Unbeholden Forever

"The Unbeholden? What Unbeholden? Beasty Boy was their heart and soul, and he's gone solo. Mistress Terror or Terrorist or whatever she calls herself, the so-called leader, has gone into hiding. The rest are strictly small time. Trust me, the Unbeholden are just a bad memory. It's groups like the Angry Bees or the Technocratic Dominion that we need to be watching, not those has-beens."

-- Captain Jerry Tooley, November 2007Longbow Senior Staff Briefing,

It seemed, for some time, that Captain Tooley was right. When they were in the news, the Unbeholden were plagued with rumors of internal upheavals, interspersed with recruiting surges and reunions that sounded suspiciously like canned press releases. Even Beasty Boy's rampage in the summer of 2007 seemed unable to stir them into action. Then events began to unfold that suggested the Unbeholden's lethargy had been a smoke screen all along.

It started with a single picture of what appeared to be Sarana, long believed to be Mistress Terror's personal assassin, taking down a mob boss in Port Oakes. Other pictures followed. Sarana battling snakes, fighting her way into Fort Hades, even defeating the Ferocious Flambelle in an Atlas Park bank robbery. Flambelle has, thankfully, recovered and was a key factor in positively identifying the elusive swordswoman. There are rumors that she was seen with Beasty Boy at some point as well, but all our sources seem to have disappeared.

Mistress Terror, meanwhile, was rumored to have been captured while trying to assassinate Ghost Widow. An Arachnos informant even released the following photo:

Then, on January 24th, the big news hit:

Mistress Terror, aided by familiar cronies Hanoi Jane, Nightmare Pixie, Erith, Plague Dog, Exterminus, and Screeching Harpy, made a spectacular strike on Atlas Park, targeting not the bank, but Wentworth's Consignment House. Then, at long last, she spoke to the press. Our Rogue Isles affiliate, possibly but not definitely that guy who puts the secret notes for villains in the newspapers, conducted the interview at night, under a bridge in Port Oakes.

"I hate Wentworth's," Mistress Terror explained. "That, and Plague Dog has been working wonders in the interplanetary contraband industry, and nothing makes him happier than a pile of weird junk."

Asked about the group's long quiescence and what might be next on their agenda, Mistress Terror replied, "For one thing, I wasn't trying to assassinate Ghost Widow. In fact... well... never mind. We've been gathering artifacts, researching the origins of our powers, making new friends, and... do you really expect me to tell you everything?"

Our plucky reporter followed Mistress Terror the next day and snapped one more surprising photo in Aeon City. After a tense pause during which she seemed to be considering teleporting him over the ledge, she offered the reporter a brief statement: "What can I say? The Unbeholden are back in action, and we are everywhere. Don't mess with us."