Then...
"I will let you know that I don't like hitting ladies."
He was known as Rodeo, the cowboy-themed hero of Globetropolis. He had been the guardian of the city long before Starchild had entered the scene. Armed with a motorcycle and revolvers with high-tech trick-bullets, he bravely fought injustice, whether it was "normal" criminals or super powered goons.
In this case, it was the second.
It was supposed to be easy. Tony Reynard, some weapon-dealing scumbag Rodeo had chased for so long, had hired some muscles. Some gal in an S&M outfit, sipper-mask and all. Reynard had called Fatal. And she had just thrown a car after him. Rodeo now had to fight her, meaning that Reynard and his goons could get away with a truck filled with laser beam guns or whatever kind of guns it was.
"Wow, you are a tough cookie, aren't ya?" Rodeo shot her with a couple of trick-bullets, and she was now wrapped in six rubber-bands. In mere seconds, she made them snap and charged toward him. Realizing that he didn't want to be too close to Fatal, he turned on the engine on his bike and drove as crazy. He could hear the ground shatter as Fatal leaped after him. She was not fast enough to catch him, but that she would stop at nothing to try, meaning that she would bring chaos to the streets the longer the chase took. Rodeo made a u-turn and jumped off the bike and fired two bullets at it. The bike hit Fatal, and the bullets made it blow up in her face. Rodeo then fired a round of small-explosive bullets at her. It didn't knock her out, but it did make her fall down on her knees, panting. It gave him time enough to load the gun and fire a round of glue bullets, trapping Fatal in a huge green lump of glue. Her head was free, so that she could still breathe.
"Ah, son of a..." Rodeo could finally check the wounds he had gained from crashing to the ground after jumping of the bike. "You know something?" He said to Fatal who tried to force herself free from the glue. "I am so tired of you super-psychos running around in my town. I mean, why? You can, what, bench-press a tank, and you work for pricks like Reynard? It REALLY makes me sick how... wait a sec..."
Rodeo stepped closer to Fatal. He thought it was something he had imagined, but...
"Are you... crying?"
She was. She was sobbing, actually. Rodeo pulled off her mask.
"Holy..." Rodeo stared at the face of a young woman with blond hair. She cried so hard that her nose was running. "You are just a kid. I have a pair of socks older than you!"
"I... I didn't want anyone to be hurt!" she said with confused and tearful eyes. "Tony said that I just had to chase you away, and that's it! He said I would be okay... that nothing would happen..."
Rodeo just stood there, unsure if he should try to... comfort her. But then the cops arrived and Rodeo watched them drag away the young woman who looked more like a victim than a lawbreaker.
Now...
"Yes! YES! My answer is Y-E-S, YES!!!"
That went faster than Johnson had expected. But he had been told that Sally Bulkmeier would be easy to persuade. But he didn't even have to try. Bulkmeier was as exited as a little girl at the night of Christmas Eve. Her face was filled with joy.
"... Ms Bulkmeier, maybe you should let me explain the deta-"
"Nope, I'm in! Don't care about details." Her gleefulness left her face, and was replaced by sadness. "I feel so bad about all the, you know... stuff I did. Tony told me that I had to, that we needed the money and that it was temporly..."
"Temporarily."
"Yeah, that. Don’t like this place. The other girls here are really mean to me, and so are the guards. I just want to get out of here and never come back ever again."
"You... do understand that this is not just a get-out-of-jail-free card, right? You have to work for it. Each mission will take a few weeks off your sentence."
"That's the BEST part of it!" The bright smile reappeared on her face. "I get to be a superhero! For real! Seriously, how cool is that?! Just show me what to sign."
Once Bulkmeier had signed the form, Johnson had a bad taste in his mouth as he left her cell.
Sally Bulkmeier, 18 years old, was a lost puppy trapped inside a super strong body that could kill a man with a little finger. She had been pushed around most of her "criminal career" by this Tony Reynard. To say that she had been manipulated would imply that Reynard had had been difficulties making her do his bidding. She was a high-school dropout whom he had been SO nice to. He had talked her into being the test subject of some highly illegal experiment that turned the young lady into a superwoman. Then told her that they needed money to pay the "good doctor". And so on and so on. Bulkmeier's lawyer had a hard time talking the judge into sending her to a juvenile prison instead of Monster Island. She had to wear a power damping neckband, as well as giving her daily injections. She had been the subject to harassment by the other inmates as well as the guards who did not like super humans, but despite this, she had been a well-behaving prisoner. After a recent riot, the guards had believed she had escaped as well as 21 other of the inmates, but the guards later found her hiding in the shower. She had told the guards that she had stayed there the whole time due to her fear of accidentally hurting someone.
And that makes her an important asset to the team. Frank Martin's words rang in Johnson's head. She is the only one who will join the program with pure intentions. And she is powerful enough to subdue the others if they somehow figure out a way to negate the nanobots. And due to her simple mind, she will follow any order you give her without questioning it.
So that was three down. Now, Johnson had to visit the prison facility on Monster Island to get the fourth and last member of the Glory Guards;
The non-human one.
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