Repercussions (Wearing the Cape Book 8)

by Marion G. Harmon

  The Ascendant: Just three years after the Event, Doctor Simon Pellegrini wrote The Sleeper Must Awaken, the manifesto of The Foundation of Awakened Theosophy. An organization dedicated to using meditative imaging and “enlightenment” techniques to trigger breakthroughs in its followers, it was dismissed as one of the more harmless “origin sellers.” Unknown to the public, Dr. Pellegrini was also the Ascendant, a supervillain terrorist who claimed credit for several mass-disasters which killed hundreds or thousands while triggering handfuls of breakthroughs. It’s believed that the Ascendant was behind the Green Man attacks on Chicago.

  Astra: aka Hope Corrigan. The titular heroine of the stories, Astra achieved an A Class Atlas-Type breakthrough when the Dark Anarchist dropped the Ashland Overpass on her in a messy assassination aimed at someone else. In short order she became Atlas’ sidekick and then the youngest member of the Sentinels. Her parents are John (Iron Jack) and Anne-Marie Corrigan.

  Atlas: aka John Chandler. Atlas was the first Post-Event superhuman to be caught on video (impressively catching a falling plane), and the first to put on a costume and give himself a superhero codename. Only eighteen at the time and “Just a boy from Texas, ma’am,” Atlas dedicated his life to protecting others and advancing the image and position of superheroes. The naming breakthrough of the Atlas-Type, he died at the hands of Seif-al-Din while protecting the President during the Whittier Base Attack. Many consider him the archetype by which superheroes are measured.

  The Bees: Julie Brennan, Annabeth Bauman, and Megan Brock. The Bees were that circle of It Girls you hated or idolized in high school: glamorous, from “good” families, and supremely confident. When Hope’s friend Shelly died during high school freshman, year Julie led them in “adopting” a broken and lost Hope. Julie is the bossy leader, Megan the group’s snarker, Annabeth the nice one who just likes everyone to be happy, but since graduation they’ve all shown other sides of their character (especially Annabeth). They remain very important to Hope, although she struggles to maintain the connection under the pressures of her superhero career.

  Doctor Beth: Doctor Jonathan Beth is the Sentinels’ resident physician, and a researcher of “superhumanology.” He studies breakthroughs and the manifestations of their powers and has written many monographs, giving lectures around the world. He carries lollypops for good patients and reminds Astra of her family doctor.

  Black Powder: aka Tycho Kwon. Black Powder calls himself a “trouble shooter.” He has the power to transmute bullets as he fires them, changing them into a substance that defies analysis (and breaks down fast after firing). The transmuted bullets can take any property of density, frangibility, etc., allowing him to fire anything from stunning “mercy bullets” to rounds that can pierce an A Class Ajax-Type’s hide. His power doesn't just affect impact: his transmuted bullets let him penetrate defenses like forcefields and magnetokinetic interception. Formerly US Army, Black Powder is now a civilian contractor with the DSA. He works on protection details and teams serving General Warrant on extremely dangerous breakthroughs. (Black Powder was created by Jacob Crimin.)

  Blacklocks: Capitalism creates a service for every need. Blacklock Security is a developer and supplier of superhuman restraints, everything from titanium shackles and cells to “sandman” tranquilizer packs, hoods, and more exotic means of restraint. Today most heavy-duty shackles are referred to as Blacklocks.

  Blackstone: One of the Sentinels’ founders and a mentor to Atlas and later to Astra, Blackstone was a retired US Marine turned stage magician. His power is essentially “stage magic”—he can appear and vanish both himself and objects he pulls from his hat or waves away (teleportation), fly (levitation), and spin completely convincing visual illusions. He has always been the team’s intelligence analyst, and after the deaths of Atlas and Ajax, the last serving founders, he became the team’s de-facto leader.

  Breakthrough Powers: Breakthrough powers come in all shapes and sizes, although most tend to conform to “types” made popular by media exposure or societal beliefs, and they range from trivial or close to human ability (D Class) to amazing (A Class). Power naming conventions vary; the most common powers are named after the first breakthrough witnessed exhibiting them (Atlas-Type, Ajax-Type, Volt-Type, Verne-Type, Merlin-Type, etc.), or a classic type (Speedster, Kinetic). (Author’s note: one of the best sources for power-types is the TV Tropes wiki, under Stock Superpowers. But beware, TV Tropes is best read with someone who can force you to stop.)

  The Brotherhood: In the aftermath of the Event, many street gangs found themselves becoming minions to street-level supervillains. Chicago developed two such supervillain/minion gangs; the Brotherhood and the Sanguinary Boys. The two fought constantly for turf rights to various criminal activities (mainly protection rackets, prostitution, and street-distribution for the Chicago Mob).

  Burnout: aka Roger Carr. Burnout was one of the super-celebrity creations of the entertainment industry. A talented singer who manifested pyrokinetic powers (immune to heat, able to generate and control flame), he became a huge recording pop-star—which lead him into drugs, groupies, and eventually convictions for multiple counts of statutory rape and drug possession.

  Capes: There are a few reality television series devoted to superhumans, and Capes is one of the better ones. It is entirely action footage shot by camera crews following different CAI capes around on patrols and missions, and interviews with the subjects.

  Chakra: The Sentinels’ most controversial member, Chakra is an A Class Mentalist who gained her tantra-based breakthrough powers during an episode of epiphany-triggering episode of ritual sex. She describes her powers as Tantric Magic, but while they are charged by tantric rituals they largely conform to classical psionic powers (forms of telepathy, ESP, precognition, psychic healing, and levitation). Although now a full-time Sentinel, she holds a degree in psychology—she studied sexual behavioralism—and was a licensed sex therapist. After becoming a Sentinel she capitalized on her fame to write The Sacred Gates, a book on sacred sex.

  The Chinese States: Also known as the Secession States, these are the territories which revolted against Beijing in the aftermath of the brutal suppression of minority and politically distrusted breakthroughs following The Event. They are currently struggling to suppress their own would-be warlords. In this they are being assisted by Indian and League troops. It’s expected that most of the Secession States will confederate with a reformed Beijing to reunite China, but at least four will almost certainly go their own way: Tibet, Xianjang, Manchuria, and Hong Kong.

  Citizens for Human Rights: CHR is a political activist group which loudly advocates restrictions on superhumans and superheroes. They have picketed to protest the special legal treatment of superheroes—such as being able to testify while wearing a mask—and to support superhuman registration and the right to know when they are living next to superhumans.

  Anne-Marie Corrigan: The daughter of an old blue-blood Chicago family, Anne-Marie scandalized high-society by marrying John Corrigan. John was a decade older than her, not from one of the best families, and not yet successful. Their children are Josh, Aaron, Toby, Faith, and Hope. When Faith died of a childhood disease, Anne-Marie founded the Faith Corrigan Foundation. The foundation throws charitable art and social events and collects millions of dollars in donations from Chicago’s elite towards medical research and children’s aid at home and abroad.

  The Crew: Superhero vs. Supervillain fights can cause a lot of damage that has to be cleaned up quickly, and the Crew is a superhuman contracting company which specializes in fast cleanup. It hires Ajax-types, strong telekinetics, and other superhumans with powers that do the job. Crew members often take on codenames like Border, Irons, Brace, and Gantry, and when they aren’t cleaning up after superhuman fights they are traveling to disaster areas where reconstruction speed is vitally important.

  Crisis Aid and Intervention Teams: The Sentinels’ original contract with the City of Chicago set the template for Crisis
Aid and Intervention teams, which make contracts with municipalities much like private security companies and emergency-services providers. CAI franchises such as the Guardians and the Knights are extremely popular with state and local governments because they guarantee uniform standards. They’re popular with superheroes because they act collectively to provide legal and insurances services as well as collective bargaining support. CAI teams are certified through their agencies, but still need licenses issued by state governments and are always subject to jurisdiction requirements.

  Cryo: Cryo is a Brotherhood supervillain, an A Class Cryokinetic. He tried to “freeze” Astra during the Pullman Tower Fight, and she broke his arm with a thrown rock.

  The Dark Anarchist: (See first The Teatime Anarchist) The Dark Anarchist is the Teatime Anarchist’s “evil twin,” split off in the breakthrough event which gave them both the power to travel to the past and future. Neither could change the past, but they could visit the “probably future” and then come back to the present to change it. Both decided to create a better, or at least safer, future, but they diverged significantly as to means. This led to a time-war which lasted several years, in which the Dark Anarchist stole his twin’s code-name and framed him for a host of crimes and assassinations. Astra named the Dark Anarchist, and outside of a select group who had direct contact with him or very high security clearance and need-to-know, nobody even knows of his existence.

  Daystar: David Knight. Daystar is an Ultra Class Atlas-Type. He’s also a Metamorph-Type; he transforms from his unpowered form into Daystar—an idealized superhero version of himself. His transformation includes his costume, which is just as tough as he is and repairs itself between transformations. His toughness extends to anyone he is carrying close as well, an interesting wrinkle on the traditional Atlas-Type. He is the strongest and toughest Atlas-Type hero known, but he can only be Daystar for a few hours at a time. Daystar uses his fame to gain support for Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) and Breakthroughs For a Better World. A fervent Christian, he also proselytizes and speaks publicly everywhere he can. He isn’t a member of Heroes Without Borders, but is happy to coordinate with them whenever their missions merge and he often encounters them responding to humanitarian crises. (Daystar was created by David Bird.)

  Senator Davis: Senator Todd Davis was a “strong national security” advocate for the regulation and control of superhumans, and the author of the Davis Bill. He died in the Ashland Overpass bombing that triggered Astra’s breakthrough, the Dark Anarchist’s intended victim.

  The Department of Superhuman Affairs: The DSA is a department, like the Department of the Interior, rather than an agency, like the FBI. This is important; it means that the Secretary of Superhuman Affairs is a member of the President’s cabinet and reports to her directly. Without its own law-enforcement arm, the DSA relies on the US Marshals Service, which has its own chain of command. The DSA also directs a branch of the Secret Service, fielding breakthrough agents whose main responsibility is the protection of the President and the federal government from superhuman threats. Both US Super-Marshals and Secret Service agents are sent, with lawyers and investigators, when it looks like “supervillains” might be compromising local government and law enforcement. Lastly, the DSA works closely with the FBI on counter-terrorism and counter-intelligence operations, and aids the Justice Department in its mission to prosecute civil rights violations and public corruption when breakthroughs are involved. All of this creates something of a mess of competing missions, but it also means that the officials and agents of the DSA work very closely with the other federal departments and the Secretary of Superhuman Affairs (called the Director in-house and by the media) is senior to the directors of the various agencies. There are no DSA “superheroes.” DSA superhumans always dress civilian or in DSA uniforms.

  The Dome: The Chicago Dome is the Headquarters of the Chicago Sentinels. It’s located in Grant Park, across from Michigan Avenue. It sits in open park, a solid and half-buried bunker with wide sight lines and lots of space for evacuating civilians from the area; one story has it that the city planners initially intended to put the Sentinels’ headquarters in one of the new Post-Event high-rise business building projects, until Blackstone—a former US Marine—“had words with them.”

  Dane Dorweiler: aka The Dane. Annabeth picked Dane to be her boyfriend in sophomore year of high school, and the big good-natured goof went along with it. They’ve been Danabeth ever since. Hope likes him quite a bit and once had a crush on him she’ll never admit to.

  Detective Max Fisher: Detective Fisher is the senior detective on the CPD’s Superhuman Crimes Detective Division, assigned to all cases involving superhuman powers, and he may not be real. He (and Astra) is aware that he is a character from a short-lived and forgotten series of detective novels written over a decade ago. He doesn’t age and can’t be killed (although he can be beat up), and he has memories that don’t match reality. He hopes he’s the series’ author and just a delusional breakthrough; he might be a persistent thought-form created from the author’s obsession before he died.

  Doctor Cornelius: aka Rafael Jones. Doctor Cornelius was a college student majoring in metaphysics and seeking drug-assisted enlightenment when the Event changed the world. His hallucinatory and epiphanic breakthrough transformed him into one of the most powerful Merlin-Types known. He is a master of Hermetic Magic (also called Deccanic Magic), and a tormented man who would very much like to give up his “enlightenment.” He is a close associate of Orb’s.

  Flare: aka, Mark Luxius. Mark is a musician and Flare is his stage-name. A D Class Photokinetic, he can generate and direct low-wattage lasers from unidirectional sources. At most his lasers can blind, but he can use them to create impressive “light-sculptures” and laser shows, a skill he’s leveraging into a performance career. (Flare was created by Spencer Brint.)

  The Fortress: Described as the superhero’s Hard Rock Café, the Fortress is a cape-memorabilia museum, a café, a club, and a Chicago landmark. Astra has seen many CAI capes hanging there, including Caterwall, Bombshell, Jack Frost, Hardlock, Red Robin, Blue Fire, Foxlight, The Cardinal, Wisteria, Flashback, and SaFire. Cosplaying groupies usually far outnumber the actual capes, who often don club-wear versions of their sturdier field costumes to party.

  Freakzone: “No we're not your daddy's villins/ we're not chillin' then we're killin'/ we want you, best be willin'.” (From Murder Night.) The entertainment industry made breakthroughs with even a little talent the new pop-stars, while “supervillains” took over the genre of music formerly known as gangsta-rap. The result is groups like Freakzone, a hugely popular villain-rap band.

  Galatea: A chrome gynoid (female android) robot creation of Vulcan’s, Galatea is variously a low-sentience AI and a drone shell for Shelly to “pilot.” Her configuration is subject to change and she has various modular add-ons like micro-missile racks and boot and pack jets, and she has been destroyed several times. The public believes her to be a human-shaped drone, which is more or less true, and fans endlessly debate who her pilot is.

  Gantry: aka Eric Ludlow. Gantry is a B Class Ajax-Type war veteran and member of the Crew, and was Astra’s first superhuman “fight” (she had to restrain him during a drunken tantrum). He later becomes Dozer, one of the Wreckers.

  The Godzilla Plague: Somehow, somewhere, some insane Verne-type thought it would be a great idea to create a race of Godzillas that were designed to attack pollution sources (mainly nuclear plants and, well, cities). The creatures go through two stages: a stealth-stage where they lurk in the depths, eat lots of fish, and lay eggs, and the monster-stage, where they grow much bigger and seek out contamination. Their primary weapon is a plasma jet that can melt steel and their secondary weapon is the ability to generate local electromagnetic pulses that interfere with electrical systems. Godzilla periodically appear and attack coastal cities and it’s proven impossible to find all of their eggs. Predictably, Japan seems to get an unfair share of G
odzilla attention.

  The Green Man: Almost nothing is known about the Green Man. “He” appears to have been able to transform himself into a disembodied “spirit” capable of possessing plants and generating amazing waves of growth. He threatened Chicago with successive eruptions of green, but proved vulnerable to extreme heat at the center of his manifestations. Some speculate that he may have been boosted by the Ascendant.

  Grendel: Brian Lucas is a transformed A Class Metamorph-Type (within limits he adapts to his environment and opposition). Grendel lost his family when the Ascendant exposed several thousand victims to a psychotropic gas which triggered hallucinations, rampages, and several psychotic breaks and breakthroughs, and was permanently transformed into a gray and monstrous humanoid form which is the baseline for all his changes. He’s potentially stronger than the strongest Ajax-Type. Grendel has joined the Young Sentinels and has also sworn himself to Ozma’s service (he’s currently the Royal Army of Oz) in return for her promise to help him gain justice for his murdered family.

  The Guardians: The Guardians are one of the largest CAI franchises in the US, with teams in most states. The other seven Crisis Aid and Intervention teams in Chicago are all Guardian teams, named for their districts (South Side Guardians, West Side Guardians, etc.). They, and the Sentinels, are all coordinated through the city’s Dispatch Department in The Dome, under the direction of the Sentinels and city coordinators.

  Halo: aka, The Mighty Halo, aka Sydney Scoville. Halo is the first superhero Astra encountered on her visit to the Archon extrareality. Halo’s powers appear to derive entirely from five orbs to which she has become psychically linked (and physically linked, to the extent that she cannot be separated from them by more than a few feet). The DSA doesn’t know how to classify these orbs; they could be superscience, but observations of Archon indicate that the laws of the extrareality allow for hyper-advanced magic so they could be magical artifacts. Astra simply described them as “Really, really weird.” The power-levels displayed by the orbs’ different abilities range from D Class (the “lighthook orb”) to Ultra Class (the “pew-pew orb”). (Note: Halo is the creation and wholely owned intellectual property of Dave Barrack.)