Recursion

by Marion G. Harmon

  The National Public Safety Act: The NPSA has gone through several incarnations, the first one passed by the US Congress in the first weeks after The Event and vetoed by President Kayle. The NPSA calls for the compulsory registration of all breakthroughs, with monitoring and mandatory detainment and evaluation of breakthroughs deemed serious potential public threats.

  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’s a round little priest with a 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 created by the late Andrew M. Greeley.)

  One Land: A Chinese-nationalist group, operating throughout the Chinese States. One Land is dedicated to the reunification of China into a single state, the recreation of the People’s Republic of China. One Land carries out guerilla operations against Succession State militaries and governments, and against the United States, India, and other nations supporting them.

  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. The orb 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. It is a hazardous pursuit; 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 experiences” 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 her long-term plans are aimed at reconquering Oz and liberating her people from the Gnome King and the witch Mombi. Currently she’s 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’ve 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.

  The People’s Republic of China: Today the Communist Party of China controls only a wide strip of northern China around Beijing, from Lianing to Shandong on the east coast and Hubei and Gansu in central China.

  Pieman: A teleporter of unknown class, Pieman is a “performance-villain.” He picks public figures he believes 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’s wanted in twelve countries, although most law enforcement agencies aren’t terribly interested in catching him.

  Pinky: aka, Rose Reyes. Pinky is an unusual variety of Verne-Type. She fixes things, and she’s really, really good at it; she can kick an engine, reboot a computer, and have everything humming again. When she actively tinkers, she intuitively understands what she’s looking at, what’s wrong with it, and how to fix it—or at least how to get it going long enough to do the job. She’s the only known Verne who can fix other Verne-Type’s gadgets—even tweak them to make them work better for her! Her gift took her to space, where she lives her dreams working for Boeing Aerospace. (Pinky was created by Crystal Groves.)

  Platoon: aka Tom, New Tom, Willis, the Bobs, etc. Platoon is a Redux-Type breakthrough of unknown magnitude. A band of multiple clones with some sort of telepathic group-memory who provides security and services at the Dome, he’s also apparently a highly trained DSA field agent(s), a member of President Touches Clouds’ Secret Service detail, the major-domo at both the Dome and 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.

  Polychromatic Sharknado: A very short-lived breakthrough indie-rock band. Nemesis killed two of its four members, and the third disappeared.

  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’s now inscribed over many monuments and gravestones, the unofficial prayer of Catholic superheroes.

  President Touches Clouds: The day of The Event Jennifer Touches Clouds manifested an A Class Aerokinetic-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’s 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. It’s low on character drama and high on first-responder work but also superhuman crimes and court cases, and 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’s capable of controlling the emotions and impulses of whole crowds. 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 largest 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 s
treet-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’s 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 until 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. An A Class Speedster, when speeding he’s able to accelerate his personal time up to ten seconds per-second, 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’s 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, an aerokinetic who could suck the air right out of your lungs, Lighter, a standard pyrokinetic who preferred vodka as a starter, and 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 stronger than an A Class Atlas-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, and 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.

  Sirius: aka, Richard Nystrom. Sirius is a B Class Verne-Type, but he considers himself an engineer. He specializes in “synthetic, digital interface analogues” for human nerves. This allows him to create refined man-machine interfaces with both present and remote systems. He works from Armstrong Base with remote systems in orbit and beyond, often teaming with Pinky and Wafflebat to troubleshoot for Boeing Aerospace. (Sirius was created by Jesse Birmingham.)

  Seven: A Hollywood hero and celebrity, Seven possesses 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. When Hope was fifteen Shelly jumped to her death, an origin chaser convinced that the fall would trigger her own breakthrough. But in a way, she got her wish: the Teatime Anarchist used 22nd Century technology to record a quantum-copy of her mind to use as a 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. He then tricked Hope into accepting 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, allowing Shelly to appear 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 conform to older stories, folk-tales, legends and myths, and even in the US, individuals who are more into vampires or fairies, or who are 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.

  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 is 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).

  Sean Redmond: Superintendent of Police Sean “Big Red” Redmond replaced Superintendent Garfield as the appointed head of the Chicago Police Department after Garfield was implicated in events leading to the second war with Villains Inc. Known as The Fixer, Superintendent Redmond is cleaning up the CPD and changing its relationship with the city’s CAI capes for the better.

  Terry Reinhold: The writer of Citywatch, a weekly newspaper column devoted to the doings of Chicago society, Terry has increasingly found himself covering Chicago’s superhuman celebrities. It helps that he is on good terms with The Harlequin and Astra. Terry describes himself as “A male Lois Lane who stays out of trouble.”

  Mal Shankman: State Representative Mallory Shankman is a political demagogue who has made his career protesting superhumans generally. Popular with a paranoid segment of the population, he can be counted on to be behind every major anti-breakthrough protest (if he doesn’t start it he gets out in front of it).

  Sifu: Edward (Ted) Li is an A Class Speedster. Not much is known of his past, other than he was born in Philadelphia, but he served during the China War and afterwards he remained in China for a few years before returning and opening a martial arts school to teach Bagau. He is a friend of John Corrigan’s, taught Hope self-defense and Chinese tea ceremony, and is now Crash’s guardian and teacher; although he puts on the mask for city emergencies, he is not an active cape.

  Variforce: One of the
replacement Sentinels recruited after the Whittier Base Attack, Variforce is a former US Marshal and an A Class Energy Projector capable of generating and shaping variable-property force fields. He uses them as shields, flying wings, cutting blades, etc., and has demonstrated the ability to stand off attacks form A Class Atlas and Ajax-Types with them.

  Veritas: A mysterious and annoying DSA agent, Veritas can hear lies, any lies in any format (he reads campaign speeches for laughs). This doesn’t mean he knows whether any given statement is true or false—only whether or not the statement’s giver meant it truthfully. He does have a sense of humor; it’s just very strange and very well hidden.

  Villains Inc.: Patterned after the old Murder Inc., Villians Inc. was the supervillain arm of the Chicago Outfit. It has been taken down twice by the Chicago Sentinels so far. The Villains Inc. roster has included Undertaker, Knox, Trophy, Stricture, The Message, Hecate, Tin Man, Flash Mob, Warp, and Ginsu.

  Volt: An aspiring actor with surfer-boy looks, Volt rode his A Class Electrokinetic breakthrough to movie-star fame in Hollywood before becoming the president of California’s superhuman union and going into politics. Astra killed him in the fight in the Dark Anarchist’s secret base, an event so clichéd that if it wasn’t a state secret it would have its own movie.

  Vulcan: Verne-Types are one of the strangest breakthrough types; able to “invent” and build impossible machines and technologies which nobody else can duplicate, they make flying suits of powered armor, ray guns, force field generators, anti-gravity ships, teleportation cubes, etc. Vulcan is the Chicago Sentinels’ resident Verne; he uses fabrication devices to mold “polymorphic molecules” into an infinite variety of impossible elements and alloys to make gear for the team. He’s Galatea’s creator, and made the team’s air-car as well as Astra’s armor.

  Wifflebat: aka, Staci Jones. Formerly Lt. Jones of the U.S. Airforce, Wifflebat is an atypical Atlas-Type. Her strength and toughness rank only C Class, but her flight-speed ranks as Ultra Class. She isn’t capable of reaching her top speed on Earth—the atmospheric friction would kill her—but in space the massive acceleration of which she’s capable makes her ideal for pushing lifters from Earth Orbit to the Moon and beyond. She works for Boeing Aerospace, and often “pilots” Pinky to whatever base or station needs her help. (Wifflebat was created by Nick Fohl.)