TalKaline

Laura Lockhart Excerpt from WSPDR With Amanda Vines interview with Laura Lockhart, member of UN Special Council on Super-Human Activities Laura Lockhart: "I don't believe it's a metahuman power. Or even related to supervillains." Amanda Vines: "Obviously it's never a bright line, especially when you're talking about insight powers. But you certainly do have a reputation. And it's not one that deals with normal people." LL: "I do believe that supervillains are far more normal than we give them credit for." AV: "Let's come back to that later, because it seems to contradict some other things you've said. But I was talking about your darker reputation. Eagle Eye has described you as 'a woman born completely untroubled by conscience.'" LL: "I'm also untroubled by his opinion about me." AV: "Dr. Science - hardly a radical - has said that speaking to you was 'a terrifying experience'." LL: "If he thought I was a bad person or that my logic was unsound, he would have said that instead. Dr. Science is very precise." AV: "Miss Liberty sought you out and hired you specifically for the UN SCSHA as a 'supervillain consultant'. She clarified that she specifically meant a consultant on supervillains, not a consultant who is a supervillain, but the fact that she felt the need to clarify... implies things." LL: "I am able to predict, comprehend, and negotiate with some of the most volatile personalities on the planet who sometimes have metahuman abilities allowing them to kill people from across the room. It's very reasonable that people would find my ability to do that frightening. It's more reassuring if we pretend that supervillains are some sort of alien life-form that none of us could ever be, or a monster from the id sent by the Well of the Furies to possess ordinary people and to warp them into pod-person parodies of their former selves. It's very, very hard to admit that evil might not be quarantined to a small number of exceptional minds, or some sort of disease that turns human beings into rabid beasts. But if we refuse to accept that the incentives that drive Lord Recluse's behavior might also exist in our own souls, the easiest way to avoid facing it is to insist that anyone who does understand the impulse towards supervillainy must be a supervillain themselves." AV: "Right. About that. You've complained before about people treating supervillains like 'normal people'-" LL: "I have never said that. Not once." AV: "You stated that the Scout's attempt to appeal to Dr. Pasalima Hamidon's humanity was 'foolish'. Some people interpreted it as you saying he deserved what he got." LL: "Of course I didn't mean that. I simply meant that his attempt was doomed to failure. The Hamidon has strong political anarchoprimitivist beliefs. When he was Hamidon Pasalima, he spent forty years gaining a molecular biology degree before using it to transform himself into a exponentially-growing monocellular amoeba that produces golem-like monstrosities of stone, moss, and fungus to eradicate all evidence of human existence on this planet. He was - he spent years and was willing to sacrifice his life as a part of his plan. He wasn't going to be swayed by one person telling him that human beings were animals too and thus a part of nature." AV: "So you think he was naive?" LL: "Well, yes, but more than that, I think he simply didn't respect Hamidon enough. He didn't believe that someone as intelligent as Dr. Hamidon, someone Scout had worked with his whole life, someone who had taught Scout the techniques he used to be a hero, could have looked at the world and decided that humanity needed to be eradicated. But Hamidon did. So Scout believed that Hamidon just... had to be mistaken about something. And if he just said the right thing, he'd be revealing a fact to Hamidon that Hamidon had never thought of before, and then Hamidon would see that humanity deserved to live, and everything would go back to normal. But... you don't... would you change your entire political beliefs, something you were willing to fight and die for, over one simple change in definition of terms? Would you uproot your entire life over a single sentence? Would anyone?" AV: "... I see what you mean." LL: "Scout thought that Hamidon had to... had to just have one simple thing wrong with him, and that he could fix it and Hamidon would see that he had been mistaken about everything. But it's not. People don't work like that. No one would expect an ordinary person to work like that. But because Hamidon is a 'supervillain', Scout expected him to not act like an ordinary person." AV: "So, when you say that - are you saying that your insight power, which may or may not be metahuman in nature, allows you to see the ordinary person inside the supervillain?" LL: "No. Not at all. If anything, I see the supervillain inside the ordinary person."

Superheroes and the 1980s First crossover between The Spy Camera, audioblog run by Trey Pither (son of Vernon Pither, Arachnos Director of Efficiency) analyzing metahuman combat tactics, and The Secret Circle, text blog run by ex-superhero "Jack Flash" (government name unstated) analyzing operational-level superheroics Jack Flash: "So yeah. I was on Dyne back in the 80s. This isn't news." Trey Pither: "I mean, I don't -" JF: "Don't what? You don't crush yourself?" TP: "No! But, I don't cover - I don't cover that sort of thing. I talk about the decisions that you make when you're in the - in the moment. When your life is in danger. The decisions you make when you're not fighting-" JF: "This is whether or not you have the chance to ever make that decision. Fights happen anywhere. They're won in the gym." TP: "... Disagree, but... ... So, you get Superadine in gyms?" JF: "The locker room, actually. There's usually someone who knows a guy. Of course, if you're twitchy, they'll tell you it's something else. Like 'insulin'. Stalwart always did 'insulin' he got from Agent Aldritch before his workout. What a loser. Even when he was back with the FBSA - the most dangerous place to stand in Paragon City is between Lincoln and a camera." TP: "So, it's true, then? The government gives out Superadine?" JF: "Shouldn't you have a - you know, a specific party line that you're required to say, like, 'the metahumans from the mainland invented Superadine and forced it on your innocent children', or 'the metahumans from the mainland are denying us access to free and natural Superadine so we won't get powers', or both at once? Since you live in Grandville and all. With an address that your local Marshal knows." TP: "I don't know what the Arachnos official stance is and I don't care. My blog is not about my Dad, okay? My blog is about letting people know how much thought goes into being a metahuman combatant and how many decisions they're making every second of every fight. Hero, villain, whatever. I'm neutral." JF: "Are you?" TP: "Well I kinda wanna see Arachnos attain world domination someday. It'd keep Dad busy." JF: "Sure, sure. Anyways, 'the government' implies a degree of intentionality that just isn't there. It's more that they turn a blind eye. If the cop who arrests a dealer does some of his stash, gives it out to his poker buddies, some of whom bet their capes on three jacks and a dream - well, the rest of the force will figure they've got better things to do." TP: "But everyone knew?" JF: "You knew who was using and who wasn't. Guys who had been looking like Scrappers for a decade, suddenly they're Brutes? Guys don't just suddenly change their whole archetype at 34 years old. It's the guys who weren't using that I feel bad for, twenty years on." TP: "So some people weren't?" JF: "Yeah. Some guys, they'd tell me... 'I wake up at 5 AM and kiss my kids goodbye at 6 so I can hit the gym. I turn the police radio on at 11 and ride a snake-themed motorcycle through the city -'" TP: laughs "Gee, I wonder who you're talking about." JF: "'- until 9 PM. I'm doing everything right, and I saw some twenty-three-year old who's crushing so hard he's already going bald, and he made Phalanx Reserve two weeks ago. The only way to keep up is to start injecting - but I want to see my children have grandkids.'" TP: "Kind of in the wrong business for that. Cold, I know." JF: "... It's not just that. They're fine with risking their lives, but risking brain damage? Risking the people who are near them? When you're crushing, every problem seems like it can be solved with violence. A guy in the street who you think could rat on his dealer isn't talking? Violence. Someone isn't respecting you and they don't know what you can do? Violence. Your wife leaving you because you scare the kids? Violence." TP: "Wait. You're saying that in the 80s, there were a lot of superheroes using. Are you saying that the reason 80s superheroes were so, well, like that is because a lot of them were..." JF: "Look at Back Alley Brawler. You think you get to looking like that without mail-order chemicals?"

The Legacy Chain Transcript of international phone call from Sultan's Republic of Alwaha, one half of which was recorded under Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act passed after the truck bombing of the New York Trade Center in 1993 Vanessa DeVore: "No, Mom." VDV: "Everything's fine." VDV: "Yeah. I know you're worried. It could be worse, I could be in Iran, or South Arabia, or Balad Eamun." VDV: "I know it sucks, but everything sucks. Anyways. As long as I wear a headscarf when I leave the Temple of the Four Winds, I'm fine." VDV: "It sucks that I can't go out drinking with the other two members of the Legacy Chain here. I mean, I'm twenty-three. These are supposed to be the best years-" VDV: "Oh? Yeah, they go out drinking." VDV: "Well, Superadine is illegal in America, but somehow there are plenty of Trolls in Skyway City, aren't there?" VDV: "Anyways, the Legacy Chain is - it's fine." VDV: "No, Mom, I can't be one of the people they have guarding the Holy Grail. They don't let Christians do that. Not since what they refer to as 'The Incident.' No one in the Legacy Chain is allowed to be stationed at a temple holding an artifact of religious significance to any religion they, or their parents, or their parent's parents hold." VDV: "Well, it's illegal to discriminate in America like that, but as you mentioned a few minutes ago, I'm in Alwaha." VDV: "Besides, I think the Legacy Chain is one of those organizations that kind of doesn't care about human laws. It was founded by a djinn or something centuries before America existed. She's called Serafina." VDV: "Yeah, most of their upper management is djinn." VDV: "Sort of why heroes don't like to join the Legacy Chain. Not a - not a lot of upwards mobility when your boss is immortal." VDV: "My boss? She's called Scheherazade. Spelled like the department store." VDV: "I haven't asked her if she's the actual Scheherazade." VDV: "Not the actual department store - oh, never mind. It's what I study." VDV: "Yeah. Five more years of this and they pay for my tuition in art history." VDV: "I went - I went out here because it was important. You know that. I told you." VDV: "What?" VDV: "Say that again." VDV: "And this was printed in the Paragon Caper?" VDV: "No, it's not true! I'm not covering up a pregnancy!" VDV: "Why would I - why would I go to Alwaha to cover up a pregnancy?!" VDV: "It's the Paragon Caper, Mom! They'll print literally anything!" VDV: "Saying that Mr. Yin is covering up a secret baby he had with his sidekick is exactly the sort of thing they'd say, they don't care about anything there!" VDV: "I haven't even spoken to Mr. Yin in nearly four months." VDV: "No, I can't take a picture of myself to show you that I'm not pregnant. I don't have a camera. And taking a picture of myself is illegal here." VDV: "Well, Mom, I'm not going to have a bitch-ass baby who can't murder MacBeth, so when I get home, you can check me for a C-section scar, okay?" VDV: "Okay. Great." VDV: "So just so we're clear, there are completely normal reasons for someone who was starting a promising career as a superhero to join the Legacy Chain other than the fact that they had to cover up a pregnancy, okay?" VDV: "Great." VDV: "No! I'm also not running away from being sued!"

Hopkins "Hopkins" Hopkins First crossover between The Spy Camera, audioblog run by Trey Pither (son of Vernon Pither, Arachnos Director of Efficiency) analyzing metahuman combat tactics, and The Secret Circle, text blog run by ex-superhero "Jack Flash" (government name unstated) analyzing operational-level superheroics Trey Pither: "So. I have to ask. Is that Superadine?" Jack Flash: "Geez. Uh. I don't know. I can't say for certain. There are some people who can have that body type, naturally. It's a small percentage, but-" TP: "It really sounds like you think it's Superadine." JF: "I mean, yes. The easiest way to look like Hopkins does in this video is to do a lot of high-quality Dyne. Before and after your workout, of course." TP: "Of course." JF: "I mean, it's not dinger juice. You don't just inject yourself with Superadine and lie back in your recliner and feel your muscles swell." TP: "You'd know - not that I'd ever imply that you were on Superadine." JF: "I was." TP: "I didn't know you said that. These days." JF: "I live in the Rogue Islands now. Not like I'm going to run into Eagle Eye or the other Regulators." TP: "So what was Hopkins' deal? Historically, I mean." JF: "His 'gimmick' - that's, uh, that's what we call the concept behind your gadgets, costume, and marketing-" TP: "I know what a 'gimmick' is." JF: "Right, I just wasn't sure. Anyways. He said that he was just harder working than everyone around him and didn't need to rely on powers." TP: "And presumably a Dyne habit makes it easier to be 'harder working'." JF: "Well, yeah. Word is that he's a bit of an idiot. Filled out the wrong paperwork when he was trying to get his costumed name changed, accidentally changed his government name to Hopkins Hopkins." TP: "No, I heard he did that on purpose. Like the guy in Tennessee who changed his name to "Pro-Life Tax Cut" so they had to put him on the ballot as that." JF: "Maybe. Anyways, he had a whole catchphrase and everything. 'I'm not a man, I'm a machine!'" TP: "Isn't that a little - we have android superheroes. Like, all the Bastions after IV." JF: "Yeah, Tin Mage made fun of him, and he stopped. Anyways, I can't - can't say for certain. It's possible, for a non-mutant to look like that." TP: "And if he is a mutant, well, could be anything. Wasn't Superadine derived from mutants in the first place?" JF: "It uses some of the same chemicals. Dyne is way more psychoactive, though. And I don't want to just say that he's on Dyne, just from these pictures of him. Anyways, he was one of those people who never quite got the push over." TP: "The 'push over'?" JF: "Well, there are plenty of guys who work out and want to be superheroes, but it's really hard to do it on your own unless you're Justin Sinclair. There's a lot of guys who could get hired by one of the established supergroups, guys with sponsorship deals and government contracts that let them pay you to spend fourteen hours a day in the gym and in the film room. Because that's how much work it takes to be a superhero these days. Even if you are a machine." TP: "Right. Well, at some point, rather than getting hired by the Centurions or someone like them, he got hired by Countess Crey, and he's spent the last decade as her bodyguard. Not sure if there's any backstory there. Here's him four years after getting hired fighting some Goldbrickers." JF: "Oh, Jesus! Nope. No, no. Okay, that answers that question." TP: "What?" JF: "That is him on Superadine. He's absolutely crushing. Jesus. I can practically see the veins in his arm writhing..."

Southern United Manufacturing Company Interview given by UN Special Council on Super Human Activities member Laura Lockhart to reporter Jack Houston Laura Lockhart: "Nemesis has always used organized crime as his preferred cover story. It's genius, really." Jack Houston: "I'm sorry, but organized criminals already need cover stories. If you wanted to disguise yourself in order to hide from superheroes and the police, why would you want to pick a crime syndicate that's already being pursued by them?" LL: "Because people looking for criminals will find criminals. If they don't know what they're looking for, they might find you instead." JH: "Explain." LL: "Think of it like this. Pretend you're a truck driver." JH: "I went to college." LL: "Just, just pretend. Say that you're being paid your normal rate to ship a truck full of - I don't know, apples, from Independence Port to Boston. Would you look inside the truck?" JH: "Probably not, but I guess I might. If I had to investigate something that went wrong, at least." LL: "Now pretend that someone offers you an extra twenty percent to ship something to an isolated location in the middle of Iowa, on the condition that you never look inside the truck or ask what it is. Would you look inside the truck?" JH: "Absolutely. That's incredibly suspicious. And I'm curious now." LL: "Right, and while shipping it, you find out that it's full of Arachnoid clone shock troopers from the Rogue Isles. What would you do then? Assuming that they didn't wake up, of course." JH: "Run away, change my name, find a new job." LL: "You should probably close the door first." JH: "Probably, yeah." LL: "What if you thought you weren't smuggling Arachnoids? What if you thought you were smuggling drugs? Cocaine, Dyne, Excelsior, something like that." JH: "I think I see what you're getting at, but - no, no, this is still a bad plan. Crimes - crimes have victims. Drug crimes still leave people dead of overdoses, dead in gang fighting over who gets to sell drugs where, dead from firestorms starting when the Superadine mill explodes from a spark." LL: "And if someone has to die as a result of your plans, you've already got a built-in explanation for why. 'Joey here saw too much and Mikey tried to rat us out. Get the concrete shoes and drop them off Valor Bridge.' And you know plenty of people willing to do it. And you can hire them, once they seem like they can be trusted - in both competence and loyalty - and you have plenty of blackmail on them from the crimes they've already committed for you." JH: "It still seems - like something would go wrong." LL: "Look, it's like an onion, an onion of protection. Someone walking by a truck carrying a squadron of Jaegers sees the 'SUMC' logo and assumes that it's a legitimate company delivering legitimate cargo. Someone who does more research into SUMC - maybe they're a tax collector or maybe they're a nosy employee - looks into them and finds out that they're bribing politicians, but for graft so they can get cushy contracts. And some people stop there. If you dig long enough into the cushy contracts, it looks instead like it's a drug smuggling operation. Rum in the 20s, Dyne in the 80s. Some people stop there. It's only once you penetrate past all these layers of cover story do you find out that there's a small number of the criminals actually involved who get invited to dress up as Prussian soldiers and plot world domination." JH: "Seems unnecessarily complicated." LL: "Have you seen Nemesis?"

Alektology Article in New England Journey of Metahuman Studies, April 2003 Who becomes a metahuman? Not "who becomes a superhero". We know that, despite the best efforts of scrupulously nearsighted journalists and well-meaning government functionaries; the rest of this issue is dedicated to that and the various theories explaining our data, from Dr. Thompson's theory that downwardly-mobile members of the upper-middle-class precariat do so in order to risk their lives for the chance of fame and fortune, on the belief that they will either assure their place in the world at the level of comfort experienced by their parents or dying so they don't have to experience poverty; Sledge Train's theory that superheroics are a way for traditionally subaltern classes to anonymously influence police priorities and the distribution of scarce security resources throughout society; or Samantha Salazi's theory that they all did it in order to meet girls. (Presumably, Captain Indomitable could not be reached for comment on her paper.) But who becomes a metahuman? Who gains the bizarre powers and strange abilities that give you the greatest chance of being a superhero without spending millions of dollars on a suit of powered armor or 15 years of your life training in a monastery devoted to the worship of Artemis, goddess of the hunt? The CDC is not allowed to track the possessors of metahuman powers, one of those understandable overreactions to the excesses of the Might for Right Act that makes the job of innocent researchers like me unnecessarily hard. Still, most conservative estimates believe that at least 90% of metahumans make no attempt to use their powers for either superheroism or supervillainy. This is a staggeringly low number when you consider how few people are actually involved in the actual committing of metahuman violence. If you are a baseline human taller than 6 feet and 7 inches, you are less likely to be hired by the NBA than a metahuman is to be hired by Freedom Corps. We have found that above all else, one factor predicts metahumanity far above and beyond all traditional correlations; proximity to existing metahumans. If you are the roommate of a metahuman, you are over eight times as likely to develop metahuman powers as your next-door neighbor. This occurs whether or not the powers in question are magical, genetic, or scientific in origin. When strains of bacteria that possessed metabacterial abilities were discovered, it was theorized that perhaps metahumanity was a sort of contagious disease transmissible between humans. Stanford molecular biologist Hamidon Pasalima [1] disproved this with a series of experiments in 1981, showing that petri dishes completely quarantined from each other could cause proximate metamutations. (Variations of bacteria that developed 'travel powers' such as super speed and teleportation were excluded from this experiment.) So, are we doomed to live in the world that MI6 director, passionate eugenicist, and Roger Vrabel bowling teammate Neil McIntosh predicted in 1970 where baseline humanity is outbred in a Great Replacement by metahumanity? Surprisingly, no. Pasalima's further experiments showed that while new strains of metamutations developed in response to the nearby presence of metabacteria, there was an upper limit to this. Once the population density of metabacteria reaches a certain percentage of the bacteria in the dish, the rate of metamutations drops to near-zero. It is as though there is a certain 'saturation point' of metapowers, and the presence of metapowers provokes the development of more metapowers until this 'saturation point' is reached, at which point the rate of new metamutations remains equal to the death rate of existing metabacteria, as though there was a desired percentage of metabacteria existing inside each petri dish. When measured originally by Hamidon Pasalima in 1982, that percentage was 2.41%, with a 0.15% margin of error. Measured in 1990 by Dr. Science, that percentage was 2.58%, with a 0.11% margin of error. Measured in 2003 by Antonio Nash as part of a GIFT survey, that percentage was 2.73%, with a 0.08% margin of error. The leading theory among researchers is that Hamidon Pasalima's measurements were originally either erroneously or maliciously low, and that future scientists double-checking the work of an anarchoprimitivist amoeba mistakenly discarded accurate but high results because they believed them to be outliers. The alternative is generally considered too terrifying to contemplate. [1] Better known for other work.

Brass Monday Plaques at centerpiece exhibit in the Nemesis Wing of the 'Boston Museum of Costumed Adventuring' This 1932 Werfer Jaeger was built at the direction of Gerhardt Eisenstadt, also known as the "Prussian Prince of Automatons" or "Lord Nemesis". His clockwork-powered machines continue to baffle scientists and superheroes alike; to this day, his organic brain, preserved inside a suit of armor of his own design, remains at large, as he has since 1840 when he murdered his brother for calling him a 'mere toymaker' and started the cross-European crime spree that would eventually lead him to America. DID YOU KNOW? - Before Brass Monday, Statesman was not publicly confirmed to possess superpowers. However, during the fighting that spilled out across the Southern United Manufacturing Company's headquarters when the giant underground hangar mined out by Nemesis' mole machines was revealed, Statesman was pictured by reporters for the Paragon Free Press flying through the air, calling down lightning from the sky, and deflecting bullets by blocking a Maxim gun with his chest, granting credence to the persistent underworld rumors spread by rumrunners he had tied up for the police to arrest that Statesman possessed abilities unexplained by science. - More than 225,000 Werfer Jaegers were built between 1920 and 1932, more than two for every enlisted member of the U.S. Army at the time. Even this gigantic army was under half the size that Nemesis intended for it, as Brass Monday resulted when Nemesis' plans were revealed by Statesman's investigations of the Capone, Verandi, and Genovese crime families, forcing Nemesis to begin his assault on America earlier than he had anticipated. Employees of the Southern United Manufacturing Corporation who had assembled the Werfer Jaegers were lead to believe that they were either creating clockwork-controlled water heaters, or secret distilleries meant for use by bootleggers to separate wood alcohol from grain alcohol. - While Nemesis had experimented with electromagnetic remote activation and deactivation of his automatons during the Civil War - 30 years before Heinrich Hertz would discover radio waves! - the Werfer Jaegers were the first fighting machines of his to be fully commanded by remote signal, sending messages to and from specially trained members of Nemesis' army in morse code. Vandal of the Fifth Column would iterate on these techniques for the design of his Steel Valkyrie air-to-ground combat drones. TRY IT YOURSELF! This is a duplicate of one of the command radio bunkers that were operated by a Subaltern in the Nemesis Army. Our museum's Jaeger has been set up in the pit at the center of this room, and has had its weaponry replaced with foam versions; a version of the Nemesis Army Code Book, current at the time of Brass Monday, is in a binder attached to the inside of the bunker (such code books were required to be memorized and could not be brought into the same Nemesis base as the command bunkers.) Try to command the Jaeger to launch foam darts, sawblades, and bombs at cardboard cutouts of Statesman, Maiden Justice, and the Dark Watcher; if you are unable to, lift up the tin panel on the ceiling of the bunker to reveal a modern LCD readout already translating the Morse Code signals received into plain English commands and phrases. Then consider that a Subaltern would have been responsible for controlling 12 Jaegers at a time, and would have had to report their progress in battle upwards to their Captain!

Clarissa "Countess Crey" Van Dorn Accidentally recorded discussion between Clarissa van Dorn and Hopkins, not used as sourcing for unsanctioned Freedom Corps tell-all 'Infinite Access: My Look Inside The Freedom Phalanx' and hastily abandoned in a ditch behind a Kings Row construction site by former FBSA agent Lincoln Aldritch Hopkins: "Clarissa. You don't have to do this." Clarissa van Dorn: "Ah, ah, ah. What have I told you, Hopkins?" H: "When you wear the leather dress with the slits cut in the side, your name is 'Countess Crey'. A thousand apologies. Countess, you don't have to do this." CvD: "Hopkins, I've been very clear. I want you to always tell me the truth and share your opinion, even when that means disagreeing with me. But I am in charge here, and I want to hit Justin Sinclair with a folded stepladder." H: "It's dangerous, no matter what deal your lawyers cut with his lawyers and Lady Grey. It's my job to keep you out of danger. You should be having me dispose of the rich boy for you. Not, not you dressing up and-" CvD: "Ah, ah, ah. What is it that Crey Corporation sells, Hopkins?" H: "Crey Corporation sells the fantasy of metahumanity to a baseline audience. I never, uh, I never really understood that mission statement. I mean, I understand what we do, but I don't understand what you meant by-" CvD: "Six-year-old boys wrap towels around their necks and jump off of the roof of their house because they want to be Statesman and fly. Nineteen-year-old activists confront Senators in their offices because they want to be Miss Liberty and save the world. The people who survive doing those things put away such childish fantasies. But do you know what, Hopkins? They always keep them. Locked away deep in their heart where not even they acknowledge them anymore. And the key to that lock is what Crey Corporation sells." H: "We also sell computers, medicine, vehicles -" CvD: "We sell computers that unfold from the bottom of your desk and have keyboards that can be disguised as rows of lipstick tubes and makeup compacts so that a mild-mannered housewife can imagine that once her children are tucked into bed she'll flip a switch, become fifteen years younger, and be called by a masked but attractive paramour of her preferred gender on the monitor saying that she's needed because Lord Nemesis is up to no good in Independence Port again. We sell medicine that is packaged in little pouches on a utility belt so that a repairman can slap on a patch of antibiotic anesthetic medical gel and imagine that he got the burns from a Mu magician bent on world domination in the name of Arachnos rather than touching a live wire like an idiot. We sell construction vehicles that have an extra gear that changes their shape when they drive from one spot on the worksite to the other so that the worker piloting them, alone in the cockpit, can dramatically say to himself 'Leaving All-Range mode. Deploying the Darkclaw.' because no one's listening." H: "I like to think that people buy Crey for reasons other than just the marketing. Our reputations for quality, reliability, ruthlessness..." CvD: "And because I offer them that fantasy - because I let them pretend that they could be the equal of Manticore if they just got as lucky as he was one day - there's no end to what they'll do for me. They believe that my products are the future, that I can do no wrong, that I am a heroic titan leading them into the superpowered age. They think that Crey technology will make zero-point energy free and universal, reversing climate change. They think that the Crey space program will colonize the Moon, Mars, Venus, and beyond. They think that we're ten years, twenty years away from unlocking the secrets of metahumanity for everyone... including immortality. If I back down in front of Manticore, I ruin all of that for them. I would never recover. I'd become just another company. And the second Crey becomes just another company is the day we lose our superpower - having the first choice of hiring the people who want to make that happen." H: "I think the stockholders would prefer it if you focused on beating Sinclair Industries to market and in pricing, rather than beating Justin in a wrestling ring." CvD: "If the stockholders of Crey Corporation could have created Crey Corporation, they would have created Crey Corporation. Crey isn't the people who own stock in it. It's the people who work here. And because I offer that fantasy to our employees, they're willing to do anything for me. They'll work ten to twelve hours a day, they'll angrily shout down anyone who thinks our products aren't perfect, they'll die for me to defend our property rather than run when we're under attack. Because the alternative to working for me is living in a world filled with supermen; supermen that they aren't allowed to be." H: "Yes... actually, I've been meaning to talk to you about that, Countess." CvD: "Then speak." H: "Have you considered that a corporate recruiting strategy explicitly designed to appeal to the weirdest nerds on Usenet possibly explains why we've had so many employees become mad scientists?" CvD: "You know, once they're arrested for supervillainy, we own 100% of the intellectual property of anything they had worked on at Crey. Our rogue employee problem could also be considered a product design solution."

Borderline Metahuman Onboarding interview process for Midnighter Club "Alektology Department", recorded in the 'Tome of the Midnighters', accessed by revealing Midnighter Club fiducal marker ultraviolet tattoo to apparently-living eye on front of tome and requesting "66 years, 33 days, 1182 minutes, Smoking Lounge B". Edgar Torvald: "All right. Now. If someone - your wife, your child, your favorite superhero, whoever - what do you tell them when they ask you 'What is a metahuman'?" Nathan Crane: "Well I tell them that I can't answer their question, because their question doesn't - doesn't actually make sense." ET: "Explain it to me. Explain it to me like I'm a hard-boiled private eye with nothing to lose grilling you in a dim interrogation room." NC: "Well, it's like, uh, what Doc Hancox said. If you try to just, draw an arbitrary distinction between 'normal', or 'baseline' people and 'metahumans' - is James Doohan a metahuman?" ET: "Who?" NC: "Ah - he's an actor. He played Montgomery Scott. I mean, Scotty. On Star Trek." ET: "I haven't watched that." NC: "Right, right, uh, pretend you had. Anyways, he was shot six times on D-Day. Friendly fire, some other guy got scared. Lost a finger. And he healed, over the course of two months or so, and would fly planes by the end of the war. Got reprimanded for nearly crashing one-" ET: "Not important." NC: "Not important, right. Uh. Anyways. He survived and healed six gunshot wounds. Is he a metahuman?" ET: "No, because normal people heal wounds all the time." NC: "If he had healed not over the course of months, but in the course of a minute, he would be a metahuman, right?" ET: "Right. Regeneration powers. We've seen that." NC: "So, at what point does he become a metahuman? Is he a metahuman if he recovers in a week rather than a month? Is he not a metahuman if it takes him hours instead of minutes? Where's the dividing line where it stops being human and becomes metahuman?" ET: "We obviously can't say there's an exact point, but we can say that someone who heals from gunshot wounds in a few minutes is probably a metahuman, and someone who heals from gunshot wounds over the course of a few months is probably not a metahuman. Unless their powers are unrelated to gunshot wounds, obviously." NC: "Right, obviously. Okay, what about Justin Sinclair? Is Justin Sinclair a metahuman?" ET: "You mean Manticore, right? No, he's not a metahuman, he's just really good at archery." NC: "Really? How would you know? How would he know? What if he has super-strength that only works while he's nocking an arrow? What if he has super-vision that only works when he's focusing on a target? And not just, you know, the archery. What if he has supernatural insight or postcognition or something that kicks in when he's solving a crime, and he only thinks he's the world's greatest detective?" ET: "The only person who thinks that Manticore is the world's greatest detective is Manticore." NC: "But he still thinks that." ET: "Point conceded." NC: "Okay, what about Positron?" ET: "Who's that?" NC: "The guy in the brown armor with green bombs who flies and raises his hands up like he's at a concert when he throws those green bombs at people." ET: "Oh, him. No. Positron isn't a metahuman, he's just a guy in a power suit that shoots radiation everywhere." NC: "What if he's got a metahuman power that powers his power suit?" ET: "That'd be ridiculous. He just happens to have a completely different metahuman power and a power suit? At the same time?" NC: "He could have built it knowing he had one. That's possible." ET: "Still ridiculous." NC: "And all the other guys with powers. How do you know they don't have power suits that they're really good at hiding? And how do you know that the power suit guys don't have powers?" ET: "Okay, taking away all discussion of power suits, what is a metahuman?" NC: "I mean, what if someone casts a powerful healing spell on a hospital or something that makes everyone in there regenerate? What if they only regenerate as fast as Scotty does?" ET: "No one's done that yet. Can - can you do that? If you can, move departments." NC: "I can't do that. But, for the purposes of the hypothetical discussion-" ET: "We'd say that the person who cast the spell is the metahuman, then. Not the person recieving the effects of the spell." NC: "What if it's a permanent effect? Like if Scotty grew a finger back. Long after he left the hospital. Is he a metahuman then?" ET: "But that's what we invented the category of 'borderline' metahuman for. For people who have been changed by metahuman powers but don't have them themselves, or the recipients of drugs based on metahuman powers." NC: "What if the spell only ever works on one person, and we don't know about the spell? Then it looks like someone just has a metahuman power to regenerate, but only when they're standing in one specific hospital." ET: "But if you knew about the spell, you'd know why they were regenerating." NC: "Look, this whole thing is just - it's begging the question, in the literal sense. The term 'metahuman' was a term created by people who wanted to put a really clear, really bright line - here are a bunch of normal people, and we call them 'baselines'. Here are a bunch of weird people, and we call them 'metahumans'. And if we can't decide or it gets awkward somehow, we call them 'borderline'. But - we're all weird in some ways and normal in others. And we all live in a world that's weird in some ways and normal than others. And we just have to accept that, rather than trying to invent categories to determine who's weird and who's normal." ET: "... All right." NC: "Did I pass?" ET: "That's a good answer." NC: "I passed, right?" ET: "Okay, great. Now, if someone who is already a member of the Midnight Club walks up to you and asks you 'What is a metahuman', what do you tell them?" NC: "A metahuman is anyone with a Shard from the Well of the Furies, a borderline metahuman is anyone who's been permanently altered by a person with a Shard, a baseline human is someone without a Shard who just contributes to the Well of the Furies." ET: "No. Wrong." NC: "What?" ET: "Incredibly wrong." NC: "But - but that's right!" ET: "You make sure they're who they say they are first. Always, always make sure they are, especially if they're asking you questions they should already know. Shapeshifters are really good these days."

Beyond and Behind the Mask, 2nd Edition p.1 to p.3 of first edition (1981) of 'Beyond and Behind the Mask' AM I A METAHUMAN? In all likelihood, yes. When we are children, we are taught about the supervillains who periodically threaten the lives, liberty, and property of others, and the superheroes who stop them. Posters of the Statesman standing beside a rippling American Flag (Fig. 1) urging students to read were found in 23% of a random sampling of primary school libraries. As we grow up, we are taught that 'metahuman' is the official name for people who have powers that put them in the spotlight as members of the admittedly porous categories of 'superhero' and 'supervillain'. Marcus Cole, better known as the Statesman, is a metahuman, as is his adoptive brother, Stefan Richter, more commonly referred to as 'Lord Recluse'. People who possess powers unattainable by ordinary men are 'metahumans', and these 'metahumans' then decide whether to become superheroes or supervillains. But is it that simple? Take the various members of the Freedom Phalanx over the years. The only remaining founding member in the Statesman clearly has abilities that are not available to ordinary people. He can fly, he can summon bolts of lightning from the sky, and he has survived being inside the blast radius of a Russian tactical atomic bomb. Anyone questioned who was familiar with the person and the terminology would say that yes, Statesman is a metahuman. Similarly for Breakneck, the first Afro-American member of the Freedom Phalanx, who could run at speeds nearing the sound barrier. What about the Steamroller, however? He has the ability to lift several tons of weight and his skin is impervious to military rifles. He is a metahuman, but at what point does he become a metahuman? If he was only capable of lifting one ton, would he still be a metahuman? What if he was only impervious to hunting rifles and small pistols? At exactly what point did he cross over from something possible for baseline humans and become something that could only be described as 'metahuman'? The International Olympic Committee attempted in 1933, 1948, 1952, and 1959 to come up with an impartial definition of 'metahuman' that clearly put a bright line between people like the Steamroller and what every human being could achieve given proper health and sufficient training. They failed each time, and decisions about Olympic eligibility are still made on a case-by-case basis by votes in an appointed council. The controversial 'Might For Right Act', which drafted American metahumans into military and government service from World War Two through the Vietnam War, attempted to define metahuman as 'someone capable of reliably and consistently performing a specific task more effectively than five standard deviations above the human mean' - or better than 1,744,277 out of every 1,744,278 people. The definition of 'specific task' was intentionally never specified, though. If summoning electricity is a 'specific task', then yes, the Statesman legally qualifies as a metahuman under this definition. What about unpowered flight? The most recent census found that there were 226,545,805 residents in the United States of America. Some brief long division would reveal that under this definition, a 'metahuman' is someone who has approximately 130 peers at a 'specific task' in the entire country. But everyone knows that more than 130 people in America are capable of unpowered flight (Between 4,000 and 9,000 by most modern estimates). Would that mean that someone with only the ability of unpowered flight is 'not' a metahuman? And if unpowered flight suddenly became rarer, would they start being a metahuman again? No one has been able to draw an exact point at which a baseline human being becomes a metahuman being. Some people have tried to invent the category of 'borderline metahuman' to describe people like the subjects of the 5th Column's 'super-soldier' experiments, but this just raises the question of when a baseline human becomes a borderline metahuman and when a borderline metahuman becomes a full metahuman. This book is intended for people between the ages of 14 and 21, the age cohort in which the development of abilities popularly referred to as 'metahuman' are most likely to develop. If you have sought this book out, it is likely because strange and unexplained things have happened to and around you or one of your close friends, and you want your questions about this to be answered. If the first question is 'am I a metahuman?', here is your first answer; if you are asking whether or not you count as a 'real' metahuman or not, the answer is almost certainly yes. This can be a frightening prospect. This book was written with the assistance of several metahumans to attempt to guide you through this new life as much as possible.

Might for Right Act p.182 to p.185 of the second edition (1984) of 'Beyond and Behind the Mask', a book published by Freedom Press with the intent of being given to 13-year-old metahumans. Senator Alexis Cole-Duncan had no role in writing it, though she did encourage its creation as part of the published recommendations from the 'National Commission on the Proliferation of Metahuman Powers (1982)'. The book was required by Department of Education policy to be purchased by all public school libraries, but that was overturned in 'Mississippi v. Freedom Press', a 1988 decision which found that that was an unconstitutional requirement that the government enrich Freedom Corps. DO I HAVE TO DO THIS? No. You do not. This is settled, black-letter law. Washington v. FBSA (1967) states that it is unconstitutional to force someone to use their metahuman powers. It is illegal in every part of America. Subsequent decisions have only clarified this. Forcing you to use a metahuman power violates the 14th Amendment (granting you equality under the law to non-metahuman individuals; they could not be forced to fly into a burning building because they cannot fly, and as such even if you can fly you cannot be forced to do so), the 5th Amendment (granting you the right to not reveal metahuman powers to the government and to deny that you have them, even if you do), and the 13th Amendment (granting you the right to not be forced into any form of involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime.) The only reason that you can be required to use a metahuman power is specifically to reverse the effects of a crime that you were convicted of committing. It is illegal. It is wrong. It is not a thing that America does anymore. The government may coerce your service in other ways. You will have to pay taxes, just like any other citizen. You may even have to pay taxes on your metahuman powers; if you have the ability to transform lead into gold, then the difference in market value between the lead and the gold counts as income and must be taxed. (See Chapter 7, "Money".) You will have to sign up for Selective Service, just like any other male above the age of 18. If the United States re-institutes a draft, you may have to go to boot camp and serve in the Army like anyone else. But you will serve there just like anyone else. Even if you are resistant to bullets, your officer cannot require you to serve as a shield for your more vulnerable squadmates. Even if you can carry 5,000 pounds of equipment, your commanding officer cannot demand that you carry all of your entire squad's rucksacks. You may volunteer this information to your officer, and you may choose to do these things because they are good for your squad and good for your country. But if you do that, it will be your choice. Once, metahumans didn't have a choice. Once, metahumans were forced to use their powers to protect America. But since the government then used its power to decide who could and could not be a superhero, Roger Vrabel, the head of the FBSA, made sure that only people who he thought counted as Americans would ever get to be a superhero. You are an American, no matter the color of your skin, the culture that you're from, or the chemicals that you were exposed to in that traffic accident. That gives you rights. And one of those rights is to say 'I do not want to be a superhero.' CAN I DO THIS? Well. That's up to you.

Dream Doctor S1E12 of 'Day In The Life', a show where sidekicks are outfitted with hidden cameras without the knowledge or consent of their mentors, designed to show people what the superheroic life is actually like. Footage recorded in 1967. Dream Doctor walks out of a glowing golden portal, followed by two teenagers, one male and one female. All are sweating profusely. Dream Doctor sets his staff down on the ground for a moment while he catches his breath, and re-adjusts the top hat and tailcoat that are part of his costume, which had been significantly mussed. Dream Doctor: "Well! That was a scrape I wouldn't like to repeat any time soon." Jessica [last name unrecorded]: "Jeepers! Another ten seconds and the three of us would be goners!" Jacob [last name unrecorded]: "It sure is a good thing you used that illusion of yourself appearing outside the deathtrap to convince Mu'drakhan that you'd already escaped it!" DD: "Yes! Yes, that is exactly what I did. But we've got no time to rest on our laurels or ask questions about how I did that! If Baron Zoria manages to cut through Tielekku's Barrier and contact any of the gods of the Banished Pantheon, the best thing that could happen is that he'll be ten times more powerful than ever before!" Ja: "Holy order of magnitude, Dream Doctor!" DD: "Quite." Je: "I saved the Implicit Maze, double-D!" DD: "Excellent! Bring it here, Jessica, and hold it up for me - I need to focus on this-" Dream Doctor taps his staff against the sidewalk he stands on. The head of the staff unfolds into a rotating speaker looking like a single eye on a swivel mount, which points towards Jessica's outstretched hand - she's holding a black puzzle box covered in glowing white lines. Dream Doctor's staff begins to emit a warbling hum, as he adjusts the position of the speaker and the lines on the puzzle box begin to extend - before the puzzle box is snatched out of Jessica's hand by the animated scarf of a fourth figure. This person is three inches taller than Dream Doctor, has green eyes while Dream Doctor has blue, a larger nose, and is slightly lighter-skinned. He wears a tweed sweater vest and his scarf appears to be three times longer than him, hovering off the ground, and consisting of green, gold, red, silver, blue, and black patches. Unknown Interloper: "Sorry, Jessica, I'm going to need that." Ja: "Hey! You'd better give that back to Dream Doctor, or-" Jason makes a fist. UI: "Quiet, Jason. Not now." Je: "How does he know who we are?" DD: "Not now, Jason. Come on! I was using that! I need it to find Baron Zoria!" UI: "Yes, and I'm going to need it to find my way through Uulralur the Mirror's Garden of Memories. If you use that to find Baron Zoria, it'll work perfectly, but he'll destroy it when you meet him." DD: "I hate it when he does that!" UI: "Believe me, I already know. You'll have to figure out some other way to find Baron Zoria. Why don't you try to track down the Scroll of Tielekku?" DD: "Of course! The goddess who sealed the Banished Pantheon in the first place should have been the first person I tried to contact! Either to get her help or to warn her, but either way -" UI: "You'll figure it out in time. I trust you." The unknown interloper leaves. Je: "Did you... know that man, double-D?" Ja: "... Dream Doctor? Who was that?" DD: "It's... magic. And I... don't have time to explain it right now." Dream Doctor produces the remote keyfob for a 2015 Honda Civic, clicks it in front of him, and opens a second glowing golden portal. DD: "Allons-y!"

Northwestern University Law Review Ending of 'Sinclair v. Crey - The Meet/Fight/Team Up Between The Fifth Amendment and the First', article in 'Northwestern University Law Review', April 1997 edition The "Meet/Fight/Team Up" is a common trope of superheroic fiction - two superheroes, encountering each other while pursuing separate leads, mistake each other for malefactors and attack each other briefly before realizing that they actually have a common enemy and joining forces against that. This is mostly a matter for creating drama in soap operas. The majority of superhero-on-superhero violence happens for the same reasons that the Brickstown War did - superheroes have type A personalities and are used to getting their way and not backing down when confronted, they have mutually exclusive financial interests, and most often they just have pre-existing animus between each other over slights, miscommunications, and personal differences. But in Justin Sinclair's many lawsuits, the Fifth Amendment right to protect your fellow citizens anonymously to safeguard yourself from criminal retaliation ran headlong into the First Amendment right to freely speak about who you think the person wearing a mask and protecting your fellow citizens is. They fought for a brief period, neither able to make the other submit - but then they realized that they had a greater enemy, the new proliferation of super-mercenaries using the anonymity of superheroism as a shield for 'accidentally' committing crimes on behalf of major corporations. And by combining the First Amendment right to assert that superheroes were actually acting as the catspaw for financial interests, and the Fifth Amendment right for information learned about those corporations in discovery irrelevant to the case to not be revealed - Miss Liberty found a solution within American law that protected both the rights of superheroes and the rights of people harmed by those claiming to be superheroes. Miss Liberty has, whatever you think of her politics, shown herself to be a tenacious fighter against whatever malefactors she sets her sights on in both the streets of America and the halls of Congress. Even without the Girdle of Hera, she is renowned as a crafty fighter who leverages her opponents weaknesses ruthlessly. With her retiring from Congress in order to devote her full attention to the SCSHA, many experts in the field of superpowered law believe it's only a matter of time before even the most loathed and feared super-mercenary groups such as the Phoenix Ultimatum and the Knives of Artemis are brought to heel, whether they're defeated with physical force in the field or wrangled through complicated legal maneuvering in the boardroom. After that, who knows? The Cold War is over; Russia is no longer our enemy. In terms of planetary surface area, Dr. Hamidon Pasalima covers a mere 25% of the territory that he did during his high-water mark in 1987. Gerhardt "Lord Nemesis" Eisenstadt has not been credibly seen in four years, with it being nearly five months since the last time a False Nemesis command automaton was unveiled. Perhaps even Miss Liberty's uncle will be replaced as leader of the Rogue Isles, though it's extremely hard to imagine him leaving office to quietly retire in exile the way Juan Perón did. A superhero is best described as a natural disaster with very strong opinions about things. The dangers that superheroes have brought in their wake are as much a part of history as the villains they've defeated - we can ignore the self-interested self-pity of supervillains who insist that they are merely the universe's reaction to whatever superhero they affix their ire to, and the statistically disproven contention that the presence of superheroes somehow 'leads to' the presence of supervillains, when the correlation has been proven to be caused in the opposite direction - but today's solution, as always, has turned out to be tomorrow's problem. When they first appeared in the late 20s and early 30s, the 'costumed adventurers' fought not only the Mafia families that, with the backing of Nemesis, choked our country, but also struck nearly as many blows against jazz music, the Harlem Renaissance, and relatively innocent alcoholics. In the 1940s, the superheroic tradition lead to both the First Hero Brigade and to Sturmkorps, with the fascist movements of Europe insisting that their own metahumans were a sign that their inherent genetic superiority gave them the right to rule the world, and many of the worst crimes were committed by the "Yokai Corps" of the Imperial Wind testing the ability of superpowers to create mass civilian death on the weaker Asian nations. In the 1960s, metahumans who went along with the Red Scare and who denounced "racial agitation" were given plum government subsidies to fight crime and put in the best position possible to become famous superheroes - less politically reliable ones were sent on long undercover overseas missions, many of which ended in their deaths. In the stagflation of the 1980s, with rampant crime fed again by Nemesis seeking to use organized crime to subvert the nation, heroes became renowned - praised, even - for their brutal methods and willingness to tolerate collateral damage in the 'war on drugs'. It was feared that the 1990s and 2000s would be marked by the rise of post-national mercenary superhero armies, but with the SCSHA hunting for targets, most of the worst offenders have pre-emptively closed up shop, changed their names, and moved jurisdictions. In 1994 there were four million barrels of crude oil burned in South America by mercenaries believed to belong to the Free Company; in 1996 there were less than 10,000 that caught fire total. Perhaps we will remember the superheroes of the 2000s not for the people they hurt, but for the people they saved. Perhaps we will measure superheroic greatness not by villains defeated, but by people saved from storms, from fire, and from hunger. Perhaps the greatest use of metahuman powers will turn out to be not granting people freedom from fear, but rather freedom from want, as superheroic powers are turned away from dissuading villains and towards solving the energy crisis, famines around the globe, and environmental disasters. Perhaps the last thing left in Pandora's Box really did turn out to be hope. This piece was originally published anonymously under the shell superheroic identity "Learned Hand", named for the former Chief Justice. "Learned Hand" was claimed later by Orestes Gillicuddy, son of Jason Gillicuddy, Senator Alexis Cole-Duncan's chief of staff. Gillicuddy would graduate Northwestern University in 1998, become in-house counsel for Freedom Corps in 2002, and die in the 8th day of the Rikti War in 2004 when the Freedom Phalanx headquarters was blown up by an antimatter bomb.

Sen. Alexis Cole-Duncan, Retired Excerpt from 'Sinclair v. Crey - The Meet/Fight/Team Up Between The Fifth Amendment and the First', article in 'Northwestern University Law Review', April 1997 edition As we all know, a corporation is a 'fictional person', a concept created by the legal system to allow an enterprise or business to own property in its own name. If all of a corporation's property was owned by the owner of the corporation, would that corporation lose half of all its factory equipment and property in a divorce? Which half? Do we cut the assembly line straight down the middle, like Solomon's baby? Best to create a 'fictional person' who can own property, and then, fight over who owns what share of that fictional person. The former Miss Liberty's suggestion was simple - what if Manticore's secret identity was Sinclair Heavy Industries? What if the secret identity of the unknown Juggernaut suits and cyborgs was Crey Corporation? While Manticore had a Fifth Amendment right to a secret identity, he did not have the right to break the law, and if he was found to be civilly liable for damages unnecessarily inflicted during the course of his superheroic excursions, a judge had the right to order Manticore to pay restitution, and if Manticore refused, to subsequently investigate Manticore's true identity and then order it to cough up the money; so long as the judge did not reveal Manticore's identity to anyone else in the process. Furthermore, Clarissa van Dorn had an ironclad First Amendment right to state her opinion that Manticore was Sinclair Heavy Industries, just as Justin Sinclair had an absolute right to state his opinion that the person wearing the Juggernaut suit was Crey Corporation. By suggesting that Sinclair Heavy Industries was Manticore, Miss Liberty allowed the judge to apply all of the same investigative procedures to the 'fictional person' that was Sinclair Heavy Industries - with all of the judge's discoveries kept under the seal of the mask, of course - and if the judge discovered that the arrows that were being fired into Crey trucks were made by Sinclair Heavy Industries, he could rule that a preponderance of the evidence indicated that Manticore and Sinclair Heavy Industries were the same person, and thus, Sinclair Heavy Industries could be made to anonymously pay restitution for Manticore's actions. If the judge investigated the juggernaut suits, he could discover that employees of Crey Corporation sent three emails telling their co-workers to 'sand off the serial numbers on four of the prototypes and leave them for Hopkins to pick up', which again, suggested through a preponderance of the evidence that the juggernaut suits and Crey Corporation were the same person. The judge, of course, could not reveal any of this information, and official company budgets for Sinclair Heavy Industries and for Crey Corporation at the time indicate that both companies paid and received large amounts of money from 'people we are not legally allowed to describe.' However, the Accounts Receivable and the Accounts Payable invoices published to the stockholders of both companies indicate that whenever Sinclair Heavy Industries paid anything anonymously, Crey Corporation received an equal amount of money anonymously, and whenever Crey Corporation paid anything anonymously, Sinclair Heavy Industries received an equal amount. Realizing that any attempts at expanding their operations into America would expose the corporations personally to exhaustive discovery as to what they were doing and who they were being paid by in order to do it, 'super-mercenary' groups like the Free Company and Directed Outcomes canceled all attempts to expand into America, with even the mostly-above-board Hero Corps pulling out of Paragon City. Sensing blood in the water with the fine reflexes that made her a superhero, the former Miss Liberty announced that she was going to work with the United Nations to form the Special Council on Super Human Activities, designed to put an end to the 'super-mercenary wars' by revealing the principal financiers of mercenary superhuman violence, and holding them liable for the actions undertaken by their agents. The war was over in Brickstown, and soon it may be over in the rest of the world as well.

Moth Cemetery Tactical advice provided by MAGI OZC to Paul Kurangi, last mayor of Astoria (pop. 1507) Jason Dworkins: "He's coming back. Just called us. Asked if it was us who did it, and I told him that we have way too much work at the Office to go around making more of it for ourselves. That just made him angry." Brian Dossey: "I'm surprised he's not in the hospital." JD: "I guess he must have come out of the helicopter crash okay. That or he's really, really pissed at us." BD: "Remember, it is not MAGI policy to say 'I told you so.' That always just makes people angrier." JD: "We did tell him so." BD: "That's why we aren't supposed to say it. So unless you want to explain to Azuria yourself -" JD: "I'm not talking to your boss - okay, I can hear him outside, look presentable." Paul Kurangi, last mayor of Astoria, walks into the MAGI Office of Zombie Control. He bleeds profusely from a wound on his right arm, staunched by a torniquet. He is covered in mud and oil. His hair smokes, having recently been on fire. He wipes muck out of his eyes and glares angrily at Brian and Jason. Paul Kurangi: "Exactly where. Did the zombies. Get guns?" BD: "See, the question you really ought to be asking is 'where'd the zombies get bullets'?" JD: "We told you, man. The zombies are always a symptom, never a cause." Brian glares at Jason. PK: "Why is this happening?" JD: "I told you. We're trying to maintain control of the developing situation until we find out what 'the rest of it' is. Trust the process, man." PK: "Neither of you are ever allowed in Astoria ever again." BD: "Okay, even if you had the power to do that, who's gonna stop us? The zombies?" JD: "Dude, your only chance of being re-elected is to work with us and save your city. You'll lose your job." PK: "How can I lose my job if no one can ever hold an election in Astoria? Because of the zombies?" JD: "... Um." BD: "There has to be something we can do about it. That can't work as a loophole to make him mayor forever, right?"