They contacted Jonathan Light, CEO of Light Industries, and got his permission to stake out his warehouse. He asked them to take along his personal security representative; Spectrum. Spectrum was a new PC, and his concept was Hard light constructs as battle armor. Tony Stark in most ways that matter, but he's also not so good with people. The group agreed, and got set up in the warehouse.
They didn't have long to wait as a portal opened in the wall and out stepped...dun dun DUH!!! Apollo and his Midnight Men. The team was Detonator, Noose, Black Empress, Stormstress, and a bunch of goons to carry stuff. The villains looked around quickly, and then moved to grab their loot. This is when the heroes struck! Windsor started in on the goons (Takedown 2 was useful here) and Kali moved to engage Apollo himself. She wrapped him up pretty well, but then he smiled.
Yeah, this was about when the team discovered Apollo's super charisma to women. Suddenly their four armed super strong war goddess wanted to help the other side! She let Apollo go, but not much more than that...yet. Mach raced over and started beating on Stormstress. This went back and forth for a while until Psytrix ended it decisively with a mind blast. Spectrum had been trading blasts with Detonator, but nothing seemed to dent his armor. Noose tied up Kali, and was trying to choke her into submission.
About now, all of the minions were out, and people started switching partners. Windsor and Apollo started a long range archery duel, both of them managing to stay a hair's breadth ahead of the other's shots. Psytrix used his mental prowess to impose a prison of iron will on Apollo, and shut done his Charisma power! (This was one of the first times we saw a Hero Point in action). Mach freed Kali from Noose's attack, and Kali turned and promptly decked him into unconsciousness.
Apollo was now catching fire from all sides, and ran for it. He dove for the portal that Black Empress had kept open, and they escaped. The only one still up was Detonator. He calmly looked around and drawled "Y'all are gunna love this..." and touched his gauntlets together. The massive explosion filled the entire warehouse, and the team was blasted off their feet. They regrouped and scrambled to put him down. Several massive blasts later, Detonator was out, and the battered team was victorious.
Afterward, they interrogated Detonator at the police station, but weren't getting anywhere, so they went after some of the goons. This was a lot more productive as they discovered an arms deal going on at Fort Meade to supply weapons to seperatists in Quebec. The team got permission to enter the base and stopped the inside man from transferring high tech components needed for the supercomuter for the weapons going north. From him, they got the location of a safe house in Quebec, and before anyone could blink, Mach was across the Canadian border. Seconds after doing so, she was intercepted by The Arrow, Canada's premier speedster. She was able to come alongside long enough to ask Mach to officially stand down and for the Protectors to come and meet Canadian Shield.
Borrowing a ride from the military, the team arrive in Canada and met their Canadian counterparts, or at least some of them. The Arrow, Magus, Big Nickel and Kodiak agreed to accompany the Protectors on a raid of the seperatist safehouse.
The two teams smashed into the building in a two pronged attack, and cleared it in record time. Entering the last closed room, they saw a foot tall woman sitting on the lip of a packing crate. They realized it was Marionette form the Crushers! From inside the box they heard a voice say "Well, this is certainly inconvienent. Empress?" and a dark portal swallowed the crate and Marionette. At the last second, Mach lunged forward and grabbed at something from the crate! The team examined it and discovered they had one of Mocker's sub-assemblies. Minor and easily replaceable, but chilling proof that the Crushers were involved.
As the team returned home, they were greeted by a representative of the Mayor's office who wanted to give them official police powers and a snaction to act as Peake Harbor's team. Things sure were moving quickly. In fact it seemed almost too easy...
