[The cover shows Weapons Master strolling down a New York City
street, and the shadows are full of menace...eyes, hints of
blades and gunbarrels, a pair of cat ears, and so forth. He
seems rather unconcerned, although being in costume with a
large number of sheathed weapons might have something to do
with that.]
While Chuck Morse had some nostalgia for New York City in the Old Days, the bathrooms at Penn Station were almost miraculously better now than they used to be.
Getting off a train to find clean,
spacious, and even private restrooms definitely helped make a good impression on people otherwise leery of entering a notorious haven for paragangs run by a rumored crimelord.
Ironically, Umbrae was probably more legit these days than most of the people in the Walters C-suites. Of course, he had more to prove, and he WAS a crimelord.
Walters hired good techs, but a guy who calls himself Weapons Master
is going to be able to tell when the balance of a sword is off by even a few grams. Let the hired help know they're on a leash, but also let them think the leash can be dropped, so they don't look for the shock collar.
he'd been given an appointment with a minor
functionary in an unremarkable office at the Scott Building, formerly known as the UN Building.
So, off to his appointment, with both sides no doubt tracking his every move and his own side (loosely defined)
Not a problem. He felt the comforting warmth of the amulet against his chest, and knew he could activate it any time he needed. It would spawn a magical "ghost image" that any technological trackers would follow for a while before losing contact entirely, leaving him undetectable until he chose to reveal himself.
He had to be careful when he used it, especially if it
looked like there were any Taoist wizards in town,
The conference room looked like any one of a thousand
bland corporate or governmental rooms with a sturdy if inexpensive oval table, various chairs, a decade-old projector unit mounted on the ceiling, and so forth. All artifice, of course, since the building likely hadn't been renovated until Umbrae took it over, but appearances can be important even when they're unassuming.
Walters proposed sending an investigative crew from his American
NewsNet media company to get an 'unbiased' view of Mr. Umbrae's progress rehabilitating the city, but we were understandably concerned given the recent upswing in vigilante activity stirring up old animosities, and suggested he send a member of the Freedom Alliance first. I believe we specifically recommended you, as most of your team has trouble being subtle, and the Red Widow has too many old enemies here.
"It shouldn't surprise you to know I don't think Walters is as rabidly pro-American as he acts, but he does definitely want to be the first to make inroads into the Autonomous Sectors. He'd love it if you'd actually let his ANN crew into Manhattan, but he doubts that'll happen, so I'm to gather as much information as I can before you put me on the train out."
"When they give someone a job requiring discretion, they'd better know that sometimes that includes not telling them everything. We sometimes help our bosses best by not giving them information that they're not in a good position to use yet."
Mabuse's eyes twinkled with amusement. "A proper gentleman's gentleman knows what his employer needs, and when it differs from what they want, yes.
It is pleasant to work with a professional of such experience...not many of us made it through the troubles."
"I suspect our paths have crossed before, despite the age difference, but one or both of us never knew it happened. Because we are professionals, after all," Chuck grinned widely.
"There is a
school of thought that says that the paragang situation was already dying out on its own in 2022, a fad that was unsustainable, when the Warden arrived and weeded out those who didn't have the fortitude to remain in the lifestyle. That he single-handedly made the problem worse."
"Sounds like a load of...fertilizer...to me," Chuck shrugged. He'd been
through a couple cycles of that debate, starting back in the early 1970s. "Superheroes cause supervillains!" and all that.
"And for political reasons, you can't crack down on the paragangs too openly, which makes the Morning Stars convenient in the short term, but they could also be a problem in the longer term. So you want me to get a fresh view on the girls and give you a second opinion."
Black Opal was one of
the more important figures in that scene, and whenever his business took Chuck (who wasn't running around in a costume at that point) to Manhattan, he made sure to keep Black Opal in the loop. Professional courtesy.
Of course, he also knew the man who'd worn the helmet before Black Opal,
and he was one one of very few people still alive who knew that Jiang Sheng had been the Minuteman during World War II.
"He mostly worked out of Boston, I'm not very familiar with him. But I'll keep that in mind." Not very familiar didn't mean ignorant, and Chuck knew a few things about Shade that would definitely be useful in the right hands, but right now those hands were not attached to Mabuse's arms.
"What if I think they're serious, but in way too deep and they're going to get killed soon enough?"
"We leave that to your conscience. Convince them to retire, train them so that they have a better chance, get them to seek official sanction from the city so we don't have to officially treat them as criminal vigilantes, whatever seems most appropriate. We must trust the man at the point of the spear, or why put him there?"
"Of course, should you wish to become a
double agent...we wouldn't trust you anyway, so best to keep that option completely off the table."
Well fair.
"And the best terms involve the old master being unable to do anything about your choices," Mabuse replied coldly.
As a younger man, Chuck might've worried that Mabuse had figured out he was already a double agent. But he'd been around enough blocks to recognize a shot in the dark when he saw it. It also helped that his real allegiance was to a nearly unknown player who was on the other side of the planet.
Chuck accepted the chip and tucked it into a shirt pocket. He'd read it
on a disposable whitecel later. "Do people still call this place the Big Apple?"
If confused by the seeming change of topic, Mabuse didn't show it. "There's been some discussion of a new epithet, as the Apple isn't quite so big anymore. The Little Apple has been suggested, but a town in Kansas has been going by that nickname since the previous century. Why, do you have a suggestion to run past our tourism board?"
"Yeah. The Big Onion...this place has a lot of layers, and if you dig too deep into them it might make you cry."
Turns out the guy who played
Mabuse in Fritz Lang's movies (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) also played Rotwang, something I had not been aware of when I wrote him into the Metropolis arc almost twenty years ago. Ah, sometimes there *are* coincidences.
Weapons Master is one of the first dozen
or so superheroes I made up in grade school, back around 1981 or so, before I owned an superhero TTRPGs. As such, he's been through a bunch of redesigns over the years, including a somewhat embarrassingly Liefeldian version drawn during the brief period I liked Liefeld's work.
In 2016, he got trapped in a Chinese tomb,
as seen in the one-shot "Lifetrap" (in the Miscellaneous section on the ASH website).
In February 2026, he was freed by the Western Dragon, leader of the Central Asian Confederacy (a successor state to the Greater China that controlled much of Asia for about a generation), and the two became romantically involved.
It has not been established if he will start aging again, or if he
crossed some threshold in consuming the Elixir and no longer needs additional doses to maintain his youth. It does not make him unkillable, however, something the wizard who devised it found out the hard way a couple thousand years ago.
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