Superhero Adventures, UK Style

(Adapted from the published adventure by D.T. Butchino)

“Professor Worth, everything’s in place. The unredacted versions of the documents you requested have been obtained and released into the public domain. They will ‘prove’ that Stormers are a risk, not just because they’re potentially a covert advance force for alien invaders but because their forced breakthroughs regularly result in a lifetime of psychiatric and criminal behaviour. Your book will be released in two days’ time and we will ensure that it enters straight in at number one on the bestsellers list. We have also paid one million pounds into your bank account as an advance, which should cover any and all of your tour expenses. Do you require anything else from Labyrinth at this time? No? Then let me wish you good luck…”

Conversation held between Worth and a mysterious man in a mask,
two weeks previously.

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The follow up in the UK to the infected Stormers being discovered above ground had resulted initially in their mass incarceration and forced surgery to extract their control parasites, despite the ‘beasties’ being rendered no longer cognizant with the apprehension and subsequent imprisonment in the Deep Six Gaol of the geneered creature calling itself Slaed.¹

That situation had only lasted for a couple of weeks before the Government had been forced to justify their decision to illegally imprison the Stormers before the High Court and as a result had to release all non-offenders after compulsory “deworming”.

That did not help those Stormers who’d been physically transformed by their forced breakthrough; who had nowhere else to go and were feared and hated because of their differences.

A number of post-infected Stormers had ended up temporarily staying at Container Town. There were some issues with the other residents; intolerance due to their unusual looks and even threats made against them, however many of the older residents remembered Sam’s short stay amongst them and the kindness he showed towards them and acted as their advocates with the other residents, or at least those willing to listen to reason.  The Stormers however did not feel welcome and talked of moving on, except there was nowhere for them to move on to with the refuge of London Below and the other sanctuaries now closed to them.

It worried Mary, this underlying tension and growing animosity based only on their unusual appearance and a presumption that they might become violent or treacherous.

Then a call came in from Marcus. After exchanging the usual pleasantries and confirming that Jerome was still fine, despite finding being back at home a bit restricting and no there had been no indications that his memories of being Locker might resurface along with his Manchurian programming.

Marcus got to the point of his call; would the team be willing to keep an unofficial eye on a Professor Worth and his so-called ‘Worthy’ followers while they were in Wessex carrying out a book tour for his latest page-turner? He will be highlighting his theory that Metas were not in fact humanity’s next evolutionary step but were racial throwbacks, an evolutionary dead end intended as a defensive mechanism developed in humanity eons before, something that humanity had outgrown and no longer required so it became dormant until something changed, possibly an environmental trigger, caused it to be reactivated. He claimed that legends might actually document the presence of Metas in the past – Gilgamesh, Hercules and even the stories of ancient gods may have been memories of ancient Metas.

He continued, “His theory is a blessing to those who find the idea that they are no longer the pinnacle of human evolution upsetting, those who cannot accept that Homo sapiens are being gradually replaced by Homo superior. If you believe him then Worth’s theory changes that, it claims that Meta-humans are an evolutionary dead-end and again places the rest of humanity as the race’s evolutionary future.

His theory is not without some merit though, as DNA evidence of meta-genes has been found in some corpses dating back thousands of years. Why meta-genes never apparently activated until 1909 is unknown – it seemed to lie dormant for millennia before it suddenly and inexplicably activated. No one seems to know why. Could there have been a Silver Storm event in 1909?

Personally Worth’s theory takes legends, half-accurate data and the unexplained and tries to come up with a comprehensive general theory where one plus one equals eleven… He is advocating that Metas and particularly Stormers are dangerous and need to be separated from other humans for everyone’s safety. His theories have attracted a lot of support in certain circles and his presence in Wessex is controversial – his talks will attract support from the AML and counter protests from anti-racists. Interestingly, he seems to have convinced the New Knights to act as his personal security.”

He played them a clip of one of Worth’s recent speeches, “There is a war coming you know and Metas will betray humanity whether they want to or not. It’s better for the future of humanity if they were either imprisoned before they can turn on us or eliminated. We can, we will replace them with a suit of armour around the world.” And at that he turned and presented the New Knights, led by Rex Arturus.²

As it ended, Akira smirked and asked, “so, you want us to smash the Knights and kill the Prof’?” Marcus shook his head and smiled back, “No, Akira I want you to keep an unofficial eye on things whilst this guy and his entourage are in the city.” Then he realised that Akira had deliberately stuck his fingers in his ears and was humming to himself so he couldn’t hear Marcus’ reply. Shaking his head in mockery, Marcus signed off after telling ‘the adults in the room’ that Professor Worth would be arriving in Wessex in two days’ time.

Saturday arrived and along with it brought extremely and unexpected warm weather for so late in the then juju year. People immediately took advantage of the unusual weather and flocked en masse to parks and public places as ice-cream vans were pulled out of their winter storage for one last weekend of intense sales.

Mace was bored though and had elected to undertake a sky patrol above the city. Good weather generally meant less actual serious crime occurring and more low level public disturbances as people tried to bake themselves in the unexpected warmth and drink way too much alcohol. This was England after all, they lacked the Scottish capacity for excessive drinking or the Gallic culture for sensible alcohol consumption, which meant low level antisocial behaviour issues as a result.

She wanted, needed, something to keep her occupied, something worthwhile and as a result, she was monitoring closely when a Police alert was relayed to her by Frankie who was also in search of some ‘entertainment’.  In a squawking voice she heard, “Five Eight Six … we have a break-in at the Wessex Credit Union over on Walton. Please respond to the alarm and report in, over.” “This is Five Eight Six,” responded a male voice. “We are enroute, over.” In the distance she could hear the scream of a police siren. Rather than request support from Akira and Mary, she redirected herself towards Walton Street and sped towards the community bank.

As soon as she arrived, she saw below a group of five men; all dressed in jeans and jackets with various horror movie masks on, jump into a police car and speed away, heading in the direction of Port Meadow. There was an officer seemingly wounded on the street and another lying unconscious by the entrance.

She was surprised that they had stolen the Police car; surely, they hadn’t carried out a robbery without a getaway car so what had happened to it? Then in the distance, in a nearby street she saw a man running away from a minor collision leaving his car in the middle of the road. Had that been their getaway and they’d been forced to improvise? Down on the street she saw two injured officers. She knew Frankie was monitoring the situation and as though in confirmation, she heard over her team comms Akira request medical assistance for the ‘officers down’. Good, that saved her having to decide whether to stay with the victims or follow ‘le bandits’, even if she could hear Mary angrily muttering about their first duty being the preservation of life.

From above, the stolen Police car was easy to track and she knew they would have to abandon it soon. As though in confirmation the car swerved into the southern entranceway to Port Meadow park and the five speedily decamped, running into the gathered crowd, throwing their masks into the bins as they prepared to split up and mingle with the sun worshipping crowd. Mace considered unleashing a series of baton rounds but in this size of a crowd and from this height, she knew there was a strong chance she might hit innocent bystanders instead. She did have a cartridge of tracker heads though and their dispersal method meant that should they fail to hit their intended targets they would do no harm to anyone. Grabbing the cartridge, she slammed it in her sheath, set the dispersal rate for multi-attack and began firing. The heads were designed to explode in mid-air dispersing the small, near invisible tracker to land on the back or shoulder of their intended target. If they felt the impact, hopefully, seeing the fireworks exploding above they would assume that some fragment had bounced off them.

She fired at all five men. A battery of aerial fireworks lit up the sky above them as they dispensed their payload. The trackers impacted gently onto three of the five of the bandits, including the man with a holdall which she assumed held the money from the robbery but missed two as others accidentally intercepted their trackers. That was not unexpected in such a crowded environment. It would have been impossible to track and detain all five of them by herself anyway.

Then she heard confirmation from Frankie that Designation: Banshee and Designation: Akira were already on their way to join her.

Now unmasked and merged with the crowd, she tried to follow the three she’d tagged as they began to split up, ignoring the two she’d failed to hit for the moment even as she saw Banshee and Akira flying in from the direction of the BASEment. Good, they could target the other two possibly; she definitely wanted the bagman for herself. Then she saw Akira do the same, obviously guided by Frankie.

She saw one of the untracked men look up, see her and then reach over to grab a passing stranger on his bare shoulder. The grabbed man instantly collapsed as though suffering from a massive heart attack. Meanwhile the bagman was about to pass three youths on skateboards and Akira and she saw him raise his arm and extend the bag out towards them deliberately. Without that bag and its stolen contents, they would be hard pushed to prove that they had been the robbers.

Akira tried to get in closer, landing and immediately merging into the crowd, changing his appearance as he did so.

Mace decided to unleash a series of baton attacks regardless, before the five of them had dispersed too much. The first missed the thief who’d previously grabbed the man now on the ground going into anaphylactic shock. The thief was starting a panic by shouting out that the man was the target of a terrorist attack, possibly poisoned with something like novichok. The nearby crowd began to run in alarm (except for an elderly man who proceeded to carefully retrieve his bottle of wine and filled glass from the ground before calmly and carefully heading towards the nearest exit).

Mace had no time to retry, her second baton round hit the bagman behind the ear, knocking him unconscious even as the bag went flying into the air. Her next bolt missed its target, shattering a bottle of beer just beyond him but the remaining two gang members weren’t so lucky as one hit the man in the back staggering him and the last knocked her final target to the ground and rendered him unconscious as a result.

Akira, trapped in the fleeing crowd screamed, “Get after the skateboarders, Banshee” as the first of the three youths reached the thrown bag and made to grab it. Banshee knew that unless she stopped them they would do the mobile equivalent of three-card Monte switch with the bag and vanish into the fleeing crowd.

No time to target, Banshee unleashed a terrorising scream that washed over the crowd – it took down the skaters, most of the throng around them and even shook Mace in the sky above. It also brought down the remaining crooks including the first robber as he tried to escape having somehow injured the man going into shock.

Akira didn’t want to take any chances, he levitated the bag high into the sky, out of the reach of anyone on the ground and flew it towards him. As soon as it reached him, he opened it, saw the money and quietly said, “Ah, I think I’m finished here, I’ll see you later guys!” and jokingly pretended to walk off with the bag floating behind him.

Banshee wasn’t watching though, she rushed over to the collapsed man entering into anaphylactic shock, wishing she had access to epinephrine. Instead, all she could do was keep him calm while she waited for medical assistance as requested by Frankie who began talking her through the resuscitation procedure just in case.

Meanwhile Mace and Akira began handcuffing the culprits using cable ties though they knew the skaters would likely walk free due to a lack of evidence. Frankie informed them that a Police motorcyclist was speeding their way with an epi-pen and a defibrillator and ambulances were also being deployed to the Credit Union where one of the wounded officers has taken a gunshot from a shotgun to his left leg while the unconscious one was apparently recovering, having suffered some sort of seizure.

It was about half an hour after they had captured the thieves and had given their initial statements that another officer approached them. “We’re lucky you folks showed up… thanks. Oh, by the way, I understand the Mayor is looking for you. He’d like to speak with you at the Town Hall.”

Akira tried unsuccessfully to tease out what Mayor Adam O’Connor wanted with them. O’ Connor was the newly elected mayor of Wessex with responsibility for strategic governance in the region though somehow they doubted that he would want to chat about bike lanes or city budgets. He also had the powers of the regions Police and Crime Commissioner though.

Having finished with the Police and Akira (admittedly reluctantly) having handed over the bag full of stolen money, they headed for St Aldate’s and the famous Town Hall. Arriving at the beautiful and sprawling historical building, they were directed upstairs to the Mayor’s Parlour where they were greeted by his secretary, who informed them that the Mayor has been expecting them and to just go in. Inside Mayor O’Connor was in his office, on the phone. He nodded in your direction and motioned them towards several chairs. Both Akira and Banshee proceeded to sit but Mace elected to stand just behind them while they waited for the Mayor to finish.

“That’s right,” he said to the person on the other end of the phone. “I understand, but is there any way we can limit the route to a shorter distance? How about limiting them to only doing the route once then? I see. Well, we’ll see what we can do.” With that, he shook his head and hung up the phone, looking towards them as he did so. “Thanks for coming so quickly… I appreciate it. I hope you can help us, you see the city needs you.”

Banshee nodded for him to continue. The Mayor went on, “Professor Worth is coming to town tomorrow to have a march supporting his divisive beliefs before giving a lecture at the Wessex Alternative Theatre. I want to make sure it doesn’t become violent. That’s where you come in… I need to make sure someone doesn’t make a martyr out of this guy and that his followers remain exactly within the letter of the law, so I’d like you to help keep an eye on things and ensure his followers behave themselves.”

The team looked at each other. It seemed as though Marcus’ unofficial request was about to become official. Unaware of the earlier appeal for their assistance, O’Connor went on to explain, “Professor Mark Worth is a professor of psychology and sociology known for his “theories” on racial and cultural superiority. His appearances are usually bereft of any tolerance and filled with a wide scope of prejudices, of late that focus has been on Meta-humans. Since he’s started to gain attention in the media and on the Internet, he’s begun gathering a following of people he calls “The Worthy”, fanatically devoted to his beliefs.” He leant forward conspiratorially and explained quietly “Honestly, if I had my way, I’d tell Worth exactly where he could put his ‘theories’ and his so-called following. But it’s a free country and I support the right for him to speak his mind and for his people to assemble peacefully, not matter how much I disagree with his message. The important thing is to ensure it stays peaceful. Can we request your assistance?”

Banshee looked at her teammates before replying, “We will try.” As soon as she had spoken, the Mayor smiled “Excellent. Both the city and I appreciate this. The march is supposed to start from outside the Town Hall around 10 AM tomorrow morning before finishing at the Wessex Alternative Theatre. If it’s possible could you try and be here before it starts? Again, can I say just how much I appreciate your help?”

His phone began to ring and he politely excused himself, leaving them to make their own way out.

The next morning, they arrived at the Town Hall in time to see a short, older man in a power suit exit a limousine. He looked at them through his glasses and seemed to smirk at them before walking up the steps of the building. Behind the car was a pair of minibuses filled with people. On the side of the buses, it read “Are You Worthy?” in red lettering.

The march seemed to consist of what appeared to be less than a hundred supporters, primarily bused in, though some were very obviously local AML supporters. Surrounding them on the other side of a thin blue line of Wessex’s finest was several hundred protesters with a variety of signs that included messages such as “He’s Not Worth It!” and “Wessex against Hate!” It looked as though the Hope not Hate and Anti-Nazi league crowd were out in force in response.

There were also several obvious Stormers standing in and amongst the protesters. The Police were attempting to calm and contain the growing crowd. As they stood waiting, a police officer approached them and introduced himself as Inspector Taylor. He explained that he was the officer assigned to oversee the march and was glad that they would be there as back up. He explained the route and apologised for the fact that they would be going round the same route twice. He then excused himself saying he had to coordinate with his men.

After about 20 minutes, the man with the smirk came out with Mayor O’Connor. As they approached the Mayor called over and said, “Good morning … this is Professor Mark Worth; Professor Worth, these are the heroes that will be part of your escort. They are some of the finest Wessex has to offer.”

“Good to know, Mr. Mayor,” Worth said with a grin. “But I have my own … protection. However, it’s nice that your Mayor has accepted our request. Freedom of speech is so underrated these days, wouldn’t you agree?”

Akira smiled back, “I may not agree with what you say but I’ll fight to the death for your right to say it” misquoting the saying he wrongly attributed to Voltaire.

With that, Worth returned to his limo even as the crowd’s mood got worse, throwing beverages and rubbish over the heads of the Police and just failing to hit the parked car and its grinning occupants. A few minutes later, the New Knights arrived. Their transport landed in the disabled bays of the Town Hall carpark. They decamped and walked towards the three of them, pausing only to nod a greeting to a beaming Professor Worth sitting in his limo.

Rex Arturus, a man of commanding stature immediately introduced himself and the other five members of his team. With the exception of the giant full body cyborg carrying what looked like a blaster cannon in one hand, who went by the name Galahad, the others were all dressed in customised suits of powered armour. Rex introduced them each in turn; the arrogant Lancelot who openly flaunted wearing an actual sword, the beautiful, athletic, mahogany-coloured Guinevere, Gawain the powerful bodybuilder armoured in red and blue armour who was obviously the teams’ brick, while Tristan in a faceless mask and cowl hovering above them was obviously the teams’ flier and fast response.

Rex then turned and asked why they have been requested to get involved given that he and his team would also be present? Banshee explained that they were present at the request of the Mayor himself and then asked in reply why they were supporting this event?

Rex admitted that although they agreed with Worth’s work and theories they were not necessarily a supporter of the author. The government papers recently released into the public domain however proved that the Silver Storm was an alien infiltration device intended to create a powered and controlled fifth column of Metas preparing for a planned invasion.  As a result, Stormers were effectively Manchurian Candidates – people who were not loyal to, or who would harm their own race because they are under the control or influence of another species. The ‘proof’ that Metas were obviously not the next evolutionary step in mankind’s evolution just clinched it in his mind.

Akira smirked and explained, “I must admit I don’t have a lot of truck with all this evolutionary nonsense!” Lancelot interrupted, “Oh, he’s one of those anti-science fundamentalists, I bet he also believes the ‘it only took six days to build the earth’ crap as well!” and burst out laughing… A very fake, forced laugh.

Rex tried to ignore the rude interruption and explained that Worth’s involvement in making public the unredacted government files that proved Stormers were a threat had made him a target and they were there to make sure everything remained peaceful.

Lancelot again interrupted to ‘ask’ The Balance to keep out of their way as they were ‘obviously’ best equipped to deal with any escalation by the protesters. It was clear that should a situation break out that he would focus primarily on dealing with any Metas involved.

Behind them, the marchers were grabbing their placards from the back of the minibuses and unfurling their banners; displaying messages such as “Time to reincarcerate all Stormers”, “Sterilise them all”, “Stormers are terrorists” and “Time to lock them up and throw away the key”. Others were less controversial claiming, “Metas are the dead end” and simply “Humanity First”.

The march would follow a circular route round the city Centre twice, with Worth riding in a Cadillac convertible surrounded by his followers the whole time and with one of his minibuses following behind before heading off towards the theatre.

Inspector Taylor explained that the New Knights would escort the Professor both in front and behind the car, but Worth would not allow anyone to drive beside it and they would have the same limitations imposed on them.

That was fine with them; Banshee and Mace immediately flew up and took up their positions above the march watching out for any trouble. Quite a crowd had gathered to see the show and more were gathering along the route, primarily to protest. Out of hearing, Mary put in a request to Frankie to ask if she could do some research on the New Knights? It wasn’t urgent but she knew that regardless of what happened today they would confront each other again at some point she was sure.

Meanwhile Akira turned invisible (after infuriating Mace by stating he was going to change his physical appearance to make himself look stereotypically Chinese), dodged through the Police barricade and in amongst the protesters but quickly gave up when he realised that he couldn’t move fast enough through the crowd to keep up. After several minutes of frustration trying invisibly to push through the throng, he became visible and levitated up to join his teammates in the air.

As the protest set off, they could hear loud boo’s coming from the gathered crowd. At first, they assumed that it was all aimed at the marchers but slowly they began to realise that some of them had begun to boo them for seemingly supporting the march. The overheard phrases like “You should be fighting for Freedom… Not hate!” and “Wessex loves its heroes, not its sell outs!”

At first they ignored it but by the time they passed the Town Hall for a second time it became obvious that things were getting hostile on the ground and a number of makeshift ‘missiles’ were now being exchanged between both groups. Banshee flew over and joined Mace on the grav-bike as she changed back into Mary, manifesting her harp as she did so. She immediately started to play allowing the music to wash over everyone below leaving them calmer though fatigued and hopefully not inclined to riot.

They did notice that some of the Worthy were playing up to the crowd and were trying to convince them that The Balance have joined Worth’s cause. They considered dropping down and having a word or three with the main antagonists but then saw from their vantage point that a number of looters were targeting shops in a nearby side street using the commotion as cover. If the Police were forced to leave the march to arrest them then the team were sure that a full-blown riot would erupt.

No, they had to resolve this first and quickly. After a quick game of stone, paper, scissors in which Akira lost he flew over to deal with the dozen or so looters leaving Banshee strumming away as Mace kept an eye on the interactions below.

Akira flew over and hovered above the looters. They were mostly teenagers he saw as he shouted down to them, “Stop smashing things up, or else!” They ignored him so before they could smash any more windows he began to gesture calling forth the Somnambulant Spell of Sirrion; beseeching the Sorcerer in Scarlet to unleash a thin, pinkish mist, rising up from the ground that immediately put them into a deep sleep. Then, satisfied they weren’t going anywhere anytime soon and that they would still be ‘lying around’ to be arrested when the Police could spare the officers to arrest them he left. For a moment, he wondered if this had been a deliberate distraction so someone can get to Worth?

The convoy was almost at the end of its route and would now head to the theatre where Professor Worth was speaking later that night when they noticed a very large group of people including several Stormers had gathered at a nearby junction and tensions were rising.

Catching up Akira saw a large muscular man, covered in a full all-encompassing body suit pushing his way in to the back of the jeering crowd, another Stormer? Then he ‘saw’ him disappear midstep even as a feeling of intense anger rose with in him. He was not alone, suddenly the crowd nearby started violently fighting each other.

Back on the road the Professor’s ‘Worthy’ had come into physical conflict with part of the crowd, both sides yelling insults at each other as things seem likely to turn violent especially as a number of the counter protesters managed to push through the Police cordon and rush into the street blocking the march’s route.

That group was made up of a variety of people, though many were wearing white t-shirts with the word hate printed under a crossed out red circle. They were holding hands and had formed a “human wall” across the street. As the car approached, it came to a slow stop then the mini-bus pulled up alongside the car and also stopped, opening its door with a quiet “shush”.

That’s when Banshee and Mace saw a man of impressive build walk out from a nearby side street wearing some sort of containment suit with a dozen wired disks attached to its exterior and head towards the back of the protesters even as they erupted into violence around him. The massive brute suit made Mace immediately think that the wearer was compensating for something and thought of the classical comedian Charles Hawtrey, the bespeckled weedy-looking character from the old Carry On films – a suit that bulky had to be hiding something surely? Was there a Charles look-alike inside?

What surprised her most though was the fact that none of those around him seemed to be paying the slightest bit of attention to his presence. They were acting as though he wasn’t there yet they were deliberately working round him.

Mary was sure she had seen something similar happen once before she just couldn’t remember where.

Beside her, Mace fitted an EMP bolt and unleashed it at ‘Charles’. In the conflict, it failed to connect even as Akira tried to ‘twat’ at the void in the crowd with a mystical bolt. The latter hit a couple of the squabbling crowd instead because the crowd was too thickly packed. He really wanted to hurt the so-called “Worthy” for being so prejudiced against Meta-Humans or possibly he could attack the bleeding hearts on his own team? He definitely wanted to bring that Professor guy to his knees, begging for mercy.

Then another wave of aggression washed over everyone, causing Mary to change back into Banshee and unleash a frustrated, terrorising scream that forced both groups apart and fall to their knees. Anger and a desire to cause mayhem though remained in everyone. It was only later that they realised one result of the riot was that Professor Worth had been left completely unprotected.

Then Akira saw that someone had left a small haversack leaning beside a lamppost next to the stalled parade, apparently just abandoned. He shook off his desire to hurt others and forced himself to focus instead on the bag. No one would leave a new backpack just lying in the street. It had to have been put there since they had passed by that lamppost last time otherwise the Police would have called for the bomb squad or have removed it. This time round the Police already had their hands full dealing with the sudden riot.

Akira couldn’t risk ignoring it. He ran over, grabbed it and teleported into the BASEment’s Reception Room and carefully carrying the bag ran towards Sam’s old Black Room. The Firing Gallery or Black Room was the room Young Sam had designed to allow him to experiment with his fire powers. Painted black it currently was only used to store the fireproof automaton target dummies (the MMD’s or Mobile Mannequin Distractions as Annie had named them). It was also heavily armoured and totally fireproof.

He threw the backpack into the room and immediately sealed the door. A few seconds later he heard an explosion and the sound of multiple thuds as several somethings hit the walls and door. He knew instinctively that he’d just foiled a fragmentation bomb. There was no time to investigate though, instead he immediately teleported back to his teammates.

In the crowd, several of the Stormers were getting in on the action, as were the New Knights who were focusing exclusively on attacking them back. Mace and Banshee saw a familiar face pull back her cowl to reveal a reptilian face they recognised from London Below, Gorgon. She was radiating a paralysing aura that dropped everyone around her as she calmly made her way through the mob towards the Professor. Her earless face, surrounded by the snake-like tendrils on her head, really antagonised Mace who suddenly wanted her out of the game. She knew that Gorgon only ‘heard’ sound as a series of vibrations that she could translate as words and for some reason that made her even more angry.

Mace unleashed a series of baton bolts at that, oh so smug face. They hit their intended target’s forehead leaving her dazed. Behind her, a youth underwent a transformation from a human boy into a mud-like figure also without ears. Banshee immediately recognised him; she had helped rescue that boy from the Gamemaster’s Slaughterhouse.³ This was Grendel, a Meta with the ability to instinctively adapt to danger by some autonomous form of Darwinian adaptation. In the Slaughterhouse he’d been in the process of ‘evolving’ into a xenomorph-like creature to enable him to dig his way out as the chamber he was in collapsed. Now he had changed into a creature that simply absorbed any physical blows that those around him tried to rein down on him.

Akira was again levitating above the mob and now had a clear view of the guy in the full body suit forcing his way to the mob towards the Professor. It seemed that his ability to be unseen or ignored only worked on those close to him. Akira quickly unleashed a mystical blast that knocked him backwards even as he followed it up by creating a force cage around him.

Mace however was still focused on trying to hit Gorgon as she unleashed another baton round at her – this one hitting her in the chest even as her ‘Charles in the inflated suit’ unleashed an energy blast that shattered his ‘cage’ and hurled him to the ground.

Before Mace could respond, a figure from above unleashed a blast at her. Tristan was swooping in, strafing at her forcing her to dodge and weave around in the air. It seemed that the New Knights anger was solely focused on Metas, Stormers and, for some reason, her.

She dodged the multiple blasts even as Galahad unleashed a series of sonic blasts from his cannon recklessly into the crowd hitting several of the Stormers. Rex and Lancelot rushed into the mob where Rex knocked unconscious a familiar green-skinned, red haired Stormer who had recently moved into Container Town, a girl calling herself Chambre. Lancelot however seemed determined to behead Gorgon as he waved his sword around and succeeded in knocking her to the ground, temporarily protected from decapitation only by the surging, angry crowd swirling around them both.

It was time for The Balance to respond – Mace unleashed a bolt at her attacker, hitting Tristan in the throat and forcing him to fly away before she could follow it up with another. Even as she did so she saw the ‘brick’ Gawain rush at Akira, knocking people aside with total abandon as he tried to grab, intending to crush him. Akira knew that those massive exo-skeletal enhanced arms would shatter his spine if they ever connected. He managed to dodge the armoured behemoth’s charge just, as he tried to escape by levitating into the air even as several throwing blades fired by Guinevere skimmed passed him. They would have killed him if they had hit instead they could have killed or seriously injured some of the protesters if Grendel, now resembling an armoured but still earless armadillo, hadn’t interrupted the blades passage, allowing them to bounce off his newly evolved scales.

It was Banshee who first realised that the only people who appeared to be unaffected by the wave of anger were Grendel and Gorgon and the only trait they shared was their apparent lack of obvious ears. Could this hatemonger be using some form of sonics to create uncontrolled anger in everyone around him? If that was the case, could she create a counter-wave to nullify this area attack? She tried to focus then unleashed a near subsonic response going through the scales until she found the anger dissipating. Unfortunately, she struggled to maintain the frequency for more than a couple of seconds.

Akira used the resulting chaos to respond to the new Knights’ assault on the crowd by unleashing a series of mystical blasts at them – not least, because he was completely pissed at their willingness to attack unarmed and unprotected civilians – which most of the Stormers were.

His attack had no effect on Galahad or Gawain, but one of his blasts staggered Rex (his blast smashed his greaves, which Akira laughingly thought of as ‘ripping his tights’). Another couple of blasts incapacitated Tristan sending him crashing into the ground and shut down Lancelot’s suit though he pulled his blast at Guinevere, hitting the ground in front of her as a warning to stand down instead.

He then had to dodge the dart almost casually fired at his head by Guin’ in response to his ‘chivalrous’ gesture.

As he tried to figure out what to do about the remaining Knights, the ‘hatemaster’ character was pushing his way through the crowd with total abandon, seemingly heading straight for the now unguarded and totally terrified Professor Worth. When his strength didn’t work in clearing a path for him (which Banshee thought wasn’t surprising since they appeared unaware of his presence amongst them) he took to firing some sort of kinetic blast from his hands knocking several to the ground where they were at risk of being trampled on.

It was chaos, Galahad unleashed a blast from his obviously illegal cannon at the crowd trying to clear a path to Grendel; it hit a ‘norm’ instead causing the old man to collapse. From where they stood, it was impossible to tell if he was alive or dead. Gawain elected to focus on The Balance and took a running leap at Mace who was hovering only about 5 metres off the ground. She immediately took evasive action and he missed, instead he crashed down on top of the limo’s bonnet, bursting both of the front tyres and compacting the engine beneath his feet. No time to respond she had to shut down the cyborg before he fired any more reckless shots into the unarmed crowd. Selecting an EMP head she fired a shot straight at what she hoped was one of the suit’s secondary ‘brains’. A suit like that would need multiple dedicated CPUs to allow it to function in real-time and that meant reduced electromagnetic shielding, she hoped.

Her guess as to what to target was spot on as the bolt hit the chest plate and discharged. Galahad froze mid-step as the offline unit stopped commanding the extremities to move; leaving him momentarily paralysed while the secondary CPU attempted to reboot.

That left her unprepared when Gawain hurdled towards her again and she took the tactical decision to focus on getting out of range of him, tout de suite.

The chaos did have one advantage, Banshee was being ignored and that allowed her to focus and fine-tune her hellish scream at the ‘hatemaster’ who was now pushing his way through the police cordon. This close, he was no longer visible to her but his mere presence, as officers were slammed aside and then started fighting amongst themselves, showed where he had to be. She unleashed her blast once more, and tried to narrow it down to just the right frequency… She wasn’t overly upset to see that it also was affecting the officers surrounding the behemoth ‘hole’ in their huddled mass causing them to fall to their knees rather than continue fighting. It also washed over the remaining Knights. Then, smoke apparently from this giant-sized hole in the cordon was replaced as the ‘hatemaster’ suddenly popped into view; his suit spewing smoke from each of the wired disks as they overheated.

All thought of completing his mission to get to (and assassinate..?) Professor Worth now abandoned, he turned and tried to run away, through the confused and bewildered crowd around him. Their failure to move aside caught him off-guard and he suddenly took to grabbing those in front of him by the neck or face. Each person he grabbed responded in the same, now almost familiar way; they collapsed spasming on the ground. Was he somehow deploying a similar neuro-toxin to the one that the thief had used had use in the robbery the day before?

No longer ‘ignored’ by those around him and seeing those who were unable to flee collapsing, the crowd began to run in every possible direction in a vain attempt to get away from the man in the containment suit. All that was except for a human-sized armadillo who seemed unaffected by his touch and who responded by blocking his escape route, his augmented skin apparently immune to any form of contact poison.

It also gave Akira a clear shot. He fired a mystical blast at ‘hatemaster’s’ suited back and knocked him to the ground. He wasn’t going to run away from this. The blast was followed by Mace unleashing a deadly accurate bolt to the back of the head, just in case.

Meanwhile those Knights still conscious were running around trying to check on their own, Professor Worth was herded unceremoniously into the minibus by the Police or at least those not involved in administering first aid to the protesters targeted by the Knights and by the hatemaster.

Mace had to know… The three of them pushed their way through the confused and bewildered crowd to the collapsed figure and having handcuffed him (just in case) flipped him onto his back and pulled off the hood.

To Banshee and Akira’s shock and amazement, they recognised the face beneath the hood, it was Disunity Jack.⁴ The same terrorist they had first met shortly after Banshee and Chrono had first arrived in this world, when they had first met Akira and Young Sam, the same terrorist that Chrono had allowed to escape.

As Mace had suspected, the suit was primarily padding and packed with amplification equipment to enable the normal-sized Irish terrorist to disguise who he was and allow his powers to affect a much wider area. Then Banshee realised he wasn’t breathing, his lips were pale blue and covered in speckles of foam from some ingested chemical. She felt for his pulse, nothing. She immediately began chest compressions but was stopped from giving him breaths by Mace who realised that his lips and lungs would still contain an overdose of a deadly nerve toxin, a dose sufficient in this case to kill him outright. He had obviously felt death was a better outcome than imprisonment.

The next few hours were totally chaotic. Ambulances arrived and Jack O’Connell also known as Disunity Jack, believed to be a member of the Irish Liberation Army was declared dead at the scene and his body immediately removed to the city morgue in the hope of identifying the toxin he’d used on the others who were thankfully all still alive.

Several members of the New Knights were arrested at the scene for the use of excessive force as well as having undeclared offensive weapons, with Rex arguing that the laws of the land did not apply to him and his knights.

Professor Worth’s lectures in Wessex were cancelled on the grounds that future attempts on his life might be attempted were he to proceed. He seemed to be quite shocked and was taken away to a place of safety muttering something about not realising he was being ‘set up’ though he refused to explain what he meant by that.

Akira did manage to get a brief postcognitive reading from Jack’s body before the ambulance crew and Police moved them aside. Mostly it was visions of a lifetime of hate and revenge but one thing did stand out – this job had been unaffiliated to his political aspirations for an independent Éire, Akira ‘saw’ an almost triangular symbol with a maze-like design built round the letter L; the emblem of the secretive group that called themselves the Labyrinth. This had been a paid gig, undertaken for them. His task had been to slaughter Professor Worth making him a martyr by laying the blame on Stormers and thereby create increased hostility towards them. He hadn’t realised the capsule he’d been given contained the same neuro-toxin they had fitted into his gloves, he’d been told it was a secret tracker device to allow Labyrinth to locate and rescue him in return for his silence. It had definitely ensured his silence.

Then the doctors turned up, declared him dead and whisked him away. They left the Police to arrange for the remaining Worthy to be safely dispersed and for the still unconscious looters to be rounded up before heading back to the Town Hall for a quick debrief. Whilst there, Mayor O’Connor came out and publicly congratulated them on a job well done to the press.

It was only afterwards when everything had returned to normal Mary was able to check on the man who collapsed in the park only to discover that he had suffered an adverse reaction caused by a temporary nerve poison but who was making a full recovery as was the Police officer found unconscious outside the Credit Union.

Was this the same poison used by Disunity Jack to try to allow him to escape through the crowd?

Then news came in from the Police that Disunity Jack’s body had vanished after the ambulance removing his body had crashed. Had this been a ghoulish body theft or had Disunity Jack’s death been faked with a similar nerve poison to their park victim? Could both events have been linked somehow?

Only time would tell.

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1.  See Episode 55 – Things to see, People to do
2.  See Bluebook Session – The Once and Future…
3.  See Episode 28 – Welcome to the Slaughterhouse
4.  See Episode 3 – No More Mr. Nice Guy