Woah there ED-NA! Calm down. I know you’re not a fan of the little ones, but that was
uncalled for. Sorry about that kids. Alright. I think I have a story or two in me. Out here
in the West most places have some form of law enforcement. Whether its an army of Securitrons,
a few men and women with badges, or a hard-working sheriff. In the East, the Capital Wasteland
doesn't have much government. Each little town has its own law. Most of them hire a
mercenary to help keep the peace, but sometimes that isn't enough and folk have to take the
law into their own hands. As far back as four hundred year ago, the dime novels and comic
books told tales of masked vigilantes who fought for justice and righted wrongs. Eventually
it wasn't enough for these fictional characters to wear a mask, these "super" heroes needed
crazy costumes and super-human powers to fight crime. The superheroes fell out of favor over
time, replaced by tales of barbarians, spacemen, and heroic soldiers, but companies like Hubris
Comics kept printing the funny books until Armageddon came.
Among the Hubris line up was Grognak the Barbarian.
Grognak!
Modern readers know Grognak as a source of
handy tips on swordfighting, but if you look past the action scenes there are some good
stories and characters hidden between the ads for x-ray glasses. One of his old enemies
was the Antagonizer, a femme fatale who commanded an army of ants. And hundreds of years after
that issue was published, a young girl in the town of Canterbury Commons must have come
across that very book and taken it to heart. The citizens of Canterbury Commons like to
tell her tale to caravans who pass through the town, and there was an Enclave outpost
not too far away that captured video footage of her on occasion. Hers was a tale of sorrow...
When Tanya Christoff was just a girl, her parents were killed before her eyes by giant
ants. While many people would have vowed vengeance against the six-legged creatures, Tanya realized
that she had been spared. Nay! She had been chosen! She turned her back on humanity, seeking
solace in the welcoming embrace of the ants. Humans are unpredictable, ungovernable and
most of all self-destructive. But among the ants, she found her rightful place - as queen.
And her royal court of insects did her bidding. It might have been a mutation, or advanced
technology that allowed her to control them, but I suspect it was an act of sheer willpower.
Once she had an army at her command, she created a suit of ant armor, and dubbed herself - The
Ant AGONIZER! With high hopes, and the relentless determination of an ant, she began her assault
on humanity - starting with the people of Canterbury Commons in 2277.
Giant Ants can be pesky, but they're hardly able to outmatch a couple of well-armed mercs
like the town had. And with the Ant Agonizer always screaming melodramatic monologs, the
townsfolk could hear her coming and get the drop on her bugs when they showed up. Despite
her theatrics, she turned out to be more of an oddity than a menace. The trader caravans
even considered her to be a source of entertainment, and the townsfolk had something to break up
the monotony of their days. But one man had enough of her villainous ant-ics! A hero chose
to fight back against the formic felon! When Scott Wollinski saw his fair city under siege
by a nefarious temptress and her arthropod army, he assumed the mantle of... The Mechanist!
With his robot sidekicks, The Mechanist waged a never-ending crusade to defend the good
people of Canterbury Commons against the creeping henchbugs of the Antagonizer! But, alas, the
epic battles threatened to annihilate the very townsfolk that he fought to defend! The
ants weren't so bad by themselves, but when the Mechanist added in a bunch of robots firing
lasers up and down main street, well, things started to escalate...
They would fight to a stand still almost every time, and the Ant Agonizer would run away,
screaming "You haven't seen the last of me, Mechanist!" The townsfolk tried to get rid
of them for months, but no one could find their secret lairs, and the last time I was
out East, they were still at it, disrupting the trade caravans that passed by the town.
Both of them were just too proud to back down, and wouldn't sacrifice their superhuman identities,
even for the common good. That's a shame, too. There are plenty of towns out there that
could use a superhero. Places like New Reno for instance. That’s a place so full of
sin and vice, you could trade a comic book for fifteen minutes of... But that's a story
for another day...