Dominic Dantes
Dr. Dominic Dantes
A generally non-descript man in is late twenties or early thirties, brown hair and average height. Pretty much what you would expect from a non-TV doctor.
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Age
30
Date of Birth
2042
Children
Gender
Male
Eyes
Blue
Hair
Brown
Skin Tone/Pigmentation
Slightly paler than normal
Height
5'10"
Weight
160 Lbs.
Related Reports
Fast and Filthy Rich
Dominic Dantes
Level 37 – Fast and Filthy Rich
Adventure 1
The flight from LaGuardia was uneventful, but comfortable. I was able to talk the person at the ticket counter into an upgrade to first class for the non-stop flight to Chattanooga. Gently exploring the agents mind made finding out the man had a young daughter, who he cared for very much, significantly easier. Flying down for “emergency surgery” for an injured child easily pulled on his heartstrings. Just a minor push was all it took to get him to believe I was a world-class surgeon, believably backed up with my very real medical credentials. I would need all the rest I could get for surgery first thing tomorrow morning. He didn’t even question that my plane would be landing in the middle of the afternoon later that day.
As the plane ascended, I began running over the plan in my mind. Get on the ground, check-in to a hotel then go give the address a check. A raw plan, but not knowing what to expect out of this secretive group made detailed plans more than a bit pointless, I would definitely have to think quickly on my feet. I much prefer planning ahead, particularly now, as I try to avoid any surprises that might bring out my less socially acceptable sides.
The taxi ride to the hotel was more eventful than the flight, but only because the driver was talkative. I found his southern accent somewhat humorous and almost cliché.
After a quick check-in and dropping off my small bag in the room, it was time to go see what this address was all about and get something to eat. After a fair walk, I found a café that had a good view of what would seem to be the address in question and sat down for a local specialty, barbeque. Taking an hour to enjoy the meal, something I hadn’t really taken the time to do since the passing of Angela, didn’t really give me any insight on the building. There were a few people that came and went, but nothing at this distance stood out about them. Perhaps they had some underground access, or a helipad, or just maybe I was blowing this all out of proportion and there really isn’t anything that different about them. A walk by the building after the meal didn’t give any more information, other than what appeared to be a normal office building lobby. I was a little bit disappointed, but what should I have expected, henchmen in colorful suits and maniacal laughter over the loudspeakers?
A quiet drink in the hotel bar rounded out my evening before retiring early, but not before doing my best James Bond impression by searching for cameras or listening devices…not that I really know what I’m looking for or would know what to do with it if I found one. Those old movies used to make us laugh.
Morning came earlier than expected. Time seems to act so oddly when you can’t get to sleep but then it is light as soon as you do. A quick shower and breakfast in the hotel restaurant picked me back up before another walk to the address given to me. I don’t think that was real bacon, but my taste buds did not seem to notice any difference. Not sure I could afford a hotel that had real bacon.
The office lobby didn’t look any different today than it did yesterday. I approached the information desk which seemed to actually have a real person staffing it and not some automated kiosk. “I have a meeting with Elder Yoshida Teru scheduled for 10 a.m.”, I said with a smile.
The attractive brunette smiled and looked back to me, “Yes, Mr. Dantes. Please take the elevator at the end of the hall.”, as she waved a hand indicating behind her.
I looked at her a bit quizzically at the rather limited guidance, no room number or anything else, but then it also dawned on me that she did know who I was withing me telling her. Keep on your toes, Dom.
“Thank you.”, with another smile I walked past the woman and the information desk down the hallway passing several other elevator doors. The elevator doors at the end of the hall slid open quietly as I approached, and I stepped into the empty elevator. As I turned to see what button options were available, I quickly noted that there were no buttons where expected, nor on the other side. Guess I’m going wherever they want me to.
I turned and faced the closing door and waited patiently. The motion was so smooth that I did not get a good feeling which way I was going, as far as I knew, this could be a Wonkavator. I didn’t have long to think about it as the doors opened again leading to a short hallway. With a quick glance around, I moved down the short hallway and could hear muffled noise, possibly voices coming from the other side of the door at the end.
I pushed open the door and found a relatively large, almost industrial appearing room where a casually, but nicely dressed man near the door began speaking to me. “Mr. Dantes, please feel free to wait with that group over there.” He motioned with his hand towards a small group of people. Now this is getting interesting. There was a casually dressed female, a casually dressed male and three other people in special suits, uniforms, or something like that, which obscured their faces. Apparently, I’m overdressed in my traveling suit for this occasion. There were other people in other parts of the room, but this appeared to be the group that I would be working with.
Revered Takashi introduced himself and the other people in the group took turns introducing themselves and briefly discussing what we each bring to the team. Maven, Switchblade, Disciple Garcia, Revered Takashi, and I would be going on the mission together. Our mission brief was given by Carla our mission coordinator.
Our mission would be the retrieve Roland Drake, a person important to Level 37, but currently being held by IERA. His transfer from one location to another was initiated by a Level 37 operative known as The Widow. Our task is to intercept him in transport and return him to Level 37. This would be done in rural Tennessee. Our mission is to be accomplished by “any means necessary”. Well, I hope it doesn’t come down to that, but I didn’t get involved with this blindly, my intentions aren’t exactly pure.
We pile into 2 separate vehicles driven by Dom and Dante, which takes me aback a bit, and head out to the highway. It isn’t too long before we are approaching the armored vehicle like a New York cabbie.
As we get closer to the armored car, Takashi has the roof opened on the SUV and pulls a rifle and takes a shot at the vehicle, leaving a “thunk” sound. Takashi gives a command over the radio to The Widow and the vehicle begins to slow.
Once the armored vehicle came to a stop, the chaos began. Another car that had been traveling at the same speed also stopped ahead of the armored car. Two IERA special agents jumped out of it with weapons drawn and one SWAT officer got out of the passenger side of the armored car.
At this point, Switchblade ran out of the SUV, like through the SUV, and into the armored car, again right through the doors. I’m definitely not the only special one here, given what I saw from Maven’s shapeshifting earlier. The others jumped out of the vehicle as well. Stuck in the back, I was a bit slow to get out, but this does appear to be convenient for me.
Maven points out something flying in behind us. Takashi notes he is a local-ish super who does flying stuff.
A blast from behind me strikes the SWAT agent that jumped out, I’m hoping that is from Garcia. The IERA agent with a big gun takes a shot at Takashi, I think, but misses, the huge amount of lightning arcing around. Those IERA types always complaining about energy and here they are throwing around lightning bolts.
Takashi returned the fire with some sort of dark blast from his gun and definitely making an impact on the IERA agent. With all this weapons fire going off, I can feel my anxiety rising. I am not used to this sort of action, and it all begins to blur.
I’m a bit shocked out of it when what must be Maven tries to eviscerate the SWAT officer in front of the SUV. I’m not certain it is Maven, but that entity got out of the vehicle right behind Takashi, so I’m pretty sure it is Maven. Fortunately for him, her attack was a bit clumsy.
At this point I saw the second IERA agent come around the armored vehicle nearing Maven and Takashi, I focused on him briefly causing his thoughts to explode, dazing him before he can approach my teammates.
Holy crap! That flying guy came swooping in next to the vehicle and Takashi disappeared.
Holy crap again! That poor SWAT officer that Maven swung at before wasn’t so lucky this time. He was nearly cut in half by that attack.
With Takashi gone, and Maven apparently quite capable of taking out guys with guns, that flying guy drew my attention. Reaching out and plucking his mental strings, he too is was temporarily entranced by the thoughts, images and sounds flooding his mind. This caused him to plow into the one IERA agent and take them both down the road a bit in a heap.
Maven then went running off into the tall grass on the side of the road, at which point I really wasn’t sure I wanted to see any more.
Maven is off on the side of the road, Takashi disappeared, I haven’t seen Switchblade in a while, I think Garcia is still around here somewhere. I’m really glad I decided to stay in the vehicle. I really only have a good view of the remaining SWAT officer, hopefully I can disable him before Maven makes a mess of him. He too has a mind that is overwhelmed with his own thoughts.
Woosh! There goes that flying guy again, right back by the SUV. Looks like he might have clipped Garcia who was just behind the SUV. Garcia then returned the favor by throwing something at the flying guy and a dark orb enveloped the flyer, keeping me from seeing him any longer.
Another shot rang out from near the SUV I was in and the remaining SWAT officer goes down.
At this point, Switchblade emerged from the armored vehicle, this time actually using the doors, along with who I assume is Roland Drake, two SWAT agents calmly sitting in the back and begin hand cuffing themselves to the vehicle. The team and Roland re-mount the SUV’s and make our exit.
We drive a short distance away to a clearing where two suited men and a man in red robes are waiting for us. The suits confirm our mission success, and we approach the red robed figure.
The robed figure then asks us to come closer and begins waving his arms around, the area around us shifting through a yellow light, with overlay of another setting eventually becoming a comfortable office. The robed figure tells Mr. Drake to move behind the desk and welcomes him to the lodge. The area around us begins to light shift again this time looking like the room we were first in when we received the mission.
Portal then tanked us and portaled away again.
Takashi then thanked us and told us that Portal, Level 37 is happy and that we will be contacted again, and we are dismissed.
I give my card to Maven, they definitely seem like someone that could use some help.
Now to just find my way home.
Encounter notes:
Chromium Condor – Flies fast, doesn’t seem to be able to do much more.
IERA Agents – Unsure, the big gun looks mean, but didn’t see it do damage.
How It All Began - The Origins of Dr. Dominic Dantes
Dominic Dantes grew up in a middle-class area of Los Angeles. Given the turmoil of the times and both of his parents being medical professionals, the family kept a relatively low profile overall. There were no extravagant homes or cars, but Dom was never lacking for anything and often had the best of anything he needed. He was taught early on that you don’t need to be flashy, or one of those social media people to make a difference, and that it was often those you don’t hear about making the real impact, and that if you were noticed by the wrong people, you might become one of the Vanished.
While he had heard of a few people Vanishing as he was growing up, it was always still more of a problem of others, perhaps his parents shielded him from the worst. Dom did well in school and was able to sneak in some early college classes during high school. He often felt like he had to hold back for fear of standing out and drawing the wrong kind of attention, but that did not keep him from doing well enough in school.
He headed off to college where again, he kept a low profile, that fear of being too noticeable might get the attention of the wrong people persisted. It was during this somewhat reclusive time that Dominic met Angela Halliwell while he was studying at the library.
Angela was many things Dom was not. She was very outgoing and vivacious and was somehow able to draw Dom out of his mostly solitary existence. She exposed Dom to much of what he had not done while growing up, and mostly just forgetting that the rest of the world existed when she was around.
While they spent a lot of time together, Dom was able to maintain his studies, perhaps because he now had a study partner that made him look forward to studying for something more than the knowledge.
In 2063 Dom and Angela graduated from college and moved to New York so that Dom could attend medical school. It was during this move that they decided to get married. They had decided to wait a bit on children, as Dom wanted to get through medical school and residency, and that would give Angela time to get settled in her career. While Dom’s studies and Angela’s career took their time, they spend whatever remaining free time together.
In late 2070, Dom was approaching the end of his residency and Angela’s career was in a good place, they decided it was time to try for a child. Things could not have gone any better during the pregnancy and everything was looking great for a July baby. In mid-2071, Dom had gotten on the staff of a hospital a fair distance across the city and was halfway through his shift when the blackout hit. Events like this bring out the worst in people and there was a steady stream of people coming into the ER and it was all hands on-deck.
It wasn’t until later that evening when he had a chance to take a breath when he checked his phone to see several calls from an unknown number. As he listened to the message left from the last call, an Officer Milton asked that Dom call him back urgently. Hoping he wasn’t too late; he returned the call. Officer Milton answered cheerfully, but when Dom indicated who he was the Officers voice took a very somber tone. The officer explained that during the initial blackout there was a lot of fear and panic on the streets, and that Angela was downtown at the time and that in that panic she was trampled. They tried what they could, but she was pronounced dead on the scene, as well as the baby.
Dom’s world fell apart at that moment.
While he physically went through the motions of the funerals and family coming into town, his mind was in a daze. How could this happen to her? Who did this? All our plans, gone.
Dom seemed to vacillate between bouts of fear and anger. Fearing the future without Angela, and anger at why she was taken from him. He would tell himself these are natural pieces of the grieving process, but the feelings overwhelmed him at times. To help deal with the pain and loss, Dom began to self-medicate.
Being a psychiatrist in a prominent hospital, he was able to get hold of some of the more experimental medications from the vendors that have access to such things. These medications did seem to have a noticeable effect on him, and his dreams became incredibly vivid. He had taken them for about a week when the first “event” happened.
In the dream, he was chasing down some of those LFER’s, the group who claimed responsibility for the blackout. When he caught them, he made sure they knew the terrors he felt, at least for a short period of time. When he woke up in the morning, he felt physically better than he had in weeks. It was only when he started to move around in the bed that he noticed something was amiss. The sheets and blankets had been badly slashed. Something incredibly sharp went through all the blankets and carved up the mattress, and the wooden post at the head of the bed had been cleanly cut in two, as well as leaving a gash in the wall to match. What the hell happened?!
The local bedding company replaced the mattress, that one was no longer really capable of supporting anyone.
The next night, on his fresh new mattress, the dream returned, but much more vivid and lucid, to the point it was real.
Dom crawled out from under the sheets to the floor, his elongated arms easily reaching the floor, long steel-like talons extending from them. There was no fear in seeing this change, just fascination. He moved on all fours over to the bathroom, like a panther among kittens. He could feel the power in his muscles and with a thought, the claws retracted into strong, meaty hands. When he got to the bathroom mirror, he was a little surprised, but not afraid. His body was an amalgam of forms, taking what would be the scariest parts of creatures and monsters. The metallic claws from a horror movie, the face of a demonic dog, chitinous plates covering parts of his body, most certainly something Dom would be terrified of, if this wasn’t obviously a form of him looking back in the mirror. But now he had the urge to inflict the terrors he had felt upon those that caused it. Unfortunately, he had no idea where to even start looking for these LFER people, they are a secretive lot. This would take time and some consideration.
One unusual impact of this, is that he no longer feared the future of life without his wife. That fear appeared to be contained and exuded to others within that other form, that he now referred to as Terror.
Not long after, while working with a patient who was trying to explain what was going on in their situation, when he began to experience what they were thinking about. He could see their thoughts before they could put them into words. The longer he focused on the deeper into their mind he could experience. Is this another side effect of those medications? Given other recent events, he faced this change with much more excitement than apprehension.
Dom spent the next several weeks practicing his new abilities, which appeared to span the telepathic and telekinetic spectrum, and carefully using them to try and learn more about LFER, with very little luck.
During one of his training sessions, the frustration of not making any progress in finding LFER, in addition to still being angry his wife was taken from him finally caught up with him. Instead of manifesting the invisible field around him, which had become second nature, he burst into flames. His rational mind somewhat faded to the back and his anger burst to the surface and he began to burn everything around him.
Things had just become more complicated. While Terror and this newer Rage manifestation were definitely both Dom underneath, the prominent thoughts were those of the manifestation. It was as if these manifestations were a small part of Dom that broke off and made itself anew. He no longer felt the fear and anger as much during his daily life. Perhaps this change allowed him to store up those emotions and release them in a more controlled manner, if turning into a flaming rage monster or terror beast would be considered controlled. This would all take more time to analyze.
The next piece came during one of his sessions with a client who was having trouble sleeping. Dom had taken to poking around in clients’ thoughts during sessions, which was actually very helpful at getting to the root of issues. It was during this session that he uncovered that this client was working for an organization called Level 37, which Dom had not heard of. This client also knew that Level 37 was moving against some of the members of LFER. Finally, a lead on who they are and where to find them, perhaps this Level 37 group could get him more information. Dom was able to maneuver the conversation and eventually talk his client into introducing Dom to the organization.
Finally, the revenge he sought had a path to tread.
