Chain 183: The Incredibles

Chain 183: The Incredibles

Location: Metroville
Age: 26
Identity: Drop-In
Drawbacks: [0] The Glory Days, The Long Haul

[Free]      We Can't Keep Doing This, Bob!
[400/1000]  Jumper Doesn't Have Any Powers
[700/1000]  Self-Duplication
[700/1300]  Item Stipend (+300)
[Free]      Armored Limousine
[900/1300]  NSA Files
[1100/1300] JumpTech
[1300/1300] Import: Demona and the Conspiracy

And so CrossTech joins the collection of companies under my banner. A media company, broadcasting as CTN, and operating in lockstep with Cross Industries and Cross Technologies. Ah, the path to establishing a monolithic megacorporation is paved with a thousand steps, but I am walking it.

Also, the Sovereign is out fighting crime (often in several places at once), and Demona occasionally acts upon her own as well, the gargoyle with the body of metal; the dark Conspiracy exists, or such is the rumor, but no one ever sees more than a couple of their members at a time. Oh, aside from preventing a few dumb deaths things went smoothly, got to do the meet and greet with classic heroes in their prime, and it was rather unfortunate that Supers were eventually outlawed but the writing was on the wall.

Fortunately, I didn't have to be assigned by any minders to a particular job - I was just fine keeping myself on the books in the employ of CrossTech. After all, someone had to keep pushing out those technologies to make the 1960's look a lot more sci-fi than they ought to, and I was in the perfect place for it. Even if things ended up being a little... Fallout Chic, I think would be the right term? At least, pre-war.

Syndrome came to town and was predictably an idiot; CTN minimized coverage, because that paints things in a bad light, instead playing up how some unlikely retired heroes came out of hiding in order to handle an extraordinary threat, before returning to their normal lives. And then we made quiet arrangements to get an interview with Mr. Incredible himself, which... we did have to edit a bit of, because the government would have had our heads if we were glorifying heroism, but something HAD to be said. Although Bob Parr was very curious as to how we knew where he was, and was running on almost no sleep due to some unfortunate timing, but a bit of coffee did him a world of good.

And then the Screenslaver, and the summit. Well... things weren't quite as expected. It wasn't on a yacht for starters, it was in a government building, because you don't sign treaties on a BOAT unless they were symbolic. Of course everything still went to hell - the whole thing was seemingly about wanting to just completely make people distrust television (hence, "screen slaver") and was partly the generic "TV is a bad influence" thing and partly "dad died when he could have lived" thing, so it was two birds with one stone. Basically... to her, he couldn't separate fiction from reality and tried to play hero when there was no need for it, right after costumed heroes were outlawed.

Meanwhile the Parrs' kids got the goggles off Helen, Helen got them off of her husband, they fought Frozone and the newbies; Winston and Evelyn got into an argument, since she'd taken him hostage and up to the control room to keep him from causing any problems.

"You don't get it. Dad was trying to protect us. He thought the saferoom was our best bet, but he wasn't sure we were going to be able to make it before the robbers got in. He knew he wasn't going to stop them, dad just wanted to make sure we were safe."
"That's not true! The supers warped his mind!"
"You never did get it, did you? Being a hero isn't about beating up bad guys. It's about sacrifice and doing what's right. Supers inspires people to believe they can be better. To give us strength to do the hard things, even if it means losing everything. Gives people to sacrifice themselves to save the people they love. He didn't think he was the hero. He WAS one. And you still can be. You just need to let them go, and we can fix this together."

And... he got through to her. She turned it off.

And of course that's when the Underminer attacked, kitted out to repel all four of the Incredibles. But he wasn't equipped to deal with all the new ones.

And with the equipment they had on hand... and with me acting as an intermediary... we made sure the fight was captured on film and broadcast live. (The conference had been knocked off the air; I later made sure the whole Screenslaver thing was buried, since Evelyn was sincere in her heel-face turn.)

You see, people usually had only ever seen the aftermath of the conflicts, unless they were there for the fight. Most had never seen what actually happened. What heroes did to protect people and each other.

Public opinion turned around overnight, and even if oversight was a thing, supers began making a comeback. Imagine that.