Hero Factory: Galaxy's Most Wanted

Parent Page: Media

Hero Factory: Galaxy's Most Wanted
Media
Type Activity Book Year(s) released 2010

Hero Factory: Galaxy's Most Wanted, also known as Hero Factory: Galactic Villains, is a 32-page Hero Factory activity book by Greg Farshtey. It was translated into Polish language, and released by the AMEET publishing company on 2010 along with Hero Factory: To Serve and to Protect. It takes place during the 2010 story arc. The book contains various activities and information on Von Nebula's gang.

Content

The book has a story that is split into two, Bad to the Bone and Evil to the Core. Evil to the Core is a first-person perspective from XPlode, and takes place before the events of Episode 1: Trials of Furno. The book also has a comic called A Narrow Escape. The books describes Von Nebula's gang. It also has quizzes and puzzles. The book also has a board game called Race for Hope, with action cards.

Bad to the Bone

To be written

Evil to the Core

I'm Xplode. If you are one of those victims of fate who just sits and listens to the Hero Factory Radio non-stop, you have probably heard of me. I am a criminal, an outcast, a nightmare for decent citizens. It is before me that the inhabitants of all known worlds tremble. Great feeling, believe me.

Do you want to know if my life is different from yours? Then listen. What do you do when you run out of supplies? You stop at the first spaceport, buy what you need from the merchant and fly on. I can't do that, I'm wanted in most spaceports. Not without reason. But I can bunker beyond the next moon, wait for you, and steal what you just bought. It's faster, easier and much cheaper. For me, not for you.

Many smart people wonder why robots like me go astray. They theorize about some important, extremely complicated reasons why we find ourselves on the other side of the law. Don't listen to this nonsense. The thing is, some robots are just plain bad. My philosophy is not complicated: someone builds something, I destroy it.

And that's why I found myself with Rotor on the sixth planet of the Taygeta system. We got an order from a man named Von Nebula. The guy has a serious problem with the Hero Factory. Personally, I am not driven by revenge at work. This uncontrolled feeling dulls the senses. But whatever, the boss pays - we do the job.

The task was simple. Somewhere in the galaxy there is a place they call the "thieves bank". When you make a big jump and you know you're in hot pursuit, you leave the loot with the "banker" and he holds it for you until you get out of jail. After serving your sentence, you pay a large percentage of the value of the goods for the "banker's" service and get your property back. The Hero Factory has been looking for a "bank" for years. Von Nebula came up with the idea that if his two famous mercenaries allowed themselves to be tracked on their way to a deserted planet where no one in their right mind would land, the heroes would follow them, hoping to discover the location of the "bank".

And so it happened. And we have prepared a little surprise for them.

"Did you bury it?" I asked Rotor. He grunted in the affirmative. "Deep enough?" I kept asking. He grunted again.

Rotor doesn't really like working with me. He once tried to leave me stranded while I was working. Well, I used one of my explosive spikes to disable his rotor. How he hit the ground then! From then on, he scowled at me as if he wanted to take me apart. This would move me to tears if I could cry... or had feelings.

The hero craft appeared on the horizon about six hours after our landing. Two capsules detached from it, and when they sank into the sand, Bulk and Stringer - our first victims - emerged from them. Now we just had to engage them in battle and... lose.

Yes, I said "lose".

Can you imagine that? We, professional criminals smarter than all the rabble from the Hero Factory, were screaming and attacking us as if we had just been built. Bulk and Stringer hesitated at first, probably thinking we were crazy. However, when they realized that we were serious about charging, they immediately returned fire. Rotor instinctively dodged, but I let Stringer hit me and fell to the ground. Everything had to look believable.

We let ourselves be pushed around like that for a few minutes. Then I fired a volley at the ground - sand flew several meters up and we escaped. Bulk and Stringer gave chase, so we slowed down so they could catch up. And again a short exchange. First we take them, then they take us, and then we take care of them. We played like this for almost the whole day, repeating the same pattern. Each time the heroes almost had us, but we eluded them at the last minute.

Bulk and Stringer were very frustrated with this. Von Nebula was jamming radio communications around the planet, so they couldn't call for backup. It was still too early to let them do that. Rotor and I forced them to exert themselves without giving them a moment to consider why we were fighting like robot waiters after a melee and not like seasoned villains.

You're probably wondering about this too. Well, it's time for a short lecture about the construction of a robot. The Hero Factory installs a power core in each hero, which must be recharged before the action. If the core discharges during combat, there is a good chance that its owner will not leave the battlefield under his own power. More effort means faster energy loss. But the core contains so much of it that only a really difficult and long fight can exhaust the hero's strength to an extent that threatens his life.

That's why we decided to help our heroes a little in wasting energy. It is worth telling here what Rotor buried on the battlefield. It was a small gadget - the work of Von Nebula - that sucked the energy of the cores from a long distance and stored it inside itself. Chasing back and forth after us, Bulk and Stringer were losing energy twice as fast as usual. A few more hours and they would be staggering. Then Stormer, Furno and the rest would fly in to help, and we would take care of them the same way. Not stupid, eh?

Now for some good advice, for free. Whether your "non-stupid" plan succeeds or fails depends on your partner's level of stupidity. In this case, Von Nebula failed to anticipate that his plan might not be immune to Rotor's bottomless stupidity.

Things started to get complicated after about twelve hours of our cat and mouse game. Rotor was finding it harder and harder to bear it. He had this idea that Bulk and Stringer would get out of the trap alive and the universe would know how easy it was to defeat Rotor. I didn't think he had so much pride. Because why? His only advantage is that he can fly. This is useful in our profession, it's easier to escape. And he suddenly wanted to go down in history as a hero slayer, not as a shooting target. I told him everything was going according to plan. Bulk and Stringer were losing strength, just a few more rounds and our gadget would take all their power. The heroes would turn to scrap.

Rotor complained a lot, but he finally gave in. At least that's what it seemed to me then, because in the next fight he fought seriously. The sight of his heroes weakening was too tempting for him. He fired non-stop, giving no chance to counterattack. But the plan was for them to waste energy, not us! The rotor could have failed the entire action. I had no choice - I cooled down his enthusiasm with an "accidental" shot from the putter.

"What are you?! Are you crazy?!" he shouted. I don't like it when someone shouts at me. This irritates. And when I'm angry, I explode... and so does everything else around me. I struggled to keep my composure as I said, "Von Nebula gave us a simple assignment. Do you want to offend him? It's up to you. Maybe I'll get lucky and get an assignment for you later."

He closed up and I used the silence to wonder what was going through the characters' heads at that moment. They must have already noticed the energy drop in their cores. Bulk was an idiot, but Stringer could think. He was probably wondering why they were losing strength so quickly. Is it a planetary influence, and do Rotor and I also have this problem? That would explain our poor fighting style.

Stringer broke the silence, shouting from hiding, "Listen! Something's wrong here. We should get off this planet while we still can. Maybe a little truce? We'll try to get our craft back and fly away together."

Yeah, right. Were we supposed to march meekly on board and be taken straight to jail? Never! Even if we were weakened like them. I threw some explosives at them in response.

The characters' reaction was predictable. They chased us with all their strength. A decisive attack was their last hope to defeat us and escape the planet. In my opinion, one action should completely discharge their cores. Maybe then Von Nebula would give us a bonus?

Bulk and Stringer launched an attack. I was prepared for this. I looked towards Rotor... but Rotor wasn't with me. A bad feeling came over me. Success was so close, and something told me Rotor was going to mess it up. I saw a few hundred meters away...

Oh no! There's no way he could be that stupid, I thought. But he was. The rotor flew straight to where the energy drainer was buried. I guessed what he was going to do. He wanted to dig it out and absorb the power stored in it to annihilate the heroes with one blow. I ran after Rotor. I had to stop him before our trick was revealed. If Bulk and Stringer saw the device, or worse yet, if their vehicle's sensors detected it, the Hero Factory would immediately quarantine the planet. Rotor and I would be stuck in this wasteland forever.

The heroes must have sensed a chance to win. Stringer ran after me, faster than he could by my calculations. Maybe Makuro has improved the core design since Von Nebula left the Factory? Meanwhile, Rotor had dug out the sucker and was messing around with its console.

I couldn't do anything anymore. If I fired, I could damage the device and the energy would return straight to Bulk's and Stringer's cores. I shouted to Rotor to leave the machine. Either he didn't hear me or he didn't want to hear me. Instead, I heard the sound of our defeat.

It was a steady, low noise - just like the one a Stringer pitcher makes. A powerful sound wave hit Rotor and sent him flying backwards. The device fell out of his hands. It seemed as if the machine was falling to the ground in slow motion. I jumped desperately to catch it, but I couldn't. It hit a stone, broke, and a cascade of sparks and lightning shot out from inside. I knew that the heroes behind me were quickly regaining their energy.

If you listen to Hero Factory Radio, you know the end of this story. Rotor and I were arrested, and the machine ended up in the hands of the Factory specialists. They will take it apart, examine it, and find a way to better protect the cores. Von Nebula's plan failed only because Rotor couldn't stand defeat - even a fake one.

Now we are both locked in our cells. But we won't stay long. Von Nebula will probably send Thunder for us, and then we'll have to explain a lot about how we managed to screw it all up. Of course I'll blame it on Rotor. And he's on top of me. Then we will painfully feel how Von Nebula endures failures...

At times like these, I seriously consider changing my career. Do you know any cool job that uses a lot, but really a lot, of explosives?

A Narrow Escape

To be written

Characters

• Hero Factory
  • Alpha 1 Team
    • Preston Stormer
    • Jimi Stringer
    • Dunkan Bulk
• Von Nebula's Gang

External links

• Hero Factory: Galaxy's Most Wanted (archived)
• English translation in BioSector01