Dramatis Personae

• The Commander (Doug) – telekinetic super-soldier with a really angry dog (Yukio). The dog is a powerful ally (250-300 points) and very intelligent and very, very aggressive.
• Zephyr (Merlin) – Real name Murui; Shaolin Kung Fu expert and super-speedster.
• Eamon Finnegan (Kyle) – smooth talking gravity-master; Ultimate Fighting Lawyer, to borrow a phrase.
• Ezekiel (Christian) – Techno Master, Genius, Esper, Super Archer
• Katana (NPC) – Will be The Commander’s wife one day. She knows it to be true. Recently revealed to be the 4yo little girl from the time-vision plot arc. The Commander cannot date a kid he knew when she was four. Icky.
• EMC (Now NPC) – we lost a player, so EMC was shunted off into an Aegis facility by “Top Men.”

Discontinuity

We haven’t played in a while, so we had to remember what the hell we were doing. No one really could. We decided that every time we go for food, interesting things happen. So we decide to go for fish tacos, because that was the site of the first mission. Above-board, we know Christoper has probably prepped something, and that it’ll come to us, so we decide to lean in.

We check around, and Senator Blackwell has been pushing metahuman restriction. We decide to build a device in international waters that will turn him into a metahuman. Christopher swears we’ll never take this long a break again, because our non-linear tendencies are way, way out of control.

We wind up heading over to Fort Tilden, considered a national park but Aegis set up a base underneath it. We get in, and General Legend is looking very perturbed, looking at information flying over several computer screens. One of the screens show a list of Directors of Blue Skies, and many of them have question marks, one is outright missing, and one has been scratched out.

They got some more intelligence from the field teams, and they’re trying to figure out what’s the what here. A guy named Moya is the Chief Business Officer, and looks to be perhaps the weak link in the chain. The BoD went underground when we

He then pulls up a dossier on a woman, who has very odd eyes. Like snake eyes. We call her Thulsa Doom. Her name is Mary R. Montemayor, and she’s the Human Resources Procurement Director. She’s never been charged but frequently implicated in all sorts of nasty stuff. Genetic experimentation, human trafficking, industrial espionage . . . lovely stuff. We draw the mission of extracting a full list of the new Board of Directors. Names, photos, the works. From Montemayor. She’s been at Blue Skies for at least a decade.

• Pertinent details?
• Net worth: $500M or so
• Home address, contact numbers, etc were all part of the big data pull we had
• She’s signed off on most of the black projects that we’ve been looking in to
• We have the name of her personal assistant as well

We dig into some of her contracts and contacts. The Commander tries (and has to spend 3 Karma thanks to a roll of 17 to turn a fail into a crit success) and digs into the missions that she’s signed off on. Which ones does she sign off on first, which last, and which does she refuse to sign?

We track down some info on her properties worldwide too. She’s got a lot of them – 30 or so. We found a spike in the electric bills at her Martha’s Vineyard complex, enough to account for at least a dozen people living there.

The Commander discovers that as he looks at the ops she’s signed off on, we realize that she’s trying very hard to impress the CEO, and she very much wants to be the next CEO. She’s also prone to public take-downs of her rivals; there’s a guy who goes by AJ to whom she always denies resources. Not sure who AJ is, but we’re going to find out. We also start working up psych profiles on her based on this pattern.

Zephyr hits up his contacts for Smooth Operator, and crits. We basically get a pretty much complete crime map in the region. There are all sorts of contacts being made, ironically enough on Tinder. There are also a lot of weapons (firearms) being bought and sold in support of the criminal activity. It feels very much like someone’s gearing up for a war.

We also find a line on her personal assistant, and either he’s hiding a keen intellect under a chiseled, buff, ridiculously well-coiffed exterior, or he’s not hiding anything, in more ways than one.

We focus in on Martha’s Vineyard, and watch a lot of overloaded trucks going in and out – high security.

Plans Within Plans

We try and work multiple angles:

• We think about sneaking in a legit request from AJ that somehow has all the BoD’s signatures on it. That should draw her ire and get her calling them to deny AJ’s request.
• We think about setting up a base in a nearby house (or even a submarine) to minimize reaction time
• We see if we can pull some strings and hire some of my SEALs into the target’s security force, just to have folks on the inside. We send in all six of my guys to “interview,” hoping 2-3 get placed. We also try and trace back who’s doing the hiring
• We also look into AJ. Perhaps she’s shooting him down because he deserves to be shot down. Figuring out what it is that makes her say “no” to him so steadfastly

We get three folks placed in the network, with SEAL training in dealing with metas, a solid planted deep background for each, they’re snatched up quickly.

We also find out that AJ end-runs Montemayor by going through the CFO. Most of what AJ is trying to do involves advanced, if high-risk, research. Replicating the VanDoren industries industrial process, smart cars, cybernetics . . . seems like a lot of fairly normal stuff. Maybe that’s all he can get funded without her say-so. Hrm.

We hit on the idea of sending in an undercover agent to chat up the assistant of Director Montemayor trying to figure out her beef with AJ. We research him, and – get this – he apparently has a cupcake fetish. She critically succeeds her influence roll! She winds up in his apartment, and there’s a ridiculously expensive computer right there. She’s going to distract him for five or ten minutes, and Zephyr runs into the apartment, puts a data spider on the computer, and get a quick data dump.

We (meaning Ezekiel) gadgeteers up a gizmo to tap into his computer, and Zephyr gets in and out through a (conveniently) open window.

Wow, that guy has a lot of pictures of cupcakes, and about zero security on that computer. Our undercover agent gets a “call from her mother,” which leaves a disappointed Mr Kelly all alone with no cupcakes of any sort to show for it.

We come across a name in the computer: Andrew Jones (ah, ha! AJ.) He’s a golden boy who’s moving up the ladder really, really fast. He’s the type to rub higher-ups the wrong way as a genuine genius. She’s adept at handling resources and despises the fact that it all comes easy to him. There’s a feeling, as AJ has been working directly with the CEO, that he might be the Wunderkind that gets tapped for the next CEO. He’s freakin’ James T Kirk for being in the right place at the right time, plus Westley Crusher for analytical and intellectual ability. And he loves being in the public spotlight. He also visited the Aegis Tech Expo. And he’s probably also a metahuman.

We start wondering if we have what we need.

• the HR direction has been suspected of human trafficking
• The CFO has signed off on all sorts of evil
• AJ not lily-white. He’s all about the science, and doesn’t care who he hurts.

No real “oh, we can use this power for good rather than evil” candidates here.

We wonder if we can tie both AJ and Montemayor into something that make them both react at the other party. We weave a story about human trafficking experimentation, and make it look like both of their plans are tied up in the same boat. They’ll hate that, we think.

One SEAL with Jones, another with Montemayor, and the third is with David Lesko, the Chief Information Officer. Montemayor was in charge of hiring folks for the use of the BoD. We play on the fact that they think they have a non-governmental (?) agency after them. They’re building manpower up, and looking to take action. Do they care if they make a mistake and “only” take out some competition instead of eliminating the exact threat? For a proactive, violent (evil) group they’ll make the best guess then can about who it is, and destroy them.

We want to kick over that anvil (the province of spies) and then swoop in and interrupt anything bad, as well as finding new leads (the province of superheroes).

We lose contact with one of the SEALs – the guy that was with Lesko. Three or four days go by, and no contact.

And there’s the superhero moment. We end there.