Behind The Hero: Barnyard Rangers
By SolarGemX
The Wild West, a romanticized viewing of the American Frontier during the late 1800's. This period of time brought upon the famous legacy of The Cowboy, immortalized in American culture thanks to the famous figures like Billy The Kid, Buffalo Bill or Kitty Canutt or the many movies, actors or writers that brought this style of entertainment to life, and just like those individuals, that brought the modern idea of the "Cowboy" to the masses, Heroes have kept the tradition alive, more than 200 years later. Howdy! In today's episode of Behind the Hero, we take a look at the group that dishes frontier justice in Texas and its surrounding wilderness, the most Rooting and Shooting team in the Wild West, The Barnyard Rangers.
This team's origin is quite different to what many would expect, you see the BR's have only been a team for a little over 2 years now, but that doesn't mean they've
only been active for that period of time. The members of this not so little posse have been active for over 7 years, but were working under different names, yes names plural. You see before the eight strong team came to be, there were actually two teams bidding for territory, The Desperado Rangers, and The Barnyard Bashers.
As many would assume, there's a kind of "rule" when it comes to modern heroics, teams take jobs or do their patrols in the territories they are allowed to work at. Think of as different areas in a map, for example you could be a hero team stationed in or near The Worker's Mitt in Horizon, you do your part and save the day and then try to head towards the Uni district in search of more work, that would bring trouble since that area is under New Dawn's contract. Making it bad news if you try to poach work from under them since it would lead to a bunch of problems among them being financial in nature. Now you may be asking why is any of this important? Well… you see… that's
Exactly what happened between the two Texan groups. Its unknown who started the conflict, some say it was Gold Eye taking jobs in BB work area or White Devil capturing a suspect that was being trailed by the DR's while in their territory, but toes had been stepped on and so began a bit of bad blood between the two groups.
It started as a somewhat passive aggressive rivalry, barbs and quips between the two, but as the years passed on and with no boundaries set it began to ramp up into insults and on one occasion, a fight between Copper Serpent and Golden Rooster, ending with both parties injured and out of commission for nearly one month. This hostility would continue on for nearly Two years until it eventually came to a head during an especially important mission about 2 and half years ago, where each group received different contracts, completely clueless of the eventual result.
From what we've been able to uncover both groups had received contracts from different sources, The Desperados had received a contract from one of the Active Duty Military installations near Texas, the base had found out that a huge surplus of military level gear, guns and vehicles had gone missing while in transit and that the perpetrators may had used metahuman assistance in doing so, the team was hired to search the areas of the most recent hijacking to see if they could find and retrieve the stolen goods. Meanwhile, the BR's had received a contract over in Wyoming pertaining to a string of missing people cases, over 15 individuals had gone missing, and the team was hired in hopes of finding them, and so both teams went to work.
The Desperados Rangers had managed to use both Breeze Hoof's and Gold Eye's abilities to find some tracks that led them to the hijacker's base of operations deep in the wilderness. Taking it slow they began taking down criminals one by one until they heard a massive Bang deeper within the facility, causing the alarm to be sprung and causing them to have to hurry in other to not get surrounded, as they turned the corner of the underground complex they were surprised to find the Barnyard Bashers inside the complex. The BB had managed to scour some of the locations where the victims were last seen and after some investigations, they had discovered that every individual were being taking into the wilderness in order to be sold off, human trafficking. They had managed to sneak their way into the base without much trouble, until they had discovered one of the victims about to be executed for causing a ruckus, making them come out of cover and start fighting against the villains, and by extension, triggering the alarm.
Back in the present the sudden arrival of both teams nearly caused a fight to break out, right then and there. But before things could escalate, they were interrupted by the emergence of the main ringleader of the operation, Arms Race. The villain, later identified as Tony Rodriguez, was a smuggler that took trafficking jobs from the criminal underground, from weapons to people, nothing was out the table. Arms Race had an ability to empower non metahuman individuals to a certain degree, making them tougher and hardier than most, making it easy to overpower normal civilians. Due to his sudden appearance and a resurgence of enemy troops, both teams had to settle their differences later as they were immediately set upon, separating all of them from their usual teammates. As each hero fought alongside members of the opposite team rivalries began to fizzle and they began making sure to cover each other's weak spots, eventually taking down the villain and retrieving the stolen goods plus the kidnapping victims. It was after this incident and finding out why both teams were there to begin with that the rivalry finally came to an end. Slowly beginning to interact in a more friendly manner it took around six months before a vote was called between the two teams, causing a merger to occur and for the Barnyard Rangers to be born.
Quite the tale huh? Both look at the time, we been here for so long and we haven't even begun talking about the members, let's fix that shall we? Let's start with Desperado Rangers side of the team and then go to the Barnyard Bashers side.
Let's start with the leader of the Rangers, Marybelle Anderson Astraud, also known as the literal horse girl, Breeze Hoof. Ms. Anderson is slight dysmorphic Metahuman taking the form of a Centaur of Greek myth, The top half of a rather attractive reddish blonde adult woman and the sleek muscly lower half of a horse, she's probably one of the tallest members of the team, coming to just around 6'6 feet tall. Breeze hoof is the speedster of the team easily reaching over 60 miles and hour and with recorded speeds easily reaching twice as much, in addition to her speed she is capable of generating platforms of solid air under her hooves, letting her essentially "fly" through the air making her very hard to get away from. Nobody ever expects several hundred pounds of horse girl suddenly dropping on top of them. Before her involvement in the hero scene, Ms. Anderson was actually an orchard farmer, harvesting a variety of fruits including apples, pears, peaches, apricots, and grapes and in fact her farm has expanded greatly since then, now hosting the entire team withing its premises.
The Second member in the team is one of the two more human looking members of the team John Chavez, also known as Burstfire. Mr. Chavez has the classic cowboy look people expect when they hear the word "cowboy" and coming around 5'7 in height he is a fine tall glass of water if I do say so myself. Burst fire's ability is simple in comparison to his teammates, he is able to imbue objects he touches with flamelike qualities. He uses these powers in conjunction with his trusty pistols in order to turn all ammunition he uses (rubber bullets and normal ammo) into incendiary rounds or causing them to explode on impact. A gun enthusiast at heart, Mr. Chavez came to Texas as part of gun shotting competition that occurred a couple of years back, in where he met his future wife Marygold Basil Astraud, Cousin of Breeze Hoof.
Speaking of which, Ms. Basil also Known as Copper Serpent is also a slight dysmorphic metahuman just like her cousin, instead of equine she's a lamia, a Rattlesnake to be exact. Originally from Puerto Rico, Ms. Basil came to live in Texas alongside her two cousins in order to help them with the orchards and eventually, hero work. Copper Serpent in a twist of fate actually doesn't have any venom unlike her namesake, instead she has sound-based abilities. With the upper half of a woman and the lower half of a snake, Copper Serpent can generate potent sound waves from her mouth, back and tail, producing volumes potent enough to hit with solid force. Additionally, she can grow giant (About the size of cat) orange scales from her back or tail and fling them with surprising force, once thrown these scales actually explode into shrapnel if hit with sufficient force or if hit with her own sound-based attacks. A fun fact about Ms. Basil is that she is a frequent customer at many of the city's BBQ joints, being the best customer in many of them.
The fourth member and last hero of the original DR's is Mary- Anne Jay Astraud, also known as Gold Eye. Before continuing with Ms. Jay's power bio, you may have noticed that three members of the team are all related to each other, plus the fact every single one of them starts with Mary in their names. There is quite a little story to that, just like Copper Serpent, Gold eye is also one of Breeze Hoof's cousins, yes one of. You see in an interview taken a little into their career it was discovered that the Astraud Family has a kind of tradition. Each daughter born into the family will have the name Mary or a variation of it, apparently, it's a tradition that has been going on for over 200 years and is still ongoing today. As you can probably assume, this has brought the birth of many Mary memes on the internet, where every Mary in history or in present day are related to each other and that's there's a hidden society of Mary's somewhere in the world. The members made sure to clarify that not every Mary out there is part of the family, but the jokes continue to prosper. Back to Gold Eye, as the financial advisor of the team her metahuman power let's her sense any form of metal in a 3-mile radius, this ability is what let her eventually find many criminals lair, including the one that eventually lead to the birth of the BR's. Another aspect of her power is that she is capable of absorbing the properties of metals she touches in order to cover herself in them, making her resistant to normal weaponry and letting her hit much harder.
With the Desperados out of the way let's see the Bashers side of the team, starting with their leader Sebastian Smith, otherwise known as Sheriff Bull Rush. Mr. Smith is a fully dysmorphic individual, being one of two members of the team that is so. The sheriff takes the form of a giant bovine of around 7 feet in height, a minotaur. Contrary to his appearance, Mr. Smith is actually an intellectual and used to work as a university teacher teaching Chemistry before the switch to heroics, he occasionally takes teaching jobs at his old university from time to time. His main method of engagement is routed in boxing, bringing potent blows towards his opponents and is one of three members in the team that practice a form of martial art.
The second in command right behind Bullrush is Felix Rodriguez, also known as Golden Rooster. Mr. Rodriguez just like his leader is a full Dysmorphic metahuman, taking the form of a 6-foot-tall bipedal rooster. The hero main form of fighting involves the use Muay Thai taking advantage of his flexibility and iron sharp spurs to engage his opponents. Another aspect of his power is his "Rise and Shine routine" this hero has the ability to energize his allies with a loud cockle-doodle-doo, giving them a pep in their step and re-energizing them after a long day of work. While a beloved member of the team, they are ever so slightly annoyed at him. The reason? He is a morning person, and has on more than one occasion, gone up to the roof of their base and bellowed his call at dawn waking all the other members, much to their annoyance.
Finally, The Third and Fourth members of the original BB team were Grace Luciana and Henry Valentine, also known as Solambulant and White Devil, respectively. Sheep puns aside, Ms. Luciana's abilities do fit the bill. She is capable of generating cloud like objects out of her wool-like hair, if a target gets wrapped in the wool, they are hit with a massive case of drowsiness and eventually fall asleep. These clouds are somewhat solid, if soft, and are actually used by the White Devil as platforms to change direction mid jump during battles. As for Mr. Valentine, well he is a slight dysmorphic metahuman, but his appearance is kind of… well he's a Bunny Boy. Long pointy Rabbit ears, rabbit like white fur on his arms and legs and a fluffy cottontail in the back; as you probably assume… there are a LOT of fanart of the hero online, much to his embarrassment. Moving from his appearance, White Devil's name was inspired from the Monty Python film and the memorable rabbit within. While not as bloody, Mr. Valentine can be just as vicious during a battle. His strong legs let him jump and kick with extreme force, easily crushing metal like it was soda can. He is perhaps the most manurable of the entire team and on occasion has been seen sparring with his fellow members in order to help them with hand-to-hand combat.
My oh my, that was quite the chapter, this is perhaps one of the largest hero groups we have talked about so far. From shaky beginnings to being loved the Texan state over, the Barnyard Ranger's is an example of one the less talked about but important parts of the hero world. Work contracts, disputes between heroes, rebranding and even mergers. This "young" team has gone through quite a lot, well here's hoping they can continue doing the good work and bringing evil doers into justice. It's been a pleasure talking to all of you again! This has been Behind the Hero, singing off!
Authors note:
Is this considered a series? Because here is episode 4 of Behind the Hero: The Barnyard Rangers! Originally, the team was only supposed to be composed of the Desperados, but after re- reading a Bitterman's New Dawn chapter I was a bit inspired to pursue what a hero team merger could look like, So the Barnyard Bashers were born. The biggest team documented so far, I took Wild West and Farm Animals and combined them together. Anyways, Breezehoof is based on well, centaurs and some slight inspiration on the double jump mechanic in videogames. Copper Serpent is a Lamia and is inspired by Monster Hunter 4 Najarala a giant Snake Wyvern. Burstfire was based on Cowboys and an artificer's ability to imbue stuff, and Gold Eye is based on metal detectors and a character from a YouTube series that could transform into gold.
(Shout out to Epithet Erased!)
Fun fact: Said series has a Female Cowboy(girl?) with a rather ludicrous ability. Sundials power lets her accelerate or rewind time as long as it hadn't reached a "ending point" she could make trees go from seed to oak at the drop of a hat and imbue things like swords with her power, basically making them 1 shot weapons since anything cut would corrode to dust… except gold since apparently its one of the few metals that never corrode. Would have loved to use that character but it definitely would fall into copyright territory, plus that power would probably be stupid OP in the right circumstances.
As for the BB's, they were mostly inspired by animals found or raised on a farm. You know, bulls, roosters, sheep, and rabbits.
