In downtown Superior City, at Washington Park, a mysterious person wearing a battered trenchcoat and hat sits next to a pond, fishing. He doesn't catch anything, save from a disapproving look from a little girl in a black dress with a matching black parasol and a bouquet of black roses. "Are you allowed to fish in the park?" she asks, pointedly glancing to the sign nearby that reads "No Fishing". The mysterious person (who bears a suspicious resemblance to a giant mutant turtle in a trenchcoat) just shrugs - so the little goth girl instead heads across the park, toward a cotton candy stand.

"What colors do you have cotton candy in?" she asks the woman at the stand.

"All colors! What color would you like?"

"Black," the little goth girl says.

The woman doesn't quite know how to respond to this, but after an awkward pause, she suggests, "How about very dark purple?"

"Perfect!" the goth girl says, and she buys a cluster. When she turns around, she can't help but notice a threesome of conspicuously monstrous looking fellows lumbering along, wearing trenchcoat-and-hat disguises. Meanwhile, the would-be fisher at the pond heads over to a skater boy who looks like he's about to spray some graffiti on a wall - and promptly starts up a conversation with him, showing off his own skateboard.

The goth girl, meanwhile, rescues a kitten from a tree, and returns it to the little boy who lost it (though she scolds him for not taking better care of his kitten).

It's a lovely, almost perfect day ... until the three suspicious-looking men (?) throw off their trenchcoats. Underneath, it's evident that they are mutants: huge, overly muscled men with horns and bony ridges. One of them, the brown one, is "Smash". The green one introduces himself (loudly) to everyone as "Bash", and the red one introduces himself as "Crash". They begin to act according to their names, grabbing park benches, a mailbox, and a trash bin, and tossing them about, causing much destruction and mayhem. Citizens scream and run - including the boy with the kitten - while the cotton candy vendor hides behind her booth.

The little goth girl decides that these men are very bad, the way they're destroying things, so she flings a few of her roses - sharp stem first - and one of them sticks in the backside of Smash's trousers. That certainly gets his attention ... so he turns around and tosses a garbage bin at the little goth girl! The cotton candy vendor screams, as the bin digs into the ground, garbage flying everywhere.

Suddenly, the mysterious fellow across the street tosses aside his trenchcoat, revealing himself to be ... the Turtle Ninja! He comes to the rescue, flinging shuriken at the other two overly-muscled thugs ... and in return, he gets a few heavy objects flung in his direction. He opts to do a partial retreat, clambering up a nearby lamp post, to fling his shuriken from higher ground.

Just about then, a muscular, dark-skinned man with mirrored glasses comes running onto the scene, just in time to see the dumpster get dropped on the little goth girl. "That's no way to treat children!" he calls out, and he charges into the fray. Shortly behind him, a girl in a white trenchcoat shows up - Voltage - and she decides it's time to go into action, too.

Punches fly - as to more benches, mailboxes, lawnmowers, and anything else that is or isn't nailed down. The muscular fellow with the shades is Scars - as his body evidences - but he can take an awful lot of punishment ... and he can take even more if he's allowed a moment to catch his breath. He takes blow after blow from Smash, occasionally returning the favor with a well-placed punch of his own. Alas, while the little goth girl manages to imbed a couple more rose stems into the backside of Smash and his companions, Smash has no qualms about slapping little girls around, and he knocks her unconscious. He also has no qualms about hitting a guy with glasses (sunglasses, admittedly), and he piledrives Scars into the ground. He's rather shocked when he sees that Scars is unharmed ... but he quickly recovers, this time knocking Scars toward the street, creating a large furrow through the grass and dirt on his way there.

Turtle Ninja manages to take out Bash, but then Crash grabs the lamp post he's on, and smashes it down on Scars (who is still trying to pull himself out of the latest crater he's made in the ground). The poor Turtle Ninja is knocked senseless. Voltage, still smarting from going one-on-one with Crash, rushes up and delivers him a powerful electrical shock that sends him flying backward, smashing through a crate of spare car parts, and then into some machinery at a car repair shop. The haywire hydraulics give Crash a good pounding ... and then Voltage, giving her all with one last push, runs up and grabs the contacts on the machinery, giving it one last surge of power. The machinery comes crashing down, and Crash groans, flopping unconscious. Voltage, a satisfied look on her face ... slumps down, unconscious.

That just leaves Scars versus Smash ... and Smash has a wrecked light post, a trash dumpster and an abandoned cotton candy stand at hand to use as improvised projectiles. Things just get uglier from there.

Smash hurls several oversized projectiles at Scars, and flings him across the street. Scars pulls himself out of the crater, dusts himself off, and then rushes forward to deliver a defiant punch against the rampaging mutant hoodlum. Despite Scars's legendary resilience, he is showing the effects of so much abuse, and his own attacks against Smash only seem to make the mutant even angrier and meaner.

After getting clobbered with the now-greatly-battered trash dumpster again, he "plays 'possum" for a bit, trying to regain his strength. Smash gloats and leisurely strolls over to rip up what is left of the cotton candy booth to use as a projectile. Alas, Scars's amazing regenerative ability isn't coming through for him at the moment, so he hauls himself out from underneath the dumpster, and bolts across the street. Smash, grinning from ear to ear, stomps after him, with the booth held over his head and bits of candy falling out left and right. (Voltage, despite being winded, manages to grab a cluster of castaway cotton candy, and munches on it while watching the rest of the battle.)

Scars struggles, hand over hand, to climb up a drain pipe to the rooftop of a nearby building. He leans over, psyching himself up, trying to regain his strength ... but then he watches, to his amazement, as Smash simply leaps from the street, still carrying the remains of the cotton candy booth. The huge mutant comes crashing down on the roof of the building, almost breaking through it. He gloats, and prepares to flatten the remaining hero with his makeshift weapon.

Scars isn't fully recovered. He doesn't have the "super strength" that he's able to use to great effect when at full power ... but he has no choice. With a mighty yell, he rushes forward, making a tackle against the mutant's knees. He's unable to do more than a minor bruise against the mutant's rock-hard hide ... but it's enough to knock Smash off balance. Smash stumbles back a couple of feet ... but a "couple of feet" is sufficient put him out into open space.

With an angry bellow, Smash plummets off the building, falling a couple of stories, smashing into the pavement below ... and then the cotton candy machine teeters off the edge and falls on top of him. As Scars drags himself to the edge of the rooftop, he looks down to see Smash briefly struggling, then flopping, unconscious, back into the hole in the street that he's just made. From the other corner, he can see Voltage weakly raising her hand to make a thumbs-up.

The battle is over, and the sirens indicate that the police, at last, are on their way.

Our heroes groan and gradually get up, dusting themselves off. Scars first goes to check on the little girl that he saw get clobbered by Smash, and is amazed that she seems to be largely untouched. Still, moved by pity that she lost her cotton candy, he salvages some from the wreckage of the cotton candy machine and hands it to her. Alas, she seems no more cheerful than usual.

Turtle Ninja wastes no time in hauling open a manhole cover, and leaping in. Voltage follows suit, huffing and puffing as she drags in a scavenged lawnmower with her (one that was briefly used and abandoned by one of the mutants as a makeshift projectile). Bewildered, Scars asks, "Why are we running away from the cops?" Then, he looks around, at the craters, the furrows across the street, and the smashed booths and park benches. The little goth girl gives him a shrug, retrieves her parasol, and lightly leaps down the manhole. With another groan, Scars clambers down after her, and hauls the manhole cover back over himself.

Down in the sewers, our heroes have a chance to introduce themselves, more or less. The Turtle Ninja reveals that he is "on vacation" from New York, and that he has always been a giant mutant turtle. Voltage is a college student and something of a tinker; despite her obvious possession of impressive powers, she tries to explain it all away as mere "static electricity" from her habit of wearing a rubber coat lined with fur, and a pair of rubber boots. Scars reveals that he's a retired soldier who actually fought back in World War II, even though he still looks as though he's only in his twenties; his amazing regenerative powers have kept him going for a long time, and he's decided to make good use of it by fighting crime. The little goth girl doesn't say much about herself (and nobody asks).

Voltage and Turtle Ninja fill in their companions on their previous misadventures in the sewers. Turtle Ninja shows the way, and they get far enough away from Washington Park that they can risk popping back up to the surface. Voltage volunteers to go up for some pizza ... but after having to wade through raw sewage (not possessing the abilities of the others to make impressive leaps over streams of sludge), she figures that Scars is probably best off of the bunch of them to make the run. They argue for a bit over what toppings to get on their pizza, and finally Scars takes the order up. Wisely, on his way back to the manhole, he goes ahead and eats his own share of the pizza - as he's none too fond of the idea of eating pizza mere feet away from raw sewage.

Back in the sewer, our heroes have lunch ... though Voltage and the little goth girl are somewhat nauseated by the combination of pepperoni and sewer-stink, and end up using parts of their shares of pizza to feed to the occasional baby alligator passing by. Turtle Ninja seems to be the happiest with the arrangement, and carries the leftovers in a box. They talk for a bit about where to go next, and Voltage brings up that she remembers a possibly relevant news report: gang members in the crime-ridden area known as the Factory were rumored to be using some sort of toxic goo as part of an illegal process to give themselves horrible mutations - and super-strength. Side effects included horrific mutation that not only made the recipients rather fearsome to look at ... but made them prone to violence and mental instability. (For someone already mentally unstable and prone to violence, however, it would probably be considered a net gain.)

So, Turtle Ninja decides that our heroes should head toward the Factory, in the hopes of figuring out more about this.

They follow Turtle Ninja's lead, traveling for a while. They head through a familiar-looking tunnel, though it has some unfamiliar contents: a crate caught in some refuse, labeled "Caution", "Danger", "Explosive Contents", etc. Turtle Ninja is curious, and wants to pry it open with a ninja star, but this provokes alarmed protests from Voltage and Scars. Turtle Ninja insists that there should be no harm in merely opening a crate; he won't make any sparks, and it's not as if a crate is something that would have an air-tight (or sewage-tight) seal that he'd be breaking.

During all the arguing, the little goth girl (looking perturbed at the delay - or perhaps just perturbed in general) starts to get out one of her roses to fling at the box. Scars cries out and grabs her hand, insisting, "Little girls shouldn't go throwing steel-stemmed roses at boxes of explosives!" So, she decides that she's going to kick it instead. Again, Scars cries out, "Little girls shouldn't be kicking boxes full of explosives, either!"

Finally, things calm down a bit, and Turtle Ninja goes back over to the box to pry it open with a shuriken, while the little goth girl glowers over his shoulder - and Scars and Voltage wisely take a few steps back. The Turtle Ninja easily pops the crate open, without causing so much as a spark or even jostling the crate.

Nonetheless, it explodes, catching the Turtle Ninja in the face, and the little goth girl in its immediate blast radius.

The next moment, as the flash subsides, our heroes suddenly find themselves surrounded by ninjas, in exactly the same formation as the last time they came down this tunnel - led by a female ninja scantily clad in red leather, and another swordsman ninja in dark blood red garb. The ninjas let shuriken fly, but this time, our heroes are ready to meet them. Turtle Ninja drops some smoke grenades to offer some cover from the shurikens for himself, Scars, and the little goth girl - and then he distracts some of the ninjas by shoving pizza into their faces. Voltage gets several shuriken thrown at her, imbedding in her rubber coat, so she wades across the sewage and pulls the handle on the lawnmower (which she has stripped down to its "essential" components in the course of walking through the sewers). "Time to mow the lawn!" she cries, as she smacks it into the first ninja, sending him hurtling into the drink. The other ninja, faced with this horrible prospect, keeps his distance, flinging shuriken at Voltage from a few steps away.

Scars moves forward into the midst of the rest of the ninjas. Not realizing his nigh-invulnerability to most common weaponry, most of the ninjas focus their attacks - vainly - upon him. The Blood Ninja orders his ninjas, calling out weak points in Scars's defenses, but to little avail. The little goth girl leaps over the heads of the ninjas and moves to the back of the fray, pelting them with sharp-stemmed roses from behind, dividing their attention and leaving them open to a few well-placed smacks from Turtle Ninja and Scars.

"You're too pretty to be a bad guy!" Scars says to the female ninja in red, but she responds with a boot to the head. He returns the favor with a straightforward punch - even though he looks regretful the whole time - sending her sprawling into the sewage. At last, there's only the Blood Ninja, and the one ninja who has been pelting Voltage with throwing stars. The Blood Ninja declares, "You have fought well," and then he tosses down a grenade. There's a blinding flash ... and then, a moment later, all is still. The ninjas have fled - and even the bodies of the fallen are gone.

Our heroes dust (and scrape) themselves off, pulling shuriken out of their backsides, and make their way along, discussing amongst themselves just how a whole bunch of ninjas might have been hiding in a box.

As they continue, they get to a corner. There's a manhole cover that provides a way back to the surface, but they make a right turn and continue on. Turtle Ninja does some tracking, and finds marks left by himself - and Voltage and Fireman - from their previous journey through this area. He also finds evidence of the passing of Mad Molly (or someone else navigating the sewers in high heels).

They come to another intersection. Just as before, there's a crate stuck in some debris at the corner, and there are some barrels floating down the passage, all of them marked as containing hazardous contents. Scars proposes prying them open, but Turtle Ninja and Voltage indicate that their previous experiment in that regard yielded little good. Voltage remembers that they thwarted the plans of the cackling bad guy last time. "What was his name? Captain Crunch? Colonel Crash?" (After some time, they recall that it was "Colonel Chaos".) She predicts that if they head downstream, they'll run into a bunch of ninjas, a big guy in a black coat cackling about his evil plans, and so forth. Instead, however, they decide to head upstream, because Turtle Ninja recalls that the barrels of toxic goo were supposed to becoming from "the Factory". If the Factory is where they wanted to go, then going upstream should lead them there.

They make their way along carefully, and eventually they spot a dock of sorts, where a mechanical arm is being used to lower barrels of toxic goo into the sewer flow. Mister Big is there, loudly boasting about how there should only be a few more cans, and Colonel Chaos can finish his master weapon, and they can rule all of the Factory, then Superior City - and then the world! He continues babbling aloud about his plans, mentioning Madame X, while our heroes ignore him and try to come up with a plan of attack. In the end, they decide to send Turtle Ninja snorkling under the sewage, and waiting until an explosion as his cue. That explosion would be courtesy of Scars, who would sneak up, grab a barrel of toxic goo, and throw it, with the typically explosive effects that our heroes had observed before. The others would charge in, and Turtle Ninja would emerge to provide cover fire with his shuriken.

So, our heroes rush into action, and - at least at first - it goes as planned. Scars grabs the barrel, and before anyone can react from their shock to do something about it, he hurls the barrel directly at the controls for the blast door leading away from the dock - thus sealing off Mister Big's most obvious means of escape (or an avenue for reinforcements). His bodyguards and thugs open fire, bouncing bullets off of Scars's muscular chest (and tearing up his poor abused shirt some more). Turtle Ninja pops up to start flinging shuriken at various targets of opportunity, diving back down again after each shot to avoid return fire. The little goth girl leaps across floating barrels to get to a position from where she can hurl roses ... but unfortunately that puts her close enough to the thugs for them to rush her with crowbars and other makeshift bludgeons! (They seem to have no qualms whatsoever against hitting little girls - the monsters!)

Some of the thugs rush to shove barrels of toxic goo into the sewage, so that they aren't surrounded by potential explosives, but too late: Scars rushes up next to the crane arm, and grabs up one of the barrels. He then brings it crashing down on the thug in front of him. It explodes, setting off a chain reaction. Scars is unscathed, but a couple of the thugs drop, unconscious.

Voltage rushes forward and perches atop a barrel of toxic goo that has been pushed into the sewage, but then finds it drifting downstream. Though none of the thugs with guns can target Turtle Ninja in the sewage, they can target Voltage ... and the cannister she's floating on. One of Mister Big's bodyguards, battered from shuriken flung by Turtle Ninja, targets the barrel. It explodes, knocking Voltage unconscious, and dealing a significant blow to the poor Turtle Ninja. Voltage manages to make it to a nearby ledge, waving off Turtle Ninja's attempts to rescue her, so he can focus on the battle at hand.

Mister Big's chief henchman opens fire with a machine gun on Scars, but to little effect. Finally, Mister Big orders one of his bodyguards to man the controls of the mechanical loading arm. She uses it to swing down and grab Scars and lift him up off the ground, slowly squeezing him. With his amazing strength, Scars pushes out, straining against the machinery, and sparks fly ... but it looks like the machine is eventually going to win!

The little goth girl leaps over the heads of the gathered thugs, moving to a far corner, from which she flings several roses, pelting her enemies, and largely just serving to frustrate them, rather than taking them down in droves.

For a moment, it looks like the little goth girl is the only one left for anyone with a gun to shoot at. She flings more roses, taking out a couple of thugs with guns ... and then she focuses on the operator of the mechanical arm, knocking her unconscious. With this distraction - and a few well-placed shuriken from the Turtle Ninja - Scars finally manages to wrench free. Warlord - Mister Big's head thug - goes toe-to-toe with Turtle Ninja, and in the ensuing melee, Turtle Ninja is knocked unconscious. The little goth girl continues to fling roses, winnowing down the numbers of the lesser thugs. Scars prepares to smash Warlord with a piece of the mechanical arm that he's salvaged ... but just then, it expodes in his hands, and he falls back, stunned for a moment. As Warlord prepares to deliver a mighty blow against Scars, the little goth girl looks divided: she sees Mister Big making his getaway down the tunnel, but she also sees Warlord about to pound Scars into the sewage. She decides to focus a burst of roses on Warlord. Warlord looks momentarily surprised at several roses sticking out of his cybernetic hardware ... and then sparks fly, he shakes about, and falls back into the sludge.

Mister Big flees into the darkness.

Scars dusts himself off (figuratively speaking, considering how much sludge is clinging to him now), and our heroes gradually extract themselves from the mess. Voltage grabs one of the thugs and starts questioning him, asking who he works for. He's able to tell them a few things - but largely just what they already knew. He's working for Mister Big, Mister Big is big in the Factory, and they're working on providing some toxic goo that's a crucial element for some weapon of mass destruction being built by Colonel Chaos. He refers figuratively to the weapon being enough to "destroy the world", but then backpedals when Voltage challenges him on the wisdom of serving a madman who's going to destroy the world. At last, Scars offers to cut in. "Here, let me handle this." And then Scars gives the guy a good smack, and knocks him senseless.

The little goth girl starts writing down notes and putting them in the pockets of the various thugs, with a number for a career counseling line, figuring that they need a new line of work. Scars starts to wrench open the broken blast door. Voltage starts to fiddle with the cybernetic machinery on Warlord ... and, alas, sets off a self-destruct sequence. Rose and Turtle Ninja rush toward the blast door, which Scars hasn't quite finished opening yet, while Voltage relentlessly tries to grab every bit of broken machinery off of Warlord's prone form that she can.

There's an explosion.

When the others regain consciousness, they find that Scars has pulled them out of the rubble. After a bit of first aid, they manage to drag themselves along (Voltage heartbroken that she's lost her "new" lawnmower in the chaos), and at last they haul themselves up out of a manhole, to find themselves somewhere in the area of the city known as the Factory.

It's night. There's a building on fire - the Toxico Company, right next door to Acme Smoke Alarms. There are overturned cars, a couple of burned-out police cars, and several thugs with machine guns gathered in a parking lot, as if lying in ambush. At the burning building, the Pyro Twins relish all the destruction (armed with fire-resistant suits and portable flamethrowers), while the power-suited Crimson Duo hover overhead. (Voltage relates to the others that she's heard of these criminals before. The Crimson Duo were a pair of genius brothers who devised super-power-suits as weapons to pitch to the army, but they were outbid by another corporation. In anger, they have gone on a rampage to demonstrate the superiority of their inventions - and recoup the costs of their investments in developing the prototypes. The Pyro Twins have much the same story: their suits and weapons were experimental prototypes developed to be pitched to the military, but they were outbit (by the same corporation), and hence decided to demonstrate the effectiveness of their weapons "on the field", so to speak. Unlike the typical "urban legend" super-vigilante or super-villain, these deranged fellows had appeared on the news several times.)

A team of muscle-bound people in brightly-colored spandex rush to the scene, trading blows with the Crimson Duo and the Pyro Twins. Turtle Ninja and Voltage remember them from news reports as "rumored" vigilantes operating in the city: the mysterious cloaked hero of the night, Lunar; the dazzling, gossamer-winged Faerie Queen; the master of the arcane, the wizard Mysterio; the raging powerhouse Warhawk ... and lastly, the most famous "superhero" of all, Mr. Coffee.

(Of that last, Mr. Coffee looks the least impressive. He's an overweight guy in bright red spandex and goggles, with "Mr. Coffee" and a registered trademark symbol on his chest, with a "Percolator Pack" on his back, a (coffee) beanbag gun slung over a shoulder, a styrofoam cup dispenser, and a helmet with a stylized steaming coffee cup perched on his head. He's one of the few publicly-acknowledge "superheroes", in that he's the eccentric owner of Superior City's most successful coffee chain, often making appearances and coming to the rescue of fatigued college students with a much-needed cup o' joe. He's Voltage's hero for that very reason. In all the TV ads, however, he's typically replaced by a stylized cartoon version who has a perfectly muscular physique and cleft chin, who battles such "supervillains" as "Dr. Fatigue" and "Stayed--Up-Too-Late-Last-Night Man".)

Meanwhile, Scars walks up to some of the thugs, and tries to figure out what's going on. He finds out that they're members of the "Urban Renewal Gang", and that they're watching the blaze. Apparently they've got a grudge against Toxico or corporations in general, and they're not about to let any superheroes inferere by stopping the blaze.

Suddenly, Turtle Ninja cries out, "It's an ambush! Look out, superheroes!" Several guns train on him. As it turns out, Turtle Ninja and the little goth girl spot a kitten up in the top of the burning building, and they each spring to the rescue, making great "anime" leaps as they race across the street. (Turtle Ninja gets there first, and the little goth girl looks somewhat perturbed. As usual.)

So, a fight breaks out. Scars pretends to be unattached to any of the superheroes, and instead runs out into the street, feigning running for his life (while he searches for something large to throw). The other band of superheroes trades blows with the Crimson Duo and the Pyro Twins. Turtle Ninja leaps to the top of the building, but Lunar gets there just a moment before him - and grabs the kitten before he can. When Turtle Ninja protests that he was going to rescue the kitten, Lunar insists that it was his rescue, and he doesn't need someone else butting in. After a brief argument in the middle of a burning building, Turtle Ninja leaps away, only to be replaced by the little goth girl. Lunar looks perplexed, asking where she came from, and tells her to stay there until he comes back to rescue her. He leaps away, and sets the kitten free, then leaps back into the building. The little goth girl, looking perturbed as usual, responds to his attempts to "rescue" her by kicking him in the shins. The floor collapses, and both of them are sent spilling down to the street below ... though, with their "anime leap" abilities, they make it to the bottom unscathed.

Several thugs shoot away at Voltage, but she walks into the midst of them and lets loose with her electrical charge, knocking the majority of them out at once. Still, she's taking quite a beating, so when a couple of thugs come at her with machine guns, she opts to go find a safer venue from which to watch the battle - atop an upturned truck. Goth girl, ticked off at these "superheroes", comes to join her, and they munch on some popcorn. Faerie Queen protests when Turtle Ninja comes in to help fight the Crimson Duo and the Pyro Twins, but it's for naught: after a short battle, all the thugs are knocked out (in part thanks to a small car that Scars started tossing around), the Pyro Twins are knocked out, and the Crimson Duo is splayed on the ground.

Faerie Queen looks like she's about to break into a terrible rage. Lunar, despite his mysterious reputation, sounds somewhat whiny about the interference of these "strangers". Mr. Coffee serves cups of coffee all around, and tries to defuse the situation. Turtle Ninja mostly manages on his own, by suddenly gushing about how great Faerie Queen is, and asking for her autograph on his shell (right next to the signature by Voltage, and a bumper sticker that says "Turtle Crossing"). When Faerie Queen notices the signature of "Voltage", she asks who that is. Turtle Ninja points to Voltage, sitting on the truck across the lot, and Faerie Queen gasps.

"It's Sparky!" she exclaims. "That's the super villain who attacked Darla Dazzle of Channel 99 News!" It looks as if a fresh battle is about to break out, but Turtle Ninja hastily exclaims that it was because of Mad Molly and her mind control powers. Faerie Queen looks distinctly disappointed that Voltage isn't a supervillain after all, so she pouts and leads the others off to go in search of other super villians to defeat.

Turtle Ninja and Voltage are somewhat aghast at the immature behavior of these so-called superheroes. Mr. Coffee stays behind to serve around some more coffee, and to assure our heroes not to take it too seriously. He insists that these superheroes are "newbies". He's not a member of their team: he just goes around to "show the ropes" to "the new kids". (Never mind all the buzz that Mysterio is actually centuries old, and Faerie Queen supposedly even older.) He starts to try to explain "superhero etiquette", but Scars steps in and says that he thinks he knows what he needs to tell his companions. Mr. Coffee thanks him, though looking somewhat confused about something, especially at the sight of the Turtle Ninja. He leaves them with a word of warning: while superheroes are occasionally knocked out by villains in the rest of Superior City, some superheroes come to a violent end in the Factory, as the residents have no qualms about finishing them off once they're down. He urges them to be careful.

Mr. Coffee then takes off, passing out free coffee to a few bystanders who had been watching the battle, and bids our heroes farewell and good luck. (Voltage beams at having met her hero - Mr. Coffee - in person.)

At the sound of corporate security approaching, our heroes decide to head over to catch the nearest monorail to more civilized parts of town. (Turtle Ninja takes a moment, however, to liberate a trenchcoat and a hat from one of the unconscious thugs.) So, they head out to the suburbs, paying a visit to Scars's place. He has a nice house outside of the city proper, with his own yard, his own garage, a nice car, a lawnmower, a holo-television, and full surround sound. He fixes up a few drinks from his private bar for Voltage and Turtle Ninja. (The little goth girl, being underage, has some chocolate milk instead.) Voltage starts fiddling around with Scars's computer system, putting a screen saver with "happy fluffy bunnies" on it, just to annoy him, while Turtle Ninja uses a free-mail account to send an email to his brothers back in New York. Not long after, Turtle Ninja finds a return message from "Postmaster@sewer.net": "No such user. Message could not be delivered. Transcript of message follows...." Turtle Ninja is perplexed at this, but figures that his brothers probably have some sort of security system set up so they won't receive email from an unknown source - or something like that.

They watch the news for a bit, and see a special report on News Channel 99 that features Darla Dazzle on the scene, as a collosal cybernetic monster crashes through the city. Turtle Ninja, Voltage and the little goth girl are aghast, as this is the very same creature that was in Colonel Chaos's lab, which was rather violently destroyed after their last visit. Army tanks and police vehicles were lined up to deal with it, but then there was a blurry glimpse of something - no, someone - flying in: Iron Fist, clad in blue and white, with a red cape, his shining silver mechanical arm ready to punch evildoers.

Just then, static interrupts the signal, and a message indicating "Technical Difficulties" appears. A bit later, the report continues, with the cybernetic collosus lying on the ground, surrounded by tanks and police vehicles, with no sign of Iron Fist. Darla Dazzle winks as she reports that the army and police have succeeded in defeating this menace....

... and then she goes into a report about Superior City's latest menace, a renegade by the name of "Sparky", who had actually attacked the media. (A police sketch bears some slight resemblance to Voltage, though with a rather horrific, goblin-like face - albeit still sporting the important details of the stylized red marks on her face, her frizzy white hair, the white coat, etc.)

"Well, with a police sketch like that, they won't notice you at all!" Scars claims.

"Maybe you should go for a change of costume," Turtle Ninja suggests. "A hat and trenchcoat works wonders for me!"

The little goth girl suggests that black would be a nice color for Voltage's new outfit.

Voltage decides that she'd rather change the subject, and thus proposes that with a little work, she could improve upon the design of Scars's lawnmower....

So, after a brief tour of Scars's collection of old superhero costumes he's collected, during his long career as a part-time masked vigilante, our heroes crash at his place, putting off further discussion of just what they should do next.

Tune in next time, for the continuing adventures of our heroes in ... Superior City!