Just Cause Universe

Mustang Sally has some speedy shoes to fill. This young superhero has waited her whole life to join Just Cause - the premiere team of American heroes. Now she's hoping her super-speed will earn a spot on the same team to which her parents and grandparents belonged. A chance encounter with the villain who killed her father changes everything. Even though she's only an intern, Sally devotes herself to finding the man known as Destroyer.

The would-be Archmage has slain nearly all the magic-users in the world, taking their power for himself. If he succeeds in killing the Lucky Seven's own mage Stratocaster, the Archmage's power will become absolute and plunge the world into darkness under his cruel reign. But not if Mustang Sally and the rest of the Just Cause superheroes have anything to say about it.

A City in Darkness - Four Lost Souls Seeking a Light - July 13, 1977 - The lives of four super-powered people become irrevocably intertwined when the lights go out in New York City, plunging their world into chaos. The superheroes of Just Cause, grown soft and complacent without any supervillains to challenge them, must overcome their personal demons as well as uphold the law in a lawless land of rioters, arson, and murder.

When criminals are convicted, they go to jail. When they have parahuman abilities, they go to Deep Six, the most secure prison facility in the world. Six thousand feet underground, nobody has ever escaped from the maximum security facility. Until now. A parahuman terrorist called Misrule engineers a mass breakout, and it falls to a pair of prison guards to stop the world's most dangerous criminals from reaching freedom.

Jay is having a pretty bad day at school. His popular cheerleader girlfriend just dumped him and a jock spilled soda all over his brand new Nikes. So when the God of Rabbits recruits him to save the world from an invasion of interstellar cockroaches, it seems like it might be a pretty cool gig. Unfortunately, in the spectrum of god-like abilities, rabbits rank pretty low, and Jay receives the ability to make snarky wisecracks, jump real high, and...that’s about all.

When Just Cause hero Orb is murdered using a new kind of nanotechnology, Mustang Sally will stop at nothing to find and bring to justice his killer. Not even her longtime mentor Juice's dismissal from his position as team leader can distract Sally from her mission. A sensational new parahuman named Champion brings old-fashioned morals back to the world, training others to follow in his footsteps and heralding the onset of a new age of heroism. But Champion isn't all that he seems, and there is a sinister side to his organization.

As a new president takes the White House, Just Cause returns to New York City for the first time in eight years, under the command of its newest leader: Mustang Sally. But not everyone is excited about the expansion of Just Cause. Senator Christine Goodwin, slighted by the team's leadership years before, has made it her mission to put all para-humans on a very short leash while, at the same time, creating her own super-powered militia.  

Man. Lion. Warrior. Enigmatic superhero Lionheart was always cut from a different cloth than his teammates on Just Cause, so when he learns his old kung fu teacher, Master Chou, is dying, he doesn't hesitate to travel halfway around the world to pay his final respects to the man who saved his life, and set him off upon his heroic journey. Upon arrival, he discovers his old master has been murdered, and quickly becomes embroiled in a battle for the honor of his master's Cherrywood School against one of the most dangerous heroin cartels in Hong Kong: the Five Deadly Serpents.

A few years ago, Mustang Sally had to make a deal with her worst enemy in the entire world: Destroyer, the man who killed her father. He agreed to use his technology to reverse a nanotech plague and save the world. His price? A favor, to be collected from Sally at some point in the future. The time has come for Sally to fulfill her obligation. Destroyer needs her to help him save the life of his sister, who has been trapped in a comatose state for nearly her entire life. Sally will have to enter the woman's Dream-world, with help from her teammate Minerva and Destroyer's nephew March.

Seventh-grade Superheroes! It's not easy being a 12-year-old superhero, but the five kids of the neighborhood watch are doing the best they can. La Capitána: super-strong flier. Wheels: brilliant inventor. Hothead: catches on fire. Breezy: controls wind. Rascal: super-skateboarding. From their headquarters built into a repurposed Winnebago, they patrol the streets and alleys of their small hometown and dream of being big time heroes like Mustang Sally and the rest of Just Cause.

All Jackrabbit, Herald of the Rabbit God Leporidus, wanted to do was give his best friend Bunny a nice pre-wedding gift in the form of a trip to Japan. Naturally, Bunny is kidnapped by ninjas shortly after their arrival, forcing Jackrabbit to play superhero, detective, martial artist, video game enthusiast, street preacher, and more in his quest to rescue his friend. 

Humanity has spent decades calling into the stars, seeking assurances that we are not alone in the galaxy. After many years of silence, someone has answered. The Hind came from afar, not to extend the hand of friendship, but the axe of conquest. The Hind drop an impenetrable force field over New York City, creating a cage where their shock troops will battle a handful of superheroes. In their desperate bid to save first their city and then the rest of the world, the heroes of Just Cause must do the unthinkable and ally with the greatest supervillain the world has ever seen.

To attend the Just Cause Hero Academy is a great honor, and freshman superhero Chloe Wyld is eager to impress her classmates and instructors, especially legendary combat instructor Mustang Sally. Chloe is off to an excellent start for the year with an awesome roommate, some great new friends, and even a handsome boy who seems as interested in her as she is in him. However, only days into the semester, things get weird.

Vanitha is the world's greatest parahuman hacker and can physically enter computer systems to control them from the inside. To relax, she's created a Hindu-themed multiplayer online role-playing game called The Path. When a mystery presents itself, she goes to investigate the strange new Malevolence. It kills her. She awakens inside the game as a new character, unable to use her parahuman powers to return to the real world. With no other options, she embarks upon a desperate quest to locate her body, a corpse run that may present her only chance to escape.  

For the kids of the Neighborhood Watch, the final weeks of middle school are interminable. In the fall they will get to attend the Hero Academy, studying to become Just Cause superheroes. Their plans get derailed when police officers gun down an unarmed black man. Annalisa, aka La Capitána, gets video of them trying to cover up the killing. 

As the world warms, civilian and commercial traffic through the Arctic increases. More people means a greater need for help, and Just Cause Arctic Circle is the superhero team assigned to find those who are lost and endangered due to accidents, environmental hazards, or their own foolhardiness. 

The werewolf without a pack: By night, Jackie Langdon is the outlaw vigilante White Fang, fighting crime in Reno...except when the moon is full, and she transforms into a savage werewolf with an indiscriminate blood lust that can only be contained by locking her in a cage until sunrise. The vampire hunting her: For the last century, vampire Charlotte Pastor has slain werewolves for her secret society, The Midnight Collective. When assigned to shut down White Fang, she figures it's just business as usual. 

What if you became what you despised? And the hate group you once called home planned a violent terror attack...and only you could stop them? Fledgling superhero Zeke Shepherd must overcome all his fears to save lives. And time is running out.  

It was supposed to be a simple job for The Ghost, a 300-year-old unkillable mercenary: Interrupt a prisoner transfer and deliver the prisoner to those footing the bill. Jingshen had done jobs like it thousands of times. But this time, it all goes wrong. He was supposed to deliver Zoe, a young woman with a devastating power. But after centuries of doing dirty work for money, he decides it's time to regain his lost humanity.

From a single short story written in 2001 to a sprawling series of more than 20 books, the Just Cause Universe is a superheroic reflection of our times. Encompassing more than 60 years of history, these tales fill in the gaps, tell the side stories, and broaden the depth of the JCU. Although all these stories have appeared in previous publications, this is the first time they have been collected into a single volume.