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The Day The Suits Took SOMA Dr. Elliot Sut is a recently unemployed nanotech physicist who has been blacklisted by the corporation that pushed him out of his own research think tank. He was forced to take a job as a suit salesman at a men's clothing factory outlet (Burlington coat factory), but soon got fired for not meeting his sales quota and snapped, deciding it was completely normal to try take over the city by making everyone wear the same suit. It would have been a crazy idea if not for the home nanotech lab he had built in his mother's old sewing room. He has altered 1000s of identically ill-fitting factory irregular suits and wired them with flexible nanotech exoskeletons (literally empty suits that walk like men) The suits are made from elastic fabric that allows the fabric to stretch. Each suit possesses mobility, malleability, a link to a collective intelligence that Suit controls, and neural dampeners throughout the fabric designed to subdue the wearer (the suits don't stay empty). Dr. Suit unleashes his smart clothing on the streets of San Francisco shortly before dawn. He also fedexed some to several key San Francisco locations - city hall, major buildings etc. The suits quickly take over whole buildings, slipping in individually, unseen and empty and eventually spilling into the streets in force, each wearing a person. They overrun The Financial District in hours. In no time they begin to march on South of Market area where they gather around the Metreon. By the time news cameras get there, things begin to look spooky. A TV newsvan films the eerie scene, but is chased off by the suits. First police and then troops are sent in to disperse the crowd, but they are just taken by empty suits. After news of the Metreon siege reaches the headquarters, Portal teleports the team to the scene of the battle. Our heroes find the Metreon building surrounded by what appear to be a veritable army of men and women in the same bad suit. The Suits seem determined to stop anyone from entering the building. After a brief discussion we decide to engage The Suits and force our way into the building. The founding members start to discuss the plan and pierce just jumps into the fray, leaving the rest little choice but to follow. The course of the early battle allows the individual members to figure out ways of using their powers against the crowd. The Wave is being pushed back by a group of 5 suits that make the mistake of pushing her into the MLK fountain in Yerba Buena Gardens. She realizes she can funnel the water like a hose, dousing her attackers, and waking the unwitting inhabitants of The Suits. Once the nanotech fabric is thoroughly soaked, a suit's motor skills and neural inhibitors are inoperable, and instead of the suits receiving routine commands and sending them directly to the brain, the human host's conscious thoughts are transmitted uninterrupted into the collective. Pierce can't use her powers offensively for fear of harming people trapped in suits, but is able to disable a number of them with moves the fighting moves that Dervish has been teaching her. Doubletime moves far too fast for the suits and manages to free a few people from the suits by just removing the suits before they realize what's happening. Once the suits realize she can do this their are able to use their elastic ability to cling to their host and fight her. The Suits see Jinx as an extreme threat after he easily dispatches the first 3 suits that try to stop him from walking to entrance. They overpower him and bury him in suits. After we realize what water does Ben absorbs a few park structues and grows then begins to dunkin suit after suit in the fountain like oreos. The Toon creates a a 30 second stampede of rampaging cartoon hippopotamuses that shove the suits into the street before popping out of existence. Which leaves a clear path inside the mall. Menagerie summons a throng of pigeons, gulls, and pelicans to dive-bomb the Suits to keep them away from the entrance. With the rest of the water left in the fountain, the Wave creates a wall of water that flows across the remaining suits. The independents rush inside the Metreon. Menagerie summons 1000s of rats to scare swarm around the entrance once we get inside. This hold off onlookers and the last of the press and police. Veil checks out the area invisibly and provides the information that the suits are under Dr. Sut's mental domination and that he has gained access to a hidden tech lab under the Metreon (5 sub-levels down - the whole complex is a cover for advanced nanotech research). The tech in his lab will allow his suits to infect regular clothing with nanotech and expand his army with no chance of stopping him. Ephemera also runs her own intangible reconnaissance mission and brings back more info on a back way into the nanotech lab. Download gets a good look at the nanotech suits and after a brief leap into a nearby laptop emerges with an often-ridiculed paper by Dr. Sut about his so called "smart clothing". Some thinking about a diagram of Sut's early vision of a cyberpathic network gives Download an idea. Final battle erupts between Dr. Suit (at some point during this fight Blunt calls him Mr. Suit and it drives him over the edge - he's a quadruple Ph.D..) and the full roster of Independents in the secret lab hidden beneath the Metreon The team take on Dr. Suits "Powersuits" (visually designated by pin stripes and red ties) This is the next generation of the nanotech suit after evolution in the Metreon lab, and has more abilities than the originals. These can change their shape based upon what they think you are more likely to wear. Their touch can bring a stunning effect, electric shock or heat radiation. Their elastic abilities are increased tenfold, and they can draw upon the life energy of the person they contain giving itself superhuman strength. It seems only one of these abilities work at a time. These suits are empty and want The Multitude as hosts. They are still vulnerable to water, but there isn't much water in the lab for the Wave to use. The members of The Multitude fight to keep themselves out of these juiced up suits (a few members will get nabbed by suits for a few moments but will be saved by water wielding teammates. The toon flattens Powersuits with a toon iron or something ridiculously large and heavy. Conjure returns with super soakers, seltzer bottles, firehoses and hydrant hookups for everyone whose powers don't provide a natural defense. Download tries without success to break into the suits collective intelligence, and realizes that he needs a willing member of the Powersuit series to gain unlimited access to Dr. Suits network. Animator uses her powers to tie the suits in knots. Download willingly puts on a suit that the Wave has rendered harmless after realizing that salt water damages the neural dampeners, but not the uplink. Download then has Trip send him a barrage of images showing examples of human individuality into his mind. After the captured Powersuit witnesses the array of different abilities possessed by the members of Monkey Force in particular and the human race in general, it will develop a sense of individuality. This Powersuit has seen through the eyes of the people that have been enslaved by the suits and now understands that blind assimilation of individuals is ÒwrongÓ. The captured suit betrays Dr. Suit in the end, giving us the willing link Download needs to mentally hack into their collective mind. (The traitor suit could join us as a mascot - maybe maybe not) Once Download reaches the suits collective intelligence, he has Jinx take his hand and fftttttzzzzz! Crk! Boom! Download conducts Jinx's electromagnetic pulse directly into the the suits electronic brain on the wavelength of his own electrical form shorting out everything within 15 feet of any dry nanotech suit. The collective intelligence has been lobotomized. But it took the whole team to buy them the time to make the idea work. Dr. Suit is quickly contained (stuck in a pile of dried Conglomeration goop) and detained by the SFPD on suspicion of causing mass hallucinations and mayhem, for lack of a better charge. Unfortunately, attempted domination of a major city isn't on the lawbooks. His trial brings about beginning of updating laws to govern superhumans - once documented proof of superhuman activity is leaked to his prosecutors who were having trouble making the charges stick. A webcam in the SONY store (Jinx - took out the security cams as a matter of course) inadvertently gets a number of frames with clearly superhuman activity - you know webcams - a flying leg here, a red spiked girl there, and hundreds of pigeons clearly dive-bombing a slow-moving army of people in identical cheap suits inside the Metreon. The images are archived as usual, but overlooked as Police try to figure out what happened. A computer tech in the SONY store finds the images and sells them to the highest bidder. The stills end up on every newspaper, news show, and webpage on the planet. Most people suggest its a publicity hoax for the Metreon, others a government conspiracy. |
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