew as he snapped back, screaming.
"Aw... Poor baby didn't know he can't win..."
"Doesn't mean I'm going to stop trying to get out of here."
"Where do you think you can go, cape?" Mantis wiped the blood from her shoulder and admired it, "Even if you beat me, you still have all those freaks upstairs to deal with."
"I'll burn that bridge when I get to it," the scrapper gasped as he sidled over to the implements bag, "For now... Ooh! The meat hook!"
"You have got to be the strangest cape I've ever met."
"While we're on the subject, please stop calling me a cape... Do you see a cape on my body? 'Cause if you do, let me know."
----------
--On the Ferry to St. Martial--
"What the Hell were you trying to do?" Power Breaker growled at Matt, "Shut up. I know what you were doing. You want to know how I found you?"
"I guess," the worn out rogue sighed as he gazed across the water.
"I caught some chatter from an Arachnos listening post. They were sending information to Grandville that some lunatic brute was looking for Silver Mantis. You want to know what would happen if they found you? She'd have two prisoners instead of one."
"I just wanted to find-"
"No crap," Breaker sighed and returned to his seat, "You know, for all the time you and your friends have spent dealing with these islands, you'd think you'd have some inkling of how things work around here."
"Low rent Nineteen Eighty-Four."
"It's exceptionally high rent, but yeah. Now, look, I found where Mantis is keeping Psycho13. I'll take you there and we'll yank him out of there. Now, what you have to do is make a decision."
"What decision?"
"Do you just want to get your friend back, or do you want to make a statement?"
"A statement?"
"Simply put, we go in there, wreck every freak in the building and stomp a mud hole into Silver Mantis."
Matt's eyes glittered with mad glee, "YES! That's exactly what I want to do!"
"See, that's exactly what I'm talking about," the larger brute sighed, "Ice... That crosses a line. It gets you involved. Specifically, you get involved in the fight with Arachnos, and there are very few capable allies in that fight. You want in on that? You want to spend every night lying awake, waiting for their assassins to creep into your bedroom window to slit your throat?"
Dirty Ice stared at Power Breaker, suddenly understanding a little more what the lecture was about. There were consequences to every decision, even the ones that involved the people normally below the notice of the major players.
"Let's just get him back," the blonde young man sighed.
----------
--The Iron Hammer Basement--
Silver Mantis wondered how it had gotten like this. She was obviously hurting the guy, but he never relented. He could apparently feel pain, he just didn't seem to care. A couple of times, he laughed hysterically like stabbing him in the neck was the funniest joke he'd ever heard.
It was almost maddening. Her only real regret was that he seemed so unskilled at fighting back. His assaults were devoid of any real skill, they were mostly just exaggerated swings and flails, all with a vain hope that they would do anything approximating real damage.
However, in the end, it wound up that he had her neck wrapped up in the chain attached to his forearm and was choking the life out of her. While she would normally have derived some form of perverse pleasure out of it, she could see there was no such mirth in her soon-to-be-victim's eyes.
"You want to torture me!?" Psycho13 shouted, "You have no idea what I've been through! You've awakened something in me, and now you're dealing with it!"
Spikes suddenly poked through the links of the chains and Silver Mantis stood. Wrenching the metal apart, she smirked at the astonished young man, now completely defenseless, and giggled.
"Oh no..." his tone sounded defeated, "Another setback."
With a shout, Mantis hurled a single spike that slammed into her victim's shoulder and drove him into the far wall. He grunted when he hit and was busy trying to pull himself free when she ran over and pulled his arm to the side.
"To quote one of my favorite movies," she licked her upper lip as she produced another spike from her wrist into her palm, "'Victims, aren't we all?'"
She drove the metal through the scrapper's forearm and Baker screamed loud. He would have screamed for a while except somethings topped him...
"-Aaaa-Hey! My friend lives for that mov-AUGH!"
She drove another spike into his other outstretched forearm, effectively crucifying him to the wall. However, he was still able to support himself from his feet on the floor. Not-at-all gently, she yanked the spike in his right shoulder out of him and tapped it against her other palm.
"You don't know when to shut up."
"That's funny, my teachers always said I was a quiet boy..."
She smacked him hard across the face and he chuckled. He seemed unbothered, however.
"Do you feel a draft?"
Another smack.
"Hey, if you see Silver Mantis around, could you tell her that her grandmother just came down here and tried to work me over?"
Her knee just slammed into his gut and he coughed a lot. Mantis sighed as he slumped and sauntered back to her bag of goodies. Producing a battery operating buzzsaw, she grinned and turned back to her victim.
"Time to have some fun!" her silk-over-steel voice echoed as the club suddenly became very quiet.
----------
--Hours Later...--
"Oh my God," H4nnib@l muttered, "Will he live?"
"Better than that," Silver Mantis laughed, "Tomorrow morning, he'll be all healed! I tried seeing what would happen if I cut his hand off, then just pressed it against the stump and it grafted right back! I can experiment with him as long as I want! Oh... If I weren't so disinclined toward the notion, I'd almost say I were in love!"
"Poor guy," R4nc1d groaned, "Why'd you cut his legs off and reattach them?"
"I wanted to see if I could put them on the wrong way, you know, left for right, right for left... Didn't work, and the right one kicked me... I didn't want him bleeding out, so I put him back together. Hook him up to another IV and I'll be back in the morning. Ciao!"
When Silver Mantis was gone, R4nc1d looked to his boss and shook his head.
"Alright, I know we don't care about much of anything, but that [girl] is whack. Totally whacked out of her gourd."
"Yeah, but she pays well," H4nnib@l growled, "Get the Doc down here and we'll hook him up."
He walked up to the unconscious scrapper and lifted his chin with one of his claws.
"You. I want better sleep tonight, so I don't want you screaming because you're afraid of the dark. Honestly, what kind of cape are you?"
"I'll try to oblige," the young man whispered, "It depends on what plays in my head."
As the Meat Doctor worked on the unconscious young man, R4nc1d walked over and looked him over. When Psycho regarded him, he waved.
"Would you like something to eat?"
"Thanks, but I've been cutting back on my [urine] intake."
"No [urine]," the freak replied, "Honest. You just look... You look starved."
"Are you coming on to me?" Psycho13 arched an eyebrow at R4nc1d.
"Yeah, are you?" the Meat Doctor chimed in as she turned to face him, "Because, seriously, if you swing that way, I know this guy who-"
"Shut up!"
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
"So this is how it ends," the speakers suddenly shouted, "Not with a bang, but a whisper."
The freaks stopped their moshing and looked to the Disc Jockey booth. Wh1rlin' backed away from the floating microphone as it was set back on his rig. A pair of glowing purple eyes surveyed the crowd of the Iron Hammer before the dark purple circuitry glowed suddenly and the cloaking field faded, revealing Power Breaker. The front door opened and Dirty Ice walked in, stone hammer in hand, but he wasn't holding it threateningly.
"What do you want?" H4nnib@l asked.
"You the boss?" the larger brute queried back.
"Yeah, I own the place."
"I want Psycho13."
----------
"Mantis," the Metal Swiper grumbled as he reached the bottom of the steps, "You might want to stop now."
"I told you not to disturb me this morning!" the cybernetic ninja shouted, "Today, I make this little whelp scream!"
"I think you should really pay attention to your flunky," the captured scrapper wheezed.
Silver Mantis quirked an eyebrow at her prisoner, then turned to regard the two rogues flanking the proprietor of the Iron Hammer. H4nnib@l shrugged and stepped aside for them.
"You're one of Scirocco's flunkies," the metal girl cooed, "Funny that he would have a cyborg in his ranks..."
"Life's got a funny way of turnin' out different from expected," Power Breaker replied, "If I were to retrace my steps back, I still can't pinpoint the one moment in my life that would have led to anything but this, yet I'm still surprised to find myself here."
"You could just walk away."
Power Breaker let the notion hang in the air for a moment, but his posture told Silver Mantis the answer she would receive. He wasn't going anywhere.
"What do you want?"
"I want him."
"I never figured you for-"
"Shut it," Breaker growled, "I'm not in the mood for banter. Just give us our friend, and we'll be going."
"But I'm having so much fun..." Silver Mantis started to saunter back to Psycho13, "I don't want to give up my new toy just yet."
"Toy?" the scrapper gasped, "Like I'm a damn teddy bear... Teddy bear... Hm..."
Though it sounded like he was considering something, Mantis kept her attention focused on the two brutes who had just been led to her. She made a quick mental note that she'd never be coming here again before taking a step toward her adversary and extending her metal spikes.
Power Breaker, despite his reputation as a thuggish bruiser, simply gazed passively back at her. It was maddening that he could be so calm at the moment.
"You're not hopped up on all of those drugs you normally take when facing greater numbers," Power Breaker sighed, "I can put you through the wall easy enough. Now, look, Manti- Psych! No!"
"Wake up, Wolfgang," the scrapper growled before ripping himself free of the spikes holding him in place, vaulting from the wall and wrapping his arms around Silver Mantis's neck.
Spikes pressed into his body, but it was like a bed of nails initially. When she backed into the wall, such was not the case, however, and he was skewered multiple times at once. However, he didn't let up his grip.
"Time to sleep," he gurgled out as they rolled to the floor.
Power Breaker walked over to the heap and gazed down in the same passive way he had been. His body was now radiating energy fields, but that was just a necessary precaution. He grabbed a hold of one of the spikes and rolled Silver Mantis to look at him.
"I know he'll die before you, so I'm telling you to let him go now."
"Never," she gasped.
"Let me make this clear, Mantis, if you don't let him go, I'll take this personal. You don't want me to take this personal. It'll inconvenience you."
"How?"
"Because, I will not end a day, from here on out, without putting you through a window at least once. I will wake up, eat my breakfast, read a paper, then hunt you down. No matter what it takes, no matter where you are, I'll put you through a window. If I have to make up for missed days, I'll put you through a window multiple times in a day. Trust me. After a while, it'll stop feeling good and get boring. Then it'll get annoying. Then it'll start to hurt."
She stared back at the brute and read in his eyes that he was telling the truth. Whatever it took, he would try to follow through on his promise, and likely succeed. There was no way she'd be able to get a hold of all of the narcotics she would need to keep him at bay indefinitely and explain the need for them to Arachnos properly. There was even a likelihood that she would wind up kicked out of the organization for being led so blindly by her vices...
"Fine," she hissed and her spikes slunk back into her body, "Get him off!"
Power Breaker plucked the hand from the back of her head, unwrapped it from the "figure 4" hold and plucked the scrapper's other hand away from Psych's bicep. Hhe then pulled him out of the choke hold and lifted the defeated body into the air.
"Just made it," Baker whispered before passing out.
"So that's it?" Dirty Ice asked from the stairs.
"That's it," Power Breaker replied, "No hard feelings, I hope. Mantis?"
"I'll see you pay for this!"
"As good as can be expected, I guess..."
----------
"How're you feeling?" Daren asked as Levi emerged from the Crowne Memorial hospital, "Doesn't hurt much, does it?"
"Funny you should ask," he replied, "I ache all over, though I didn't feel a thing when it was all happening. It felt like getting punched repeatedly, you know?"
"Weird."
They walked to Randall Grey's apartment, mostly in silence. Solo didn't know how to say any of the messed up things the rest of the group had come up with. Some of the subjects were joking about her ("Damn, she's gonna want to cut his vocal cords out after the third hour but they'll just keep growing back!" -Draven), some were joking about him ("When she's done with Psych, he's going to have to redefine his gender!" -The Kingdale Referee) and some were about both ("I'm kind of wondering what position we'll find them in..." -Various). But now, with him back, and after the stories he had told them as the doctors operated on him, none of it seemed funny.
"Look, Levi," Solo finally muttered, "Jared, James and I have been talking, and... And we think you should take a break from the job."
"Why?"
"Because that... That was more than you should have gone through... Than anyone should have gone through."
"I'm fine," Baker smirked, "They didn't do a damn thing to me that I can't walk away from. See?"
He hopped a little as he walked, demonstrating how he could put weight on his legs. Solo wondered how long it would be until the scars on his face and arms faded away.
"Couple more days, it'll be like I was never locked in that basement with that steel-wrapped witch."
"Look, man..." Solo ran his fingers through his hair and sighed, "We're not just talking about your physical well-being. We're talking about what's going on inside that [frig]ed up head of yours! Ever since you disappeared, you've been spiraling deeper into your moniker. You're like a raving lunatic, and it's a wonder nobody innocent has been hurt. You seriously need to get off the sauce, and the sauce is your freaking knives and the hero work."
"Pft, you're on the other side of the fence. You're probably trying to cut back on the blue population..."
"Dammit, Psych! This isn't a joke! Is it so [frig]ing unbelievable that we care about ya!?"
"Solo," the scrapper replied calmly, "I've been to Hell and back. I'm telling you I feel fine, but if you and the guys think I should lay off for a while, then, fine. I'll lay off."
Simms nodded and they continued to the homecoming party waiting for them. Baker grinned. For the first time in a few years, he'd actually get to relax.
Then the Britney Aguilera song kicked on in his head and he started to writhe, scream and curse. They'd forgotten to take the emergency songs out of his playlist...
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
((This portion takes place after the first section few posts of the Co-Op Story thread))
"What the Hell part of 'Take a Vacation,' includes foiling a bank robbery!?"
Solo Stryker was fuming. It didn't help that he was going nearly out of his gourd with dark powers at his beck and call and unable to use them within city limits (except in cases of emergency or special circumstances like when Freedom Corps or law enforcement officials were overseeing the event), but they had just got their crazy knife-wielding scrapper back from his torment-filled captivity. They didn't need to be losing him again so soon.
"What would your brother say if he knew you were risking your neck like that?" the stalker growled.
"I guess he'd ask about the weird cyborgs that other hero and I ran into. They were a lot like that one we fought last year, you know?"
Solo arched an eyebrow at his friend, then turned to Justin Steel, who was sleeping in the corner of the Staging Area's central Arena.
----------
"Ugh, one step forward, two steps back," James grunted as he ascended the staircase, "We really need to drop by this base more often."
"Or we could consider the Air Guard's offer," Draven countered, "Then we'd just have to give it one good cleansing and be done with it. We could conduct all of our business through the Staging Areas."
"Yeah, but it helps to have a place we can just hang out and be ourselves, without the authorities messing with us."
They could have flown. However, a lot of the tools and implements they were carrying were unwieldy and heavy. It would have been slow-going in any case.
"Stop," Dale suddenly shouted from below, "Look at the rail!"
Draven didn't see what his cousin was talking about, but James did. Pointing with a nod of his head, he indicated something on the rail of the staircase.
"Looks like a calcium deposit," he explained, "Kind of like..."
"Coral?" Draven asked worriedly.
When they got to the top, they found King Slater at the end of his third teleport. He was bringing up the crates of stuff that were too heavy for them to carry, but his particular brand of teleportation enabled him to dematerialize and reform the objects wherever he needed them to go (provided he needed them to go to a solid surface connected to other solid surfaces).
"What the Hell's taking you guys so long?" the tanker gasped as he sat down to take a break, "Here I am, three crates of spare parts and an engine block, and you guys just got here with brooms and hammers..."
"Not all of us can 'swim' through steel," Draven replied, "You didn't happen to see anybody here, did you?"
"What? No..."
There was a creaking at the main hatch to the base's barracks. Slater pushed himself up from his sitting position and peeked around the crate.
"When you and your brother were here, you guys shut the door, right?" Draven asked.
"Yeah, I flew up here and checked, myself," Ragin' James replied, "Somebody's been here."
The collected meta humans approached the hatch cautiously. They were about halfway to it and standing in the middle of the platform when it opened fully and the first "fish-man" stepped out.
He was green, stony, and only barely resembled the man he had once been. His gaunt form waddled out of the door, and he was dragging an Arachnos generator behind him. When he looked up and saw the gathered members of the Brutal Warriors, he turned his ridged head back to the door and emitted a wet, guttural moan. The wet slapping sound that followed indicated that the group would soon be with company.
"I wonder if they taste like salmon," Draven chuckled.
The others just turned and glared at him.
"What? Psych's not here, somebody's gotta say the sick or weird thing."
"No," James countered while shaking his head, "Just, no. That's just dumb. Dumb."
"It is pretty dumb," Dale agreed.
"Totally, man," Slater finished while drawing the Black Mauler, "Besides, I think we better stay focused for this. If what I've heard about these guys is true, they don't [frig] around..."
The Coralax. The group wasn't particularly well-known, but those who had experience with them knew to fear them. The fish people were a dangerous lot, with designs for the world far more alien than most of humanity could even begin to comprehend.
For some reason, they had wandered far from their normal territory, which was just outside the Rogue Isles. They had come here, to the BWO offshore rig, because it was abandoned and still had some remnants of technology. Whether they intended to take it over or not was a question left for another time, however, as they didn't seem to be very forthcoming with information as it was.
A red-tinged Coralax Hybrid stepped out of the derrick's hatch and was followed by a number of glue and green-tinged underlings. They regarded the Brutal Warriors with a mixture of curiosity and contempt. The meta-humans looked back with weapons of steel and flesh ready to carve and smash.
"Bloody them," the Red Hybrid gurgled.
Suddenly, King Slater was among them. The Black Mauler whirled about and he brought knocked a few hybrids silly. Rage dove ahead of Draven and barreled through the creatures, electricity sparking off of him and frying their brains. Draven's black sword cut some of them open.
This wasn't like dealing with the Devoured. There was little to nothing left of the humanity that was the base of these twisted creatures. Only a very few of their number had broken free of the Will that dominated their lives, and they were still very dark and twisted.
So, it was with little remorse that many of the Coralax Hybrids died in that moment. Draven seemed to fight with a bit more vigor than the others expected, but then, he was a fan of the literature of Loveking, so he had some nasty notions about how far the Coralax were willing to go.
Ragin' James caught two of the green ones and slammed them together. Holding them to the deck, he tripped a blue one rushing toward the Referee (who was busy shielding his brother, cousin and friend) and pulled him into the pile. Held there, he proceeded to crush the life out of them with his flight and super strength.
Dale wasn't a pushover, though. Another Blue Hybrid rushed him, spraying ice at the shield-emitting defender, and the two tumbled across the deck as the creature bowled him over. Dale recovered slowly, but it was a feint. As the Hybrid loomed over him to spit something into the young man's mouth, Dale yelled, and the speakers dotted throughout his outfit amplified the noise. The focused sonic waves tore open the Hybrid's mouth, scattered the fluids to the wind, and sent the creature sprawling. Black ichor oozed from many of its pores and orifices.
The only one to escape unscathed was the Red Hybrid. She fought her way to the edge, blinding the Brutal Warriors with her ice sprays and psychic attacks. However, King Slater was still more mobile than she could mitigate, and as he appeared beside her, bits of steel flaking off his body, she dove off the side and into the sea. A few Blue Hybrids escaped to the other side of the platform and hurled their broken bodies over the side as well. It was a long plummet, and Dale was certain only the red one had a chance at surviving.
"What the Hell was that all about?" Draven shouted as the pounding blood in their ears started to slow, "What the [frig] are they doing here?"
"I can't believe that just [frig]ing happened!" Rage concurred, "Fish people? Here?"
"Alright let's calm down!" Dale announced, "We've got some corpses, let's get them down to the ship and get these back to Paragon. Once they're out of our hands, I'm sure we can let this all go."
"Cool... Good idea..." his cousin breathed.
"I just have to go inside and see what they messed with."
"What about the bodies?" James barked.
"You guys deal with them, and hurry up! We don't want Ringo getting [frig]ed with down there!"
Slater nodded as the other two looked to him. In an instant, he melted into the steel and was gone. He reappeared shortly thereafter in the Captured Dream, where Ringo was busy smoking a cigarette.
"You see anything weird?" the tanker asked.
"Other than someone falling into the drink?" the arsonist asked, "Nah. What happened up there? A fight?"
"Coralax."
"I figured. It's why I've got this..."
He held up a glass container filled with a clear liquid.
"Special accelerator. One squirt of this, they could very likely burn to the bottom of the ocean. Burns so hot it splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. Useful to have around in case of freaks that like the stuff."
Slater's face demonstrated the next question he had in mind and Ringo answered without needing to be asked.
"Arachnos acts like the Coralax are a new thing. Etoile fishermen have been dealing with all sorts of crazy things since even before Marchand's time. Run with any family of fishermen for an appreciable amount of time, they'll teach you their tricks of the trade. Some use acids, others explosives. My grandfather liked fire, and he used his still to concoct this explosive elixir. I have the recipe burned in my brain, so did my dad. I like to call it Clear Phosphorous, even though it's got nothing to do with that chemical."
"Weird, man."
----------
"So, it's not the Committee..." Solo sighed as Justin finished confirming that their old foes were in fact all washed up, "Then how would anybody else get these cyborgs?"
"Whoever made the design could have sold them," the business suit-clad mastermind replied sleepily, "We could probably arrange a meeting with Mr. Reynolds in the Zig."
"He won't want to talk with us," Levi intoned, "Not after what we did to him. Not after what the guys in the Zig will likely have done to him."
"I don't think we have any other choice," Solo replied, "Not unless you want to go looking for another cyborg."
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
Justin Steel, Draven Erickson and Ragin' James were sitting in the sparse refurbished rec room of the BWO's mid-Atlantic base. The television, the video games, even the stereo system were all gone. All that remained was a single chessboard that wasn't there when they'd last left.
"It looks normal to me," Justin commented as Draven and James stared at him while he set the board up, "The pieces are wooden and lacquered, the board is also wooden, just like you'd find in any gift shop magazine. At least the whole thing isn't made of coral."
Rage eventually relented and sat down to play a game with the group's finance manager. Outside, they could hear Steel's mercenaries and Mark Shadow shooting a set of targets they'd brought up with them. The past few weeks, the corrupter-class rogue had been more withdrawn and aloof.
"I wonder what his problem is," Draven muttered as he heard the familiar reports of Shadow's successive alternating ammunition.
"Mister Kolt says he's been developing a serious attitude," Steel replied as he moved a pawn.
"Don't be pulling that Blitzkrieg crap on me," Rage replied as he moved a knight, "Every experienced player... Then they get so flustered when it doesn't work because I 'never move my front row.'"
"Duly noted..."
"Well, it's not like we can hope to save the world," the pacing red-coated scrapper intoned, "We already tried that. Remember? A lot of us almost got killed that day, the Paragon med-porters don't work on 'rogues.'"
"We've got emergency access because we're not bad guys," Rage replied, "We'd have been fine."
Draven had his doubts, but they were beyond the scope of their present concern. They had to decide what to do with this base. Before, with the dropship, it was a viable staging point, neutral to all sides and capable of providing a decent enough security from any and all threats.
The Brutal Warriors had faced a number of strange enemies during the course of their careers, from the Lusca to a giant rag man that provided them with the strangest fight of their lives. Power Breaker, one of their best customers, had provided them with a number of the strangest occurrences, almost as many and as varied events as Blue Steel's fares provided(whenever the hero of King's Row couldn't or shouldn't hitch a ride with a Longbow helicopter).
Now, however, they were hardly ever here. They even tore pieces off to fund, arm, and improve upon the new boat that replaced the dropship.
"Maybe Levi was right," Draven muttered, "We should have named it."
"Yeah, but what?" James asked, "It's just a slag heap in Hector Wallace's barn, now."
"He paid to have it dragged back to his house?" Justin asked as he took a pawn Rage had finally moved, "Why?"
"He said he wants to experiment with it," the brute replied, "At least he let us keep the engine for the boat."
"Well, I guess we should determine what we intend to do with this place," the finance manager waved off any further discussion on the dropship as he took Rage's queen, "Alright, I think it's fairly certain that we don't have much use for this place anymore, what with the work we've put into our staging areas, plus the Air Guard and the Sky Raiders are putting up some pretty decent offers."
"Sky Raiders?" Draven balked, "Yeah, no. Last thing we want to do is give them anything Sheldon or Dale have worked on."
"Well, the Guard doesn't have much to offer..." Steel tapped his shades and the details started playing across his vision, "Let's see... Some discounts on security teams, about a third of what the Raiders are offering..."
"We're not taking the Raiders' deal!" Rage thundered, "Look, you know what Kip said about them, who's running them. It's too much of a risk to put something that could be converted into a listening post or-"
"I got it."
"So, what do we do?" Draven asked.
"Sounds like we've got two options," Steel tapped his shades in a particular sequence the offers from the Sky Raiders were deleted, "We can either keep paying for this base or we can get a hold of the Air Guard and sell it. Both options have problems, we're tight on funds and they're tight on resources, for instance. However, we need to do something."
The door to the rec room opened and Mark Shadow walked in, followed shortly by the mercenaries.
"Guys," the corrupter rasped, "We've got trouble... I think..."
----------
Outside, there was a strange vehicle resting where the dropship usually sat when the dropship was still in operation. It was smooth, sleek, black and waxed to a mirror finish. It looked similar to a limousine, except...
"Oh my God," Draven gasped, "It's one of those cars Psych was talking about!"
"We using stage names now?" Justin asked.
"Definitely," Rage replied, "Dibs on the big guy."
"What big guy?"
Truth be told, the hovering limousine had just landed. Nobody had exited it yet.
Justin ordered his mercenaries to get into position and checked his poison projectors. Draven drew his sword and the eyes of the metal skulls Rage wore flashed red a moment before blazing electric armor. Mark drew his rifle and took a deep breath.
The limousine finally opened and a young, red-headed woman in a black business suit with a short skirt exited it. She looked up at the gathered meta humans and pursed her lips pensively. She then beckoned back to the open door and a hand delivered a stack of papers and a clip board, which she took before walking over to the Warriors.
"Greene," Draven growled, "Angela Greene..."
"You thought you got rid of me after you sent that big thug to trash my office," the girl smirked at the red-coated broadsword wielder, "Lucky you, the Committee was falling to pieces at that moment. I got a new job, and I'm doing quite well at it."
"Who is this?" James whispered, "She's cute..."
"She's pure evil," Steel replied, "There's nothing she wouldn't do to advance her career."
"Last I knew, Steel, you didn't mind when I was strad-"
"What do you want, Greene?" Draven interrupted.
The smirking woman turned her attention on the scrapper and giggled. It was a deep and mirthless laugh, the sort a cat has when it toyed with a mole. Draven, however, wasn't intimidated by laughter.
"I've learned that a friend of yours had an altercation with some of my employers' off-the-books security forces..."
"Who are your new employers?" Shadow asked.
"We prefer to remain anonymous at the moment. We have a number of European businesses that are currently having trouble with Crey Industries, and we can't have Crey knowing about us until we're in a position with enough power to hold them back."
"What does this have to do with Psycho Thirteen?" Rage asked, keeping his voice neutral to keep the woman from knowing about his family ties to the lunatic scrapper.
"We need to make sure he hasn't reported to the authorities about what he's seen," Greene replied, "Otherwise, Crey stands a good chance of learning of our presence long before we're ready for it, and we can't be having that."
"Well, the bad news is that heroes have to fill out after-action reports," Steel replied with a grin, "Especially after strange and bizarre bank robberies. You know, for a group that wants to keep its presence unknown, you're not doing a very good job, what with the energy pistols, exploding cyborgs, and Shadowshock, the walking thunderhead..."
"That... Incident... Was the result of some political maneuvering within the syndicate. We're still trying to trace the steps, but those involved with the conspiracy are winding up dead and the money men behind the ordeal are thus-far unknown to us."
"What does any of this have to do with us?"
"Look, Draven," Greene's smile faded and she narrowed her eyes, "I could care less what happens to you and your pathetic little dinghy."
"Hey! It's not-!"
"She means the boat, Numb Nuts," Rage jabbed him with his elbow, "Get your head out of the gutter."
"Right..." Greene's eyes rolled, "The boat... Anyway, there are members of the Committee who have been absorbed into the Syndicate, and they may still feel like they have a score to settle with you. The more they try to hurt you, the more they risk exposing the Syndicate, which I don't think they're all that worried about anyway. They're not the ones in control, you see, so they're probably trying to expose the ones who are in a convoluted effort to regain their power."
"Business is Hell," Steel agreed, "Old, greedy men constantly trying to hoard more money for themselves so their sons can take their places in a position of power and become even more old, greedy men. And you wondered why I turned my back on the Committee when I did."
"I thought it was because they were trying to replace your mercenaries," Greene turned to Mr. Kolt, who kept his heavy machine gun hovering at her midsection.
"That was the catalyst, yes."
"Loyalty goes both ways," Kolt concurred, "It's why we're still with you, sir. That, and the paychecks never stopped coming in, so at least now we're doing work that makes more sense to us."
Angela nodded and turned to her papers. Pulling some out, she looked them over and handed them to Draven.
"Look, if you'd like to help with this, here are some leads I think might lead to the culprits behind that bank heist. I'm not the only one working on this, whoever figures this out stands to gain a lot from the real powers behind the Syndicate."
"And we'd like to help the Committee Two, why?" Draven asked with a shrug.
"You don't have to. I have other resources available, but I was thinking you might want to get back at the [butt]holes who made your late-teen lives a living Hell before they got slaughtered by their betters. Just take the information, look it over, and you can decide for yourselves what you're going to do. I have other appointments. Thank you for your time."
She walked away and Draven looked at the papers in his hands. It was strange, this seeming help from the enemy. Greene was definitely playing an angle, but there wasn't much reason why they shouldn't get involved in the investigation.
"We'll talk about this inside," he growled.
-----------
"Are they going to do it?" the man sitting with Angela asked gruffly.
"I have a good feeling about this," Angela replied, "I was sensing plenty of desire emanating from them, and it really spiked when I mentioned the Committee. They want vengeance, and I expect that they'll do something. We just need to be ready when they shake something up."
"Excellent," the man intoned, "Driver. Take us to Steel Canyon."
----------
"What do you think?" Justin asked as they sat down.
"I think we're getting played," Draven replied.
"I agree," Rage growled, "That Angela... She tried to send goons after Matt and me when I found these skulls... They were dressed like Arachnos, but they didn't fight like them, and they had orders on who to deliver these skulls to."
"I was getting e-mails from her when we were starting out," Draven admitted, "She started out advertising the Committee's help, and it later turned to threats and intimidation. I sent Power Breaker after her after that incident with the Pocket D bartender. That covered his tab in my opinion."
"Yeah, but this is big," Mark countered, "we're talking the inception of a new organization that intends to compete with Crey... And what's worse is that they think they can do it!"
"Lots of upstart organizations think they can go against the big dogs," Draven argued, "They forget there's a reason they're the big dogs."
"We have a choice here," Steel waved for his friends to calm down, "We can either do as we always do, and run our ferry service, or we can look into this matter and make sure these former Committee chairmen aren't really after us."
They were quiet for a few moments. Rage and Justin played a few more moves in their game. Steel was working the brute into a corner, but Rage was putting up a tough fight, despite the loss of his queen.
"We can't just leave this to itself!" Shadow finally shouted, "We can't let this group get away from us the way the Committee did!"
"Newsflash, Mark," Draven shouted, "These guys are already away from us!"
"I say we do it," James finally muttered as he claimed Justin's queen, "But not with what Greene gave us. We'd just be doing her dirty work."
"What do you suggest, then?" Draven asked, surprised.
"I say we go to Brickstown... We've got somebody in the Zig who's got plenty of information that deals with the Committee. He'll let us know who we should look out for."
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
"What the Hell do you want?"
Charles Reynolds. The boys called him "Chuck." He was the de facto Alpha Male when they all went to high school together. Even for some of the neighboring districts, he was a young man to be feared.
Reynolds was the son of the owner of a car dealership, and it was a small chain that employed a lot of people. There had been a lot of money moving through the business, and not a small amount of it was poured back into the surrounding communities, funding school expansions and uniforms, public works and funding a number of candidates' campaigns. This only made it more difficult to get an investigation going when former employees claimed that drugs were being run across state borders in the various new and used cars.
There was likely some truth to the claim, however. How else was Chuck able to make the connections necessary to form and run the Committee? It was discovered through interrogation after his arrest that he didn't actually run the clandestine organization until after completing college, but it was still his brainchild.
The Brutal Warriors each had a story to tie to Charles. He'd sent his thugs after James and Ice, which wound up with three dumb people taking a week off school so their bruises would heal. The thugs had more success against Draven, however, when the alpha dog realized the long-haired ladies man had been the reason why his girlfriend broke up with him. Of course, Psycho13 had his own stories to tell about the torment he received at the hands of the rich boy's goons.
However, the dark-haired, blue-eyed, dour young man sitting inside a bullet-proof glass box in a prison uniform hardly inspired the same intimidation he did as a teenage jock. He looked beaten and worn. He was scratching at a light stubble that scrawled across his cheeks and he had dark bags under his eyes. Glaring at the people responsible for his imprisonment, he repeated himself.
"Well? What the Hell do you want?"
"Sorry," Draven replied, "We're just savoring the irony. You were the prince of Kingdale, and now look at ya. Locked up in one of the biggest, most secure prisons on the planet."
"You obviously aren't familiar with the escape rate..."
"You're still here," Rage retorted.
There was a silence as Justin sorted through a few more papers, looked them over, then signed and handed them to a guard. He whispered to Draven the terms and regulations. Basically, they were allowed to ask him nearly anything, they just couldn't get violent.
"We should've brought bribing money," The skull-clad brute growled, "Then we'd get half an hour or so to stomp his lousy [butt] into the corner!"
"[Dog], there's nothing you can do to me that hasn't been done already," Chuck groaned, "Since I used that damn powered armor when you detained me, I was tried as a meta human, so now I'm in D Block. Despite the fact it has big, gaping holes in a number of the floors, it's still a dank, urine-soaked Hell hole that I can't get out of and am surrounded on all sides by freaks and lunatics. There are all sorts of hideous things going on in here, and even if I told you about them, nobody out there would believe you. Now, what do you want? As Judge Samson would say, I'm late for my cornholing..."
"I never figured you to be someone who gave up so easily," Draven intoned, "I... I kind of feel sorry for you. Especially since your former partners seem to be doing so well."
"Who said I gave- What?"
"You didn't know? A lot of the shareholders in your former outfit have banded together with some sort of European conglomerate. Apparently, they're right back to whatever they were doing before you were arrested."
"You hear that?" Rage growled, "You were a God damn patsy."
Reynolds glared at the Brutal Warriors for a few moments. At first, there didn't seem to be any other reaction. He just leveled his gaze into Draven's eyes. He was reading them, looking for the trick, the lie...
Suddenly, there was a rattling sound. Charles was shaking with anger. He jumped up with a roar and hurled his chair at the glass wall of his box. Since it was bullet-proof, the chair bounced back and slammed into his shin. The former jock crumpled to the floor and clutched his injured leg. Guards started rushing in, but when they saw that there was no way the visitors could have caused the incident, they just stood around, looking perplexed.
"Argh... I'm alright," Chuck growled, "I'm okay... I was just... Just a little ticked. I might need to go to the infirmary after this."
"Alright," one of the guards replied as he replaced his night stick, "You've got five minutes."
"What can you tell us about your former fellow shareholders?" Draven asked.
"Nothing here. I'll tell you if you get me out."
"Yeah, that's not happening. One, we're not the cops, two, 72 Hours is a work of fiction. ****-Shin! Inmates aren't released because they know something, they're kept in and pressured until they let something slip. My dad worked corrections, remember?"
"Yeah?" one of the guards asked, "Where at?"
"Kingdale Correctional, New York."
"Oh, one of those upstate deals, huh? Is that like the one designed so the inmates really never see the light of day?"
"No, but there're a couple Maxes the next county over. Ours just gets a lot of the goons from Syracuse and Rochester."
"Ah..."
"Alright, fine," Reynolds threw his hands wide in defeat, "I'll give you a name. If it pans out, and you guys are able to take this guy in, I'm going to have to suggest you guys get me into protective custody as soon as possible."
"Why?"
"Because the Committee will send goons after me, that's why! And not cuddly, cartoonish goons like you find in here, I mean big, mean, ugly abominations built from sin. Your brother helped conceive and build some of them, Rage. He had a lot of nightmares rattling around in that brain of his..."
"Why do you want to help us so suddenly?" Steel held up a hand to keep Rage and Draven from making any further comment.
"That's easy, Justin. I don't want to see those nimrods getting rich off my idea. I was the one who came up with manufactured heroes! Crey took the idea and did something weird with it... Heck, we might've come up with the idea at the same time, but mine is the better one! With the M.M.H.P., we could make truly synergistic teams to patrol the world's cities. We could have sold heroes to the military for covert operations without tarnishing anybody's image. With all the similar powers out there, who'd have known the lunatic who blew up the oil field in Iran was the same fire-based hero patrolling Cincinnati?"
"See, that's why it was an evil idea," Draven narrowed his eyes and shook his head, "Ends do not justify the means, Chuck. It's why you see heroes so bothered when innocents are hurt or killed during a skirmish with criminals."
"Death tolls are statistics."
"And now you're paraphrasing a madman."
Charles pushed himself to his feet and looked out to his former classmates. They were staring back at him with contempt. He wondered if it would be the same back home. He knew how his father would react.
A clicking sound distracted him. The guards were tapping their watches.
"Alright, look, you want the name or not?"
"Hit me," Draven replied.
"Kevin Tycho. He's the owner of a small pharmaceutical company, Tycho Pharms. He was one of the Committee's chairmen. Tie him to something, and you should get some leads into this new group."
----------
"We waited two weeks for that?" Draven growled, "What the Hell is he thinking?"
"Revenge, mostly," Steel replied impassively, "I think he intends for us to wipe out this new Committee one-by-one."
"Well, let's get cracking!" Rage shouted.
"No... We can't just rush this."
"I don't care what you say, Steel, you're not in charge of the heroside or heel-side operations!"
"Oh dear Lord..." the business-suit clad mastermind groaned, "Not this ridiculous leadership system again..."
"Regardless of your distaste," Draven stepped between them, glaring more at Rage than Steel, "Rage and I have the reins in this organization, Justin. We'll decide how to go about this."
"Well, we should begin with alerting the police about our upcoming investigation," Steel bluntly suggested.
The two other meta humans stared at him like his words had short-circuited their brains. Justin explained further that if they just stormed into the offices of Lawrence Pharms, the company could easily call the police on them and that would bring a swift end to both of their careers.
"We need to inform the police that we've been given reason to believe that Tycho Pharms at least bears investigation. We can call Joe, get him to accompany us with a warrant, and we'll go from there."
"Alright," Rage growled, "Should we check with Agent Wild to see if I can get my communicator to broadcast blue to the police drones when I'm using my powers, too?"
"It would probably be wise," the business-suit-clad man replied, "Considering what we've faced in the past couple years from the Committee and your brother's report from the bank in Steel Canyon, we might need your back-up."
"Alright, let's get going," Erickson shivered, "I'm feeling cold... Like we shouldn't be here."
Steel scanned the traffic. Few cars ventured past the prison, but one stood out. It was sleek, like glass, and didn't bounce or wobble on the same potholes the other cars did.
"We'd better hurry this investigation. Charles is probably in a lot more trouble than he knows."
----------
"Mister Reynolds," the young, red-headed woman said as she looked through her notes, "It seems you've been having a busy day."
"The word I'd use is [drecky]," he replied, "You finally slurp your way out of that Etoile office, Angela?"
The red-headed psychic glared at the orange-suited man behind the bullet-proof glass. She wondered briefly if it was super power resistant as well and if she could jam a mental spike in her former employer's brain without anyone knowing the difference between the attack and a stroke. A warning footstep behind her indicated that her superiors likely did not think the attempt would be a wise one, so she let it go.
"Good to see somebody's got you on a leash," Reynolds grinned, "Even if you were thinking you could kill me with your brain, you should remember you can't. I've got one of those mini-speakers in my head, like the one we put in Baker, and it produces a sonic resonance that protects me from psychic attacks and attempts to read my mind. You'd get nothing but a dull bass sound reverberating through your skull before I started shouting to the guards that you were trying to kill me and they sent a robot guard in here to ram a metal spike up-"
"Enough!" Greene shouted, the lights dimming a little as she lost some of her cool; while she felt like explaining that the guards weren't watching (they'd been properly bribed away), she had other proposals to make.
"Look, Chuck, I'm here to offer you a chance at freedom and a position within the new company I'm working for. I know you weren't so heavily involved in the more criminal activities of your former partners, and that they gave you the short end of the stick when the whole organization fell apart under pressure from Crey. With the B.W.O. chipping at your endeavors, they must have figured you were the prime candidate to simply feed to the wolves."
"Damn," Reynolds growled, "You've got me feeling bad about all the nasty things I said about ya just now. Oh well, can't fix that."
Angela smiled.
"Does that mean we have a deal?"
"I'll think about it."
Reynolds knew that, despite Greene and her mysterious companion's obvious bribery of the guards, there was somebody watching the interview chamber. He couldn't just accept this shiny gift without the news somehow getting out and the authorities keeping an eye on him. It left way too many variables in Greene's favor. Her's and her new company's.
What further bothered him was the fact that the B.W.O. was just there, telling him about a new company. Considering what he knew about business practices (actual business practices, not business models like people learn in school, but the "All in the Family" practices that had been keeping rich families rich and poor families poor), there was a strong chance she was working for the very same people who had abandoned him.
"Don't think too long," Angela sighed the tired cliche, "Otherwise, authorities may find mounting evidence to keep you in here for a very long time."
"That's just as good," the former Committee head growled as she and her quiet companion left, "Better than living in the streets..."
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
"Alright," Draven stopped them before the doors of the pharmaceutical company, "Joe and I will go in, issue the warrant, and take a stroll. We're not looking for a fight."
It had taken two days to convince a judge to provide the warrant. It helped that the request was coming from the Paragon Police Department, even if it was one of the ridiculous hero units. Unfortunately, it wasn't a raid-worthy warrant. If the company had "corporate secrets," the heroes wouldn't be allowed access to those areas of the building.
Fortunately, that was what Solo was for. Agent Wild stood nearby, his communicator indicating that the use of Stalker Powers was currently allowed. When the two heroes were disallowed from certain sections, Daren would sneak in and find out what was going on. Now they stood before the company's Brickstown headquarters, waiting to put the plan into action.
"We all know the plan," Wild growled, "Get to it. It was difficult enough getting the time for Solo to do his thing. Remember! You only have two hours and no assassinations!"
"Do I look like a snarling psychopath?" the stalker-class rogue growled before disappearing into the shadows, "Give me a little credit, Tom."
The Freedom Corps Agent shook his head and the group entered the building. Looking to Rage, he sighed in aggravation.
"You know, if you guys had records, none of this would be possible."
"Well, then I guess we all should be happy we don't," the brute shook his head, "Wild, is that whole black-and-white attitude a part of the training? You really think that people are defined by how their powers work?"
"No," the Freedom Corps agent replied after a moment's pause, "I just... I'm stressed. Things are getting more difficult at work. We've got constant turnover, and training the new guys takes time we don't have..."
"What's been happening?"
"A lot just can't take the pressure. Many get taken down by rogues and aren't the same when they get back from the reclaimators. Some don't even come back."
"That's terrible, man," Rage shrugged, "It doesn't make me evil, though. I hit as many spiders as I can when I'm out there. It doesn't stop your buddies from taking pot shots at me."
"Sorry," Wild hung his head in exasperation, "I'll try to get those memos out again. You guys are supposed to be on a list..."
"Don't worry about it," James smiled, "It actually helps us get through the Isles more easily. If Longbow troops stopped shooting at us, well... It would cause certain questions to be asked. Questions we can't answer. At least, with you here, we don't have to tell heroes, like her, why their communicators indicate I'm a brute-class, despite the fact that I register as an ally in their scanners."
"You know, that is a good question. Why are you conning blue?" a blonde woman in a red outfit asked as she stared at the young man, "It shouldn't be that way..."
"He's with me, Sooner," Wild replied, "We're... We're in the middle of a limited joint operation."
----------
"This is bad, isn't it?" Draven asked as he surveyed the wreckage strewn across the lobby.
There were broken desks, injured bodies and scattered papers everywhere. Bullet holes riddled the walls and ceiling and there were a number of scorch marks next to the doorways.
A young woman ran up to the paired heroes. Her uniform, a normally sterile white (and surprisingly unrevealing, even by this city's standards) skirt and blouse, was marred and stained. She carefully picked her way through the debris, whimpering and sniffing until she got to them.
"Thank goodness you've come," she sobbed, "They... I think they were Crey security guards! What kind of security just storms into a respectable business, threatens innocent people, even... Even..."
She looked at a prone body and started shaking as she crouched over him.
"Timmy?" her voice cracked before she started crying uncontrollably.
"Oh, that does it," Draven barked then lifted his communicator, "Wild! We've got a situation! We're going to need full combat readiness!"
"Dammit, Drave!" the agent's voice issued over the communicator, "I can't just pull that out of my [butt], you know! I have to radio for permission!"
"Just do it! We're gonna try to take these Crey goons down!"
"Crey? I thought you said you were in there in case Tycho was involved in something illegal!"
"There's still time," Solo replied, "I'll snoop around, you just get on the horn with the F.C. and get us that permission!"
Draven set his communicator to passive and started stalking down the hall. However, he realized he was alone.
"I know what Solo's doing," he whispered into the device on the local frequency, "What are you doing, Joe?"
"Thanking my lucky stars there's a subvocalizing translator built into these things," the cop replied, "I'm scouting ahead, and i'm too close to... Draven... Oh my God... They've got hostages!"
The red-coated scrapper was running by this point. He couldn't let Joe jump into a situation without at least some support. Sarah would kill him if he let her hubby have to woe the hospital. Worse, she would kill him, meet him outside the hospital and kill him again.
When he arrived at the room, Durnan was just in the middle of hurling a smoke grenade into the room. It was strange, Draven was having trouble seeing his friend. The cop had some sort of cloaking device running.
"Pansy," he growled as he started to fade into the shadows as well, "Can't go invisible on his own like a real man!"
The Crey security guards didn't last very long. Their eyes bleary with smoke, they were only able to fumble about for their hostages, much less fight back against the two stealthy heroes flitting among and neutralizing them one-by-one. The heroes then ushered the coughing hostages out of the smoke.
"Hold still, hold still," Durnan said softly as he gently washed the eyes of the freed Tycho Pharms employees, "There you go. Are there any more?"
"No," one man sighed with relief, "No more."
"Who are you, sir?" the officer asked.
"I'm Gerald Jones, today's manager. We... We were having a light day because we'd just issued a fresh batch of research to Central. We beat our deadline. It was supposed to be a party today..."
"You have reclaimator accounts, right? It's part of your health plan, right?"
"Only for management..."
"Get to the lobby," Draven urged, "There's a guy down there, Timmy... You press your beacon into him and you send him to the hospital, got me!?"
"They hurt Timmy?" Gerald sounded horrified, "He was just the mailboy! Why would they hurt Timmy?"
The released hostages fled down the hall while the heroes regarded each other. With any luck, the young man critically wounded in the entrance hall wouldn't die today.
"They didn't send goons to harass a few employees," Joe muttered sternly, "There's something here."
That was when they heard gunfire coming from down the hall.
----------
Earlier...
"I don't get why they said we needed a full squad," one of the Mob Specialists muttered, "And I don't like leaving Miller and his crew to mess with people. That guy's got enough screws loose to rivet a boat, and his boys aren't much better."
When they heard the sounds of gunfire behind them, they knew the drill. Heroes had arrived.
"How'd they hear about the op?" one of the rookies whined, "We didn't even know about it until a couple hours ago..."
"You didn't know about it until I told you," the Paragon Protector leading them corrected, "Now shut up and step it out. We have to-"
The wall next to him exploded. A large man in a business suit emerged from the dust as it cleared and backhanded the Protector into the security detail. He would have looked like one of their Infiltrators if not for two things. One, he was much too large and bulky. Two, there were no cybernetic devices evident anywhere on his person. If the invasive guards looked a little closer, they would also have noticed the agent's skin was much paler than it ought to have been as well.
"Is it one of ours?" the rookie asked worriedly.
"No," the Protector growled, "It's one of theirs..."
"Unauthorized personnel," the large agent intoned, "I have been instructed to utilize lethal force."
"Fire!" the sergeant leading the Mob Specialists shouted.
"Wait!" the Protector interrupted, "I'll deal with this."
Claws sliding out of his wrists, the Protector lunged at the agent. The steel blades sunk a few inches into the larger man's chest and stopped. Not giving up as easily as his fellows, the yellow-and-blue-clad pseudo-hero raked his blades across his opponent's torso until the agent caught one of his wrists.
"Damage incurred," it rumbled, "Uniform: Destroyed. Estimated Cost: Two hundred and forty-eight dollars. Lacerations to flesh: Serious. May require an extended recuperation period in the preservation vats to return to healthy humanoid status. Estimated cost: Three thousand, four hundred and ninety-two dollars. European."
"What are you?" the Protector breathed as he felt bones snapping in his wrist, "Ugh... You're not like me... I'm still alive! I'm-"
"A pathetic copy that's about to pay for my recuperation with his hide."
"What?"
"We're granted a bounty for every one of you we kill. New Horizon is keenly interested in how their projects hold up against the carbon-copy quasi-heroes."
"Kill him!" the Protector shouted, "Shoot now!"
"You heard him, fire!" the sergeant yelled and the Mob Specialists unloaded their submachine guns into the duo.
The Protector was a regenerating type, so he started healing wounded flesh and his wrist's bones popped back into place once the agent dropped him. The agent's body didn't regenerate, however, the cybernetic endo-chassis that provided the monstrosity with its superb strength, agility and resilience was partially revealed once the guns went dry.
The Protector renewed his attack against the anomalous enemy, this time with fire arcing from his fingertips, but he still met with crushing defeat. The once-agent's arm shot up and a metal, skeletal fist smashed through the visor of the quasi-hero's helmet, tore through his jaw, and ripped the helmet off his head. There was an audible crack as the head twisted in the opposite direction of the body and his death rattle was unmistakable.
"Congratulations," the agent's voice, now much more tinny and distorted, seemed to reverberate through the very bones of the Mob Specialists, "You have totaled this model. You now have the very special gift of seeing its full destructive potential!"
The left pectoral armor plate popped open and the metal fingers of the cyborg's right hand reached inside. When the hand emerged, it held a pistol, but it was unlike any pistol yet seen. The weapon had portions that glowed and it emitted the strangest whine.
A blue bolt blasted out and speared through the guards to the sergeant's right, sending the lifeless bodies tumbling back down the hallway. The cyborg turned its powerful weapon to the other side of the formation and effortlessly slaughtered the guards to the sergeant's left.
"Run, kid!" the man shouted as he sprayed a burst of bullets across the cyborg's body while simultaneously shoving the rookie back the way they'd come.
"Oh my god, he just killed them!" the new guy was definitely crying, "They... They.."
"Go! Go! Run!" his sergeant kept urging the younger man on.
Blue beams whizzed by their heads and tore holes into the walls. they were being corralled and they knew it. Taking a chance, the sergeant kicked his underling's legs out from underneath him, causing the younger guard to tumble down a side corridor and barely miss getting his head shot off. The sergeant dove after him, with a bolt scoring a chunk out of the corner.
"I'm sorry I can't do better than this, kid," the sergeant grunted as he drew his pistol, "If I don't make it, tell my wife... Tell her... I tried."
"Sarge?" the boy asked as his superior squeezed a round off into his belly, causing the emergency mediport beacon to register the critical damage before he could die and sending him to the nearest secret Crey medical facility.
"Okay, you sonova..." the sergeant kicked his way down the corridor on his back while he alternated the weight on his shoulder blades, "I may not have been in 'Nam, but I've seen my share of action! You think you scare me? You think you scare me?"
He held his SMG in his right hand, the pistol in his left. He wished he didn't have to use that bullet, but Crey had hefty penalties for using their secret emergency medical teleport matrices without being critically injured. All were expected to lay down their lives for the cause. He would have considered the EMTMs to be a myth to make the guards more fearless, but he'd made use of their services enough times to know that they worked.
The agent rounded the corner and leveled its "blaster" at the guard. The sergeant wasn't about to go out without a fight, however, and drained the magazine from his SMG into the deplorably damaged body. When that failed, he squeezed rounds off from his pistol until its clip went dry.
"Time to say goodbye," the oddly sadistic machine intoned before there was a loud bang and something hit it on the side of the head.
Turning down the hall, the agent saw the vague form of Joe Durnan. However, what it saw more clearly was the smoke wafting from the barrel of his assault rifle.
"Oh crap," the police officer dove into another room and pulled up his communicator, "This is Sergeant Durnan, requesting backup! I'm fighting some kind of metal thing inside a man... It's like the thing from that movie, The Destroyer!"
The agent squeezed off a round down the corridor with the Crey guard in it and started stalking toward the room where Joe had hid. He didn't notice his shadow was keeping a different pace from him, nor did he notice that he'd missed the guard completely. His targeting array had actually been damaged by that sniper round and now his perception was off.
"I'm activating my powered armor now!" Joe announced and pressed a button on his communicator.
Blue armor wrapped around him. His partners called it "Super SWAT," which it was, in a sense. It was a prototype armor Joe had found during one of his rummagings through the storage lockers. Refurbished and altered slightly, it had served him well during his various hunts in the sewers of Paragon City.
A bright bolt exploded through the wall and almost took Joe's head off. Instead of waiting for the agent to correct his aim, the officer leaped up and fired a grenade into the wall. It blasted away and the cop took off running. The agent fired many times after him, putting many holes in the wall. However, he could not seem to hit his target.
"I require recalibration..."
"Yeah," Draven's sword hacked through the energy pistol, "Too bad you won't be getting it!"
The agent said nothing. He simply whirled around and backhanded Draven into the wall. When the scrapper didn't go through, the cyborg pirouetted and delivered a savage sidekick into the young man's chest and put him through it.
Admiring its victory and savoring the damage he was about to do, the agent slowly started stepping through the hole in the wall to finish the hero off. This was a real test, not like the Protectors, the pale imitations of heroes that couldn't hope to put up a fight. These guys had different tactics, different capabilities, all sorts of versatility...
A burst of rounds scored against the side of his head and the agent turned back down the hall. The Mob Specialist sergeant stood there and started marching toward him, firing a burst from his SMG with each step. As the agent turned its full attention on what had to be an insane human being, a solid red lightning bolt crashed into him and tackled him through the wall, into the next room, and through the next wall and into that room.
----------
Slightly earlier...
"...like the thing from that movie, The Destroyer!" Durnan's panicked voice announced on Agent Wild's communicator.
"Sounds like an inverted Freak Tank," Sooner Spirit suggested, "But that doesn't make any sense. Wouldn't they want the armor on the outside?"
"No," Rage replied, "Wild, I don't care what you say, I'm going in!"
"Dammit, Rage, you spark up and every Police Drone in the block is going to be alerted to your presence!"
"Good! We'll need them here if that's what I think it is!"
"Wait, why can't he work as a hero?" Sooner asked just as Rage's dark-red electric armor flared up, "Oh my!"
"RAAAAAAAAAAAH!" James roared as he flew through the doorway, shattering it to pieces and tearing through the staircases and hallways like some sort of violent poltergeist.
When he connected with the agent, he was glad it was momentarily distracted. Holding onto the cyborg's waist, he stopped their flight when they hit the third wall and regained his footing.
"You can't beat me!" the agent shouted, "I am the latest model! I was built to destroy heroes!"
He slammed a fist into James' back, causing the brute to bark out a yell. However, he didn't release his grip. Instead, he seemed to be positioning himself under the agent and gaining a position of significant leverage.
"Oh yeah? Oh YEAH!?"
Tightening his grip, he hoisted the cyborg into the air and fell backwards. This caused the machine-man's head to hit the floor in a maneuver commonly known as a German Suplex. Rage then rolled the two of them over, hoisted the cyborg up again and executed the maneuver a second time.
This time, they fell through the floor. In the level below, Rage still maintained his grip.
"I'm not a [rig]ing hero!" he shouted with one last lift, and this time he whipped the cyborg around and slammed he front of its torso into the wall.
"YEAH!" he shouted, "Get up! Get back up so I can knock your rusted [butt] back down again!"
"Oh...k-k-k-kay," the cyborg grunted distortedly as he lunged at the brute and performed a double fisted backhand strike.
Rage was caught offguard and was sent sprawling into the next room. Before he could get up, the agent kicked him in the ribs, sending him tumbling into the wall. Coughing, the brute caught the next attack,an axehandle forearm smash, and pulled himself up so his face was level with the cyborg's.
"That the best you got?" he spat into the machine's eye socket, "Pansy?"
----------
"What's going on in there?" Swan asked as she came to address the sudden influx of police and spectators.
People were drawn to the sounds of heavy thuds and breaking walls. Draven and Joe emerged shortly after the freed hostages. they were followed by a man holding an SMG (but his Crey uniform was conspicuously absent). The sergeant looked worriedly to Joe, who simply narrowed his eyes at the guard.
"Ma'am," Agent Wild addressed his superior with a salute, "Agent Thomas Wild, Fourth Class Field Agent."
"At ease, Agent," Swan returned the salute clumsily, "Dammit, I hate doing that... What's going on here?"
"There's been a situation," the red-and-white clad hero replied, "It's being dealt with by some of my... friends..."
"Why is that man holding a submachine gun?"
"I do not know but I will find out..."
"I-!" the sergeant stammered, but he was interrupted by a loud explosion of brick and mortar.
Raging James tumbled through the air with the debris, and crashed with it too. His tortured body shuddered a couple times, but could barely lift the weight off his back. Just as things were looking lost for the rogue and the police drones were locking onto him, there was a loud note trilling from Agent Wild's communicator. He checked it and noticed that James' emergency permission to use his powers had kicked in.
"Well, I guess that's lucky," he growled.
"Oh my goodness, are you alright?" Sooner asked as the brute gasped for breath, "What did this to you?"
"That!" Durnan shouted and hoisted his assault rifle.
The cyborg agent, so much of its flesh torn away that it didn't even look human, dropped from the hole it had put in the wall with the rampaging brute. Landing on its feet, it left a wide circle of spiderweb cracks across the sidewalk and pavement. It stood and started stalking toward the heroes.
"A-a-a-a-after I'm d-d-done with you, I'm going on a k-k-k-killing spree," he muttered on his beeline for Joe.
The cop fired a burst while shouting, "Everybody get out of here!"
Civilians started scrambling. Sooner Spirit seemed to disappear from sight as her own shadowy armor wrapped about her body. Swan, however, huffed and focused her will against the monstrous machine. Her psychic attack had little to no effect, however.
"There's... There's something distorting my power!" she shouted.
Draven's black sword snaked between the agent's legs, tripping it. However, the machine-man tumbled, rolled and was on its feet as easily as if it had never been tripped. The blade became a thing of shadow and returned to its wielder's hand.
Agent Wild, after a pause from Joe's assault, leaped up and tried to drop-kick the monster. He wound up batted out of the sky. All seemed hopeless when there was suddenly a hole opened up underneath the enemy and dark tentacles started to stream out and grab him.
"You're not going anywhere!" Sooner Spirit announced as she appeared in front of Joe, "And you're not hurting anyone ever again!"
The police drones focused their aim on the machine and started to fire. However, their teleport beams seemed unable to send him to the Zig (not that it would have helped anything if they did).
"You're go-go-going to have to tr-r-r-r-ry harder than that, little girl," the cyborg growled, "And it's going to-to-to take more tha-a-a-a-a-a-an you've go-!"
The machine stopped as tentacles wrapped about his head and started to poke into the cracks, crevasses, nooks and crannies of the metal skull. Suddenly, with a resounding crunch and the sound of metal parts plinking to the ground, the head was twisted around to face Solo Stryker. The Stalker-class stared impassively into the eyes as they went dark and smirked.
"Wasn't nearly as hard as you made out," he withdrew the shadowy tentacles his arms had turned into and turned the amorphous shapes back into his hands.
"Stupid idiot," Rage grunted as he pushed himself up, "You've murdered us all!"
"Wait!" several bystanders yelled, but Rage sparked up his armor again, dove through the air and collided with the lifeless hulk of the cyborg just as it started to beep. Lifting the heavy wreck into the air, he put as much "oomph" into the flight as possible before the skeleton exploded, sending him rocketing back to the pavement amidst all of the stunned meta humans.
"Oh my," Swan muttered, "That was new... That was like one of Luminary's blasts!"
"Only with fire," Wild grumbled as he tried to pick himself up, "Ow! I think I broke some ribs..."
"James? James!" Draven shouted as he regained his wits, "You okay, man?"
"Aw, man, that sucked," the brute grunted as he pushed himself up, "Solo... Next time you can save the day in one fell swoop, don't."
The stalker, lying flat on his back because the wake had caught him full force, nodded.
"I'll take that into consideration, bud."
----------
"Sarge?" the kid said weakly as his former superior greeted him in the hospital bed, "I made it out, Sarge."
"I know, Kid, I sent ya here."
"That... That thing... The docs... They keep asking about that thing."
"Well, they should stop, now. I gave them a full report on its appearance and apparent capabilities. Plus, there's plenty of Police Drone footage to corroborate."
"It was a monster," the young man laid his head back onto the pillow and looked lazily to the headboard, "I'm glad it's dead."
"One of them is," the sergeant growled, "And it took a half a platoon of Crey security and a Paragon Protector with it. You and me, we'll probably have to tell others how to survive an encounter with one of 'em..."
"Wait for the heroes to finish it off," the kid coughed a little as he chuckled.
"Yeah," the sergeant smiled, "You get some rest... I'll tell your mother you'll do just fine."
"Thanks, Dad."
----------
"So, you found what you were looking for," Chuck smiled, "Do we have a deal?"
"Because of the little stunt that cyborg pulled, yes," Joe replied, "The Paragon City Police Department is willing to put you, Charles Reynolds, in Protective Custody."
"Sweet," the dark-haired prisoner grinned at the heroes sitting outside the bullet-proof glass, "I'm glad I don't have to consider the other offer."
"Other offer?" Draven asked, arching his eyebrow despite the incredible pain it caused him, "What other offer?"
"The new guys," Check leaned back in his chair, "They said they want me in their crew. Thing is, though, I don't want to. I've been down that road before. I was sold out once, I could be sold out again. With you guys, I can rest easy knowing that my knowledge is keeping me safe and sound."
"Don't feel too safe," Joe growled, "I went through a lot of crap because of you, Reynolds, and I'm not talking about football!"
"You still remember that, huh?"
"I'm remitting you to the custody of the Brutal Warriors Order," the cop replied.
"What!?" the prisoner and the bandaged hero shouted at once.
"You will be held in their custody until the information you provide delivers convictions. Then we'll see about finagling a new identity for you."
"You can't do this!" Chuck shouted, "I need to be handled in an official manner!"
"You're going to be treated to my foot in your [butt]!" Draven shouted back, "Joe, we'll kill him!"
"Do that, and you'll be charged with tampering with an investigation," the cop replied, "Look guys, my superiors, in fact, my highest superior, Blue Steel, said this would be a good idea. Especially since nobody seems to know where the BWO Staging Areas are. You guys can just toss Reynolds into a Universal Portal and zap him to safety."
"We don't want to keep him safe," Erickson retorted, "We want him in a different type of prison."
"I never said you had to make life easy for him."
((Sooner Spirit used with permission from Sooner! Yay!))
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
--Time passes, as it does... Atlas Park--
It was going to be a long day for the portly young man. He had menial tasks to do, and a lot of distance to travel to get it all done. However, he had the benefit of not having to do any hero-work, he was off-duty for the day. Or at least, that was what he thought.
"Oh man... How'd I forget this downside?"
Standing before him, just outside his apartment, was a squad of Arachnos soldiers. They didn't have their weapons drawn, nor were they organized into any kind of battle formation. This was obviously intimidation in action.
"We're here to escort you to our lair, where you'll then be detained before being carted to the Rogue Isles," the Huntsman explained.
"You guys aren't very good at this, are you?"
"What?"
Roland cracked his knuckles.
"Oh, he's going to try to make this tough. Get him, boys!"
"Look, I don't have time for this, guys. I gotta get my jeep inspected, I gotta..." he noticed them closing in, "Look, I may not have my bow, but I've fought enough of you idiots to know the tricks."
"Roland! ROLAND!"
The operatives turned to see a skinny young man in a tan hoodie and blue jeans calling to their target. One of the Wolf Spiders aimed his pistol and put a round in the new guy's chest.
"Oh, you're gonna wish you didn't do that," Grey grunted.
"[Frack] beaten!" the man screamed, "All I wanted to do was invite you to go bowling!"
Psycho13 drew his blades as he stood back up. The Arachnos soldiers were taken aback, and when they turned back to their boss, he was slapping his forehead and grumbling something about "stupid capes that don't wear capes" while he drew his assault rifle.
"Kill him! Put him in the hospital, HURRY!"
The soldiers aimed, but that was about as far as they got. In the blink of an eye, Psycho13 had closed the distance between him and the nearest Wolf Spider. The soldier screamed as his forearms were stabbed into and the inner-ligaments of his left knee got severed. He crumpled to the ground and the scrapper moved on to the next soldier.
As the blur moved among the group, the Huntsman made for Roland. Normally, the defender-class hero would have put a few arrows into his assailant's armor, maybe slowed him down with a glue bomb, or frozen him in place with his ever-trusty ice arrow. However, he left his bow and quantum quiver in his apartment. All he had were his two fists (there was no way he was going to be trying any fancy kicks) and his wits.
Unfortunately, one didn't become an Arachnos Wolf Spider Huntsman without knowing something about fighting. Roland threw a punch at the squad leader that was promptly deflected and he was popped in the chin for his trouble.
The Huntsman followed up with an attempt at butt-stroking Grey in the head, but Roland dodged around and came back with a flurry to the chest. He didn't accomplish much, but he did wind up in a good position to body check his assailant back.
"Sonova..." the Huntsman growled, "'Take the job,' she said, 'It'll be good for your career... It'll be easy,' she said... Last time I ever take a job from Silver Mantis again."
"That metal [dog] sent you over here?" Psycho13 shouted as he wrestled around with two Wolf Spiders, "Why?"
The portly defender rolled his eyes. He wasn't about to explain what was going on. Fortunately, neither was the Huntsman, who was (unfortunately) busy leveling his rifle at him. Before he could squeeze the round off, however, another hero seemed to simply emerge from the ground and took the bullet to his chest. There was a "spang" sound as it ricocheted.
"Slater!" Baker shouted as the Wolf Spiders picked him up and tossed him aside, "What are you doing here?"
"Draven was wondering what was taking you so long," the bigger man replied as he drew the Black Mauler from his belt, "And as for you..."
He smashed the rifle with the heavy, spiky ball of his war mace. The Huntsman drew a knife from his boot that was promptly batted away. Slater had also broken his hand with that swing.
The Spiders closed in and started trying to muscle through the two heroes to the "depowered" third. However, King Slater proved to be quite the rooted, immovable obstacle. He pushed the nearest one back and jabbed him in the face with the Mauler, busting his lips and breaking a few teeth.
"You boys are obviously ill-prepared for this," he muttered with a smirk, "How about you do yourselves a favor and beat it?"
"Never!" another Wolf Spider shouted as he drew his own mace and charged toward the tanker, "For Recluse!"
Dustin swung hard and shattered through the weapon. With a backhand swing, he took out the operative as he stared glumly at his broken haft.
The rest scattered and the heroes were left to look at one another. The Huntsman remained, though.
"So..." Roland grumbled, "About that base..."
"Here are the directions, send me to the Zig," the operative sighed as he handed over a device that looked similar to a hero communicator, "I knew I shouldn't have agreed to this."
"Cool..." Slater tapped the information into his own communicator, uploading it to Joe so it would be another base in the Police Band queue, "Goodbye."
He lightly tapped the operative on the chest and a small beeping dot was left on the armor plate. Before the Huntsman could grab and pull it away, a passing Police Drone whirled around, zapped him to the Ziggursky Penitentiary, continued its spin and went back on patrol without losing speed.
"Woah, they're getting more efficient!" Psycho13 chortled as he pulled his blades out of his belly, "Damn, they got me good... At least this one wasn't crisped. I can get it fixed. So, Round, you comin' with us for bowling?"
"We were just in a firefight," Grey replied, "You got shot, stabbed, and tossed around..."
"I got some of them a whole lot worse than they got me."
"...And there are all sorts of people freaking out about what just happened! Don't you guys think it's a little strange that we're... You know... Taking this all in stride?"
The other two looked around and shrugged. People were indeed running around, terrified. A few were walking like everything was still normal, and they'd watched the black-armored soldiers fleeing past them.
"It's nothing to worry about," Slater replied, "We're equipped to handle this crap. I guess it just seems like clockwork to us... No offense."
An Oscillator warbled indignantly at them as it flew past. The fact that it seemed to be on a leisurely glide was yet another cause for concern. Then it flew back.
"*Bzzt!* You guys wouldn't happen to know where I could find a descent flower shop around here, would you?"
They stared at it for a few seconds, finally Roland pointed down the street.
"Around the corner... What do you need them for?"
"Well, *whir* Penny is a little ticked at... *hum* My King, and he was asking us to bring him the best flowers in the city..."
The heroes looked at each other. They knew from rumors and other heroes just who was talking to them. A small bead of lubricant seemed to seep from the little robot's head as they remained in a bit of an awkward silence.
"Well," Slater almost chuckled, "You're not... You're not robbing them, are you?"
"I have money..." the Oscillator showed them a wad of heavily soiled bills, "I'd rather not say what my brothers and I had to go through to get it..."
"Sewers?" the heroes asked at once.
"Sewers," the robot admitted glumly.
"Well, you..." Roland looked at the bills, "You really should wash those things, first... They're not exactly paper, they're like cloth. It wouldn't ruin the money."
"Yes, but... Well... Look at me."
They had to admit, the robot was a rusty, oily, grimy little thing. Roland looked to the others and shrugged.
"I've got stuff I need to do, guys, you want to help him?"
Levi was already standing there with a bouquet, wrapped in plastic, and was handing it to the little robot.
"Watch out with those propellers," he explained as the robot gleefully grasped the plastic, "Don't worry about paying me back."
"Thank you very much!" it warbled happily as he floated away, "I'll... *bzzt!* I'll make sure my King knows what you've done for him!"
"See, now it's just getting weirder," Roland grunted, "I think... I think maybe I should make plans to get out of here."
"Well, what're you gonna do?" Dustin asked, "I mean, not a lot of us ever thought we'd get out of Kingdale, and now look at us! We're running a transport and courier service, your dad has his own super group, a new construction company... We've got power and influence now."
"Among lots and lots of other people with power and influence. Frankly, the whole thing is starting to bother me. I can't go a few steps without getting the attention of some dumb[butt] paparazzo..."
"Paparazzi follow you?" Psycho13 asked, "But... You don't do anything out of the ordinary. You even make being an archer hero seem boring."
"It's not... It's aged me horribly..."
"Well, what's keeping you here, then?" Dustin asked.
"I don't know... I've become the de facto superintendent of my building, but anybody could do my job with a little training..."
"If you ever need help, give me a call," the tanker chimed in.
"...And there is an issue where I've been helping out this girl I know... But she can get that kind of help from a lot of people."
He expected them to say something derogatory, but they were passive. Roland nodded as he made a realization.
"Ah yes... You're not Draven."
"We don't all have to assume dumb things," Slater chuckled, "So... Let me get this straight, you've been wrestling with this issue for a while?"
"Yeah..."
"What keeps you doing this?"
Roland rubbed his chin before shrugging. He honestly didn't know why he wanted to leave, but he also didn't know why he wanted to stay.
"Sounds like you're trying to get into some sense of normalcy," Psycho13 remarked, "Problem is, in this world, there's no such thing as normal. Heck, we were in high school with a wizard and a mad scientist. Kip was fighting all sorts of weirdos, in and out of school, and who knows what madness you and your family has seen... And that's from before any of us even came to this city! Face it Roland. There is no normal."
"Well, I've got something normal I've gotta do," he grumbled, "I gotta take my jeep in to get inspected. Then I've got groceries to get, and after that, I gotta get some pots and pans."
"What? Why?"
"Dad's holding a benefit in King's Row. Or maybe it's a block party... I don't know what. All I know is he's bringing in a whole lot of chicken from back home and he corralled Cedric and Snuffy's husband, Joe, into helping him make baked beans."
"Is it legal to transport poultry like that?"
"I don't know how he's doing it," Grey threw his hands up, "Maybe it's just Bob to come by and help him marinate the birds and he has a more local source. In any case, the event's happening, and I'm helpin' out. I can't go bowling with you guys."
"That's cool, man," Slater clapped his friend on the shoulder, "Maybe another time."
"Tell Jared it was cool he thought of me... Or was it you, Levi?"
"Nah, Jared wondered if you'd like to come with, since we were in the area."
"Well, thanks anyway. If you guys hadn't shown up-"
"Another group of heroes would have saved ya..." the regenerating scrapper chuckled, "Maybe your dad would have gotten involved! It would be cool to see that!"
"Yeah, he seems to only really show up if everything's gone to Hell..." Dustin commented.
"He's a tough old bear," Roland shrugged, "He's letting the young cubs sweat the small stuff. Plus, he's got mom back. He doesn't see much reason behind throwing himself from one dangerous situation into another. Well... It's been cool, guys, but I gotta go. I'll buy you a couple drinks in the D tonight."
"Awesome."
They shook hands and went back to their originally planned day. Meanwhile from a nearby hedge, a pair of Arachnos soldiers plotted and planned how they would make the intrusive heroes pay for causing their operation to fail.
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
--Super Lanes: Atlas Park--
"So this is what you guys do in your off time?" Chuck muttered as he watched Daren's ball roll down the lane.
"Sometimes, yeah," Dale replied, "I love watching my bowling ball smash the [dreck] out of those pins."
Reynolds barked a laugh at that as Daren's ball wound up with a seven-ten split. The Stalker whirled around at him, his eyes blazing furiously.
"You think it's funny, [butt]hole?"
"What? That? Yeah."
Daren's hands started to darken visibly as his dark powers were manifesting. Suddenly, a hand clasped on his shoulder and he stopped. It was his cousin, Jared Simms.
"What's goin' on, Solo? You letting Chuck get into your head?"
"What took you so long?" the Stalker replied as he took his ball and prepared to throw, "We had to start a game without ya."
"We ran into some trouble trying to get Roland to come," Daren's older brother, Dustin, replied, "Arachnos was trying to kidnap him. He couldn't come, anyway, said he had to get his jeep inspected."
"Why would he need a jeep?" Dale laughed, "He's got one of those jumping machines wrapped around his legs, right?"
"There's leaping around, looking for trouble, and then there's actually having to carry stuff around," Draven replied as he pulled the bowling shoes on, "God, why do these things have to be so ugly?"
"So you don't steal them," Levi replied, "You want stylish bowling shoes? Build, find or buy your own. So, since this game just started, can we team up?"
"I got no problem with that," Charles muttered, "You, Daren? Dale? Dust-... God, all 'D' names? What was your dad's name again? Dave? Didn't you have an older brother named Dirk?"
"And another named 'Dave,'" Dustin replied, "I'll partner up with Chuck. You guys?"
"Solo, of course," Draven smirked, "You know we always roll together."
"I'm with Dale, he knows what he's doing!" Psycho13 chortled.
"The [frick] you say!" Solo shouted, "I know what I'm doing!"
"That's your seven-ten, right?"
They picked up where the game left off, each teammate alternating from the one who bowled the last frame. Dustin and Chuck, "Team Poo," barely won the first game, but it was so much fun that they decided to play a second.
Nearby, they heard a loud man shout "OVER THE LINE!" When they looked, a large, balding man was threatening another patron with a ham sandwich. Despite the large man's agitated appearance, he and his friends started laughing and bought a round of beers for the alley.
"They got a bonus," the waitress explained as she handed the drinks to the meta humans, "So they're in a celebratory mood. Plus, because of their similar appearance to certain movie characters, they reenact scenes sometimes."
"Sounds like a fun bunch of guys," Levi chuckled, "Tell 'em thanks."
They played a singles game that Dale, whose skills were actually much better than the rest, came out well ahead in. Daren came in second, but Levi somehow came in third.
"It's all about the power throws, baby," he declared as they exited the bowling alley.
"If that were true," Dale retorted, "You'd have come in first. Were you in first, Levi? No. You weren't. I was in first!"
"Don't take this away from me, man. I'll cut you... In the hair."
Most eyes turned to the odd, skinny scrapper. He shrugged and continued walking. Jared, however, stopped the group suddenly.
"You guys hear that?"
There was a crackling sound in the air. The meta humans turned to their left and saw a car burning in the parking lot. Three Arachnos soldiers were standing there, one of them had a mace resting across his shoulders.
"Is this really happening?" Dustin asked, "Whose car is that?"
The companions shrugged and exchanged "I-don't-know's."
"You owe us, heroes!" the center-most soldier soldier announced, "You ruined our operation, and now we're going to [frack] you up!"
"Well, you're going about this all wrong, then," Draven shouted back, "There's only three of you, and we have four, six if you count our 'rogues.' Besides, any one of us could take you guys. Heck, Dale could take you guys."
"Uh... Draven, I don't have my gear..."
"Okay, so maybe we're officially three on three, but still, any one of us could take you all on!"
Then, Slater proved it. Without a word, the tanker sank into the ground and reemerged in the center of the triad. The soldiers reacted poorly, and the tanker slammed his bowling ball bag into the center of the chest of the one with the mace. He then brought the impromptu flail crashing into the helmet of the one who'd been talking.
"Damn it," he grunted as he took a round in the back, "Haven't you learned not to take pot-shots at a stone tank?"
He tripped the last guy by knocking his feet out from under his legs and dropped the bag onto his chest. The last soldier grunted and started to roll over when Slater kicked him in the face.
"Now we have to go to the cell you guys came from and wipe it out," the tanker grumbled, "Come on, guys, let's get our stuff and do this."
Draven looked at his watch and shrugged.
"I've got an hour to kill. Can't be any longer than that, though. I've got a date tonight."
"Yeah? Who is it this time?"
"Warden Ross," the scrapper smiled happily, "The same one who gave us crap when Ringo brought the Dream in. She's pretty nice once you get through her shell."
"Well, let's get cracking, then," Solo muttered, "I'll keep Chuck in the Staging Area, you guys wipe these idiots out."
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
While the heroes of the Brutal Warriors Order ran off to wipe out the Arachnos cell, the "rogue-class" members of the group set a table up in the base's ring and started playing cards. James dealt out a game of Euchre with Matt as his partner against the team of Mark and, oddly, Chuck.
"I can't believe this," the former business chairman muttered glumly, "Those guys go off to wreck some place, and you guys just chill out playing cards, here."
James snorted as he decided Hearts would be trump.
"You guys don't even care that you're being pushed around by an arbitrarily placed law?"
"Arbitrary implies randomness," Justin replied darkly as he turned the pages of his book, "Suffice it to say, there is very little that is random about the current attitudes toward one's particular employment of 'powers.' Dangerous people employ the abilities we wield."
"Dangerous people employ the other powers, too. All it takes is a positive spin. Imagine how your men would look to the public with uniforms that portrayed them as security guards instead of mercenaries."
"He's got a point, Just," Ice grumbled as he tossed a low card over Mark's, "You could probably make a lot of money providing security for armored cars."
"When our job stops paying so lucratively, I'll look into that," Steel replied, his tone calming, "However, as it stands, we find enough cash and freedom on the open seas and foreign nations to be able to handle life perfectly fine."
"Yeah, but the country that is your home treats you like common criminals."
"When we retire, we can use that propaganda crap to clear our names in the public eye. Or fade from it," James growled, "Throw your card, Chuck."
Reynolds tossed a spade on the pile and James shook his head.
"We're on diamonds. We should take the trick just for that."
"Pay attention, Chuck," Mark shouted, "[Jebus Cripes]! This is exactly why the Committee fell apart right under you! You've got your head in the clouds of what could be, and you've got no freaking clue what's going on in your own hands!"
"I'm distracted..."
"I know. I just said so."
Reynolds pulled back his card and looked at his hand. Tossing a diamond on the pile, he glared as James shook his head again.
"You just took your partner's trick..."
"I played this game, like, once in high school, [frack]-tard," Charles shouted, "The only thing I remember is something about Jacks of the same color being the highest for the trump and you can't talk to your partner."
"You can't strategize with your partner," Matt corrected, "But you're blowing this so hard out your [butt], you need help! Justin, you've played this some, come on, help him out."
"Let him help himself," the businessman replied and turned back to his book.
They sat in silence for a few moments.
"What does it matter if I took his trick?" Charles finally asked.
"It shows a lack of faith. It smacks of arrogance. The only reason you should throw a higher card down is if he threw a low one or it's all you've got! Is that the only diamond you've got?"
"No. The other's an Ace..."
"Well, okay," Mark breathed a sigh of relief, "Now we're getting somewhere. Now I don't have to feel like you're [fricking] me over."
"I don't get it, though... If I take the trick, what's the difference?"
"Well, on a tactical standpoint, if you burn his high card with your high card, that's two high cards your team just blew to take one trick," James explained, "It gets worse when this happens..."
He threw a Nine of Hearts on the pile.
"Trumped. I don't have any diamonds. Now, you've lost two high cards and the trick. If you hadn't used your King on his Queen, you'd still have that King to use later. You may not know what the future has in store for which suits we'll play, but you'll at least have high cards to use."
The game continued slowly. The other three taught the finer points of the game meticulously to Reynolds, who didn't take learning well. Surprisingly, Chuck and Mark closed the gap in points, though Rage grumbled it had to do with his luck in "teaching the newbies," and how they somehow always beat him (at least the first night). In the final hand, however, he threw a Jack of Diamonds over a set of trump Hearts.
"Damn," Mark grumbled.
"No way, that's a diamond!" Chuck shouted.
"Uh... Not right now, it isn't," Matt corrected, "Remember, Left and Right Bauers? Heart's trump, Jack of Diamonds is Left Bauer. It's the second highest card in the hand. Game."
"Don't feel bad, though, Chuck," James shook his adversary's hand, "You played a Hell of a game."
"Man, [frick] this!" Chuck kicked his chair over and threw his cup of beer against the wall, "This place sucks! It's a [fricking] hole in the ground! Whenever I flush the toilet, I can hear the pipes around this place shudder! I swear I saw brown water spew out of a grate in the floor!"
"Hey, calm down!" Mr. Kolt shouted, "Mister Remington, get a mop so our guest can clean the mess he's made."
"[frick] you, Kolt! Or should I say 'Wincott?'"
"It doesn't matter what you call me," the commando replied in his gruff voice, "I still outrank you here, and if we wanted, we could just chain you to a corner in the wall and make sure you just get three square meals and a chamber pot. We could toss you on a straw palette and meet our minimum requirements of supporting you. Calm the [frick] down and remember that we can always make things worse."
Reynolds breathed raggedly for a few seconds. Mr. Remington handed him a mop and a bucket of soapy water. Grumbling, the prisoner started scrubbing up the mess he made.
"He's right, you know," James said when they were away from the others and Charles was rinsing out the mop, "A lot of people in your position wouldn't be seeing the light of day ever again. You'd just be badgered for information until there was no reason to keep you around, and then -BAM!- back in the slammer you go!"
"I'm used to being treated better."
"Where!? In your old life? Yeah, maybe. You've just spent the last year in prison, though! What was par for you at that point is hoping you're not headed for a three A.M cornholing! Now, we've brought you back out here, we've taken you into the sunlight, and you're still [ticked]!? We're treating you like a human being, for [Cripe's] sake! Despite what you did to us in high school! Is it so terrible? Are you that bothered by us?"
Chuck wrung the mop out and sighed.
"They're rich on my ideas. They made money from my designs..."
"My brother's designs," James corrected, "His and a whole lot of other people's. Your idea was to throw them in a Hurt Locker until they vomited their visions to ya."
"...And now they're selling their designs to the highest bidders... Or making something entirely worse from them. I have no idea what this Syndicate is, but if they have my projects in their hands, they've got plenty to make a bad mark on the world."
"Well, then work with us, Chuck. Tell us who we need to hit next and we'll take this new group apart, piece by piece."
"No..." Reynolds slouched on the toilet and sighed, "I... I can't have you just go off and rip into my father's business partners. I have to be involved in this, too."
"How?" Rage threw his hands in the air, "How else can you hel- NO! No, Chuck!"
"Come on, Baker, I know how to fight! Just let me get a suit and get payback in my own way!"
"It's not happening!"
"Fine."
Defeated, the other man slumped a little lower. For some unknown reason, he flushed the toilet and the pipes started to groan and shudder. Some dust fell from the ceiling.
"We should probably have Slater look at that," he muttered.
"Look, I'll run it by the guys," James relented a little, "but I seriously don't think you'll be seeing the inside of a power armor anytime soon. It would take a serious situation for that to happen, and, frankly, I don't see that happening again."
He walked out of the bathroom and paused at the door when Chuck coughed a slight chuckle.
"You're just remembering when I upper-cut you off the roof of the building."
"I'm remembering having to fly back up and tackle you across the tarmac up there. How hard did your head hit that helicopter, again?"
"Hard enough to forget that part... I was wondering how I got beat..."
"No, I didn't stop there. I lifted you up and let the propellers work some on your helmet. That was some tough metal... After that, I took you into the sky and bombed us both through five floors."
"Jebus..."
"It was like that power move the Stone did... How he would hook his opponent's arm over his shoulder and behind his head then hoist him up and plant him in the floor... Like a reverse half-nelson slam."
"Ow," Chuck rubbed his back.
"I'm not scared of having to fight ya, Chuck. I'm leery of having to chase ya. A suit like that is bound to make you stupid again. You might think you can pull off getting away from us and starting up your own organization. I'm not letting that happen, capiche?"
"Okay, okay... I get it."
"Alright... Well, we're going to throw in some movies, maybe call some friends over or play some music... If you want, you can come join us."
"Sounds kind of-"
"Finish that sentence, and I'll break that toilet with your face."
"...Fun..."
"Good cover," James shook his head and chuckled breathily, "Look, man, we've got girlfriends... Some of us... It's just hard to find people we can trust, you know? For now, we just get drunk, watch movies, talk about good times and current times, and try to move on through the day. Get it?"
"I understand, man," Chuck nodded, "I just don't know who the center man of the entourage is."
"Tonight... Nobody. We're just getting drunk and forgetting the fact that we have to live in a hole in the dirt while we're here in Paragon."
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
The heroes of the Brutal Warriors Order emerged into the daylight after having sending the remainders of the Arachnos troops to the Zig. No sooner did their eyes clear than they were staring into the green-glowing eyes of a group of Circle of Thorns mystics. The Defender leveled his crossbow at Draven, who batted it aside with Crow.
"What the Hell is this?" Project Whirlwind asked, his voice slightly muffled by his mask, "Has this ever happened before?"
"We've been scouting this cave for the past few weeks," a Madness Mage explained, "Was there somebody in it?"
"Yeah," Slater replied, "Arachnos soldiers."
"Sonova..." the wizard bit off the curse, "Alright, well, are they gone now?"
"Yes."
"Good. Well, we all know where this is going now. Take them, harvest their souls and wear their skins... Let's get this over with."
"Somebody's been broken open a few times," Draven chuckled.
The Defender brought his crossbow back around, but Draven hacked through the bit into soldier's wrist this time. As the husk dropped to the ground, rasping out a strangled cry as he lost his grip on his weapon, the red-coated scrapper kicked him in the face, knocking him out cold.
King Slater emerged from the ground next to the Madness Mage, his legs seemingly still a part of the ground. The wizard focused some psychic power on the tanker, but only succeeded in giving Dustin a slight headache. The tanker delivered a strike across the wizard's face with the Black Mauler and knocked him to the ground.
"Do yourself a favor and stay down," Slater grumbled, "Compliance isn't treachery..."
"For us, it is," the wizard replied, "Believe me, hero, I know how this will end. I would rather end this now and take my men away from here and this fight..."
Psycho13 and a pair of Thorn Wielders tumbled across the grass behind Slater. One of the Wielders had his strange-shaped sword stabbed into the hero's torso while the other, behind the scrapper, was being stabbed in the shoulder with a sharp "upward" jab from Baker's heavy blade.
"...But it seems that such a decision is well beyond us, now."
A pair of Spectral Demon Lords emerged from the ground next to the Madness Mage. Slater took another stance and readied himself for what was becoming an exponentially more difficult fight. The ghostly monstrosities started floating toward him when a terrible wind kicked up and knocked them back. Slater wondered why he suddenly felt like he could breathe a whole lot more easily and see more clearly.
"I got your back, K!" Project Whirlwind shouted, a rapid-swirling vortex of wind circling around him and pushing the foes back, "Let's cut 'em down!"
The madness Mage was resisting the effects of the wind, and he did something unexpected as lightning arced toward his demonic assistants. Instead of focusing his ire on King Slater, he turned his attention to Project Whirlwind, and invaded the defender's mind.
Suddenly, Michael was in his bedroom, back in his home when he was in high school. He could hear his mother calling to him, telling him he'd be late for school if he didn't get up.
"Okay, Ma," he shouted down to her, then said to himself, "Man, what a weird dream..."
Hurriedly, he got dressed in a white T-shirt and a pair of blue jeans. When he looked in the mirror, he wondered idly why his hair was white, but thought nothing of it and bolted down to get breakfast.
"What are you doing?" his mother asked.
"I'm just getting a bowl of cereal, Ma."
"Oh no... That won't do at all. You need a proper breakfast to start your day... I've been slaving over a hot stove all morning... And you didn't shower, did you?"
Her voice was getting louder, more shrill. Michael didn't like how her hands were wringing the butcher knife's handle in her hands.
"You're such a terrible son! Don't you ever think about anyone but yourself!?"
"Ma, this isn't like..." he stopped when he saw that she didn't have a face.
"I will teach you a lesson!" a mouth full of sharp teeth split open on the lower portion of the faceless head and she was suddenly holding the knife in a reverse grip like she intended to stab him in an over-arcing manner, "I WILL TEACH YOU A LESSON!"
"Ma!" Michael shouted as she attacked. He caught her wrist, twisted her over his shoulder and threw her into the table.
He couldn't spare any time wondering why that came so naturally to him, so he turned to the door and shouted for his father.
"Something's wrong with Ma, Dad! I need your help!"
The sound of a chainsaw revving up answered him and Michael looked to the window. Outside was nothing but a bright white light. Looking back, he saw his father, just as faceless as his mother, only he was holding a running chainsaw.
"Don't do this, Dad."
The big man-thing raised his weapon and started forward to charge. Michael raised his hands and shouted. Two bolts of lightning arced from his fingertips and tore through his father, throwing him back and slamming him through the wall. As his father crashed through, the world shattered...
"Ow!" Project Whirlwind shouted as he crumpled to the ground, "Dammit! I hate when that happens!"
Slater was busy burying the head of the Black Mauler into the Madness Mage's face. The wizard weakly fended the weapon off, then lied still.
"You okay?" the tanker asked.
"Yeah... Just another one of those damn nightmares."
"Blood was running out of your mask's eye holes."
"Jebus..."
As the defender removed his mask and started checking his face for more blood and where it might have come from, Slater turned his attention to the Spectral Demons. He was assisted by Draven and the Kingdale Referee. The rest of the minions were held back by Psycho13.
"You doing okay, Psych?" Whirlwind shouted to his friend.
"Yeah, I'm fine," the scrapper replied, the swords stuck in him saying otherwise, but he didn't seem to be slowing down like he should have been.
Whirlwind cast his healing and oxygenating spell on his friend anyway and turned back to the others. They were having trouble seeing through the waves of darkness wrapping around them and choking them. The defender jammed a green gem into his chest, healing himself, and started throwing lightning at the demons.
One of them suddenly lost its hold on its aura and Draven's blade struck home. Crow wavered a little inside the Spectral Demon's chest, and when it solidified, the monster screamed and faded from existence. King Slater and the Referee finished off the other with a one-two punch of Dale's Scream attack and Slater's upper-cut smash. When the ghost disappeared, it was missing a head.
"Damn it," Draven shouted when the battle was finished, "Why do we constantly have to deal with this crap? It's not like we're heroes!"
Psycho13 finished tagging the Thorn Wielders and Defenders he'd been fighting that now lied motionless about the clearing. He then pulled the thorn weapons from his chest and squeezed the wounds shut as Police Drones swooped in on the beacons.
"Well, let's see what the others are up to," Slater grunted, "Roland said he'd buy us drinks at the D tonight... What do you guys say to a night out?"
"Sounds good to me," Draven replied, "Lord knows the other guys are getting tired of being cooped up in the base. Hey, Slater... You know we're having plumbing problems, right?"
"So? Call a plumber, then. I just fix walls and the like."
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
"Whoo!" was the deafening cry as the Brutal Warriors Order entered the super club called Pocket D. Or it would have been the deafening cry, had the music not already been deafening the collected meta humans.
"Where's Roland?" Solo shouted, "I gotta get my drink on!"
"He said he's on his way," Draven replied, "For now... I say we... It looks like a party is going on..."
The club was almost packed with meta human life. Aliens, heroes, villains, monsters, ghosts, wizards, demons, angels... The list of the different kinds of people present was endless.
In the center of it all was DJ Zero. Somehow, in a world full of conflict and turmoil, he'd found a way to be a calm little center and spread his influence out a little into his pocket dimension night club. Here, if only here, bitter enemies could meet face-to-face and not tear each other's heads off.
Well, they weren't allowed to tear each other's heads off, but Zero allowed for dueling as well. It was a system similar to that in the arenas in the Rogue Isles and Paragon City, but that wasn't why the Brutal Warriors had arrived.
"Bartender!" Raging James shouted to the dancing man behind the counter, "A round of shots!"
The boys bustled up to the bar and cheered as their drinks were arranged for them. Other meta humans moved away with disconcerted and disgusted looks. However, this did not dissuade the amalgamated group, and they downed their whiskey with fury.
As the next round was being ordered, Roland arrived at the bar. He slapped a fifty dollar bill next to the shots as they arrived and indicated he was paying for a round of beers. The bartender arched an eyebrow at him and took the money. He seemed to be muttering something about "freaking drunks" as he prepared the beers.
The group was busy conversing when someone heavy bumped into King Slater. His skin was blue, and he had black triangles over his eyes. His arms had a collection of wicked tattoos and his black boots and gloves were adorned with spikes.
"Shadowshock," Draven muttered, "You keep bumming around, trying to stir up trouble... What are you trying now?"
"I want to see one of you guys in the Arena!" the big brute slurred, "I'll-"
"Get to it," James replied, "I'll see you there."
The brute stumbled a little, obviously intoxicated, and eventually sauntered to the Arena terminals. James, however, turned back to his beer.
"That'll give us a couple hours," he chuckled.
"That was cool!" a cute little brunette shouted, "Are you gonna go kick his [butt] now?"
"After this beer... or maybe two."
"Coolness!" the girl made her way over to the brute and, smiling, extended her hand for him to shake, "I'm Darla."
"James."
"My communicator has you registered as a brute... But you're too cute to be a brute!"
"Well, uh..." Baker fumbled with his communicator and looked at what it said about the girl, "A Dominator!?"
He looked askance at her for a moment. She smiled and licked her upper lip.
"You want me to go kick that guy's [butt]?" he asked.
"While that would probably be really cool to see, I'd rather you didn't risk that pretty face," she winked at him and interlocked her fingers in his, "I've got better ideas on how we can spend our time."
"Check!"
"You already paid," the bartender replied.
Rage smiled and walked off with the girl. He waved to his friends and gave them a thumbs-up hand gesture.
"Have a good one, James," Daren smiled at his friend as he left, "Don't make us come after him!"
"I'll make sure he stays in one piece," Darla giggled as she led the brute away.
"Lucky dastard," Levi muttered, "Almost as easy for him as..."
He looked to Draven, who was sitting at a table with Warden Ross. Apparently, he'd succeeded in getting her to come to Pocket D instead of their other plans... Or maybe this was where they intended to go, anyway. The woman was out of uniform, now in a low-cut top that revealed a lot more of her lightly blue-tinged skin, and leaning pretty heavily on the red-coated scrapper.
"Oh yeah..."
"So, who's going to take care of Shadowshock?" Slater asked.
"I'll do it," Psycho13 nodded, "I'm the most sober one here, anyway... Well, I metabolize and oxidize faster than you guys..."
"Actually," Solo stopped the regenerator, "Where's Mark?"
-----
Shadowshock stumbled through the Arena version of Perez park. It wasn't an actual piece of Perez, but the central auditorium and a section of Everett Lake, recreated in a realistic, possibly hard-light holographic instance that could also have been its own pocket dimension.
Once the big blue brute started trying to think about this, his head started to hurt, so he stopped thinking about it. Instead, he sat down in the auditorium's stage and started working on finishing his bottle of liquor.
He had the rim of the bottle to his lips when there was a sound like thunder, and the bottle shattered. Shadowshock felt something bounce hard off the side of his head and he fell onto his back.
Groaning, the big man reached up to feel at the burning sensation. There was a scar on his scalp, but the bullet must have barely missed grazing his skull. As the wound started to close, Shock blearily gazed about.
There was another sound like thunder and another bullet scored into his right shoulder, slamming him to the stage again. The brute shouted in agony and shoved himself from the stage.
"Rargh!" he got out before a series of rounds perforated his torso.
"I'm gettin' real tired of you [fracking] with us, man," Mark announced as he stepped from the bushes, his assault rifle in hand, still smoking from the attack, "So tired, I'm dealing with you myself..."
He snapped his fingers and a small drone robot pushed its way through the foliage to sidle up next to him. It was emitting a shield that wrapped about the corrupter-class meta human and protected him better than his own wits ever would.
Still, he wasn't nearly as resilient as Shadowshock, who shoved himself off the stage and bolted for the irritating little shrimp. Mark sidestepped and barely missed getting his face electrocuted and punched at the same time. He really disliked the whole "electric melee," it hurt a Hell of a lot more than it should have.
As Shock came back around for another pass, Mark bolted for the lake. With the bigger man hot on his heels, he dove into the water and the brute drunkenly stopped at the edge.
"Oh ho..." he laughed as he sauntered to the ripples lapping at the shore, "It's not smart to hide in water to escape lightning... All I have to do is touch the surface..."
He extended his pinky finger and lowered it slowly. When he touched the surface, his finger sparked red and electric arcs started coursing through the lake. In the distance, he saw the shield generator explode where it had been bobbing above the waves.
"Ha-HA!" Shadowshock cheered triumphantly before he felt something hit him from behind and topple him into the water, "Augh!'
"In order for that trick to work," Mark announced as the blue man struggled to stand and reorient himself, "You have to make sure I'm actually in there."
"WHAT!?"
"You're so drunk... You were staring at the water for your meticulous assault. You never saw me leaping in the air. Sucks that my shield generator got hosed, but it wasn't my shield generator, just another simulation of the... Screw it. You know what I'm getting at."
Shadowshock wasn't really paying attention. He'd found his footing and was starting to stalk after the Corrupter.
"Fine," Mark sighed, "Catch me if you can..."
With that, he bolted back into the forest. The blue brute followed with a roar. If he'd been smarter, he'd have waited.
As he smashed through the tree line, there was a hissing sound. Looking down, he saw a small orb expelling a noxious green cloud. He started holding his breath and pressing forward, but a web grenade caught him at the ankles. Cursing at the sticky fluid, he didn't look up to notice the acid grenade that cracked open on his head, spilling its corrosive contents all over his body.
"Augh! Augh!" Shadowshock screamed, his skin boiling and his senses on fire, "Why!? Oh God, please tell me why!"
"Because I don't like you," Mark Shadow replied as he walked out of the shadows of a pair of trees, "And frankly, I needed the practice. Now, shut up and take your whuppin's..."
He leveled his assault rifle on the tormented brute and with a squeeze of his trigger, the body disappeared in a flash of red energy. Mark's communicator warbled that he won the match, and he found himself porting back to the club.
-----
"Where'd he go?" Shadow asked as his senses came back to him, "Where's Shadowshock?"
"Big lush took off," a tanker replied, "he looked ticked and... Embarrassed. I thought you rogues stuck together..."
"Nothing in life is black and white or red and blue," the corrupter replied darkly, "He wasn't my friend. He's not anybody's friend."
"There you are!" Solo shouted, "Come on! We ordered up some pizza and got some card games goin'! What were you doing?"
"I was busy finishing James's job," Mark replied as he noted that the familiar weight of his weapons and devices was gone. He wondered idly how Zero's equipment was able to make such realistic simulations.
"Yeah, he got picked up-"
"I saw. I don't blame him for the choice he made. If it were me, I'd have gone with the girl, too."
Solo smirked and clapped his business partner on the shoulder.
"So, how'd it go?"
"I won. I won real easy. That scares me a little."
"You won!" Daren nodded, "Well, gratz, man. That deserves a drink."
"Make it scotch on the rocks," the corrupter nodded satisfactorily, "And I mean ice."
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
"Will you quit complaining?" Mark barked at their charge, "Ever since the cookout, you've been whining about your damn tooth!"
"Well, it hurts!" Reynolds shouted back.
He'd complained the entire way to the Rogue Isles onboard the Captured Dream. At first, he'd whined about hearing a loud buzzing, then he shouted because he said it felt like someone had stabbed him in the mouth. Mark had taken a look, but didn't see anything in Chuck's mouth that indicated anything was wrong. If anything, his teeth were too perfect, and this only infuriated the Corrupter-class rogue further, which caused him to verbally abuse the former Committee proxy until they reached Port Oakes and from there the BWO's Rogue Isles Staging Area.
"Look, tomorrow, we'll get you to a Black Heart Memorial," he finally conceded, "but for now, I'm tired, I want some sleep, and I'm not terribly concerned with your well-being."
"That's not very nice," the genetically altered mutate, Bioserj, muttered as he walked in from the medical area, "Charles is our guest, no? Prisoner?"
"A little of both, actually," James replied as he emerged from the entrance chamber with a box of snack food and beer in his hands, "Until he proves himself otherwise, we're keeping Chuck on a short leash, but it's not so short he can't move."
"So does that mean I can go to Black Heart now?" Reynolds murmured.
"No. Maybe if Solo or Dirty don't mind takin' ya when they get here, but I'm meeting Darla here in..."
"Hi-hi!" a loud squeak sounded from the entrance room, "Oh! There's that cute butt!"
"...Right now!" the Skull-wearing brute grinned broadly as he turned to nod to his new girlfriend, "Come on in, Dar."
"Hi guys!" the brunette girl was dressed in a form-fitting black dress with a hemline that ended just above her knees, "How've you all been doing?"
The gathered "red-side" Brutal Warriors murmured their various replies as she hopped over to Rage and looped her arms around one of his. He set the snack food down on a table next to the ring and tossed the box of beer to Chuck with orders to put it in the refrigerator. The former Committee man grumbled a little, but he got to it.
"So, what are you?" Bioserj intoned as he looked the newcomer over, "You're not... Like others in the Isles..."
"Oh, I'm registered with Arachnos as a Dominator," Darla chuckled, "Or a Dominatrix, but I hear that's a villainess' name. I don't really use my powers or terrorize the planet, but it's great to make a few ice sculptures with dancing fire inside of them at parties!"
"So... You don't take issue with us just being here?" Mark asked as he quirked an eyebrow, "You don't think we have to aspire to be the Scum of the Earth?"
"Ew! Who wants to be scum?"
The rogues looked to each other and shrugged. Darla continued.
"Seriously, I think it's great you guys do your own thing and don't just terrorize the neighborhood for no good reason. I mean, this'd be a great place if almost every Tom, Dick and Harry weren't trying every day to tear it down. Seriously, why would Arachnos let all those freaks and losers loose on the streets like that?"
"Well, that's the billion dollar question, isn't it?" Justin Steel asked as he, his mercenaries and Solo walked into the Ring Room with a few boxes of DVDs, a television and a video game system, "Looks like we're settling in, eh, James?"
"It seems a cool enough place," the brute replied as he dropped down into a chair while the mercenaries set up the entertainment system, "Why shouldn't we settle in?"
"Hey!" a shout came from the office they kept the refrigerator in, "Mark! Do you have a set of needle-nose pliers I can use?"
Mister Remington reached into his medical and pulled a small set of forceps out. Tossing them to the Corrupter-class rogue, he nodded with his head in inquiry as to what was going on.
"Oh, Chuck's got a toothache," Shadow replied as he walked to the office and tossed the forceps in, "There ya go, you big baby."
"[Frick] you! [Butt]hole!"
"You couldn't pay me nearly enough," Shadow muttered as he returned to his seat, which had been taken by Solo Striker, "Oh, come on!"
"So," Daren smirked, "If I'm hearing you correctly, you do have a price..."
"Kiss my [butt]!"
This exchange got some chuckles out of the group. Eventually, Mister Kolt triumphantly turned on the television and the video game system (they'd been careful about doing so ever since Power Breaker warned them to avoid watching Television in the Rogue Isles) and a movie started playing. It was a classic action/horror flick about a cyborg going into the past to hunt down a future savior of mankind to change the course of the war against the machines.
"What do you think Chuck was going to do with those forceps?" Daren asked as he looked back to the office, "He's been in the bathroom a long time..."
"I doubt he was going to do any self dental work," Rage chuckled as he rubbed his girlfriend's arm, "I mean, come on, you'd have to be crazy, or like my brother, to pull something like that off."
"But your brother is crazy..."
"No... He's not. He just likes making people think he is."
----------
There it was. That molar. Second on the left. Made of ceramic, the tough kind that also went in body armor.
A tough tooth was useful for when a person accidentally found themselves biting hard into a pearl inside and oyster. That had also caused him to crack the tooth above it, and he had the entire waiting staff fired for it. It was the first time he'd ever felt the rush of a power trip...
Well, maybe it wasn't the first time, but it was the first time he really thought about it. It wasn't the last time, either.
Charles starting thinking then that perhaps the people he was working with weren't necessarily the best of people, nor were they turning him into the man he always thought he would be. What was worse, his former associates had thought he wanted to be like them. They thought he saw the world as they did, and in many ways he did.
He agreed that there should be men and women with wealth and power. He agreed that these individuals would be in the best position to help the most people. He just didn't agree that they actually were helping anyone except themselves.
Which was why they sold him out. It was why he wound up in prison while they made a new deal. It was why somebody in the Old Committee had activated the transponder in Chuck's false tooth.
Nobody knew where the BWO's staging areas were.
He pulled in a slow, steady motion. It shouldn't have hurt, the dentist assured him that the nerves had been killed. But it did hurt, the nerves weren't dead or perhaps one had grown in or something unexpected was being irritated, Reynolds didn't know what was going on. He just knew his tooth hurt, and he had to pull the damn thing out.
He'd know what to do from there.
The tooth was just set into his jawline. It was never meant to be permanent. It was meant to be tough, yes, but the dentist had assured him he'd be able to remove it himself if he ever needed to. Regardless, there was still a little blood and he didn't really like the sensation of it scraping against its neighboring teeth. Still, after a half hour of tugging, pulling and his arm cramping up, not to mention the frustration of the forceps slipping from their grip numerous times, he pulled the damn false molar out.
He was so relieved he didn't even think to wash it off for a few seconds. He just wanted to catch his breath and relax his arms for a few seconds.
Eventually, he turned on the faucet and ran the false tooth under the water. He pulled the cleansed tooth back and looked at the tiny blinking red light under it.
----------
Charles Reynolds burst out of the bathroom and stormed into the storage bay.
"Pack your [dreck]! Pack your [dreck]!" he repeated, over and over.
"Hey, you're not allowed back there!" Mark shouted after him, "What the Hell d-!"
Chuck threw him a duffel bag, another to Solo, and started cramming stuff into one he kept for himself. Two of Steel's mercenaries, Hackler and Coach, stood and approached the rampaging malcontent with their arms extended to restrain him if need be.
"Calm down, Mister Reynolds," Coach intoned softly, "Why don-!"
"No! [Frick] you, [it only gets worse]!" Chuck shouted back, waving a coffee pot menacingly, "You start getting [frick]ing excited! We gotta get outta here!"
"Come on, Chuck, we've seen that movie lats more times than you!" Daren shouted, "What the Hell are you going on about?"
"I can't explain, Daren! All I can say is we've got to go, before it's too late!"
The television's image rolled unexpectedly.
"Oh God..."
"What are you talking about?" James asked as he started pushing Darla off his lap, "You might want to-"
There was a thump against the far wall.
"It's too late," Reynolds whispered as he dropped the duffel bag, "They're here..."
There was another, louder thump on the far wall. Some mortar dust fell and a couple stones rattled across the floor.
"Run for the portal, Darla," James shouted as his skulls emitted a low growl and lightning started flowing from his body, "You've gotta get out of here!"
There was another hit and some bricks actually fell. They could see into the disused sewer maintenance tunnels on the other side and an odious scent of refuse filled their nostrils. There was also a pair of glowing red eyes out there.
The New Horizon Syndicate had found them.
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
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.
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
Wing Commander Rachek returned to his quarters. It was over, the temple destroyed, Captain Lukas's men lost without a word to Duray, and the village had been spared. Another high note, relations with the Brutal Warriors had been upgraded to professional, and he had paid them promptly through necessary intermediates. Best of all, he could call his aunt and let her know her favorite son was still alive.
He poured himself a couple shots of whiskey, drained them, and filled a glass with a vodka based drink before relaxing in his reclining chair. As he sipped the screwdriver, he considered playing a suitably violent, yet uplifting movie. Perhaps that one about small-town Texans fighting zombies that seemed to be melting...
"I wouldn't do that, Tony. It would distract you from the business I wish to discuss with you."
He paused with his remote aimed at the television. A woman? In his room? And how did she know what he was about to do?
He turned to where he thought he heard the noise come from. He was getting a bad feeling about this. Upon seeing the apparition before him, his almost cursed, but thought better of it and just let loose a grunting sigh.
"Thank you," Sister Psyche said pleasantly.
"You're not here, are you?"
"No."
"That's why the alarms didn't go off..." Rachek took a sip from his drink and sat a little deeper in his chair, "So... To what do I owe this dubious honor?"
"Well, Wing Commander... I have a strange proposal..."
Rachek listened intently. She had him so entranced by her proposal that he'd forgotten to finish his drink. In fact, the proposal itself took much less time than the several hours he sat pondering it.
After accidentally dropping the glass on his rug, he grunted and brought himself back to the present. Looking at the clock, he cursed himself for wasting time, but all he really had to look forward to was sleep.
In the morning, his decision had been made.
"Lieutenant Daniels," he barked at the hangar foreman, "I want you to prep a Skiff for a long distance journey... I'm going to Paragon City today."
"Sir?" Daniels asked, but he still waved to one of the crewmen to gather a team and get to work on the order, "Couldn't you just take the Thunder Nimbus?"
"She's on patrol. Besides, this needs to be low profile. Don't write up any paperwork on this and peter out the fuel depletion across multiple work orders. You know, like you do when some of the boys go joyriding."
Lt. Daniels bit his lower lip and nodded.
"Weapons, sir?"
"No. No weapons load. I'll be carrying everything I need."
Indeed he would. He checked his duffel bag again. His machete, a few specialized magazines, some normal assault rifle rounds, a pair of pistols and some spare revolving chambers with plenty of ammunition for both weapons. The rifle itself he had slung on his shoulder.
"W.C.! Where are you going?"
Captain Phillips. He was recently promoted, and was probably coming off of a long night of working as the duty officer on deck. Rachek turned to him calmly and appraised the man. Phillips made to salute, but the older man stopped him.
"We're the same rank, Phillips," Rachek growled, "Wing Commander's just a billet."
"Ah..."
"Now, as to where I'm going, I already informed your relief of what I'm doing and where I'll be. Until I return, Captain Anderson is in charge of things. He's competent, things should go fine until I get back."
----
"When will you be coming back?" Anderson had asked him.
"I don't know. Nothing like this has ever been tried before. Could be a few days... It could be months..."
"Or," Anderson paused with a sigh, "We never see you again. Rachek... You and I have worked together for a long time... Longer than the Sky Raiders have existed... Back in Vigilance..."
"I know."
"Well... You know I don't have what it takes to command these men! Not indefinitely, anyway..."
Rachek's eyes narrowed at his old friend.
"If you can take command for a few days, why can't you keep goin' on for weeks or months? Why not years?"
"Years... I'm amazed we've made it this long."
"I've got more fight left in me," Rachek smiled, "More than you, anyway."
"Pft," Anderson returned the grin, "I'll outlast you. Just don't be goin' too soon. You're like a father to a lot of these guys."
----
Having packed up his equipment and a package of shield generators from the engineering department, Rachek gave his Skiff a final pre-flight inspection. Nothing seemed wrong with it, the fuel lines were all still attached and there wasn't even a speck of rust anywhere on the machine's sleek surface.
That wasn't special of W.C. Rachek's Skiff. His machine was no different than any of the others. The flight technicians on his derrick were some of the best on the Atlantic, and they took pride in being able to prevent the vessels under their care from acquiring rust, even out in the middle of the ocean.
Satisfied, he crawled into the cockpit and prepared for takeoff. His equipment for the trip behind his seat, he strapped himself in and took a deep breath.
Flying never bothered him. In fact, he rather enjoyed the jet packs. He almost wished he could bring one with him, but there just wasn't room in any way in the skiff.
No, what bothered him was the mission he was about to embark upon. Something felt different about it... Almost like this was a turning point; like there would be no turning back.
However, he'd dedicated himself. Kicking on the engines, he gave a brief "fist in the air" salute to the flight crew. The lights for the vessel's status all told him he was good to go, so he kicked on the thrusters and set off on his course for Paragon City.
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.