A long tense silence passes between the Greek themed hero and the chainsaw wielding villain, while behind them Letterguy and The Weasel look from one to the other in confusion.
Working up a bit or courage, The Weasel walks up behind Perseus; leaning in to whisper,
"Do you two know each other?"
Not breaking his gaze, he reply's simply,
"We have a history…"
Before he takes a step forward and speaks to Chainsaw Vigilante directly
"Mind if I have a word with you…."
His eyes glance over his superhero peers,
"In private?"
Not waiting for an answer, he turns and walks out of the alley way, the fierce gaze of Chainsaw Vigilante following him as he passes by, if anything getting more aggressive at the bold, unconcerned attitude he treated her with.
Shooting her gaze back at the other two heroes, who in contrast flinch at her menacing expression, it changes to a satisfied smirk at their look of fear, before she turns and follows Perseus out of the alley.
When the two rivals finally turned the corner and out of sight, Letterguy lets out a huge sigh of relief.
"Phew, that was a close one."
The Weasel on the other hand, regarded what had happened with curiosity, stealthily taking a few steps forward and looking around the corner to see if they really had gone, before heading back to Letterguy and asking,
"What's with Perseus and The Chainsaw Vigilante?"
"You mean you don't know?" he replies, an eyebrow raised in slight confusion and surprise.
"Well…"
The Weasel responds a bit timidly,
"I think I've heard bits and pieces of something involving Perseus and…her."
"Oh yeah that's right, I forgot you only moved here recently, so you weren't there when it happened.
Not to worry though, I'd be happy to get you up to speed!"
Letterguy composed himself, taking a more confident stance and leaning against a nearby wall in preparation to tell the story.
Had this been a comic, this would have no doubt been shown as a flashback… but it isn't, so you'll just have to use your own personal thought bubbles instead.
"Well you see, it all started about a year ago…
It was a dark time, when these twin cities were on the brink of a crime wave.
Barely a few days earlier, a crack team of thieves had sleazed their way into our fair cities, and had started wreaking havoc among the innocent populous.
Of course, eager to do our civic duty, we leapt into action to stop these wicked criminals once and for all….
But the Chainsaw Vigilante had other ideas, having similarly appeared out of the shadows without warning about a month or two earlier, beginning her unexplained war against all costumed heroes, and standing in our way at every turn to obstruct the justice we were trying to bring to our community!
Tensions were running high, with the Chainsaw Vigilante growing in power and notoriety despite all our best efforts to stop her, until we finally reached a breaking point, which resulted in one of the greatest catastrophes these cities superheroes had ever seen!
And I should know, cus I was actually there for this one!
The awful, humiliating day when the Chainsaw Vigilante defeated all two hundred and thirty five of the twin cities heroes in a single night!"
The Weasel: "You're kidding me! Over two hundred superheroes…. In a single night!?"
Letterguy: "Yes! The entire superhero population of the twin citys area was defeated that night!
From what I heard later from those first on the scene, the criminals I spoke about earier were caught in the act of breaking into the safe of the local bank, and were about to be brought to justice, but then SHE appeared to once again obstruct the forces of truth and justice, and a fight broke out!
Word of the fight spread quickly for miles around, and soon every hero available came to answer the call to battle!..."
The Weasel: "Wait a minute, are you telling me, that a single bank robbery getting interrupted by the Chainsaw Vigilante was enough to draw in over two hundred superheroes from miles around?"
Letterguy: "Well yes, as I said, every available hero answered the call."
The Weasel: "And you also said that every superhero in the city was defeated that night."
Letterguy: "That's right."
The Weasel: "Are you telling me that not a single superhero in the entirety of the twin city's area had anything better to do than to show up at this one, single bank robbery?! Nobody had any supervillains they needed to fight? Or orphans to rescue from a burning building? Or cats to save from a tree?"
Letterguy: "Look do you want to hear the rest of the story or not?"
The Weasel:" Right, my mistake.
So… just how did the Chainsaw Vigilante defeat over two hundred superheroes in a single night? I mean I knew she was tough, But I didn't think she was THAT tough! She's supposed to be just a scary lady with a chainsaw right?"
Letterguy: "Just a lady with a chainsaw…Pfft, hardly! You ask me there's something unnatural about the Chainsaw Vigilante. Something sinister and evil that goes beyond normal human comprehension! Like some vile avatar of vengeance against all those who think to wear a costume sent to punish us for every slip up, every act of selfishness, every time our actions put the average man woman and child on the street at risk rather than ensuring their safety, and it's a retribution she takes against all who think to wear a costume and call themselves "super", whether they are guilty or not!
I even hear she sold her soul to the devil!"
The Weasel now looked positively terrified, his eyes wide and his body trembling as he stood there, thoroughly regretting having ever even considered going on this absurd endeavor to try and figure out her secret identity. Honestly what was he thinking!
Letterguy: "But anyway, as I was saying,"
He continued, oblivious of The Weasels terror.
"Word of the fight had spread for miles around, and more and more superheroes came to join in the fray, but one after another… hero after hero was defeated!
Busman, The Hun-man, Heavy Metal Rocker, some of the toughest the twin cities had to offer, and all of them went down, along with heroes like Traumagirl, Frog-woman, and The Elf!
She brought them all down, even as more heroes arrived on the scene, and it looked like the beating would continue, until Perseus arrived to intervene!
They engaged in an epic battle, and for awhile they seemed evenly matched, The mighty Perseus being able to hold the Chainsaw Vigilante at bay, until the Chainsaw Vigilante delivered her ultimatum, denouncing the worth of all superheroes, demanding that we all go into retirement and return to our lives as normal citizens… before she defeated Perseus as well.
Those of us who hadn't already fallen in battle, just didn't have the will to carry on after that, and accepted her demands, renouncing their titles as superheroes, and going back to their day jobs.
I myself had to watch as each of my team members turned away from the fight and head home, no matter what I said to try and convince them to carry on as The Civic Minded Five.
But it was too late, and there was no use.
So in a moment of weakness, I too gave up my mask for a time.
And although, as you can see, I later came out of retirement to continue my career as a superhero,
still to this very day there are many who never came out of that forced retirement.
I hear it even drove some to super- VILLAINY since then."
The Weasel: "Wow… sounds like it was a pretty epic night. But what does it have to do with what's going on between Perseus and the Chainsaw Vigilante?"
Letterguy: "I was getting to that, cus you see, now here's the kicker;
It turns out that the Chainsaw Vigilante had indeed made a grave mistake in FORCEING the superhero community into an early retirement like that!
Because the very next day, a supervillain showed up to attack the city's in the form of a giant (naked) man, tall as any sky scraper and called…. The Tumor.
And you know what? She had the arrogance, the unmitigated gall! To go out and ask us superheroes to come back out of retirement to go deal with the supervillain! Barely a day after she forced us to give it all up! And then, get this, she even said once we had rallied ourselves together and collectively come out of retirement to take care of the supervillain, she was gonna go and beat us up again!"
The Weasel: "….Wow, I don't think I've ever heard anything more hypocritical… Although she is a supervillain, so I guess that kind of vile, villainous deceit is to be expected."
Letterguy: "Yeah, just don't call her that to her face, she HATES it when people do that, just ask Arachnolad."
The Weasel: "She doesn't like being called hypocritical?!"
Letterguy: "What? No… well maybe, but not as much as she doesn't like being called a supervillain."
The Weasel: "Wait really? Why would she get mad at something like that? That's what she is isn't she?"
Letterguy: "Nobody knows why. We just know not to do it. Otherwise she won't show you ANY mercy."
The Weasel: "You mean what happened to The Stapling Avenger was merciful!"
Letterguy: "Compared to what happens when you call her a supervillain yeah.
Seriously, you don't want to mess with the Chainsaw Vigilante….. but we're getting off topic, I still gotta finish the rest of the story!
The Weasel: "Yeah, you still haven't explained what happened between her and Perseus."
Letterguy: "Right.
So as you could imagine, when she went around telling the heroes her plans for them to come out of retirement, only for her to immediately go right back to beating them up again, there were some heroes who were going to have none of that, and instead decided they were going to come back out of retirement on their own terms, and take out both The Tumor, and the Chainsaw Vigilante, once and for all!"
The Weasel: "So which side were you on?"
Letterguy: "The winning one."
The Weasel: "And which one was that?"
Letterguy: "Well, uhhhhh…. How about I just continue on with the story?
So, as some of the twin city's superheroes rallied themselves to go face The Tumor, others made it their focus to take on the Chainsaw Vigilante, but as we all got together to collectively take down The Tumor, it was hard to tell who belonged to either side, as we all cooperated like we normally would while we got to work bringing down the giant man.
For a while, it seemed like things were gonna go pretty smoothly. After all, The Tumor was really slow moving, as if his sudden change in size had left him only able to move in slow motion, and up until now, he hadn't shown any signs of aggression….
In retrospect we really should have picked up on those red flags from the beginning, because just as we were starting our attack, the Chainsaw Vigilante appeared on the scene and started attacking us superheroes yet again!
Only this time shouting that we had to stop, about making a huge mistake, and that The Tumor was an innocent man, not a supervillain.
It was then that those who sought to get rid of the Chainsaw Vigilante revealed themselves.
Having formed a Superhero team the previous evening, they called themselves The Retributioners, and with the appearance of the Chainsaw Vigilante, they announced their plan to be rid of her once and for all, and encouraged all the other superheroes who had come out of retirement to fight The Tumor, to join their cause as well.
And most of them did, right there on the spot."
The Weasel: "Did you?"
Letterguy: "Well, to be honest I probably would have, but I was already a part of The Civic Minded Five, and each of us had made an agreement to go over it with the other members of the team before we joined any other superhero clubs, and even though we had kind of disband when Chainsaw Vigilante defeated all the heroes, I still figured I'd better go over it with the guys just to be safe."
The Weasel: "Wow…. that actually sounded pretty noble of you. I mean The Retributioners sounds totally kickass, it couldn't have been easy to give up on joining such an awesome sounding superhero team."
Letterguy: "Yeah well, we all have to make sacrifices, and it's better to stick with your comrades than to chase after every flashy new thing that came along.
Side's, me and Oddman work in the same cubical. If I were to have betrayed them I might never have heard the end of it.
So, as I was saying, The Retributioners called off the attack on The Tumor in favor of chasing after the Chainsaw Vigilante. Now as I said, I wasn't one of them, but from what I heard from some of my friends who had joined up, it was a pretty exciting chase.
The heroes had her on the run, the faster of them catching up to the Chainsaw Vigilante and trying to trip her up, or at least slow her down enough for the huge group of superheroes lagging a bit behind to reach her, the lot of them chasing after her like a heard of angry bulls. Some of them tried firing their super hero weapons and gear, but she was so wily, she would just knock the faster of the heroes into the way of fire with her chainsaw.
But even then they still were gaining, and gaining on her, until just as it looked like the heroes might finally bring her down, she just disappeared!
Like, poof, gone! And nobody could seem to find her! And needless to say, this got the leaders of the Retributioners really, really mad.
But back with The Tumor, things were getting kinda hairy. All the superheroes attacking him like that had left him pretty spooked, and with almost all of the superheroes having left to go chase after the Chainsaw Vigilante, there was hardly anything stopping him from destroying the city around him!
So, relying on our superhero instincts, those of us who had remained did our best to get the nearby citizens to safety.
I personally ended up saving at least seven people from the falling wreckage that day.
*he said perhaps a little too smugly before continuing on*
But as we were doing our best to minimize the collateral damage and get everyone to safety, I see Perseus come and fly in.
Now I couldn't really see too much of what was going on, because he was way up high in front of The Tumors face, which had to be at least 20-something stories off the ground, but it looked like he was trying to communicate with The Tumor, but it wasn't going so well, so he flew to one of the nearby billboards and carved something into the surface of it. Now I couldn't see what it said from where I stood, but it seemed to work, because The Tumor calmed down considerably after that.
Perseus then swooped down and said to us remaining heroes,
"Whatever you do, don't attack The Tumor! He's not evil! Do not Attack Him!"
Before he dashed off, looking to be in a real hurry.
I stayed to help pull people out of the wreckage for awhile, before I suddenly get a message on my pager for the Civic Minded Five to assemble, and meet back at the home base immediately!
So I dashed back, and you'll never guess who I found there…."
The Weasel: "Who!?"
Letterguy: "….None other, than Perseus and Chainsaw Vigilante, chatting it up with the other members of my team!"
The Weasel: "No way!"
Letterguy: "Yes way! Apparently she and Perseus had made some sort of truce, and it turned out that us, The Civic Minded Five, were the only team they knew of that hadn't joined up with The Retributioners yet, and that they needed our help in protecting The Tumor.
As proof of The Tumors innocence, they had brought an answering machine that had made a recording of the whale noises The Tumor had been making all day, and by rewinding the tape, and then fast forwarding it to play the tape at high speed, we could clearly hear the giant say, 'Please! My name is Edward, Help me! Why won't anyone listen!?' before the Chainsaw Vigilante quickly stopped the tape before it could say anything further."
The Weasel: "So how did you know it wasn't some sort of trick?"
Letterguy: "Well, we didn't, but we had never known Perseus to lie before, and even if the Chainsaw Vigilante was tricking him for some nefarious reason, it was like he said. We're superheroes, and as far as we knew, there was an innocent man in danger, and it was our duty to protect him, even if that meant going against our own friends and allies; that no matter what, it was still our duty to do what was right. So we went along with their plan.
Half of us, along with Perseus, were to go out and spread the word to the other heroes about The Tumor's innocence, while the rest of us were to track down any information we could about The Tumor, with the goal of finding out a way to cure him somehow. The Chainsaw Vigilante on the other hand, planned to lie low until this was all over with, and leave all the work up to us superheroes, saying that she was tired of dealing with us 'pajama wearing dweebs' and that we could deal with our own mess for once. She'd had enough.
Perseus did his best to try and convince her to stay and help, but she wouldn't hear any of it, instead taking the answering machine and leaving with one last ' I'm outta here losers' before he could even say much of anything. Not that many of us minded though, we didn't want to work with her anyway.
I went with the group assigned to look for information on The Tumor, or rather I should say Edward, and before long we were able to track him to his point of origin, a hospital in the downtown area that had been damaged when he first grew to his terrific size. Before long we were able to track down his physician, who told us that they knew about his condition and had been planning to call in a specialist to help take care of the problem, but in all the commotion they hadn't been able to get an appointment made.
But after explaining the situation, they agree to alert the authority's and get the specialist flown over immediately to return Edward to his normal size, which all in all, would probably take an hour's time.
But it turns out we didn't have that much time to spare.
Across the entire Deertown- Hobbleville twin cities area, the superhero emergency alert broadcast began to sound, and although all the heroes who knew of it had sworn that it only be used in an emergency, and as a last resort, The Retributioners had decided to use it for a decidedly different reason.
I can still remember the sinking sense of dread I felt when I heard the message come in over the tv….
b[Citizens of the twin city's area. We regret this intrusion upon your mundane lives, but know that it is a necessary annoyance in the fight to purge our cities of the evil and crime that has nested within it. So please good citizens, bear with us for a moment, because this is a message for The Chainsaw Vigilante.
We have been humiliated for the last time Chainsaw Vigilante… So, you seek to obstruct justice do you? Well I've got news for you villainous scum, you'll never stop us, for we represent a beacon of hope for this city. A hope that the good do not have to languish under the shadow of crime, that it is something that can be fought against, and that good can and will triumph over it, just as it is going to triumph today.
We are going to drive this giant monster out of our citys, as is our duty as superheroes, and regardless of whatever lies you try to tell us Chainsaw Vigilante.
And I dare you to try and stop us, or better yet, why don't you just turn yourself in.
Maybe that way, we could remove two tumors from our city…..]/b
Worried for Edwards safety, the rest of the team and I rushed over to stop them before they tried to hurt him, positive that the Chainsaw Vigilante would never give in to their demands, and worried that it might drive The Retributioners to go and do something rash…. but we were wrong, they hadn't needed and excuse for it.
As we neared the giant man, we could see that they had already had him beaten and tied down.
They had already won the fight ages ago, they had just been keeping him in the city to be used as bait.
And likewise, we were wrong about Chainsaw Vigilante refusing to get involved….
Apparently putting Edward in danger had been enough to draw her out despite the overwhelming odds, although it was clear that she wasn't there to surrender either, but at least at first, she tried to at least talk things out.
But since her method of "taking things out" mostly consisted of saying things like,
"I am here to protect an innocent man, from a dangerous group of fussy overgrown children in their pajamas ."
It's really not all that surprising when negotiations fell through.
But it was surprising how many turned against The Retributioners to defend Chainsaw Vigilante when the inevitable fight broke out. It seemed that the other half of the civic minded five along with Perseus had done a pretty good job in getting the word out about The Tumor's innocence, and the resulting fight was totally EPIC!
There I was shooting my mail gun left and right, wrapping up heroes in snug inescapable cocoons of paper letters, up until I was brought down by Trauma-Girls powers of emotional instability! It was nut's!"
*he said with a hint of laughter*
"But it turned out that Trauma-Girl was actually on our side! But since the Retributioners hadn't exactly done anything to differentiate themselves from the other heroes, so we still couldn't really tell who was who! And it was glorious absolute chaos!
And I guess during the fight Chainsaw Vigilante got to cutting Edward loose from his bonds and getting him out of there, and it sure took him awhile to get moving, but once he did, man, the whole city shook!
Now I wasn't able to see much past there, but from what I hear, Chainsaw Vigilante had caught a ride while Edward had run to the very edge of the city limits, along with a few of the leaders of the Retributioners, and they ended up having a final battle of sorts, with the Chainsaw Vigilante coming out on top, and the day basically being saved, with the medical expert arriving soon after to return Edward to normal and everyone savoring in their victory!
….Right up until Chainsaw Vigilante started beating the tar out of all us superheroes once again.
But regardless, it seems that to this very day, whatever truce Perseus and the Chainsaw Vigilante had made during the event still stands, and while the precise terms of this deal they had made still remain a mystery, but we do know at least this.
That because of the deal Perseus had made, the Chainsaw Vigilante can never again rid the twin city's of all their superheroes.….
Also that Perseus and the Chainsaw Vigilante basically never mess with one another because of it."
The Weasel: "Wait, but didn't they fight last month?"
Letterguy: "I said BASICALLY never mess with one another."
The Weasel: "Oh, right…. Well that does explain a lot.
Honestly I'm surprised nobody told me this story sooner. I mean, I hear so many stories from the other heroes about things like foiling a robbery or pulling over someone with expired license plates on their car, but all this time they've been sitting on a real doozy like this and hardly anyone even mentions all the juicy bits of the story. It's like starting a comic series and having to end on issue #3, right after you start getting invested in it, but right before any of the really good stuff starts happening! "
Letterguy: Ahhh well, at least most of the other spinoff series did alright; I mean The Man Eating Cow got like what, ten issues?
The Weasel: Yeah…. So you wanna go eavesdrop on Perseus and the Chainsaw Vigilante?
Letterguy: What are you nuts?! I don't want to risk breaking whatever deal those two made and getting the Chainsaw Vigilante to drive every superhero in the twin city's back into retirement again! And who knows what Perseus had to do to get that deal in the first place! What if he, like sold his soul or something! I don't wanna get wrapped up in any of that!
The Weasel: Yeah….. that's a good point. I guess we'll just wait here then.
Letterguy: Or we could try and make a break for it?
The Weasel: Also a good plan.
