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The Team Justice Campaign Chronicle
Foxfire started her superhero career and met the other future members of Team Justice while investigating a meteorite falling south of downtown St. Paul. Team Vermin showed up to take possession of the meteorite but was beaten off by the other assembled paranormals, all of whom were invited to join the Twin Cities superteam by Mongrel. Mongrel was a cyborg who claimed to be from a future, in which mutants have been wiped out by Genocide, an anti-mutant group that seemed to have been eradicated in this timeline. The other member of Wild Pack was Quartz, a martial artist who couldn't take anything seriously. The meteorite turned out to be an alien, Blackbird, a shapeshifting scout who could take human form or that of a shiny black humanoid: strong, tough, and a fast flier. Another paranormal, who also accepted the invitation was Chronos, Master of Time.
The new team proceeded to fight various supervillains who threatened the Cities or the Underground. Mongrel wanted to operate as a vigilante out of a secret base, taking on government and business installations which he claimed would grow into or contribute to the junta from his future as well as criminals, but Chronos opted to form a relationship with the police, and Foxfire and Blackbird agreed with him. They renamed Wild Pack "Team Justice" and publically denied that Mongrel, wanted by the police, was one of their members; he just happened to attack many of the same targets.
Chronos retired after being seriously injured for the first time. Foxfire, more of a tactical and strategic thinker than Mongrel (and, quite possibly, more ruthless), gradually began to take control of the group. Team Justice hunted only criminals, and only killed in secret . Foxfire hired a PI and other agents to keep an eye on the businesses and "legitimate" organizations that represented future threats, according to Mongrel. Team Justice drove Mongrel's former allies, the all-female vigilante group, Team Vixin, out of the Cities.
A group that called themselves Wild Pack and claimed to have come from the future, hunting Mongrel, attacked the Underground and managed to make Mongrel vanish with some device when Team Justice came to drive them off. They went after Foxfire with a similar device, but failed, then escaped. Wild Pack then got into orbit and murdered the Chicago superteam and destroyed their satellite base (which the Chicago Team had apparently wrested from Mongrel). A pair of FBI men tried to take the sole survivor, Lord Kelvin, into custody, but couldn't produce a warrent when Foxfire demanded one. Her lawyers and press agents managed to force the government to leave him alone and he joined the team. The Wild Pack was finally hunted to Arizona and all but one, Ghost, were captured. Foxfire refused to hand them over to the police, since there wasn't enough evidence to incarcerate them and they were too dangerous to stay free. Kelvin and Blackbird came up with the plan of putting them in stasis chambers from the satellite on the dark side of the moon, where they were very unlikely to be found.
Foxfire took control of the funds that Wild Pack had raised during their stay in the 20th century, laundered and reinvested them, becoming a millionaire. She offered Wild Pack's old base to Team Vixin, on condition that they stay out of the Twin Cities without her permission. She also built a new base for Team Justice in a depressed area of St. Paul, including an academy for paranormals (mostly mutants) too young and/or too incompetent to join Team Justice, including a younger member of Team Vixin. At this time, she became involved in Twin Cities politics by organizing and funding lobbyists for mutant rights and opponents of the Brotherhood of Man's political arm.
Team Justice's lawyers also managed to press criminal charges against Armored Security, a dangerous paratech corporation that had been more-or-less surreptitiously attacking Team Justice and various mutants and endangering bystanders. Quartz infiltrated Armored Security, but before he could inform the team where their base was, Dr. Destroyer attacked Armored Security, wiped them out, and stole the plans for their teleport device. On his way out, Destroyer set up a gauntlet for Team Justice to run and left an operating teleport device as a "prize".
Mongrel's files indicated that Armored Security had sold at least one teleport device to a government black project located on a military base in Hennepin County. If this were the case, Dr. Destroyer would soon be back. So Foxfire called the Pentagon and after many inquiries of "Where did you get this number?" was transferred to Colonel Foster of the Military Intelligence Bureau.
The Colonel seemed quite happy to receive the information and told Foxfire that his bureau had just been assigned to investigate "Project Black Talon" (to whom the teleport device had been sold) and several other questionable military research projects as well and would shut them down if they found "major violations". He invited Team Justice to join his group when they arrived to examine Black Talon's installation. The higher-ups in Black Talon, hearing that the government was throwing them in the wolves, had pretty much packed up and was preparing to fly away when Team Justice, Colonel Foster, and the MIB's superteam arrived. The superteams charged onto the plane, only to meet Dr. Destroyer, who had finished slaughtering the last of the Black Talon operatives and was hijacking the plane. Dr. Destroyer chased them away and took off, but Blackbird tore the wings off the plane, and Destroyer had to abandon it before it crashed. Blackbird then elected to move to the west coast and join a more powerful superteam that he hoped could protect him from Destroyer's vengeance.
Colonel Foster got back in touch with Team Justice over another government project: Black Box, which had created Lord Kelvin and someone who had taken refuge with the team, Electrode. Apparently, the process gave the subjects superpowers, but drove them mad, and he wanted to take Electrode into custody "for treatment". Foxfire decided to fight him in the courts, but Lord Kelvin arranged for Electrode to escape Team Justice's headquarters, flying almost into the arms of Foster's waiting superteam. Once in military custody, there was no way to get Electrode's case back to the civil courts. Foxfire blamed Kelvin rather than Foster (especially after Foster agreed to let Caribbean Blue help treat the Black Box victims), and Lord Kelvin ended up leaving Team Justice to go independent.
Around this time, the Black Lotus Society, an evil Hmong kung-fu outfit, decided to embark on a major project, the
qualification of one of their members to become Fisher King, and realized that if they wished to conduct their rituals in Minnesota (which they wanted to), they had to prevent Team Justice from interfering. So they dispatched Mist, one of their finest, to assasinate the team. Mist chose instead to defect to Team Justice and to warn them about the Society. Kestrel, a young mutant with wings and enhanced strength, is the latest addition to Team Justice during this period.
As part of their rituals, the Society released a number of dragons to wreak havoc in the Twin Cities. Team Justice defeated all of these handily except for one, the dragon released into the Dreaming (who arranged a breakout where the supervillains are held). Foxfire ended up imprisoning the creature within her own mind. It is there still, presumably corrupting her to become more draconic: ruthless and possessive, but so far no one has noticed any difference (not that she's told her teammates about it).
Zarathustra, an imp from another dimension, was accidentally summoned to Earth by one of Foxfire's spells. He offered to join the team and "help", but was mostly concerned with gating as many of his brethren as he could to this dimension. He tried to steal some of Foxfire's equipment for this purpose, but was foiled. Demon, a major conspiracy of black magicians, also decided to interfere with the Black Lotus rituals. Team Justice simply beat up the Demon agents and rescued the Black Lotus elder that Demon was trying to kidnap. Zarathustra made off with the Demon magician's diabolic focus, and Foxfire declared open season on him and handed the Demon magician to the mystic Knights of Malta, in exchange for some future favor. Hurt and confused, Zarathustra vowed revenge and flew off to the Black Lotus Society. He was never heard from again.
To stop the would-be Fisher King, Team Justice had to confront him and try to disrupt several rituals, which incurred a debt to the Unseelie Court (still unpaid). Finally, they defeated him. Quartz took the sword he had been forging in the rituals and gave it to Daniela Ondaatje. Daniela appointed Foxfire the Guardian of the Twin Cities, a job carrying certain mystical powers and responsibilities.
Around this time, Eric left the Underground long enough to make a strange request of Foxfire. He wanted her to deliver a sealed letter to Spectrum if she should happen to run into him. Oh, and by the way, please don't read the letter. Foxfire agreed to his request, frustrating as it was. Spectrum was the mutant leader who led the campaign against Genocide in the '70's. He fought them as a terrorist at first when Genocide was legitimate, then allied with heroes and villains to bring them down when Genocide was finally outlawed, and was thought dead.
In the meantime, Chronos had become headmaster of Team Justice Academy and had been conducting research on parallel universes in his lab at the base. He and Team Justice accidentally discovered that there was a weak point between Team Justice' universe and one in which the Third Reich had taken over the world. The Nazis had created this weakness because they were shipping people through to take over the "new" universe that they'd discovered. With the help of Colonel Foster and two new members, Blackjack and Photon, Team Justice invaded their universe, made contact with the resistance, and rescued their version of Chronos, who had been used to make interuniversal gates. With some intervening difficulties, the other Chronos was brought back to the Team Justice universe and proceeded to collaborate with himself on parallel universe issues.
Parallel universe issues continued to be a problem. The Chronoi observed slips and stops in the timestream, but no one else did until Photon vanished for several days, then returned claiming to have been transported back into the 1970's and having observed another version of Mongrel hatching a plot (which failed) to destroy Genocide before it even got founded.
Back in 1995 (the present), the Brotherhood of Man had obtained Genocide anti-mutant weapons and attacked some of the Team Justice Academy trainees with them. Team Justice (few of whom are actually mutants) captured the attackers, and Foxfire's telepathy revealed that they had purchased the weapons from an unknown party who was going to auction the biggest weapons off shortly. Just before the auction, Blackjack, who is a mutant, was kidnapped. So Team Justice crashed the auction, which was where Blackjack had been taken as a demonstration specimen. During the rescue, the energies released by one of the weapons altered Blackjack's powers. Not only did Team Justice capture all of the weapons, but they also learned the location of other caches. However, as soon as they got to the nearest Genocide cache, they found that someone else had recently looted it. They posted a watch over it, and a few days later, an alternate version of the Wild Pack popped up there. They were willing to talk to Team Justice and had expected to travel back to 1975 rather than to 1996 to tilt the balance of the final clash with Genocide.
As soon as he could figure out how, Chronos sent Team Justice back to 1975, without stopping to warn them. It was there that they met Spectrum, so Foxfire handed him Eric's letter. Team Justice, rather than Wild Pack, destroyed the first Minuteman robot, leaving Spectrum free to hunt down the leaders of Genocide. Team Justice returned to 1996 at the end of the battle. Foxfire and Photon both had questions to ask of Eric: like what he had written to Spectrum, his younger self, and what else he knew about 1996 Genocide activities. But we'll never learn the answer to these because the campaign ended at that point.
© 2001 Rebecca Teed
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