Episode 12

Back to Ravenswood

The New Champions return to Ravenswood Academy from NYC. Nightraven discusses their plans and offers the use of the Barbican for their transatlantic flight.

Feral Cat’s contact in the CIA provides valuable intelligence about Warlord and Sierra Leone.

While helping Cypher repair the damaged vehicle, Sentry expresses concern about the loyalty of Dementia and Feral Cat. He explains that in the Age of Destroyer both of these heroes, or perhaps clones of them, are servants of Doctor Destroyer.

Feral Cat discusses with Nightraven what he thinks should be done with Harbinger and Warlord. Nightraven cautions him to resolve to kill or not to kill Warlord before a split-second decision is required.

Meeting of the Minds

The team meets with Thunderstrike via a mindlink established by Dementia, who has remained behind in NYC to investigate the activities of Menton.

Thunderstrike proposes that the team act as the New League of Heroes’s taskforce in Sierra Leone, sharing what they learn their and preventing any attempt to assassinate Warlord by the Punishers. The team aggress and the League provides a flight plan to a refugee camp in Guinea from which the team can slip unnoticed into Sierra Leone.

Destiny Knocks

Seven appears in the map room of the Ravenswood library and insists that The Gumshoe meet with Doctor Destiny. She teleports Gumshoe to Destiny’s cabin.

Destiny reveals that not only has Grey Gremlin II escaped from Stronghold, but the villain has been transformed into something demonic by a Nazi talisman.

Destiny also discloses that he is suffering from Parkinson’s disease and that his hands tremble too much to allow him to cast spells.

Destiny asks Gumshoe, on behalf of the League, to take on Coarse as a provisional member of the New Champions and to take him with them to West Africa. Gumshoe reluctantly agrees and Seven teleports Coarse and Gumshoe back to Ravenswood.

Lainé camp

The New Champions land the Barbican at Laine refugee camp, in Guinea, and meet with Faridah Boubakeur, an attorney for the International Criminal Court. She makes arrangements for them to travel to Conakry, Guinea’s capital, to meet Rikki, a white South African mercenary and smuggler who will take them by sea to Freetown. She also communicates that Warlord has been secretly indicted by the ICC for war crimes and encourages the team to bring him to Laine camp if they capture him, so that he may be arrested by UN troops stationed there.

Conakry

When the team arrives at Rikki’s hotel and, on the television at the bar, watch Doctor Destroyer deliver an ultimatum to the leaders of the world, threatening to kill 9 out of every 10 human beings on AltEarth in 72 hours.

The hotel porter informs the team that their contact was arrested for smuggling the day before and is in Conakry Central Prison. The team bribes the porter to gain access to Rikki’s room, where The Gumshoe discovers a pouch of rough diamonds sewed into the mattress.

Breakout

Cypher uses her shapeshifting to appear to be a Guinean and to bribe the guards to release Rikki. Guinean police demand identification papers; when she is unable to produce them, they lock her in a room and a prison official subjects her to an interrogation.

She shapeshifts into the form of a prison guard and, along with Sentry, makes her way to Rikki’s cell. The two then burst through the ceiling, only to be attacked by snipers. The snipers critically injure Cypher, who is not in her armored, cybernaught form. Sentry stabilizes her and deploys a smokescreen from his armor while the other members of the team incapacitate the snipers.

Rikki takes the team to a warehouse dock and a damaged VIPER submarine/hovercraft. Cypher repairs damage to the craft that would require it to surface in Guinean waters. Rikki advises the team to don the VIPER gear in the vehicle and offers them cover identities as ex-VIPER agents from South Africa seeking work as mercenaries in the Warlord’s private “shadow army.”

Cypher returns Rikki’s diamonds, ensuring his loyalty, at least for the moment.

Freetown

When the team arrives in Freetown, Rikki talks to Warlord’s men at a government dock. The soldiers allow the team to proceed into the city, where preparations are underway for a national parade featuring Warlord (to demonstrate that he was not killed in the U.S. cruise missile strike (see World in Flames).

Coarse’s Gambit

The team agrees to Coarse’s plan to trick Warlord into revealing himself by claiming that, as a fellow ally of Doctor Destroyer and presumed murderer of the Minutemen, he wishes to join the villainous fold. The rest of the team masquerades as his minions.

At the start of the parade, at the ruins of the presidential manor, a helicopter bearing a double of the Warlord arrives with Warcloud. Coarse confronts Warcloud and demands a meeting with Warlord; he also discloses an imminent plot against the dictator’s life.

Warcloud assures Coarse that Warlord is in no danger, but agrees to a meeting after the parade. Shadow army soldiers escort the team onto Warlord’s helicopter which takes them over the ocean. Only Sentry remains behind, invisible, to observe the parade.

Warlord’s submarine base surfaces and the helicopter lands, lets the team out, and flies away. The team is then led inside the submarine before it descends once again.

Another Fine Mess

The team is escorted to the brig by Warmonger and shadow army soldiers. Warmonger is called away due to events in Freetown. Unable to talk their way out of the situation and unwilling to be locked away, the team incapacitates the squad of soldiers.

At the cliff-hanger conclusion of this episode, the New Champions finds themselves trapped, underwater, in the mobile base of a vicious villain!