Recaps

Game 01 - 10/14/2017
Game 02 - 10/28/2017
Game 03 - 11/11/2017
Game 04 - 11/25/2017
Game 05 - 12/09/2017
Game 06 - 12/23/2017
Game 07 - 01/06/2018
Game 08 - 01/27/2018
Game 09 - 02/10/2018
Game 10 - 02/24/2018

Game 1: 10/14/17

NOTE: I was not present and therefore I have no recap. However, we have the notes of agent Antonio Jones (Provided by Alan) to fill us in on some of the goings on.

From the notes of Agent Antonio Jones

Day 1

Disneyland Theme Park. July 4^th, 2017. 5:35:43 PM.

Scene 1

Blue Bayou Restaurant – Nick Grimes

Nick and his girlfriend sit at a table awaiting their meal when The Pulse happens. Everyone in the restaurant collapses. 5 or 6 seconds later, a middle-ages man sitting at the table closest to the exit stands while all other remain on the floor. While the is no sound to available from the footage, it is obvious that the man screams as his body bursts into flames. He collapses to the ground a few seconds later and stops moving shortly after that. His is indescribably horrible. Flames spread from his corpse at a shocking rate, engulfing the table and chairs even before the man is dead.

Nick awakens at about the same time the man collapses. He assesses the situation and sees the burning man’s companion a few feet from the flames. He rushes over and drags the man away. It is clear that Nick will not be able to reach the exit before the flames, not while dragging the man, who remains unconscious.

Luckily every one else in the restaurant gets up. Nick’s date rushes into the servers cottage, but others, slower to rise and further from the exits, jump the railing and get into the waters of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.

Nick then disappears from the CCTV footage along with the man he is carrying. A few seconds later both Nick, carrying the still unconscious man, and his date exit the front of the restaurant.

We were able to find footage of the couple leaving the man, now walking shakily, at one of the medical stations near the ride.

It is clear that the footage did not glitch and Nick Grimes does appear to have disappeared from one spot and, presumable, reappeared in another.

NOTE: July 12^th – Nick has since confirmed that he has obtained the ability to “teleport”. He claims, though we have not verified this, that he can transport himself from one place to another without passing through the intervening spaces. He offers no explanation as to how this is achieved, and we have none either.

Scene 2

Fantasy Land, the fantasy castle courtyard. - Richard Harvey

Richard Harvey can be seen distantly but is recognizable. He was with two sons, who are currently occupied eating cotton candy when The Pulse strikes. Everyone in the visible area collapses. Richard is the second person in the footage to awaken. The first is a middle-aged woman later identified as Lee Wolfe. When she collapsed she was holding her son, Bernard, by the hand. The boy was, in turn holding a green balloon.

About 5 seconds after the pulse Lee awakens as her arm is pulled upward. She recovers quickly and holds her son’s hand as the boy rises in the air. It become clear that she is struggling to maintain her grip even a few seconds later when Richard awaken. It seems that her screams attract his attention and, after briefly ensuring that his own sons are unharmed, runs to the woman. Richard grabs the boy by his feet and appears to also have difficulty holding on. However, he maintains his grip after the mother’s strength fails her and is able to hold on to the boy until others awaken and come to their aid.

Once he is pulled down, an adult has to sit on the boy at all times that he is seen in the footage to prevent him from floating away. For his part, the boy, Bernard, seems amused by the entire event.

However, it is shortly after the boy is secured that we notice an oddity with Mr. Harvey. The mother, Lee, is clearly upset and overcome with panic. Richard forces her to focus on him and then we see some form of energy pass between the two. It can only be described as a faint glow that passes from Richard to Lee. She immediately calms down.

NOTE: July 12^th^- While Richard Harvey is a trained therapist and once worked for the F.B.I. as a well-regarded profiler, he was explained to us that he has an ability that he cannot explain that allows him to alter the mental state of other people. It is unclear exactly how much control he can manifest of the victim, but from later experience we have seen that he can do what he says. As with the others, we have no explanation at this time about how this is achieved.

Scene 3

The Haunted Mansion – Johnny Utah

(edited July 12^th) Johnny and his sister, Sarah were on the ride near the “haunted dinner” display when the Pulse hit. The footage here is dark and rather hard to decipher, so the following report includes information obtained in conversation with Agent Utah at a later date.

Johnny is the first that we can see in the area to awaken after the Pulse (it is important to note that only five people can be seen in the supplied footage). A few seconds after Johnny begins to actively look around, we can see an elderly man fall from the seat of the car in front of him. This man is called Freddie Balsley and was attending the park with his wife of 34 years Eva.

A few seconds after Mr. Balsley falls from his car we see that the ride begins to move again. It is important to note that none of the rides, lights or electronics observed in the footage from the park seem to have been affected by the Pulse in any way. A detailed report on this information and others can be found elsewhere. Johnny notes the older man’s fall from the car and moves to assist. However, for reasons unclear from the footage, Johnny hesitates when reaching to pick up the still unconscious man. We later learned from Agent Utah and numerous independent witnesses, that Mr. Balsley was exuding some form of “black light” or “dark glow” and that getting near him made people feel sick and weakened.

Agent Utah recovered and proceeded to pick up Mr. Balsley and return him to his car. Johnny then retreated to attend to his sister. We later learned that the dark energy extended approximately ten feet from Mr. Balsley.

Footage from the exit area from 5:46:57 PM that same day shows Agent Utah lift Mr. Balsley from the car and rally the ride attendant to recover Mrs. Balsley, who even on the footage appears to be deceased. Utilizing wheelchairs nearby the two men, accompanied by Sarah Utah, push the couple to a nearby medical station.

From various witnesses and medical staff we learned that due to the crowded and chaotic situation it was not possible to keep everyone clear of Mr. Balsley, who appears to have retained the dark glow (shown in better detail in by phone camera footage taken by the nurse attending him) until nearly 7 am. The next morning.

It seems that the nurse attending him, one Rosalie Rice, was made rather ill by her attendance to the elderly man. From a personal interview with Miss Rice I would have guessed her to be in her mid thirties, though she did have an unusual streak of gray hair. However, we learned that she is 27 years old. From photographs obtained later, and from conversations with her co-workers, she seems to have physically aged nearly a decade while attending to Mr. Balsley.

This may explain the death of Mrs. Balsley, as she was eight years younger than Mr. Balsley, who is 83 years old, and according to Mr. Balsley was by far the healthier of the two. It might also be interesting to note that Mr. Balsley is a retired employee of the park and attended the July 4^th celebration every year since retiring with his wife. Brief interviews with two former coworkers who arrived to assist Mr. Balsley with his wife’s body, indicate that he was well liked by those he worked with and generally a “nice old fellow”.

Scene 4

Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln – Wes Stallings

Mr. Stallings was sitting alone in the Opera Hall when The Pulse struck. There were seven other people visible in the hall in the footage. Mr. Stallings awoke about 10 seconds after The Pulse. One other middle-aged woman awoke a few seconds before him. She clearly was the anamatronic Mr. Lincoln rise from his chair and walk forward on the stage. In the footage a thin, glowing string appears to be attached to Mr. Lincoln and a woman in one of the back rows. Her name is Alexandra Wyatt, a single mother of three from Toledo Ohio, here on vacation with her children.

Mrs. Wyatt, it should be noted, remained in what appears to be a semi-conscious state throughout what follows.

Mr. Stallings awakens as the animated president hops from the stage and starts to move up the center isle. Others in the hall awaken at about the same time and flee out onto Main Street. The approach of the president forces Mr. Stallings to move to the side, and this is where an unusual thing happens. He seems to glow slightly, with what appears to be electricity sparking about his body. He moves to the side in what can only be described as gliding. His feet move as if he is running, but his strides do not match his pace. He moves faster than it seem his legs should take him.

Mr. Stallings tried to assist the stunned Mrs. Wyatt from the hall, but her movements were clearly slow and fumbling. Despite his best efforts, Mr. Stallings is unable to pull the woman away faster than the mechanical president approaches. It should be noted that the president appeared to be moving very quickly, faster than any other person in the hall.

Mr. Stallings pushes Mrs. Wyatt, aiming her toward the exit and turns to face the president. The device simply pushes past Mr. Stallings, takes a two-handed downward attack on the dazed woman, but misses as she stumbles aside. Then Mr. Stallings attempts to disable one of the legs of the machine, but is unable to pull any wires of cables from the device. He later claimed that the machine was far tougher than it should have been, that the cables and wires were too strong to be moved.

The device than swung a backhand at Mr. Stallings, missing him. It followed Mrs. Wyatt as she stumbled outside. Mr. Stallings enlisted the aid of two young men, one who attempted to tackle punch the device, but to no effect. The other lifted Mrs. Wyatt and moved rapidly away. The president then struck the young man nearest him, instantly knocking him to the ground, clearly unconscious. It then pursued the other man and Mrs. Wyatt.

During this time Mr. Stallings acquired a blow torch from a nearby glass blowing store, but dropped it and instead picked up the stanchion and attempted to tangle the machine’s legs, but was unable to do so. While this was happening, the device struck the young man carrying Mrs. Wyatt, also knocking him out cold.

Then Mr. Stallings tied the stanchion rope to Mrs. Wyatt, narrowly dodging a blow for Mr. Lincoln. Sparks again surrounded Mr. Stallings, apparently causing no harm to Mrs. Wyatt, who remained dazed, and flew into the air out of sight of the cameras. We learned from Mrs. Wyatt later that they apparently landed on the roof of the Operah Hall. The president can be seen clawing at the wall of the building for 8 minutes and 34 seconds before collapsing.

NOTE: July 12^th – we have been able to confirm from conversation that Mr. Stallings claims to be able to fly, though at this time we have not witnessed this activity directly.

The day of July 12, 2017

On this date Agent Walters organized for a nurse, Miss Janet Avers, to assist us in gathering blood and saliva samples from the “unusuals” identified from CCTV obtained from the Disneyland theme park in Anahiem California on the day of The Pulse.

Twelve individuals were gathered at the facility, along with two guardians of the younger individuals. Further details provided in their individual dossier.

Jill Bolton – 29 years of age. 5’7”, brown hair, brown eyes. Believed to be Caucasian, but at the time of interview, her skin was dark blue. Currently employed at Disneyland as a clerk. From the footage it seems that people coming in contact with her skin were harmed, though it was unclear what form or how that happened from the footage.
Maurice Enrique Howe – 46 years of age. 6’0” in height. Hispanic with curly brown hair and black eyes. Works as a line cook at a restaurant in East Los Angeles. The footage shows Mr. Howe displaying what can only be described as elaborate and theatrical martial art maneuvers, causing injury to several people. This happened immediately after The Pulse, and we believe that at the time he was unaware that what he was doing. Our brief interview indicated that he knew nothing of these activities. It is clear from Mr. Howe’s life experience and poor physical condition that he has not prior experience in the martial arts.
Maricela Bates – 44 years of age. 5’0” in height. African American, with short curly brown hair with gray streaks. Eyes are hazel, build is stocky. Owner of small business called Mini Maids operated out of Los Angeles with four employees. This individual was seen in the footage to glow subtly around her head, but nothing else is known about what might be her unusual ability, if any. During her interview she claimed to have experienced nothing that others had not also claimed to experience that day.
Jocelyn Bowers – 13 years of age. Caucasian. 5’7” in height, with long red hair, pale freckled skin. Thin of build. Accompanied by her father, Edward Bowers. Mr. Bowers is employed as a construction worker and exhibited no unusual effects seen in the footage. Jocelyn bowers is known to be narcoleptic. From the footage she is seen to remain unconscious for nearly 20 seconds. At the end of that time her appearance dramatically changes. Her body faintly glows and her hair turns raven black. Her skin appears tanned. She walks with a confidence that does not appear in her previous to this change. We were unable to interview anyone that witnessed this at the park, and during the brief interview Jocelyn would not speak, clearly intimidated by the presence of Agent Walters and the attitude and aggressiveness of her father. For his part, Mr. Bowers was hostile and unwilling to speak to Agent Walters.
John Greenwood – 32 years of age. 6’2” in height. Caucasian. Military cut blond hair and blue eyes. Physically fit. 6 years military service as a Marine, special ops. Dishonorably discharged for assaulting several superior officers. Current operating as a driver for Lyft. Two arrests for theft, no convictions. The footage shows Mr. Greenwood leaping over a building. No other footage of him was found. He would not discuss this during the interview and was very reluctant to come to the facility.
Emily Houston – 13 years of age. 5’8” in height. Caucasian. Long blond hair, green eyes. Accompanied by her mother, Elizabeth, who is working as a lunch lady in a Santa Ana high school. The footage shows Emily perhaps 6 seconds after the Pulse. She awakens and appears to panic. Immediately something that appears like spider silk sprouts from her body and attaches to the ground. She remains in that position for several hours. Witnesses attest that eventually medical personnel, with the mother’s permission, sedated Emily and when she was asleep the tendrils retreated and they were able to get her to a medical facility in the park.
Mateo Cruz – 17 years of age. 5’8” in height. Latino. Dark brown hair, black eyes. Pomona High School senior. Footage shows him helping an elderly man from the ground after the pulse. Where the made contact a faint white light connects the two and they remain connected for the entire time they are both seen on footage in the park. From the interview, Mr. Cruz claims that at the time he seemed to be “thinking with someone else’s voice”. He believes from later experiments that he was actually speaking with the older gentleman “directly in his head”.
Tommy Watson – 24 years of age. 6’2” in height. Caucasian/Asian American. Short black hair, blue eyes. Works as a professional dog walker in Hollywood. In footage Mr. Watson is seen to awaken from The Pulse after about 10 seconds. Almost immediately a bright flash of light is seen to burst from his body. Mr. Watson and one other attendee that was awake at the time stumble about, clearly blinded by the light. From the interview later, Mr. Watson says that he has no idea why we will suddenly burst out in light, and claims that he becomes tired each time it happens. He is seen in footage from the park to “explode” in light several times, eventually passing out.
Wes Stallings – described in detail in notes from July 4^th.
Agent Johnny Utah – described in detail in notes from July 4^th.
Nick Grimes - – described in detail in notes from July 4^th.
Richard Harvey - – described in detail in notes from July 4^th.

Game 2: 10/28/17

Johnny Utah (Jim), Wes Stalling (Joe), Nick Grimes (Mark), Martha Block (Darren)

Okay, gotta do a little pre-amble here, a quick one-paragraph on my character’s arrival.

Martha Block is a young web programmer and, as she puts it, “Social Engineer”. A woman obsessed with social media and creating an online alter-ego that she couldn’t possibly be in real life. She’s come all the way to Disneyland out of a combination of curiosity and guilt. A social misfit, she created a likable, and eventually beloved online personae named Summer Grey. Summer’s exploits were legendary in certain online circles. Because of Martha’s fastidious nature and attention to detail, as well as researching the people she communicated with, she managed to manipulate them pretty well, enough so that when she realized some of them were in love with a person who doesn’t exist, she decided she had to kill her off. Also, the stress of maintaining a fake life was overwhelming. So Martha killed off Summer by posting as ‘Summer’s friend’ about what had happened. The loosely associated group of hackers who had befriended her decided they wanted to meet. Martha (Posting under her online personae “Pattern Ghost”) told them the family didn’t want non-family there. So they decided to all meet someplace and celebrate her life and that’s how they wound up at Disneyland. Martha went too, pretty sure she was only going to shadow them, but feeling that she might make herself known as Summer’s friend. So she’s there in indecision limbo when…

“The Pulse” happens. Martha is first in her area to wake up, about a hundred feet from her “friends” at the base of the Matterhorn. She sees someone jump from the peak then spread bat-like wings and fly. As she goes to check on the friends she realizes that the thing is coming their way, shrieking as it goes. It manages to take a chunk out of one of them. Martha starts alternating between dragging them toward the bushes to hide them and drawing the attention of the thing way from them, when they start to wake up. When purge (one of the hackers) wakes up and is inured by the man-bat, he begins to foam at the mouth as if instantaneously infected with rabies and comes after another hacker. Martha has to knock him down using a rock. Too bad she can’t hit the man-bat that well!

Ultimately, two of the girls run off and another one helps watch the unconscious hacker while Martha gets help. The guy will be fine and man-bat flies off to cause trouble elsewhere. I won’t bore you with detail about the hackers.

Martha is approached at her hotel by Agent Walters of Homeland Security. There’s some negotiation and then she ends up agreeing to come out to DHS’ makeshift HQ out in Riverside. She can’t find anything on this guy online. She’s shown why they singled her out, because they suspect she has “abilities”. She’s not sure what they’re talking about but when they show the Disneyland footage, whenever the man-bat swooped in and she had to dodge it, she would disappear for a few seconds. Attempts to simulate the effect succeed and it seems she can make herself invisible to electronic surveillance only. She’s introduced to the team and they are collectively asked to go out and act as outreach to the “Unusuals” community. This is the government’s placeholder term for us.

Once we’re all acquainted we talk about the idea of making the team (who are not federal employees) a separate company or organization headed by rich-guy Wes Stallings. He will employee homeless thug Nick Grimes and web thug Martha Block, and we will be HEAL (Human Enhanced Assistance League), a public outreach program trying to help those who don’t understand or can’t control their powers.

To that end we try some outreach. We attempt to contact and communicate with several people who were seen displaying powers on camera. One is a Shapechanger (fail), one is a woman who can go ghostly (fail) and one other, which I forget. During this we discover the following things:

Martha is socially inept and has trouble doing the “Hi, we’re here to help” shtick.
Johnny Utah is a stickler for the rules and does not wan’t to be privy to anything illegal going on. This leaves him “out in the car” a lot of the time when someone like, say…
Nick Grimes likes to port-and-enter (P&E) to check things out.
Wes Stallings has lots of money. I’m sure there’s other stuff, I just didn’t want to leave Wes out.
Martha discovers something she didn’t know she could do before, and that’s to sense around for electronics in her presence. If they’re within 10ft she can manipulate them. And if she has touched them she can use the microphone or speaker to listen and talk through.
There may be another government organization or non-government organization trying to abduct folks like us. The ghostly one claims people (us she presumes) tried to abduct her.

Now comes a sideline. Nick decides that he’s going to communicate directly with the public as someone with powers. He goes and posts a video with a little “we’re not dangerous we’re just like you” manifesto online and shows his powers. He urges people with powers to come out. Because he’s using Wes’s site and the organization HEAL, Wes gets media contact for an interview. Nick is going to reveal his powers publicly so people can see they’re real and he’s given a specific time and date. Wes gives an interview to the local CBS affiliate. Nick does his public demo with two news crews in attendance. No thug-types come after us.

We’re asked by our organization to round up a man who escaped an asylum. Video shows him using bits of stuff he had around the nuthouse to build himself tools to access the pharmacy. Then he mixed himself some drugs that helped clear up his head. Then he stole a car that belonged to a nurse and escaped. He’s considered dangerous because he supposedly tried to kill a child once and has killed small animals.

Some investigation leads us to the scene of the abandoned car. A search by flyboy Wes leads to some homeless folks, one of whom has a cart that an old man came by and souped up for him and left with the extra unneeded pieces. Also, we find a woman with a car that had broken down but now it was working better because our escapee came by and fixed her car. Worth noting is that she has a 12 year old son and the supposed child-killer didn’t care. So he left with more parts. By the time we track him down, he’s souped up some kind of cart in order to drive around, but currently he’s captured by a group of thugs who want him to abandon his vehicle.

A fight breaks out between us and the thugs who have no respect for Johnny Utah’s Authoritai! Problem is, they are lethally armed and we are less so. Well, okay, yes, Johnny has a gun but so does one of the other guys, but they also have a bat and some broken bottles. Ultimately we liberate the old man but not without taking some injuries and having to beat up some thugs.

This leads us to request some combat training from the Gov, who acquiesce. Also, they currently have the old guy in custody where his a plot device to either cause mayhem or assist with mayhem at the GM’s whim.

The next one we go out to help is a man who appears to grow a spider face. Seems not everyone really got useful powers. We go to his house and his place of business, ultimately winding up finding a club that caters to people who have sucky powers and who want to be left alone. We try to crash their party and when we don’t leave them alone, a group of them (spider face included) come out and try to beat us up. They’re doing a GREAT job of it, but as the game winds down, we’ve managed to negotiate a cease fire (which is good because it wasn’t going all that well).

That’s when I had to bail.

NEWS AND NOTES (From the GM)...

July 15th – 22nd

More stories of people having been affected.
- Most are minor powers or just minor oddities most making the rounds on morning talk shows. A guy with enlarged hands and triple or more the normal grip strength. An older woman that can heat or cool small amounts of liquids and has obtained bright blue hair. A young girl with a long, prehensile tongue (this is only not creepy because she is a cute 15 year old that finds the whole thing funny).
On the 15^th roads are once again open for normal traffic, though people are expected to keep on the lookout for emergency vehicles and not all the cars have been cleared. Air traffic and public transportation are still down in most cities.
On the 16^th Trump begins tweeting again. He starts by questioning who might have done this Pulse thing to us. Throughout the week his tweets get stranger and he blames several unnamed sources, claiming that his white house will bring justice.
On the 18^th a person declaring himself “enhanced” posts a blog on a website called H.E.A.L. showing himself teleporting around a small room with plywood walls. He names himself and Nick Grimes and gives a speech about how “enhanced” should be treated like people, because they are people.
On the 19^th planes begin flying again all around the world. But not a lot. PCs that live out of the state will have trouble getting out.
Ont the 20^th Nick Grimes posts that he will be holding a press conference at the pier in Long Beach (Santa Monica?) that evening. Wes Stallings, the leader of the organization calling itself H.E.A.L., claims in an interview a few hours before the Nick Grimes press conference re-iterates the sentiments and pushes the H.E.A.L. web site as a place for people to talk about their issues and help each other. On the pier Grimes makes a similar plea and later answers clearly hostile questions from the interviewer. There was no incident at the pier.

From the notes of Agent Antonio Jones

July 15th

The unusuals assisting our work were given three unusuals to locate and hopefully gain samples and information from.

Caitlin Velazquez, details in file. This unusual was seen on camera to disappear in one place and reappear in another a short time later. The unusuals believe that she has the power to become invisible or, after their conversations with her, to become “insubstantial”. Conversation with the unusual yielded a few pieces of possible information, though the veracity of this information and the clarity of the subject are questionable. She was unwilling to come in or give any sort of data. She remained far from our team.

Miss Velazquez appears to be paranoid, though if her claims are accurate perhaps not.
She claims that four “Joe Rogans” attempted to abduct her. When or where this happened is unknown.
Speculation about what this means include:
- The comedian and podcaster Joe Rogan has some sort of power to duplicate himself and, for reasons unknown, assaulted Miss Velazquez.
- Some other unusual can change form, project illusions, divide into multiples or some combination and assaulted Miss Velazquez.
- Joe Rogan is some form of slang that represents a type of person, such as thug, and four of those types assaulted Miss Velazquez.
- We have no evidence or information that would prove any of these to be true.

Leonard Franks, details in file. This unusual was seen to exhibit great strength. When approached he was civil but unwilling to give samples or much information.

Dino Kemp, details in file. Mr. Kemp is believed to have the ability to change his shape. He was also unwilling to offer samples or information. He was, in fact, unwilling to admit that he had exhibited any unusual abilities.

July 17^th

In the early morning we learned of the escape of Jacob Werner from the DSH facility in Norwalk. Due to his dangerous nature the team was asked to locate and capture Mr. Werner. Details of Mr. Werner and his criminal history are in his file.

The team discovered the vehicle that Mr. Werner was believed to have escaped in at the side of the road missing several parts, including the spare tire.

The team was able to follow Mr. Werner’s path by following a trail of encounters with citizens.

First they discovered a homeless man in a motorized chair. The chair was reported to be much improved, with greater speed. The citizen reported that a man meeting Werner’s description had fixed the chair after it had broken down, not only improving it, but leaving with several parts from the device that were apparently no longer needed.

The team then observed a disturbance further up the road and found a crowd gathered about a mini van that Mr. Werner had repaired in a similar fashion, making it run again but also leaving the exhaust smelling like flowers (carnations). As before, he left with several parts from the vehicle, including a spare tire.

They then located Mr. Werner behind a mini mall under assault by five young men, several armed with simple weapons, one with a firearm. They chased off the young men and recovered Mr. Werner and a shopping cart that he had apparently turned into a motorized vehicle using the parts scavenged from his previous encounters.

Mr. Werner has been taken to the facility and remains here. Observation shows that he appears to no longer be violent, but has clearly gained intelligence and skills beyond anything we can understand. He also appears to remember his life entirely differently than what our records show. He claims to be a research scientist with several science degrees from well respected universities as well as a degree in philosophy. His record shows us that he has been in and out of mental facilities since he was in his twenties and has been mentally harmed not only by frequent drug use, but probably from treatments he underwent in mental hospitals. Our best assumption is that he is suffering from delusions reinforced by his newly gained unusual powers.

July 19^th

Due to things that have transpired recently on orders from Agent Walters, I will no longer be writing these reports. It has been deemed imprudent to keep such records.

Game 3:

Johnny Utah (Jim), Nick Grimes (Mark), Richard Harvey (Paul), Martha Block (Darren)

End of game 2, after I left, the team nearly broke up. There was a difference of opinion over letting Agent Walters know about "The Fates", the club which was home to a number of enhanced people whose powers were more disruptive to them than helpful. But apparently the fracture in the team was fixed by the time this game started.

It starts off slowly as we are in the down period after the previous adventure. Nick is still doing his outreach. In the absence of Wes, a few rolls are made to see how his AA-style meetings for "jokers" are doing. They are sparsely attended.

Martha's crunching of data still doesn't yield any viable theories about the event. Johnny's attempt to figure out the "Joe Rogans" reference doesn't yield anything. Johnny is now able to regrow missing body parts on others, which leaves us with an opportunity to do some serious good publicity if he starts visiting VA Hospitals and places where people are missing limbs.

There are bank robberies going on. First one had someone with powers melting their way in, with money being stolen. Second one had video of someone trying to rip the door off and failing, no money taken. Third one seems to be a combination of the two, leading us to believe that there were two robbers who have now joined forces.

We are lucky enough to get word of a robbery in progress on the police band and we head out. There are two suspects (one male, tall, thin and dirty; one female). They are wearing metal plates of improvised armor as they try to break access a vault, having somehow melted their way through a wall. Johnny Utah does his 'freeze fbi' thing and that goes over just like you'd expect.

I'll try to break down the fight into the more memorable chunks...

Bullets seem to be bouncing off of them due to the armor
The big guy has a rhino horn on his helmet and will henceforth referred to as rhino. He tries to ram Johnny and fails.
We all retreat back toward the car, which is blocking one end of the alley. The woman tries to flee the other way while Rhino does a massive clap of his hands which causes a shockwave, damaging the front of the car.
They go out the other side of the alley and "the twins" (as the GM referred to them since their initiatives were virtually synced and Nick was teleporting Richard around while Richard tried to hypnotize people) pursued by going from roof to roof.
Johnny and Martha got in the car and drove around to cut them off, which they did, and failed to damage Rhino by hitting him with the car.
The girl tries to melt her way into a building. We now know that her powers are corrosive; she doesn't so much burn-melt her way through things as acid-melt.
They are close to stealing the car with Rhino on the trunk of the car and the girl in the front seat when Martha jumps in and grabs the keys. Before acid woman can do anything, Nick teleports her out, turning this back into a foot race.
The twins go back into port-and-command mode and manage to periodically get one or both of them to stop temporarily.
The Rhino flips the car so that's no longer usable for this fight.
Martha peppersprays the woman causing her to be blind for several rounds.
The combination of mind control and all of us attacking at once allows us to take them down.

We bring up with Agent Walters that there's no good way to secure these folks. One was super strong and the other could just melt the cuffs. They end up being drugged for transport.

Seems we have some people who want to join up with HEAL. The most memorable of these are:

Brian. He's former military, physically fit, a little gung-ho about the idea of doing patrols and such. He's physically the closest we've seen to a genuine superhero. He does things very fast. He's selected the codename "Viking" to go under while he's out patrolling wearing a mask with our HEAL street patrol, though Martha suggested since he's a speedster and he's attractive he should be called "Hot Flash".
Susan. She's middle-aged, with the ability to "make people tired". Sounds just like most moms! (rimshot). She's also agreed to trying out patrol.
A guy, whose name I can't remember. He turned out to be somewhat of a faker. He showed up with green skin, not concealed. He interviewed with Nick and turned out to be a poser. Nick thought he was just a wanna-be, while Johnny and Martha both thought this could have a darker intent, like maybe he's trying to join in order to inform or worse--to come up with targets. Giving his information to the feds they do indeed figure out that he has had an unexplained large sum of money deposited recently that doesn't ft with his normal finances. He's a "person of interest" but that's about all.

We tried to patrol as a group but only two of us have movement powers. We did find one crime which was basically some hooligans doing property damage, but that gets broken up and we end up performing a few moves that we have put on the "do not do" list: Primarily, firing a superpower even if it's just to scare people. Brian ("Viking") is beginning to show signs of being a little too zealous. In other words, he seems to be itching to use his superpowers. After the patrol, Nick talks him into maybe not bringing a GUN to these things. He'll show up for the next event like us, with pepper spray and a taser.

Speaking of which... There's an "Enhanced Rights" rally, cuz Jokers are people too. Counter-protests have been set up and your more nazi-istic types show up for this and try to stir up problems. One of the protesters is "Jane" a blue-skinned woman whom we've met before (I can't remember where from so... maybe game 1 when I wasn't there?). The normal human faction of the pro-rights issue back off while the jokers themselves won't back down from the bad guys. A fight nearly breaks out but... The cops do a good job of controlling things, and selective mind-controls from Richard and lots of "Don't do this" needling from Nick manage to keep things calm enough.

I then had to leave. Between whatever happened after I left and anything I missed, I'm sure there's more to add.

Game 4:

Johnny Utah (Jim), Nick Grimes (Mark), Martha Block (Darren)

We do some discussion of the future of HEAL and it's organizational structure, all of which could be blown apart without Joe's approval because he's the money man. I believe we divided it up into (approximately) 3 arms: The outreach/soup kitchen/shelter aspect of it which we're referring to as the "HEAL Lighthouse", the patrol/safety group called "HEAL Guardians" (I think that's the one we went with; Jim has notes), and something administrative. I'm sure there's more, but I didn't absorb it all.

Martha introduces her new "Partner". With a flourish she summons out of mid-air (or rather the wifi data stream that surrounds us all)... Summer Gray! The personality whom she had crafted online for essentially cat-fishing her "friends" became so real to her that she was actual able to manifest it as a flesh-and-blood person (who refuses to believe that she's any kind of "creation"). She has a number of physical-based skills, like Kickboxing, climbing, driving, etc. She's very pretty but at the same time, unbeknownst to her creator until it's pointed out, looks a little like Martha.

Speaking of whom... Martha finds that online there is a lot of chatter from white-boy supremacists. They're planning something. So she does her best to find out some info and comes up with a cell that are planning essentially a "wilding" event where they go out and beat up random "freaks". We surveillance them by having Johnny Utah, using his new power (The ability to transform into a whole other identity) to go in and leave simple cell-phones around so that Martha can tap into them and relay what's happening. Two get turned off, but one is on long enough to find out that they'll be hitting the freaks who hang out by the boardwalk, among other places.

I should mention our new freak. A young man named Matteo offers his services. He's a mentalist who can communicate (but not invasive mind-reading). We use him as a switchboard. He calls himself La Mente.

So we watch the Pier and are there when a fight breaks out. They show up in superior numbers (Six or Seven I believe). Summer puts a pretty good dent in one guy with a kick, Martha stuns one with a taser but also gets stunned by a baton hit. One of the bad guys takes down a local freak fish-lady knocking her out cold due to a bad save. Another takes down agent Utah for the same reason. The fight lasts long enough for the cops (whom we had tipped off) to roll up on the event and order everyone to freeze, subduing the situation. Bad guys go to jail, good guys do questioning and are released.

Johnny sneaks into the hospital and tries to heal a couple of injured freaks (one from our event and one from another crosstown event). This was going on all over the place, we just happened to be part of one of the two events where things went in our favor (the other had our other two NPCs in a group at a different location).

There's a new drug on the streets called TRUTH SERUM. It's rare enough and localized enough that we think this is the epicenter and source. Which has us thinking maybe it's a product (or byproduct) of someone Enhanced. Why? Because either it causes the user to alter reality or it causes him to think that he's changed reality.

Nick tries to pick some up through his connections but isn't having much luck. Eventually some shows up but because Nick is a known quantity publicly, Martha becomes the "buyer". The sellers are the supposedly extinct LA gang, The Black Dragons, who have suddenly had a resurgence. She makes a good enough roll that he'll sell to her, but he's asking outrageous prices. She eventually agrees, at the mental switchboard prompting of Nick, who understands these things better than she does. She gives him a down-payment for a large order. Johnny and Nick try to follow him back to his source but fail.

The samples we got turned out to have a biological component (like it came from a being) but that's all. DNA doesn't match anyone we know.

Martha comes back two days later. Dealer gives his price which is much higher than before. She reluctantly agrees. After she leaves, the guys notice that this time the dealer has a couple Black Dragons keeping watch. They choose to follow those guys. Ultimately they end up finding the dealer's car, whereupon Nick teleports into the trunk and finds their warehouse that way. He's also come up with the strategy of putting a burner phone with a tracker on it into the trunk of a car and following that way, which is becoming useful.

Where the chain of following bad-guys finally winds up is a warehouse that has at least 3 super-powered folks in it, which we don't think we can take head-to-head given our experiences in the past. People who show up trade in their cash for a small supply of the drug. Eventually we wait long enough to see that they have a large wooden armoire-sized box that contains in it a chained-up Enhanced. They beat him and cause pain regularly in order to make him cry, then they harvest his BLUE tears.

Nick winds up teleporting into the box and teleporting out with him, then he manages to teleport across several roof-tops to where we're waiting and we get away with him. He's non-cooperative since we're strangers and he's had nothing but trouble. Agent Walters says to bring him in and we can find out what's going on.

He's the boyfriend of a former Black Dragon. They were arguing about her gang affiliation when the "Flash" happened and he doesn't remember much after that, ending up imprisoned by the Dragons. Seems he was sold to them by the angry GF once she discovered his tears caused this weirdness.

We get the names of the five principals, all of whom likely have powers.

We buy a panel van because, regular abduction.

We talk with Walters about how to proceed. Once we understand what he wants we go out and do something and later realize that's not what he meant.

What we do is take down the first conspirator, a guy named "Bee Hive", who does not turn into bees or keep bees, or have a cool tube-shaped hair-do. It turns out he creates hexagonal shaped nets of energy. We find this out when we try to grab him once he's no longer at home with his wife and child and is stopped at a stop-sign. We rear-end him (lightly) with the van, which causes him to get out angrily and then we swarm on him. We get him without too much trouble... Nick or Johnny KO'd him, we put him in the van, and called Walters. This is when we find out that the only thing working in our favor is that we actually found the drug in the vehicle so we can set up some kind of circumstance that shows he was picked up by Walters for possession. Walters takes him in to the local cops and explains the guy's powers so they can subdue him properly.

Johnny Utah's healer personae is called "Halo", but we're noticing another personality happening which we're calling Johnny Cruelstreak.

With information from what we've done, 8 dealers get taken down. We tried to backtrack the numbers in Bee Hive's phone, but those are just his underlings, no superiors, so that trail is cold. Which means there are 4 more (at least) superpowered Black Dragons out there with no trail behind them for us to follow.

Game 5:

Blast/Halo (Jim), Wes (Joe), Merlin (Paul), Evac (Mark), Masquerade (Jeff), Cyber Ghost (Darren)

Sorry, don't remember what or if Wes's callsign/codename is.

We started with some discussion of HEAL and its organization, at which point Jim broke out our corporate charter, spreadsheets, powerpoint presentation, first quarter projections, and introduced us to the board of directors.

HEAL are contacted by a new guy who wants to attend one of our outreach meetings. He's Gawain, and turns out to be a celebrity magician. He's amiable enough and wants to work with us. In addition to his normal sleight-of-hand tricks he can also create illusions.

Addendum...

The doctor we captured in game 2 has been working on inventions. One of the things we asked him to work on was to figure out how these powers happened. He calls us in because he's had a breakthrough. What he has is a machine that looks wildly dangerous but that he claims can give you insight into your powers. There's no shortage of volunteers (The only person who thinks it's more dangerous than helpful is Martha, but even she eventually relents once people have survived it).

Each person who uses the machine (Which requires two additional elements: Blast's purple energy powers and Merlin's mental-ness) gets a glimpse of an entire life they've lived, perhaps as an alternate reality. Later we'd discover that anyone who does it a second time relives the same alternate life again. Some of us were doing worse in the alternate world, some of us were doing better, one might have even been a wash.

(Wish I'd made notes on everyone's alternate realities. The only one I can speak to on any level is Martha's, which was a favorable alternate reality where she overshadows her brother and sister (rather than the other way around like here) and she's hot enough to become a supermodel and has all sorts of fame.)

Cry-Baby attacks continue. We try to figure out how to nail some of these guys and wind up setting up a sting, with the new guy downtown in hobo regalia, while we wait and watch.

The plan (ideally): They show up, Merlin possesses one of them and perhaps even uses him to find out more information about the group and where they come from.

The actual result: As the bad guys bear down on Masque, Evac takes it upon himself to teleport into their path. Masque actually is able to get away pretty well using a camouflage ability, while Evac takes a lead pipe to the cabesa. No, candy did not fall out. The rest of us all seem to be figuring out how to intercede without actually catching the guys. Masque tells Merlin to stop the possessed guy from running away, then confusion subsides and we resume plan. Merl has the guy drop his wallet (twice, since the first time one of his friends saw him do it).

So they go and now we have a wallet with info about one of the guys. For some reason we pass this on to the authorities rather than following up on it?

Instead we have a wandering monster encounter. Out on patrol in three separate groups we come across three separate monsters... or rather one monster in three separate locations... or one monster separated into three locations. Anyway... Two of us encounter a Left Leg hopping down the street. Merlin and Evac capture it by mind-controlling it. Yes, mind-controlling a foot. Then beating it up. It actually possesses Evac at one point though. The right arm comes across Wes and Cyberghost. It's exceptionally fast and Wes slows it down by flying above it and pushing down with gravity powers while Ghost and her partner Summer beat the tar out of it. Or GOO rather. When they die they turn to goo. The third peace is a left arm that comes after Blast and Masque. I forget what its special power was. But that's okay because we aren't done yet...

As we search for more body parts we find the last four as a group: Left Leg, Left foot, and a pair of eyes. One eyeball freezes Summer in place because it has a time-freeze bubble surrounding it, the foot just tries to kick Masque (He's a combat boot!). I think the other leg makes people sick and the eye did something that I can't remember. We end up beating them into submission and then into goo before tracking them back to a homeless man who got beat up a day earlier by thugs and since then his limbs have been swelling up and breaking away from him to go out and do their business. We end up, with permission of the club "The Fates", taking him there to be with his own kind.

I believe it's they who also gave us a tip about what is probably an underground joker fight club. The rest of the game involved us going to the fights.

We infiltrate and hang out and find that they do 4 fights a night and that while not all of them are jokers, most are. There's a small staff seeing to the event (bouncers, bartender, door man, announcer, and a sort of enforcer/likely-leader who is a martial artist. We witness him one-punch a man to unconsciousness who was trying to take photos inside the place. You get great combat-oriented opponents like a guy covered in snot, a woman with toxic sweat, and a guy whose bones exit his body and try to fight you. It's a good night of entertainment for the whole family.

We discover that the fighters are volunteers who are paid, the whole thing breaks down and vanishes within an hour of when it's over with, the contestants being driven away in a van immediately after the fights, the gear being driven off and stowed right after they break it all down. Turns out (we find out after the second fight club) that the stuff is stored at a self-storage place. There's a lot of subterfuge and tailing that seems impressive (with Evac porting into and out of trunks, attaching trackers etc; one of us tailing then the others tailing the tailer) until we find out that they're on to us.

At one point, with just two of us in a car, one of the tougher contestants materializes being the vehicle and takes out a tire with her knife, causing the passenger/driver to flee.

We've only been privy to one half of some of the phone conversations so as far as we know the group is just the lead martial arts guy, a handful of bouncers, a bartender, a doorman, a backroom guy organizing the fighters, a ring announcer, Wet-works (the aforementioned woman with a knife who is a sometimes participant of the fights), and at least one more participant of the fights.

At end of game the gig was up and we were trying to figure out the next step. I left, so there was more roleplaying after that.

Game 6:

Nick/Evac (Mark), Johnny/Blast (Jim), Richard/Merlin (Paul), Martha/Cyberghost (Darren)

There's a lot of combat this time. Enough so that I'm having trouble remembering all the fights.

We try to track the Man-Bat. The thinking is that his early crimes, which were more conventional/less-rabid were probably near home and that the latest ones happen because he's losing control (on the full moon) wherever he just happens to be at the time.

His DNA collected from one event points to a guy whose place hasn't been visited in a while. So that leaves us with our theory of trying to catch him outdoors targeting a big noisy event. We split into two groups (always a good idea) and while Johnny and Martha go to Knotts Scary Farm, Richard and Nick go to Queen Mary's Haunted Harbor or whatever it was called (It's October.) Turns out Richard & Nick win the lotto because that's where he shows up! He gets spotted in advance before he gets in too close and they engage. Bat-boy is taken down by Nick's "Nausea" power as he fails the save and crashes.

There's a lot of incidents involving the Crybabies and now they've committed a murder. So we get back to patrolling and again with split patrols the winners this time are Richard & Martha. We come across two folks who seem to be targeting us, but they aren't crybabies, they're actually superpowered: One is a flyer who can shoot blasts from his fists and the other is an elephant man who is strong, resilient, and can hurl steel balls at people.

Merlin gets the elephant to stop, Martha and her two summoned friends try to get the other guy but he flies out of reach. Merlin goes after that guy and the Martha Trio try to take on the Elephant guy. He's very resilient but we do damage to him, though he only disengages because Martha's new summoned friend (A doll-like childhood friend named "Tina" who can either befriend or terrify a target) causes him (And the other Summonee, Summer) to run away in fear. This is when se decide it's best to get away before they regroup because the two of us are out-gunned.

The Crybabies are being armed by somebody. They're coming out with guns and better equipment and becoming more dangerous. We find a group of them while patrolling and engage them as a group. They are beating up a local joker and we engage. They do a lot of shooting at Martha and her friends while Nick nauseates, Johnny blasts, and Richard mind controls. While they are dangerous they don't do a lot of damage to us before we take them down.

Quick sideline: The nutty professor wants to see Johnny Utah. It seems he's got an experiment. What he actually wants is for Johnny to store his purple energy in a special battery he made. He's reluctant to do that because it means the inventor can do all sorts of experiments without Johnny's participation and oversight. So he gives him a little to perform one or two experiments with.

Back to the action: Another patrol yields an encounter between bad guys and us. This time it's Nick and Richard who take on Shocker (from the fight club) and Frost blast (or something like that). They fight and manage to capture one then they interrogate (also now known as "Mind Rape" since it involves Richard's new mind reading power) the individual, finding out that we are being hunted. Someone has put out a half-million dollar reward for killing or capturing a HEAL "Guardian".

This creates a problem. The cops won't hold this guy without a complainant. Most of us wear masks and can't file a complaint without putting our names on the reports and obviously it has to be someone who was attacked. And if we can't put him away then we're releasing him to come back and kill us later? So we try to come up with a scheme to convince him to leave us alone.

Through many, many convolutions of plans, and the mental powers of Merlin, what we end up with is knowledge that the fight club people have put up the money and that if one of these guys kills us the fight club will get in contact with them and pay them. He's more afraid of WetWorks, the highly trained killer from the Fight Club than he is of any of us. So our final maneuver is to give him a story that if he doesn't work for us as an insider in the fight club and send us information then we'll tell Wet Works that he's a traitor and she'll kill him. Once we find out through mind reading that he now intends to flee for his life rather than stick around and do anything to us, we release him.

There's a big fight later when the whole group of us come across the bulk of the bad guys. It's Elephant Guy, Shocker (who escaped earlier), Flying blaster guy, and a fourth one who turns out to be "Swarm" who is someone the rest of you know from game 1 (the game I wasn't at).

This fight should be much worse than it was. A great mind-control from Merlin sends Elephant Man after Shocker. Swarm sends bugs after Merlin, who gets out of them, and then while Blaster blasts their flying blaster guy, Nick makes Swarm sick and he plummets from the sky on a failed roll. This fight pretty quickly swung our way.

Our last fight is with some of the fight club people and involves an amusing, if claustrophobic, combat inside the van! We manage to pinpoint the location of WetWorks by calling her cell phone (using the number taken off of the phone of one of the guys we defeated). After some confusion over whether we're going after Blaster or Blue Demon (the other guy from the fight club who likely runs the show), we end up going after him. Richard uses his mental powers to convince him to come out for a ride in our van. Once he's out there, Utah tries to handcuff him, which allows him another save and he breaks free. We then have a brawl inside the van which sees this guy grabbing Richard and threatening to kill him unless we pull over. We pull over but just so that Summer can move to the back and help kick fight the thug. While we're brawling, someone freezes the back of the vehicle, so Nick ports to the front of the van and starts driving again. We eventually contain him again.

There's more but I had to go.

Game 7:

Merlin (Paul), Evac (Mark), Blaster (Jim), Cyberghost (Darren)

I should have made notes. We did a lot of stuff but I can't put it in the right order in my head. So this may jump around a little.

We still have issues with the Black Dragons that we're trying to figure out. We try to buy drugs from local contacts so that Merlin can mind-read them for information at a distance. We get minimal info.

We get a call patched through from our HEAL secretary and on it is Weeper (the guy whom the Black Dragons were exploiting for his tears so they could sell them as a drug). He's in trouble! Seems he's only made it as far as Vegas and now people are out to get him. We drop everything and head that way.

We (along with Le Mente in the van and Viking with us) are on site at a scummy motel and Weeper comes down to meet us when motorcycles and a car come rumbling up. The bikers are the Vegas based "The Bones". In the car with them are two super-types... a woman in armor and another in cat attire.

Our strategist, Evac, moves most of us to the roof and the rest of us get up there ourselves and from there the fight ensues. Their catlady tries to port up to the roof and grab viking and take him with her but he saves against it. Bikers take up partial cover and we shoot each other. Cyberghost summons Talking Tina who then scares the crap out of one of the bikers and that, in combination with Merlin mind controlling a driver into driving away seems to cause them all to flee (after all they weren't expecting this kind of resistance). Evac makes drivers sick. Intentionally I mean. And Johnny Utah shoots out some tires. Some get away but we manage to catch at least two who crashed on cycles.

We try to bring Weeper back to our base and on the way there's an ambush set up. Seems the Black Dragons have come to the edge of their Turf and set up a "Ward". What they didn't count on was that virtually everyone would make their saves and pass right through it. The only one that failed was Summer (Cyberghost's summonee) who was driving one of the purloined cycles back. She hits the barrier and takes some damage but ghost just un-sommons her so we can keep moving.

Merlin mind-reads our captives so that when we ask them questions we can get the real answers. Seems there's a guy dealing in information who "knows everything" that knew about Weeper.

A super detention center is being worked on. It involves re-configuring an old facility and will take a while. Once it's complete it should hold some super folks relatively safely.

Another call we get is from a new group of Supers out of Vegas. It's a three woman team whom we invite to come to our facility to see what we're up to. We do a little sparring too (Except for Merlin, whom Evac thinks it's best we keep his powers secret).

We float the idea to them of becoming a HEAL affiliate, but none of us are exactly sure what that entails.

Okay, seems I remember less than I thought. I'm sure there was more stuff but that will have to do.

OH... we completed our FBI training. You get your choice of either 1 Appropriate Feat (something the FBI could train in) or 4 skill points.

Game 8:

Johnny Utah/Blast/Halo (Jim), Nick Grimes/Evac (Mark), Richard Harvey/Merlin (Paul), Ganny Magic/Masquerade (Jeff), Wes Stallings (Joe), Martha Block/Cyberghost (Darren)

Crybaby activity has been high. But so has vigilante activity! We try to look into this because the vigilantes wound up taking out the same two people we had captured previously doing a bank robbery. They beat up the duo pretty well. Halo does a drop-in and heals the duo. We do some peripheral investigation but are too stupid to go poke around the scene. Eventually an ally of the duo calling herself "Enchantress" shows up at our place and wants to know why we're doing nothing. We explain we didn't have a starting point, but she drags us to the scene and points out a clue. I should mention they are reportedly: A guy in full white medieval armor, another in armor who does some kind of webbing and third one who creates fire creatures to attack people with. The clue found on the scene is some metallic fibers which are probably part of the spider-person's mobility. Backtracked, we find the general area they started from.

We stake it out with no luck. Eventually we put up cameras and manage to get a time when they are there and confront them. It does NOT come to blows however as we try to recruit them away from vigilantism to simply capturing people, but they're pretty hardcore. I think they were Ember, White Knight, and I forget the third one. They turn us down flatly and even say, "Hey if there's something where you're not willing to get your hands dirty, you know where to find us."

We get a new hireling, a lady who can turn invisible! And also change the colors of other things. She's going by "Spectrum". She might be useful later on. We might also be a bit shady for her. We don't exactly give the impression of being a by-the-book organization to those on the inside.

We talk to the two former bank robbers about their assault. Unfortunately we can only find one, the woman who can generate acid, who owns the garage where they were assaulted. She is "out of the business" of robbery because the price was too high. So, seems like maybe the vigilantes weren't wrong. They actually acted as a deterrent here!

We tried to recruit her (the thinking being that if she joins the good guys maybe that'll defuse the vigilantes). She has no interest. We warn her that there may still be some anti-her sentiment out there and to stay alert.

The big fight of the night involves being alerted by Viking that the streets are crawling with groups carrying more dangerous weapons than normal (Shotguns and Automatic weapons). We meet with him at the scene of an assault (and possibly murder) by some cry-babies. This turns into a fight almost immediately.

I (Martha block) almost got removed as an element of this fight immediately when her summoned fighter, Summer, took a shotgun blast and de-rezzed, and she spent the rest of the right being shot at, wounded, and barely being saved by Masquerade's fake force wall and Evac's teleportation. Fortunately, everyone else picks up the slack, with Wes using his gravity powers to impede them, Evac making them sick, and Blast doing namesake things. The bad guys do get caught for the police.

Did I forget Eater? I did. One of the things before the big fight was that an acquaintance we made in a previous game, a Joker who can eat anything (and everything) has been hauled in by the cops. Seems he was found eating a body. With some investigation (and the mind powers of Merlin, which were very helpful throughout this entire game), we find out that he only sees two things: Food and Not-Food. If she had been a living being he probably wouldn't have eaten her. Which means someone dumped a body off to be disposed of. From his memory, at least two not-foods dropped off the food.

We start thinking that maybe it was Sleeper, one of our previous encounters. We get in contact and fortunately no fight breaks out between us and him.

Game 9

Merlin (Paul), Evac (Mark), Blast (Jim), Wes (Joe), CyberGhost (Darren)

For some reason I can never remember Wes' codename.

In fact... I remember almost nothing. Nothing! To say I was checked out for most of the game is an understatement. I'm sure it looked the same as usual as I alternated between fooling with my laptop and fooling with my phone, but I can usually retain most of what happened. Not so much this time.

There was a jail break. A duo from the prison got away because of a spooky shadowy black creature appeared from the shadows in the common yard and picked them up and carried them away. We find out that it's likely that they are going to come after three people upon whom they've sworn revenge: The Prosecutor, the Arresting officer, and a teenage girl witness. We stakeout the witness. Turns out while we were doing this they went after the one that the cops were staking out, which was the officer? (He said trying to remember which of the two)

We continue our stakeout after failing to crack the former cellmate of one of them. It eventually pays off. What we've done is send her away to a safehouse and replace her with shapeshifting Johnny Utah. So when something shows up to get her it attacks him/her and Evac manages to get him out of there, leaving it to claw up Merlin. The rest of us are looking around outside for the summoner of the creature, which is essentially a chupacabra. The one that broke them out of prison was a mothman. So this guy can summon Cryptids.

The folks outside in the air (Wes) manage to spot the bad guys clustered in a group of motorcycles. We roll up on them while Evac goes back and safely gets clawed-up Merlin out of the house.

The enemy are a handful of bikers with shotguns and pistols, and the two escapees who are a guy with lizard skin, high strength, and is not afraid of anything. The other guy summons spooky things. Summer/Martha/Tina roll up on the group and Summer gets de-rezzed by a shotgun blast through the windshield. Martha has to jump into the driver seat and use the van as a weapon for the next five rounds. Meanwhile Evac is nauseating people and moving people around. What he doesn't know is that Merlin has a new power which allows him to swap minds with a target. So when he's up on a roof he swaps bodies with a target guy and then his own body almost falls off the roof, requiring help from Evac. This fight is long and dangerous with shotguns being way deadlier than any of us, but we overcome.

I remember that we tried to locate a missing man. He was from the first game (the one I wasn't at) and is an older man who drains the life energies of people around them, leaving himself revitalized. Well, two burglars broke into the house where he had been kept isolated in his room and they died in his field of drainage and that gave the man the ability to get up and go ambulatory. Along his path of drainage he accidentally crossed paths with another person with powers and wound up draining them as well. Now he not only could drain people but he had flight and any other power of that guy!

By the time we follow the path of dead cats, dogs, and people through the neighborhood we find that he's gone to a place there was lots of "life"... in this case night life... a club near closing time. He went in and sucked the life out of everyone in there. We tried to engage him with the cops but couldn't get too close. What makes it worse is that he ignores all damage of our level. The only person who in-theory could do some damage to him is Summer and the killing field around him would murder her.

Merlin managed to corral him using his mind control power. He gets him to sit down in the back of a patrol car so that we can lock him in. Eventually, through a combination of Merlin's mind-control and his newly revealed body-switching powers, the bad guy is moved into a cage and hauled away to be stored by ETHOS.

There's more. I'm just surprised I managed to get THAT MUCH out of the blackhole of memory. And I almost couldn't remember why were fighting that first group until I finally remembered the Mothman.

Game Ten:

Masquerade (Jeff), Enigma (Joe), Blast (Jim), Merlin (Paul), CyberGhost (Darren)

We get a call (deja vu!). While neither Evac or Enigma are present at the time, both have had their loved ones abducted. It seems that because they are public figures they were targeted by someone. Whoever it is, leaves a message that is voice modulated to the point of almost not understanding it. They say that they don't trust us because we work with the government, so that's why they've taken leverage. They say that the CERN Hadron Colliders have opened holes into other dimensions and that has caused the problems people are suffering (Jokers) and that he/she knows that there's a cure for this affliction and it's at Fermi labs.

There's some preliminary detective work done to try and track down the perpetrator but then we do a trip to Fermi labs in order to ask about the issues. We level with the contact there about why we are there and a combination of mind-reading and asking questions seems to only yield that they are on the level. We decide we need a fake device to take to the blackmailer. The guy at Fermi whips up something that looks semi-official. With a thermos, stickers, etc.

Now after we get back and are figuring out what to do next police-work-wise, Enigma arrives (Joe gets to the game). He'd like more follow-up at Fermi but too late for that. Through a bunch of detective work (Cameras, Cars,Elimination, Deduction, Surveillance) I won't go into because it'll make this recap endless, we figure out which guy it was and we abduct him. He's a tough nut to crack. First off, he has some kind of mental protection that keeps our psychic out. He seems resistant to threats. What we end up doing is turning him over to ETHOS for holding, using his phone and texting his accomplices to meet them. We end up at a restaurant to meet with a guy who looks like the Toxic Avenger whose name I can't recall so I'll refer to him as Toxi, and a girl named Calico. The guy we caught was Cheshire Cat (because he can invis himself). Our end of the meet is shape-changed to look like Cheshire Cat. At the conclusion of the meet, they leave to go to the pick-up point for the blackmail (A rooftop garden bar up the street). But we've managed to get from their heads via Merlin exactly where our people are held. So we run off to do that first.

In the sewers there's a sort of juncture point. There are four guards armed with automatic weapons. We send our invis people in first (Masq and Spectrum) to scout and then we do the siege. One is held in place by an illusionary cage because he can't make his saves to realize it's false, the others actually get rounded up pretty handily, no major injuries.

We head to the rooftop garden where because of its location not everyone arrives at once. The trigger will be when Martha shows up through the wires of the cashier station. She shows up and what follows is some pretty bad work on our part. Martha keeps taking wounds (fortunately 1 point at a time, which allows her to escape back through the wires). Flying Enigma gets shot down and manages to hit the ground without dying (Martha checks on him). Masque causes all sorts of confusion among the bad guys by creating weird opponents, making good and bad guys run into the area, etc. Merlin creates even further chaos by making them attack each other through mind-control. Toxi has a small group of cats who do some of his bidding, but they get held in place by Enigma's gravity ability (at least until he got shot down).

Once we have a bunch of them down the others retreat and frankly we let them. We had one man down and another badly injured.

Next thing... We are called in to ETHOS because our mad scientist has invented something. Apparently he's created a window into another world, but it's visual only and one-way. We're looking through a glass at a room where nothing happens much. But recording the room we eventually see someone come in and store something on a shelf there. The scientist will work on creating a mobile version of the glass so he can turn it and perhaps see more.

Then, later that evening, we get word that one of the ETHOS agents has vanished. We do our best to come up with clues as to what happened but just end up with nothing.

Best we do is that we are following up on a clue when suddenly our van is attacked! Someone has set an ambush for us as if they knew we were coming and what route we were taking. The van is demolished. We are surrounded by people with guns that are decidedly more futuristic than what we use. They can fire nets or fire full auto. "Stay inside the van" meaning the wreckage. Many of us ignore that. There's lots of lead flying, flyers getting hit by nets (at one point Blast is flying from rooftop to rooftop trying to scrape the net off). Summer was driving and one hail of gunfire de-rezzes her. Martha runs away right after everyone takes their turn so she's safe. While we take out a few guys, mostly we end up fleeing in order to recover because they were doing plenty of damage; we were out-gunned.

We are trying to figure out who these guys are and why they want us. We're presuming that these are the same guys who abducted the ETHOS agent, and that they may have used trackers like we use or possibly even could be using a window like our guy invented to see what we're doing.

During the conjecture, the HEAL line gets a call from one of the bad guys. Seems Alley Cat has been abducted. Somehow the villain knows where she's being held but doesn't have the firepower to go in after her. She knows we have the numbers.

We go to the office building where they're being held, send in the invisible recon, and when we're done and trying to figure out how to deal with such a well-armed, embedded, fortified group of people, who have eight or so captured Aces in cryo-tubes, suddenly THE FLASH HAPPENS AGAIN! When it finishes and we wake up, we find they are gone. A replay of some video we have on the building shows somebody moving through the building at high speed to move them out.

So we have no idea where everybody went. We don't know who these people are. And now we've undergone another transformation. Apparently we've been bumped a few levels.