The Redeemers

((Some Scoop Readers have indicated that they would like an archive of some kind for this story. At first, I figured that it would be unnecessary (as previous issues of the Scoop were still available to read). However, with the incident that happened during the first week of December due to the lack of a Scoop the week before, I feel that an archive may actually be necessary now.))

Concept Introduction

The Redeemers was something I stumbled upon as I wrote Grey's Army. Various characters I'd made were bumming around, doing random hero work, and I figured it was time I gathered them up and put them to work together.

Two of them were former Outcasts, and one had worked with the Council as an undercover Longbow agent. Realizing that they had experience with villain groups, and that they wouldn't be the only reformed super-powered criminals to "turn cape," I figured I would slap them all into a hero group together.

And suddenly I had a small army of characters to deal with. I could use Freaks, Trolls, Outcasts, Hellions, Skulls, Tsoo, and in extremely special circumstances, Family members, Council and Nemesis soldiers, Arachnos troops, Crey's Paragon Protectors, Devouring Earth and maybe even Praetorians. If I wasn't already writing Air Guard, I would probably have thrown some Sky Raiders into the mix, but that's a different concept to me altogether, so I tend to keep them out of it.

Base of Operations

Unlike most heroes whose bases are kept in some ethereal "Basespace," the Redeemers are actually based in a warehouse in Skyway City. If you know the corner of the War Wall where it juts east toward the Talos Island gate, you probably know the warehouse well. It's the one next to the building you enter during the Synapse Task Force (don't worry if you've been in both, sometimes they get pushed out by the Clockwork while their crews are on patrol, much to their annoyance).

Characters

Trolls

Garm

Garm is a former Caliban. As a Troll, he terrorized neighborhoods in Eastgate (the Hollows) and Skyway City. However, for one week, he and his crew couldn't get their Superadine shipments and for a brief moment, he had a moment of clarity. When Atta finally got them a new shipment, Garm didn't partake. As he slowly regained his memory and sense of who he was, he decided it was time to leave.

To his surprise, two of his closest friends as Trolls decided to come with him...

As a Redeemer, Garm has been elected as "Second-in-Command." When the boss, Mortiganen, isn't in, he's in charge. Since he's still got some excessive testosterone in his system, he doesn't mind too much, but his leadership lacks long-term planning.

When he's on patrol, he maintains a crew that's a nice mix of Tsoo, Trolls, Outcasts and the hero Gregory Caid, who worked undercover against the Council. He likes to think that the mix shows he's at least a good enough leader to bring these former enemies together in a cohesive group, but he knows he's lucky to have people like Ashen Roast and Caid, who have helped immensely with the transition.

Since Garm's been off Superadine, he's been losing his powers. For the moment, he's still incredibly resilient and strong, but as the weeks wear on, he knows he'll have to give up the fight at some point. He hopes that when it happens, he doesn't learn the hard way, which is from the wrong end of a shotgun.

Doug the Ogre

A peculiar ogre, Doug is notable for a shock of red hair that pokes out of the back of his head. She's not too keen on telling Garm why she wanted out of the group, but the fact that as a human, she was female instead of the genderless green freak might have something to do with it (she took the name "Doug" because she knew it would be better if the other Trolls thought she was always a guy).

Doug serves as a tanker for Garm's crew. With rock growing out of her body at will, she probably serves the role even better than Ashen Roast.

Doug's losing her powers just like Garm. However, for some reason, the rate isn't as fast. Some would say it has something to do with the "petrified" state of her physiology, that maybe her hardened skin has made her metabolic rate slow down.

Briggs McBain

Briggs is a monster. Shorter than even Julius, Briggs more than makes up for his lack of height by being a small mass of condensed muscle. All that power in such a tiny frame has caused an unusual circumstance for the Troll enforcer, in that he's a lot more powerful than he should be.

Briggs has been known for beating the tar out of whole crews of Outcasts, Trolls, Tsoo, Frost Family hit squads and even a squad of Nemesis soldiers. He joined the Trolls after beating the tar out of one of their Calibans for trying to wreck his car.

Garm still doesn't know how he convinced the burly little beast to join him. In all fairness, Briggs doesn't even know why he did it, either, but he figures it had something to do with how bored he was getting with the Trolls. At least if they sent a crew to beat Garm and Doug up or even kill them, he'd get a chance to deliver a beatdown on Atta.

But the attack didn't come and Garm presented him with a different adventure. For the most part, Briggs appreciates the supergroup of former rogues for the opportunity it provides him to trick out his new van. Otherwise, he could care less if her were beating on criminals or heroes, or just kicking back in his apartment and going brain dead from television or videogames.

There is another peculiarity McBain has from his trollish counterparts. He's not getting any weaker. As the weeks go on, he's actually only getting stronger since he got off Superadine. If asked, he replies "No, I'm not working out," and shrugs disinterestedly when pressed about the information. He's not going to submit to examination, either, so it'll be a mystery left unsolved for a long time.

Outcasts

Ashen Roast

Ashen Roast is a tanker. He didn't start out as one, oh no, but he learned how after helping a group of refugees out of Boomtown. He rather liked helping people more than victimizing them, so he quit the Outcasts and signed up with the FBSA and Freedom Corps' Redeemers shortly afterward.

Ashen doesn't do much to distinguish himself. What has proven to be a source of entertainment for the rest of the group, however, is his trepidation around his best friend, Blizzard Front.

Blizzard Front

An ice blaster, Blizzard is no stranger to being different. When he was kicked out of his family and beat up by a group of classmates for his sexual preference, he was surprised the Outcasts led by a strange man named "Nor'Easter" was willing to let him in. Nor gave Blizzard some artifacts that altered his skin and made him able to throw ice. During the course of his time with the Outcasts, his homosexuality rarely came up as they were often fighting for their lives against other gangs.

When the Redeemer recruiter revealed his secret to Ashen, however, he was surprised that it suddenly became an issue. Aside from the fact that the recruiter erroneously believed he was in a relationship with a man he saw as a brother, Ashen had fears that Blizzard was "constantly checking him out." Blizzard assured him this wasn't the case, and that his preference wasn't actually about anything sexual, but that he had decided to spend his time with men because they made more sense to him.

It took a long time for Ashen to accept his friend for who he was after that. The odd thing, for which Blizzard is extremely grateful for, is that the tanker finally learned to at least let the issue go to the wayside when Briggs McBain shared his indifference to the subject with the fire tanker. Somehow, this helped put things in perspective for Ashen, and he's learned to let the issue go.

Mountain Crag

Crag's career as an Outcast ended a couple years ago, when he was professionally embarrassed by an up-and-coming katana-wielding hero. After his stint in prison for artifact smuggling, he was working as a city landscaper in Kings Row when another group of Outcasts crashed into him and he wound up with some stolen materials on his person.

Despite how it could have gone, he was able to make a statement with the cops indicating how it was all a terrible mix-up. While he was in the precinct, he saw an advertisement for the Redeemers and decided he'd throw his hat in. He was tired of trimming trees for the city.

Tsoo

Genji Lukas

Genji left the Tsoo after his mother died. He gives a number of varying reasons, but in the end, that's what did it for him. She had known what he was, even though she didn't know why. Because of this, she had come to hate him for the violence he committed, even though he was trying to learn as much magic as he could so he could try to cure her cancer.

Once she was gone, he didn't feel he had a reason to stay with the Tsoo anymore. His leader, Iron Tiger, didn't agree and sent the Strik brothers to assassinate him.

This caused him to lose three potent Tsoo members instead of just one...

The Strik Brothers, Danny and Tommy

Danny and Tommy Strik are actually Daniel and Thomas Kim, but they changed to the moniker of Strik to sound more dangerous. It turned out they were actually quite competent fighters, and nobody in their group questioned their name.

When they were sent to make an example of Genji Lukas, however, they decided they'd had enough. They were tired of roughing up shopkeepers for minor artifacts and shaking down perfectly normal people. They didn't like letting their skills go to waste so some hero could come along and bust their heads open.

So, Danny with his sword and Tommy with his empowered fists left the Tsoo and turned directly to the FBSA. In return for leniency, they turned Iron Tiger in to the authorities and were assigned several hundred hours of community service instead of prison time. They decided to turn their community service over to the Redeemers.

Freakshow

Johnny Slag

Johnny is a Redeemer lacking redemption. He saw a quick way out of prison and signed up for another chance to bring more hurt to people. While he's ticked that he can't get regular Excelsior injections like he used to, the super soldier serum they've got him hooked on is good enough to keep him alive and regenerating.

He also likes the new snazzy cybernetic arms and the retractable claws built into them. It's so much lighter than having to carry around half a wrecking dump.

For now, though, the only thing keeping Johnny in the Redeemers is a bracelet. It's queued into the MedCom system like his hospital beacon, but if it ever gets activated by his team leader, he'll be sent straight to the Zig for breaking his parole.

The Devouring Earth

Olive the Undevoured

Olive's a special case. As a young heroine, she was captured by the Devouring Earth and turned into one of their field commanders, a Greater Devoured. Once she was extracted by a team of scientists and magicians, she found that her powers had been substantially altered and she would never look human again.

Depressed, she was almost suicidal when she learned of the Redeemers from a flier on a bulletin board outside her support group. Wondering if this group would give her half the chance she was looking for to find herself again, she jumped on the opportunity.

Sometimes, when she sleeps, she still hears the Hamidon calling for her, as it does for all its children. Fortunately, her regular visits to the support group keep her wistful glances toward Eden in check.

Skulls

Somber Graves

Somber was a young Bone Daddy. He was granted the rank early on because he already had a powerful connection with the nether realm and was talented at using its denizens to his benefit. However, what the other Skulls didn't realize was that he was also communicating with the restless spirits of the families of the people his gang harassed daily.

After his cell was broken raided and arrested, he turned to whatever rehabilitation he could get. He practically jumped at the opportunity to join the Redeemers and repair the damage he did as a Skull.

Hellions

Cinder Burst

A former Hellion, Cinder thought the gang would teach him some cool magic that he could use to really make some noise in the world. What he found instead was a group of petty thugs that didn't know whether their butts were punched or bored when it came to the dangerous forces they dabbled in.

After an ally accidentally burned himself to death because he was trying to summon an Inferno Demon, he decided he'd had enough. Cinder turned himself over to the police and was working through his third month of community service when he heard about the Redeemers from his parole officer.

Crey Industries

Thomas William Redshadow

A former Paragon Protector, Thomas was hit by none other than Synapse himself in order to begin his path toward redemption. Hitting his head rather hard, his mind reverted to his old personality, apparently obliterating his memories as a Protector. With a year of memories lost or turned to fog, he tried to look into his past only to find Crey trying to reacquire him and heroes trying to put him in the hospital.

After Mynx tore open his abdomen thinking he was trying to get revenge on her, he was found by Briggs McBain, who brought him to the Redeemers where Mortiganen helped save his life and remove the bizarre psychic presence that was inflicting damage upon him. If a vein hadn't popped in his sinus, he would have suffered from an embolism and died to protect Crey's secrets. Because of the wizard's work, he wouldn't need to worry about it ever again.

Thomas has a unique honor among the Redeemers. He's a solitary investigator, allowed to go about alone as a hero without a crew watching over him. While this causes some friction between him and the other Redeemers, they don't know the real reason for this assignment is so Longbow can use him as bait against the Crey organization.

Others

Mortiganen

Mortiganen was a thorn in the side of the Midnight Squad. He means that as a literal description of his status as a villain. He was never more than a mild annoyance for them, and they often had to help clean up messes made by the unforeseen consequences of his research.

In all fairness, he did research many consequences and prepared for them accordingly, but sometimes his work attracted the attention of powerful demons and demigods that had fallen from grace, and those were whims no mortal and most immortals couldn't even begin to fathom.

His contributions to the magical community were small and easily overlooked. Cheaper spell scroll inks and materials, many minor particulars on various outsiders and monsters, and even a handy concoction for making potion brewing less repugnant without altering the effects.

However, because of the trouble he'd caused and the fact that he never did anything unless he expected some kind of payoff, Mortiganen found himself classified along with the rakish elements of the world. Unaligned and on the wrong side of the law, he realized it would be a short time before the Circle of Thorns or the Mu mystics tried to embroil him in their newest conflict. Neither side appealed to him, so he applied to his old acquaintances in the Midnight Squad for help. They pointed him in the direction of Freedom Corps who turned him in to the Redeemers.

He was surprised when they elected him the leader of the group. However, he's not about to let the power go to his head when he has a responsibility to perform. If there's one thing he hopes people remember him for, it's that he's a strict professional. His profession happens to be that he should be a hero, so he works to direct his group in the defense of this city.

Gregory and Mider Caid

Gregory Caid was born without magic. For most kids, that's perfectly fine. For the Caid family, a family of wizards, magicians and sorcerers, that was not perfectly fine.

His parents feared the magic had left their bloodline, but they didn't let that fear cloud their love for him. However, when Mider was born, and it turned out that he had an abundance of mystical potential, the attention quickly diverted from the athletic child and focused strongly on the new one.

His parents tried to keep their attention on them evenly, but with Mider's growing power and their need to keep tabs on his actions as they threatened far more than an average rambunctious kid, Gregory seemed to be left out.

This was why Longbow turned him toward undercover work in the Council when he signed up in an effort to prove himself. They used his family history as a sob story to convince the Council that he was a desperate man and the Cor Leonis ate it up.

Mider, however, joined the ranks of MAGI. Because of the close work between Freedom Corps and the FBSA, he found himself relegated to the role of "clerk" officially (because his relationship with his brother was "suspect"), while unofficially he helped in major experiments and research. It's actually a point of shame for Mider that he was partly responsible for the ease of the theft of the Wheel of Destruction, since he was in the vault in Galaxy City, researching the device when the Banished Pantheon cult attacked, but Azuria assured him that she thought the cult had been beaten back enough to not make such an attempt, so she held some of the blame for herself.

His brother, however, had done such a good job posing as a Council soldier that he'd been promoted to Archon status. When Gregory was on the verge of discovering the source of some mystical ammunition another Archon was experimenting with, a hero group crashed his cell and arrested him. After he gave whatever information he could, Freedom Corps set to work to reinitiate him as a hero.

After a few months of working as field agents, Mider and Gregory were informed of the Redeemers project by some of their friends, so they signed on to help out. Gregory found himself attached to Garm's crew, but Mider, in a stunning turn of events, found himself in charge of his own crew.

Martin Sanders

A former hobo, Martin was abducted during the course of the Rikti War. The Rikti started experimenting on him and found out the hard way that he wasn't about to become one of their monstrosities anytime soon. They also found out what it feels like to come face-to-face with Hades himself, though Sanders doesn't remember that part too well.

After helping usher a group of refugees through Boomtown for two years, he and the refugees were rescued and he was initiated into Freedom Corps. Partnered up with Mider Caid, he did some general patrolling before being brought into "clerk" status. While working as a paperwork pusher in an official sense, he still had a lot of physical work to do, so his patrolling resumed. Agent Wild helped him with the transition and when the Redeemers were formed, he helped the gruff man work as liaison for the group.

Agent Wild

Agent Wild works as a liaison for numerous groups throughout Paragon City. He hates when people think he's Agent Wilder, who tends to use and abuse the people working for him all in the effort of doing damage to the credibility and infrastructure of Arachnos. Wild feels he's more honorable than that, and if Arachnos is to be taken down, it'll have to be done in a stand-up fight, not with back-alley tactics.

As the major liaison for the Redeemers, Wild maintains a long professional distance from the group, preferring that they earn their place on their own merit rather than being considered a stable for misfit Longbow troops.

---

My Stories

Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.

The Council van crashed into the side of the highway and ground to a halt. The rusty green van following it screeched to a stop just next to the broken-down machine and the back doors popped open. Four costumed heroes dropped out and approached the other van.

"Alright, guys," the first hero said calmly as he walked to the back door, "Let's make this nice and easy..."

"Dammit," a large, green-skinned man growled to the man in the passenger seat of the van he'd just exited, "Doug, did you have to blast their tires out like that? Look at how they crashed into the guard wall here! I'm pretty sure this comes out of our per diem!"

"We get paid for this?" the Ogre asked as he started to exit the van, "Cool."

"Kind of," the Caliban replied, "We're compensated for our expenses, the food we need to eat, and there are a few perks, but we don't make much more than the average cop... Heck, we probably make less. You never noticed?"

"I only remember some F.C. toadies bringing meals to the meetings."

Garm slapped his forehead and growled something to himself. He had to go through this with the other members of the group every couple of weeks, he'd thought Doug was smart enough to figure out the payroll system for himself. Heck, even Briggs had done that.

They were the Redeemers, and this was just one squad of the whole super group. Their numbers fluctuated every day, but they usually had between seventy-five and a hundred former rogues that claimed membership. Currently, they were a tad on the low side, some members had died, others were found to still have outstanding warrants and had to postpone their "heroic" activity until they'd completed their sentences, and some either quit or reverted back to being criminals. Some, however, were true believers of the cause.

"Why are we doing this again?" a man dressed like a Tsoo Sorcerer, Genji Lucas, asked as he prepared his arcane rites, "It can't be for fame..."

"Because we prefer being out here instead of prison," the Caliban growled, "Jebus guys, we've been at this for five months, I'd think you'd get the idea by now."

"Oh, we get it," the first hero commented, "Genji just misses the old days when he could electrocute information out of people."

"Or threaten to turn them over to the Circle, Greg."

"Hey!" the scrapper shouted as he banged on the back door of the Council van, "You guys still alive in there? What's taking so long?"

Gregory Caid was answered by a burst of gunfire perforating the doors and his body. He shook violently as he fell flat on his back.

"Ah, dammit," Garm muttered as he rubbed the bridge of his nose, "They never do it easy."

"You Trolls think you can stop us?" the Adjutant shouted as he hopped out the back of the ruined doorway, "You have... Oh. These guys."

"Yeah, these guys," the former Troll replied, seemingly unconcerned for his fallen friend, "Now stand down or we'll manhandle you."

"Fire!" the masked man shouted and more Council troops emerged (it was funny how many they could pack into the back of a van), leveled their weapons on the heroes and fired.

Garm and Doug took the brunt of the attack, Genji diving behind them and muttering an enchantment that would raise a small fog to protect his allies and the other hero, a former Outcast named Ashen Roast, took to the sky, dropping suddenly on the van's roof. The troops prepared to fire another volley, but the orange-skinned young man took a deep breath and blew a gout of flame at the terrorist soldiers, breaking their ranks and causing them to start firing in all sorts of directions.

The former Trolls pressed the advantage, tackling two of the soldiers and punching them in their faces to knock them unconscious. Another came out of the van, but Doug caught him in mid-air and chucked him into one of the troops they hadn't tackled.

The Adjutant moved to kick Garm in the cheek, but his knee gave out as Gregory pushed himself up in a crab walk and kicked him in the back of the leg. When the man fell into his lap, the regenerating scrapper wrapped his legs around his foe's waist and his arms around his neck.

"Time to meet the Sand Man," he muttered as the Adjutant struggled to breathe, "Don't worry, you're not going to-"

The Council soldier suddenly roared and turned into a large, bloodthirsty, rampaging wolf. It wasn't the first time the gathered heroes had seen the phenomenon, but it was never fun whenever it happened.

"I'll take Heads," Garm muttered as Ashen automatically threw a coin to his and Doug's feet.

The coin came up "Tails."

"Alright!" the Ogre cheered as he scrambled up and threw his arms back in a quick stretch, which accidentally caused him to backhand the Marksman behind him, "Time to get this-"

The War Wolf punched him in the face, sending the large green man tumbling into the back of the Council van. It then swiped at Ashen and Garm before grabbing the van and trying to topple it over the side of the overpass.

However, something was stopping the large hairy beast. AS it tried to throw the van over the edge, it felt something tugging at the front of the machine in the other direction.

That something was Briggs McBain.

Briggs was another former Troll, like Doug and Garm, but he was much (very much) shorter than his compatriots. He was, in fact, shorter than the infamous Julius. However, what he lacked in height, he more than made up for with muscle mass.

"Somebody bop the dog on the nose!" he roared as he yanked the truck back and pulled the man-animal off balance.

"Done!" Doug shouted as he delivered a hard jab straight to the former Adjutant's snout, his fist wrapped in stone so it delivered much more of an impact.

The War Wolf fell backward, but before it could hit the ground, Garm and Gregory caught it, lifted it, and tossed it over the edge. Looking down, they watched the wolf bounce off the side of one building and continue down to the streets below and the "Land of the Lost."

"Oh boy," Ashen murmured, "He's gonna come back and he's gonna be ticked."

"Finish detaining the rest of these guys," the Caliban sighed, "I'll get ready for their boss. Briggs? Are the keys still in the ignition?"

"What're you doin' with my baby, G?"

"Nothin' it wasn't redesigned for."

---

My Stories

Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.

"Now, just so we have this straight," the wizard, Mortiganen, whispered hoarsely as he looked over the report, "You engaged in a high-speed chase on a busy freeway, caused a small pile-up, and then proceeded to run the leader of the criminals over with your van... The witnesses were not pleased."

"Hey, it's not my fault he reverted back to human form right before I hit him..." Garm chuckled back, "But it was funny watching him scream obscenities right before I did..."

The two leaders of the Redeemers stared at each other for a few minutes. Garm could swear the room had gotten darker and colder.

Mortiganen used to be a bona fide super villain, with such a magnitude of power that no crew was necessary. However, the market for freelance dark wizards dried up in recent years. Also, with the Mu and the Circle of Thorns aggressively expanding (he noted this, it looked like they might be gearing up for another war) and groups like the Legacy Chain and Midnight Squad becoming more prominent and with such elements working against him, Mort figured it was a good idea to look into more legitimate employment, and there were few markets open for one of his skills.

Fortunately, the dark wizard took his job very seriously. He was employed to uphold the law, so he was going to uphold the law. Since most of the world didn't really know him (a fact that irked him something fierce; he used to do battle with and work alongside the Midnight Squad before the Rikti War for goodness' sake!), he didn't have to worry about angry reprisals from old compatriots that were afraid he'd sell their secrets or old foes looking to settle a grudge. His knowledge of the world and his capabilities as a natural leader was what led to the former criminals electing him leader of this unusual experiment.

Now if only the loser of that competition would be more compliant. Of course, he knew Garm only thought he should learn to lighten up. He wondered why the Trolls held so strongly to their ambivalent view of the world, even when they were supposedly cured of their Superadine addictions.

"Well, Agent Wild wasn't pleased," the wizard finally intoned, "As our liaison, he caught a lot of heat for your little stunt. As it stands, you and your crew are suspended for a week. Barring emergencies, of course."

Garm smiled and nodded. He was expecting something, anything, and in fact had prepared for worse. The fact that Mort was being lenient showed that he was probably rubbing off on the guy.

Mortiganen twirled his mustache and narrowed his eyes at his second-in-command.

"Suffice it to say, Garm, it is not alright to run criminals over with your van."

"Got it," the Caliban chortled, "So, what did D.A.T.A. have to say about that gear we recovered?"

"Just interdimensional monitoring equipment..." the wizard shrugged, "Nothing incredible. Well, incredible in our point of view..."

----------

The Redeemers were not a premier super group. They weren’t the Freedom Phalanx, they weren’t the Vindicators, heck, they were barely affiliated with Freedom Corps. However, with the influx of heroes in the city, there were a fair number of criminals that were looking for an easy way to avoid “getting their heads punched clean through their butt cheeks.”

Most of them went solo, joined up with the various disparate hero groups, or just tried to go back to normal lives. Along with information on their former compatriots, they brought equal parts hope and contempt to the groups. Many civilians recognized former Trolls or Outcasts for what they were, and the crisp demeanor of former Council or Fifth Column troops often revealed the former allegiances of some heroes much too quickly. Many civilians simply didn’t trust that “villains” could be rehabilitated. However, somebody in the ranks of the F.C. decided it was time to pull off the same concept as a public relations stunt, and some freelance reformed criminals were brought into Freedom Corps’ “Redeemers” super group, or “Vindicators Lite” as the media called the project.

After his debriefing, Garm mulled over the day’s events and some of the brief history he’d had with the group. More often than not, his compatriots had dealt with angry mobs hurling produce at them (rotten and not) after successful missions against bank robbers or terrorists. He knew that it was going to be a long road, but sometimes he really wished more people would just live with the moment and realize they’d just been saved by a slightly unorthodox group of heroes.

For now, however, he wanted to relax with his partners and friends. It was surprising how easily his old crew, Briggs McBain and Doug the Ogre, had settled into working with the former Tsoo sorcerer, Genji Lucas, and the Outcasts, Ashen Roast and Blizzard Front. He thought it was funny that Briggs, of all people, had helped settle the fire tanker’s issues with his best friend’s homosexuality.

“Is he trying to date you?” he murmured to himself in a half chuckle as he walked into the impromptu cafeteria of their converted warehouse base, “No. Then what’s the problem?”

“What’re you muttering?”

Garm looked up and took note of the red and white uniform of a man who worked as their liaison to Freedom Corps. They had a few, for accountability purposes, but this was their in-house man, Martin Sanders. Martin normally wore street clothes, so his being in uniform probably meant he was about to go out on patrol. The “capes-and-spandex” look really didn’t suit him, though.

“Just musing about my crew,” the Troll Caliban answered, “What’s up?”

“A couple crews got pinned down in Brickstown,” the former bum grunted, “I’m about to grab my team and attempt a rescue. Want in?”

“Sure. We’re still amped from our tumble this morning…” Garm stopped, and then bit his lower lip.

“What?”

“Well, we just got suspended by your partner, Wild, and Mort was all too happy to comply.”

Sanders chuckled.

“You think I’m gonna let that stop you? We’ve got friends in trouble! Come on!”

---

My Stories

Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.

Garm couldn’t stop laughing as they arrived in Brickstown. The look on Mortiganen’s face was absolutely priceless before the magic in the teleporter fired up and they zipped away and tumbled into the stone-and-mortar city.

However, when he looked at his communicator’s map to see how much distance they had to travel to the first pack of Redeemers to rescue, he cursed. They weren’t able to requisition McBain’s van for this trip, and the big guy had, in fact, turned down coming.

“Willy hears ya,” he grunted with his head under the hood after the Caliban kicked him in the leg after asking for the third time, “Willy don’t care.”

Which had prompted the use of the teleporter in the first place. The trolls didn’t care much for the only ones they had set up, stylized magic rings with hovering stones inscribed with runes. They distrusted magic, even though most people thought they were produced through mystical means. However, as the mystical versions were the only ones available, and Garm had already pointed out that leaping from their warehouse in Skyway City all the way to Brickstown would be a serious pain in his ankles, that was what they had to do. They also had to do it fast, before Mortiganen stopped them.

“I don’t see this being much easier,” he grunted as he limbered up, “At least I didn’t have to jump over to the train station.”

“Time’s wastin’, G,” Doug got a running start and jumped into the distance, “I always hated this part!”

It wasn’t the jump that bothered them. Their legs had enough muscle density to propel them almost as far as a lot of the better-known heroes in the city. However, landing was usually painfully difficult. Heroes had training when it came to how to properly leap across long distances. Trolls, and a lot of the criminals in the city, often had to go through a crash course.

And crash is what Doug did. He’d miscalculated in his jump and wound up banking off the ledge of an apartment building. There was a loud curse that echoed through the alley he landed in, but shortly thereafter, he was back with the rest of the group. Doug fared slightly better, but he still winced every time he landed from the pain in his ankles or he would land awkwardly and tumble across the roof before righting himself and pushing on.

This went on for nearly a mile before they finally arrived at the first base where their compatriots were pinned down. Taking a breather outside, they could hear the sounds of fighting just inside the door. It sounded like a lot of loud metal crashing together.

“Fantastic,” Genji sighed, “Freaks. I’m starting to wish Briggs came with us.”

----------

It wasn’t the first time Mider Caid wished he was back behind his M.A.G.I. desk, and it wouldn’t be the last. The cell had been empty and his crew took the opportunity to root through everything for any evidence they’d need to make their arrests stick. However, what they hadn’t counted on was the sudden arrival of the cybernetic monstrosities, complete with a full complement of Tank-types and their Tank Swiper leader, simply named “Blender.”

The freaks caught them split apart, and the first one to find them was the team’s scrapper, who happened to be a former Freak named Johnny Slag. While he was no longer a Freak, he was a regenerating cyborg, and his refined combat prosthetics enabled him to still stand up to his former associates for a few minutes.

Unfortunately, those few minutes didn’t help as much as necessary. The former rogues weren’t used to working with each other, and they rapidly fell apart. The wizard tried to rally them together, but they distrusted him even more than the others.

The former Tsoo ninjas, the Strik brothers, ducked into their own little corner early on. Hiding behind some machinery, they were able to create a bottleneck effect that allowed them to face two or three of the smaller Freaks at once and kept the larger Tank Freaks at bay. Mider worked his way to them, followed by a former Skull named Somber. Somber, despite having run with such a nefarious crowd, was a surprisingly timid young man. Caid could only surmise that the other magician had learned of a terrible price for wielding his dark arts, and preferred to fight with just his two hands if he could.

The rest of the crew, an Outcast named Crag, a Hellion named Cinder and a plant-like heroine named Olive wound up tread underfoot as the Freaks pressed their advantage. They weren’t dead, as their MedCom beacons were still registering their connection to the grid, but they weren’t in good shape, either.

Pinned down behind the machinery, Mider tried to regroup the remains of his crew. He was terrified, and he didn’t know if the distress signal he’d sent had made it to the Redeemers’ base. However, they still had to try to get through this.

“Alright, now listen!” he hissed, “I told you guys to follow my lead, and you balked! Now look where it’s gotten us?”

A staccato of gunfire and a hail of bullets against the machinery punctuated his statement. The Freaks were toying with them, now.

“Well, gracious leader,” Danny Strik rasped, “What do you suggest? They’ve got the guns, they’ve got the numbers, and they’ve got-“

“We’ve got your woman!” Blender shouted, lifting a clenched claw that held Olive by her arm in a painful, pinching grip, “And unless you come out from behind there, we’re going to see just how far we can push these nifty little MedCom devices! I bet we could pluck all this green girl’s limbs off before she finally croaks!”

And with that, Mider had a plan. It wasn’t a very good plan, but it was something. It gave them an opening, it gave them a surprise, and it gave them a momentary edge. Muttering an incantation, he walked around the machinery, grunting a few words as bullets tagged him, but he kept his focus. He could hear Olive groaning as she fought against the pain in her arm and it caused him to shrug off the Swiper that came too close. He walked up to Blender and placed his hand against Olive’s ankle.

“Boom,” he rasped before fire enveloped them all.

---

My Stories

Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.

Olive felt like she was in a dream. It was just like when she was trapped inside the body of one of the Devoured. People didn’t understand what that was like… Not unless you were a former victim who survived, and there were scant few of those. In the support group she was a part of she knew five others, just humans, and they all had such a terrible fear of plants of all kinds that she had to wear makeup to conceal just how altered she really was.

Her misery at being unable to truly connect or help those people or herself was going to have to be pushed aside. She knew what had led to this moment, and she had to figure out how to get out of it. One twitch of her wrist and she would be able to-

She felt herself get hefted into the air and something was digging into her arm. Somebody was shouting harshly, and suddenly there was light everywhere. When her vision cleared, she saw the Freakshow all lying all the ground, pushing themselves up, and there was fire everywhere. She cringed away, until she felt a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

“Relax. It’s mine and can’t hurt you. The floor’s yours for now,” her team leader, Mider Caid, murmured, “Better hurry, that good feeling you’ve got doesn’t last much longer than a minute…”

“It’ll be a good minute,” she replied before she flexed her forearms and a number of special seeds were deposited into her hands.

She hurled the seeds into the midst of the Freaks. One leveled a shotgun on her but his blast went wide when a burning vine shot out of the ground and batted his arms aside. He looked up in terror at the fiery, sinewy thing and screamed as it wrapped around his waist, lifted him into the air and, in the same motion, slammed his head to the floor. Other burning vines did the same to the other Freaks with varying results.

One turned his shotgun on the vine facing him and blasted it apart. No sooner did he do this than Danny Strik leaped over the machinery, his katana drawn in an aggressive manner, and deftly slashed through the gun. The ninja followed up his attack with a handle strike to the nose and a knee to the gut that put the thug down. Another Freak, this one armed with a submachine gun, started firing short bursts at Danny, and he twirled his sword about to deflect the rounds.

“No way!” the man screamed as he swatted the weapon, “Come on you piece of-!”

His sentence was interrupted by the glowing fist of Tommy Strik, who happened to have been a follower of the Green Ink training. He wailed on the gunner for a few more rounds before finally leaping up, whirling in the air, and dropping his fist right down on the goon’s head. The Freak bobbed his head up and down a little before falling over in a heap.

A couple of the Freaks tried to escape, and they ran into their old friend, Johnny Slag. He was flicking his claws in and out of his wrists absent-mindedly, but when one ran by him, he kicked his foot out, tripping the man, and slashed out the Excelsior feed tube at the same time. He glared at the Smasher and looked over his one cybernetic arm.

“One-on-one, punk,” he growled, “You don’t stand a chance.”

The smasher rushed at him, his big hammer arm in the air, ready to strike. However, this was just what Johnny wanted as he sidestepped and let his opponent crush a nearby crate. He then smashed his claws through the wrist and severed the heavy weight from the arm. The smasher stumbled backwards and fell on his rump, looking up at the extended claws Slag kept pointed at his eyes.

“Why’d I become a hero, you ask?” he growled, “I like the upgrades.”

The front doors to the factory smashed in, signaling that Martin’s crew had arrived. In a blur, the Freakshow goons were defeated and piled up in a neat pile next to the machinery Mider Caid and his crew had previously been taking shelter behind. Thinking it was over, they started to attend to their injured and wounded.

“You did really well there,” Mider said to Olive, “Are you okay?”

“I don’t ever want to be knocked out like that again,” she muttered back.

“We’ll work on making sure of that,” the wizard favored her with a rare smile, “Any chance you can get any of these guys back on their feet?”

He gestured to the remaining unconscious. Crag and Cinder remained on the floor. Unfortunately, Olive shook her head.

“I have spores that can heal, but none yet to help revive friends.”

“Does anybody have any Lazareen?” Martin asked.

“Yeah!” a voice shouted from the machinery as cyborg bodies started tumbling off the pile, “I got your Lazareen! Right here!”

The heroes watched in mild concern as Blender pushed his massive bulk out of the wreckage of his goons. There was something different about him, though. Steam hissed out of his appendages and they looked “fragile” for lack of a better word. Suddenly, his arms popped open and an array of blades were spinning from the points where his forearms should have begun.

“Something I’ve always wondered about heroes,” he growled sadistically as the blades sped up, “Will they blend?”

He was like a walking buzzsaw. Worse, he was his namesake. They were tough, even Garm had earlier demonstrated that Trolls could stand up to Freaks when he took a Swiper’s hooked blade to the chest and promptly broke the man’s cybernetic arm off at the shoulder and started beating him with it. However, this was worse than anything anyone ever faced before. This would be like taking a Nemesis Mole Machine’s drill to the face. Worse, there would be no way to stop him before he seriously hurt somebody.

“Ideas, anyone?” Martin asked as he took a stance.

Somber pulled the scrapper back and knelt next to Crag and Cinder. As Blender started to approach, the former Skull started muttering. If Sanders didn’t know any better, he would have sworn it sounded like a prayer.

---

My Stories

Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.

Somber wasn’t exactly praying. He was begging the forgiveness of the souls whose energy he was about to pull from. They were all throughout the city, the spirits of the dead, from all throughout history, from all across the world (a fact which perplexed the former Skull). He’d always been able to see them, to communicate with them, and, after some practice, to command them. Now, he was asking them to forgive him, because he needed their help to stop this psychotic Freakshow Tank that was about to turn all of the heroes into puree.

They answered him. They answered loud and clear. Somehow, he had found just the right group, and a teaming mass of screaming souls came pouring through the wall, blazed through Blender, and unleashed a torrent of dark energy across Mountain Crag and Cinder Burst. The two jumped up with a roar, while Blender seemed to have gotten dazed and his arms were no longer facing forward. Crag took advantage of the momentary distraction to summon a large stone hammer from the concrete below them and stepped in close to slam the heavy weight against the Tank’s face.

The big Freak stumbled, but came back with his arms starting to spin again. Vines shot from the floor and wrapped about the twisting limbs, holding the blades in place. Blender lurched, and almost got a shout out before Martin Sanders punched his bugged out eyes back in.

The fight wasn’t over yet, however. Blender thrashed free of the vines holding him down and took a swipe at Sanders. A large boulder, thrown by Doug, hurtled through the air and smashed into the thin frame of the arm, causing the spinning to stop. The other arm was being held down by Crag and Garm, with the Caliban trying to break the Tank’s blades off and the former Outcast trying to break the arm at the elbow. Blender tossed them off, but wasn’t ready for Ashen Roast, who came flying over the other heroes to drive a fiery blade into the villain’s face.

His head on fire, Blender started screaming and running around, thrashing violently. He turned at the wrong angle and wound up with another blast of fire in his face. Doug finished him off with another boulder, but he rolled this one across the floor like a bowling ball.

“Okay,” the Tank gasped as he lied on the ground, smoldering, “I’m done.”
---

The other groups had either recovered and overcome their opponents or ported to the hospitals. The latter groups were an unfortunate case, as the criminal organizations they were against were able to move their operations elsewhere. They weren’t dealing with anybody as bloodthirsty as Blender, so it wasn’t a complete loss. Still, Martin started taking information on the various cases the groups were working on so Freedom Corps agents, contacts and informants could be on the lookout when he got the information back to them. While they went through that, the others went about their business.

“I want in on your crew,” Johnny Slag growled at Garm, “I’m sick and tired of being pushed around by a pansy…”

“Hey!” Mider shouted, “It wasn’t my fault you got your butt handed to you by your old friends! If people would listen to me-!”

“You wouldn’t want in on my group anyway,” Garm chuckled, “Our scrapper is his brother.”

A hand clapped onto Johnny’s shoulder roughly. Before Slag could react, Gregory had yanked one of the tubes out of his arm and kicked the former Freakshow Swiper in the back of the knee. The dark-skinned, green-haired man looked back at the man angrily while he righted himself and reattached his arm tube.

“You’ve got a bad attitude, Freak-boy,” the rough-shaven man rasped, “I suggest you un-“

“Caid, beat it,” Mortiganen’s voice resounded through the chamber, “Garm and I have some discussing to do about what it means to be suspended.”

“Now, hang on,” Martin tried to interject on the conversation, but the wizard dismissed the liaison with a wave of his hand.

“You have your hands full, transient. Besides, your counterpart is quite vexed with you. I suggest you prepare yourself for a loss in pay.”

Sanders just shook his head and went back to his work. Garm folded his arms over his chest and settled in for a long talk about how “the rules apply to everyone.”

---

“That must be the pizza…”

The Mob Specialist started walking toward the door, but the Paragon protector standing next to it held a hand up and waved him back.

“It’s alright, Sergeant,” the generic hero said calmly, “I can get it.”

“Yeah, but…” the man smiled, “Okay, cool. Thanks, Blades.”

The Protector chuckled a little as he reached for the handle of the door. To him, just because he was one of the Crey Corporation’s elite didn’t mean he couldn’t do simple things like acquiring pizza from the door. Besides, it was probably better public relations to show that the Paragon Protectors were willing to do menial tasks as well as providing security for major facilities.

However, when he opened the door, two things hit him at once. The first was the aroma of the pizza, which was apparently a supreme-style. The second was Synapse’s body, hurtling through the doorway and sending the Protector flipping through the air so he would land hard on his head. There was an audible crack as his visor smashed against the concrete, but by then, half the facility had been wiped out.

“Come on, Synapse!” Mynx shouted as she followed behind her mentor, “Leave some for me and the new guy!”

“I’ve been here for two years,” the dark-skinned wizard with red-dyed hair holding the pizza box mused, “I’ve been here for some of the most pivotal events, alongside many other ‘rookie’ heroes. It’s not fair to call me a new guy, especially since you were using me for this pizza scam…”

“Ooh, ‘I make the pizza hot,’” the catgirl snarked, “’I’m really important. Stop calling me new meat.’”

“Oh, knock it off, Mynx,” Synapse chuckled as he zipped up to the two heroes and reached into the pizza box, “Cory’s a great guy, and this pizza thing was funny… Too bad I went and cleared this place out before they could blink.”

Mynx looked down at the Protector on the floor and nudged him with her toe.

“You kinda missed this one, boss.”

The wizard knelt down and tapped the weapons at the Protector’s side.

“He… He has swords? That’s new…”

“Let him be,” Synapse muttered, “I got the files out of the cabinets that we need… We better move on.”

“Will you two still need me?” Cory asked.

“Oh, yeah!” Synapse said as he reached into the box again and pulled another slice from the pizza, “You really do keep this thing hot!”

---

My Stories

Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.

"You okay, Tom?" Henry asks, "You seem down in the dumps."

The young man shakes his head and snorts.

"I came to this city thinking I had an edge..." he looks at his curved blades and scrunches his face up in disgust before continuing, "I didn't mean that as a pun! I thought, with my sword-skill, ambidexterity and agility, I'd be on the fast track as a major hero here! Then I got here, and it seems almost every other hero has got two blades of some kind."

"You came here to be famous?"

Wong arches his eyebrow and grins. He notes the hero's disappointed expression and shakes his head amusedly.

"Relax, kid. Ambition's not so terrible a thing in this business. Sure, the major players like Statesman and Sister Psyche look down their noses at those of us trying to make a living, but in this day and age, it’s time we recognized just what kind of a lucrative position up-and-coming heroes like you are in.”

“Well…” Tom seems apprehensive, but he’s still open to the sales pitch, “I didn’t come here for money, but it would be nice to be able to pay my rent…”

“Look,” Henry reaches over and takes the hero by the shoulder while slipping him a card, “I’ve been watching you street-sweep the Hellions around here. I’ve also been paying attention to your broadcast traffic, and I’m glad you finally came to me. You’ve got talent, kid, and I think it’s time it was both recognized and properly honed. Now, I’ve been getting word from Crey about a job they want someone of skills like yours for. If you’re not up to snuff, they’ll get you the training you need.”

“Crey?” he looks at Henry with a bit of trepidation, “Are you sure? I mean, with what’s been in the news…”

“Hey, the Countess is in prison, it’s a brave new Crey…”

----------

Thomas Redshadow woke up coughing blood. He pushed himself off the floor and wondered where he was. There were Crey guards strewn about everywhere. Some of the men were groaning and others were just unconscious. There wasn’t the tell-tale scent of gunpowder, so he had no idea what had happened.

“Maybe it was some kind of gas,” he gurgled as he pushed himself up, “Oh… Where am I?”

That was when he noticed that his vision was severely hampered. Half his vision was obscured by blood. The other half was fractured and yellow in some parts. Reaching up to the visor he was wearing, he started pulling bits of glass away from his face. As he plunked the third piece away, stopped.

“Wait… I don’t wear a helmet…”

He sat back and looked at himself. He didn’t recognize what he saw. His home-made outfit of armor-imbedded leather was gone. It was replaced with a bizarre blue-and-yellow uniform that he recognized as that of the Paragon Protectors.

“I’m not a…” Thomas stopped.

He wasn’t a Paragon Protector.

Why was he wearing one of their uniforms? What was he doing in a Crey facility that seemed to have just suffered an attack?

What was going on?

“Is everybody alright?” he called over to one of the guards picking himself back up.

“I think we’re okay, Protector,” the guard grunted, “What hit us?”

“I don’t know…”

Redshadow pushed himself off the floor, wobbled a little from dizziness, then lurched to the door.

“I’ll go… I’ll go check and see what’s outside.”

He didn’t turn back when the guard asked if he was alright. He didn’t turn back when he was half a block away. He didn’t turn back when he heard the guards shouting for him.

He had to get away and find out what was going on.

----------

Henry was looking over his reports when he heard the hero walk in front of him. He nodded to him and reached for his communicator to find a list of objectives that needed doing in Atlas Park. However, the tip of a blade touched his wrist and he looked up to see a man in a bloody Paragon protector uniform glaring at him through a hole in his visor. A pair of steel-blue eyes pierced into his and the man’s mouth was held in a thin line. A trickle of blood was running down the man’s nose and the white of his left eye was extremely bloodshot.

“Who are you?” Henry Peter Wong asked the Protector, “And why are you threatening me?”

“Crey needed somebody of my skills,” Thomas Redshadow said coldly, “Why can’t I remember most of this past year?”

Wong’s eyes widened as he recognized the man. The last time he’d seen him, he was boarding the Yellow Line for King’s Row and the Crey offices there. He remembered the hero because when he never heard from the man again and when he had asked around among his contacts in Crey, they thoroughly chilled him to the bone when they replied that they’d never heard of the hero and that it would behoove him to never ask again.

Wong knew what that meant, and it made him sick to his stomach that he had led this man to a fate worse than death. What was worse…

“I was trying to help you,” he whispered.

“Right,” Thomas’ expression didn’t change, “Do you mind-?”

There was a shout that came from the Universal Super Group Base Portal just behind Wong. The Hero Corps representative turned to see a band of heroes come barreling over the edge of the podium holding up the statue to take down the Paragon Protector harassing the man who had helped a lot of them at the beginning of their careers. He tried to raise his hands to stop them, but the cry of “Badge!” went up and they seemed to be blind to the idea that this wasn’t what it looked like.

When he turned back, Thomas Redshadow was already long-gone, leaping into the distance with a band of heroes giving chase.

“I’ll see what I can do to help you,” Henry pulled his communicator from his belt and started dialing for Colleen Saramango, “We’re getting to the bottom of this.”

---

My Stories

Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.

They didn’t catch him. He had to dive into the filth of the sewers and get lost in all the twisty passages there to escape them, and he himself got lost. It wasn’t until a week later, after fighting through Lost, Vahzilok zombies and Hellions that he found his way out of the sewers and back into the streets of Skyway City. Reeking of sludge and filth, he made his way first to one of the rivers. A set of Trolls watched him like he was insane, but they didn’t do anything to stop him.

The filth washed easily from the surface of Redshadow’s uniform and he was glad the smell went with it. Once he’d finished rinsing the outfit as best he could, he turned to his own body. After a week of rolling in waste, it felt good to have reasonably cleaner water to rinse off with.

-----

“Okay, Synapse, I’ll see you tomorrow,” Mynx called as the last of the day’s training wrapped up, “Those guys you had investigating the Clockwork show up yet?”

“Nah,” the super speed hero replied, “They were pretty green… I’d have thought a veteran would have shown up to help them or something… Maybe I should go check up on them.”

“Maybe…”

Mynx started heading for the Yellow Line. She had a party to go to in the club, Pocket D, and she didn’t feel like taking the long way to either the Founder’s Falls Entrance or the Talos Island entrance. She was just debating whether or not she would go to Overbrook to avoid having to go to Kings Row when she saw him. It was a Paragon Protector with a broken visor. He was standing on the walkway between her and the railway station.

“I know who sent you!” she shouted as her claws popped out from her fingertips, “I’m not going back to Crey today!”

“Wait!” was all Thomas could get out before she dove into him.

At the base of the bridge, just under the station, Mynx looked to see she’d stabbed into the Protector’s abdomen. As she tensed to have to fight more, however, he simply grunted and tried to push her off. There was something strange about how he did it, though. It was too gentle for a fight.

“Help…” he said weakly, and she recoiled in shock.

Thomas looked at the girl and had a passing memory. It was something about getting bowled over and she was standing over him afterward, but it was all foggy.

“Help… Me…”

Mynx seemed to notice there was either something different about him, too.

“Wait…” she said as she pulled her claws out of him, “Just… Just hang on, let me get some help…”

The catgirl bounded off of him and started dialing into her communicator, calling for any heroes with healing magic, technology or medical training who could help. Most were already involved with teams fighting crime or had to get their equipment ready before they could arrive, others were simply dismissive. A lot of heroes didn’t care if a Paragon Protector died, anyway.

“Come on, come on!” she shouted into her communicator, then started turning back to Redshadow, “You’re that guy we saw a week ago, right? That one with the swords… I… I should have known something was up…”

But when she looked to where she’d left the broken Protector, he was gone.

-----

“Alright, boys, listen up!” Garm shouted as he called the meeting to order, “Mort’s busy with research over at the Midnight Squad, so I’ve got the helm tonight.”

“You sure?” Johnny Slag asked, his voice issuing mechanically from his throat, “I thought you were on suspension.”

“Suspension’s up,” Garm grunted, “Only lasted a week.”

“Even after that stunt you pulled?” the former Freak Swiper asked.

“Yep. Now… We’ve got some business coming down the pipe… There’s an A.P.B. out for a Paragon Protector… Crey’s trying to tell us that it’s their responsibility to ‘bring this dangerous rogue in,’ which, for any of you with experience with the Protectors, means he’s not a bad guy like the others are.”

This got a chuckle from the crews gathered in the meeting hall.

“Still, we don’t know how cool or uncool this guy is, so if you see a Paragon Protector in a disheveled uniform and a broken helmet, approach with extreme caution, alright? That’s the only heads-up I’ve got out of Freedom Corps…”

Doug smacked his forehead suddenly and Garm turned to him. The ogre looked agitated with himself and when asked what was bothering him, he explained.

“I saw him. I saw him earlier today. I was trying to get some information on the Family’s shipments when we saw this guy crawl into the river under us.”

“Alright,” Garm nodded, “That’s not bad, Doug. We’ll patrol the area, see if he comes back… The rest of you, you’ve got your assigned patrols. Get to it.”

The other former rogues nodded or grunted their compliance and started shuffling out. Garm’s crew got together, and the Caliban stopped his head count when he noticed a particular member wasn’t around.

“Where’s Briggs?”

-----

The squat green man was used to people staring at him. It came with being a Troll. However, he wasn’t used to people thinking he was just like everybody else. This is why it was such a surprise that these idiots in ski masks went through with their plan to rob the convenience store he was shopping in.

“I told you,” the leader of the group shouted, “Down on the floor!”

“Get that gun out of my face,” Briggs growled, “And get the Hell out of here before I make you regret this!”

The thug squeezed the trigger and the store’s patrons screamed. The thugs shouted for everybody to calm down, but the one who shot the Troll was feeling particularly smug about what he’d done.

At least, until he turned back to examine the body. Briggs was digging some of the buckshot out of his eye.

“That’s gonna be stuck in there,” he grunted as he squeezed the eye shut and glared at the man with his good one, “Probably for a few days. You’re gonna pay for that, bucko.”

---

My Stories

Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.

It was sort of like a gong sound when the heavy body hit the store window. Almost a minute later, the door opened and Briggs was dragging the three unconscious thugs into the street while the store owner yelled at him.

“How was I supposed to know it’s bulletproof glass?” he barked back, “Come on!”

“You could have killed that idiot!” the clerk kept shouting, “And what if you’d cracked it?”

“It looks fine,” the troll unceremoniously dropped the bodies in a heap on the sidewalk and turned to the young man, “Besides, any damage incurred while a hero is saving your place of employment can be charged to the perpetrators. I know this because it happened to me in the old days!”

The clerk was about to say something more, but stopped suddenly. With a devious thought, he walked back into the store, stroking his chin. Briggs didn’t like the look of that. He figured in a couple days, he’d be getting a call from Chris Jenkins.

Before he could dwell on the question any further, the police arrived. They were about to try arresting him with the thugs, but he remembered to show them his identification card that indicated he was a hero. Although the cops stared dubiously at the card (in fact, they scanned it almost ten times before Briggs got fed up and snatched the card back from them), they grudgingly admitted that he was a super-powered citizen who’d helped stop a criminal act.

“I just wish you guys would leave these sorts of crimes to us, you know?” one officer commented as they started reading the would-be robbers their rights.

Briggs waved them off and started heading down the alleyway to where he parked his van. There were some Clockwork robots gathered around some bum sitting on a box and he waved them away. At first, the machines looked like they were going to do something, but they took one look at the ugly green man, did a double-take, and skedaddled before he could smash them to bits.

“I thought they weren’t supposed to be scared,” he grumbled, “Being robots, and all…”

The bum groaned loudly, and Briggs looked down at the guy. He was wrapped in a dirty blanket, so much that he had covered up his head to disguise his features. For some reason, he was doubled over and clutching at his abdomen while he grunted and coughed.

“You okay?” McBain asked, “Do you… Do you need a lift to the clinic?”

It was weird. Ever since he’d gotten off Superadine, he’d had this nagging concern. It wasn’t for anything about himself, no, he felt fine. However, ever since a protracted battle with Ice Mistral early on in the Redeemers’ inception, and having to save people’s lives, he’d found it was getting harder and harder to ignore people in need. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the idea of helping people, but the whole responsibility of it was so foreign to him that he didn’t know how he should feel. The best he could figure to do was to ask people if they needed help and hope he did the right thing if they answered in the affirmative.

“No…” the man replied in a whisper, “No hospitals… They’ll get me…”

“His mind has been broken,” a voice called from the end of the alley, “His life has been shattered. The rest of his kindred search for him, scattered. They must not find him, they must not win. You have to help him break from his sin.”

“What?” the troll asked, “Who are you? Come over here where I can see!”

A disheveled bum walked into view. It was the Can Man, Briggs knew of him through reputation. Trolls had tried roughing him up before, but they’d been soundly corrected by Synapse and Mynx repeatedly to never make the attempt again. Now, it seemed he helped heroes, but it was usually the higher-end, more popular or more powerful ones. Briggs could only wonder why the disheveled man was helping him.

“You saying this guy’s important?”

“Every life is important, even if it’s false,” the Can Man replied, “This one was not the original bearer of his soul, yet it makes it no less true.”

“I thought you were supposed to talk in rhyme, not in riddles…”

“Help him this day, and he will show you your way. There is a long fight ahead, many will be dead. The world needs its strong to combat what is wrong. You stand in the shadow, between the dark and the light, will you make the choice that you know is right?”

“So, it’s rhymes and riddles now?”

Briggs’ eye twitched with annoyance and the buckshot caught in there burned anew. He started digging at it and pulled a couple pebbles of tungsten alloy out. There were still some in there, but the burning sensation had lessened. When he looked to the end of the alley as his vision cleared, though, the Can man was gone.

“Okay,” he muttered as he turned to the bum next to him, “Well, I guess he was referring to you, little man. Let’s see what makes you so special.”

He picked the man off the box he was sitting on and pulled back the blanket from the head. He almost snorted when he saw the familiar uniform of the Paragon Protector and his broken helmet.

-----

“Well, this is unusual,” Mortiganen commented as he looked over the man they had sitting on the stretcher, “Mr. Redshadow… You should be dead.”

“What?” the man asked, “What do you mean?”

“You’ve suffered an aneurism,” the wizard replied, “You should be feeling a massive headache, but something complicated happened, and your bleeding from your nose has been relieving the pressure from your brain.”

“That sounds bad.”

“It could be, but it gives me something to work with. Genji, get somebody, anybody, with medical experience over here. I don’t want to leave anything to chance…”

“Sir?” the former Tsoo sorcerer asked.

“Hurry, we don’t have much time!” the pale-skinned old man barked, “I want to get this right!”

He turned back to Redshadow as he pulled a large black book from where it hung on his hip. He laid the tome on the stand next to the stretcher and started flipping through the pages with a dexterity far superior to what his gnarled fingers conveyed as possible.

“What are you doing?” the Protector wheezed.

“Saving your life,” Mort rasped, “And hopefully acquiring one of Crey’s favorite projects for this group here… This second task is notoriously difficult, young man, as I have experience with the Protectors, and they are known for never giving quarter, and any that have been captured mysteriously wind up dead…”

The old man took a hold of Thomas’ head and glared into the injured man’s eyes.

“They die of brain aneurisms, normally; some of heart attacks. I’m going to make sure nothing like that happens to you, and I’m hoping you’re grateful enough to pay us back with your service.”

Thomas nodded. The man was intense, and more than a little frightening. However, he could sense that Mortiganen seemed to have his best welfare in mind. At least, for the moment…

---

My Stories

Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.

The next day found Garm and his crew taking the new guy to Atlas Park. They had to meet with their main liaison to get Thomas formally inducted into the group and get him on the payroll. With any luck, it would keep Crey off his back so they could get back to work.

“I would think we’d investigate my problem,” Redshadow muttered grumpily from the back of the van.

“We’re not detectives,” Garm countered, “We’re soldiers. We patrol for bad things happening, and we deal with them. We don’t crack open criminal hangouts unless we’ve been told to.”

He also didn’t want to mention that it helped to show companies and groups that you’re not out for revenge when you join a group like this. They were composed of nobodies and disillusioned malcontents from groups that looked very unkindly to what they viewed as betrayal. The troll actually mused that it was probably more disbelief than anything that had kept all of their former compatriots at bay for so long.

“That doesn’t make sense!” the former Protector almost shouted this time, “We’re supposed to be heroes now, right!?”

“One would suppose…”

Briggs brought the van around a corner and started driving past the main plaza of Atlas Park. A new crop of heroes was being welcomed into service by Ms. Liberty. The squat driver had to resist the urge to wave a lewd gesture out the window at her. He still didn’t like any of the “proud, cape wearing” heroes and heroines. They always looked like they had something to hide. Still, Garm would’ve been ticked and the new guy would be shocked, and Briggs didn’t want to hear them complain, so he reigned himself in.

“We didn’t even get a reception like that,” Garm chuckled, “Still, it’s better than being thrown in a slammer.”

“Well, what do we do?”

“We told you, man,” Doug clapped the swordsman on the shoulder, “Patrol! We take down those purse snatchers and mobs of baddies while the other, regular heroes aren’t!”

“Making us something of a costumed sweeper team,” Briggs growled, “Something ain’t right about that.”

“Not everything can be a grand, epic adventure,” Garm sighed, “Which is probably a good thing.”

He absent-mindedly rubbed his shoulder where the Freak Swiper had slashed a week earlier. The others couldn’t tell because of his jacket, but a puckered scar sat there now. It caused Garm more than a little distress. His powers were starting to fade.

He could still lift and hurl boulders, punch through brick walls and all manner of other things, but slowly, as the Superadine wore out in his system, he would lose it all. He wondered just how far it would go. Would he keep the tusks and horns? Would he lose more than his enhanced muscles and be left a wiry, skeletal frame? Or would he look just like his old self, a stupid punk wearing his mom’s tattered leather jacket and torn jeans because he thought it made him look tough?

Briggs pulled the van into the parking lot of the Freedom Corps center they were told to meet their liaison in. It was time to sign up Redshadow and find out who he would be working with. Garm hoped it wasn’t his crew. He had more than enough hitters. He needed another support agent, or Genji’s brain was going to fry.

Inside, it was the same rigmarole that greeted them every time they walked in. It didn’t matter which one of their crew walked in first, the “newbie” they had manning the door would always freak out and bring his assault rifle to bear as soon as he saw the former Outcasts or Trolls. He would think it was some sort of raid before one of his superiors ordered him to stand down.

Sometimes, they got a few shots off, so Garm or Doug had taken to walking in first anyway. The Trolls could take the hits. Doug was about to take point himself, but Tom beat him to it and walked into the Freedom Corps building like he did it every day.

Once Doug walked in, there was shouting and yelling and he casually waved off the rookie with his I.D. The private’s face seemed to drain of color as another Freedom Corps agent walked into the lobby to shake Garm’s hand.

“It’s good you guys can keep out of trouble sometimes,” Agent Wild chuckled, “So, this is the new guy? Where’s his uniform?”

“I burned it,” Tom replied as he shook the other man’s hand, “It didn’t seem right to keep, you know?”

Wild nodded and led the group into a back office. Thomas had all of his necessary information memorized still, so the paperwork was a breeze. Everybody was glad about that the brain work Mortiganen, Genji, and the peculiar plant-like girl, Olive, were able to restore the young man to working order without damaging his gray matter. There was still some time to check and see if everything was still in working order, but for now, his memory and motor functions were all intact. On the plus side, Mort said they’d tweaked whatever it was that killed other Protectors, so he should be safe from whatever the killswitch’s trigger was.

“Alright, so, I’ve got your record stating you’re a Dual Blades, Willpower Scrapper,” Wild muttered as he looked at his computer’s monitor, “Funny, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Protector like that…”

“I think they’re experimental right now,” Thomas chuckled, “I guess my escape proves why.”

“Makes sense… Are you using your original swords?”

“Nope. I don’t know what happened to them, but they gave me a pair of these ninja swords, like on that old kids cartoon show with the talking turtles.”

“And is there anything you can tell us about Crey? This is kind of important.”

“Sadly, no. My mind’s a big fog from my days working as one of them.”

Agent Wild nodded and printed out his new identification. It had his new designation as “Protector Redshadow,” and he was assigned as a “Roaming Redeemer.”

“What’s that?” Garm growled.

“It means he can pursue his own leads,” Wild replied, “You’ve got enough people in your group, it’s about time some of you were out investigating.”

It was times like this that Garm was glad he didn’t grind his teeth. He’d have clipped the tip of his nose off with the ends of his tusks.

---

My Stories

Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.

Business went back mostly to normal for the Redeemers. They were brought in to help usher civilians away from a few bank robberies and they were even called in to clear out a few Council cells when other “freelance” heroes couldn’t be available. They had a respectable position, but they were starting to notice that they weren’t being given any respect.

“Can you believe the way that precinct chief was glaring at us?” Blizzard Front ranted from the back of McBain’s van after a foiled robbery, “Like we only beat those guys up because they beat us to the punch…”

“We’re gonna deal with that a lot,” Garm replied as he gazed glumly out the passenger window, “We’re still monsters to a lot of the people we’re trying to help now.”

“Maybe that Tom guy had the right idea,” Ashen Roast muttered, “Maybe we should investigate a case on our own, show that we’re willing to go above and beyond our duties to protect these people.”

“No, that’s not our job,” the Caliban replied, “We start going out looking for trouble, it’s going to find us. Then we’ll be in a heap we don’t want to see. Trust me, guys, there’s plenty enough out there.”

“Cripes, Garm,” Briggs growled, “You keep talking like that, I’m gonna start calling you ‘Whipped Dog.’”

----------

Back at the base, Mider Caid was poring over a document Azuria had sent him to research before it was time for his next mission. It was something about a goddess named Merulina, but it wasn’t making any sense to him. He wondered if it made any sense to anybody.

“Why do we gotta wait for you, cape?” he heard behind him.

“Why, Johnny, I didn’t hear you knock.”

The former Freakshow Swiper growled some insult in the back of his throat, but the wizard preferred to ignore it. He laid the parchment back onto the desk and walked past the scrapper-class “hero” to head to the main floor of the base. Johnny didn’t take kindly to the slight and followed angrily after.

“Why are you here, huh? You ain’t a thug like us!”

“Johnny, either you’re better or you’re not,” Mider intoned disinterestedly, “If you have doubts, don’t try to take your frustrations out on me.”

“What makes you think-?”

Slag slipped on a small patch of ice and his feet shout out from underneath him. He slammed against the concrete hard and started holding his head in pain. He’d be fine in a few seconds, but the pain was still there.

“I don’t need to put up with your insubordination,” the wizard explained as he kept walking away, “Either you straighten up, or I’ll put in with Mort to get you transferred. I’m sure there’s a group of testosterone-drunk idiots who still pine for their old days of villainy among us somewhere…”

“You really shouldn’t push him,” the former Skull, Somber, muttered as he walked over to the surprised Slag and started to help him up, “He’s not kidding. Some of us are still on probation.”

“I know,” Slag growled and showed him his bracelet, “I’m one of them.”

It was an experimental system, tags that would zap the wearer to the Zig if he ever got out of line. It was controlled by a monitoring team in the Galaxy City Freedom Corps building that waited for the word from the Redeemers’ various team leaders to activate the tags and zap the apparently unreformed criminals back to incarceration. There were a few Redeemers wearing the bracelets, and Somber scratched his wrist absent-mindedly at the thought of how close even he was to receiving the same treatment.

“I think it’s stupid,” Johnny muttered as he picked at the device, “Haven’t I paid my debt? Am I not a fine, upstanding member of society!?”

“No,” the former Skull replied, “Johnny, you’re scary.”

“Shut the Hell up, twig boy!”

“Hey!” Mider shouted from the other end of the main floor, “You two coming or not? We’ve gotta clean up a Hellions cell!”

“Fantastic,” the man standing next to him barked in aggravation, “Maybe this time I’ll be able to burn the face off an old friend the same way Johnny got to cut an old buddy’s hands off…”

“Calm down, Cinder. They may be old friends, but they’re breaking the law. Our orders are just to go in and get the artifact they stole from the museum. If we can, we’ll arrest their boss…”

The former Hellion grumbled and headed out the door. They didn’t have their own transportation, instead relying on the teleporters and their own travel powers. While they argued, the Strik brothers and Olive were already well on their way to the hideout.

It was a sad state his group was in, Mider Caid realized. Despite their failure last time, the group was hardly any closer. The Striks remained with themselves, Olive never said anything and Johnny was still a belligerent and bellicose malcontent. Only Somber Graves and Cinder Burst ever really spoke with him, but they hardly had much relevant to say. They were still teenagers, and were busy trying to either get back into school or get the materials necessary for a G.E.D. They couldn’t help him anyway. The others in the group needed a show of leadership and confidence from Mider, he just didn’t know if he could do it.

“I spent so long wishing I was doing this,” he muttered as he followed the former Freakshow scrapper and the Skull Bone Daddy, “Now I wish I was a MAGI clerk again…”

---

My Stories

Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.

The battle with the Hellions went as Mider Caid expected, which was that it wasn’t a complete disaster. It helped that the Strik brothers were both extremely competent fighters in their own rights, and they took the brunt of the assault. The leader of the cell, a heavily scarred man who called himself Boil, had a few nasty tricks up his sleeves, like fiery “imps” and a blazing sword, but he was outnumbered and was easily over-powered. In fact, Olive had her vines drag him and most of his crew out.

“Why do they do this?” Cinder asked as the police drones arrived to zap the unconscious men to the Zig, “Why do they take a crew like us, and say ‘Hey, you’ve got Tsoo in your crew. Would you go wipe out Golden Dragon for us?’”

“I don’t know,” Mider muttered, “Look, guys… I know these people used to be your friends-“

“Not Boil,” the Hellion interrupted, “That man was scum…”

“Look, they hurt people… You guys don’t want to do that anymore, do you?”

“No…” Tommy Strik replied, “No we don’t. With the Tsoo, we were always harassing people who couldn’t fight back… There was no honor in that, no matter how the bosses spun it…”

“I got my reasons for this,” Slag growled, “I don’t need your moral trip to bring me down.”

Mider shook his head and started walking away. They were done for all intents and purposes, and it was time to get the paperwork taken care of. He was about to fly away when he felt Olive’s light hand catch his shoulder.

“Caid… I need to thank you,” she said, “For… For sticking with us.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We heard you were considering leaving…”

He looked to the rest of the team members, which were preparing their egresses from the area. Some of them were scratching their necks at the sudden attention. Johnny, however, just sneered and leaped away in the direction of the Green Line station.

“Well, I can’t,” he finally said to the green-skinned girl, “I’m not good enough to do this on my own, and M.A.G.I. won’t take me back, my position’s already been filled by another eager young mystic.”

“Yes, but, you and your brother could-“

“Olive, have you ever worked with my brother? Let’s just say that when they say siblings shouldn’t work together, they were thinking about us…”
----------
Garm's crew hadn't had quite as rough a day, but there had been a lot of work in it. From settling disputes between Outcasts and the Tsoo to ushering civilians from yet another round of bank robberies, they had definitely earned their per diem for the day. On their way back to the base that evening, Garm’s cellphone started to ring. He looked at the number and almost spat out his drink.

“Who is it?” Gregory asked, the light of the phone drawing his attention from his reveries in the back seat.

“It’s… It’s Atta…” the Caliban replied, “Should I take the call?”

“Go ahead,” Briggs chuckled, “It’ll be worth listening to him whine that you ditched him again.”

Garm looked back to see if he could get any other words of concern or encouragement. However, the rest of the crew was exhausted from the day’s events and if they weren’t dozing, they were well on their way to dreamland. Figuring it probably wouldn’t matter if he just talked to his old commander, he answered the phone.

“What do you want?”

“Garm!” the voice came through garbled, but worried, too.

“Tatu? What’re you doing with Atta’s phone?”

“We need help…” static interrupted what the other troll was saying, “…breaking down the caves!”

“Who is?” Garm shouted, “Atta? Tat, you’re not making any sense!”

“Garm…” the panicked troll was breaking up, “…Lives… Grendel lives…”

The signal cut out and there wasn’t even static anymore. The former Caliban turned to his enforcer and Briggs snorted.

“A mountain got dropped on Grendel’s head,” he explained, “Ain’t no coming back… Plain and simple.”

“All we know about that fight is what Atta and his cronies said when the dust settled. The Hollowing had just finished, we were looking for leadership ‘cause the heroes were moving in to wipe us out and the Outcasts were pushing in… What if Grendel really is alive?”

“Then we should let him beat the tar out of the trolls out there.”

“How long until he goes after heroes, though? How long until he tries to leave the Hollows and becomes a threat to innocent people? It sounded like the cave was coming down around Tatu in that call… Whatever was hitting them, it was not in control of itself…”

“What’re you trying to say?”

“He’s saying that ‘Grendel,’ whatever it is, isn’t gonna care if it’s kicking over houses and munching a few kids,” Gregory Caid explained from the back seat, “You really want to let it go unchecked?”

Briggs growled something, but he started driving toward the Hollows. He knew there wouldn’t be much they could do with the crew in its exhausted state (heck, Garm was stifling a yawn), but they could at least get an idea of what they were dealing with.
-----

They found Julius in his apartment and got him to take him to wherever he figured Atta had been hanging out that week. The thin troll picked their way through the territories largely controlled by the Circle of Thorns. Garm hoped they didn’t run into too much trouble, he only had Briggs and Gregory with him, and none of them were in top form.

“They should be right…” Julius paused at the lip of a small rocky crag jutting out of a hill overlooking the Red River, “…Here… What the…?”

Garm and the crew crested the crag and looked down. The full moon showed them all they needed to know. Something had come here and torn the cavern down on top of everyone inside. A few Trolls struggled to escape and Briggs immediately set to helping his former compatriots from out of the rubble. Garm followed shortly after, but he was looking for someone in particular.

“Tat!” he shouted as he pulled large rocks up, “Come on, man, where are you?”

“Garm?” he heard weakly whispered from the center of the crater, “Atta… it’s Garm…”

He crept cautiously to the center and saw Atta and Tatu pulling boulders off their friends. The Troll leader glared angrily at him and said nothing before going back to work. Tatu, however, was quick to explain.

“Grendel lives. Grendel’s back… But he don’t have body by 'Dine no more.”

---

My Stories

Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.

“Let me get this straight,” Mortiganen muttered as he stroked his right temple and glared at Garm’s report, “Grendel lives? Is this some sort of Trollish game?”

“It’s from the early days of the Hollowing,” the Caliban yawned, “Sorry. I didn’t get much sleep… Don’t know why. Anyway, I-“

“Stress,” Mort interrupted, “You’ve got a lot stressing you. I suggest you get a girlfriend and debase yourself for a night or two.”

“Uh… That wouldn’t help me… Not yet, anyway,” Garm grimaced, “The mutation… It affects certain things…”

“Oh…”

“Anyway, we checked around the Hollows, found a bunch of really big footprints, but it’s like whatever it is can either jump really far or it swims through rock, because we couldn’t find a solid trail. This… Thing, whatever it is… It apparently said something about being Grendel to Atta’s crew before it started stompin’ ‘em. I couldn’t get much more out of the crew.”

“Despite your old friend being so forthcoming?”

“Tatu’s an old friend, yeah, but he’s not going to entice me into goin’ back,” the troll scratched his scalp and sighed before continuing, “He’s just a dumb thug… A competent dumb thug, but a dumb thug nonetheless. I got nothin’ to hold against him because he doesn’t go after innocent people…”

“Just innocent companies?”

The troll shrugged.

“Well, what did you learn?”

“Well, there’s a big hole over next to that ‘Badge Marker,’ the one that puts a nifty little icon in the communicators of heroes and lets them run around, telling people they’re ‘Seekers of Monsters.’ I’m sure it’ll be filled back in soon, it probably won’t last the day. Supposedly, that’s where Atta killed Grendel. If this thing’s the real deal, it probably came from there. Atta didn’t seem too inclined to tell people they got the spot wrong.”

“And if it’s not?” the wizard steepled his hands over the reports and leaned interestedly toward his counterpart, “Have you considered the possibility that this is some form of hoax?”

“Well, if it’s not the real Grendel, then he, or whoever put him up to this, put the hole there to make it look like it is. Still, it’s hard to think of who would do something like this. The Frost Family? Maybe their competition from the Rogues or D.C.? Maybe they souped up some Supes in a new way, made a weird kind of Troll and unleashed him on us…”

“Or the Trolls are still behind this…”

Garm almost laughed.

“Atta’s not smart enough to pull a hoax that involves attacking himself. While they do the contests of strength bit, they don’t see the point in just attacking themselves for the sake of a caper. Simply put, they’re not Nemesis.”

Mortiganen grinned before leaning back in his chair. It was an unusual chair. Garm always figured Mort would have turned this old foreman’s office into something gothic, regal, or something that screamed “Wizard,” but it remained in the same state they found it in. There were broken lockers to his left that held scrolls and rolled up reports, a computer on the desk that Mort used to type up other reports, a laser printer to the right and the furniture looked like it came from the office section of a pawn shop. There wasn’t even any padding on them. As such, when the wizard leaned back in his chair, and it made a loud screech that complained of a lack of lubrication, Garm couldn’t help but wince.

The whole office was boring and uncomfortable. He couldn’t help but wonder why Mort kept it this way.

“I’ll go check the hole,” Mortiganen finally said, “I suggest you and your crew take a break.”

“Most of ‘em are already sleeping in their bunks.”

“Good. You get some rest, too. It’s hard to believe that you’ve started worrying about things.”

“Heh, yeah…”

Garm left the office and a moment later was followed by Mortiganen. The old man sure didn’t seem to believe in wasting time. In the blink of an eye, he was at the door. As soon as he had it open, he vanished again.
----------
Thomas Redshadow was riding the Green line to Talos Island. His investigations had thus-far been more on cases that weren’t quite related to his own personal vendetta against Crey, but Agent Sanders had warned him to avoid revenge missions. The last thing Freedom Corps needed at the moment was some loose cannon with their badge making baseless accusations against Crey, and the megacorporation, despite its current legal troubles, still had the economic and legal savvy to make things very difficult for the organization for even perceived slights.

For now, Crey seemed content saying that Thomas Redhsadow was an “inspired” freelance hero who happened across the uniform of one of the Paragon Protectors and masqueraded around as one for a couple weeks. Their investigation into the matter was just to determine whether or not he really was one of theirs, as nobody had ever heard of a Paragon Protector wielding swords before. While that was what they said, he still caught the surreptitious glances of their scientists and security guards. They were watching him, and he could tell the looks on their faces meant that they intended to “get back what was theirs.”

Mynx and Synapse were very supportive in helping him cope with his troubles. They both had been victims of the company, yet the lawyers always had one explanation or another to throw at them. Synapse couldn’t risk the reputation of the Freedom Phalanx in order to pursue the man who’d tormented him, nor could Mynx pursue the company for damages because of what Crey’s spin doctors would do to the Vindicators. Still, they offered up a few good suggestions on how to take down Crey personnel when nobody could see. It was especially easy in Brickstown, where the company’s security forces seemed to think they owned the town and were a general nuisance to everybody.

He was going over the data for his current case, something about a Sky Raider weapons smuggling operation, when the train stopped in the Skyway City station. He looked up and noticed some costumed individuals enter the car. He looked back to his communicator and tried to mull over the information, but something about the new passengers nagged at him. Looking back up, he saw what it was and his heart sank.

Four Paragon Protectors were staring at him. The lead one had two swords drawn and held them crossed in front of his legs. The others were drawing similar blades.

“Time to die, traitor,” the leader said in a voice that Thomas couldn’t quite place, but was somehow familiar.

---

My Stories

Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.

Mortiganen reached the hole just in time to shoo away a bunch of Trolls that seemed stumped as to whether or not they should fill it back in. They weren’t too keen on leaving without a fight, but he was able to frighten them off with a nightmare visage that was probably a simulacrum of one of their fathers, only bigger and more terrifying. It probably looked like Jack in Irons for all Mort cared.

The hole was definitely big enough. Ten feet deep and eight around, it also looked like it had exploded out rather than been dug up. Still, he already knew six arcane methods off the top of his head that achieved the same result, and that meant there were at least half as many ways to do it using modern mundane sciences and technologies.

He was in the process of smelling some of the dirt when he felt the approach of mystically-inclined individuals. Cursing to himself, he looked up to find not the Circle husks, as he expected, but members of the fledgling group of mystic enforcers called the Legacy Chain. Their ridiculous appearance in their ornate uniforms only made Mort more aware of his own outdated apparel. He tugged self-consciously at his robe as they approached and assumed a formation that gave them all a clear look at him.

“What do you want?” he rasped.

“Mortiganen!” the leader announced, “We are here to arrest y-“

“Get lost, whelp!” the elder wizard barked back, “If I thought you could do anything to me, I’d have surrendered. Instead, all you’re doing is taking up my precious time! I’m reformed! Don’t you get what that means? It means I have higher obligations than just making people miserable for the sake of my research!”

“But-“ the Legacy Chain member stammered, but Mortiganen interrupted him again.

“In fact, my research is directly responsible for the safety of this city in a very immediate way! If you would pull your heads out of your collected hind quarters, you would probably get a chance to see that!”

“He… He does register as a hero on the scanners,” a mystic holding a communicator whimpered behind the leader, “Perhaps-“

“He’s still the evil wizard the Midnight Squad fought back in the seventies! Just look at… What are you doing!?”

“You’re not important enough to postpone this,” Mort growled as he got back to inspecting the hole, “Hm… No entry holes in the base… I can’t sense any other soil disturbance…”

“Look at me!” the leader of the Legacy Chain squad shouted.

“Look, you can either pose as an enforcer of the law, or you can help me. Something big came out of this hole, of that I’m certain. I’m detecting faint traces of epidermis all throughout this soil, it probably scratched off during the escape… Sand can be surprisingly abrasive.”

The mystics looked to each other confusedly for a moment before joining in. They were pretty decent at elemental magic, so they were able to generate a decent composite of what had been in the earth before it had violently erupted. Seeing the earthen reconstruction made the dark-robed Redeemer wizard flinch, and the mystics deconstructed it rapidly.

“The real thing won’t fall nearly that fast, though,” the leader of the squad said, “I’m detecting large traces of… Of steel in this skin… Which is… is…”

“Unusual, to say the least,” Mort agreed, “But certainly not impossible. Not in this world. However, I wonder if it really is the legendary Grendel or if it’s just some recreation. There’s no corpse down there, nor are there any remains, but I’ve never seen anything in the behavior of any of the current crop of Trolls to indicate this kind of behavior. Sure, they get big, but they certainly don’t look like what you showed me, nor do they have steel in their skin.”

“That’s what we’re looking at, though,” the leader of the squad murmured.

“I guess I’ll have to get a look at this thing up close. Unfortunately, I can’t get any new information out of the Trolls. I got the best I could out of my lieutenant.”

“So, you’re really with the heroes, now?”

“Yes,” the wizard sighed, “And while I understand your need to demonize me, I really wish you wouldn’t. There are so many worse things in the world than me, from the Coralax’s mysterious deity, to the increasingly desperate behavior of the Oranbegans, to even the bizarre presence of Ghost Widow. I am but a researcher, a scribe, and I don’t extend my reach beyond my grasp. You would take care to learn how to differentiate between true dangers and ones you’re simply making up.”

“In all fairness, Mortiganen, our brethren in the Etoile Isles are being torn to shreds because they don’t take enough of their threats seriously. We don’t intend to be caught with our pants down up here.”

“In that case, I suggest you step up your game. Most of the community regards you as little more than a joke, and the Circle looks at you as a gnat in their path. If you’d like, I could provide you with research material that could help.”

The mystics stared dubiously at him. They’d come to arrest him, not to deal, and now he was offering to teach them. Still, the squad leader was unimpressed.

“What’s the catch?”

“A favor, simple as that. That is how these deals go. There may come a time when I have need of your kind and your abilities, and I don’t want to have any hassle about it. You can relax, as I won’t try to make you do anything you’re morally opposed to. Deal?”

“It sounds fine,” the mystic replied, “How will we know whether the deal has been made or not?”

Mort smiled. It was like the parable about the boy crying about wolves.

“I trust we can bind ourselves by our honor. I know I can by mine, and you can check with the Midnight Squad to determine my trust if you’re still unsure.”

The mystics nodded and started walking back to their base. Already, Mort was picturing how their superiors would view the deal, and they would likely dislike it to begin with. Still, a deal with him was better than a deal with the Circle or the demons that backed them.

---

My Stories

Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.

Redshadow scanned the passengers of the car. It startled him that there was only one civilian, a young woman who had a number of university books with her. She clutched them to herself worriedly as she saw the escalating situation and Thomas knew his duty was clear.

“We could wait for this train ride to end,” he pleaded with the Protector in the lead, “Let this young lady get out of the car…”

“And risk you getting reinforcements?” the vaguely familiar voice rasped, “I think not…”

“I see…” Thomas sighed, then turned to the girl, “Ma’am… I’m sorry…”

“Help…” she squeaked, “I don’t want to die…”

Redshadow drew the swords from his belt scabbards and glared at the Protectors.

“I don’t intend to let you.”

There were no more words to be said. Redshadow analyzed his options. The car was narrow, and for some odd reason, the other Protectors seemed to be close-range combatants. They all had swords, just like him.

He didn’t have any more time to question the situation, though. The lead Protector dove in with a double stab that Thomas parried and counterattacked with a kick to the sternum. He then followed up his kick by slashing with his right sword. One of the other Protectors tried to stab from around his leader, but Redshadow deflected the blade and the Protector Leader’s arm got cut, eliciting a yelp of pain.

Hooking the pommels of his blades on the vertical hand bars of the car, the Redeemer vaulted himself into the leader. This shoved him into his entourage and knocked some of them off balance. Redshadow swiped at them as they tried to recover, and actually caught one across the neck. He promptly disappeared in a red haze that signified he’d been yanked to a Crey facility before he could be tagged for a police drone or sent to a civilian medical facility.

Another got to his feet and Redshadow backed away as his assailant’s blade hacked through one of the poles. Thomas kicked the now-broken bar’s lower half and it bent toward the Protectors. He then stabbed at the leader, causing the Crey pawn to back into one of the railcar’s windows, smashing it out with the hilt of his blade.

The other two, however, were able to get in close enough to get a hold of Thomas. They hooked his arms in theirs and were getting ready to stab him when a heavy book came flying through the air and struck the one to Thomas’ right in the shoulder. He cried out with the same voice as the lead Protector.

“Augh! That was a corner!”

Seeing an advantage, Redshadow placed his foot behind the ankle of his enemy and twisted his upper body, causing the Protector to trip and fall, dragging the Redeemer with him. The other crashed into another window of the car just as it entered a tunnel. While the resulting crash didn’t kill the man, it did smash open his helmet and he disappeared in another red haze.

“This isn’t going so well for you guys!” Tom shouted as he rolled away from the lead Protector’s stabs, “Why don’t you just give up?”

“We have our orders!” the other shouted, “Get back on your feet and kill him!”

“And that’s why you fail,” the hero growled as he grabbed the metal bar next to him and twisted it around so it faced his opponents, “You’ve got no imagination!”

With that, he kicked the Protector leader’s knee, causing the other man to stumble down in pain. He then leaned forward, gripped the collar of the Protector’s spandex and yanked him face-first into the end of the bar. There was a sickening crunch and the body laid still.

The remaining Protector seemed to go into a frenzy after that. He stabbed wildly at Thomas, his blade poking holes into the floor. At one point, the sword hit the track and was destroyed, sending the handle hurtling through the interior and smashing into the control box at the front. Thomas didn’t know what would happen after that, but he figured the smoke coming from the computer couldn’t be good.

In fact, it wasn’t good. Already, the Paragon Transit Authority’s Central Dispatch Computer was registering the loss of control and was rerouting the car to a line that would lead it to Boomtown. The line was broken in Boomtown, though.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the car’s intercom announced, “Please make your way to the front of the car and the emergency medical bracelets you will find in the conveniently highlighted emergency container… They are active only for the duration of this emergency, and will aid you in escaping mortal danger in the case of a lack of heroic intervention…”

“Kind of takes the edge of the emergency of the situation!” Redshadow yelped as he rolled from side to side to avoid the stabs, “You better do as she says!”

The college girl, however, just clutched at her remaining books and shrieked. The Protector leader was pulling himself off the bar and getting back to his feet. The hero knew he wouldn’t be able to fend them both off, so he took desperate measures.

Noticing that the crazed Protector was now standing over him, he kicked his assailant’s inner thigh. The Protector fell backwards and he rolled forward to get back on his feet. He also drove his shoulder into the man’s gut, tackling him before he could gather his wits about him. The Protector’s head went out the window and the helmet disintegrated from its impact with the tunnel wall outside. Before the red flash, Thomas saw the face for a brief moment and he paused, confused.

The lead Protector saw his chance and prepared his deathstroke. However, Thomas noticed a glint from the reflection of the blade in the corner of his eye. Grabbing one of the discarded blades, he rolled away and stabbed his enemy in the belly as the Protector stabbed the seat. As the Protector wondered at his ill fortune, Thomas rushed to the girl.

“We need to get the bracelet!” she shouted.

“There’s no time,” Redshadow replied, “Hang on!”

He had her put her arms around his neck and he kicked out the back window. As the train cleared the tunnel, he saw where they were and cursed. Leaping through the window, he said a quick prayer to whatever gods were watching that he could stick this landing and they would be alright.

---

My Stories

Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.

Upon hitting the ground, Redshadow rolled, keeping his arms wrapped around the poor young woman in a desperate attempt to take the brunt of the impact. They tumbled across the debris for a few seconds before finally coming to a stop, the girl rolling away just a few feet from the hero due to the last bits of momentum left. They lied there, breathing heavily as their bodies and minds attempted to fight through the shock of what they’d just survived.

The sound of the car crashing into a pile of debris further away brought Thomas to his senses and he sat up. Looking to the north, he could see the twisted machine smoldering in the pile of cinder blocks, rebar and support beams at the base of the War Wall. Clockwork robots were already converging on the mess to recover salvageable parts for their ramshackle horde. A group of Outcasts were watching from a safe distance away.

“Please don’t look this way,” the scrapper grunted as he started checking himself for injuries, “Please don’t look this way…”

“What is it?” the girl asked as she cradled her arm, “Where are we?”

“We’re not far from Steel Canyon. Are you hurt?”

“It doesn’t feel broken, but it really hurts to move my arm…”

The woman looked to her would-be savior and grinned weakly. With her free hand, she brushed her brown hair out of her eyes and Redshadow winced. She had some nasty cuts and scrapes from the fall.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, “We should get you out of here and to a doctor immediately!”

Placing an arm around her protectively, he started guiding her to the south. Gingerly, they picked their way through the debris that used to be Baumton. Taking stock, Redshadow realized they weren’t actually in the region known as Boomtown, but really the area between Steel Canyon and the blasted city zone. To the north and south, the monolithic War Walls loomed, barring passage to all unless you were allowed through the select few access points or somehow knew the few methods to shut the massive energy fields down.

Thomas didn’t know the methods, but hoped that he and this young woman would be able to access the secure tunnel that linked the ruins with Steel Canyon. As he pondered this, he realized he didn’t know the girl’s name.

“Claire,” she replied when he asked, “What’s yours?”

“Tom,” he replied.

“That’s an odd name for a hero… I was expecting Red Blade or something…”

“My last name’s close enough to that. Redshadow.”

“You should stick with that,” she chirped before stepping wrong and jostling her injured arm.

“Don’t worry,” the scrapper comforted, “We’ll get you to a hospital and get you all fixed up in no time…”

“I know, it still hurts, though.”

They reached the secure tunnel and found a side access hatch. It was fortified in much the same way as the gates in Steel Canyon and Boomtown, only with more police guarding them. The officer in charge, one Captain Rafferty, balked as they approached.

“What are a pair of civilians doing out here?” he asked as Thomas fished for his identification, “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait here until-“

“FBSA, Freedom Corps, and all that jazz,” the scrapper wheezed, “I must insist that you provide us with some way to get to Steel Canyon… This woman needs medical attention!”

“Okay, okay,” the captain replied as he started waving to a nearby tent, “No need to get in a panic. Douglas! Get over here! Ma’am, this officer is our examiner. She’ll be able to check on you and provide assistance until the ambulance arrives.”

As the officer escorted Claire to the tent, Rafferty sized up Redshadow and examined the identification.

“This area’s a little low for your security level. What happened out there?”

“It was a railcar accident,” the scrapper replied, “Some criminals assaulted me, and the young lady was caught in the crossfire. The ensuing damage to the train caused an automated security system unlike any I’ve ever heard of that just jettisoned the wreck into the ruins back there.”

The cop’s eyes widened at that. Returning the ID, he took a stack of papers from another officer and handed them to Redshadow.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to fill out a report…”

----------

“So, that is what I’ve learned,” Mortiganen declared after informing the leaders of the various teams of his experiences in the Hollows, “Whatever this thing that wiped out Atta’s base is, it’s big, bigger than a Supa Troll, and its skin has metallic properties.”

“Well, Garm,” a former Family hitman named Harold Danesti growled, “Looks like your buddies have-“

“They’re not my buddies,” the Caliban retorted, “And this is as much the fault of your old friends, if not more.”

“I say we let the thing wipe out the Hollows,” the former Tsoo Swift Steel practitioner, Steel Blaze, rasped, “Let an army of heroes deal with it afterward.”

“Which heroes?” Mortiganen countered, “The fresh faces that wander in there every other day? Yes, I’m sure they, with their novice skills and comparatively weak powers will be able to succeed where Atta and almost an army of Trolls failed.”

Sensing the sarcasm, Steel Blaze was about to say something when Garm spoke up again.

“Listen, guys, the fact remains that we know something’s out there. Something the rest of the city isn’t aware of yet. Our purpose in this matter is to inform the rest of the heroic populace about this new threat and try to amass a force to take it down.”

“Yeah, a lot of people are gonna listen to a bunch of ex-cons like us,” Harold grumbled into his collar, “And I might magically sprout bat wings and fly around to drink the blood of the wicked…”

“Be careful with words like that,” Mortiganen growled as he gestured to the Italian, “It might come true…”

Danesti looked back in shock, thinking the old man had cast some kind of curse on him. Instead, what he found was a pair of glowing bat wings imprinted on his chair.

“Cute.”

“We’ve got a plan,” the leader of the group growled, “It’s the best we can do with what we know. Martin, I trust you and Agent Wild will be able to help us with this?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” the gruff man replied.

---

My Stories

Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.

“What happened to you?” Mider Caid asked Redshadow as the scrapper lurched past him into the base, “You look like you got hit by a train car!”

“That’s a good guess,” Thomas rasped, “Is Mortiganen in? Or… Wait… You know how to heal, right?”

“Some,” the wizard replied, extending his finger and emitting some green flames to mystically seal the wounds shut, “But you might want to see Olive… I think she can do a better job of making you look hale and healthy… Olive!”

The green girl looked up from where she was sitting next to McBain’s van and her eyes widened once she realized the man her team leader was talking to was grievously injured. In an instant, she was up and running over to them.

“I ran into some Protectors,” Tom explained, “They… They seemed to know me. It didn’t end well. I got the civilian to a hospital after the train we wrecked was jettisoned into the wastes between Steel Canyon and Baumton.”

“How is she?” Olive asked as small vines started extending from her fingertips and wrists to wrap about the injured man, “These will squeeze your injuries shut and I’ll start delivering a serum that will spur your body to regenerate itself.”

The blade wielder looked intently at her for a moment, and she seemed to wilt a little.

“Look, I don’t know how the process works, I can just do it, okay? I can use the tendrils to set bones, even thigh bones, and the serum does the rest. I don’t know how I make it, but… It’s in my tears, too, so…”

“I was just wondering how long this would take,” Thomas chuckled, “I kind of want to take a shower and get to sleep.”

“That second one might not be an option,” Mortiganen announced as he seemingly appeared from the shadow of a nearby girder.

“Don’t do that!” Mider Caid shouted, “I’m too young to be having a heart attack…”

The elder wizard seemed to ignore the younger and focused intently on the scrapper.

“Something’s come up,” Mort’s mouth quirked a little into a grin, “I need you to suspend your investigation. I need every able-bodied Redeemer on hand to scour this city for a monstrosity unlike anything we’ve ever seen. The team leaders know what to look for; I’ll brief you after you’re refreshed.”

Mider looked worriedly to Thomas and shook his head. The former Paragon Protector would be searching alone while the rest of the Redeemers were in groups. It struck him as a dangerous plan, but there was the possibility that whatever the thing was, it would go after a lone hero quicker than a team.

----------

“That’s what it looks like,” Garm explained to the spandex-clad, ridiculously tall and muscled man that snorted back at him in derision.

“Trolls askin’ for help fightin’ trolls. I guess that’s ironing for you.”

“The word you’re looking for is ‘irony,’” Ashen growled, “And it’s not a troll that’s asking for help, but a fellow hero in service to this city!”

“You’re just a pack o’ punks that got tired of us knockin’ you around.”

Another hero, one in a black trench coat with a sword resting lazily on his shoulders, casually lit his cigarette on Ashen’s aura as he walked past and took his place resting against the wall of the apartment building they were standing outside. The big man smiled to his friend before turning back to Garm and jabbing him hard in the shoulder with his sausage-like finger.

“I ain’t goin’ on no wild goose chase just ‘cause some sissy green man is too scared to look for himself,” he growled, “Now get out o’ my sight ‘fore I start thinkin’ my radio’s tellin’ me you’re a ‘friend’ ‘cause it’s busted.”

The former Caliban shook his head sadly and walked back to the van. Ashen followed and entered through the back hatch, using hushed whispers to the rest of the team to explain what happened. Briggs was mangling the wheel in his hands as he shook with rage and Garm squeezed the burly man’s shoulder to calm him down.

“Get us out of here,” he muttered grimly, “These morons aren’t here to help people. They’re just thugs on the blue side.”

Radio reports flooded in and the other teams were having varying degrees of success. Some, with mostly human-appearing heroes, were having success getting the message across about the thing the Trolls called Grendel. Others, especially the ones with heavily mixed groups, predominately aggressive attitudes or still utilized outfits from their old days as criminals, were getting laughed at or into fights. Most wondered if Freedom Corps or the Surviving Eight had anything to do with the request, and others thought it was some kind of joke, but there were more than just the one hundred and five former criminals and low-class heroes on the lookout.

“Well, it’s better than we expected,” Garm grunted as he shut the radio down after reporting in, “At least some people out there are looking. I’m a little more concerned with the inquiries about whether or not the Phalanx know about this. Do you think they’ll put in an effort if they find out?”

“I don’t care,” Briggs growled as he pulled the van into the main overpass through Skyway City, “One pass through the city and call it a day?”

“Sounds good,” his friend muttered before settling into the passenger seat and trying to pass out, “God, this whole Grendel thing has me in knots. What if it really is him?”

“Doubtful. He died in the Hollowing, that’s all there is to it.”

They passed over a bright flash and Briggs glanced into the mirror. Garm remained unconvinced, though, and sat up straight again to continue the debate.

“Maybe he was just wrecking Atta’s crew, you know? If it really is him, he’s probably just trying to take over again.”

“If it really is him,” McBain’s face screwed up into a mask of worry and he started applying the brakes, “You’re gonna wind up being on the opposite side of the fence from your friend. You tellin’ me you might think of goin’ back if Grendel takes control?”

“No…”

“Alright, then.”

Briggs brought the van to a stop at the edge of the road and turned to look intensely at his team leader. When Garm looked at him in confusion, he spoke.

“Get out.”

“What?”

“NOW!”

---

My Stories

Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.

“Out! Everybody out!”

Garm’s crew tumbled out the back of the van, Doug barley clearing the doorway before Briggs brought his foot down on the gas and sped away, the tires of his van squealing horribly. Garm looked worriedly after the retreating vehicle, wondering if the compact Supa Troll may have lost his mind or turned back to working for the Trolls.

“What’s he doing?” Doug shouted, his voice cracking a little.

The two former Trolls looked to each other. Doug looked worried, but Garm shook his head. The Superadine was wearing off, and they were starting to revert. It made the former Caliban wonder why Briggs didn’t seem to be reverting.

There was a loud hissing noise and a metallic crash. The team looked down the street to see that Briggs had used the hydraulics to jump the van over the concrete median divider and was now going the other way down the highway.

“Okay, now this is weird,” Ashen Roast intoned as the van roared past, some of which was the chaotic Troll’s own shouting, “Just what is he doing?”

----------

They’d been helping Synapse investigate this problem for weeks, now. They had just found the evidence that would lead them to finding and combating the dreaded Clockwork King. However, just as they left the warehouse where they’d dismantled the Clockwork Lord, disaster struck.

A monstrous Clockwork machination known as Babbage came tearing down the streets after them, and the plucky young blaster named Static Havoc was the first to see him. He launched volleys of energy at the approaching hulk, but it was able to shrug them off like they were nothing. The other members of the task force arrived shortly after, but the giant monster already had a bead for the little guy in the group.

In a desperate bid to escape, Static flew away, putting the overpass between him and Babbage. A moment later, though, he realized that wasn’t going to dissuade the walking wreck. It had leaped up and grabbed a hold of the overpass, pulling itself up to continue its deadly assault on its miniscule quarry.

“Oh man!” the teenaged hero shouted as he hurled bolt after bolt at the machine’s head in desperation, “I’m gonna die!”

Babbage, nonplussed by the assault, hauled itself up and glared down at the boy. The team’s Tanker leaped up and gripped one of the machine’s ankles, trying to trip it back over the side of the overpass. The team’s controller was busy dealing with the myriad of Clockwork robots the big machine seemed to have just generated by waving at spare parts that had rattled from it during the fighting. The two scrappers jumped up to try to lend some support to the tanker, but Babbage shrugged them off as it reached to smash Static Havoc into a grease stain.

This was the scene Briggs McBain had witnessed earlier. He saw the big monster pulling itself up onto the overpass and the young hero it was trying to squash. He didn't understand these pangs of conscience he'd been feeling lately, but it was obvious to him that the little guy was way out of his weight class, and decided to do something about it.

He wished there were more time to explain to Garm and the others, but he couldn't have them in the van for this next stunt, or they'd be severely injured, and the trouble the hero was in was imminent.

As he sped close, he reached for the hydraulic handle on the console. He wasn't too surprised it had worked to vault the armored vehicle over the median, he'd tested it using schematics from "lowrider" competitions, but this was going to be a wholly different ball of wax. He jammed the lever forward, bringing the van down, and when he felt close enough, he yanked it back...

There was a loud horn blaring and headlights focused on Babbage. It looked over to see an armored van hurtling through the air at it. Before it could pull back, the machine had slammed into the giant monster’s right chest plate, ripping the body open and spinning it around as it crashed to the pavement. Then van rolled in the air after the hit and landed on its side, skidding to a stop almost a hundred feet away.

Babbage lost control of its right arm and tried desperately to push itself back up. Parts were spilling out of its chest cavity and reassembling into confused Cogs, Gears, and Oscillators. Looking up at it’s bizarre assailant, the machine saw the van on its side, crumpled heavily on all sides and spewing smoke from its engine.

The passenger-side door burst out as a green fist slammed into it and a squat, overly muscled Troll with a blonde crew cut pulled himself out of the vehicle.

“Every couple of weeks,” he shouted as he started purposefully stomping toward the big machine, “Every couple of weeks I have to see you terrorizing another hapless bunch of heroes!”

“Hey, hey!” the tanker, Eli Jones, a super strong and apparently super tough man despite his average appearance, tried to stop Briggs, “What do you think you’re doing!?”

“I’m making a point!” the troll barked as he pushed the man aside, “And it involves ripping this thing’s head off…”

He gripped the large head of Babbage and started to pull. When it weakly reached its good arm to stop him, he kicked it aside and went back to pulling. The neck joint was starting to give.

“… And using it as a toilet!” the troll finished as he felt the give.

“Woah, woah!” Static shouted before a blur of green rushed past him and Garm tackled his friend off of Babbage, “Uh… Guys?”

“Get off of me!” the squat, burly troll shouted angrily as the taller, leaner one held him in a headlock, “I need to… Need to…”

“Hush-shh-shh-shh…” Garm replied, “Relax, brother. It’s over now… The police drones are on the way to mop up the wreckage. You did good… Time to rest…”

“I… Uh… Kay…”

Briggs passed out and Garm let him go with a gasp of relief. McBain had apparently been faking, though, for he then opened his eyes and jumped up to continue trying to wrench Babbage’s head off. Garm and Eli both tried to pull him away this time as the Drones arrived and zapped the working parts of the giant monster to a specialized section of the Zig dedicated to studying the various incarnations of the machine. The sudden lack of resistance caused the three vigilantes to tumble to the street in a heap.

“No!” Briggs shouted, cupping his face in his hands, “It would have been such an awesome toilet!”

“Let it go, man” Eli patted him on the shoulder as he picked himself and Garm up, “It’s over.”

The drones then turned toward McBain's van and zapped it off the highway so traffic flow could continue unabated. When the burly guy yanked one of them out of the sky and started growling, it warbled a few times and started buzzing. A ticket issued from under its teleportation blaster and he read it.

"Derelict vehicle notice?" he growled, "Oh, come on!"

"It was just removed for safety reasons," Garm assured him, "See, right there, 'transported to Lou's Garage.' I'm sure you'll just need to pay a processing fee and we'll get it back."

Then they noticed the heroes Synapse hired to investigate the Clockwork horde staring at them. Eli Jones was the first to speak.

"What were you guys even doing out here?"

----------

The two teams exchanged information. Synapse’s Task Force was composed of various heroes from different super groups, and they were very receptive to the idea of a new type of monster thrashing around the city.

“It wiped out Atta’s base?” the controller, Frost Princess Yuki, asked worriedly, “I fought him earlier this year… That’s a really tough fight! He got out of the Zig?”

“It’s a very quick revolving door system,” Doug grumbled.

“Anyway, keep on a lookout,” Ashen replied, shaking the woman’s hand firmly, “You never know when something like this will turn on those of us on this side of the blue line.”

---

My Stories

Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.

“Alright… Let’s see what we’ve got so far…” Mortiganen murmured as he looked over the reports, “Judging from the group members Agent Wild had to bail out of jail for ‘disturbing the peace,’ and the reports that indicate who rejected our requests and those who accepted, we’re looking at around an eight percent total hero population that is helping us with this. The rest, well, let’s just say we’re not quite as popular as Freedom Corps expected us to be.”

“Pft, uppity blowhards,” Harold Danesti barked, “They think they’re so big just because they never got caught racketeering…”

“Then there’s this issue with the Paragon Protectors,” the wizard continued, “I’m sorry, Thomas. I was hoping they’d leave you alone longer, but it seems we’ll have to deal with this as soon as possible… As a group.”

The scrapper nodded as he held an ice pack to his hip.

“I heal pretty fast,” he muttered, “not as fast as that Caid guy, but it’s pretty quick.”

Garm was looking over his own notes and chewing on the end of his pen in consternation. It didn’t make sense to him. This massive creature just showed up out of nowhere, decimated the home of one of the most notorious villains in the city, and then disappeared. It smacked of the sort of conspiracy that involved a living weapon.

“Since the Hollows were the last place this ‘Grendel’ was sighted, we should focus our search there. That weird guy, the one with the clockwork-like cybernetics, Tickin’ Clank, or whatever his name is, he said his crew found a bunch of dead fish people on the coast of the Red River. The Circle never seems to bother with them, and the Trolls have been steering clear of ‘em, too… Plus, according to the report, it looked like their bodies had been crushed in quick succession and laid out like some sort of message, so I’d say it’s a good bet that our mystery monster was the culprit.”

“I agree,” Mort rasped, “But that means he could be in the Hollows, Skyway City, Atlas Park, or even head out into the ocean and make a bee-line for Talos Island.”

“So, what do we do?” Danesti asked, “Stage patrols anywhere that borders Eastgate and hope we catch a glimpse of this twelve-foot beastie?”

“That’s probably our best bet,” the wizard replied, “I’m sorry, Thomas, but until the end of this, I’m afraid I’ll have to keep you here in the base until we can get more teams focused on your case. I don’t want to risk another group of Protectors or Crey’s favorite ‘acquisition squads’ trying to capture you again.”

“I understand, boss,” Redshadow groaned, “I could use the R & R, anyway.”

----------

Skyway City was no stranger to the Troll menace. Every couple of nights, a group of their rowdiest and roughest would pick a warehouse and start gulping down gallons of the concoction that made them what they were in the first place. If one dose of Superadyne were enough to alter their bodies and physiques beyond recognition, multiple doses were bound to have more pronounced effects, and they did. The so-called Supa Trolls used to be a massive, insurmountable menace in Skyway City, blocking up traffic for days until a few heroes took it upon themselves to spend a few months clearing them off the streets every time they held a rave and started disrupting the city. Nowadays, the Supa Trolls were wary of the bombs, bullets, lightning bolts and so forth that the heroes would turn on them, so they often turned in as soon as their brains got even a little less foggy during the course of their depredations.

The normal Trolls remained in the open, however. This was still their city, and they protected it from all incursions, whether they were dealing with the Outcasts, the Tsoo, or even the Lost which had consumed much of the south side of the city with their access to bizarre technology. While they sometimes had pitched battles that spilled into the streets, they normally just posed in their favorite hangouts to show that they still owned the streets. Favorite hangouts included the pit under the Yellow Line train station, the construction yards, a couple basketball courts, and especially the rivers of the Gruff.

It was like they were drawn to it. It could have been considered some sort of sick joke on their part, as a reference to classic trolls from children’s stories, but few who ever dealt with the Trolls for any length of time would actually believe them capable of such parody. It could also be considered that they simply wanted quick access to a bountiful water source. Whatever the reason, the Trolls ruled the drainage rivers of Skyway City.

At least, they did. None of them could have known what was bubbling under the surface of those waters. None of them believed the rumors that had been circulating their gang. Nobody could have done that to Atta and his crew. Nothing that powerful existed. Sure, there had been heroes that single-handedly busted up his place when he had a skeleton crew, or groups that took on the armies he could keep in his warrens, but nothing ever single-handedly smashed his house down around his ears while his whole band was there. They’d assumed it was a power play from any number of the factions within the Trolls. They never considered that it wasn’t ambition driving the rumor, but fear.

It had been a long time since the Trolls had ever been afraid. Today was the day they’d relearn how to fear.

With a mighty roar, a great gray bulk burst from beneath the river of the Gruff and rounded on the nearest cluster of Trolls. They stared, dumbstruck, at the beast that had chosen them for its next meal. If they had run, perhaps they would have lived. Shortly after the guttural roars of battle and the agonized screams of defeat ended, the drainage waters were running red with Troll blood.

---

My Stories

Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.

The main floor was converted into an impromptu theater as the reformed criminals watched the television in awe. The news crews were covering the damage being wrought throughout the underbelly of Skyway City.

“…The creature is approximately twelve feet tall and is almost as big around as the pillars supporting the overpass!” the woman shouting from the news chopper announced to the viewers throughout the city, “Longbow forces are moving into place… But the Trolls that have been throwing themselves at the creature have been getting tossed aside like rag dolls! Now… Ladies and gentlemen… If you have small children watching, you should probably have them leave the room as much of our footage is quite graphic…”

“Indeed,” the dark wizard watching the Redeemers under his leadership murmured, “You children should be heading out there, helping those massing Longbow troops… Especially since their organization issues your paychecks!”

“In a moment, in a moment!” Harold shouted, “Here come the Supa Trolls!”

The big gray mass started punching the burly green monsters aside like they were rag dolls. Some were able to get in a few hits, but they didn’t seem to slow the beast down. It raged on, smashing the Supa Trolls into the river, the pillars and various bits of wrecked cars. It was like a machine, and worse, it was getting better. As the Supas pressed in, it started not only taking the hits, but grabbing the beefy monsters and yanking them off balance and slinging them about like so many toys. When it kicked one in the gut and followed up the strike with an uppercut that knocked the Superadine-addled brute into the underside of the overpass, Mortiganen turned off the television.

“Oh come on!” Danesti shouted among the groans of dissapointment, this time with more anger than any kind of twisted humor, “You saw what that thing is doing! We’re gonna get killed out there!”

There were some murmurs of agreement and half of the Redeemers refused to leave their spots. The dark wizard muttered something and the television burst into flames.

“I’m sorry,” he rasped again, “I don’t remember giving you a choice.”

“You can’t order us to throw our lives away!”

“Oh come on you big baby!” Johnny Slag shouted from the door, surprising the whole crop of ex-cons, “We’ve got the Med-Com dealies! It’s not like it’s gonna kill us!”

And with that, he was out the door. Harold watched him go and the rest of the group turned to look at him.

“You gonna let him call you that?” Garm grunted.

“Hell no!” the former hitman shouted, “Jones! Get me my rifle! We’re taking that beast down!”

----------

“HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!”

The beast let loose a bellow that reverberated throughout the underbelly of the overpass. The Trolls weren’t rushing to meet him anymore and the thing that most closely resembled the form of Grendel that the Legacy Chain mystics had demonstrated to Mortiganen considered its targets. The Longbow Eagles getting into position and sighting their rifles on his near-impervious form were a good bet, but there were still plenty Trolls to kill, first. He let loose one more bellow to goad them into rushing for him, stomping a shockwave into the water to show his contempt.

He was rewarded with a bright flash of pain as something slammed into his right eyebrow. Five hundred yards away, Harold racked another shell into his rifle’s chamber and sighted in to fire again.

“That’s funny,” he muttered, “I must be wasted, because it looks like he’s mad at me… We sure that’s the guy we’re looking for?”

“Yes,” Mortiganen replied as the former Frost Family enforcer fired again, “Twelve feet tall, gray skin, longhorns like a bull… Basically a mini Talos.”

“Grendel didn’t look like that in life,” Garm muttered, “But… His skull features are similar…”

“Well, cloning’s not the most surprising of concepts,” the wizard muttered, “Best not to worry about it now. We’ll help take this beast down, then worry about who sent it after the city.”

“Uh… guys?” the hitman muttered as he hoisted up his rifle and jumped down from the piled up concrete blocks, “We should be moving…”

They jumped away just in time to avoid a derelict car slamming into the perch. It tumbled over the rocks and chased Garm, but the Caliban tumbled out of the way through the water just in time.

“Looks like we need to revise our strategy,” he gasped, “sniping him isn’t going to work…”

“It got his attention away from the Eagle squadron, though.”

A series of reports from the assault rifles wielded by the Longbow troops showed that a new volley was being launched against Grendel. A roar indicated that he wasn’t amused and was attacking them with the same fervor he’d gone after the Trolls just hours earlier. When they looked to see what was happening, the gray beast was lifting a boulder out of the riverbed and hurling it into the swarm of jetpack soldiers. The twist was that, due to the size of the flying object, the entire group was batted out of the air.

“Not good,” the Caliban grumbled, “He does stuff that super strong tankers wish they could do…”

“He’s not even bleeding,” Danesti yelped, “All those bullets just bounced!”

Then more attacks were leveled against the monster, these ones launched not by more Longbow troops, but by various teams of the Redeemers. A series of vines ripped out of the water and lashed at the monster. Ashen Roast’s fiery form leaped into the water next to the gray monster and lashed at him with his fiery sword while Johnny Slag’s cybernetic blades hacked and slashed into the harder-than-steel flesh. Beams of ice and lightning scored into Grendel’s torso and head and then things looked like they were going to go the way of any average monster fight.

Then the beast stomped and his combatants were carried off in what could only be described as a tidal wave. Grendel didn't seem to have a scratch on him, and his deep chuckling indicated he hadn't really been hurt.

This was going to be bad.

---

My Stories

Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.

For several hours, the Redeemers, Trolls and Freedom Corps forces threw their assaults at the nigh-unstoppable beast. Nothing they threw at Grendel seemed to faze him. Whatever this creature was, he was not drawing inspiration from the cowardly behavior of his namesake.

Bullets ricocheted off his skin. Several Longbow troops wound up teleporting to the hospital and Trolls dragged their bleeding bodies away from the fight after they all wound up getting struck by the bouncing projectiles. Throwing objects had a similar result, except Grendel was throwing the debris and detritus hurled at him back.

Fire made him sooty, which he fixed with a stomp into the river that cleared the combatants away just as easily. Conversely, ice was such a minor inconvenience so as to be negligible. Ashen Roast’s friend, Blizzard Front, had frozen the waters around the monster so solidly as to stop an eighteen wheeler. With an application of constant force, Grendel pulled his leg free of the frozen water, scattering large blocks into the surrounded crowd and knocking many into the oncoming waters. Worse, he now had a set of frozen blocks to use on the meta humans trying to stop him.

Oddly enough, actually getting in close and engaging Grendel in hand-to-hand combat was effective. Garm had gotten a few good punches on the gray bulk’s jaw before being punted into one of the overpass’s pillars. After that, Briggs McBain crashed into the much larger man’s knee, knocking Grendel over before the burly little troll tried to drown him.

Unfortunately, despite McBain’s strength, he was much lighter than Grendel. He was lifted and hurled across the river. When the little green man bolted back up and started rushing back to the fight, the monster picked up a small boulder and hurled it so hard at him that it knocked him over backwards and Briggs landed face-first in the water. He didn’t seem to rise again, but he swam to another location to reconsider his strategy.

Nothing could slow the monster down, nothing could weaken his skin. He seemed to respond to force and momentum, but the damage being done was minimal. It was getting so bad that the city’s major heroes started getting involved before Grendel decided to start trying to eliminate the “legitimate” heroes.

Mynx was the first, bounding into the fight and raking her claws across his skin. Sparks flew and the long-horned beast sighed like she had done him a favor before trying to squash her with his massive fists. Hopping, twisting and flipping, she avoided his assaults, but he swept a wave of river water at her that sent her tumbling. Before he could stomp on her, Genji Atomoyo, Garm’s Tsoo sorcerer, appeared next to her in a swirl of whirling colored smoke, grasped her wrist, and disappeared with the catgirl in tow.

As soon as Grendel brought his foot back from where he’d stomped, he felt something kick him in the back of the knee. Stumbling, he swung behind himself for his attacker. Ms. Liberty caught the blow with her forearms and was sent hurtling to the concrete edge of the river. Getting back up, she was barely able to avoid getting flattened by one of the monster’s fists and delivered two more kicks to its mid-section.

Unfortunately, the monster caught her, gripping her torso in one of its hands and pinning her right arm in the grip. Chuckling, Grendel stood triumphantly and presented his prize to the gathered meta humans. He squeezed her a little she let out an anguished cry.

“This-!” his deep voice rumbled before he saw a red fist crash into his nose and send him tumbling backwards.

Statesman caught his granddaughter as she was tossed aside in surprise and cradled her. She looked to him with a small amount of scorn, but hugged him for the help and he set her with some of the Wardens and Ballistae that were arriving to provide more serious support. In the distance, a pair of Cataphract Heavies were trundling into the river to help engage the monster.

The meta humans were going to need the help, too. Grendel was far from beaten, and he was pushing himself back up. Glaring at Statesman, he reached up and gripped his own nose. There was a cracking pop and Mortiganen realized that the monster’s nose had been broken.

“Interesting,” he muttered, “His bones can break… As invulnerable as his flesh may be, if we hit him he feels it. There may be a way to defeat him in that.”

“I think it’ll take all of us hitting him at once, Mort,” Garm said derisively, his back still sore from hitting the concrete pillar, “All of us, every hero in the city, all at once… And they’ve gotta be good hits, not just waving fists at him like a brawler…”

“Scoff as you will, I will work on a method to utilize his strength as his weakness. For now, you and the others must keep the beast occupied!”

“I think Reichsman’s got that covered,” Harold indicated the battle between Statesman and Grendel through gritted teeth, his arm broken in three places after a cinder block had smashed into it, “I bet those two could fight until dawn.”

Statesman did indeed seem to be handling the fight much better than the entire compliment of meta humans. Grendel could barely swing at the smaller man before he had ducked away and smashed a fist against the monster’s jaw or abdomen.

When the city’s champion of champions landed an uppercut and toppled Grendel again, the gathered meta humans, Trolls and all, gave a triumphant shout to applaud him. However, the beast wasn’t beaten, and he stood again. Not wishing to give him the chance for an advantage, Statesman tried to punch him in the head before he could stand.

A massive gray hand shot up at the last second and caught the smaller fist. Undaunted, the hero tried his other fist and that was caught by the other hand. Chuckling, Grendel stood and held Statesman up until their faces were level. With horror, Marcus Cole realized their was intelligence behind those dull red eyes.

“Heh,” the voice was deep and rich, hardly the voice of a monster, “Statesman… What kind of brainless hulk do you think you’re fighting?”

---

My Stories

Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.

For several hours, the Redeemers, Trolls and Freedom Corps forces threw their assaults at the nigh-unstoppable beast. Nothing they threw at Grendel seemed to faze him. Whatever this creature was, he was not drawing inspiration from the cowardly behavior of his namesake.

Bullets ricocheted off his skin. Several Longbow troops wound up teleporting to the hospital and Trolls dragged their bleeding bodies away from the fight after they all wound up getting struck by the bouncing projectiles. Throwing objects had a similar result, except Grendel was throwing the debris and detritus hurled at him back.

Fire made him sooty, which he fixed with a stomp into the river that cleared the combatants away just as easily. Conversely, ice was such a minor inconvenience so as to be negligible. Ashen Roast’s friend, Blizzard Front, had frozen the waters around the monster so solidly as to stop an eighteen wheeler. With an application of constant force, Grendel pulled his leg free of the frozen water, scattering large blocks into the surrounded crowd and knocking many into the oncoming waters. Worse, he now had a set of frozen blocks to use on the meta humans trying to stop him.

Oddly enough, actually getting in close and engaging Grendel in hand-to-hand combat was effective. Garm had gotten a few good punches on the gray bulk’s jaw before being punted into one of the overpass’s pillars. After that, Briggs McBain crashed into the much larger man’s knee, knocking Grendel over before the burly little troll tried to drown him.

Unfortunately, despite McBain’s strength, he was much lighter than Grendel. He was lifted and hurled across the river. When the little green man bolted back up and started rushing back to the fight, the monster picked up a small boulder and hurled it so hard at him that it knocked him over backwards and Briggs landed face-first in the water. He didn’t seem to rise again, but he swam to another location to reconsider his strategy.

Nothing could slow the monster down, nothing could weaken his skin. He seemed to respond to force and momentum, but the damage being done was minimal. It was getting so bad that the city’s major heroes started getting involved before Grendel decided to start trying to eliminate the “legitimate” heroes.

Mynx was the first, bounding into the fight and raking her claws across his skin. Sparks flew and the long-horned beast sighed like she had done him a favor before trying to squash her with his massive fists. Hopping, twisting and flipping, she avoided his assaults, but he swept a wave of river water at her that sent her tumbling. Before he could stomp on her, Genji Atomoyo, Garm’s Tsoo sorcerer, appeared next to her in a swirl of whirling colored smoke, grasped her wrist, and disappeared with the catgirl in tow.

As soon as Grendel brought his foot back from where he’d stomped, he felt something kick him in the back of the knee. Stumbling, he swung behind himself for his attacker. Ms. Liberty caught the blow with her forearms and was sent hurtling to the concrete edge of the river. Getting back up, she was barely able to avoid getting flattened by one of the monster’s fists and delivered two more kicks to its mid-section.

Unfortunately, the monster caught her, gripping her torso in one of its hands and pinning her right arm in the grip. Chuckling, Grendel stood triumphantly and presented his prize to the gathered meta humans. He squeezed her a little she let out an anguished cry.

“This-!” his deep voice rumbled before he saw a red fist crash into his nose and send him tumbling backwards.

Statesman caught his granddaughter as she was tossed aside in surprise and cradled her. She looked to him with a small amount of scorn, but hugged him for the help and he set her with some of the Wardens and Ballistae that were arriving to provide more serious support. In the distance, a pair of Cataphract Heavies were trundling into the river to help engage the monster.

The meta humans were going to need the help, too. Grendel was far from beaten, and he was pushing himself back up. Glaring at Statesman, he reached up and gripped his own nose. There was a cracking pop and Mortiganen realized that the monster’s nose had been broken.

“Interesting,” he muttered, “His bones can break… As invulnerable as his flesh may be, if we hit him he feels it. There may be a way to defeat him in that.”

“I think it’ll take all of us hitting him at once, Mort,” Garm said derisively, his back still sore from hitting the concrete pillar, “All of us, every hero in the city, all at once… And they’ve gotta be good hits, not just waving fists at him like a brawler…”

“Scoff as you will, I will work on a method to utilize his strength as his weakness. For now, you and the others must keep the beast occupied!”

“I think Reichsman’s got that covered,” Harold indicated the battle between Statesman and Grendel through gritted teeth, his arm broken in three places after a cinder block had smashed into it, “I bet those two could fight until dawn.”

Statesman did indeed seem to be handling the fight much better than the entire compliment of meta humans. Grendel could barely swing at the smaller man before he had ducked away and smashed a fist against the monster’s jaw or abdomen.

When the city’s champion of champions landed an uppercut and toppled Grendel again, the gathered meta humans, Trolls and all, gave a triumphant shout to applaud him. However, the beast wasn’t beaten, and he stood again. Not wishing to give him the chance for an advantage, Statesman tried to punch him in the head before he could stand.

A massive gray hand shot up at the last second and caught the smaller fist. Undaunted, the hero tried his other fist and that was caught by the other hand. Chuckling, Grendel stood and held Statesman up until their faces were level. With horror, Marcus Cole realized their was intelligence behind those dull red eyes.

“Heh,” the voice was deep and rich, hardly the voice of a monster, “Statesman… What kind of brainless hulk do you think you’re fighting?”

---

My Stories

Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.

Grendel held the city’s greatest champion out at arm’s length. With the hero’s hands pinned within those massive paws, there was little he could do to fight against the monster. The monster, however, had a plan to basically pull Statesman apart.

This proved easier planned than accomplished, however. While he was much smaller, the hero still had tremendous reserves of strength and power that much of the world still hadn’t witnessed yet. No matter how hard Grendel tried to pull him apart like a wishbone, he simply couldn’t succeed.

This didn’t stop the beast, however. As other heroes, heroines and Trolls tried to free their de facto leader, he simply swung the man around like a club and batted them aside. Running out of options, Statesman thought hard and hoped Sister Psyche or other psychics were close enough to hear the plan. With no other recourse, he turned to the nearest meta humans and shouted “Get out of the water!”

Mortiganen had heard the call, though his connection hadn’t been psychic. Such methods of communication could cause ripples on the Aetherial planes, and he happened to catch one of the eddies (not that it was difficult to find, radiating with urgency as it was). He could tell numerous nearby psychics were trying to pull unwitting meta humans away from the fight, but he had a better plan.

“Genji,” his raspy voice sounded more forced than normal, “Bring them out of the water. All of them.”

“What?” the young Asian man shouted, “Mister Mortiganen… I… I can’t…”

The wizard rounded on the sorcerer and gripped him by the shoulders. Focusing his pitch black eyes on the younger man’s brown ones, he treated Genji to a glimpse of the knowledge contained within his mind.

“Boy, you have the capability, the power, and the youth to live through what you’re about to do! I would do it myself, but the stress would surely kill me… But if you need, I could lend you some of my power…”

A ribbon of blue light wafted from the older man’s hand into the sorcerer’s. As it coalesced in the young man’s hand, Lukas suddenly felt like he could do anything.

“I… I understand…”

The meta humans could feel it in the air. Their hair (for those that had it) started standing up or on end. Little sparks were arcing off any exposed rebar and everybody realized they had to move fast. Unfortunately, events were moving along much more quickly than anyone could run, jump or fly.

There was a bright flash, and some thought it was the end. Instead, floating as near the center of the gathered heroes and heroines as he could locate, Genji Atamoyo spread his hands wide, muttering a chant he never thought he would apply in such a way. When he finished, he swung his arms before him, drawing his forearms up with his fists clenched and palms pointed toward his body. There was a terrible rushing sound, like a hurricane, and every costumed body was yanked from where they treaded, perched or floated by a powerful wind only to find themselves deposited on one of the overpasses above the battle. They were fortunate, most of the traffic had stopped of its own volition when the battle started, and what little was left had been halted by police roadblocks seeking to prevent any loss of civilian life.

Genji collapsed in the center of the group of bewildered meta humans, his body glowing briefly with blue light. Mortiganen marched up to his prone form and knelt down. Patting him on the shoulder, he whispered something to the young man that seemed to make him stir.

Mider Caid also approached the young sorcerer and knelt beside him. However, he said nothing. Instead, he glared at his group’s leader, the message that he intended to have words with the old man later clearly evident. Mortiganen’s impassive return stare conveyed his lack of concern.

“Look!” a heroine shouted and pointed over the side of the overpass.

Below them, Statesman’s plan came to fruition, and bolts of lightning slammed into him and Grendel. The water flashed brilliantly repeatedly as the electric arcs lanced through the two again and again. Statesman could take the hits, Grendel, it seemed, couldn’t take quite that much. A few times, his bones seemed to be visible through his skin. A final explosion launched the hero out of the monster’s grasp and Grendel rolled backwards into the water.

Pushing himself out of the roiling waves caused by the big creature’s fall, Statesman surveyed the scene. It all seemed too easy to him. Looking to his left, he saw the Cataphracts had shut down during the lightning storm he generated. Shortly, however, they would fire up again and start firing volleys into the creature. Shortly, the battle would be over.

“Statesman,” he heard a raspy voice hiss in his head, “Listen to me! Brute force will not stop this thing!”

Grendel was already starting to stir.

“Who are you?” the hero asked.

“Something of an employee of yours, oddly enough,” the voice replied, ”Were I inclined to follow classic behavioral archetypes, I believe I would chafe at saying such a thing, but I don’t, so you can take my advice with the understanding that I am indeed trying to help.”

“I’m inclined to disagree, but I have little recourse. What is your idea?”

“Its body seems to be damaged by force, if not much of anything else. I know it will be a long time until you can strike it with another lightning storm and even if Synapse arrives after ensuring the citizens of this city are a safe distance away, we both know he lacks your energetic strength. We have to fight this thing with what we know can harm it. Its jaw was broken earlier; the skeleton can be affected and manipulated, but that can only take us so far…”

“He’s getting up… Do you have a plan or not?”

Grendel knelt before Statesman. His dull red eyes were leveled on the smaller human’s. While he’d shown intelligence before, all his gaze displayed at this point was malice.

“It’s simple,” Mortiganen finished hastily, ”Rip off a horn.”.”

---

My Stories

Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.

Statesman and Grendel exchanged more blows. The city’s champion didn’t precisely know how the wizard talking with him expected a horn to be ripped from the monster’s head, but it was a goal to work with. Other heroes were joining the fray again, and the Cataphracts were whining as they fired up. He didn’t have much time to accomplish what he had to do.

Grendel made things a little easier for him, though. Ducking low, the gray beast charged at the patriot-colored hero in an attempt to gore him and trample him underneath. While this was notoriously difficult to accomplish with longhorns, he still made the attempt similar to how bulls with the same predicament attacked. Turning his head to one side and snapping it back as he reached his target, he felt a connection, but there was no shout of pain nor the sensation of a body crumpling under him.

Before he knew what was going on, Statesman was on Grendel’s back. The big creature stopped running and looked left, then right, then started trying to grab at the smaller man. The hero rolled away from each grasp, and finally reached up to grab the left horn and started pulling.

As most anyone would, the monster started trying to pull away. Statesman’s grip was too strong, however, and Grendel wound up only helping him in his quest. In actuality, Marcus was surprised at how easily the horn broke out of the monster’s head.

Grendel was not happy about the result, though. In the next instant he was roaring, spinning, and backhanding the champion away. The horn fell into the water and Statesman slammed into a support column for the overpass. A moment later, energy blasts from the Cataphracts slammed into the monster and the battle was joined as the first of the heroes closed in.

As they battled, however, Mortiganen was busy trying to coordinate the endgame. He sent his thoughts to Garm in an effort to maneuver him.

“You don’t need to do that,” the Troll muttered, “I’m standing right next to you.”

“Oh,” the wizard pulled his hands away from his temples and leveled his gaze on the green man, “Well… Why didn’t you join the battle?”

“Fighting something that’s giving hundreds of heroes trouble doesn’t strike me as a smart thing to do when my own powers are weakening as it is. The day’s been so stressful, Doug’s already regrowing her boobs.”

The ogre let out a little squeak of embarrassment and wrapped her arms over her chest. Other members of the group stared incredulously at her and looked to each other for an explanation. Her face seemed to darken as she blushed. It made her feral face look something like a lightly bruised fruit.

“Later,” the former Caliban interrupted before any questions could be asked, “Right now, we need you to tell us this plan of yours to finally take that thug down, Mort.”

“Stab him with his own horn,” the wizard replied, “I didn’t say it would be elegant. I suggest tearing open a high pressure artery. Even if he regenerates, the spray should prevent any closing of the wound and he’ll bleed out.”

“I don’t think Statesman will appreciate us killing him,” Ashen Roast said quietly.

“We don’t have a choice. We need to stop this monster now before innocent people get hurt.”

“Innocents been hurt,” a gravelly voice growled to the side, “Or maybe you no consider trolls innocent…”

“Considering they were doped up to their eyeballs on Superadine,” Garm leveled his gaze on the interrupter, “No. Atta.”

The other Caliban stood with a small army of fresh Trolls from all over Paragon City. They stood less of a chance than the heroes already fighting, but they were ready to avenge their fallen brothers.

“He kill-t kin. You owe me, G. You kill him. You fail, we drop bridge on him.”

Garm looked out the corner of his eye and saw other trolls moving to wire the overpass with dynamite. He could already picture the orders Mortiganen was giving the rest of the heroes to stop the demolition attempt. It was surprising that the trolls thought their plan would work, but they never were ones to think too far ahead.

“I’ll take that challenge,” the former Caliban replied before diving over the side of the overpass.

He landed in the river hard. He was getting better at leaping, but landings were still troublesome. At least, that’s what he hoped was the problem. The exhaustion he was feeling told otherwise, however. When he pulled his head back out of the waves, he shook the water free and started lurching for the battle.

When he got to the outskirts of the fight, he started searching for the horn. A hero was batted aside by Grendel and bowled him over. He heard some sort of curse about Trolls not being invited, but kept searching.

Statesman returned to the battle along with Ms. Liberty and Mynx. Their support was welcome, but largely fruitless. In the heat of the fight, Statesman smashed a lightning charged punch into the monster, lightly shocking everyone around them, too.

It also sent a charge to Garm and he saw something in the water glow. Grasping it, he yanked Grendel’s horn out of the water and stood triumphantly. He wasn’t sure about the next part, but he didn’t see how he had a choice.

Grendel wasn’t looking, his attention focused on attempting to use Statesman as a club again. When the hero delivered a right cross that rocked the monster’s head aside, the former Caliban struck by vaulting himself up the gray beast’s back and stabbing the point of the horn into his left shoulder. Garm flipped over the shoulder and crashed into the water at Statesman’s feet.

The monster reared back and prepared to smash both the city’s champion and the troublesome Troll into oblivion. Then red sprayed around the horn and he stopped. He tugged a little at the protrusion and looked confusedly at Statesman. A moment later, he fell to his knees, his eyes looking about worriedly.

Grendel’s aorta had been punctured, and the blood was spraying too quickly for him to heal. Loosening the horn from the wound had only made things worse. He wanted to lie down, so he rolled over into the water. His vision darkened and the last thing he saw before everything went black was Statesman looking down glumly at him.

“I’m sorry,” the hero murmured as heroes and heroines picked themselves up around him, “I wish there had been a better way…”

---

My Stories

Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.

The days after Grendel’s defeat were rather routine. While anybody who’d been injured in the conflict recuperated, the rest were placed into new teams and resumed patrols. They restricted themselves to working in Skyway City and Steel Canyon for the most part, but a few loners took up brief patrols through Independence Port and Talos Island. They left Atlas Park, Galaxy City and Kings Row to the newbies.

As the days went by, Garm continued to feel his body growing weaker. He was able to maintain a certain amount of strength through regular workouts, but he knew that in a short amount of time, he wouldn’t be able to roll cars or punch through rock.

“It’ll be great being able to… You know… Be with a woman again,” he chuckled as Doug sat on a bench next to him.

They were watching Briggs work on repairing his van. It was as if the burly little guy purposely wrecked the machine just so he had something to do instead of being on patrol. He was supposed to be resting a set of cracked ribs, but the injury didn’t seem to show any sign of slowing him down.

“You know, Briggs,” Doug’s strangely deep, feminine voice sometimes cracked to lighter pitches and octaves as she spoke, a sign that her Superadine was wearing down as well, “If Mort catches ya doing this, he might think you’re malingering.”

“It was his idea,” the burly green monster grumbled, “He caught me working the really heavy bag, told me to do something constructive.”

“Really heavy bag?” Garm asked.

“The normal ones break too easy, so I made one out of steel mesh and filled it with cinder blocks.”

The other two looked at each other worriedly and noticed that members of their team had gathered around. They looked like they had questions to ask.

“So… Doug…” Ashen began, “You’re, uh… You’re a woman?”

“Yes,” the ogre rolled her eyes and folded her arms over her chest again, “I’m a woman.”

“But ‘Doug’ is a guy’s name…”

“I just thought it would be easier among the Trolls if they thought I was a guy. They usually name themselves after classic monsters, so I was a little worried when I took an old classmate’s name, but nobody cared and a short while later I was in Garm’s group.”

“So, what’s your real name?” Blizzard Front grinned a little

“Patricia. My name is Patricia Helman.”

The others in the group nodded. The blue-skinned blaster started grinning and chuckling, but left the source of his humor remain a mystery.

“So… You’ll be turning human now?” Greg Caid asked as he wrapped a bandage around his wrist.

“Yes, we’ll be turning human,” Garm replied somberly, “Every time we have to fight, we burn off a little more Superadine and turn a little less green.”

“It gets harder and harder every day to generate my rock armor,” Patricia/Doug sighed, “And my skin feels so much softer… I’m thinking that I should probably stop now before I get hurt.”

“You both should,” Mortiganen rasped as he approached, “I need to talk to them alone. The rest of you, leave.”

“What about Briggs?” the orange-skinned tanker asked as he saw the third troll wasn’t moving from his vehicle.

“What I have to say might concern him as well,” the wizard muttered, “Mister McBain, are you suffering from a lack of strength or an increase in vulnerability?”

“Nope,” was the curt reply.

“Regardless…” Mortiganen gave a sideways glance to the burly green man before continuing, “Freedom Corps’ scientists have explained what made Grendel… At least what we think is Grendel, may have been formed with a new brand of Superadine. I’m hoping you two can help as Mister Danesti and I organize a few strikes against Frost Family storehouses and shipping lanes. You may not be able to help in the fight yet, but your experience as Troll leaders will be invaluable.”

“I appreciate the offer, Mort,” Garm replied, “Thanks, but I’ll have to think it over.”

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“What is there to think over?” Patricia asked as she joined him on his walk around the block, “We get to keep helping the group…”

“Yeah, and once this investigation is over, what? What do we do once our knowledge, which grows more obsolete every day, no longer applies to the investigations? Do we just shuffle into the background of the group? Do we work as janitors, maybe help Briggs soup up his van?”

“I wouldn’t mind knowing how to do mechanic work,” the green woman said glumly.

“I’m saying we’ve got a lot to consider, D-Pat…” Garm sighed, “Sorry about that. I just… I don’t know what to do anymore. Before, when someone said ‘go’ I could run in and start swinging my fists until I was either on the ground or the problem was resolved. Trolls, Redeemers… It didn’t matter. Now, everything gets a little clearer every day and I’m starting to see all these complications to every little thing…”

“And you feel powerless against it all…”

He turned to the young woman then. He’d never regarded her as such before, and he had even known the secret after a drunken revelation back in the days when they were in the grips of Superadine. Her features were softening a little more every day. Even now, she’d be considered attractive by some standards.

“Patricia,” the former Caliban scratched the back of his bald head and jumped a little when he realized he felt the shoots of new hair follicles there, “Uh… Well… Look, you want to go get dinner?”

The former Ogre smiled at him and nodded. He didn’t know where the night would take them, but Garm was at least feeling a little better that he was just doing something instead of letting himself be paralyzed with indecision. As they walked to a sub shop down the street, he threw an arm around his companion’s shoulders and hugged her close.

“We’ve been through a lot,” he sighed, “I don’t think we’ve ever done something like this, though.”

“One step at a time, Garm,” she replied quietly as she poked him in the ribs, “It’s not so difficult as you’re trying to make it seem.”

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My Stories

Look at that. A full-grown woman pulling off pigtails. Her crazy is off the charts.