The front door to the Bar with No Name swung open. The three of us turned to see who was joining the festivities. I was expecting our fifth to finally show up after running an hour late, but it could have been any one of the numerous shady clientele of the bar.

What we didn't expect was a guy covered in blood to come stumbling through the door.

"Jesus," Boomerang said as the door closed behind the guy. He stumbled forward, crashing into the bar and just barely staying upright. He had on a blue shirt that was dark on one side with a whole lot of blood, and some of it went down to his slacks, which had a large rip on the left thigh. That wound was definitely gushing blood, as a fresh red stream bubbled into the fabric when he hit the bar.

"Hel..." was all the guy got out before he fell away from the bar and landed face-first on the floor.

A few seconds passed. I was still holding the box of steaks, and Speed Demon and Boomerang were half-turned, looking at the guy on the ground. I remember the bar was silent for those seconds...

Until Trapster let out a loud snore.

For some reason, his sleep apnea broke the three of us out of our temporary stasis. I put the steaks on the bar and pushed between my two friends towards the guy. The bartender was leaning over the bar, staring down at the guy as I squatted down to check him out.

His breathing was ragged, but somewhat steady. His pulse was a little slow for my liking, however. "Come on, get this guy to a table," I found myself saying.

"What for," Fred asked.

"Because I want to see how bad he is before we patch him up and get him out of here. Hey," I said, motioning to the barkeep, "you got a first aid kit?" He nodded, and started walking to the far end of the bar. "Here, James, give me a hand, man."

Demon grabbed the guy's feet as I got his shoulders. We very carefully turned him over and lifted him off the ground. As we carried the guy past Boomerang, he stepped to the side and gave a low whistle. "Christ, Herman, it looks like a dog got to him." Up close, I could see that the fabric of his khakis had been torn away, not cut, and that a couple of buttons were missing from his shirt, along with several small swatches of fabric.

We laid him out on the table, and I gave him a quick once over. "Alright. Here's what we're going to do. I'm gonna patch him up. Fred, you grab the phone book and find out which hospital's closest. James, you're going to run him there and drop him off in the ER."

"Why would we do that?" It was almost in stereo, the way Boomerang and Speed Demon protested.

"Because if this guy doesn't get looked at, odds are he's going to die. And I think the last thing we need is someone croaking in this bar, or else the heroes ain't ever gonna let them set up shop again." I went to take the first aid kit from the barkeep, who had come out from behind the bar with a large white metal box in hand. But he waved me aside, and put the box down on the table. He opened it up and started to pull out gauze and wound pads. I just stepped back and let the man work.

Speed Demon joined me a second later. I looked over at him, about to ask him what in the hell could have happened to the guy...then I saw the black leather wallet in his hands. "You're kidding me, James. You ROLLED the guy?"

"Damn right I did. I wanted to make sure the guy has insurance before I drop him off somewhere. And..." He held up a wad of twenties. "...don't forget the co-pay"

I reached for the wad. "And don't forget YOU owe me twenty bucks yourself..."

A loud, high-pitched scream cut us off. "OH, GOD, HELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLP!"

Maybe I'm just a sucker for a damsel in distress. Or maybe it was a scream I hadn't heard before. Sure, in my line of work, I've had women (and some men) scream when I show up to do the voodoo I do pretty well. But they're usually a cry for help that, in the Big Apple, they expect to be answered. By Spider-Man, by Cloak and Dagger, hell, even one time, the Sentry, when he swooped down from the sky and snagged a carjacker by lifting the freakin' car.

But this scream, though...it was primal. Like this person was seconds away from death.

I was moving past Speed Demon and a phone-book-perusing Boomerang by the time the scream ended. I had my uniform on (sans mask), but my gloves and boots were on the ground by my barstool. I didn't think to stop and grab them, and in the end, that fact almost got me killed.

The Bar was in a not-quite rediscovered block of Avenue D, so seeing a bright yellow school bus in the middle of the street caused me to stop in my tracks almost as soon as I was outside. It was parked across both lanes of traffic, one end nosed into a parked car on the right side of the street. The sun had set behind the low-rent apartment buildings lining both sides of Avenue D, so I couldn't make out anything inside the bus itself. But what I did make out...

"HELLLLLLP!"

...was the lady screaming for help. Hard to miss her, but, again, late evening, New York City public school bus stuck in Alphabet City vs. lady screaming for help in a rough part of New York City. Take away the screaming, and the school bus wins in terms of "what the fuck" factor 95 out of 100 times.

The lady was in the middle of the street, lying on her back. On top of her, another man was flailing away at her, trying to get a good grip on her. The top of her blouse, I could see, was ripped open, and she was barefoot. Her hands slapped and pushed at the guy attacking her, but he just kept grabbing and groping.

Ok, I may be a villain, but assaulting a lady...unless she's an Avenger or a member of the Serpent Society, it's pretty damn low, especially if she's a, pardon the term, "civilian." Now go a bunch of steps down on that Sliding Scale of Morality, and you'll find rapists. You ever hear the joke "even villains have standards?" Well, some of us do. In either case, assault, rape, in what technically amounted to broad daylight? Outside one of the few bars I could actually still drink at in this city?

"Hey, buddy, get OFF!" I charged towards the guy, barely aware that Speed Demon and Boomerang were behind me. They took a few hesitant steps towards the woman, probably confused at what the hell I was doing.

Once I got there, I grabbed the guy by the back of his flannel shirt's collar and just pulled him right off. Spinning in place, I tossed the guy away, towards the opposite side of the street. He staggered away and landed face first between a Buick and a Nissan. I looked down at the lady. She was breathing hard, and her eyes were wide, but she was registering me standing in front of her. After a beat, I extended my hand down towards her. "Lady, what the..."

Then the guy I had thrown away slammed into my side and clawed at my exposed neck.

Before we push on, I should take the time to explain a few things about me and what I can do. If you've seen me on TV, you've seen my...unique looking costume. Basically, for the first couple years of my criminal career, I wore this homemade costume made of really thick yellow quilt patches. It added a good bit of bulk, but it also ensured that I wouldn't kill myself from using my gloves.

Gloves first. Without bragging too much...I'm a fucking genius when it comes to engineering. I dropped out of high school, but that was because...well, odds are you've been to high school. It's fucking boring. Not the geometry and physics, mind you, but English and history. Who needs them? I got disruptive enough that I was asked to leave my senior year, and I bummed my way around for a few years, working in auto shops, fixing boats down on the docks, and doing the occasional stick-up and heist. I found out I had a knack for locks along the way, and spent some time with a crew in Lower Manhattan as a safecracker. And a damn good one, too. Went independent in a few months and made a name for myself. You ask anyone who the world's best safecracker is, and Herman Schultz's gonna come up with in five names.

That ended when I got arrested and thrown into General Population at Riker's.

Jail and I didn't quite agree. So I started looking for a way out. Now, I was a safecracker, but jailbreaker wasn't on my resume. Finesse went out the window, so I decided to blast my way through the gates. Now, in a great show of New York Department of Corrections bureaucracy, they assigned me to work in the machine shop of Riker's Island. Putting a safecracker in a machine shop was dumb enough, but...you know, genius at engineering? It took me five months to put together my first set of vibro-smashers and blast my way through the wall of the machine shop and right through the wall to freedom.

The concept is actually really simple. I push the thumb triggers, and the gloves project a concentrated blast of vibrating air at intense frequencies. The best way to describe it is like having several near-solid walls of pulsing air smash into you. Depending on how long I hold the triggers down, I can control how far, how intense, and how big the spread is on the blasts. I got five distinct levels set on the trigger, from "stiff punch" (level one) to "don't press your luck" (level three) and capping off with "ever see a parking meter get stuck through a telephone pole(level five)?" And because my blasts vibrate, they can wrack merry hell on physical structures, like buildings, bridges, tunnels...and, of course, human skin and bones.

The vibro-smashers I used to break out of Riker's were hastily jury-rigged together. Once I went to ground, I adjusted, tweaked, and fixed them. The first time I fired one properly, though...well, the initial test almost fucking killed me. So when you saw my yellow-and-brown suit, what you saw was me surrounding myself in quilting so I didn't blow my skin off while using my gloves. Stupid looking, but practical, save for the occasional nosebleed. The padded suit actually served me pretty well until Spider-Man realized all he had to do was wrap me up in his arms and point my hands away from him. That summer SUCKED in terms of cash flow.

Luckily, though, I shared a cell block on the Raft (which was a step up from Riker's. Better food, for one) with Unus the Untouchable. Guy was a flake, but he gave me an idea. When I broke out, I took my suit and shoved a whole bunch of contact plates for small shock units under the quilting. Throw in a couple of motion detectors, and anytime someone tries to grab me, they go off and deflect their hands away. Makes me impossible to take completely by surprise. And as an added benefit, thanks to a concept called "trip-hammer vibration," my hand-to-hand punches are about ten times a normal human beings in terms of power and impact.

So yeah. My suit lets me take a punch from Spider-Man (and the Thing, in one case) and my gloves let me make him take a punch from the Shocker, both from long-distance and in close quarters.

Alright, I tried to make the exposition as smooth as possible, so let's get back to my first rescue attempt of the night...

The guy slams into me. My suit deflects physical blows, like punches and chops, but if someone's just trying to bull rush me, they're gonna get through. Good luck trying to grab on, though. This guy's arms and hands are just bouncing off my back, but he manages to catch me where my hood's bunched up just below my neck, the tips of his fingers scraping over the skin for a second. It's enough to cause me to spin around and get ready to shove this fuck. "Hey man, ba..."

Then I got a damn good look at his face.

Yuppie, probably 25 years old, with a head of hair stiff with gel and an attempt at a beard barely described as "scruff." He had on a blue tie and matching shirt. And I could see his teeth through the hole in the right side of his face. It looked like a dog had locked down and torn away a good chunk of his flesh. Dried blood trailed down his cheek and his chin...to the much larger hole in the side of his neck. Forget a dog, it looked like a wolf had gotten a hold of him and tried to rip his throat off.

Kind of like what he was trying to do to me. His hands came up and grabbed at my throat. My response was to simply shove the bastard. I took a step forward, putting myself between this guy and the lady, who was sitting up on the ground now, watching what was going down. The guy staggered backwards, but kept his footing. He was staring at me the whole time, his eves not once leaving me. Before he really had his balance back, he had both arms raised and stumbled back towards me.

Persistent.

I decked him as soon as he was in range. I didn't have my vibro-smashers on, but years of lugging them around, along with wearing a heavily padded suit, gave me a decent right cross. I caught him right in the jaw, easily with the way he lumbered towards me without trying to defend himself. Small problem, though. It didn't stop him. The yuppie kept coming forward, moving towards me. Not the woman he had been attacking. Me.

I cocked my elbow back, and smashed the guy right square in the jaw wit it. The pressure pad underneath fired from the impact, adding just enough oomph. That sent the guy staggering again...right on top of one of the lady's shoes. I watch as the yuppie tripped over a medium-heeled red shoe and go spinning away, stumbling towards the cars parked on the opposite side of Avenue D. Somehow, he managed to end up between two of them, with just enough room between them for his body to fall forward in a clumsy ballet...

*THWICK*

His body was at a 45 degree angle to the street as he fell directly onto the thick metal bolt that sat on top of the fire hydrant on the curb. He jerked slightly for a moment, before his arms went limp and fell straight towards the ground. His legs went out from under him too. It took a few seconds for him to stop twitching, and then went perfectly still.

A shoe. I took out the first one with a god damn shoe.

At the time, though...seriously, who the heck accidentally kills someone with a shoe? And I was damn sure the guy was dead, because the way his body was, the bolt had to be the only thing holding it up...

"Herman..." Speed Demon zipped up, joining me in staring at the yuppie's body. "...what did you do?"

"I didn't mean to, James," I protested weakly. "The guy kept coming, so I elbowed him, and he tripped! How the hell was I supposed to know there was a fire hydrant there!" I had never killed anyone before. Sure, I had come close plenty of times, but always by accident (save of course for the "drunk-so-he-missed-all-the-fun" Trapster). Killing's a line I...thought I'd never cross. That all went out the window pretty quick as the night went on, but for right there and then, I was mortified.

"Calm down, man, calm down." Speed Demon put his hand on my arm, and seemed to actually make an effort to speak relatively slowly. "It was an accident, alright? I'll testify as much in court, self-defense or something..."

"Yeah, yeah...I mean I would have seen the damn hydrant if someone hadn't parked in front of it! There's laws against that kind of thing!"

"There you go, sheila." Behind the two of us, Boomerang had helped the woman to her feet. Fred never was one to pass up a chance to chat up a girl, even when his friend was staring at the corpse of what would have been his first murder. "You're ok now, I got you..."

"The kids!" The woman had broken out of her shock (I don't know if she even saw what had happened to the guy attacking her) and was pointing at the school bus. "They're going after the kids!" Speed Demon and I turned around...

"Oh, crap," we both said in stereo.

Two guys had pushed open the front door to the school bus. Now that I was paying attention, the forms of the passengers of the bus were evident. The screaming helped as well, a cacophony of high pitched cries tinged with fear.

Assault on a woman was bad enough. But kids? Even Boomerang, who had no problem offing a cop if they got in his way during a bank heist, wouldn't touch a hair on a kid's head.

I started heading that way as Boomerang was telling the woman "stay here, we'll get em off of the kids." A dark blue form whizzed past me, though. I had barely moved by the time Speed Demon had reached the bus. One guy had already gotten inside, but the other guy had one hand on the door, trying to pull himself up onto the first step.

Speed Demon was suddenly in front of him, one hand on the guy's chest. "Back off, pal..."

Now, James had some of the fastest reflexes in the world. But the guy (Knicks jersey, I remember), his hand came up so damn fast, and wrapped around Speed Demon's forearm. Before he reacted, the guy had bent down...

"MOTHER!" James yanked his arm back, rubbing at a spot on his costume. "Son of a bitch, you..." The guy leaned forward as James spoke, and I heard one of those things moan for the first time. I've heard it a lot since, but it still scrapes across my nerves every single time it's made. The only part of Speed Demon that's not covered by his costume is his mouth and nose. Moving at the speed of sound, you encounter wicked wind resistance, not to mention that a little pebble could feel like a .22 at that velocity. From where Boomerang and I stood, it looked like the guy was trying to bite at that part of James, the exposed skin of his cheeks and lips.

His profane cry earlier had me and Fred moving as quick as we could to help him out. Now Speed Demon reacted. I could just make out the blur as James zipped behind the guy, and put his hand on the back of his head...

WHAMWHAMWHAMWHAM!

The guy's head bounced off of the side of the school bus four times in rapid succession. Speed Demon stepped back and let the guy fall backwards. There was a big red splash seeping into the dent from the impact of the guy's skull, and a few drops were beginning to make trails down the yellow paint.

I noticed all of that out of the corner of my eye. I didn't even stop to think about how Speed Demon had probably killed that guy (Speed Demon kept a more...loose set of ethics, in the years I knew him), but bounded up the steps and into the bus.

The driver's side window was covered in blood, with most of it having pooled down in the sill by the time I had arrived. The keys were still hanging in the ignition, but the engine was off. I took all that in very quickly before turning towards the screaming kids. A dozen boys, maybe fifteen, and all the noise they were making, the bus was acting like an echo chamber. The guy was about halfway up the aisle, and most of the kids were crammed into the very back of the bus. When they saw me, the cries started switching from fear to...not joy, but if there was a way to sound relieved while still managing to piss your pants, their voices held it.

I moved as quickly as I could up the narrow aisleway. By the time I got there, the guy was reaching over one of the seats towards the closest kid. The kid couldn't have been more then ten, and instead of yelling, he was curled up under the window, knees pulled to his chest, sniffling slightly.

I grabbed the asshole (he was reaching for a little kid, far as I'm concerned, asshole) and pulled him back into the aisleway. A good stiff jab to the back of the head seemed to stagger him, that I had to reach out and grabbed the back of his shirt to make sure he didn't get any closer to the kids. "Get that back door open," I yelled. I had to repeat it a second time to make sure I was heard over all the screaming that was still going on.

"The back door's jammed," one of the older boys responded. "It's stuck!"

Christ. Speed Demon and Boomerang were still outside, and I wasn't sure if they could hear anything I yelled at them. I glanced over at the side windows, all of them shut, and none of them big enough for one of the kids to squeeze through. "Damn it...alright, I'm gonna keep him tied up! You kids crawl over..."

It would have been a pretty good plan, I'm sure. Something one of the capes would have thought up. Hold the bad guy in place, tie him up, as the innocent kids make their brave and miraculous escape. Heroic and dashing.

Then the guy pushed backwards against me, and I tripped over my own shoes.

The aisleway was narrow, so when this asshole rammed himself backwards, I lost my balance. Normally, not a problem, except that I banged against the side of one of the bus seats, and that twisted me around a bit, which caused my legs...you know, screw it, I'm not going to explain the comedy of errors that led to me lying on the floor of the bus with a drooling nutjob on top of me. Just accept that I did and let's move on.

So I go down, and the guy spins around and pounces on top of me. He's got several holes in his shirt, long greasy hair, and there's something dripping from his gaping mouth that I hope to God is spit (turns out, it wasn't) and he's pushing down, trying to get closer. It takes both hands on his throat to keep him upright, but I have no freakin' leverage down on the ground, and anytime I tried to kick or twist, I banged into the metal supports for the seats. The kids are still screaming, and I'm pretty sure by this point I have a nice stream of swear words going as well. "Come on, move! Start climbing over the seats!" Of course, they weren't moving, but I wasn't going to blame them. Get mad at them, yeah, but in their situation...

I was in the middle of cursing myself for leaving the vibro-smashers in the fucking bar when I hear a loud creaking sound, just before, through the gap between the seats and the guy's leg as he's straddling me, the back door of the bus suddenly rips on open. An Australian voice yells "COME ON, BLOODY MOVE IT," and it's enough to get them moving. On the bright side, I am keeping this asshole tied up, so the kids can scramble out the back.

"FRED!" I yell this without too much shame. "I'M GONNA NEED A HAND HERE!" The guy's still pushing, and snarling now. I get a good look at his shirt while trying to avoid whatever it was that he was dripping on me. Beneath a couple of the holes, I can barely make out what types of wounds are underneath. If the number of holes on his chest are indeed from what I think they are...

...someone tell me why he's on top of me, trying to do...something...to me...with five or six bullets in his chest?

"GET HIS HEAD UP, MATE!" I head Boomerang scream once the final kid is away. I push up, but the asshole's pushing right back down. I grit my teeth and lift his throat, slowly inching upwards as he's thrashing and shoving back...

"COME ON, HERMAN, GET HIS HEAD UP!"

With a bit of a snarl on my own part, I gave a good shove. As the guy's upper body got forced upwards, I could hear a familiar swishing sound...

With a wet squish, one of Boomerang's razorrangs embedded itself in the back of the guy's head. He went limp in my arms almost immediately, and I managed to shove him completely off of me. I scrambled back a few feet, looking at the sharp piece of curved metal sticking out of his skull. At the other end of the bus, standing just outside the door, Boomerang waved a hand. "HERMAN! You alright?"

I gave him a half-hearted thumbs up, before getting back to my feet and climbing out of the front of the bus. Speed Demon was waiting for me. I shoved down my urge to ask him why the hell he hadn't come on the bus after me, and instead asked another question. "What the hell did that guy to do you?"

"BIT me!" Speed Demon held up his forearm, which he was rubbing slightly. His costume was intact, but I could make out the indentation of teeth marks in the outfit. "He grabbed my arm and tried to fucking bite me!"

"One way to break a hold," I muttered. "Did he get you, James?"

"No," he replied. "Didn't break the outer layer." The two of us walked to the back of the bus, where Boomerang was waiting for us. He had climbed onto the bus to retrieve his weapon from the guy he had dropped, and was sitting on the edge of the aisleway, legs swinging slightly. "Christ," James said once we arrived, "this night went to hell in a hurry."

The emergency door was lying on the street. I had to step over it to stand in front of the Australian. Rubbing my face, I looked down at the door, and then at the jagged metal that had once been the hinges holding it to the bus. "Damn, Fred, how the hell did you get it open? Did you blow it up or something?"

"Mate, I didn't have a damn thing to do with it." He pointed over my shoulder. Turning, I saw that the woman I had helped earlier had gathered up the kids who had escaped the bus...

...and all of them were standing around the guy who I should have known would have been responsible for ripping apart the back of a school bus. The kids were all staring up at him with a bit of awe from his feat of strength, and the looks on their faces made me smile, relieved that the fifth member of our drinking party had finally made it.

"You're late, Aleksei. What the hell took you so long?"

Aleksei Sytsevich, aka the Rhino, held up a pink box, tied together with a white piece of string. "Sorry, Herman. I had to stop and get your birthday cake."