[The Power Posse!] Issue 1: First Contact

Anne reaches into herself and pushes. The massive chitin plates of the Man-tis begin to yield. It softened like warm clay, soft enough to tear through with one's bare hands.

The police officers huddled behind the cruisers stare at awe. The monster that was impervious to bullets is down to the floor. There is a mess of Anne-bodies on the floor, blood everywhere, and between them, the Heroes who saved the day.
A moment later, they all spring into action.

"Central, subject is down. Repeat, subject is down. Send EMS, now. We’ve got an officer down and civilians in the bus."

Two officers stay on the radio, the rest come out from behind the cars. They walk in a loose half circle toward the body, with their guns aimed ta the ground, waiting for the creature to so much as twitch and they’ll put a round through its head.

Two of the officers break away from the half circle around the Man-tis corpse and run for the school bus. They reach the door, and push it open. A moment passes, then the first kid comes out – a girl with a backpack on her shoulders, her face wet with tears. Then behind her the rest of them, almost fifty kids from Meramec Elementary, second grade to fifth judging by their heights.

Some of them are crying, but a few are downright exhilarated; it’s not every day that you see real superheros up so close, bringing down a terrible monster. The ones who didn’t understand how much danger they were actually in, stare at heroes, their mouth hanging open with awe.

None of the children are hurt. The bus is a little dented, and there is a hole in it were one of the barbed arm went through the metal, but luckily, you all arrived before the Man-tis opened the bus like a tin can.

The parents are already coming more and more cars stopped a block away from the intersection. Fathers, mothers, grabbing and hugging the little children, with a ‘thank you, thank you, thank you’, (and more then a few who thank god rather than you).

Ambulances are here as well. So many of them. Most of them are not actually needed, except perhaps scoop up the remains of Anne-Tibody(s) from the floor. And then not even that, because once the doctor told them the bodies are a bio-hazard, the police put a yellow line to restrict access to the area as they wait for the bio-hazard team to arrive in their hazmat suits.

The only one who does end up being evacuated is officer Darcy. He is missing one of his legs, and his face is as white as a sheet of paper. He is unresponsive as they lift him off the ground, and the ambulance quickly carries him to the ER. Nobody there could tell showstopper if he will be alright or not.

Above you two news chopper already hover. A van from Channel 5 hits the curb hard as it comes to a stop. Door opens, reports rush into the scene, followed by the camera crews. All of them want to be the first to bring live pictures from the scene – and hopefully, be the first (if not only) to get a statement out of the superheros.

But the news reporters are not the first. Every window on the block had a phone pointed at the action. The entire fight is already on the internet; Anne distracting the creature, Showstoper putting shots into the creature from the rooftop, Flux charging in, Inkredible’s fist going through its jaw – and the Brawndo man posing over the corpse. Pictures of the little children disembarking the bus, all safe. You were unknown yesterday. Today you are all going to be on the national news.

Do you stay to talk with the reporters, or disappear where you come from?

And more important questions, perhaps: what was that creature? where did it came from? and...are there any more?

Showstopper

Showstopper looks around the bus. Then, by hunch, she looks at the garbage bins not too far away. One of them has its lid off, garbage overflowing. Easy to overlook, and the police haven’t (and wouldn’t) ever considered looking inside. The sanitation crew would take the whole thing tomorrow morning, and would have missed what’s inside.

And there was something inside!

Under the dirty diaper and rotting vegetables, she fishes out a plastic box. It is the exact cheep shape of a cockroach bait station (and in a sense, it is), and that, too, would have gone out with the rest of the trash. But it is missing a logo. The seams are too clean. When she turns it, something inside ticks. And the smell is stronger off the thing when it is was inside the bin.

Pheromones?

Pheromones!!

Pheromones designed in a lab. A scent that attracted the flying Man-tis like a beacon.

It wouldn’t be a leap of logic to assume that whoever dropped this scent-box into the nearby garbage bin intended to draw the Man-tis here, and since that pheromones-scent was purposely designed to do so, he (or she) must have been involved in the monster’s creation.

What do you do now?

Anne-Tibody

Dr. Tibody is shown to the bio lab, and handed a white suit, complete with a hood and gloves. Everyone inside are wearing the same, with only name tags to tell one from the other on their chests. She goes through the airlocks, and a sealed door, and shown to her station.
The crew are already examining the remains from the Man-tis under microscopes, talking with each other through comms installed inside their suits.

You look under the microscope at your sample. You zoom in. The cells look like human, at first glance, a closer look shows how wrong they are. Then she finds it. The retrovirus. An infectious replicator going from cell to cell, rewriting its DNA, inserting insect genetic material through the human genome.

Anne feels a chill creep down her back.

This retrovirus is sophisticated, and has very familiar ‘fingerprints’ on it. It was designed a lab. A lab like the one she used to work at, before she escaped...

What do you do?

Brawndo Man, Inkredible, Showstopper

Showstopper scans the area, and she quickly manages to locate a camera pointing at the service alley that led to the open dumpster. It belongs to a local connivence store. Officer Miller whistles something about her ‘good eyes’ with awe, as he leads the officers towards the shop to retrieve the footage.