by Tattooedman » Mon Jul 23, 2012 10:10 am
World of Freedom Timeline:
-February 1st, 2007: Project: Freedom, a program created by Harriet Wainwright that allows super-powered criminals to performed work for the Department of Public Works, makes it's public debut. It's members include Donnie 'Curve' Bennis, Henry 'Heavyweight' O‘Hara, Mai 'Quick Kick' Jun, Cliff 'Psynapse' Williams, Max ‘Marathon’ Willaims, and the mage Zalman. The ex-cons intervened in a bank robbery being done by Rant and Rave that was nearby the site they’d originally been assigned to work that day, they managed to stop the sibling criminals following a small altercation, but Rant and Rave managed to escape thanks to the project members inexperience at working together.
-March , 2007: Doctor Metropolis is attacked by Hiroshima Shadow and is helped by members of Project: Freedom to repel the villain, saving many bystanders from the very public event.
-April 1st, 2007: Wildcard goes on a crime spree in competition with fellow criminal the Jester, both men using the theme of the day to influence their crimes. The Raven became involved and managed to stop both men, sending Jester to Providence Asylum while Wildcard was later broken out of jail by members of the Crime League.
-April , 2007: Project: Freedom is brought in to act as bodyguards for a former hireling of Fear-Master who had been arrested and turned informant against the super villain and was making his appearance before the grand jury. Fear-Master managed to activate several pre-set fear inducing devices he’d planted throughout the building. The members of Project: Freedom did manage to protect their charge and capture several other members of Fear-Master’s gang but the Fear-Master himself managed to escape.
-May 30th, 2007: Project: Freedom was tapped by AEGIS to help in dealing with a suspected VIPER cell in Freedom City. The base was hidden beneath a building in the Fens and due to events that have been classified, the base and the building above it were destroyed.
-June 5th, 2007: Talos sends out drones that capture the members of Project: Freedom and replaces them with almost perfect robotic replacements made of proto-matter (similar to what was used during the creation of Argo) in a plan to have the dopplegangers commit crimes for him that won't be tracked back to him, trusting in fact that public opinion will turn against the Project if the identities of the thieves are revealed and if not he has a good set of sleeper agents for future uses. The duplicates perform several robberies before authorities start to suspect the members of Project: Freedom. However the ex-cons manage to escape from Talos' confinement and are able to (publicly) battle against their duplicates and prove their innocence to authorities.
-June 23rd, 2007: The members of Project: Freedom were in the spotlight as they dealt with the events known as the Time of Vengeance. Several things went wrong for them however fighting against the Dark Angel and the rest of the G'Tach; they broke into smaller groups to deal with the separate threats of the various plague avatars and in some cases were hard pressed to win. Several times they missed certain clues as to what was the real cause behind the attacks and there was much property damage as well with almost every fight. During the final showdown between the members of Project: Freedom and the G'Tach, Heavyweight betrayed the team and killed Quick Kick and Marathon himself before being dealt with by Zalman in a permanent manner while Psynapse was left alone against Dam who induced such a powerful seizure in the mentalist’s brain that he is still in a coma to this day. Curve suffered serious injury one of his arms thanks to Arov’s acidic saliva (afterwards it was amputated). In the end however they did manage to stop the Dark Angel but it was thanks to Zalman's use of magic to send her to another realm to fully end her threat. Many of the G’Tach managed to escape in the aftermath of this final showdown as well. As a result of their actions against the G’Tach both Curve and Zalman were given full pardons. Curve makes use of Wainwright’s connections to start up his own security service that takes on any legal customers while Zalman disappears from the public eye.
-May 25th, 2008: Maximus Atom has his first date with Vanessa Hudson.
-June 1st, 1008: Victoria Atom starts he personal blog, “Transformations”. It quickly becomes very popular, and soon begins to have millions of hits within a very short amount of time.
-August 18th, 2008: Dovetail, Abaddon, K-9, Silverstreak, Magnus, La Rana, Livewire and Utu all arrive at the Anders Building to meet with Ethan Keller and finalize his offer for them to band together as a team, to be called FORCE Ops, to protect Freedom City. Sivlerstreak quits the team during the very first mission briefing due to personality conflicts with other members, following his departure the remaining members depart to investigate a section of old underground tunnels thought to be where super-thieves, the Horde, have a hidden base. The group discovers said base but upon entry find that all members of the Horde have been savagely beaten, but upon examining evidence they are able to determine that super-criminals for hire known as the Order of Chaos were the responsible party. FORCE Ops then chases down an obscure line of information that leads them to where the Order of Chaos had hidden themselves and after an intense battle, FORCE Ops emerges the victor and they call AEGIS to pick up the defeated members of the Order
-August 30th, 2008: H4ck is brought in as a replacement member for Silverstreak.
>FORCE Ops is asked by Mayor O'Conner to act as a protective guard for Marko Worth, a semi-well known man with extreme views on civil liberties and a large following of racists that is having a public gathering in Freedom City as part of a country wide tour. The White Knight shows his support of Worth's cause and faces off against the majority of the team and is defeated while H4ck deals with the discovery that Worth is a powerful psionic in his own right and has been using his powers to on those who come to his public gatherings to cause violence and draw media attention to him and his cause. H4ck uses his own impressive mental might to disable Worth's psionic talents but pushes himself too far and his body (which is actually comprised of his own psionic energies) comes undone, forcing the psychic to fracture his mind between his new teammates to survive unbeknownst to them. That action results in each experiencing select parts of H4ck's life in vivid dreams.
-August 31st, 2008: AEGIS agent Ryan Lin is brought in to help determine what had happened to H4ck the previous day. After hearing that all of them suffered from unique dreams the previous night, Agent Lin is able to determine what had happened to H4ck and uses his own psionic abilities to help the younger psychic re-form his body. However despite Agent Lin's efforts, Magnus continues to suffer from the memory/dream affliction.
-September 13th, 2008: Magnus, still suffering from the same reoccurring memory/dream problem brought on by H4ck forcing part of his mental being into Magnus' psyche, takes a medical leave from the team to seek treatment at the Albright Institute.
September 14th, 2008: Warshade joins FORCE Ops.
-September 15th, 2008: Freedom City PD calls upon FORCE Ops to help them locate kidnapped celebrity Christina Spears, a world famous pop star, by the Thieves' Guild. They were able to locate and rescue the singing sensation without too much trouble from the Thieves' Guild, resulting in the arrest of Firebug, the Bolo, and Looking Glass.
-September 21st, 2008: FORCE Ops became involved in a fight between the salvaging villain known as Scrounge and the Power Corps. It seems that Scrounge had discovered the recently stored old armor the Power Corps had just had replaced and was using various parts of it all in own personal crime spree and the Power Corps were not happy about it. FORCE Ops was able to defeat the Power Corps but Scrounge and his men were able to escape capture.
-September 25th, 2008: The Freebooter, in cyber-disguise of an older man, is on the run from the ninja agents of Doctor Sin in Liberty Park. There H4ck and Warshade call for backup and intervene, forcing the ninjas to abandon their efforts to capture their target. The call is made to take the older man, who said his name was Chuck Idle, back to the Anders Building until the group can figure out why the ninjas were after him (which is because Freebooter had stolen information from Doctor Sin's hidden computer network concerning how his money was laundered in the United States). Crimson Katana and Black Lotus were sent with a larger force of ninjas and they invade the Anders Building (disabling the power to the building). Despite their greater numbers Crimson Katana, Black Lotus and their men were defeated and driven out of the Anders Building, but Livewire suffered problems with her powers as a result of pushing herself to deal with Black Lotus (Livewire was taken to the Albright Institute for treatment and relearning how to control her now increased electrical abilities), though Crimson Katana managed to elude capture. Freebooter was eventually revealed as well though he too made a getaway of his own.
-October 2nd, 2008: Victoria Atom electronically publishes her first collection of stories, travelogues and essays about her family’s adventures in various locations across the globe (and sometimes off it). Within a couple of weeks “V-spotting” becomes a popular game for her fans who know (or think) that Ms. Atom might be in their area, perhaps in disguise.
-October 10th, 2008: The Albright Institute is attacked by the Psions (Empath, Jump, Aura, Argent, Ember, and new members Amend, Rampart, and Unani) as Professor Psion wants the research the Albright scientists have managed to gather so far about the effects of Terminus radiation on psychic abilities. During the attack Richard Dunn, Keisha Nelson, Sean O'Toole, Jenna , and Adam Maday all do what they can to prevent injury to the rest of the people present at the Institute and prevent the Psions from getting the personal information on the patients of the Institute. And while they manage to protect the electronic information the physical fight between them could be better summed up as a draw. Langston Albright later meets with all five teens to personally thank them for their actions and to offer them all the chance to be part of a new project he is funding to help gain understanding for children affected by the radiation of the Terminus Invasion that happened in the early 1990s, all five agree to be part of despite some initial misgivings.
-October 13th, 2008: AEGIS calls upon FORCE Ops to help them deal with the growing war between SHADOW and VIPER (which has been going on across the country for several days prior at this point). Together with normal AEGIS agents and their own team of superhumans, the Reserve, FORCE Ops invades one of several VIPER bases (also known as Nests) in Freedom City. FORCE Ops discovers that SHADOW is employing a powerful new superhuman, an alien being who calls itself Martyr, to lead the attacks against VIPER, though it is Agent Alex Venizi who is able to convince Martyr that he has been lied to by Overshadow and the alien joins forces with FORCE Ops to stop both SHADOW and VIPER. A massive fight breaks out between members of VIPER's Dragon Branch and SHADOW's 'super agents' (who have minor super abilities of their own) with FORCE Ops in the middle along with regular agents of VIPER, SHADOW and AEGIS. Once all of the fighting was said and done, all members of Dragon Branch that were present were arrested and just over a hundred members of VIPER and SHADOW as well. Martyr accepts an offer from Ethan Keller to be a part of FORCE Ops until a way to return him to space can be found.
-October 30th, 2008: La Rana returns following her recovery of injuries she suffered on the first mission.
>Dovetail, K-9 and Warshade are sent to AEGIS headquarters to accompany Martyr as he is debriefed concerning his experiences with SHADOW. Star Knight recruits Martyr for service for a mission against his people who had exiled him in the first place.
>La Rana, H4ck, and Argus (who was put in charge) go with Abaddon as he has a 'training session' with Troll of the Sentinels, a team of heroes that operate in New York. Originally it had been intended for only Abaddon to spar against Troll, but after a small discussion all of Abaddon's teammates square off against a quickly put together team of Sentinels. FORCE Ops performs moderately well against the more powerful and experienced Sentinels (though Abaddon does get knocked out could by Troll). During their return back to Freedom City, via the teleportal system the Freedom League shares with the Sentinels, the Assembly downloads it's artificial intelligence into Freedom Hall's computer systems without anyone realizing it. Once both parts of the team have returned to the Anders Building, they are told about a diplomatic mission underway at Atlantis that has been attacked and some of aides are killed, along with several of their AEGIS guards, FORCE Ops is tasked by AEGIS to go in undercover and find out who in Atlantis is responsible and stop them. During a small stop for specialized equipment that Ethan Keller had made by the mage Zalman, La Rana wonders her way into one of the many portals the mage made use of in his place of business and becomes separated from the team and lost. Zalman promises to do everything he can to locate the lost heroine. After arriving in Atlantis, FORCE Ops is almost immediately set upon by those seeking to sabotage the talks and soon begin their own investigation into the matter which revealed members of a rogue faction of Atlanteans, called the Naguar, that push for the undersea city to return to their older ways of living and a more militant stance on their relations with the surface world. Before FORCE Ops was able to locate any members of the Naguar within the castle Sea Devil, the leader of the Naguar attacks Warshade, Argus and H4ck then makes her escape with Princess Thetis as her hostage. Argus makes use of his hidden abilities to follow after Sea Devil and once FORCE Ops locates where the Naguar have hidden the princess, they move to free her and return her to her family. After which FORCE Ops returns back to the surface world only to find someone from the area K-9 patrolled waiting for them.
>Zalman, former member of Project: Freedom, gathers together several lesser known members of the mystical community (Samantha Vega, Aasif and his Golem, Clay Jackson, Angie and Babs Partans, Charles Kilroy, and the guardian angel Anteriael) to form a group that will deal with various mystical threats before they become a real problem. Their first objective is to clear out the site of where a cult in Canada had been dealt with by Zalman’s apprentice, Aurora. All that remained to do was to make sure that none of the cult members had left behind any kind of artifact or trinket that could possibly fall into the wrong hands.
-October 31st, 2008: FORCE Ops returns to the Anders Building to find that people close to K-9’s activities in the Theater District have been taken by something. Ethan Keller brings in two temporary members, Aurora and Vinidicator, to bulk up the team following the loss of Abaddon and Utu due to injuries they suffered while in Atlantis. What they learn is that the creature that has been targeting people of the Fens is a creation of none other than Doctor Shock and that he sent some of his other creations to collect it.
In the ensuing fight FORCE Ops is captured and studied (briefly) by the mad doctor and it is discovered that he is the Ben-e-fac-tor who created K-9, though they manage to break free of the restraints they'd been placed in and following a second fight with beings that either are more experiements of Doctor Shock or are prisoners of his that are being controlled. Eventually the team manages to break out of the hidden labortory in Wharton State Forest where they face off a third time with the loyal creations of Doctor Shock, and after a short fight FORCE Ops manages to keep their freedom but suffer the loss of one of their own; K-9, who is killed by Doctor Shock so that he can escape.
-November 1st, 2008: New members of the Freedom League; Avatar, the Witness, Inductor, Otakumon, Perun, and Sea-King II all arrive at Freedom Hall for their first day as part of the League that is based in Freedom City. During a teamwork exercise being run by the Bowman, the Assembly makes it's presence in the Hall's computer system known by taking over the Wreck Room's weapons systems as well as the combat droid building array and sets some of the deadliest criminals loose upon them. The new League members manage to fight their way free from the Wreck Room to the part of the sub-basement where the combat droids are assembled and fight against the Assembly's latest creations. Before they can finish off these latest threats the Assembly, sensing it's minion's defeat looming, made use of it's new body's ability to teleport (it had constructed a duplicate of the criminal known as X-8) to escape before any member of the League could fully attack it. After everything is said and done, Inductor feels that he needs more experience before venturing out as part of the League and returns to working as a solo hero with reserve status in the League.
-November 2nd, 2008: Curt Mardis and twin sisters Lyn and Liz join the other teens that Langston Albright recruited into his program for children of the Terminus in moving into the new building that the Albright Institute had furnished where they meet the staff (Doctor Leslie Reece, Doctor Spence, and Doctor Halperstein) who has been assigned to watch over them as well as help them deal with the problems their powers currently give them. The three doctors take all of the teens to local restaurant, Champion's, as a way for all of them to get to know one another a bit better seeing as how the majority of them will now be living together as well as working together. During their meal an incident at the nearby Supers Museum catches their attention and all nine of the super powered teens move to find out what the source of the problem is. What they find is a massive colony of what seems to be intelligent insects working on consuming one of the displays that is related to the Terminus Invasion of the 1990s. Through a combination of smart teamwork and cunning planning (done by the collective seat of their pants) the teens manage to figure out that the colony wants nothing more than to feed itself (but it can only eat certain forms of energy) and they also discover that it is as smart as a human. So they broker a deal with it to come to the Institute where the scientists there will help it to feed and make sure that it is safe as well as make sure it was no longer a threat to the public.
-November 4th, 2008: Foreshadow gathers together five strangers - Panda, Pinnacle, Raptor, Stryke and Blindsight, to form a team that would focus most of it's collective attention on the growing mob war (between the Olverti Mob and two newly established mobs) that was happening in the streets of Freedom City. Choosing the Russian mob, known as the Red Shadows, Foreshadow sends the five heroes to various different locations where the Red Shadows operated their gun running with the intent of shutting them down to weaken the newly arrived mob's ability to finance themselves. And despite a few hiccups in it the execution of said plan it was considered a success by all those involved as they managed to either destroy millions worth of dollars of illegal firearms and/or cause the arrests of several dozen members of the Red Shadows.
-November 8th, 2008: The Witness is called out of country for a work assignment (he is a reporter for a local paper) and White Lantern joins the League to replace him. The League is at City Hall, to receive an award from the mayor when giant vines break through the concrete and begin to attack the people who had gathered for the event. Upon further investigation the League discovers that many buildings in the downtown area have become overrun with plant life and the people who worked in the buildings were trapped despite the efforts of the STAR Squad, so the group moved to helped as many as they could and were joined by Joan Arcanum, a French mage in Freedom City to deliver a message to a former teammate, before they were directed towards Liberty Park, which had been transformed into a strange, alien-like jungle. The League made their way through the dense flora only to discover that the Green Man and his Brides were responsible for the plant attacks on Freedom City by use of an item he called the Meta-Seed that he'd inflicted upon Doctor Metropolis and was siphoning the Spirit of the City's energies to boost his own. A long, involved battle followed but the Freedom League managed to overcome the enhanced powers of the Green Man as well as the threat of his Brides and free Doctor Metropolis from the Meta-Seed.
-November 10th, 2008: Hearing that the operations of the 99 Dragons, another new mob moving into Freedom City, had expanded from Emerald City Foreshadow sent Pinnacle there to investigate just how strong their operations were. Meanwhile the Dragons' Freedom City operations were being disrupted by another masked vigilante, which was allowing the Red Shadows to expand their areas of control despite the Knight's efforts against them, Foreshadow dispatches them to find out the identity of this person and try to reason with them to at least coordinate their efforts with the Knight's so that both gangs would suffer equal losses. Soon enough they learn that the newest vigilante is called Caliber and that she doesn’t play nice; blowing up Stryke’s motorcycle with him and Panda on it simply to relay a message to them and then tricking Foreshadow and the rest of his group into dealing with the 99 Dragons and forcing them to fight super powered agents of Doctor Sin (Green Dragon, Jade Phoenix & Black Lotus) who were meeting with the gang. Black Lotus, Green Dragon and Jade Phoenix are defeated, though they make their escape, and Raptor, Stryke and Panda manage to track Mister Hurang down to one of his several safe houses in Freedom City only to find he had been killed for his failures by the Crimson Katana, another agent of Doctor Sin.
-November 15th, 2008: FORCE Ops returns to work following the loss of K-9; Lt. Taylor has requested that they work with the S.T.A.R. Squad in capturing the criminal group known as the Royals, who have been on a crime spree across the country robbing banks. Things take a turn for the worst when the Thieves' Guild show up to rob the Southside Palace as well which turns the entire event into a three-way fight.
-November 16th, 2008: Graham Clark and Melissa Graves joins the rest of the teens living in the Albright house that are part of Langston Albright's children of the Terminus project. After a week of normal classes at Claremont, the Albright kids are introduced to the Doom Room and have their first simulation within it. That evening after returning from school, the teens are offered the chance to go the the Boudrie Opera House and watch a performance of the rock opera Rock Of Ages. Graham, Keisha, Curt, Lyn and Liz, Melissa and Jeanie (Richard Dunn's little sister, who lives at the Institute House) all take up the offer while Sean and Jenna manage to convince Doctor Noah Spence to call in a favor of an old friend and secure them entry to a local art show going on at Liberty Park instead. Richard instead decides to stay at the Institute House and enjoy the peace and quiet of a night spent watching television, and Adam on the other hand never shared his plans for the night and wasn't heard from the rest of that night. After the intermission of the show at the Opera House the musical-themed criminal known as the Piper appears on stage while his men cover the floor and commence to robbing all of the people in attendence. It's through a combination of good luck, determination and strong intestinal fortitude that Graham, Keisha manage to stall Piper long enough so that Melissa and Curt can enact their own seperate efforts to interfere with Piper and his men's efforts. In the end however the Piper manages to get away, along with all of his minions and a decent amount of ill gotten gains.
>Sean and Jenna's enjoyment of the art show is cut short by the appearance of a wildly colored madman, named Paintball, that had managed to rob the artists of the money they'd made so far that night by selling their art. While taking a moment to cause more panic and fear Paintball began a fight with Sean and Jenna which lead to the black clad girl to be laid out helpless by Paintball's odd set of powers which drives Sean to finally take out the crazy-colored criminal.
>Richard on the other hand claims to have been assaulted by 'ninjas' and left hanging from a rope suspended from the ceiling with all of the furniture of the room mirror-placed onto the ceiling.
-November 17th, 2008: Devil Ray manages to gain control over Gigantosaur and has sent the beast on a destructive rampage in Freedom City, demanding a payoff of 100 billion dollars to call off the creature. The new Freedom League responds and manages to repel the creature and after a short fight at the drop site for the money they manage to chase Devil Ray to his latest base on Kiju Island where the League learns how Devil Ray managed to capture not only Gigantosaur but several other giant creatures with the forced help of Doctor Solomon Saturday and his wife, Drew.
>Lyn and Liz suffer some kind of mental breakdown that causes Lyn to think that Liz is some kind of hallucination. Following a high speed chase both girls passed out and were taken to the Albright Institute's main labs for monitoring as the doctors there try to figure out what happened.
-November 19th, 2008: Miku joins the Albright program, quietly moving into the group home.
-November 21st, 2008: The teens of the Albright program find themselves with a night left to their own devices and for the first time nothing really goes wrong.
-November 23rd -25th, 2008: A pair of psychopathic superhumans, David Fraley and Ramona Cortez, have been on a killing spree across the U.S. and recently arrived in Freedom City.
One of them, Ramona Cortez, is able to detect superhumans and she is the one that lures the target into the pair’s trap while the other, David Fraley, is the one that gets his hands dirty, thanks to his superhuman strength and durability. They share a delusion that there is a coming war between all of the superhumans of America and they seek to eliminate their future competition now before the War of Powers begins.
At first the pair targeted select members of the local homeless (there were a few who had minor powers). After that they move on to those who are unconsciously using their minor abilities; a lawyer with enhanced charisma and a dancer who possessed increased dexterity and endurance. Blindsight became aware of the duo after their attacks on the homeless and began tracking them down but she fell victim to a ruse by the two and became their latest victim.
Foreshadow was able to make the connection between all of the victims thanks to Ramona’s belief that she needed the use of a ritual to steal her victim’s powers, which left the bodies covered in various rune-like markings and killed by a specific tool of her choice (a double edged knife with an ivory handle). He then alerted Raptor, Panda and Stryke to Ramona and David’s activities and the group tracked the pair down to a warehouse on the docks the mentally unstable couple was living in.
But once inside it became clear that David and Ramona were ready for anyone who might come looking for them, having created home-made traps and hazards within the warehouse. Between the traps and mind games the pair played Panda and Stryke found their powers severely reduced in potency thanks to Ramona’s ability to nullify superhuman abilities and both ended up captured and taken by David and Ramona to a secondary location they had in case their first was discovered.
Raptor and Foreshadow were able to find this location and save Stryke and Panda before Ramona could perform their ‘last rites’ and following a heated battle where Raptor played on David’s need to follow the ‘rules of the game’ to defeat him while Foreshadow dealt with Ramona as his superhuman senses didn’t directly affect his ability to fight.
In the end both David and Ramona were taken to Providence Asylum as neither was able to stand trial due to their mental deficiencies.
-November 25th, 2008: The normal day at Claremont gets disrupted when the Psions show up looking for newly arrived Moodswing, a psychic whose body houses seven other psionic personalities.
-November 27th, 2008: Sea-King, Otakumon and Avatar bring in new members Harlequin, Sally Salvage and Stars Fire to boost their ranks after the depature of Perun, White Lantern and Joan Arcanum. They're contacted by members of Freedom's Hall staff that the Lighthouse has went offline for over two hours and they are sent to investigate, but what they find instead of signs of a massive battle is that everyone who was on the space station has been turned into an eight-year old version of themselves. In the collective cases of the senior members of the Freedom League still possess their powers at their adult levels.
-December 7th, 2008: The criminal Cortex started experimenting with the street drug Zoom, getting pregnant women addicted to it so he can learn how they’re bodies would react to the drug as well as the effects it might have on their unborn children from being exposed to Zoom so early in their physical development.
What ended up happening is all four of the women develop hyper metabolisms and as a result have their children be born premature. The stress of child birth combined with the effects of Zoom on their bodies ends up killing the mothers, while the children quickly begin to show signs of that they are physically maturing at a highly advanced rate, looking like young twenty-somethings after only three months. The kids even developed minor speed powers of their own like most Zoom addicts but their powers are permanent but with their minds being so underdeveloped, they’re barely equal to a 3 year old mentally, they are a threat to those around them.
Another problem is the kids metabolisms need a higher than normal intake of proteins in their diet, somewhere around almost 4 times the usual amounts, and Cortex learned quickly that the kids would eat any kind of meat to get the proteins they craved, even going as far as to eat other people.
Seeing a chance to cause more chaos and test these unique beings, Cortex released the kids into the city to see how they’d react to the new environment and how their altered metabolisms would adapt to life ‘in the wild‘. What happened was that the kids started operating like a pack of animals, stalking people and eating them like lions in the wild.
The sudden rash of cannibalistic killings drew in Foreshadow and his allies, Panda, Raptor and Stryke. After examining the bodies left behind as well as the areas where the attacks happened the group is attacked by the Zoom Babies and are just barely able to fight them off, though they do manage to capture one of them that is left behind. After tending to their injuries and regrouping the four heroes are able to use clue from the Zoom Baby’s clothing to determine where the others might be hiding at when not out hunting.
After combing the area the group, thanks to Stryke, is able to track the Zoom Baby’s back to their ‘den’ where they are confronted by Cortex and a stable of his own chemically altered minions. It then devolves into a massive brawl between the four heroes, Cortex and his men and the Zoom Babys. During the fight Zoom Babys begin to become weaker as their accelerated metabolisms work against them which allows the group to defeat them but Cortex manages to escape.
Realizing that the altered children can’t be held accountable for their actions but are too dangerous to be left alone Foreshadow reaches out to ASTRO Labs to take charge of the Zoom Babys as they attempt to help them by reversing the effects of their abilities on their bodies as doctors from the Albright Institute and Providence Asylum are brought in to treat their minds.
-December 15th -18th, 2008: A new lottery craze called Black Cat Fever has hit Freedom City. People are winning millions only to show up dead a few days later. Red Death is behind the lottery, believing the lure of money will draw the wicked to her so she can murder them before they can use their newfound wealth for evil. The group must uncover the mystery and stop Red Death before she kills again.
Not all of those who win Black Cat are killed; only those that have spent their winnings wastefully (fancy cars, extravagant houses, out there jewellery, and so on). Those are the ones that are hunted down by Red Death. Those that use the money well (helping family & friends, giving to charities) are left alone (there’s only been one or two).
Foreshadow sets up a sting to catch the apparent killer, he suspects who is responsible but has no hard proof, having Stryke purchase several tickets (and thanks to Foreshadow’s ability to see the future one of them is a winner).
After going on a massive spending spree undercover Stryke is confronted by Red Death who attempts to kill him. Following an intense, hit-and-run styled fight that goes from one end of the mansion used for the sting to the other. Red Death is finally captured and turned over to Providence Asylum for care given her mental instability.
-December 21st – 24th, 2008: Stryke, Raptor and Panda all find themselves hunted by Coda, Reflex and Orion the Hunter. After a series of attacks, eventually the hero-hunters decide to switch up targets which leads to their learning of the other two hunters targeting the same people they are after. This kicks off a kind of gorilla war in the streets of Freedom City as the three mercenaries realize that they have competition for their targets and the group, along with Foreshadow, are forced into trying to hunt down the hunters now to prevent further injuries to the public as all three men could care less about the collateral damages they are causing in their fights with one another.
The group is able to learn that Reflex, Coda and Orion the Hunter were each hired by the Red Shadows to get rid of the group for interfering in the Red Shadows’ attempts to establish themselves in the underworld of Freedom City.
Foreshadow then hunts down Reflex alone and following an intense fight, takes his identity then together with Raptor, Stryke and Panda manages to spring a trap on Orion and Coda, though both men manage to escape they both promise to make Sergei Romanov pay for deceiving them.
-January 2nd-7th, 2009: New versions of Zoom & Max have been hitting the streets and they are deadlier variants that have double the mortality rate of the usual versions. With some looking into the new drugs and who is making it will reveal a new drug cartel.
A few days later after the first deaths come reports that Neanderthal-like beings are appearing all around the city. Most of them have died, mostly due to the strain their bodies undergo in the transformation & resulting rampages they go on that called for the response by the S.T.A.R. Squad (who was forced to use lethal force to end the threat to public safety).
What’s happening is that Cortex is using a low-level drug dealer as a puppet for dealing with people & has been establishing a client base. Now secure, he’s started to add a drug of his own creation, that he calls NdT, to his versions of Zoom & Max. Cortex plans on creating enough of his NdT mutates to cause a city-wide panic while his agents dump a more powerful version of NdT into Freedom City’s water supply. Thus exposing every man, woman & child to it & giving the Cortex a small army under his control for his plans to destroy humanity.
When Foreshadow alerts the group to this new problem they quickly realize that Cortex is involved and manage to track him down to his new lab but to their surprise they find VIPER agents there as well. It seems that VIPER has hired Cortex to develop a new kind of drug to increase the psionics potential of a person for their latest project, creating a psionically based hive mind that they want to use to control various heads of local government to unknowingly work for VIPER.
Following a short fight, where again Cortex manages to escape, the group is able to find where VIPER has set up they’re newest base in Freedom City only to discover that Stryke’s missing fiancée, Julia, is among the captured psychics. A plan is made to free everyone but Julia’s powers react to the drug VIPER scientists inject her with; she drains the minds of several of her captors before releasing the other captured psychics, who are all hyper aggressive towards VIPER and start to attack them. This combined with the efforts of the group leads to a break out of prisoners VIPER has taken over the course of several weeks and in the confusion Stryke is captured by VIPER and the others don’t realize it until after they regroup at the brownstone hours later.
Returning to VIPER’s base, the group finds that it has been sanitized and there is no sign of Stryke or Julia, as well as any clues as to where he’s been taken or gone. Foreshadow, feeling responsible for the loss of Stryke and what happened to Blindsight, disbands the remaining members of the group and returns to his loner ways.
- January 5th, 2009: After seeing a television interview featuring Keisha Nelson of the Albright Project, Foxbat and his crew decide to cheer up as many of those poor, infected T-Cell kids as they can and what sick kid doesn’t like ice cream? That’s right, Foxbat and company stole a corner vendor’s ice cream cart and simply walked into the Albright Institute’s main building where they proceeded to pass out the stolen frosty treats under the watchful eyes of the members of the Albright Project. Despite Foxbat’s reputation he and his crew are on their best behaviour, unfortunately Mister Mist isn’t as accommodating as he breaks into the labs looking for a device that’s been developed to help a T-Cell victim, who has powers similar to the criminals as well as the same cohesion issues as Mister Mist. A short fight ensues between Mister Mist and the Albright kids until Bugsy, the evolved colony of insects the Albright kids had helped a few months earlier sees them in trouble and decides to lend a hand.
Last edited by
Tattooedman on Tue Feb 05, 2013 9:41 pm, edited 9 times in total.
