"Look at the monitor."  From wherever he was on the site, Binary fed the security camera from the hallway back to the monitor on the wall near Dragón's room.  There was the shimmer as his attacker unveiled and attacked, and then most of the fight could be made out as the camera automatically repositioned itself to track the action.  Dragón tagged the attacker with his own needler, then boosted.  Then knocked him through the wall.  Then when the man attempted to retaliate, Dragón knocked him back down hard enough to splatter the ceiling with blood.

Without warning, Dragón froze mid-attack.  There was no obvious reason, no attack.  He relaxed, said something to the crippled attacker, then both were gone.  "You're gone from all scans there.  And you were gone for two hours."  The rest of the feed played in fast forward for him.  Security searched for him, started collecting evidence from the room, marked the whole hallway off with tape.  A few team members arrived, then moved out to canvas the surrounding area.  Then, without warning, Dragón just reappeared on the floor.

Dragón felt worn out, but uninjured.  He also felt like he needed to sleep.  A sedative perhaps?  Or a nova power similar to a sedative?  It was wearing off, his nova physiology driving it away with some speed.  Various medical personnel were just now arriving to poke and prod him to be sure he was alright.

Try as he might, though, Dragón could not remember the last two hours.

El Dragón closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall.  His whole life had been built on control.  Control chi, control pain, control fear, control the racing thoughts that had plagued him since his adolescence.  Now it appeared that for two hours someone else had taken control.

"Binary," he said, "you still with me?  I want to find out a few things and you're the man for the job.  I want to know what I said to him..."

Someone had taken control of his mind and body without apparent struggle and then disappeared with him...where?

"Also," he said, swallowing hard, "try to figure out what that was on his wrist.  If he was communicating electronically with someone at any point, SigInt should have picked it up.  See what you can do to help those folks work their magic."

Ai caramba! why couldn't he remember?  He was searching every corner of his mind for some clue.

To the medics who were clustered around him, he said, "Take a blood sample," his eyes were becoming a bit unfocused, "test for...for..."  He struggled to hold his ideas together in the growing noise inside his head.  "...for drugs like Versed...because...because...I CAN'T REMEMBER!"

His heart was pounding and his breathing was growing more rapid.  If someone had taken control of him, he could be a danger to his team and not even realize it.  The faces of Flare, Johnny, and Binary flashed by in his mind and he thought of the betrayal.  And what about his family?  A hard knot formed in his gut.  He was headed for a panic attack such as he had not had since his childhood...

...and strangely, it was that thought that saved him.  Out of some of his strongest memories a pair of hands grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him, and a woman's voice shouted, "Angelo!  Mirame!  Angelo!"  Her voice cut through the fog and in his mind's eye, he saw his Tia Carmen, her steady eyes focused on his, drawing him out of his racing thoughts by giving him something stable and still to concentrate on.

"Show me 24 Steps," she ordered.  "Get up!  Show me 24 Steps!"

Dragón pushed himself up, sliding his back up the wall until he was standing.  "Clear me a space," he said.  "I'll lie down on the gurney in a minute, clear... me... a... space."

He turned fiercely on the medic who was trying to creep up on his right side.  "You try and hit me with that sedative, corpsman, and I'll break your frickin' arm! I don't need to be tranqued, I NEED A CLEAR SPACE!"

"Don't make me have to clear it myself," he growled.

"Listen to him!  Clear a space!"

The medical staff backed off.  The security guards made sure to push them even further back.  Binary said something else to him through the wall speakers, but Angelo missed it.

The memory played out.  El Dragón's node ached, reacting to his panic.  Control.  Discipline.  Precision.  The sensation faded, and he became fiercely aware of his world and himself.

He still could not remember what had happened precisely.  But he recalled a ... noise in his nerves.  Someone else had used his arms and his legs, hastily and roughly, in a sort of possession.  They had not had time to do things carefully or learn how he moved, so they forced it.  And he had resisted to the limits of his power.  There was a gray haze, an electron fog that filled the two missing hours.  He had only the aches and pains of that possession to tell him what had transpired.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:05, Sat 30 June 2012.

The familiar and long-practiced flow of the Beijing 24 Steps brought his chi back into alignment, allowing chi energy and quantum to flow through him.

Clear everything away.  Tear everything down until all that remains is breathing in and breathing out.  Throw out all thoughts, think of nothing, just breathe in, and breathe out.  Wait for the universe to whisper its secrets to you.  Somewhere in his mind, there were memories...maybe just snippets and glimpses...of where he had been and what he had done.  He was blocked from actively recalling anything, but the memories were there, he just had to clear his mind and wait for something to bubble up that would offer him a clue.

After a minute or two, one niggling thought bubbled up.  "Were you saying something, Binary?"

"You alright?  I ordered everyone out of the building.  If you've got everything together, I'll tell them to come back in."  There was an uncomfortable pause.  "You got a little weird there."

El Dragón took another long, slow, calming breath before he replied.  "I think I have a handle on it," he said in a placid voice.  "Thanks Binary."  Another breath.  "I think it may have been a sort of 'side-effect' of the mind control.  I started getting anxiety attacks when I was a teenager, but I had learned to control it with Tai Chi and meditation.  I came close to having a doozy just now, but I have fended it off.

After another couple of breaths, he said, "Go ahead and call the guys back in so I can apologize and then we can get me over to the infirmary."

There were questions, but not too many.  None of the baseline personnel wanted to upset Dragón and risk another episode.  But they scrubbed his quarters for physical evidence and immediately got him to the infirmary for a more proper medical examination.

Report reached Impetus a mere ten minutes after things had settled down: a break-in.  A two-hour disappearance.  Evidence of quantum powers in use, but no sign of the portal-producing nova or the cloaked attacker or whoever manipulated Dragón or whether these were separate novas or all the same.  It fell to Impetus to handle any further debriefing of Dragón.  Full and thorough analysis of everything collected could take another week or more.

Binary and Afterburner came to visit Dragón in the infirmary.  "Hate to see the other guy, big hoss.  You going to be alright?  They told me you were getting a little punchy after they found you again."

"Hey guys," Angelo said, greeting his friends.



"You could get Binary to show you the video," Angelo said with a smirk, "you can see the smear he left on the wall before I got brain-napped."

"As for what happened after...I probably ought to talk to Dr. Greenburg or Professor Bharati to see if the 'possession' is going to have any long-term side-effects.  Thinking back on it, it probably was more freaky than serious.  I've had trouble with racing thoughts since I was a kid...maybe it was a bit of panic when I realized I had been someone's puppet for two hours, and maybe it was a result of him muscling his way through my defenses (I got the impression he was in a hurry) that left the discipline I used to control my symptoms down.  When my thoughts start racing, it's like there's a static generator in my head that keeps getting louder and louder, making it hard to concentrate.  If it hits really bad, it can trigger an anxiety or panic attack as you feel like your mind is just going to fade into the noise and never come back.  My Tia Carmen taught me to use Tai Chi meditation to center myself and get control of the noise, and for years, as long as I did my exercises every morning... Ah, but you guys didn't come to hear me psychoanalyze myself.  Angelo grinned and took a playful jab at Johnny.

Johnny laughed.  "No.  But it's good to hear you bitching again."

After some small talk, Johnny and Binary traded a glance.  "So we were wondering ... you want to track down these guys on the record?  Or off?"  Afterburner had hateful, vicious look in his eyes.  Like it was time for some violence and he didn't want to let the boss know about it.  "Best therapy in the world is a boot in the ass, and better if its your boot in someone else's ass."  Binary gave a nod, though with less enthusiasm.

"I don't see why we can walk both roads," Dragon said with a look of crafty nonchalance. "Getting an official investigation going is expected, not to mention giving us a lot of powerful resources.  On the other side of that coin, the three of us together have the kind of resources that could take any information we get from the official channels and run with it like we stole it," he said with a grin.

Then with a more serious look, he said, "I don't care how much 'power' I've lost, I'm still a Ranger...and you don't screw with the Rangers and expect to walk away without a giant jump boot up the posterior."  The deadly fire in his eye was the only outward clue as to how angry he was.

By year's end, the official investigation into DeVarga's abduction had turned up nothing.  An unknown nova assailant had clearly abducted El Dragón via teleportation and mental attack, but the official report could not determine what persons or organization was responsible or what information might have been leaked.  Project Utopia leadership left the decision on whether to report the incident to the El Dragón's US Military contacts entirely at his discretion.  Very little came out of official channels.

Informally, however, things were soon cooking.

Binary and Afterburner put out feelers and discretely worked what information they could, Binary through the OpNet and Afterburner through parties, drinking and long conversations with people in the know.  Johnny was the the first to turn something up.

"So these Directorate guys, they're alright.  Stuck up government and military types, but alright.  Offered me a job if I ever got tired of this, on account of my public service.  Anyway, this gal who told me she worked at the Pentagon told me they only got started with all the cloak and dagger crap because we were doing it first.  Wouldn't go much farther than that, and I try to be a gentleman so I didn't push for much more.  But I'm guessing they work real hard to keep a back door in here.  Remember a few years back when that paparazzi nova with the little bugs managed to get pictures of Dr. Zero and the Freak getting their freak on in a block of pavement?  When they captured Freak?  Something like that.  I'm moving my personnel effects to a secure location."

Then the trial for Gale and Flare's Michaelist attackers happened, and Geryon attacked.

---

January 22nd, 2006

"There!  Right there!  See him?"

At Impetus' request, Utopia remote drones had been deployed to monitor the proceedings at a distance.  Binary was playing with enhancement of different parts of the EM spectrum, and managed to tweak a still frame of the video such that a figure could be seen on a rooftop.

"He's using his eufiber, I think, to camouflage himself against the building.  From just about every perspective and wavelength he just looks like another part of the building, but right here we managed to catch him on film."  Dragón's attacker, the man with the eufiber cloak.  A figure they'd informally dubbed "the Ghost" in the same way that the old T2M:A had dubbed one of their foes "freak" so long ago.

Afterburner, Dragón and Binary were alone in the old T2M command center from the Drug Wars.  It was empty, ostensibly free from Utopia surveillance, and the perfect place on the base for new conspirators to discuss matters like this.  Binary had claimed it as his own, and now the ceiling was covered in carefully organized ropes of both eufiber and fiber-optic cables so he could have his own personal digital stronghold.  He grabbed one of the ropes and attached it directly to his suit so he could work with the data more directly.

"Alright, now watch." He played the video, enhancing on the fly to keep the pseudo-invisible man visible on the screen.  Geryon showed up, attacked, knocked Ricardo Montoya-Bernal out of the way and into a building, killed people and then gave his speech.  The Utopia drone began to pursue Geryon at this point.  "Our ghost starts after Geryon with the help of his friend here."  The Ghost appears on a rooftop a through a portal made by some other nova, far more invisible now that he's in motion, and begins running and gliding across buildings trying to keep pace with Geryon for about a mile, occasionally shooting some sort of carbine.  "I don't know what he's shooting: some sort of dart.  Maybe mox or a tracker or something like that.  Doesn't matter, because this is where Geryon shakes him."  Seemingly unaware that he was being pursued at all, Geryon lands on a rooftop and quantum leapt away.  The Ghost quantum leaps himself, but doesn't seem to have Geryon's hideous strength to power his jump.  It's obvious from their trajectories that Geryon will have at least a mile between him and his pursuer, and more than likely enough time to meet a Teragen friend and disappear from sight.  The flying drone, naturally, loses sight here.

"Alright, but that's not the scary part.  Using that bit of footage, I made some code to just go back and check all of our base surveillance footage for the last year, just out of paranoia.  Now guys, please don't get too mad."  Over the past month, once a month, the Ghost had been making visits to the T2M:A base.  He'd check a few things, then visit a room without cameras, and then leave.  Always by very subtle portals a mile away from the base, and never staying for more than an hour.  "He's like clockwork.  He just looks over things, checks in here, and then leaves.  I don't think he could have been doing it for more than the last six months, or Gravitas would have ... would have noticed the portals coming in."  Binary licked his lips nervously, still uncomfortable talking about the plague affecting his saviors and mentors.  Not to mention Dragón's exposure.

The video showed the Ghost visit the same room every month: the personal quarters of Dr. Max Greenburg, safely out of reach of the base's cameras.  Greenburg was one of the Utopia physicians who had been at the base since the beginning.

"He's got a card that lets him go in and out.  It's got our security codes, and when he swipes it near the reader the computer logs him as a random person from the base each time so there's no obvious pattern.  That's not my work, that's something that's been in the computers here for a long time.  I think ... I think he's one of ours, guys."

Out on the rest of the base, Binary moved and thought fast enough to keep a good poker face.  But now he looked seriously worried.  "What do you guys want to do?  Do we confront Max?  Do we tell Impetus?  I don't even want to be near Imp right now, he'll probably know I'm hiding something.  And I don't know how he'll react.  Do we try to track down our Ghost, or set a trap when he comes back next week?  I just don't even know where to start."

---

Spoiler text: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)
OOC: alright, time to get this moving again.  Sorry again for the delays.

---

"Let's set a trap for that dipstick the next time he shows.  I assume since it has a security checkpoint that there's only the one door to that office?

"Have you figured out what he used to signal for help, Big B?  If so, we can jam that just before we spring the trap.  I've put this joker on the floor once, I can do it again...especially when Johnny's got my back."

Plans whirled through Dragón's head, he just needed a little more information.

"Not sure.  But I did get into the old warchest and found some gear that should work.  We've got two options there, and both are noisy.  I've got a sort of white noise generator that should block just about everything, but it means we won't be able to talk either and if we don't let everyone else in on our plan than security will probably assume we're under attack.  I've also got some HPM grenades.  High Power Microwave, so they go boom and they should short out unhardened electronics.  They were also supposedly good for shocking the hell out of eufiber, but if he's good at attuning the stuff I can't guarantee anything."

"Do we just ignore Greenburg until then?  And what about Imp?"

Angelo paused to consider.  "If...if we talk to Dr. Greenburg and he's working with this guy, he'll get tipped off and we may never catch him.  And Imp...he's got a plateload already, and I don't think he's quite himself either.  Maybe its the stress of command during this whole crisis, or the dip in his own power, or a side effect of the infection, like Grav's seizures...or maybe all three."  He hated this.  Talking bad about his commanding officer just didn't sit well with his training.  On the other hand, this handbasket they were riding in was getting awfully hot, and it wouldn't take much to tip them all into the fire.

"Binary, make me a video clip of this guy slipping in.  We need to coordinate with base security, but in the smallest circle possible.  I'll sit down with the CO, brief him and coordinate from there...hopefully the details of what we're up to won't have to go beyond him.

"Johnny, take a look at those grenades and that white-noise generator.  If your powers work on them, try to come up with ways to jam him without jamming us.  The device he used fit in a wrist watch and didn't require any speech.  So maybe it was like a homing beacon.  It shouldn't be hardened at all, so we should be able to fry it.  I know between the two of you, the technical and equipment details will be professionally handled.  How long do we have before his next 'visit'?"
This message was last edited by the player at 22:07, Fri 30 Nov 2012.

"About four days.  He's shown up on the 26th of every month.  Usually uh ... 22:00 hours."  He immediately set about multitasking, a screen behind him compiling pieces of footage into the requested video.

"If he portals out of there, should we try to follow him?  I'm fast.  We rig up some goggles to see in whatever spectrum that is, or adjust my helmet for it, and I could jet right through after him."

"By yourself Johnny?  If he portals away, it will be to where he has help.  No, if he gets away, we'll change tactics… track him down through his portal maker."

---

Spoiler text: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)
OOC:  That's what I get for posting when I'm "that tired."

---

This message was last edited by the player at 11:10, Mon 03 Dec 2012.

"Alright, you're the boss."  Somehow, he didn't seem altogether convinced.

"Johnny," Angelo says, putting a hand on his shoulder, "I am, first and foremost, a tactician, and I am not about to waste an asset as valuable as you on a desperate gambit.  You were the first person to greet me when I got here...sitting up there, cleaning that vintage Colt of yours...and I want you to be my wing man when we go after this guy.  We're going to do everything we can to make sure he can't even call for help, much less get any.  Then we're going in fast and hard to take him down.  Can I count on you?"

---

Spoiler text: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)
I'm using all my Leadership skill plus my Leadership merit to try to swing Johnny around behind my plan.

---

Johnny nodded.  "Alright, hoss.  I'll keep it reigned in.  But if he gets away, I'm not going to shut up about it."

With a little bit of work, word spread to a small cadre of the base staff.  All US Army rather than the smaller Utopia security staff, and all people that Johnny and Dragón decided could be trusted.  Johnny could be a right smooth talker, Dragón inspired confidence and loyalty, and Binary chained them all together with a new, secured line of communication.  Anyone monitoring wireless communications just saw another network attributed to Gravitas for a weather experiment.

A few days passed.

---

"Anything yet?"

Binary was nervous.  They'd left the door wide open, and had all of their men in position, equipped and ready to rush in at a moment's notice.  Johnny was flying overwatch like he usually did, but instead of flying over Las Vegas he turned around after five minutes to circle at higher altitude.  Everyone had visors with a program to counteract eufiber-camouflage.

Dragón's senses were sharp.  Even now, far sharper than when he was a baseline.  Now that he knew where to look, the Ghost didn't stand much of a chance.  The Ghost slipped over the perimeter fence -- at 22:00, right on schedule -- and jogged quickly and quietly up to the base.   Confidently, he then approached the headquarters building, walking slowly to give his camouflage time to keep up with his movement.

El Dragón lay some fifty feet from the path that led up to the doctor's office, his own eufiber camouflage making him look like just another lumpy patch of gravelly sand the base was built on.

The plan was pretty straightforward.  As soon as the "Ghost" had stepped inside the building, he and Johnny would converge on the door, and Binary would start jamming the beacon.  Johnny could have a "talk" with the lock to get them access (Dragón had decided against using their i.d. cards in case that imbedded software contained a lockout or alarm routine) and they could corner the guy inside.  Meanwhile the "squad" would move up to surround the building in a staggered leapfrog they had practiced in order to conceal their numbers from any distant observer.

The intruder slipped through the door, and even as the door was closing,  Dragón could faintly hear the whine of Johnny's jet pack increasing in pitch from the Doppler effect of his power dive.   Dragón sent quantum rushing through his body, boosting his power.  It felt nice after months of steadily diminishing strength.  When the door clicked shut, He surged off the ground, leaping the distance to the door and landing, cat-like, on his toes.  He took hold of the handle of the door...

"Copy, Colonel."

With a shrill whine and a thud, Johnny Afterburner cut his engines and slammed to earth only a few steps behind.  The door popped open in Dragón's grasp.

The Ghost whirled toward the door, dropping into a crouched posture to avoid being seen.  "Sheeeit," he whispered to himself, believing himself concealed from sight.  Around the room, the metallic sound of doors bolting shut and shutters closing signaled that Binary had done his part and sealed the lobby.  Behind, the soldiers were closing in to complete the trap.

"On.  The Ground.  Now!" The Dragon bellowed as he leapt into the room.  "You are hereby advised, for your safety, to comply with my instructions."  Then, I turn and look him in the eye and say, "I put you down once, pendejo, and I'll do it again in a heartbeat."

I stand loose and ready and Johnny is at my shoulder with a dart gun full of Mox.

The Ghost finally processed that they could see him, and did not look amused.  He saw the weapons, saw the grenade in Johnny's other hand, and saw El Dragón ready to beat him down again.  He had already heard the room locking down.  And he could hear the military backup rushing in to provide fire support.

"Not bad."  He removed his wrist-communicator and crushed it to powder.  "Looks like you've got me."  The eufiber camouflage eased back to normal opacity and became a coat rather than a cloak, and the Ghost raised his arms in surrender.  "We doing the holding cell or the black bag treatment today?"

El Dragón began getting the feeling he'd seen that face before somewhere, but tried to shake it off.  “We've got a nice, comfy holding cell for you, as long as you cooperate with the good Sergeant.  Or, I could have someone go grab a black bag, muy pronto.”

"Sgt. Tucker, why don't you trade the gentleman that stylish orange jumpsuit for his eufiber."  This is going pretty smoothly, he thought, here's hoping our "Ghost" doesn't try anything stupid.  Although a certain part of his machismo was hoping he would.  It wanted to dish out a little payback.