It took about a second for a little text and light to flash across Ghost's visor. "Here you go," he scribbled down a number for Ace. "It's not really my business, but if it's a paper message you're talking about there's an easy way to destroy it, all you have to do is eat it. But who knows, they might get lucky."<br/><br/>It took a bit of time for a couple of other bounty hunters to file in (apparently Kanina wasn't the only one who needed the show), and to get Whitney popcorn. There was more than enough room for Tabs to sprawl as she pleased.<br/><br/>The overhead projector hooked into the laptop in a perversion of everything about science, and the beginnings of a slideshow appeared. "So it's not a video like you're used to..." Ghost coughed, and one of the bounty hunters immediately walked out, grumbling. "But, well, this is important."<br/><br/>"But we have to do the thing," Boushh insisted. "It's a tradition."<br/><br/>"We have to?" Ghost sighed at the immediate nod. "Perdition take my soul."<br/><br/>Boushh seemed happy about getting to do the thing. "Wellcome, to the wooorlldd of tomorrrowww, and to a noble brotherhood of mercenaries, rabble-rousers and low-lives! And also us, the bounty hunters, who bring all of those in for fun and profit."<br/><br/>"Is that all?"<br/><br/>"It's good enough."<br/><br/>Ghost began.<br/><br/>"This...<br/>(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/0/05/Bright_light_trees_resized.png)<br/>...is Zohar. It's not much of a picture, but it's as good as we could do without the camera burning out. Subject radiates intensely in both visible spectrum, infrared and UV, covering the vision ranges of humans, the hybrids we've tried so far, and also a tourist from... well long story short it's basically a cowboy planet. It's bright enough to overwhelm most local sensors, sort of like staring into your own miniature sun. We've had numerous engagements with it; most of what it does is intense and precise light-manipulation on a level we've never seen before. The lasers are the most obvious, but when you start binding light into autonomous constructs," there was another slide with a shining white knight assaulting the side of a prison complex; given the way it was grabbing the roof, it had to be a couple of stories tall, "and we're probably in the realm of sufficiently advanced technology. Radiant pattern is closest to that of Beta Orionis without the high-end radiation but it's not a strong correlation. We thought it might be a point of origin but we haven't heard back from our more, ah, extraterrestrial inquiries. Rigel is a blue-white supergiant, it's not exactly friendly to life or planets. Spacefarers don't go there without a good reason."<br/><br/>"The good news it's not tough. Here's a satellite close-up we got of its first attempt attempt at assaulting a solitary containment cell. Here's The Sorceress Rose, Darc you'll remember her as the one that consumed the Skull of Orknos and opened a gate to... I don't want to call it 'Hell' but it was definitely another dimension, lots of havoc. Rose, right after being released, decided to fight it." The picture set showed the aftermath, with rose petals and shredded pieces of bright material everywhere and a burned but very intact sorceress. "We think she, uh, killed it? She's remained at large and that worries me sick, but that was the first and last time Zohar took a swing at freeing anybody Red would have been called in for. If you want to look into bringing her in, being able to interview her about the encounter and, well, taking her out of the running again would be a big win for the good guys. She hasn't reared her head again but it's only going to be bad when she does.<br/><br/>Now, Zohar! First of all it got better somehow, so maybe it can reform itself? We don't know. The real trouble is it's, well, as mobile as you'd expect light to be. It's really, really good at running away." Another close-in satellite photo, with a superteam in formation facing it down, "here's Captain Hammer and team trying to engage it at New Newgate Prison," and another, "and here's it reappearing halfway across the globe at New New Newgate Prison about sixty milliseconds later - that's a speed of light delay. It's as hard to pin down as you'd expect too; the old mirror-maze trick hasn't worked but we don't seem to have anything that's perfectly reflective under current technology, it's something that's being worked on. It seems to have a long list of people it wants out, so it's reasonably assured of hitting somewhere where we're not. Hero teams where they even exist are pretty disorganized right now. They'll show up to a prison break and Zohar will go somewhere else and there's not much coordination after that. And it seems to be able to hide or go inactive or something and then flare up when it's decided it's going to make our lives difficult.<br/><br/>Another weakness we've identified: it's either not tech-savvy or just generally not precise. It attempted to free the supervillainess Auxilia," a picture of a blue-skinned android girl appeared alongside technical specs, "but she's an AI, and we had her contained in a group of remote mainframes. I can provide the full report on that breakout afterward, but the net result was that Auxilia got free because her guards had the choice between letting her out and letting Zohar terminate her blundering around the mainframes, and they opted for the former. We're currently looking into villain containment methods it's not likely to understand; that's something else going on on the side.<br/><br/>But it's still elusive, and still at large. So, the going strategy for those heroes that have a strategy is to try and figure out what it wants or what it's trying to protect; if you can pin it down to something it needs to defend, that would be perfect. Meanwhile everyone we throw back in jail is someone it has to try and break out again, which sounds sort of futile but not as much as you'd expect. Every time it does it we learn a little more - well, not<em>every</em>time but you know what I mean. It's learning from us, but probably not as fast as we're learning about it. We hope." Ghost didn't seem confident about that; it was probably his way to want to be certain.<br/><br/>Boushh took the opportunity to refill Whitney on popcorn, chiming in, "so the Prison Architect Cartel is taking this really seriously. They have bounties on new information about this thing,<em>and</em>if you get back their escapees. Zohar itself has the biggest one, but Sorceress Rose is pretty high on the list too. It drops off a bit after that but if you want to bring in the Defenestrator that's still enough for a lot of alcohol, right?"<br/><br/>"So it's like this," Ghost said, "we need leaders, scientists, heroes, explorers, connectors and everything in between if we intend to beat this thing. You got-<em>we</em>got complacent. That has to change, and I hope you'll be willing to help." He shrugged the shrug of a long-suffering man. "If you don't then at least you know enough to recognize an opportunity if it strikes.<br/><br/>There's probably more. It's not what you'd call chatty, but it seems to talk and understand languages. We haven't run into one it didn't comprehend, but we haven't tried Navajo or Basque or some other language that hasn't appeared in our radio transmissions. And it-" Ghost tilted his head to the side as though receiving a message, "-might have the ability to recognize its name from a distance and EMP electronics in the vicinity of that happening? Okay, that's new, that's not confirmed. And that's recent, to the point of- oh, it seems like... you all were there for that? Huh, you might be closer on its trail than you realize."