Superhero Adventures, UK Style

It had been a busy week, and it was still only Tuesday.

First Mary (in her personae as M. Weirdigan) received an official notification from Wessex Council that Container Town was an unauthorised development and as such had to be dismantled at once. This was apparently her final warning as all previous notifications and court hearings had been ignored.

She was immediately on the phone to Bethany’s lawyer, Jimmy the Fish, to track down the original approvals that City Hall had seemingly ‘misplaced’. Thankfully her paratwin, the original Mary, had kept photocopies of the appropriate documents, so it was merely (merely?) a case of convincing the Planning Department bureaucrats and job’s worth’s that the fault was theirs, that the original approvals had been ‘misplaced’ and no previous notifications had ever been sent.

It also took Frankie the best part of an hour of searching and tracing to track the complaint back to its original source, Alexander Helmes’s personal secretary. He had initiated the original ‘suggestion’ that the Wessex Container Town be investigated as it was supposedly an illegal housing development built on top of potentially contaminated land. If, as Mary suspected, bribes had changed hands, there was unfortunately no evidence to prove it.

Again she still had the results of ground tests carried out, proving that there was no contamination on the bit of land that the containers were sited on. The same could not be said regarding the junkyard next door, though even that was inconclusive and was based on its history and subsequent industrial use rather that any actual evidence of pollution. Mary did wonder if Labyrinth was planning similar legal assaults on the newer Container Town developments she’d established across the Country?

Then the newspaper reports ‘arrived’ online with tales of their nefarious misdeeds that had apparently just surfaced; from the recent claim that they had engineered the destruction in the Shambles, to recycled stories claiming they’d stolen the Janus Mask, destroyed property and arrested innocent people. The worst offender had been Kayla Feraz (Gossip Columnist for the Sun newspaper), who had previously published a scathing and completely inaccurate ‘expose’ of Young Sam when he’d been a member of the Balance. Kayla Feraz’s Gossip Column was generally negative about everyone and contained no new accusations, merely recycling what had been claimed previously. Lazy reporting thought Mary.

Again a cease and desist court order for publishing what could be libellous stories without evidence stopped the newspapers from publishing more such material but couldn’t stop the social media frenzy that followed.

Jimmy countered where he could but their statement that a worldwide criminal conspiracy called Labyrinth, led by a bull-headed metahuman calling himself Taurus, was behind the assaults on their character backfired on them slightly when Labys voluntarily opened their books and premises to investigators. Labys headquarters in Switzerland was found to be squeaky clean. There were no sign of the weapons development workshops, and no connections to any criminal organisations were uncovered. The Board of Directors were all different from the people they’d seen when they had gate-crashed the Labys headquarters prior to the Terminus Invasion.

As for Taurus, he was a myth surely? The Minotaur fable reinvented and resurrected, not to be taken literally. It merely added to the conspiracy theories circulating on social media that the Balance were trying to pass the buck and cover up their own misdeeds.

Admittedly the social media keyboard ‘warriors’ were divided in their opinions. Some claiming the Balance were heroes and others criminals hiding in plain sight.

Then on Tuesday Brian received an early morning visit from Child Protection, consisting of a specialist social worker and the Police. They had received a call (and they played Brian the recording which admittedly sounded genuine) from young Chris claiming that Brian had been torturing him.

The social worker allocated to the case was one Jayne Mason, who had been seconded from London as she had extensive experience working with teenage metahumans. Chris absolutely denied calling Social Services and refuted all the accusations but had to accept that the call did sound like him.

He was subjected to the indignity of a full body examination by a Doctor which only found a single small bruise on his shin which had occurred during a training session. It was Frankie again who subsequently proved the call was a spoofed deepfake, though how the perpetrator had managed to install the call onto or using Chris’s phone was a further mystery.

The decision to take him back into care was temporarily rescinded while further enquiries were pursued and Chris, to his great relief, was allowed to stay with Brian and Stacy, at least for now.

Akira, fearing the worst, covertly undertook a journey to cast a warning spell around Skomer Vale and sent a message to all his friends to be on the lookout for trouble.

Celestus received a request from the UK branch of G.R.E.E.T. to be properly registered as an extra-terrestrial visitor and was sent an interview request. This was relayed via Archduke Ty’dea Viisarikaa who had immediately responded with a statement that Celestus had full diplomatic immunity as an admittedly lesser noble of the Imperium. Could the nations of Terra accord him the rights and privileges due his rank and status which included not having to undergo any interviews or formal registration?

It meant he had been outed, though admittedly his Vilani name or specific rank had not been exposed. It also meant he was no longer considered an illegal alien, subject to being deported to Star Island off the African coast!

There was also bad news, according to an ‘off the record’ call from a ‘sort-of’ relation of Mary’s, Rory McCarty. He apparently worked for a secretive UN-agency called the Covert Surveillance Bureau; an agency set up as a secret extension to G.R.E.E.T. to clandestinely track and investigate extra-terrestrials while on Earth. It seems they had been instructed to keep Celestus under close observation and investigation.

It was late that evening when the next assault took place. Frankie called the team together to receive a call from her creator, Annie. As the screen cleared they found themselves staring at a smiling over two-metre tall Annie and a beaten up gang member being held casually by the throat so that the tip of his shoes were barely touching the ground. To Celestus’s utter disbelief it appeared that Annie was an artificial person, apparently an android, with a very human personality, She smiled a vicious smile and threw the gang member across the office, towards the open door. He hit the door frame and bounced.

Behind her, trying hard (and clearly failing) to not giggle as their bruised and battered ‘attacker’ stumbled out of the office door was a dragon-like male; Young Sam, apparently.

“That idiot was a member of the West-X6 posse. He was paid to assault Annie as a message to the current team. I’m afraid I allowed Annie to deal with him and didn’t try to protect him; if he wanted to commit suicide by Annie, I wasn’t going to interfere. Moron!” He paused when Annie asked what was going on?

Jeeves whispered to Celestus that Annie was actually a human that happened to have been badly injured and who had had her brain transferred into an artificial body and that her height, look and apparent invulnerability were choices she’d made when she and Young Sam became a couple.

Meanwhile, Mary was explaining about the several attempts so far by Labyrinth to discredit the team and punish them for trying to reveal their clandestine involvement in world affairs. Annie merely nodded before asking if they wanted her help in blocking and removing the online crap?

Mary shook her head, “Cheers for the offer darlin’, but it’d be a right dodgy if all the codswallop and bleedin’ lies were ta vanish o’ernight. Better we face it head-on, so we will…”

11:45pm they left the lounge knowing that Frankie was still facing, and countering,  continuous cyber-attacks as Labyrinth tried to breach her network defences and learn the location of the teams’ base. There was no rest for the wicked – or even for the saintly, especially those who couldn’t experience physical exhaustion. For the rest it had been a long week – and it was still only Tuesday!

G.R.E.E.T. – The Galactic Reception Embassy for Extra-Terrestrials.

Aftermath – Wednesday Evening

The cyber-attack on the BASEment had failed again, thankfully! The attacker(s) had finally given up, for now.

At X-Ray’s request, Frankie made copies of their server logs detailing the cyberattack and passed the data to the Police as proof that ‘someone’, who they believed was working for Labyrinth, was trying to breach their defences. She also leaked the data clandestinely to the press.

X-Ray had wanted to directly release the data to media outlets via Jimmy’s’ public liaison department to prove that the team were under constant cyber-attack by someone, who they believed was Labyrinth, attacking them. As he stated, “it may go some way to showing that we are facing an orchestrated attack… string section, percussion, the whole works!”

Frankie vetoed the suggestion as it would likely be seen as an attempt to interfere and influence the Police’s investigation. Better to make it look like the information had got into the public domain accidentally with no traces leading back to the team.

X-Ray also wondered if any of them had any idea who the “board members” were that they had seen on the news; the ones that had “replaced” the Labyrinth board..? Frankie confirmed that they had been listed on Laby’s Board of Directors for several years and appeared to be the genuine directors.

Interestingly, that Board usually met in their Brussels offices, despite the company being registered out of Switzerland.

An exasperated X-Ray suggested they could track down a few, and have a “word” with them… “With Akira’s ability to get the truth out of someone, it could be useful to get them on camera, with sound, of course.”

Akira smiled as he touched the medallion around his neck, “Only the Modrossus can decide if they are willing to grant me that gift and even if my appeal is found worthy, I can only read surface thoughts, not what they try to hide. Even were I to succeed, evidence obtained through psychic means is a legal no-no, Frankie?”

<<Designation: Akira is correct. The use of super-senses and powers like telepathy are considered a violation of a person’s right to privacy and a legal prohibition against unreasonable searches. No one can be forced to submit to a telepathic scan, and evidence acquired solely through extrasensory means is not admissible in court.>>

What they couldn’t prove was that the assault was linked to Labyrinth, or any of their shell companies. Even Frankie had been unable to trace the source of the attacks through the dark web!

 X-Ray wondered if Celestus’s own, non-Terrestrial AI system might have the kind of computing power to track Labyrinth’s attacks back to their source? He also queried whether Celestus’s newly acquired ability he’d nicknamed his Psi-Blade, might affect the signals being sent and perhaps short-circuit The Professor’s control?

Celestus agreed to ask Oracle if it could track Labyrinth’s attacks. As for his newly acquired ability, as far as he knew, his Psi-Blade had to physically touch an opponent’s body to have any effect, so trying to use it against the Professor remotely probably wouldn’t work. How could it touch a signal after all?

 Frustrated, X-Ray changed the subject to discuss the proposed new building and its potential staffing. He felt they needed more time to think about the new building but suggested they try to recruit some elementals, though whether to try again with Tempest was another matter.  They could benefit from having some psionic and magic-users on the team-roster, especially if any have powers over electronics.

 Celestus proposed that the new building should be treated as a resource, not for the Balance’s own use. If so, it made sense to have its renovation and security handled by a team with a broad range of abilities. Who did the Balance know and trust well enough to lead such a project, and would they be willing to risk becoming a target for Labyrinth?

Mary muttered that Bethany might be the best person to discuss that with, but it might not be diplomatic to approach her at the moment. Instead, she proposed that Jimmy might know who to approach.

 She looked at Celestus who was clearly distracted. He had been ever since she’d revealed that he was being watched and followed by the Covert Surveillance Bureau.

In fact Celestus had decided that he would discreetly pass on the warning to the Vilani embassy in case its diplomats were also under surveillance.

As though she was reading his mind, Mary pulled him aside and said, “We’ve worked with this crowd before, and we’ll probably will again, so having a reliable contact on the inside is crucial. For the love of God, don’t go doin’ anything that’ll risk rattin’ out the lad who told us you’s were gettin’ looked at by the guards.”

She paused, deep in thought before continuing, “I’ll jus’ add a final penn’orth, given ma’ guiding-spirit has been a bit distracted these last couple of days. Wouldn’t ya know it, a load of bleedin’ hassle seems to be comin’ from Mister Helmes, who was givin’ a hard time to yer man Dalton as well, so shouldn’t we be sortin’ him out sharpish, yeah?”