The Gneech! Awww YeahWhile this is going on, Alpha Sentai contacts Crosshair, looking for Ebony Wings, who has not reported in from her last patrol. This immediately gets everyone's suspicions up; Crosshair spots that some of the shipping containers being loaded onto the ship appear to have air holes and investigates, finding three manticore-like creatures ("mutacores") as well as the captured and unconscious Ebony Wings. 4/?
Crosshair stealthily frees Ebony Wings while Vega keeps distracting Dr. Laughton, Vesper, and the other "humanimals" Dr. Laughton brought with her; Ebony Wings explains that she was pursuing the Gargoyle Man (as she has been doing in the background for the past several sessions) when she got sucker-punched by some winged ally of his, which sounds to be Harpy. 5/?
Over the course of the conversation Vega asks Dr. Laughton if there are any other dragons at the island... Dr. Laughton then shapeshifts, revealing that the reason the humanimals call her "the Madame" is because she also goes by the name "Madame Monstrosity"... her alternate form is a huge dragon! 6/?
As if there wasn't enough going on, Ogre comes sneaking onto the scene at this point, still looking for the missing Cammy, who the group has more or less deduced at this point to have been transformed by Dr. Vesper into the Harpy. The Mythics herd him into a safe-ish hiding place, but as soon as Ogre hears the name "Dr. Vesper," he nearly goes berserk—apparently Dr. Vesper was one of the team on the Devolutionizer Project that made Ogre the way he is! DangerMan and Riven manage to hold Ogre back before he goes rushing in and ruins their attempted sneak, but it's a near thing. 7/?
Finally, with everyone in place and apparently no info left to finagle out of them, Crosshair opens up the fight with a huge sniper shot with ice arrows that badly damages Madame Monstrosity and freezes her in place—and the chaos commences! Crosshair is chased by Hellifino, Madame Monstrosity's half-elephant half-rhino bodyguard... who is in turn chased by Spotlight. Vega squares off against Alpha, a Che Guevara-looking gorilla with a machine gun, while Riven, Great Ceasar's Ghost, and DangerMan do their best to support around the periphery. 8/?
Ogre goes straight after Vesper, who immediately nopes out of there; Harpy finally "speaks," by which I mean she lets loose with a sonic blast that leaves everybody's ears ringing for several seconds; Crosshair and Spotlight get to her and reveal that they know she is Cammie and that they are here to help, as is Ogre, who she had befriended back at the F.E.A.S.T. shelter before running off with Dr. Vesper. This causes her to stand down from the fight, instead going after Ogre to try to communicate with him. No mean feat given that her two volumes are "barely whisper" or "sonic blast," and his monosyllabic caveman mentality. 9/?
Although the heroes manage to take down Madame Monstrosity before she can even take a significant turn, the rest of the humanimals put up a hard fight; Vesper escapes, but Alpha, Hellifino, and the mutacores are all captured. Alpha Sentai and Fight Girl arrive just as the Mythics are cleaning up the last of the fight, but provide what info and assistance they can. Cammy/Harpy flies off into the night; Ogre explains that she said she was going back to the Laughton Institute to think things over... and that with Madame Monstrosity captured, Dr. Vesper would probably take over the island. 10/?
BUT! The Mythics contact Division X, the New Halcyon Police, and Agent Carter, so the Laughton Institute is likely to get the snot raided out of it in short order. Since they were already in the process of abandoning the place (hence loading everything onto a ship), the eventual results of that are still to be seen. Ogre says he will return to F.E.A.S.T., although Spotlight tries to impress upon him that there is still the possibility of reversing the Devolutionizer process and returning him to a normal life. 11/?
And with that we reach the end of another chapter of New Halcyon Nights and I return GMing duties to @PlotlineGraveheart! I enjoying running the game, but I'm also glad to be a player in it as well. I like to think that with our quite different focuses in terms of both style and story, that our combined efforts are greater than the sum of their parts. :) 12/12