In a meadow outside the city of San Francisco at 10:23 a.m., the exact moment of the Equinox, a ripple forms in the air.
You can tell where they've been, because it's ON FIRE
In a meadow outside the city of San Francisco at 10:23 a.m., the exact moment of the Equinox, a ripple forms in the air.
Tina Grewal is the 2nd and final child of the Grewal family to be born in the United States
Jean-Claude Gironde, Doctor of Psychiatry, heir of Phoenix Industries and several pieces of private real estate, takes his career in a new direction. In the process, he secretly creates a supergroup called "Wyldfire" which employs interesting metahumans whom he has met in various other circumstances.
John De'Salle ends therapy with Dr. Gironde and withdraws from Wyldfire. He moves to Michigan and forms a partnership with Floyd Lawton/Deadshot. He reminds Thomas that it's a life-risking move to be in contact with each other -- but also encourages Thomas to "stay in touch". Floyd privately instructs Thomas to keep it to email only for a few years -- give John time to figure himself out and settle down. John and Floyd join a pilot project spun off of SAFEGUARD that specializes in containing metahuman incidents too complicated for regular law enforcement.
A hypnotic violinist is the chief minion for an "Element Master" who has a quartet of brainwashed minions obeying the violinist's every cue.
On a simple trip to pick up groceries, ShadowStar in her civilian identity of Tina Grewal gets taken hostage by the Joker, who needs bait to draw in the current Robin. Joker was not the sort of villain to look around for witnesses; he has no idea that someone witnessed the crime, and is willing to pursue Tina's captors wherever they may go.
It was just supposed to be a simple bodyguard/chaperone task, not even a real Wyldfire operation ... but then a hostile psionicist went after the ambassador's daughter.
Intergang forces stage a daring raid on the boardroom of Phoenix Industries, drugging the executives at a conference on the construction of a high-tech prison for metahuman lawbreakers. More as this story develops!
The same forces behind the business kidnapping mere days ago now try to negate the support structure for those executives. An egocentric nihilist with an obsession about musicals is manipulated to target Firestar, with ultimately self-destructive results.
In the aftermath, Firestar retires from heroing, graduates from Professor Gironde's college graduate program, and moves off to a civilian life.
When a superspeedster and a hacktivist take a romantic vacation in the Bermuda Triangle, the laws of reality guarantee that something hinky will crop up. In this case, there is a shimmer in the air that tosses one of the two metahuman college students almost sixty years into the past.
Plans made by Wyldfire -- even "final exam via live exercise" plans -- seldom go smoothly. Tempest, the daughter of a United Nations ambassador, is not immune to this trend even if her stay is short.
Surprisingly not about Gotham City's "Joker" nor about anyone from the Card Shark Syndicate!
Feral comes up with a plan to make one last try at stopping the Freak Murders serial killings: she'll take out a classified advertisement in a New York City tabloid, offering to let the killer go for her directly instead of making a "copycat". The first problem with her plan is that others besides the ((current)) killer show up to her proposed meeting. The second problem with her plan is that the Freak Murders were never the work of a single individual ... and evil, death-obsessed hypnotist villain Kadaver is ready to confront any idiot who dares challenge his "art".
A supervillain from another dimension, seeking a world where he can become the Ultimate Evil Overlord with less opposition which might be competent to stop his dastardly conquest, picks the wrong reality. Dr. Doom invites himself into the opposition, in the process realizing that he truly does not want to rule a world. He merely wants to not live under the moral obligation to oppose Reed Richards. No: Doom wants to live quietly in a space he completely controls, exploring his theories of superscience, and going down in history as the smartest person ever to use a soldering iron.
During the ramp-up for this adventure, Jean-Claude Gironde discovers and unmakes numerous mental blocks and hypnotic commands implanted in Jarissa Venters' mind. This includes all of the villainous work Kadaver accomplished in the previous adventure, plus several things (but not all) from the Infinity Inc Hybrid Minion mental programming.
Also during this adventure, villain henchman-for-hire Mime gets physically split into two people. Mime/Robert Ridderhoff remains an employee of Phoenix Industries working at the Gironde mansion, as part of his parole. Ghoul is now a cannibalistic shapeshifting villain who can no longer copy new powers. Ghoul leaves to work in high-mortality areas of the world, mostly urban areas of Colombia, as a do-anything flunky.
Four girls have gone missing, all connected to this school which Professor Gironde suspects of being a front for a neo-Nazi radical organization. The school takes only mutants, teaches them to suppress their powers, teaches them that mutants are lesser than "true humans". All four girls were taken from their own homes, from their bedrooms, at night; no sign of forced entry. Two bodies have been found.
Wyldfire investigates.
The private school, which had spent ten years as part of Metropolis's city-wide college network, now officially opens its doors as a private boarding school for students who need a specific learning environment. Some of these students are metahuman, either born with an active metagene or developing metagene activity due to medical or environmental intervention. Others are more traditionally "human", but come from complex circumstances or have difficult-to-fit learning needs.
When Intergang spends too much of their anti-surveillance budget on a James Hong Marathon cover, they decide the perfect place to hide one of their most dangerous operations is in the false basement of an over-the-top Stereotypical Chop Suey Restaurant complete with "cultists" on loan from Golden Lotus. Astonishingly, absolutely no one in Metropolis law enforcement or city licensing agencies is convinced that this restaurant is above-board. "Grand Opening Day" ends in a Wyldfire investigation of all the areas not already shut down by the Metropolis Police Department.
At Alexei's Bar, Feral meets a time traveller -- a young man who is trying to correct the terrible event that makes his present into a dystopia. His first step is to make sure that his father never goes off alone to assault Infinity Inc. The young man's name is Grayson, his father is Blackjack, and Jarissa Paxton has not yet told anyone that she is pregnant.
Complicating Grayson Paxton's desperate plan is the pursuit of another time traveler, a hunter from a corporate rival who has come back to make sure that II does capture Blackjack and every other meta currently gathered at this rural tavern.
Knight Thrasher gets mutated for a while. Feral kills Rafferty, a previously unmet Hybrid Minion from the Omega series. When it comes to Rafferty, death generally does not take.
A cell of the Friends of Humanity anti-meta terrorist organization tries to film a segment for a "documentary" by staging an incident at Alexei's Bar. They maybe should not have done so while the Freakshow motorcycle gang is passing through rural areas of Pennsylvania.
When "Special Projects" at the Gironde School needs a quiet intel pickup from a rainy corner of New York City, Jean-Claude Gironde assigns the task to the two adults in the building currently most on his nerves: Sleet and Blackjack. He then puts it out of his mind.
It should have been a quiet, six hour round trip assignment, including twenty minutes for the pickup and forty minutes for a casual meal.
Instead, a mercenary named Retro kidnaps them.
Retro takes over the Berkeley Sports Metroplex, Metropolis' major sports stadium, while groundskeepers are still preparing it for the Black Friday Game. He holds it hostage, threatening explosive demolition, unless his demands are met: Wyldfire to surrender to him.
After a commissioned theft at the Metropolis Museum of Modern Art is foiled by the Gironde School staff who had been supervising a school trip, the Card Shark Syndicate sends a Spades team led by Face Card member Poker Face to the school grounds in retribution. Alas for them, Poker Face's remains are found by the county sheriff five miles away, in a single-car fatal accident, with an awful lot of incriminating weapons piled in the back seat.
Twisted nightmare versions of some of the world's Greatest Heroes take to the streets of Metropolis for nefarious purposes. The "Dark Captain" version of Captain America is a steroid-abusing brute; the "Dark Robin" version of Robin is a sniper.
Opposing them are any area heroes who can turn up, including (but not limited to) Wyldfire.
Feral and Blackjack stake out, then invade the destroyed II base in Niagara Falls, Ontario, to recover what records they can on how Jarissa's DNA has been altered via the Hybrid Minion process. They find a lot of dessicated bodies.
Dr. Tafey Anne Sinjin calls in members of Wyldfire to investigate a break-in at her biotechnology laboratory. Who stole lab notes and samples on a virus from her lab? The Midnight Syndicate, that's who! And investigation into their underground base -- hidden under the Warehouse District on the northern coast of the Lackawanna River in Metropolis proper, connected to the Metropolis Underground -- finds a further reference to the Metahuman Research and Defense Agency, whatever that may be.
A very elegant woman named Susan Taylor comes to the private areas of the Gironde School and tells Jean-Claude Gironde -- whom she had dated about 15 years ago -- that her missing son Jase Taylor was his child. She has been careful not to do anything that might seem like making demands on their old association ... but he has money. He has resource. Susan has exhausted the options available to her; Jean-Claude needs to have someone find her missing son.
Something about Susan Taylor strikes Wyldfire agents as a stone-cold liar. Ms. Taylor is going to get quite a bit more of an investigation than she planned for!
A villain named Drassad, from a virtual reality based Alternate Earth, breaks through to this reality via the computers in Wyldfire's training area beneath the Gironde School main building's basement. He uses a computer virus to take over most of the campus, collecting prisoners along the way to serve as raw materials.
Complication: Drassad's visual representation has always been identical to Jean-Pierre Gironde, late father of the team's employer, even before he gained access to the Wyldfire servers.
Bubba Jordan comes to his Auntie Rissa with a personal mission: an impostor has cruelly framed one of Bubba's two personal heroes for a bank robbery, and it's up to Bubba to clear Big Bird's good name. But, as Bubba (like Big Bird) is a perpetual six-year-old child, he needs an adult sidekick to help chaperone him through the investigation.
On recommendation from Gotham City's caped crusader, young mutant "Ace" Harmon enters the student roll at the Gironde School starting with the winter session.
Claire McKinney a.k.a. Diamond X drafts Ace and Blackjack to retrieve a shipment to Alexei's Bar, stolen by the Friends of Humanity and hidden in small town in western Pennsylvania.
A pyromaniac terrorizes Metropolis. Captain America apparently dies. Eventually Metropolis Police Department Detective Matt Slater, Jack Monroe as Captain America, and Iron Man capture "Ashtray" Art Connelly who had previously appeared as the "Dark Lantern" in the Shattered Images caper, along with a gunshot Red Skull and the coma-laden Steve Rogers. Red Skull survives, albeit without his telepathic abilities, and will go to World Court to stand trial.
Feral and Nomad make plans to kill the Red Skull in the hospital. Unfortunately, Jack gets beeped by SAFEGUARD to go play "Captain America" again - his assignment: protect Red Skull so that he will be able to stand trial.
A new domestic terrorism organization calling themselves "The Knights of Genetic Purity" are after two kids from the Metropolis Undercity. They disguised themselves as members of a Chinatown gang, "Wind Dragons", and dragged the kids down a tunnel that opens up in Chinatown. They left a tunnel collapse behind to make people think the kids had died in an accident. Wyldfire to the rescue!
"Vampires" attack prominent city leaders, drawing blood with needles and infecting by bite all companions. Jean-Claude Gironde declares open season on capture of the alleged vampires. Feral, Nomad, and Iron Man track the faux vampires back to Poison Ivy, who is cloning new "children" and (with the help of the Idiot King) creating money trees.
Deathstroke and some soldiers from the Midnight Syndicate fight it out in the middle of the Gadsden Consumerplex, the biggest shopping mall of Metropolis, all over custody of an autistic little boy.
Villains gonna villain.
Dr. Victor von Doom visits an acquaintance in Wyldfire to deliver promised information on another villain. Meanwhile, Card Shark stores their loot from a high-tech heist in a Metropolis warehouse, and their victim wants his materials back.
Each following their own trail of stolen items transported across the northeastern U.S., Dr. Doom and Wyldfire agents travel from a Metropolis warehouse to a corporate laboratory in Gotham City, then back to a villain lair in Metropolis where the combined villainy of explosive metahuman Plastique and body-controller Shimmer have chosen to become a single person named Muse.
And to grow themself, in true Rocky Horror fashion, a perfect boyfriend.
Who is going to look a lot like the young Hero of Metropolis known as Silverwing.
Jonathan Lighten, a friend of Dr. Tafey's, comes to visit her and to play tourist in Metropolis over Memorial Day Weekend. Unfortunately, certain parties don't like his politics and hire an assassin to make an example of him.
Preliminary investigation after the event suggests that this attempted assassination hid some oddly specific business influences.
Hired terrorists who watch too much television attack during a Phoenix Industries social function. Their first mistake lies in not knowing that Phoenix Industries is the secret backer of Wyldfire.
Having heard some of Rafferty's claims to the Rollerboyz against herself, Feral recruits Kraven the Hunter to help infiltrate their hideout and extract Rafferty for questioning.
Dr. Doom puts in an appearance, and winds up adopting "Little George", while Kraven adopts "Big George". Both kids get new names.
Solomon Grundy makes an unexpected appearance in the oldest section of Metropolis' sewer system.
((Rafferty is working for Casanova von Frankenstein on the UniSols restart, all while gathering information for Infinity Inc.))
The Hammer Empire assaults a train in order to recover the correct copy of a highly sensitive government disk. Unfortunately for them, the whole thing is a trap, a joint operation between the Watchmen and Wyldfire.
While being escorted by Gironde School counselor Jarissa Paxton to his parents' home for a holiday visit, Ace finds himself alone and trying to piece together the cause of an attack on the bus. He gets drafted by the legendary Batman. Scarecrow tests a {fear gas+Silent Dreams+cocaine} mixture on Feral.
Remember when Muse worked with several Metropolis gangs who were using an "Optic Inducer Relay" to mess with vigilantes' and civilians' minds so that large thefts would be easier?
Terrorists claiming to be from Iraq take over a pleasure cruiseliner in the Gulf of Mexico. Their targets are the two political figures onboard. A security tape is secretly broadcast, however, showing that the supposed terrorists are in fact the Hammer Empire, plus Stirge and Puma. Puma is acting very strange.
Rather than allow this rather imperious lady to use her not inconsiderable political connections to stir up a lot of trouble for Blackjack and his former associates, Wyldfire has been assigned to step into the gap and pass themselves off as "Monsieur Paxton's team". Details are as follows....
Fright, Thomas, Sean, and Doc Steven just wanted to go find a safe bar for a drink -- "safe" defined as "someplace the tipsy Women of Wyldfire will not think to look for us". That's it: that's all they want: a safe bar for a few beers.
Wyldfire has been sent on an ultra-secret rescue mission on an island not too far from Easter Island.
During a cocktail meeting of the private financial backers for the Watchmen in a renovated section of New York City, some hundred gang members (at the remote direction of the new Simon Phoenix II) cut out the neighborhood power and phone grids, and wreak havok through the city block. It seems that Simon's mutated pet creature, "Fluffy", had been (briefly) confiscated from him in this neighborhood, and he wants to get revenge by depriving area businesses of their animals, money, overseas business contacts, and lives.
Theft of exotic animals soars as "Noah's Ark" gangs target zoos.
Meanwhile in Metropolis, the city will be hosting a "Creative Coffee Cart" contest this week, with all proceeds going to the Metropolis Zoo and the winning cart receiving two years' free operating license.
Sahara, Skyburner, and Dr. Reynolds meet up and fight new villain gang (imported from Chicago!) The Freakshow.
Instead of regular zombies, New York City gets badly-declaiming-historic-poetry zombies. Special guest star: Sahara
Don Blake has been hired on to the Gironde School full time as the athletics medic, taking some of the workload off school doctor Steven Reynolds. Dr. Blake has additional duties as First Aid Instructor for two classes per semester. This will help him save up money to replace his destroyed ambulance!
Plus, there's some kind of extra pay listed on his employment project for something called "Special Projects", duties assigned as needed.
But, with this being his first week on the job -- and with Dr. Gironde out of the country on Phoenix Industries business -- that extra duty clause surely won't come into play until he's properly settled in.
Right?
The Three Investigators have DONE IT AGAIN. Brian Tanner of same has DISAPPEARED. AGAIN. and Susie and Jeremy have to argue with each other about whether to tell the adults. From checking on the Mason Maul Shippers warehouse that Brian was supposedly surveilling, to a smelting foundry where Brian was last known to lurk, to interfering on the Russian ship Svetlana when Feedback of the Freakshow tries to rob it, this goes about as squirrelly as every other time the Three Investigators decide to ignore protocol.
Wyldfire Adventures: Another Bad Idea and Wyldfire Adventures: Noble Favors are two among the series of very short adventures run when a PC can't make it for a current in-progress adventure.
Martin Prinz and his daughter Amy Prinz and his daughter have recently arrived. Don Blake is recovering from his "four car pileup", receiving continuing care from Dr. Gironde and Dr. Reynolds. Rissa thinks "electronic coconuts" is a code phrase for something else. Probably something raunchy. The school is going to the "Harvest" street festival in Metropolis' Chinatown. Somebody attacks the crowd with grenades, while a city councilman's children vanish!
Mysterious sporadic power losses and brownouts are a danger in this wintry time to regular citizens. They're also strange. Professor Jean-Claude Gironde is tired of these repeat interruptions. He drafts the first three "Special Projects" staff members he finds: Rissa, Steven, and Martin. He brings them to Thomas, who says he has found something "very interesting" about the brownout pattern.
Infinity Inc and Hammer Empire are squabbling over a serum sample currently in the possession of SAFEGUARD.
SAFEGUARD and Wyldfire try to save the lives of captured Infinity Inc minions, and stop a new I.I. plot, oh and completely wreck an I.I. minion-converting base.
With an unusual break-in to a concealed SAFEGUARD lab, a strange field ‘silencing’ the Vault, and Loki being unwilling to talk to anyone except Thunderstrike … Safeguard and Wyldfire must team up to unravel the puzzle of who or what is behind the thefts, and what has happened to Jeremy Ballard, Brian Tanner and Susie Dolfin when they were abducted while trying to stop the theft in Metropolis?
With Loki detained, he gives the heroes information that leads them to a location in the New Mexico Mesa Verde region where a hidden AIM base is. Loki doesn’t know the exact location, he only knows it is in in the Coyote Canyon area.
The heroes must deal with the inhabitants of the AIM base to recover the kids and all the stolen items.
Puma is on a multi-part international contract for a client in Golden Lotus which has gotten a couple weeks into the stage where he travels clandestinely, mostly on foot, across parts of the Eurasian continent where he absolutely ought not to be. Things are going according to plan -- not great, nothing to write songs about -- when his journey stumbles over an unexpected search party in a rural village.
More accurately: he stumbles over the quarry for whom the search party is rousting the village.
A certain leopard woman of his long, often-annoying acquaintance.
Who tells him, before events force them apart again, that everyone else she knows has been murdered.
A well-built Shoshone walks into the Boston, Massachusetts branch of the Thieves Society for a few drinks.
Wyldfire sends some men undercover to help a metahuman lawyer root out dangerous secrets in a small mining town.
Wyldfire (with special guest star Kraven the Hunter) tries to track down the latest clue about Feral. To do that, they'll have to meet the Wundagore Knights -- including Jarissa's clone-sister, Lady Jessica.
There is so much punching to do in such a limited time, and that's before the adventurers travel to an alternate Earth!
Wyldfire investigates a special conference on the topic of "Metahumans and Medicine" that sets a new bar for the idea of "so much more than what it seems"!
The Trenchcoat Brigade is called in by SAFEGUARD to investigate, and cover up, a potential "ghost ship" in the New York Harbor. At approximately the same time, Wyldfire is in Brussels, Belgium, trying to intercept the auction of stolen stem-cell research that when combined with the proper treatment, could regenerate eyesight.
During the Brussels Summer Festival of 2009, Wyldfire has been tasked with their secret employer to intercept the last copy of a genetic therapy process invented by one Dr. Magnus Corado that can regenerate various damage to the eye! Someone stole it from Dr. Corado's worksite. Whoever committed the theft, it is now hidden inside an antique book ... being auctioned off at an estate sale of a two hundred year old personal library ... as perfect cover for an international black market deal.
Dr. Jean-Claude Gironde diverts Wyldfire less than an hour into their overseas flight: AIM robbed the winner of the antique journal, and they were not after the thumb drive full of data! Recover the journal, get a copy of the related data feed which originated in Wewelsburg, and make it fast!
At a cabin outside the tiny town of Alpbach, Austria, morning peeks over the slopes of the Alps. It is magnificent, provided one is not on the run from AIM.
Skyburner shows up to explain to the rest of Wyldfire how it came to be that they are stranded in Europe with no Phoenix Industries jet to get them home....
Captain America drafts Wyldfire to aid him (and SAFEGUARD) in assaulting the nearby Black Order base. Finally, the sort of organized chaos we understand!
Alternate universe villainy crashes into Atlantean history as Wyldfire fights to rescue their kidnapped teammate.
A plea for help in rescuing a family member from the grips of a criminal organization, Advanced Idea Mechanics, draws Wyldfire into the crosshairs between a three-way tug of war!