Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Fire of Saturn Seen in Rogue Isles


After reappearing in Atlas Park, fighting crime alongside the Atlantean champion, Glubglub, and joining the Scrap Pile, the people of Paragon City seemed ready to accept that Fire of Saturn had put her villainous past behind her.

New footage from Port Oakes and Mercy City, however, calls her sincerity into question. 

While no actual members of the Scrap Pile (apart from Fire of Saturn herself -- see below) were available for comment, Hero Corps representative Dean Helm stated that, "The situation as we understand it is that Fire of Saturn was pursuing a group of Marcone Family thugs that were causing trouble in the Argosy Industrial Area." She was, in fact, seen fighting a huge Marcone captain and his henchmen, but she didn't turn him in to any recognized law enforcement authority. "That neanderthal cracked my helmet and I barely survived the fight," Fire of Saturn told our reporter. "You can't count on the court system to handle people like that. I know they'll treat him right at Fort Cerberus."
Despite confirmation that this and several other "arrests," including a nest of Skulls that she cleaned out, did happen, Fire of Saturn's activities in the Rogue Isles were not all explainable as law enforcement of any kind. For one thing, she is known to have visited Mikey the Ear, an information broker known for his shady contacts. And then there's this:
Fire of Saturn dismissed this clear attack on Paragon City Longbow troops as yellow journalism, saying, "Come on! Those guys were assholes. And they're fine! Just a little chilled. I'm not a murderer. Look, I had to work on Arachnos turf to get the bad guys, and it helps keep things smooth if they see you knocking some Longbow dorks around. It's not all green parks and giant heroic statues out there. You gotta play the game to stay alive."
Asked if using her shield drone to take dance selfies in front of Larry's Tiki Lounge was part of surviving on the mean streets, Fire of Saturn rolled her eyes. "Okay, fine! Yes, I went to Larry's. There's nothing like it in Paragon City. I mean, I love the... you know... goodness or whatever, here, but you have to admit, they really know how to party out in the islands. Larry's just rocks!"

Fire of Saturn once again asserted that she is not a bad guy. "Look, I stop criminals. Period. I was up front about all this with Scrappy and Shocker, and they understood. Shocker even said you vultures had given her friends a hard time once about the same sort of thing."

Monday, September 28, 2020

Homecoming

The world was ending. Fleeing to the Shadow Shard, Citrus Shocker, after borrowing some Crey Corporation equipment and making some frantic calculations, believed she had found a way to use the same dimension-spanning threads that allowed Pocket D to exist, to create a quantum mirror of her world and shunt all its inhabitants through the chaos to this new universe. Her plans went awry, fragmenting her own timeline. If any other heroes (or any people at all) were transmitted this way, she never found them. 

Deep in the Shadow Shard, though, the deserted halls of Pocket D flickered to life, and its proprietor, an entity known only as DJ Zero, reappeared. He set to work doing what Citrus Shocker had been trying to do before. After that, it got hazy for a while.
Citrus Shocker found herself in a burning building in King's Row, the fragment of exotic Shadow Shard material still secure in the backpack device she had used before. She was overjoyed to find Captain Scrappy talking to Detective Broyko of the PPD outside. 
Scrappy's memories suggested a different past than Citrus Shocker remembered, one in which they were beginning their careers here after years of struggle. Unfortunately, their weakened powers seemed to support his version of reality. They barely made their way through the district to the Atlas Park train. Citrus Shocker was horrified to learn that Galaxy City, where, in her version of the past, she and Captain Scrappy had first met, had been destroyed. This was already part of Scrappy's past, so it was no surprise to him.

Back in Atlas Park, the pair reconnected with Hero Corps to beat up some Hellions and snow men. Citrus Shocker stowed her failed gadget for further study and built a jet pack. They settled in and started working on finding their friends and rebuilding the Scrap Pile.

Back in Paragon City

 More updates soon!

Saturday, October 18, 2014

The Night Shift

While Skyway Shocker continues to avoid contact with the media, we have word from an anonymous source identified only as a "fan" that she most likely is, as previously speculated, the displaced Paragon City heroine, Citrus Shocker.


Posing as a variety of rescued civilians and fans, our source was able to occasionally speak with the elusive heroine and put a few things together. While Crey doesn't have anywhere near the power here that they did in Paragon City, Shocker believes that a group of their enhanced agents has been able to entrench itself in several Millennium City organizations, creating a web of conspirators able to access valuable technological and financial resources at will. She also claims to know the name of this alleged conspiracy: The Night Shift.

As Skyway Shocker became more visible to the public, the Night Shift or, more likely, random criminal elements that were simply out of her league, made Millennium City more and more dangerous for her, so she spent some time in the wilds of northern Canada, fighting ice demons and other strange menaces.


We don't have a lot of pictures from the Arctic. Apparently our source didn't like the cold. When Skyway Shocker came back, it was with a new costume and some new inventions. Of special note were a sleeker, more compact jet pack and a pair of hovering drones that vastly improved on her previous models.

She has since been seen fighting crime on several occasions in the city, even helping out with a disturbing outbreak of spontaneous combustion.

There has still been no sign of any of her compatriots in the Scrap Pile, and our source has not been able to get her to comment on the matter at all, except for, on one particularly pleasant afternoon, a smirk, followed by, "Tell your friends they'll be along."

Regarding her undisguised operation in areas where this "Night Shift" can easily strike at her, Shocker's attitude confirmed previous assumptions that she was, in fact, eager to see them try. Asked about her flight to the Arctic, she acknowledged that she "hadn't fully accounted for... some things." On another occasion, she confirmed that she "wasn't ready then, but now I know exactly what I'm facing."

UPDATE: Our source turned out to be a shape-shifting robot. It was found on our front step today, short-circuited, with several components missing. A note was left clipped to its jacket that said, "See?"


Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Stars, Specters, and Super-Powers

Three of the stories in this book (Mister Blue Sky, The Man Comes Around, and Misfits & Mistakes)  feature The Scrap Pile, The Enigmas, and several other characters that we originally created in City of Heroes. "Mister Blue Sky" has a lot of things that will look familiar if you've ever played the winter event. "A Bad Habit" is also a super-hero story, but it's much older than City of Heroes.

And hey, it's only 99 cents on Kindle!

https://www.amazon.com/Stars-Specters-Super-Powers-Christina-Lea/dp/1723910538

Thursday, January 09, 2014

Skyway Shocker

Fleeing the authorities after a run-in with the Crey Corporation that ended with several warrants for her arrest, Citrus Shocker was last seen heading for the Shadow Shard portal on Peregrine Island.

Over a year later, Skyway Shocker was reported to be working with the Champions in Millennium City. The weaponry seems to be  more exotic and possibly more advanced, but Skyway Shocker bears a remarkable resemblance in both face and attitude to the rarely-masked heroine, wields the same lightning-based powers, and even wears a costume similar to the best known of Citrus Shocker's many outfits.

Skyway Shocker has thus far avoided any interaction with the media. If this is the same person, she almost seems to be daring whatever remains of Crey to come after her. If not, well, that would be even stranger. So far, however, none of her compatriots in the Scrap Pile, even Captain Scrappy, have been spotted.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Echo of Mercy

Mercy has decided that her old name no longer matters.

In her old life, under her old name, she worked for the Lizard Moll's gang. Nothing flashy - she wasn't a supervillain herself, or even a soldier. She just monitored some of the start-ups around Mercy Island, keeping tabs on potential rivals. It wasn't glamorous work, but she enjoyed it.

Then the Storm came and world started to crack. Mercy Island was torn apart from beneath and sank into the ocean. Swimming desperately for one of the escaping ships, Mercy was caught in a wave of glowing green sludge from some Arachnos experiment and dragged, choking and burning, into the depths.

She awoke under a pier in Millennium City, a strange shore in an alien world. The city was being attacked by insectoid aliens. Some new form of Rikti? Nobody recognized that word. The humans here, who seemed shorter than humans in her world, called them Qularr. One of the creatures came at her and the flailing arm she threw up to fend it off went right through its carapace. At first, she thought they must be incredibly fragile, but soon she realized that the people weren't small and the bugs weren't weak. She was the one who had changed.

She joined in the fight, helping to drive away the bugs, and someone asked her who she was. She meant to say, "I'm the echo of Mercy Island," but all that came out was, "Mercy."

While she had never had any great respect for the law, Mercy was a survivor. She had been accepted as a hero when she helped fight off the Qularr, and she found that this was a comfortable life. No reason to put all that at risk by robbing banks or trying to rule the world. She found that she had a violent temper now. She suspected that some of this came from the chemicals that had transformed her, but she was also angry and frustrated at the loss of her home, her family, and her friends. Taking that frustration out on criminals, however, was enough. She sometimes wonders what it would be like to go farther, but so far has not seen any reason to try it.

On Halloween, the dead rose, and demons clawed their way through the veil of worlds. Millennium City felt like home for the first time.

In the chaos, Mercy stumbled across a thrilling revelation: she was not alone.

Fighting her way through a horde of zombies, she found herself in a group of other heroes who had done the same. Together, they dove into the portal and confronted the demonic entity beyond. One of the heroes was from Paragon City.

Despite her elation, of course, Mercy had to conceal some of the details of her own origins. Still, after a long chat over pumpkin-spiced cocktails, she found out that she and Aleph-Ka weren't the only survivors. Several other heroes, and possibly other not-so-heroic sorts, had washed up on these shores over the past year.

It was good to make a connection with someone from her home world, but it was even better to realize that she could make a connection, period. Maybe this world, this life, could be more than just bearable, after all.