Session One 10-7-05

The group finds themselves assembled in the hospitality room of a private airport. Each of these six heroes has been recruited and interviewed over the last several months. They all share a general distrust of existing super groups—corporate and government—and a strong desire to do good. They are met by Abbey Relihan who explains that they’ve been chosen by their anonymous patron to join a new independent super team. They’ll be paid well and also given significant material support. Their patron has begun to make arrangement with a number of Midwestern cities so that the team can move between them, fighting crime in a number of places. The sole exception to this is, of course, Chicago a city dominated by several major Anarch groups. As the briefing nears its end, Relihan is called out by a phone call.

As they introduce themselves to one another, they begin to hear noise from the rest of the airport. Moving into the hallway, they see people thronged around TV monitors. The news begins to come in of a superhuman disaster. A colossal battle between two Anarch Teams, Ravage and Synistry, and a host of superheroes led by the superteam Frontline has resulted in a massive explosion, leaving dozens and dozens of Bloodliners dead. The reports are sketchy, but it appears that the Anarchs intent was a break in at Lockdown, the super containment facility located in the South Dakota plains. Relihan returns, shaken and asks the team to board a waiting aircraft.

In flight, Relihan puts a new proposal to them. With the devastation of Ravage and Synistry, the situation has shifted in Chicago. She expects there to be a jockeying position among Anarchs there. She also sees an opportunity to wrest control of the city from those villainous groups. It will be dangerous, but should they accept, they can be the first Chicago superhero team in decades. All agree and they head in. Relihan explains that they have access to an old Sentrymen base located in Downtown, abandoned after that group’s disbanding. From the airport, the team is whisked to the facility, now being pulled out of mothballs by the group’s new technicians and support staff. On the ride, the team decides on the name The Untouchables, to honor the spirit and history of their new city. Shutdown, oldest of the group, is elected leader.

After a brief tour, the group picks up their first event—a bank robbery by a well armed gang a few blocks away. They head over in the team’s vehicle arriving on scene within minutes. Inside they see a hostage situation. Roaming Wolf makes his way up the building to come in from behind while Onyx creates a distraction by shattering the reinforced glass of the front windows. Cruel Butterfly and Grey move in quickly to take out criminals in the main lobby while Shutdown provides support. Roaming Wolf engages those who take cover behind the counter. Meanwhile, on the street, Bolt spots the gang’s driver and dispatches him quickly. As he speeds back to his teammates, he sees a team of figures swooping out of the sky—Super Villains!

Bolt alerts the rest of his team and engages the enemy—a group known as the Enforcers. They’ve arrived on the scene in the hopes of looting the criminals. Despite having only just met, the team works together well under Shutdown’s authority. With a brief exception when the villainess Crasher possesses Onyx, they manage to take them down speedily. The local A-SWAT team arrives as they wrap up. They’re clearly not please with the presence of superhero team in Chicago, but avoid coming to blows. The group returns to their new base with the knowledge of a job well done.

Cruel Butterfly's version of events as taken from his blog:

Episode One: The Beginning is the End

Well not sure how much of an improvement its gonna be, but it looks like I’m out of Japan at last. After the “incident” at the TGS I think they were glad to see me go, though not half as glad as I was to get out. On the other hand it looks like this teams is now gonna be based out of Chicago, which probably isn’t going to end well, but I’m getting ahead of myself here.

After what was quite possibly the longest flight in history we set down at the private airport where our meeting was arranged. We all assembled in a conference room and waited. Grey was definitely the first one I noticed, hard not to with the full body armor and the facemask. Apparently she’s a mentalist, and a pretty good one too. Then there was Shutdown, he looked a little too old to be getting into the super game, plus he was doing that "I wear a black trench coat I'm a bad ass thing". In the supers game if you ever run into a guy in a black trench coat you can pretty much discard him as a threat instantly. Anyway turns out he’s some sort of Symanski drainer. Guess he’s got some experience under his belt but he dropped out of the scene for a while. Sitting next to him was Roaming Wolf who apparently had not called ahead to make sure he and Shut Down didn't dress a like. I have to say he actually managed to pull off the intimidating presence thing a little better, I think it was the wolf emblem on his chest. He seems to pretty much be a straight Rakepaw scrapper, with claws and I’m assuming other animal like powers. A little ways down was Bolt looking like he was almost old enough to start shaving. He’s just a straight up hunter speedster. Last but not least was Onyx. In retrospect how I missed the tall black woman with the shaved head the tribal scars when I first entered the room is really anybody's guess. I'm gonna chalk it up to jet lag, and certainly not my raging alcohol abuse. She was giving me “the eye’. Apparently she’d never seen a guy in full body armor with gigantic butterfly wings before.

At this point Abby Relihan entered and introduced herself. I have to admit the details of the meeting are a little hazy. Essentially she wanted us to be a traveling Midwestern team. She represented a patron that would keep us supplied with equipment and a decent yearly salary. It was about on par with what I was taking down in Japan, but I don’t have to do commercials, which was really incentive enough for me. Of course that’s when the monkey wrench hit.

We still don’t know happened for sure but apparently there was some massive battle out by lockdown between Sinistry, Ravage, and some heavy hitter hero groups. Apparently there was some sort of massive EMP pulse knocked out all the cameras and killed all of the present Bloodliners. Not sure if any of the family was there yet but there were dozens of dead. Relihan was on her phone quicker than you could blink though.

Within a few minutes we were all on plane heading for Chicago. Apparently our patron had decided that with Sinistry and Ravage out of the picture it might be golden opportunity for a team of supers to come in start cleaning up Chicago. Which as it turns out is us. I’m still not sure this was a good idea, the life span of a super in Chicago isn’t long. Ah well not like I got into this business for my health. Besides its gotta be better than Japan. At some point during the plane ride the team decided that we were going to be called the Untouchables and that Shutdown was going to be our leader. Not sure how all that happened but they did have a remarkable minibar on the plane, and now so does my utility belt.

After we landed we were ferried over to our new digs, the Sentry Men’s old base. It’s a bit of a fixer upper but I think we’ll make do. I’m just glad the halls are wide enough that I can stretch out my wings. After two years in Japan you really learn to appreciate wide hallways and rooms. Most of our tech is almost 20 years out of date but Relihan assured us she’s working on that. She also introduced us to our new Tech girl, Carrie Ming. Seems to know her stuff, and she’s not too bad looking. We may have to go over some possible armor modifications before too long. Anyway she was the one listening to the police scanner when the call of the bank robbery came in. And so, less than an hour after setting down in Chicago the Untouchables were off to their first mission,

We arrived on the scene in time to see a group of thugs with guns holding up the bank. Onyx shattered the security window out front and we all dove in save Bolt who took care of their wheelman. Things were over almost as quick as they started with Grey and my Snare gun taking out half them in the blink of an eye Roaming Wolf played clean up. Of course that was about the time Bolt came on the radio to let us know that super villains were flying in on us. In retrospect I probably should have taken it easy on the drinking, but seriously nobody said anything about actually fighting crime today, let alone in Chicago.

The villains dropping in were the enforcers. Apparently they were there to steal the robbers haul. With names like Electro Eel and Praetor though I think you can guess about how well they did. The combat was quick and dirty with us rolling them over pretty quick. The only issues we ran into were a brief possession of Onyx quickly thwarted by Shutdown and our fearless leader's subsequent incapacitation. I get the impression the enforcers were pretty low on the local totem pole, but we did take them out on their home turf, which I guess it bodes well.

Boding significantly less well was arrival of the city’s A-Swat Team. They’re lead by some guy named Carl Roady, a real jackass. He got in our faces a bit while picking up the trash. I get the impression we are not going calling them for back up anytime soon. Overall though it looks like our first mission was a success. Maybe it just the last of my buzz but I got a good feeling about this.

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