The heroes were crowded in a makeshift "green room"--a small tent erected on the Atlas Park City Hall landing. It was made of dark material, to prevent the competition from taking pictures, and it was very stuffy. Steel Bayonet was sweating profusely.
"This is idiotic," he complained.
"Try to make a good impression," Peter said.
Steel Bayonet was a hero. He had a card and everything. He wasn't, to put too fine a point on it, particularly comfortable with the title. Peter Renaut, a smaller, thinner man in a disheveled brown suit, was his ELITE liason. Many of the other heroes had similar smaller men, in similar disheveled suits of various colors, also talking to them in a similarly urgent manner.
The tent was very crowded.
"Pete, this isn't what I signed on for," Steel Bayonet said.
Peter sighed. "I know, Mike. But look, the station is interested in the 'new heroes' who helped evacuate Galaxy City, and the city really needs some good publicity to help keep the blood pressure down. This is part of the job, OK?"
Sweat trickled down the back of Mike's neck. "Well when are we going on? Seriously. I'm going to pass out from the heat in here, and--wait a minute." He turned, almost knocking down a shorter man dressed in full plate armor, and faced a younger guy in blue and white spandex uniform with a snowflake pattern stamped on the arms and legs. "Hey... er... Ice Guy..."
"Antarcticos," the man replied.
"OK, Antarctic--wait, really?"
The man sighed. "Really."
"Because, uh, that kind of sounds more like a villain name."
"I know!" Antarcticos rolled his eyes and indicated a short fat man in a dark green shabby suit. "That's what I told GIFT when they gave it to me. I said 'every time I say this name I feel like I should throw back my head and laugh maniacally!' But they gave it to me anyway. They said--"
"The name is fine," the short fat man in the dark green shabby suit said, somewhat defensively.
"That's exactly what they say," Antarcticos said. "Every time."
The short fat man in the dark green shabby suit glowered.
"Well, look," Steel Bayonet said, "seeing as how we're all packed like sardines in this stupid tent--" he raised his voice higher, hoping someone outside would overhear him-- "I thought maybe you might, you know..." he wiggled his fingers.
Antarcticos sighed. "The boss won't let me." He jerked his head toward the short fat guy in the dark green shabby suit.
Every hero in the tent immediately turned to face the short fat guy in the dark green shabby suit and glowered. The man gulped self-consciously.
"It's a liability issue," the man stammered.
"Oh yeah?" Steel Bayonet frowned. "What kind of liability are we talking here? Are you afraid his ice powers are going to accidentally conjure up a blizzard that buries us alive or something? Maybe we'll get trapped in this tent--you know, the one parked right outside City Hall--and we'll have to resort to cannibalism to survive."
The short fat guy in the dark green shabby suit flushed scarlet, but he also crossed his arms and planted his feet. Steel Bayonet felt Pete tug at his arm and saw him shaking his head.
"Please don't make trouble," Pete said.
Steel Bayonet sighed.
The tent brightened momentarily as the tent flap was pushed aside. The heroes and their handlers sighed collectively as a quick breeze blew in from the outside. A man in a headset peered in and looked at the assembled group.
"Steel... uh... hmmm." The man looked at his clipboard and frowned. "The sword guy," he said finally.
"That's me!" Steel Bayonet said. He started working his way to the front of the tent.
"Mike, just... be polite, OK? Remember why you're doing this." Pete sounded worried.
"I'm doing this because you told me to," Steel Bayonet said cheerfully.
"No!" A tinge of panic edged Pete's voice. "No, you're doing it for the city! For the city!"
"Because you told me to," Steel Bayonet repeated, and stepped outside.
* * *
Cheryl Morris was an attractive, aggressive woman in her late 20s. She was considered one of the rising stars on WHRO (the "Hero Network") for her gutsy and occasionally dangerous on-the-scene reports of hero and villain activity. She'd recently managed to get on location footage of the madness in Galaxy City, and the city had tried very hard to suppress as much of that footage as possible. From the city's perspective, they had every reason to try--Galaxy City was a frightening mess, and they didn't want people rioting form sheer terror. From Cheryl's perspective, the city was trying to suppress information, and whatever their motives might be, hiding the truth always led to greater problems down the road.
The city had arranged these interviews in an attempt to mollify her. She found their attempt to trade a hard-hitting journalistic piece about heroism and destruction in Galaxy City with a fluff piece about largely unknown heroes more than a little offensive. The fact that her boss made it absolutely clear that she was going to do the piece and shut up about it infuriated her even more.
So far she'd managed not to take out on the poor heroes they'd corralled into this farce. She was a professional, after all, and she'd seen a lot of this group in action, helping with the evacuation, standing against the Shivans, even facing off against an Arachnos agent or two. They weren't responsible for the city shutting down her story, and she wasn't going to take it out on them.
... but then Steel Bayonet called her "Lois."
He was average height for a Paragon City hero--which meant, statistically, he was well over six feet in height. It was an odd statistical anomaly that the mean average height of a male Paragon hero was from six foot five and a half inches. Steel Bayonet looked a little shorter than that -- maybe six four. He wore some kind of high-tech body armor that a number of the new melee heroes were sporting, a dark-colored chain mesh made of a new alloy that DATA was field testing on a number of ELITE, GIFT and SERAPH recruits. Over that was a blue-and-black chest plate and black arm and leg guards with extra armor over the joints. Strapped to his back were two swords. He wore blue mirrored sunglasses, and she saw old, heavy scars traveling down the left side of his face.
He wasn't condescending. He just sat down on the stool they'd set up for the interviewee, flashed her a grin, and said "hiya Lois." In most other situations she might actually have found it amusing, but today it was precisely the wrong thing to say at exactly the wrong time.
She betrayed no emotion, waited for the cameras to start rolling, and politely started asking her questions.
"You're name is Steel Bayonet?"
"My name is Michael Brennan," he said. "Steel Bayonet is my... hm."
"Stage name?" She asked helpfully.
He stopped, tilted his head sideways for a moment, then laughed. "Yeah, that works. It's my stage name."
"But you don't actually use bayonets, do you?"
One eyebrow shot up over the top of his sunglasses. "No," he said. His voice sounded a little more guarded now.
"A bayonet, from what I understand, is something like a knife that is fixed to the end of a rifle. But you don't use knives or rifles."
"That's right," Steel Bayonet said. "I use swords."
"So why do you call yourself Steel Bayonet?"
Cheryl could see her editor frantically waving his hands, trying to get her attention. She ignored him. She also noticed a small, thin man in a rumpled brown suit frantically waving his hands, trying to get Steel Bayonet's attention. Steel Bayonet ignored him. She saw his jaw set, and the corner of his mouth turn up into a slight smile.
"I call myself 'Steel Bayonet' because that's the name they gave me."
Cheryl blinked. "You didn't choose your own name?"
"No, most of us don't get to do that any more."
She felt herself leaning in, fascinated. "Why not?"
"They don't tell us," Steel Bayonet said. "All they say is legal reasons. But I figured it out on my own. It's a copyright thing."
She saw the small, thin man in the rumpled brown suit put his face in his hands. "Copyright?"
Steel Bayonet shrugged. "It's pretty simple. Paragon gets a disproportionate number of heroes in the US. It's sort of a trouble zone, right? But all these heroes... well obviously there are names we're not going to take. The famous ones, the ones trademarked by the comic book companies... because one, we don't want to disrespect the heroes who made those names big, and two, we don't want to get sued from here to Christmas and back, then twice for Kwanzaa."
She saw the small, thin man in the rumpled brown suit look up sharply, glare at Steel Bayonet, then sink his head back into his hands.
"Go on," she urged.
"Well, that still leaves a lot of names," Steel Bayonet said. "But mostly we're not that creative. I mean, I'm not trying to say we're stupid, it's just that when we decide to get into this, nine times out of ten it's not because we thought of a name first. It's kind of an afterthought. A lot of times the first time we have to think of it is after our first fight, when someone runs up to us and says 'thank you so much! Who are you?' And then we're stuck reaching for something."
"I see," she said.
"It's awkward," Steel Bayonet said.
"I bet it is," she agreed.
"I mean, inevitably you'll have at least two, and usually ten to fifteen, guys running around with exactly the same name. And then when they find out about it there's a huge legal mess to work everything out. So if we're actually recruited by one of the departments--I was recruited by ELITE, for example--they take care of the name up front. They all have this database of unregistered names and they find one that fits. But they don't always... fit... perfectly. So in my case, apparently it came down to 'Steel Bayonet' or 'The Living Rapier.'"
Cheryl almost smiled. "'The Living Rapier?'"
Steel Bayonet grinned. "Yeah. I have no idea why someone didn't snatch that one right up."
"So 'Steel Bayonet' was the closest name available to a guy who fights evil with two swords."
Steel Bayonet shrugged. "That's what they tell me."
"Does that bother you? The swords, I mean."
Steel Bayonet frowned. "Why would that bother me?"
"Well," Cheryl said, "they're swords. You're a hero--your job is, essentially, to serve and protect--but your primary weapons are, let's be perfectly honest, lethal weapons. It's hard to subdue someone with a sword."
Steel Bayonet studied her for a moment. Her editor was now gesturing urgently to the camera crew, trying to get them to stop shooting. She smiled slightly to herself. They were far too well trained for that.
"You familiar with a hero named 'Positron'?" Steel Bayonet asked.
Cheryl narrowed her eyes. "Of course I'm familiar with--"
"Yeah," he interrupted, "he uses this thing called 'antimatter' to make all the pretty colors that come out of his suit when he's attacking bad guys. Now I'm no scientist, but from what I understand antimatter doesn't have a 'just knock them out for a while' setting."
"But Positron is a rather unusual case," she countered. "After all, he--"
"And Synapse," Steel Bayonet said. "He does this thing with electricity. I mean, tasers aside, electricity is pretty solidly lethal in mass quantities, and he's pretty good about the mass quantities."
"Are you comparing youself to--"
"No, I'm not comparing myself to Positron or Synapse," Steel Bayonet said. "They have actual powers. I'm a guy with swords. I'm really amazingly good with swords, mind you, but I don't grow them out of my hands or anything like that. I'm more like Manticore. You know, the guy who shoots incredibly sharp things at very high speeds toward people he has disagreements with?"
"I think we can agree they're a special case," she said.
"No we can't," Steel Bayonet insisted. "Most of the heroes out there have powers that are deadly. You have a few who specialize in non-lethal attacks, but mostly? Heroes who shoot fire, heroes who shoot some kind of weird, creepy bolts of darkness, heroes who have claws, for crying out loud! Not to mention the ones who can pick up cars! Have you ever been hit by someone strong enough to pick up a car? I can't pick up a car. Heck, I feel outclassed most of the time. Occasionally the guys from DATA keep trying to get me to replace my swords with these weird glowing energy things they developed for Vanguard."
"Why don't you?" Cheryl asked.
"Well," Steel Bayonet said, "that would make my handle completely idiotic." He grinned, looked over to the small, thin man in the rumpled brown suit, and grinned wider. "I have to go now," he said. "I think I might be in trouble. Thanks for taking the time. This was unexpectedly fun."
With that he walked off to city hall. The man in the brown suit straightened, sighed heavily, and hurried on after him.
Cheryl decided she liked him after all.
Scrapper Jack (SJ/WP Brute), Sky Commando (WP/SJ Tanker), Curveball (Rad/DP Defender), and a bunch more.
The heroes were crowded in a makeshift "green room"--a small tent erected on the Atlas Park City Hall landing. It was made of dark material, to prevent the competition from taking pictures, and it was very stuffy. Steel Bayonet was sweating profusely.
"This is idiotic," he complained.
"Try to make a good impression," Peter said.
Steel Bayonet was a hero. He had a card and everything. He wasn't, to put too fine a point on it, particularly comfortable with the title. Peter Renaut, a smaller, thinner man in a disheveled brown suit, was his ELITE liason. Many of the other heroes had similar smaller men, in similar disheveled suits of various colors, also talking to them in a similarly urgent manner.
The tent was very crowded.
"Pete, this isn't what I signed on for," Steel Bayonet said.
Peter sighed. "I know, Mike. But look, the station is interested in the 'new heroes' who helped evacuate Galaxy City, and the city really needs some good publicity to help keep the blood pressure down. This is part of the job, OK?"
Sweat trickled down the back of Mike's neck. "Well when are we going on? Seriously. I'm going to pass out from the heat in here, and--wait a minute." He turned, almost knocking down a shorter man dressed in full plate armor, and faced a younger guy in blue and white spandex uniform with a snowflake pattern stamped on the arms and legs. "Hey... er... Ice Guy..."
"Antarcticos," the man replied.
"OK, Antarctic--wait, really?"
The man sighed. "Really."
"Because, uh, that kind of sounds more like a villain name."
"I know!" Antarcticos rolled his eyes and indicated a short fat man in a dark green shabby suit. "That's what I told GIFT when they gave it to me. I said 'every time I say this name I feel like I should throw back my head and laugh maniacally!' But they gave it to me anyway. They said--"
"The name is fine," the short fat man in the dark green shabby suit said, somewhat defensively.
"That's exactly what they say," Antarcticos said. "Every time."
The short fat man in the dark green shabby suit glowered.
"Well, look," Steel Bayonet said, "seeing as how we're all packed like sardines in this stupid tent--" he raised his voice higher, hoping someone outside would overhear him-- "I thought maybe you might, you know..." he wiggled his fingers.
Antarcticos sighed. "The boss won't let me." He jerked his head toward the short fat guy in the dark green shabby suit.
Every hero in the tent immediately turned to face the short fat guy in the dark green shabby suit and glowered. The man gulped self-consciously.
"It's a liability issue," the man stammered.
"Oh yeah?" Steel Bayonet frowned. "What kind of liability are we talking here? Are you afraid his ice powers are going to accidentally conjure up a blizzard that buries us alive or something? Maybe we'll get trapped in this tent--you know, the one parked right outside City Hall--and we'll have to resort to cannibalism to survive."
The short fat guy in the dark green shabby suit flushed scarlet, but he also crossed his arms and planted his feet. Steel Bayonet felt Pete tug at his arm and saw him shaking his head.
"Please don't make trouble," Pete said.
Steel Bayonet sighed.
The tent brightened momentarily as the tent flap was pushed aside. The heroes and their handlers sighed collectively as a quick breeze blew in from the outside. A man in a headset peered in and looked at the assembled group.
"Steel... uh... hmmm." The man looked at his clipboard and frowned. "The sword guy," he said finally.
"That's me!" Steel Bayonet said. He started working his way to the front of the tent.
"Mike, just... be polite, OK? Remember why you're doing this." Pete sounded worried.
"I'm doing this because you told me to," Steel Bayonet said cheerfully.
"No!" A tinge of panic edged Pete's voice. "No, you're doing it for the city! For the city!"
"Because you told me to," Steel Bayonet repeated, and stepped outside.
* * *
Cheryl Morris was an attractive, aggressive woman in her late 20s. She was considered one of the rising stars on WHRO (the "Hero Network") for her gutsy and occasionally dangerous on-the-scene reports of hero and villain activity. She'd recently managed to get on location footage of the madness in Galaxy City, and the city had tried very hard to suppress as much of that footage as possible. From the city's perspective, they had every reason to try--Galaxy City was a frightening mess, and they didn't want people rioting form sheer terror. From Cheryl's perspective, the city was trying to suppress information, and whatever their motives might be, hiding the truth always led to greater problems down the road.
The city had arranged these interviews in an attempt to mollify her. She found their attempt to trade a hard-hitting journalistic piece about heroism and destruction in Galaxy City with a fluff piece about largely unknown heroes more than a little offensive. The fact that her boss made it absolutely clear that she was going to do the piece and shut up about it infuriated her even more.
So far she'd managed not to take out on the poor heroes they'd corralled into this farce. She was a professional, after all, and she'd seen a lot of this group in action, helping with the evacuation, standing against the Shivans, even facing off against an Arachnos agent or two. They weren't responsible for the city shutting down her story, and she wasn't going to take it out on them.
... but then Steel Bayonet called her "Lois."
He was average height for a Paragon City hero--which meant, statistically, he was well over six feet in height. It was an odd statistical anomaly that the mean average height of a male Paragon hero was from six foot five and a half inches. Steel Bayonet looked a little shorter than that -- maybe six four. He wore some kind of high-tech body armor that a number of the new melee heroes were sporting, a dark-colored chain mesh made of a new alloy that DATA was field testing on a number of ELITE, GIFT and SERAPH recruits. Over that was a blue-and-black chest plate and black arm and leg guards with extra armor over the joints. Strapped to his back were two swords. He wore blue mirrored sunglasses, and she saw old, heavy scars traveling down the left side of his face.
He wasn't condescending. He just sat down on the stool they'd set up for the interviewee, flashed her a grin, and said "hiya Lois." In most other situations she might actually have found it amusing, but today it was precisely the wrong thing to say at exactly the wrong time.
She betrayed no emotion, waited for the cameras to start rolling, and politely started asking her questions.
"You're name is Steel Bayonet?"
"My name is Michael Brennan," he said. "Steel Bayonet is my... hm."
"Stage name?" She asked helpfully.
He stopped, tilted his head sideways for a moment, then laughed. "Yeah, that works. It's my stage name."
"But you don't actually use bayonets, do you?"
One eyebrow shot up over the top of his sunglasses. "No," he said. His voice sounded a little more guarded now.
"A bayonet, from what I understand, is something like a knife that is fixed to the end of a rifle. But you don't use knives or rifles."
"That's right," Steel Bayonet said. "I use swords."
"So why do you call yourself Steel Bayonet?"
Cheryl could see her editor frantically waving his hands, trying to get her attention. She ignored him. She also noticed a small, thin man in a rumpled brown suit frantically waving his hands, trying to get Steel Bayonet's attention. Steel Bayonet ignored him. She saw his jaw set, and the corner of his mouth turn up into a slight smile.
"I call myself 'Steel Bayonet' because that's the name they gave me."
Cheryl blinked. "You didn't choose your own name?"
"No, most of us don't get to do that any more."
She felt herself leaning in, fascinated. "Why not?"
"They don't tell us," Steel Bayonet said. "All they say is legal reasons. But I figured it out on my own. It's a copyright thing."
She saw the small, thin man in the rumpled brown suit put his face in his hands. "Copyright?"
Steel Bayonet shrugged. "It's pretty simple. Paragon gets a disproportionate number of heroes in the US. It's sort of a trouble zone, right? But all these heroes... well obviously there are names we're not going to take. The famous ones, the ones trademarked by the comic book companies... because one, we don't want to disrespect the heroes who made those names big, and two, we don't want to get sued from here to Christmas and back, then twice for Kwanzaa."
She saw the small, thin man in the rumpled brown suit look up sharply, glare at Steel Bayonet, then sink his head back into his hands.
"Go on," she urged.
"Well, that still leaves a lot of names," Steel Bayonet said. "But mostly we're not that creative. I mean, I'm not trying to say we're stupid, it's just that when we decide to get into this, nine times out of ten it's not because we thought of a name first. It's kind of an afterthought. A lot of times the first time we have to think of it is after our first fight, when someone runs up to us and says 'thank you so much! Who are you?' And then we're stuck reaching for something."
"I see," she said.
"It's awkward," Steel Bayonet said.
"I bet it is," she agreed.
"I mean, inevitably you'll have at least two, and usually ten to fifteen, guys running around with exactly the same name. And then when they find out about it there's a huge legal mess to work everything out. So if we're actually recruited by one of the departments--I was recruited by ELITE, for example--they take care of the name up front. They all have this database of unregistered names and they find one that fits. But they don't always... fit... perfectly. So in my case, apparently it came down to 'Steel Bayonet' or 'The Living Rapier.'"
Cheryl almost smiled. "'The Living Rapier?'"
Steel Bayonet grinned. "Yeah. I have no idea why someone didn't snatch that one right up."
"So 'Steel Bayonet' was the closest name available to a guy who fights evil with two swords."
Steel Bayonet shrugged. "That's what they tell me."
"Does that bother you? The swords, I mean."
Steel Bayonet frowned. "Why would that bother me?"
"Well," Cheryl said, "they're swords. You're a hero--your job is, essentially, to serve and protect--but your primary weapons are, let's be perfectly honest, lethal weapons. It's hard to subdue someone with a sword."
Steel Bayonet studied her for a moment. Her editor was now gesturing urgently to the camera crew, trying to get them to stop shooting. She smiled slightly to herself. They were far too well trained for that.
"You familiar with a hero named 'Positron'?" Steel Bayonet asked.
Cheryl narrowed her eyes. "Of course I'm familiar with--"
"Yeah," he interrupted, "he uses this thing called 'antimatter' to make all the pretty colors that come out of his suit when he's attacking bad guys. Now I'm no scientist, but from what I understand antimatter doesn't have a 'just knock them out for a while' setting."
"But Positron is a rather unusual case," she countered. "After all, he--"
"And Synapse," Steel Bayonet said. "He does this thing with electricity. I mean, tasers aside, electricity is pretty solidly lethal in mass quantities, and he's pretty good about the mass quantities."
"Are you comparing youself to--"
"No, I'm not comparing myself to Positron or Synapse," Steel Bayonet said. "They have actual powers. I'm a guy with swords. I'm really amazingly good with swords, mind you, but I don't grow them out of my hands or anything like that. I'm more like Manticore. You know, the guy who shoots incredibly sharp things at very high speeds toward people he has disagreements with?"
"I think we can agree they're a special case," she said.
"No we can't," Steel Bayonet insisted. "Most of the heroes out there have powers that are deadly. You have a few who specialize in non-lethal attacks, but mostly? Heroes who shoot fire, heroes who shoot some kind of weird, creepy bolts of darkness, heroes who have claws, for crying out loud! Not to mention the ones who can pick up cars! Have you ever been hit by someone strong enough to pick up a car? I can't pick up a car. Heck, I feel outclassed most of the time. Occasionally the guys from DATA keep trying to get me to replace my swords with these weird glowing energy things they developed for Vanguard."
"Why don't you?" Cheryl asked.
"Well," Steel Bayonet said, "that would make my handle completely idiotic." He grinned, looked over to the small, thin man in the rumpled brown suit, and grinned wider. "I have to go now," he said. "I think I might be in trouble. Thanks for taking the time. This was unexpectedly fun."
With that he walked off to city hall. The man in the brown suit straightened, sighed heavily, and hurried on after him.
Cheryl decided she liked him after all.
Scrapper Jack (SJ/WP Brute), Sky Commando (WP/SJ Tanker), Curveball (Rad/DP Defender), and a bunch more.