Session 1

Finishing up some after hours lab work for his Biology 101 class in his Secret ID, Apex was ambushed by a VIPER 8 Team, Ogre, and Lazer as he was getting into his car. Ogre leaped from the shadows and destroyed Apex's sweet ride, and shooters opened fire from their hidden sniper position. In the ensuing donnybrook Apex was sorely pressed and almost knocked unconscious, but managed to careen off into the biology building, smashing through walls and lab equipment with desperate recklessness.

Ogre pursued him into the building, and clinging to consciousness Apex weaved a path of destruction through the building like an out of control cannonball, trying to get a breather, but briefly passed out from the strain. Ogre closed the distance, as a few of the VIPER agents left their shooting positions and moved into the building to assist. The super-resilient Apex recovered consciousness just as Ogre caught up to him and was ready to smash him into oblivion, and managed to regain his feet as Ogre slipped in the rubble and fell on his brutish face. Apex quickly took advantage of the situation and smashed Ogre through an outside wall. But Ogre fought back and the two ended up on the floor, wrestling for control. Briefly gaining the upper hand again, Apex cleverly punted Ogre sideway through another wall and into the building's atrium.

Ogre was briefly out of the fight, but a couple of VIPER agents had maneuvered into a position to fire upon Apex in the building, including one sporting a massive heavy automatic energy rifle. Shots pattered around Apex, and he wisely moved out of their immediate line of fire into the atrium, trying to keep pressure on Ogre before he could recover. Seeing Ogre sprawled across the second floor balcony where he landed after being kicked, Apex flew up to take another kick at Ogre, but the thuggish palooka regained his feet and blocked the attempt. Worse for APEX, some of the VIPER shooters that were on the roof of the building had maneuvered around tactically to cover avenues of escape from the building, and a couple were able to see him in the atrium, plus the agents in the building moved into position as well. As shots rained around him, Apex realized he was like a fish in a barrel and dove over Ogre's head through the atrium facing windows of a second floor classroom.

Ogre dove in right after him and the two began grappling again. This time Ogre got the upper hand and threw Apex almost a 150 feet through several walls, clear out of the building, across a parking lot, and smack into the side of the next building over. Nevertheless the incredibly resilient Apex clung to consciousness, but a well placed shot from the over watching Lazer caught him in the back of the head. Apex finally succumbed to the abuse and passed out, and wasn't given the opportunity to recover by his merciless opponents.

Session 2

Puttering around in the basement of his (rented) home in the hills north of Balboa Park, Pete Mazza (geeky alter ego of the hero known as Makeshift!) was working on a hinged & locked lid for the hidden entry / exit tunnel he dug through the foundation and away to a hidden exit point in a nearby canyon. He had the news on the TV running in the background, when the weather was interrupted for a super-alert. Reports were coming in from campus security that what appeared to be a VIPER raid was in progress at USD. Looking at the map on his wall, Pete saw that it was only about 9 miles away, and quickly got into the Makeshift armor and dove into his escape tunnel.

Making good time, Makeshift got to USD and moved into a good observation position (ironically, a position one of the VIPER snipers had previously occupied). In the increasing gloom of twilight he was able to make out a team of what were obviously VIPER agents arrayed around the top of the biology building, while Ogre amused himself smashing to bits the remains of an expensive sports car. He could also see the dead or unconsious body of what appeared to be a civilian laying near a big hole in the side of the building.

Thinking it unwise to get into it with the obviously superstrong Ogre, Makeshift tunneled deep below the building and the next one over, coming up on the far side. He then leaped up and grabbed onto the roof lip of the four story building across the parking lot from the biology building and roll over to the roof. However his clanking metal armor clanged and scraped, and was heard by one of the alert VIPER agents across the way. Some of the VIPER agents were equipped with nightvision via their helmets and were able to easily see the armored interloper as he gained the rooftop, and they quickly opened fire on his position. With shots raining around him, Makeshift took cover behind an AC unit on the roof and returned fire but missed, causing more damage to the bellaguered biology building. One of the VIPER agents with the big repeater rifles opened up on the AC unit and blasted it to shreds, but Makeshift sprinted across to another large roof installation. Lazer took to the air and pinpointed Makeshift, only narrowly missing and melting a hole through the roof.

Unwilling to test his armor against such a strong lazer, Makeshift burned his way down through the roof and all four stories all the way down to the ground floor. But Lazer moved into position over his head and fired a blinding wide beam down onto Makeshift blinding him for the better part of twelve seconds. Makeshift blindly stumbled out of the line of fire into the building, his thick metal armor pushing desks and detritus out of his way. Finding a wall, he bored through it and took cover on the far side of it to wait for his vision to clear. Things weren't working out quite has he had planned! Lazer decided not to follow the unknown super into the tight confines of the building and pulled back into a better shooting position in case Makeshift left the building on the ground floor.

Meanwhile, Ogre had been alerted to the new threat by one of the VIPER agents, and the ever eager brute grabbed Apex, who he was supposed to be watching, and leaped clear over the biology building onto the roof where Makeshift had been. Seeing the hole tunneled straight down, Ogre leaped into it with total abandon. Meanwhile Makeshift, having heard the receding sound of Lazer's jetpack, had been blindly stumbling around looking for a door and had tunneled through another wall in the process, moving out into the lobby / students lounge area. His vision finally returning and hearing Ogre's entrance, Makeshift moved back into a shooting position into the classroom via the hole he had made in the adjoining wall and drew a bead on Ogre before the thug realized he was in danger in the darkened building, but by the emergency lights Makeshift was able to see that Ogre had draped over his shoulder the body of the civilian Makeshift had seen earlier. Silently cursing the luck, Makeshift held his fire, and Ogre noticed him out of the corner of his eye. With a callous disregard for his orders, Ogre hurled his captive, who of course was Apex, at this new power armored opponent.

However in the darkened room, with such an unweildy missile, Ogre missed Makeshift by a bare margin. Apex's unconscious form sailed past Makeshift's shoulder through the hole in the wall and into the lobby. His dilemna of accidentally hitting a civilian solved, Makeshift let Ogre have both barels; both an energy blast and gout of high pressure water coursed across the intervening space and slammed into Ogre, bowling him back a few feet and letting him know he might be in trouble vs. his new foe. Awakened by the jarring, and without Ogre giving him a few love taps to keep him under, Apex finally recovered and, thought shaky and wobbly, regained his feet. Assessing the situation quickly, Apex moved up to stand next to Makeshift, knocking in a door adjoining Makeshift's hole in the process. After such a display of raw casual strength, Makeshift quickly realized that despite appearances the disheveled young man was not normal and revised his plans accordingly.

Ogre regained his feet and rushed the two heroes, attempting to take them with a double clothesline and bear them out of the building. Makeshift managed to duck out of the way, but the still wobbly Apex was taken and was borne along with the rushing Ogre clear through the building and into the parking lot and into the line of fire of the VIPER agents and Lazer yet again. Things did not look good for Apex, but his newfound ally quickly moved into position, directing covering fire at the shooters on the roof, knocking Lazer out of position with a well placed blast, and sent Ogre flying as well with a blast of his water cannon giving Apex a chance to regain his feet once again. Finally having a chance to shake it off, Apex heroically rose to the occasion and rejoined battle with Ogre in a display of super-strength blows and grapples. Meanwhile Makeshift rabbited around distracting the shooters on the roof and convincing Lazer to pull back out of effective range for his own safety.

However, on the roof a VIPER hover vehicle had flown in from the far side of the conflict and the VIPER 8 Team, their leader having apparantly finished whatever it was he was doing inside the building, began and orderly withdrawal into the transport. With Lazer extracting himself, that just left Ogre who was gamely battling on against the two heroes. Fully loaded the hover transport manuevered down into a firing position on the parking lot and opened fire on Apex and Makeshift, and then moved in to scrape Ogre out of the altercation on the lip of it's loading ramp; the VIPER leader reaching out to help pull the recalcitrant thug into the vehicle. The hover van wasted no time and picked up speed, heading north easterly. Makeshift fired upon its fleeing back, scoring a decent hit but not stopping it, and Apex attempted pursuit but quickly realized he couldn't match its pace without going into hyper flight and overshooting them entirely.

In the aftermath the two heroes introduced themselves and moved to investigate the biology labe before authorities arrived, to see if they could figure out what VIPER had been after. Searching the building, on the ground floor they found one of the labs basically fire bombed, almost everything destroyed. However they found bits and pieces of abnormally large frogs scattered around the room, and one bit -- a large red-skinned leg, scored nasty chemical burns on Makeshift's gauntlet; he secured it in a sample jar scavenged from an adjoining lab for future study. The second floor appeared to be untouched save from the battle damage from Apex's struggle with Ogre. On the third floor they found the office of the head of the biology department, Professor Dale McAdams, ransacked, an office computer destroyed by some form of energy weapon, and the body of the professor with his head shot in execution style.

Makeshift recovered a badly damaged hard drive from the computer, and found a stack of pictures knocked off the desk that were lab photos of what appeared to be a series of mutation tests conducted on frogs. The test subjects all showed massive growth over a short period of time, but most apparantly died from the process. One of the pictures was of some kind of a small red tree frog, that over the course of a few days almost tripled in size and also seemed to have the toxic chemical properties of its skin magnified based upon some pH measurements displayed in the photos; Makeshift correctly assumed the leg he had found belonged to that particular frog.

However, their investigation was cut short by the sound of approaching sirens, and the duo made their way to the parking lot where they first spoke with campus security and then with police as they arrived. They were taken downtown to give statements, and were soon met by Lt. Thomas from the LA PRIMUS office, who flew down for the occasion in a PRIMUS hover car. Apex agreed to sanction and was quickly debriefed and allowed to go. Makeshift argued with the Lt. and refused to sanction, and thus was subjected to the full hostile witness treatment and kept for 24 hours "on suspicion". Left to cool his heels in a cell, in his armor and fully capable of busting out at will if he wanted to live with the consequences, Makeshift became even more determined to make a name for himself so as to feel comfortable with coming clean with PRIMUS and facing down his abuse of his former position as a PRIMUS field tech.

Prior to parting, Apex gave Makeshift his phone number, and Makeshift promised to get in touch soon to pursue the VIPER matter further.

Interlude

CONTINUITY: Three weeks between Sessions 2 and 3.

CRIME SCENE

A PRIMUS team came down from LA and did an initial sweep of the biology building and the general ed building that some of the combat spilled out into. They took a lot of pictures, did a tactical analysis, initial forensics on the Professor, and had a couple of specialists go over the Professor's office and lab with a fine tooth comb. Afterwards the area was police-taped off and the local cops took over.

The University of San Diego issued a generic statement of loss and canceled classes in the two buildings until they can make other arrangements or have the facilities repaired.

MEDIA

The press came around and the murder got some play, but there aren't many hard facts about what VIPER was doing. The TV news concentrated on the damage to the buildings as a "raging super battle rampaged out of control" and speculation over whether the "new supers" that "the police have under questioning in relation to the VIPER attack" are a good or bad thing for San Diego.

The Union Tribune mostly focused on the Dr's past accomplishments in the field of biology and community work and conspicuously avoided speculation of any sort, yet somehow still managed to not convey anything newsworthy. The North County times actually managed to get a blurry picture of the VIPER hover van snapped by someone who saw it flying low somewhere after it left the scene, but didn't publish the name.

Channels 8 and 5 would like to know more about the "possible new supers" making San Diego their home, and Channel 8 recalled Makeshift from the Mantara nab, which was partially televised. Channel 3 announced plans for a special VIPER in the Sun City videtorial later in the week in response to this latest outbreak of VIPER interloping.

AEGIS

In other news the large defense contractor Aesir, reported that their labs and hangers located off the 5 near the airport were the victim of yet another of what they claim to be sabotage raids conducted by a gang of super powered saboteurs. They have taken the unusual and media worthy tact of issuing an open call for a corporate sponsored super team to protect their facilities, and San Diego in general, from superhuman threats.

They will subsidize a respectable base and support equipment & personnel. The team will be called Aegis, and try outs will be held over the weekend April 15th thru 17th (a few weeks away). Applicants will have to prove themselves vs a series of challenges framed up by Aesir's famed senior engineer and all around design genius Dr. Hans Bors and a panel of "superhero experts" including a staff writer from HERO Magazine (Paul Vorheez) and a top reporter from SNN (Anita Dales) and some analysts to advise her. Some combat will be expected from "potentially qualified applicants".

APEX

In the weekend after the VIPER attack, Apex was found by a couple of detectives, Sgt's Holbert and Croft due to his car being found destroyed at the scene, who took a statement from him. He claimed that he had been picked up by friends and left his car parked on the campus so that he wouldn't be tempted to drink & drive. After that he spent time at a few parties over the weekend and subtly got as much information about the Professor as he could without appearing suspicious. Since the prof had just been gakked though it was a common topic of discussion, so it was fairly easy to accomplish.

Of particular note he heard tale about a doctoral student that was working as a lab assistant for Prof McAdams who had his thesis rejected and got expelled for unknown reasons at the Professor's behest. This student was named Joey Tarbanelli. Apex decided this sounded interesting and deteremined to follow up on it later.

On Monday Apex flew to L.A. to register at the PRIMUS offices as he had promised, and was given a typical battery of tests to gauge his abilities. A team of three scientists lead by Dr. Gary Brooks conducted a standardized battery of tests and a few specifically tailored to Apex based upon the preliminary data. The scientists seemed very interested in the results, and Dr. Brooks expressed interest in having Apex come in for further tests after the team has time to analyze the readings. Of note, Apex did not detect as a mutant or as a mystic being, but on the other hand Dr. Brooks informed him that not all mutants or mystic beings detect as such, just the large majority of them, so we wasn't ruling anything out.

For the first time in his brief career as a practicing superhuman Apex had the opportunity to test his boundaries. He almost pegged out the super strength equipment the L.A. office had on hand, discovered that he could lift approximately 300 tons over his head without undue strain, and could deadlift around 400 tons, and that his skin has enough tensile strength to repulse a .50 round fired from a high powered military crew served weapon (simulated). The PRIMUS guys all seemed very impressed with him.

Returning to San Diego later in the week he met w/ Makeshift as Apex at Fiesta Island after dark. They caught each other up on their individual investigations, and Makeshift gave Apex the harddrive which he had not been able to get anything off of. The two talked about the AEGIS open call and both agreed to show up. Apex was interested in some pocket money and figured if he was going to fight crime anyway, might as well not go hungry to do it.

As Ezil he continued to pursue finding out more information about Joey Tarbenelli, and also sought out and used his charms on a cute chick who happened to be into computer hardware at UCSD. She delivered the goods a few days later; a largely restored data dump on a thumb drive the day before the AEGIS trials, so APEX figured he'd use that opportunity to pass it on to Makeshift.

MAKESHIFT

In the weeks after the VIPER attack, Pete took the opportunity to hit the books and educate himself on biology in general and Professor McAdam's contributions to the field in particular. In addition to hitting the internet for whatever he could find, he also went to the USD campus library as they had several copies of the Professor's various out of print books and articles. It was boring stuff, but as people's lives could depend upon it Pete pushed himself to the task. Much of it was beyond him, but he got the basics...enough to realize the potential ramifications of a mutagen capable of producing the lab results Pete had seen in the photos he found in the Professor's office after the VIPER attack. This was serious stuff!

In the evenings he tried to restore the harddrive he had taken as well, but it was too far gone for him to do anything with, so he gave it over to Apex to work on when they rendezvoused at Fiesta Island one evening in the second week. The two heroes caught each other up on their individual investigations and also talked about the AEGIS open call which both agreed to show up for. Makeshift was not crazy about becoming a "corporate wage slave", but figured it would be a good opportunity to see what kind of local talent was around.

Finally, Pete tried to find out who took the picture of the fleeing VIPER hover van that appeared in the North County Times so that he could track them down and find out where the picture was taken, exactly. However the paper was unwilling to divulge a source. Not giving up so easily Pete ordered a large print of the photo with plans of trying to do some photo interpretation of it.

Session 3

The area around the Aesir facility was quite the media circus on the starting day for the AEGIS open trials. SSN has an exclusive, so all "lesser" news venues were forced to crowd around the guarded front gates to try and interview candidates as they entered. There was also quite a crowd of looky-loos and hero afficianados packed into the parking lot and any available space. Two large flat screen displays were set up to televise the trials once they started, but were initially dark.

Makeshift arrived on foot after manuevering around in the nearby bay to avoid having his route potentially traced, and chose to run in at high speed and vault the gate and assorted media, waving at a few onlookers yelling out "MAKESHIFT!!!!!"

Apex on the other hand put on a good show, coming in slow and majestic, letting the press and crowd get a good look at him. He made nice for the cameras for a few, and then entered the facilities to join the other applicants in a courtyard shielded from view from the gate by an intervening building.

There was a passel of sixteen other would be contestants already present when Makeshift and Apex arrived, and a final contestant calling himself Triage arrived last. He answered a few questions for the press, and made his way to join the others.

The contestants chatted amongst themselves for a bit, with some taking to each other, and some personality conflicts already starting to arise. The charismatic Apex became a center of attention, but came into almost immediate conflict with one of the potential candidates called Furnace, getting into a "who's is bigger" sort of verbal one-ups-manship. Similarly Makeshift did not hit it off well with the gadgeteer called Prefab after Prefab criticized some of the (to him) clear deficiencies of the Makeshift armor. Triage on the other hand made nice with everyone, and was particularly interested in the physically challenged contestant called Longarm, who is a quadrapalegic.

Prior to the trials beginning, famous SNN reporter (and a member of the judges panel) Anita Dales came through and gave each of the contestants a brief interview. Makeshift did suprisingly well with his time on the mike, but Apex stumbled a bit when asked a few leading questions though he managed to recover and play it off. Triage was fairly flat, and refrained from disclosing the nature of his abilities on film. Of them all, the young Kamikaze was the most entertaining, and Furnace proved to be a bit dark. Some of the would be heroes abstained from appearing on camera, perhaps not realizing that such a decision might hurt their chances in the competition.

After Anita had made her rounds, the proceedings got under way. The CEO of Aesir, Paul Barnes, took the podium and briefly gave a media-friendly corporate sponsorship "we are pleased and honored" blah blah blah speech, and quickly turned it over to Hans Bors and departed. Mr. Bors, the head technology expert and all around genius behind the success of Aesir, got to the point quickly, explained that he, Anita, and Paul Vorheez of HERO Magazine would make up a panel of judges would have the final decision over who made the team and who didn't, but that the actual trials were to be conducted by Showdown, the leader of the PRIMUS associated HERONet initiative.

On queue Showdown emerged from the opening doors of one of the large Aesir hangers, leading a team of three other superheroes from the HERONet initiative...his trusty number two Spiker, the metallic brick Ferrous, and the flying electricty blaster Amp. Showdown gave a motivational speech, pimped the HERONet initiative and urged all the supers present to register, lauded Apex for his recent registration, and then got down to business. He and his team would be coming around and screening the applicants, and picking which ones would be able to compete.

In total the contestants who passed initial screening were: Apex: 350 point Flying Brickness Makeshift: 350 point Power Armored Blaster Triage: 350 point Bio-Manipulator Seizure: 305 point Brick / Martial Artist Harrier: 295 point Flying Psychokinetic Neuro: 320 point Blaster / Damage Shielder Prefab: 305 point Gadgeteer / Blaster Murk: Has the ability to "step between" into a space between this dimension and some other, and is able to still affect the physical world while he does so with his STR and some effects based upon projecting the "between space" into the normal world, but the environment of the place he goes is inimical to life and it starts to kill him. Its also hard for him to come back; he has to make an Activation roll to do so. Every time he uses his powers he might die. He also has a kind of "don't see me" effect when in the normal world that isn't true invisibility, but makes it difficult for humans to notice or remember him. While the contestants that were screened out were: Questor: has total control over Questionite, Kendrium, Nuetronium, highly refined Titanium, Ferinium and other very rare extremely strong metals. Of course such materials are in extremely short supply, making this ability of marginal usefulness. Longarm: Quadraplegic in a wheelchair with fully invisible TK w/ Fine Manip, and can use it on anything he can see even if its via (live) television (modeled as Clairsentience only via live broadcast), but the TK has low STR, and he has no combat capable abilities. Chatterbox: Has numerous Sonic based powers vs AVLD: Flash Defense (Hearing), but all of her abilities also have a Linked Flash vs Hearing, severely crippling her usefulness. Kamikaze: A tweener move through speedster who generates a kinetic wave in front of himself and is almost immune to BODY damage (not so much STUN though -- Dmg Reduc Res 75% BODY Only). However he's got major ADD and hyperactivity issues. Furnace: His core temperature is insanely hot. In addition to the predictable damage shield, his body is superhumanly tough to withstand his own heat, he has a major CE to raise the Temp Level around him with Personal Immunity, and brutal heat projection powers. However, all of his effects are at full strength, and the heat he projects is so hot it randomly causes secondary high intensity fires that he has no control over. Actually quite powerful, but very unstable and dangerous to be around. Powderkeg: A former championship lady body builder who took an experimental "health supplement" and developed respectable superstrength, decent durability, and the ability to cause a kinetic explosion of force around herself with strain and a lot of flexing. Well meaning, but not very bright. Flicker: Middle aged man who has superstrong fingers; is able to flick small objects (like pennys) at high speed. He can also freescale, has a nasty iron grip, and can do a few other things due to his superstrong fingers, but the rest of his body is of normal strength and toughness. Abolisher: Middle aged man, former military, highly trained "commando". Uses guns, and has a mild reputation as a vigilante. Gard: Young man. Claims to have the ability to generate invisible force fields, but no one seems to see them or think they work other than him. Polecat: Young woman, claims to be able to control the minds of men, but only while dancing. The Yeti: Burly, fat, hairy, ugly guy of indeterminant age who has low level superhuman strength and toughness, and works as a bouncer. Strobe: Apparant teen ager with the ability to generate and to a lesser extent control light, but not (yet) lazers or anything of obvious combat application other than a relatively ineffective flash.

There was some drama from Kamikaze and particularly Furnace when they were let go, but for the most part those cut maintained their composure and or dignity and departed.

That difficult task accomplished, there was a quick photo op for the selected, and then Showdown escorted them into the hanger he had emerged from. Inside the hanger had been set up to contain a replica of a park, complete with 9 tracked robots serving as civilians. Ferrous, Amp, and Spiker took the field and would be playing the role of villains rampaging through the park. The contestants mission is to save the civilians by getting them out of the "danger zone" (a 20 x 20 hex square) first, and secondarily to stop the villains. Each civilian saved would be worth a point to the person that saved them. Each civilian destroyed would cause all the heroes to lose half a point.

In the ensuing chaos, Apex soared around saving five of the civilians by himself, while Neuro saved one, and Triage eventually managed to save one despite a close call with Amp. Makeshift moved to neutralize Spiker but was hurt in the process, her dangerous neural spikes bypassing his armor almost completely. Seizure charged in and successfully fought Ferrous, giving the more experienced hero quite a fight and completely occupying his attention and even Spiker's after she initially took out Makeshift. However, Makeshift returned to the struggle towards the end and managed to knock Ferrous flying with his water cannon (no mean feat) and save a civilian as the buzzer rang out. Harrier and Amp fought an arial battle, that was mostly one sided in the more nimble Amp's favor, but ultimately was resolved when Harrier managed to knock Amp out of the sky into a painful impact with the ground giving her just enough time to get a "civie" out of the danger zone before the buzzer.

However, Prefab proved to be the most valuable player of all, with the possible exception of Apex (who saved most of the civilians single handedly). Using his amazing gun and gadgets to his best advantage, Prefab almost flashed Amp, returned Makeshift to the struggle with a healing ray, caused Seizure to grow considerably and turn the tide against Ferrous and Spiker, englobed Spiker in a force bubble she couldn't get out of, and sniped Amp out once he had been knocked out of the sky by Harrier, preventing any last second intervention from Amp against Triage, Harrier, and Makeshift who were each rescuing a civilian in the final seconds.

Murk on the other hand stepped "between" at the beginning of the trial and had no further contribution...or at least none that was noticed.

Showdown was pleased with the results; the contestants exceeded his expectations. In addition to saving all the civilians (though one was badly damaged, it was still "alive"), they also took out all three villains in the process, and did so with at least some of the heroes displaying rudiments of teamwork, particularly Prefab.

Murk eventually reemerged from "between", blue in the lips and almost dead. He went too deep into his other dimension and almost couldn't get out. Consequently he was dropped from the competition and taken for medical treatment.