After Time Working in Government, Most People Want to Go Private Sector

I meant to do another of these made-up team posts a couple of weeks ago, but I've been pressed for time the last three weeks (last three months really), so it was easier to do other, quicker posts. Anyway, this idea this time around was to build a team from a bunch of people used to working for various secretive government organizations, but they'll be operating independently this time. Fortunately, "government teams of people with special abilities" is an extremely common thing in fiction, so it wasn't too hard to come up with a group.

The Leader: Major Motoko Kusanagi (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex) - The Major's a highly skilled former soldier, now special government investigator type. Her consciousness was transferred over to an advanced cybernetic body sometime earlier in her life (Stand Alone Complex said it was when she was a kid, but I'd imagine the other versions have different takes). So she's much stronger, faster, and more resilient to injury than your average flesh-and-blood person. She can also mentally enter communication networks, or another person's brain, assuming they have any sort of cybernetic hook-up to it (as most people in her world do). The question is whether the team will be operating in a place she can use that. The other team members all hail from fictional universes less technologically advanced than hers. Which could also be a problem if she's injured in the course of their work. There is one person on the team who might be able to handle repairs.

The Major was the field leader for her Section 9 group. On missions, she's serious and focused, not in the mood to hear excuses if someone doesn't carry out their job. She keeps a high standard, and expects the people she leads to do the same. Most of the characters in this team are pretty competent, if erratic in various ways. There may not follow orders, though if they can get the job done without collateral damage, she'll roll with it. She knows when to give someone a confidence boost, and when she can give them some guff for screwing up. She has a dry sense of humor, but she can definitely unwind. She's a private person, which shouldn't be a problem as long as none of the team develop a reason to question her.

If she needs to she can drop out of sight fast. None of the others have any cybernetic parts that could potentially be traced or monitored if they're in her world or a similar one. There's still surveillance all over the place, but she can handle most of that, remotely hacking it. Moving around undetected might be fairly easy in her world, if they're careful. One person on this team might louse that up, though. Assuming she had any say in the roster, she'll have scouted all of them thoroughly, wanting to maintain a high standard. Some of them are questionable in how reliable they are, but she'd be certain she could handle it if she's put them on the team. Of course, if she didn't have any say, that might make it more interesting, figuring out their powers and personalities on the fly, trying not to let the thing rip itself apart in the early stages.

The Rogue: Aoi Miyoshi (Night Raid 1931) - Aoi is the one most likely to irritate the Major. He's not a dishonest, untrustworthy Rogue, he just has his own strong sense of what is right and wrong. Which may not always jibe with the mission. One advantage to them not being connected to a government is they should have more leeway to alter how they handle things if they want. The Major can probably use that judiciously to keep Aoi from getting too out of control. Hey, she likes to freelance, too.

He's impulsive, rushes in without thinking. Relies on charm and wit, and manages it some of the time. He's a bit of a goof, tends to hide his more serious emotions behind that mask. The guy who flirts by playing at being a clumsy oaf trying for charming. He's not as good at it as he thinks, but even if it isn't working to get him in the front door, it might work as a distraction. He can be stubborn and impatient to an irritating degree, which also works for a distraction. Sometimes you need someone to piss off the door guy buy insisting he left his wallet inside and refusing to leave.

He's a telekinetic, limited to manipulating objects he can see. He can only use it for 15 seconds a day, total. It doesn't have to be all at once, he can partition it out over the day, but that's a narrow window to rely on as heavily as he does. It almost got him killed once, when he'd overestimated how much time he had. He's also a decent photographer and a terrible violinist, one of those will probably come in handy at some point.

The Muscle: Seras Victoria (Hellsing) - Seras is a vampire. She wasn't a full-fledged one in the anime, because she hadn't taken any of her sire's blood. In the manga, she did eventually become a full-fledged vampire after feeding on a dying friend so they could win the battle together. Even in the anime, she's strong enough to carry a 30mm cannon around like a toy popgun. In the manga, once she's leveled up, she can destroy dozens of trained Nazi soldier vampires with minimal effort, tearing through them like a scythe. In raw power and speed, she's the top of the mark for this bunch.

Seras works well as part of a team, or individually. She was a police officer before being turned, and afterward, she was part of a military organization dedicated to defending England from supernatural threats. She's used to taking orders, and frankly, the Major is less scary than either Integra or Alucard. She's filled a number of different roles. Long-range support, working as the lead for a unit, or as the one who roams and destroys while everyone else holds the line, or simply as a bodyguard for the boss.

On certain occasions, she performed surveillance. When she wears regular clothes, rather than the Hellsing outfit (in-story there's no reason given why they don't just give her some pants, she wore them as a cop), she can look like a fairly normal person. The red eyes might be unusual, depending on where they are, but that could be special contact lenses. Depending on setting, her British accent might be the biggest issue for blending in.

She's a bit silly at times, although you could chalk some of that up to trying to adjust to a strange circumstance. She's the person who takes things very seriously, and in an effort to not screw up, goes overboard in her response. She can think quickly when she needs to, she'll do her best even if she's scared. She was still young when she was turned, and there's still a certain amount of immaturity to her, although reaching her full potential seemed to take care of some of that. She was hesitant initially about killing what seem to be people (and I imagine she still thinks of herself as a person, so these other vampires must still be people, too), but that's worn off after all the carnage she fought through. She's not kill-happy; she'd just incapacitate a person if that was enough; she has cop training for that. But if she needs to put a 30mm shell through someone, she'll do it. Sometimes an encouraging word is going to work best with her, other times it's gonna be the blunt approach when she gets depressed and starts navel-gazing.

The Lady of Mystery: Miss Deep/Nancy Makuhari (Read or Die) - Nancy's ability is to go intangible, like Shadowcat (the white line in the image on the left is the path of a weapon passing through her). She can at least make objects she's carrying or her clothes phase with her or not as she chooses, but I don't remember seeing her make another person intangible. Maybe it just didn't come up. She's also a kind of clone based on Mata Hari, as part of a group of "geniuses" reborn as clones by another genius seeking to take over the world. Nancy would have easily fit into the Rogue role, but it's going to be hard to figure why she's working with this bunch. What's she getting out of it?

She wasn't much of a team player, considering she betrayed both sides at one point or the other. Even before that, she didn't enjoy being on a team. She hates her codename, she's frustrated by her partner Yomiko's easily distracted air and unprofessional approach. But she's willing to trust the rest of the team is there for a reason, to trust Yomiko does actually have some idea what she's doing. They developed solid teamwork, considering how often they were making up plans on the fly, taking turns being the distraction in their battles. She'll be distant at first, seem like she doesn't even want to be there, then come through in a key moment to save someone's life, confusing everyone for a bit.

The Major's going to know some of Nancy's checkered history. This might be one of those things she keeps from everyone else, figuring it's not going to help if the rest of the team is looking at Nancy with suspicion, trusting she can keep Nancy in line if she needs to. I'm not sure how she'll manage that with a person who turns intangible, but I could see her having some ace up her sleeve. Either that, or she only needs Nancy's help for a certain amount of time, and after that, it doesn't matter so much if she sticks with them or not. At any rate, that could end up being the thing that makes the rest of the team suspicious the Major's hiding things (Aoi and Seras both have experience with people who turned out to not be what they presented themselves), unless Nancy can defuse it. If she cares to.

The Guy with a Motorcycle/Car/Giant Robot? - Norman Burg (The Big O) - The protagonist of the show, Roger Smith, is a Batman-meets-James Bond (with a giant robot). Norman is Alfred-meets-Q. He looks after Roger's house, runs errands, makes sure everything operates exactly as Roger wants it to (until R. Dorothy takes it upon herself to not let Roger sleep in past 11). He's also the one who maintains Roger's car, and his mech. On occasions when Dorothy's android mind was tampered with, Norman knew enough to run a diagnostic on Dorothy to determine what had happened, what could be done to deal with it, and whether she'd be OK. His role was to know whatever skills are necessary to help Roger fulfill his role. Like Alfred.

Let's leave it at what we have there. Norman has some sort of past (which he doesn't recall the details of) as a soldier, is a mechanic and engineer, understands computers to an extent. He's a good motorcyclist. Knows when he can afford to attack, and when to hold back because the risk is too high. He follows orders, and if he disagrees with them, he won't argue openly. He'll opt for the gentle side comment to illustrate where he thinks the person is making a mistake. He might be able to get Aoi to curb some of his more impulsive actions, act as an occasional buffer between him and the Major. He probably won't convince Aoi to tie his tie properly, look a little less slovenly. He's probably going to remind Seras of Walter, who in the manga turned out to be a traitor. That could cause some problems. Walter seemed kindly and helpful, easy to trust. Which is going to make her worried about whether she can trust Norman when he offers to maintain her cannon, or patch her clothes or something. Norman isn't going to press things. He'll do his job quietly, and let the others decide what they think of him.

Best guess on the threat is something combining aspects of all their worlds. Read or Die had self-proclaimed geniuses out to "improve" the world by killing most of the people (the old Ra's al Ghul bit). Big O had giant robots, but also a collective amnesia about all events further back than 40 years ago. Night Raid 1931 had a guy clued in to a vision of the war ahead who could convince others to help him terrify world leaders into bowing to his will, because he hoped to avert that. Ghost in the Shell operates in a world where basically everyone in the world can connect their minds to the Internet. Hellsing had Nazi vampires, and lunatic Catholic soldiers out for another Crusade. Well, they need something to punch on their way to the ultimate problem. Take Night Raid's idea of a terrifying future, but instead of averting it, try to make it reality by accessing people's minds world wide and tampering with how they remember things. Or have one person try to use their vision of the world, and make reality somehow bend to that. That's basically what the Read or Die TV series did though, so maybe not.