My talk with Armmaster helped me learn some stuff about The Gang. One that they were in business for seven years, and they recently gained a new member. The short man, was named 'tattletale'. But there was a lot of information I was missing out on. So I found out.
My school had a computer room, So I decided to go to it, I would've looked them up when I came home from school but I was tired so I just slept, and in the morning I had to go to school so this was the earliest I could go. I enjoy going there because I like how none of my tormentors is there,
There was a line for the computer like always but I could keep my patience and get on one computer and look them up on PHO, the leading site for parahumans news.
I had a sense that The Golden God or Tattletale were the leaders, so first I started with Tattletale, when I looked him up, I frowned. The search showed basically nothing, starting with a header reading "this is a stub. Be a hero and help us expand it." There was a one-sentence blurb on how he was an alleged villain active in Brockton Bay with a single blurry photo. The only new information for me was that his costume was Lavender. A search on the messenger boards turned up absolutely nothing. There wasn't even a hint what his power was.
I looked up The Golden God, and I got a little more than with tattletale. For one thing, I learned that he possibly has nerve powers. And has been in the criminal business for 7 years. A rather long time to be involved in the criminal business without getting caught. I learned that he's been doing this ever since he was a fully grown adult. He uses a taser to shock people and has been in several confrontations with the Protectorate at least five times. And has lost five times, but always escapes. I guess if their team has been in fights with heroes for several years, but they know nothing about Tattletale, it's true he's a recent addition.
I searched for Dogman next. No results. I did another search for his more official title, Hellhound, and got some information. Apparently, the animals I saw were dogs he turned into monsters as big as cars with his power. He had had his dogs since he was eight and got his powers when he was fourteen, according to his own words in fights with The Protectorate. He trained his dog's various techniques to tear people apart, sniff out drugs, and strike and retreat. I imagine that would've been useful against Lung. The picture in the sidebar was taken from surveillance footage. An average-sized man with dark brown hair wearing a dog mask, which was the only unusual thing he was wearing. Everything seemed normal for a young man to be wearing, except for his shows, which looked like skechers. He was wearing a gray shirt, green jacket, and blue jeans. It looked like he put no effort into finding a supervillain costume.
I looked up The Dark Brute. The wiki states he's been a criminal as long as The Golden God and Dogman. It said he did plenty of crimes all by himself, petty theft, such as robbing small stores and doing some as an enforcer for those who wanted a little superpowered muscle for a job. However, whenever he's with the rest of The Gang, as they called themselves, they do higher-scale jobs, including corporate theft, attempting to rob banks, and robbing a casino. It said that he had basic hand-to-hand combat according to Armmaster's words and that he and Armmaster have had several confrontations against each other. Enough for The Dark Brute to consider him an arch-enemy, but I imagine all supervillains say that about a superhero that has beaten them repeatedly. They listed his picture as darkness generation in the sidebar under his picture. It was a picture of all the Gang, and what looked like another fifth member in dark spandex and a bird mask. I didn't see her in the fight against Lung. I thought about looking her up, but I didn't know her name, so I decided against it.
After looking up Lung and his minions on the news articles and the forums, I looked up myself. I included insect, spider, swarm, bug, plague, and a mess of other terms that had struck me when I had been trying to brainstorm a good hero name. I narrowed the timeframe of posts to search for posts made within the past 12 hours and hit Search.
My efforts turned up two posts. One referred to a villain called Pestilence, one of those capes that claimed their power was magic, The second post was in the 'Connections' section of the message board, where rescued damsels left their contact information for their dashing heroes, where conventions and people organized fan gathering and where people posted job offers for capes and the cape-obsessed. Most were cryptic or vague, referring to stuff only the people in question would know.
The message was titled, simply, "Bug".
I clicked it and waited impatiently for the outdated system and overloaded school modem to load up the page. What I got was brief.
Subject: Bug
Owe you one. Would like to repay the favor. Meet?
Send a message,
Tt.
The post was followed by two pages of people commenting. Three people suggested it was something important, while a half dozen more people decried them as tinfoil hats, 's term for conspiracy theorists It was meaningful, though. I couldn't interpret it any other way; Tattletale had found a way to get in contact with me.