Will of the Earth
General Summary
Mega Crossover Series: Will of the Earth
June 15th through 24th, 2004
It's early summer, and the summer session is in progress for schools of many kinds throughout the northeast. At the Gironde School for Gifted and Special Needs Students, more than two-thirds of the student body have gone home until the fall. Those who remain are reorganized into broader groups for nontraditional study programs; and the fourteen-and-fifteen-year-olds have been assigned a complicated research project on the effects of a public identity versus a private identity for all the different kinds of superpowered careers.
They convinced their instructors that the local library simply didn't have the resources they needed, and they would have to visit the New York Public Library. (The actual resource they wanted was, in fact, publicly-known NYC hero Sahara.) Two members of the staff were sent on this trip as chaperones: Tom Jordan and Don Blake.
Round 1: Penny Dreadful
Within minutes of their arrival, however, noted supervillain Penny Dreadful appeared in the East Reading Room with a ... strange assortment of henchthings. She claimed to be present to stop a crime in the special collections room!
Events got particularly interesting for Sahara, Silverwing, and Don Blake when the criminals had been captured and Penny Dreadful left: her vehicle was attacked in traffic from below, her two remaining henchthings exploded, and it's only the amazing driving skills of her driver that kept the resulting crash from being fatal. Penny Dreadful then ranted to Don Blake during emergency medical treatment about the unnamed person who insisted she take the henchthings on the outing. She departs in a passerby's car, her arm in a sling, to go "set things right".
An hour later, the kids are being picked up by a representative from the NY branch of the Gironde School. Sahara's shift is finally over, and he's done giving witness statements regarding the attempt to steal the Special Collection. A news flash reports that Penny Dreadful was arrested out in Queens for trying to access the sewer junction under a corner of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.
The question is: who's really behind all this?
Note: Safeguard has been alerted about a potential national security risk named Dr. Theron, apparently a biologist who can engineer semi-sentient creatures and is supplying them to numerous mentally unstable individuals. A biological sample of his work has been turned in with the full report.
Early returns on the biological sample are very technical and very contradictory. You may want a highly-trained scientist of your own to interpret some of the acronym-and-numbers-and-charts parts of the report. They're sending the remainder of the sample on to a consultant -- SAFEGUARD's Research cell would really like for Agent Chameleon to send along additional samples if he gets a safe opportunity -- but thus far they confirm that they're seeing similarities to "oommycetes" and different similarities to jellyfish, and everything else is a great big scientific disagreement.
One of the four people contributing to this analysis even wrote something about "genetic material unlike anything on this planet".
Round 2: Scarab
Penny Dreadful awaits her day in court with promised legal representation. She's under hospital care for her car crash injuries, and gave "her lawyer" instructions to pass along an apology (and promise to make things right) to "her boys".
The Scarab has been arrested at the Queens Museum on assorted charges; he blamed the Bullseye Blasters as "the thieves he was trying to foil", but the address he gave for the Bullseye Blasters' headquarters turns out to be an under-renovation Bio-Investigations Limited free clinic for metas.
Fighting the monster things was significantly difficult that last time. Thunderstrike had to return to Metropolis in order to have his hammer cleaned, tested, and recharged; one of the creatures ... or, possibly, whoever was speaking through them ... recognized him and tried to destroy him.
The crossover team is going to need some better tactics before they fight these things again! And fight them they will, because just a couple of days later, electronic billboards throughout the northeast have been reprogrammed to transmit a very special message at eyeblink speed, in between the regular advertisements. In fact, the regular advertisements have gotten a little staticky....
Round 3: Imp Urity and Acid Raihne
the GM draws a line below her session plans, and writes
"Fark this, the party has gone to Penny Dreadful's Hideout!"
Silverwing's clue:
The digital billboards throughout the Northeast have begun to have static.
Actually, it's an implanted message playing at superspeedster-only rate.
There's security-camera style footage of that big fight the other day that you, Thunderstrike, Sahara, and what's-his-name had against the Scarab guy and the big green gelatin monster things. The angle's a little weird, and it has a lot of close-ups, and it's definitely not in the order that things happened.
Interfering Costumed Vigilantes
There's more footage, maybe the same camera brand or cameraman, of zooming in on Penny Dreadful's face as her expression grows more and more horrified.
Stay Away
You see a green-tinted still from security footage of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, taken with the same tools but at least it's a still image this time.
For the Good of the Earth
You see a negative image of a lightning strike, black instead of white; this is probably what makes normal-speed people think it's all static.
Sending in the Hammer Bearer is Tolerable
In the hospital at the end of Round 1, Penny Dreadful told a person she thought was her lawyer that her hideout is at 266 Adelphi Street, and that she needs him to pass along her apology (and promise to make things right) to "her boys".
Thunderstrike: I have Don's money, do you want sushi?
Kitsune: Who's Don?
Thunderstrike: He's my friend. He always leaves his money on the nightstand. It's not my fault.
Kitsune: Oh, THAT kind of friend.
--
"Divine", Survey Questioner: Who Is More Sexy, Edward Nygma or The Idiot King?
Kitsune: Judging the aesthetic qualities of both individiuals cross-referenced with the average preferences of women expressed in several female-oriented popular magazines, I would say that the average American woman 20-35 would find Edward Nygma sexier than a guy who wears a bag over his head.
I thought it then, and I still think it now:
That line was just Homeric. Absolutely Homeric.
Round 4: The Brooklyn Navy Yard
The insidious Dr. Theron has literally called the heroes on being late, and Thunderstrike is up to the challenge.
Who will be the villain on the scene, no doubt lying in wait for the blond crusader's arrival at the Brooklyn Navy Yard?
How will the party defeat the strange green goo-things, more dangerous at every encounter?
Who's cooking the cheeseburgers?
All this and more, tonight!
No less than a giant, spinning, hovering UFO straight out of the classic scifi movie Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind -- but bright yellow in color -- zoomed into the investigation and attempted to attack several parties with beam weapons of an even brighter yellow. Thunderstrike fought back with his Atomic Hammer and his absolute determination.
When the dust cleared, Thunderstrike had vanished ... his smoking hammer remained in the center of a crater on the pavement ... and the AIM VTOL craft had splashed down into the Hudson Bay.
Iron Man of the Watchmen came over to fish it out and fly it away. No doubt he will take the empty craft apart and reverse-engineer any nifty engineering developments within.
Round 5: Perfect Storm at the Aqueduct Racetrack
Days have passed since Thunderstrike vanished.
If any clues were forthcoming from the wreck of the flying disk, no one from the Watchmen is volunteering them.
Dr. Theron's plans (to qualify for Advanced Idea Mechanics inclusion) are in ruins, his old enemy is missing, and the secret society of world-conquering science nerds have rejected his membership application. There's nothing left to do but salvage his pride!
In the Ninth Precinct, The Scarab is about to be interviewed by a psychiatric consultant who specializes in meta psychology. The goal is to determine for the D.A. whether The Scarab qualifies as criminally insane.
And at the Aqueduct Racetrack in Ozone Park, a new video lottery machine is being introduced. Created by STAR Labs, it claims to be the first-ever "unbreakably meta-proof" casino game. In fact, the first meta-powered individual who can influence it into giving a result of all zeroes will earn a one-time payout of seven million dollars.
Needless to say, this is drawing some powered civilians and would-be supervillains out of the shadows in droves....
"Perfect Storm" is a temporary villain team:
- Whirlwind
- Komodo
- Animator
- Zot
Oh, it's a REAL tornado!
Epilogue
During the month after Thunderstrike vanished, Silverwing and Sahara did extensive research and experimentation (and, just maybe, a little bit of liberating materials in the name of a rescue mission) until they had a device to reopen the warphole. They brought along key supplies, such as snack food and a recharging system for the warphole-opener, and went to rescue their missing colleague.
Thunderstrike, in his much weaker alternate identity's body, had been living for a month on a strange island during the start of Monsoon Season. He built himself a shelter, left logs forming "S O S" on the beach, and began two major projects: the continuing Attempt To Make Rum, and exploring the island and its seascape. He learned several interesting pieces of the puzzle, such as the scarily intelligent monsters which occasionally carpet the sky, and the secret of the strangely-formed cliffs.
After several obstacles provided by the island itself, the three heroes met back up. They set to work recharging the warphole-opener and Thunderstrike's hammer, making dinner, and figuring out just what could be wrong with this Flooded Earth.
And it is definitely flooded. Most of the South American continent is gone, only plant-covered islands remaining. Significant portions of the southern central US are also gone. The northeastern seaboard is reported to be radioactively uninhabitable. Pockets of civilization are generally not in contact with each other, sometimes broadcasting by radio in forlorn hope that someone -- anyone -- will hear and respond.
Oh, one more puzzle piece: some coconuts are technological. Thunderstrike has a pile of them in one corner of his hut, blinking and working together somehow to be a radio. Coconut fibers link the pile to the separated halves of another coconut, their cut surfaces covered by stretched Calathea leaves, forming a Surround Sound system from a coconut that apparently wanted to be a speaker. Alas, no coconut antenna has yet been found, so the radio mostly plays static....
.... Until a scientifically-minded genius with the mutant power to manipulate magnetic fields decides to hold his hand over the radio and concentrate, and suddenly broadcast can be heard from as far away as the Cajun Bayou community.
Eventually our heroes gathered enough information, got themselves cleared of both major viruses destroying this world, and returned to their home reality ... but not before giving the local SHIELD some hints on how to make the warphole-generator for themselves, so the remaining innocents might find a more survivable home. If the supervillain viruses don't get them first.
Character(s) interacted with
The Heroes:
- Agent Chameleon of SAFEGUARD as Kitsune of the Trenchcoat Brigade
- Sahara of the Knights Vigilant
- Silverwing of Wyldfire
- Thunderstrike of Wyldfire
- Dr. Achilles Theron, hoping soon to be "of AIM"
- Penny Dreadful
- The Scarab
- Imp Urity and Acid Raihne
- Iceheart and Granizo from Blüdhaven
- Whirlwind
- Komodo
- Animator
- Zot
Report Date
24 Jun 2014
Primary Location
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