Lionheart Chronicles, Issue #004

Issue #004 – – – – – controlled by Fraser Machin – – – – – Credits 4

Lionheart wasn’t good at hiding.  His sheer size and striking appearance tended to make even the attempt pretty pointless.  But in the darkness of the car park he managed to lurk in the shadows long enough to watch some of the prisoners he’d set free stumble out of the rear door.  Distantly, he could hear sirens.  This should be good news in normal circumstances, but with his fuzzy memory he didn’t want to take any chances.  He wanted to be gone before the cops arrived, but he also wanted to see what his fellow gladiators did.

Oddly, of the twenty or so who had been imprisoned, only half-a-dozen emerged.  He didn’t know if this meant they had been recaptured inside, or they just didn’t want to be set free.  But these guys did.  As a pack they loped off along the road, keeping to the shadows where they could.  They were a big, ugly group of dangerous-looking bruisers.  He was struck by the fact that he could not remember seeing any of them before – yet he also felt he had been a gladiator in the arena for some time.  Something strange was happening to his brain and it wasn’t just the result of his mental altercation with the Tophat Twins.

Lionheart trailed the gang.  He wasn’t particularly good at moving stealthily either – in this instance nothing like his namesake.  But for every bit that he was bad at being quiet, the group he was following were worse at observation.  And so it was that the hero was able to trail the small group as they made their escape into the alleyways and backstreets of the city.

The escapees moved quickly for people their size and put plenty of distance between them and the club before they took  a break, ducking into the ground level of a block of low-cost apartments and huddling near the elevator, which was marked clearly: “Out Of Order.”
“What we gonna do?” muttered an immense slab of a man with a low brow and a heavy enormous forehead.  His powerful arms were too long for his torso and his muscular physique was made up of unlikely slabs stacked atop one another to give the impressive of a wall of sheer power.  “We must find somewhere to hide out,” said the smallest of the group, a silver-grey skinned freak with a third eye in the middle of his forehead.  “Like where?” said a metal-plated behemoth in a white T-Shirt with the word: “Truck” emblazoned on it’s chest in red ink.

Lionheart, whose fast-healing had already knitted up the worst of his wounds, stepped from the shadows by the door and growled: “Mind if I join you?”  He didn’t know whether to trust any of these guys, but he thought safety-in-numbers was a pretty safe tenet in this sort of situation and besides – he needed some answers.
“You!” Said the only woman in the group.  She was enormous, possibly the most muscular of them all and her voice was low and gruff.
“Yes,” Lionheart nodded.  “Me.  I set you free.  I was hoping you could help me in return.”
“You got us out, man,”  Truck nodded amiably.  “We owe you.  What you need?”
“I seem to be having some memory issues,” the Hero told them.  “I’d really like to fill in the blanks.”

Some quiet discussion revealed who the six escapees were.  Neanderthal was the low-browed giant who Lionheart decided was probably good in a fight but wasn’t about to solve a logic puzzle any time soon.   Area51 was the little man with the third eye.  Truck was Truck.  Sally Slab was the enormous woman.  Man Mountain, despite his name, wasn’t particularly huge.  More like the size of the average American wrestler.  He probably would have been imposing in normal circles, but next to these monsters he wasn’t overly impressive.  The final member of the group was Fe Guerrero, a Latino streetfighter who seemed constantly to be like a coiled spring, wound tight and ready to strike.

During chatter with the six, Lionheart managed to establish some of the recent history that his mind seemed unable to retreive.   He’d been a fighter for about three months, having taken part in various “low level” battles before this evening’s fight.  He also discovered that the granite beast he’d defeated was called Foundation and had been widely tipped to win the battle.  The group did not know where Lionheart had come from or how he had been captured, but suspected his story must have been something like their own.  Some of the group were freaks, simply looking for a way to eat in a city that hated and feared them.  They’d volunteered to participate before they’d discovered how brutal it was, after which they’d found they were not free to leave.  Others were on-the-run unlicensed Abnormals who’d fallen into the clutches of the Gentleman King while trying to avoid the authorities.

“We can’t hang around here for long,” said Truck.  “Sooner or later somebody will come through here and report us.  We’ve gotta make ourselves scarce.”
“A group like us?” Sally Slab laughed, though there was no humour in her voice.  “How are we going to hide?”
Lionheart’s memory was very vague, really only flashes and faint images, but as the woman spoke one clear idea floated to the surface in his mind, like an air bubble rising from deep underwater.  “I know a place, I think,” he said.  The others looked at him quizzically, but there was general assent.  There was simply no obvious leader amongst this group and they were apparently happy to defer to the man who had freed them.

Half an hour later the group were gathered by an old metal fence on the very edge of Helix Point, the only part of the glitzy portion of the city to really look “run down.”  Some years earlier the industrial sector had migrated to The Port and the edges of the city and the huge old buildings they had previously inhabited had not yet been redeveloped.  Beyond the fence sat a huge empty parking lot and after that a massive building.  A rusty old sign, hanging down on the left side where it had slipped a screw, read: “Sydonyn 5.”

“What is this place?”  Truck asked.
“I don’t know,” Lionheart said.  “I can’t remember.  But it’s big and its deserted.  Whatever security is in place to keep folks out wont be much of a challenge to us.  Isn’t this as good a place as any to hide out, lick our wounds and decide how to move forwards?”
“Nobody appears to be using it,” Sally accepted, eyeing the dark windows and empty lot.
“Can’t you check it out and see if there’s any danger inside?” Man Mountain asked Area51.
The silver-skinned freak turned all three eyes on him: “What do you mean, check it out?”
“With your brain and that,” Man Mountain said.  “You know, mind shit?”
“Put your prejudice back in the box.  I don’t have psionic powers,” Area51 assured him coldly.  “I’m just strong and fast.”
“Oh,” Man Mountain looked stumped.  “Are you sure?”
“I think I’d know,” Area51 said grimly.

“Come on,” Lionheart told the group, trying to keep them focused.  It was clear that once the danger was over there would be some personality clashes within the team, but he would worry about that later.   “First things first,” He told them.  “We need medical supplies, food, shelter and security.  This building is the answer to all those, I think.  Once we’ve got a base, we’ll need a plan.”  And a costume, Lionheart thought.  Something like my old costume, but maybe a little darker.  To match the darkness he could sense all around him.  To challenge it.
“Okay,” Sally agreed with an amiable grin, clapping Lionheart on the shoulder with one enormous hand.  “Lead the way, boss.”