The group has changed somewhat. In addition to the original stalwarts of Jack Holland (Chris), The Whisperer (Tim), Faceless (Nick), the Sentinel (Bruce) and Black Aria (Dave), the group has lost the Quantum Mechanic (Miles). On the other hand, two new players have joined: April and Gareth. April is playing Fade, a nearly-invisible four-armed woman, while Gareth fails to decide what he wants to play and leaves.
Tim has proposed a series of possible team names. Several of these are actually quite good, though they have some drawbacks: Psychopaths for a Better Tomorrow, Twelfth Precinct Paranormal Hit Squad, and whatnot. Holland's Posse got the most votes, even though Chris wanted to override them to name the group Law & Order, explaining that it was both simple and hard to make fun of.
Since last session, there have been a number of events in the news. Several of these have previously been mentioned in other session summaries.
Jack Holland decides to head over to the Brooklyn Museum and check out the alterations made to the dinosaur displays. He uses his little-known psychometry skill to examine the dinosaurs and re-live the actual crime. He gets an image of three midgets, one dressed as the Lone Ranger, one dressed as the Caped Crusader, and one in a Jester's outfit. All three are laughing uproariously while the Jester midget points at dinosaurs and causes them to move under their own power. The Lone Ranger midget appears to be in charge.
After he relates this story to the others, several of the characters conclude that these must be a bunch of kids who have recently found themselves to be Metahumans and who are showing off their powers. Jack, unwilling to pursue pranksters when there are murderers on the loose, persuades a police clerk to try and hunt downa few possible suspects.
Black Aria looks into Jessica Hansette's background. He finds that she's a student at Columbia who has lived a fairly mundane life to this point. Her father is quite wealthy, and lives a substantially higher-profile life. Horace Wilkisson (Sentinel) actually knows her father, having previously become ill at one of his parties. He calls the senior Hansette up, and obtains permission to have Whisperer look through her effects and attempt to locate Jessica. Hansette's attache Williams tells Sentinel that she had a townhouse at 370 18th Street, Number 5. Williams arranges with Hansette to meet with Sentinel and Whisperer at her townhouse in an hour.
When the characters get there, they find a Jaguar parked in front of the house and Williams standing in front. Whisperer gets right down to business, casting Seeker and Trace spells. He gets a vision of Jessica tied to a bed, about 120 miles north of the city. Whisperer, panicked at the thought of fighting a clawed berserker alone, calls Black Aria. Black Aria recommends that everyone gather at the headquarters, and rather subtly notes that he has access to a VTOL aircraft to get to Jessica's location.
The police dispatcher calls up to Jack Holland's office and informs him that he has yet another unusual visitor. When he gets down to the lobby he finds a huge, inflatable pink dinosaur model. Holland is overcome by an attack of impatience, and shoots it while his cohorts laugh at him. He then inquires as to whether the dispatcher would like to be reduced to the intelligence of a cockroach for the next several minutes, an opportunity the dispatcher declines.
Black Aria reports that Winston Hansette has a mercenary corps of about twenty men looking for his daughter. These folks go by the name of The Company, and they have quite a reputation for never failing to complete a mission. However, the characters have all previously seen a videotape (of rather uncertain origin) of Bloodrage tearing tanks apart and sloughing off machine-gun fire, and generally suspect that unless the Company are metahumans they're doomed.
Midway through the Whisperer's and Sentinel's trip back from Jessica Hansette's townhouse, someone drops onto the back of Sentinel's car. Sentinel swiftly accelerates and slews to the right, causing the hitchhiker to fly off the back of a car and into a wall. Whisperer sees nothing, but Sentinel is able to see the heavily-distorted image of a short-haired creature with an extra pair of arms flying into a wall. Alterted to the presence of a hard-to-see foe, Whisperer calls a flock of pigeons to surround it. The figure vanishes, until Whisperer dismisses the pigeons, then reappears and starts to walk towards Sentinel's car. The hitchhiker is female, and quite a sight, with her four arms, glowing red eyes and continuously-operating chameleon powers. After a brief confrontation that develops quite an audience, Sentinel agrees to let her into the car while Whisperer casts a whole series of unsuccessful spells (Sleep, Sense Foes, Truthsayer: it doesn't seem to matter).
Whisperer engages the hitchhiker in stimulating conversation ("Did you kidnap Jessica Hansette?", "Do you want to hurt me or my friends?") while Sentinel speaks to Jack Holland on his cellphone. They finally decide to take her to the headquarters and meet in the parking lot. Once there, she introduces herself as Fade. It quickly becomes evident that her primary mode of communications is through Telesend, which causes no end of problems because half of the characters can resist her powers. Reliable communication is finally established through the expedient of Jack Holland's notepad.
All the characters get into Black Aria's VTOL and head up north on Whisperer's directions. This process is not nearly as exact as either Black Aria nor Whisperer might like, as the plane flies rather fast compared to Whisperer's ability to get his bearings. However, the plane is sufficiently shielded from observation that neither of them are really too concerned about the locals seeing a jet swooping back and forth over a stretch of farmland. After a certain quantity of searching, they narrow in upon a deserted-looking farmhouse.
The plane's infrared cameras identify two people moving around in the building, neither of which look much like Bloodrage, but hi-res radar sees three people inside. Black Aria claims that Bloodrage doesn't give off a heat signature. Common wisdom is that guns will at best irritate Bloodrage. The plan is for everyone to sneak up to the farm. Holland and Sentinel will distract Bloodrage with gunfire while Black Aria, Fade and Faceless try to sneak in and rescue the heiress and Whisperer tries to maneuver Bloodrage into a position in which he can transform him into stone or entomb him in the earth.
The characters mostly move up towards the farmhouse stealthily, with the notable exception of Whisperer who steps on every dry branch in the area. Bloodrage responds to this disturbance by emerging from the house, whereupon Sentinel shoots him in the nose for no visible effect. It quickly develops that Bloodrage is able to run at a Move of 80, and covers the 60 yards to the characters almost instantly. Sentinel shoots him several more times, connecting every time but accomplishing nothing, then falls back to repeated Acrobatic retreating dodges. Meanwhile, Jack Holland does a remarkable job of sucking down Bloodrage's intelligence to vegetable level and Whisperer casts a series of largely-ineffectual spells. Finally, mere moments before Bloodrage clobbers Sentinel, he is first stupefied by Holland and then levitated out of reach by Whisperer. Over the next few moments, Holland drains 69 fatigue away from Bloodrage, incapacitating him for the duration.
Meanwhile, Black Aria, Faceless and Fade sneak in to the farmhouse through the back. Faceless notices a guy watching out an upstairs window with a pair of binoculars, and sets up to shoot him from a covered position. Before Faceless gets into position, the guy goes back into the house and injects the heiress (who is tied to a bed upstairs) with some kind of drug. Faceless and Fade sneak in up to the second floor, where they find Jessica. While Fade attempts to determine what has been done to Jessica, Faceless heads into the next room to find the other kidnapper dragging a large tripod-mounted rifle to the window. Faceless shoots at him. In response, the kidnapper dodges and gestures, producing a phantom blade as if from nothing. Faceless, alarmed by this new development, uses his Flash powers to blind the kidnapper. The kidnapper responds by using his eldritch psionic powers to put Faceless to sleep. Fade responds by shooting the guy with a taser, which pretty much puts him down for the count. Adding insult to injury, Black Aria shoots him with a stun rifle and zips him up in plastic restraints.
Black Aria then notifies the supercomputer Alicia to contact IST and get them to show up and collect Bloodrage. He points out that time is of the essence.
Fade points out that the kidnapper had injected the heiress with something just as everything went down, and makes sure that the needle is brought back to Holland. Holland looks at the drug residue, and determines that it was just an incapacitating drug.
While the characters wait for IST to show up, Holland drains enough fatigue from Bloodrage to keep him incapacitated. Doing this tires him out, so he turns to Sentinel to ask, "Do you feel pretty good right now?" When Sentinel says that he is, Holland sucks him dry of fatigue. Sentinel immediately collapses, thinking bleary thoughts of learning the art of sleep-gunslinging.
About ten minutes after Black Aria's call, an IST VTOL shows up. They swiftly take control of the two prisoners. The characters arrange for the heiress to be taken to Our Sister of Glory & Mercy Hospital. Along the way, Sentinel calls Mr. Hansette to let him know where his daughter is being taken. Noticing that Sentinel still sounds a bit tired, Whisperer gives him some spare fatigue.
With the heiress safely under hospital care, Jack Holland takes an opportunity to try and engage in a touch of self-aggrandizement. Mr. Hansette shows up within a few minutes to congratulate Black Aria and Whisperer for their hard work, to give Whisperer the reward (a $500,000 check), and to largely ignore Holland. Whisperer splits the cash five ways, as Black Aria declines to accept the money. Sentinel keeps just enough to purchase a nice new laser sight, then donates the balance to charities to help the "less-fortunate."
There is, by Holland's arrangement, a press conference. It doesn't go quite like Holland would have liked, as the press actually asks him several questions that aren't entirely fawning.
The next day, the characters note a news story reporting that fifteen graves in the Calvary Cemetery have been disturbed. The earth was pushed aside and the coffins opened. There was no sign of the bodies.
Holland arranges for an interview with Frank Jeeves, the kidnapper with the psychic powers. The police have previously identified him as a transient farmer from Conneticut. His background is really quite mundane. IST has also scanned him, and determined that he does not have the active gene for superpowers. Holland interrogates him by making him stupider (7 points of IQ), and discovers that he wasn't much smarter than that to start with. He remembers nothing about kidnapping anyone, and the last thing he remembers is getting picked up in a bar by a woman who matches Jessica Hansette's description. IST experts who analyze his mind think that his identity has been heavily modified, and that he may not have been responsible for any part in the kidnapping. The IST psychic volunteers to provide the Erikson Corporation with a list of known pschics with the requisite skills.
Each character gains three experience points.