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The Explosive New Justice Front Issue #3: "Small Problems, Big Bombs!" Hits the Stands TODAY!!

FEATURING: Albedo, Solar Powered Queen of Space, The Behemoth, Gargantuan Champion of Justice, Blackhawk, the Master Detective, and Cryokinetic, King of cold with a wit as sharp as shattered ice!

Guest Starring: The Spectacular Alpha Prime, of the Centurions, Doctor Roller, Doctor Silverback, and the ARC:US Science Squad!

The Team is gathered in Doc Roller's office, those of them who fought Proton having just completed decontamination procedures.

Also present are:

Dr. Malcolm Heddarada, of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commision.

Sandra Hanson, of the Office of the Mayor of Century Station.

Lt. Col. Duggan MacCray, US Nuclear Emergency Support Team.

and Professor Charles Riley Nelson, ARC:US Nuclear Physicist.
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:28, Tue 06 Feb.

Cryo enters the room, and was seeming to have an argument with the people he had just left in the decontamination areas. "Well Agent Jones-I could have told you NOT to spray me down with water! What did you think was gonna happen!? I mean, seriously! That's on you, dude! I mean, the shards will melt out of your face EVENTALLY!" He looks around defensively. "What? That was not me!"

He waited for someone to say something, and no one did he yelled behind him again. "Ok, ok! I am sorry!" Then he looks around. "There, happy!?" He said to pretty much no one. He sat in a chair, which promptly began to freeze. "Dammit..." He grumbled, and made his own ice chair/snow beanbag structure to sit on.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the player at 16:09, Tue 06 Feb.

Albedo was simply floating in the air, even though she was in a sitting position.  Not wanting to take up a seat on the couch or at the table, she was merely suspended in mid-air in a space off to the side near one of Doc's bookcases.  Given the fact that she tended to glow, and that her eyesight was fine enough to distinguish anything project at the front of the room, Inez usually made sure that she was in the back row of any gathering that she wasn't currently presenting at.

Her head turned to the commotion that appeared to be following Cryo as he entered the room.  Quirking an eyebrow, a light sigh emanated from her burgundy lips.  "With Great Power..." Albedo gently reminded her fellow hero.  She didn't feel the need to complete the statement knowing that Cryo was well aware of his role in the circumstances.  His cold could be deadly, and beneath the bravado she thought that she could detect a layer of contrite regret.

She also knew that it was difficult to be so different; the glowing heroine could sympathize with her teammate.  Like his constant aura of cold, her glow and her flight effectively never turned off.  To even partially suppress them took significant effort - and while not as potentially invasive or directly dangerous as Cryo's cold, they could be just as inconvenient.

As she drifted near her low-temperature teammate, Albedo apologized, "Sorry, I smell like detoxification chemicals..."  Perhaps that was one of the few times that no longer having any real sense of smell probably helped.

Cryo glanced up at her. "Don't sweat it. Well...nobody can sweat anything with me in the room. The last six parties I went to it were so bad they just had me stand in a metal box with hanging meat. Oh, and the keg of course." He rolled his eyes, which was hard to tell because his eyeballs seem to be under a layer of fine ice.

"So, its...ah...Albedo, right? I heard good things. Nice guns by the way." He did two 'finger guns' and pointed them at the pistols on Albedo's hips. He even made the 'pew-pew' noises. "Most of the gear they give me has to be cold resistant or I break it and then they want to charge me for it! I keep telling them I need better gear! So annoying..."

He looked around conspiratorially, and whispered to her. "Did the doc bring you in to deal with Seven Eyes?"

Albedo gave Cryo a lopsided smile when he started making pew-pew noises.  "That's me..." she ventured tentatively, "Nice to meet you.  Cryokinetic, right?"  Though she may not be the brightest bulb on the team, she could deduce that much; the pool of super-powered agents wasn't that large - and generally their powers were distinct enough.

She shook her head at her teammate's story about literally being put on ice at parties, "Well, they never invite me to surprise events." referring to her constant glow, "Or any food tastings anymore." referring to her direct absorption of sunlight for any sustenance requirements.  The complaints were good-natured enough and, obviously made in jest to commiserate with Cryo, but there was just a tiny hint of genuine hurt behind them.

When asked about Seven-Eyes, the glowing heroine simply shrugged.  "No idea." Albedo ventured, "It's either that or you're being brought onboard to help locate a rogue nuclear device."  She paused for a moment thoughtfully, then conceded, "Or both conjectures are true." as the two (seemingly disparate) threads might be somehow linked.

"Those decisions are above our paygrade." she joked.

Cryo nods at her statement. "Yup, that's me. What gave it away?" He snickered. "Rouge Nuke, huh? I love that movie Broken Arrow. ' I don't know what's scarier, losing nuclear weapons, or that it happens so often there's actually a term for it.'" He chuckled while quoting from the movie. "To be fair, that line was most likely the best part of the movie."

He notices her glow, and rubs his icy chin. "You know, one of the side effects of my powers is I can bend light. Even to the point where I can vanish. Maybe I could help you with the glow?" He shrugged. "I have done things like that. For example..." He blinks, and the light coming off of her flows into him, and then reflects outward in an array of different colors. Like a disco ball.

Blackhawk walks in and throws up his arm to shield his eyes from the strobing disco lights flowing off Cryo. His hood and mask are back, or else his lenses would have taken care of it, but who expected a disco ball attack in the base? "Cryo, dude," the young Hispanic man says as he edges around Cryo, shielding his eyes, his breath visible in the now-chill air. His wing-cape swirls close behind him.

Casper thumbed through the paperwork he had on new assignment as he lumbered down the hallway towards the conference room.

He was glad he was still assigned with Albedo, as that likely meant this group was on the trail of the dirty bomb. His adaptation powers meant he could interact with high levels of radiation safely rather than some poor co-worker getting microwaved for the greater good.

He was also glad to see Blackhawk coming aboard. They’d met only briefly but having a dedicated detective would make it a lot easier to get on the bombs trail.

And he was excited to see Cryo again…though they hadn’t talked since the Atlanta Journal Constitution had outed his Dynaman ruse. Behemoth hoped he wasn’t holding a grudge.

Regardless though, this dirty bomb had been weighing on his mind and eating his sleep since they had to walk away from it. He was excited to have a group together that could crack down on this case and take it as seriously as it deserved.

…he opens the door and is blinded by Cryo turning himself into a frigid disco ball.

Cryo, his eyes adjusted to excess light due to his reflexive bending of the spectrum, is not blinded by the disco ball effect. Needless to say Albedo is also immune to such things, as she is constantly emitting light. However, anyone not expecting a disco ball might be a touch overwhelmed. "What? What?" Cryo says to Blackhawk, wondering what the problem was. He also did not seem to recognize Behemoth, as he looked very different now. "I can play music if you need it...oh! You mean the lights! Right, sorry about that."

The strobe vanishes as quickly as it appears. "That was me, my bad." He glanced over at Albedo with a 'whoops' expression on his frozen face. Somehow, his iced over features where still quite animated.

"It's cool," Blackhawk says, making a quick finger-gun gesture to Cryo for getting in an ice pun before he did. "Behemoth; good to see you again. That footage of you at the other site was pretty amazing," he says as he turns to the large man. They'd been in meetings together, but this was the first time they'd been on a mission team together.

In reply to Blackhawk (msg # 11):

Behemoth rubbed the spots out of his eyes with his knuckle.

“Thanks, Hawk. I’m sure it looked a lot more impressive without the tire fire smell that was coming out of some of those shots I took.

I’m glad you’re joining this case. If we’d had somebody with your skill set at the scene we may well have wrapped this up already.”

"Well, we'll see," Blackhawk replies to Behemoth. "There seems to be a lot of magic mixed up in this so far, and that's not a thing I know much about." The young man looks a little abashed at mentioning this, but also seems to be determined to lay his cards on the table.

"Well Hawk, you'll be glad to know what we're doing today is tracking down a simple work-a-day nuclear weapon."

"Nothing supernatural about it."

"Al, I need your team to work up a plan of action, inform these folks what it is, and then get out there and recover the weapon before it get sold on to anyone or, worse, used."

"HA! Never heard that one before..." Cryo says with a smirk.

He turned to Behemoth. "Yeah, I was trying to show Albedo light options in case she could not already bend light. Which most likely she can." He nodded at her. Then he turned back to the large mutant man. "Anywho, sorry about blinding you. Here, let me make up for it." He creates two snowcones, one for Behemoth, one for Blackhawk. He was fairly sure that a light based being like Albedo would have no use for such a treat, but offers her one as well. Then he reaches into the small pack he carries everywhere and pulls out a very odd looking squirt gun. It has multiple chambers, almost like a toy rapid fire mini-gun. However, instead of having bullets, it carries multi-colored liquids. One in each of its different chambers-made of clear plastic so you can see them.

"Who wants what? I got purple, and red, and blue...no yellow for obvious reasons." He smirked again. He will proceed to 'shoot' the snowcone with the colored liquid in question.

"I'm not made of light." Albedo corrected Cryo, blinking a couple of times to clear spots in her field of vision.  She nodded at Behemoth and offered her much smaller hand up for a fist-bump to Caspar's huge appendage, "Good to see you, Big Guy." and then introduced herself to Blackhawk with an , "I'm Albedo.  You must be Blackhawk.  Good to have you aboard."

The young, floating heroine (as Cryo suspected) begged off on a snow-cone.  For now.

She nodded grimly to Doc and his brief briefing.  Albedo pursed her lips, "Sounds like we are on the clock again, gentlemen.  What are we thinking?  How do we crack this nut?"

With that the glowing heroine started to brainstorm, offering up, "What additional resources to we have to be able to detect weapon?  I can cover a fair bit of ground quickly, but have no special senses to be able to detect a radiation signal - even one of that magnitude."  Then Albedo postulated, "If we have Geiger counters with high enough sensitivity, I can sweep any reasonable area relatively quickly to help pinpoint radiation sources."  Inez looked thoughtful for a moment before continuing.  "Of course," she readily conceded, "hospitals and other laboratories are likely to show up on such a general geographic sweep.  And the area doesn't scale linearly with distance; so, the search area can become intractably large quickly.  even with my speed."

A "Hmmm..." escaped her burgundy lips, "And anything sufficiently deep underground may be difficult to detect from the air."

She glanced at the others, "What other angles or personnel can we leverage to try and narrow down that broad of a search area?"

Blackhawk takes a red sno-cone, then nods to Albedo. "Thank you; good to meet you," he says. He listens to her, then looks thoughtful. "Well, at least it's not magic," he says. "You're right; most mundane ways of detecting nuclear payloads are prone to misdirection and generally need to be close to the target to begin with. Sat imagery is almost useless inside a city, and we'd need to know how they were transporting it around, first. We have a full lab and ARCUS equipment store, though, so maybe there is something better in there?" he says, looking to Doctor Roller. "Some way to detect it's neutron output would be great, if that exists. Neutrons are almost impossible to contain but likewise that makes detecting them almost impossible, outside of exotic technology."

"All of us can get around pretty fast, or don't have to worry about most obstacles", he says, looking at Behemoth for that last bit. "We could simply implement a random search pattern and hope we get lucky but that's very inefficient and unlikely to succeed. Plus, I don't like relying on luck."

The young hero takes a couple bites from his sno-cone. "Really, the best way would be to find the people moving it. I think we can assume at least one other member of The Sinistry is going to be involved and people like them generally do not move through the world easily or quietly."

Alpha Prime, in the room representing the Centurions, the premier superteam of Century Station, and CHIMERA, the authority in control of all superteams and operatives, takes that moment to add to the conversation.

(Alpha is a statuesque 7 foot tall strangely attractive alien made of solidified energy)

"I won't tell you how to operate. Our assessment of your capabilities is that they are excellent."

"That said, Sector 10 has determined that Proton is currently on the outs with The Sinistry."

"Based on their interrogation of him it appears he may well have been doing this job freelance to gain capitol to leave Century Station or even to form a team of his own."

"Plans which are now defunct based on your timely actions."

Inez was a bit star-struck, as the statuesque energy-based alien was idolized by a young girl and Alpha Prime had been one of reasons (at least indirectly) that the glowing heroine had volunteered for the program that eventually turned her into Albedo.  "Yes, ma'am." was all that she could manage initially, "Thank you, ma'am."

"Hmmm..." Albedo cudgeled her brain for something more to say, given the additional supposition that Proton was not acting under the auspice of the Sinistry.  "If he was trying to go freelance," she posited, "then movement options would be restricted and that would limit the materials, resources, and contacts that he'd be able to access and leverage ..."  After a moment she added, "Seems like we should be able to find someone to talk..."  Inez felt like she knew a couple of people that might know something about something.

She had another thought, "Do we have any CCTV or video surveillance on any of the movements of Proton and his associates over the past couple of weeks?"  Anything from traffic cams to bank or other cameras could give hints about movement or activities.  And give leads on where or who else to ask questions.

---

[OOC:  Let's try some Streetwise or Find Contraband and Illegal Weapons:

  12:12, Today: Albedo rolled 16,61 using 1d100,1d100.  Streetwise: 42%, Find Contraband & Illegal Weapons: 48%. – 16,61
Well, at least the Streetwise roll might help us know where to start looking...]

In reply to Albedo (msg # 19):

Cryo blinked at the energy being, and looked to Albedo and back to Alpha. Clearly there was a difference between someone made of light vs someone very light-intensive. As Albedo herself had pointed out to him. Still, she did not take the snowcone. Who does not like snowcones? Other than someone who can't eat due to...being made of energy?

Cryo goes into his pack, and pulls out his phone. He can see what he could research on Proton and his actions. Now that he was part of the team, he could try to access the group database for some real detail.

OOC-
09:58, Today: Cryokinetic rolled 72 using 1d100.  TV/Video if possible. – 72 Failure if needed to roll in the first place.

09:58, Today: Cryokinetic rolled 20 using 1d100.  Research. – 20-Success.

"CCTV is certainly a good start," Blackhawk says. "If he's broken with the Sinistry, then he's going to lay low." He thinks for a bit. "The Sinistry might even be looking for him at the same time; trying to ferret out their movements might still bear some fruit."

OOC
09:49, Today: Blackhawk rolled 87 using 1d100 with rolls of 87.  Streetwise.
09:49, Today: Blackhawk rolled 87 using 1d100 with rolls of 87.  Find Contraband.
Yeah...so that's not going to work well.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:54, Mon 19 Feb.

Casper didn’t speak but did take notes on a notepad. He didn’t have any skills like his teammates did that could contribute well to an investigation, but he wanted to make sure he was well apprised of the situation before they found their quarry.

Though he did wince when Alpha Prime said she wouldn’t tell them how to operate. Casper had lost a lot of the funding he was counting on for excavations when Project Daedalus turned out to be more of a Project Icarus and the economy collapsed. Suddenly his firm had expensive archeological equipment to pay off and no jobs coming in to do it with. He knew in his heart it wasn’t all her fault, but she started a domino cascade that ended with him forced financially into working for a soulless corporation that accidentally turned him into a monster.

“You won’t tell us how to operate? I thought telling us how to operate was the reason you came to this planet in the first place!” he thought to himself. But all that escaped his thoughts was a scowl.