Weird Adventures In Space #8

Welcome everybody to episode eight of Weird Adventures in Space, the SHU sci-fi real-play superhero podcast. Whew, I'm your host Jay, I'm also your GM. This is a game we do, and in the game you roll dice and stuff happens, it's a laugh. You'll be right on board.

I suppose I should let everybody introduce themselves, it's only the right thing to do. I'm your jussel, I'm known as a player of this game. What that means is I roll dice and then I tell Jay what I rolled in the dice and then they tell me when things happen. Oh yeah, gaming.

Then I get mad. I am Logan, I am also a player of this game, and I also roll dice, but I don't usually get mad when I tell Jay what I roll. You play Akita. I play Akita.

I'm Wayfear. I'm a Rob. I'm a player of this game playing Sean. I'm gonna do as little dice rolling as possible.

I'm the heel of this game. Hi, I'm Bailey. I play Carrie and I rolled dice and then depending on how the story's going, I may or may not fit about it. You'll never know.

Hey, I'm Tony. I play Greg. However, do not roll the dice because I'm special. Ball in.

I know, right? Last episode, there was a hockey game infiltrated by the federal government, but all was fixed. Or so it seems as a beacon went off signifying that a prison on the planet of Mercury is being breached. That's our players.

That's the game. We got a lot of bloodshed to get to. So let's just cut the bullshit. This is episode eight of Weird Adventures in Space.

Oh, beautiful world and such strange people in it. The episode begins on Red Hills, the colony of Mars, specifically in the Union of Heroes Space. The Union of Heroes resident physician Dr. Dudad is attending to a handful of medicine aliens, Elbedo, a criminal who has been somewhat reformed under the Union's watch, Shom, a tree-like species from far away, and Arlu, an Amunite witch also from another galaxy.

They're not native here in the Milky Way. They're looking at a human doctor looking across from them right now and expecting them. The doctor is looking them over one by one, trying to fit these specialty pieces of equipment under their arms and legs. She says to you, okay, I know we've gone over this, but there is a prison break on Union's secret prison on Mercury.

I don't want any of you to be injured, but it is very likely that if you step outside of the facility, you will be burnt to ash. The facility itself is temperature controlled, but Mercury is so close to the sun. I need to know if there's anything else you need prepped because I'm teleporting you in that building, but I don't know. It's a dangerous, dangerous place.

Are you still up to going? I have the advantage of having a teleporter that teleports me directly into the lab within the prison. So you'd be alone, but you'd be first on the scene. We get to kick the most ass.

My elbow, Shom. Lightly, here's a joke. Do that says, Shom, I would especially understand if you weren't interested in this because it seems that your type of plant species might be most vulnerable to extreme heat. It's going to be a challenge, but we need to lock down.

There's a lot of reasons why we need to lock down Mercury, but I feel like I don't know enough about this place. I didn't build it or anything. We don't have a lot of good blueprints or schematics. They're in the Union's Black Files for God's sakes.

Do we have any idea of who's kept there? Only the worst of the worst. Some sort of global or universe level threat is what's required to be absconded on that Mercury prison. You have several entities that could likely end all of reality, and you capture them, you do need a place to put them.

So what you're saying is we can go hog wild. Elbito speaks up and says, look, I'm going in because I've been in the facility and don't go hog wild, okay? So they're not that strong? They're people you shouldn't be fucking around with, are they?

Are they? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Why were you there? Uncapable of observing the sun. Oh, I didn't you. Why would I?

What advantage do I have of humanity ceases to exist? Why were you there? I was there because they looked at my threat potential and determined that I was unstable enough that that was a possibility. They eventually let me they eventually let me out when I indicated that I was not to their credit.

I am a career criminal and I don't get to erase that for my resume, but I'm not a bloodthirsty monster. Hmm. I don't know why they said either in the first place though. It just seems kind of dickish.

I don't understand their rationale, but after seeing some of the people I was imprisoned with, I understand the purpose. If the RIGOR corporation is seriously doing a prison breach, they're not going there for no reason. These people don't know what they're messing with. We have to go and turn this off ASAP.

I don't attach to you or the planet guys. I can just push it into the sun if I really tried hard enough. Any further preparations? Otherwise I'm lighting this thing up.

Look, I can't go with you, but I will give you whatever intel I can over the cons. I am a human. We turn into like crispy treats at 150 degrees. Is there going to be any assistance from up?

They're sending people as fast as possible, but we've got this teleporter and the teleporter on the satellite. The unit members are getting there as soon as possible while also handling a crisis on Earth. So yes, but the ETA is unknown. You should have backup from the rest of your team relatively soon though.

The light from Venus to Mercury if you're taking an advantageous path is no longer than an hour or two. She turns it on. I'll run into it. I appreciate your bravery.

And then as soon as Arly runs in the teleporter goes, Sean, could you please just make sure? You know. I'll keep all of him in check. She's got a good heart, but a lot of enthusiasm, let's just say.

Yeah. And I will walk through. Both of you transcubstantiate via the teleporter and Albedo shows up immediately behind you. You are in a pitch black room.

You can only see vague outlines. Albedo tries to spark some light on his fingers to provide a light glow, but it's not enough to really illuminate what appears to be some sort of science lamp. I'd like to try and sprout some bi-rhuminescent plants. Okay.

Can you make me a well-ruled? Zero, title. The fungus tries to grow in the corners of the room, but immediately withers away under the heat. Suddenly, the building is rocked.

Some sort of rattle shakes the building and shakes it under your feet. I need you to make a physique roll. I have a plus three on physique. Plus three too.

You two are perfectly fine after the shake. Albedo floats up into the air to avoid any damage. Sean, you can feel yourself kind of rattled even as you feel the ground underneath your feet. It seems to keep rumbling and it seems to imply there were more attacks coming.

Arlu, I need you to make three will rolls. Good. Damn it. Five, three, three.

You're having a vivid physical reaction. Your body's tensing up. You feel the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Your face is wincing.

This reminds you so much of an incident with Taedalyn, your former mentor, where you were both trapped in a building. What? And the entire building was shaking down to its foundation. You barely survived.

You're struggling with this sort of memory. You're struggling getting through it. It's the only thing occupying your mind right now. And you're doing everything you can just to keep your composure.

I don't like this. Albedo says, this place is basically a big maze, but they don't keep the prisoners together. They're one by one in their own individual chambers. We can move forward if we want, but I'm worried about your wizard friend.

I'm going to check on Alu. Just try and give them a notch to try and respond. Arlu, I need another will roll. Three.

With a three, you're able to regain some of your composure. You're like shaking the cobwebs out, but it does kind of feel like you just had an enormous headache pass. You're stumbling to regain your composure for a second. In that moment, you hear a large clanging noise, and then the door breaks down.

Standing in the frame of the door is this enormous thirteen foot glowing ethereal minotaur. A half bowl half man carrying a large axe. The way this room is laid is the only thing you can even see. And as he approaches you, the minotaur says to you in this deep low rumbling voice that you can feel even in the back of your brain, I am the minotaur.

You have found yourself lost. Allow me to ferry you to death. Greg, it is the next morning after the hockey game. The vast majority of the super team here on Red Hills sped off in a hurry to one of ten billion alarms that seems to pop up day after day after day.

But you had a comfortable night and you slept well and you woke up in your own bed. What would you like to do on a day like today? You've got nothing but opportunities. Well, I probably just want to do a basic check of the main systems.

I always like to do that. Make sure the generators are runn a full efficient, water tank, sir, pumping, that kind of stuff. But just the usual rounds to start the day. Do you rely on people for that or you the sort of person that likes to get in there and take a look at yourself?

I mean, I've got people who do the nuts and bolts of it, but I kind of like just to go and scan everything and make sure, just keep everybody honest, make sure that my guys are doing what they're supposed to be doing. Second set of eyes on things, you know, oversee it. There's nothing remarkable except for one division of advance con, which is the chemicals department. Oh, yeah.

It seems like the chemical research division has been working alongside a handful of Martian scientists and they've developed a chemical that you can distribute through the bedrock that makes that green crystal far more stable, which would prevent future sinkholes. All right. So it looks like for now, the single problem has been fixed, but only with the help of Martians who kind of understood the properties of the crystal and walked your people through it. All right.

Well, that's a good thing. So that's one down. You got your usual rounds out of the way. I say it's mid morning or so.

Do you have any sort of day to day office work that you do back at the office or you kind of a mobile runner? Well, just the usual stuff. Like if anything, you know, anything's coming in needs my signatures or me, me needs me to look it over or whatever any kind of new, you know, new projects need approval or items need acquisitions, stuff like that, you know, just the basic stuff. I'll go check that out.

Okay. I mean, you basically do the rounds and that takes another couple hours. I'm going to ask you if you're proof of the following things, an additional public park. I don't really see a problem with it.

I mean, of course, I'm thinking this was, you know, are the current parks enough for the capacity? You know, if we need it, of course, I want to do it. You're a park heavy town, but it's really hard to grow stuff on the soil. And so like your parks are well used, but there may not be any condition that you'd like.

I see. Well, maybe, maybe instead of making a new park, we spend that same, the same resources and manpower on seeing what we can't do about improving the ones we have currently. How about the construction of a new light rail train to replace the old train from Earth to Mars? Well, yeah, I mean, the old ones just completely wrecked or no, that's beyond repair or what?

It's beyond our comprehension, how to repair it. They've been managed to reverse engineer with enough time how to put their own together. So probably wouldn't be as good as that one. It probably wouldn't be as efficient, but it would work.

All right. Well, we got to have something. So I say we get it going. Yeah.

So that one's getting greenlit and they're going to start building. How about a university? Oh, definitely. What's the level education we got on a compound right now?

You got full preschool through 12 as well as a couple of vocational crafts. And you also have a bunch of aliens who have artisan cultures. So they have journey mints and they have apprentices and stuff like that. Kind of this big knowledge model other than an official university.

Oh, then yeah, I'm all for it. And then if we can get with that, Martians, if they want to, you know, annex into our university and teach their stuff to our people, we teach our stuff to their people vice versa, you know? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

So then the last thing I would ask to prove if you if you prove this is the construction of a roadway between Red Hills and the subterranean town of Sederics. Do you want to build a road between our part of Mars and the Martians part of Mars? Yeah, I mean, I'm forward if they're for it. I don't want to intrude on them.

You know, if there's I want to of course address any concerns their people might have with such an easy conduit from one one environment to the other. But if they're cool with it, I'm cool with it. Turns out that the Martian you met Grogg is also a public works manager when he's not the president. So you're actually working with him on this and he's super easy to work with.

You can put a road down no time at all. Then yeah, let's go for that too. Green light. Awesome.

So you got a bunch of new construction projects going up. That's keeping a lot of people in town busy. You've got a lot of restaurants and stuff going up where people's lives have stabilized and they've kind of developed a society here in Red Hills. All right.

It's this kind of moment where nothing's going on and you don't have anything to do where it's a lot easier to reflect on what you've accomplished. And in that moment of reflection, you do get a knock at your door, the door of your office. All right. Who is it?

My name is is me. Oh, hey, hey, is me. Come on in. Sounds good.

And she opens up the door to your office and says, hi, she is a three person, a lot like Sean is, except that she has bright, multicolored hair down to her back. She wears several robes and shawls. You can only really see her face. And she looks kind of slight.

She's not exactly big and athletic and strong or whatever. It's a little skinny, almost frail. And she says to you, Greg, I don't know if we've met. We have not.

I'm a friend of Sean's, the son and day on your union of heroes team that you work with. Oh, yeah, yeah. He rescued me from the regular corporation a couple of months back. And well, I've had a lot of time to think since.

And since I'm not native to the Milky Way, I don't know anything about y'all's culture. So I've just been holed up for the past couple of months trying to learn. I want to help. I want to know what I'm good at.

I want to know where I can pitch in. Well, hey, I appreciate that, too. And I think that's what I would do in a case like this is ask you, what do you like to do? And then kind of let you decide.

And then you could you could like shadow some of my people or like intern for them. Give it a shot. See if you like it. See if you excel.

See if you do good. If you do, you move up through the ladder there. If you don't, you try something else. Okay, that makes sense.

I mean, so what do you what do you like to do? What do I like to do? Okay. Well, I used to be an intergalactic pop idol.

I loved to sing and dance and put on shows. I had to stop that because I had to become a violent guerrilla freedom fighter. And in the meantime, I learned myself a little bit of like magic. Oh, oh, and I can talk to trees and make and make plants grow and stuff, the same stuff that Sean does, although I don't like stretching my body.

It feels weird. Let me put this to you. We probably have some availabilities and a few of the entertainment venues. If you wanted to pursue that or we have been having a problem with stuff growing in our parks.

So if you were thinking of being more practical, helping out on a more practical level, you could get with my parks people and see if there's some, at least some advice you could offer to help the greens grow in the park a little better. Because if people want a new park, but I don't really want to start a new park till we got the existing parks looking good. That makes sense. So if you want to be involved in that, I'm all for it.

I could hook up with those people. You could do both for all I care. I don't know how many hours in the day you have to spare for stuff. But any any moment you want to spend helping us out, you're more than welcome.

Do you have any openings for superhero? It's possible we do. You could probably talk to the hero group. They might not with them.

I just want to hang around town. There's so much here to see and all these people to meet. It's overwhelming. I don't know what the hell I'm doing.

I'm not going to lie. All the stuff that I was suggesting you get involved in the park thing or the or the be the entertainment. It's not very superhero-y. If that's what you want to do, you might you might kind of be on your own or like I said, talk to the others when they're around.

But I don't know. There's going to be a lot of downtime, probably superhero-ing right here in this town. Well, right. But what if I use that downtime to like, look after the parks or put together shows for people?

I just want to help her again. I'm all for all of it. How about I get you with the parks people, spend a day or two with them, see if there's something you can do, see if you enjoy it. If you do, you might find, hey, this is my calling, this park thing.

I'm just going to stick with this. If you don't like that, come back and see me. We'll hook you up with the entertainment people. She gets really excited and you can see this giant wave of color shoot off of her head into this guy.

It doesn't hurt anything. It's just a light show. Right. But she goes, wait, I have an idea.

Sure. Can you take me to one of these parks? I want to show you what I can do. All right, let's go.

You've been waiting in this space port for a couple of hours. You've been waiting for a key to arrive. President Goryo, the president of the Cosmic Cabal, has promised you ships as well. But at this time, you're just kind of looking at your shoes and twiddling your thumbs until you get the distress message that the prison on Mercury held by the Union of Heroes is under assault.

You have a prison on Mercury? Yes. Great. I think we should probably take care of that.

We might actually be the closest ones to it. Yeah, we think so too. Do I need a suit or something? And she like pokes her flesh arm and she's like, I'm mostly squishy.

Don't know how to be in space. I think maybe we don't want to push our luck there. We need transport. Can we find out how far away it is?

You know, it's like two hours. That's a bit longer than I'm willing to wait. We could just borrow one of the ships. Yeah.

President Woofwiff said we could borrow them. Okay, let's take President Woofwiff's ship. At this time, you can call through your communicator from an unknown person. You found who it is.

This is President Woofwiff speaking. I'm particularly concerned about this breakout on Mercury. As you might understand, we're a little bit closer than Earth is. We allowed the construction of this present years ago under a pact that it is a non-aggression thing.

There's too much at risk for letting those people out and us the cabal protected as well. Would you like to join me? It is my duty to protect this. I've been sworn to do so.

I'm down. This is too important. We should probably just get going as soon as possible. And my spaceship is very fast.

Have you heard from Nikita? No. I'm just looking at wayfarer. Like I'm not saying shit and if you're not saying shit.

Oh, wish you were here. Even in this prescient moment, he's in the back of my mind. I will meet you at the bay. We have a spaceship coming in for Doc.

We can be there soon. Our hour or less. Earth done. Okay.

That's probably the best. Eventually the time passes and a luxury spaceship gets there in parts in the back. In this luxury spaceship, there are food, spacesuits, weapons, etc. It seems like the president is alone and driving the ship by himself.

And he welcomes you and says, Wayfarer, Lotus, it's a pleasure to work alongside you. I can't imagine we will always be allies, but today we can be. You know anything about this place before we go in there? I did negotiate it.

Like, what kind of threats are we looking at here? I would say that these are not your typical criminals. These are cosmological threats to the very nature of existence. And we have been lucky enough to capture them over time to prevent them from hurting ourselves or others.

The union did most of that work, of course. But because Venus is closer to Mercury, we negotiated a treaty with them. Because if any of these prisoners get loose, what's really at risk is not just Earth, Mars, etc. It could be all of creation.

Have you heard of the Tales of the Carnivacs? Hmm, is that an enemy? Oh, you like an enemy? The president says to you, the Carnivacs is an ancient avatar of entropy.

It eats, sons, whole. We managed to capture one in the crystal within that prison. Imagine if you have nine more of those sitting in one extremely volatile place. I don't know why the union did things the way it did, but it's on your hands now.

Oh, this sounds like we have a lot of work to do ahead of us. There are ten extinction-level events added at sitting inside of that rock. And while I don't get along with the union's sanctimony about prison and law, we neither of us wants the universe to end. Can you say that about Raghor?

No. They don't know what they're getting into. And then he plunges the ship into Turbo Drive. So you all hop in the rover together.

Oh, yeah. You drive on over to one of these parks. And this is a park that's very close to a residential neighborhood. You just pick whatever the closest one is.

And she says, so this is your park, this big, empty-swared dirt space. You got some roads and like, that grass is trying really hard. It's trying. It's trying.

You know. What do you want in a park? What is this supposed to look like? Green or grass, fuller trees are more natural environments, so people feel more comfortable.

So it looks, you know, we're thinking a little less desolate than this is currently looking. You know what I mean? I mean, we're trying. We're doing the best we can, but you know, this is a start.

I'll be honest, it could be better. Okay. Let me see what I can do. She fumbles into one of the pouches in her hip and she puts what looks to be a small bell into the soil because you're spinning it, pivoting it left to right to try to get it to sit properly.

And then she closes her eyes, her whole body becomes calm, and she starts humming. That on starts resonating with the bell. And suddenly in this incredible super speed uprising, that grass goes from a half inch to about four inches and grass turns into a neon green, a sort of green that's not natural on earth. And she looks at you and goes, is that the right color?

Yeah. Wow. So let me get to straight. We spent countless hours, tens of thousands of dollars trying to get these parks to look the way we want, haven't succeeded.

And then all of a sudden you show up in the park in a pouch. Where you been all this time. I've been running Greg. Wow.

It's hard out there. Before I got to the Milky Way, I knew like maybe three or four people and all the managers, business managers and stuff, just trying to get me to play places and take my money. But like here, I don't have to worry about that shit. I don't, so pressure on me to perform.

I can take things at my own time. Well, hey, if you don't mind me imposing, we got quite a few other parks that could use this exact treatment that you just got going on right now. Because once this is S squared away, I can approve another park. That helped me clear my play all the quicker.

She looks at you and goes, oh, good, because I was just clearing my throat. And then she opens her mouth and begins singing this beautiful song in a language you don't understand. And as she sings that bell chimes more, as she continues to sing this beautiful song in a language you've never heard of, you see ferns begin to grow, you see bushes take shape, you see trees grow as if they've aged 100 years and a half a second. Their branches become heavy with fruit and flowers.

The wilderness begins taking over the road, but then slowly starts peeling itself back, clearing away space for people to walk and for the benches to sit. She finishes this song and looks at you and goes, this is all right. This is more than I could have asked for. This is perfect.

Thanks. Appreciate it. This is the coolest thing I've ever done. Usually I just sing for money and now I sing to make people happy.

I'm way better. You might take me to these other parks. I'm feeling myself a little bit. Hey, we're just going to tour the parks.

As many times as she's willing to give this treatment, you know, but if it's too much of an imposition, she can, you know, stop whenever she wants. Take a break, take a couple day break, whatever she feels like. Well, I appreciate that Greg. That's very cool.

But I don't know. I don't know. I want to see these other parks. Earth and humans and all this shit.

I think I could get easy 20 parks at the time you're done today. All right. So Aquino steps off the spaceship onto the surface of Venus, seeing all of these posters of President Goryo and man that definitely looks like a little familiar. What's going to do with yourself, Aquino?

First off, Aquino's going to contact Lotus and Wafer. See where they're at. You guys seeing this shit? You mean President Wilf?

Yeah, we're actually in his fancy space car right now. You're with him. Yeah. I think he's got the whole planet bug to this.

Be really careful. So you go into the distress call with him? Yes. All right.

I'll be there as fast as I can. He said back in the ship and he's taken off to Mercury. As the carcass to is taking off to leave orbit, you feel a sudden stop and snag in the plane. And one of the orcs says, we got a boy on a tail.

Am I able to see what like scan for what it is or see who it is? You can see that there is somebody at the rear of your train. They look human. They're in a super villain costume spandex cape and everything.

And they have grabbed onto the back of your spaceship with their bare hand. And that's what's preventing you from moving forward. Am I able to recognize the villain? Yes.

Can you make me a lower roll? Sure. I don't think I have any lower. This is just how good the AI is going to pick it up for you.

Okay. That's a wash on the dice. So zero. Zero is fine.

This is cacophony. Cacophony is an amplatite. Other amplatites include Clarity Bell and Dark Bell. Cacophony is a mercenary for hire and has fought Clarity Bell and the Union of Heroes several times.

Known powers include super strength, flight, super invulnerability and asonic tree. Well, Akita's gonna stop trying to take off because he doesn't want to break the ship. And he is going to get out and go, what the hell are you doing? What do you want?

Look, you got money on your head. Any personal? Yeah, I'm sure. Okay.

The cup all's got a big fat wad on your neck. And all I need to know is whether or not you're fighting me or you're coming peacefully. Because I'm getting paid either way. What do they want with me?

Hell if I know I don't ask questions, then I get some fucking scratch. Fine. Akita will go with him willingly. Arlu Shom, you were in this blacked out laboratory and the Minotaur just burst into the room.

Arlu, before you make any decisions that require a dice roll, you do have to pass a wheel check to regain your stability after the trauma. Plus five. That'll help you get your head straight. You're good enough to move and you won't have to make any more checks until you get traumatized.

Oh, great. I want to blast him or something. I want to know if I know some Atlantean, black magic stuff from Doctor Who. Are you literally just rolling for the most fuck out magic I know?

Yeah. I like to make his blood boil or something. Make me a wool roll. Holy fuck.

Plus eight. Plus eight, huh? Plus eight at will. Okay, so you've sunk a nasty chaos bolt right at him.

It splits his head off right from his shoulders. He's now decapitated. The head is screaming and uttering while the headless body still comes to approach you. I'm going to try and restrain the body.

How are you going to do that? I'm going to stretch myself out to pin it down. Physique, that is a plus four. Okay, with a plus four, you can manage to entwine it into the ground.

Albedo sees that the Minotaur has been pinned to the ground and he illuminates the Minotaur's body with a giant display of light trying to like flash fry it. And it takes a few bits of damage but is not really deterred. Down the hall, you can hear a familiar voice. A voice of a former teammate named Mirage.

That seems to be echoing down the halls and asking you to enter the labyrinth. No, fuck yourself. The Minotaur is mostly restrained but it does require a sham to stay on top of him unless you manage to restrain him in some other way. Can I try to grow some other plants out to keep him held?

I need two rolls. Is a plus three and another plus three. Roots are rapidly growing up through the bottom of the structure, cracking the ground, cracking the floor and they are pulling the Minotaur's body closer to the ground. You can see the Minotaur even headless is slashing those roots and trying to get himself free.

So this may not be a permanent solution. On the other hand, it does seem like he's occupied for the moment. I'll just give him a little kick before I leave. Y'all are walking down this long tunnel.

Elbido is providing light for you as you walk through the hall. When I say long tunnel, I mean long. Think like an airport where you're just kind of walking in a straight line for 30 minutes. And occasionally they fork off into different areas.

There are about 20 cells here. It looks like 10 to 11 are occupied. Where do you go? You still hear Mirage's voice echoing through the halls.

I'm going to yell back that she sucks. You start hearing more shaking and rumbling in the facility. I'm not going to ask you to brace herself which kind of used to it by now. But it seems like the structural integrity of this building is falling apart.

I want to try and see if I can use my staff to just hit it on the ground and try and fix the building a bit. Go ahead and make me three world worlds? Six. Five.

Six. Those are some good worlds. You're able to improve the structural integrity. You've got some like magical time nets and stuff keeping cracks from spreading.

So we're hearing Mirage. It doesn't seem like a telepathic communication. That is a plus four. It seems like she's throwing her voice.

You can't tell whether or not there are illusions. It's not necessarily psychic but you can't tell where it's coming from. It's really uncertain. There's no way of telling if she's whispering in the back of your head or something.

Yeah I was first going to try and recap mentally to communicate with Mirage. No response. I just want to yell out that we replaced Mirage with a better cat. Okay if I'm not getting any response from Mirage.

Yeah if I'll be done on those where Mirage is held we will go that way if not to pick the direction of random. Yeah he's trained to lead you through. Every time you walk past a door to another chamber or another cell you see Mirage in that chamber or cell through the bars through the glass etc. God she's still ugly.

And it's alongside these other things and people that are in prison. You still continue towards Mirage or do you get all the way? Yeah she doesn't have a spaceship to throw it anymore. She can't do shit.

Yeah we're still going to have to Mirage. Okay as you walk through you can hear the prisoners screaming and wailing to be free. It's really deep guttural noise. You feel uncomfortable in your stomach.

As you get to Mirage's cell the only thing that remains is a single mirror mounted on the wall. And in that mirror you can see the reflection of Mirage or cat-like features or large coat, a sight that she carries. And she says hello I see you found me. Unfortunately now we have to look at your face.

We have business. What are you doing to everyone? Or I go corporations set me free. So I'm doing them the favor of keeping you busy.

I blast her. You blast the mirror? Yeah I blast the mirror. I shall just hit it with the staff and try and break it.

Make me a fight roll and then a will roll. Fight is not great plus two. Will plus five. So you crack the mirror when you hit it with your staff.

And then the pieces of broken mirrors slowly fall onto the ground. And in each shard you can see Mirage's face. The shards then begin to lift off the ground, Arlu, like Levitate. And they shoot towards you.

I need you to make a roll to dodge. Plus four. You don't dodge. You actually get caught with a shard of this broken glass.

And you immediately fall into a coma. In this coma you are living through a dreamlike reality over and over and over again where you are being born. And you're being born to different people each time. That's horrifying.

It's a never ending loop and there's no escape. You're just paralyzed on the floor. Islands are born by being thrown up. I'm just being vomited out of people.

Repeatedly. Sean, the remaining glass free fragments start speaking to you. What about you, Sean? You have business here?

I'm here to stop this. And if you're the one causing it, that means I'm here to stop you. Hmm. So would you stop me or say one of these other prisoners I'm letting out, which would be the priority be there?

Hard to decide. Maybe a little bit of this one says, uh, heat death. That sounds interesting. Just stop.

Like, stop this now. If you're probably with me, then I'm here. My problem's not with you, Sean. But this will be fun.

Editors, note, Jay here, we've got a returning character this episode from another show. So I thought I would let all y'all folks in on the deets. Of course, if you need more information, go to shupodcast.com and check out our character profiles. Well, who's the returning character?

Well, her name is Maraj. And her name is Miranda. So way way back before Shah Makita and Arlu got marooned in the Milky Way and joined the union of superheroes, they were teammates with a cat-like alien vieress named Miraj, as part of a bounty hunter firm named the Nebulist Knights. Miraj's formidable psychic powers made her renowned in that space sector, but her teammates were always leery of the paranoid and shadowy mindbender.

When Maraj was approached by the crime god, Zixus, to fight in the God War, her demeanor changed. She began wielding a cursed scythe, capable of killing gods. She became openly murderous and cruel, attempting to slaughter her former teammates by telekinetically throwing a spaceship out. As Maraj and Zixus arrived on Earth to fight the God War, she was critically wounded by a rival faction.

And in her last dying moments, transferred her consciousness into the nearest metahuman, an indestructible teenager named Kendra Fang, changing her identity to fit her with her new home. The terrifying mind parasite known as Miranda has spent the last few months in a jail cell due to a chance encounter with the union of heroes, Earth Division. You can see Maraj's introduction as a hero and are slowed to send into super villainy by checking out Nebulist Knights episodes 1 through 22, and you can see her transformation during the God War cross. Both of those shows are on the SHU podcast feed ready for you to check out.

Alright, back to the action. So, Kakafani helps you set your ship down in the bay. It's safely he doesn't harm anything. He approaches you and says, I appreciate you doing it this way.

I don't want to get hurt either. Let's go over and go. So he walks you over a couple of blocks to an ornate building. It looks almost like a White House sort of official presidential structure.

And he brings you into a side door that goes underneath that building. And when you're underneath that building, he places you in a room that is decent sized. It's not a prison cell or anything. But he sits there across from you and says, we're waiting.

For who? The cabal. Look, I don't know what they want with you, but it's pretty safe to assume that it's the president's interest, isn't it? Who, President Goryo up there?

You do look an awful lot alike. Yeah, that's no coincidence. Yeah? Spill.

His name's not Goryo, that's for sure. Okay, then what is it? Kin, Akita Kin. Never really.

Guess when you're not from this neighborhood. Oh, hell no. Yeah, Goryo shot a couple of years back and really snapped this place in the line. Yeah.

Yeah, this place used to be a hell of a lot worse than it was. And you also saw multiple gunfights and shit on your walk over to the Capitol building, so it's not good. So I don't live here. I just do my business and get the hell off.

There's a premium placed on people who can travel between different planets and Earth, and I like collecting that premium. Lotus, wait for her, either. Yeah, what's up, man? Yeah.

Binsight, Tretch. The cabal wants to speak to me. Why? I don't know.

Kukoffany here says the president wants to see me. Do you want us to mention it to him, since he's here? Yeah, probably. Okay.

Okay. Is the president in his own little potters or a co-pilot's chair next to him? There's a co-pilot's chair. He's been trying to give you a privacy so you can speak in quiet.

I'm just going to plop down next to him. He'll be like, yo, why you got people capturing Akita? People capturing Akita. I don't even know where Akita is or if he's even alive.

What are you talking about? We do. He is. And what did you say the dude's name was Akita?

Kukoffany. Yeah, some dude named Kukoffany has him at the Zoom Kobals clubhouse. I would never hire some brigand like Kukoffany to bring in my only son. If I knew where he was, I would be there by his side.

Although I have to admit, he's safer on Venus than he is in Mercury. If he heard Goryo say that he didn't hire Kukoffany, he's going to glare at Kukoffany. Goryo asks, can I please speak to my son? If you're speaking to myself, can I please speak to my son?

If he wants to talk to you, you have to respect boundaries. That's called being good parrot. The president, damn it. Yeah, that'd be nice, but I should probably get out of here.

The president puts his arm to your shoulder and says, Carrie, I need that commuter carrier. He says he will talk to you, but right now he's trying to get out of wherever he is unless we're about to tell him. He doesn't realize it. Let me finish talking.

I hate when men talk over me. I was about to say, unless what you are about to say is going to get him out of that danger, it can wait if you're going to help him. She hands him. The communicator.

Continue. I'm not interested in the conflict at this point in time. You don't want to talk to me. That's fine.

So you didn't hire this asshole? No, I didn't. I didn't hire anybody to find you. You've been on alert, of course.

I've been trying to see if you've been around, but no. He says a bounty's been on my head. Well, that might be from the other members of the cobalt. Alright, then.

And what I would say is they are going to use you against me. Probably. So keep yourself safe and don't trust cacophony as far as you can throw him. Okay.

Ok, I know it has been a long time since we've last spoke. You've got a lot to answer for. I have plenty to answer for, but I think once you hear my story, you will understand. For now, I need to protect my planet just as you would protect yours.

Alright. And then he adds the communicator back to Lotus and says, thank you. When you leave the cockpit where the president follows you into the back and begins putting on an elaborate suit of techno armor. Alright, so I need to steal one of these friends and make out.

Alright. As he's suiting up, he looks over at you and Kerry and says, there are additional suits if you need to be protected. Thank you. I appreciate that.

I don't know how well my powers will work through one of these though. The president approaches Wayfarer. Wayfarer? Yeah.

I expect those on Beta will be there. I expect that too. I've never been successful in the conflict with Mr. Beta.

How about yourself? Um, TBD. So then do we need to prioritize him? I must feel like he might be a distraction.

You're rather violent one. Yes. Okay, that makes sense. Let's assess the scene when we get there.

We're going to stop in the Rover in the drive off from Park to Park to Park. As you get how about to, I would say the eighth or ninth park you've been at this for an hour or two, a sudden fire breaks out in an apartment complex in the middle of her song. She stops singing and looks to you and says, Greg, that's not good. Right?

Typically no. What do we do? Uh, well, we can head there and see. I don't know if you have any fire suppression capabilities.

Otherwise, we might have to just rely on the current fire department here. We can head that way and see what's going on. I guess it's supposed to what your fire is made of. Let's go check it out.