Superhero Adventures, UK Style

The aftermath to their latest mission was unusual to say the least; there were two dead bodies on the lawn and they had the issue of the depowered Oktoberkynde to resolve.

The local Police were called. The house had unfortunately been drained of its illusionary and protective powers and, for the first time in decades, now appeared unvandalised and undamaged. Thankfully the Police were from nearby Brichester and didn’t know any different.

The Sergeant, on arrival, immediately arrested the team on suspicion of murder – Mace’s crossbow bolts in the body of Hexenhammer being the primary reason given.

As there was no evidence that the now disabled Spring-heeled Jack or his depowered team members had done anything beyond trespass on Akira’s property, they were asked to give statements and were subsequently released. The discovery of the now dispossessed skull caused them a few issues but as the cranium was carved and obviously very old, they were allowed to retain it when they left with the temporarily disabled Jack. Of course their physical descriptions no longer matched those of the ‘people’ involved in the prisoner breakout so there was nothing to hold them on.

The footage from the confiscated Tinks drone didn’t actually help the team’s case. Whilst it showed that Hexenhammer struck at the team first, the question of whether reasonable force was used reared its head as did Mace’s status as a HCP trainee interning with the team, yet clearly shown using lethal force.

Then the coroner declared cause of death in both corpses was due to systematic organ failure caused by extreme old age and stated that, despite the footage, both bodies had been dead for a number of years reducing the possible charges against the team to desecration of a corpse.

Before a public enquiry could be held, the case was officially requisitioned by the Met’ Police and transferred to CI-13’s Inspector Stranger – a dishevelled, raincoat-wearing 30 year old who apparently specialised in the ‘weird’ cases. His team seemed prepared for the unexpected. The first thing their Inspector did was to call Marcus to get a run down on the team, then called for a D-Notice to be issued forbidding newspapers from publishing the story within the UK and asked for a closed enquiry. This cleared the team of all charges.

Whilst this was going on Jimmy the Fish was busy, behind the scenes trying to recover their reputations.

Inspector John Stranger agreed to seal the mystical hammer, which like their own powers and the houses’ had begun to recover its mystical abilities within a few days, in a casket which was encased in iron and sealed before being sent to the Artefact Research Centre for long-term storage.

Adler’s borrowed physical remains remained unidentifiable and were subsequently cremated but, at Mary’s request, the body of Shamus MacCarty was returned in a lead-lined casket to Dublin for burial in the family plot with only the local priest, the team and close family in attendance.

The next day, at Jimmy’s request, the whole team set flight for Sierra Leone where Heroes without Frontiers were rebuilding a series of orphanages destroyed during a recent rebel attack on the outskirts of Freetown.  Jimmy had hoped they may have been allowed to help with the eruption in Hawaii but the United States closed border policy meant that non-American Meta’s were not welcome.

Instead they headed for Africa.

Tony was hired to accompany them on their fortnight-long mission to rebuild two orphanages in the nearby countryside. Other teams were also working on restoring several nearby villages. Despite the heat and squalid living conditions, the team really enjoyed the work, rebuilding the dormitories and school classrooms, digging wells to ensure access to fresh water and erecting play areas and basketball courts where they joined the ever-smiling children just enjoying being alive.

Their work in each of the orphanages included fitting Challenger-Wildeman uplinks in each the classrooms to allow the kids to get a proper education using volunteer teachers halfway round the world, as well as a state of the art security system in case the rebels returned.

Whilst this was going on, Jimmy was always in the background taking photos; of Sam being climbed all over by dozens of giggling children as he tried to play basketball, of Mary meeting with the village elders, of Akira making it snow so the children could experience a snow fight and build a snowman just once in their lives and of Mace organising a workers co-operative for the single mothers so they could stay close to their children that they’d been forced to give up.

As before, the time went too quickly and it was time to leave the orphanages and head back home again.

It was the following day that Young Sam, with some anticipation, logged onto the web to see what the latest rumours about him had grown into, only to find most of the conspiracy nuts were now facing a barrage of posts asking why would a Government Black Ops assassin be willing to be so public and open as to support Heroes without Frontiers work – the posts were accompanied by photos of him playing with the orphans intermixed with photos from their mission to Bali as well as several team photos including one of Mary beating up one of the rebels that had tried to kidnap one of the female orphans when they first arrived. After Mary had finished with him, there had been no more attempted abductions in that region.

Seemed Jimmy had been running a major social media campaign raising both the teams and their individual profiles and making them major celebrities. With their return he’d even booked Sam on to several chat shows – working on the theory that it was hard for people to think you operate in the darkness if you are constantly in the spotlight. He’d also booked Akira onto a Children in Need TV spot doing a magic act for the children in a hospice and Mace on a Wish upon a Star event giving disabled children rides on her grav-bike. Mary’s wish for privacy however was as always respected.

After Jimmy’s work, only the most dedicated conspiracy theorist now continued to support the Carpathian propaganda machine’s campaign against the Balance.  It of course helped that several of their social media bot factories had been hacked into and subsequently obliterated with extreme prejudice thanks to the efforts of Annie.