Captain Pink

That was then: Captain Pink once described himself as a force for good and advocate of quiche. His colourful costume may not strike fear into the heart of villains, but his stylish poise, chiselled abs and square jaw do inspire a certain admiration in them. His faithful sidekick Poptastic Boy, ‘the Toy Boy Wonder’, is never far from his side in the battle against evil and poor taste in curtains.  Together in the iconic pink cadillac known as the Pinkmobile the pair have faced the darkest criminals and painted them pastel.

This is now:  Oh how quickly the paint can peel.  What seemed so solid, so true, so faithful can turn on its heel in a capricious moment and plunge the most innocent hearts into black despair.

Type Of Hero: Abnormal

Base Of Operations: Helix City –  The Yard

Secret Identity: Wayne Bruce

Description: Pink Bodysuit. Fluffy Pink Boots. Pink Cape. Half-Face Pink Mask. “Pinkmobile” Pink Cadillac.

Powers: Flight: Advanced, Sidekick : Poptastic Boy, Energy Attack Vibration: 3, Energy Pool: Basic

Issue #001 – – – – – controlled by Fraser Machin – – – – – Credits 4

The Man Made Entirely Of Rough Pieces Of Granite smashed Lionheart to the ground again.  He hit hard, the breath blasting out of him.  His head was ringing.  His left eye was swollen nearly closed.  His right ankle was throbbing and had ceased to carry his weight some time ago.

“Kill him, kill him,” the blood-crazed crowd screamed, their excitement, rage and fear mingling like some chemical mood enhancer in the air.  They were high but not on anything as mundane as weed or coke – they were high on hatred and violence.  It made for a toxic atmosphere.

Lionheart got to his feet, surprised that Rocky didn’t just club him down.  Rocky!  Lionheart managed to amuse himself even when he was having the living crap kicked out of him.  He raised his eyes to the giant before him.  It huffed heavy breathes from somewhere within that colossal stony body.  Lionheart mused that this indicated the thing had lungs.  Well, of course it had lungs!  It wasn’t a freakin’ alien, was it?  It just looked like one.

“Okay, big fella'” Lionheart grunted between cracked and bleeding lips.  “I might have to stop holding back now.”  As quips go, it wasn’t great.  But then Lionheart wasn’t feeling so great just at that moment.  Half an hour of this behemoth punching him twelve ways to Sunday will do that to a guy.

“Kill him!” The crowd screamed some more.  Their rhetoric, while colourful, wasn’t exactly creative.  “Tear off his head!”  Ah, Lionheart thought.  That’s better.  Must be some academic haters among the mob.  Or maybe a media consultant, or something?

The Man Made Entirely Of Rough Pieces Of Granite came forwards to fulfill his fans’ wish.  Lionheart didn’t know if that was actually what he was called.  It seemed a bit overlong, but frankly he’d been too busy getting seven bells smashed out of him to come up with a pithy name for his opponent and nobody had politely introduced them beforehand.  So it would have to do for now.

“Look, buddy,” he said as the monster loomed over him, “If you’re after a kiss, I ain’t judging ya’ – each to his own.  But I don’t swing that way.”

Roaring, The Man Made Entirely Of Rough Pieces Of Granite swung both massive hands down at the hero’s head.  Tough or not, this was likely to be the last thing Lionheart ever saw.  Which was a shame, since he had no idea whatsoever how he got here or where he had been previously.  He wasn’t even entirely sure who the hell he was.  These things, Lionheart thought glumly, were probably important.  Ah well, no time for that now.  There was an unstoppable force coming directly at him and his skull was definitely not an immovable object.

Lionheart

The legend goes like this.  Once there was a man who became the hero named Lionheart.  Just your typical man much like everybody else.  Nothing very special about him at all.  His love of motorbikes vied with his need to earn a few bucks turning his hand to manual work.  Nevertheless he managed his money well enough to take a trip somewhere exotic every year.  Not to sunbathe.  Not to visit tourist attractions.  But just to ride his bike, wild and free.

He was on an adventure trip to Africa when his motorcycle careered out of control off a precipice. Clinging to the edge of a ledge he was able to claw his way up and to his surprise he came upon a cave entrance.  Exploring the cave he came across what appeared to be a shrine to some kind of old animal god.  His interest was piqued.

Investigating the shrine he saw a glowing talon. He hadn’t planned to take the talon.  He just wanted a closer look.  But his hand seemed to reach out with a will of its own.  A crackle of energy and a bright flash of light stole his consciousness.

Coming round several hours later he was shocked when he looked down at his hands which were now covered in a sandy-coloured fur.  Nor was this the only change that had been wrought in him.  Talons instead of fingernails.  Sharp teeth.  An amazing strength and feeling of wellbeing, in his whole body but particularly in his legs.  Something very drastic had happened.

The bad news was that it was probably going to be hard to avoid being noticed now.  And the new talons were going to be a challenge when riding his bike.  But there certainly wasn’t going to be any problem getting back up the cliff.  As for the other problems, Jack Hammer wasn’t really given to worrying about such things.  Live life as it comes, he thought.

Type Of Hero: Brick

Base Of Operations: Helix City –  Helix Point

Secret Identity: Jack Hammer

Description: Sandy Fur, Long Hair, Talons and Fangs. Red and Black Leathers. Lion over a Union Jack on Back.

Powers: Giant Size: Large (non-permanent), Health: 1, Leap: 1, Strength: 2, Tough Skin: 1

Issue #001 – – – – – controlled by Junius Stone – – – – – Credits 6

The only sound was the steady low hum of the machinery.

Everything in the laboratory, or the cell, or whatever it was, seemed designed to heighten a state of relaxation.  The walls were painted in light pastel hues.  The lighting was subdued, emitted from bulbs hidden in wall alcoves so that the illumination seemed not to come from any direct source but simply  raise the overall level of ambient light.

Iron Maiden tested her bonds again.  Laying on her back on a metal gurney there were tight bands at her wrists, her ankles, her thighs, her upper arms, her waist and her throat.  They weren’t metal, she didn’t think, but some sort of flexible heavy-duty plastic.  Whatever they were made from, they were perfectly capable of restraining her, despite her immense strength, effectively.

The door opened and a woman walked in.  She wore a lab coat and unfashionable spectacles were perched on the end of  her nose.  She was every bit the stereotype lab geek, complete with pen in her breast pocket and clipboard in her hand.  “Hello, Amy,” she said.

“Who the hell are you?  Where am I?  And why are you calling me Amy?  My name isn’t Amy,” Iron Maiden said.
The lab geek smiled.  It was a cold, humourless expression.  The edges of her mouth turned up but were accompanied by no warmth whatsoever.
“Answer me,”  Iron Maiden insisted, trying to keep her voice moderate.  For now.  “Or I’ll pop these cables and ask more forcefully.”
“You won’t do any such thing,” the woman chuckled mirthlessly.  “You are secured by bonds made from a plastic/metal hybrid developed by the Bull Corporation, patent pending.  It is one of the strongest flexible multi-alloys known to Man.  Your super strength has been tested accurately to within a tenth of a Modus Point, the scale by which we rate abnormal powers.  To break those bonds you would need to be nearly six times as strong as you are.”
“Ah.”  Iron Maiden said.  “Well, when you put it that way it does seem less likely.  How about something to drink then?  I’m parched.”

Instead, the woman removed her pen and began poking and prodding at the hero’s silvery flesh.  “Hey!” Iron Maiden protested.  “I’m not a piece of meat.”
“Indeed you aren’t,” the woman agreed.  “Quite the reverse, in fact.  You really are remarkable, Amy.”
“I’m a superhero, did you expect mundane?”
The woman in the white coat shook her head: “You are not a superhero.  You are an experiment gone wrong.  And soon you will not even be that.”
“What are you talking about?”
The woman did not answer.  She jotted some notes onto her pad and then turned to leave the room.  “I’ll be back later, but you won’t remember me, Amy.”
“Why do you keep calling me Amy?”
“That’s your new name,” the woman confided.  “I hope you like it.  But it doesn’t really matter if you don’t.”  And with that, she left.

Iron Maiden lay still on the trolley for a moment and pondered her options.  She couldn’t seem to remember very much.  How she got here, what she had been doing for the last few months, or the last couple of years actually.  She presumed this was the result of something that had been done to her by the people who held her captive.  A supervillain seemed the best bet.  But probably not wise, right now, to be jumping to any conclusions.

Taking a deep breath, Iron Maiden gathered her sense of purpose and let her anger form a cold, deliberate force within  her.  Then, with a mighty heave, she popped all the bonds on one powerful surge.  Rubbing her arms where the bands had been she rose to her feet and smiled grimly.  “Do you know what you can do with your plastic/metal multi-alloy hybrid bonds, patent pending?” she muttered as she glanced towards the door.  “You can stick them where the sun doesn’t shine.  Sideways.”

Iron Maiden

Good-humoured and likeable, this powerhouse is fun to have on the team and deadly to have as an enemy.  What she lacks in subtlety she more than makes up for in raw power.

There’s nothing very complicated about what Iron Maiden does, she breaks things.  But she does it very well indeed and for the right side.  A fact which law enforcement nationwide are very, very glad about.

Type Of Hero: Brick

Base Of Operations: Helix City – The Suburbs

Secret Identity: Mandy Bell

Description: A tall, curvy, athletic woman composed entirely of living metal.

Powers: Strength: 3, Tough Skin: 2, Health: 1

Iron Maiden-Mandy Bell was a student at the local university. A physics student, she was pretty in that quiet, gaze at the world from behind glasses sort of way. She was lost in her inner world of forces, vibrational strings and so on. She wasn’t that great with people and this bothered her somewhat. She long desired to break out of her shell. A protege’ of the professor who would become Dr. Warp, she was recognized for the brilliance within her, and he sought to coax and direct it. He was coming up with a theory to breach the other spacial dimensions of our universe and had come up with a material he thought could exist. It was a metal that could act as living flesh, yet had the protective qualities of titanium. Mandy was the Head Teacher’s assistant in developing that metal.

Then the day came. They were testing a probe to minutely penetrate the dimensional membrane, Mandy encased in a capsule of the experimental metal. The penetration broke it’s containment and energy tendrils lanced out…

Mandy woke up to find her body had fundamentally changed. When she was struck by the tendril, she had been wishing, at that moment, she was a fundamentally different person. Taller, stronger, more voluptuous, more assertive… and now, she is, a steel encased Vargas girl. But a chrome-skinned woman is a startling sight. Life was going to be very different from here on out.

 

Issue #001 – – – – – controlled by Bill Treadwell – – – – – Credits 20

“Are you ready?” Thomson asked, unclipping his baton from its holster and thumbing the trigger on its side.  The weapon responded with its telltale buzz, all the confirmation that was needed to confirm the current was now live.
“Huh?”  Cassandra asked, momentarily confused.
“I said, are you ready?  Come on woman, wake up.  If you end up dead today it’s me that’ll have to fill in all the paperwork.”

Cassandra glanced around.  She stood at the entrance to a dark alleyway, crouched back behind a dumpster alongside her team leader, Thomson, and three other uniformed adults, two plain-looking men and a large imposing woman.  She knew their names. Jacob, Andy and Anne.  She knew them well, had been on missions with them, had done basic training with some of them some years ago.  And yet …

“Let’s go,” Thomson called, the trigger for the group to burst from their concealment and charge along the alley towards the small group of gang-bangers huddled around a metal barrel full of fire at the end of the enclosure.

Cassandra fell back a little while the others charged forwards.  She felt oddly detached, strange.  Something seemed wrong.  But she couldn’t put her finger on it.  Then all the shit really hit the fan.

Thomson swung his electrified baton at the head of the biggest gangbanger, a black man who was so large as to dwarf all the others in the alley.  But the black man was quicker.  He leant backwards and the baton passed harmless in front of him, inches from his chest.  Then he snapped out the most perfect side-kick Cassandra had ever seen, smashing Thomson so hard in the chest that he was hurled backwards against the alley wall.

Jacob went for his sidearm, but one of the gangers threw a knife.  It’s glittering arc catching the light of the flickering flames as it flashed through the air before embedding itself deep into the cops chest.  Jacob fell back into Andy’s arms, which delayed the other cop just enough for a young ganger, barely more than a child, to smash in the side of his head with an old lump of iron.  Looks a bit like a bit of old bike, Cassandra thought in her odd, detached way.  She should have been horrified.  Yet she felt separate to it all.  As if she were watching a movie.  As if she were not part of it at all.

Anne put up a better fight.  A veteran of the force she dodged a clumsy attack from a ganger and hit him with a taser that dropped the thug like a stone.  Two other gangers fell back as Anne approached, pulling out her own baton.  But the big guy finished with Thomson, picking him up by the throat and simply squeezing until the wind pipe burst, and turned towards her.

“Back off,” Cassandra said, her side arm in hand, trained directly at the big black gang leader.  “Back off or die.”  Her nerves were completely calm, her stance assured, her dark eyes flashing with warning.

“Why do you care?” The black man said.  “You’re not one of them.  You’re not a Bully.”

The word lit up in Cassandra’s head.  Bullies.  A nickname for the city cops, after their financiers, the Bull Corporation.  She knew this – and yet some part of her brain told her that everything she knew was wrong.  It was false.  This whole thing – it was as if it had been conjured up from nowhere and simply become real.  But that made no sense?

“Shoot him,” Anne growled.  “Shoot this bastard and let’s take them down.”

Cassandra did not.  She watched as the huge black man approached her partner and smashed her baton aside. Phenomenally strong, unbelievably fast, he open hand slapped the big woman to the ground and then stomped on her head.  Then Cassandra shot him in the head and he folded up and collapsed.

Just like that the alleyway was silent.  The gangers had fled.  All that remained was the fallen bodies of her colleagues and the gang bangers.  Cassandra watched the shadows dance with the light of the flickering flames and she thought: “What the hell is going on here?  Who am I?  Why can’t I remember?”

Vermilion Widow

Wherever the action is, that’s where the Widow will be.  Combining speed with stealth she can be upon the bad guys before they know what is happened – and by the time they do know it’s probably too late.

Type Of Hero: Abnormal

Base Of Operations: Helix City – The Port

Secret Identity: Cassandra Stormsov

Description: A lithe and athletic woman dressed in a vermilion cat suit and domino mask, over which she wears a black leather jacket with a vermilion spider symbol on back and left Breast.

Powers: Agility: 1, Energy Attack Fire: 3, Energy Pool: Basic, Heightened Senses: Sixth Sense, Speed: 1, Wallcrawling

Issue #001 – – – – – controlled by Keith Nixon – – – – – Credits 117

The steady drip drip was immensely irritating.

Not just because every tiny sound felt like a needle into the miasma of pain that was her head but also because it told her something that she didn’t want to know.

Got Gal felt like she had been run over with a bulldozer, which, not happy with the job on the first pass, had proceeded to reverse back over her again.  Of course, that was not what had happened.  She would be dead if that had happened.

She didn’t know what had actually happened since, most inconveniently, her entire short-term memory, plus a fair amount of her long-term memory seemed to have taken a hike for pastures unknown.  This did not worry Got Gal very much.  She was a very practical lady, when all was said and done.

What did worry Constance Toffee, the name by which she was known when she shed her superhero costume and was dressed in a bikini of an altogether different colour, was that drip drip sound.  It was a reminder that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Sighing heavily, constance rose to her feet.  She hurt.  Everywhere.  She took stock of her injuries.  The usual.  Bruises and scratches and the general look of having been given a most thorough beating.  That was part of the superhero business though.  There was some blood too.  A deep gash on her knee and another that she couldn’t see, but could feel, up the left side of her head.

Her hair seemed okay and her outfit remained untorn (which, in itself, was a minor miracle.)  But she was going to ache for days.  The pendant was in place, thankfully, or she’d be a lot worse off than she was, it being the source of all her powers and all.

Drip, drip, drip.

Finally ready to face reality she took stock of the surroundings that were the source of that damned noise.  She was in what looked like a sewer tunnel.  Of course she was.  No memories, beaten to a pulp, and half-drowned in rat-infested slime and human waste.  An all too familiar scenario.  Joy.

“What I would like,” Got Gal said to nobody in particular.  “Just once.  Is an adventure where I get to battle evil in pleasant green fields.  Or in a nice restaurant.  Or in space.”  She thought for a moment then: “No.  Scratch that.  Not space.  Nobody can hear you scream.”

Trudging wearily along the dank, musty old pipe, her feet sloshing in the water, she tried not to dwell on what she might see when emerging from the sewer grate that a steel ladder, just ahead of her, apparently led to.

That’s the problem with selective amnesia, she mused.  You just don’t know what to expect…

Got Gal

Got Gal had no intention of becoming the new Lara Croft, but fact is most of her adventures just lately have taken into sewers and tunnels and other ickyness.   It’s not appropriate really, given how scant her costume is.  Oh well.  If life deals you lemons…

Got Gal’s powers come from her pendant.  Happy-go-lucky, free-spirited and upbeat, the style is all her own.

Type Of Hero: Foci

Base Of Operations: Helix City – The Suburbs / Below

Secret Identity: Constance Toffee

Description: A pretty young woman, her costume is a skimpy blue bikini, strap on high heels, a red jewel pendant and not a whole lot else.

Powers: Flight: Advanced, Strength: 2, Energy Immunity: Magical: 1

“I suppose I’d better sort through that old box of Great-Uncle Frank,” thought the young woman – an idea that had passed through her mind every six months for the past few years. She’d always liked Frank when he was alive and she appreciated him even more after he left her enough money to buy this apartment, but checking his old nick-nacks had always seemed like too much trouble.  However it was a wet winter evening and everything on the TV was truly dull, so it was at least a small distraction.

The carved chest was a handsome enough piece to have a place in her hall and few minutes rummaging in her oddments pot produced the key that opened it. It turned out to hold mostly books, hand written by many people. The ones that weren’t by Frank looked old, mostly in strange languages and even stranger alphabets. There was a small casket at the bottom containing objects of unknown purposes, but nestling among was a large gem on a silver chain. She lifted it out and whistled, it was crudely cut and there was something cloudy in the middle – a flaw?  Still even a poor ruby of that size had to be worth a lot.

She went over to the mirror and hung it round her neck. As soon as the jewel touched her skin it began to glow and a voice said: “the Priestess has been chosen, Great Gott will be paid.”  She jumped at that, where had it come from?  Then the girl realised she was floating in mid-air and reached out a hand to steady herself on steel coat-hook which bent like Plasticine in her grasp. “Why, I’m strong and I can fly – I must be a super hero.  How smashing!”  And in the ensuing excitement of trying out her powers and selecting a costume forgot everything the voice had said except the word Gott, which she presumed had been “Got.”   So she became Got-Gal.

Issue #001 – – – – – controlled by Wayne Gildroy – – – – – Credits 96

Oakheart was in darkness.

Not darkness of sight, though there was that too, but darkness of the soul.

How long he had been in this state he had no idea.  Perhaps a very long time. Perhaps no time at all.

There was no world around him that he could detect.  Just a comforting warmth and the sensation of weightlessness.  It would be easy to sink back into it again.  Very easy.

But Oakheart was aware now.  He was aware of two things; this was not normal, and this was not how things were supposed to be.

Oakheart had vague memories of some emergency.  Something he had been involved in.  Something important.  But he could not focus his mind on that.  He could not put the pieces together.  There was something wrong with his mind – with the way his memories fit together.  He couldn’t make much sense of it at all.

He could remember who he was.  Sort of.  A superhero? Of sorts.  A defender of the natural world?  On occasion.  He had done good in his time, though the particular events where he had done so would not form as anything more than hazy recollections.  Like dreams.

“Enough,” he said.  And in doing so he let some light filter into his consciousness.  Light?  So the world was still there!

Oakheart was not perfect.  He lacked many things.  But courage was not one of them.  Without pausing to consider what he might see he took a deep breath and opened his eyes.

“Well,” he rumbled ominously.  “I wasn’t expecting this.”

Oakheart was in the city park.  Well, he thought it was the city park.  His memory wasn’t supplying much information but that which it did, rationed in strange and unsettling ways, supplied both the name and a vague feeling of homeliness.  But even though Oakheart may have found this place comforting, there were two key elements that did not seem to fit.

First, that the city around him was so dark.  The architecture of those towering skyscrapers was bleak and severe, peaks thrusting up to points, menacing colours dominating the landscape. The black smog that hung in the air.  The long shadows that lurked at the edge of the occasional circles of forlorn light cast by the streetlamps.  He was fairly sure the city was not supposed to look like this.  It seemed very, very wrong.

The second thing that felt utterly out of place were his legs. Or rather, his lack of legs.  Oakheart was fairly sure that he had been able to walk around before.  Now, like every other tree in the city park, his upper branches gave way to a solid-looking trunk which was firmly rooted in the ground.

Not given to extremes of invective, particularly not in conversation with himself, Oakheart expressed his profound puzzlement quite simply: “Hmmmm.  Not good.”