Scrappy Quest Begins

Captain Scrappy has disappeared! Again! Her first clue leads Citrus Shocker home to Striga Isle. Stephanie Peebles knows something. And she owns a bar.  

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."

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.

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?"

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.

https://books2read.com/b/StarsSS

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.

Before Its Time

You think it'll last forever - people and cars and concrete - but it won't. One day it's all gone, even the sky. My planet's gone... before its time.

--The Doctor

Citrus Shocker at the End of the World

Shocker Saves Halloween

Press Release
While other heroes went about their oblivious trick-or-treating, Scrap Pile commander Citrus Shocker saw a danger and took action. It started with a message from some of the team's junior members (see previous article) and a ghostly ship floating through the streets of Talos Isle, where the brilliantly unconventional super-hero was posing as a shopper to lull criminals into a false sense of security.

"Actually," adds the modest hero, "I really was shopping. Then I saw the boat and thought maybe I should check my voicemail, and there were like 800 messages from Freefall Brawler and Ex Astra and some kind of squeaky gremlin thing that talked too fast to understand."

The courageous Citrus Shocker immediately took action. All the evidence gathered by her loyal crew had pointed to something sinister rising out of the fog-bound streets and cemeteries of Dark Astoria and engulfing Paragon City, perhaps the whole world, in eternal night. She even reserved a room there, allowing villains to believe that she was planning to meet Capt. Scrappy there to celebrate her birthday, and went undercover as a trick-or-treater.

Blasting her way through hordes of zombies who apparently saw through her clever ruse, Shocker eventually found that there really was some strange evil afoot.
"Yeah, it was just like last year. Sometimes you open the door and get a treat, sometimes you get a rock, and sometimes you get mobbed by jack-o-lantern men and witches and stuff like that."
The cunning Shocker quickly assembled a team of other brave heroes and tracked the evil to its source deep in the cemetery zone.
"Yeah, those guys were freaks," Shocker adds. "But they found Eochai for me and it was kind of neat assembling up on the war wall like that to plan our attack."
The darkness faded only a few days after the defeat of the avatar in Dark Astoria. "I guess he wasn't really doing anything, but he was still... you know... magic. I hate magic."

Junior Scrap Pilers Go Trick-or-Treating

Junior Scrap Pile members Speed Lightning, Freefall Brawler, and Ex Astra (clockwise from farthest) meet up in King's Row, having noticed that the Sun seems to be gone.


Prince of Scorpions from the allied super-group Eye of Horus joins up. "Hey, was that a zombie with a musket?"


Consulting with HallowJack, who agrees to get some of his impish friends looking into things.


Oktoberfest convenes in Atlas Park: HallowJack, GremlinJack, and Obsidian Wind.


Obsidian Wind and GremlinJack.

To be continued...

Slime Creatures from Outer Space

Atlas Park goes green:

Impending Disaster (and I'm not talking about the bomb):

Thanks a lot, Blue Steel:

Nova Sentry holds Steel Canyon (with some help):

Row in King's Row:

On the edge:

A bad place for the beet boosters to cut out:

Superheroes on Striga Isle

What seemed to be a violent but mundane raid on a Council base went wild yesterday when a fallen fascist suddenly transformed into a werewolf and the two commandos fought back with previously unrevealed super-powers. Who are these low-key heroes? What's happening on Striga Isle?

Scrap Pile Updates Its Image

Having cleared up the vast Outcast conspiracy to smear the team's image, members of the Scrap Pile set out to improve their public relations in other ways. Captain Scrappy, shown at right in Atlas Park, recruited two new, clean-cut science heroes. Golden Song and Speed Lightning have already made a name for themselves cleaning up the streets of King's Row.

Citrus Shocker, meanwhile, established a strong working relationship with Agent Eckman of Bloody Bay and patrolled the region. Rumors that she only did this to enjoy the seaside view and maybe hook up with an Arachnos Arbiter are, "just mean-spirited" according to the eccentric heroine.

Citrus Shocker also cleaned out the old Rikti bunker in Perez Park to find Hero One's time capsule, a move which earned her some credit with the Atlas Park administrative crew, and developed some flashy new technology including a sparkly laser tracking drone and a compact LCD cloaking device which is "much better than the one they give you in Bloody Bay and not at all derivative of their patented design." When asked if she planned to sell the devices or at least share the design with Longbow, Shocker responded, "Well, they're kind of, um, lightning-powered. I'm not sure there's much market for that."

Finally, Shocker appears to be sporting a new, much flashier costume, as seen in her recent encounter with spectral villains and mages in the sewers of Steel Canyon. Citrus Shocker seemed less than eager to talk about her new look, however. "It's still experimental," she explained. "I'm really not that comfortable with spandex, but it seems to be what everybody's doing these days, and I was tired of hearing from Starbryte that my normal costume looks like something her grandmother would wear. Hey, how about those ghosts, though, huh? I hate ghosts. Good thing Master Imhotep was there."
Master Imhotep, as readers may know, is the leader of the Eye of Horus team, which shares a long-standing coalition with the Scrap Pile. "Tep helps us out with annoying magic stuff a lot. He's like a brother to me."

The more conservative Master Imhotep, looking somewhat uncomfortable, replied, "Yes, my friend the Citrus woman is like a sister who dresses in underwear and speaks blasphemy to scandalize our family."

Finally, the team leaders made a significant move toward updating their long-neglected base, despite Captain Scrappy's position that, "all you really need is a place to watch TV and dump all that junk the criminals drop when you slug 'em." New team member Recycled Man has already begun making plans for the new base.

"He's a little eccentric, but he comes highly recommended," said Citrus Shocker of her new recruit. "His cybernetics are made entirely of post-consumer materials and, as you can see, his brain is enormous."