| Fighting For Legitimacy | ||
| [The Foundry]
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Issue #5: A Hot Time In Old Town, Part I. 8 February 2002. Devereaux Manor is rather busy this Saturday morning. Not only do they have a mysterious man with no face in the underground-headquarters infirmary, but there is a Coast Guard investigation just off-shore. Plus, a bewildered Top Hat and Too Tall drop by for a visit to ask some questions related to the Marley’s incident and Jack’s junior-detective work. And, oh yeah, the Street Crimes Unit shows up to canvass the neighborhood, since the late James Smithson once mentored Lt. Shinmen and Sgt. Franklin. Jack is still following the money trail, and he presents the team with a detailed report of who owns what. When the no-faced man wakes up, the team—-oh, yeah, and Jack, in civilian identity for some odd reason—-interrogates him. Velocity duplicates and reads the data disk, and the team, with Tabula Rasa in tow, decides to do a stealth investigation of the crime scene beneath the Coast Guard’s dragnet. Before they even get out of the underground grotto, Jack decides to change form to Shadowstrike—-in the Mist Runner, in front of the team’s “guest.” Evading the USCG’s sonar, the Mist Runner travels Downtown, where the team decides to find someplace to drop off Tabula Rasa. Instead, they respond to an apartment fire in the gentrified portion of Shanghai Hill—-Vic Charlton’s apartment in the 1400 block of Moore St.! There, they rescue the trapped residents of adjacent apartments and battle members of the Pagliacci Gang—-and the mysterious young woman from Rainbow Serpent. This is the first appearance of Hyperion members Brother Knight, Caballera, Imp, Halitosis, Gemini, The Somnambulist and The Ninth-Dimensional Man. They show up and do battle with the clowns, and a sympathetic Brother Knight tells the “Doe Family” to leave before the cops show up. Speaking of which, the Checkerheads’ Extreme Countermeasures (ECM) squad arrives soon afterward, and the military begins scrambling aircraft to deal with the team’s “UFO.” [This is the first appearance of Capt. Tommy Gunn, ECM commander.] Issue #6: A Hot Time In Old Town, Part II. 8 February 2002. The Mist Runner manages to escape the police and military, and Tabula Rasa parts ways with them—-just after Velocity gives him a team VoxDot. Vic Charlton hangs out at Lone Gunman Books to watch the Checkerheads and the Fire Department sift through the rubble of his apartment building across the street. He overhears the bookstore owner talk about two cops who stole his “Throw The Bastards Out!” petition and an out-of-print conspiracy-theory book suppressed by the Throckmortons. Vic buys a copy of the book, then notices a distinctive black SUV parked in the adjacent alley. He and Sgt. Franklin end up exchanging information; it seems SCU watches more cops than IAD. The data disk is circulated as Tabula Rasa and the team compare notes again. A maverick former Throckmorton Technological International Inc. scientist, known only as “The Afri-Cola Drinking Man,” disappeared shortly after the publication of the suppressed conspiracist book. Joshua, however, believes he knows the man’s whereabouts, and the team sets off in the Mist Runner. On the way, they are detoured by word of more gang violence in Aurora Gate, but they discover it is a Checkerhead trap. And in the middle, on a street-corner just blocks away, is none other than The Afri-Cola Drinking Man! Margaret, in a back-up vehicle disguised as a Total Taxi, picks up the man. Within seconds, two ECM cars, tricked out straight out of James Bond, appear and attack the taxi. The team repels their assault and dukes it out with half of Team Hyperion, but the rest of the police force pounces too quickly for the heroes to regroup. They disperse, returning to the Manor. Except Margaret and Afri-Cola Drinking Man. They are in an alternate-timeline universe—-in the People’s Republic of Alaska! Issue #6 Back-up Feature: Kandahar Are You? 8-9 February 2002. In Afghanistan, Paladin Noir from Ravensgate’s Team Hyperion fights the War On Terrorism with Interpol Justice Force One. He answers a distress call from pinned-down Coalition soldiers, shrugs off a Stinger missile strike to the face, and knocks the terrorists senseless with a well-placed sonic-boom fly-by. He returns to base, where other heroes congratulate him, but his mind is elsewhere. [This is the first appearance of the rest of Justice Force One-—Union Jack (identity not revealed to readers, gravitic manipulator, Great Britain), Mother Russia (Irina Svobodnya, mistress of magnetism, Russia), Hatikva (Yosefa Adad, light elemental, Israel), The Phalanx (Dmitri Apollion, duplicating mega-strategist, Macedonia), Mr. Patriot (first name Robert, strongman, United States), and Silver Crescent (identity not revealed to readers, mentalist, Egypt). Asahi (identity not revealed to readers, fire elemental, Japan) is alluded to, but Northguard (identity not revealed to readers, cyberpath, Canada) and Fleur de Lis (identity not revealed to readers, plant elemental, France) are not mentioned and do not appear.] Paladin Noir and The Somnambulist hold a long-distance vid-phone conversation regarding current events. Here, it is apparent to the readers that The Somnambulist is distorting facts and manipulating his colleagues and the cops. He mind-controls Caballera and Gemini, as well as Capt. Gunn from ECM, and Imp is his accomplice. Issue #8: A Penny For Your Thoughts.
9 February 2002. This is the fast-paced two-parter where all hell beaks loose. The team infiltrates TTI and commandeers their experimental dimensional-portal machine in order to reach the People’s Republic of Alaska and rescue Margaret and The Afri-Cola Drinking Man. While there, a mysterious lycanthropic girl assists them. Back in Ravensgate, The Somnambulist goes apoplectic when he discovers what has happened, and he sends Paladin Noir after our heroes. PN, who has flown all the way back from Afghanistan, intercepts the Mist Runner as it makes a run for the dimensional gate. He peels the roof off the airship before Jeopardy can get inside his mind and short-circuit The Somnambulist’s mind control. They return to TTI and face Team Hyperion, ECM, the Rapid Armed Intervention Division (RAID, the Checkerhead SWAT team), TTI Security and COMETPRO (FBI’s Counter Meta-criminal Project). Paladin Noir arrests The Somnambulist, burning out the latter’s eyes when he tries to regain mind-control, and the team turns over the data disk to the FBI. Imp and Ninth-Dimensional Man are arrested as The Somnambulist’s accomplices in criminal conspiracies—-and they later escape—-but Joshua is devastated to learn that The Somnambulist hypnotized him into blowing up the original Hyperion’s team airplane. The team is hailed as the city’s new heroes, the FBI gives them provisional sanction, and the city’s legal guns decide to suspend the registered-superhero law pending review. They are no longer known as “The Doe Family”; when Paladin Noir asks them what they call themselves, Velocity offers up “The Foundry.” Paladin Noir introduces them by that name at a public rally. The data disk implicates over 600 Checkerheads in various acts of corruption, calls into question the legitimacy of nearly 40 police-involved fatal shootings, and results in hundreds of indictments of cops and politicians. In protest, the Ravensgate Police Guild threatens to strike and the RBPS upper management threatens to resign out from under Superintendent Snow unless (1.) the Sinclair Commission is disbanded, (2.) the registered-superhero law is restored, and (3.) calls for police reform are halted. All is not well in Ravensgate. Due to The Somnambuist’s mind-control meddling, ECM and RAID and Team Hyperion are sidelined for psychiatric evaluation. Corruption allegations and indictments sideline the Homicide and Special Investigations, Robbery-Fraud, Criminal Intelligence, and Narcotics and Vice Divisions. FBI agents and Oregon State Police detectives are helping pick up the slack. The Somnambulist is taken to his arraignment in a secured motorcade. There, he brags about all the post-hypnotic suggestions he’s made to “lots of people.” Then he is assassinated on the courthouse steps by Ninth-Dimensional Man. [In either #7 or #8 is the first appearance of Antonio Marcoli, Special Agent in Charge for COMETPRO Region Nine. He has had some experience in Ravensgate in the 1990s, and he is a resource of Joshua’s.] |