It has been a couple weeks since the party celebrating the defeat of Hamidon. There were still the usual crooks stealing, kidnapping, and concocting evil schemes, of course, but the heroes of Paragon City were just as tireless as the villains.

However, while fighting some mooks, a member of the Redemption Supergroup found a clue in one of their many missions; a letter from a high-ranking government official of Paragon City to Emil Marcone, the man currently in charge of the Marcone Family (aka the faction called "the family").

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This chapter is meant to be fewer characters directly involved. So basically, Chris: choose a character to have found the letter and that will be the character who finds a few SG members to recruit for this mission. Why Chris? Because he's going to work soon, so may as well give him something to post at work.

It was Kitau who found the note, but she passes it on to Raymond to follow up on without giving a reason for why.  Raymond shrugs and lets the others know over the SG channel.

"Anyone interested in coming with me, meet me at the base entrance."

He heads in himself.

"Better yet, meet me at the salvage racks."

He gets to work cramming valuable salvage into the storage racks.

  Impressive Guy makes his way down eventually.  Current thoughts, where do those clones/alternate dimension versions of himself keep getting shuriken? Seriously.

  "Hello Raymond, hard at work stress testing the shelving as usual I see.  What's this I hear about smashing Family members?...  That came out wrong."

An arcane circle appears next to Raymond's feet and Emerald appears from top down, eventually materializing, standing on the circle before it disappears. A sound like TRON rezzing accompanies the new, fancy teleport power. She smiles and waves at Raymond and Impressive Guy. "Hi guys. You called?"

 "Hello Emerald, always lovely to see you up and about." There is going to be a lot of smashing (damage) in the Family's future.

Raymond nodded to IG's comment earlier.  He stares and blinks in surprise at Emerald's special effects.

"Neat spell effects, Emmy."

He shows the letter to the other two.

"That's all I have to go on at the moment.  We'll likely have to do some violent investigating to get more clues."

"Thanks, guys.." Emerald says with a bashful, but playful grin. She takes a look at the letter and says, "The family... First place that comes to mind is Independence Port. We'll go and self-defense the family into submission, since it goes without saying they'll fire at us unprovoked. Then we can interrogate them. It's a place to start, at least."

  "Passive Aggression, one of the most useful tools in crime fighting."  Uh, what.

  "The sooner we can leave, the sooner we can get shot at."  Do you listen to yourself?

"You're welcome," Raymond answers, "Port Oaks is the first place that came to my mind.  I suppose it's telling of how much time I spend on the Rogue Isles.  I.P.'s a better plan.  Much easier to get to.  Thanks again for the help, you two."

He heads over to the I.P. teleport pad.

Once the group are in I.P., Emerald gets to flying towards the Family area. Emerald says, "Port Oaks, eh? Yeah, that's a bit of a trek from here, Raymond. But for what it's worth, it was the first place to come to my mind also. Guess they swarm there more often. Either way, the official is from Paragon, so the closer to home we fight the Family, the more likely we'll find the connection. I'm hoping."

Of course, once the group gets to the area where Family lurk, they see Emerald and don't open fire. Emmy forgot that grey-con enemies are smarter than to pick a fight with someone that much higher security level. That and two of the heroes are friggin' INCARNATES. "Hmm... not attacking us."

In the game, it's easy enough to just kick the butt of nameless NPCs who were technically not doing anything wrong. But in IC...? Might be a different story.

  "Don't worry, I have an idea."  Impressive Guy says, as he calls up an acquaintance.

  MEANWHILE, AT THE HALL OF JUSTICE POCKET D

  Briefs Boxer, Pink speedo pugilist is on break from his shift dancing in the cages.  He checks his PMs, invites Impressive Guy, resulting in a party security clearance of 1.

  MEANWHILE, WITH OUR HEROES

  Impressive Guy is now totally under leveled for the area, attracting the attention of mobs (of mobsters). "Get him!"  "Haha, see! My plan worked-owowowowowowow."

Raymond chuckled at Emerald's comment.  "'Swarm...'"

When the mobsters failed to attack, Raymond folded his arms.

"Looks like we'll have to use more tradi..."

He stops when the goons attack.

"Never mind."

ZAP!  Raymond uses judgement bolt on the lot of them!  He then uses his hand held revive machine on Impressive Guy.

"Clever plan.  Gutsy and effective."

He gets to restraining and questioning the baddies.

Emerald gets to comforting IG. She of course, is not so nice to the criminals who beat up IG.

Most of the guys have no idea what the trio are asking about, but one guy insists such while being a bad liar about it. Doesn't take much to spill, especially since he goes on about how "you'll never get me to snitch!"

Within minutes, the trio of tights managed to get from him that there is a secret Family base in one of Atlas Park's warehouses, and the guy who was supposed to get the letter should be there.

A quick send-to-jail technology later and Emerald looks at her allies. "Atlas Park... figures the current leader of the Family would be holed up right under our noses. Maybe he's taking a vacation from the Rogue Isles? Can't say as I blame him... that place is depressing."

Meanwhile, the camera pans to Emil in the secret base grumbling, "Ug... I have to hole up in this pajama party Atlas Park! This place is too bright and shiny. I miss the grunge of the Rogue Isles."

  "Perhaps he feels false security in the fact most heroes that could easily smash his face would pass right over it on the way to the auction house or latest costume contest."

  Meanwhile, at Wentworth's.  Captain Original Character Do Not Steal incarnate teleports several dozen of his guildmates into the auction house.

"Impressive interrogation," Raymond comments, "I'm not used to making progress quite this fast."

He hmms at IG's speculation.  "Possibly.  Then maybe we should take a subtle approach.  Surveillance, wire tapping, and the like.  He'll be less likely to let something important slip if he gets a visit from a bunch of heroes.  Until we have more to go on there's no telling what he's plotting.  So we don't want him on guard and tight lipped."

Emerald says, "Not exactly a false sense of security if they really do get passed over." then strokes her chin at what Raymond says. "So used to beating up the bad guys and calling it a day. Yeah. Let's tell the police and get some wire tapping going."

  "I suppose if only so we can yell wroooooong at him when he inevitably says we have nothing on him."  Look, spite and pettiness can be great motivators for proper heroics and crime solving okay?

Raymond nods to Emmy and smirks at I.G.'s remark.  "I do enjoy having ammo for come-backs, yes.  Not terribly confident in going to the cops with considering the nature of the letter.  Don't want to tip off any moles within the department.  We could check within the guild to see if there's any techies available to do the tapping for us."

Emerald says, "Then let's check in with HQ."

When the group checks for a techie, Eli responds. "I'll get on that. Gimme 48 hours or less, and I'll have 'em fully tapped for you."

Emerald looks at Raymond and IG. "Well... while that's being dealt with, whatchya guys wanna do?"

 

  "Oh, you know.  Just normal stuff."  Then his player realizes she asked what he WANTED to do, not what he HAS been doing.

  "Something aside from inventory sorting or auction scrounging, at least."
This message was last edited by the GM at 09:40, Sat 16 Aug 2014.