Session 5, April 24th, 2008
The Watch was faced with a tough choice. The Base needed to be moved, but where to? Ultimately it was decided that Veronica would invest in a comic store called the Secret Lair (or something similar). This would in fact hide the secret lair of the Watch! She chose a centrally located place near the park in the center of Hero City.
The Watch also chose to follow Auquosus' advice regarding a public face to the team. To this end, the Watch turned down an offer by the city to all the Watch to become a fully funded, official branch of the city executive government but requested an office instead. Citing important considerations such as expectation levels by the citizenry who might have had to foot the bill for Watch facilities and the possible political considerations such endorsement would lead to, the city received a polite and gracious "no thank you" from Veronica on behalf of the team.
Nathan set up a corporate entity, with Memo as a visible "face" man, that not only purchased the property for the new comic store, but also provided an "anonymous" donation to the city to pay for a Watch office at the central police station/city hall (wherever the city chose to place it). The members of the Watch did not wish to put any kind of extra financial strain on the city. However, the Watch was happy to still operate at the behest and approval of the mayor's office.
While completing a tour of the new property, members of the Watch noticed activity occurring on a massive scale downtown. Even Auquosus, far away at work in his mundane identity notice the flash and disturbance. The Watch converged downtown to discover a gold reserve was being hit by a new super-powered villain!
Strobe was first encountered by the Black Mask, who was blinded by her light powers. Other members of the team quickly converged on her, however, and subdued the powerful meta-human. While the Black Mask kept a firm grip on the unconscious prisoner, members of the Watch then assisted civilians blinded and rendered unconscious by Strobe's powers.
Outside the reserve building, things took another strange turn of events. Demonic entities swept into the city from unknown origins and began to possess unconscious persons! These possessed people turned out to be both numerous and powerful, but the Watch swung into action again to take them out. To the team's relief, many of those who were possessed were rendered free of possession once the demonic entity was defeated. However, many civilians and police officers lost their lives to the demons before the Watch could get to all of them.
Fortunately, Memo made an agreement with Strobe, who assisted against the demon attack. Rising into the air, she emitted a bright flash that appeared to render the demons blind and incapacitate them. In addition, a new vigilante arrived on the scene. Named Tex Arcana, he explained that there was some kind of demonic force below the city that released (66? can't recall the exact number) demons!
The Black Mask provided some quick logic. Since only 16 demons were defeated, that left (50?) more! And, since they seemed to possess only people who were unconscious or asleep, then the next place with the largest number of resting humans (during the day) would be the most likely next target. That could be the hospital! The Watch, thanking Arcana for his arrival, prepared to move again -- this time to investigate the scene at the Hero City Hospital!
This page by Dustin Evermore, 2008.