There's more to this campaign than a bunch of naked people breaking and entering in the suburbs. The Meanwhile... thread will include bits and pieces of things going on that relate to the characters but don't directly involve them. Some of this may seem strange, but it will all start to make sense over time - trust me. My players did.  

 

 

WARNING: This thread will contain potential spoilers. If you are a player in this campaign and want to maintain a perfect mystery for yourself, read no further. If you're more interested in knowing stuff and have no problem keeping player and character knowledge separate and distinct, then by all means enjoy.

 

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Collins is only two for thirty-six lifetime against Hurst, his last hit a double off the Green Monster during last season’s ALDS… the two-two pitch… a high pop up behind the plate… Gedman throws his mask… moving back towards the on deck area… looking… and its out of play.  The count on Collins remains two and two…

 

“Crap… >huff<…” Jason Wexford tapped at the treadmill console, elevating the plane another couple of degrees.  He maintained his strong, steady pace.  His lean, athletic limbs moved fluidly as he ground out his tenth mile.  He blew a stray lock of light blonde hair out of his face with a huff.

 

“Sox losing?” came the question from behind him.  He turned his head to see the familiar face of Tom Dinapoli coming down the basement stairs.  Tom was still dressed in his dark pinstripe suit from work, but he’d been home long enough to grab a beer from the fridge.  He walked past Jason on the treadmill to plop down on the edge of the couch by the widescreen where another opening day at Fenway Park played out.

 

“It’s tied,” Jason replied, pulling the safety tab on the machine.  It slowed to a stop and he steadied himself on the hand bars while his legs adjusted to the lack of motion.  “Hurst looks awesome.  Boggs had a dinger in the third.”

 

“Oh, cool,” Tom said as he watched the game and took a sip of his beer.  He’d drafted Boggs in his roto league.

 

NESN switched to a commercial and Tom leaned back on the couch.  He watched as Jason used his towel to wipe the sweat from his face, hesitant to start the conversation.

 

“I, uh, had that conversation today with James.”  James LeMaster was his boss at OmniTech, a small computer applications R&D startup in the Valley.

 

Jason eyed his housemate warily.  “And?”

 

“And… I didn’t get it.”

 

Jason stopped and stared at Tom for a moment before smacking the treadmill console in frustration with the towel in his hands.  “Dammit… did they give you a reason?”

 

“Not enough experience.”  The game came back on.  Neither seemed interested much now.

 

“What?”  Jason rolled his eyes.  “You’ve got more experience than anybody there.  So who did they give it to?”

 

Tom cleared his throat.  “Suzanne.”

 

“Suzanne?  Suzanne?”  Anger crept into Jason’s tone to mingle with the frustration.  He sighed helplessly as Tom got up off the couch, running a hand through his rough-cut dark brown hair.

 

“You know she only got the promotion because she’s blowing James.”

 

“I know,” Tom admitted, head down, to his friend.

 

Jason stepped over and lifted Tom’s downcast chin with two fingers.  “Maybe you ought to blow James,” he joked tenderly.

 

Tom chuckled and wearily replied, “I thought about it, but he’s not my type.  I like blondes.”

 

They kissed then, and Tom allowed the kiss to take him out of his work malaise.  He’d wanted that promotion badly and the rejection stung, but they really didn’t need the money and Jason was just such a damn good kisser.

 

When they finally broke, the two men remained close, arms around each other’s shoulders, foreheads touching.

 

“Why don’t you come upstairs and let me cheer you up some more?” Jason offered.

 

“Mmmm… tempting,” Tom answered.  “But you’re all sweaty.”

 

“You like sweaty,” Jason retorted, sliding his hands down Tom’s sides.

 

“Ew.”  Tom shoved Jason in his bare chest playfully with the fingers of one hand.  “Watch the suit, sporto.  I just had it cleaned.  Now go shower.  I’m starving and it’s your turn to make dinner.”

 

“Wrong,” Jason said, pointing at Tom as he started up the stairs.  “I made dinner last night.”

 

Tom had moved to the other end of the L-shaped finished basement where a work table was set up.  Two computers were running and a third was open-cased with its guts spread out.  Various engineering tools were placed among them.

 

“You want to cheer me up?” Tom asked, “then make dinner.  I want to see how my latest invention is doing.”

 

“The universal remote thingy?” came Jason’s raised voice from upstairs.

 

“It’s not a universal remote,” Tom called back, “it’s the universal remote.  You could interface with and remotely control anything run by computer with this, which – this being 1988 - is just about everything.”

 

Tom fiddled with one of the open computer components.  “If I can get the damn thing to work,” he muttered to himself.  He picked up a thin probe and placed the pointed end up against one of the circuit boards and checked the black and white monitor screen.

 

“Let’s see what you’re up to—“

 

A sudden booming crash, like someone tossed a car from a tall building, sounded in the basement storeroom and Tom jumped out of his skin.  The probe flew across the room as his hands flew up protectively.

 

“What the hell?”  Jason came running down the stairs.  “Are you okay?”

 

“I’m fine,” Tom said, still breathing hard but regaining his composure.  “It came from the storeroom.”

 

Jason and Tom moved over to the storeroom door and opened it slowly.  Their faces were masks of awe and bewilderment.  They looked back at each other, and then back at the storeroom.

 

Sitting on the unfinished concrete foundation slab was a giant strange black box, like a huge steamer trunk or a treasure chest from a pirate movie.  It looked like it had a lock set into its sturdy frame, and writing on it in a highly symbolized language which neither man recognized.

 

There were no holes in the walls or floor or any other sign of where it had come from, but it had totally wrecked both of the off-season clothing racks when it arrived.  The box just sat there quietly among the scattered garments, defying Tom and Jason to figure out its riddle.

 

* * * * *

 

Amy Hanlon made her way up College Drive and contemplated the lecture she’d just attended.  The principles and foundations of case law percolated in her head as she dissected the case that had been discussed. 

 

Now in her senior year, the pre-law candidate appreciated how she’d made the transition from merely absorbing knowledge to implementing it analytically.  It was a pivot point the professors had always talked about, but you just couldn’t appreciate it until you reached it yourself. 

 

Her path back to the dorm took her past the student union, so she ducked in to check her mail.  Her mailbox was empty save for a small pink slip.  Curious, Amy retrieved the package receipt and walked over to stand in line with the other students at the service window.

 

When it was her turn she handed the slip over to the middle-aged man in the USPS uniform.  He looked at it and then handed her a clipboard with a pen on a chain.

 

“Sign and date, please.”

 

Amy penned her signature on the line and the date: March 18, 2005.  She then slid the clipboard back to the postal worker, who checked it before nodding and saying, “Hold on.”

 

He disappeared for a moment and then the door next to the counter opened.  The postal guy had a hand truck on which was a huge cardboard box wrapped in fiberglass tape.  It was easily as big as her and looked formidably heavy.

 

“Um, what’s this?”

 

“Your package,” he replied, shuffling the box off the hand truck and turning to walk back into the mail room.

 

“But… wait!  What the hell am I supposed to do with this?”

 

The postal worker shrugged, back at his window.  “Sorry, I just deliver them.  Have a nice day.”

 

A half an hour later, Amy was holding the door to her single open for three large young men carrying her box.  They set it down in the middle of the floor and caught their breath.

 

“That’s really heavy,” one said, wiping his brow.

 

“Yeah,” answered another.  “So, um…”

 

“Right,” Amy nodded.  She went to her small fridge and pulled out two six-packs of beer and handed them to her sherpas.  “Payment as promised.”

 

“Yes!  Thank you!  Wooooo!”  The burly trio made celebratory noises and high-fived as they walked down the hall.

 

“Freshmen,” Amy breathed with a shake of her head before entering her room and closing and locking the door.

 

In the relaxing confines of her small room, the box was an imposing intruder.  With nothing but to do it, Amy reached for the utility knife in her desk drawer and cut along the seams of the cardboard until it fell away.  What was revealed only increased the mystery of this odd delivery from persons yet unknown.

 

Inside the cardboard had been packed another box of similar size.  This one was black and very tough-looking, shaped like an odd trunk.  She ran her hand over the ribbed exterior and examined the writing that was stamped on one side.  She didn’t recognize the language, but it looked Asian, maybe. 

 

Walking around it, she noticed a CD jewel case duct taped to the exterior.  With careful movements she peeled the tape off and took the case.  Only afterwards did she have a thought about terrorism, bombs, and strange packages with foreign writing.

 

Not having exploded, she focused on the disc.  It bore no markings other than those of the manufacturer.  Shiny and new, it was an odd mystery in and of itself, along with the box.  With a shrug, she opened her MacBook and popped it into her drive.  The tray slid shut with a subtle whirr.

 

The laptop digested it for a few seconds before QuickTime opened in full screen mode.  A video started playing, one that would change the young woman’s life forever.

 

* * * * *

 

Hello, Amy…

 

Amy stared at the smiling but reticent face on her screen in disbelief: Tom Dinapoli – her father.

 

I’m sure you’re wondering what’s going on.   I know I haven’t exactly been communicative or a real part of your life for a long time, but I hope in your young adulthood that… Well, if you can’t forgive me, then I hope you understand that this was how your mother wanted it…

 

It sure was.  Tom had left her and her mother back in ’86 when she was two.  It turned out that the wonderful, caring, sensitive man that Mom had snagged for a husband had discovered that he was gay, or had finally admitted it to himself, or whatever.  So they’d split, but not before he’d managed to create a daughter. 

 

She hadn’t heard from him in fifteen years, after a birthday card in the mail had driven her into a two-day long crying jag.  That had prompted an angry phone call from Mom and the cards and letters and phone calls had stopped. 

 

If you’re watching this video then I’m afraid I’m the bearer of bad news.  In all likelihood I am dead…

 

At that, Amy sat bolt upright, shaken from her dour thoughts of her dysfunctional childhood.

 

What I’m about to tell you is going to sound strange, but it is completely true.  I’m sure once you look inside the box you’ll come to believe that what I say is the truth, however difficult it might be for you to believe me now.

 

This story starts in 1988.  I was home with Jason, my partner, when the box arrived…

 

Any paid rapt attention to the story that her father laid out.  Unable to really wrap her mind around what she was being told, she simply tried to take it all in.  Her father’s tale went on for a good ten minutes before he came to the point.

 

So that’s it.  That’s the real history.  And now we get to the subject of the black box.

 

Inside you will find everything you need, should you accept my proposal.  Honestly, I don’t expect you to.  I mean, it isn’t the type of thing most people would embrace as a career choice, ha hah.  But this is all I have, my life’s work for the past fifteen years.  In a very real way, this is your birthright.

 

I wish… Well, I wish a lot of things.  But mainly I wish I could be there for you, to help you, like I helped Jason all those years.  Unfortunately, this cancer has other ideas.  I’ve done what I could to make everything fit and to provide enough of everything you’ll need.  There’s a series of instructional CDs included as a reference and so that eventually you should be able to provide for yourself.

 

A tear rolled down Tom Dinapoli’s face on the computer screen.  A sorrowful smile came to his lips.

 

Take care, sweetheart.  I miss you.

 

* * * * *

 

Amy sat on her bed and stared at the contents of the open box in front of her.  It was like some strange, surreal dream.  Even presented with the hard evidence she was having a difficult time processing it.

 

Some eighteen years ago a guy dressed in a black costume had foiled an armed robbery of a bank in Century City.  According to everyone interviewed at the scene, he’d used an array of incredible technological gadgetry and mixed martial arts  to take out five men armed with machine guns holding twenty hostages.  He appeared a month later to break up yet another bank heist, this time in East Hollywood.  By then he’d been given a name by the local Los Angeleans: the Black Angel.

 

It hadn’t exactly been original, but the media loved it.  And the guy just kept coming.  Within one year he’d broken up a dozen armed robberies, three hostage situations, and smashed one of the largest human traffic rings in the world operating out of the port of LA. Nobody could explain his methods or the secrets behind his special gear.  To anyone not the FBI, it hardly mattered.

 

In a world without heroes, Black Angel had come out of nowhere and drawn a line in the sand against crime and corruption.  Everybody had an opinion.  The eye-for-an-eye conservatives loved him.  The ACLU tried to have him brought to court on several occasions to face civil liberty and due process law violations.  Politicians’ stock answer to the Black Angel question was to avoid the question.  But nobody could deny that he was a true American cultural phenomenon and a symbol of hope for oppressed people the world over.

 

And then, just as suddenly as he’d arrived on the scene, the Black Angel vanished.  His last appearance was about three years ago during a hostage situation in Long Beach.  There was a lunatic, and a building, and a bomb, and Black Angel had managed to get everyone out before it had gone off.  But nobody was able to say for sure if the vigilante himself had escaped the blast.

 

Theories jammed the internet to this day.  Was he alive and retired?  Was he dead?  A dredging of the beach hadn’t produced a body.  Nobody knew anything for sure except that, since then, the world had not heard from Black Angel.

 

Until today.

 

It was all there.  The costume was exactly as it looked on the news, jet black and sleek like a jungle cat’s hide.  It was thick and made of a material she’d never seen or felt before, obviously tough enough to be bulletproof. 

 

And the other gadgets, the classic icons of the vigilante, they were there in the case, too: the zip line, the tanglers, the batons, the bracer, the utility belt that no doubt contained most of the amazing gadetry.  She had to reach out to touch them before her mind would agree that they were real.  She could go to YouTube and pull up no less than a hundred amateur video clips of the Black Angel in action, but this was real, and right here.

 

Amy leaned forward and reached into the bottom of the box, swallowing heavily.  From the shadowed depths she drew forth a black cowl of the same material as the rest of the costume.  It was Velcro-fitted, with cutouts for the eyes above a reinforced, molded bridge over the nose.  A finger rose to lightly trace across it, then moved slowly around the edges of an eye hole.

 

Amy Hanlon clutched the mask of Black Angel against her chest and lay back on the bed.  She stared at the ceiling and tried to come to grips with the fact that, no matter what else happened, life as she’d known it had just ended.

 

* * * * *

 

From her spot perched on a concrete edifice high above Broadway, Amy watched the electronic billboard with the U.S. National Debt Clock tick away.  As of June 8, 2007, the national debt was… a butt-load of money.  She shook her head and wondered at the futility of the national government while she placed a hand to her ear and switched on the major crimes unit channel on her police scanner.

 

Nothing.  Just like last night and the night before that.  The anticipation was murder.  All the training, all the expense – well, the expense wasn’t a big deal.  The other half of her inheritance had been several million dollars in a custodial account Tom Dinapoli had established on her behalf when he first moved out on her and her Mom.  Deposits had been made in steadily increasing amounts, particularly in the later years.

 

The bastard.  She’d come a long way in her feelings for her Dad in the past couple of years.  She’d invested so much time in hating him that it was difficult to change, but clearly he wasn’t the devil she’d conjured up in her head.  So now she hated him for that, but not really.  Or something – her therapist could figure it out.  Right now she had more important things to worry about.

 

She’d trained hard once she’d made the decision to pick up where her father’s partner had left off.  Martial arts, weight training, science, tactics, acrobatics, how to use the gear and the gizmos – she’d dedicated her life to the task of preparing herself for what she started two nights ago.  Or rather, what she had tried to start. 

 

She adjusted the MCU channel on the police scanner again.  Nothing.  Dammit, she thought, this is New York Freaking City.  Where’s the damn crime?

 

A scream, faint as the wind among the skyscrapers.  Amy looked down and around but couldn’t see anything.  From her height, the people on the ground were tiny moving specks.  Wait – there…

 

Five men and a woman in a blind alley, and it didn’t look like any date Amy’d ever heard of.  She leapt from the ornate stone ledge out into the Manhattan evening.  Her dive took her a few yards out and from there she fired her zip line to the building across the street.  It looked far easier than it was, but she eventually managed to swing herself down and close to the group.

 

Five men.  She’d never tested herself against that many.  But there weren’t any words, just menacing leers and grunts as the men started to push their victim to the ground.   She could do this.  She had to be able to do this.  Amy didn’t bother stopping to introduce herself.

 

Her low swing brought her into the alley with the momentum of a speeding taxi cab.  Her feet slammed into the backs of two men who wouldn’t be getting up again for quite some time.  It was enough to slow her so she could release the zip line, tumble across the alley, and use the brick wall at the end as a backstop.

 

Before the three other men had reacted, she flashed out with a tangler.  It struck one of them and exploded in a mass of chemical filaments which hardened near-instantaneously in the dimly lit night air. 

 

Gravel crunched behind her and she pivoted on the balls of her feet as she ducked a beef-armed grab.  She added momentum to her turn and lashed out with the heavy bracer on her left arm, slamming it into the side of her attacker and staggering him a few steps away.  A second later a baton was in her hand and she pressed her advantage.  Ribs, knee, collarbone, neck – four shots in quick succession and goon number four was toast.

 

She never saw the pipe that cracked into her skull and drew the entirety of the scene down into a pinhole of light in the center of her vision.  A whiplash sensation of vertigo was followed by the grinding pain of her cheek hitting the ground. 

 

Her mouth tasted copper.  Her baton was nowhere, one hand scrabbled blindly in the dirt for something… anything.  A cool wetness covered half her face.  Her eyes squinted as she was turned over onto her back.  A boot caved in her side forcing her to retch.  Twice.  Someone got down close to her and there was a sharp jab in her kidney.  Again.  There was cursing. 

 

She remembered the first punch that smashed into the side of her face, but not the second.  Or the third.  Or the fourth.