Red1-Z1/The Malta Incident
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
Working with a contact developed during the course of her career as a superhero, Zeya at one point arrested a Malta honcho known by the code name Kingdom Red 2-0-2. Though Freedom Corps never learned his true name, they had enough information to send him to the Zig for two hundred seventy one years. Unfortunately, most of their information came from sources they could not afford to disclose, and he actually received a sentence of 18 months. On his release 10 months later, he set about renewing some of his old acquaintances, and settling a score with Zeya.
Knowing Zeya centered her operations near Crey's Folly, over a hundred Malta operatives, Titan bots and field agents joined in for what they expected to be an afternoon's light entertainment. Instead, they found Zeya's base empty, and settled in for the longer pursuit. For the next three weeks, everywhere she went she found Malta agents waiting, or appearing shortly after her arrival. For three weeks she avoided her friends, stayed out of populated areas, and led Malta teams through some of the Devouring Earth's largest monstrosities near Eden. For three weeks, they continued their pursuit.
And then, she disappeared. For four days, the operatives electronically tracking Zeya and the agents reporting her movements shouted and argued. They knew where they had last seen her. At worst she could portal to another location, but anywhere she could portal, they could follow. She had simply gone to ground, in the middle of nowhere.
When they began losing contact with agents, they knew she had chosen to resurface. Bringing together the forces from the original assault on her base, they closed in on Crey's Folly again. They soon caught sight of their quarry, who fled into a building. Malta pursued.
After four days of preparation, Zeya was ready for them. Crey Corp owned the building, but they had moved their operations elsewhere, and most of the electronic keys had long since failed. Zeya had spent four days getting the doors and elevators to respond to her electrical signals, and she evaded Malta again and again by engaging, then fleeing through a door that only opened for her.
The Malta titans found the doors would open for their rockets, as would holes in walls, ceilings and floors, and the pace of the hunt accelerated while the building came down around them. Zeya defeated the entire force, eventually, but not before reducing the research facility to a skeleton, and during the fighting Malta agents killed three security guards employed by Crey Corp.
Crey Corp accused Zeya of maliciously dragging Malta into their faciliy to even old scores with them. They also charged Zeya with entering the facility illegally, and therefore argued that she should stand trial for all of the damage subsequently done, and the guards killed. The Freedom Corps, furious with Zeya's chosen battleground, agreed. She stood trial as a civilian, and was convicted. After her trial they decided that, since she was a superhero rather than a civilian, she should face the military penalty for her actions rather than that imposed at her civil trial, and modified her sentence from life imprisonment to death.
She awoke from her confinement in the Zig stasis cell and subsequent death, and found an Arachnos prison break in progress. Seizing the opportunity, she flew off and followed the Arachnos fliers to less hostile territory, aware of her twenty year sleep only as a feeling of heaviness she could not shake. Taking on the role of a rogue enforcer, she began hiring herself out as Red1-Z1, the slightly corrupted Malta code name serving both as her name and a score card. She had to admit, Kingdom Red had certainly gotten even, and she had plans for a rematch.
