Sentinels United 2007
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
File:Glossy SULogo3.jpg
Year 2007 for the Sentinels United.
The story so far...
In the final days of 2006, the team now known as the Sentinels United found themselves the victim of some classified bureaucratic nonsense that stripped them of their identity. Refusing to bow down to the red tape, the team unanimously decided to reform under another name, the Sentinels United, under the leadership of Scarlet Streak with Tigra Swipe as his second in command.
The first bit was spent settling in, with the most notable activity being the leaders of the Sentinels becoming partners not just in work, but in life. Their wedding provided a joyous event for all the team to focus on in an otherwise troubled time.
But just as things were beginning to become settled and life going back to normal, disaster struck. Scarlet Streak was sent on a journey to Praetoria to rescue Statesman, and was required to go alone. It was there that Tyrant, Statesman's Praetorian double and kidnapper, killed Streak during the rescue attempt.
Bound in mind and heart, Tigra went wild at Streak's death, breaking into Portal Corps to recover her husband and resigning as leader of the Sentinels so that her actions wouldn't reflect upon them. However Protocol 9, who she promoted without warning, refused to accept the resignation and he and Swath followed her on her rescue mission.
The next several weeks were tense, with a depression settling over much of the team as they tried to figure out what to do now that they had lost their leader, and effectively lost their co-leader as well as Tigra settled into a depression many wondered if she would ever break out of. But during the trip to bury Streak at his home in LA, they were in for a surprise.
Streak's body disappeared in an astral explosion that covered several blocks of LA in such brilliant astral and psionic light that he couldn't be found, and two kids who were some of Streak's biggest fans saw him. He wasn't dead after all.
Instead, it was discovered that he was an Aduran, a race related to the Kheldians but without the need to take hosts and capable of "resetting" and being "reborn" after catastrophic injuries. No longer was he the Scarlet Streak, but Ian Cameron remained, now known as Prince of Light, and he returned to Paragon to resume his position as leader of the Sentinels -- once everyone was convinced he was the same person.
The team was just beginning to recover from the loss and rediscovery of Prince when word of another missing member was finally found. Steven Tonnil, aka Psychosmos, had disappeared some months prior and finally turned up in the Rogue Isles as Nasoreign. When none of the contacts in the Rogue Isles proved able to address and recover Steven, Tigra insisted on going in undercover herself. Naturally, Prince refused to let her go alone (though that was her wish) and followed.
The duo was able to track down Steven using a magical ring created for just that purpose, and they returned him to Paragon where the malevolent entity Nasoreign was forced from Steven's mind.
The next few months were relatively quiet, with the team continuing to fight the good fight in Paragon. Primary focus seemed to be on Crey, the Council, and the Nictus. New friends and allies were added to the team as the Sentinels grew in both size, influence, and fame.
And then came the Invasion.
In the first waves of the second Rikti Invasion, the Sentinels United base was one of the first targeted. Protocol 9 was recovering from the expulsion of what had become known as "Protocol Zero", in which Nine lost all ability for coherent thought at the mere sight of the Rikti. He was in the base when the Rikti invaded, and barely escaped from the explosion that wiped out the Sentinels' home.
For the next several weeks, the Sentinels bunked with friends and allies while they fought to repel the Rikti. Luckily, no lives were lost, but one member (Adrian, aka Ble the Barbarian) did lose the use of his legs. When finally the waves of invading forces were winnowed down to occasional events instead of a constant barrage, the damage was reviewed.
Prince used his influence with Statesman (after all, he as Streak had died trying to rescue Statesman, and Tigra, Niner, and Swath had completed the rescue) to procure a new and larger facility for the Sentinels to call home.
While Tigra and Prince were working with Statesman's crew to get the new base operational, another longtime member of the team disappeared. Natalie, aka Torchlight, had been acting erratically over the past few weeks. And when she caught her boyfriend Nathan (Night-Stranger) showing a ring to a new Young Sentinel, Annergy, she lost control of her powers and ran. It turned out that Nathan was showing Annergy the ring he was going to give Natalie, but Natalie's suspicious mind had seen otherwise.
Only two members of the team were able to keep in touch with Natalie, Becky aka Rally Girl and her roommate Scarlet Steele. But when Becky contacted Tigra in a panic, Tigra and Prince came running. Natalie had run away again, last seen in the direction of Boomtown. There, Tigra and Prince found her in the ruins of one of the still-burning buildings, her fire powers clearly no longer in her control. But when Tigra gazed at her with astral sight, she discovered a 'thing' on her back, an astral parasite whispering evil thoughts into her mind.
Between them, Tigra and Ian were able to convince Natalie that they weren't going to leave her, and for her to come with them to see Tolarin, who could help. They told her what they saw, and Natalie dug in to a well of strength and courage to go with her friends. Tolarin and Prince were able to extract the parasite that had been picked up in Croatoa, leaving Torchlight scarred and weak, but fully herself again.
But when she went to talk to Nathan, he was gone. In his place was once again the man known to Tigra and Ian as "The Stranger". In a discussion with Tolarin, Daniel (Nathan's grandfather, in Nathan's body) revealed that the Rikti magi had cast a Soul Shattering spell intending to destroy Nathan. But because Nathan aka Night Stranger wasn't real, it had instead torn the Nathan persona from Daniel, returning Daniel into control of the body. The real Nathan, who had never been Night Stranger, had been pulled to the Shadow Shard and his soul was being kept there.
Daniel hatched a plan to trade his soul for the boy's, coercing the Young Sentinel Katrina Gale aka Hailstorm Witch into performing the magic ritual to trade the souls. When Tigra found out they were going after young Nathan, she agreed to come. They were accompanied by the healer Jalna Pine, the mystic Dr. Mythos, Torchlight, and an ally, Elfshadow. The group journeyed to the Shadow Shard, with only Daniel and Katrina aware of what was planned. But when the ritual was begun, Tigra and Dr. Mythos were in a rage at not having been informed of the plan, of Katrina and Daniel making deals with demons for the soul transfer, and that everyone who had come had essentially been tricked into assisting Daniel in self-sacrifice to save the real soul of Nathan. And of course, things didn't go as planned.
While Nathan was returned to Paragon, Daniel didn't die and Nathan didn't take over the body. He was instead joined with two others to become Triune Mode, a Kheldian merging of 3 lost souls: the Nathan personae created by Daniel, the real soul of Daniel's grandson, and Liam. And if that weren't enough, over the coming months the merging became unstable. In the end, Daniel passed on peacefully, Nathan was split from the Triune Mode trio, and the persona Liam given control of the form. But in that splitting, there was enough loss of memory and confusion that Liam and Nathan left the Sentinels to try and build a new life without the confusion of mixed memories the Sentinels provided.
In the meantime, things were rough for the other Sentinels as well. Angered by Katrina's actions in assisting Nathan (namely, in making a deal with demons to do so and not informing them), Tigra and Tolarin increased the duties they were giving Katrina as her tutors in weaponry and magic. But just as their relationship of mentor and student was beginning to mend, Katrina very nearly killed another Young Sentinel, Tabby aka Kid Tantrum, in the medbay of the newly-opened Sentinel HQ.
Leaving Tabby in the hands of the medical staff, Tigra, Ian, Shadow-Wraith, Major Gravimetric, Rally Girl, Stellar Flair, and Triune Mode went chasing after the bolting Katrina. They tracked her down to a Circle of Thorn hideout and rush to recover her. But the team arrives just in time to see Katrina impaled on a Thorn blade as part of a ritual sacrifice. Though too late to stop it, the team dispatches the Circle mages. As they are mourning the loss of their friend, Major Gravimetric (an alternate-reality version of Dr. Gravimetric, who was in a psi-coma) used his powers over gravity to turn back time in Katrina's body. As the blade was removed, Katrina awoke...
...only to trick Tigra away from the rest of the team long enough to kidnap her. The team fought frantically trying to stop Katrina and recover Tigra, but it was to no avail as Tigra and Katrina disappeared. Ian, furious at the action, took off on a mad chase to recover his wife. The chase lasted for almost a month as Tigra was moved from place to place by the demonic entity Oroan, who had taken over Katrina's body after the soul had been purged by the Circle mystics. Tigra underwent intense conditioning and torture as Oroan tried over and over to break her will and spirit, twisting and turning everything the Jochian hero held dear. And Ian, forced to watch and feel what was happening to his wife but unable to reach her or find her, was driven mad in his own way.
Once again the Sentinels were left without either leader, with Protocol 9 in charge and trying to find both his COs. And on top of all of this, Stellar Flair and the Young Sentinels were forced to watch as Tabby was first revealed to be under the control of her "father" and creator, Wu Jin Gou, and then killed with them unable to do anything to stop it... though Glyphe was able to capture Tabby's soul for future restoration. It seemed that Gou had been working through Tabby for weeks, and it was because of this that Katrina had attacked Tabby in the first place.
While the Sentinels and Young Sentinels had been unable to save Katrina or Tabby, things finally came to a head with Tigra and Oroan when the demoness tricked Tigra into killing two children she believed to be her own twin daughters. The act of pledging her life and soul to the demoness in exchange for the souls of the girls, then at her Mistresses' command being forced to torture and kill them was the straw that broke Tigra and tore open a barrier inside of her that had been growing thin. Unable to face what she'd done or handle the situation any more, after exploding in a blast of destructive Ebon Shadow, Tigra withdrew into a psionic shell in her mind that no one could break.
But it was that very explosion and withdrawal that burst through Oroan's shields long enough to reveal to Ian and her friends where to find her. Determined they would not fail in this task, Sentinels and Young Sentinels alike banded together to fight head-to-head against the team of villains Oroan had assembled in Bloody Bay, Ian charged to where Tigra was being kept, and more friends poured to join Tolarin and Chloe at their home to protect Tigra and Ian's twin daughters from the band of Circle mages sent by Oroan.
In the end, Oroan was defeated and bound (later to be banished and removed to the Cavern of Transcendence), Katrina's soul returned to the body, Tigra's body recovered, Oroan's team defeated, and Tigra awakened. While no single person, not even Ian, Kilira, or Tolarin, could reach through the barrier behind which Tigra had placed herself, the loving touch of all of her friends brought into her barren mindscape by Dr. Mythos was enough to return her to life and awareness.
Over the next month, Tigra struggled to conquer her fear of darkness and learn to control the powers over the Ebon Shadows. Though she had many tutors and the support of all her friends, it took the need to rescue Niner and Swath from Swath's creator Sub-Pulse for Tigra to actually embrace the Shadows. From that point on, Tigra was no longer afraid.
In the meantime, the Young Sentinels followed up on leads to track down Wu Jin Gou and avenge their fallen friend. But they got more than they bargained for when they discovered that a second Tabby had been created. The team opted to restore their friend and let Gou escape, with Glyphe returning Tabby's soul to the new body.
All the various twists, turns, trials and tribulations took their toll on the team, wearing down members physically and emotionally and causing trust -- especially toward Ian, after he ran off unaided and unannounced to track Tigra -- to grow thin. When they learned how many members of the team were harboring resentment toward Ian's actions, Tigra and Ian held a meeting to try and get caught up with everyone and to address the issue. Ian apologized for his desertion, having discussed the matter more in-depth with those members who were known to be harboring grudges. Niner stepped down as both the Young Sentinel liaison, placing Jalna Pine into the position in his place, and took a leave of absence as second in command as well.
It was at this meeting that the source behind an infestation of cats in the base was discovered. It seemed their old friend Mary Mayhem was up to her antics again. In early November, the team was invited to spend some down time at a carnival in Talos. Several members as well as some innocent bystanders took the bait, and were having fun.... until Mary Mayhem stepped in and placed people in peril (as well as turning some into fruit...). Though the team rushed to save everyone, in the end it was discovered that no one had -really- been hurt. Apparently Mary Mayhem liked to make "harmless" trouble. And now, she was at it again. Over the past few weeks, since just before Halloween, cats had been finding their way into the Sentinels and Young Sentinels bases first in small numbers and finally numbering well over 100. When one of the cats duplicated itself like a tribble, and another showed up with a note from Mary Mayhem on its collar, the team finally organized to find the SOURCE of the cats and a team was formed to investigate them thoroughly.
Unfortunately, the team wouldn't have long to work before disaster struck again. This time, Tigra and Ian were on the trail of the Nictus leaders in the Council, Requiem and Arakhn. They were in the middle of stopping a plan to leave Nictus Shadow Seeds all over Paragon, enabling the Nictus to transport unbound Nictus in mass quantities for a full Nictus invasion. But when the team was caught by surprise by Requiem himself, the encounter was disastrous. Ian was left nearly dead after Requiem used surprise to get the upper hand and keep it; Tigra was mentally unstable after Requiem's forced entry into her mind revealed a truth about Ian's past, and tore open some of the mental shields Tolarin had placed regarding some of the events under Oroan's torture; Swath's new-found psionic form was torn, several of the "Ayas" that made up Swath apparently destroyed and her control over her nanites disrupted; ArchStrike of The Justice Guard was so injured it took her a few days in the hospital to recover, despite her swift healing abilities. Niner was the only one able to leave the encounter under his own power. Liberty Guard had also been part of the strike team, but had been removed from the battle by an irksome Requiem, not wishing to face the stalwart defender of freedom.
When Tigra awakened, she harbored not only a desire to stop Requiem, but to outright kill him, and she worked subtly to obtain quantum weaponry behind Ian's back. Ian, in the meantime, woke mostly healed physically, but in a "Vulcan" mode where all emotion was locked away so that he could focus like a machine, unhindered by emotion, on healing and stopping Requiem. However, without emotion to temper his logic, he became almost cruel and ruthless in his actions. His behavior led not only those members of the team to encounter him to distrust him even more, but pushed Tigra -- his soulmate -- away as well. No longer were they Tigra and Ian, they worked as Tigra and Prince, subordinate to commanding officer.
While Prince healed and prepared strategies for the next encounter with Requiem, Tigra continued the job of stopping the last of the Shadow Seeds and Arakhn. Then, a week later, Prince was called in on a job for Portal Corps. The structure of several universes was being destroyed, and upon investigation, the Requiem of their world was behind it. Backed by a small team of allies, Tigra and Prince ventured into the mini-verse that Requiem had made into his own, the originating source of the energy that was destroying so many other worlds, and confronted Requiem directly. Once again, one by one, their allies fell to Requiem's attacks. But this time, Tigra and Prince were left standing to fight while Jalna and a new ally Snap Shadow got the injured out of that reality back to their own.
And when Requiem forced Tigra's hand, Tigra revealed the truth to Ian: that it was Requiem, not Recluse, who had killed Ian's first wife and daughters while keeping him helpless. That news snapped Ian out of his Vulcan state and he was filled with such anger and shock that he exploded. Literally. He'd called upon his heritage and performed a move known as the Dawn Strike. Tigra had seen and felt enough over their mental bond to know what was coming, and had been shown the Dawn Strike in Ian's memory before, so she evacuated the remains of the team.
The Dawn Strike didn't go exactly as intended, as it hit just at the same moment that Requiem's universe-destroying energy was let loose. Ian's energy was able to negate Requiem's, but even then it resulted in the destruction of Requiem's mini-verse... and Ian, so the team thought.
But despite all evidence to the contrary, Tigra was absolutely, positively, 100% certain that Ian wasn't dead. Despite the odds, she knew he'd somehow escaped. So it was an eerily-calm Tigra who ran the meeting a few days later that brought the team up to date on the situation. And it was at the meeting that the seed of an idea was planted: Robert, aka Thorny Devil, wondered if maybe Ian had somehow used his soulbond with Tigra as an anchor and merged with her. A few days later, after several days of odd behavior (including the Ebon Shadows refusing to work for her any more) and knowing things she really shouldn't know, Tigra discovered with Jalna's help that Robert was right. She was now playing host to Ian while he recovered. After discovering this, she decided to take a few days off to recover mentally and emotionally, and during this time she learned that she now had some of Ian's powers as well.
Of course, in the true fashion of the Sentinels, nothing is ever quiet. Interwoven with the troubles with Requiem, another member of the team was having troubles of her own. Rally Girl's powers of speed were fueled by what she affectionately called her "go faster juice", and every once in a while she had to return to the lab in Canada where it was made to obtain a new supply. Only in early November, she left for what should have been a 1-2 day trip, and wasn't heard from again.
She was finally tracked down in Canada, where a team of Sentinels and Young Sentinels went to recover her. She was injured, the lab destroyed, and Council soldiers everywhere. And though she was returned to the Sentinel base, all of those with healing powers found that their healings caused more pain than good. And without any more juice, Rally was without powers -- and a target for the Council.
She put herself under house arrest to ensure the Council couldn't reach her, and left the investigation to the team. It was discovered that one of the two scientists that created the juice had betrayed the other to the Council. And unfortunately, the second scientist didn't survive the interrogation process. It seemed the Council wanted the "go faster" juice to further enhance their super-soldiers. And without the formula, the only source was Rally herself.
After nearly a month with no powers, Gizzy was able to figure out how Rally's system worked, and discovered the formula etched microscopically on her equipment. Rally Girl was back in action.
And so the Sentinels United and their protege team, the Young Sentinels, continue in their everlasting vigil of Paragon City, the world, and beyond. All while pulling together as comrades in arms, as family.
United.
