The voice was a silken caress across his flesh as he slept, whispering “You have done well my disciple. Have I not given you everything I have promised? Have you not destroyed your rivals? Have not your enemies died beneath your feet, screaming?” The doctor twitched restlessly, his eyes darting beneath closed eyelids. The long, delicate fingers of a surgeon bunched handfuls of sheet by his sides as he dreamed on. “Yet even now you have failed me, failed your benefactress, your true Mistress!”

A quiet whine escaped from bloodless lips as the sweat-soaked body on the bed jerked as if struck by invisible whips.

“This magic you call science is but a wan reflection of the power I offer you. You have but tasted of the glorious power I can give to you! Your heart and soul belong to the Mistress. You are filled with the darkness you dance with and that darkness is my home. The shadows between your desires are my hunting ground.” The voice inside the mad doctor’s brain grew sibilant with menace, the razor-edged words slicing across his mind.

“Do not disappoint me.”

Chapter the 3rd: Predators and Prey

Spyker wasn’t familiar with this area yet. She had only recently had a reason to travel to Kings Row, away from her normal haunts in Atlas Park or sometimes Galaxy City. She had followed rumors and whispers and hidden innuendos regarding the deadly Eidolons of Dr. Vahzilok to Kings Row, confirming her information with her own brand of first-hand intelligence gathering. Those punks should be out of the hospital soon enough. Spyker was determined to find the Skull leader named Bonebreaker. He was the brains behind the operation that stole and smuggled equipment to the mysterious doctor and his organization. She had narrowed down the possibilities until finally she had arrived in the grimy section of Kings Row called the Gish. This was her fourth night in the area. Her initial forays had been primarily scouting missions, the first move in her campaign. Terrain familiarity was a prerequisite for any successful mission. She had found a bolthole in the area: a place to hide her equipment and a safe place to rest. Then Spyker had started her real work. Tonight the huntress in her heart was looking for Skulls. Prey.

Spyker cautiously sent tendrils of thought questing ahead of her through the chill night air. The moon was a huge silver eye glowing in the sky, dominating the air and casting deep shadows between the worn-down and burned buildings around her. Throughout the Gish the homeless used discarded oil barrels to burn refuse in, trying to stay warm outside shelter. The acrid scent of smoke from the numerous fires wafted on gentle currents, alternately tickling the nose and suddenly stinging the eyes.

“Give it up, lady! I ain’t got all night.”

Spyker wasn’t sure if she had heard the words or only sensed them. There were so many things about her abilities that weren’t clear to her yet. They seemed to be evolving, changing as she used them more and more. Perhaps they were just like any other skill and the more she used them the better and stronger she would grow with them. Time would tell. With scarcely more noise than the papers that blew between the empty lots, Spyker slipped through the shadows toward her prey.

“Lady, what, are you nuts? Gimme that purse!”

“C’mere little chiclet, the party’s just starting!” The two men had bracketed a young woman and one held her while the other tugged at her purse. She was still fighting them but was obviously losing the struggle. The two Skulls were mostly playing with her now, jerking her back and forth between them. Her black hair whipped about her face as she screamed for help. The Skulls just laughed harder. They knew that after dark the cops only came into the Gish in flying squads of at least three cars and all the gangs watched the roads leading into the Gish carefully in order to give plenty of warning.

“Stop it! Stop it! Leave me al… OH!” the young woman screamed as the purse strap finally broke and the thug behind her wrapped his arms around her petite body as she fell against him.

“Boys, boys. You think the two of you are enough to handle one little lady? And to think I’d heard the Skulls were tough.”
Snarling, the two hoods spun to face the voice that emerged from between the buildings. The leader pulled out a semiautomatic pistol and fired a shot into the shadows. The other Skull dragged the still struggling woman backwards, away from the silky voice, using her body like a shield and pulling out a knife with one hand.
Spyker stepped out of the shadows, completely ignoring the wild round that whined down the alley. Focusing herself, she gathered the power inside her mind into a tight ball and wrapped it in the ever-present anger of her soul. The punk’s gun clattered to the pavement as a glowing ball of force slammed into his face. Spyker let the darkness slip from between her hands, watched it boil up her arms and then shoved both hands directly at the Skull. He screamed as the claws of blackest night tore through his chest. Spyker felt the rush as part of his life-force flowed back to her, strengthening her. Spinning down low, Spyker thrust out one leg, catching the crook just above the ankles and jerking his feet out from under him. As he bounced off the gritty asphalt she drove a flat punch directly into the hollow of his jaw. The Skull flopped once bonelessly and then lay unmoving. He would be out for some time Spyker knew from experience. Even though her powers didn’t cause actual physical damage, the psychic trauma was something these punks would never forget.

“Back off, bitch! You move and I’ll kill her. I’ll do it!” the last punk screeched at her. Panic waffled through his voice as he jerked his victim backward.

“No problem, half-wit. I’ll just wait here while you run away. See look, nothing in my hands.”

Spyker slowly brought her hands upward as she straightened to her full height. The punk’s eyes widened as he took in the tiger-striped face paint, the black thigh-boots and her leather wrapped arms. He tried to stutter something but the black fire of her power had already seeped through the ground beneath his feet. Feebly, the Skull tried to cut the throat of his hostage, but missed completely as the young woman twisted away and ran pell-mell down the street. Spyker held him in the talons of her dark powers as she slowly stalked toward him.

The skull mask on his face flew off into the night as the hood’s head snapped back under the strength of Spyker’s mental bolt. Snapping a hard left hook into his jaw, Spyker drew the sinister black flames back into herself. She grabbed the staggering Skull and jerked him around, spinning gracefully to throw him against the wall behind her. She heard an audible crack as the back of his head impacted the rough bricks and he crumpled to the ground.

“Dammit! I needed him conscious!” Spyker berated herself. She took a chirper from the top of her boot and placed it between the unconscious thugs. She was running out of time. Soon she would have to return to the main city and deal with her business there. Reclusive or not, Elektra Duras still had to make decisions on her investments so that Spyker could continue her alternate life. Another three nights was the most she could afford to stay. This time anyway. But next time she promised herself she would not leave until she had found her quarry.

There’s never a thug around when you need one, Spyker mused to herself as she melted back into the shadows and quietly climbed up a nearby fire escape. Stepping around bits of refuse and other things she tried not to think too much about, Spyker emerged on the rooftop. For a moment she simply stood there, basking in the silver light of the unobstructed moon. Then her eyes turned back to the alleys and streets, their darkness alleviated only here and there by the waning glow of decrepit streetlights and oil-drum fires. She simply had to find this Bonebreaker, but where?
Her quick eyes spotted motion in the wasteland of the park several blocks over. Spyker spun into action without a wasted motion or thought, leaping from rooftop to abandoned rooftop, clambering over exposed HVAC piping and electrical conduits with sinuous grace. When she reached the last building in the line she launched herself off the parapet toward the park entrance, diving through the darkness. Her outstretched hands grabbed the steel bar at the top of the open gateway to the park and arrested her fall. She spun in a complete circle around the bar to kill her momentum before she released her grip and landed, quietly as a cat, to scoot instantly over into the deep shadows cast by the brick walls around the park. She ran lightly around a huge boulder blocking her view. Some landscape architect had probably spent hours finding just the right spot for it, she thought to herself cynically. As she cleared the dark grey shoulder of the massive stone Spyker stopped dead in her tracks. Oh my dear God, she thought to herself. Not that, surely not that! But it most surely was.

Standing directly in front of her were three absolute monstrosities; patchwork quilt giants and the patchwork was of human flesh! Mismatched eyes stared dully at her from faces that had been stitched together over ill-fitted bone, some of which still gleamed whitely in the moonlight. Subliminally, Spyker noted the constant buzzing of flies around these monsters as her horrified gaze took in the hump-backed appearance and incredible size of the three zombies shambling aimlessly through the ill-lit park. Human skin of at least a half-dozen different shades had been sewn together and it was painfully obvious that an equal number of different size bones lurked beneath the repellent exteriors. Had it not been so sickening to see, the zombie’s jerky motions would have been comical, but Spyker realized the incredible cost in human anguish that each of those terrible monstrosities represented. Nothing she had ever seen compared to this wanton disregard of people’s lives and bodies.

Spyker back-pedaled, trying to reach the safety of the shadows. Street punks, even drugged up and insane street punks, were one thing but this was something from the realm of bad science-fiction horror films. She moved too late however, as the previously unseen fourth man, if the other three could still be called men, pointed a stiff arm in her direction, yelling something. Suddenly they were all headed directly toward her! Spyker spun away from the lurching monsters. Instinctively she leapt up to the top of the boulder, hopefully out of their reach. She gathered herself and launched a sizzling mental bolt full into the face of the nearest monstrosity. The dark fire coursed through her arms and full into the chest of another of the zombies. Her body shook slightly as the corrupted life of the zombie was pulled back through the black lines. The power that flowed through her seemed tainted although it did make her stronger. Slashing down with her right leg, Spyker cracked her boot across the forearm of the third monster. For an instant it looked stupidly at the ends of bone protruding through decaying flesh, then it turned it’s flat eyes back to her and simply reached for her with the other arm.

Spyker brought her hands to her temples, desperately trying to gather her mental energies for another strike. The blazing energies erupted from her forehead and slammed full against the head of her first victim. It crumpled in slow motion, falling backward like a tree falls to crash into the packed earth below her. Spyker switched opponents in a fraction of a second, but that was still far too long. Her body shuddered with the impact of a crossbow bolt that slammed into her just above her left breast. Throwing out her right hand, Spyker called up the ebony energies beneath the marksman and his next shot went wild. She had time to see the words “Reaper” stenciled across the mockery of a surgical apron the man wore before she tumbled off the boulder. She thudded painfully to the ground. Her reinforced costume had stopped the full penetration of the crossbow bolt but she could feel the point gouging into her muscles, slowing her down. The two zombies remaining closed in around her. Spyker collected her inner strength and released it in a terrifying shout as she drove the first two knuckles of her right hand into the outside of the slimy knee closest to her. The zombie’s leg twisted inward as it fell to the ground. Spyker was up in a flash but couldn’t escape the powerful backhand of the other monster. Stunned, she staggered backward.

“Ahhhhh!” Spyker screamed as another crossbow bolt embedded itself in her side. She fell to one knee as the pain ripped through her. Then suddenly she was enveloped in revolting green goop that the zombies vomited forth. The smell alone was repellent enough, but the caustic slime burned across her exposed skin and into her wounds. Fighting only for survival now, Spyker used the last of her will to once more send twin bolts of ebony fire toward the closest patchwork giant. She felt her wounds heal somewhat as the monster took the full brunt of the strike, yet the energy returned seemed fouled and it burned through her blood. Or perhaps that was poison on the crossbow bolt, Spyker thought muzzily. She knew with frightening certainty that whatever energy she had stolen would not be enough. The next backhanded slap sent her flying backward to crumple at the feet of the crossbow-wielding Reaper. She looked up into maniacal blue eyes above a bloodstained surgical mask. He dropped the crossbow and pulled out a rusting butcher’s cleaver. Cackling like the madman he surely was, he reached for Spyker with one rubber-gloved hand.

Chapter the 2^nd: Where there’s smoke…

“I’m tellin’ ya, nothin’! I don’t know nothin’!”

“Then tell me who does” Spyker hissed at the Skull gangbanger. For good measure she bounced his head off the wall once more. The Skull’s feet scrabbled fruitlessly as she held him a couple of inches off the ground. “I can do this all night, you gutterpunk. And I’ll enjoy it right up until your brains splatter out and I have to go find some of your friends by myself.” Her balled fists twisted into the lapels of the cheap leather jacket the punk wore, Spyker shook the skeleton-masked man once more.

“A’right, a’right a’ready!” screeched the punk. “There’s a guy that knows a g… OW!”

“If I wanted fairy tales I’d go to the movies! Last chance.”

“Okay! Jeezus! Ask for Bonebreaker over in the Gish. He moves around a lot. I’m tellin’ ya!” the punk yelled as Spyker shook him once more, “He doesn’t let anyone know where he hangs. Over in the Gish, the Gish I swear!”

Spyker let the power within her begin to seep through the leather wrappings around her forearms. The ebony energy looked like a cross between black flames and dark grey, sooty, smoke. The Skull’s eyes widened as he felt the hungry fingers begin to creep toward his face.

“Wha the! Hey, no! I told ya!” he screamed as the dark cloud covered his head.

Spyker dropped the unconscious punk to the ground. The police band beacon, a “chirper” in the lingo, she set by his feet. The PCPD should arrive long before the Skull and his buddies regained consciousness. Spyker faded back into the shadows, the black tiger-strip camouflage on her dark orange catsuit blending her outline into the night’s cool darkness. She headed slowly toward the park she knew was nearby, staying to the shadows while she thought her way through what she’d learned.

Rumors had been circulating about a new type of villain terrorizing the streets of Paragon City. Not that there was a shortage of evil-minded freaks wandering about after the Rikti invasion. There was also no shortage of new heroes as well thanks to the incredible energies released during the Rikti War. Many had formed teams and even groups, but Spyker had avoided them. Her single-minded mission hadn’t seemed to leave much room for working with other heroes. Yet, she knew other heroes might have information sources she did not. She had been a loner for so long, she wasn’t sure how to approach these other superheroes. For now, she had another goal in mind. Homeless people had been disappearing. It wasn’t as if the city kept accurate records on the homeless, but several of Spyker’s sources had reported friends and acquaintances going missing. Worse than that, she had seen copies of several police and forensic reports where bodies had been found, or rather pieces of bodies had been found. Few of the victims had been identified since DNA-style identification was mostly useless; the homeless rarely had occasion to have DNA typing done. In every case the police had been unable to positively identify the victim. More disturbing than that was the information that hadn’t made the papers: in many cases the body parts found together didn’t belong to just one individual.

The full moon cast a silvery light across the brown, desiccated grass of the park as Spyker crept through the wrought iron gateway. The special contact lenses she wore brought everything into sharp detail as well as disguised her eyes behind a glacial grey façade. She had little fear of anyone recognizing her. The sharply lined, tiger-style makeup she wore made her face look completely different than Elektra Duras’ face. At any rate, since her rich alter ego had a reputation for reclusiveness, there weren’t that many pictures of her circulating in the public eye. After the explosion that had changed her world forever there had been the typical media circus with photographs and news reports on every station and every newspaper in the area of course, but the woman that walked away from the medical institution after recovering from a months-long coma and more months of therapy afterwards bore little resemblance to the one brought in by the EMS unit. She had kept in touch with a few friends on the police force and some of her family’s contacts in other circles, but they only saw the carefully prepared socialite, Elektra Duras.

As Elektra she wore personally tailored clothes that softened the muscular lines of her body. The strange effects of the lab fire had given her above-average strength, which she had worked hard to maximize. She was no match for the super-strength of some other adventurers, but she was significantly stronger than a typical person, particularly starting from her athletic background and earlier police conditioning. Special shoes, black hair dye and careful attention ensured that no one made any connection between her two identities.

Spyker prowled the edges of the park, slipping out the other side to slide beneath the bridge arching overhead. Her specially made boots added even more inches to her 6’6” frame, but she could walk through broken glass and never make a sound. The Skulls had hidden gathering spots throughout the city, but the area known as the Gish seemed to be a magnet for all the different kinds of weirdness scattered through other parts of the city. She knew that eventually she would turn up this “Bonebreaker” and he would tell her what she wanted to know. Everything she wanted to know.

The underground grapevine was rife with rumors on the grisly slayings, but one particular story had drawn Spyker’s practiced eye. The Skulls were reportedly brokering equipment deals for a mysterious figure known as Doctor Vahzilok. The other main outlaw gang in the city, the Hellions, had been engaged in a turf war with the Skulls over supplying this Dr. V, so there was plenty of money flying around. As long as the Skulls and Hellions were taking each other out no one was likely to shed any tears, but lately the battles had taken a darker turn. Even the Skull and Hellion bodies were disappearing now and witnesses had described a new, vicious, combatant the Skulls referred to as Eidolons. These creatures were covered head-to-toe in black leather and chrome-buckled belts. Far more powerful than either the Skulls or Hellions, these monsters had also been seen to throw bolts of dark flames and create smoky, insubstantial, tentacles that nevertheless held fast anyone caught in them. Spyker looked down at her own hands and thought of the inky smoke that she also could manipulate in various ways. She would never forget the voracious black flames that had destroyed her father’s laboratory and ruined her own life. There had to be a connection between the two. She would find it, however they tried to hide.

“Bonebreaker eh” Spyker whispered to herself, casting her senses out into the night. “We’ll just have to see about that.”

Original Characters copyright © 2007 all rights reserved.
City of Heroes Copyright © NCSoft and Copyright © Cryptic Studios

Chapter the 1st: The Time Before

“DAD!” Elektra Duras screamed as she leapt up from her sweat-soaked sheets.

She was halfway to the door before her conscious mind reasserted itself and reality spun away the fibers of her nightmare. She fell to her knees, the terrible images still so real inside her head: the awful smell of the laboratory as the black flames roared hungrily through shattered glass beakers and test tubes. The heat was terrible; she could feel it beating against her, but somehow inside her skin rather than outside. Even now she could still feel the twisting agony echoing within her, just as she had first felt it racing through her father’s office door only to be engulfed in darkness.

Shaking her head to clear it, Elektra stumbled on trembling legs into the bathroom. Luckily, it wasn’t far to go in her studio apartment high above the streets of Paragon City. She snapped on the light and started cold water running in the sink. Cupping both hands in the clean, cold flow she splashed her face with water and ran long fingers through her short-cropped hair.

“Dammit. Just dammit all. I’ll never get back to sleep now. I may as well do something productive.” Her stride lithe and purposeful, Elektra prowled back out to her bedroom and grabbed her working clothes. Dragging the boots and her orange and black coverall over to the edge of her bed, she threw the rumpled sheets aside and started dressing. The white shock of her thick hair took only a second to shake dry as she finished zipping up her uniform. Angrily she wiped tears from her eyes as she sat down at her dressing table and began pulling out her makeup. Her mother had always called it her “war paint”. How appropriate that was now. Her nightmares of the disaster at her father’s police laboratory always brought other family memories to the fore. Her mother, proud as only a proud Greek can be, had taught her many things while Elektra had been growing up. She had learned the legends of her home country, the ways of the world and the ways of this strange country. Elektra had idolized her mother and her father long before she was old enough to understand their brilliance and the driving force of the ideals they both held most dear. They had fled Greece barely ahead of the secret police that so many refused to believe even existed because of their ideals. The belief that all people should be free, that scientific discoveries were meant to be spread out among all the people of the world and not just the select, the rich or the powerful.

Elektra finished the final touches on her makeup before placing everything carefully back in its place. Reaching a long arm over to her bedside table, she flipped on the powerful police-band radio she had kept from her days on the police force. The constant chatter faded into background noise in her mind as she slipped on her black leather boots. Mother would not have approved of these boots, she thought to herself. It had taken her quite some time to get used to them actually. She had always been more comfortable in either tomboy clothes, or volleyball uniform, or gymnast’s leotard. Her mother hadn’t really approved of those either, although she had been fiercely proud of her daughter’s accomplishments. She missed her mother desperately sometimes even after all the years since the automobile accident and a drunken driver had stolen her mother away. That had been a turning point for her life. Elektra had always intended to use her college athletic scholarship as a springboard to the professional volleyball circuit. Her height and long-limbed build had earned her respect across college campuses as well as the nickname “The Tiger Spiker”. It had also made her lonely as many of the men she had met were intimidated by her size and ability. Of the few that remained, most of them had only seen her as another kind of trophy. But when her mother was ripped from her life, Elektra had soured on what seemed an inconsequential life of the sport idol. Against her father’s wishes, she had enrolled in the Paragon City Police Academy. Her father had fatalistically accepted Elektra’s new course, having experience with the implacable resolve of his wife, and so Alexandras Duras offered his considerable scientific expertise to the Paragon City PD as well.

Things had actually worked out quite well for the pair after that. Elektra remembered award after award her father had won as he almost single-handedly brought the scientific equipment used in the police force not only up to the state-of-the-art, but also beyond it in some areas. Elektra’s face hardened into chisel-sharp lines as her recent nightmare played again on the screen inside her mind. Her father had been working in the lab attached to their home on the outskirts of the city on that terrible day. A new type of communications breakthrough he had theorized promised to revolutionize not just the police force, but military units and any other occupation where communication was essential: direct mental contact. Once thought the realm of fantasy and comic books, telepathy promised to bring a desperately needed coordination and instant connection to team members involved in life and death struggles on a daily basis.

Elektra put in the colored contacts and inspected herself in the magnifying mirror before standing up. She snatched up her accessories satchel and stalked over to the full-length version along one wall of her bedroom. For months her father struggled to make a practical apparatus from his esoteric formulae. Months that Elektra had learned first hand of the daily sacrifices and pain of her own teammates on the police force. And then finally the terrible afternoon when the explosion echoed through their house. Elektra clenched her fists tightly. The nightmares never really stopped but she had learned to stop talking about them. She had fought the firemen and rescue workers as they dragged her from the remains of her father’s destroyed laboratory. In her frantic madness she had injured more than one of them as she struggled to go back to find her father. The black flames that seemed to eat the light rather than cast it; the tearing heat that shattered skin and bone without leaving burns; the pulsing psychedelic light that beat against brain in pounding waves; none of it had mattered to her. Only finding her father was important. But she had failed at that as well. She hadn’t been able to save either of her parents.

Finally, the EMS techs had been forced to sedate her and she had slipped into a nightmare-infested coma which lasted for more than 3 months. Her nightmares had been even worse then and much more frequent. She had tried to tell the doctors everything before she realized they had no hope of understanding. She learned to keep her thoughts to herself, putting up a shell of dry humor as a wall around her inner demons. When she had been released, Elektra knew that the police force would never be able to give her what she needed to fill the hole left by her parents’ deaths. She had thrown herself into hard physical training, pushing herself far past the limits of her former physical conditioning. She had discovered new skills and frightful powers within herself and had honed them along with her steel-hard resolve to find her father. His body had never been recovered from the lab. His equipment had been destroyed in the explosion but her father’s patents had more than covered her own medical expenses as well as a new place to live. She couldn’t stay in that house any longer and moved to a high-rise in the city. The joking and wisecracks became second nature to her and let her disguise her true self and her real feelings behind a façade few ever saw through. Her wealth had made her into a society-paper debutante and given her the perfect excuse to become an elusive, reclusive figure.

The open window sent cat’s-paws tickling through her white hair as she looked out on the city below. It was still several hours before dawn. Perfect hunting weather. She would find the people responsible for her father’s disappearance; she would find her father. If not tonight, then another night. She wasn’t going to stop until she had. The back alleys and byways of Paragon City had their own sources of information: a whisper-stream that eddied and rushed through the shadows and hidden corners. The whispers told many things to those with ears to hear. A new name had been dropped in the dark pools there, a new hunter prowling the fringes of daylight: Spyker. A name she meant to make sure reached the ears of her prey. Her black-leather wrapped hands gripped the edges of the window as she launched herself out into the void: a tiger-striped missile homing in with single-minded, relentless intensity.

“I’m coming for you. All of you” she whispered as she hurtled crisp night air. Ebony fire flickered down her arms and pulsed through her fingertips as Spyker reached out into the darkness, hunting.

Characters copyright © 2007 all rights reserved. City of Heroes Copyright © NCSoft and Copyright © Cryptic Studios

“Ey Carla. Ya mind pointin’ dat blamed Gatling gun da other direction?”

The beautiful young woman standing beside the long black sedan pointing the barrel of a truly huge weapon at the dark figure behind the passenger window did not appear to hear the question. The sound of the slide ratcheting back was loud in the silence.
“C’mon Carla, it ain’t been dat long.”

Her shoulder-length black hair shifted gently in the cool spring breeze as she raised the impressive assault-rifle style weapon to the bare shoulder showing above her form-fitting red dress. Impenetrable black sunglasses covered her eyes and there was no expression on her face as she flipped the fire selection lever to ’slaughter’. The solid snap of the safety seemed to echo from the concrete driveway.

“Do I know you, slick? More importantly, do you know who my daddy is?”

The door of the sedan opened and a black slouch hat emerged from the shaded interior and rose slowly as the man exited the vehicle and stood up. And stood up. And kept going up. Carla’s carefully manicured eyebrows rose slightly as she took in the mountain of a man dwarfing her. Mirrored sunglasses wrapped around a square face beneath the brim of the black hat. A precisely trimmed mustache and goatee surrounded his mouth and matched the short-cropped red-black sideburns. Carla was tall for a woman, taller than her father and her father was almost six feet tall, but the top of her head would come in somewhat below this giant man’s chin. Grey shirtsleeves rolled back over the unbuttoned black suit jacket’s sleeves straining ominously over forearms that made Popeye look anemic and fingerless red leather gloves were strapped to hands seemingly larger than her head.

The roar of her high-caliber rifle on full automatic brought two machine-gun toting guards bursting through the high-arched doors of the mansion behind her. They immediately split to each side of the thick wooden doors and took shelter behind the marble columns supporting the ancient portico, black gun-barrels locked on the giant figure surrounded by a cascade of brass and compressed lead bullets. With a slight grimace the enormous man brushed at the front of his dress shirt and straightened his tie, knocking loose several more flattened lead pellets to fall to the ground.

“Carla! Put that away. Now.”

Carla carefully moved three steps backward before lowering her weapon to hip level. The barrel waved almost negligently back and forth in the general direction of the sedan.

“Carla. Now.”

“Yes Papa” she said in a small and almost disappointed tone. A quick motion of her wrist and the raven-haired beauty was suddenly empty-handed. She turned toward the slender figure of the older man standing in the high-arched doorway beneath the columned portico. “A girl can’t be too careful you know.”

A slight smile showed white teeth on the face of the man as he walked toward his daughter. “Carla, you’re surrounded by enough men to invade a small country. You just like showing off.”

An impish smile curved her ruby lips and transformed her face before she assumed an air of injured innocence. “Why Papa, you say the most outrageous things!” She turned her face back toward the man standing silently by the sedan. “Hat. Shades. Gloves.” she said musingly as she slipped one long arm around the narrow waist of her father. “Gio? Whynhell didncha say so?! You made me waste almost a full clip.” She looked at him appraisingly, “You’re a little bigger than I remember from the prom.”

A slow blush crept up from the giant’s unbuttoned collar across the man’s craggy face. The older man shook his head slightly as he held out his hand to be briefly engulfed by the other man. “Welcome Sergio Giordano. Thank you for coming.”

“It was an offer I couldn’t refuse, Don Tortelli” came a rumbling basso reply from deep in the cavernous chest. “Consigliere Castiglione mentioned that you needed a little, ah ’special’ assistance down here in Paragon. It was a fine time to take a little trip” he finished respectfully, tipping the front of his hat to the Don of the Tortelli Family and his daughter. “Don Lavigni sends his respects.”

“Come inside and we’ll talk” answered the older man as he guided his daughter back toward the mansion, the hulking giant bringing up the rear behind them. “I have this situation that requires an, ah, delicate touch” he said as the two machine-gun toting guards closed the doors behind them.

“Me? I’m jus’ da backup driver” rumbled the very large man through the open car window. The smartly dressed PPD sergeant’s mouth opened slightly to frame a suitably acid reply as the man passed a business card to him. “Tortelli Construction. We’re here ta make a delivery.” The policeman took the card automatically but had only glanced at it before the window in the rear door slid down soundlessly and a soft contralto said “Tommy! How’s the missus doin’ after her surgery? You know we were all concerned. Mario and I are just showing our new driver the byways of Kings Row. He’s new and we wouldn’t want him to get confused and upset, now would we?”

The flustered cop looked at Gio’s impassive face and stuttered out an apologetic reply before turning and striding quickly away.

“Gio, don’t frighten the nice men in uniform.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Mario, you stay here. We won’t be long.”

Sergio stepped carefully out of the car that was scarcely large enough to hold him and opened the rear door. Carla unfolded her long legs and gracefully stepped out, pointedly ignoring the hand he extended to help her. Shrugging slightly he closed the door and fell into step behind her as they approached the somewhat run-down facade of the large brownstone huddled in the back alleys of the area in Kings Row known as the Gish.

Carla reached for the doorknob, but Sergio’s long arm reached it first. She whirled on him angrily, but stopped at the look on his face. “Beggin’ yer pardon Carla, but dis is what I’m here for.”

“I don’t need no damn babysitter!” she stormed as her assault rifle materialized out of nowhere into her hands.

“Carla, you may kill me cuz ya don’t like it, but dat’s nothin’ compared ta what da Boss will do ta me if’n I don’t do my job.”

She snarled at him, but lowered the barrel. “Fine, fine. I’ll deal with you later. We’re here to explain to these goombah Skull twits that free-lancers aren’t welcome here any more. Their stupid little scams are bringing in too much super-powered attention.”

“Yeh, I’ve dealt wit’ a few of dem types” rumbled Sergio. “Dey don’t seem ta unnerstand how it is.”

“That’s right. We’re gonna take down crime and take it over til all these super-noseys run out of things to do here and get out. Then we branch out to Steel C and Skyway.” Carla made a complex little motion and attached the underbarrel flamethrower that appeared in her hand to the assault rifle. An actinic blue flame leapt forth at the front of the barrel.

“Some day you gotta show me how you do dat.”

“Don’t hold your breath big guy. A girl’s got secrets. Now open the damn door or get outta my damn way!”

Something almost like a sigh slipped from Sergio’s lips as he casually ripped the doorknob and lock completely out of the steel door. “Dese posers need better locks” he said as he kicked the door off its hinges and walked over it into the dark hallway. The skull-masked man flattened under the door moaned as Sergio stomped down and crushed the ganger deeper into the wooden floor. A second street punk pulled a handgun just in time to have his face rearranged by the bone and sinew mallet of Sergio’s right fist. The last tough made a split-second choice to go for his phone rather than his gun, but phone and body went different directions as Sergio casually slapped him into the wall. The unconscious man slid bonelessly to the floor as Sergio crushed the celphone beneath his black leather shoe.

“Silence is golden.” Sergio grinned bleakly as a sound like a monstrous zipper announced Carla had found targets for her full auto assault. “Or not” he mumbled as he turned and charged down the hall.

Mario moved the car smoothly away from the curb as Sergio popped open his cellphone. Carla let out a happy sigh from the plush rear seat as they slipped into the traffic flow like a shark through water.

“Paulie? Better let me talk ta the Doc. Yeah, I know. Just do it Paulie. Doc, we’re gonna need a coupla cleaners. Geezit, I know already! Carla got a little carried away. And for God’s sake don’ say nothin’ about dis. You know how he feels about it. Thanks Doc. Paulie’s got da beep from my phone. Lemme know when yer done.”
There was a sudden scream from the rear of the car. Mario whipped the big sedan between two sports cars with scant inches to spare and bounced over the median to turn into a crossing street, accelerating smoothly into the straightaway.

“WHATHEHELL!!” Sergio yelled as he was flung against the door by Mario’s defensive maneuver.

“I broke a friggin’ nail!” Carla screamed at him. “Somebody’s gonna pay for that!”

Characters copyright © 2007 all rights reserved. City of Heroes Copyright © NCSoft and Copyright © Cryptic Studios