After the MillMen fought off the Devastator and returned the STALWART system to the FBI, WarMan shifted back into human form and made his way home to Chicago, where he planned to try to muster up the courage to face his family.

Though he loitered in the city watching them from a distance, he couldn't bring himself to see them as he still feels too gulity for what happened the evening of his change, and then for running away from justice.

Afterwards WarMan returned to Mill-City and helped out at the orphanage for a bit, trying to find some sort of emotional balance and overcome the feelings of remorse and guilt that were plaguing him.

He fought the urge to change into WarMan from, though it became harder and harder to do so. And then he began to notice that he could use some of his abilities all the time now, even in "human" form.

This reawakened the old fears that he may no longer be human, and that the changes will never stop until he is completely robotic all the time....

But he also couldn't ignore the repeated mentions of a string of murders stemming from some sicko stalking the women of Mill City, his surrogate home. His heroic nature got the better of him and he sought out what information he could among the homeless of the city, who see much.

A rumor was going around that the girls were being taken off the streets by some kind of monster. Word was an old bum named One-eye Teddy Cribbs saw one of the victims, Silvia Blass, snatched off the street by some kind of big flying cat. The cops wrote him off as a wino, but maybe there was something to it.

Overhearing a broadcast of Mill City Supers Scene on WCOT, the main FM local talk radio station, that Rook was spotted at the scene where the most recent victim's body was found along with Stalker of the MC8, WarMan realized he could hide no longer; he must do what we could to bring the killer to justice!

Shifting into the towering metal form of WarMan, he took off into the air and flew off to connect with his old ally Major Savage at PRIMUS HQ.

Massive insisted that Gravitic go with him to team up for world domination. Gravitic turned him down somewhat unconvincingly, but Massive departed.

Disgusted with Gravitic's denseness, Rook departed on his own to go find Alliage and continue to pursue the investigation of the murders. Gravitic flew himself home in a state of bafflement.

The going theory is that its Talisman and Black Paladin behind it all stemming from the fact that Black Pally had busted Talisman loose from the Vault a few weeks before and the murders had started a few days later. But the MCPD was being stubborn in the face of growing internal conflicts with PRIMUS over jurisdiction.

WarMan departed for the crime scene, promising to keep Savage apprised of the situation on the low down and play it cool with the MCPD.

But VIPER couldn't just let sleeping dogs lie and staged a mission to attempt to capture the crusty old campaigner for some nefarious purpose. Imagine VIPER's surprise when the extended Wrath clan put all those rifles and shotguns in the back window of their trucks to use and fought them off!

Wrath was last scene in some sketchy aerial photography in a running battle with the VIPER agents attempting to flee the Wrath acreage, careening after their high tech battle wagon in a beat up old Ford.

Weeks later he reappeared in his dingy apartment in Mill City. Warming up the boob tube he watches the news and gets caught up on what's going on. Hearing about the murders and the rumors of Talisman's involvement Wrath intuits from his lengthy experience in dealing with her in the past that she wont be holed up in some dump -- Talisman likes the finer things in life too much and after a stint in prison her first priority would be to make herself comfortable.

As they departed the scene they were rejoined by Rook. Huntress realized she was out of her league and departed, leaving the investigation in the hands of real heroes.

WarMan flew back to meet with Savage and fill him on the details, while Rook took Legend to a Best Western near PRIMUS HQ downtown. Of course it was very near Wrath's apartment as well, and the old warhorse was alerted to their presence by the disruption and looking out the window recognized Rook.

Without hesitation Wrath took to the rooftops and kept them under visual observation without them noticing.

WarMan made contact with Savage, and met another PRIMUS person named Major "Showdown" Brooks, who apparently is in charge of some new PRIMUS outreach initiative. Showdown invited WarMan to meet with him the next day to discuss getting sanction members of the MillMen set up as HERONet affiliates.

Savage gave WarMan a copy of the surveillance tapes from Talisman's breakout and WarMan flew off to rejoin the others at the hotel. Reunited, WarMan shows off a new trick and hooks himself up to the TV and plays back the surveillance tapes of Black Paladin busting Talisman from prison.

Pensive, the four heroes decide that their best bet to find the villains is to use Alliage as bait and go hit some clubs.

Meanwhile Wrath, still being sneaky, broke in to the club from the roof. Inside the club the trap is mistakenly sprung by a strange lounge lizard type that starts hitting on Alliage; Legend detects something odd in his aura, and as the stranger escorted Alliage to the dance floor Rook sprung into action, knocking the stranger for a loop.

At the same time a read blur streaked into the club and after a pause rushed Rook with a sound like a wood saw at full speed. Unperturbed Rook calmly knocked the new assailant out with his invisible force limbs, as Wrath entered the scene from the top, leaping from the upper levels onto the dance floor.

Legend teleported in and imparted order onto the chaos, and extracted the various supers to the street to straighten everything else.

The two new supers were Blackjack, who was just cruising the bar and thought Alliage was cute, and Turbofist who came to the club to investigate the disappearance of an Asian girl from his turf (North Detroit), Anh Xuan.

As the club's patrons fled the area, the odd assortment of supers departed as well for Blackjack's nearby penthouse where they pooled info and resources. Finding out about  this new missing girl, likely another victim, from Turbofist Rook decides to call Detective Marlowe and report it. The cops already had the lead and had gotten some good info from the girls sister, who witnessed her leaving with some strangers, and got a license plate number off the Rolls Royce they were driving..

Detective Marlowe directed the group to an estate about 30 miles south of the city owned by wealthy socialites, and after Blackjack agreed to come along for kicks the seven departed for the mansion, courtesy of Legend's ability to open teleportation gates.

Arriving at the mansion, they soon discovered that it was a font of dark and ancient evils, they were attacked by huge Gryphons and DEMON Cultists! Eventually overcoming these threats, the group was drawn to the basement by Legend's mystic senses. Opening a doorway at the bottom of the basement stairs, the seven heroes found themselves staring into what looked like a pastoral French countryside....outdoors!

Bemused the seven moved into the strange setting, and were somewhat dismayed when the door closed behind them, leaving them stranded. Off in the distance they could see the spires of a dark castle so they made their way towards it. En route to the castle they were set upon suddenly by seven villains that appeared to be distorted, evil versions of themselves!

The heroes were easily defeated by their counterparts, with even Rook finally succumbing to combined attacks after all six of his comrades had fallen. The heroes awoke to find themselves imprisoned in what appeared to be in individual medieval dungeon cells, but attempts to escaped demonstrated that the cells were like the mansion they had entered thru.

Each hero was harassed by their double to various degrees, and then after a period of solitude the inner wall of the cells turned transparent, to display each of their counterparts on the other side facing into their cell, Talisman behind them all in the center of a circle, chanting some ritual and brandishing a wicked looking dagger. At the culmination of the incantation, each counterpart stepped forward and suddenly the heroes were displaced to a strange, polluted, otherworld of metal and decaying industry. And oh yeah, they were under attack by what appeared to be Major Savage, and a wing of similarly suited agents and more prosaic foot troops. In fact, they were boxed into a containment perimeter!

Finally, the heroes won free and were helped by a mysterious woman that turned out to look just like Talisman, but called herself Pendant! She took them to a safe house. Over a period of exposition and rest, the heroes discovered they were in a world similar to their own, but like a negative image. Instead of the USA, the reigning world power was the Hegemony of Vinland; and they were in the ruins of Mill City, which was destroyed by the Conquerors in an attempt to kill Doctor Democracy, the greatest paragon of freedom and liberty in the world.

Putting their noggins together, the heroes decided that if the mansion they went to was an evil gateway to other planes in their dimension, then something at the same place in this one might be a benevolent gateway. Worth a shot, they managed to sneak out of the ruins of Mill City and discovered the mansion, where they met members of a group calling themselves ANGEL that were using it as a safe house.

Legend figured out that the seemingly comatose Alliage was really someone else hidden by a sophisticated illusion. Using his advanced knowledge of the mystic arts Legend intuited that Talisman must have been taking advantage of the Law of Symmetry to cast the spell that forced the heroes into this dark world, while presumably pushing their counterparts into their own dimension. He suspected that Talisman must have held on to Alliage as a better subject for whatever dark magics she had been subjecting the victims too, and put a spell on Ahn to make her as similar to Alliage as possible to satisfy the Law of Symmetry.

Acting on his hunch Legend dispelled the illusion of Alliage, and with a wrench, the heroes were gated back into the strange French purgatory realm they had been in before.

Alliage learned much about her powers in a condensed period of time, and made large breakthroughs in her ability to use them. But she was definitely a prisoner no matter how gilded her cage. However she befriended one of her guards, a strange fey creature called Hob, and it helped her to escape, though she was pursued by an evil and unspeakable plant thing called the Black Alice.

Fleeing the castle at high speed, Alliage arrived in the same pastoral field as her erstwhile companions did when they were gated back into Chantal's pocket realm.