Actually, We CAN Run ... and Hide

It's been a while since we updated, so this will have a lot of compressed material in it...

Having cornered the likely source of nasty zombies in a Mexican drug lord's compound, we did what we do best - recon by assault (or assault by recon, take your pick). Some went in doors, some underground or through walls, and Craig went up on the roof, where he dispatched a couple of normals and discovered the joys of firing an RPG. We flushed the über-bad guy - apparently a manifestation of some ancient Celtic god - out of the house, and put him on the run with the aforementioned rocket fire and the realization that it was him against all of us. We also found the likely source of his zombie-making powers: a giant iron bathtub ("the magic bathtub", it was quickly dubbed). Jeff's wizard/necromancer started salivating over the prospects of "studying" it (or creating a large zombie army, we aren't sure which), so we loaded it on a liberated truck and drove off.

As we left, it became clear that the Celtic god had called his Dogs of War (or Dogs of Unusual Size) and was giving chase. So we slipped across the border and drove east into the West Texas desert. Finding a nice empty spot with no normals nearby, we camped out and waited. The minor deity eventually did show up, with a few pals and five horse-sized dogs along. We killed or incapacitated the dogs and started to do the same to the people - though not before Jeff nearly killed us all with his first critical spell failure. Next time, we're going to stay well back from him when he's casting... In any case, the god and his cronies took off into the ether, allowing us to tote the magic bathtub back to Chicago without further incident. The god later made it known that we've made ourselves an enemy - he may have to get in line before too long.

Once back in Chicago, Jeff put the tub in a special sealed-off section of his bookstore/home, while the rest of us resumed our "normal lives". Normality, of course, never lasts long (at least, not in our campaigns)...

A few weeks after we got back, we all found ourselves on or about the Navy Pier when a giant humanoid fish-monster decided to crawl out of Lake Michigan and treat the crowded pier like a buffet. Craig shooed his latest girlfriend away (more on that below), pretended to fall off the pier, and then changed and headed out to the end to do battle. He was joined there by Kevin and, eventually, Brian, Mike and Ghost Wolf, while Schmitty summoned his dragon friend from the top of the ferris wheel and Bill dropped a hot dog cart on the thing's head telekinetically. It proved to be a tough and nasty fish-monster - it nearly killed one cop, and likely would have killed several if we hadn't intervened - but it was eventually brought down by repeated blasts, hacks, and stabs. The group then dispersed back into the (now rather freaked-out) crowd and left - another day at the office for your average group of secret supers.

But it turned out that Craig's latest girlfriend was not what she seemed (you know, you really should find out what they do for a living before dating them...) A couple of days later (after news reports with sketchy details about the fish-monster), Craig got a frantic phone call from his girlfriend, who claimed that there was what looked like a vampire lurking outside her office building. Craig and Bill sped off to investigate, calling the rest of the gang for backup. The girlfriend called again en route to say that the vamp had broken in, and that she was taking shelter in the warehouse connected with her office.

The whole crew showed up pretty much at the same time to the warehouse/office in the middle of an industrial park. The front door was smashed in, so Craig, Bill and Kevin charged right through it, followed by pretty much everybody else - with Ghost Wolf pulling Mike's Iceman through a wall just for tactical flavor and surprise.

Turns out the girlfriend was not just a cute chick - she was an FBI agent, and the whole thing was a setup. As soon as we burst in, the agents flicked on the Klieg lights, and aimed about two dozen assault rifles and tasers at us. Being that we didn't really want to get arrested, many of us turned around and walked out, taser darts bouncing off our armored bodies. Craig and Kevin provided some distraction for the troops while Ghost Wolf took Iceman through the back wall, then came back in and carried off the girlfriend/FBI agent for questioning in the next building over.

The forces that were supposed to close off our retreat were immobilized by Bill, who then flew Schmitty's character to safety while Craig, Brian and Kevin escaped in two cars. Brian, unfortunately, realized immediately that he would have to abandon his Cockroach Killer van/mystery machine, as it had his name and phone number in big letters on the side. Recon to various spots through the evening confirmed - Jeff's place, and Kevin's dojo, had not yet been discovered by the cops, but Brian's cover is pretty much blown (as is Craig's, obviously, though it's not clear that they know WHAT Craig is - just that he's associated with Ghost Wolf in some way).

Questioning of the girlfriend led to a phone call with the local FBI field commander, and a request that they back off and leave us alone - mostly on the grounds that they don't know who most of us are, and they aren't going to catch us anyway (three or four dozen SWAT officers had just failed to do so...) The FBI fellow said he would think about it, so we let the girlfriend go. Craig called her cell phone and left a message, suspecting that he was in for an awkward conversation later.

After a day of hiding out, nothing had been heard from the FBI girlfriend. Then somebody set fire to Brian's van in the impound lot - we assumed it was the feds, trying to cover the incident up. A phone call to the FBI field commander disabused us of that notion - they thought WE had done it. Clearly there was someone else working here.

Craig became suspicious when the girlfriend didn't call - after 24 hours, you'd think she would at least be curious. So we all headed over to her apartment, where recon by Craig and Kevin discovered that she had been brutally killed - hacked to death by something with big claws and pointy women's shoes. Jeff the necromancer summoned her spirit, who told us that she had been killed by the Chief of Police's girlfriend (what is it with betraying girlfriends in this episode?), who had shown up at the door, grown claws out of her hands, and shredded the ex-FBI agent. Jeff also confirmed that only Craig and Brian have been positively ID'd by the FBI so far - which is a good thing. But now we're likely to get framed for the FBI agent's murder as well as the car fire in the impound lot - somebody is clearly out to get us, and it's not just the FBI.

Next time - more investigation, and hoping the feds stay off of us long enough for us to bring the real bad guys down, and maybe clear our names.