When they say heroes, do you imagine musclebound warriors clad in armor, wielding massive swords and slaying dragons? Or are they lone warriors who slay their foes in a single strike? Or are they gun slingers who aim with excellent precision to prevent unnecessary amounts of casualties?

All these are commendable qualities of true heroes.

Unfortunately, this is not the case for our heroes today...

As gunfire pierced through the glass window of a tavern, a trio of misfits crash through it to escape as bullets kept flying to the now open area where the glass used to be.

One was a girl with red hair and a green, sleeveless coat, long gray stockings with green boots, green gauntlets and fingerless gray gloves. In her hand is a crossbow while some sort of while a big red, phoenix-like bird is on her shoulder.

Next is definitely the oddest of the group, but he resembles that of a bipedal, golden fur fennec fox wielding a gun that's too big for his hands with glowing blue liquid as ammunition. He's wearing a sleeveless top with a bandolier of chemical tubes slung over his shoulder to his waist. In addition to fingerless gloves, he also has goggles on his eyes. He also seems to be carrying a knapsack with him.

Finally, the last member of their quirky trio is a boy the same age as the redheaded girl. He too has goggles but wears them over his brown haired head instead of his eyes. He has a green trenchcoat over a white polo shirt, grey gloves, blue pants with big pockets, metallic boots and sort of watch on his left wrist.

These are our unfortunate heroes: Cassie, the Hunter's Daughter, Pip, the Rogue Alchemist, and Benjamin, the Child of Storms.

"Give that back, damn terrorists!" one of the knights of the Magistrate, all clad in classic medieval armor yet wielding steampunk assault rifles, yelled before opening fire once more at the trio, who all immediately get out of the way by running off before bullets started flying again.

"Way to go, Pip!" Benjamin, the boy, scolded his furry companion, Pip. "Clearly, your kleptomania is sure a good way to help our situation!"

Pip only scoffed before he stops running and hops onto Benjamin's shoulder to use him like a mount. "Relax, Ben! This ain't a problem!" He tried to pull an excuse but Cassie, the girl with the bird, suddenly pulls on Pip's ear.

"We were told to get the red crystal only! Not rob every Magistrate soldier blind and take all their pocket change and random gear!" Cassie yelled at their furry fellow.

"Ow ow ow ow! Okay, okay, I get it!" Pip complained before slapping away Cassie's hand to free his sensitive ear. "Besides, we still got the crystal. What's the harm of a little bonus can do, huh? Barik can make some interesting stuff with these grenades!" Pip added as he pulls his knapsack from his back and takes out some of the stuff he stole in the tavern while Ben and Cassie kept running. However, the first thing he pulls out is a necklace with a locket on it. "Pffft. Fake gold paint. Not even worth selling on the streets."

Just as Pip threw the locket away, more gunfire blocked their path through an alleyway, causing them to look up to see more soldiers at the rooftops.

"Pip!" Ben yelled at the vulpine on his shoulder, who immediately discards his knapsack and takes out his Potion Launcher before firing a volatile potion that explodes on impact on the position of the Magistrate knights, knocking them all out and off the roof.

"You'll remember this, as the day you almost caught Pip the fire thief!" Pip taunted their downed opponents before he received glares from his two companions. "... And his friends!" He attempted to add them but did not stop glaring.

Ben then sighs and swipes Pip's knapsack from him before taking out the red crystal they came for from it before returning the bag to the furry creature, which caused Pip to fall off Ben's shoulder. "Fire thief, huh? Just tell the truth and say you're the 'anything valuable' thief." Ben points out as he held the crystal in his hand before putting in his coat.

"You guys can't take a joke." Pip retorted while he stands back up and hops onto Ben's shoulder again.

"Come back to us when you actually become funny." Cassie retorts to him before running ahead of her companions while her bird follows her. Ben, with Pip on his shoulder, follows the girl down the alley.

Upon finding their way through the tight alleyways, they finally found what they were running to: their two horses. One is a majestic brown horse while the other is a beautiful kind of onyx stallion. Cassie gets on her brown horse while Pip gets off Ben's shoulders to hop onto Cassie's horse as well.

Ben was about to hop onto his onyx horse...

... until a red blur slams into him and pins him onto a wall.

"Ben!" Cassie yelled in worry as she and Pip look at who got to Ben. As Ben slowly opened his eyes, he sees that the one who has him cornered is some sort of draconic, bipedal lizard that's 7 feet tall and clad in some sort of mechanical armor while his right hand has been replaced with a rocket launcher, with his left hand being used to strangle Ben.

One look and Ben immediately recognized him as his yes widened. "Not now, Drogoz! We're in the middle of something!" Ben attempted to joke to the draconic man, named Drogoz, while struggling to breathe because he is being held by his neck.

"You will return what you took from me, pink skin!" Drogoz spoke with a deep and bellowing voice as he held Ben even higher while nearby civilians started running away from the sight of the cybernetic dragon man choking out a teenage boy.

"I don't have it... He does." Ben spoke with any breath he has left as he points at Pip, to which Drogoz turned his head to see Pip holding up a random grenade he stole from the knights earlier in his hand.

"That's not what you stols from me, you–!" Drogoz yelled just as he turned his head back to Ben...

...who now has his long barrel .454 Casull Auto pistol aimed directly at Drogoz's head. The pistol itself have some sort of orc language engraved on the side that read as "Bin mog g'thazag cha", which translates to "I will protect you".

"I forgot. I must've left it at home, Dro-gross." Ben retorts before pulling the trigger, which actually made the engraved words to glow, before firing a magical shot from his pistol that had enough power to knock Drogoz away from Ben but not enough to kill him, sending the draconic beast into an abandoned inn and through it's walls. As Ben fell to the ground, coughing, Pip gets off the horse they're on before running for Ben, taking out a flask filled with green liquid while Cassie also gets off the horse and starts firing crossbow bolts at Drogoz, who's starting to get back up.

"Drink up, bud. We can't exactly take on big bad lizard-borg over there by ourselves." Pip tells his human companion as he hands the flask to Ben, who weakly takes it while gasping for air. Once Ben took it, Pip turns around and starts firing his Potion Launcher at Drogoz to assist Cassie.

As Drogoz roars and lunges at the archer, Cassie rolls out of the way to dodge before firing an explosive bolt at Drogoz's face, staggering the dragon man while Pip jumps on a nearby wooden box to gain height and puts his launcher on his back. While Cassie continued her onslaught of bolts being fired at Drogoz to keep him at his toes, Pip jumps and grabs onto a horizontal pole from a nearby house before spinning himself on it to gain momentum before letting go at the right moment and launching himself onto the rooftops.

With a new vantage point, Pip then first loads a flask with boiling red liquid into the barrel of his weapon before firing it at Drogoz. Once Drogoz got hit, he's now drenched in the liquid, which caused him to turn his head to look at Pip in rage. However, he had zero time to even glare at the Vulpine as another shot from the Potion Launcher, this time, blue in color, struck Drogoz. With both red and blue mixing on Drogoz's body, the two different chemicals created an explosive reaction that knocks Drogoz away from the group and severely injuries him.

"Yes! Alchemy, one! Giant lizard, zero!" Pip boasted as he cheered for himself at the rooftops.

However, his little celebration was interrupted when Drogoz roared so loud, the smoke from the explosion surrounding him got blown away and revealed all the scars and scorch marks on his body. Glaring at Pip, the draconic man starts glowing with a sinister, yellow aura and the thrusters on his suit activate, acting like wings for him as he starts to fly towards Pip.

"Uh oh." was all Pip could say as Drogoz was now directly in front of him before the cybernetic dragon punches Pip with his left fist so hard, it sent the Vulpine flying into the distance.

As Drogoz stopped glowing and lands on the spot where Pip used to be, more crossbow bolts hit him on the back that made him turn his attention to Cassie down below. Cassie fired three crossbow bolts in quick succession before firing an explosive one at Drogoz's face, which not only hurt the beast but anger him as well.

Drogoz then activates his thrusters again and lunges at Cassie, who yelped in terror...

...before something caught Drogoz by his tail and suddenly pulls him the opposite direction and throws him into another conveniently unoccupied building. When Drogoz pushed off all the rubble that toppled on top of him, he stood back up to see the one who threw him.

Standing before him and in front of Cassie is a humanoid, moth-like alien whose four wings and antenna can fold up into a hooded, giving him the appearance of a phantom.

He has a black body with cyan patches on his arms, shoulders, legs, the back of his wings, and the back of his neck that resemble ice chunks. Each patch has thick blue outlining except for the ones on his wings, which are outlined in black. There is also a black line that runs on the edge of the outer margin on the back of each wing. On his torso are three plates. One resembling the chest, a shorter plate under the chest, and one resembling the stomach. On his face are blue cheeks and underjaw, a mouth that always shows bluish white teeth, and large green eyes with dark green spots. The top of his head also sports a blue Y-shaped marking that extends over his scalp. He has three pointed fingers and a thumb on each hand, and two toes on each foot and a third toe-like extension on his ankles.

Lastly, he has some sort of hourglass symbol on his chest.

"What in the world–?!" Drogoz spoke but got shocked when the moth man in front of him blew a breath of frost, causing him to fly up to dodge as the moth man froze the building he threw the draconic man into.

Answering Drogoz's actions with an appropriate response, the moth man opens his wings and flies up to follow the cybernetic dragon. "Let's see you handle me like this, lizard man!" The moth creature mocked Drogoz.

"Heh. And I thought you wouldn't get uglier, pink skin!" Drogoz mocked the icy moth, who he implied to be Ben.

"Look who's talking, Gatorboy! And when I'm like this, I'm BIG CHILL!" Ben, now calling himself Big Chill in this form, yelled at his enemy before the two of them lunge at each other.

Drogoz attempts to strike Big Chill with a fiery punch, but Big Chill became transparent all of a sudden and Drogoz's fist simply phased through his intangible body, causing him to miss. Big Chill takes advantage by coating his fists in ice and giving himself spiked ice gloves that he uses to punch Drogoz in the face, which actually made the the reptilian flyer spit out blood.

However, Big Chill was caught off guard when Drogoz grabbed his right wrist. Big Chill didn't expect what the cybernetic dragon did next as Drogoz looks back at him and suddenly spits at him with a fiery loogie, coating Big Chill in the disgusting liquid as well as blinding him momentarily.

With this, Drogoz then overrides his rocket lancher before aiming at Big Chill and unleashes a salvo of missiles from his gun that explodes on impact with Big Chill, knocking the moth creature into a building.

Drogoz then followed his opponent and lands on the roof before lifting Big Chill up from the back of his head while Big Chill has his head down, seemingly unconscious. "You will return to me what you stole or I will bathe the mountains and sky with your blood!" Drogoz yelled at the seemingly knocked out Big Chill...

...until the moth man raises his head with a big, trolling grin on his face, and he immediately follows it up by exhaling a big ice breath that froze Drogoz's feet solid to the ground, preventing him from moving. In shock, Drogoz unintentionally let go of Big Chill, who then turns intangible again and phases through Drogoz, freezing him from within, and phases through him again until he rinse and repeats and leaves Drogoz coated in a thick layer of ice. Inside, Drogoz is unable to move while he struggles to even make a noise.

"Chill for a while, lizard boy." Big Chill mocked Drogoz, but, unfortunately for him... a familiar beeping sound started coming from the hourglass symbol on his suit. "Uh oh."

And with a big flash of red light, Big Chill is replaced with Ben and plummets from the sky. As he screamed while falling from the air, he found himself crashing...

...into a convenient stack of hay.

"Oooh! Ow... my back... Jumping into hay from a high place is harder than it looks..." Ben comments as he stands up in pain. As he walks in a limp, he held onto his side and felt that something that's meant to be in his coat's inner pocket, so he checks it and sees the red crystal is no longer in it.

Ben looks around at his spot until he sees the crystal on the floor in front of him. He sighed in relief as goes to pick it up, holding it up with his hand...

"Hi there, handsome."

Ben froze as two pink bladed knives suddenly gets close to his throat while he fel something heavy on his shoulders. All he did was look up at who's threatening him and sees someone quite familiar to himself.

Wtih short pink hair, a dark purple trenchcoat, fingerless gloves and wielding two knives now threatening to cut Ben's throat, this girl is somehow balancing herself on Ben's shoulders as the two of them stare at each other eye to eye, with the mysterious girl smirking at him.

"Maeve of Blades." Ben responds, smirking at her as well, their faces in almost close proximity to each other. "Come to steal something from me?"

"Yeah. I'm going to steal your heart, loverboy~" Maeve, the girl, flirtatiously says to Ben. As if to prove her point, she then moves her face closer as their lips are inches away from each other, feeling each other's warm breath under the cold, snowy alley they're in...

...until Maeve suddenly jumps off Ben's shoulders, pushing him down on the floor and accidentally making him let go of the red crystal, to which Maeve caught perfectly in mid air before sticking her landing perfectly.

"Hey!" Ben complained as he tries standing up but winced as the pain on his back from earlier comes back.

"See ya later, loverboy. This crystal is going to be worth a lot of credits." Maeve tells the downed Ben as she winks at him before throwing one of her knives justa few inches away from Ben's crotch. "It'd be unfair if I didn't leave something for you after taking this." She adds as she gestured to the crystal in her hand.

"You can't take that!" Ben says as he finally found the strength to stand up, trying to activate the watch on his wrist, but it's glowing red instead of green like it usually does.

However, Maeve simply waves her fingers at Ben as she says, "Ah ah ah!"

Suddenly, the purple gems on her longcoat that resembled cat eyes suddenly started glowing and Ben's vision started to darken, as all he could literally is nothing but blackness and his hearing could only hear muffled versions of the noise around him. However, Maeve's voice is somehow still as clear as day as Ben hears it echo while it says, "Good niiiiiiight...~"

Ben desperately tried reaching out into the darkness while he calls out for Maeve's name, but even his own voice is muffled, at least to his own ears.

"M..."

"Ma..."

"Maeve!"

"Ben!"

Ben gets shocked when his vision finally returned as Cassie is now holding onto him, shaking him by shoulders. Pip also appeared as he hops on Cassie's shoulders.

"I... Uhhh..." Ben stammered as he blinked to keep himself focused.

"He's out of it. Hang on." Pip says before taking out a flask filled with a clear liquid. He then takes off the cork covering it and suddenly splashes Ben's face with the fluid inside, keeping him awake.

"Hey! What the hell, man? What kind of potion did you spray on me?!" Ben complained as he wipes his wet face.

"It's called water, genius." Pip sarcastically replied before getting off Cassie and hopping on Ben's shoulder instead. "What the hell happened with ya? Did Drogoz kick your butt so hard, you lost your vision?"

Ben stops wiping his face as he turns around to where Maeve left him and sees the knife she lsft behind for him. He crouched down to take it from the ground before flipping it in his hand. "No. Maeve came and took the crystal from me."

"That wanna be thief?!" Pip yelled. "How the heck did she take it from you?! Has she been following us?!"

"Yeah, even though I hate her, Pip, I think she does her stealing better than you." Cassie retorts.

"Wha... I... Shut up." Pip tried to retort but couldn't find the words or even deny anything. Cassie's bird, Zigs, suddenly squawks at Pip, who understood him and responds with, "Shut uo, birdbrain! Nobody asked you!"

Ben continues flipping the knife in his hands and even though he was robbed, he couldn't help but smile at Maeve. For some odd reason, it's her roguish personality that's appealing to him. "At least shd gave me something. Never know when a knife can be useful."

"Well, it's not gonna be useful for telling Captain Valera we lost our main objective. What now?" Cassie asks the boys.

With a sigh, Ben puts the knife in his pocket before facing Cassie to say, "Lok'tar ogar, sis."

Cassie merely raised a brow at Ben to say, "You know I hate it when you speak orc."

Pip chuckled as he takes off his goggles before putting the flask of water in his knapsack and says, "He said victory or death. Very fitting for our situation. I say we distract the captain by selling all these stuff we stole and bribe her with the spoils of our minor victory?"

"Pip, shut up." Cassie and Ben both say to the furry thief.

Welcome to the realm of champions.