I wish that I could say that today would be a good day. It won’t be. A good day will come when I can patrol the streets and not see a single member of the Council, Circle of Thorns or Freakshow ruining the lives of the people within the city that I help protect. If Crey didn’t conduct their corporate corruption in broad daylight, shielded only from justice by a wall of highly paid lawyers ready to swoop down on people like me. Heroes. I suppose I should introduce myself. You don’t need to know my real name, you shouldn’t. After all, that’s technically classified information, because I’m what you all would call a Cape. A Mask. Or, my all time favorite, the Tights. Spandex. Sadly for those ill-informed criminals, I left behind both of those favorite costume fabrics and styles behind a long time ago. Instead, I prefer a uniform that lets me identify other people within the Supergroup that I helped to create.

My name is Drift of Frost.

You probably don’t know me that well. I’m not that surprised, as I had to take a trip elsewhere for a while, something that took me out of Paragon City and into Italy. I was trying to follow a trail that had gone cold a few thousand years ago, back in the time of the Romans, but there were a few clues hidden in the hands of the Council and Nictus. The two seem to be wedded these days, ever since the Center picked up the Fifth Column and absorbed Requiem into his organization. I’ve lost count of the amount of times that we saw a Shadow Cyst in the middle of a group of Council, ready to disperse its load of Unbound Nictus. It was at those times that the soldiers became my primary focus. You see, my powers don’t go well with fighting beings with incorporeal bodies, or at least not that many. Something attached to the ground is my plaything, for me to manipulate at my whim until I lock them up in a prison of ice.

However, it is neither the Council nor the Nictus who I fight today. I got my orders last night, leading me to this desolate concrete structure in the corner of Brickstown. Of all of the zones within this city, divided up by the War Walls, Bricks is one of my least favorite. The obvious reason to any citizen is the Ziggurat, the massive prison built to house the toughest, nastiest, most evil criminals known to man. Instead, it is the blatant corruption and criminal elements that stalk the streets. Freakshow, clad in their metal armor, cybernetic implants and strange cyber-grafting that allow them to wield electricity against us. Their techno raves play on every corner, harassing any passerby before starting a showdown with a hero. The Council…as much as I hate them, is possibly less evil than those mercenaries, if only because they have an agenda that requires the world to be in one piece. They start up promotions on every corner, gathering the disaffected and disillusioned into their army to begin a new life as soldiers. Those who refuse end up as research subjects.

The last is the reason why I am standing here, my comrades around me. Crey. The monopoly on all things technological has done things much worse than just what one could consider unethical, but downright criminal. I was there when we charged into one of their labs, knocking out their special brands of scientists and protection. The worst of their horrors that we must face in the flesh are the Paragon Protectors. They are the cloned remnants of hero’s that Crey has taken and mind controlled, allowing them to have a veritable army of men and women directly under their control with powers of proven heroes that they have captured. The Countess Crey, of course, denied all knowledge of such events. The woman must rule with an iron fist, controlling absolutely every aspect of the company. Nothing was out of her reach. That lab, the one which produced Paragon Protectors, I could have torn down with my bare hands, were I not restricted by the laws and regulations that govern us. Instead, I had to settle for letting the Freedom Phalanx stalk over the ruins of a good strike, look at the debris caused by our assault of the ‘illegal’ lab.

It’s for the purpose of taking down the woman in charge that I’m here now, in front of one of those members of the Freedom Phalanx. Manticore, the most dubiously good of those famous men and women. His morals were questionable, although his loyalty was not. Perhaps it was for that reason that he was the one giving us this assignment. Our group leader is actually one of those Nictus who I hunt so much, but AFP is a Warshade. He has turned his back on the ways of those aliens which I so despise, and is fighting to make things right again. Daio is our Tanker, a formidable woman who’s powers in the physical range can not be denied. To pretend they do not exist is to sign your own warrant, a quick, one way ticket to the Ziggurat after one savage strike. Arious, one of the so called Scrappers, needs no weapon other than his hands or feet. I’ve seen him take blows that would cripple a man before and recover in mere seconds, completely regenerated. Oddly, we have another alien on our team, the exact opposite of a Nictus. A Kheldian. Both aliens are really hybrid fusions of humans who have agreed to fuse with the aliens, but perhaps it is fitting that an alien race that has been fighting itself for longer than the human race has been alive are now fighting for the sake of the human race.

The Kheldian is Mean Machine. If AFP has the powers of shadow and darkness, Mean Machine will destroy you with the light of the world. In the background is a strange man, almost a robot instead of a true human. HealBot 9000 is a cyborg, but to say that a cyborg cannot heal is to deny how often he has kept us alive. I have lost count of how many times his healing aura has been dispensed, restoring my vitality and will to fight just when it seemed that I would need to teleport or die. Then there is the so called System of Insanity. She manipulates fire to her will, causing her foes to be incapacitated under the rain of flames and waves of heat. She can strike the hardest out of anyone here, often taking down many of the enemies in mere seconds, leaving only a handful of the toughest, meanest men and women against us.

And then there is me. Drift of Frost. My role is simple, but no less vital. You see, I have the power to manipulate ice to my will, trapping my opponents within blocks of ice, turning the ground beneath them into hazardous terrain that often making them fall to the ground. My faithful servant of ice, Jack Frost, accompanies me at times when it is to dangerous for me to be working. My other powers are perhaps more important though. I deal with kinetics, whether it is speeding up my own allies, turning a volley of kicks into an avalanche that will bury the enemy, or taking that power and speed away from the Paragon Protector who is facing us. We are a fairly balanced team, filled with tricks that will catch those who manage to live through the first few seconds off their guard. Maybe that is why we are trusted with this task. No ordinary mission to break into a laboratory belonging to Crey, but something far better. To catch the Countess Crey in one of these facilities that she supposedly has no knowledge of. It was time, I thought to myself as we all rose from where we had waited, to bring the queen crashing back to the scum and disease infested waters of Crey’s Folly.