The Strike of the Union - vol. 1

You walk through the entrance of a 24/7 convenience store. It has a small sandwich shop with a dine-in area attached. The only other people inside are the clerk and a customer who appears to be on his 400th scratch off lotto ticket of the night. Neither one pays you a lot of attention as you enter.

You take a seat out of direct sight from them and start to look through the mobster’s wallet. His Michigan driver’s license gives his name as Ricky Conway. His home address is in Detroit. Moving on from that disappointment, you manage to find a hotel keycard tucked away between a couple of hundred dollar bills.

The Regal Point Plaza. It is a pretty upscale hotel in downtown Crowfall. You happen to know that it is owned by Terrance Fabiano. When the hotel was renovated last year he came under investigation for using his own crews to launder vast sums of money hidden within the construction costs. The charges were ultimately dropped.

The Fabiano Crime finally is probably a front runner to be the number 2 organized crime operation in Crowfall behind the Paganelli Family. There has been plenty of violence between the two outfits over the years.

I am the only person who knows that Coffinstrike manipulates time... HE MANIPULATES TIME! How do I fight that?

Okay, how do I deal with this situation? I may be the only person who knows that Coffinstrike can change time, as long as he has the secret then heroes are trying to fight stealth not time travel. I need to get the word out to the world, but I have to assume that if Coffinstrike knows I am the source he will travel back in time and try to stop me. If I knew how to fight him that would be a good way to lure him into a confrontation, but I don't have a clue how to fight when throwing a car isn't the best move.

So I need to get the word out in a way that he can't stop it. It has to be anonymous and through as many outlets as possible. That is the smart, responsible move; inform the world and its heroes so everyone is better equipped to fight Coffinstrike. If I am really lucky someone else will take him down right away.

I still need to stop the assassinations in the Deep, and I suppose Crowfall at large, but I can't let Coffinstrike realize that I know his secret. This is like all those police procedural shows that talk about bad search warrants and 'fruit of the poisonous tree'; the police know the facts but have to find some other way to get the evidence into court. I know that Coffinstrike has a hit list, but I have to find a plausible alternative for how I know.

Coffinstrike knows that I patrol the Deep and that I was at the Docks. I can follow up on that end without raising his suspicions. There are plenty of loose ends including Toddy, the Reynold's brothers, anyone else they brought into the dock's job, Ricky Conway and his henchmen, and even the dead security guard and his two helpers. Plenty of people knew and might have talked, so if I ask Ricky some questions there is no reason to jump to the idea that my memory survived the time manipulation.

Step 1: Expose Coffinstrike's secret
Step 2: Chase down Coffinstrike and the hit list starting with Ricky Conway.


Stephen stocks up on coffee and heads back to his apartment over the garage.

He works until dawn writing out a letter long hand on notepaper, crossing out lines and discarding drafts until it seems good.

When he is confident that Lance will be awake, Stephen calls and says

"Lance. I won't be working today and if anyone asks tell them I got in a fight at the Seadog Pub last night and I'm taking it easy.
Coffinstrike was at the docks and things got seriously strange last night. I'll fill you in later. Bye."

When the house is awake Stephen heads over for breakfast and to borrow Susan's typewriter.Then he spends the morning carefully typing his letter with both index fingers. When the draft is finished he visits a self-serve copy shop and leaves with 500 copies. He buys envelopes and stamps before heading to the library.

He spends the afternoon in the reference section creating a list of newspaper editors and reporters (Roscoe Wilson is at the top of the list), television producers and reporters, law enforcement agencies, and Superhero publicists and agents and managers.

He arrives home before Lance's shift ends because he's not going to stuff, stamp, and address all these envelopes alone.

When you get to the breakfast table you find Susan looking worried while a happy looking Carmen sits at the table with a thermometer in her mouth. Susan takes it out and Carmen asks, "Can I stay home today?" Susan pats her on the head.

"Sorry, kiddo. You are healthy as can be." Carmen frowns. Susan gives you a weak smile. "Ana has some kind of stomach bug. So far the rest of us seem alright so I guess it wasn’t something we ate."

She tells you not to worry and sets you up with her typewriter.

---

You meet up with Lance later that day. He is a bit more stressed than normal but is relieved to finally be getting some answers from you. He fills you in on the situation at the docks. They were forced to make due with a skeleton crew today. Just enough to unload anything that absolutely had to be moved today. The police had most of the docks locked up tight for hours as they continued to investigate the crime scene.

Lance tells you that the cops are looking for a burly man, possibly bald, who is able to leap tall buildings. Beyond that they didn’t have much more to ID him, as dark as it was. Lance desperately wants details on what happened, but manages to calm down long enough to read the letter you prepared.

"Oh my god. This is insane, Stephen. How could you keep this from me for months?" A couple of the dots begin to connect and he waves his hands. "Ohhhh. So you’re saying Coffinstrike killed those men on the docks last night? They didn't have his usual trademark though. It isn’t like him to kill someone and not take credit for it. I totally believe you. Why would you make this up? I just don’t know what we’re going to do about it."

"Can I tell you the whole story? I want someone else to know the details and you're the only friend I can tell, but I don't want to put you in more danger?"

Lance nods vigorously and waves his hands in the internationally recognized gesture for 'get on with it'. Thankfully Lance manages to listen without interruption through to the end.

...so then I'm suddenly back at the docks with police pointing guns at my back and three dead bodies around me. The hit list is gone and he replaced it with a copy of Working by Studs Terkel. He didn't claim the kills because he was trying to frame me and I'm lucky that I got away without the police getting a good look.

I went to the parking garage and the mobster was still there. I was guessing that Coffinstrike wouldn't care about inconveniencing others so he wouldn't call them off. The mobster got angry and went to find the Reynold's brothers. I go tot eh Seadog Pub first adn went in without my mask. I bumped into Wes and Bobby and made a distraction so they could get away. I got the mobster's wallet and found out his name is Ricky Conway. The I came home and started writing the letter.

You know, he didn't have to kill those three idiots... they were just average guys who made stupid choices. In the parking garage they got away and lived before he went back and changed time; he killed them just to cause trouble for me."

The sadness and frustration on his face twists into an angry resolve and Stephen points to the pile of letters and envelopes

"Now I'm gonna cause trouble for him. It's not what I thought hero work would be, but the smart move, the move that will hurt him the most is if we mail these letters and get his secret out into the world.

We don't know the limits of his powers or his determination so we have to assume that he could travel back in time and investigate. I have a plan to mail 500 letters anonymously.

We're going to put 20 letters each inside big manila envelopes that we are not going to seal. The we drive around to different drop boxes around the city, we put feed the big envelope into the drop box open end first then hold the back end of the envelope for a moment while we shake out the letters and then let go of the empty envelope. We mail 500 small letters and it looks like we mailed 25 big envelopes. We're also going to change hats and clothes between drop boxes so he won't see the same person at each drop box if he manages to stake out every drop box in the city."

In the moments after revealing the grand plan, doubt and confusion take turns on Lance's face, so Stephen takes a deep breath and explains in a firm voice

"Coffinstrike is extremely dangerous. We have to be extremely cautious. He can't track this back to us because he is a sociopath and he will kill our families and everyone that we care about. Help me stuff the envelopes and I will take care of mailing them all tomorrow when the streets are busy and I can blend in better.

After these are mailed I'm gonna find Ricky Conway and get some answers."

Lance wastes no time getting to work on stuffing envelopes but you can tell that his mind is working a mile a minute. After about five minutes he stops working and starts staring off into space. You have to snap your fingers in front of this face to get him back into reality.

"Sorry. Was lost in thought." He gets up and starts pacing, as he is prone to do while thinking or worrying. In this case it is probably both. "The plan is solid. It is sure to give you one up on him... if he doesn’t already know who you are."

Lance returns to his seat and takes a deep breath. "Why didn’t he just kill you? What if he tried and realized he couldn’t? For all we know, he spent three lifetimes trying to end you and failed every time. That would have infuriated him. The greatest assassin that ever lived bested by some brand new superhero. What if that is why he set you up?

"You know about his secret when seemingly no one else does. Why? Presumably, he could have reset time and set you up without leaving your memories intact. That would be a much worse fate. But you retained your memories of the other timeline and he left the book as... as what? A joke? A dig at you? He wanted you to know it was him that set you up.

"I can’t shake the feeling that he may know more about you, and by extension, me and your family, then we realize. He must have followed you from the rooftop, or the parking garage, all the way back to the dock. What's to stop him from going further back to before you had the mask on? At the very least he went out of his way to pick up that book, and that was just to send a message. There is no telling how much he knows about you.

"Look, Stephen, I am more than willing to help you with this. I think it is a great idea and stands a good chance of really doing a number on Coffinstrike. I just want to lay it all out there before we commit. I don’t have any alternative suggestions. It's just... something to think about."

Stephen's face loses all expression and he stares vacantly for an uncomfortable length of time. As Lance opens his mouth to break the the silence, Stephen's head tilts back and he begins repeating the same four-letter word over and over again. Initially he curses softly, and although his volume does not increase, soon the word acquires an edge and a sharpness as his anger and frustration are fully stoked.

"I never wanted this! I wasn't thinking when I hit that super goon and got sprayed with chemicals - the whole situation was just so unfair! We work all day at an honest job that may not be fancy but it matters, but the company would rather hire hire a super goon than pay us what we deserve!

Then after all those months in the hospital we find out I have powers. Okay. I'd rather work as a human forklift than a hero, but that was never gonna happen - not with corrupt corporations and crime families and... everything wrong with the way the world works! So I thought maybe I could make a difference for the working people in the Deep - and then in walks Coffinstrike! Talk about over my head! That's not even getting dropped into the deep end of the pool, it's getting dropped in the middle of the ocean!

I don't know what I'm doing. I didn't even think about the Studs Terkel book as a taunt, but you're right; why would he go to that trouble?"

Stephen lets out a big sigh while he clenches and unclenches his fists.

"How about we split the difference? I'll write a new draft of the letter and we send it only to the heroes and not the press or law enforcement. That way we're getting the word out about his time powers but with less chance that Coffinstrike finds out about it so less chance of retaliation.

Then I talk to Ricky Conway and try to find the list and/or Coffinstrike. If I run into him I'll let him talk and we'll see if he expects me to remember him framing me.

What do you think? All our asses are on the line here, but mine's bulletproof."