Toy Dispenser/Mechanical Storm

From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe

((The following is the longest story I have ever written, taking me about one year to finally complete. I just copied this right out of Word, so there's probably some formatting errors around. I'll correct them later when I feel like it.))

== Mechanical Storm ==

Book One of Toy's Story

The Etoile Islands, more commonly known as the Rogue Isles is a chain of islands stretching across the middle of the Atlantic Ocean to about twenty miles off the US coast. Originally founded by a cult exiled from France, the Rogue Islands eventually became known as a haven for pirates, wanted criminals, and other of that ilk. The main group of islands surrounding the capitol island of Grandville was created when during the early eighteen hundreds a massive volcanic eruption split the large island into multiple smaller islands. From the lone isle of Grandville came the islands of Port Oakes, Cap au Diable, Bloody Bay, and the current Grandville. Currently ruled by the terrorist organization known as Arachnos, the Rogue Isles remain, in the finest words of Obi-Wan Kenobi, “…a wretched hive of scum and villainy.”

But the leader of Arachnos, Lord Recluse, an extremely powerful superhuman, rules the islands with an iron fist, controlling the dissident inhabitants and varied visitors of the isles with his own private army. It was Lord Recluse who masterminded the massive break outs from the high security metahuman prison, the Ziggurat, and transported the various super criminals to the Rogue Islands. There they could flourish, testing their might against the various organizations that called the islands home as well as bits and pieces of the massive Arachnos army itself. Lord Recluse took great pains to work his territory like a miniature test of Darwin’s Law, ensuring that only the most powerful villains and criminals could survive and eventually be recruited by Arachnos for Recluse’s own nefarious purposes.

Aside from gaining what amounted to a personal army of metahumans that he could call upon at any time, little was known of Lord Recluse’s plans for the hundreds upon hundreds of criminals that he had rescued from rotting in the Zig. Statesman, the premiere hero of Paragon City, was, is, and shall remain vocal in his belief that Lord Recluse is planning on using this army to enact his master plan, that of world domination, as well as to destroy Paragon City. Since Paragon City has unofficially become known as the City of Heroes, it is of little wonder why Lord Recluse would wish to destroy it. But of the true reason why Lord Recluse established his counter-point to the metahumans of Paragon City, his own City of Villains, only he would know.

• --*

To the entity known as Toy Dispenser,

I, along with several other powerful figures in Arachnos, have been watching your rise to power with great interest. Your constant displays of forethought and ingenuity frequently amaze us, especially when one considers your background. It is with great pleasure that I extend to you and invitation to come and visit Grandville, the capitol of Arachnos, and gaze upon the arena of your newest challenges. For there are many in Grandville who would wish to hire a mercenary of your skill and tenacity and almost as many who would attempt to strike you down the moment you lower your guard. Grandville is a harsh proving ground, despite what efforts I have made to the contrary.

But my troubles are not important here. Instead, I wish to consult with you personally about a matter that closely concerns you. I speak not of something potentially fatal, but about something which could serve to increase your might. I have read a report that Kalinda penned regarding your attempt at unlocking your potential as a 'Destined One' and I have also read about your encounter with Statesman after the ritual and the phenomena that resulted from it. In three days hence I would like to speak to you in my private offices in Spider Tower. Perhaps there we shall decide upon your future in Arachnos and discuss the next plateau of power you have yet to reach.

Fair winds, Scirocco

Fair winds my metal ass, Toy Dispenser thought as he looked up at the giant statue of Lord Recluse situated just outside the seat of Arachnos power, Spider Tower. Damn magic flinger probably thinks he can get me to do a job cheap. Probably try to buy me off with some cheap parlor tricks.

But he knew this was unfair of him to think so. Everything the mastermind had learned about Scirocco pointed to the fact that he was an upstanding guy. The sort of villain that kept honor alive among the upper echelons of villainy and Toy was pretty sure that the mystic meant what he was talking about.

Now then, to just figure out exactly what he was talking about.

This was an interesting conundrum, and the techni-colored android allowed himself to slip a bit into past files to summarize what had happened between him and States on that fateful day about two months ago as he walked around the giant statue and toward Spider Tower's entrance.

It had been another of Kalinda's special jobs. Bust the carnies, steal some of their stuff, and then perform some hocus pocus ritual that was supposed to unlock the power of the Destined One. Well, as can be expected from a robot working magic a whole lot of nothing occurred and Toy was forced to try and slink back out of Paragon City where the Carnival of Shadows group had been. It was just his bad luck that Statesman himself was chasing a couple of Circle of Thorns mages right past the door that Toy had just exited from.

It was even worse luck when the hero saw through Toy's camouflage of brightly colored paints to recognize an up-and-coming villain of the Rogue Isles that he had undoubtedly been briefed on. What followed was the most painful experience in Toy Dispenser’s entire career. The only highlight of that whole bungle was that he was able to knock States around and surprise the big lug a couple of times. Not that it prevented his emergency trip to the hospital barge at the edge of US territorial waters, but it helped assuage his battered ego.

But the real curious thing about that fight was that afterward, Toy had gained this odd...thing, about him. Due to power cell damage, energy leaked out from his body in harmless amounts and played over his armor like miniature red lightning bolts. Even after the power cell was repaired to full working condition, the random energy discharges stuck around. Since they didn't hurt him at all and looked damn cool, the mastermind had decided that he'd just ignore the aura and leave it at that. Of course, Kalinda had said that that was the outcome of the ritual but since Toy had empirical evidence that it was Statesman that had done it; he had ignored her ravings and left on his next contract.

And now I wish I had talked with her a bit more about this, Toy thought as he nodded to Arbiter Rein and passed through the annoyingly circular Arachnos doors.

Inside was yet more statuary, this time including Recluse's four lieutenants, a huge line of civilians, and numerous harried looking Arachnos functionaries. Toy spent a moment lingering by the statue of Scirocco, impressed by the image of strength the pose of the rock put out, before he stepped past an arguing couple and into an empty corridor. Almost sighing in relief, until he realized that he had forgotten once again that he couldn't sigh, Toy followed his internal map to the nearest elevators and took them up.

And up.

And up.

And finally the elevator stopped, dinged, and Toy stepped out. A quick glance out a nearby window showed that he was already a good eighty stories up and a significant chunk of the building left to go up. But that wasn't where he was going and the android made good time down various halls and passages before arriving at a door guarded by a pair of high-ranking Mu mystics. Toy paused for a moment and then reached into his belt pouch for the letter.

"Hey guys. I've got an invitation from your boss here and-"

"Scirocco has been expecting you, Toy Dispenser," said the Mu on the right.

"You may enter, or not, as you please," said the one on the left, not missing a beat.

"Fine with me," Toy said nonchalantly as he slid the letter away.

Nodding politely at the mystics, Toy tapped the button that opened the door and stepped inside.

The room wasn’t as big as Toy Dispenser had expected and looked all the smaller for being mostly taken up by a massive desk and a pair of chairs in front of it. The desk was huge, black, covered with papers, and had a well known super villain sitting behind it looking up at Toy Dispenser with the hint of a grin on his face.

“I’ve always found your choice of costume to be very amusing,” Scirocco said as stood up.

“Uh, thanks. I guess,” Toy replied as he looked down at his multi-colored exterior.

“I am, however, glad to see that you have taken up my offer,” Scirocco said as he motioned for Toy to take a seat in one of the Arachnos emblazoned chairs.

“Yeah, about that,” Toy said as he sat down. “Did you really mean what you said? I mean, it isn’t everyday that one of the pillars of Arachnos decides to offer to help a mercenary like myself.”

“True,” Scirocco replied as he shuffled together some papers and slid them into a drawer.

From the same drawer he pulled out a sticky note and handed it to Toy. The mastermind took it, curiosity visible in his movements, and scanned it quickly. After a moment he looked up at Scirocco sharply.

“Wait, let me get this straight, ‘The observed aura is indeed a result of the subject’s greater destiny in this world. Like most such auras, the effect is clearly magical and it seems susceptible to standard Mu teachings.’” Toy read and then set the note down.

“That note was given to me by one of my highest ranking mages,” Scirocco said as he took the note back. “He sent this too me after viewing certain camera logs and interviewing various other mystics that you have defeated.”

“I guess Kalinda was right then and uh, about those mages of yours that I’ve beaten so far,” Toy said nervously, his head twitching from side to side. “No hard feelings, right?”

“No hard feelings,” Scirocco chuckled. “They were there to test you, as were all Arachnos soldiers that you have fought, although they didn’t know it at the time. And Ghost Widow’s Fortunata are trained to see into the future. Kalinda is especially good at what she does, hence her post on Mercy Island. But this meeting between us is not to talk about the past, but to talk about the present.”

“Alright,” Toy said. “What do you have in mind?”

“In order for you to gain mastery over this aura of yours, I will have to teach you a modified form of the standard Mu teachings. And of course there must be a certain amount of trust between student and teacher,” Scirocco explained, leaning back in his chair. “And despite the fact that I believe we shall get along fine, if your file is correct, I need to see first hand how proficient you are.”

“Sounds good. Am I getting paid?”

“Yes. We can set this up like one of your standard contracts. In fact, I have a copy here for just such an occasion,” Scirocco said as he pulled out a piece of paper and scribbled his signature on it.

As Toy took the contract and read it over, Scirocco kept talking.

“There is a base of mine here in Grandville that cut off all contact a few days ago. No transmissions have been recorded going in or out since then and I would like you to go in there and find out what happened. That base is supposed to be a repository for some artifacts that I have acquired and I would like to make sure that they are unharmed.”

“Ok, let me get this straight,” said Toy as he leaned forward, placing one forearm on the desk while he ticked off points with his other hand. “Infiltrate an Arachnos base, find out why things are screwy, and look around for your artifacts. Are casualties an issue?”

“It depends on the condition of the soldiers within. If they are already dead, I don’t care what you do to whoever might remain. But if they are still there and attack you, I would prefer to have as many as possible left alive.”

“I can deal with that. Now, about those artifacts…”

“You will know them when you see them,” Scirocco said, deflecting further inquiries.

“Alright, at long as they won’t kill me or melt my CPU or something,” Toy warned as he added his angular signature to the paper. “So you’ve got my services from now until this issue is resolved.”

“Very good. I’d prefer that you start as soon as possible. There is no telling what might be going on in there.”

“Gotcha,” Toy said and then stood up.

Scirocco followed him up and the two villains shook hands.

“Good luck and try not to get yourself killed,” Scirocco said. “I would be most displeased to learn that a potential ally was killed on his first mission.”

“No problem there,” Toy said nonchalantly as he tipped an imaginary hat toward Scirocco. “I’ll come up and report directly once I’m done.”

Scirocco sat back down and nodded in reply to Toy’s statement. He quickly pulled a piece of paper off a large stack in front of him and started writing.

Amazing how even supervillains have paperwork to plow through. Toy thought to himself as he walked out the door.

“Welcome to our lord’s service, Toy Dispenser,” said the mystic to his right.

“You will find yourself most welcome within our ranks,” added the left most one.

Toy favored each one with an arch look and then shook his head.

“You guys will always creep me out.”

Not sticking around for a reply, Toy activated his anti-gravity jets and whisked down the hallway to the elevator. He had an Arachnos base to break into.

“Is this the place?” grunted the nine-foot tall assault bot.

“It’s where Scirocco said it would be,” replied Toy Dispenser as he and the aptly named Combat Toy stared at one of the many ubiquitous circular Arachnos doors in Spider City.

“Doesn’t look like much,” chirped up Mini Bot, the eccentric one of Toy’s three battle drones.

“Doesn’t have too,” replied Toy again as he moved over to the keypad sitting next to the door. “And if the codes that Mu gave me still work, then we won’t have to go through the trouble of alerting every guy in the base that we’re here.”

“That’ll be a relief,” muttered Small Toy, another of the battle drones, as Toy rapidly punched in a six-digit code.

With a hiss, the door cracked open and revealed the way inside.

“Big hulking combat droids first,” Toy said as he waved Combat Toy through.

The big machine grumbled but otherwise kept its vocoder shut off as it squeezed through the door and took up a guard position as the rest of the group filed in. As the last protector bot stepped through, Toy punched in another code that locked and sealed the door once more.

“Don’t want anybody getting out,” Toy said, mostly to himself, as he then assembled his laser rifle and propped the thing up on his shoulder. “Ok boys, let’s go kick some ass.”

“Hell yeah!” shouted Mini Bot as it jumped up and down, its enthusiasm so great that it accidentally smacked into the wall.

“Standard guard formation,” Toy said as he looked around at his surroundings.

It was a typical Arachnos set-up, lots of red, lots of exposed wiring and tubing, and a whole bunch of machinery that Toy Dispenser could never fully identify. Nothing at all seemed unusual by just looking at the place, but things would probably get more interesting once he ran into his first enemies.

“She told us she loves us.”

Speak of the devil, Toy thought as a pair of Mu Strikers neared his position. They didn’t seem to notice him and his bots yet so the mastermind stood his ground and waited.

“She told us she loves us,” said the Mu on the right.

“And now we love her, now and forever,” added the one on the left.

“Creepy,” muttered Large Toy, a protector bot as it cast a quick shield on Combat Toy.

“You should love her too!” shouted one of the Mu suddenly.

A split second later and a crackling bolt of red electricity slammed into the shield covering Combat Toy. A little bit made it through, playing over the big robot’s armor, but the major damage was prevented and the Mu had wasted their opening shot.

“Let’s get it on!” shouted Combat Toy as its arms sprung up and their protective blast shields slid back. It fired a massive plasma burst, knocking one Mu out of the air and catching the other one on fire.

As the grounded Mu flailed around, the three battle drones stepped forward and opened up as well with a continuous laser blast. The airborne mystic spun around in confusion and pain until he passed out and joined his brother on the floor. Toy stepped forward and nudged them both with his foot. They were still alive.

“That was too easy,” Toy mentioned as the entire group started moving.

“It’s about to get harder,” Block Bot said. “Patrol of Bane Spiders ahead, boss.”

“She told us she loves us,” said one Bane Spider as it lifted up its mace.

“This is going to get really old, real quick,” Toy said as he shouldered his rifle and opened fire.

The Bane Spider Executioner gurgled as he clawed at his crushed throat. Toy Bot took a step back and shook some blood off of its mace hand and watched dispassionately as the high ranking Arachnos soldier gasped for breath and then collapsed, dead. The drone turned its four glowing red eyes toward its master and awaited its next orders.

“Brilliant. Just brilliant,” Toy Dispenser groaned as Large Toy used a small infusion of nanites to repair some damage to his armor. “We leave a whole ton of the small fries alive and when we come to the base commander, what do we do? We kill him. If Scirocco hadn’t said that casualties weren’t an issue, I’d be worrying for my head right now.”

“Sorry, boss,” said an unrepentant Toy Bot. “I was just eliminating him as a threat as quickly as possible.”

“Which is supposed to be my job,” growled Combat Toy from across the room as it worked on getting rid of the last bits of web grenade fibers trapping it.

“But you were immobilized and my function is-“

“Shut up you two,” Toy said as he pushed Large Toy away and walked over to the mainframe computer sitting against the far wall. “While I work at getting the security camera footage, I want you guys to look for the safe.”

“Aye, boss,” said all the bots.

The next few minutes passed in silence as Toy Dispenser used yet another of the codes Scirocco had given him to quickly access and watch the security camera footage from the infiltration a few days ago. The footage showed something very unusual and explained the one track minds of the soldiers that Toy had been forced to beat down. It showed first a woman in a genie costume entering the base and being blocked by a pair of Mu mystics, maybe the same two that Toy encountered as well. Then all three moved out of the entrance camera’s view and when the woman was next seen, she had several more Arachnos soldiers trailing her like a lot of lovesick puppies.

It appeared as though the woman was looking for something and once she had enough soldiers under her control, she sent them all out to find it. The footage ended then with a blinking message saying that the base commander had shut down the cameras at that point.

“Found it!”

The safe in question was hidden underneath a sloping platform and looked about as solid as any other Arachnos safe Toy had cracked during his stay in the Rogue Isles. As the mastermind walked over to it, a data disk of the security logs in his hand, he noticed something was wrong with the safe. Crouching down, he identified the problem. It wasn’t locked.

Dreading what he would find inside, Toy pulled the door open and was confronted with one of the oddest things that had ever happened to him. He smelled. Since he wasn’t used to the feeling, he wasn’t able to tell if it was a good smell or a bad smell but the fact was that it wasn’t being reported by his olfactory sensors. And of course the safe was empty.

“We are dealing with one crazy powerful magic user this time,” Toy said as he suddenly sat down. “One of you call up Scirocco and tell him that his base is clean and that I’ll be up to report in person shortly.”

“You ok, boss?” asked Mini Bot worriedly as Small Toy stepped off to the side and made the call.

“Oh, I’m fine. I just had something happen to me that’s supposed to be impossible, but otherwise I’m fine.”

“That’s actually kind of normal for around here, boss.”

“True.”

“So that’s all I found. An empty vault, mind controlled soldiers, and footage of some genie,” said Toy as he wrapped up his report. “I kept casualties down as much as I could and fulfilled all objectives that I could. I assume the credits have been forwarded to my account?”

After an initial bout of questions, Scirocco had fallen into a contemplative silence with his fingers held steepled in front of him. The mystic nodded absently as he continued to think and after a while Toy Dispenser began impatiently tapping his fingers against his armrest. Finally, Scirocco stirred and sat up, looking at Toy with a serious expression on his face.

“You did an admirable job considering what you were up against,” Scirocco said. “While the loss of the artifacts is annoying, they were ultimately not important. But I believe I know the source of the problem.”

“You think you might know who that genie is?” Toy asked, leaning forward a bit. He was very curious about this extremely strong magic user.

“I certainly have my suspicions but they can wait. What I want you to do now is speak with Arbiter Daos. I want you to ask him about any other bases that may have been attacked. But be warned, Daos is the most powerful of the Arbiters and is not one to trifle with.”

“Alright, I’ll watch my step,” Toy said as he stood up. “If Daos has anything important to tell me, I’ll make sure to get it to you ASAP.”

“Very good,” Scirocco said. “And if Daos asks you to perform a service for him in return for this information, do it. You will be paid as though you were working for me.”

“Which, in a way, I will be,” Toy added.

“Indeed you will,” Scirocco said and then waved Toy away. “Now go, there are some matters I need to check up on.”

“Good luck with that,” Toy said with a nod as he turned and left the room.

“Anything interesting, boss?” came a high-pitched voice from his right.

Turning and looking down, Toy Dispenser put both hands on his hips and tried to express his displeasure at Mini Bot, who had been adamant in refusing to go back to base. Like all the other times, this failed, Mini Bot being about as thick to such things as Black Scorpion’s skull.

“I’ve got to talk with a guy who could order me erased from existence,” Toy finally sighed as he headed down toward the elevator.

“Well, boss, think of it this way,” said Mini Bot as it trotted alongside. “If you were going to get erased, you wouldn’t be here right now.”

“Mini Bot, no paradoxes today, ok?”

“Oh fine,” huffed the drone as they got into the elevator.

The two walked in silence for the minute and forty three seconds it took to reach Arbiter Daos at his post in front of the Lord Recluse patron statue. The bald, gray armored man was conversing quietly and at length with another villain in bright red armor and Toy decided it would be a better idea to wait. After another minute, the other villain walked off with an expression of rage on his wolf-like face and Arbiter Daos was left shaking his head.

“What do you want?” Daos suddenly asked, looking in Toy’s direction.

The man’s sudden refocusing of attention and the very force of his personality momentarily threw the android off for a second. It was possible that Arbiter Daos noticed it but if so he had an excellent poker face.

“I’m here to speak to you about a problem that needs correcting,” Toy eventually got out, moving forward to face the Arbiter directly.

“There are many such problems that I know of.”

“This one involves bases suddenly cutting off all contact due to the interference and mind control of an unknown agent.”

“Ah, that problem,” Daos said, a deep scowl suddenly appearing on his face. “Three bases in the past week and another one just today. That damnable woman is getting on my nerves. What do you want to know?”

“What connections, if any, the bases had with each other.”

“Easy, they were all repositories for artifacts in Scirocco’s keeping. None of them very powerful, but all together they represent quite a loss. I assume Scirocco is intending to do something about this?”

“Yes. He’s having me track down this woman.”

“Good. Then I am sure he won’t mind me borrowing you for a small task.”

“It would be my pleasure.”

“Heh, manners, how quaint,” Daos laughed lightly. “I want you to secure the base that went off-line today. The thief might still be there but even if she isn’t, recapturing the base so soon after she left might garner us additional information. Are you up to the task?”

“Very much so,” Toy said. “All I need is the location and the codes to enter the base.”

“You shall get them,” Daos said and then turned away for a moment.

He seemed to talk into a communications device built into his wrist plate and almost as soon as he put his arm down, another white clad Arbiter was hurrying out of a side door and handing him a data disk. Daos gave the disk to Toy Dispenser and the mastermind quickly scanned and downloaded the data. He handed the disk back to Daos and turned to leave.

“Good hunting, Toy Dispenser,” Daos said as Toy walked away.

“Thanks a lot, Eraser Dude!” shouted back Mini Bot as it waved its gun arm in the air.

Toy sighed and grabbed Mini Bot by the shoulder. He had had to drag the little combat bot away from situations such as these many times before.

“I’m getting’ a feeling of déjà vu, boss,” remarked Mini Bot as it stepped over the unconscious, bound form of a Crab Spider Slicer.

“Yeah,” said Toy Dispenser. “The whole love thing they’ve got going is just as creepy as last time.”

“Well, that too. But I mean that all these Arachnos bases look exactly the same and-“

“Mini Bot, shut it and start shooting at those charging Bane Spiders there.”

What followed was a short, quick engagement that ended with Block Bot lying on the ground with a crushed head and three Bane Spiders scattered about the floor. Toy shook his head at the waste and tapped a few commands on his wrist pad. With a flash, another protector bot teleported in from Toy’s orbital manufactory satellite. The new robot looked down at the dead Block Bot and shook its head.

“Which one of those bastards got me?” the new Block Bot asked.

Combat Toy wordlessly pointed at a blackened smear on the ground. That Bane Spider had been hit with an entire barrage of inferno missiles, a photon grenade, and several laser bursts, leaving just that black smear on the ground.

“Nice to see I’m still appreciated,” Block Bot mentioned while it started dropping more force fields on the others.

“Hey boss!” shouted Small Toy. “I’ve got something interesting up here!”

Glad to get away from the scene of carnage, Toy hurried on his way over to where Small Toy had been scouting ahead. Combat Toy and the other clumped along behind and they all stared out into a small room occupied by a menacing Webmaster, an equally menacing Executioner, and a lowly Fortunata. What was odd though, is that the Webmaster seemed to be arguing with the high-ranking Bane Spider.

“Are you sure that you love her?” asked the Executioner as he tapped his mace in one hand.

“Of course I do!” shouted the Webmaster, his extra spiders legs twitching. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“We don’t think you do,” answered the Fortunata.

“We don’t think you love our Serafina,” added the Executioner.

From Toy’s point of view, the Webmaster didn’t look like he was mind controlled; otherwise he’d be babbling on about ‘love’ like those other two were. Which meant that the soldier was in deep trouble, as the Executioner could easily kill him, even without the help of the psychic. So Toy could save the Webmaster, hoping that the soldier wouldn’t try to fight him because of some stupid orders, or he could just wait until a fight started and then sneak past.

Like hell I’ll leave that guy behind, Toy thought to himself. Out loud, he said, “Aim well, boys, we’re going to the rescue.”

It was probably the clanking noise from Combat Toy that alerted the Executioner, but reasons didn’t matter much as he quickly clouted the Webmaster on the head with his mace and spun toward the group of robots.

“Serafina warned us about you, Toy Dispenser!” he shouted as the Webmaster slumped to the ground.

“She told us to stop you!” added the Fortunata.

“Enough talk! Die now!” roared Combat Toy as he fired a barrage of smart missiles at the mind controlled Arachnos soldiers.

The smart missiles registered the Webmaster as an ally and made every effort to avoid catching him in their explosion; which resulted in the Fortunata being thrown across the room, the Executioner being knocked off his feet, and the Webmaster being untouched despite his proximity. The battle drones focused on the weaker Fortunata, trying to take her out of the fight quickly, while the protector bots started spawning seeker drones that lunged at the prone Bane Spider, disorienting him further.

But Bane Spider Executioners were not considered the best of the best for nothing, and this one was no exception. He sprang to his feet and knocked a seeker drone out of the air with one swing of his mace. On the back swing, he launched a ball of red energy that slammed into Combat Toy’s chest and exploded. The expanding energies knocked Mini Bot and Toy Dispenser flying through the air while the rest were protected by their shields.

As Toy picked himself up, he saw a green energy beam lance into Combat Toy and watched as the gaping wound knitted itself together under the influence of the nanites transferred by that beam. Leveling his laser rifle, Toy fired his own shot at the Executioner and then ducked as the beleaguered soldier took a swing at him. Toy responded by booting the man in the stomach as another barrage of missiles finished him off. The Bane Spider fell, his armor smoking, and Toy quickly pulled out a thin strip of metal from his belt that snaked around the Executioner’s wrists and pulled tight.

“He’s still alive, boss,” Large Toy in reference to the Webmaster, who seemed to be waking up.

“Ugh,” muttered the Arachnos soldier as he sat up suddenly. “What the hell are you?”

“I’m Toy Dispenser,” Toy said, stepping into his line of sight. “And that’s Large Toy. Who’re you and why shouldn’t I shoot you now?”

The Webmaster shook his head as though to clear out some cobwebs and made to stand up until he noticed Combat Toy at his side. Under the assault bot’s baleful glare, the Webmaster sat back down and told his tale.

“Toy Dispenser, huh? I’ve been briefed on you. But I’m operative Hughart, I worked at this base until a little while ago. I just showed up a little while ago from my vacation and everyone was acting nuts. I figured it was some sort of psy-op so I just suited up and tried to act normally. Hmph, you can see how well that worked.

So while I could, I tried to find out what this Serafina chick did to the base. It turns out that she just teleported in out of the blue and started taking over minds left and right. I also learned that the base commander himself, old tight wad MacGuin himself, opened up the vault for her to look through. I checked it out and the whole thing was empty, all the stuff from Scirocco was gone. I would’ve tried to find out some more, but this guy got a hold of me. Suspicious bastard and I don’t recognize him too.”

Toy took a moment to mull this over but eventually came to a decision. He stood up and patted Combat Toy on the arm. The massive assault bot looked down at his boss for a moment and then stepped back from Hughart with a palpable air of disappointment.

“Get up, Operative,” Toy said. “You can help us take care of the rest of your unfortunate comrades. Just try to avoid shooting to kill and we’ll get along fine.”

Toy Dispenser watched as a pair of normal Bane Spider Commandos dragged the former base commander, another Executioner, away. All around him were regular Arachnos operatives cleaning up the base that Toy and his group had so recently reclaimed. Watching for a moment as a Tarantula fumbled with a broken computer, trying to slot the mostly undamaged thing back in its socket, Toy eventually decided that it was time to go. Of course, the sidelong glances that the low ranking Wolf Spiders kept shooting at him were making the mastermind nervous and he was anxious to leave and report to Scirocco. But before Toy could get too far down the hallway, he was stopped by the bulk of Operative Hughart looming up before him.

“Hey, Toy Dispenser, do you mind if I ask a favor?” asked Hughart nervously.

Crossing his arms, Toy twitched his head to the side.

“Shoot.”

“Well, I was thinking since I, you know, helped you out,” Hughart stumbled along until he took a deep breath and said everything in one go. “Since I helped you out I was really hoping that you could put in a good word in with Scirocco for me because I’ve heard you’re working with Scirocco and after a mess like this it’d be really good to know somebody that could put in a good word for a guy.”

Hughart wheezed for a moment as he finished his run-on sentence and then straightened out. It must have been nerve wracking to ask a guy whom he had just met for something like this, especially a guy who had just recently been beating up on his former buddies.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Toy said a couple of moments after Hughart had collected himself. “I can’t promise anything but the work you’ve done here today will speak well in your favor.”

I sure am getting used to a position of power quickly, aren’t I? Toy thought to himself as he patted the Webmaster on the shoulder and then walked past him. He still had a report to turn in.

“…so that’s how it went down,” Toy finished, sitting across from Scirocco. “Magical stuff gone, everyone except Hughart mind controlled, and not a damn clue except for a name. Serafina, whoever that is.”

Earlier during their talk, Scirocco had grown silent after Toy Dispenser had mentioned Serafina’s name and now he was doubly so. From the looks of things, this Serafina could be some sort of arch-nemesis of Scirocco’s or maybe a jilted lover or something.

“I haven’t been entirely truthful with you,” Scirocco said suddenly as he glanced up at Toy from staring at his steepled fingers. “I suspected Serafina was involved in this the moment you came back with your first report but I had hoped it wasn’t true. Now that it is confirmed, well, this changes many things.”

“She a bad one?” Toy asked, leaning forward a bit. He liked a challenge. “All I’ve seen so far is her ability at manipulating minds, which won’t work against me very well. But if she’s like most psychics then she’s mainly a one trick pony.”

“Serafina is not an ordinary psychic, Toy Dispenser,” Scirocco said with a bit of steel in his voice. “She is an very powerful, very old genie. Not the kind that grants you three wishes but more of a genie that is bound to safeguard a particular object. In her case, she was charged with the task of transferring on an item of great power, one of the legendary mantles of the four winds.”

“Wait a second,” Toy said, suspicion in his voice. “Don’t you have a-?”

“Yes,” Scirocco interrupted. “I own the very mantle that Serafina is bound too and that is the reason she is coming after me. You see, I didn’t come by the mantle by any ordinary means. I took it from her when she was weak. At the end of the Rikti War, when the earlier Scirocco had been killed and Serafina herself gravely wounded. I took it from her when she was weak and now that some of her powers have apparently returned, she seeks to return it to an owner that she herself has picked.”

“Most likely some Paragon City hero,” Toy guessed and Scirocco nodded.

“Exactly. But I fear that she is too powerful for you and I to handle on our own, which is why I have been trying to lay some groundwork for your next mission while you were busy with Arbiter Daos,” Scirocco paused for a moment and then pushed himself away from the table and stood up. He started pacing a little bit as he continued talking.

“To ensure that Serafina does not succeed, we are going to need allies. Unfortunately due to the infighting among our ranks none of the other patrons are likely to heed whatever warning I might give them, let alone a plea for assistance.”

“Which is where I come in,” Toy said.

“Which is where you come in,” Scirocco agreed and the passed Toy a piece of paper with an address and a time written on it. “I want you to first meet with Silver Mantis, Black Scorpion’s protégé. At that time at that building she will be busting a covert Nemesis operation. The cell had been discovered some time before and Mantis displayed a powerful urge to get at them herself. I expect that most, if not all, of the automatons will be destroyed by the time you get there and all you will need to worry about is Silver Mantis and her bodyguard.”

“So what do I do when I get to her? Talk with her?”

“You will probably need to fight her. Creatures such as Black Scorpion and Captain Mako respect only strength and beating their lieutenants on an even playing field will at least make them listen to my entreaties. But if you can, avoid fighting her and just give her a message asking Scorpion for aid. If we are lucky, she’ll listen.”

“But not likely.”

“Correct.”

“Oh joy. It’s always been my dream to beat up a crazy metalhead.”

“Then I am sure you’ll enjoy yourself.”

“So says the guy who just has to order me off,” countered Toy as he stood up.

“True, but I am stuck with the paperwork,” Scirocco responded as he reached out to shake Toy’s hand. “Good luck with her, she isn’t a pushover.”

“The Wind Man speaks truth!” Toy said sarcastically as he walked over to the door. “Good luck with that paperwork, by the way. I hear that stationary print really bites.”

Scirocco had already sat back down and waved a good bye at the android, who quickly stepped outside and closed the door. Checking the paper again, Toy made sure that the date was set for tomorrow and then set off for the secret hidey hole in a small house in the Gutter that held a teleporter leading to his super group’s base. Tomorrow would be a busy day and he needed to get a start on repairs.

“Nice digs,” Combat Toy remarked as the group of robots entered the office building that Nemesis was using as a front.

“Could use a better interior decorator,” Block Bot added. “I don’t think this whole dismantled robot theme works for me.”

The front entrance was torn up pretty badly, furniture thrown about and wall paper torn down. Several shredded Nemesis automatons lay scattered about, their office worker disguised exteriors looking out of place when combined with all the steam tech that dangled from their innards. Most of them looked as though they had been sliced to pieces while a few definitely suffered from extreme machine gun to the face syndrome, implying that Silver Mantis either didn’t feel like, or was too distracted, to kill all of the automatons.

“Anything salvageable?” Toy asked Large Toy as the group started moving again.

“Nothing worth stopping for,” replied the robot as it scanned the demolished Nemesis machines.

Unlike other masterminds, Toy Dispenser didn’t create his own technology and tried to buy as little as possible. Instead he scavenged whatever he could from different groups and then incorporated that technology into what he already had. Over the time since escaping the Zig, Toy had gathered quite a collection of Rikti, Nemesis, Council, Freedom Corps, and Arachnos tech, among others. A primary goal of any mission was to take what he could. In fact, the only reason he hadn’t been stripping the earlier Arachnos bases clean was because he was working for a patron and it would have been more than a little embarrassing to be caught lugging a load of Arachnos war maces back home by the follow-up forces.

“I hear something up ahead!” called out Mini Bot as it cupped one hand to the side of its head.

“Sounds like Arachnos blaster fire,” Combat Toy added.

“And a certain feminine voice cursing her heart out,” Toy said as he nodded and drew his rifle.

Passing through one last door, Toy and company found a small group of Wolf Spiders and Tarantulas watching Silver Mantis brutally massacre a pair of out-matched Nemesis automatons. Hidden gatling guns and pop-up storm cannons were no defense against super hard metal armor and extremely quick reflexes. As Toy watched, Mantis ducked under one clumsy arm and threw a metal spike at another automaton that was trying to line up a shot. The spike slammed into its head and pinned the robot up against the wall. Mantis then smoothly extended a pair of steel blades from his wrists and then cut off the arm she had ducked under.

While the machine tried to step back and gain enough distance to open fire with its storm cannon arm, Mantis jumped over it and landed on the shoulders of the last automaton. She slid down its back a little until she had wrapped both arms and legs around its torso. Then spikes shot out all over her body and impaled the machine a dozen different ways. Then the spikes facing the final moving machine shot from Mantis’s body and shredded it. Mantis jumped off the automaton she was holding in a death embrace and the two machines hit the ground at the same time.

“Now that,” Silver Mantis said, rolling her shoulders. “That was fun.”

Then there was a loud crack and the automaton that had been pinned to the wall went limp once more, its power source destroyed.

“Just cause it looks like you won doesn’t mean you should let down your guard,” Toy said as he lowered his rifle. “I’m not sure how tough you are, exactly, but I think that gatling gun would have dented even your pretty metal hide if you weren’t expecting it.”

Silver Mantis glared up at Toy as he and his robots filed through the door, fanning out on either side of their boss. The Arachnos soldiers also spread out and moved to flank Mantis. Two Fire Tarantulas backed up by a quartet of Wolf Spider Huntsmen. Not a bodyguard to scoff at.

“And just who the hell are you?” Mantis finally said, looking Toy up and down.

“My name’s Toy Dispenser. I think we’ve met before,” Toy said and, seeing the look of confusion on her face, elaborated. “Circle of Thorns temple on Sharkhead Island?”

“Oh yeah,” she nodded. “I remember you now. You’ve got some more friends since last time.”

“The name is Combat Toy,” Combat Toy growled. “You got a problem with that?”

Silver Mantis’s eyes narrowed dangerously and Toy held up an open hand for peace.

“Calm down, Mantis. I’m not here to fight. I just have a message to deliver from Scirocco.”

“Scirocco? What the hell are you doing working for Scirocco?”

“We’ve worked out a business arrangement. Now, are you going to let me deliver my message or what?”

“Like I’d want to listen to whatever that pansy ass wants to say,” Mantis said, a pair of spikes slowly growing from her wrists. “Tell you what, though. You beat me and then maybe I’ll listen.”

As soon as she said that she spun around in a quick circle and hurled a pair of spikes at Toy Dispenser. But being a robot has its advantages, one of which is a super fast reflex; so Toy easily dodged the flying spikes easily and then gave leave for his bots to attack.

“Small fries first, folks,” Toy ordered as he raised a force field in front of a charging Fire Tarantula, knocking the soldier sprawling.

Silver Mantis charged forward but was stopped as Combat Toy loomed up in front of her and its arm came flying through the air to hit her. Mantis dodged to one side to avoid the blow, which gave Combat Toy enough time to swivel both arms up and blast a Huntsman in the face with both plasma cannons. The Wolf Spider fell to the ground and then flashed as his medicom activated, teleporting him to an Arachnos hospital.

“Small Toy! Drop!” Toy shouted and the named battle drone threw itself prone, allowing a mace beam to pass right over it.

“Toy Bot! Up and over!” he ordered again and Small Toy got up on its knees while Toy Bot jumped on top of it. The drone on the bottom pushed up while Toy Bot jumped, throwing it up into the air and landing directly on the Huntsman that had attacked them. Once in close combat, the durable little battle drone quickly disabled the Wolf Spider and then turned to the next one as the wounded Huntsman disappeared.

“Stop ignoring me!” Mantis shouted angrily as she jumped up into the air and slammed a spike into and through a hovering Toy Dispenser’s lower leg. Toy cursed and fired a laser blast point blank at Mantis’s face, knocking her off but leaving the spike lodged in his leg.

“If you insist!” Combat Toy shouted as it hunched down and launched a ripple barrage of missiles at the super villain.

Mantis took some hits, dodged a few more, and the rest missed but while she drew herself back to throw a spike at Combat Toy, a quick burst of laser fire slammed into her from behind. She spun around to see Mini Bot waving cheerfully and pointing behind her. The furious villain slashed out behind her as she spun around and cursed loudly as she saw she hadn’t hit anything. Then Combat Toy landed on top of her with a loud thump.

“Get the hell offa me!” Mantis shrieked as she struggled to free herself from under Combat Toy’s feet.

“You might be super tough,” Toy said as he floated down to land next to her head. “But you aren’t incredibly strong. And Combat Toy weighs a hell of a lot. Now, are you going to listen or am I going to have to order Combat to tap dance?”

Silver Mantis spat at the mastermind and then stopped moving. “Talk.”

Toy wiped some of the spittle off his faceplate and wiped his hand off on the floor while he explained the problem to Mantis.

“Here’s the deal. There’s this nasty genie called Serafina running around and…”

“This is Scirocco. Talk.”

“Hey Scirocco,” Toy said into his comm. device. “You really should get some caller ID.”

“Ah, Toy Dispenser, good to hear from you. How did your encounter with Black Scorpion’s lackey go?”

“Well enough. A couple hundred bucks worth of repair need to be done but really nothing big. She accepted the message and ran home, just as we thought. In fact, she should have talked to Scorpion already since I waited a bit to call you.”

“Very good. I shall go and speak to Black Scorpion now. I’ll call you once I am done.”

“Good luck and you know my number. Toy Dispenser, out.”

There was a click as Scirocco hung up his phone and Toy closed the link. Then he looked down to see how the repairs were progressing and gave Mini Bot a quick smack on the head.

“Are your eyes malfunctioning or something? You’re painting the new armor yellow. My leg is green.”

Mini Bot looked down at the paintbrush it held in its hand and then at Toy’s leg.

“Yep, I think that Tarantula hit me a little too hard on my head,” the drone responded as it ran a quick diagnostic. “Nothing serious though. Although now that I see it, that yellow looks really good there, boss. Makes you look edgier.”

“No it doesn’t,” Toy groaned. “And I’m not supposed to look ‘edgy’ anyway. You and I both know I’m supposed to look bright and cheerful, the better to throw people off when they see me.”

“Fine, I’ll fix it, sheesh,” complained Mini Bot as it grabbed a new can of paint and quickly slapped on a fresh coat of green. “There? Happy now?”

“Yes, yes I a-“ Toy froze suddenly as his head rang.

“Call for ya,” Mini said ingratiatingly.

“I noticed,” Toy growled back. He really did need to fix that ringing thing. But until then, Toy reached up one hand and pressed it against one of his sat comm. links to answer.

“Toy Dispenser here. What’s up, sir?”

“Black Scorpion refused,” Scirocco said, disgust clear in his voice. “I said he’d prefer to sit on the sidelines and wait to see how this went. Apparently he would prefer to see me fall and then try to take power for himself.”

“Well, that certainly sounds like him,” Toy responded. “Probably rooting for Serafina too. So what next?”

“We still need allies and as much as I would prefer not to, we must try to enlist Captain Mako’s aid,” Scirocco said after a moment of thinking. “Of all of the patrons, he would respond best to seeing his lieutenant beaten and returning with a message. Mainly because Mako is nothing but an animal and animals respect little more than strength.”

“Well, if Barracuda was as easy as Mantis, then I won’t have any problems. Do you know where she is?”

“Yes. As of thirty minutes ago, Barracuda left with a detachment of Crab Spiders to attack and sink a Longbow ship that has mistakenly entered Rogue Isles territorial waters. While I agree that the ship would be better of sunk, this is the best chance we have to isolate Barracuda and defeat her.”

“Thirty minutes is a long time. You sure the battle isn’t over yet?”

“I had one of my mystics perform a scrying. The Flyer that dropped Barracuda and her assault force off is still around and there appears to still be fighting on the deck of the ship. I have ordered the captain of one of our submarines to take you to the ship. If you can get to the sub’s position just off of Grandville quickly, the captain can get you there within ten minutes.”

“Sounds good. I’ll be there in five.”

“Good. But be wary around Barracuda, she has a long memory for insults. Good luck.”

With a click, Scirocco hung up and Toy took his hand down from his ‘ear’. Jumping to his feet, the mastermind grabbed his laser rifle from a nearby charging rack and started walking toward his base’s teleporter.

“Here’s the deal, boys,” Toy said to his bots as he walked. “I want all of you up in the satellite ASAP. I doubt there’d be enough room in a submarine for all of you, anyway.”

“Why are you going in a sub?” asked Combat Toy as a pair of robotic arms reattached its arm.

“Off-shore target,” Toy replied. “I’m going to call you guys in for an orbital strike. I figure it’s the best way to neutralize whatever defenses Longbow would have left by the time I show up.”

“Aye, boss,” said Toy Bot as it straightened up and clicked its heels together. “Returning to base now.”

With a flash and a pop, the powerful teleporters in Toy’s manufactory satellite snatched up the little drone and deposited it up in orbit. The other bots soon followed and Toy was left by himself, all the rest of his villain group being off elsewhere, before he stepped backwards into the teleporter and reappeared at the teleport end point in Spider Tower. A couple of anxiously waiting civilians cast him a glance as he appeared but since villains popping into existence in that corner of the room was pretty common, they didn’t really take much notice of him. Nodding at Arbiter Daos as he left the building while disassembling his rifle and slipping it into various slots and pop-up holsters, Toy switched on his anti-gravity jets and soared into the air.

The waves washed against the hull of the surfaced submarine and explosions rumbled in the background as Toy Dispenser climbed up the ladder and jumped out onto the top of the sub. Off in the distance, Toy saw the modified Longbow cargo ship, which appeared to be dead in the water. Flying above the cargo ship was an Arachnos Flyer dropship, desperately chasing around a half dozen Longbow Chasers. The Flyer seemed unable to make a single kill, as the Chasers would dart in, sting the larger ship, and then dart away as the Flyer impotently fired its large chain guns. Ignoring the antics of the flying craft for a moment, Toy activated a zoom function and looked at the deck of the cargo ship.

Several pylons stood on deck, with small AA turrets firing upon the Flyer from below. The small caliber rounds seemed unable to penetrate the thick armor of the Flyer but they tried anyway. To gain entrance, it looked as though Toy would have to take down those four turrets. Seemed easy enough, although it’d be nice to lend that Flyer a hand, seeing as how it was sucking horribly.

How can I do this? Toy thought to himself as he studied the way the Chasers were flying. And then it hit him. The Longbow craft were using some sort of pre-made engagement plan, probably pulled off by the Chasers’ AI while the pilots focused on firing their weapons.

“Lazy bastards,” Toy muttered. “And in about twenty seconds, they’ll be right about…there.”

Flipping up his wrist panel, Toy tapped a long sequence of commands into the keypad and then flipped it shut. Counting down the seconds, Toy looked up into the sky and waited. At second fifteen, he could see a quartet of bright dots in the sky. At second seventeen, he could make out the individual forms of his bots. At second twenty, two Chasers suddenly exploded as a pair of RED-C, Rapid Entry and Deployment Capsules, smashed through them and fell into the waves. The third capsule clipped the Chaser it was aimed at and sent that aircraft tumbling into the water, which was as good as destroying it. Combat Toy descended a bit slower, its flight controlled by a pair of large jets in its feet. The Chaser it targeted was flipped around as Combat Toy smashed an arm into its front nose. Combat then fired a full load of missiles into its underbelly, prompting the Chaser to explode in flames.

Then, down on the deck of the ship, a pair of flashes heralded the arrival of Large Toy and Block Bot. Each protector bot clutched a grenade in its hand and appeared right next to an AA gun. Quickly tossing the grenade down each turrets’ gun barrel, the bots dived for cover as the turrets exploded in balls of flame.

“Time to move!” Toy Dispenser cried out. “Get your asses out of the water and onto the deck, we’ve got a ship to sink and a super villain to take down.”

Activating his anti-grav jets, Toy skimmed along the water as he hurried to get on deck himself.

“Eliminating the remaining turrets,” Combat Toy said over his command link. “Almost there. Turrets down! The way is open!”

“I’m up!” shouted Mini Bot. “Longbow bastard climbed out of his scrap heap and tried to knife me, though.”

“Objective complete,” said Toy Bot. “Awaiting further orders.”

Coming up on the side of the cargo ship, Toy suddenly pulled himself up and over onto the deck. What he saw pleased him. All the turrets were destroyed, the Flyer was hunting down the last three Chasers with ease, and all of his bots were undamaged and waiting by a blown open door leading inside the ship.

“Nice of you to join us, boss,” Combat Toy said sarcastically. “And here I was thinking I’d get to have some fun today.”

“Sorry, Combat,” Toy said as he put his rifle together. “We’re fresh out of fun. But we do seem to have a large stock of cans.”

“Wha-?” stated Mini Bot, confused.

“Cans of whoop ass, my dear Mini,” Toy said. “Let’s go open a few.”

“Oh yeah!” shouted Combat Toy as it spun around and charged through the open door.

The rest of the robots followed it through shortly thereafter.

“Looks like someone already opened a few, boss,” mentioned Large Toy as the group slowed their charge almost as soon as it began.

The inside of the cargo ship and been gutted, and a sophisticated command and control center had been built in its place. The stairway that they had all just run down opened up onto a multi-level structure built in the center of an empty ship. From what Toy could see Barracuda had already been through here and she seemed pissed off. Since Toy could see quite a few Longbow lying on the ground and all Longbow came with a medicom teleporter that only failed if the user was dead, Barracuda was in quite a mood.

“Screams coming from up ahead, boss,” Small Toy said as its laser hand scanned the area before them.

Of course, as soon as Small Toy mentioned them, the screams were cut off abruptly.

“Great, a pissed off super villainess,” Toy cursed as he started walking forward. “Try to find her but keep yourselves unobserved. I want to see if I can cook up and ambush.”

“She’s already found, boss,” Combat Toy said as it took a couple of steps forward and pointed over the side of the top level.

Hurrying forward, Toy saw Barracuda, with a pair of Crab Spider Slicers by her side, watching a Longbow Ballista on the lowest level being beaten up by a small mob of other Crab Spiders. The beleaguered Ballista was stumbling around, clearly at the edge of his strength, while the soldiers smacked him around. The wounds he had suffered clearly warranted an emergency mediport but apparently Barracuda had brought a portable teleport blocker, which might account for the unusually large about of dead Longbow agents.

“Shit,” Toy said simply. “I hate it when I have to deal with these people.”

“Not all Crab Spiders are bad, boss,” said Block Bot. “Remember that Hughart guy?”

“Yeah, yeah. But I’m not talking about all Crab Spiders. I’m talking about the assholes that pal around in Mako’s personal guard. You can tell by the big tooth symbol on their helmets.”

“Damn,” said Combat Toy. “What do we do? These guys are supposed to be super tough.”

“As I said earlier, I want to try an ambush. Large Toy, I want you to run over and grab a gun from one of those dead Longbow. Everyone else, head on down to the bottom floor on the opposite side of this blood sport. Take up concealed positions and wait for my signal.”

“And what’ll you be doing?” asked Mini Bot as the others ran off.

“I’ll be pulling Barracuda over,” Toy said as he put his rifle away and pulling the mask off a corpse next to him. Slipping the mask over his head, ignoring the tears his sat comms made, Toy sat back and waited for Large Toy to bring him an unbroken weapon.

“Good luck,” said Mini Bot as it ran off to hide.

Large Toy came back with the sniper rifle of a Longbow Eagle and then ran off to join the others. As Toy Dispenser checked the weapon over to see if it was usable, he heard the Ballista start shouting at Barracuda. It seemed like a standard hero speech, the one that called the recipient a brutal, heartless monster and seemed perfectly suited to this situation. Just as Barracuda started to laugh and shout for her soldiers to finally kill the poor bastard, Toy leaned over the edge and shot at her.

His aim was poor and the bullets just rattled all around her, but the damage was done. Spinning around in a rage, Barracuda saw his mask and his gun and jumped to the conclusion that he was a surviving agent. Since sticking around wouldn’t help his case any, Toy spun around and ran for it.

“Hold the prisoner!” he heard Barracuda shout. “This one is mine!”

Hook, line, and sinker, Toy thought as he jumped over the side and landed with a thump amidst a bunch of crates.

A lighter thump behind him prompted the mastermind to turn around and toss his weapon in an underhand throw at Barracuda. Startled by his nonchalant attitude, Barracuda caught the weapon reflexively and just stared for a moment as Toy ripped off the annoying mask.

“Fast, aren’t we?” Toy said. “But a little slow on the uptake, regardless.”

“You,” Barracuda hissed and the rifle in her grip suddenly froze over and shattered into a million pieces. “You are that villain who kept me from learning about what I am.”

“Yep,” replied Toy as he unlimbered his own rifle, assembling it quickly and efficiently. “You got a problem with that? Cause, I mean, you if you do, I bet this ambush will finish you off even faster than last time.”

As soon as he said the word, all of his bots sprung out from behind crates and opened fire. Barracuda was knocked flying as the laser, missile, and photon grenade barrage threw her into the main structure, causing its frame to buckle.

“Cake walk,” stated Combat Toy just before Barracuda jumped out of the hole, screamed “DIE!” and shot a spout of water out of her hand that blasted Small Toy backwards into a pile of crates.

“Take her down!” Toy shouted as he lifted up into the air and motioned for the other two drones to circle around her.

Force fields quickly sprang into existence around the robots as Toy’s wrist flanges glowed and following water spouts splashed away upon hitting the fields. Combat Toy moved forward and spewed flames from its arm, causing Barracuda to fall back and right into combined laser fire from Mini Bot and Toy Bot. Barracuda shielded herself with her arms, the flames peeling away the top layers of her protective coral armor. The coral hybrid retaliated with a blast of psychic energy that caused Combat Toy to fall back, the impulses of its brain temporarily shorted out.

“Stun her now!” Toy shouted as Barracuda threw a water twister at the hovering mastermind. The android easily dodged it and fired on her, distracting the villainess long enough for Block Bot and Large Toy to maneuver themselves to either side of Barracuda. As one, they fired a pair of photon grenades, the bright lights and concussive force acting as a pair of close range flash bangs.

Stunned, Barracuda could only stagger around as Mini Bot and Toy Bot dashed forward and twisted her arms behind her back. As the coralax hybrid shook her head and tried to regain her bearings Combat Toy stomped up in front of her and raised up its arms.

“Your head needs to be flatter,” it rumbled before bringing both arms down.

There was a sickening crack and a loud pop as Barracuda’s mediporter activated, carrying her to safety. Back on the other side of the transport there suddenly arose a great commotion. Apparently Barracuda had kept the teleport blocker on her person and with her escape the Ballista was teleported away as well, leaving the Crab Spiders without any prey.

“Time to bail,” Toy said as he floated upward toward the door. “Make your way outside and then initiate return protocols.”

“Got it, boss!” called out Mini Bot as it vaulted up the few levels to the door with the other bots close behind.

Kicking open the door, Toy Dispenser was the first one out and he accelerated toward the waiting submarine. Behind him his bots roared up into the sky on trails of flame until they reached the maximum retrieval distance for the teleporter on the manufactory satellite.

“Well,” he said to himself as he slipped down the hatchway. “That went well.”

Toy Dispenser leaned back against the giant statue of Lord Recluse and crossed his arms, watching the crowds of people, Arachnos employees, and the occasional villain move about. He didn’t have anything to do at the moment and watching other people was a rewarding practice every now and then. That and he was bored.

“Why don’t we just go squish some spider lovers?” Combat Toy grumbled as it slouched its way through a pace to Toy’s right. “Anything else than just sitting here.”

“Arachnos is our ally as of late,” replied Toy Bot as it stood stock still, its only movement the slow panning of its head scanning the crowd. “It would be considered bad form to attack them while under contract.”

“Hasn’t kept us from doing it before,” huffed the assault bot as it glared down at a pedestrian who had been staring at it for too long. The man quickly hurried off.

“But we haven’t worked for a patron before, lug-nut,” Mini Bot shot back as it hung from one of the statue’s spider legs. “Even I don’t think we could afford insulting Scirocco.”

Combat Toy made a dismissive noise but shut up anyway, instead spending the next few minutes disrupting nearby radio waves, causing several people to wonder what the hell was up with their cell phones. Just as the Arbiter on post in the center of the square started to sense something amiss, a tone beeped on Toy’s wrist, signaling an incoming video call. Combat Toy immediately shut off it’s interdiction device and edging closer to Toy, wanting to hear what was going on.

Flipping up his wrist panel, Toy hit a button and accepted the call, revealing Scirocco’s face on the small screen. But while the video might have to be redirected to an external source, the sound was being picked up directly by Toy’s comm. sat system. To anyone but Toy Dispenser and his bots, it would look as though they were lip reading a mute talking head.

“How’d the talk with Mako go?” Toy asked right off the bat.

“Not well,” answered Scirocco wearily. “I found his conversation as tiring as ever and received nothing to show for it. He said that he would ‘attack who ever comes out the weaker’ and I quote.”

“Well, that sucks. But I suppose shark face was a long shot anyway.”

“True,” replied Scirocco as the scenery behind his head changed. Apparently he had just entered an elevator. “But there was still a slim chance of him offering his aid just as there was with Black Scorpion. And since neither of them will help me, I shall turn to one who has been much friendlier with me in the past than those two.”

“Ghost Widow.”

“Exactly. And I have a much better plan than before,” Scirocco said, his voice perking up a bit. “I have learned that Ghost Widow’s protégé, the Wretch, is going on a mission to destroy a Malta base that has been discovered in Siberia. Why Lord Recluse wants this base destroyed I do not know, but I have also learned something interesting from one of my mystics. It appears that the Malta know the strike team is incoming and have prepared an elaborate trap for the Wretch and his soldiers. I have little doubt that they will succeed and in so doing give us the opportunity we need.”

“Rescue the damsel in distress and kill the dragon, eh?”

“Yes, although in this case the damsel is a twisted, malformed mutant and the dragon is a paramilitary group of professional covert ops.”

“Things just aren’t like they used to be.”

Scirocco laughed lightly. “Indeed. But you know what you must do. I assume you have transportation?”

“Yeah, I’ve got a friend who can get me up to the backwaters of Russia pretty quickly.”

“Good. Now, I have one last thing for you. It seems that Arbiter Daos would like to speak with you. I do not know what he wants but I advise extreme caution. The leader of the Arbiters is not a man to provoke.”

“Don’t worry, Scirocco. I’ll see what Daos wants and then nip on over to Siberia. If I’m lucky, they won’t even see me coming.”

“Good luck, Toy Dispenser.”

“Meh, I’ll be fine. Toy, out.”

His robots trailing behind, Toy walked up to Arbiter Daos and raised his hand in greeting.

“Hey there,” he said as he stopped just in front of Daos. “I heard that you wanted to talk to me?”

Daos nodded. “Yes, I did inform Scirocco of that much. Now then, let us get to the point quickly.”

“I always appreciate those kinds of conversations, go ahead, shoot.”

“Do you remember the bases that were attacked and how they were always storage locations for artifacts of Scirocco’s? Well, I obtained a complete list of the artifacts stolen and ran it by some of my own sources that have no connection to Sciocco’s Mu. What they sent back to me was…unsettling, to say the least.”

“What do you mean, ‘unsettling’?” Toy asked as he tilted his head to one side. “It’s my understanding that a lot of magic can seem that way.”

“I can’t say anything without more proof,” Daos said. “But I would advise you to keep an eye on your patron. Scirocco has long wished that things could be different and he might be doing something to further that goal of his.”

“Riiiight,” Toy said sarcastically. “Ok, I’ll keep one eye on Scirocco. But if I see anything, don’t expect me to call you.”

“That is just as well. Now go, villain, and do what your patron has asked of you.”

Almost the second after he said that, Daos turned away from Toy and started consulting with one of his aides. Apparently Toy had been dismissed.

“Bloody load of arrogant Arbiters,” Toy grumbled as he led the way out the doors and out onto the Spider City streets. “One of these days I’m going to hit one, just to see what it feels like.”

“Probably a lot like hitting a normal person,” guessed Toy Bot.

“Except more satisfying,” added Large Toy with a mock slap in Toy Bot’s direction.

“Probably,” Toy said absently as he looked up at the sun shining overhead. “Well then, time to get going. I think Commie is going to want plenty of time to get ready.”

“Too bad he doesn’t have any,” snickered Combat Toy.

“Too bad, so sad. He’ll live with it.”

“You want me to what?” CptCommie incredulously said as he looked over at Toy from his sprawl on the couch.

“I want you to get me into Siberia,” Toy repeated. “I’ve got a contract that calls for my being there and normal avenues of travel are closed to me.”

“I told you you shouldn’t have gotten involved so closely with Arachnos,” Commie said as he swung his legs up off the armrest so that his feet were firmly on the ground. With the hand holding the remote, Commie flicked off the TV that was displaying the newest technological gadgets available to the public; nothing new, in other words.

“Yeah, yeah,” Toy sighed as he slumped down in a chair set at a right angle to the couch. “But the rewards beat out the risks, in my opinion.”

“The potential rewards you mean,” Commie said, jabbing his finger at Toy. “And besides, if you want me to help, you’ll need something better than just saying it’s in your contract.”

“Would the fact that I’d be fighting the Malta pique your interest at all?”

Under his scarf, Commie frowned.

“Malta in Siberia, huh?” he mused. “I suppose that would explain something.”

“Explain what?”

“You know I’ve got my own operation in Siberia, yes?”

“Yeah, that’s sort of why I asked you for this favor in the first place. What about it?”

“Well, one of my cargo planes has gone missing. But before it went incommunicado, one of the pilots managed to broadcast an SOS. Specifically the one that warns of a possible highjacking.”

“And you think the Malta stole your plane?”

“It makes sense. The supplies on that plane would be enough to keep a sizable group of men equipped, supplied, and fed for at least three weeks. And from what I’ve studied, the Malta and I use similar weapons and tactics, so their stealing my plane is not out of the question.”

“So will you help?”

“Under the condition that I take possession of sixty percent of the salvage.”

“Agreed,” said Toy as he stood up and held out his hand.

Commie stood and took Toy’s hand, giving it a firm shake. The Communist then grinned under his scarf and grabbed his Colonel’s hat from the other side of the couch.

“You do know that for anybody else I’d be charging at least eighty percent,” he said in a joking tone.

“I figured as much,” Toy replied in the same tone. “When can we leave?”

“Right now,” Commie said. “I was actually going to leave and check things out for myself in a little bit but I can speed things up some. My plane is down at Haven’s airport.”

“Gotcha. Let’s roll.”

“It’s a concealed airfield all right, sir,” one of the pilot’s shouted back into the cargo hold of the massive military grade cargo plane. “One of the scout planes from the base buzzed it and didn’t get shot down, so I think I can bring you all in safely.”

“Good,” Commie shouted back as he checked his parachute harness. “But I think we should avoid any traps that the Malta might have laid. Bring us around for a low altitude drop.”

“Yes, sir!” replied the pilot and the plane banked as it ponderously came around in a wide u-turn.

“Check your partner’s equipment, men,” Commie called out unnecessarily as his eight conscripts began tightening parachute harnesses and making sure everything was secure.

“We’re good to go, sir,” Commisar Semenov said with a salute.

“Are you ready, Toy?” Commie shouted to the other side of the cargo hold.

Toy and his robots were arrayed in a line pointing toward the as yet unopened doors with Combat Toy first, the protectors bots after, and then the drones and Toy last. The multi-colored mastermind gave his ally a thumbs up as magnetically charged boots kept him and his bots from moving when the plane banked.

“You sure you want to do this, though?” Toy asked. “Parachuting down in the middle of a blizzard, even a small one, is kind of stupid.”

“Nothing we haven’t done before,” Commie replied. “After all, we all trained up here.”

“Your funeral,” Toy shrugged and cast his sensors over their entire group again.

Combat Toy and the rest of his robots were ready to go, that was easy to tell. Their load-out was effective in all situations and so Toy hadn’t switched any equipment out this time. He had, however, given Combat Toy a different type of fuel for its flamethrower that would still work at such low temperatures. Over on the other side, Commie’s squad was much more diversely equipped. Eight of the stubborn commander’s conscripts filled the bulk of his force, each one of them carrying weapons suitable for close ranged combat. Three of them carried automatic shotguns and door breaching charges and a fourth carried a rocket launcher in addition to the standard pistol that they all carried. The remaining conscripts carried AK-103s, a more advanced version of the bread and butter AK-47, which came with an optional grenade launcher attachment. All four soldiers chose to take that option.

Commissar Semenov carried his own custom rifle, a mix of standard techniques and new technologies. It could fire a single round, triple burst, and limited automatic fire. It could also function as a sniper rifle if the need arose. And just in case that wasn’t enough, he carried a bandolier of stun and gas grenades and a pair of Desert Eagles with several clips of specialized ammo. For his part, Commie came loaded for bear as well, with a pumped up version of the AK-103 that Toy himself had collaborated on in improving. It could operate at semi-automatic or full auto and could fire up to three grenades at one time. Commie also carried a backpack that contained, among other things, plenty of extra ammo and an emergency health dispenser, a bit of tech that Commie had found in a Crey lab one day and decided to keep.

“Doors opening in 3!” the pilot suddenly shouted over the intercom. “2…1…Doors opening!”

The cargo bay door groaned and shook as it slid open, letting in a flurry of snow that quickly melted when it touched the bodies of the men and robots. Just outside the door was now a swirling maelstrom of white, a blizzard that only the Antarctic regions could beat out for sheer ferocity. Toy quickly panned over to look at Commie and waved his arms.

“You told me it was going to be a small storm!” the mastermind shouted. “This is like a freaking hurricane out there!”

Commie shrugged and flicked on his radio.

“Team, this is Russia Green Actual. We are good to jump,” he said.

Toy sighed and opened up his own radio link to reply.

“Russia Green, this is Mechanic Actual. My guys are good to go. And have I mentioned that this stuff is really unnecessary?”

“Multiple times, Mechanic,” Commie sighed. “But as I’ve said, the Malta are good at countering typical super tactics.”

“I think someone just wants to have him some fun,” Toy huffed and then waved his hand. “Mechanic Team, jumping.”

“Boo ya!” Combat Toy shouted as it charged forward and jumped spread eagled into the white blankness.

The protectors bots and battle drones jumped out silently as Commie’s conscripts and Commissar followed. Soon, just Toy Dispenser and CptCommie were left in the cargo hold. Toy tossed Commie a sarcastic salute and took a step out into the void.

“Thar she blows. Looks like a pair of Arachnos Fliers, recently deceased,” shouted Toy over the radio, the only way his team could hear him over the roar of the storm. “Their thermal signatures are low but unmistakable.”

“Good!” Commie shouted back from where the two commanders were prone in the snow. “Yuri reports that the perimeter defenses have been disabled near hose Fliers, so we can assume that that is where the Arachnos forces made their entrance.”

“And I doubt they’d expect a second attack from the exact same location,” Toy said as he waved his bots forward. “So let’s go introduce ourselves.”

“Roger that,” Commie said as he got up into a crouch and started hoofing his way to the entrance.

The rest of his men followed the same procedure while Toy Dispenser and crew just ran forward, trusting in the snow to muffle the sounds of their normally overly clanky approach.

Within a minute, the two teams were on either side of a large hole blasted into what appeared to have been a heavily armored door. From deep within the compound could be heard the sounds of gunfire and the occasional explosion. Toy looked over at Commie and the commander signaled that he would go in first. Toy responded with a hand signal to show that he couldn’t detect anything inside.

By the numbers, two of the conscripts charged into the hole, moving quickly to avoid being shot, and slammed against the opposite wall with their shoulders, guns tracking for targets. Finding none, they waved everyone else in. The conscripts deployed with the robots at their center, Toy’s force would provide the bulk of the supporting fire when combat came. As one, the group headed down to the left, following a trail of char marks on the wall and the occasional dead Arachnos solider.

“The Malta put up a tough fight,” Toy said over a private comm. to Commie. “To have so few casualties compared to the Arachnos is impressive.”

“More likely they’ve mostly won,” Commie replied, sub-vocally speaking on his radio with Toy. “The bodies we’ve passed look like they’ve been moved from their original positions and the Malta keep up the standard tradition of not leaving your men behind, dead or alive.”

“True,” Toy conceded, giving one of the bodies they passed another scan. Indeed, the floor around the body was scuffed and scraped in the pattern of the Wolf Spider’s back armor. He had been moved.

“You do know this means a tough fight?” Toy asked.

“I’ve wanted to try my hand against the Malta for a while now,” Commie replied. “We seem to have more or less the same training and-“

“Contact,” hissed one of the conscripts on point guard as he scuttled back. “Maltan patrol incoming. I count one robot and four men, one of them had a nasty looking rifle.”

“A Hercules titan and at least one Sapper,” Toy said. “They must still be nervous. Captain?”

The group was currently in an open passageway with little or no cover, the only way to catch the Maltans by surprise would be to charge them silently and take them down efficiently as possible. Of course, this was something CptCommie excelled at. Toy Dispenser, on the other hand, was much more one for the frontal approach.

Waving his men forward with the rocketeer in the lead, Commie and his squad advanced quickly and silently as Toy and his bots moved forward slowly, taking their time to avoid making noise. As the soldiers moved up, they could hear the grinding thump of the Hercules titan and the soft mutter of voices speaking to one another, broken occasionally by a low pitched mechanical voice.

Satisfied that he had remained undetected so far, Commie had his men take up position at the corner. The shotgunners were placed in front, the machine gunners behind them, and finally the rocketeer and CptCommie in the rear. He had done the best he could do with the resources available at hand and Toy watched with interest as the Maltan patrol came around the corner, unsuspecting.

Normally when two groups ran into one another, there would be a short pause of shock before each man went for his guns. In this case, only the Maltans froze, giving Commie’s men just the edge they needed.

The Sapper went down first, cut almost in two by two shotgun blasts converging on his torso. The two TacOps followed next, lines stitched into and through their advanced Kevlar armor by Commie’s men. The Hercules got off one shot with its plasma cannon, which dug into the ceiling, before its right side was blasted to bits by a rocket. The cyborg whirred loudly and then collapsed, fluid leaking out of its braincase from where shrapnel had perforated it.

“Move move move!” Commie shouted now that their cover was blown. “They know we’re here now so let’s get the survivors and get out of here!”

“Roger that!” Toy replied as he broke into a run, his bots thudding behind him like the beat to a particularly crazy song. “Let me take the vanguard now.”

“Roger,” Commie replied as his men drifted back and then formed up behind the charging robots. “Just try to not get yourself blown to pieces.”

“I think I can manage that,” Toy said back, turning his head to speak to Commie and thus missing the quartet of Malta that charged out of a side corridor.

It was a toss up on who fired first, but the air was quickly filled with yellow tracer rounds and the burning after image of laser blasts scorching the air. Bullets pinged off of and dug into Combat Toy’s armor, the big machine being the logical target, as lasers dug into one of the TacOps Engineers, tossing the big man to the ground in a smoking heap.

The robots spread out just as a TacOps fired a grenade, catching Small Toy in the chest and blowing the robot back, opening a gap in the line of metallic bodies for Commissar Semanov to step forward and punch a bullet through the offending guerilla’s head, killing him instantly. A pair of photon grenades joined a trio of the standard kind being lobbed over the heads of the bots to blow the remaining two enemies to kingdom come and then the rescue force was off again, repairing on the fly.

The sounds of gunfire got louder as they raced down the long corridor, as did the distinctive sound of thumping footsteps coming from the off-set door up ahead. Perhaps overanxious to win favor from his commander and without a proper respect for the Maltas’ capabilities, one of Commie’s men sprinted forward; bringing up his rifle and firing a grenade at something behind the door. There was a loud whirring noise and then a bright flash, followed by a wet thump as the conscripts lower body hit the floor, his torso completely vaporized.

Then the wall shattered as the massive Zeus titan, barely fitting into the corridor, bulled forward in its mission to destroy all intruders. The machine spent a moment scanning its targets, a moment that the attackers didn’t waste, diving to one side or another or opening fire. Missiles washed over the Titan’s upper torso, almost throwing it off balance. But the war machine recovered and brought one arm up in an uppercut, ignoring the bullets and lasers that plinked away at its armor. Combat Toy caught the limb full on, its front armor crumpling as it was knocked up into the air and back, almost landing on top of Semanov.

In retaliation, Toy threw his hands forward, blasting the Titan with a powerful bolt of force that knocked it back against the wall with a groan of protesting hydraulics. Then a trio of grenades blasted away at its leg as Commie joined the attack, ordering his men to stop wasting ammo and blast it to pieces. They complied and the Titan was soon battered by a wave of grenades and high explosive missiles, losing one arm and a significant chunk of its left side. But the Zeus was built to last and opened fire once more with its own missiles barrage, blowing the corridor to hell and knocking the combatants to and fro.

Mini Bot went down, its left leg snapped off at the hip, as did Semanov when a wave of concussive force knocked him headfirst into the wall. But even this was not enough to save the Titan as Combat Toy regained its footing and blasted it with a wave of inferno missiles, followed closely by another tank-buster missile. This time the Zeus went down, belching smoke from the gaping hole in its chest.

Activating the health dispenser that he had, Commie shot bursts of healing nanites into Semanov and his other men, healing them of the worst of their wounds. Large Toy and Block Bot managed to get Mini Bot’s leg reattatched and then the group was off again.

“The sap rifles! They do nothing!” shouted some unlucky Maltan from around the corner, followed by a guttural roar of anger and the body of an even more unlucky Sapper slammed into the wall in front of the group.

“Wretch mad! Wretch not like stupid blue men!” came a shout from the same direction as before.

“I think we found our man,” Toy said unnecessarily as he rolled his wrists and started dropping protective shields on everyone. “One last rush and then we should be good.”

“Yes,” Commie agreed as he slotted a new clip into his rifle with a snap. “Let’s go.”

Once again as one, the group wheeled around the corner and beheld a quite amazing sight. In the large, empty room that lay before him was a small group of figures. About 90% of them were Malta and the other 10% were dead, except for the one giant brute of a man currently crushing a Hercules Titan into scrap metal while being shocked by no less than four Sappers. The Wretch roared and hurled the remains of the Titan at one of the sappers, who managed to dodge narrowly, almost as though he expected the brute to do that. All of the Maltans were too busy trying to incapacitate the supervillain to notice the group of soldiers at their rear.

“I love lack of communication,” Toy said as his bots deployed into a skirmish line.

“Same,” Commie grinned right back as his men joined the robots, taking careful aim so as not to waste their first volley.

Stepping forward, Toy raised his hand and held it there, waiting for Wretch to notice them as the brute was looking directly in their direction. And notice them he did, the brute hastily threw himself to the ground, proving that he wasn’t as stupid as other people thought he was. As the Malta were trying to figure out what was going on, Toy chopped his hand down.

The first volley of missiles, lasers, and grenades, cut down almost half of the Maltans, leaving the rest to duck and dive for cover as best as possible. And now the firing line broke up, each person moving a different way and opening fire on the Maltans. It was turning into an old fashioned firefight as men popped up from behind one of the metal crates strewn about the room, fired, and then ducked down again. But the problem with an old fashioned firefight is that it didn’t take into account robots or angry mutants with super strength.

The Malta found themselves being assaulted from behind by their target just as surely as they were being shot at my Commie’s men. Then they came under assault from above, as Combat Toy, Mini Bot, and Small Toy used their foot jets to jump up into the rafters above and rain fire onto the Malta from there. Thrown into disarray and utterly demoralized from their failure to capture the Wretch, the Maltans went down fast and hard, the only trouble being a Gunslinger who teleported once the first volley was over and drop kicked Toy Dispenser to the ground.

The cowboy quickly unslung his pistols and aimed at the mastermind but fell back as Commie pumped a slug into his body armor. The Gunslinger teleported again and then fell back with a broken nose as Commie lashed out behind him with the butt of his gun, predicting where the soldier would appear. The man teleported again, this time appearing on top of a crate, both pistols firing at the Captain. Commie ran, sparks flying up all around him, until he could dive behind a crate and take cover.

Then it was the Gunslinger’s turn to run for cover as Toy Dispenser kneeled and blasted a laser bolt right through his teleporter, removing his primary advantage. Cursing and weaving to avoid Toy’s vengeful laser blasts, the Gunslinger ducked behind a crate and then popped out, blasting away at where Toy had been. As soon as he revealed himself, Commie rolled out from behind his crate and unloaded on the Gunslinger, who was exposed from Commie’s position. The Maltan jerked and twitched as the slugs penetrated his armor and ultimately collapsed like an unstrung puppet, dead.

“Wretch thank you lots,” the Wretch said as he walked up to Toy and Commie, his misshapen face twisted into a grin. “Wretch know Ghost Widow send help.”

“Actually,” Toy said as he walked over to the brute. “I’m sure she would have, but we came by order of Scirocco.”

“Wind Man?” the Wretch asked, puzzled. “Wind Man help Wretch?”

“Effectively, yes,” Toy said. “Now why don’t we get out of here. I have a feeling the Malta won’t let you get away so easily.”

“Wretch crush puny blue men!” the Wretch roared, beating his chest.

“I’m sure you will,” Commie spoke up. “But let’s go anyway. The less casualties, the better.”

As the group reformed, now joined by the Wretch, Toy clapped Commie on the back.

“We rock,” he said, as the group moved out.

“Greetings Toy Dispenser,” said the leftmost of the two Mu floating next to Scirocco’s door as the mastermind approached. “Our master shall be most pleased to see you.”

“As the plan has worked quite well,” said the rightmost Mu, picking up right after his brother finished. “But Scirocco had best tell you that yourself.”

“Well that’s certainly good to hear,” Toy said as he walked up to the two Mu sorcerers and looked back and forth between them. “By the way, have I ever asked for your names?”

“No, you did not,” said the left Mu.

“Which is all well and good,” said the one on the right.

“For we two do not have names,” finished the left one.

Toy looked at them again and then shrugged. The intricacies of magic were best left to those who practiced it. Although Toy secretly thought these two would be considered weird even among their buddies. Nodding to them both in lieu of saying anything else, Toy waved his palm in front of the door, which now was keyed to open for him. The android had barely stepped inside before he almost ran into someone.

The red armored Fortunata stopped bare inches away from Toy’s metallic blue chest and looked up, her five feet ten not even bringing her close to Toy Dispenser’s seven feet.

“If I had eyebrows I’d be waggling them at you right now,” Toy said to Kalinda, one of the most powerful Fortunata’s in Arachnos. “Long time no see.”

“It has been a long time, yes,” Kalinda replied as she stepped aside to let Toy Dispenser past. “And while I would enjoy reminiscing about your battles with the Snakes of Mercy, you and I both have urgent duties to attend.”

“True enough,” Toy said as he reached over her and waved the door open for her. “See you some other time, then.”

“Of course,” Kalinda said and then walked out without so much as a backwards glance.

Shrugging, Toy walked the few remaining steps into Scirocco’s office and looked down on the archvillain as he talked forcefully into the phone and waved Toy to sit down. The mastermind sat and put an elbow on each armrest before linking his hands together, forming a little spot to rest his chin on while he waited for Scirocco to finish his call.

“Yes, yes,” Scirocco said dismissively. “The losses will be barely felt, believe me. Yes. No, absolutely not. Alright, very well. Yes. Give my thanks to your mistress.”

With a definitive click, Scirocco turned off the phone and set it back in its recharging cradle. He then smiled broadly and extended his hand for Toy to shake, which he did.

“Things are coming to a head, my good friend,” Scirocco said. “Your rescue of Wretch couldn’t have been better timed. As soon as news reached Ghost Widow of the rescue, she immediately sent word to me of her thanks. From there, I was able to outline the problem with Serafina and receive assurances that she would bet her best Fortunatas on the case.”

“So Kalinda was here to tell you the good news, I gather,” Toy said as he leaned back in the chair. “You know where Serafina is going to strike next.”

“Precisely,” Scirocco said as he swiveled his chair around and pointed at the blank wall to Toy’s left. At the press of an unseen button, the wall transformed into a sophisticated holoscreen that displayed an aerial image of Grandville. There were several dozen points on the map, a few of them pulsing red but the rest glowing a steady green. One point near the outskirts of the city was circled in yellow.

“As you can see here,” Scirocco said, gesturing at the map. “Serafina has only destroyed a small number of the bases where I keep several artifacts that I am currently not using. The base that the Fortunatas say will be targeted next is the one circled in yellow. It’s a relatively small base, used for storing several interesting Egyptian tablets and fetishes that I was going to get around to studying. Not very important at all.”

“So collateral damage is not an issue?” Toy asked as he mentally overlaid the map on the wall with his own map of Grandville and started marking in the various points that Scirocco was showing him. Surely enough they weren’t all of Scirocco’s bases, but knowing even this could always come in handy in the future.

“Exactly,” Scirocco said and changed the display. This time it showed several still camera shots of the inside of an Arachnos base, probably the one that Serafina was going to attack. Each picture showed Arachnos troops going through their daily routine, acting as though nothing was expected. “Unfortunately, I am unable to warn the base commander of the imminent attack, as any information of our previous knowledge of her actions would send Serafina into hiding. But I have made several troops requisitions and the base is currently operating on a skeleton crew.”

“That should really lower casualties,” Toy said, nodding. “I’ll try to stick to my regular method of combat as much as possible, but Serafina’s defeat comes first. Right?”

“Very much so,” Scirocco said, his voice growing grim. “We cannot allow her to find me and retake the majority of my powers. These powers are mine now, and it has never been her right to play matchmaker.”

“Right. Final engagement set and go, eh?” Toy said as he leaned forward in preparation to stand up and leave.

“Remember,” Scirocco said as he turned off the screen and looked back at Toy. “Defeat Serafina and we can begin the lessons on how best to harness this new power of yours.”

“If you really think you can teach a machine magic, go right ahead, I’ll make sure to listen,” Toy joked as he stood up.

“Good luck,” Scirocco said. “I would send aid if I could but my troops have proven too susceptible to Serafina’s magicks to be safe.”

“I’m pretty sure I can handle her. Just be sure to have my paycheck waiting, ok?”

Scirocco chuckled and pulled a slip of paper from a drawer. He waved it around a bit and Toy spotted that is was a check already signed with the proper amount for taking down a fully fledged metahuman.

“Your confidence in me is inspiring,” Toy said with a short bow to Scirocco. “Now, if only the repair shop guy would be so enthusiastic about me not coming back broken so often.”

Toy left Scirocco to his chuckling and slipped out the door, nodding briefly to the two Mu guards before walking down the hall to the elevator.

“How’d it go?” Combat Toy asked from the alcove it had tucked itself into to avoid getting in people’s ways while Toy was gone.

“Yeah! Did the funny stupid guy pull through for us?” Mini Bot asked as it jumped and front of Toy and waved its arms.

“We’ve got a place, a time, and a target,” Toy said as he stepped into the elevator and waited for his bots to file in before hitting the down button. “All we need to bring is the firepower.”

“Fuck yeah, that’s what I like to hear,” Combat Toy said as the door closed.

“Geez, this place really is empty,” Toy said as he stepped over the unconscious forms of the only mind-controlled patrol the group had come across. “Scirocco wasn’t joking when he said that he cleaned the place out.”

“Incoming!” Large Toy shouted as it came running back from up ahead where Toy has sent it to scout. “Another big patrol, about eight of them.”

“Train of pain?” Combat Toy asked plaintively as its head turned to look at its boss.

Toy rolled his head like someone else would roll his eyes but nodded anyway, giving Combat Toy leave to perform one of its favorite moves.

“Fuck yeah!” the assault bot shouted.

“They coming from that corner right there?” it asked, pointing at a corridor about twenty yards away and partially blocked by a large piece of machinery set against the left wall.

“Affirmative,” Large Toy said. “No spell casters or psychics. Just a couple of Widows, some Crabs, and a few Banes.”

“Everybody behind the giant scrap heap,” Toy said as he moved behind the large piece of machinery and took care that no one coming from around the corner would see him. “Get ready to jump out once Combat Toy’s done.”

As the smaller bots took cover, Combat Toy positioned itself right in the middle of the hallway, square in the view of whoever came around the corner and completely exposed to incoming fire. The assault bot crouched down, one leg further forward than the other, almost as though it was preparing for an Olympic hundred meter dash as the mind-controlled Arachnos came dashing around the corner.

“Serafina says you do not love her!” a Blood Widow shouted as she charged Combat Toy, poisoned needles glinting in her hands.

“Toy Dispenser must die!” the Bane Spider in back replied, lifting up its Power Mace to open fire.

“CHOO FUCKING CHOO!!!” Combat Toy roared as it suddenly dashed forward into and through the line of soldiers, bowling them over as it went.

Under the weight and momentum of the assault bot, the Arachnos were tossed to the side and trampled underfoot until Combat Toy reached the last Bane Spider who had just brought his mace up to fire. The assault bot slapped the weapon from the man’s hands and then thrust its entire upper body forward, body slamming the Bane into the wall.

“Everybody out!” Toy shouted as he jumped out from cover and expertly shot the leg out from under one of the Crab Spiders using Combat Toy’s targeting solutions. The battle drones and proc bots piled out as well and laid down enough firepower to put the entire ill-fated patrol down for good. The whole engagement had lasted maybe fifteen seconds.

“We bad!” Mini Bot said as it ran forward and gave Combat Toy a jumping high five. “We bad!”

“We fucking kick ass,” Combat Toy said as it stomped forward, just a single scorch mark on its chest showing where a lucky hit had been suffered.

“Combat Toy has the right of it,” Toy said as he started moving down the corridor the patrol had come from. “Now, let’s go see if we can kick the ass of a fully fledged genie.” "I see that you've finally cornered me," said a sultry voice as Toy Dispenser and his bots filed into the former command center of the Arachnos base. "I suppose I should have expected it. The false Scirocco guards his treasure well."

"'False' Scirocco?" Toy echoed and he lifted up his pulse rifle and surveyed the room, cluttered with computer banks and lined with giant monitors. From where he stood at the entrance to the room, there were plenty of places that he couldn't see into, likely a purposeful design.

"From what I heard, whoever takes up the mantle of Scirocco gets the power."

"A half truth," the voice, Serafina, replied. "The one who receives the mantle becomes the next Scirocco but it is not for the taking. I was entrusted with the task of choosing the next successor and I come to reclaim the mantle which has fallen to such scum."

"Now now now, didn't your mother ever teach you about bad-mouthing your betters?" Toy shot at Serafina as he motioned for his bots to fan out and begin moving through the rows of consoles.

"Ha ha ha," Serafina lightly laughed, frustrating Toy's furtive sweeps with his rifle. "The tales that my allies tell of you are true. You really do respect no one other than yourself, do you?"

"I wouldn't say everyone," Toy replied. "But I certainly don't respect cowardly sorcerous wenches that taunt me from the shadows."

"Or wherever ever the hell she is," Combat Toy muttered as it kicked aside a toppled trashcan. "Count on a fucking cape to hide and talk."

"If you truly have so little patience," Serafina said and her voice seemed to grow louder. "Then let me oblige your death wish."

"Error!" Toy Bot suddenly shouted out. "Strong magical presence detected! Warn-!"

Further talk was cut off as a gust of wind so strong as to be visible slammed into the drone, plucked it off its feet, and rammed it into the wall near the entrance that the attackers had just come through.

"Scatter!" Toy shouted as he dove to one side and took cover behind a console. "Keep her from hitting all of us at once!"

"I'm afraid that won't protect you," said Small Toy as it jerkily spun around and spat laser fire at Large Toy. The protector bot fell back, loath to fire on its brother, giving Small Toy free reign to fire without fear of retaliation.

"Get the hell off of my brother!" Mini Bot shouted and dove at Small Toy, knocking the drone to the ground. The two of them rolled back and forth, neither of them able to gain the upper hand.

"Where the hell is she?" Combat Toy cried out as a gust of wind slammed it into a wall, binding its limbs from moving.

"Show yourself, coward!" Toy shouted as he poked his head up over the edge of the console and found himself staring straight at a rather busty, blue clad chest.

"I'm right here," Serafina said and lifted her hand up, throwing Toy Dispenser up into the air.

The mastermind flailed for a moment before cutting in his anti-grav jets, freezing him in place and giving him enough time to take aim and fire a bolt of energy right at Serafina's face. The energy split just in front of her face and stabbed into the floor behind her, but from her cry, it was clear that she had still been wounded slightly.

"This would be so much easier if you just laid down and died!" Serafina shouted at Toy as her brow furrowed.

Pink energy swirled around her feet and lashed out at Toy's mind, attempting to break it in two. But Toy's mind, as human-like as it was, was still that of a machine and was not easily affected by mental attacks. But his processes were still scrambled, and Toy jerked under the effect of Serafina's attack.

"Without your toys you aren't much difficulty," Serafina said, a small smirk quirking up the right side of her mouth. "Perhaps I should have fought you earlier and put an end to this much sooner."

"You'll find I'm a bit tougher than you think," Toy grated out and snapped out his foot, catching Serafina right in the forehead and knocking her back.

Toy Dispenser fell to the ground and dashed forward, planting his foot on her chest and shouldering his rifle. He glared down at her and she up at him as he pulled the trigger.

The laser was suddenly snatched out of his hand as Block Bot's laser blasts tore it from his grasp. The protector bot, mind-controlled like Small Toy, then turned its gun on its former master and prepared to fire again.

"I've got him, sir!" Large Toy shouted and rammed into Block Bot. "You can take her, sir, don't give up!"

"Oh shut up," Serafina snapped and a gust of wind smashed Large Toy into a mainframe, lodging it there amid sparking wires and shattered metal.

"God damn it!" Toy shouted and lunged at Serafina, one fist drawn back to slug her in the face.

It wasn't that hard to imagine the gust of wind that blew Toy back and the mental stab that scrambled his mind once again, leaving him disoriented as the genie stood over him and lifted her hand toward him, a ball of wind slowly gathering in her palm.

"I'm sure you'll have a fine epitaph," Serafina said. "That is, if they don't just throw you on a scrap heap."

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Combat Toy suddenly roared as a long barreled cannon arm came out of nowhere and knocked Serafina flying. The genie managed to halt her fall and shoot a gust of wind at Combat Toy, but the assault bot had already jumped through the air and landed right in front of her.

Pulling back one arm, Combat Toy viciously rammed it into her chest, thrusting her back against the wall. Serafina yelped as the blast cover flipped back, painfully scraping her bare stomach.

"Nobody touches the boss and lives," Combat Toy snarled as it fired its plasma cannon, causing Serafina to cry out with pain and the skin around the barrel to blister.

Weak bursts of wind battered the assault bot, but its legs were locked and its great weight allowed it to easily withstand the light breeze.

"Now fucking DIE!" Combat Toy roared and fired again, this time with its missile launchers.

The air around the assault bot was suddenly full of smoke and fire as the missiles did their work. Some time during the conflagration, Serafina's mediporter activated, pulling her out of the fighting. The only thing left of her was a veil, which lazily drifted through the air.

Toy Dispenser slowly pulled himself to his feet, his cape falling down around him, and reached up his hand. The veil seemed to float into his hand, which closed into a fist as he grabbed it. He brought the veil up to his faceplate and stared at it for a long moment.

"She's not dead, you know," Mini Bot said, its left arm hanging limply. "I bet she'll be back for revenge or something."

"Damn right she will," Combat Toy grunted as it stepped forward, bits of molten metal dripping down from its right cannon. "I hope she remembers us a long time."

"We're done here," Toy said. "Pack up and move em out."

Silently, the mastermind spun around, his cape flowing out behind him, and walked out of the command room. One by one, his bots trailed along behind.

The Mu door guardians remained silent as Toy walked up between them and opened the door to Scirocco’s office. He paused for a moment to give the two floating figures a nod before stepping inside to face Scirocco’s greetings.

“Ah, Toy Dispenser!” Scirocco said with a smile on his face as he looked up. “I’m glad to see you back so soon, I trust that Serafina was defeated?”

“We took some damage, but showed her not to mess around with the bad guys,” Toy replied easily as he pulled Serafina’s veil out of a belt compartment. “Here’s all that’s left of her. Things like her don’t get killed by guys like me, though, so she’s most likely still alive.”

“Though greatly weakened by your victory,” Scirocco said approvingly as he reached for the veil. Toy handed it over and the mystic spent a few moments looking at it with a blank expression on his face. “You wish that I didn’t have to take her out like that,” the mastermind said as he studied Scirocco’s face.

Scirocco shot Toy a glance out of the corner of his eyes and then nodded once, slowly, before handing the veil back.

“You deserve that more than I, as confirmation of your conquest,” the man said as he looked over at one wall. “And yes, I think I would have preferred if Serafina had not come after me and made it necessary for myself to order her destruction. She was merely doing what she had been ordered to do by my late ancestor, the previous owner of this mantle. It was unfortunate for her that I must remain in possession of it.”

“So you really did steal the mantle from the previous Scirocco?” Toy asked, leaning forward a bit as he tucked the veil away once again. “I had heard the rumors, of course, and Serafina seemed to allude to it, but I don’t see how a…well…”

“How a villain such as myself could have plucked this wind mantle out of the heart of Paragon City during the height of the Rikti Invasion?” Scirocco asked with a slight smile. “It is an interesting tale, if I say so myself, but we have more important things to attend too.”

Scirocco then shuffled a pile of papers into order and slid them into a drawer before standing up and walking around his desk to the door. After staring motionless for a moment, Toy hastily stood up as well and followed Scirocco out of the door. Exiting, the pair was flanked by the Mu guardians and all four of them traveled down the hallway to a new, larger room. Not even close to an office, the room was more akin to a small theater, albeit one cluttered with various mystical signs on the wall, numerous crowded tables, and several very large pentagrams inscribed on the floor at the four corners of the room and an even more massive one located in the exact center. Scirocco made a bee-line for the center circle and Toy followed hesitantly, his sensors just barely able to detect the after images of great feats of magic performed here.

“This is my working laboratory,” Scirocco said as he stepped into the center of the main circle and motioned for Toy to join him. “It is here that I work and perform various spells that my duty requires of me. I have a larger, better equipped room at my main base, but this is nearby and well suited to the task at hand.”

“Which would be teaching me magic, right?” Toy said with a half-hearted laugh as he inched into the circle with Scirocco. “I mean, well, I’m flattered and all but I didn’t think you would actually go through with it…”

“Nonsense,” Scirocco said with a dismissive hand gesture. “You have performed a service for me and I shall do you one in return. Of course, I will also be satiating my own curiosity about that unique aura of yours. If the divinations I have worked are true, or even mostly true, your aura of flickering lightning can be worked and coaxed into a form much like that of the lightning magic that the Mu are so fond of.”

“Speaking of the Mu, what are those two doing right now?” Toy asked, referring to the guardians who had drifted into two of the corner pentagrams opposite of one another with Scirocco and Toy between them.

“They shall be monitoring things and will serve as emergency power channels should things go wrong,” Scirocco said as he closed his eyes and seemed to center himself. “If you lose control of your energies, they can leech it out of this circle and redirect it into the Tangle, where it will harmlessly disperse among its thousands of strands.”

“Aha!” Toy said triumphantly, one finger sticking up in the air. “So that’s what the Tangle is made for; dispersing magical energies! How clever of Lord Recluse to make us think it was a doomsday weapon!”

“If only that were so,” Scirocco said with a frown, his eyes still closed. “But let us not speculate of Lord Recluse’s plans. What I want you to do right now is close your eyes, or turn off your visual sensors, and focus on your inner self.”

“Where the source of all my power comes from?” Toy asked as he shut down his sensors and focused his internal scanners on his power core. “Cause I can do that real ea-“

“Not your power core,” Scirocco said softly. “And do not look with your artificial eyes. Focus on the source of your power, not the power for your body. In your case, I would say you should look for where the strength of your personality comes from.”

“Well, that’s a bit more difficult to pin down,” Toy said in a quieter tone as he tried to isolate which anomaly in his coding resulted in his very self. “I’ve tried this before, but things are such a mess in my head that-“

“Try again,” Scirocco said, interrupting Toy for the second time. “Things will be different.”

“If you say so,” Toy muttered as he dug around in his skull. “But I really don’t think this’ll wor-……”

Toy’s voice trailed off as he found something odd. Visually, it would have appeared as a series of red glowing cracks in a rough black and white field of rubble. Technically, it appeared as nothing at all; unblemished code was all his scanners could see.

“Found something?” Scirocco asked.

“Yeah, and it’s as confusing as all hell. I can see it, but I shouldn’t be able to see it because I’m looking at my codes and you can’t see codes, you-“

“Follow what you have found to its source,” Scirocco said. “If we have found what we have been searching for so soon, then that lends hope to the strength of your power.”

Mentally frowning, Toy violated various laws of computer logic and started following the red cracks along the ground to where they came from. Several times the path he was tracking ended suddenly, with no warning at all, and other times the cracks and the landscape vanished, to be replaced with the lines of code that Toy saw normally. It took an effort of will to make the landscape appear again, but this time it was a little easier, as though he were retracing his own steps.

After an indeterminable amount of time, the cracks had converged into a single line that plunged into a deep hole that looked blacker than the void that Toy thought of when he wondered what he saw when he was powered down. Pulling out of the program-numbing mindscape for a second, Toy cracked open a single visual light sensor and looked at Scirocco. The mystic was still standing where he had been, with both eyes closed, and as Toy looked at him, Scirocco nodded slightly.

Taking heart from the fact that the more experienced mage was at least keeping an eye on what the hell was going on; Toy delved back into the black and white landscape and threw himself into the hole after the single red line. The line seemed to thicken as Toy seemed to fall deeper and deeper into his own mind. The android spent a brief moment examining the irony of an android doing something that only humans were supposed to manage but quickly focused his thoughts on the task at hand, finding where the damn line led.

And then all at once, he had it and some new system that hadn’t entirely been there before clicked into place.

“I think you found it,” said a dull, tinny voice out of the blue. “Which means you can stop blowing my room to pieces now.”

Snapping back into himself like a rubber band, and about as disoriented, Toy flipped on his visual sensors to a scene that could have passed for hell in a C-rated sci-fi flick. Red lightning was crackling all around and discharging itself against the thin air over the thick engraved circles in the floor. Where the arcs hit the actual floor, however, the effect was a bit more catastrophic. Already there were several sizable holes in the floor and as Toy stared in shock at the scene, another was blasted out from right in between Scirocco’s feet.

“Wake up, Toy Dispenser,” Scirocco said again, sounding more than a little annoyed with a dash of worried tossed in. “I would always regret blowing you away but-“

“But you’d do it to save me the agony of turning into some giant red exploding supernova bomb like in a movie? How sweet of you,” Toy said and all at once the lightning stopped.

Scirocco let out a heavy sigh and wiped a bit of sweat from his brow before stepping backwards out of the circle.

“I take it you have things under control?” Scirocco asked as he walked over to a far table and picked up a plastic water bottle. He took a big swig of it and then looked back at the android with an expectant look on his face.

“Seems like,” Toy said and then aimed one hand up in the air. With a sizzling crackle, red lightning shot from his fingertips and impacted against an invisible shield on the ceiling. “And it seems like you need to put a shield thing on the floor as well as the ceiling.”

“It appears I do,” Scirocco said, greatly amused. “And it appears that you’ve accomplished something great here. I do not believe that an artificial being has ever managed to do what you’ve just done here and now.”

“I’m pretty sure some random hero bot in Paragon can do it,” Toy said flippantly as he stepped out of the circle and looked at his hand. “But I have to say, I bet he doesn’t have anything on these magic fingers.”

“Let us hope not, because then the laws of reality might protest a bit much,” Scirocco joked and took another drink. “And do not think that this is the limit of your talent. I’m sure that with further training you can harness it even better and set your power to doing other things.”

“But this is perfectly fine for now,” Toy said with a grin in his voice. “All this trouble with Serafina was worth it just to see the expressions on the faces of the heroes that are going to be on the receiving end of this. Oh its times like this I love being bad.”

Scirocco nodded and motioned for the two exhausted guardians to leave at last. He followed them, the water bottle still in his hand, but paused when he reached the door to look back at the multi-colored android still standing in the center of the room.

“Just tell them you left your finger in a wall socket for too long,” joked one of the four patrons of Arachnos to the mercenary robot.

Toy flashed the mystic a thumbs up, but remained standing there alone for a little while after Scirocco had left.

“I’ve always had myself a little thunder,” Toy said, at last walking toward the door. “About time I got the lightning.”