Extraction (TWS)

It's been a dark two decades since-

the Tempest rose to prominence, the proverbial ill wind; of obscured powers and thus-purported patron of forces unknown and unknowable. His once-in-a-generation vision, ambition - physically represented in this story by an honest-to-god city in the clouds - drew admirers and dangerous freethinkers. Back then, his storms still sufficed with thrilling and rattling the bones of the unscrupulous souls who'd chase him.

His influence rose meteoric, settling comfortably into ubiquity just in time for his flying city to vanish, which in twisted retrospect might've suited Finn Tangible just fine. Finn hated the spotlight, fixated on an ethos that he restrict his conscious impact on the world to doing right, so his disappearance stirring up a fearmongering media frenzy wouldn't have suited his ideals.

So you assume, anyway. You never met the guy, he was active in the Association while you were just a kid, and nobody outside the Association appreciated him. Not, you assume, that Finn would've minded.

Anyway-

You grew up under the leaden, jagged skies of the Tempest, joined the Uprising (your Uprising, now) after the near-miss where Tempest's enforcers came for your parents. What purpose a flying death-fortress would have for a minor telepath and a carpokinetic, you stopped thinking about years ago.

The important thing is, you made it, Tempest is as dead as you could ask for, and Buddy Scope is on Line 3.

The Vault's back, opacity's creeping up as it looms over Gale City, they tell you. Right where Buddy pegged it, but finally visible to those without super-vision. It's in bad shape - a gun mount the size of a bus has already fallen off and crushed Gale City's (mercifully abandoned) City Hall.

Buddy Scope's already coordinating evacuation out of Gale City in case the Vault's generators give up the ghost, but there's barely a soul alive on Earth without loved ones somewhere in that Vault.

You, third leader of the Uprising, are in for a final mission.

Who are you?
What's your power?
Who are your crew members, and what are their powers?

You forgot your real name, it just doesn't seem important any more.

Your codename is Big Cheese now, and you have the ability to summon dairy products into existence. In another time, another place, it might have seemed silly, but an Uprising needs food and your talents have really cut down on the need for supply runs.

Your closest crew are a couple in powered armor. One of them doesn't talk, and seems to have an innate power to cancel noise in about a fifty-meter radius. A useful disruption technique when you've taught your crew sign language, though it doesn't buy you much time if the enemy has a telepath. You call this one the Silent Knight, and you don't know much more about them.

Their partner - in both the professional and personal senses - seems to come from a church background. The sort that thinks that powers can be a gift from God, or a curse from the Devil. A bit pushy about it sometimes, but then, if you'd been taught that kind of stuff and then your power turned out to be glowing with as bright a light as this kid's, you might be pushy about it too. This one's the Holy Knight, and you can only imagine how much worse you'd have it if he could walk on water too.

You're Marilyn Queens.

You expertise is in the specious present. For you, it's a little more spacious. You can witness events that happened in the past. Of course, you have to be in the right place. It's perfect for recovering secrets that people wished to forget. But, sometimes its hard to control, and you'll see things you wished you hadn't.

With you is The Surgeon. He's the quiet sort. Tends to see people more like machines needing to be fixed, but dang, can he fix them. Cells and tissues bend to his will. Neurons connect and reconnect through his influence. Just be careful he doesn't trim your telomeres too short.

Out in the field is Lamprey. A cloaking parasite with a jaw shaped like a meat grinder. While he's latched onto a victim, he's only detectable by the more astute clairvoyants, or the most mechanical of observers. Anyone or thing that could be his food is ignorant of his presence. When he's feeding, he has complete control over his meal - for about an hour until the victim drops dead.

Then you have Blaze. He was an early resistance fighter who was captured and then lobotomized. You rescued him though, and the Surgeon put him back right...mostly. He billed himself as a pyrokinetic, but he actually manipulates oxygen concentration in his immediate surroundings. After his experience, he's more likely to sap the O2 from somebody's lungs, instead of giving them the chance to run away from a blast of flame.

You're Marilyn Queens.

Director Queens to those in the Uprising, and probably how you'll go down in the history books. Like most kids (from your generation, at least), you entertained at least some career aspirations of joining the Association, picking out a hero name and all that besuited cop nonsense that really only holds up in a functioning society.

Your power isn't flashy, but "flashy" would've seen you picked up by a hit squad and hauled off to the Vault years ago. It's helped you survive, and maybe once all this is over you can take solace in the fact it helped a few others survive as well.

Rose Tint, you'd figured it. Funny how these things stick with you. You stand around in one place long enough, memories start flooding back like you'd spent your whole life there. It's the kind of deluge of insight that kept you on the move, particularly when your mental state influences which snippets of a timewarp stand out against the rush.

---

You've no shortage of Uprising folk, veterans and newcomers alike, eager to storm the Vault. You'd best review all your options before choosing a team.

You've certainly got options.

Leiche. They're a bit unhinged, and you can't really blame 'em. As they put it, functional immortality's a right bitch when it means leaving a trail of your own corpses behind you, every one a plum reminder of exactly how you fucked it up. Though eternally playing possum certainly helped when it came to evading capture.

Vitrine. Picked her up back out East, before you got kicked up the command chain. Rapid insulation (electrical, thermal or otherwise) was one hell of a handy trick when facing Tempest's hit Squallds. Failing that, the old Priestley Maneuver tends to eliminate respiratory foes right quick.

Eirie kept to himself until recently, reticent about what exactly qualified the old coot for Association membership back before the Tempest. That changed as soon as the skies cleared up. You'd always wondered where all the birds had gone following Tempest's arrival. Eirie's vengeful shades make that abundantly clear.

SpoilerShow

All the folks so far look great! I'm going to need you all to choose four folks to venture Vaultward with Queens.

Feel free to suggest possible additions to the team, or get clarification on what dangers might await in the Vault.

What sort of place is the vault, anyhow?

And who's guarding it at this point?

If you're seeking straight infiltration: Silent Knight, Lamprey and Vitrine would be the best to send in, perhaps with Surgeon as an on-hand medic.

Of course, skill is second to trust. Eirie has plenty of experience, and Blaze has since learned how to keep his cool. Holy and Silent work better as a pair than on their own - but stealth won't be as much of an option.

Big Cheese should stay back at base and keep the troops refreshed.

> Who, or what should we expect to find?

What sort of place is the vault, anyhow?

The Vault, at least in its initial stylings, was a self-contained research facility. Administrative/support staff positions were even posted online - even a flying doom fortress-city needs catering and IT.

There was an incident, a couple years before Tempest revealed his true colors, when the now-defunct NDF's R+D contracts were leaked and nobody could divine what exactly was hiding in those blacked-out documents, what the Vault had produced to justify several trillion dollars of state military funding. It hit the headlines, and slid off them just as quick. Reminded everyone that government branches of all stars and stripes were just great shambolic money-pissing contraptions, and the Tempest's machinations stepped back from their spotlight stint, reputation no worse for the wear.

They were an independent outfit most jokingly referred to as a cult composed of misfits, geeks playing at supervillainy among the clouds. A trope, by this point. Pre-emptively dismissed, and with newsworthiness limited to cursory 200-word Page Nine articles and ten minute segments on the news, at least until an agglomeration of egos did the inevitable and brought the whole operation crashing down a little more literally than the tabloids are accustomed. You know, because, sky fortress.

Hindsight's a bitch, and your abilities mean you're the only one who gets to make that joke.

The Vault's construction and infrastructure were on lockdown before their recruitment became more employer-proactive, don't-call-us-we'll-kidnap-you. You reviewed recordings - copies of recordings of recordings, of interviews with the Vault's PR team in its early days, the layered visual-and-otherwise noise of physical media lending the tapes an eerie-similar parallel to your own vague adolescent memories of the program on the Inkwire Hour.

Tempest's a real visionary, according to the guys in this segment. (Eirie alone managed to put names to faces - Vince Vigour, a C-lister celebrity, did most of the talking, while encouraged-to-quit ex-Association member Scanner Darkly navigated the more technical tangents.) The Vault's built from ethical sources where possible, employing individuals with synth-class powers to produce materials onsite. Labour inspectors are given a begrudging tour of the retirement halls. Haggard-but-healthy 30-somethings talk candidly about a gruelling few years of output before settling down, their onscreen unease attributed to the bristling array of Departmental instruments hemming them in, scanning voice and brainwave and bloodstream for signs of influence.

Blaze's memories, what remain of them, paint quite a different picture. He's got jumbled recollections of harsh hallways, fire, sensory deprivation, a steely gaze that flashes like an afterimage when he scrunches his eyes shut too hard, even now. Fire. Induced sleep. A finger, seized and thrust into a flask of periwinkle, whipped out and shattered like glass under an unerring hammer.

He's convinced the last one's a bad dream, thanks chiefly to the Surgeon.

> Who, or what should we expect to find?

Anyone - everyone - ever identified from on high as a correctly-shaped gear in the machine's latest expansion.

And who's guarding it at this point?

All comes down to how long this snake will survive without its head, now, doesn't it?

You've got a crew picking up what's left of Tempest, to take back to the labs for insight into what, exactly, his Power consisted of. Your final scuffle would imply it wasn't mind control, which means there's at least one asshole under his command with it awaiting you up top.

The Vault's underside and flanks are a jumble of missile launchers and other aircraft deterrents, ammunition stocks unknown, mostly for show. Since Slowmentum was captured and a concerted recruitment drive went underway for telekinetics, they haven't had much reason to blow up perfectly good parts in midair. Much easier to slow them down and maneuver them in. Much less wasteful.

Get aboard in one piece, and the Enforcers' quarters clad the guts of the operation like a particularly suicidal immune system, pitting odds against an invading force hitting vital zones and doing real structural damage before getting taken down. Blaze doesn't recall ever fighting intruders, but there were probably few with enough of a deathwish to dive headfirst into the Vault.

The rank-and-file here, at least, deserve to be evacuated and treated for the same procedures as Blaze. Higher-ranking soldiers, you'd have to consider on a case-by-case basis. Your extraction team doesn't have time to disarm and haul out every Enforcer that jumps you, however - Tempest's warned you with his dying breaths that the Vault's only a closed system while he's on board, take him out and it's going to run down down down into unforgiving Earth, taking its population of possibly-millions with it.

No, between a barrage of missiles and a raft of telekinetics, evacuation isn't a viable option. Shutting the defenses down might guarantee a few rescued, but the logistics of clearing out the core areas, residential+research, ensconced in soldiers' barracks, that snarl of prisoner-civilians mean you stand to save the most lives by diving straight for Central Command, wherever in flying supervillain hell that happens to be. Touch the Vault down gently, shut down its defenses, and evacuate from there.

Simple.

---

Revise/confirm your party. Suggestions for party members are still open.

Mind control is a substantial problem.

You may want to bring Annika. Dubbed Null-Space by the grunts, she's the kind of psychic that psychics hate. Really, most folks with psionic inclinations would find time with her difficult. Around her, powers tend to just...shut down. She wears a large metallic collar about her neck, the same kind often found chained to dissidents of the Vault. It keeps her ability from running rampant - potentially leaving the whole Uprising powerless and vulnerable. Bringing her would help stave off any psionic assaults, but it would also leave your crew unable to use the full extent of their abilities while she was near.

Team suggestions:

Eirie - experience is invaluable, and while he may look like a shade of his former self, that works to his advantage.
Vitrine - Energy dampening will come in handy in combat and when dealing with less delicate elctronic systems.
Blaze - If he can hold his composure, knowledge of how the Vault operates, and where to go will make infiltration much easier.
Annika - Weakened abilities will make the going rough, but you're used to taking on foes bigger than yourself. And she'll muzzle the lions in the den.

your power is Astral Projection, you can incite out of body experiences in yourself and others

You should bring Rhyme and Reason. Despite their eccentricities, they always deliver.

Rook is weird. She's new, and her power's that coordination just becomes-- easier around her. Like getting five people all working on one incredibly precise task together suddenly becomes a lot less difficult. People feel good around her, too, like there's hope in what they're fighting for. She doesn't have a lot of experience-- she used to be a firefighter and knows her way around a firearm, but she hasn't seen anything like the rest of us. Still, having a literal beacon of hope around might help.

Party suggestion: Rook, Vitrine, Blaze, Eirie

How about the Co-Opperative, three individuals that are in some sort of symbiosis together - one is the 'lead' unit that can swap places with another one of their 'shadows'.

Each of them move independently of each other but the shadows are somewhat opaque - careful observation will reveal them moving about.

No one knows what they look like; they seem to prefer weird, numbered masks and cloaks.

Ypres normally works alone, but nowadays there's no room for freelancers in the save-the-world movement. She's a snipper - she has the power to cut little slices of time out of the universe and use them later, up to a neat one minute and seventeen seconds. It's not much, but that 77 seconds might save a life one day.

Party suggestion:
Leiche, for defense-scouting & general damage-soaking.
Rook, for team cohesion.
Blaze, for fighting, inside knowledge and possible connections inside.
Eirie, for experience and bird.

We seem to be reaching an agreement that Blaze and Eirie are good party members; let's tentatively lock those two in and argue who makes sense for the other two.

Leiche because that way we can reach the horror-mandated party corpse quota without losing any party members

Rook because we're going to need more than a little hope going into the Vault, and keeping our team cohesive and focused will be absolutely critical.

Surgeon, Leiche, or Vitrine are my fourth-slot picks, leaning on Leiche though.

Also supporting Rook for TEAMFRIENDLINESS

Rook and Leiche sound good

Rook, Leiche, Blaze, and Eirie sound dandy.

With this team I'm certain nothing terrible will happen!

Your team moves fast once the order goes out, converging on Gale City within the hour.

Blaze

arrives first, beating you to Ponente West Police Station. He's sitting on the front steps with a woman you don't recognise, standing sharply to attention.

Blaze would be a physically intimidating guy with better nutrition and a less traumatic past; his face is gaunt and his posture one stimulus shy of snapping back into something predatory. You've kept him well clear of the Uprising's front lines, sticking to guard duty around bases at most.

His hair's grown in, evened out over the scar tissue. It's done wonders for his appearance, really, since you last saw him.

"Director." He greets you, voice low leaning in and pressing a battered envelope into your hand. "The lady says she's a friend of yours. Got a letter with your signature and everything."

You glance at your handwriting, the "M" squashed into more of an H like it's scared of taking up too much space, look at her. She's like high cloud personified, colorless and wispy against a cool blue sky. You'd have remembered someone like this. She motions for you to open the letter, reminding you as you read in an out-of-practice voice.

"One of your men, Leiche, aided me in something of a snarl. I promised to return the favour - the letter was his idea."

She's a ghost, or more accurately, a ultra-high-range wideband psionic. Her Power wipes memories of her clean off the face of the earth and the minds of anyone with an inkling of her identity. Smart of Leiche to get you to pen a letter - by the sounds of it, they'd be no better at persuading you this wasn't a sprawling hyperrecline of the flattest of flat jokes.

"I wrote- it says here, you can cloak an object... 'inhibit sensory processing.' And long-term memories of people caught in it aren't erased like your main ability?"

There's a flicker across her face like an almost-smile. "Cautious. But correct. If the Association still stood, I could be talking of frequencies and discrete mental harmonics, or other foolery."

Somehow, you doubt she would. Miss Monday strikes you very much as one to forsake society, were it still extant in any meaningful sense. The fact she's got morals enough to square her debts, though, leaves you at peace with letting her drift beyond the clutches of whatever civilisation you help rebuild. You've got men in your ranks with fewer scruples than she's shown in these few minutes, that's for certain.

Rook and Leiche

arrive in short order, on a motorbike that doesn't belong to either of them. You calm Leiche down about the stranger in your ranks (don't joke about it being their idea in the first place, they're a little too paranoid to see the funny side of an unreliable memory), and they seem surprised that Eirie's not around. The old coot apparently last checked in from within Gale City itself.

Rook interrupts, and you look up to the oddly comforting sight of phantasms flitting to and from the hospital roof. The mechanical gridwork of the Vault's undercarriage, high above, warps imperceptibly.

Eirie

has beaten you to the helicopter, nodding in greeting as ghosts scatter upon your group's arrival. The helipad around Eirie shimmers with shades.

"Entries still where m'friends last espied them. Not that they despise the place no less since." He gives Miss Monday a look, then says to you: "Didn' think we were still recruitin'. Right slog of a mission, this 'un, to cut your wispy teeth on, innit?"

"She's helping us with safe passage, Eirie."

"Whatever you say, boss."

You pile into the helicopter. Leiche takes the controls, Eirie hunkers down in the back, and Miss Monday demands zero distractions. You direct her next to Rook, who doesn't need to exchange words with the sensejacker to tell Leiche you're ready to roll.

The background noise rises with the chopper, settling into a shout-overable thrum as you level off with Stratoscorp's old highrise headquarters. You scour the streets for upturned faces, but the few souls you see are focused elsewhere.

Leiche is grim - they look like that, when concentrating - following the ghost-lined path Eirie is tracing out for them, nodding minutely like they do when things are in order. Rook's influence on the crew is already pretty clear; Blaze looks positively serene, and Eirie's behaving when Leiche would've cursed him out for messing around by this point.

You've got ten loud minutes to chat with someone less busy, if you don't mind shouting a bit over the engine.

What do we know about Rook? How did she get caught up in the Uprising?