The Paragons

Chapter 6: Nightclaw, The First Recruit

Inside a two-story suburban house in the city of Los Angeles, California, Carla Rosenblood---secretly known as the werewolf superheroine Nightclaw---entered her bedroom, sat at her desk, opened her desktop computer, and got ready to record yet another episode of her online podcast, Hero Theory. Her younger brother, Murray Rosenblood, had made his first guest appearance on the show about a year prior, and had made several more infrequent appearances since then, but she decided she would go it alone this time; the topic of discussion would be an incident that occurred fairly recently, and Murray wouldn't have had a lot of time to research it beforehand. Plus, he had already gone to sleep, and she didn't want to wake him up.

Without further delay, she activated her recording software setup, adjusted her microphone, and hit the "record" button.

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"Good evening to all of you superhero enthusiasts out there on the Internet! My name is Carla Rosenblood, and I'm happy to welcome all of you back to yet another episode of Hero Theory! Now, it's no question that the mysterious, serpentine superheroine known as The Viper is one of my most-talked-about subjects here on this podcast, but as many of you across the country have likely already seen, three more heroes have appeared around the United States as well; a super-strong young man in Seattle, Washington who appears to use the callsign 'Powerhouse', a sub-zero hero based in Jacksonville, Florida who goes by the name 'Coldsnap', and....."

She grinned slightly before continuing.

"An elusive, cunning, and absolutely breathtaking werewolf who has begun to shadow the streets of our very own city of Los Angeles, California, scouting around for trouble! Not that I would know who any of these people are, of course."

Of course, Carla already knew that she was talking about herself, but her grin grew even more enthusiastic at the excitement of having a secret identity. She could go around helping people or defeating the bad guys, and no one would ever know who she was.....just like her idol, The Viper.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I bet you all feel much safer at night knowing that these cities are under the watchful eyes of these brave souls.....am I wrong? Heck, at least one witness in Mercury Heights---previously thought to only be The Viper's home city---claims to have spotted a dark, tricked-out convertible with blue headlights---and armed to the teeth with weapons---infrequently accompanying the heroine on her nightly patrols. What's even more interesting is their allegations that they've spotted Duncan Drevis himself inside the vehicle, as well as his partner, The Crawler, in the back! Could the doctor really have turned himself around? Could he actually be working alongside the city's icon of justice? Details are a bit foggy at the moment, but if this is indeed true, then I, for one, applaud him for seeing the error of his ways. There's no denying that it will take him a long time to fully reintegrate into society, but if his status as the CEO of the popular innovation company Lifeline Industries is any indication, he's well on his way. The question is: does he have any superpowers? Does he have a callsign, or does he just use his real name? If that last option is true.....I could see him running into issues with his identity later on if he ever manages to make any powerful enemies," she said.

But she wasn't done yet. That was all just the ice-breaker.

"Would you believe that that's not our main topic for tonight, folks? Oh, no, no, no.....tonight, we're here to talk about an event that happened fairly recently---about 1.5 weeks ago---at the Mercury Heights power grid. City life was proceeding as normal that fateful night.....nothing out of the ordinary was happening. Then, suddenly.....BAM! The entire place gets hit with a city-wide blackout out of absolutely nowhere!" Carla exclaimed. "Communications were down, important tools and devices were deactivated, the streets were plunged into complete darkness, and the people were running, screaming, and panicking for their lives; some even claimed that they were almost on the receiving end of a two-train collision! Eyewitnesses reported that it was almost as if Mercury Heights's entire electricity supply had somehow been redirected to their own power grid.....? Unfortunately, although we know for certain that The Viper and Duncan Drevis had a part in turning the power back on, the fight was mostly isolated and left out of the public eye, with all of its participants having either been killed in combat or made some kind of secret promise to never tell anyone too much about what happened. As far as the citizens were concerned, the blackout was just a result of natural causes; though I personally believe it was something more. It's a shame.....we could have really used that added knowledge. Whatever---or whoever---caused the blackout.....it's clear that Duncan definitely hasn't taken it very well.....maybe he had some sort of personal connection to the culprit? Who knows?"