AEON B2-Team: Season 8, Session 5 – Return in the Dark

Dramatis Personae

  • Amar Gupta aka The Iron Sikh  (played by Christian): Brick. Taxi Driver. Ass-Kicker. Sikh. Tagline: “Being a man of faith means to live it.”
  • Amie-Belle T. W. Lee aka Whisper (Played by Curtis): Cold War era super-soldier/spy that got put in the Freezer, because she got poisoned. After getting thawed out and cured she tried to back to work, and was given an “adjustment period”. Uncle Sam called 2 years later, with work… because once you’re in, you’re in for life. Tagline: “In and out without a whisper.”
  • Beauregard K. “Bo” Ratnam aka Wirerat (Played by Brice): Technopath, inventor, and hacker. He specializes in co-opting enemy systems and tech assets. Tagline: “Nice tech – I’ll borrow that.”
  • Rafe Hanlon aka Nyx (played by Chris D.): An umbrakinetic petty thief still on work release several years later, on his way to becoming a true agent and hero. Tagline: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
  • Vincenzo L. dePrezzo aka Threshold (Played by Rory): Doctor, Mathematician, and Scientist (yes, capitals) and Spatial Manipulator. Threshold can bend space like a pretzel, teleport, obliterate things, and has extraordinary senses. He’d rather be in a research lab than fight. Better known for his work with Doctors Without Borders, the United Nations, and disaster relief than famous battles. Tagline: “I can be there in a snap!”
  • Derrick K. Ratnam aka Legerdemain (NPC Ally): Spin doctor and media liaison for Project VANGUARD. Twin to Bo. Tagline: “Well, actually that’s not how it happened…”
  • Layla A. de Blackburn aka Nox (NPC): CIA-trained child assassin all grown up to be Daddy’s Little Monster. Maybe a little mad. Argues with her shadow often. Tagline: “No, we shouldn’t do that…should we?”
  • Stainless Steel Rat aka “Sir” (NPC Ally): Bo’s best friend and assistant. A sentient drone in the shape of a stylized shiny metal rat mindlinked to Bo. Specialties are rapid repair construction and modifications. Imagine if K-9 and R2D2 made a baby and it looks a bit like a rodent. Tagline: “Repairs and upgrades in progress.”

Previously . . .

Nox is still in the new pillow fort, slowly pulling in Nyx while Wirerat works at his lab. He’s pretty sure that he’s identified the wavelength of light that Glowworm is using and is able to reproduce it on a massive level by making a filter that can fit over existing lights. He’s still worried about Legerdemain being out there on the streets, though the brotherly love and insults are still flying around.

Threshold has still been working around the hospital, keeping busy while stuck in the middle of triaging everyone. He’s informed that they’re running out of a lot of medical supplies. He heads out to find several emergency supply depots that he’s able to get supplies from, the Red Cross, WHO, Doctors Without Borders. He manages to get a number of supplies from a Red Cross depot in Italy. He’s pulled off of doctor duties and instead put on administrative requisitions.

Nyx is sitting in the blanket fort where Nox is being quite clingy, just holding onto Nyx and asking for stories which Nyx spices up with manipulating darkness into a show.

Fortified in the Dark

Nyx and Wirerat
Old FDNY Engine 299/Ladder 152 Building aka New Base
Saturday, May 9th, 2020, 0000 hours (EST) 
61-20 Utopia Pkwy, Fresh Meadows, NY 11365

About four hours later, there’s a knock on the door. There’s a shadowy presence there, intentionally ignoring the cameras set up, wearing a peacoat with the collar turned up. Wirerat is rather annoyed at the situation and glares at the blanket fort for a moment, telling SSR to back him up along with Prodigy, asking her to back him up with the nulling. She’s already surprised to see Wirerat out of the basement. When he opens the door, he finds Lynch standing there, walking past him and commenting that Wirerat is moving up in the world. Wirerat’s paranoia isn’t able to detect any kind of tech implanted in him, though it appears that he’s got a burner phone and a pistol on him with several reloads and a silencer.

Wirerat isn’t too happy to see him, saying that it’d probably been a shitty day when he saw him next. Lynch asks for Prodigy to drop the gun and she refuses until Wirerat tells her that it’s fine. Stepping into the light to reveal himself, she gasps. Apparently, he’s someone that she knows personally as well. Lynch tells them that he needs to speak with Nyx. Wirerat directs him down to the basement lab while Lynch talks about his current loyalties, that he’s not with the CIA anymore, but a different organization. That sometimes citizens must bleed so the republic stays clean, it was just Wirerat’s turn that time. They’re able to agree that there’s currently more urgent concerns than them killing each other at least as Wirerat escorts Lynch downstairs.

Lynch shows up in the lab, saying that he can’t see them but he knows they’re there. Wirerat tells him that it’ll take him about half a minute to shut down the security systems, inflating the time required by at least half a minute. Lynch asks where Threshold is at, whereupon he’s told that he’s wherever the mass casualties are. Lynch calls him a good person, unlike himself and Wirerat. He’s quite interested in the flashlights that Wirerat is building though, is told that it was a copy of what a light super is doing over at the hospital that Threshold is at.

Lynch asks where Nyx is, only to hear from somewhere in the room to pay no attention to the darkness manipulator behind the blanket. Prodigy is more interested in knowing what’s going on though, especially when he mentions that he’d recruited Prodigy father for something and he’s in a bad place now, quick amending it to a bad place but still alive when she starts warming up her gun tech. He says that August found what he needed but that he wasn’t able to get the files from August. He explains there was some kind of infiltration in Riker’s, at least three years back, possibly five and that the prior breakout was a dry run for the current one. That there’s a reality manipulator that was imprisoned far below Riker’s Island, someone that’s so powerful that it wasn’t meant to be released, that just cannot be killed unless they want to be killed. And they’re five years old.

He explains that he doesn’t want to tell them who he’s working with, though he’s allowed to. They can get into NYC, but they can’t get out. He starts telling them about Erebus, about how powerful he is. They aren’t sure how he’s in the US, that the last time they used something on him that should have given him a brain aneurysm the moment he stepped foot inside the country. Nyx just asks what made them think that Erebus was actually there, pointing out that Nox’s shadow seemed to be working independently as it, slightly creepily, stroked Nyx’s face. Lynch says that’s what they’re thinking is going on while Wirerat sends coded messages to Threshold saying that dinner is ready and dinner guests are waiting.

Aftermath

At the hospital, Threshold gets to witness The Milk coming in claiming that he’s invincible and sets to start helping the doctors. As Threshold pulls out more supplies, Medevac warns him not to go through the portals. The teleporters are starting to have trouble and the last time someone tried to get out of the city that way, they came back with their entire body lacerated. It’s easy for them to get things in, but not so much out. The groups are still working on their home turfs and still in crisis mode where they’re trying to get to the point where they’re going from reactive to active.

There’s discussion on how much that MAPs HQ is actually doing to deal with the situation where Medevac isn’t too thrilled with how Threshold is dealing with the situation, or his complaints about the lack of going forwards. She tells him that now he’s going to have to either put up or shut up as she’s going to drag him to HQ.

After Action Report (GM)

Bit of a slow burn session this time. But Lynch is back! Welcome back you annoying ass amoral bastard. Seriously. No one likes Lynch…but everyone recognizes his worth. I’m just starting to peek around the corner with regards to something I set up going on half a decade ago. The High Command. In game at the end of 2016 AEGIS and allies vanished when the MEA was set up. But that didn’t stop them. Now they are deep cover, black black illegal ops – doing what they did before but in the shadows. When they recruited Lynch he knew exactly who he needed to turn to and try and recruit: his old VANGUARD team. We’ll see what happens.

(Am loving the humanizing effect that Erebus is having on Nox vis-a-vis the rest of the players.)

Other Notes

Bonus Report from Rory.

Soundtrack

“Alone in the Dark” by John Hiatt
“I Know I’m a Wolf” by Young Heretics

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