The Belonging (thing)

Hallow's Eve encountered a number of individuals soon after her climb from the grave, and they found a mutual bond out of their individual loneliness and feelings of being outcasts in society. She sought to bring these kindred spirits together, but before she was completely successful, tragedy hit.

In 1977, an evil man and Bewitcher's arch nemesis Malcolm Factor used his powers of magic, hypnosis and mind control on a select few misfits and mutant outsiders with special powers. He meant to use these masked vigilantes to do evil instead of good, take control of Bridgeborough, New Jersey and eventually the world. He called his little band of mutant misfits The Beholden and for a time they answered only to him.

Hallow's Eve learned of Malefactor's plan, and sought the aid of Bewitcher, as some of those under Malefactor's power were friends and aquaintences of hers. Together they did battle with Malefactor and The Beholden, and after failed attempts were finally able to stop Malefactor's plan and bring his victims out from under his spell of servitude. Not having a home or a family, these misfits turned to Hallow's Eve for guidance, and with the assistance of Bewitcher and Winston Brooks, she became their new leader. They redubbed the team The Belonging, and from 1978 to 1983 they diligently served as guardians and protectors of the city they called home.

Brooks owned an island off the coast of Bridgeborough, and had a large building constructed to serve as headquarters and home for the ten members of the group. This island was already deemed off limits to the public, and could only be accessible by water or by air. Here, The Belonging exercised their abilities in partial privacy and honed their skills as a team. They battled many threats to life and property for five years, and quickly became beloved among the Bridgeborough community. Some are still remembered fondly today.

In 1984 an alien presence who called themselves Locastas arrived before the coastline of Delaware Bay under the cloak of night and proceeded to invade Earth, planning to make Bridgeborough their center of operations, because recently discovered alien technology that originally belonged to them was being kept at the Bridgeborough Stellar Observatory. The Belonging engaged them in battle, and during this battle the island building they had come to call home was destroyed in a radiation blast from the Locastas ship which left it in rubble and left the island radioactive for twenty years. Though Hallow's Eve was forced to remain behind for personal reasons, the rest of The Belonging stowed away on the Locastas ship, and were able to take the ship over. However, they learned that a greater threat to all of Earth awaited them in space. The Locastas ship they apprehended was merely a scout. More were coming. So despite Hallows' Eve's urgency that they remain, the other members of the Belonging agreed to fly the ship into space and attempt to thwart the Locastas threat, vowing never to return to Earth until they were certain of her safety.

Hallow's Eve is the only known member of The Belonging to still be alive. Though she attempted to reinvent a group like The Belonging in the following years, she was unsuccessful, and later joined Jumping Jack Limited until its demise in 1995. The whereabouts and status of the remaining members of The Belonging are still unknown. Since then others have appeared occasionally claiming to be Hallows' Eve's long lost friends, but though at first she took them at their word, they were later discovered to be impostors.

A partial list of the missing members of The Belonging are listed below:

• Knightingale - alias Gail Storm. She was a very rugged mercenary with alien armor and a sword that spat energy blasts. Later it was discovered that her armor was invented by enemies of the Locastas. Hallow's Eve appointed Knightingale tactical leader. Knightingale was the only known lesbian of the group.
• Ringer the Clown - alias Silas Briggs. He was a quiet circus clown who was little more than a bum living in Bridgeborough's Waterfront District when Hallow's Eve recruited him. He used mysterious clown make-up which gave him his powers. His abilities were largely empathic, causing people in vicinity to experience great joy or utter sadness. He could also take any force or explosion known to man and bounce back unscathed. He rarely ever spoke, and would always look towards the most non-violent of solutions in any given situation.
• Cobra - alias Dr. Brittany Masters. She became a mutant victim of her own fiendish experiment of using venom inside humans to try to create a hybrid. She suffered from partial amnesia, and was originally aiming towards a life of crime before Hallow's Eve saved her from the brink of insanity. She couldn't remember who she was before the accident, and Eve helped her put the pieces together. A humanoid snake with a curiously unstable cellular structure, she could stretch her body to unbelievable levels, and mutate from mostly humanoid to large boa-constrictor like form at her own whim. She had a devastating fang attack which placed any victim under her verbal control for 72 hours until the poison eventually exited the victim's system. Repeated injection of the venom turned the victim into a human/snake hybrid, and increased her control until they were mindless zombies.
• Greenhorn - alias Bradley Scott. He was an army veteran who was subject to government experimentation during the Vietnam War. He escaped but was almost recaptured when Hallow's Eve intervened. Greenhorn is half man half plant. Another hybrid. He controlled plantlife and had incredible strength and endurance, his body operating like a solar battery. It is unknown if his abilities or lifeforce would have survived exiting Earth's atmosphere.