Businessmen and Supervillains and Politicians, Oh My!

As the battle commenced in the corporate office 53 floors off the ground, things first looked pretty grim - our heroes were surrounded by bad guys with swords, and it looked like their powers might be turned off. An attempt by Jeff's mage to Deathtouch the CEO/head honcho had gone terribly wrong - it winded him a bit, but nearly blew Jeff up in the process. Jeff, sensibly, teleported out of the low-mana zone that was draining his power fast.

Things started to get better as Brian discovered that his powers were unaffected, and Craig and Kevin got their powers back with a big of effort. Craig turned on his Cuisinart routine, while Kevin started blasting henchmen. Ghostwolf and Iceman came through a wall to join the fun, and what had looked like a sticky situation turned rather quickly into a rout. A few seconds later one henchman lay dead, a couple of others were wounded, and the rest of the bad guys - the CEO fellow included - vanished, apparently teleported out. By whom, we didn't know.

We quickly riffled the office, with Craig helping himself to the hard drive of the computer for later examination. Finding little of informational value, we turned to questioning the one wounded henchman left behind. He proved to know very little of value, having apparently been brainwashed into thinking that the organization he was working for were the good guys (of course, we know they can't be - they tried to kidnap us!) Ghostwolf took him off through the walls to drop him off elsewhere - somewhere that he could not be a credible witness to what had just happened.

Around this time, we got a call from our FBI contact, warning us that the cops were coming for us. Sure enough, looking out the window to the ground 53 stories below, we saw a whole ton of cops and a few SWAT vans pulling up - welcome committee #2. We later learned that the company "hosting" us had called the cops before we even showed up - more suspicious behavior.

We then realized that we had two problems: how to get out without being seen, and what to do with a dead body and a blood-soaked office. Some of us HAD been videoed by cameras entering the building, so this wouldn't look good. After various suggestions, a truly disturbing idea rose to the surface: Jeff's mage raised the dead body as a zombie, healed it, then ordered it to smash the window and jump to its death. (He IS a necromancer, after all...) This led to the whole incident being dubbed a suicide in the papers, which suited us just fine. Tracks covered, we slipped out in various directions, eluding the police.

We waited a couple of anxious days, but it seemed that the company that had hosted the meeting - and the black-clad minions who had invited us - weren't going to come after us seeking revenge. We sent in a couple of invisible folks to case the office again - and discovered that there might well be TWO copies of the CEO figure (a suspicious later corroborated). Other than that, it seemed mostly business as usual in the business world.

Schmitty and Bill also discovered, through various street contacts, a new "club" for supers and Wonders forming. Using a combination of streetwise and Facebooking, we tracked this budding social club to a bar/dance club (which also serves plenty of normal, unsuspecting folks) in a decent suburb in Chicago. Naturally curious, we found the Password and went to check it out. It turned out to be a private gathering (password required) in a back room, with maybe half a dozen likely real Wonders and a whole lot of wannabes and cosplay types, all mingling and generally having a nice time socializing. Craig, Schmitty and Bill wandered through this crowd for a while, long enough to figure out who were the Real Powers. It seemed very much simply a social networking gathering for people who found themselves being a little ... different ... after the Shimmer, and those who wish they were.

After a while, one of the black-clad Henchmen came in - not one we recognized (and he didn't recognize us), but same uniform. He made ALL of the Real Wonders in the room VERY nervous. He mingled for a couple of hours - obviously trying to unobtrusively recruit - and then left. We learned that he, or others like him, had sometimes come to the club, met people and arranged to meet them again later, and those people were never seen again. Enough to make anyone nervous.

We also learned that the Doorman of this particular club is a Psi (oops - sorry! next time, Schmitty will knock), and that he and the social club don't seem to be in league with the CEO fellow and the black-clad henchmen - a good thing. We may yet have friends in the world.

The henchman was tailed back to his place (it's fun having an insubstantial werewolf who can be made invisible), where we learned a few more things - especially his employer, Walker Security.

We also noted - without being entirely clear what it meant yet - that the CEO we had tangled with (the one with the apparent Reflection power) had been seen in public again, apparently supporting a local candidate for a Senate seat who was once himself CEO of the same company. Apparently, the CEO's claims of having Friends In High Places was serious - these people do have a plan of some kind to seize power (for what end, we don't know).

Mulling over our options, we decided to see if we could set a trap for these "recruiters". The next Friday (the social club meets Fridays) we sent Jeff in, looking like someone no one had ever seen before. He was approached by another black-clad henchman, and after a brief conversation, agreed to a meeting the following Wednesday evening - this one (somewhat incongruously) to be held at a Moose Lodge on the South Side.

Naturally, we cased the joint extensively - and learned that there really ARE two CEO look-alikes (and we don't know yet what the other one can do, if anything). As it turns out, the Senate Candidate is giving a public speech/town hall kind of thing - right in front of the Moose Lodge - right before Jeff's planned "meeting". So we set ourselves up good and early around the place, some mingling with the crowd, some invisible under the stands, Bill blending in as only homeless people can, and Bruce invisible and insubstantial right inside the podium to get a good whiff of the candidate - see if he recognizes the smell.

With everyone in place, the candidate's people came out to take their seats - including the CEO we had encountered in the office (we will call him Reflection Boy). Then the Candidate himself came out - and Jeff immediately felt a drop in the ambient mana. This, apparently, is our power drainer. He walked out, looked right at Bruce (invisible though he was), and then took the mike away from the podium to begin his speech.

Next time (in a few weeks - the next couple of weeks are vacation for various folks) we'll try to find out more of what these people are up to. And we'll try to avoid getting into a very public fight, right in front of live TV cameras...