Smart people tell us that there are only a few constants in this universe - as one of my associates from Paragon City used to say "Everything freeeeeezes" ... which of course turned out to be only too true for him when a Hero breached his cryogenic weapon system during a battle; the poor guy shattered like a chunk of ice someone hammered with an icepick.
Anyway, back to the constants. Apart from the well-known constants like death and taxes, in my experience there is one more you can always count on: there are assholes everywhere!
In this case I am thinking of a very specific bunch of of them - the Crey Corporation, or Crey as they are commonly known.
I've taken assignments from just as many villain groups as I've fought against; that's one of the things you learn fairly quickly on the Rogue Isles - never think that the enemy you are fighting today can't be the employer your are taking assignments from tomorrow - and vice verse.
However, in my case this NEVER applies in the case of the Crey. Those bastards have double- and triple-crossed me - even at times when I never even knew they had an active part in activities I was involved in.
Taking a regular mega-corporation with all it's built-in greed and lack of respect for people and crowning it with the uninhibited greed, petty mindedness and lack of morals of a super-villain organization is a match made in hell. Lawyers with meta-human backup - it rivals any evil that could come out of the bio-engineered hives of the Devouring Earth or the dystopian catacombs of the Circle of Thorns.
Some weeks ago I undertook a series of assignments from a new broker who called himself Wainwright. He offered above-average pay and there were excellent "salvaging opportunities" along the way, as well as some good opportunities to crack some Malta Group heads, as Wainwright seemed to have a beef with them.
I never knew nor suspected that the Crey were involved until the moment I delivered a box with Titan AI controller-chips to Wainwright and I got jumped by a gang of Crey Power Tanks the second he said he would "no longer be requiring my services for this project." I think the jokers were expecting to knock me out like some rookie and drag me back to some Crey station for shipment to Project Revenant (the Crey "recycling" program that results in the Paragon Protectors). Of course being a Power Tank might be enough to frighten the Heroes and Villains back in The City, but it doesn't impress me one bit - and with all that fancy, heavy body armour they are particularly vulnerable to a certain Brute stomping his foot into the ground with enough force to quake an entire street and send Crey lackeys and pieces of concrete flying everywhere. While they were trying to pick themselves up, I stomped them into the ground and made myself some instant canned Crey - unfortunately Mr. Wainwright managed to escape during the melee.
Not that this did him much good of course - having some ex-Crey employees in the Seventh Cabal as well as access to some heavyweight hackers meant that locating a number of possible bolt-holes weren't all that difficult.
It just took a few raids and overturned Crey stations before I ran into Mr Wainwright again - this time wearing his Crey Tank Armour - and I of course took the time to kindly explain that I took a dim view on being treated this way by the Crey and requested (in all modesty of course) that they refrain from doing so again. A point of view which they seemed to respect.
... of course, I cannot be entirely sure what with the whole places going up in flames, smoke obscuring everything and collapsed walls and ceilings all over the place.
