Superhero Adventures, UK Style

(Adapted from a published adventure by Professor Christopher McGlothlin)

Next morning Sam and Akira stumbled up to the apartment roof to find Mary just back from a night in the cells and downing a large mug of fresh coffee. Sam immediately reached for some for himself. The TV they had brought up to the roof previously was showing the local news. Local hospitals continued to be overwhelmed by people who’ve contracted the bubonic plague. Newly afflicted people were shown streaming into ERs throughout yesterday afternoon and evening.

Much to the obvious chagrin of the authorities, camcorder footage of stacked-up body bags outside local hospitals has been posted on various Internet hosting sites and had also made their way onto the news. The shaky footage was a jarring sight. In addition, more and more fragile bodies had succumbed overnight to severe malnutrition and the ravages of the plague. Unfortunately, things were likely to get a good deal worse.

Doctors without Borders were hoping to flying into the city within a day or two and there were discussions about Héros Sans Frontières, the Meta-human support agency also helping but there were apparently all sorts of political implications about involving superhero teams.The news coverage continued. Whereas the day before traffic out of Jerusalem had slowed to a crawl, today it has stopped completely thanks to the additional people fleeing. Families were leaving the city on foot with whatever they can carry on their backs.

Space, water, food, clothing—all the essentials—were all in short supply, primarily due to hording.

An overeager news reporter came on, shoving an unwelcome microphone in the face of an obviously stressed nurse at Trinity Hospital. The reporter was obviously trying to fill up some of his network’s 24 hours of airtime by asking the busy health care professional, “Do you think the city will be able to handle the current crisis?”  The nurse unhesitatingly replied, “Yes, because our heroes, Sabra and, what are they called? The Balance will come through for us. I believe in them.”

Suddenly Sam was muttering about asking the Mayor for dual nationality!

This was immediately followed by a less cheery piece of news; someone was floating over the City Centre pelting one of the main squares with a storm of blue flaming hail. This looked like a job for…

Except Sam shivered and muttered that it was “too cold and perhaps I’ll just watch this one on the TV!”

Given Adam still had repairs to complete on the Raft, it was agreed they would get there under their own power.

As they flew over the city, the endless rows of immobile cars and increasingly desperate people made for a sobering sight; people were giving up on their homes and losing faith in anyone’s power to save them.

Some scattered cheers are heard as they flew passed, even if some the people mistakenly call out the names of Sabra though Sam did hear two children arguing over whether they might be The Balance instead.

Upon arriving at the central square, the situation quickly became clear. There was indeed a steady, driving barrage of grapefruit-sized hail pounding the vicinity. For reasons known only to magic, the balls of ice are aflame. The barrage was shattering car windshields, building windows and peoples’ heads in equal measure.

People hit were either being frozen to the spot or collapsing with instant hypothermia.

Sam immediately dived through one of the broken windows and sheltered inside the deserted building.

Akira formed a force shield around himself and flew in closer.  It was a young girl about 19 with pigtails and a broad crazy look of satisfaction across her face…

Akra made a guess “Shoshana, Shoshana Weingartner?” That got a reaction.

“I’m Barad now. Yohani Wadler come out, come out it’s time to pay for your sins.” She continued to pummel the ground with her hail, making a pattern that looked… slightly familiar. She wasn’t deliberately targeting people and vehicles they just happened to be where the next part of her ‘artwork’ needed to go.

It would all very dramatic and not a little intimidating; all the time she kept up her screaming for this Yohani Wadler person to come out and face her. Who was this Yohani Wadler? A quick check on ECHO revealed nothing. The name was apparently unknown, to the public at least.

On the ground Jenni Rocket had arrived and was carrying out a speedy evacuation of civilians from the area. Sam noticed however that she seemed embarrassed whenever the ‘Ice Queen’ shouted out Yohani’s name. Whenever she slowed down it was clear that she was very red-faced.

Sam gave her a call over the comms channel and thankfully she was receiving. “Do you know who she’s looking for? Do you know who this Yohani Wadler is Jenni?”

“Can’t-talk-over-an-open-channel- where-are-you-and I’ll-be…” “With you in a second” she finished breathlessly standing next to him as she located and ran into the building and stood beside him in under a second.

After they had switched off their communication devices, it only took a few embarrassing seconds for Jenni to admit that her secret identity was Jenni Wadler and that both her father and her grandfather had shared the name of Yohani Wadler.

Her grandfather had served with the Liberty League (a.k.a. he’d been the Golden Age Rocket) but he had never lived in Jerusalem and now resided in a care home, having been diagnosed with rapid-onset dementia. The second (Jenni Rocket’s father) was dead.

Once it became clear she couldn’t find him, Barad began to throw a temper tantrum and started to pelt Akira’s force shield with hail, completely covering it in ice and then started to float towards the building Sam had been hiding in. Banshee tried to draw her attention and became the focus of her hail barrage; thankfully as she was insubstantial, the attack just passed clean through her.

Banshee responded with a terrorising scream that caused the girl to back off slightly disorientated. In the meantime Akira screamed out that he was “freezing in here”.

Sam reactivated his comms and Jenni zoomed out and back into the street to complete her evacuation of the area.  Nothing for it, bracing himself for the cold, Sam jumped out of the window and flew straight towards Akira’s hovering snowball prison and unleashed a blast of fiery breath melting the snow; allowing Akira to redirect his force wall into a cage to try to snag their tormentor. It failed. Too much ice and hail combined to stop the cage from closing quickly around her and she dodged out of the way.

That’s when they saw it. The hail had recreated a monochrome representation of Da Vinci’s Last Supper. The work could only be recognised from above but that was what she’d been making with her hail attacks. What the..? Sam couldn’t help quip that wouldn’t she have been better doing her art attack in a field instead?” That brought on a worse tantrum from the icy artist.

Sam dodged behind Akira and asked her “What year do you think this is? You want Yohani Wadler? He’s not been around for some time so what year is this?”

Barad seemed a bit confused as to why ‘Yohani Wadler’ hadn’t shown up yet and shouted out “2017!!” as she turned her attention back to demolishing all of the buildings surrounding the square.

Sam grabbed for his tablet and took a quick snap of the icy masterpiece on the ground before turning his attention back on the angry young girl. Maybe he should set Akira up for a date with her? Nope, focus…

In the meantime Banshee dropped to the ground, changed back into Mary, grabbed her harp off her back and began to strum away using a soothing lullaby to try and calm her down.

For a few moments, a look of calm and peace crossed her face. She stopped screaming for Yohani Wadler and seemed content. Then she calmly returned to demolishing the surrounding buildings to frame her ice picture. This was a whole new level of crazy. Sam tried using draconic persuasion to ask her why she would want to destroy everything? He got a smile and blast of icy hail in his general direction as she beamed at him and kept up her destruction.

Akira again moulded his shield wall into a cage and this time captured her inside it as he snapped it closed. However, she still kept on unleashing blast after blast of hail, this time against the inside of the cage, quickly starting to fill up the enclosed space with a torrent of ice. If this kept up she’d suffocate.

Sam unleashed another fiery blast against the edge of the force cage, melting the ice inside and heavily buffeting the cage, knocking Barad unconscious and causing her to start to sink into the half-filled bubble of water. Akira estimated there was between 15 and 20 cubic feet of water in there, more than enough to drown her. He hit his earpiece to activate it and asked Jenni if she was ready to detain their prisoner. A very angry, joyful yes was the immediate reply. Water was important just now and he didn’t want to waste any. With that he did a schizophrenic mind split mojo and activated his mystical heritage, teleporting an unconscious Barad out of the bubble of water and straight into the custody of Jenni on the ground.

Exhausted, he forced himself to work through it. Looking around he observed at all the icy hail on the ground and saw a nearby water tank that was almost empty which gave him an idea. Forcing himself to maintain the force bubble of icy water (with the thought that “they might need it later”) he used his Theurgical-Kinesis to shovel up as much of the icy masterpiece as he could and dropped it into the water tank ready to melt back into water.

As they started to help with the clean-up, one of the Police officers came over and muttered, “Say, I know you guys just got done with one nutty happening, but would you be interested in helping with a swarm of locusts attacking people near the UN Governor’s Palace over on the Southside?”

It was obvious that as the joint attack hadn’t worked the day before, their foes were now trying a war of attrition; sending the plagues at them one after another to wear them out.

A quick check revealed that Sabra (minus Jenni) were busy evacuating civilians from the area.

Heading back into the air they had little difficulty spotting the mile-wide cloud of buzzing insects over the nearby botanical gardens and mansions to the south.  Flashes of light seemed to indicate that someone (the other members of Sabra probably) were actively trying to stop the invasion from entering the centre of the city.

As they made their way towards the heaviest area of infestation (with Akira’s force bubble of water in tow), they heard that that the locusts were attacking everything including humans and were hungrily burrowing into the flesh of local residents.

Rushing in towards the UN Governors Palace from above, they couldn’t help notice that the locusts were avoiding an area in the Botanical Gardens next door like…well, the plague.

The gates to the Botanical Gardens were closed, but inside the clear, protected circle of grass and uneaten plants, were a man holding onto two young children who were chanting away and a pleasantly rotund lady. Akira headed towards the area just in case, whilst an insubstantial Banshee stayed above the locust swarm and Sam settled himself down on the roof of the mansion like a living gargoyle.

Akira muttered to himself that he knew there was a reason for his melted snow globe and threw it at the densest part of the swarm above what looked like a locust-human hybrid straight out of his worst nightmares. The bubble opened drowning millions of the locusts and causing them to fall down on the creature who apparently seemed to ignore it, despite the obvious battering it must have caused.

Banshee, having experienced the swarm pass through her, was suddenly reminded that she needed to breath and floated up higher where she saw that the target of the locusts might not be the mansion after all but a nearby care home…  Could this be where the oldest Yohani Wadler was now residing?

Sam meantime had realised something was keeping the swarm away from the grassy patch of the gardens and flew down to the chanting people in the middle of the oasis.

“who are you and how did you get here?” he asked only to be quickly told by the man that he was the UN Governor and these were his two children and that they needed to keep on chanting if they wanted to live. He gestured towards the full-figured Afro-Caribbean lady who was smiling at him. Her aged and wrinkled face held a beaming smile of welcome. Her hair, greying and braided into cornrows somehow matched her mix match of overloud colourful clothes.

He immediately approached her and asked how the chant was keeping the locusts at bay? She smiled and whispered conspiratorially in a Haitian-accent, “Oh da chan’ don’ do nuttin’, but people withou’ purpose d’ey become fearful an’ mighty afraid. If d’ey  d’hink d’ey doin’ somethin’ to save d’emselves d’en d’ey too busy to be afraid. It take der mind off de peril…” She lent in closer “It be an ol’ hymn I teach d’em to sing in French, good eh???”

She has a big warm smile that makes her seem entirely non-spooky and welcoming. “So’d is it shelter you be lookin’ for, or is dare something else Madame O’Tando can do for yous?”

Sam asked why the locusts remained outside the area.

Madame O’Tando replied, “That be Damballa’s doing. He sometimes call himsel’ Moses. You might know him better by dat name. As in de plagues o’ Moses, yes?”

“So how..?”

“ah, you’se need a bit of da’ magic.” The bits consist of small, fist-size cloth bags tied closed, and smelling not unlike a used nappy full of curry. “Dis kip da liddle buggas away.” She looked around, saw the other two nearby, and handed him three of the mojo bags.

Sam said “thank you” and grimaced slightly at the odour. Madame O’Tando added, “Dat smell? Oh, you get used to it!”

Sam tied on of the bags to the belt of his shorts and headed towards Akira. As soon as he got close enough he explained very briefly what happened and threw him a bag. Immediately the locusts fled. “Howzatt!” Akira muttered.

As Sam headed towards Banshee with the remaining bag for Banshee, it became clear that the majority of the locusts and the screaming creature were definitely heading towards a two-story building, surrounded by a reasonably sized lawn. Outside, a sign indicated it was the “Gabel Mukaber Retirement Home.”  This was clearly not a four-star. Atop the dilapidated building, the man-sized locust reared up on its hindmost legs and ranting above the sound of the buzzing swarm it seems to command.

Most of what was said was in Hebrew and beyond their ability to follow but two elements became clear, the creature referred to itself as Arbeh and it was seeking someone or something called Brayan Netzbauer!

Sam again called Jenni and requested assistance in clearing the old folk’s home as well as seeing if she’d ever heard of a Brayan Netzbauer… A few checks later and she replied that that had been the name of an old time villain; one who’d gone by the nom de guerre of ‘King Bee’ way back in the 60’s.

Jenni arrived and immediately began trying to remove the residents (most of who could not be removed at speed) and search for this Brayan Netzbauer.

Seeing how deadly the creature’s mandibles were, they kept a healthy distance from the creature and the juju bags did the same for his swarming locusts.

Sam tried flying towards Arbeh unleashing a blast of fiery breath to clear a path through the shield of locusts. Changing to Mary, she tried to help Jenni identify this Brayan character as Akira joined in the fight by unleashing a mystical blast of such intense force that it stopped Arbeh in his tracks.

Suddenly an elderly man armed with a big gun that Buck Rogers would have been at home with appeared at the door and shouted, “If you’re looking for me, here I am.” The gun looked big, cumbersome and heavy and seemed homemade – almost a Blue Peter project only missing the sticky-back plastic.

Caught off-guard, both Sam and Akira unleashed blasts that knocked the creature unconscious.

As the rest of Sabra arrived and found themselves caught in the resident evacuation and locust-wrangling of an unconscious Arbeh, the three of them hurried inside the home to see if they could find out more about why the target was this Mr Netzbauer.

Eventually they found themselves knocking at Netzbauer’s door, and an elderly but unbowed man greeted them with a broad smile.

“Come on in! No need to be nervous–I got out of the business back in ‘68.”

On the other side of the room from him was the now smoking ray gun. Seeing what they were staring at he continued, “Don’t tell the nurses about that, okay?” he whispered, “They don’t know I kept a few souvenirs from the old days.”

Upon entering, the heroes found themselves in a furnished room, with a computer and boxes full of merchandise. A quick glance revealed books, t-shirts, can holders, mouse pads, hats, and photos of Netzbauer in his King Bee apparel. “That’s right,” Netzbauer said, “you’ve entered the hive of the infamous King Bee!”

Electing to play along, the three of them declared it to be an honour to meet him and  sat down, in Sam’s case that had to be on a couple of crates of merchandise. Netzbauer offered them some tea (with honey, of course) and they began to talk. The entire time, he could barely conceal his glee at their presence.

They had to ask and Netzbauer gladly related how he was once an “infamous supervillain” but was now long retired. “Yes indeed, I was quite the caper artist back in the day. With my brilliant criminal mind, my special trained bees, and my stinger gun, the King Bee was feared throughout the city!”

“Yes, I got out of the life back in ’68 when the Liberty League disbanded. I’d just got out of Solomon Penitentiary and was pulling a new caper. Then this vigilante with a bow came after me. He was drunk! Could’ve killed me! Then there was… Anyway, when the heroes got like that,” he said, “it just wasn’t the same anymore….” The sadness in his voice was unmistakable.

“So these days, I put on the old costume, do the occasional supervillain autograph show, and sell stuff over the Internet,” his jocular tone restored. “It gives me a little extra income–allows me to live here,” he said, a bit ruefully, “but mostly I do it for the fans. The kids these days, they really love to meet and talk to us old-timers, you know!”

Trying to find a connection, they asked him about his enemies.

He replied, “You mean like the Legionnaire? Or, hmm… the Creation, maybe?” It took a few minutes and several prompts to find the link.

“The Sabra? We really only fought once, and that was a total accident.  It was back just before I retired. We had just pulled off our greatest heist ever. We robbed every last jewellery store in the city. We cleared 60,000 shekels apiece on that job, easy. Anyway,” he continued, “we split up to evade the cops more easily.” Mr. Netzbauer took a sip of his tea and continued, “I ducked into a School building to avoid the Police. That’s when I saw her.”

Mr. Netzbauer’s high voice grew shriller as he continued, “She pulled a gun on me! A fucking gun! With real bullets! What kind of hero carries a gun and shoots people?” He pauses to collect himself, and then concludes thoughtfully, “I think I startled her. I was the supervillain making a getaway, but I must’ve surprised her, the way she was screaming at me. Anyway, I got the heck out of there when she started shooting. Never saw her again after that.”

Sam immediately asked about the school kids only to discover it had been at night, no one else was there.  It had been just after her testimony at the hearing apparently. But after the drunk Bowman and then a gun-wielding Sabra..?  Retirement from villainy beckoned and he got into a safer and more honest line of employment.

Looking around, Akira asked if they might have three t-shirts as mementos, only to be taken back when Netzbauer  asked him for payment. Before the old man could take offence, Sam asked if he took PayPal and pulling out his tablet completed the deal even receiving an extra, extra, extra, extra large for himself.

Then taking one of the shirts he asked the old man if he’d autograph it for them planning on having it framed and hung in the BASEment as a souvenir.

Akira muttered that perhaps they should leave Mary here, as she’d surely feel right at home..? He ducked, just in case.

On the other hand, merchandising seemed to be a good idea to think about, maybe after all this..?

They managed to take their leave and were about to leave when they were accosted in the corridor by one of the remaining residents; a little old lady.

“My name is Mrs. Kemp. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help overhearing you young people asking about the Sabra,” she said before pausing for the heroes’ confirmation.

“Yes..?”

She continued, “She was my heroine when I was a little girl. She saved my mother and me from a robber back in 1964, and I never forgot it,” she said emphatically.

“Many people here used to live in the Morashba district of the city, and turns out a lot of us admired her,” she said wistfully, “She was the only mystery man heroine the neighbourhood  had back in those days.” Mrs. Kemp’s face turned more regretful, “She got in some trouble later on and everyone else hated her. But I never forgot what she did to help my mother and me.”

“In fact,” Mrs. Kemp said, “a bunch of us chipped in and bought her a monument for her apartment in Galilee a sometime back. It’s a little thing, but no one deserves to be forgotten. Do they, young man?”

Sam smiled and pulled out his ‘brass rubbing’ of the plaque to show her. Tears in her eyes, she nodded.

Outside, ECHO immediately linked them to a live broadcast coming from the Mount of Olives; a reporter was doing a play-by-play as a mile-wide eclipse made its way across the area towards the old city.

Akira muttered “Plague of darkness, then the first born. You’re lucky you’re a second child, I’m an orphan…”

Sam went pale, “Adam!” he switched on his earpiece and called Adam straight away. “Adam? No don’t say anything, take the Raft and leave the city now, don’t wait, I mean now. Take a holiday for a week – go visit Tony..?” Then satisfied he rushed after the others.

Outside and from the sky they could see that the blackened zone has progressed to the Mount of Olives and trapped several school trips inside, which seemed to be its intended target. Rather, his intended target, because as the mystical darkness gave way to natural twilight, the face of the enemy became visible amongst the long shadows.

Floating spookily in mid-air over the centre of the school groups, the darkness avatar grimly announced in broken English, “Eight plagues hath been visited upon this city for its multitude of sins. I am the ninth, Choshech, and I come to herald the death of the children of the wicked. May Allah have mercy on your souls.” With that, he slowly raised his outstretched arms from his side up to waist level, and his Animated Shadows began their attack on the students.

A couple of members of Sabra arrived on the ground and started to fight the shadow creatures while hustling the students out of the gardens.

Looking closely, the Balance noticed one of the groups had a school badge they recognised – a stylised red raven, the badge of Claremont Academy. Their  two teachers seemed better organised  that the other groups and were gathering their group and herding them behind an out building that appeared to be some form of control room for the sprinkler systems and wall flood lights.

Three of the students deliberately went in the opposite direction and dived behind trees and walls. As he looked, Akira recognised the male in the pack as the young barman he’d met at The Endeavour pub.

Then several seconds later three people leapt into the air, a man in a costume that mimicked the British flag, a girl in a black cloak and – the third hadn’t changed at all and still wore her pink princess t-shirt, yet some form of non-mystical glamour prevented the students from recognising her… To the Balance’s mystical senses it didn’t work, yet… No-one else seemed to recognise her anymore.

The Princess rushed at two of the dozens of darkness and shadow constructs and physically ripped them apart. The girl in black unleashed several mystic blasts of power at another whilst the barman turned superhero used some form of telekinesis to shred his dark demon.

Leaving the Claremont student turned superheroes to work with the members of Sabra in protecting  the trapped students and the attacking  shadow creatures, they  decided to take the attack direct to the heart of darkness itself; Choshech.

As they rushed in the darkness constructs attacked them back. One of them unleashed a blast of dark energy at Banshee that hit her causing her to stumble in the air. Damn, that hurt even whilst insubstantial. Sam was also blasted at by one of the shadow creatures, but managed to dodge at the last second. He responded with a fear roar to “encourage” the remaining students to leave their hiding place and flee the scene.

Akira rushed in and suffered a blast from Choshech himself. Close up they could now clearly see the muscular man in armour and hood that was the source of the attack.

It took several minutes for Banshee and Akiva to manoeuvre in close enough to attack Choshech himself whilst dodging blasts from both him and his creatures. The fight was hectic. Sam took a blast and was left dazed and he decided that they needed an advantage.

Whilst Banshee unleashed his aura of fear at Choshech who had reverted to speaking in Arabic, it drove him back enough for Akira to unleash a series of mystical blasts only to face a burst of power that threatened to put them both to sleep.

Whilst this was going on Sam made it over to the control room they’d seen before, went inside, and closed the door searching for a specific set of controls.

Outside Akira tried to end it with a mystical blast to Choshech’s face, causing a glancing blow, only for Choshech to be hit almost immediately after by a terrorising shriek from Banshee.

Disorientated and dazed, his creatures destroyed and decimated by the Claremont Students and Sabra, he was unprepared for the blaze of lights as Sam found the override switch and blasted away all the darkness with the floodlights that surrounded the garden.

Collapsing to the ground, the plague avatar’s powers completely nullified while under the lights, every super in the area unleashed their attacks, rendering him unconscious.

Leaving Sabra to finish up, the exhausted members of the Balance headed away. Hopefully there would be no further attacks tonight.

As they arrived back, a woman approached them. “Hi, I’m Dr Bathsheba She’arim, Tzaddik asked me to contact you. I can see you have links to The Library. Are you aware of the Watchers? No? Regardless I believe  I might be of assistance?”