We Will NOT Play DnD

The future is coming, and everyone has to get ready because it can't be stopped. It doesn't matter what it means anymore, or who it's good for. The future is coming. This is a promise many companies make these days, and Kelvin McDonnel's companies are naturally no exception. The future is COG, and whether New Jerseydelphia wants it or not, if Unstoppable Industries doesn't accept it, someone will....

In spite of a clear betrayal, the information Unstoppable Industries has on the criminal world and what law enforcement is doing about it is simply too juicy for Kimon to let go of if he plans to carry on in nefarious activities. To get back in the company is going to take a bit of cleverness. Perhaps even an idea so stupid it's actually genius.

Kimon makes the choice to get back in contact with Unstoppable Industries, but first by calling Flux as a means of feeling out his reaction. Considering that the company had just finished faking Kimon living, it comes as quite a shock to realize Kimon is alive. Of course, everyone was duplicitous in this arrangement, but not everyone is the bad guy.

The crew goes on "The Show That Airs At Night" to talk to Denny Bluthers about recent events, bringing along with them a fake Kimon who sounds convincingly like the real one with maybe only just a little less hard experience. Meanwhile, Kimon watches and passes judgement on the whole performance.

It's now Freeze Frame and Flux in the spotlight without any help from Kimon. In spite of however they may have felt about Kimon, he had a way of driving things forward and pushing major events to the next step. Now the group must move at Freeze Frame's pace, on Freeze Frame's terms, and there's something a little more... incentive-based when he has complete control.

Overconfidence is an insidious killer. If you assume your enemies can't ever overcome your position, you might be proven dramatically wrong, especially if you've left them to cultivate their power for too long. Frankly, this seems especially true when it comes to super villains, who are capable of producing magical weapons with surprisingly few resources.

The pieces have fallen into place and Kimon is finally getting what he wants. Unstoppable Industries is one again on the case of Mercury, and this time taking it quite seriously for perhaps all the wrong reasons. Or all the right ones, depending on who you are and who you know.

Kelvin is now in Kimon's hands, and the plan has a certain appearance of reaching its conclusion, but the truth is that an act like this doesn't really have an ending as long as the perpetrator is still alive. It's a case that can go cold, but that's the best case scenario for something so brazen.

There's nothing like a well-executed plan! It helps a lot towards success when an idea is so audacious you'd have to be an idiot to try, because nobody thinks you'd be dumb enough to do it. It paradoxically leaves a lot of clever little holes in everyone's oversight.

There's a saying that if you know yourself and know your enemy, you will never know defeat. With all the pieces in place and nothing left to chance, Kimon and his crew now knows the full layout of McDonnel's mansion, how many guards there are, and will be able to track those guards in real time using their own cameras. The place won't know what hit it!

As Kimon gets all his ducks in a row and gets ready to carry out his big crime, back in the real world, Elvis and Lawry are getting kind of antsy as passive bystanders to an interesting story. Mayson helps mediate a compromise, and now Kimon's efforts will wind up seeing a little extra help.

If it were easy to rob a man with bottomless resources to steal, it'd happen all the time! Even with superpowers, it's not something you just do overnight. It's going to take at least two nights, and it'll be stopped at the last second by a superhero, usually.

Freeze Frame scores a huge victory for the team by getting lifetime access to a box suite at the local baseball stadium! It may not be fighting crime, but it's something the company needs, and the bottom line is what's important. However, it's not quite as important to everyone.

When a guy needs help, the only sensible thing is to ask for it. Not from the people who are creating the problems, though. Clearly the correct answer is to outsource to a bunch of unvetted amateurs who are eager, but who have never done this sort of work before.

You can't tell a man like Kimon that he can't go do something if it's important to him. He'll find a way, or do it in secret, and is good at that. You also can't really replace exactly what Kimon can do, though Freeze Frame might try by inviting the oddball couple that is Lightshow and Terry to the city.

Worse than being talked about is not being talked about, but when it comes to bad news, you can't always get away from it. What you can do, however, is change which bad news people are talking about. It's usually not good if there are multiple negative things to talk about, but it gives options!

There is a simple rule in any conflict-related role: there is no safe way to apply force. Any act of violence can have unintended consequences, or be made too rashly. Just shoving a person can result in an accident. So what does one do when people have super powers? What's an ethical way to stop a man who can fly? Who can read minds? Who can jump between moving vehicles and take control of them in...

Interrogation is an unusual art, and it's not something that's easily done in a vacuum. It requires already knowing some answers, being careful not to give away what you do and do not know, and giving the subject enough room to say things you wanted to hear without them knowing what you wanted to hear. And in the case of police work, when there's not a lawyer present, a bit of trickery and flimfla...

In many events that deal with the law, self-incrimination can be a leading cause for arrest. For example, it's not rare for someone to discus how much they've had to drink during a sobriety test. And while you don't have to speak to the police or let them in the house if they don't have a warrant, certainly those rules change if you do something flagrantly illegal as a reaction to a knock at your...

The real depth of a super power is determined by the creativity and the wit behind it. No superman is all that difficult to overcome if he always does the same predictable things and has no new ideas. Paul and Lawry are certainly men of their own ideas, however, and the two split up to pursue completely separate goals.

Any kind of breaking-and-entering, even if it's technically legal, is going to be fraught with perils. It's something that requires being in and out with all the sneakiness of the Grinch on Christmas, and when a person gets caught, it takes quick thinking and buttery lies. Super powers also help quite a lot.

If you can run faster than a speeding bullet, then you can bet society is going to insist that you follow a lot of rules about when and where you can run. Crime-fighting super heroes have to get warrants and talk to lawyers, or else the whole system would be a chaotic mess of autocratic heroes - and look, society has spent a lot of time trying that. It works sometimes, but not always, and when it...

You can't just wait for crime to happen and then go punch it down. If any crime of that caliber happened off, no city would survive. Instead, there's a lot of concern about budget, the amount of work being done, and who's doing it.

Good police work is rarely done from the barrel of a gun - that sort of thing is for emergencies. Ergo, good super hero work follows the same rules. Just because it's possible to use laser vision or throw a car into the sun, that doesn't mean you can really stop crime by doing so. Good super hero work means identifying the crime, gathering evidence, and following the rules. Usually.

Unstoppable Industries moves to officially declare a new head of the superhero field crew, and naturally it's politics from top to bottom. Freeze Frame is the company's favorite, as the other candidates are too new, or have way too many open files with the HR department. Though the company logic is there, one has to wonder if an ego the size of Kimon's can really be okay with it.