Kipland went bowling over a wrought iron fence and rolled onto his side, coughing violently. His armor was fading away... He hated when it did that, he always felt so drained when it was gone.
"What's the matter, boy?" Tyrant asked as he walked casually around the fence, "Are you surprised that you don't measure up?"
Slamming a couple green gems into his chest, Kipland picked himself up and started running away. He had to get to a group of heroes, and fast.
"Aw, don't run..." Tyrant was almost chuckling, "Don't run..."
There was a high-pitched whine and the ground underneath Kipland exploded, launching the scrapper into the air and dropping him on his back a few yards away.
"Pathetic," the Praetorian king's eyes blazed red momentarily, "And you were so full of [censored] and vinegar... I expected more from you..."
"Well then here's the rest of me!" Cobalt Black shouted as he hopped over the fence and drop-kicked Tyrant in the head.
The anti-tanker staggered a couple steps and glared fiercely at the navy-blue-fatigued scrapper.
"You're supposed to be helping me kill this waste of skin..."
"I make my own choices, my own destiny," Cobalt Black replied, "Just because you rule an army of the damned doesn't mean I'm gonna be following suit!"
"Very well, then."
Tyrant stepped toward Cobalt Black 3-8-9 and prepared to punch his head off. Suddenly, he felt something kick the back of his knee and he crumpled to the ground.
"Doesn't take much effort," Kipland quipped as he hopped away from Tyrant's flailing arm, "Just a light press, but I was kind of hoping I'd break something."
"You really think those football pads are going to protect you?"
"I'm held together by more than the clothes on my back!"
Tyrant picked himself up and glanced from scrapper to scrapper. Sighing, he straightened out his uniform and shrugged his cape back. The two boys were in martial defensive stances he was unfamiliar with, but that didn't matter much when you could punch through-
Kip snap-kicked the anti-tanker in the face. This was followed up by a driving kick into Tyrant's belly from Cobalt Black 3-8-9. When the Praetorian king regained his faculties, the two boys were transversed.
"Okay," he muttered, "Now I'm [censored]!"
----
Roland arched an eyebrow at all of the heroes sitting on the City Hall rooftop. They seemed to be watching something happening on the...
Ms. Liberty was fighting Dominatrix on the Atlas Globe.
"Breh-heh," he chuckled as he worked his way up onto the roof, "What're you guys doin'? Just watchin' the fight?"
"Yeah," a low-level tanker replied, "Oh, hey Roland."
"Uh... Oh! Ashen!"
"Yeah," Roast replied, "Dominatrix appeared out of nowhere and perched on top of the globe. She knocked the heroes up there off and called out Ms. Liberty. They've been duking it out since."
"Nobody's gonna help?"
"Uh... No, I don't think so..."
"What about the rest of the city zone? Aren't there Praetorians running about?"
"The Clockwork have been working with Freedom Corps for some odd reason... They've been able to hold back the various small armies on their own. Y'know? Alongw ith the cops and all..."
"Cool, cool," Roland sat down and balanced a bow on his knee, "I guess that means we'll be chilling here for a moment."
Blizzard Front waved to Roland. Chilling some condensation into a cup, he handed it to the pudgy Defender.
"Didn't you used to date her?"
Glaring at the ice blaster, Roland answered very curtly.
"No."
Blizzard Front turned to Ashen Roast as if to say something, but the orange-skinned tanker shook his head warningly. Shrugging, the blaster went back to watching contentedly.
"You boys been talking to my brother again, huh?" Roland growled at Ashen.
"Only on poker night..."
"And Wings Night at the bar, huh?"
"Yeah."
"I'm not getting into it..." Round sighed, "It's complicated..."
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
"Well, since I think we could all be doing something better," Roland stood after a few minutes of watching the fight and pulled an arrow from the quiver strapped to his belt, "I'm going to go ahead and end this."
"Yeah? How?" Ashen was incredulous, but his eyes boggled slightly when he saw the canister at the end of Round's arrow, "What the Hell is that?"
"Something incredibly flammable..."
He let the arrow fly, and it impacted against the side of the globe. Black oil poured down and a lot of the observing heroes turned to the Grey's Army Defender.
"It's also really slick..."
Ms. Liberty delivered a vicious side kick to her counterpart, and Dominatrix was sent sprawling across the globe. The evil version of Paragon City's favorite young heroine (sorry Mynx) scrabbled back to her feet, but she didn't pay attention to the fact that her foot was on the topmost portion of the oil slick.
"Oh-ho!" Roland chuckled as the girl fell, screaming, over the side of the Atlas Globe, "That looks like it's gonna hurt!"
"What the Hell!?" she shouted after landing with a very audible thump, "Which one of you-"
Her stream of curses were cut off by two things. First off, she saw Roland grinning down at her and waving. She recognized him from when she had, days earlier, stomped on his throat. Second of all, a nearby Police Drone warbled an alert before firing it's teleportation ray.
"I wish I had a camera," the pudgy archer turned to Ashen Roast, "Then I could show people that she was sent to the Zig flipping me off."
"Uh..." the fire tanker seemed a little concerned, "Roland..."
"What the Hell do you think you're doing?" another tanker shouted, "Do you have any idea how many bets we had on that?"
"Yeah, man!" a blaster chimed in, "The big names have been popping up all over the city! We want to see how they fare against each other!"
Roland was already hopping off the roof. The black-armored Tanker hopped down after him, and moved to block his path.
"Well, boy?"
"We don't have time for this crap," the defender replied glibly and moved to circumvent the tanker, "There's a war to be fought."
The tanker got in his way again, "Pft, it'll still be here tomorrow."
Ashen Roast and Blizzard Front hopped down after Roland. Standing behind him, they attempted to intimidate the tank. This was difficult, since they were only in their late teens.
"Hey! Leave him alone!" Blizzard barked.
"Calm down, B," Roland waved them back a little.
"What're you gonna do, fat man?" the tanker laughed, "Hit me with your bow?"
"Hero-on-hero violence isn't really allowed," Roland replied, "And you outrank me something fierce... If you want to take it up with my supergroup leader, you're more than welcome once all this is over. Until then, get the Hell out of my way."
The crowd of heroes was dispersing. Individual heroes and teams were each finding themselves called in by Freedom Corps to handle various problems the Praetorians had deployed across the city. In a short while, only the tanker's super group were watching the argument.
Seeing that the support was pretty much all his, he leaned in close to Roland.
"I may just-"
"Stand down."
Joe Durnan, assault rifle slung over his shoulder, stepped forward and glared angrily at the tanker and his friends.
"You got nothing better to do?" he growled.
"And who the Hell are you?"
"I'm an officer of the law, a protector of the peace, a servant of the people. Don't you profess to be the same?"
"Uh..." the tanker was taken slightly aback.
"I would say you're derelict in your duties," Durnan motioned for the trio to come with him, "And if your answer was 'no,' then you don't deserve your cape. Get the Hell out of my sight. Roland, Ashen, Blizzard, there's trouble in the Hollows."
"Then let's get crackin'," Roland hefted his bow, "I'd say I've done all I could do here, anyway."
----
Matt dropped the body of his opposite in front of one of the heavy duty police drones stationed near the Atlas Park/Eastgate Entrance. In short order, his enemy was being zapped to the Zig.
"Thanks," he growled to the winged female controller who led the charge to cover him, "Sorry I didn't find much intel."
"That's alright," she replied, "So long as some kind of progress was made."
"Indeed. When that guy gets to the Zig, the guards are gonna start grilling him for info..."
Matt was typing into his communicator.
"I'm sending the alert now. What to ask for, especially."
"Why?"
"Some of the Praetorians involved with my friends and I... They're involved with a bombing... Probably to severely damage the infrastructure of the city, if not the city itself."
"Oh dear..."
"But if enough heroes are mobilized, I bet it can be taken care of."
"How can you be sure?" a scrapper with a broadsword (and very little clothing beyond his cape and tight shorts *shudder*) barked, "There's gotta be one of them for every one of us!"
"Not likely," Sarah showed up and handed Matt a canteen, "A lot of the counterparts of us newbie, no-name heroes and heroines are just rank-and-file goons in the Praetorian Army. I know mine is, for instance."
"And they're not all still alive," the controller further explained; she seemed somewhat sad, "I... I accidentally killed mine in a mission for Portal Corp..."
"I see..." the bearded "broadsword scrapper's" face screwed up in consternation, but he seemed relieved.
"So, the end result is that we've got lots more going for us than the Praetorians expected," McGinty finished off the canteen and handed it back to his friend, "Us specifically, though? We need to come up with a plan. We can't let the Praetorians keep the Hollows."
"That's actually pretty easy..."
Julius the Troll stood behind the heroes. Flanking him were two of the most notorious villains in the hazard zone, Frostfire and Atta.
"A truce has been called," Frostfire intoned, "We ain't wastin' each other... We were hopin' you'd treat us the same."
"If not, no matter... We crush, we kill!" Atta barked, "We conquer Hollows, use guns to drive heroes and magic men out! Settle up in the end."
Julius rolled his eyes.
"Yes... That sounds like a winning plan."
Atta seemed happy that the smallest Troll in the city (officially, there were some largely disregarded "pocket trolls" acting as heroes) approved of his ultimatum.
"We'll work something out," David Wincott breathed, "For now, we're all on the same side."
"Cool."
Frostfire.
"Yah!"
Atta.
Matt grinned. It looked like they were finally going to make some progress.
----
Statesman was leading the counter-assault on Praetorian Earth. All they had to do was enough damage to the power systems to shut down the invasion portals. Positron had warned Statesman about this... The Rikti War was just the beginning, now there was a chance to have to deal with every different militant dimension across the globe. Anywhere, any time there could have been a different outcome in the universe that would have radically altered history to a darker outcome... Their timelines were converging, and war upon war loomed on the horizon.
They were able to seal off the Rikti Earth. Who knew how long?
Statesman shrugged off the frightening question. He'd walk that path soon enough. Now, now he had to...
Several factories in the Praetorian Terra Volta were already ablaze. Narrowing his eyes, Statesman peered closer. It seemed something was stalking from power plant to power plant, and leaving destruction in its wake.
It looked like a Zeus class Titan of the Malta Group, only with some massive modifications... Not the least of which, it seemed, was a head with an actual face.
----
Ryat Dreadnought was running low on juice. His ammunition was depleted (his rockets especially), his power plant was overloading. This was the last building he'd be able to handle, and he was going to handle it with style.
"I don't know how this'll turn out," he grunted as his fists slammed soldiers this way and that, "I hope Cobalt and his crew turned out alright..."
He tore his way into the main chamber of the plant and came face to face with Nightstar.
"What is this!?" the feminine android shouted.
"Pardon me," Dreadnought growled over the sound of his engine overloading, "but I hope this doesn't interrupt your regularly scheduled business day..."
His armor plates split apart, and bright beams of light were the only warning Nightstar had to activate her escape teleporter.
----
There was a blinding flash, and Statesman had to shield his eyes as a fusion reaction was suddenly unleashed in the center of the Praetorian Terra Volta. Statesman could feel the heat from where he hovered over the zone. When the unantural sounds of thunder died down, he gazed back to see what had happened.
"By the gods..."
Much of the region was burning. The last building the odd machine had run into was nothing but a smoking crater. The buildings surrounding it weren't faring much better.
"That should just about..." Statesman saw the lights throughout the zone flickering, "Hm... Maybe a few more... Tyrant can't deal with a full-fledged revolt, not with his forces divided like this. He'll shut down the invasion if he has to decide between power for his 'citizens' or conquest."
----
Kipland Durj was thrown, slamming his back against the corner of a building, and he crashed through a faux wrought-iron fence. Cobalt Black followed, only his leap backwards missed the corner of the building, and he had his pistols blazing at their pursuer as he cleared the fence with his leap. He skidded a little as he hit the ground, but he stuck the landing.
Tyrant followed shortly thereafter, not even breaking stride as he smashed unerringly through the barrier. Cobalt Black reloaded in record time, and started firing again... Into Tyrant's face.
The Praetorian dictator was unaffected, and his eyes started glowing violently. Cobalt Black did a half-split, half crouch, barely ducking under the energy beams when he fell backwards as Tyrant fired. His left arm breaking his fall, he kept his right pistol trained on his enemy, still squeezing rounds off into his face and upper torso.
"You can do that all day," Tyrant muttered after the clip ran dry, "It's not stopping me."
Cobalt crab-walked backward until he got his feet back under himself and he got back up. Kipland lurched into position, his armor flickering in-and-out of existence.
"You tired, man?"
"Yeah," Kip replied, "You really with us?"
"You got it, brother."
"I thought you were supposed to be his enemy," Tyrant muttered as he looked to each of them, "You were supposed to be one of my subjects..."
"You done gone [censored] up!" Cobalt Black replied, "You turned over anywhere you deemed the 'wild lands' to Shadowhunter, and his wolves tore what was left of my hometown apart!"
He pointed the other pistol at Tyrant.
"I may not be the one who kills you... Or sends you zipping along to the Zig, however it works... But I swear I'll see you fall, in this life or the next!"
"It'll have to be the next," the arch-villain chuckled, "You two don't have nearly what it takes to stop me."
Suddenly, a line of massive bullet holes tore through the dirt, leaving little plumes of sand and sod shooting into the air in a trail leading toward Tyrant. The bullets impacted and sent him sprawling.
There was a strange pulsing hum in the air. The Kips looked up to see the BWO dropship hovering overhead. The ship's three double-barreled machine gun turrets were trained on where they'd last seen Tyrant.
"You guys okay?" Solo Stryker's voice sounded through the loudspeaker, "Who the Hell was that?"
"Trouble!" Kip shouted back, " Get the Hell out of here, Dare! This isn't your fight!"
Psycho13 was suddenly next to Kip. He handed him a few green and blue cylinders. Kip thanked him as he pressed them into his thigh, the high-pressure spring-loaded injectors puncturing through even his metaphysical armor to repair and recharge his body with their chemical and nanotechnological contents.
Unfortunately, Solo Stryker wasn't able to adhere to Kip's advice in time. Tyrant burst out of a nearby building's wall and delivered a savage punch aimed directly for the machine's nose. The shields resisted the hit, but it still sent the vehicle sprawling through the air. It seemed to rock back and forth on its hover pods after it stopped flying backwards.
"Woah!" Daren shouted through the loudspeaker, "Hey! Who the [censored] said you could do that!?"
"I am sick of these games!" Tyrant shouted, then turned to the communicator on his wrist panel, "Marauder, release the hounds."
----
Though it strained the Praetorian Earth's power grid, a few more portals struggled to life. Many neighborhoods browned out, and not a few people were made very unhappy. But not nearly enough to actually do anything about it.
The brown outs were short-lived, however. The portals that activated were merely one-shot devices, designed to fire their contents into Prime Earth and fall silent forever.
Or at least until Antimatter or Neuron got a hold of them again.
In Prime Earth, there was yet another tearing sound that many of the heroes were already getting used to. Out of the holes in the sky dropped the biggest, meanest anti-tanks and brutes that Praetorian Earth had to offer. They were feral, savage, or just downright bloodthirsty. Each one was more than capable of taking down Tyrant and his court through Brute Force alone, but it hadn't been brute force that had stopped them.
Beaten into unconsciousness, Tyrant knew he'd one day have use for these living siege engines. He had Marauder train them. He had Antimatter and Neuron work on a way to keep them in stasis. Now, their time had come.
The stasis cages broke open as they were teleported into Prime Earth. The beasts awoke in mid-air and very rapidly worked up into a frenzy as their plight was realized.
The next few seconds were not going to be very good for Paragon City.
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
Five minutes.
In five minutes, whole buildings were leveled by the onslaught of Praetorian anti-tanks and brutes. Worse, they were savage, insane, and just didn't feel any pain. A couple were gunned down by heroes, military, and Freedom Corps forces. Some Vanguard troops were transferred from a nearby U.N. outpost, too, and they brought with them a couple new war vehicles, like anti-aircraft tanks (to blast flying Praetorians out of the sky) and similarly crafted tracked armor equipped with gas-missile pods and magnetic rail driver enhanced tank guns.
These forces were brought in, but they initially were sent into Atlas Park to help Ms. Liberty drive out the "Heavies" (as they were called upon landing) and secure a safe zone within the city. Galaxy City wasn't faring well at all. Back Alley Brawler had been able to hold back the enemy from the Freedom Phalanx headquarters, and he had deployed a few hero teams out to harry the baddies, but the Heavies dropping in gave the Praetorians a sudden surge in their assault. They didn't have the support of the military groups, and it seemed the various criminal elements in the zone had decided it was time to lie low and wait for the storm to pass.
"We can't hold them forever!" a low-level scrapper shouted over the tumult, "They're breaking through!"
A small robot leaped over the scrapper and crashed into a Rampager. It was black and gray, with green lenses on its eyes. There was a whirring, clicking and popping sound, like out of a Clockwork robot, but this was far too symmetrical to be one...
A series of automatic weapons barked fire into the Praetorians and a group of larger robots suddenly tore through the back of the Brawler's ranks and into the Praetorians, smashing their way through the invaders and tearing into their rear ranks. Each one, except for a few minor details, looked much like the first, and like their leader...
"What the..." Back Alley Brawler turned a little to see RYat99 directing the last of the machines before heading into the fray himself.
The Galaxy City leader caught a hold of one of the icicles protruding from the android's body and pulled him back.
"Who are these guys?"
"My brothers and sisters, sir," Ryat99 replied, "Nearly a hundred androids, each built to specs that nearly match mine. We're going to win this, yet."
"I suppose so..."
Ryat99 nodded, then turned away from the legend to help the heroes turn back the Praetorian onslaught. The surprising push was enough, and many of the forces fell back under the sudden counterattack.
Before, the Praetorians had the advantage. They had numbers in Galaxy City. Most heroes didn't venture there, and those that did were usually passing through or didn't know enough about what they were doing that they still needed the helping hand of Freedom Corps to keep them going until they got the ropes.
Now they faced nearly double the number of heroes they faced before, and each of them running off the shared experience of their leader, Ryat99.
With mathematic precision, they arranged themselves into a spearhead formation, Ryat99 at the lead and his fourteen fellow "heavies" fanning out behind him to make a point. The smaller androids amassed behind them, the ones armed with automatic weapons (borrowed from the Freedom Corps armory inside the Freedom Phalanx building) skirting along the outside with the melee style androids and the ones armed with heavier weapons (like rocket launchers and the like) made up the center.
One android, Ryat10, painted a bright, cheery green, was given a series of clear channels throughout the formation. His armor glowed briefly, and any damage accrued by the androids near him was nearly instantaneously repaired. It must have been composed of much of the same technology that made up Nester Durj's outfit...
"Ready boys?" Ryat99 called out to his fellows.
"You're not gonna start saying a series of ones and zeros, are you?" Ryat87 asked, "I've been sleeping for months, and the last thing I need to hear is a stupid pun."
"Fine then, I'll jsut say 'break 'em all!"
"Hey!"
Back Alley Brawler stepped up beside Ryat99 and tapped him on the shoulder.
"Yes?"
"Mind if I tag along?"
"I'd smile if I could," the big android replied, "You sure you can keep up, old man?"
Back Alley Brawler grinned back and popped his knuckles in reply. A group of heroes situated themselves among the androids, some of which were healer types, which was a great relief to Ryat10.
"Sure, you're magic based," he said to a young girl with glowing green runes, "But that won't stop ya from helping us."
"Why not?" she asked, confusion evident on her face.
"It's hard to explain..." the android replied, "Just consider it a 'favor of the gods...'"
"Everybody ready to show these Praetorians the hornets' nest they just crawled into?" Back Alley Brawler shouted over the crowd.
"Wow," Ryat99 intoned to Ryat88, "I could never do that..."
"You ain't got the voice for it," his yellow-painted brother replied.
"Hrah!" the amassed heroes shouted together (some of the Ryat androids among them) in response to the veteran hero's shout.
"Then let's give 'em Hell!"
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
"It's over, Retsen," Ezekiel shouted over the sounds of battle across Independence Port, "Your bombs are being found, either because your buddies told us already, or they're being found on accident. Your goons are getting trashed like last week's garbage, and we've got you outflanked..."
Nester and Zeke had acquired a small cadre of heroes. It was mostly a motley pick-up group, but they'd all worked well together when defeating various "Dark-Mirrors" of the team members, as well as some of those nasty "Heavies" that had dropped in unexpectedly. It was a nice mix, a controller to complement Nester, a scrapper and a tank, a blaster, another defender that specialized in "dark magic," and a Peacebringer.
"I'm not beaten yet," Jrud shouted mechanically.
He was in bad shape. His metallic body had been punctured repeatedly by the blaster's energy beams, the tank and scrapper had knocked him around a couple times with a mace and a broadsword, plus, the controller was a fire type (with shielding magics as her secondary specialty), and she was an artist with her flames, really working them into the anti-defender's exposed circuitry.
Somehow, he was still moving, still thinking... Still a threat.
"Just surrender," Nester muttered quietly, half wishing that he wouldn't, "This will all be over if you surrender."
"No..." Jrud's eyes flashed brightly, "This is over when I say it's over..."
Nester's visor noticed a sudden discrepancy, and he put a finger on the dial on the right side of his helmet. Rolling the dial, he zoomed in on the discrepancy and noticed that Jrud's eyes were flicking a series of numbers where normal people would have irises and pupils.
"You're running out of time..." Jrud laughed, "You're running out of time!"
"He's a bomb, too!" Nester shouted.
"Madman!" the female scrapper shouted as she drove the blade deep into Jrud's belly, "We have ways of stopping you!"
"And I cheat..." the anti-defender chuckled as his fist suddenly shout out of his forearm like a rocket.
It impacted on the girl's belly, and she was sent flying across the bay, and toward (sadly) the waiting tentacles of the Giant Octopus, Lusca.
"Help!"
"I'll save her!" the Peacebringer shouted, but Ezekiel was faster.
With a gesture, he teleported the girl back while the tank and Nester closed with Retsen. The dark-hooded defender and the zombie-like blaster stood back and tried to offer fire-support.
Retsen was still offering surprises. His missing arm was replaced by a beam of glowing green radiation that resembled a sword blade. He used this weapon to hold back the medieval-armored tank, but didn't count on Nester yanking out the broadsword.
"Here," he shouted as he threw the weapon to its owner, "I wouldn't know where to begin..."
A wave of nausea hit him, and he realized he'd been skewered by Retsen's blade. Rolling his eyes, Nester hit a button that kicked on the Healing Wave Generator and his injuries started to close, as well as those of the tank.
"Come on, Jrud... You knew it would be like this..."
Retsen replied with an eye-beam blast that Nester's Defensive Matrix actually deflected. Distracted, Jrud didn't notice the mace swinging into his shoulder, either.
"I got him!" Nester shouted suddenly before the tank could deliver a final crushing blow.
The defender dove forward and caught his opposite under the shoulders. Holding him in a bear hug, he took to the skies.
"Nester!" Zeke shouted at him, "What are you doing?"
Too close for his enemy to maneuver, all Nester had to make sure of was that Jrud didn't get him with the eye beams. Snaking his head left and right, he avoided the attacks, as well as a few nasty headbutts.
"You think hoisting me into the air is going to stop me?" Retsen finally shouted at him, "I will destroy us both, and the radioactive fallout will contaminate this region!"
"I knew you'd say that," Nester replied softly, "A part of me hoped you wouldn't, that we'd only have to beat you down before we could try to fix you... But you're an all-or-nothing type... You can't beat us, so you'll kill us, yourself, and any number of innocent lives in your mad quest to... Well, you probably don't even remember anymore."
"Ready?" he heard in his ear.
"Ready."
"What?" Retsen cocked his head to one side and Nester let him go.
Floating there in the air, Retsen was left wondering at the fire controller suddenly appearing behind Nester. She snaked an arm around Nester's shoulder and wrapped her legs around his waist. Her left hand, she shot out at Jrud, and a green orb appeared there.
"What's that gonna..."
Jrud was encased within an energy orb. Nester couldn't hear him anymore. Nobody could hear his screams. Nobody could hear him smashing his hands against the energy field holding him in. Nester kicked on his Invigoration Wave Generator, jsut in case the girl needed it for the shield, but she said they were fine.
Jrud's explosion made the energy shield pop, and a cloud of green gasses floated from it. The controller created another orb and encased the gasses within it, compressed them, then dropped the orb to Zeke, who opened a portal to another dimension and dropped it in there.
"Waste management," Ezekiel muttered in a strange voice, "Never figured I'd be used for something so mundane."
"You're lucky you're even allowed to go around at all!" the Peacebringer shouted at him in a voice very unlike the one she had earlier, "If these people knew what you did..."
"Nester and Zeke do," it was Zeke's Nictus that was talking, not the man, "And I'll thank you kindly to respect the fact that I am working for the recognized authorities here, I'm under probation, and I have to meet regularly with Shadowstar to report my activities."
"I was at the battle of-"
"Nerrogazzad," Androm'Geizzer finished, "I know. If you want to talk about it, let me know... Just..."
The Peabringer suddenly shook her head and the human face suddenly looked very irritated.
"That's enough M'drael," she intoned, "I'm sorry, Zeke. She's been yammering on since we started teaming..."
"It's fine," Zeke replied, "I had a feeling this was going to happen a lot after Androm woke up."
"This is neither the place, nor the time, though," Nester suddenly declared as he lowered to teh ground, "Excellent job, Fireshield."
"Thanks," the controller replied, "I wish it had turned out better..."
"It should have been Cobalt that did that... Took down Jrud, I mean... I would have done his heart some good," Nester sighed, "Well... Who has something else we can do?"
"Ooh!" the scrapper suddenly jumped up, her eyes twinkling, "I hear there's a small nest in the southwest corner of the Heavy types! I just had a personal message sent to me by a friend... He said they need help!"
"Well, what are we waiting for?" the tank hefted up his mace and prepared to start leaping away, "To arms!"
As the others left the area, Zeke held his son back.
"You okay?"
"That last fight..." Nester sighed, "It just seemed so... Anti-climactic."
"Not everything can be like a storybook," Zeke shook his head, "Especially in war. We rarely have time for the long, drawn-out battle sequences, you know?"
"Yeah..."
"Well, let's get to helping those idiots before they let the Heavies get out. And Nester..."
"Dad?"
"Next time you go and hug an atomic bomb, would you mind telling me that you have a plan ahead of time? Unless, of course, you figure you can heal a heart attack with those gizmos..."
Nester winced.
"Oh... Sorry... Fireshield and I worked out the idea after we helped take down her opposite..."
"Ah."
Zeke disappeared suddenly in a cloud of black and purple smoke. Nester took to the skies and started heading southwest. It was a depressing end to a scary adventure, but one major threat was over. Now they had to deal with the thousands of other threats throughout the city.
----
"We need to send someone into Baumton to find out what's going on."
Positron looked across the crowd of heroes congregated around him. They were holding the breach in the war wall, but there was a problem with the doors. They wouldn't close.
"That's not such a bad thing," an Outcast standing next to a congregation of his fellow gang members shouted, "You can't just let them die!"
He was suddenly reinforced by the shouting of numerous criminals from around the city zone. For now, they were being left alone. Everybody had heard of the uneasy truce the Outcasts had made with the Trolls in the Hollows, and the heroes there that were waging a nasty war with the invaders.
For now, the truce seemed to have spread across the city. It didn't help that the Heavies had destroyed many prominent operations among the various villainous organizations. For instance, along with how the Clockwork helping Freedom Corps forces in Atlas Park, the Sky Raiders seemed to be patrolling Terra Volta, gunning down any Praetorian sabotage they find (that's their job, dammit!), and the Freakshow seemed to have no qualms about who they cut open, hero or otherwise.
"We don't want anyone to die," the hero leader of Steel Canyon shouted down the angry gangers, "But we can't be holding this gate forever... We need to commence a massive counter-attack, and to do that, we'll need information on what's going on inside there..."
Sheldon shouldered his way through the crowd and wound up standing next to Cedric and Ryat66. Ryat seemed to be bouncing a little happily.
"Heard about your brothers, huh?"
"They're charging through Galaxy City," the android chirped back, "The Praetorians don't know what's hitting 'em!"
"What was that?" Positron asked in their direction.
Sheldon looked up calmly as Cedric turned to him with a regarding stare. In fact, lots of eyes turned toward the inventor.
"Oh..." Sheldon replied calmly, "Well... Let's see... you need a scouting party of some sort... Perhaps..."
He rubbed his chin.
"Yes... Yes I believe I have just what you need for this, sir..."
----
"Be careful with these Cataphracts," Positron muttered as he handed over the control codes to Wallace, "I wouldn't even be giving these to you, but this is by far one of the best plans anybody could come up with."
"Aside from that guy," Ryat66 pointed at Cedric, who was bounding off into the distance wearing military fatigues and camouflage paint.
"Yes, well, we need to know what a direct assault will be like," Positron stated calmly, "Mr. Wallace... When this is all over... I'd like to talk to you about this machine you've made..."
He was indicating the peculiar walking tank the gravity controller currently sat in. Fully deployed, it now looked more to be a blend of a Nemesis Warhulk, a Sky Raider Sky Skiff, and a Zeus Class Titan.
"You mean me?" Ryat66 asked, largely oblivious to the uneasiness most heroes had around Sheldon, "Do my brothers and sisters and I pique your interest?"
The major hero turned to Sheldon. Even behind his helmet, he seemed to be glaring at the inventor.
"Oh yes," he intoned, "You and I need to have a very frank discussion."
"Later," Wallace replied darkly, "Right now, I have a scouting mission to conduct."
Five Cataphracts. That, and Sheldon's walking tank, which outstripped their landspeed by only a few feet per hour. That was fine, though. They were heavily armed and armored tanks and androids. They were designed to be a slow-moving impenetrable line.
Sheldon analyzed what his sensors were picking up. There were very few living beings in the region. In fact, it seemed a lot of the outcasts who weren't able to flee had quite possibly been killed. The Council probably went down fighting. Lord knew what the Clockwork were probably doing. In all probability, Babbage was waging a small siege on the Praetorian insertion point.
"Pray we're that lucky," Sheldon rolled his eyes, then he focused on an alert coming up, "Uh-oh... Praetorians over the next ridge."
It was a small patrol. Roughly twelve of the human-types. No machines among them. In fact, they were mostly comprised of Marauder's personal shock troops.
Seeing Wallace's tank first, their leader, a Destroyer, let loose a warcry and pushed his troops into a frenzy to charge the "hapless" hero. Sheldon fired the chaingun at them, riddling the offenders with chalk rounds and knocking some of them to the ground. When the tougher ones got too close, Sheldon ordered the Cataphracts to bombard them.
"Hm. I am not impressed," Sheldon muttered as he pressed on.
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
"Holy God..."
Cedric stood before a bizarre wreck. It seemed as if the Council had erected a crude, yet normally effective, fortification in the southwestern corner of Baumton. There were corpses and wreckage of Praetorian troops littered all around, but what was far more distressing was the condition of the fortification.
Something massive had smashed its way through the walls and torn the soldiers holed up there apart. A couple masked faces looked out to Cedric, but huddled back once they realized they'd been seen.
"It was a terrible thing that happened," a voice said behind Cedric.
Turning slowly, Cedric noted the Outcasts who had lumbered up behind him.
"You guys ain't gonna try to fight me now, are ya?"
"No... But you should know that this area isn't safe. We can't even trust the ground we're walking on..."
----
Sheldon pursued the invaders doggedly. There was something about the tank he drove in. Something about the raw power of being nigh invulnerable...
"This must be how Randall feels all the time," he whispered as he fired a few rounds at the retreating enemies.
Climbing the trashed streets that rose in the center of the destroyed zone, Sheldon started wondering at his plans. With a careful strategic bombardment, he could quite possibly...
He stopped thinking when he noticed the wall of wreckage in his path. Oddly, just a moment ago, it hadn't been there. When Sheldon began his climb up these streets, there hadn't been a wall of...
A wall that seemed to be pushing itself off the ground.
"What was that Cobalt said about my Praetorian?" Wallace muttered to himself, "Oh yes... Dross... Nobody knew if he still existed, or had become some sort of kinetic energy being that liked to cobble together monstrosities from random debris..."
A giant monster stood before him now. Much like the Babbage or the Paladin, only far more misshapen, what could only be Dross prepared to punch Sheldon's walking tank off the side of the hill.
Which it did.
Crushing the left arm armaments of the tank, the monster's swipe sent the machine sprawling and Sheldon could feel his lunch starting to come back up. He counted a few twirls and twists before everything went black and all he could hear was crashing.
----
Positron shook his head sadly as he watched the monitors turn to static one-by-one. The strange monster that must have been what kept the Babbage at bay for the Praetorians in Baumton had just appeared out of nowhere.
"That's a new trick," he grumbled to Ryat66, "I'm sorry, but it seems your friend is gone..."
"Not yet," Ryat66 replied almost cheerfully, "Sheldon's a lot more resilient than most people give him credit for."
"I hope so," Positron sighed, "We may wind up having to nuke that region of the city with a neutron bomb..."
"No way!" the android shouted at him, "under who's authority!?"
"Trust me, it's not my idea. The generals figure that if we don't knock out their last uncontested insertion point soon, the Praetorians will simply swarm through the city..."
The android stared back blankly, a faint whirring being emitted from somewhere within his cranium.
"If we can start a push, they'll have to abandon their plan, but if we can't bring up an assault in the next hour... Baumton won't be habitable for a month. The military leaders figure that's acceptable when compared to losing the city to the Praetorians because 'we were too soft.'"
"Smacks of conspiracy to me," the android grumbled, "Isn't there a counterstrike going on, though? A way to knock out the portals?"
"We haven't heard from the strike teams," Positron started heading out to the heroes, "Valkyrie... Get prepared to raid Boomtown. Select the heroes from this group you think will make a decent shield. I'll set up a support team."
"Verily," the heroine replied, "Tankers and Scrappers, to me!"
Ryat66 tugged at Positron's arm. When the hero turned angrily on him, the android responded with a simple crossing of his arms over his chest.
"Give my creator a little more time. He's better than you're figuring."
"He has until we have our teams ready," Positron replied authoritatively, "Now get out of the way."
"Will do," the android started walking toward the Boomtown entrance, "I'm certain Cedric's gonna need some support."
----
"Holy [dung]!" Cedric shouted as he watched Sheldon's tank tumble through the zone, "Don't worry, buddy, i'm coming!"
He rushed over and wound up stopping the vehicle with his axe. He could hear his Praetorian grunt in the back of his mind.
"Doing okay in there?"
Yeah... Life's just peachy. Mind warning me next time you try to stop a truck with my face?
"I make no promises."
"Sheldon!" Cedric shouted as he started trying to roll the machine over, "Shel! Come on, man, speak to me!"
His communicator warbled.
"I'm okay, Ced... Who're your friends?"
The Outcasts rushed up behind Cedric and started helping him push the machine over. The stone-type Outcasts seemed to help the most, their strength somewhat better than the other collected individuals. Once they got it over, Cedric helped Sheldon get the canopy open.
"Oh crap!" a stone Outcast shouted, "He's headed this way!"
"Dross" (as Sheldon figured) was indeed heading their way. In fact, he was heading straight their way, not lumbering down the streets or anything divergent. He was leaping off the side of the hill like any super leaping hero or villain.
The metal pieces of its body seemed to spread out momentarily, then compressed together upon landing. Various girders, chunks of concrete and wreckage from old vehicles riddled its form. Dross. Waste. Refuse from a bygone time that was never properly cleaned up. Now, it was the fuel of a monster that didn't even seem to need the modicum of form and function of a Clockwork machination.
"Come on!" Cedric shouted as he jerked Sheldon by the shoulder and snapped him out of his reverie, "The Outcasts have a building here they hole up in!"
Sheldon lifted the vehicle into the air with his Gravity Control gauntlets and nanotech robots, and started chasing after them. Cedric looked askance at the smashed machine, wondering at what further use it could have, but pressed on. They headed for a building that leaned out over the ground, Dross hot on their heels.
----
A portal ripped open over King's Row. Blue Steel took position on a nearby rooftop, expecting another heavy tanker-type Praetorian. It was weird how the Praetorians had just tossed the monstrous creatures at the city, like they were nothing more than weapons...
All day, it had been a nasty war. It seemed like every time he splintered one push into his corner of Paragon City, another showed up on the other side of King's Row. He was glad for all the support he'd gotten from the low-level heroes and PPD Hero Program cops.
A number of times, though, he was utterly on his own. Sometimes, he pulled off maneuvers he never even knew he could do, like the time he threw his shield, it stuck into a wall after knocking out a row of Praetorian troops, and he leaped onto it, fending off the Heavy that was chasing him with little more than his nightstick and a taser. He was tired of having to live up to a reputation that he largely felt was undeserved, but damn if it didn't seem sometimes that he was the warrior god the newer heroes made him out to be.
Randall Grey fell out of the portal, hollering and cursing as he realized he wasn't winding up on the street but was crashing into a rooftop. A gout of flame followed him, but it didn't last as the portal's generator was destroyed by the charges he'd planted.
"Are you alright?" Steel asked when he got to the Granite-form Stone Tanker, "I'd have probably done something nasty to ya, but my communicator registers your slightly singed Hero Identification..."
"I'm good," Randall grunted as he pushed himself up, "I'm good... I didn't see my Praetorian out there, but I heard some pretty nasty talk on the counter attack chatter..."
"You took out the King's Row facility?"
"A main one," Randall sighed as he dusted off the last of the rocks that used to be his granite armor, "And don't tell me I'm uglier now than I was with that stuff on. I know I'm uglier now."
"Heh, well..." Blue Steel checked his communicator for any chatter from the neighboring zones, "Are they going to be able to push through here any more?"
"Probably," Randall scanned the horizon, "but not a lot at once. Not anymore."
"Well, you wanna help me deal with a sudden push from Galaxy City? A whole bunch of Praetorians seem to be rushing this way really fast..."
They got there in just enough time to find the SWAT officers arranging a shield formation akin to a phalanx. One turned to the newcomers and saluted to Blue Steel.
"Sir, would you like to take the center? We've been getting word from the Brawler that they're rushing this way... He seemed... Happy about it... like he was having a good time..."
"Odd..." Blue Steel took the offered position, "...Back Alley Brawler doesn't normally like shunting problems off on others..."
"Shunting," Randall almost chuckled as he looked over the riot shields, "That's a good word for what's going on... Look."
The Praetorians were in fact heading their way. A large mass of them, cobbled together from all the various general types. Behind them, though, was just as motley an army. Androids, cyborgs, aliens, mutants, and small (almost cuddly) monsters, with Back Alley Brawler at the lead, cheering and whooping all the way.
The Praetorians didn't look as happy...
"Hey, this looks like fun!" Steel suddenly chuckled.
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
Dross wasn't going away. The Outcasts had brought the heroes to a leaning skyscraper, and the walking pile seemed to be patrolling the base of it.
"We should just turn these guys over to that... thing!"
Cedric and Sheldon's eyebrows raised slightly at the fire-type Outcast who seemed to run things in their little hideout. He wasn't happy that one of the scavenging/scouting teams had brought the Dross to their doorstep, and when it turned out it was largely because they had brought heroes with them he almost literally blew his top.
"Now, hang on," the scout leader tried to calm the other down, "These guys say there's a truce..."
"You're gonna trust them?" the Lead Scorcher shouted, "May as well turn ourselves over to the cops, or just jump out the window and let that freak tear us apart!"
"Now hang on!" Cedric stepped forward with his arms out to his sides, "I think you're missing out on the important issue here..."
"Which is?"
"The big [fricking] monster outside!"
"That you brought here!"
"And how long do you think it would have been before you were finally discovered?" Sheldon interrupted their argument, "You really think your fate is any different now as it would be then?"
"That's not-" the Scorcher was angry, but his voice faltered a little.
Sheldon continued, "We're in a bad situation here, and dividing ourselves and pointing fingers is only going to make it worse. If you want, we could probably thrash everybody in this room except the ones who want to work together and survive this day..."
The Scorcher closed his mouth and stepped back.
"Now, look," Cedric pulled Sheldon away and took over the conversation again, "Nobody wants to thrash anybody, and nobody wants to get thrashed..."
He gave a pointed glare to his friend.
"Now, look," he went on, "This is a bad situation. We've got what is essentially a giant monster to fight... When heroes fight giant monsters, we usually have to pull together a few teams of us to take them down... Even the smallest of them, like Babbage's little brother, the Paladin..."
"We're not heroes!" a Chiller shouted.
"Why not? You've got powers, you've got attitude... You guys ever know Ashen Roast or Blizzard Front?"
Unsurprisingly, few of them did. The ones that did said something to the effect that they were "traitors to the cause."
"Cause? What cause?" Cedric was incredulous, but pressed forward to the point, "Look, we don't need to fight over the details, the point is that you guys all have the potential to be heroes, to be something more than you are..."
"Get it into your head," the Lead Scorcher shouted at him (it seemed he liked to yell), "We're not good guys!"
"Well then get it into your head that if you don't get up off your [butt] and do something, you're all gonna wind up dead bad guys in here!"
Cedric breathed heavily a couple times. Sheldon let out a small sigh, but said nothing. The tanker had the floor, and now the Outcasts were attentive again.
"Look, we can take this Dross, we can take it! All we need is a plan..."
Now, Sheldon piped up, "I believe I have one..."
----
"I'm sorry," he whispered to his walking tank.
He hadn't even given it a name. It was just a prototype, a working prototype, but a prototype nonetheless. He had been hoping to turn it over to Freedom Corps, or Portal Corp, or some major company... Not Crey... He'd heard enough about them.
"Sheldon, can we hurry this up?" the Brick barked at the inventor, "I mean, we only have so much time..."
Sheldon looked up at the opening he had torn into the side of the building to fit his machine in. They'd busted into the narrow portion of the building, the part Dross couldn't get into.
"You were meant for more than this," Wallace continued as he walked around to the canopy, "But you served admirably, my dear."
"Is anybody else creeped out by this?" the Brick turned to his companions, "I mean... Why is he talking to his car?"
"It's a bit more than a car, man," a Chiller replied, "I kinda wish I had one..."
"Still, you get what I mean."
"Eh, let it go," a Match finally waved it off, "He worked hard on it, of course he's a little sentimental."
"I guess," the Brick sounded unconvinced, but he dropped the issue.
Sheldon, however, didn't. He'd been grappling with the issue for several weeks up to that point. Most inventors invent to solve a problem they were dealing with. Sheldon invented to solve things that might happen. He also invented out of greed (such as his pet mutant gerbil, Felix), and out of compulsion (the Ryat series androids were more or less made to see if he could do it). These were not the hallmarks of a law-abiding inventor. They were the hallmarks of...
Wallace flipped a switch inside the canopy and red lights started flashing along with alarm klaxons. He closed the frame of the shattered glass and walked back over to the Outcasts, his gloves humming as they gathered up a series of nanites from the various pockets dotted throughout his lab coat to help him with his next task.
"Okay, boys," he said to the Outcasts gathered with him, "Let's take a walk."
----
Cedric bounded from room to room, supervising the Outcasts as they worked at weakening a section of the building. Ice-types would freeze a certain section of the floor, fire types would burn it, stone types were hammering everywhere. The only ones who didn't seem to eb doing anything were the lightning ones, but it was more or less because there wasn't much they could do.
"We basically make power for the building..." the Lead Shocker told Cedric, "We're the generator."
"Wow," the tanker actually sounded impressed, "I bet you guys are normally a lot quieter than a gas powered one, huh?"
"Heh, yeah... Except when we've had bean burritos..."
"The ones from Taco Town?"
"Yeah..."
"Alright, then I got another idea..."
----
Sheldon marched out with the Outcasts in tow. He had the walking tank hovering behind him, it looked almost like a balloon on a string with how he had it levitating. The Outcasts fanned out in groups of four and scouted about for Dross.
They didn't have to wait long.
Dross came around the corner with Babbage hot on its trail. It was a little strange, it looked as if Babbage had been fighting a small army...
A series of rockets flew through the sky (it was probable they were fired by Praetorian forces) and connected with the Clockwork monster. Sheldon shrugged off the mild distress he felt at seeing the big machine go down. Sure, it would have been nice to have the assistance, but there was just as much of a chance that Babs would have attacked them when it was done fighting Dross.
"It would have been no different than Croatoa," he muttered as he prepared to get to work.
The Outcasts took positions behind wreckage. They didn't have many effective weapons, in fact, they had little to no explosives. They did, however, have some hard-hitting special abilities, such as the big rocks the Bricks liked to throw and the fireballs of the Scorchers. Behind cover, they'd at least be able to hide from Dross's assaults for a moment.
Sheldon's job was to give them that moment. With a gesture of his hand, the walking tank started orbiting around him. As he continued to trace a circle in the sky, the vehicle kept picking up speed. As it hit terminal velocity, Sheldon took aim and threw the impromptu boulder at his Praetorian.
Dross felt the impact as a new piece of wreckage suddenly nestled into it. The walking wreckage turned to Sheldon and seemed to almost chuckle.
"Well?" Wallace intoned and arched an eyebrow, "What are you waiting for?"
Dross started stomping toward him, and Sheldon kicked on his kinetic energy siphon device. Striking the monster in the toe, he barely slowed it down, but the energy he got allowed him to keep just out of harm's way every time it threw it's arms out to try to crush him.
"Sorry... Too slow... Better luck next time... Oh, you almost had me there... Are you even trying?"
Dross was under the leaning building now. Sheldon whistled, and the Outcasts attacked.
----
Above Dross, Cedric cleared the Outcasts out of the weakened rooms. Licking his lips, he prepared to smash into the ice with his axe.
"Unless, of course, you've got another one of those energy blasts for me..."
Sorry, brother. You're gonna have to make do with what you've got for now.
"What a gyp..." Cedric muttered.
Taking a deep breath, he jammed one of the hooked chains into the corner of the doorway and gave it a tug. Figuring he was safe (enough), he edged out into the middle of the frosty rooms and hefted his weapon.
"You shockers ready?" he asked.
"Yep," they replied, "That [jerk] is going to learn the hard way why you shouldn't just wrap yourself in steel..."
Cedric grinned and smashed his axe into the floor.
A bit of ice dust flew up into the air, but other than that, there was no reaction.
"What?" Cedric shouted, "Oh, come on! We had this place groaning under what we did to it!"
"Maybe we need to make all the ice shatter!" a Match suggested.
"No we don't need to do anything like that..."
"Or maybe have all of the stone-types smash the walls down..."
"Then they'd probably fall down with everything, we're trying to minimize casualties, here, guys..."
"Maybe..." the Match piped up again, "Maybe fire?"
"Dammit!" Cedric stomped on the floor, "No fi-"
There was a loud groaning sound.
"Rr?"
The floor fell out underneath Cedric and kept falling away. His chain held, and he wound up hanging over Dross's head. Or rather, where Dross's head would have been if it weren't for the piles and piles of concrete, steel, ice and old rotten furniture that had just been dropped on top of it.
"Whoo!" Cedric shouted triumphantly, "Now we just have to..."
While his chain may have held, it seemed the doorframe wasn't up to the task. With a loud snap, it broke away, letting Cedric fall.
"Don't-stop-on-account-of-me-I'll-be-oof!"
He slid off Dross's shoulder as the monster tried to recover.
----
When the pile fell on the monster, Sheldon shouted to begin the attack. The Outcasts launched their respective assaults at once, and when the dust cleared, Cedric's body fell against Dross's shoulder.
"Woah, that wasn't part of the plan," Sheldon started walking forward, not entirely sure of what he was going to do to help his friend.
Fortunately, Cedric had something else planned. The various Electric-type Outcasts suddenly came pouring out of the hole, flooding the air with shocking bursts and charging Drosses girders and rebar. The monster let out a pained roar as it fell back and momentarily lost cohesion.
While the Outcasts let out a triumphant cheer, Sheldon realized what it was. Dross was in there somewhere, getting zapped, and he was just reshuffling the wreckage around himself to pull anything made of rubber near him.
Dross was still human.
"Fantastic," Sheldon shouted as he reached Cedric, "Come on, we gotta get out of the blast radius!"
"The what-whose-it?" Cedric tapped the side of his head as his friend pulled him off the ground, "Oh... Oh!"
They ran, Sheldon launching a speed boost into his friend (accidentally causing him to overshoot the retreat by nearly a thousand feet), and as they reached a safe distance, the inventor stopped, turned, and knelt down with his left wrist in front of himself and his right hand poised over it.
"Time to say goodbye," he whispered and hit the blinking red button that revealed itself as his left wrist panel popped open.
----
Dross knew who Sheldon Wallace was. He'd been helping Neuron study the surveillance and had made sure to check for anybody who looked like him. It was a little odd finding his opposite with a group of androids, or overseeing a reconstruction project, or even utilizing his kinetic and gravity control technology to personally fight the various enemies throughout the city.
The fool, he thought to himself in those days, He should be a millionaire, or at the very least, a man of power and influence... Not this scraping worm, groveling at the feet of those who are his lessers...
He'd had a rough time at life. The Praetorians were by far a very difficult group to work for. Survival of the fittest often led to Dross saying goodbye to colleagues and co-workers in the most violent of ways. Sometimes, he thought he was the next to go, when it would often turn out to be a test to see if he could defend himself.
That was how he learned how to gather wreckage about himself and turn it (at first) into a protective shell. As time wore on and he refined his inventions, he turned his armor into his weapon, a giant monster to enforce the will of Tyrant.
His father had called him mad. He kept shouting it, even as Sheldon, laughing, stomped on him with feet made of concrete.
He wondered if Hector still lived in this world... Likely, the foolish old man had been killed in some sort of accident. Considering the saccharine nature of this Earth... The one the inhabitants called Prime Earth (foolish cretins...)... This Sheldon Wallace may have tried to save his...
Ow.
The building collapsed on top of him, and all Dross knew was rage. He remembered flailing about wildly, struggling to escape from the materials that smashed into him, but suddenly he was assaulted from all sides. He could sense metal fusing together, rocks smashing apart some of his concrete defenses...
Then there was lightning. The sudden jolts he felt from the arcing electricity brought him back to focus, floating as he was in the center of the behemoth's torso. He yelled in anger and frustration, echoing it throughout the assembled parts.
Growling, he relaxed some of his control and pushed the steel away. He had a few cars mixed somewhere inside the wreckage, so he clenched his fists and tore away their tires. A few seconds later, and he had rubber protection from the electric arcs.
As he regained his focus, he looked to the mirrors that served as his viewscreens. No need for high tech when all it takes is careful angling to for a good view. What he saw was his opposite and some crazy military-looking guy with an axe running away. As he gathered the body back together and started to follow them, he saw Sheldon do something that caused the army man to rocket into the distance, then he just stopped, turned around, and crouched.
"You fool," he muttered, "Now you die."
He raised the behemoth's fist into the air and prepared to let it slam into his enemy. Then there was a flash, and everything went black.
----
The Outcasts started cheering and whooping as Dross fell apart. Cedric and Sheldon approached the wreckage and clambered up on top of it.
"You think he made it?" Cedric asked, "That was a pretty nasty boom..."
"About the same strength as a blockbuster bomb," Sheldon agreed, "And knowing me, yeah, he probably made it."
They found the unconscious form of Sheldon's other sprawled on a piece of concrete. It seemed he had been keeping himself inside a chamber of concrete and steel. There were the broken remains of a few molten tires.
"Makes sense," Cedric arched an eyebrow at him as he pulled a tag from his belt and placed it on the villain's forehead, "Alright, time to tell Posi that it's safe to launch an assault."
"That's good," Ryat66 shouted as he leaped down to them, "I'm glad I found you guys. There's trouble..."
"There's always trouble," the tanker sighed as he pulled Sheldon's opposite out of the wreckage, "Let's gather these guys, get out of here and maybe put in a few good words for 'em..."
He shook Dross.
"Not this guy, though. He's got himself a date with a three-by-five prison cell, cold showers, nasty food, and the only way out... is suicide..."
"What about Arachnos coming by and taking him away?" Ryat66 chirped, "Or maybe the Praetorians will bust him out..."
"We'll burn that bridge when we get to it," Sheldon chuckled, "Come on. Outcasts! Time to go!"
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
The Brutal Warriors Order found themselves face-to-face with the leader of the Praetorians. Well, most of them, anyway. Psycho13 tried to keep up with them, but he wound up getting sidetracked in Talos Island when the trail ran across the fight going on between Bobcat and the Freaks.
The rest of the group couldn't keep track of their wayward friend and his misadventures, however. Solo was more than a little busy trying to keep the rest of the crew from getting slaughtered by Tyrant.
"I don't have time for this insolence!" shouted the monster, "I will tear your vessel apart, piece by piece if I have to!"
"Then let's give you a piece!" Solo Stryker shouted through the loudspeaker, "Draven! Rage, show this [wussy] what happens when he [messes] with the B.W.O.!"
Tyrant shouldn't have arched an eyebrow. For that wasted moment, he found himself being pelted with a nearly never-ending stream of machine gun ammunition from three different sources.
Floating above the statue of Talos, the ships three turrets were delivering a pounding on the Praetorian's Anti-Statesman. Tyrant ducked and dived away from them, Draven and Rage having trouble keeping up, but Solo's computer-guided turret kept a solid bead on the target. Suddenly, however, they lsot him.
"What?" Solo shouted, "Where the Hell is he?"
He was answered with a scream from Draven. Tyrant had flown under the ship and pushed through the Repulsor Shield. Solo's brother, the Referee, had attempted to compensate, but it was just too late.
Tyrant had ripped out Draven's turret with the B.W.O. leader still inside it. Tearing the weapon apart as he was pushed away from the vessel, he didn't notice when Erickson leaped out and started flying away. Tyrant turned just in time to catch a broadsword to the face.
"You must be joking," he chuckled to the red-coated scrapper, "Do you have any idea how truly outclassed you are?"
"I-" Draven began, but he was backhanded away before Tyrant could even begin to care.
"I don't intend to waste time with an imbecile."
He chased back after the dropship. Solo Stryker swung the vehicle around so his turret and Ragin' James's could each line up to fire on him. Weaving through the streams of glowing hot bullets, Tyrant made for the port turret.
The weapon stopped firing a moment before he reached it. Yanking it out and doing much the same to it as he did the starboard weapon, Tyrant failed to notice Ragin' James wasn't inside. When he turned back to the machine, James was busy pointing a minigun his friends and him had acquired in their travels into Tyrant's face.
"I bet this tickles," he shouted as he pulled the trigger with his right hand, his left being busy holding him, dangling, from the opening in the dropship.
Tyrant fell back, pain evident in his posture, but he recovered quickly. As he rushed to assault the Brute on the ship's exposed flank, Ragin' James leaped out at him, tossing the minigun aside (into the wild blue yonder, it wasn't helping him anymore anyway).
His body wreathed in red electricity, James connected with Tyrant only a scant few yards from the ship as it sped off over the cityscape of Talos Island. Heroes and citizens watched in awe from below as some lunatic seemed to be going toe-to-toe with a slightly skewed Statesman.
Rage caught Tyrant with a right cross, Tyrant responding with a hammerfist smash. The brute fell away, but recovered in mid-air, actually flying to meet Tyrant in the middle of his dive.
"Bet you didn't see this coming, [jerk] face!"
Rage caught the Praetorian dictator with an uppercut to the face. Unfortunately, it only seemed to deviate the villain a little from his flightpath, and Rage could have sworn he just broke his wrist. Rubbing his injured limb, he looked down to see that Tyrant had disappeared.
"Where'd he go?"
In the distance, the B.W.O. dropship was fighting Tyrant yet again. He'd rocketed through the valley of buildings and snuck up on the heroes and rogues. As he made a final approach, however, Dirty Ice leaped off the top of the vehicle, screaming and swinging his stone mallet.
Tyrant caught him in mid-air and casually threw him to the roof of a nearby building. Coughing, Ice pushed his burning body back up, but found himself hit in the back with a large piece of concrete.
Chuckling, Tyrant turned back to the dropship to find Draven Erickson in his face again. Draven raked his blade across Tyrant's forearms (as the anti-tank was quite adept at deflecting Draven's assaults), and wound up barreling over him when the villain tried to tackle him in mid-air.
"Ow," he muttered as he hit the roof of the magic shop, "I think he bruised my hip..."
When Tyrant, breathing haggardly, turned back to the dropship, he was railed across his body with several clusters of missiles.
"That's right," Solo muttered as Tyrant emerged from the dust cloud, screaming in anger, "Keep showing me your hubris..."
Solo started firing the last turret's guns at the villain. Tyrant didn't even try to deviate. The bullets pinged and panged, scattering in various directions. Solo held down the trigger until the guns went hot. He was pulling the vehicle away when the Praetorian leader reached him and took a hold of the turret.
"And now, I take the last of your claws," he laughed as the turret came out easily in his hands.
Too easily, in fact.
Solo had a minor dislike when it came to the dropship's main turret. The side ones could be reloaded from within the main chamber of the ship. Psycho, Dale, Slater... Whoever was available at the time just had to pop a hatch and toss in another crate of bullets. The feeder clawed up the new belt and fed it into the tube leading to the turret.
However, the main turret had a finite loadout of ammunition. Dale (the Referee) and the Wallaces (Sheldon and his father, Hector) hadn't been able to work out an adequate reloading system for the weapon. Daren, however, asked for a different nasty surprise.
Tyrant glared at the retreating vehicle. The ease with which he'd yanked out the weapon and the fact that the pilot was laughing about it over that infernal loudspeaker was a little...
Too late, he noticed the peculiar digital noise warbling out of the small thermal bomb that was superheating the last of the ammunition and turning the derelict weapon into an impromptu claymore mine.
One explosion equivalent to a Fire Blast Inferno combined with a couple shotgun blasts, and Tyrant was spinning in the air. When he circled came around, he noticed the last nasty surprise Solo Stryker had ins tore for him.
A large chaingun had deployed from the opening left by the turret. It was already spinning, and the Praetorian leader's eyes widened in time to hear the sound of shotguns blasting across the city as the high-caliber weapon blasted round after round into his torso.
Tyrant was pushed back, but there weren't many rounds for the chaingun.
"What!?" Solo shouted as the weapon ran dry.
"Sorry, bro," the Referee replied, "We never got around to making enough shells for that thing..."
Hovering over Spanky's Boardwalk, the Tyrant and the B.W.O. dropship stared each other down.
"Missiles and rockets are reloading too damn slow," Solo shouted through the intercom, "Come on, Ref, tell me you've got something for me to use against this guy..."
Tyrant cracked his knuckles.
"I might ahve something..." Dale replied.
The two started rushing at each other, Tyrant rushing forward and picking up speed, the dropship blasting on the afterburners and rocketing forward. Just as they were about to connect, Tyrant pulled back for a hard punch into Solo's canopy. Solo, however, yanked the control sticks and wound up spinning the vehicle around like a baseball bat. The Ref hit the Repulsor Field button and Tyrant felt like he was flying through an undertow moments before getting blasted across the beach.
He bounced off a cliff and fell to the ground, laying still.
The dropship, despite the heroic blast, did not fare much better. Solo lost control of the vehicle and they started to crash. He screamed something about crash positions, and was surprised when there was a sudden slowing of the uncontrolled spin.
Ragin' James was outside the vehicle, and he'd caught a hold of it, using his super strength and flight to try to slow the momentum of the crash. Pushing against the rear ventral port-side corner, Rage realized his desperate gamble was not going to pan out. He saw the sand rushing to catch him, and closed his eyes.
He refused to let go. If his small sacrifice could help his friends survive, so be it...
The momentum of the ship suddenly dropped and Ragin' James looked to see the cause.
Statesman was back.
He'd been monitoring the battle personally, watching to see Tyrant's next move since the infrastructure of his world's "capital city" had been decimated and his reinforcements cut off. It seemed he had been distracted, however, and watching his "opposite" face off against this motley band of heroes and... others... had been quite amusing.
Setting the ship down, he looked to Rage.
"Are you alright?"
"Yes..." James edged toward the ship, hoping to avoid identifying himself.
Technically, he was considered a "Brute" by his power profile. A criminal.
"Check on your friends," the Paragon champion simply ordered, a hint of relief in his voice, "I'm going to check on our mutual friend..."
"Okay..." Rage muttered as he looked in to see the Kingdale Referee and King Slater picking themselves up off the floor.
"Man... Remind me never to let Daren drive again," Slater grunted, "Did Levi get that pilot's license, yet?"
"No," the Ref replied as he slumped back to the floor, gripping his head in his hands, "No he didn't."
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
((Mkay, I'm done here. I'll be moving back to doing Grey's Army and Brutal Warriors Order. Much of the rest of the Praetorian War (Invasion) will be covered as commentary in the aftermath.
I kinda wish more people tossed their stories into here. I guess I just threw it up at the wrong time.
Oh well, there's always next time.))
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.
Cedric pulled the axe back, and swung. Gray hadn't lied to him, and a great red beam blasted out of the weapon, connected with Battle Maiden, and sent her slamming into a wall. He closed with her, blocked the axe she swung at him with his own, and punched her in the face.
"No matter how many times I wind up having to do that," he grimaced, "it never feels good."
Battle Maiden shook her dizziness off and glared at the tanker. He face softened into shock when she realized that he was walking away.
"You fool, never turn your..."
She noticed a peculiar beeping sound. Valkyrie's Praetorian whirled about frantically, trying to find the bomb Cedric must have left behind. He had surprised her. The one she knew, some upstart from the northeastern portion of the northwest continent of War Earth, had been a magician and a warrior. This one had employed technological dirty tricks as well as a few snippets of magic spells. It was like she was really fighting two people.
Again, she found herself surprised. Cedric Grey hadn't left a bomb. Then what was that beeping?
"Never turn your back on an enemy," Cedric finished for her, "Except when they're dead... You know, I never liked creeds like that. It always seems there's a better way, you know? For instance, the way I beat you, just now."
"Fool! I still stand!"
He pointed at her.
"What's that on your face?"
Battle Maiden stopped stomping toward him. She noticed Valkyrie stepping in to possibly protect this whelp, but his words had a peculiar finality to them. When he mentioned her face, she felt her forehead where he had pointed. There was a bump there. Pulling slightly, there was a tearing sensation, but not painful. She held the bump in her hand and noticed it was the source of the beeping.
"What trickery is this?"
A siren from above answered her and she looked up just too late to notice the police drones homed in on her location. Screaming, she attempted to raise her axe to deflect the incoming teleportation beams that would transport her on a direct route to the Zig, but there were just too many.
Grinning, Cedric waved goodbye to her rapidly fading horrified face. Valkyrie chuckled as she disappeared and arched an eyebrow approvingly to the Tanker.
"Next time she shows up," he shrugged, "She's yours. I just had to help my brother from another world."
"I understand," Valkyrie nodded and went back to the rest of the battle.
"Sir! Sir!" Ryat66 sprinted over to Cedric and stood at a robotically perfect military position of attention, "Sir! Praetorian forces in this region are being successfully repulsed! Orders sir?"
Cedric grinned at the small robot and started plugging the team command into his communicator, "Come on, Sixty-six. We'll help hold this zone until ordered to head out somewhere else. I'm figuring Positron and Valkyrie there will have something for everybody to do."
"Aye, sir!" the robot chirped.
"Stop talking like a Marine," the tanker barked out a laugh despite himself, "I'm not in service anymore, and you never were."
"Not until I'm eighteen!"
"No, not even then, little buddy. You already got enough fight in ya to last three tours... Almost two in the Rikti War..."
"Pft, I could have outlasted you!"
Jabbing and quipping at each other like that, they headed north to the Boomtown Gate.
----
Randall Grey thrashed through the King's Row portal facility. Sure, he had plenty of explosives in his pack and could level the facility witht eh press of a button, but he'd rather make sure the enemy couldn't reconstruct most of the base.
The only thing he had to worry about was leaving enough intact for him to be able to use the portal one last time.
----
Kipland Durj was helping defend the Portal Corp courtyard along with a large number of heroes drawn to the action. Somehow, he wound up being pushed along and away from the buildings and toward the parking lot. A sudden shove, and he was free of the vicious crowd and the fighting. Tumbling a few feet, he stopped at a pair of oddly familiar boots.
A hand grabbed him roughly by the neck and lifted him up.
"Well, well, well... Aren't you amusing?"
Kipland opened his eyes to see he was looking directly into the face of Tyrant. The impassive Praetorian leader had come personally to wage this war.
"Why is my luck always so bad?" Kip hissed as he struggled to pull himself away from the villain's grip.
"That is not my concern," the villain king replied in an almost bored tone, "What does concern me... Is where is your double?"
----
A group of Praetorian soldiers had taken the rooftops of the Portal Corp buildings. Though heroes took potshots at them, the constant flood of enemies into the courtyard made the focus largely off the snipers.
That ended with a sudden vacuous sound, but the snipers didn't look back at what they supposed were reinforcements. Red Renegade put his pistol to the back of the head of one of the fire commanders and pulled the trigger.
The other Maltese Resistance fighters finished the assault in a few more seconds and started setting up a new perimeter on the skeleton of the old. It was quick and decisive, and the heroes below didn't complain when bullets stopped pelting them from overhead.
Cobalt Black 3-8-9 took position on the lip of the western P.C. building and sighted in on an event that had given him concern earlier when they'd arrived. Like most Praetorian Earth natives, he could recognize Tyrant from a distance, but he was willing to let the heroes take the human monster themselves.
However, Tyrant held Kipland Durj. His double.
"Time to return the favor," he muttered as he sighted in.
----
There was a buzzing sound and a loud "ping." Tyrant's head cocked to the side as the sniper round struck his helmet and he turned to see where it had come from. Narrowing his eyes, he prepared to fire a beam that would slice Cobalt Black neatly in two.
Kipland wasn't about to have that, so he caught a hold of Tyrant's wrist, hosited himself up, and slammed his knee into the Praetorian king's face.
The arch-villain dropped the smaller scrapper and glared at him. Popping his knuckles, he ignored the round that pinged off his helmet again.
"You have my undivided attention, now," he intoned, "Congratulations."
"Whoop-de-freaking-doo..." Kip muttered back as his dark purple armor coalesced around his body and he stood up in a defensive stance.
My Stories
Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.