Menace. Maniac. Madman. All terms he could hear in his family's barely-remembered voices. All words he'd heard from his colleagues from various schools, jobs, even a small group of fellow vigilantes from New York had caught on quick to how he could get. Terms he'd even heard here, with Islewatch.Never "brilliant" or "genius." Rarely even "scientist" or "inventor." Hell, he'd have accepted "wild card." Certainly he never heard "hero."But Vanguard, one of the new recruits to the Islewatch Guard, is about to find out that even the worst technical difficulties can yield unexpected silver linings. The shady dealings of a new and different threat come to Islewatch’s attention in the form of a band of metahuman runaways, beset on all sides and landing at Springfield after fleeing across the globe. And for some stupid reason, both his squad leader Dryad and the youngest of the runaways, the clone Patches, think he's one of the good guys.Now he just needs to fool himself into believing that, at least long enough to help ferret out the source of the threat. And would some recognition be too much to ask for?