"Central Headquarters for Expertise in Supers' Service," Auxilia rattled off, "CHESS is a United Nations-backed coalition of superteams, funded and supported by member nations. Mostly the richer states of the American Federation, if we're being totally honest. Their response network is global, and their goal is the preservation of world stability and the training and oversight of superheroes to prevent them from becoming that which they fight."<br/><br/>"Recluse's main enemy," Silvia chipped in, "because they're the ones that prop up the governments."<br/><br/>"Well, they're not the only ones. But their ideal of putting supers under nonpowered oversight is kind of trouble if you're looking to make a superpowered one world order, too. But they do try pretty hard to keep villains away from state power, whether it's by influencing nons, or assuming direct control."<br/><br/>"You know, now that you mention it, I remember hearing about<em>somebody</em>trying to get control of CHESS by shacking up with the entire central budget committee. Eh? Eh?" Silvia smirked and poked Auxilia playfully.<br/><br/>"That's not fair!" Auxilia coughed, "I was just trying to help them optimize their-"<br/><br/>"<em>Uh huh.</em>I'm not judging you, I'm..." she made a broad sweeping gesture toward the intrepid heroes, "<em>providing vital context.</em>"<br/><br/>"Anyway!" The Auxi-drone giving the presentation was beet red, but she carried on, "they're kind of a mainstay of this world, and they've shaped a lot of ideas regarding what supers are supposed to be and supposed to do. Stormwatch worked alongside them regularly. They're a bit, ah, straightforward in their problem-solving?"<br/><br/>"They're idiots who got by on being more powerful than everyone else."<br/><br/>"That's not fair either! They're really good at dealing with the usual suspects, but tended to stumble when confronted with anything new or weird or interesting. It's bureaucracy, for good and bad, the same rules that kept them in line also meant that every now and then they had to legally classify a temperature regulation program as a cigar.<br/><br/>Before Retirement they had the most heroes and the most powerful heroes too. Nowadays... less so. First there's the ones that have explicitly left to explore the universe, which was kind of a lot, but studying their response patterns, they seem to have suffered an enormous depletion of both supers and support staff above and beyond that. Atlantia attacked Simport and all they had on hand was Falling Petal, in the old days there would've been at least a couple of big guns prepped and ready to go."<br/><br/>"Wait, Simport was attacked-"<br/><br/>"By a hot mer-lady, yes."<br/><br/>"Would've liked to have been there for that."<br/><br/>"I'll show you the videos later. Anyway! Once upon a time, Firewall was a superteam based in the Silicon Valley Republic, focused on developing cutting-edge superheroic technology and net security. I've, ah, been in a few tumbles with them over the years, too. Ellie Tudor back in the day was a brilliant inventor, she's responsible for the first and second generations of artificial muscle fibers used in prosthetics, and a lot of the cognitive implants still used today. One of the others was responsible for the NetSec package on Stormwatch armor. Well, long story short, their leader, Charles Tudor, turned out to be the archvillain Tiamat, leader of the Cult of the Dragon. He was also Ellie Tudor's husband, and the father of their three children."<br/><br/>She kicked at the ground, looking down, "it didn't end well, when it came out. You won't hear a thing about the Cult of the Dragon nowadays because Ellie killed them all. Including Charles. She had to mess up her own brain pretty badly to do it, though. Ellie used to be one of the best heroes in the world. Nowadays she's called Nephilim, the Fallen Angel, and she's... well ever since Whizkid tried to totally reset her neural implants to try and bring her back, and Tzarina Tempest overloaded her brain electrically to try and bring her back, and Magnet Mandrill tried bathing her in magnetic fields to try and bring her back... well, she's been kind of a murderous cybernetic rage-monster ever since. The Firewall Remnant call themselves that because they don't want to forget. Also they're<em>super</em>choosy about who they let in any more, so there aren't many of them. I put the note up in the presentation with the understanding that if Nephilim does resurface and starts wrecking everything up, CHESS and Firewall will make that their top priority. But, since you've stopped that for the moment, they might be grateful for it. And Firewall<em>are</em>information gatherers," she gave Kanina a little smile, "some of the best, when you get down to it."<br/><br/>She nodded to Ace, "Firewall are probably the ones handling protection of Ellie's kids or are very close to the people who are. They're usually pretty prickly about her because people keep trying to help and screwing things up even worse, but I can shoot them a message. I'll be the first one to admit making this our priority would feel nice."