Repercussions (Wearing the Cape Book 8)

by Marion G. Harmon

  The mic spiked again as at least half the sitting senators erupted and the chairman banged his gavel.

  “Order! Order! Be quiet! Mr. Gibbons, you are not reassuring us.”

  “With respect, we are not trying to reassure you. We are trying to scare you. Many of you are scared right now, but you are not scared enough to consider anything beyond your political careers. Your constituents want to be safe, gentlemen. Well, so do your newly empowered constituents. Right now, all that we have to deal with are a few criminals among us who are suddenly gifted, a few emboldened by their breakthroughs who think they can take what they want now, do what they want. But their numbers are small, and the Sentinels and the other teams that are forming will show them differently. Working with the law, gentlemen, because we have as much interest as anybody in preserving the law.

  “And this, gentlemen, is because we know that the law is the only thing that protects us from bloody necessity, from the need to exercise the force that we have been given to preserve our lives and our liberties. If our government makes us criminal, then our numbers will not be small. If you force us to decide between dying on our feet or living on our knees, then you will destroy this country. Something might survive, but it won’t be an America where the Bill of Rights has any meaning. It will not be the Land of the Free.

  “I have named myself for a Greek hero of the Trojan War, but now I would like to play the oracle— hopefully not Cassandra. Many, most, governments around the world have enacted their versions of the Containment Act, and are now implementing them. Some of them will repent of their actions quickly enough to preserve themselves. Many will not. Some of them are otherwise liberal and lawful enough that their new laws will not be so oppressive as to breed immediate and deep opposition. Many are not. Nations who already persecute their religious and ethnic minorities will suddenly find that their victims have powerful champions. Despotic governments will not even try to restrain their impulse to control the breakthroughs they can trust and kill the breakthroughs they cannot, and people already fighting rebellions and civil wars will find that losses will grant power to the losers.

  “A few nations may successfully co-opt their breakthroughs, turn them into a new arm of police and military power. Those nations will survive in something like their current forms. America may be one of them, but only if this country keeps the faith and trust of its newly empowered citizens, if it allows us to serve the greater good, or not, as we see fit and within the law, rather than attempting to coerce our obedience. No man or woman will keep faith with a nation that does not keep faith with them.”

  Simon’s mouth formed a silent “wow” as the room erupted again. Lisa looked like she was going to be sick, frozen in her chair, and Sam knew Simon, geeky-cute as he was, was going to be looking somewhere else for female company. She didn’t get it. They’d all heard the same speech, but all she’d heard was a declaration of war. A lot of people would, and this bit of hearing testimony was going viral before dark. But Sam had just heard a declaration of allegiance, provisionally. Simon had heard it too, he was nodding. They exchanged looks past Lisa’s head.

  They both knew what Lisa’s next byline was going to be like, and if they wanted the people that counted right now—the people who were going to decide what America was going to be—to make the right choice, then those people were going to have to hear what Sam and Simon had just heard. They were going to have to hear it from their constituents, which meant their constituents were going to have to hear it first.

  “Beers later?” Simon asked, an invitation meant for one.

  “Hell yes. I’m really eloquent when I’m too drunk to drive.”

  “Works for me. We’ll spell-check in the morning.”

  Law, Order, and A Popping Culture.

  No backing down, no giving in.

  I pick my fights, but I fight to win.

  Though the Reaper draws near me I cry,

  Conquer or die!

  —From Conquer or Die, by Have No Fear

  Ajax’s historic speech before the Senate committee broke the fever of public hysteria. With a little calm restored, President Kayle convinced Congress and the public that the right thing to do was bury the Containment Act and create a new federal department, the Department of Superhuman Affairs. Ten years after the Event, laws surrounding breakthroughs are still in flux. Kayle’s successor, President Touches Clouds, is a former Chicago Sentinel and hugely popular public figure. The DSA and Justice Departments of both the Kayle and Touches Clouds administrations have consistently defended the civil rights of breakthroughs and pushed to have them declared a Protected Class, which would give them the same civil rights protections against discrimination as are currently enjoyed by women and racial and religious minorities.

  But breakthroughs are categorically different from other protected classes; they’re often “armed,” and some of them are very, very dangerous. A large percentage of the population idolizes capes, but a sizable portion of the public has never trusted breakthroughs—often with good reason. The tension between breakthroughs’ civil rights and the public’s right to safety is unresolvable. Courts have consistently ruled that no breakthrough is obligated to out himself, but courts have also ruled that in some cases public safety trumps a breakthrough’s rights.

  One case in point is schools; courts have ruled that parental rights and student’s safety requires that parents be told if their child is in school with superhuman children. The worst school slaying since the Event was perpetuated by Cocytus, a high school sophomore; the victim of extreme bullying, she maimed or killed half the football team and cheerleading squad at a pregame pep-rally. The school administration had been aware of her powers and not shared their knowledge with the public, and the families sued the school system for millions. Since the tragedy many states have required separate facilities for known breakthrough children, whatever their powers and juvenile history.

  And then there are the Mask Laws. The right of the accused to confront his accuser is enshrined in constitutional law. It is a basic civil right, and in many states this precludes a superhero with a secret identity from testifying in court. Since the state can compel a person’s testimony except on grounds of self-incrimination, this puts secret identities in legal jeopardy. Criminal charges and lawsuits can do the same. Some states solve this with Mask Laws which allow masked superheroes to register their true identities with the DSA and enjoy full privacy; they essentially establish a second, fully legal, public identity. Other states have created Anti-Mask Laws, making the wearing of a mask in public a misdemeanor, and refusal to remove one at the request of law enforcement officials a felony!

  But while the forces of law and order variously are ambivalent towards superhumans, the public is mostly all-in—especially on superhumans whose powers resemble those of pre-Event comic book heroes! This of course was the genius of the Sentinels; a costumed and codenamed superhero was a Good Guy, not a new and frightening threat. The Crisis Aid and Intervention teams that followed the Sentinels’ public-relations model became local—if not national—celebrities. Costumed first responders, capes saved lives and quieted public fears.

  And it became big business.

  The comics publishers moved fast to negotiate with the most visible and marketable capes to produce their own lines of comics, books, even TV series and movies. Advertisers try to recruit them as product spokespersons, politicians seek their endorsements and celebrities seek their company. Capes are the It People of the Post-Event years. Just two years after the Event, Crooner—a sound-controlling breakthrough—sang at the Emmys to celebrate the win of the first Sentinels movie, Day One. The music industry went nuts and started a talent search that turned up Burnout, a pyrokinetic with a growly voice and a lot of attitude. The rivalry between the two reached epic proportions, but just a few years later Have No Fear, an all-breakthrough band of Hillwood Academy alumni, passed them both in record sales and event tickets.

  Superhero-glam is a huge indus
try. New heroes get their codenames and crests trademarked through Brandon & Hollister, the firm that handled the Sentinels’ trademarks. Celebrity capes go to Andrew’s Designs for their costumes. Two cable channels, Powers TV and Breakthrough TV, are All Capes, All The Time channels, mixing news, gossip, docudramas and entertainment of varying quality. Magazines like Hero Beat and Power Week cater to cape-watchers of all ages, Hero Beat pitching particularly to the teen crowd. Even serious publications, like Barlow’s Guide to Superhumans, are gobbled up by an avid public.

  “Capecons” are the biggest events in the cape-watcher’s calendar. The biggest annual capecon is Chicago’s Metrocon, which combines with the biggest annual CAI training and expo conference in the country; three days of serious training and lectures, three days of inter-team competition and fun. New York and LA hold sister-conventions and each year sees a much wider second tier of smaller capecons across the country hosting regional training and events. Of course fans flock to the capecons to see the capes, buy merchandise, and have fun with cosplay, but the conventions are also job fairs for breakthroughs seeking to introduce themselves to local teams and pass qualifications, and even professional CAI heroes seeking to move up into bigger and more visible teams.

  Breakthroughs can have it good or bad, but it’s good to be a cape.

  And All the Wide World

  Most of the action in the series happens in the US or is US-adjacent—something you’d expect since Astra belongs to a Chicago-based team. But the world is wide and different nations had very different experiences, post-Event. I got a chance to really think about those differences while writing the background pieces for Wearing the Cape: The Roleplaying Game and Wearing the Cape: Barlow’s Guide. And all of that informs Repercussions. I simply couldn’t put in all the backstory I wanted to (it would have been waaaay too much), but here are some of the other stories of the New Heroic Age.

  From the beginning the European Project, as many called the dream of a continental union, possessed two goals: to make European conflicts like the two great wars that had shattered the continent in the 20th Century “unthinkable and materially impossible,” and to strengthen democracy among its member states. The Event nearly shattered the European Project, and the stronger Union that has followed has not, perhaps, gone in directions it otherwise might have. The EU was nearly broken on the first day by one breakthrough: Seif-al-Din.

  The Rotterdam Massacre

  “I dreamed and in my dream I found Aladdin’s lamp of old, and the fearful djinn I released bowed to me and asked what my heart desired. Fame, riches, power and palaces, the most beautiful women in the world? And I said to the djinn, I wish to be a sword in Allah’s hands, to smite the unbelievers, to bring sorrow to the House of War that they may weep knowing that God is great. And the djinn laughed and burst forth brighter than the sun that blinds to look upon and revealed himself to be an angel of unspeakable beauty. And he breathed upon me, breath with the scents of Paradise, so that when I awoke, I found I had become the Sword of the Faith.”

  The day of the Event destroyed the city center of Rotterdam. Buildings collapsed. Others caught fire and burned without check as firefighters who responded to the emergency were slaughtered. Before the day was over most of downtown Rotterdam—in tragic irony much the same area that was destroyed by the Rotterdam Blitz during WWII—was rubble and ash. Hundreds had died and thousands were injured and it wasn’t just because of falling planes. It was a massacre perpetuated by a single breakthrough. Seif-al-Din began his rampage unchecked and apparently unstoppable, and was only brought down hours later by a desperate band of new breakthroughs who rose to stop him.

  The first Post-Event terrorist act, the Rotterdam Massacre was a breakthrough-caused disaster exceeded only by the complete destruction of Lusaka in Africa (p.8). The public’s reaction to news of the massacre and the horrific video footage of it dwarfed Great Britain’s reaction to The Twelfth, the Ulster breakthrough who had immediately turned his new powers to attacking a British Army barracks. The fact that Seif-al-Din had apparently been eventually brought down by heroic new breakthroughs who threw themselves into battle to stop him—many of them dying in the process—didn’t have much effect other than to polarize the reaction; to many, native European breakthroughs were now good, while Muslim breakthroughs were bad. All European nations passed versions of Britain’s Shackleton Law, most of those laws especially but not exclusively targeting Muslim breakthroughs. The difference was usually that, where “native” breakthroughs who weren’t criminals might be evaluated and released, many Muslim breakthroughs were indefinitely detained or deported.

  As bad as the laws were, the public reaction was worse, with many Muslim neighborhoods attacked, and in some incidents Muslim immigrants killed. Muslim breakthroughs rose to fight back, and already battered cities burned. One lone-wolf Muslim breakthrough attacked and killed the entire Belgian royal family after his own sister died in a Brussels riot.

  The Continental Guard

  When the EU government in Brussels seemed helpless to halt the slide into bloody nativism, a volunteer team dubbed themselves the Continental Guard and began acting to stop the riots and counter-riots. The Guard volunteers came from all nations of the EU, and several of them were Muslims. Rallying around the surviving defenders of Rotterdam and modeling themselves after the example of the Chicago Sentinels, they adopted codenames and fashioned costumes. Working with the police in nations that welcomed their help (France and Germany especially, but also others), and without the police in nations that didn’t want their interference, they did their best to stop the tide of violence that swept across many EU nations.

  The example of the Continental Guard rallied loyalists throughout the EU, and gradually the crisis passed. The Shackleton Laws were lightened and applied more equitably (push-back in Germany, with memories of Nazi registration laws, was especially quick), and the EU recognized the Guard. The next step, the hardest one, was to make the Continental Guard the senior superhuman police organization and only superhuman military organization in the EU.

  Today the Continental Guard is the symbol of the European Union. Its headquarters are in Rotterdam, but it has national headquarters in every EU state and it shuffles its teams’ memberships on a regular basis so that Guard members serve in many different EU nations during their careers. Guard members are national heroes at home—at least among EU loyalists; many nativists and minorities consider them traitors.

  EU Security and Superhuman Groups

  The Rotterdam Accord doesn’t forbid its member-states from making official use of their own breakthroughs, and some EU states field groups modeled after the American CAI teams or make them part of their police or national security forces. But the EU does by treaty maintain legal jurisdiction over superhuman crimes and crimes against breakthroughs, and the Continental Guard fields the only superhuman military units. Five years service in the CG will earn full EU citizenship for oneself and one’s family, providing a huge incentive for Foreign Legion-style recruits!

  The Guard’s Overwatch Division also keeps its eye on non-government organizations comprised of or using breakthroughs (see the Superhuman Organizations section for some of these). Although it doesn’t admit to it, Overwatch Division pays special attention to both nationalist breakthroughs and immigrant and minority breakthroughs (ethnic or religious), since they are uniquely vulnerable to recruitment into Antisocial Groups (AGs). In structure, the Guard’s military and security breakthrough units are somewhat interchangeable, but the EU has been reluctant to involve them in actions outside of the EU. This is partly because Brussels doesn’t want the EU’s guardians to start thinking of themselves as soldiers, and partly because international military operations can enflame the EU’s own immigrant populations and feed those Antisocial Groups.

  Despite this, many Guards do take leave and go abroad as private citizens working with Heroes Without Borders. Brussels allows it so that the volunteers may gain field experience. Sooner or
later that experience will be needed at home; the Post-Event EU faces several serious internal and external threats.

  A New Europe

  The Rotterdam Accord, which gave the EU government complete jurisdiction over breakthrough security matters, with a transnational police force and military force to fulfill that responsibility, was a huge step towards turning the EU from an alliance of states into a true unified federal state. Not all EU states were willing to take that step, and several nations left the Union over it. Neither Ireland nor Great Britain had experienced the mob reaction of much of the Continent, and both flatly refused to turn parts of their military security and domestic law enforcement over to EU control. Finland also departed and Belgium spit up. With the Belgian royal family gone, Flanders seceded from Belgium and chose Antwerp as its new capital. Wallonia joined France, with Brussels becoming an administratively independent EU city-state (similar to Washington D.C.). Catalonia and Corsica seceded from Spain and France respectively, peacefully if not in friendly fashion. Flanders remained in the EU, while Catalonia and Corsica are non-EU neutrals.

  Finland

  Speaking of Finland, Otso Pajunen, Kukkuu’s creator, gave his own country a Post-Event history fascinating enough I had to include it on the sourcebook. So here it is.

  Finnish society is relatively homogeneous, with ethnic Swedes making up close to 6% of the population, Russians and Brits 0.1%, and all other minorities combined less than 0.1%. Consequently, the Finnish people didn’t experience the Post-Event social violence that rocked many EU states to its south. But it did experience a few psychotic breakthroughs, one of which did tremendous damage to Helsinki, killing several dozen people in horrific fashion. Consequently, the Shackleton Laws the Finnish Parliament passed with the National Public Safety Act were severe; breakthroughs could be sequestered and educated if deemed dangerous, until such time as their keepers considered them reliable and not a threat to society. A breakthrough did not need to commit a crime to be considered dangerous.