Dance in the Flames
Story
Setting	Orcus
Date	To be revealed

Dance in the Flames is a story serial written by Matoro1, written three years after the events of Allies of the Night. It is his first story serial which revolves around Hero Factory characters and will specifically target the fictional Delta 4 Hero team.

Contents 1 Story 1.1 Preface 1.2 Chapter 1 1.3 Chapter 2 1.4 Chapter 3 2 Reviews 3 Characters 3.1 Heroes 3.2 Villains 4 Trivia

StoryEdit

PrefaceEdit

Guinevere One/Intergalactic Environmental Agency Inquiry

Item 6B: Captain’s Journal (incomplete/corrupted)

The following is the property of the Intergalactic Environmental Agency (NEA) and may be read by authorized personnel only.

• Vessel: Guinevere One (Aurosian Operations, K-Class)
• Last known location: Corellia, Terrestrial body 556/D – Designated ‘Orcus’
• Comm off: Cpt Gamel

Report No: 178
Date: 11/26/338ED

At 0618hrs Guinevere One made an emergency crash landing onto Terrestrial body 556/D. We sustained severe damage to all controls, engines, and navigational equipment. All thrusters have been damaged.
All eleven crew members survived the impact and are uninjured.
Our initial investigation suggest that [TEXT MISSING] previous reports are incorrect and [TEXT MISSING] Planet Orcus is inhabited.
We are not alone here.

---

Report No: 203
Date: 12/24/338ED

Three of our number have been mysteriously abducted and are presumed deceased, the first Aurosians to die off-planet.
[TEXT MISSING] unable to repair any of the raft ships, and the clock is counting down. Our food supplies can continue to provide us with inorganic sustenance and water is plentiful enough.
There is little hope of rescue.

---

Report No: 289
Date: 03/06/339ED

Our 100^th day on Orcus has passed without incident.
[TEXT MISSING] moral remains low. Lt Sharma remains missing, presumed dead.
[TEXT MISSING] which has caused a division between the crew members of recent. Heeva and Faroka think we should leave the ship and travel west, but I disagree. [TEXT MISSING] and our mission is of the utmost importance.

---

Report No: 847
Date: 22/08/342ED

A state of stability would seem to have finally befallen us. Having been working on repairs to the craft’s sensors for the past four years, Lepak has been able to restore the ship’s radar and energy receptors, both of which are picking up massive amounts of an unidentifiable energy in that direction, as well as an impermeable rock layer. Could this mean a cave in which we could find shelter?
Only time will tell...

Chapter 1Edit

Present Day

---

He fell.
The helpless hero was spinning around and around, bashing into the interior of his damaged craft as it plummeted towards the surface of the frozen planet below. His arms were wrapped around his head to protect it. Even so, he could still see the accursed world looming ahead of him through the window. He was hurtling towards it at an impossible speed. He felt adrenaline bite into him, the G-Force press him back into his seat, and the horror finally sink in.
Tumbling over and over, as if being dragged away down a waterfall.
The Hero known as Jack Reacher could do nothing but watch as his vessel reeled and rocked. He tried fighting the violent shuddered only to hit his head hard on the panel before him. He saw stars and almost blacked out, nearly overwhelmed by the aggression of the falling Hero Craft. But the Elite Hero managed to clench his fists tighter and wring some strength from the depths of his consciousness.
The chair didn’t help either. It wasn’t made from any kind of fancy cushions or fabric. It wasn’t even designed for comfort. It was made of sharp, brittle metal, the kind that cut deeply into his thighs and back. Though he wasn’t made from organic material his core processor still recognized the injuries and converted them into impulses of pain, much to Reacher’s annoyance.
It was something else he could’ve done without.
A hollow rushing sound filled the hero’s audio receptors as his craft entered the atmosphere of the arctic planet beneath his feet. Friction began to build up on the sides of the falling vessel.
The blaring klaxons stopped abruptly, leaving Reacher in the grip of a silence so complete that, for a moment, he thought he might have died already. His vessel was plummeting down wildly, rocking from side to side in no clear direction. It spun and lurched, as if caught in a terrible wind, falling at eighteen thousand miles an hour. Five miles a second. He could be incinerated at any moment if the fuel tank caught fire, which it probably would given the craft’s ruined state.
Reacher was already aware of a pink glow outside the window as the module began to rub against the planet’s upper atmosphere.
He was on fire. The whole world was on fire. The very air was breaking up and crackling from the heat. His hero craft had become a fireball. He was in the heart of a living hell.
Reacher yelled out. He couldn’t help it.
Then the fire disappeared, like a curtain being torn open.
He saw white.
There was another back-breaking jolt as the craft’s defeated computer system activated miniature booster rockets to act against the death-defying speed of the vehicle. The frozen planet seemed to shimmer on the other side of the window, allowing the Elite hero to see nothing but blank, endless paleness as far as his vision would allow him to.
Sparks flew as the craft made its landing, smashing into an ice plateau with enough force to level a mountain. Reacher was thrown forward, his safety belt torn off the metal by the sheer force of the impact. Again he cried out in surprise then cursed as he struck the metallic roof of his vessel. He was pretty sure he’d heard an unnerving CRACK sound.
And, at long last, silence.
After spending a full minute simply breathing in and out, the hero shrugged off his injuries and turned his attention to his pounding head. He felt groggy and disengaged, which he guessed wasn’t a good sign. Soreness rarely was.
Still unsure of what was happening, Reacher pulled himself up onto his feet and realized that the craft was lopsided. The whole thing must surely have been at the bottom of the mother of all impact craters. The hero groaned and rubbed his eye, trying to wipe the grogginess from vision. It was all blurry and fuzzy. He felt like dropping off and falling asleep in the crashed hero pod, and he probably would have had a buzzer not started to ring and the escape hatch blew off. He cursed under his breath when he caught a glimpse of the wall of ice before him.
The hero pod had smashed right through the ice and finally come to a rest several meters beneath the frozen surface. Startled, Reacher hesitated to inspect the remains of his craft. The communicator screen had been cracked when he’d fallen forwards. Sparks crackled and fizzed behind the shards of broken glass and ruined circuitry. Muttering darkly, the blue and black armored hero rolled over and began pressing buttons on the control panel. There was a blunt flash of light as the cracked windscreen was illuminated by a holographic image, projected from a device hidden behind the steering wheel. After several seconds of a mind-numbing rotating cog, the image warped itself into a spherical shape, representing the dark, icy planet he was now stranded on. According to this computer, the world around him was called Orcus, a terrestrial body in the Corellia System, fifth planet from its star with a surface temperature that Reacher wished he hadn’t read.
Just because nobody’s complained yet doesn’t mean Hero Pod landings are crash-proof.
The hero took one final look at the interior of his vessel then sighed. Electricity was surging through cut wires and sparks danced across the vehicle. Worse still, hydraulic fluid was beginning to flood the cabin. The Elite hero took one final glance at his Hero Pod, then gazed out into the frozen wilderness outside.
How did he want to die? Freeze to death outside or get blown up inside his hero craft?
It took some thought. Reacher pondered the question until the hydraulic fluid started to reach his feet. It was warm and viscous, like fresh tarmac. That was all the convincing he needed as he grabbed his twin Plasma Rifles and hurled himself out of the hatch, into the unknown.
Leaving behind a ticking bombshell as the hydraulic fluid continued to leak.

---

Patrick Gust threw his Ice Spear Shooter into the snow and slumped until he was sitting down, sheltered by the small sentry post disguised by the blizzard. He was tired, all the way down to the core of his very being... tired of hiding and running and hiding some more. It seemed that was all he'd done since he and his teammates had arrived on this frozen wasteland.
The big white snowflakes rained down upon the yellow armored rookie, whipping him in the helmet and stinging his eyes as they melted. It was freezing, but he tried not to shiver. He gritted his metallic teeth to the point where he didn’t care whether or not they cracked. His mouth was too numb to feel anything.
The visibility was terrible. Gust could barely see five meters out of the cave’s mouth, yet it was light. He often wondered how he could still see in such as dark, grim place. Clank, one of his team mates, had told him it was because of the way the sunlight reflected off of the ice or something but the clouds were obviously far too thick for that.
Of course, his headgear had been upgraded with both a flashlight and echolocation capabilities when he was upgraded around a month ago, so vision wasn’t one of his problems - or at least not one of his more pressing ones.
Scanning the snowfall outside, Gust’s young, keen eyes spotted a shiny glint of silver just outside the cave. Frowning, the rookie reached for his Ice Spear Shooter and rose to his feet, tense. There was nothing to see outside except the frozen emptiness, he knew that. He’d been patrolling this planet for weeks with his three other teammates. There shouldn’t be anything out of the ordinary on such a remote, inhospitable planet.
But then the glimmer caught his eye again. Definitely silver he thought to himself. Perhaps it was a scrap of armor, something he’d dropped. It was unlikely but the rookie didn’t particularly care for guesswork. His mind was distracted now and he wanted to see what the object was, otherwise it would haunt him for the rest of his shift.
The young hero began to charge his weapon, preparing to fire a burst of ice at anything that so much as breathed. He should be the only living organism on this side of the planet. Orcus was simply uncongenial.
Still, the strange find had caught Gust’s attention. He wanted to blunder out into the storm and inspect the glinting metallic object, but he was no fool. Orcus was a dangerous planet with far too much snow, which he was swiftly beginning to dislike.
Too many potential hiding places.
The yellow armored hero stuck his head out of the cave, weapon at the ready, audio receptors burning. The rookie hesitated before stepping away from the safety of his guard post and crept through the snow, towards the object.
Gust held his catch carefully in his numb fingers to examine it. The strange thing did not belong in the frozen wilderness, that was for sure. He couldn’t leave it to be swept away by the remorseless wind or to be buried in the snowfall.
But now he had it he wasn’t all too sure what he should do with it. His find was inanimate. It did not live or breathe; it was not food; therefore it was not something he particularly desired.
His slow, frozen brain finally realized that his catch was some sort of gear, a cog. Perhaps it was part of an important machine. Maybe it had fallen off of his enemy’s craft when he’d arrived on the planet. The latter idea filled the inexperienced hero with more joy. He’d been dispatched to Orcus roughly a month ago to search for the criminal known as Bonecrusher, a violent Aurosian who had been driven mad by the destruction of his species at the hand of a mysterious disease and seemed to be blaming the Hero Factory for it. Seeing as handing out vaccinations wasn’t one of Gust’s many chores, he saw no reason for the bounty hunter to blame the heroes. He didn’t understand the fugitive’s thinking but, then again, he didn’t want to either.
Bonecrusher was dangerous. He was a villain responsible for countless crimes going back since before Gust’s time. The rookie had often asked his fellow heroes what the Aurosian had done. Someday he hoped to get a response.
As the rookie rose to his feet he came to the conclusion that the gear obviously wasn’t natural. He definitely hadn’t brought it. He couldn’t account for his teammates but he doubted the piece was one that the heroes used. It was crude and brittle, something he suspected wouldn't be used by the Hero Factory.
And there was only one other person on the inhospitable planet who could have dropped it.
A current of terror engulfed the rookie’s senses when he realized what the gear’s presence meant. When he discovered that his joints weren’t frozen together by the cold he crouched down and ducked back into the safety of the cave, weapon at the ready.
Nothing.
There was no movement outside except for the shower of snow drops and icicles. He didn’t want to admit it, but he disliked being in caves. They were far too still, too close, and much, much too dark.
The rookie stopped short. Was he hearing things? Confused, he peered into the darkness behind him.
Nothing. He turned away.
The hero froze. Something had moved off to the right. A footstep. Horror began to grip his very core once again as a dark, sinister chuckle began to echo through the cave. Gust felt the urge to run, but his feet would not move.
He forced himself to turn around and look. Four beady, sapphire blue eyes were staring down at him from the darkness of the cave. He imagined a wicked smile beneath them, filled with jagged rock-like tusks in place of teeth.
Patrick Gust whimpered in fear and backed away from the floating pairs of eyes. His head was pounding. Bonecrusher. It had to be.
“I know who you are!” he cried out, desperately trying to confront the monster in front of him. “I – I’m not afraid!”
“Oh dear” murmured the shadowy figure slowly, ignoring Gust’s babbling. “What have I here?” His reptilian eyes were alive with hunger and hate, like a hawk eying its prey. Despite Gust’s previous guess, the cave-dweller had a small mouth. He looked sad – like the saddest person the rookie had ever seen.
Then the sorrow boiled away into rage.
What felt like a crab-claw snapped shut around Gust’s chest and squeezed, hard. The rookie’s eyes budged from the pressure before he was flung aside, as if he were weightless. His Ice Spear Shooter fell out of his hand and clattered to the ground, where it wedged itself into the snow.
The fallen rookie gasped in terror as he looked up at figure. “You are fortunate” snarled the villain in the shadows. “Your sorrow will be short-lived. These are your final moments, hero” he spat in disgust. “There will be pain – great pain – but then the total peace of the beyond. Death will come as a blessing, rookie. You will welcome it in the end, you’ll beg me to finish. You’ll break down on your hands and knees then weep like a woman.”
Gust stared into the eyes of the stranger, transfixed with terror. “Wh-Wh… Who… are… you?” he croaked, forcing the words out between his chattering teeth. He was shivering from something other than the cold.
“The beginning and the end of your greatest sorrows” replied the entity. He said it plainly – clearly not a boast.
The petrified rookie’s eyes widened as the tan and black armored monster before him stepped into the light. A sapphire-blue orb of energy was materializing at his enemy’s Meteor Blaster. The wicked device crackled with energy, illuminating the hideous face of the barbaric Bonecrusher. Gust quivered in fear as he tried to crawl away, leaving his weapon behind. He didn’t get far before the Aurosian snarled menacingly and he froze in fear.
Bonecrusher drifted around him, toying with his victim. The yellow armored rookie tried not to think about how well the technique was working. It was certainly unnerving him.
The Aurosian had no nose, just two large, circular holes above his upper lip. He sniffed as he passed, and Gust somehow understood that the criminal was smelling his fear.
The alarmed hero gawped in horror and tried to make a run for it. His base wasn’t far away. He could probably call for backup, get help. Without thinking, he snapped up his weapon, turned his back on the jagged frozen cave and ran. Behind him, the monster chuckled darkly.
Then there was a vile, vicious howl of delight as Bonecrusher gave chase.

No sooner had he left the cave, Gust’s vision was suddenly shrouded by the pelting of the snowstorm. Desperately, he tried to battle his way on, trudging through the knee-deep barrier that would prove to be no trouble at all for his enemy. Savage, animalistic growls and grinding teeth seemed to fill his audio receptors, getting closer every second. Bonecrusher was almost on top of him. He could feel the criminal’s rotten breath on his back.
A pang of wild energy seemed to surge through the hero’s frozen mind. His feet began to feel like slabs of iron that weighed him down until he came to a stop, panting for breath. He didn’t dare turn around until his Ice Spear Shooter was fully charged.
As quickly as he dared, the rookie lurched to the left, rolled over in the snow, and turned to aim at the mildly surprised villain behind him. His eyes narrowed before his weapon burst into life, firing two identical beam of ice at his foe, like knives cutting through the blizzard.
No effect other than the criminal’s laugh going an octave higher.
Shocked, Gust could do nothing as Bonecrusher’s maniacal laughter continued. He watched through empty eyes as his Meteor Blaster began to hum with energy. The ball of blue energy hurtled towards him, striking him square in the chest and propelling him backwards, into the snow. He landed heavily and lay there, paralyzed.
I intended to live forever thought the rookie before he slipped into unconsciousness.
Until now, I was on track...

---

The fugitive known as Bonecrusher eyed the fallen hero with disgust. He was getting sick of the puny pests stalking him. He’d arrived on the planet weeks ago and every single day since then, even on this unreceptive, arctic planet, the Hero Factory had managed to catch up with him.
It was like they were taunting him, rubbing fresh new enemies in his face. He’d been itching to pick one off for weeks. Initially he’d planned for the one of the more experienced heroes but it was in his nature to give his enemies a sporting chance. He couldn’t help it. Perhaps he just pitied them.
With a sharp kick, the Aurosian bounty hunter booted the immobile rookie’s weapon away. He didn’t want to take any chances, not that the weapon had any effect against him. He came from the planet Auros, the icy weather on Orcus was warmer than most summer days where he came from. These Ice Shooters his enemies were parading around with had the same effect as glasses of lemonade: Refreshing.
Letting his scorpion-like tail snake round his body and up to his front, Bonecrusher decided to slice the hero open. Perhaps if he physically removed the head he could send some sort of message to the rest of the heroes. A threat, a ransom, blackmail. Whatever. That was what he normally would have done.
But the Hero Factory had changed much in the past month he had been on Orcus. The design of this hero was far more modern that the models he was used to. The wiring was all different and the headgear was better protected. It took him three times as long to wrench the headset off and when he did, he managed to pull another piece of armor off with it, some kind of cover that sat at the top. He hoped it wasn’t anything important. It was no use having a dead hostage.
The former bounty hunter was suddenly startled by the sound of a loud explosion. Tense, he jerked his head up to search for the source. His eyes widened in shock as they settled on a blinding fireball rolling into the lifeless grey sky, like a ball of gravity-defying tumbleweed .
A gigantic concussion ring blasted outwards. The entire valley was hit by a violent shockwave. Bonecrusher was tossed sideways, his right foot stabbing into a particularly deep mount of snow as he tried to frantically keep his balance. The terrible explosion had blasted outwards and had met absolutely nothing in its path. The Aurosian closed his eyes and stood in silence.
When he opened them again a moment later there was nothing to see in the melancholy sky other than a roiling cloud of thin smoke. No debris, no metal, no clattering wreckage. Nothing at all except microscopic invisible particles of vapor accelerating into the atmosphere.
And no survivors.

Chapter 2Edit

A huffing Jack Reacher mounted a treacherous, icy ridge and stared across a frozen sea of jagged peaks. He’d visited most of the varying climates of the universe in his years as a hero, but this was the harshest wilderness he’d ever experienced. A plateau of ice peppered with rocky outcrops. Whipping snow that could blind a lesser being in minutes. Temperatures so low that each breath stung his throat. It was a hostile, alien, unforgiving landscape.
The hero wanted to throw his head back and howl with mad delight but he doubted he’d even be heard over the roaring of the ferocious wind. Even so, it was well below zero and wasn’t going to get warmer any time soon. He needed to reserve his energy to keep warm before his joints froze.
The scanner he was carrying was beeping softly in his numb, frost-encrusted fingers. The blue and black armored hero put his other hand over the screen, sheltering it from the rain of needle-like chunks of ice that were pelting him. The device had been displaying an arrow for the past half hour, showing a faint life reading in the murky distance. He didn’t know why he was following it. The chances he’d have landed within walking distance of the owner of the heat signature were too slim for him to care to think about.
A cruel wind cut through Reacher and he staggered down the other side of the ridge. He’d lost track of time in this barren world of ice. It felt like he’d been wandering for days, though he suspected it couldn’t have been more than an hour.
He considered backtracking, to return to the remains of his destroyed hero craft. It took him a moment for his frozen core processor to remember the explosion that had engulfed his craft and thrown him off his feet mere minutes ago.
There was no going back.
The wind roared around him and the temperature dropped. Reacher hadn’t thought it could get any colder, but he was wrong. Even his circuits seemed to be frosting and stalling. His entire body felt numb beneath his armor. His lips were drawn back over his metallic teeth in a grimace. Only his chest was marginally warm, where his hero core burnt away.
The hero slipped and almost collapsed on top of his scanner, but managed to twist and fall on his side. He gasped from the shock of the cold impact. Part of him wanted to lie there and let the snow bury him alive. It certainly would have been easier than rising and pushing on. But he was a hero, one of Hero Factory’s finest. Failure wasn’t programmed into him.
As he struggled back to his feet, Reacher suddenly realized that the storm was getting worse. It had whipped up without warning since he’d climbed out of his craft. Yet, he struggled through the bitter gale, helmet buried in his arms to protect his eyes.
He slipped many times after that and nearly fell through cracks in the ice just as often. He was walking over deadly land for someone who couldn’t see clearly. It was all too easy to wander off the edge of a ridge and drop into an icy abyss. His best tactical move would probably be to find a cave to sit inside, waiting out the worst of the storm.
But he would grow weary soon enough. Being mechanical he had no desire for food but he still couldn’t survive in this arctic hell. His core would burn out soon enough, leaving him to disintegrate in the snow. Yet still he pushed on, preferring the idea of falling into a chasm than perishing from low energy supplies.
Something shimmered far off ahead of him. Reacher thought his depleting power reserves were causing his vision to glitch until he realized that his scanner was pointing towards the distant glimmer. He squinted and shielded his helmet from the flurry of gravel-like ice with his spare hand. There was a distinct flash of yellow. The snow was thick as ever and it was almost impossible to see anything further than a couple of feet away, but Reacher held his position and kept his eyes open. Moments later, the flicker of yellow came again.
The hero frowned in confusion. He didn’t know what the light meant. An animal? He couldn’t imagine any shining yellow animals in this solar system. He didn’t even think this planet was inhabited.
A person, perhaps? Reacher liked the sound of that idea. People meant civilization, and civilization was beginning to sound very appealing. Civilization meant warmth and shelter which, at the moment in time, were things he would almost-willingly sell his Hero Core for.
“Hey!” he bellowed, yelling through cupped hands to amplify his voice. But if it was a person, they either didn’t hear him or just ignored him.
The blue and black armored hero began trudging towards the glimmer. It was probably nothing, a leaf or a scrap of cloth, but hope drove him on. If it was a person then he might end up with a roof over his head and a warm fire at his feet that night.
There was only ice in the place where Reacher thought he’d glimpsed life. He stood, peering into the snow-riddled darkness, trying not to breathe. For a long time he saw nothing. But then, as the wind gradually died down, he caught sight of it again, a long way off, something yellow. He started to cry out and broke into a run.
He chased the glint for a full hour. The longer he chased it, the more convinced he became it wasn’t real. If his scanner wasn’t constantly reminding him it was real he might have dubbed it as a ghost leading him to his doom, toying with him for cruelty. Or the snow had impaired his vision and the occasional flashes of yellow were nothing more than a flare at the back of his eyes. If there was the slimmest chance of survival, he had to seize it.
So he pushed on, through snow, over ice, defying the bitter wind. The cold was settling in again, despite his death-defying resilience. He could feel himself drawing lose to the end. Even heroes had their limits. As disorientated as he’d been in the past hour, it was nothing short of a miracle how he’d made it that far.
Eventually, the hero found himself spotting the opening of a rocky ridge to his left. It looked like the mouth of a cave. For a long moment, the hero stared slack-jawed at the ridge. Was it real? If so, perhaps the colors had been too. Sighing, he took a fresh step forward and felt his foot connect with something hard and metallic in the snow. He cried out in surprise and nearly tripped over. Angered, the hero shuddered and examined his find then felt his eyes widen in surprise. There was a yellow body at his feet, twitching and quivering in wild spasms of urgency.
Without wasting a moment, Reacher tucked his scanner into his pack and scooped up his fellow hero in his bulky arms, intending to carry him towards the hole in the rock.
An icy chill ran down the elite hero’s back as he caught a glimpse of a dark figure pounding towards him. It was massive, dark behind the heavy snowfall, almost completely invisible against the jet-black sky. If not for its two pairs of crystal-blue eyes he wouldn’t have spotted it until it was upon him.
Was it some sort of animal? It had to be. Reacher was sure of it. The being was easily twice his size with a pair of vicious-looking horns and sharp talons. It appeared to be standing on its hind-legs, its mouth a gaping maw of blades.
It must have been starving. A more cunning creature probably would have waited longer, until he was too weak to defend himself. But when it’d seen him slip its mouth must have watered.
A sharp blow to Reacher’s chest sent his spiraling back into the snow in shock. He lost his grip of the yellow-armored hero as he flew through the air, wandering what monster was standing over his body.
Reacher rolled onto his back and glared up at the abomination towering over him. Only one thought passed through his head in that instant. He was almost certain that animals didn’t carry energy weapons and walk on two legs.
Which meant his stroll in this desolate winter wasteland had just gotten interesting.

---

Sam Clank snapped back into consciousness and cried out in alarm. He bolted upright in his bunk bed and immediately banged his head on the bed above him, which seemed to silence him for a moment as pain flared through his circuits. He opened his eyes, unsure if he was still in his dream or if the blood-red flashing lights and flaring alert sirens were just part of his alarm clock. He quickly decided against it and instead set out looking for someone to physically disembowel for waking him up. There was nobody else in his room.
The orange-armored hero’s insides began to clench, his mind racing as it always did when anyone had an especially bad nightmare. He felt like something terrible was about to happen, and he didn’t need the flaring klaxon bells and flashing lights to tell him that much.
Forcing himself to wake up and focus, the veteran hero leapt out of his bed and snatched up his blaster and sprinted towards his door. He slipped out into the corridor and was almost deafened by the noise. He winced and tried to block it out of his audio receptors, fearful for his continued hearing. After a moment’s hesitation, the orange-armored hero was reminded that the alarms meant danger and decided to get to the control room. He stumbled over to the command center in a daze, still half-asleep but ready to throw himself in front of whatever snow monster was causing all the trouble.
Clank booted the door open and threw himself inside with drunken balance. The alarms bells stopped burning his sanity and the lights shut off as he did so, and the room was plunged back into darkness, save for the light of the computer monitors that colonized the shadowy chamber.
Two other heroes were in the room, hiding in the darkness. A male and a female. He knew the female well. They’d been friends for years and teammates for slightly longer. Her name was Jenny Sharp, his closest living friend. She turned around and smiled at him slyly as he stumbled further inside.
“Enjoy your nap?” She was teasing him.
“Very eventful” he replied with an exaggerated yawn. “I don’t suppose the base is on fire?”
“No such luck” grunted the male, a green-armored hero named Jaret Tracer. The grouchy mechanic seemed to be in a particularly bad mood, worse than his usual frame of mind. Clank was just glad he wasn’t stuck on a team with Tracer, he didn’t think he’d ever met anyone more cynical in his life.
“So what’s the problem?” The orange-armored hero did a quick headcount then realized that one of their number was missing. “Is Gust in trouble?”
Sharp nodded. “I’m getting data reports that he’s been demobilized.”
“Bonecrusher?”
“Almost certainly.”
Clank nodded then exchanged glances with Tracer. They both knew what that meant.
“Where is he?” grunted the green-armored hero.
“Outside his sentry post, two kilometers north” responded the white-armored female.
A dull pop-up box sprang onto the screen. Sharp frowned. After a moment’s hesitation she clicked on it and it expanded.
“I can establish an optical link” she announced. “We can see what Gust sees… even after he dies.”
It was an inevitable fact but still one that pained the three of them deep inside. Gust was a simple rookie. Bonecrusher was a vengeful, hero-killing maniac, hardened by a decade of oppression and hardship. And they were separated from the heroes by two kilometers of frozen debris. The novice hero would be finished off long before they managed to reach him. The best they could hope for was to run past his broken body. If they hurried, Bonecrusher’s footprints may still be fresh in the snow.
And if they weren’t, Gust would have died for nothing.
The link was established almost immediately. After a split second of fuzzy, grey nothingness, the image arrived with a crackle, revealing absolutely nothing. Just a white world that seemed to be frozen solid.
But then a dark figure staggered onto the screen, shivering from the cold. The combination of the visual link and the poor visibility through the curtain of snow left the three agents confused. It took them a moment longer than it should have to identify him as a fellow Hero Factory agent. His blue and black armor appeared frozen and clammy, encrusted with a thin layer of ice. With no organic parts there was nothing to stop his joints freezing over. Plus he appeared to be blinking and coughing as he struggled to his feet, wobbled, then puffed out his chest and narrowed his eyes.
“Who’s this clown?” grunted Tracer. The three heroes exchanged confused glances before anyone spoke.
“A reinforcement?” suggested Clank unconvincingly.
Sharp shook her head. “If he was he’d have the upgrade or at least some sort of prototype ice-resistant armor, which he clearly doesn’t… unless shivering is the latest trend.”
“But his core would’ve run out if he’d stayed here as long as us.”
“I know.”
“So he just got here?”
“Possibly” shrugged the white armored medic. She rubbed her forehead, as if trying to stimulate an idea forming in her mind. In the end she just shuddered to herself and turned to her two teammates. Something was troubling her; and Clank didn’t need to be her closest living friend to figure that one out.
“Well whoever he is, he’s dead regardless of whether or not we get to him” grunted Tracer. “The cold, core drainage or Bonecrusher. It doesn’t matter what kills him, he doesn’t stand a chance out there.”
“Not essentially” retorted Clank casually, making an open gesture to the screen. “You see his armor? He has Elite plates, plus military brandings. He’s probably better suited to this planet than any of us are.”
“I’ll run a search for him in the database” muttered Sharp quietly. “You two focus on –” She trailed off when her eyes returned to the screen.
Gust had moved. He’d been picked up then thrown down. The other hero was on the ground, heaving himself back to his feet, eyes burning, muscles straining.
“He has an identification plate!” exclaimed Tracer. He pointed at the screen as the stranger returned to his feet. “Zoom in!”
Sharp hesitated, unwilling to obey orders from one of the heroes she should be ordering about. Reluctantly, she finally decided some battles just weren’t fighting and turned to face the computer interface. The image widened then homed in on the hero’s shoulder plate, his military ID tag.
“What does that say?”
“Roacher?”
“Rusher?”
“Racker?”
“I think it’s Preacher!”
The three team mates exchanged then exchanged glances, confused.
“I’ve never heard any of those names” grunted Tracer coldly as he narrowed his eyes.
“Well, whatever it is, it definitely starts with an R” murmured Sharp as she panned the camera back out. Just as she did so, the hero on the screen snarled, his joints frozen together, his fingers trembling, his hero core burning away quietly.
Blazing like a god.

“Let’s just hope Bonecrusher spends enough time wondering who his is for us to get there…”

---

Reacher threw himself at his attacker as he roared his rage. His momentum drove him into his enemy and the pair thumped into the snow, wrestling wildly with one another.
Tactically, he had the advantage having landed on top, but then his rabid foe took a vicious bite for his neck and the hero had to jerk himself away to avoid injury. The slight gap gave his strange attacker space to ram his muscular knee into Reacher’s chest. He fell back, winded.
He was in far worse shape than the stranger, but he had a fellow hero to protect and that gave him a slight desperate edge. In that single moment, he didn’t care what happened to him, but he wasn’t going to let this ferocious, beastly carnivore kill his fallen victim.
His rival was back on his feet before Reacher’s frozen metallic backside hit the snow. He had no idea who his foe was or why he’d been attacked, but like any natural warrior he didn’t care. Rather than waste time asking questions, he struggled back up and threw himself at his assailant. He would rather live in ignorance than die well-informed.
The hero’s weapons charged with energy only for a powerful swipe to strike his forearm and knock his left blaster from his hands. It disappeared into the snow, burning its way through the cold with a fiery hiss.
Angered by the loss of one of his favorite Plasma Pistols, Reacher made sure he latched onto his attacker’s back. He cried out in alarm when he realized it was jutted with sharp, bone-like spikes.
The Elite Hero’s eyes widened in shock as a thunderbolt of realization struck him. Crab claw, spiky back, horns, scorpion-tail. He was fighting an Aurosian. He should be putting this figure in a museum, not a hospital.
For a moment he considered trying to dismount and make peace with the last member of the critically endangered species. Perhaps he could crack a joke and they could laugh over how he’d mistaken him for the local wildlife. But then he realized he’d been attacked first. Plus the unconscious yellow-armored hero in the snow wouldn’t have fainted.
And he’d just remembered the name of the last Aurosian.
“Bonecrusher?” he growled in surprise as his crab-like foe struggled to tear him off his back.
“I don’t do autographs, hero” he spat sarcastically as his claw bit into Reacher’s chest. “But if you want something nice written on your tombstone then perhaps something can be arranged.”
The blue and black-armored hero was hurled through the bitter air with a flick of Bonecrusher’s wrist. By some miracle, he managed to land on his feet.
“You talk too much” remarked Reacher coldly as he raised his remaining blaster and fired wildly. He didn’t see the familiar scarlet flare for the snow but he could tell he’d struck the Aurosian. There was a hiss as Bonecrusher jerked his leg back and clamped his single hand down on it.
“You are a resilient little pest!” his enemy snarled menacingly. Before Reacher could even take up a defensive position, he was headbutted in the chest again. He snarled as his second blaster was knocked from his fingers. It wasn’t too much of a problem. The range was too close for his energy rifles. They were useless in this proximity.
But the loss of his weapon still irritated him. Without even letting an enraged grunt slip, he threw himself at Bonecrusher again, this time managing to make him slip and fall over. The two fighting strangers wrestled to the ground. They struggled against each other for a number of minutes before Reacher was finally pinned down, pressed tight against the ice.
It was going to take far more than that to finish him off though.
Squirming for his life, the hero managed to get a hand between his helmet and his enemy’s and pushed. Bonecrusher tried to chew at his fingers but the hero was too experienced to be caught out like that. His Hero Factory battle field instructors had taught him to be wary of the dirty moves as well as the legitimate. Hardly the glamorous training that members of the Alpha Team got but it seemed to have finally paid off. He’d have liked to have seen this oh-so-famous William Furno, who he’d been hearing too much about lately, make it out of a skirmish like this with all of his body parts intact.
Sliding his fingers away from his foe’s teeth, he jabbed at his eyes, gouging one of them. The Aurosian howled in agony. That gave him the only chance he needed.
Taking the window of opportunity, Reacher followed like a flash of lightning – desperately glad that the cold had sharpened his senses instead of shutting them down. If he won this fight, he’d be able to travel the Makuhero City, with one of the Hero Factory’s most wanted criminals in Hero Cuffs. What he would give to see Preston Stormer’s face when that happened.
But the conflict was far from over and only a fool would congratulate himself while his opponent was still alive and dangerous.
Pinning the three-eyed Aurosian down, Reacher found his enemy’s throat and squeezed. His fingers tightened as Bonecrusher’s face turned purple. Aurosians could hold their breath for far longer than most other species, but his enemy had been panting from the fight and hadn’t much oxygen left in his organic lungs. He had to break Reacher’s grip quickly or his species was going to finally die out.
The desperate Aurosian worked his left arm free and began tugging on the hero’s hands. When that didn’t make a difference he flailed out, trying to punch Reacher in the face, hoping to smash his helmet. But the hero had been expecting that too. He tucked his chin in tight and took the blows on his forehead, grunting in pain but still in control.
His attacker was weakening. He had fought many fights in his time and knew when one was lost. There was something glinting in his eyes. Pain? Defeat? Anger? Whatever it was, Reacher doubted his enemy was going to give up. He imagined the Aurosian making his peace with whatever Gods his species had worshipped. If he was to die, he’d want a clear conscience. He probably wouldn’t ask for forgiveness for the countless lives he had claimed, probably for the times he’d been weak instead, when he’d disgraced his proud and demanding species.
And that made Reacher taste the temptation of bloodlust.
The hero could sense victory, but remained focused. Many battles were lost in their last few seconds, when the one with the upper hand grew over-confident and gave his opponent the chance to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Reacher was sure he wouldn’t make that mistake. Just another thirty seconds of pressure and his hero-murdering stalker would be dead. Then he could find his transporter and –
Bonecrusher’s leg shot up and connected with the hero’s chest, rocketing him into the air. He gave a cry of shock and pain as his fingers were torn from his enemy’s neck. He fell through emptiness for a long moment before crashing hard against the rock beneath a particularly thin patch of snow. He shuddered and turned to regain his stance in the skirmish only for Bonecrusher’s scorpion-like tail to flash past him and pin him to the ground.
Again he hit the ground, his Elite chestplate decorated with a deep scratch. His vision flickered for a moment as he realized part of his optical circuitry had been cut. His left eye appeared to be blinking on and off, which wasn’t a good sign. Damage of any sort rarely was.
The hero barely got a moment of vision back before Bonecrusher’s jagged claw bit into him, clamping around his neck, squeezing until Reacher felt the mechanical components behind his helmet beginning to crumple.
His eyes widened and full, unbroken vision temporary returned to him. It was just long enough for him to see his enemy’s monstrous face, his bony features, the black blood trickling from his punctured eye socket, the hatred in his remaining eyes as he squeezed.
Reacher accepted that his enemy’s ugly face would be his final sight of life.

But then everything stopped and the hero felt the claw snap open, causing him to drop back to the ground in a broken, battered heap. When he stirred and opened his eyes all he could see was the menacing grin that appeared to have been carved into the Aurosian’s alien face.
“No” he muttered, gritting his teeth to fight off the pain in his eye socket. “No, I won’t kill you now. I have defeated you, and you are barely conscious, little hero. Just as well for you I would never kill an enemy in their sleep. Only a coward strikes down an unconscious foe, and I am no coward.”
Reacher groaned and pounded the snow with his fist. “Just finish me off you overgrown sea urchin!” His mouth wasn’t functioning properly because of the cold. The joints were frozen half open.
“You are without a shred of dignity” sighed the Aurosian as he began to walk away slowly. “But, alas, I will return to kill you if you become a nuisance. Just remember, every breath you take from now on is because I allow it. No matter where you travel, who you hide behind, how many battles you win – you'll know you're only walking, talking, living because of me.” Bonecrusher laughed sardonically. “I just saved your life, hero... I think that rates a thank you, don't you?”
Reacher said nothing, just glared with hate-filled eyes at his enemy.
“Of course, it was a shame. You came so very close to defeating me only to end up broken in the snow.” The Aurosian turned around, scanning the snow in the distance, then turned back. “I suspect you will not be here for long. There are other heroes on this planet, my unyielding stalkers. That’s one thing I admire about you heroes. You are capable of being so persistent and unremitting. Or at least I used to. Now I wouldn’t even drain your tainted cores to power my ship.”
“Are you done monologuing?” challenged the hero. “I have other jerks to put behind bars today.”
The Aurosian snorted before snapping his claw shut and smashing the Hero’s chest. His core made a sharp cracking sound and he cried out in pain. Barely stable.
“You should learn to speak when spoken to” snapped his enemy bitterly. The Elite Hero watched him as he smoothly bent over and scooped up his scanner. He must have dropped it in the snow when they’d started fighting. “Isn’t that what they teach you in your hero training sessions ?”
Reacher said nothing.
His foe’s three-remaining eyes narrowed. “ Fear me hero . For today you have made a powerful enemy. From this moment on I shall plague your dreams, stalk your thoughts… we will meet again, be it in the fiery depths of Hell or later in this life, we shall finish this.” The last Aurosian eyed the murky landscape once more, as if expecting something to shoot out of the backdrop of snow at any moment. “...Live a long life, hero” he chuckled. “I want you around to remember this day. The day the Almighty Bonecrusher , Ruler of the Aurosian Empire, spared your simple, scrawny little life.”
With that, the crab-like being bolted into the snow. Within seconds he’d vanished, leaving a stunned Jack Reacher stranded in the middle of the frozen wilderness with an inert rookie buried in the snow beside him.
Since when had there been an Aurosian Empire?

Chapter 3Edit

To be written

ReviewsEdit

Please post any reviews on the story's talk page.

CharactersEdit

HeroesEdit

• Jack Reacher
• Jenny Sharp
• Sam Clank
• Patrick Gust
• Jaret Tracer

VillainsEdit

• Bonecrusher

TriviaEdit

• One of the alternate titles for Dance in the Flames was "Inside the Fire", a reference to the Disturbed song which Matoro1 was listening to when designing Jenny Sharp, one of the main characters of the story.
  • What is ironic is the fact that both these titles were linked to fire and flames while the story is set on the frozen planet: Orcus.
• The story's banner was, very kindly, created by 21bub21.