[Investigative Casting Call]
[Investigative Episode: Archive Anxiety - PG]
[Role: Amateur Sleuth! Do you accept the role? (Yes/No)]
[Role Focus: Cunning+Drama]
[Archive Anxiety: Act One in Progress]
It was too suspicious, and as the hooded hero ducked into an elevator, I fired up a Casting Call for an Investigative Episode. “Come on, we’ve got a lead here.”
“You’re sure?” Fursona looked back at the newspaper-covered desk, and I winced. It looked like someone had gotten halfway through a paper mache party and decided not to clean up.
But the facts were the facts, and they told me that we hadn’t seen any heroes interested in 3V1L in the last three or four months except us. Sure, the Triad had bailed us out once, but after that? They’d gone right back to pretending the Poudre districts didn’t exist. Heck, even villains didn’t mess with 3V1L. And that meant this hero was up to something.
“No time. We’ll make it up to the attendant later…somehow. Let’s go!” I grabbed Fursona’s paw and pulled her toward the stairs. She followed reluctantly—we had a long sprint if we wanted to beat the hero to the exit on the first floor.
Our feet pounded the steps as we ran down, sliding on the handrails where we could to get some extra speed. The staircase was packed with Extras—employees working in the Council of Heroes building or people asking for help from supers—and we had to look our most serious the whole way down. By the time we’d descended twenty-plus flights of stairs, I wished we’d just taken the elevator, even if we’d lost the guy.
But we did catch a glimpse of his white cloak flapping as he pushed through the revolving doors at the skyscraper’s base and out into the street.
I pulled a [Card Curio] card. “The Sun. That’s got to be a good omen. We’re on the right track, and the sun’s setting. I bet he’ll go west; let’s get a move on.”
[Good Thinking! +1 Cunning Point]
As we hurried to keep up, the hero lugged a backpack filled with books and newspapers along the street. He was moving shockingly fast, and I paused for breath—and to wonder if he was a speedster or a bruiser. Either way, I wouldn’t be running him down as Lucky Star. “Keep on him. I’ll switch to Understudy and get some air.”
“Okay. Hurry up,” Fursona said, a tinge of nerves in her voice. “You’re right. This all feels off.”
“Will do.” I started transforming back to Understudy, letting the slow transformation play out and drawing eyes as Fursona dashed ahead. The choral music and light show drew eyes from the nearby Extras in a way that, somehow, my Lucky Star Costume and Roo-sona hadn’t, but as a few closed in—maybe to ask for autographs, or maybe to ask for help—I used [Solar Wing] and jumped into the air. “Sorry, I’m on a mission. I’ll be back to Patrol later, though!”
The air whipped through my hair, threatening to pull my tiara off my head as I gained altitude. “Where are you?” I asked
“Slinky bus, heading west. He’s up front. I’m in the back,” Fursona said. “We just passed the Westfield train station, if that helps.”
“Yeah, it does. Be there in a minute.”
I rocketed through the urban canyons, past skyscrapers that got shorter and older as we reached the edge of Mid-Town. The bus came into view just on the edge of South Poudre’s industrial smog cloud, and I dipped lower to try to get under it. Last night’s snow already had a hint of yellow-brown to it from the factories and refineries.
The bus stopped, and the white-cloaked hero stepped out. “I’ve got eyes on him, Fursona,” I said. “He’s still heading west, further into the district.”
“Got it. I’m out of the chase. I’ll head toward University and try to avoid any 3V1L patrols.”
“Understood. Be safe.”
The smog cloud forced me lower and lower until my stomach all but grazed the tops of smokestacks, and I had to loop through the haze to keep an eye on the hero as he jogged down the street. I kept silent, thinking owl-like thoughts; if he heard me and looked up, he’d realize he’d been followed, and that’d be the end of this Investigative Episode.
Truth be told, I didn’t expect a lot of points here. But it felt like a big lead, and I was determined to—
A black SUV pulled in front of the white-cloaked hero. A door opened, and he stepped inside. As the SUV sped away, I circled over the spot where my quarry had just been.
“Fursona, he’s not a hero. He’s with 3V1L!”
[Good Thinking! +1 Cunning Point]
----------------------------------------
I tried to follow the SUV, but it ducked into a tunnel, and I couldn’t get low enough to keep up the chase before it vanished. Still, I’d been right. The white-cloaked villain had been up to something, and I raced south into the University district to meet up with Fursona and tell her everything I’d found.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
That meant, of course, that I beat her back to the Green Room by almost twenty excruciating minutes. Worse, the Investigative Episode hadn’t ended yet; I didn’t want to get back out there and comb South Poudre for a villain when I knew he’d already vanished, so I spent the time trying to wrap my head around what I’d tell Fursona when she eventually arrived. Maybe a good conclusion would end the Episode with a win.
If not? That’d be fine, too. We’d learned something. The ideas crystallized in my head—it all made sense, and I’d definitely been wrong about who the One L was. This Investigative hadn’t revealed their identity, but I knew, for sure, that Monologue wasn’t in action right now. He’d crossed a line with his assault on TU during the Power War, and his lawyers were struggling to get him out of jail.
So if 3V1L was acting this boldly, he couldn’t be in charge of it.
But even more interesting was how unbelievably bold the plan was.
3V1L, formerly one of the most notorious villain groups in Tokyexico, had walked into the Council of Heroes building through the front door, strolled into the archives, and checked out as much material about themselves as possible. Then, they’d loaded it into a backpack and walked right back out, and no one at the Council building had suspected a thing. How many times had they done this? This wasn’t their first, but had they done it twice? Or two dozen times?
It didn’t matter. What mattered was that whoever the One L was, they were a planner. They knew that the longer information on their minions was outdated, the better it’d be for them, and instead of going after just money and territory, they were waging an information war.
And, honestly, that information war was why Fursona and I hadn’t had a big win against 3V1L yet—why we couldn’t push into the Poudre districts without all hell breaking loose. It felt a lot like we’d been targeted by it. I just couldn’t understand why.
Not why we were the targets, but why the One L would go through so much risk to beat a couple of early minor heroes when they could put that effort into rebuilding into something like their glory days. I stared at the whiteboard in the corner, then shook my head. Some problems didn’t need organization; they needed a spark of inspiration instead. And I didn’t have that, either.
When Fursona finally emerged from our secret elevator and pulled her helmet off, I had my speech ready. “So, here’s what I think. 3V1L is making plays to get rid of information about them. They’ve got a hench pretending to be a little league hero or something, and they’re raiding the archive for everything they can find.”
“Yeah, that tracks. It explains why we couldn’t get anywhere in our investigations. The first time, all we had was old material; this time, what new stuff we had was too hole-filled to piece together a clear picture.” Bianca sighed. “Help me out of this thing.”
As I undid the straps holding her fursuit together, Bianca kept talking. “So, if we can’t form a good picture of 3V1L, we need a battle plan that reduces variables.”
I groaned. “Not math. Anything but math!”
“Not math,” Bianca laughed, “Although Su-Bin could probably help with this if we could enlist her. If we hinted that a certain villain’s lair was in a certain location, she’d probably gather up her club and protest there. But…actually, probably a bad idea. Has she been emailing you?”
“Yes, she’s still emailing me constantly. I’m almost tempted to get on the radio with her just so she’ll stop.”
“Don’t. She can wait. So, we have variables.” Bianca went for the whiteboard, and I reached out and grabbed her hand. “What?”
“I don’t want a plan on this one. Not yet. Let’s work through it and wait for inspiration to hit,” I said.
“Okay. Sure. Variables, though. We don’t know where 3V1L’s bases are, we don’t know which Three Vs we’re going to fight on any given day, and we don’t know who the One L is. That’s a lot to work through, and with them blocking out research, we can’t Investigative Episode our way through this. We can’t Patrol in the Poudre districts because they attack us every time we show our faces publicly. So, we have a lot of things we can’t control and not much of a way to counter them.”
“Yep. We do have some options, though.” I took a deep breath and laid out the only plan I had. “This is a stupid plan, but I think if we tried to map all of this out on the whiteboard, it’d be a rat’s nest of lines and dots. 3V1L is too big to attack in the Poudre district, and right now, they’re stuck there because they’re sandwiched between us, Mid-Town, the wall, and Sister Sly. I know they haven’t beaten her yet because if they had, she wouldn’t be our problem anymore.”
“Okay. How does that help us?” Fursona asked.
“This next part’s going to sound dumb, but hear me out. We need to take pieces off the table. I don’t think targeting henches or Vs is the way to go, though. The fact is that we’ve had at least two Episodes against 3V1L that have had outside interference. Three if you count the Foothills fight against Livestream, but I think that’s a little different.”
“So you’re suggesting…” Bianca trailed off, grinning suddenly. “You’re suggesting that Rocko was right to push an Episode with Sister Sly.”
“No. I’m suggesting that your so-called archrival is an annoyance, but also that she’s forcing 3V1L into a defensive position while they try to deal with her. That’s not helpful to us right now. She’s dug into that old church, and they can’t root her out of it. If we get her out and take away her lair, that’ll relieve some pressure on 3V1L, and we can get them to overextend to the north—or, if we’re lucky, Mid-Town. They go there, they’ll draw some serious major leaguers’ attention, and that’ll break them up enough for us to finish them off.”
[Good Thinking! +1 Cunning Point]
Bee sat on the chaise lounge; she’d taken to using it even when she wasn’t in her fursuits. She shook her head slowly, her grin widening. Then she stood up. “Okay, you’re right. This is a stupid plan. But it’s the kind of thing that 3V1L might actually fall for because there’s no way we’d be so stupid as to ignore them and go after Sister Sly intentionally.”
“So, you’re in, then?” I asked, crossing my fingers.
“Yeah, I’m in,” Bianca said as she headed for my apartment door. Today, we’re taking it easy. Tomorrow’s the weekend before finals, so let’s make the most of it and beat Sister Sly.
[Episode Finished!]
[Episode: Investigative Episode: Archive Anxiety - PG-]
[Penalties: 0x Rating Warnings - No Penalty]
[Episode Finished! +3 of each Style Point]
[Winner Winner! +3 of each Style Point]
[Role Focus: Cunning+Drama - Goal Partaily Met: +5 to Cunning]
[Alias - Understudy] [Archetype - Magical Girl] [Community Rank - 179/523]
[HP 13/13]
[Styles and Skills]
►Archetype Skill - Transformation Sequence
►Combo Skills - Power-Weaving
►Badass (45)
►Cunning (19)
►Drama (31)
► Limelight Barrage 1
► Starlance 2
►Flamboyance (48) (Skill Roll Available)
►Signature Skill - Adaptive Armoire 3
►Stored Costumes: (Rainy Day, Copy Cat, Lab Assistant Panic)
►Solar Wing 1
► Quick-Time Change 3
► Improvised Ovation 1
►Grit (14)
► Freeze Frame 1