Superhero Adventures, UK Style

It had been a week since the last attack and both Mary and Akira had recovered from their ordeal by mucus. To his delight, Akira had even noticed that the snake marking on his arm had faded slightly and that part of the design, a circle in the contortions of its elongated body had vanished completely. He just didn’t know why.

Since Sam’s return from visiting his parents, he had been trying to track Dementia’s current whereabouts whilst in the UK. Annie had managed to track her travel itinerary for him. A few days after the encounter at the Endeavour, she’d travelled with her ‘diplomatic entourage’ to the Highlands of Scotland where she had stayed near Rannoch Moor, apparently awaiting the Black Dragonkin. For security reasons he was being transported by road; that aspect had been strictly confidential and had required Annie’s specialist ‘skills’ to obtain and even then only afterwards.

Sam had managed to make contact with the Scottish superhero team, The Caledonian Protectorate who were based in Edinburgh, and they confirmed off-the-record that one Igor Vasilescu had arrived safely at Deep Six Prison a couple of days ago where he was due to be interviewed by someone from the Government.

Only no one turned up. Some sort of bureaucratic mix-up by MI-5 apparently and as no one seemed to know why he’d been requested, the whole situation had proved to be a major embarrassment for everyone concerned.

Igor was now due to be sent back to serve the rest of his sentence in France. The transportation details were unsurprisingly secret. However, Sam did manage to find out that Dementia was due to leave the country by private plane from Heathrow tomorrow.

As they sat around in the lounge, a call came in from Dispatch. There was a prisoner convoy travelling down from the Deep Six Prison facility in the Highlands of Scotland heading to a secure location in the South of England and would be passing through Yorikshire later that day.

The Prison Authorities had requested a superhero escort with the Caledonian Protectorate acting as chaperone to Newcastle, with a trio of local, unaffiliated heroes covering then until they reached the Yorikshire border and that then was the problem. Only a HCP probationer, a youngster calling herself Yorikshire Lass,  was available to provide an escort until it reached the home counties where a couple of members of the London Watch would then be able to take over.

Yorikshire Lass had sensibly requested additional support from any certified teams if anyone was available.

As a 17-year-old probationer, she had been due to cover this with her mentor, Redwing, but he’d been seriously injured the night before in some form of apparent wild animal attack and was laid up in hospital.

Dispatch had the team logged as available for duty, would they be willing to assist?

They had a few hours before the convoy reached the handover point. They loaded Mace’s grav-bike into the Crate and piloted by an irritable Adam, the team, now well wrapped against the perceived cold in the North, set off for the handover point near Harrogate.

Arriving at the scene, they met their local contact, Yorikshire Lass, a chatty youngster in a blue leotard with a large white rose emblazed across her chest. It was agreed that she would join them in the Crate for the journey rather than riding shotgun in the convoy. Akira even offered to use an illusion to change it so it resembled a flying Ferrari if that helped. That got an involuntary giggle in response. She then went on to explain that she had no information regarding the prisoner other than it was a meta or powered criminal being transported down South and there were certain political or diplomatic elements involved hence the request for additional security.

She further explained that the three-vehicle convoy was taking a random route using various B-Roads across the Yorikshire Moors instead of using the motorway to make it harder to set up an ambush. The team would need to match their speed to that of the lead vehicle and follow them as they drove across country.

It was an hour after the vehicles had arrived and Yorikshire Lass had confirmed via encrypted channels that they were the authorised minders for the next section of the journey, that things started to look suspicious.

The constant freezing rain had turned into snow as they passed through the Peak District National Park. At first, it was only a fairly light flurry, but within less than a mile the increasingly localised snowy conditions made driving difficult, then they crossed a humpbacked stone bridge and the convoy ran into a metre-high snow drift. The lead vehicle was forced to screech to a halt as its wheels began slipping in the deep snow. Realising the unnatural nature of the weather, Mary confirmed that there were major elements of magic involved, though there was no indication what was causing the phenomenon.

Young Sam couldn’t help but suspect that Dementia was behind this. Her attacks had an icy component about them. Was she capable of recreating all this?

The team decamped from the Crate with Mace already outside on the bike and Akira joining her by levitating across. Yorikshire Lass jumped down to join the decamped guards from the lead vehicle as the rear van tried unsuccessfully, to get some traction reversing as it skidded on the snow and ice.

Adam immediately released his drone, ‘Tinks’ to monitor the situation.

That’s when the team saw it; several animated trees in the forest were uprooting themselves and ‘walking’ on their roots to block off the road both in front and behind the convoy. Roots and vines slithered across the snow and began to ensnare the central prison vehicle, which were starting to ice over.

From beneath the bridge they had previously passed over, appeared a cross between a large, well-built human and a hornless rhino, its grey, thick skin, offset by the large club carried in its oversized hand and the multiple sets of marble-like eyes on its domed head. Mary couldn’t help but think of the troll beneath the bridge. It stumbled towards them raising its club, which was the size of a full-grown tree. Akira muttered, “Looks like we get to fight the troglodyte…”

Several guards had decamped from the front and rear vans and were readying their stun rifles for an attack.

From the forest, a large swarm of insect-like creatures moving rapidly appeared as though out of nowhere, heading at speed towards the hovering grav-bike, Mace and her passenger.

On closer inspection, the winged creatures appeared to resemble miniscule, greenish, plant-like humanoids with four wings, a pair of arms and human legs; fairies? They certainly resembled winged, miniature people as they swarmed towards the airborne Mace and Akira…

Mace shouted out a warning to the trollish creature to cease and desist, which it ignored. Meanwhile Mace refocused on the swarm, as they appeared to be preparing to attack.

Akira raised his personal shields in readiness as Mace unleashed a couple of smoke bolts at the tiny attackers, timing them to explode in the middle of the swarm. The bolt exploded into a cloud of thick, choking smoke, obscuring their senses and causing half of the swarm to start to fly away from them, confused. A second bolt reinforced the first.

Banshee exited in insubstantial form and then Young Sam, after telling Adam to fly the Crate out of range of any attacks and monitor the situation from a safe distance flew down and towards the prison van and began to rip away the attacking vines and roots wrapping round the vehicle.

After all, Young Sam didn’t want to immediately attack the troll-like creature, he wanted to give the troll the benefit of the doubt at least until they knew for sure it was going to be a threat.

Banshee on the other hand had no such issues and elected to attack ‘Captain Beefheart’ and unleashed a terrorising scream at the troll. It appeared to stop it in his tracks. It, he? Stood still and waved its massive club in a threatening manner but didn’t try and proceed closer.

As she was observing the trolls behaviour, she saw materialising out of the mist of the bridge, slowly forming out of the freezing haze was a man in clothing made of scraps of multi-coloured material as though he was stepping out of some nursery rhyme. It looked as through the sudden mist was congealing to form him in all his medieval glory. He stood for a second and then began to play a tune that defied memory on a small flute. As he did so, the mist again began to solidify, this time into hundreds of streaming rats.

Then as Sam stood on the roof, the central vans’ bodywork mysteriously start to peel open. More vines and roots started to move in and gather round the chassis. As the metal flayed open, he saw that there was a second, armoured shell inside that contained and protected the prisoner and his guards. That inner cell was undamaged. He unleashed his claws in a berserker attack on the encroaching vines shredding them into fragments.

Then he stopped in surprise and horror as he saw a hulking familiar figure step out of the woods and advance towards him. It was his doppelgänger, a perfect duplicate of Young Sam running towards him.

What the..?  As the original Young Sam tried to make sense out of what he was seeing, the doppelgänger ran straight at the central van as another swarm of the tiny fairies began to congeal out of the mist and fly towards them.

Yorikshire Lass jumped towards the bridge, over the troll and unleashed an air blast at the piper only to be overwhelmed by the flood of rats that swarmed down the bridge and immediately began to attack her, covering her completely.

Akira unleashed a mystical blast at the medieval musician. A massive energy wave emulated out of his hands and as it hit, the figure seemed to shred into ash-like tatters and disappear and as he dissipated, so did his legion of rats, like smoke.  Yorikshire Lass shuddered as her rodent attackers vanished.

Banshee moved towards the troll, dashed in close and unleashed a corrupting touch before it could respond. Its attempt to defend itself against the attack was awkward and clumsy. As soon as she touched its chest, it began to curl in on itself like burning paper and, with a howl of utter anguish; it began to vanish like drifting smoke from a sheet of burning paper into the misty air, just like the piper.

Sam’s ‘twin’ meanwhile had reached the van and was attacking the side of the vehicle with its claws, even penetrating through into the thicker armour of the inner cell. Young Sam shouted, “Imposter, just stop that!” and jumped down to face his duplicate as he tried to get it away from the van intending to try to wrestle him to the ground. He went to grab him at the waist and his arms went right through the illusion leaving him almost hugging himself.  The apparent illusion laughed at him and in a posh London accent emanating from its head said, “Wrong part of the anatomy dear boy, wrong part of the anatomy.” It responded by casting a spell at the ‘Real’ Sam at head level, a blue freezing blast at his scales and leaving him feeling staggered and dazed and slightly icebound.

In the air, the two fairy swarms moved in from either side towards Akira and Mace on the back of the bike. She grabbed at a couple of experimental bolts, that when activated unleashed a metallic mesh net intended to ensnare and capture the swarm.

As she unleashed the first bolt, the razor wire of the mesh opened and captured the remainder of the first swarm. Mesh’s  metal came in contact with the fairy forms and caused them to flare into ash. Finding nothing to physically ensnare, the capture net began to collapse in on itself but not before dispelling most of the attacking horde. Mace couldn’t help but feel a moment of pity at exorcising so many of the little fairy creatures.

On the ground, Yorikshire Lass unleashed an air blast at the advancing trees, breaking off their swaying, attacking branches whilst at the central van the vines and roots continued to cover the whole vehicle as the sound of the metal chassis tearing open could be heard emanating from inside the bark shelter.

Mace took aim at the ‘wrong Young Sam’ as she thought of the doppelgänger. This was a serious matter of identity theft and she wasn’t going to allow the second Sam to breach their image copyright. She aimed a stun bolt at the head. Her bolt hit the creature on the forehead, which rebounded having hit something inside the illusion, but it appeared able to shake off the hit.

Banshee headed towards the central van and ghosted through the almost complete covering of roots and vines and through the partially shredded roof. Outside the guards form the other guards were unleashing bolt after bolt of their stun rifles at the encroaching vegetation and at the fairy swarm with no apparent effect.

Inside she could see three armed guards and the Black Dragonkin chained to the seat, but Igor had a massive smile on his face and was muttering to himself in Carpathian; not a language that she was familiar with. Having confirmed the prisoner was still imprisoned, Banshee flowed out of the inner cell and back into the cold outside.

Akira unleashed a mystical blast at the fake Sam’s head. As it hit, the illusion began to dispel leaving a disembodied skull floating in a field of energy, the bone carved all over with mystical markings.

It responded in an educated accent, “Good shot, damn that hurt. Looks like it’s time for confrontation rather than confusion…” As the illusion dissipated completely from around the floating sentient skull, three others appeared; a costumed demonic figure complete with tail leaping towards them, a massive, angry werewolf with elongated claws and a nun-like figure with glowing red eyes and a malignant smile dressed in a scarlet habit.

Sam muttered, “Well they look like bad news.” As the scarlet nun walked across, she gestured at the nearest ENFORCEMENT guards who immediately collapsed twitching as blood streamed out of their bodies to gather in her hands forming, long claws like blood nails. Mace muttered over the comms, “Looks as though they all have bad nail extensions” as she flew slightly higher in preparation for a sudden attack.

The ‘nun’ walked towards Banshee, the werewolf focused its attention on Mace whilst the skull floated towards Akira and the man in the horned mask calmly approached Sam. There were no introductions, gloating or villainous monologues.

Via dispatch, Yorikshire Lass stated although she wasn’t sure, she’d heard rumours from her mentor about a European group of mystical assassins – a group that apparently referred to themselves as the Oktoberkynde;  led by a creature, not quite human, that claimed to be the original Spring-heeled Jack who had terrorised the country since the 1830’s… She’d always assumed they were metas trying to use myths as a disguise but looking at the attackers she wasn’t sure anymore.

She zeroed in at the massive werewolf and unleashed a powerful airblast. It was faster than she expected as it leapt over her gust, which instead shredded an advancing animated tree behind it. She waited for its attack but it continued to ignore her as it speeded up its run towards the hovering Mace.

As she turned back, she saw a boy, no older than seven or eight, carrying a yoyo and an apparently well-loved teddy bear totter into view over the bridge. As if they didn’t have enough on their plate, now they had an innocent to protect as well. The child was obviously enjoying an unexpected snow day.

Akira wondered, how do you attack a disembodied skull? Then again, how does a skull attack back? He didn’t have long to wait.

Banshee found himself facing a floating, giggling blood nun who was wild-eyed as she said, “Another fey, what fun… Well little Ban Sidhe, you ready to dance?” and extended her blood-covered hands. The blood reformed into nail-like blades on the end of her fingers, which she slashed at Banshee with. Despite being insubstantial, the claws raked at her surface of her body but Banshee was faster and pulled away before they could do any damage. “Not bad for an old woman” she muttered under her breath as she prepared for another attack.

The werewolf meanwhile glowered at Mace as she floated higher up. She flowed a little bit lower and unleashed a standard bolt at it. It hit it in the shoulder but appeared to do little initial damage, the skin healing as soon as the bolt was pulled free. A second bolt quickly followed but the supernatural creature moved aside at speed and leapt at her but failed to get enough height.

Sam in the interim almost had the costumed figure, going by its previous leaps this had to be the so-called demonic Spring-heeled Jack, reach over and caress his face whilst whispering, “I can always do with another soul for my collection.” As he spoke, he unleashed a blue flame from his mouth that burnt both hot and cold at the same time and felt as though it was boiling and freezing simultaneously Sam’s heart. He managed to break the spell as Jack muttered, “Beware the hellfire.” Still dazed, Sam unleashed a blast of fiery breath but Jack leapt aside so fast, Sam missed.

Sam had to ask, “If you are Spring-heeled Jack I would have expected you to have more gadgets and gismos. You know the whole steampunk package.” Jack tilted his head to one side slightly, “I suppose I have the time. That’s a modern reinvention, do you honestly expect that many gadgets and gismos from a character first uncloaked in the 1830’s? I don’t need springs on my heels to steal a soul you know. That’s my goal, to collect enough souls so I can finally elevate myself.”

As if in response, the last remaining fairy swarm began to rush towards Sam, catching him unaware but other than annoyance the insect-like horde could do no injury through his scales. He was having just such a great day.

Akira was facing the floating skull. He unleashed a mystical blast straight at the grinning anomaly and leaving it apparently dazed, though not enough to prevent it unleashing a curse in reply that pulled a bolt of lightning from the sky. Akira twisted his body, knocking the bike out of the lightning’s path and almost causing them both to fall from the bike but successfully rebalanced themselves a second later. That was close, too close.

Banshee unleashed a corrupting touch on the blood nun leaving her bruised.

Back on the ground, the werewolf turned frustrated at failing to get close enough to attack Mace, and started to run towards the young child on the bridge, a savage howl erupting from its savage mouth.

Yorikshire Lass tried to grab the child intending to leap out of the way of the hurling wolf only to see a man in a bear costume dive out of the mist and slash out at her. Thankfully, the slash missed but she was forced between the werewolf and the costumed bear.

Akira shouted, “You’ll need to knock the stuffing out of Mr Bear.”

In the meantime, the blood claws on the Sanguine Nun elongated into a type of blood flail that she swung to try to rip into Banshee. They swung towards her body, missing by mere centimetres.

Mace suddenly realised the child was apparently a decoy and the bear character some form of bodyguard. She unleashed a sleep bolt straight at the child but the bear interposed itself and took the hit.  The suit had to be insulated somehow as it shook off the attack. A second bolt was immediately unleashed, aimed at the child. This successfully rendered the child unconscious and the bear character went crazy, torn between protecting the child and somehow attacking the attacker in the sky.

Akira used the confusion to change targets and unleashed a mystical blast at the werewolf but it seemed to shrug off the blast, healing itself almost instantly and leaving it with only a bruise.

Again, Sam struggled against another blast of hellfire from Jack. The blast shocked him and forced Sam to try and step backwards and trip on the ice causing the blast to flare over his head as he again scrambled to his feet. He was still bruised but at least he wasn’t hell-bound!

He needed to avoid any more encounters with Jack. He turned and ran; straight at the werewolf throwing himself into a berserker attack on it, with a surprised Jack trying to decide whether to follow. Sam grabbed hold of the wolf-like creature and began to slash continually with his claws.

Multiple claw attacks followed causing the creature, now seriously injured but continually healing the attacks, to turn and start to run back into the woods.

Spring-heeled Jack ran at Sam but electing to turn and blast at Mace with hellfire as he did so.

The blast missed, just. It literally missed hitting her by centimetres as the fairy swarm caught up with the dodging bike only for Mace to manage to fly out of their path.

Banshee flew away from the blood nun and flew straight at Jack, turned substantial for a split second, grabbing at Jack and turned insubstantial with her struggling captive. For a second he looked as though he might break free but Banshee held on tightly as the insubstantialised couple rose high into the sky. The sidhe power interacted with Jack’s own, revealing the demonic face behind the mask to her gaze. Jack hadn’t been lying, she was struggling, high in the sky with a demonic creature in her arms…

The floating skull unleashed a separate curse on Akira, intending to weaken him but again failed to anticipate Mace’s piloting skills as the blast missed its weaving target.

Yorikshire Lass leapt over and unleashed a blast of air at the bear. It hit him square in the chest causing both him and the unconscious child he was trying to protect over the bridge and into the mist where they seemed to vanish.

 

Sam found himself at risk of being whipped from behind by the blood barbs of the red nun. He turned and dropped as the blood weaponry whistled over his head. “Forgive me sister for I have sinned” he quipped, to which she replied, “not enough, not nearly enough.”

Akira unleashed a mystical blast at the back of the fleeing werewolf as it too vanished into the mist.

Mace flew down towards the Nun, activated her hypnotic gyroscope and compelled her to turn her attack on the skull. Meanwhile Sam worried about the prisoner, sprinted towards the van and shredding his way through the vine covering looked into the now torn open roof of the cell. Inside the guards laid unconscious on the floor and the shackles trailed from the bench to the floor showing that the prisoner had escaped. The plant above the van would easily have allowed him to escape beneath the overgrowth into the woods. Sam followed the scent only to find a young woman, dark complexion in a smart suit holding some form of tablet standing in a nearby glade. The woman was surprised. Sam tried to question whether she had seen the Black Dragonkin. She gestured, turned smokey and dissipated leaving nothing behind. As she did so, the vines and trees came to an immediate stop, no longer animated. From behind him, he could hear both the skull and Jack shout “Damn, we’ve just lost our way home.” The remainder of the swarm of fairies similarly melted away.

Back on the road, Jack unleashed a blast of hellfire against his captor Banshee. The blast, even though she was insubstantial, left her dazed. She flew as high as she could but Jack forced her to let go and dropped towards the ground, Resubstantialised, he landed heavily before bounding away.

The Skull unleashed a final petrification curse on Akira. Again, the curse thankfully missed hitting the trees behind him, which instantly fossilised into stone.

Frustrated, the skull turned and flew towards the trees screaming, “We WILL see you again, we have a contract to collect on,” as it teleported both itself and woman it called Sister Sanguine away from the roadside.

Even the weather started to improve almost immediately.

On the ground where the woman had been standing, Sam found a partially destroyed page from an antique book. It appeared to have been torn from an 1810, 1^st Edition of the Brothers’ Grimm Fairy tales, handwritten in their original German. Annie pointed out that the first known public edition of Grimm’s Fairy tales was published in Dec 1812. This had to have been a pre-publication copy put together possibly for proofreading purposes or something. It listed several tales not included in the first published edition. Annie reminded them that the original published copy had contained some pretty nasty and gruesome tales and this pre-print copy may have been even worse. Where had this come from?  Possibly this was a question for the Library?

It was a day later that dispatch was able to confirm to Annie that the prisoner had been requested for questioning about multiple terrorist attacks on the UK by MI-5 and in particular from an obscure sub-department, the MI-13 Special Reconnaissance Section (this apparently had no relation to the Met’s CI-13 section Akira and Banshee had encountered the week before). This Special Reconnaissance Section was apparently overseen by someone who signed themselves as just ‘R’. No one appeared to know who this ‘R’ was or why they had authorised the request.

To make things worse a video was circulating on YouTube showing a ‘Young Sam’ attacking the convoy. His own appearance had been edited out and the video was very ‘Blair Witch’, being apparently shot continuously on a mobile phone. It was hard to prove that it had been edited before being anonymously uploaded. It had proved extremely popular viewing, much to Sam’s annoyance.

Thankfully, the team had Tinks’ recording and immediately uploaded that, though it didn’t prove as popular as the fake footage.

Annie threatened to hack YouTube and hunt down all copies of the fake video but was talked out of it by Sam though he did notice the videos popularity dropped dramatically after their little chat.

An official complaint followed, from the Carpathian Embassy claiming that the British Authorities had allowed a Carpathian citizen, Igor Vasilescu, to be kidnapped whilst in their custody.  They cited the video, which they claimed showed the initial attack by the ‘terrorist’ Young Sam and his criminal partners.

The Carpathian Embassy claimed Igor was a political prisoner of the French Government and they had been in the process of requesting a review of the case against him and recognition of his diplomatic status before the European Courts of Justice. They made sure that it was noted that the case against him had relied heavily on testimony from a number of British meta-humans who were also allegedly present at the scene of his mysterious disappearance. They inferred that this was in fact an attempt to cover up an illegal political extradition and not an escape attempt or kidnapping as claimed by the Police and ‘others’.

It had been a long couple of days.

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The Caledonian Protectorate (based under Edinburgh Castle) consists of:

CopyCat (transmorph), E-Mission (Energy Projector), Rig, (size alteration), Psilence (Psychic Ninja), trainee Beltane (fire control) and Transit (Teleporter).