Dramatis Personae

• Derrick K. Ratnam aka Legerdemain (NPC Ally): Spin doctor and media liaison for Project VANGUARD. Twin to Bo. Tagline: “Well, actually that’s not how it happened…”
• Layla A. de Blackburn aka Nox (NPC): CIA-trained child assassin all grown up to be Daddy’s Little Monster. Maybe a little mad. Argues with her shadow often. Tagline: “No, we shouldn’t do that…should we?”
• Stainless Steel Rat aka “Sir” (NPC Ally): Bo’s best friend and assistant. A sentient drone in the shape of a stylized shiny metal rat mindlinked to Bo. Specialties are rapid repair construction and modifications. Imagine if K-9 and R2D2 made a baby and it looks a bit like a rodent. Tagline: “Repairs and upgrades in progress”

Previously . . .

Threshold was plotting to speak with The Brick Layer to help repair the firehouse as well as starting to set up patrol schedules. Wirerat starts getting his work list settled on and getting machines up and running. Whisper has gone down the street to look into a house that caught her eye.

Lay ‘dem Bricks

Threshold
Bricklayer Inc.
Monday, April 20th, 2020, 1600 hours (EST)
88 Pine Street, 27th Floor, New York, NY 10005

The Bricklayer is a rather tall, older gentleman with steel grey hair and a rather particular set to his jaw. As an older metahuman, he’s not necessarily a common thing. There’s quite literally a line waiting outside his rather small office to talk him considering his ability to rebuild structures in mere minutes using available materials. As Threshold waits in line, a blonde woman with short hair stands behind him, obviously upset at having to wait and starts to try to bother Threshold as he ignores her.

Unsatisfied by this, the woman just moves in front of Threshold and ignores his attempts to tell her not to cut in line. Annoyed at this, Threshold opens a portal below her and transports her back behind him to which her eyes start to glow purple and her voice drops to a growl to demand to know what he is doing only for her eyes to start glazing over as he gives her a lesson in complete technobabble.

It takes him about an hour before he finally gets into the office where The Bricklayer is behind an old, sturdy metal desk that one might see for a teacher in a 1970s schoolhouse. Greeting each other, he motions for Threshold to sit down and describe his issue which is renovating the firehouse. The Bricklayer is rather impressed that Threshold actually brought along some blueprints and looking them over says that it’ll be a bit longer than his normal job, a bit more expensive as well. The Bricklayer ends up taking a lot of notes and makes copies of the blueprints. Saying that it’ll take at least 1.5 million and take around 2 weeks to a month, unless he wants to pay a rush fee of an additional 25% which Threshold turns down as there’s probably more important projects for the Bricklayer to get to.

Back At the Ranch

Nyx, Whisper, and Wirerat
Old FDNY Engine 299/Ladder 152 Building aka New Base
Monday, April 20th, 2020, 1300 hours (EST)
61-20 Utopia Pkwy, Fresh Meadows, NY 11365

Wirerat, in the meantime, constructs several tunnels so that squirrel can come into and out of his lab to discourage Nox from coming into and out of the lab before he starts working on uniforms.

Whisper, meanwhile, has started some tradecraft to get information on the people in the house that she wants which Wirerat helps with by trying to dig up some dirt on the couple, but to no avail. They purchased the house properly around a decade ago and they’ve lived rather boring lives so they aren’t desperate to sell anytime soon and there’s no blackmail opportunities.

What Whisper does do is point out that a MAPS team has moved in nearby and that supers battles are a thing that happens. She offers them a large lump sum of cash and they decided that they’d be out within a week. She also ends up giving them some cookies and cakes as a house-leaving gift while Threshold helps teleport their belongings to their new house.

Word gets around for what Threshold did for the couple and he ends up helping multiple other people on the street by doing small things for them, including teleporting a pregnant woman to the hospital for delivery.

The Battle of Queensboro Bridge

Nyx, Whisper, and Wirerat
Queensboro Bridge
Thursday, April 23rd, 2020, 1200 hours (EST)
Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge, New York, NY 10044

Several days later, it’s the end of the day around 6-7 at night and they get a call coming in over the MAPs frequency, a police officer asking for immediate metahuman assistance at the Queenboro Bridge. Wirerat quickly gets ahold of a traffic camera for Threshold to open a portal onto the bridge the rest walks through to find stopped vehicles and a rather large hole on one side of the bridge causing some serious structural integrity issues.

There’s two villains there, Wirerat sends data over on Bombarda, a meta with explosive fire powers, and Behemoth, a meta with heightened durability, strength, intelligence, and agility. Both are fairly well known criminals with multiple murders under their belt. They don’t normally work together either and both know when to cut and run.

Whisper preps for combat by dropping into stealth mode as Nox begins to summon darkness. Nyx drops into his shadow form for lack of anything better to do as Wirerat starts to analyze the damage to the bridge as Threshold, somehow, manages to find Whisper long enough to enhance her movement when Bombarda causes an explosion to happen under the team’s feet. Most of the team get out of the way via some form of teleportation while SSR is carried away by Whisper.

Whisper moves closer into the fray while Nox kills the light levels some more, Nyx warps forwards and unleashes a shadow binding move, managing to affect Behemoth while Bombarda rockets into the sky off the top of the police car as her bombarda sense goes off. She then proceeds to dodge Threshold’s compaction beam mid-air. SSR proceeds to remotely highjack a car behind Behemoth as Bombarda brings forth small eruptions that harms multiple bystanders as it launches her upwards even further. Behemoth, meanwhile, breaks free from Nyx’s shadow binding.

Whisper runs up behind and axes Behemoth’s head a question, managing to find the soft spot and takes him out in a single blow. Nox moves over to one of the kids that was injured and starts first aid as Nyx is a bit outraged and warps upwards and starts to whip at Bombarda, crushing both her arms and then striking them in the digestive tract causing them to drop back to the ground unconscious. Not taking any chances, he then immobilizes her using his shadow binding ability.

Threshold immediately moves to start triaging people, starting with the most wounded and providing treatment on scene. SSR checks their pockets for phones, takes over their phones and checks over the data, but once it starts following the trail it self-destructs and causing backlash against Wirerat, leaving him unconscious and bleeding from the face. SSR starts freaking out and Whisper pulls out her phone to communicate with SSR who just starts repeating 187 on the screen and alerting her that there’s something wrong with Wirerat.

Threshold immediately moves towards the base where he finds Wirerat and starts providing medical attention to him, scanning his brain in the meantime, knowing that he’ll need to get an actual MRI and get proper medical attention.

Back at the scene, the firefighters and, remaining cop, is trying to provide proper attention, despite the cop, Officer Donna Morvant, is missing three fingers, she’s gritting through the pain and doing the best she can. A containment group from Riker’s Island is moving in, sedating both Bombarda and Behemoth (now back to regular human size) as they take them away. At the hospital, Wirerat is immediately ushered into surgery.

Aftermath

The remaining people on the bridge are slowly taken care of and cleared away and the bridge is closed for repairs and the MAPs Team is now released as the news teams show up along with Ledgerdemain shows up and starts his propaganda machine and that Wirerat was injured during the fight, even pulling out a photograph of them together as kids. In the background Whisper is working alongside the emergency crews to determine how much damage was done to the bridge and help clear it.

After Action Report (GM)

Sigh. The dice decide fate in a game and today fate gave me the finger. Whisper took two rounds to be sneaky, boosted by Threshold so he could go far, and then critically hit, maxed damage, and ignored DR on a hit to the skull…to the opposition’s brick. Failed his HT roll and just crumbled. Apparently when Whisper breaks out the axe futhermuckers gonna go down. Second time this has happened. SIGH. The PCs did try to capture the baddies though and instantly started helping those who were hurt. Ended it after that because this was definitely supposed to take more time and, well, it didn’t.

We also realized that this team (whatever they call themselves) are the fastest response team in the NYC MAPS program, maybe in MAPS period as they have three teleporters.

Other Notes

Bonus Report from Rory.

Soundtrack

“Bridge Over Troubled Water” by Simon & Garfunkel
“The Execution” by by David Michael Frank
“My Silver Lining” by First Aid Kit