December 16, 2006

This was a strange episode featuring Onyx prominently and strangely lacking Durga...

At the beginning of the game, Freedom Watch had just arrived back at the school and had begun to help out when Onyx began to act strangely. After yelling at them all to shut up, she suddenly disappeared, leaving behind her suit and commlink.

• Teleporting, teleporting, teleporting... Onyx vaulted from location to location uncontrollably, hearing voices in her head that she could not block out, nauseous and scared and afraid that she was going crazy. And naked!

• Finally, she teleported into a brilliantly lit white tea room. There she met a woman dressed in Victorian garb, who served her tea and cakes and told her that Onyx had removed herself from the time-space continuum. After a brief conversation, she returned her to the continuum.
• Onyx reappeared on a remote island, still nude. on the island, she met a strange, withered aboriginal man who spoke only in his native tongue and appeared unable to understand her. After some understandable miscommunication, he got her to follow him, and then made a strange drink that allowed them to talk. The old man sent Onyx on a strange walk that might have been a vision quest.
  
• Along the way, she met a dung beetle/scarab, which joined her, but if it bore any relevance to what was going on, I dunno what it was. These metaphors...
  
• Eventually she came to some water with an island on it, went into the water, failed to drown, and found a pearl inside a clam in a small cave at the bottom of the lake. On the way back up, she met an eel. He was sort of mean and got mad when she suggested stuff like that she could take him to see the world and that he was some kind of metaphor.
  
• When she got onto the island, she met the lizard that was sitting there. At its request, she used her powers to move a cloud so that it could get more sun. The lizard, unsurprisingly, liked sunning itself.
  
• Before the vision quest ended, she saw an image of herself as an older, still naked woman, surrounded by floating tech.

Back in the real world, the other members of Freedom Watch finished rescuing the students from the school.

• BlueJay used her healing powers to help the injured children.

• Brian, Marlene, Durga and the school faculty moved debris to save those who were trapped and unconscious, including Jules, using Envoy's ability to sense superpowers to locate those who were missing.
• Marlene found a tube of lipstick that Wallflower had left behind, and a security tape that showed her and Boytoy causing havoc at the school.
• Envoy took charge of the crisis, telling the Professor that he should move the children to Volcano Island and use his mental powers to convince their parents that the children were studying abroad. While Prof. X made preparations, Marlena contacted Marlene Online and began to make arrangements.
• Marlene also contacted Doc Tomorrow about the missing Onyx. He was able to locate her on a remote island once she re-entered the time-space continuum. Brian and BlueJay immediately took off on a ten-hour flight to reach her.
• Marlene had to overcome Professor Xenon's security system in order to reboot the system and resecure it and bring the systems online. It was, um, difficult to overcome...
• Nikolai and Prof. X had words about the fact that Xenon was still withholding information from the team, and that now that our enemies had that information, he might as well tell us.

Ten hours later, Tensile and BlueJay found Onyx.

• Onyx appeared to have had an extremely sudden growth spurt, as her costume did not fit her properly.
  
• The old man told them they should help a nearby village with its water problem.
  
• They were able to deduce some long-term, low-tech solutions for the village's drought, and in the meantime flew to a nearby city and retrieved a large stock of bottled water to help the villagers in the meantime.
  
• Onyx, feeling much more herself - well, somewhat, anyway - teleported them all back to the base.

Professor Xenon was able to help Onyx through her confusion by confirming that she was experiencing the manifestation of latent psychic powers. After making sure she was okay, they put her back to work.

• Onyx teleported the children and faculty to Volcano Island.
  
• Nikolai bullied some of the troublemakers by showing them how cold it was outside the island.
  
• Marlene and Marlene online made sure that there would be sufficient housing and food for the island's considerable new population.
  
• The parents were informed that they would have guests, the consensus among the team being that, having faked their own deaths without informing their children, the parents had forfeited the right to complain about these sorts of things.
  
• Next-Gen were a little demoralized that we not only had a base, but an island.
  
• Doc Tomorrow told Onyx that the woman she met was probably a Guardian of Time, and probably not human despite her appearance.

Once the children were safe, Professor Xenon finally had a debriefing meeting and came clean with the rest of his information to Freedom Watch and Next-Gen.

• Xenon had a network of operatives who were now in danger from Chernobyl. The four hubs were in New York, Hawaii, New Mexico and Chicago. The teams split up duties to check in with each hub and warn them that their covers were blown - Next-Gen to Chicago, Freedom Watch to Hawaii, and Envoy alone to New Mexico, as stealth and undetectability was key, since it was so close to Arizona.
  
• Xenon discussed other recent intel on Chernobyl's super-villain recruits.
  
  • Charlotta.
    
  • Kill-o-watt.
    
  • Wallflower and Boytoy.
    
  • Tommy One-Suit.
    
  • Asphalt, a known supervillain with warrants out for his arrest, a string of outstanding felony charges with superstrength. (This guy also showed up in Tensile's tentacle-induced vision.)
    
  • Unknown woman, wasp-waisted.
    
  • Doc Otaku (may not be strong alliance).

• He also discussed potential human pawns of Penumbra.
  
  • General Misha Borodin, from Russia.
    
  • General Striker, the Air Force military who is Captain Thunder's handler.
    
  • Speaker of the House Senator Andrew Forbes.

The teams split up to check on Xenon's agents.

• Hawaii checked out okay.
  
• Chicago took longer than expected. Cassandra and Nereid stayed behind to finish checking on everyone.
  
• New Mexico was missing a member, the Molecular Man, who had disappeared while investigating strange activity on the border between Arizona and Mexico.
  
  • Nikolai checked it out, and saw armed agents in full suits conducting sweeps of everyone who went in. He was able to detect the presence of super-technology, most likely intended to detect the presence of superpowers.
    
  • He found the Molecular Man's abandoned car, and near it a trench coat and a notebook. The first few pages of the notebook had been torn out, but he did uncover the imprint of a partial telephone number.
  Finally, after what felt like months, we went to the Liberty League's space platform to meet with the other superheroes.
  
  • This was more in the form of a mini-convention. It ROCKED, and we were awesome.
    
  • Freedom Watch was much more on top of Odessa and the Hollow Earth Project that we realized. Most of our information was new to many of the superheroes we met.
    
  • Onyx felt sort of uncomfortable with kids around in the Liberty League base when she was essentially wearing a latex outfit.
    
  • Lots of heroes talked and it was cool.
    
  • Envoy proved that he isn't always a dick, utilizing everything he learned as an ambassador's son to make connections and gather information.
    
  • Johnny Rocket inadvertently upset Brian when he talked in front of Tensile about how surprised he was that Brian Tufala never became a hero, especially after the death of his parents.
    
  • BlueJay and Union Jack reminisced about their grandparents.
    
  • Captain Thunder is sort of a dick. He and the current Lady Liberty might have a thing going, god only knows why. BlueJay read his lips when he told LL that she would "have to choose a side someday," between her Russian ethnicity and her American nationality.
    
  • Lady Liberty is still a little nervous at these gatherings. Envoy let her know that he had visited her mother a while back, and put her at ease.
    
  • Steel Violet's friend Raidin showed up, and made friends with Warlock, glad that there was another native Japanese man present.
    
  • Tensile and Envoy met the Femme Fatales from Los Angeles - Damselfly, Ms. Medusa, and Kitty Kitty Bang Bang - and Tensile left with Ms. Medusa's phone number and an invitation to come visit.
    
  • BlueJay got hit on by Behemoth, a huge purple superhero who works with the Liberty League and got his powers by being hit by a radioactive truck.
    
  • The tour of the Hollow Earth base in Hawaii and the strange underground dimension were smashing successes.

  Other Stuff

  • Marlene and Onyx networked with other genius geeks

  • Add additional stuff here

  Just as the tour was wrapping up, word came that Nereid and Cassandra were missing!