Reincarnation Syndrome - The SS Big

[Dr.Gunsforhands]

- - Earth: Nebula - -

The events of the last day, according to the news reports Nebula can access, are as follows:

- "Several cities," is probably the understatement of the decade. A flatly unreasonable number of attacks were carried out all over the world, all at once, most seemingly independently. The attacks have modest civilian death tolls individually, but Nebula can calculate that the sheer number of them combine to form a loss of life in the 7 figures and counting.

- Throughout Asia, Europe, and Oceania, the attacks consisted alternately of bombings or destructive uses of heretofore-unknown RS powers. They are being treated as terrorist attacks by insane individuals or cults. Most national governments have implemented harsh internment policies for people with RS in response.

- King Lawrence of England is said to disagree with this. He is already leveraging his influence to reverse the policies in the UK and is scheduling a summit to convince other world leaders to do the same. He has long held that Reincarnation Syndrome is a blessing, not a curse. Several news reports see him speaking alongside this Superman you've already seen, as well as a Swedish man with feathery wings.

- As of this moment in June 2026, several Middle Eastern nations have been in talks for a year or so about forming a pact among themselves to rival the EU and NATO. They deny any involvement in the attacks and indeed seem to have been hurt about as much as anywhere. Nonetheless, they seem to be taking this tragedy as their chance to assert themselves. They have announced that they are going to hold their own summit and that King Larry can go straight to hell.

- In Africa and the Americas, the attacks were a bloodbath of armed, strikingly successful coups d'etat. Groups of vigilantes, mobsters and nationalists, many suffering from RS, have taken over their local governments, co-opted military bases and locked down the highways, leaving their respective federal governments in... unenviable positions.

- A ridiculous number of submarine data cables were also attacked, rendering communication between continents somewhat slow and tenuous. Satellite footage would seem to indicate that these attacks were carried out by teddy bear pirates like the ones you've seen, which self-destructed in the process. When you cross-reference a bunch of old archived footage, you calculate that the bears' most likely point of origin is between the islands North of Jakarta. It is also the site of the single largest cable bombing, which likely served the dual purpose of destroying any evidence of the bears' construction.

Oof.

From there, Nebula has to do some digging to find a lead on the factory. The one xe selected in the game looked like it had entirely absorbed the Toronto area into its complex. Either this was an artifact of the gaming abstractions on their small board, or the machines have hidden their operation very well. On investigation, Toronto seems to still be standing, albeit worse for wear. Cars sit abandoned in the streets and all around the airport. Men with guns, some in uniforms and some not, glare at each other from across the street in front of the smoking capitol building, no longer sure who to trust. Emergency services are trying to do their thing despite conflicting instructions from competing would-be usurpers. There's a news helicopter crashed right into the mayor's window.

Scanning local social media to help filter xer heatmap to a finer extent, xe sees evidence suggesting that the attack on Toronto was a joint operation by a secessionist group from Michigan and the online Reincarnation-themed crime ring known as Team Rocket. Team Rocket's activities are always buried under pages of meme analogies saying they are to copyright infringement as the mafia was to tax evasion, but their partners in crime here are more sloppy, and Nebula traces their base of operations to an auto plant in Kitchener.

The plant certainly has the potential to build some robots. It has the capacity to construct small electronics and large parts, and to combine them into working mechanical hulks; theoretically, it would just be a matter of programming and configuring everything in precisely the right way. On inspection, the factory seems to have been left in a standard configuration for constructing the brand-name car advertised on the billboard out front. However, when xe hacks the logs, xe finds that the configuration was changed and the logging and camera functions reset numerous times in the last year, conveniently coinciding with the Michiganders' clandestine meetings. Perhaps xe should stake it out until their next meeting, which seems likely to take place within the next 24 hours? Or would it be better to make a move now, to ensure the bad guys can't do anything with it regardless? No, surely Nebula can transcend such crude binary choices. What does xe do?

- - Earth: Jacob - -

Jacob finds Jakarta in somewhat better shape than Toronto, with most of their problems stemming from a mounting case of martial law combined with the loss of all internet service that's not specifically satellite-based. Ironically, even as you bring a horde of wounded and hungry to the city square fro admission to the hospital or a host family, a lot of the local chatter seems to be that they are waiting for the Big to show up and help them. The plan seems to be to use its free satellite uplink to check in on their loved ones abroad.

- - Earth: Justine - -

Jacob vanishes with a gathered bunch of people. Seeing that the people are taken care of, Superman turns to move on to whatever he considers his next priority, but Justine needs not let him escape her questions yet again. When she yells at him, he finally caves, and relays a summary of the news much like the one from Nebula's feeds above.

"If you would like," he says, actually considering you for maybe the second time since he's been here, "I could bring you to our next briefing with King Lawrence. You could be helpful to our efforts in the coming days. After dropping Sam off with a family member, of course."

"Huh? Hey, I... I want to come too!"