Flint Dexter pulled his coat collar up against the rain and stepped outside the rundown apartment block, electing on this occasion to not use his time-altering powers to get home without getting wet. Dexter was an unregistered meta, a meta with a serious hangover and he desperately needed a drink. His latest investigation had just finished, and he just wanted to go home to finish that last bottle of whiskey.
He was just passing what he assumed was an old tramp of a woman on the street when a bright blue flash seemed to envelop both of them, and they blacked out.
The woman caught up in the event was old. Too old to be completely human. Unlike the man, she wasn’t a meta, but she was powered. Born in the 1840s in Dublin, she’d already been old when she gained her powers. Her real name was Mary McCarty but for the last fifty years she’d been known simply as Mother Weirdigan (or for a few short years as the hero Banshee) and she had been going about her own business in the streets of London when she had also been caught in the bright blue flash.
They both woke up when the liquid-filled glass chambers they were sealed in were suddenly and violently shattered – other than a breather mask and an embryonic sac wrapped around them, they were both naked. Clothes, but not their own outfits, more like black uniforms really, were lying on the ground beside the tanks.
They were pulled out of the shattered tanks by an Australian-sounding guy in a different-looking costume, who immediately identified himself as Phil (most people call me ‘Sh-ARC Bait’) Desmond. He pulled Mary free first and, embarrassed at her wrinkly nakedness, he pointed to the black uniform at her feet as three other rescuers (apparently called Becks, Gabbi and Connor according to the nametags on their chests) started shattering the other tanks to free their occupants. As they did so, they stated they were from the ARC (which they subsequently explained was an acronym for the Artefact Research Centre).
There were six tanks or chambers in total, located inside what appeared to be a large, empty warehouse. Only one of the tanks were unoccupied, two were inhabited by what Desmond referred as their “teammates in Dalton’s Defenders”, Impulse and Heartbreaker (that didn’t help as the two other individuals were not known to either of them) both of whom seemed to be seriously injured. There was also a third armoured female known to none of them – her chamber was labelled Psipher and the ARC staff decided to leave rescuing her until last.
A semi-conscious Impulse and Heartbreaker obviously knew both of them, calling them Chrono and Banshee, even as Becks and Gabbi administered first aid to them. It took Mary and Flint a couple of minutes to recognise each other and realise that both of them had been on the street when the blue light appeared, that they were well and truly out of sync with whatever was happening around them. Since they don’t even know each other or understand how they had got to this place, they found this whole matter very confusing.
According to their ‘rescuers’, who assumed they were suffering from some form of short-term amnesia, they were apparently part of a newly formed superhero group called Dalton’s Defenders and the four of them had apparently been missing for a couple of days. As their supposed ‘teammates’ were placed into high-tech stretchers, the two of them elected to keep silent for the moment.
Seeing the hovering vehicles ‘parked’ just outside the warehouse doors and another, similar vehicle on the opposite side of the warehouse, Chrono asked “What year is it?” 2020 was the surprised reply… When Flint asked about the vehicles he was told, with a look of surprise that apparently grav-powered have been around since the “Ziru Sirka” had arrived on Earth… Whoever or whatever they were.
Meanwhile Mary, Banshee was trying to find out what the liquid was that they had been exposed to in the chambers. It was Connor who explained that, “The tanks appear to be filled with a gel that speeds up cellular regeneration. It’s similar to the stuff that the Challenger-Wildeman family had developed for cloning and healing…”
Then a number of blasts rang out, some narrowly missing both them and their rescuers. Ten armoured members apparently from what Connor called the Foundry, a criminal organisation seemingly, were firing at what she assumed were three uniformed officers and two heavily armoured personnel. Connor referred to their defenders as “AEGIS Agents”.
The Foundry guards had been trying to load the tanks (and prisoners) onto the gravity-powered craft inside the warehouse when the rescue team had arrived.
Chrono asked the ARC operatives why they weren’t helping with the fighting only to be told “we’re here for the rescue and research mate, not the fighting” and that as ‘non-combatants’ they had to try and keep out of the way during the ensuing gun battle.
Chrono and Banshee had no such orders, they realised and immediately helped by taking out five of the attackers. Chrono seemed to vanish for a second as three of their attackers discovered that their weapons had been mysteriously dismantled whilst still in their hands, only for a frightening wail to wash over them that caused them to forget their weapons and try and cover their ears as Banshee ended her cry.
That left the AEGIS agents to deal with their five opponents as the continued exchange of blaster fire indicated.
Banshee this time used her terrorising scream, immediately disabling one of the five and panicked two others – who tried to run away and accidentally turned their guns against their comrades, taking another one of them out of the fight. Chrono made short work of the survivor with what seemed like a supersonic punch. In reality, time was slowed as his victim was punched multiple times in quick succession.
Desmond smashed Psipher’s tank to rescue her and the girl inside whilst still unconscious, apparently reacted in shock. Her armour appeared to activate, and the PCs saw a circular rainbow cacophony of light shining through a breach appear amidst a powerful psychic storm which started ripping through the warehouse whilst from the breach itself a living, terror-inducing Utahraptor came through, followed later by two what loooked like Roman Legionnaires. The looked surprised, swearing to each other in a foreign language.
Becks, from where he stood by the warehouse door, noted that “They aren’t speaking classical Latin; it even appears to contain traces of Incan, particularly the swearing! Wasn’t Kukulkan the name of one of their war gods?”
Banshee changed back to her Mother Weirdigan personae (her costume immediately altered with her morphing, back to her original clothes including materialising her harp from the pocket dimension that her transformation apparently tapped into) as she tried to use her music magic to create calm, despite being attacked by the ‘raptor as it rushed past and giving her a shallow wound on her shoulder from its claws.
Chrono used a series of rapid attacks to punch one of the legionnaires in the chin while dodging (actually walking round) a thrown spear. He noticed that despite the Legionnaires ‘traditional’ appearance and weapons, their armour was made from ceramic composites, Kevlar and what he thought had to be a genetically-enhanced lightweight spider-weave cloth.
Meanwhile, Mary had managed to calm Psipher down with her harp magic, and by doing so also powered down the semi-conscious female’s armour defences thereby closing the breach as well as calming the ‘raptor down enough to stop attacking whilst Chrono took out one of the legionnaires and intimidated the other into completely surrender by appearing to attack him several times from multiple directions at once.
Aegis took the human prisoners away, whilst the other three ARC operatives successfully drugged and caged up the Utahraptor. The newly reawakened Psipher was also to be transported back to the ARC, to find out who or what she was.
Desmond decided to travel with the two of them to the Reading Meta-Medical Facility. Transportation was to be by open-topped grav-vehicle, piloted by someone known as Bethany Dalton, apparently the young daughter of their apparent boss, Damien Dalton. The way Desmond said their two names, there seemed to be an assumption that they would immediately recognise them. It drew a blank in both of their memories, though. Their pilot, Bethany, turned out to be an auburn-headed, cheeky faced 11-year-old that was obviously not old enough to fly this thing (and going by her reckless manoeuvres shouldn’t be allowed to anyway). Belted in, Chrono asked for a drink and acquired a bottle of 25-year-old single malt for his troubles from Bethany, taken from an onboard fridge. Her dads apparently. On the extremely fast journey, they saw several other grav-vehicles in the surrounding sky…
The travel to Reading was fast, way too fast and Bethany Dalton obviously enjoyed terrifying her passengers. Once there, they could see a large general hospital with a separate building in the grounds with what looked like a helicopter landing pad on the roof. Bethany landed there, and her passengers tumbled out, grateful to be once more on Terra Firma.
A few minutes later they were both being examined by Doctor Ian Reid, who appeared concerned at their “extensive memory loss”. That was when they realised they had earpieces that connected them to a female calling herself Dispatch, who asked them if they were available to respond to a meta-human rampaging in down-town Reading. They immediately agreed hoping to use it as an excuse to advoid any further interrogation by theur doctor.
Seemed something big was also happening at that moment in Birmingham, and all the other ‘local’ superheroes were currently dealing with that situation.
Chrono elected to ‘run’ – in reality he ‘hijacked’ an automated taxi and, taking it with him outside of time programmed it to take him to the scene identified by this Dispatch, whilst Banshee accepted another lift from Bethany Dalton. They arrived to see the street being ripped apart by a young woman in blue armour – the meta-human that their disembodied dispatcher referred to as Death Metal.
There were about 20 civilians in possible and immediate danger as cars were lifted off the ground magnetically and tossed around. Pipes were pulled from the ground and shopping trolleys, ripped apart so that the metal was like a pitchfork on their front, were sent flying through shop windows at the people outside.
Chrono slowed speed whilst he removed the civilians from the area, then tried to speed punch Death Metal, only for the constant metal being ripped from the street hindered his passage and appeared between them to protect her.
Requesting further information from Dispatch, they learnt the attacking Meta was called Chelsea Lincoln, and she had been altered by a “Silver Storm” – some form of alien nanomachines that could activate meta-human abilities – about six months ago. They noticed that she was forming a line of metallic trays covered in jewellery behind her as she passed shops and that she was ranting about why the Protectors weren’t there, they should be trying to stop her, not these strangers…
Pipes and pieces of metal were constantly being torn free to act as a metal shield in front of Death Metal at all times. After several attempts to take her down, Banshee used her Shattering Shriek to weaken her shields and then backed up Chrono’s attacks and use of Intimidation with her own Corrupting Touch to reduce her back to her passive Chelsea personae.
As she was arrested, Chrono pulled out what he thought would be one of his business cards, but the cards he pulled from his pocket were newer and had an address and contact number he doesn’t recognise – “Dexter Investigations, 3 River Walk, Jade Garden Restaurant, Dragon’s Gate, Wessex”… He handed her one anyway and said “if you want to talk?” The smile she returned was not totally unpleasant, as they used plastic tie cables to secure her arms behind her back.
It was then that they heard that during the fight between them and Death Metal, a group of armoured mercenaries called the Power Corps have attacked the nearby Reading Meta-Medical facility and kidnapped the unconscious & comatose body of someone named Angelique St. Marie from her room, taking out the outside wall of the hospital of her room in the process.
Arriving back at the facility, it was already swarming with police and the armoured kidnappers were long gone. The TV screen in reception was displaying a newsflash: about a violent storm called hurricane Calypso, which had suddenly vanished over the Atlantic. The popular explanation was that it blew itself out.
Whilst there, they saw that that news was interrupted by another newsflash. A shocked newscaster was explaining in a dismayed voice that Birmingham had been mysteriously attacked and a large section of the city was gone, just vanished leaving a massive crater. Thousands were feared dead, and several superhero teams had seemingly vanished in the disaster. Dispatch asked them to stay where they were for the moment and liaise as required.
While they were there they saw a nurse standing outside, cigarette in hand, glowering at them. They approached and asked her what the problem was… Sr. Nurse Eileen Maguire glowered at them again and said “A meta-human goes missing and you ‘superheroes’ rush over to investigate, but when a normal, a ‘mundane’, is kidnapped from another hospital no-one does anything… Even the police don’t bother…”
Asking for more information, Sr. Nurse Eileen Maguire explained she also occasionally worked at another hospital, Reading General and one of her nurses there had told her that at the same time as Angelique St. Marie was being kidnapped by the armoured thugs, a deformed and seriously ill teenager called Mallory Brooks was removed from a private ward by a robotic figure. She phoned the police, but they never arrived, and all records relating to Mallory Brooks have subsequently vanished from the hospital records as if she never existed. Again she accused them of bias.
Despite Dispatch’s request to stand by, they immediately headed over to Reading General to visit the scene and discovered that the suite supposedly used by Mallory according to nurses on the ward was rented by a private company KessKorp, a company that according to one of the porters cleaning up the room ready for it to reoccupied specialised in supplying cutting edge (though he was of the opinion that much of their designs were often reverse engineered) technology to anyone willing to pay.
Flint checked but there were no electronic traces in the hospital or on the internet that Mallory ever existed and a local officer in the reception stated that they never received any calls that someone was missing from here, despite staff saying they called the Police as soon as this Mallory had gone missing. A check of security cameras showed that there was no trace of the robotic female but at exactly the same time as Angelique St. Marie was being kidnapped, someone apparently vanished from her room and on each occasion the cameras were suddenly pointing in the opposite direction.
Unable to do much more there, Chrono and Banshee headed back to the Reading Meta-Medical facility when they were informed that a pendant had been found in Angelique’s room – a symbol of the Egyptian god Setekh apparently – Banshee sensed a dark evil aura connected to it and when she held it got a momentary glimpse of evil in a dark and a ruined factory – an image of a run-down almost communist facility that radiated evil magic – then the connection was lost.
Ordered not to go to Birmingham, they were informed via Dispatch that their presence was requested as soon as possible by Sir Damien Dalton, at his offices in Pyramid Towers, Wessex.
Chrono elected instead to go check out his offices first, and appeared to travel there at speed. In reality, Chrono was not a speedster, he lacked the endurance or the enhanced muscle tissue to run at speed and maintain it for any length of time. Instead, he slowed down time, so he could act just like anybody else, between the seconds. It was also hard to maintain. This time when he vanished between the seconds, he ‘borrowed’ a motorcycle and headed off at speed dodging between the time-stalled traffic until he arrived at his destination. He would have to ‘return’ the bike after, assuming of course that he remembered. In the real world only a few seconds had passed.
He discovered that Wessex was a surprisingly large city, just slightly smaller than the Birmingham he remembered in his own parallel reality. It was located where Oxford should be on his version of the world. It appeared to be quite a new city though clearly built on the skeleton of an ancient town, as he headed past through the Dragon’s Gate, an ornate entrance to the city’s Chinatown (though he did see signs to Little Osaka amongst other locations).
He found that the Jade Garden Restaurant had an outside garden that ran along the river and that there were actually several restaurants combined in three restored factories and that his office was in the attic of one of the factories – he opened the door (fingerprint lock thankfully) and saw a big tidy office with a wall-to-wall bookcase. Quickly searching the room, he discovered some of the books were fake, and when pulled open a secret door to a big studio apartment concealed behind. Hungry, he visited the restaurant below, where a small Chinese woman berated him in Cantonese (which he didn’t understand, but the woman appeared to expect him to) and then grabbed him for a hug. Meanwhile, a small elderly Chinese man (his staff called him either Eddie or Mr Hong), berated him for not showing more attention to “Mama Chi”. Apparently his doppelgänger had not been paying his rent on time. Standing on tiptoes, he slapped Flint several times on the back of his head to punctuate his message – they seemed to treat him as some sort of adopted, wayward son! A young, petite and very shy waitress called Suzi brought soup and food to the table for him. These were his landlords apparently, and the food was free. Flint hugged Suzi (who pulled away quickly. This earned him a glower from one of the young Chinese men behind the till).
His bottle of whiskey however got emptied into a nearby plant pot by Eddie as soon as he placed it on the table and berated him for his drinking! Mama Chi again chattered at him in Cantonese as he ate.
Twenty minutes later he’d finished eating and left to go meet Sir Damien, speeding downtime as soon as he left the restaurant. In the meantime Bethany Dalton had arrived with Banshee at a penthouse apartment in Pyramid Towers and was seeing the news… The story was breaking on all channels – A large part of Birmingham (in fact a perfect sphere 2.6 kilometre in radius) had vanished completely, taking thousands of people with it. The area was being fully quarantined while investigations were ongoing. The reporter then went on to explain that the active members of the Protectors team had been investigating at the time and have vanished from inside what was being referred to as the Birmingham Incident.
Chrono arrived suddenly at Dalton’s office, phased back into normal time and grabbed for himself another drink when Sir Damien walked in – he stood about 5’ 0” and was very smartly dressed. His entourage waited by the door. He barely acknowledged his young daughter, Bethany Dalton, standing in the background.
Damien Dalton stated that someone needed to stay and protect here. He was disappointed that they had been captured, especially now with Impulse and Heartbreaker injured but accepted that the two of them had redeemed themselves’ since, and therefore he had been ‘persuaded’ to still offer them a contact as part of the latest franchise team of Dalton’s Defenders… Sir Damien stated he planned to establish several teams of super humans across the country over the next few years.
All the time he was speaking, he never actually looked the two of them in the face, instead he continued busy texting away on his tablet.
He offered to sign them to the team and would have their co-ordinated team uniforms with Dalton International promotional logos prominently displayed delivered in a few weeks for them to wear. A liaison would be assigned to decide what missions they should cover.
When he talked about giving them a contract, Bethany remained in the background. On hearing the offer, she started miming cutting her throat and pretending to hang herself…
Sir Damien continued tapping away at his tablet, never actually looked at them in the face as he continued his busy texting on his phone – tapping out “…. . .-.. .–. — .” over and over again and rubbing at the rear of his neck – where, to Banshee’s mystical sight, there was a small 2 – 3 cm long wound that glowed a festering, ugly yellow.
Chrono asked him why he was tapping out Morse code. He claimed to just be texting and that he didn’t even know Morse code. He then reacted by smashing the tablet on the floor and immediately walked out, still rubbing the back of his neck as though something was irritating him.
Bethany Dalton, on hearing this, explained that she recognised the message as the words “Help me”. She was obviously angry at her father and muttered, “so what?”
Neither of them had officially agreed to sign any contracts and whilst Chrono made his way ‘home’, Mother Weirdigan accepted another lift back with Bethany who admitted she doesn’t actually know where the old lady lived but knew it has to be somewhere near Port Meadow park and took her there before giving Mother Weirdigan a contact card that would automatically connect a call straight through to Bethany Dalton’s mobile. That’s when Mary realised that the earpieces were still in their possession.
As the grav-vehicle took off, Mother Weirdigan ‘recognised’ a tramp with a bowler hat and a small terrier nearby as someone she had seen on her own world – here though this version of him kept talking over his shoulder at someone or something and clearly suffered from schizophrenia – he approached her as the dog, called Rascal apparently, grabbed the hat with coins in it. The man, Jeeves, walked with her to a nearby abandoned freight yard and neighbouring junkyard. Opening the gates she saw lots of old shipping containers that had been converted into living quarters for the homeless.
Jeeves directed her to one of the ground containers, talking all the time about a delivery of chemical toilets and a contract to empty a waste tank located near the gate, so people can dispose of their waste and how someone called “Albert” had been using old radiators, washing machine pumps and plastic sheets to create solar heated showers. He vanished away to get her some food from a nearby soup kitchen and surprised her on his return by saying thank you for making this all possible… Apparently, her doppelgänger that she had seemingly displaced or replaced had been using her HCP (Hero Certification Programme) payments to secretly fund Container Town – and Jeeves has figured it out.
The beginning…
Superhero Adventures, UK Style 