Passion and Power, that's what I, Alice Creek aka Glider, desire in a partner. Sadly those things were lacking among the initiates of  the Har Meggon society.  Oh, there was power to be found within the Har Meggon Society such as Doctor Abominable and the Fury.  But if I, Glider, joined up with them I would just be another henchmen to them, living only to die. Passion could also be found but they burned out in a few weeks usually after trying to take on a job that was outside of their power and inevitably become forgotten.  What associates I have within the society had their own plans, Steel Wolf wanted to climb the ranks of Har Meggon and was working to ingratiate himself with the higher ups.  He would never accept being anything less than the Alpha in any relationship, at least if it was not to his advantage.  PsycaDelia wanted to open the minds of the world, along with their wallets and bank accounts.  Any partner she took on would be ping ponging between not being noticed and wishing that they weren't noticed.  John Lynch wanted nothing less than to rule the entire world.  He had made an offer to me, but after the "Armadillo Incident" he changed it.  The episode with the roving bottle of nair, a  Superman comic and a camera he retracted it, I kept the video just in case.  My...Mentor I suppose you could call him, was not much of a help remarking that he had been a loner for a long time and wasn't looking to change that.  Of course our first meeting wasn't all that friendly and we had gotten sick of each other over the course of my apprenticeship.

I want to leave something behind more than just another trophy in some superheros base, like the crasher or Marie Ice.  There were so many villains that had died over the years (Nightshade, Bracken...)  perhaps taking the hero that they where fighting with them and those where the lucky ones they where the ones that were remembered, the others might as well never have existed. Even within the society those that failed were forgotten unless used to make an example about why you don't do something.  So I stopped looking within the Har Meggon Society for partners to make my mark on the world with and decided to  do things my own way. So I took my goons and headed out to make my own organization.  It would be  a lot of work, but I felt that it was worth it for my beginning.

The front I set up was Alice's Hardware in a slightly disreputable part of Rose City, I may be only a initiate member of Har Meggon but the symbol of the society commanded respect enough that most of the gangs avoided the business. I had chosen Rose City because of the scarcity of Superheros my research turned up only one and that was back in the 1950's before the Red Scare had put most Supers under fierce scrutiny. In fact the Pacific Northwest was surprisingly scarce of supers of any stripe. If there was a reason for this, I would soon find out. I chose a hardware store because it would blend in more and the equipment I would need to buy could be easily concealed among the normal supply shipments.  My goons adapted surprisingly well to retail. This meant that I would have to worry less about leaving the store in their hands when the call for my first job came in, after all I only needed one for a getaway driver.

So I changed into what I had chosen for my uniform. A full face mask with built in voice modifier and gasmask, no cape but a suit of light body armor, armed with a knives, a pistol along with my sniper rifle. Engineer Boots with the reinforced steel toe, to protect my feet from the cutting metal on the roofs and harsh landings.  Nothing was revealed and it was in mottled shades of grey and black, to break up the silhouette.

What the guy did to get this hit ordered on him, I didn't know nor did I care.  So I set my self up on top of a roof, at the corner of Hazel Ave. and Cedar St., across from the city hall and waited.  It was 3 hours later when I saw him exit the building.  Arthur Mchan  was a middle aged man, with graying hair he was a city planner apprently.  With a squeeze and the recoil of the rifle the job was done.

I started to carefully but quickly make my getaway, but I was only a few roofs away when someone jumped down in front of me in a swirl of cloth.  From the voice that rasped out of the man, it was obvious that he meant to be a hero.  "Stop." That was not even worthy of a response

Besides obeying orders was never my thing, so I just rammed into him and shoved him off the building.   He grabbed me by the arm as he fell and pulled me off the roof, his weight dragged me down. We hit the ground hard, jarring our bodies. We recovered about the same time and went on to exchange blows.  I tried to punch him but ended up hurting my hands, they after all were not reinforced.  I think I broke a few of his bones when I kicked him, from the feeling I got from my blows I could tell that he was also wearing body armor.  I had to move fast to avoid him trying to punch me,  I got clipped by a roundhouse and already I could feel the pain spread.  At one point he had me pinned to the ground.  "Why did you kill him?"At this point I knew that I was outclassed as a fighter but I fight dirty so, I head butted him and stabbed him  in the side with one of my knives.

"It's just business." My voice came out heavily modified, surprising even me. I couldn't see his expression but I could tell that he was pissed off. I now that I should kill him here and now to stop him from being a nuisance later on.  But I had already killed tonight and the death of a 'hero, even someone new would attract too much attention from the organized 'hero groups. Quite frankly if that happened I would be as good as dead. I met up with my getaway driver to go back to the store to catch the aftermath with my goons.
   
It got a full 10 minutes on primetime news before it started to repeat. They had no clue who I was and that I would like to keep it that way.  No mention of the hero was made at all, so was he on the bad side of the law or just the media?  Putting that aside for tomorrow when I would start my research on him. I settled back with my goons as I was informed that the rest of the pay that I had been promised had just been paid.  It was a good start.