“Stop right there!”

The cloaked figure grinned as it turned to face the hero that had confronted it.

“Historian, the hero ranked 39th in B rank, powers include knowledge of ancient civilizations and their fighting techniques.”

Historian stepped towards the figure tentatively, as though he was expecting a trap, “So you know about my powers, do you know about this?”

He lifted his hands and revealed a gun that was pointed at the figure. The figure held its hands up in a gesture of surrender, it’s arms were covered in tattoos depicting dragons and other mythical creatures.

“Would you put the gun down if I told you I was here with peaceful intentions?”

Historian laughed and the figure laughed with him.

He frowned, “Shut up and put your hands on the ground.”

“But I already told you I mean no harm.”

He kept the gun pointed towards its chest. The intruder wouldn’t have come in here without some sort of trick up its sleeve.

“I don’t believe a word you’re saying.”

The figure sighed and knelt down so that both its claw-like hands were firmly touching that ground, its cloak had fallen back to cover its arms and it looked up at the gun wielding hero with glee.

“You should have shot me when you had the chance hero, I’m afraid it’s far too late for you now.”

Historian’s eyes widened as the words reached him and hastily fired the gun, but his hand fumbled with the unfamiliar weapon and when he looked up again the figure had disappeared, its cloak fluttering to the ground in front of him. He turned around and tried to duck as he saw a claw-like hand smashing into his face, it clicked the tip of his cheek and he felt his head crack open as he hit the wall behind him.

A pair of hands lifted him up and when he looked at his attacker all he could see was a haze of red, slowly the intruders grinning face swum into view as it talked.

“Don’t you know hero? Information is power and you lost because you didn’t have it.”

Historian coughed and pain wracked his entire body, at the same time he moved his arms behind his back, clicking a button on the personal assistance device wrapped around his hand under while hiding his movements as body spasms.

“Information Broker, male, a villain ranked with a danger level of B, why have you infiltrated the hero association?” He was fishing for information while buying time. The personal assistance device was transmitting his conversation and location to his teammates.

Information Broker smiled and the heroes eyes widened, he went flying in the air as the villain threw him across the room. The hero’s blood splattered onto the floor as he landed and the villain tiptoed delicately over it as he walked towards the injured hero.

“All information comes at a price Historian,” he looked down at his feet and saw the flashing screen of Historians personal assistance device, “for informing the hero association of my arrival the price you’ll have to pay-”

Historian barely felt the impact as the villain smashed a clawed hand down onto his head and Historians vision filled with darkness, his body lay unmoving on the ground.

“-is your life.”

Information Broker lifted his hand out of the hero’s head and wiped off the trickles of blood dripping down his skin with his other hand while laughing, “Not that telling your friends that I’m here will do any good.”

He froze in place as the air started to vibrate around him. He raised his tattooed hands while blinking and in the next moment three new figures surrounded him, ‘more heroes.’ They moved to cover Historian from him and he stood still as he analysed the newcomers.

“Rubic, hurry up and take Historian to the medical wing, we’ll handle the villain.”

He had information on all of the heroes, on the left was Green Box, A rank 98, heading towards Historian and kneeling over his body was Rubic, B rank 309, and shifting to flank him from his right was Sugar, B rank 45.

“It appears the teammates have come to avenge their fallen member. It’s a pity that you’ll just end up following in his footsteps.”

Information Broker smiled and the heroes tensed as blue veins appear across his body and overlapped with his tattoos, he waved a single hand at them before disappearing into thin air. Rubic gasped as the villain appeared in front of her. She brought her hands up to create a force field in front of her as a clawed hand went through her shoulder, her hand slumped to the ground and he smiled at her.

“Rubic, my information tells me that you have the ability to create force fields which can be used to transport both friends and foes to an alternate dimension.” He twisted his hand and Rubic writhed in pain as her flesh was turn apart, the force field around Historian flickered and then disappeared as her concentration faltered, “They can also be used to defend against attacks, you will be troublesome if I don’t take you out now.”

Information broker saw Green Box’s hands curl into fists and a green aura began to seep out of him until it covered his whole body, “You came prepared villain. I’ll get you to tell us why you’re here, after we beat the crap out of you.” Green Box and Sugar leapt towards Information Broker from both sides, he removed his hand from Rubic’s shoulder and raised it up into the air.

“But of course,” he smiled as the heroes’ fists rushed towards his face, “this information will come at a price.”

~~~~

“So first things first I guess, you should probably be told that since you left us the association has assigned several ranks to their members going from E to S. Clear enough for you?”

I scratched my head at Light’s explanation, “You have fifteen ranks for heroes? Isn’t that a bit too much?”

Light laughed, “Not fifteen, we have six ranks, E rank, D rank, C, B, A and of course the S rank.”

“That wasn’t clear at all, what’s the S rank for? Why even skip all those letters?”

“You know I never really asked about that. Anyways, I’ll get to that, let me finish.”

“Alright.”

“Well basically at the bottom we have the E rank, they don’t receive any payments from us but they’re in charge of community affairs, public relations and stuff. They’re those guys that joined to better our lives as a whole and they don’t usually have much fighting prowess, they can sure talk up a storm though. Now D class is where the action really begins.”

Light cleared his throat as he thought about how he was going to explain it, “D class is basically where the people that want to fight evil with their fists begin at, I don’t remember exactly but assigned to this base there should be at least ten thousand of them.”

“There are ten thousand powered heroes living in this place?!” Light looked at me and laughed at the shock on my face.

“Only people in B rank or higher get to live at the base Lukey, D ranks don’t even have to be powered, they’re just your average joes that want to help fight against villains, they get a small wage and generally handle non-powered aggressors. It’s not surprising to see a D rank hero holding one or two part time jobs on the side. Basically this means that they’re the lowest in the pecking order, and I’m sure that I don’t need to remind you but you’re currently in D rank.”

I nodded my head, “That’s because I haven’t been active for a few years right?”

“Exactly! Which means,” he glanced over to me to make sure I was listening closely, “That technically you’re the lowest of the low, basically the scrub of the hero association, the bottom feeder. If you want to make ends meet around here you have listen to your superiors –that’s me – at all times and obey any and every order I give you.”

I looked over to the girls, both of them had were sitting around the table and seemed to be hanging on every word that came out of Light’s mouth, “So I remember this time in a cave when Light crap-glarbglergh.”

“Heyy!!” Light had moved his hand over my mouth, “So as I was saying, time decay! All heroes have to do a certain amount of work each month or they’ll get demoted through the ranks and if they fall low enough they’ll be fired from the association.”

I forced his hand off of my mouth, “You mean a quota?”

“Exactly! Honestly I think the only reason that you’re still a rank D hero is because we all know why you left us.”

I sighed and motioned for him to move on with his explanation.

“Yeh well, it works the other way as well, fill in more than your quota and you’ll be promoted up the ranks.”

I nodded my head, “Makes sense, a reward based system is always a good one.”

“Basically all the ranks are similar to that, C has about a thousand members in it, generally quite powerful and most form teams once they reach this rank. B has a few hundred members and A has exactly a hundred, this number never changes so if someone gets promoted someone else will get demoted. Keeps the place competitive, you know?”

“I heard someone say that I was in A rank?”

Light clapped his hands together in glee, “Well the association took our contributions into consideration after the war and that’s where we got placed, but unlike you I kept working for it and managed to raise myself to S class.”

“And that’s good?”

Light clapped his hand to his head and started swooning as though he were going to faint, “Just so you know, there are only forty three –forty two actually, since Perfect died – rank S heroes in the whole world.”

I grunted and Light sighed, “I’ll make this easier for you to understand, Emperor is in the top four rank S heroes. So if you think about it carefully, as a fellow rank S hero I’m on par with Emperor.”

*Smack*

Light fell out of his chair as my hand slid across his face, “You’re on par with Emperor?” I held his hand out menacingly, “I think I ought to smack more sense into you, I think you’ve gone crazy in the years I haven’t seen you.”

Light laughed while rubbing his cheek, “I know that guys your hero or whatever, but it’s true you know, rank S heroes are the cream of the crop, the best of the best. Even the public got it into their heads that the S stands for super and they call us ‘superheroes’ instead of just ‘heroes’.”

I looked at Lunar Princess who was looking at the hand that had hit Lights cheek with a mixture of both fear and awe, ‘That explains her weird reactions.’

“And you mentioned something about a hero testing process? Do I have to do it too?”

Light lifted himself off the ground and sat back on the fluffy pink chair, “Nah, you’re already registered as a hero so the name change will be easy enough. But if the girl over there wants to join then she’ll have to pass a written test and a strength test, but if she wants to become an E rank hero she just has to do the written one.” He looked at E-23 and she shook her head.

“Well yeh that’s basically all there is to it. They’ll test her powers and intelligence and then see where she places, highest you can get on the tests is the A rank though.”

As Light continued to talk about the hero test I couldn’t help but notice that E-23 was slowly becoming more and more excited.

Light smiled at her, “So when do you want to get started?”

~~~~

Light looked through the window of the judges room as E-23 was whacking into a machine for the strength testing part of the test.

“How’s she going?” Light heard Flora’s voice ring out at him from the nearby intercom.

Light clicked on his personal hero assistance device to reply, “She’s doing well, no, better than well, her regeneration levels are enough to be considered the best the systems every recorded and her strength should be at around level 10 at the least. Considering she can create and manipulate Lightning it isn’t a stretch to say that she would easily get into higher A ranks or even reach the S ranks.”

“What do you think we should do with her?”

He couldn’t see her but he felt as though Flora’s voice was layered with worry.

“I’ll tell her that she’s assigned to C rank for now, she’ll take her time to work her way up with Aveng- sorry, Traitor, and she’ll be allowed to live in the outskirts of the hero association so that we can keep tabs on her without her being near anything important.”

“Is he serious about calling himself ‘Traitor’?” Flora asked in disbelief.

“He’s already had it officially changed, I tried telling him there were already forty-six other heroes working with that name but he wouldn’t listen. It’s just his way of trying to annoy us, his way of annoying you.”

Flora sighed, “If that’s how he wants it then I won’t complain. Very well, I’ll leave the handling of the girl to you.”

The intercom cut off just as E-23 finished her test.

Light smiled at her, “Congratulations the written and strength tests have just been finished, and you’ve placed into C rank 1059. It’s pretty rare that we get a rank C person straight off the bat.

She looked at him strangely, “I didn’t realise that an S rank hero would be supervising me personally.”

Light gulped, “Have you decided on your name yet?”

Any suspicion in her eyes was immediately replaced with excitement and she clapped her hands together.

“My names going to be Runaway! Is it free?”

It was a surprisingly normal name. He was expecting something more extravagant from the girl. Then he remembered that she had in fact run away from an evil organisation, at least according to what she had told Traitor.

“Its fine, we don’t do a unique name system anymore since there are too many people around the world that are registered with the association to make them all take a unique hero name.”

She smiled and started spinning in circles while laughing with glee. He smiled as well.

“So Runaway,” As he called her new name she grinned and faced him, “now that you’re a bonafide hero, would you like to spar a little?”

Her eyes bulged so much that Light could almost see them popping out of her head, “M-m-m-me… w-with you?” She pointed to him and pointed back to her, then back to him again, “I-I don’t t-think I’m strong enough.”

Her face lit up with worry as she realised something, “I do get to register my battle cry, don’t I?” He grinned. Usually a hero’s battle cry was the thing they wanted to put off as long as they could.

He laughed at her worrying expression and made a hand gesture for them to start moving. They left the testing area and started to walk down the hallway, “You’ll be able to register your battle cry at any time through your personal assistance device.” She looked at the device wrapped around her wrist with awe, “And don’t worry. I’ll take it easy on you, I’ll even ask Aven- err- Traitor, to watch us.”

Runaway looked down while blushing at the mention of Luke’s hero name. ‘Luke, you’ve turned into one hell of a lady killer since we’ve been apart.’

Light realised what he’d been thinking and smacked himself in the face, Runaway turned around in surprise and he grinned, “Sorry, it’s nothing. Let’s head over to the training area? I’ll send Traitor a message.”

He had handed Luke his own personal assistance device before he left to oversee Runaway’s test, he sent the message and Luke replied, “He says he’ll be there.”

Runaway nodded and moved in front of him, she was in a hurry to reach the sparring area.

Light glanced at her back, it had been stained with sweat she’d shed during the strength test, ‘It’s so human. It even looks tired.’

‘I wonder how easy it would be to kill her right now.’

He shook his head as soon as the thought crossed his mind, Flora would never allow it.

They reached the training area and another thought crossed his mind.

‘It’d be a pity if an accident were to happen while we fought, a misplaced light sphere, a punch that’s a little too strong… it might even kill her.’

Light took out some training gear from the nearby hangar and threw them to Runaway.

“Get changed over there. We’ll start as soon as you’re done.”

She caught the clothes, “Thanks. We’re not waiting for Luke?”

Light shook his head and she went into the changing room. He watched her with a sad expression on his face.

‘Sorry Lukey, it looks like this is one friend you won’t get the chance to leave behind.’