I grabbed Barry by the chest belt, and dragged him back around the corner just before the bullets started flying. We were far enough away that it was loud, but my ears weren’t ringing yet. I slammed my back flat against the brick, the other two men joining me.
Sweat soaked my sides immediately. I’d been shot before, and I didn’t look back on the experience fondly.
I turned to Sniffer Sleuth first. His eyes showed wide, but I saw steel in his spine. This wasn’t his first fight.
The gunfire stopped as they presumably waited for us to show our faces.
“Sleuth!” I said. His eyes went glassy.
“Who would want to hurt us?” he mumbled.
“Rick!”
His eyes met mine.
“They’re sending someone down that alley toward us to flush us out,” I said, pulling my grapple gun from my bag. “I need you to hit him with that baton.”
He nodded, and drew his baton, flicking his wrist to extend it.
“While you do that,” I said. “Barry and I will close distance with the guys behind the dumpster.”
“How do you know they’re behind the dumpster?” Barry asked.
“That’s the only good cover in the alley. It’s steel, but not big enough for four guys, so at least one will be at the very back of the alley.”
“What if that’s not—”
“We have to assume it is,” I said, cutting Sleuth off. I turned to the other. “I need you, Barry, to hit the guys furthest down the alley with everything you got, so I have space to knock out the guys behind the dumpster.”
“You’re good at this,” Barry said.
“Yeah, well, I had to learn fast.”
“When do we —”
“Now!” I said.
I tapped the Fox Badge, starting my cadence, and ran past the man with the pistol. He moved to shoot me, so didn’t catch Sleuth with the baton, who hit him right in the face.
The badge emitted a low hum that let me know it had halved my mass. Less than a second from now, it would double it.
My eyes spotted the two behind the dumpster. I heard gunfire. I ignored it. It all happened so fast, that I hardly registered what happened til it was over.
I jumped.
My hand aimed the grapple instinctually, firing a line right over their heads and securing the hook between two bricks. I landed five feet up on the opposite wall, then pushed off with my legs. My fingers squeezed the second trigger, and the grapple engaged its ascender, flinging me toward my quarry.
I let go, dropped right as the badge gave its second hum.
That was the battle cadence — go light, get high, then drop down when it doubles.
I kicked the first as I fell. His head snapped back with a sickening crack.
More gunfire. Ignore it.
A four-foot-wide beam of concentrated heat flashed down the alley, with a wave of hot air in its wake. The other goon covered his eyes. I kicked his knee, then cracked a hook at his temple when he buckled that sent him crumpling to the concrete.
I glanced down the alley at the last two standing. One, actually. One stood, frantically reloading his pistol, while the other rolled on the ground trying to put out his burning jacket. I glanced behind. Sleuth stood over the first with his baton raised. That one was out cold.
One left. Just had to get to him before he reloaded.
Another flash of light. It hit the goon in the chest, and lifted him off his feet to smash into the brick behind him.
His clothes didn’t catch fire, but he didn’t move either.
We’d done it!
The last goon finally peeled off his jacket, and stood. I moved to intercept, when I heard a groan behind me, then a curse from Sleuth.
I turned. He was on his knees with the goon he’d hit. Maybe he’d hit him harder than he should. I let the last one escape, tapped my badge to deactivate the cadence, then moved to help.
When I got there, I realized what was wrong. Blood spread in a pool under the goon.
“What happened?” I asked.
Sleuth had his fingers in a wound in the goon’s shoulder.
I cursed.
“Call 911,” Sleuth said.
“He’s a bad guy,” Barry countered. “He tried to kill us.”
“Just do it!” Sniffer Sleuth said.
I ran to the bag I’d dropped around the corner, and pulled the first aid kit from the front pouch. I dropped to my knees next to Sleuth. The goon’s eyes fluttered open.
“Where am I?” he asked.
“You’re in an alley,” I said, ripping the pouch on the coagulant, then pouring it in the wound.
“How did I get here?” he asked. I glanced at Sleuth, incredulous. I’d seen gunshot victims before. They didn’t tend to forget where they were.
“You and your friends shot at us,” Sniffer Sleuth said.
“My friends? Who? Who shot me?”
“Must have been a ricochet, or friendly fire,” I said, packing cotton into the wound.
I heard Barry on the line with emergency services.
“Last thing I remember was he told me to meet him at the club. Then this woman and —”
He began hyperventilating.
“Just try to breathe. In and out,” I said, unspooling the gauze.
“They’re on their way,” Barry said.
“Good,” Sleuth replied.
“We need to leave,” I said. I could already hear two more groan in the alley. Not up yet, but it wouldn’t be long.
“We can’t leave him,” Sleuth said.
I looked at the blood in the alley. It was a lot, but not enough to kill him — yet. The quick patch job we’d done didn’t stop all the bleeding, but it had slowed it. Our chances were good that he’d make it.
“We’re vigilantes,” I said. “We can’t wait for the hand off. This has to be enough.”
“It was self defense,” Sleuth said.
“It was vigilante work,” I said. “And they’ll arrest us. If you really believe in this work, you won't wait around for them to do that.”
Sniffer Sleuth cursed, and stood. I looked at him, then looked down at my pants. We were both soaked in blood.
Who had ordered this hit, and why? Sniffer Sleuth had said it himself, while they had an impressive group of heroes, this team hadn’t actually done much yet. This felt like a Supervillain plot, but something wasn’t adding up.
“On second thought,” I said. “Let's grab one that looks the most stable, and interrogate him. You have Betamind at HQ right?”
Betamind is one of the few that survived the Government’s Superhero program. He’d washed out, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t formidable. Rumor on the street said he was a T2 telepath. That wasn’t nothing.
“How did you know?” Barry asked. “I mean, yeah. He can help.”
“Let’s do it.”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
I tied up the guy I’d knocked out behind the dumpster. The other looked, well, maybe more than knocked out. Couldn’t be helped. When people are shooting at you, you have to sometimes use something approaching deadly force. I gave the one we’d tied up a sedative to keep him under.
Sniffer Sleuth threw him over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. He was stronger than he looked.
“We don’t have a car,” Barry said.
“The roof,” I said.
I leapt to the nearest fire escape, and let the ladder down for them. Soon, with a little help for the goon, we were on the roof. It took me a second to get my breath back.
I silently reminded myself that I was a hero. I did this stuff every day. Okay, well, not every every day. You don’t get shot at every day. That part never got easier.
But boy, had I kicked that guy hard. I knew it was a little perverse, but I loved getting to do that.
“Where next?” I asked when they’d made it up to join me.
“Our lair is about eight blocks that way,” Sniffer Sleuth said.
“Got it,” I said. Then handed him the Fox Badge.
“What’s this for?” he asked.
A little bit of trial and error with the badge, and one impressive show of Barry’s ability to launch himself across a rooftop with his lasers, and we made it. It took a while for Sleuth to get used to the cadence, but he was a natural. I didn’t actually need it to clear the roof.
Fox Serum gave me a natural 24-foot horizontal leap.
It wasn’t long before we got where we were going.
The Secret Lair looked, for all intents and purposes, like a regular comic shop. It had a small dedicated corner for superheroes, mostly retro and classic stuff like Captain Iron and Bronze Boy statues, but the rest of it was fantasy swords and space stuff, the current big sellers in popular media. The only thing it lacked, was the everpresent stench of mildew, dust, and body odor. You wouldn’t notice if you didn’t practically grow up in these spaces like I did, but it was too clean.
The young man behind the counter, a trim and attractive man, saw us as soon as we walked in. As if he were waiting.
“Glue Guy,” Barry said. “Where are the others?”
A stack of classic Captain Iron comics on display swung open to reveal a secret door, and a short Black woman with a tight, poofy bun walked out.
“They’re all in the field. Come on,” she said.
We carried the just-starting-to-stir goon through the secret door, and into an elevator.
“Nice to meet you,” I said. “I’m the Red Fox.”
“Nora,” the woman answered with a tight smile. She seemed to be in some sort of pain.
“Did you just come from a rave?” I asked.
“No?” she replied with her face screwed up like I smelled. “I always dress like this.”
Her black crop top seemed self tailored, and her short jean jacket practically dripped with pins and patches. Chunky plastic jewelry of a myriad of colors encrusted her wrists and neck.
“It's just,” I stammered to defend myself. “You aren’t wearing a super suit.”
“Oh, I leave that stuff to y’all. I do logistics.”
“What about Betamind and the Brain?” asked Sniffer Sleuth.
“The rest of the support team is here,” Glue Guy said. “Though Brain is having a memory cascade.”
Barry cursed.
“Is he alright?”
“He’s fine,” Nora said. “He’s reading his book.”
We got the goon to the holding cell quickly.
This next floor seemed comprised entirely of an open floor plan with a small kitchen and a gym. I leaned against the kitchen counter, and made a few texts to the Fox Foundation. My legs screamed with exhaustion. The battle cadence gave me an edge, but it was hell on my joints.
Sniffer Sleuth appeared later with a bundle of clothes.
“Called the hospital,” Sleuth said. “Talked to one of our Neighbors. That man you kicked is in a coma.”
‘Neighbors’ was hero-speak for ‘informants.’ The fact that the Care Team had a man at the hospital was just good practice. If I had to guess how the term came about, it was to reinforce the idea that the things we did was for the good of the community.
Had I hurt someone important to the community? Had they been mind controlled? This wasn’t outside the realm of possibility considering what was reported about Alphawave’s powers. He was still in prison as far as we knew, but he proved that the concept of mind control wasn’t just comic stuff.
I shook that kind of thinking as quickly as it started.
“What about the one that was shot?” I asked.
“He’s stable, but incoherent.”
I thought for a moment about what that could possibly mean, but came up with nothing. My run in with a Supervillain, Flameopath, wasn’t really the mastermind type. He was just this force of nature that I had to bring everything we had at. Everything I had.
“I tried my best,” I stated earnestly.
“Your ‘best’ nearly killed a man. Could still kill him.”
“They had guns,” I countered.
“They always have guns,” he said with some mix of sadness and frustration. “Heroes should be better.”
“Yeah, well, I’m only a Journeyman Hero.”
“It seems so,” he said. He thought for a moment. “Thank you. Without your help, we would have surely been gunned down. But at the moment, I’m not sure you’re the right fit for the Care Team.”
“Fair enough.”
“At least on a permanent basis. I make no promises either way, but I hope you’ll stay long enough to figure out what happened.”
“I think that’s wise,” I said.
He left.
I showered, then after finding the clothes, changed, and returned to the kitchen not sure where to go, or what to do next. My stomach growled. I was halfway through my second peanut butter and jelly sandwich when Nora appeared again.
“You found the showers,” she said.
“I did,” I replied, automatically running my fingers through my hair to fix my part.
“You’re very blonde,” she said.
“I mean, more dirty blonde.”
She hit me with a quick elevator eyes, then turned and leaned against the counter, looking out the window. I noticed the interest, but filed it away for later. Superhero teams, such as they were, tended to be a hotbed of soap opera drama. When everyone is in the best shape of their lives, the libidos can run hot, and the restraint run short.
Out on the West Coast was Command Squad, Painbolter and Bubblestream’s team, and they were notorious in the Super Tabloids for their tangled romantic web. Which I’d like to avoid if possible. I was, after all, a legacy hero.
At least, that’s just what I’d read.
“I’m sorry I may not have made a great first impression,” she said, looking back at me, her figure spilling over onto the counter.
I tried not to stare, and so looked down at my sandwich.
“You were fine.”
“Nah, I can be a bit crabby after a vision.”
“You’re a precog?” I guessed.
“Not the only one here. I’m only a Tier 1.”
I was also technically a T1, with the Fox Instinct. Something told me hers was a little more useful. I didn’t get full visions.
“How does it work for you?” I asked, looking up at her smile, and not anything below it.
She smiled with wide straight teeth that reminded me that I’d yet to get my care package from the Foundation. It had my whitening toothpaste.
“I get migraines,” she said. “Same time every day like clockwork — stars, nausea, the works, and I see moments in time, usually moments in the future. Then I write things down while trying not to throw up.”
“That sounds great!” I laughed.
“Oh yeah, it’s real attractive.”
“If that’s Tier 1, it’s high end. Talk about a superpower.”
“Yeah,” she laughed, “well it’s not as flashy as White Rabbit. But I’m just glad that the migraines come with something useful.”
White Rabbit pinged something in my memory. She was a new Street Level Hero. Claimed to have ‘luck powers.’ Had some kind of taekwondo training too, from the stance in the pictures.
“She also a field hero?” I asked. Support heroes stayed back at base, but they were still heroes nonetheless. Can’t fight crime if you were running around the city missing all the action. Intel remained key.
“Yeah,” she replied, showing some kind of emotion I didn’t catch.
“What’s the problem?”
“Oh,” Nora said, “she just tends to soak up a lot of attention from the newcomers. Sometimes, I feel like I’m all alone up in the intel bay.”
“Then maybe I’ll come visit when I have the time.”
Nora brightened up.
“Please do,” she said.
Eventually after some more chit chat, she showed me to the dorms upstairs.
I barely noticed the room before I fell into bed. I don’t remember falling asleep, but when I was awoken by a loud knock on the door, I saw the lights of the city still.
My watch read well into the early morning. Sniffer Sleuth stuck his head in.
“The goon wants to talk.”
Fox Foundation Approximate Power statistics compiled from the Heroic Rating Authority 1:
Note that since this is your first HRA stat sheet, some things to consider. First, to clear Superhero rank, a hero must have an Cumulative Approximate Power ranking of at least 70, but a feat of considerable might is also required. Second, that the highest a human will typically acquire in any single stat without a Power Source (like the Emotional Gemfield or Static Dark Energy) is 2.
Remember also that the most reliable stats a hero can have are the first four listed, commonly called the quadrant, and that the last two are highly subjective. But, even with concrete, measurable stats like strength, an expression of skill is always there to show that numbers aren’t everything. Consider that a skilled arm wrestler can defeat those who bench higher weights in the specific test for which they are suited.
Your stats are listed first, as is the Kit City Care Team’s. Those we could find, at least.
Don’t worry too much about your own stats. You’ll raise yours in time. --K
The Red Fox ‘87 (CAP score 31) —
Strength: 10
Movement: 3
Durability: 2
Energy Projection: 0
Mental Acuity: 3
Special Skills: 13
Sniffer Sleuth (CAP score 21.5) —
Strength: 1.5
Movement: 1
Durability: 1
Energy Projection: 0
Mental Acuity: 6
Special Skills: 12
Barry LaserGunz (CAP score 69) —
Strength: 1
Movement: 5
Durability: 10
Energy Projection: 49
Mental Acuity: 1
Special Skills: 3
White Rabbit (CAP score 26) —
Strength: 1
Movement: 2
Durability: 1
Energy Projection: 0
Mental Acuity: 3
Special Skills: 19
Levitron (CAP score 39) —
Strength: 2
Movement: 24
Durability: 3
Energy Projection: 2
Mental Acuity: 2
Special Skills: 16
Glue Guy (CAP score 7.5) —
Strength: 1
Movement: 1.5
Durability: 1
Energy Projection: 0
Mental Acuity: 1
Special Skills: 3
Superhero ? Action ? Drama
ARK — Volume 1
Who does an old soldier follow when he's left without direction?
What does the world's first superhero do when his biggest obstacle is his own family?
Where can a boy be safe when there's nowhere left to hide?
Earth has always been a nexus of incredible power—dormant too long. Devils, aliens, superpowers, and energies beyond comprehension: the world is overdue, and it's about to become everyone's problem.
Series focus
ARK Volume 1 follows the origins of a diverse cast fighting to grow, learn, and survive as an expansive superhero universe erupts around—and because of—them.
Readers can expect
- Multiple POVs destined to collide
- Drama, tragedy, action, comedy, and slice-of-life
- A steady burn of ever-escalating conflict as the mundane becomes extraordinary