Outskirts Press, INC.

A new law has come to town, and its name is VENGEANCE!

As the governorship of the province of Nordia is seized by a narcissistic despot, the Fight for Right Provincial Chapter finds itself on the receiving end of reprehensible persecution. Out of the struggle for justice and equity arises a faction that has broken apart from the Province Chapter of Fight for Right, called “Knights of Justice”. Led by a charismatic but wrathful young minister named Steiphen Silas, the Knights use aggressive rhetoric and barbaric violence in their attempt to attain moral propriety. The clash of the provincial government, Fight for Right, the Knights of Justice and the provincial commonfolk results in a great disturbance of an otherworldly nature, the results of which could conceivably doom and consume the entire province of Nordia…for good! And yet there may be one hope. Just when all seems to be lost, North America’s most famous superheroes of the third millennium — the Night Crusaders — ride their hovercycles into the province of Nordia, just in time. But the superb duo has quite the challenge ahead of them. The Night Crusaders eventually discover they are the only ones standing between vacuous followers of dubious leaders and the forces corroding the province. With colliding powers and bloodshed on one side and mystic stabilizing forces on the other, is there any hope that the Night Crusaders can quell the impending doom? Can Nordia be saved, and in time?

At about 5am on Wednesday, March 6, 2515, more than a dozen and a half bright red trucks crossed the borderlines at different areas to enter the city of Vulca. Each truck was parked in a different location, though four of the trucks were parked in the downtown area. The rest were spread out across the city.

Though the locations were different, what was seen coming out of every single truck was the same: a large number of jet-black-robed men and women – mostly men – who exited and stood in military formation on the side of each truck. Each robe had artwork of a Medieval knight in shining armor on the front and the words “Knights of Justice” written with bright red letters on the back. And they wore jet-black skull hats with “Knights of Justice” written in blood red at the base of the skull. And the ensembles were completed with jet-black leather gloves.

The citizens who witnessed these displays were beyond suspicious. Between the 20 trucks, there was a total of just shy of 1200 Knights of Justice.

Steiphen himself, who was with one of the trucks downtown, had prior to these arrivals armed each Knight of Justice with either sticks or lead pipes or bricks. Plus he provided one out of every ten Knights with a fully loaded firearm.

Once Steiphen gave the order via wireless handheld devices that were on every single one of the Knights to strike, each group disbursed and began to attack civilians, law enforcers, the homeless and even street criminals.

Before long, news vehicles arrived at various scenes to catch the actions on video. But some of the news vehicles were attacked by the Knights. Nevertheless, before long the violent demonstrations were available all over the provincial cybernews network.

Also, citizens were taking videos of violent Knight action in their neighborhoods and on their sides of the city to post on the Web.

Law enforcers were sent to quell the violent demonstrations, but some law enforcers could not find where the Knights of Justice had fled to, while others were outnumbered and defeated by the Knights.

At 7am, a group of 300 Knights led by Steiphen himself headed toward the condo building where Mayor Bernard Givens resided. Security saw this, and immediately braced itself as well as alerting the local police.

Most of the condo security was cybernetic, but there were a few human guards, as well as security agency employees assigned to control the cyber security.

Steiphen marched 200 of his followers into the building. They forced their way through the front door, killing security guards and disabling security technology, and even hurting, injuring or killing residents who decided to get brave and fight against them.

The Knights made their way to the 51st floor, the home of the family of Mayor Givens. These men and women broke down the door and advanced throughout the Mayor’s home. They destroyed his household possessions, damaged his household robots, and terrorized his wife and three children…all under the age of 10.

Six Knights grabbed the Mayor and dragged him out of bed onto the floor, where they beat him mercilessly.

Once Steiphen entered the room, he ordered the beating to cease, and for the Mayor to be thrown out of the window. The Givens family watched in horror as its patriarch was grabbed off the floor by six men to be thrown through the glass, and out the window of their 51st floor condo residence.

As the Mayor’s body crashed through the roof of a vehicle parked below, the Knights who remained outside cheered. A passenger who was still inside the vehicle at the time was also killed, having been crushed by the broken roof.

As the Knights inside made their way toward the building’s exits, Steiphen used his communicator to order all the Knights throughout the city to stop what they were doing and retreat.

But cybernews outlets from all over the city had already started rushing out to the scene, as several citizens had by this time caught footage of the Knights of Justice on camera. One pedestrian actually caught video footage of the Mayor’s body descending from his condo onto the vehicle below. The videos taken were quickly posted to the Web, and received thousands of hits within a matter of minutes.

When the news of the Mayor’s murder made its way to cyberspace, the city of Vulca disintegrated into complete chaos as more than a million angry residents rushed out of their homes and schools and workplaces and shopping centers to hunt down the Cult of Steiphen and kill them.

Riots abounded all over the city, and one large group of citizens in the downtown area destroyed a power center station, whose purpose was to power up cyborgs.

Elsewhere, angry citizens were breaking into establishments and even private residences and dragging out people whom they were accusing of being members of the Fight for Right Nation, and beating them to death.

Not long afterward, the cyberpolice force was sent to restore order. Upon a
arriving at the various scenes, the cyberofficers opened fire on the rioters, killing without prejudice.

Tens of thousands of citizens, none of whom were Knights of Justice, were killed in less than an hour.

Then the downtown rioters, and the cyberpolice officers sent to deal with them, were distracted by a bolt of lightning that struck the side of a skyscraper. Seconds later, there appeared in the sky that legendary superhuman warrior: ROID.

ROID stood six feet tall and had light-tanned skin. He had an extremely muscular build, and was completely bald. ROID had an indissoluble emblem design of a gold-colored five-point star that stretched across his chest and abs. He wore a brown harness with two vertical straps in the front and a sheath-carrier for his mysterious scepter in the back. The harness locked into his brown shorts, which went down to his knees. And he wore dark black, mid-calf military boots.

ROID usually carried a stone-serious expression on his face.

Descending from the sky, the superhero speed-landed in front of ten cybercops who were about to fire again at the crowd. Like a flash of light, ROID zoomed through the cybercops, and the next thing they knew, all the cyberofficers were disarmed. ROID smashed all of their guns with his bare hands. Then with a single punch, ROID sent all ten cybercops crashing against a nearby wall, and each of them was out of commission.

Then ROID spotted a large group of rioters firing guns at the cybercops, and he supersped over to rioters and disarmed them as well. To ensure the cyborgs would not try to harm the disarmed citizens, ROID destroyed them all.

The amazing superhero continued in this manner for roughly about fifteen minutes or so. But soon he realized the disorder was too much and too spread out across the city even for him. So he chose another tactic instead.

ROID ascended to the sky, where he was able to see the chaos and death all over the city.

Seconds later, ROID looked to his left and his right to see he had been joined in the sky by two more superwarriors – one male to his left, one female to his right – who were famously known throughout North America as Night Crusaders.

The three superhumans separated from one another and hovered like a triangle over the city of Vulca. All three began to spin their bodies like whirlwinds, causing violent winds and even dust to consume the entire city. This created confusion and fear. Some people were being blinded by the dust while others were carried into the air by the winds. Yet others ran to find shelter as fast as they could. As for the cyborgs, many of their circuits were being scrambled, and the cybercops could not function as they were meant to.

Once the city had calmed to ROID’s satisfaction, he cued his superwarrior allies to cease their spinning. The Night Crusaders stayed put while ROID descended into downtown. He grabbed the head of a cybercop because he knew in there was a communicator. ROID used the communicator to send this warning to the government: “Either you terminate this mission right now and clear the city of these cyborg cops or my superhuman allies and I will turn them all into junk!”

So the station officers in charge of the cyberpolice officers ordered them to return to their stations. While the cyberpolice were leaving, the human police moved in to arrest the rioters.

ROID did not try to stop them. Instead, he ascended to the sky to join the Night Crusaders. The three of them flew in circles above the city to keep watch in order to make sure the police did not use force or violence to arrest the rioters, and to make sure the rioters did not resist arrest.

Once the violence had dissipated, and the violent areas dispersed, ROID flew away in one direction, and the Night Crusaders in another.

The law enforcers dispatched fire departments and ambulance services to assist them in dealing with the aftermath.

The human carnage and body count were quantified for this city that was beyond devastated.

Thousands were hurt, tens of thousands were injured or killed, and approximately 325,000 citizens were arrested. And the property damage was in the millions of dollars.

Vulca had already been infamous for being one of North America’s most violent cities. And the riots of this day stood as a confirmation of such.

Later that same day, word reached Governor Marcus’s office that somehow, even through all of the rampaging and rioting and other social disorder, not even one single member of the Cult of Steiphen was arrested, nor found injured or dead.

As for the trucks that brought the Knights of Justice into the city, they were all still parked exactly where the Knights left them, and the keys were still in the ignitions. So the Knights obviously did not escape in the trucks.

Governor Marcus declared a State of Emergency, and martial law was activated throughout the province. Military troops were stationed in every major city in the province of Nordia, and mandatory curfew was enforced.

This was a tactic used to attempt to bring the Knights of Justice into the custody of the Governor. Perhaps for this very reason, many Fight for Righters found themselves unjustly pursued, arrested or detained, and several Fight for Righters became victims of some form of violence after claiming they knew nothing of the hideouts of the Cult of Steiphen.