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terryclothFriday night we had a session of Mutants and Masterminds. The party fought the law, and the law won. Luckily, it turned out it was on their side all along.
As the party left the nef cult warren, they were immediately arrested. CONTROL, who'd reassured them that what they were doing *was* within their legal rights (they had legal enforcement powers as superheroes), but had otherwise been somewhat quiet, informed them that a massive public outcry had led all the other overseers to demand their arrest. To avoid the appearance of impropriety, it was therefore going to go through the motions, although it assured them that they really hadn't done anything wrong, and the case would probably just be dismissed. But it couldn't keep advising them while they were on trial, so it was going to shut up now.
They did get a phone call, and Fractal called her mom and had her send the family lawyer to represent them. They were taken to CONTROL HQ, stripped of all their equipment (although Pocket Fluff hid his in a pocket dimension before they could take it), and put in the power-nullified cell block with the other prisoners who were superpowered, but not horrible enough to get sent to the prison on the moon (or, in the party's case, only in jail, not prison yet).
Tenebra was there, pretending to be reformed. She told the party that she could get them all out of there if they could get her to a computer... the other prisoners insisted they were innocent and/or about to shiv the superheroes at the first opportunity, but they kept quiet and didn't cause trouble, and eventually, after talking with their lawyer, who recommended they plead not guilty if he couldn't get the case dismissed outright, were arraigned.
...and the judge was a nef.
...and Flamboyance was there before them, pleading guilty -- apparently he'd been offered immunity in return for testifying against the rest of the party, who'd brainwashed and bullied him into fighting with them.
The charges were insane -- apparently, the prosecution was trying to say they'd interrupted a church service and started firing without provocation.
"How do you plead?" asked the judge.
Liquidfist: "Not guilty."
Pocketfluff: "Not guilty."
Morph: "Kangaroo."
Bail was set at $2 million, because of the significant risk that teleporting, flying, superspeeding superhereos would try to flee. But no sooner were they returned to the jail, than someone posted bail. CONTROL informed them that it had done so, because something fishy was going on with this case, and it needed them to figure out what before they were railroaded into prison.
In particular, it looked like the computer records related to the case were being altered -- the judge that had handled their arraignment wasn't the one CONTROL had assigned, and in fact should have been on vacation but somehow had been called back, supposedly on CONTROL's orders, specifically for this case.
Further investigations revealed lots of other, similar inconsistencies -- the police report was wrong, they had a hard time getting their stuff back from the jail because the video record was photoshopped... even the petition that had gotten the other overseers to demand justice was mostly full of fake signatures -- the people on the list hadn't actually signed it, and had never heard of the church.
So they decided to set a trap. They gave pocket fluff's video recordings to their lawyer, and told him to put them up on the web in a secure location and tell the prosecution about them as discovery. Then they waited. Sure enough, the hackers took the bait, and they were (eventually) able to trace them back to their tiny spaceship sitting on a dock at the spaceport. They were the 'shadowrunners', a mercenary hacker group offering 'computer security services'.
Pocket Fluff immediately teleported himself, LiquidFist and Morph into their ship, leaving Fractal as their decker... then did an unheal burst which failed to knock out his friends, but stunned the shadowrunners' decker and leader. It didn't even *touch* the troll (who responded with a dangerous burst of minigun fire), so while LiquidFist and Fractal dueled with the other two, he teleported the troll up into the air and threatened to drop him if he didn't surrender. The troll responded by trying to hit him with the butt of his minigun.
Then they almost got hit by a shuttlecraft, but dodged.
So he teleported the minigun away, while Morph as Starfire tried to plasma the troll. (but still couldn't get through its armor).
Starfire almost got plastered by a passenger liner, but dodged.
The troll grappled Pocketfluff and shoved a grenade down the back of his uniform... which got him dropped 600 feet to his... slight bruising. He was *tough*. Pocketfluff scrambled to reach the grenade, but it was right in the small of his back where he couldn't get to it! So he used quickchange to go naked, and it fell far enough not to hurt him before exploding.
Morph landed and turned into Poison, whose energy claws were more penetrating... they weren't turned back by the armor outright, but still didn't hurt him much. Liquid and Fractal had finished up inside the ship by then, and Liquid joined the fight but still couldn't hurt the troll much either. So Fractal took control of the ship's turret and threatened to blow up the troll if he didn't surrender.
She was intimidating to get him to stop fighting momentarily, and threaten to murder them instead and call the cops on them for attacking them yada yada. They really couldn't get much out of him, so Morph turned into Psylocke and mind-controlled him into submission.
They got plenty from the ship's computers, though, including the identity of the shadowrunners' john, a wealth church official and a nef. The ship was impounded as evidence, the shadowrunners were locked up (although CONTROL warned them that he couldn't hold them long because they were foreign nationals -- eventually they'd have to be deported) and the church official who'd been paying for not only the hacking and the trial, but all the recent suspicious church expansion, was arrested for conspiracy to alter vital government records.
The incident wasn't completely over, but the hackers' records of altering everything that had gotten the party in trouble in the first place was enough to get the case dismissed -- this wasn't being found innocent, so in theory they could be arrested for it again if real evidence showed up, but that wasn't very likely since they hadn't actually broken the law.
Plus, it was better than going to trial as far as CONTROL was concerned, because they were publically identified as being falsely accused, to help counteract the extremely negative pulicity their arrest had caused.
last session | next session
Oh, and next up is plot 66: On Halloween, zombies and ghosts walk among the living!
As the party left the nef cult warren, they were immediately arrested. CONTROL, who'd reassured them that what they were doing *was* within their legal rights (they had legal enforcement powers as superheroes), but had otherwise been somewhat quiet, informed them that a massive public outcry had led all the other overseers to demand their arrest. To avoid the appearance of impropriety, it was therefore going to go through the motions, although it assured them that they really hadn't done anything wrong, and the case would probably just be dismissed. But it couldn't keep advising them while they were on trial, so it was going to shut up now.
They did get a phone call, and Fractal called her mom and had her send the family lawyer to represent them. They were taken to CONTROL HQ, stripped of all their equipment (although Pocket Fluff hid his in a pocket dimension before they could take it), and put in the power-nullified cell block with the other prisoners who were superpowered, but not horrible enough to get sent to the prison on the moon (or, in the party's case, only in jail, not prison yet).
Tenebra was there, pretending to be reformed. She told the party that she could get them all out of there if they could get her to a computer... the other prisoners insisted they were innocent and/or about to shiv the superheroes at the first opportunity, but they kept quiet and didn't cause trouble, and eventually, after talking with their lawyer, who recommended they plead not guilty if he couldn't get the case dismissed outright, were arraigned.
...and the judge was a nef.
...and Flamboyance was there before them, pleading guilty -- apparently he'd been offered immunity in return for testifying against the rest of the party, who'd brainwashed and bullied him into fighting with them.
The charges were insane -- apparently, the prosecution was trying to say they'd interrupted a church service and started firing without provocation.
"How do you plead?" asked the judge.
Liquidfist: "Not guilty."
Pocketfluff: "Not guilty."
Morph: "Kangaroo."
Bail was set at $2 million, because of the significant risk that teleporting, flying, superspeeding superhereos would try to flee. But no sooner were they returned to the jail, than someone posted bail. CONTROL informed them that it had done so, because something fishy was going on with this case, and it needed them to figure out what before they were railroaded into prison.
In particular, it looked like the computer records related to the case were being altered -- the judge that had handled their arraignment wasn't the one CONTROL had assigned, and in fact should have been on vacation but somehow had been called back, supposedly on CONTROL's orders, specifically for this case.
Further investigations revealed lots of other, similar inconsistencies -- the police report was wrong, they had a hard time getting their stuff back from the jail because the video record was photoshopped... even the petition that had gotten the other overseers to demand justice was mostly full of fake signatures -- the people on the list hadn't actually signed it, and had never heard of the church.
So they decided to set a trap. They gave pocket fluff's video recordings to their lawyer, and told him to put them up on the web in a secure location and tell the prosecution about them as discovery. Then they waited. Sure enough, the hackers took the bait, and they were (eventually) able to trace them back to their tiny spaceship sitting on a dock at the spaceport. They were the 'shadowrunners', a mercenary hacker group offering 'computer security services'.
Pocket Fluff immediately teleported himself, LiquidFist and Morph into their ship, leaving Fractal as their decker... then did an unheal burst which failed to knock out his friends, but stunned the shadowrunners' decker and leader. It didn't even *touch* the troll (who responded with a dangerous burst of minigun fire), so while LiquidFist and Fractal dueled with the other two, he teleported the troll up into the air and threatened to drop him if he didn't surrender. The troll responded by trying to hit him with the butt of his minigun.
Then they almost got hit by a shuttlecraft, but dodged.
So he teleported the minigun away, while Morph as Starfire tried to plasma the troll. (but still couldn't get through its armor).
Starfire almost got plastered by a passenger liner, but dodged.
The troll grappled Pocketfluff and shoved a grenade down the back of his uniform... which got him dropped 600 feet to his... slight bruising. He was *tough*. Pocketfluff scrambled to reach the grenade, but it was right in the small of his back where he couldn't get to it! So he used quickchange to go naked, and it fell far enough not to hurt him before exploding.
Morph landed and turned into Poison, whose energy claws were more penetrating... they weren't turned back by the armor outright, but still didn't hurt him much. Liquid and Fractal had finished up inside the ship by then, and Liquid joined the fight but still couldn't hurt the troll much either. So Fractal took control of the ship's turret and threatened to blow up the troll if he didn't surrender.
She was intimidating to get him to stop fighting momentarily, and threaten to murder them instead and call the cops on them for attacking them yada yada. They really couldn't get much out of him, so Morph turned into Psylocke and mind-controlled him into submission.
They got plenty from the ship's computers, though, including the identity of the shadowrunners' john, a wealth church official and a nef. The ship was impounded as evidence, the shadowrunners were locked up (although CONTROL warned them that he couldn't hold them long because they were foreign nationals -- eventually they'd have to be deported) and the church official who'd been paying for not only the hacking and the trial, but all the recent suspicious church expansion, was arrested for conspiracy to alter vital government records.
The incident wasn't completely over, but the hackers' records of altering everything that had gotten the party in trouble in the first place was enough to get the case dismissed -- this wasn't being found innocent, so in theory they could be arrested for it again if real evidence showed up, but that wasn't very likely since they hadn't actually broken the law.
Plus, it was better than going to trial as far as CONTROL was concerned, because they were publically identified as being falsely accused, to help counteract the extremely negative pulicity their arrest had caused.
last session | next session
Oh, and next up is plot 66: On Halloween, zombies and ghosts walk among the living!
