Shame of Things to Come
It was December 31, 2001. After an attack on Times Square by the Beddy-Bye Brigade interrupted the Squad's New Year's Eve party, the heroes learned this Brigade was actually from five years in the future. The Squad then discovered that Dianne and a very pregnant Anita were missing from Challenger's penthouse where they had been left. Using Forethought's mental abilities to track them down, the Squad was led to an old warehouse, where they were attacked by the Black Squad a perverted version of themselves. SuperSquad America was losing to the Black Squad, when a mysterious man in a black battlesuit similar in style to Challenger's appeared and stopped the attack. The stranger then led the heroes into a metallic room in the warehouse where Anita and Dianne were being held. Anita was in labor. The mysterious man disappeared promising to return as the metallic room closed around them and they discovered they were suddenly outside of normal time.
As Anita gave birth to Stephen Keith Davies, Whiz Kid explored the equipment and found it strangely familiar even though he had never seen it before and all of the controls were labeled in code. In fact, the code seemed somewhat familiar too. After the baby was born, Rick Davies began to take a look around and realized that sleeper tubes to which the Black Squad had returned when their attack was cancelled were reminiscent of the ones used by Project Victory to create and program the heroes built by the project. Then, suddenly, the mysterious man in the black battlesuit reappeared.
As the Squad prepared to attack, the man removed his helmet and said "Hello, father. Hello, mother" to Rick and Anita, respectively. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am Stephen Keith Davies and I have brought you here to stop Time Twister". He explained that while he was really only 5 years old, he had been artificially aged so Time Twister could make use of the time energy within his body because of unusual birth, but now he had rebelled against his former master to halt his plans. He also explained that before facing Time Twister, the Squad should see how Time Twister came to be. With that, he pushed a few buttons and scenes of the future began to appear.
These scenes showed a future where things begin to go more and more wrong for Bernie, and to a lesser extent, Challenger and Dianne. Eventually, the Squad viewed Dianne's death from breast cancer, a cancer that Bernie believed may have been caused by the modified version of Challenger's battlesuit he designed to keep his mother safe. This is the straw that broke the camel's back and drove Bernie into time travel research with the goal of going back and preventing this future from happening by destroying the Squad.
Before the team could see more of the future, Time Twister appeared. Angered to see that his apprentice had switched sides, he launched a violent attack at the aged Stephen. Suddenly, the battlesuit that Stephen Davies was wearing crumbled to dust as he himself began to rapidly age. He collapsed to the ground in pain. Rick ran to his side. As the now elderly Stephen Davies died in his father's arms, he whispered "the baby is the key".
Meanwhile, the Squad unleashed their attacks on Time Twister to little effect. It appeared he could simply will himself to be in a different time frame than the attacks. Realizing that physical attacks were not going to work, the Squad began to talk to Time Twister, in an attempt to remind him who he really was, their friend and teammate, Bernie Armstrong aka Whiz Kid. While at first, the effort appeared fruitless, eventually with the aid of Forethought's mental powers, they broke through and Time Twister collapsed sobbing at what he had done. Then he stood and as the team kept him covered, he walked up to his younger self and apparently merged with him.
However, there was still one problem. They were trapped in the Time Room within Null Time and needed to get home. Remembering what his aged son had told him, Rick wondered if they could use the time energy apparently contained within his newborn son to power the time machine. Also, if they used up that time energy, it was one possible step toward preventing Time Twister's future from coming into being. Bernie, who had found and decoded the operating instructions for the Time Room, agreed. Using the Time Room's equipment they discovered that the baby contained enough time energy for two round trips by the Time Room. One trip could take them home and return the Time Room to Null Time, but if they wanted to completely drain Stephen Davies of time energy, what should they do with other one?
There were many suggestions. From killing Hitler to preventing Forethought's tragic assault to saving various loved ones, the ideas flew fast and furious. However, one voice was more insistent than the rest. Kelly desperately wanted to save her parents. Realizing the group was unlikely to reach consensus and that he was the only one who could operate the Time Room, Bernie unilaterally decided to set the Time Room to travel to 24 hours before the murders of Denny and Leianda Quinn aka the Silver Archer and Finesse.
While the team was not happy about Bernie's actions, they know that nothing short of physically subduing Kelly would stop her from trying to save her parents, now that she had that opportunity. After much discussion, they decided that the best approach was to fake her parents' murders and bring them back to the present with them, thus reducing the impact on history. While Kelly was somewhat upset that she would still suffer through almost ten years of pain due to the loss of her parents, she agreed that this approach was best.
Along with Silver Bow's parents, the team also returned to 2002 with the Black Squad, still in their sleeper tubes with the goal of depowering them and somehow returning them to their own time. However, realizing that it was probably not a good idea to have Bernie around anything to do with time travel, Challenger turned the problem over to EAGLES to solve.
Originally Run: Origins 2002, Gen Con 2002