Wearing the Cape 4: Small Town Heroes (32 page)

Father Nolan:
The pastor of St. Christopher Parish (St. Chris), Father Nolan is also Hope’s spiritual advisor and the senior chaplain for Chicago’s CAI teams. He is a round little priest with penchant for unorthodox homilies and a vice for Double Stuff Oreos. (
Author’s note: Father Nolan is my homage to Father Blackie Ryan, the beloved priest and detective made famous by the late Andrew M. Greeley
.)

Orb:
A top-shelf private investigator who makes LA her home, Orb is blind and deaf. She is also a breakthrough, her power taking the form of a silvery orb she absolutely mentally controls. It usually floats by her shoulder and she somehow uses it to see, hear, and even speak. Its actual form is malleable, and faced with the need for self-defense she has been known to shape it into a needle-pointed dart capable of driving itself through flesh with absolute precision.

Origin Chasers:
Origin chasers are people who intentionally pursue breakthroughs. Since most breakthroughs occur under stressful or traumatic circumstances, the consequences of not achieving a breakthrough are often damaging if not fatal. Origin chasers have most commonly used physical peril, extreme physical stress or trauma, or psychoactive drugs, to attempt their breakthroughs, and every year thousands of would-be breakthroughs wind up in hospital emergency rooms and morgues.

Origin Sellers:
A new industry has been born which caters to origin chasers. Origin sellers provide “monitored environments” for attempting “safe” breakthroughs. The most ethical origins sellers are “breakthrough boot-camps” which provide their clients several weeks of intense physical stress (known to trigger physical breakthroughs) and “breakthrough retreats” (guru-guided meditative retreats known to trigger mental breakthroughs). These services don’t increase the odds of any specific stressor triggering a breakthrough, but clients are likely to survive them without damage and may even gain physical or mental benefits. The least ethical (and usually black-market) origin sellers push designer drugs which, if they work, are likely to result in psychotic breaks and weird and twisted breakthroughs.

Ozma:
An A Class Merlin-Type, possibly
the
most powerful supernatural breakthrough known, Ozma believes that she is literally
Ozma
, the Empress of Oz as portrayed in Frank L. Baum’s famous Oz books. She looks sixteen, acts one hundred, and all of her long-term plans are aimed at reconquering Oz and liberating her people from the Gnome King and the witch Momby. Currently she is a member of the Young Sentinels while she gathers and creates magical resources for her campaign. Her companions are Nox and Nix, two dolls animated by the Powder of Life, and she has recovered many of her magical treasures including her scepter-wand and Magic Belt. One of her favored means of subduing opposition is to turn them into hats.

The Paladins:
Founded by Daniel Nathaniel Allred of Vermont, the Paladins are an anti-government survivalist group with chapters across the country. Since the Event, they have focused on breakthroughs and especially on capes, who they believe plot to seize control of the government and rule as a “master race”. They mostly spend weekends training and stockpiling for The Day They Come For Us, but they have more militant members who believe in taking the fight to the capes
first
.

Pieman:
A teleporter of unknown class, Pieman is a “performance-villain.” He picks public figures he believes are in need of pie-ing, sends them a lovingly baked pie by courier delivery, then delivers the second pie up to seven days later; in person, in public, to the face. He is wanted in twelve countries, although most law enforcement agencies are not terribly interested in catching him.

Platoon:
aka Tom, New Tom, Willis, the Bobs, etc. Platoon is a Redux-Type breakthrough of unknown magnitude. He is a band of multiple clones with some sort of telepathic group-memory, who provides security and services at the Dome. He is also apparently a highly trained DSA field agent(s), a member of President Touches Clouds’ Secret Service detail, the major-domo at Restormel, and so on. Astra wonders if he/they have a Bob vacationing somewhere for the rest of them. Artemis wonders if he/they are political officers for Director Kayle.

Prayer for Heroes:
St. Michael, defender of man, stand with us in the day of battle.
St. Jude, giver of hope, be with us in our desperate hour.
St. Christopher, bearer of burdens, lift us when we fall.
The author of the Prayer for Heroes is unknown; first circulated on the net, it is now inscribed over many monuments and on a lot of gravestones. It is the unofficial prayer of Catholic superheroes.

President Touches Clouds:
The day of The Event Jennifer Touches Clouds manifested an A Class Aeriokinetic-Type breakthrough, enabling her to generate and control air currents strong enough to allow her to fly and put out fires. She became one of the Sentinels’ founding members, and three years later left the team to go into politics, eventually becoming President Kayle’s successor. America’s first female President, first Native American President, and first superhuman President, she is hugely popular and has continued most of President Kayle’s international and domestic policies unchanged (something which makes conspiracy buffs mutter darkly in their basements).

Protectors
:
Protectors is a law-enforcement procedural television series, about a fictional CAI team and the local police and court system, low on character drama and high on first-responder work but also superhuman crimes and court cases. It tends to feature “ripped from the headlines” stories.

Psijack:
 
aka, Bradley Clark. An unassuming and very successful contract negotiator, Bradley secretly contracted other serves. An A Class Mentalist, he is capable of controlling the emotions and impulses of whole crowd. His only limit appears to be that it takes him awhile to “psijack” a person’s id, and he may require environmental stimuli (a crowd already worked up, for example).

Restormel:
The Hollywood Knight’s headquarters in Beverly Hills, Restormel is shaped vaguely like a white castle tower with crenellations along the edge of the roof—which includes a “flying entrance” and a roof garden. Yeah, it’s a big clubhouse, but it’s a serious base too.

The Ring:
The Ring is an international alliance of terrorist organizations. While diverse in goals and aims, the membership of the Ring has been known to pool resources for joint operations; the biggest operation to-date has been the Whittier Base Attack, which did not go well for them. The biggest Ring players are: the Caliphate, One Land (Chinese nationalist-communists), and Mexico Libre (the rebellion in northern Mexico fronted by the cartels).

Riptide:
A former LA street-villain and a Hydrokinetic-Type who can actually transform into water, Riptide joined the Sentinels after he met them during rescue operations following the California Quake and fought beside them during the Whittier Base Attack. His mother and sister died in the quake, and he is now guardian to his young nephew, Carlos.

Rush:
A college all-star wide receiver, Rush was known for his trademark phrase “What’s the rush?”
 
He was expected to go pro as a first-round NFL draft pick, then he triggered his breakthrough in the final game of his senior year, racing to catch the pass for a final and winning touch-down and turning into a blur. Denied fame in professional football, he trained for a year and then “tried out” for the Sentinels. He is an A Class Speedster, able when speeding to accelerate his personal time and live ten times as fast as the clock, and to drop between seconds entirely by jumping into the frozen world of hypertime.

SaFire:
A B Class Atlas-Type, SaFire is a member of the West Side Guardians. Her costumes favor purple-and-pink flames, and she is one of the Fortress’s more flamboyant (and colorful) event hostesses when not on duty. SaFire is a certified EMT who specializes in getting accident-victims to hospitals fast and alive, and Astra admires her tremendously.

Sakura Wind:
Sakura Wind is one of Japan’s rising hero-pop bands, comprised entirely of hero-idols.

The Sanguinary Boys:
The Sanguinary Boys are Chicago’s other supervillain gang (see the Brotherhood). Notable Sanguinaries are Brick, Vacuum, a aerokinetic who could suck the air right out of your lungs, Lighter, a standard pyrokinetic who preferred vodka as a starter, The Surgeon, a slicer with extendable razor-sharp nails and a taste for pain. The bunch of them got taken down by Astra and Artemis in the Great Roundup.

Seif-al-Din:
The Sword of The Faith and the most powerful Caliphate superhuman. A ten-foot giant with the shadows of enormous black angel wings rising from his back, skin glowing in undulating spots of bright and dim light, swinging a great burning sword, Seif-al-Din is at least as powerful as an A Class Atlas or Ajax-Type. He has died twice so far, the second time, at Whittier Base where—after he killed both Ajax and Atlas—Astra hit him in a kinetic strike using herself as the missile and then killed him with his own sword.

The Sentinels:
Atlas, Blackstone, Ajax, and the other founding members of the Chicago Sentinels met during the critical days following the catastrophe of The Event. They founded the Sentinels partly as a public-relations move, but the team became the template for Crisis Aid and Intervention Teams across the country. The Sentinels served abroad, as volunteers with Heroes Without Borders, during the worst of the China War and in the Caliphate War.
 
Sentinels have died in action: Impact, Minuteman, Nimbus, Ajax, and Atlas. Today the Sentinels are the most famous superhero team in the world, with a huge marketing campaign built on them which includes movies, a television action series, a comic and book series, a roleplaying game, shirts, posters, action figures, and
plushies
.

Seven:
A Hollywood hero and celebrity, Seven possess the power of Luck—in his words, “total, godlike, serendipity.” His luck will keep him alive and healthy under any circumstances, and molds his life like a guardian angel with his best interests at heart and a wicked sense of humor. After rising to stardom and joining the Hollywood Knights, Seven met Astra and the Sentinels. When the deaths of three of its members left a void, he transferred to the Sentinels and moved to Chicago.

Shelly:
Shelly Boyar-Hardt is Hope’s BFF, and she and Hope shared a superhero obsession in their teens, like lots of kids. When Hope was fifteen, Shelly jumped to her death, an origin chaser convinced that the fall would trigger her own breakthrough. The Teatime Anarchist used 22
^nd
Century technology to record quantum-copy of her mind as the seed for the Artificial Intelligence CPU of a computer system in which he stored all of the historical files he collected in his trips to the future (which Hope and Shelly call the Big Book of Contingent Prophecy). Shelly and Hope share a neural-link from the same advanced technology, which Shelly can use to share Hope’s physical senses and even shape virtual realities for her (she appears to Hope as a virtual-ghost). She also remotely pilots robot drones—Galatea—as a Young Sentinel.

Supernaturals:
Not all breakthroughs conform to superhero types—in fact, outside of the countries heavily influenced by western media, few of them do. More will conform to older stories; folk-tales, legends and myths. Even in the US, individuals more into vampires or fairies, or be deeply into magic, are likely to follow those types. Spellcasters are Merlin-types, but all other “supernatural” breakthroughs are simply typed as Supernaturals. “Divine” breakthroughs are a smaller subset of this group, although few are willing to call one of the cherubim a “supernatural,” at least not to his face.

Deputy Angel Sweet:
Deputy Sweet is Sheriff Deitz’ partner, and they have been together long enough that they function almost telepathically. Where Deitz is the more social and public-relations minded of the pair, she focuses on her arsenal of guns (she believes in bringing the right bang to any fight).

The Teatime Anarchist:
Almost nothing is known about the Teatime Anarchist. The public knew him as a superhuman terrorist of unknown powers (teleportation was suspected), who issued a manifesto accusing the US government of plotting to gain control of its superhuman citizens and through them seize a dictatorial power. He apparently issued audio and visual files on the internet claiming credit for a host of bombings which claimed the lives of dozens and issuing threats (the media dubbed him the Teatime Anarchist because of his vaguely English accent). He was killed resisting capture shortly after the California Quake. The truth is more complicated; he was really a time-traveler (see Shelly), and he died by what was arguably the most unique act of suicide ever (see the Dark Anarchist).

Tin Man:
Carl Mueller, an A Class Telekinetic, began as a career burglar and became part of Villains Inc. He uses his power to animate and remotely control “puppet” drones of various configurations, from mechanical spiders used for stealthy breaking-and-entering to huge mechanical dragons.

Tsuris:
Reese Lasila is an A Class Aerokinetic-Type, and in a world of often unique breakthroughs, he’s unique in his own special way: he appears to have inherited his father’s breakthrough air-control power (which is impossible). Being compared to Jetstream, dear old Dad, all the time created “issues” leading to Reese’ attending Hillwood Academy. He has since been recruited by the Young Sentinels, and is an asset to the team although his attitude still needs adjusting (Ozma is working on it).