Greg Veder

I wasn't able to bring the grenade launcher and the tinkertech grenades I stole to the last Endbringer fight in Liberia. I didn't understand what they were and in general you shouldn't use tinkertech you don't understand, unless you're an idiot like me, but I'm an idiot who has finally read the instruction manual. It turns out it wasn't in chinese or japanese, it was in korean. Which was a pain in the ass to decipher. I had stolen 13 grenades, ten of them were just normal grenades, which was a total rip off, and half of those grenades were smoke grenades, which kind of sucked worse, but three of them were real tinkertech stuff.

One grenade would freeze everything in it's radius for half an hour, one would turn everything in it's radius into stone, and one... well it was created to kill even the strongest brutes, it was an armor piercing weapon and I would only have one shot with it. It was more then I normally got, the grenade launcher felt heavy, somehow I had three chances to make a difference. If I could pull this off, make a good name for myself, maybe that would be enough? That said people stared at me, I didn't have a choice, I had to fight in the Bay. People knew I lived here, so I had to fight. I couldn't just run away with mom and dad, who I really freaking envied right now.

I wasn't scared through, this wasn't the time to be scared, this was the time to be bored. You see, there were two very notable portions of Endbringer battles, the preperation phase, the phase were you mingled and waited and then the mindless terror and mayhem phase. You listened to the Thinkers, did your best and if everything went well a lot of people would die, but so would the enemy.

In the event of a win the bad guys get pardons for the non-felony offenses, their time degraded to minor levels for felonies, and the removal of a kill order if you screwed up that bad. The good guys get another notch in their belts, everyone gets an offworld land grant or a larger one if you had been in multiple fights. The bounty money would be handed out as well and you would fill out some forms. Fight in 10 battles and you get a stipend from the UN for life, fight in 20 and you would recieve half a soldier's pay on top of that for life, finish 30? Full pay for life, anything past that and it's bragging rights.

So what happens to the city afterwards? Well in America once a city's attacked normally a 5th of the population permanently leaves the city. Half of them end up on Mars the others try their luck somewhere else in the States. If your city didn't get a kill it would have to wait for insurance money, hope the city got some federal money. If you got a kill, well then you could guilt trip some charity funds to rebuild. No matter what though, no city came out of it the same way.

Some portions might luck out and not have that much damage, but there was always damage, always a lot of things that needed fixing, a lot of people who needed to be buried. I looked around, the Wards were all there. The gangbangers were all there, New wave was having a glaring contest with the Undersiders. The one good thing about my official position as a war cape? I got all the benefits of isolationism without the disavantage of people calling me a coward or wondering why I didn't join the heroes or a gang.

You just want to fight Endbringers? No one was going to get in your way if you just wanted to focus on that. I felt a migraine coming on and listened to another one of Legend's speeches, the 'you have a 1 in 10 chance of dying horribly' one. A real moral booster that one, Eidolon tended to give more of a 'let's go out and kick ass' speech. I didn't understand chinese but the Yangban were freaking pumped when I was in China, so I assume it was good. It all kind of melds together after a while. An Endbringer battle is like a weird mixture of the Olympics, war and a football rally in one.

Drive 'em off and it's pretty somber when it's done, get a kill and you get these frenzied parties, and no I didn't get laid at those parties. I'm more of the 'go to the battle, get tired as hell and just want to go home' type. Plus someone always gets stuck doing recovery and guess who gets stuck with that fuckery.

I try to hide, oh fuck...

"Hey."

It's Shadow Stalker.

"Hnn."

"So, you have been to a bunch of these things."

I know that voice, this is... this is so completely fucked up, Sophia? Really? She's a fucking hero? Did standards just vanish in this town? Is the local Protectorate that hard up for peopleP

"Hnn."

"So, any advice?"

I activated the scrapped darth vader voice changer, a waste of a perfectly good battery or a chance not to deal with Sophia later? Yeah waste the battery.

"Don't die."

She started moving closer, I could almost feel the slime. Look, it's not that Sophia isn't objectively hot, she is but seriously she basically screams out crazy. It's in the eyes, and I have enough drama in my life.

"Anything more, Cowboy?"

Don't touch me, don't touch me, dont oh god she's touching me, she smells like sweat, and blood. I shrug, best thing to do is not talk at all. This was Shadow Stalker's first time at the rodeo, I hoped it wouldn't be her last.

"No ma'am."

Keeping the cowboy theme alive, was my voice masked enough? Would I have enough soap to wash this nightmare away.

"All right people, let's take our positions."

Thank you Legend, you are a glorious rainbow.

"Gotta go."

I had experience and got myself on a team as far away from Sophia as possible because I had bigger shit to deal with. I was on rescue again, essentially when someone was downed my job was to run in like a maniac get the actual capes to safety and then run to the next one. I turned my suit on and felt myself get lighter.

The city shook and I took up my position, I watched as the power went out, Ironwood's monsters flew through the sky, a white and purple color that told people 'hey I'm on your side'. Zeus rose from the sea, he had the body of a lizard, the head of a lion, and wings. Lighting started crashing down, our communications started frizzing out and then the world blew up.

This was the artillery barrage, it never worked unless someone softened them up first but that wasn't the goal, the goal was to get him angry, get him to walk right into a trap. If Ironwood, or Eidolon could get there in time we would have a chance...and there goes a lot of the east end, I follow my orders and jump in. Literally, with the field I'm strong enough to get them out of there, strong enough to get them to the purple crossed healing bugs. Get them inside, let them fly off, heal and a few minutes later be popped out to go right into battle. Been in them myself, it doesn't hurt.

"Ugh."

I grab the marine and do a click count, I ran to safety, got to a bug, let it open up and placed him inside and then went for the next one. As for why Ironwood doens't do this himself? I was told that the Thinkers said that this was the most efficient way to do it. Or at least led to the most victories and why mess with success, right? I wish I could tell stories of daring do, but honestly I ran on autopilot. Get orders, excute orders, I did what I was told when I was told to do it.

I ignored everything else and just concentrated on my orders, maybe I would die this time, maybe I would live but I knew for a fact that the people who followed orders tended to survive Endbringer battles better then the people who thought that they knew better. I noticed that I was getting closer to the battle between the best of the best and Zeus. That happened every now and then, I tried to kick open a door, that didn't work so I tried opening it by turning the door knob that... yeah that worked. There was a downed cape somewhere and I had to get her to the roof.

I looked around trying to find the smell of burnt ozone, I found Spaziuming on the ground with her hands missing and her burned out tinkertech rifle next her. I put her over my shoulder and pushed the wrist button that would summon a bug, I panted as I got to the top of the roof and put her into the bug. It was high up and I saw Zeus getting pounded, they had him and he... fucking escaped. Then I noticed the exposed core.

My grenade launcher was loaded and on my side, cut down to be more maneuverable, but the range would be shit... and I had no practice. I swallowed down my fear, the knowledge of what a pathetic lying cowardly little shit I was, and jumped off the roof. The grenade launcer felt heavy in my hands and I smelled the ozone of electricity, then I felt the burn. The creature noticed me and I pulled the trigger, his chest was healing, it was healing too fast... shit, it-

The explosion slammed into me and I was smashed into the wall of the building, I screamed in pain as electricity ran through my body, and then I fell into a dumpster. My suit was out of it, my senses were blury and everything hurt.

"Endbringer down... Repeat, Endbringer down. Void Cowboy has the confirmed kill."

I couldn't move, it was hard to breath, a television screen turned to static as it looked down at me.

"You're going to be OK."

And then suddenly I realized that I had somehow really and truly fucked up.