EPILOGUES
The World of The Future
Aliens: The general public do not know a lot of the details about the Superstars or the Architect. What they do know is that a group of aliens which like using robot bodies (popularly known as the Synths because few adults wanted to write "Sunflower Superstars" in their reports) had an outpost in Alpha Centauri and have begun talking with faction leaders. Most people are not aware the strange alien robots in the Oort Cloud were the same people, and the public version of events contains a lot of white lies. It'll do for now.
As for the Superstars, they have made the decision to slowly replace their warriors and re-instantiate sleeping Superstars deemed to be more mellow (through running mellow algorithms on their mind databases.) Old Superstar worlds are being re-settled for now while they debate leaving for a galaxy which sucks less ass.
Though the dinosaur mecha remain, the Architect has returned to its slumber and is unlikely to directly contact humanity in the foreseeable future. The Archive has chosen not to make its true nature public, but did convince someone to construct a battleship around it; it hides in plain sight as the onboard AI of the EFS New Dawn, a diplomatic and scientific research vessel.
Politics: In the wake of current events, several other moons and colonies followed the examples set by Lilith and Titan and became independent states. The three major factions (APTO, NERU and SEAA) began to relax about the space race now that they had already founded colonies and they were going independent, and the United Nations was resurrected as the successor group Earth Federation as faction borders started to melt away. It's a great time to be human, though it remains to be seen whether the system will just reform under different faction lines.
Along with the Earth Federation and the space colonies (collectively known as the Sol Diaspora, at least by today's media) another group is starting to emerge: Extracorps, those corporations capable of starting their own colonies. The extracorps - Kannagi Corp, Nutekh and less than a dozen others - must submit to oversight from the Earth Federation and are restricted in the capabilities of the private armies they can raise.
Technology: With development of cranial implants finally complete, everyone is now connected via the Internet all the time forever. (Actually, it will be a long time before everyone has the implants, but what are you gonna do?) Restrictions of nanotech loosen a little, innovations by new companies like Kannagi Enterprises and the Felicity Institute begin to trickle into the market, and everyone starts edging closer to a transhuman future. More powerful jump gates are installed and construction begins on new FTL ships with the development of the Flick Drive.
True sentient AIs such as the Meta robots are slowly becoming more prevalent, and are basically accepted by most of humanity as fellow citizens now. There aren't exactly factories cranking out these things, but everyone at least knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a robot.
PCs
Felix: Felix kept on with ZODIAC, happy that they were able to take their group to the next level. When it comes to talks, he makes up for a lack of diplomacy with earnestness and common sense. He also went to college to get a degree and become a professional animal doctor. Now he's famous for being the safest option to go to for newtype animals (less rampages)! …Well, famous in the veterinary world. That's something, right?
Leichia Yamamoto: Excited by new technology, and tempered with the ideas and experiences from the group, Leichia went ahead to college, double-majoring in robotics and history. She works feverishly to advance robotics, denying that she was trying to make her giant robot shows a reality (She is.) She eventually married Sean, and openly supports and donates to newtype rights and integration causes, firmly believing it is the duty of the strong to protect the weak. She will guest-lecture at her old school and university, mostly to help Pudding out, and constantly bugs Vasily and Rena to let her be their 'doctor' as an excuse to see advanced nanotechnology. It's still safer than Libra.
Owen Ames: Taking advantage of the new technology in his robotics company, Owen became fantastically wealthy on the side while leading the dinomech unit of SHUTDOWN, which he has officially named the Shuffle Riders, on many daring adventures in space. He is pretty much Tony Stark only with less charismatic jerk and more teleporting robot dinosaur. He is still terrible at naming things.
Rena Ulyanov:
Satsujin Amakakeru: Having found herself thrust into the public spotlight, Satsujin handled it as best she could - staying quiet and letting others do the talking. She continued to date "Parker" - or Taishi, or whatever name he eventually adopted for himself - any inexperience she had in relationships counterbalanced by Taishi's equal inexperence in dealing with humans. As human as she is, anyway. She completed high school and college, taking a Foreign Studies degree. She remains attached to Hai Kannagi in a professional capacity, but has at least learned to be more open and friendly alongside Itsuki, willingly hanging out with her friends if there is free time.
Vasily Ulyanov:
Students
Allison Kaufman: Allison the shapeshifter successfully dodged the CIA's attempts to recruit her as a spy and got out of the whole military thing. After some soul-searching she decided to go into acting as a hobby while studying for a different passion - marine biology! After playing a shapeshifting villain in some superhero films Allison backed out of the spotlight to move to Alpha Centauri and swim with the fish.
Arthur Cromwell: Arthur finally revealed that he had the power to disintegrate objects, but he hadn't killed anyone so nobody cared. His offscreen adventures over, Arthur continued traveling with the band and doing the high-profile-newtype version of hanging out with his mates at the pub. He also does voice acting.
Bob Grabowski: Bob focused on building up his band Doing In The Wizard, and it achieved moderate success as an alternative band with a strong influence on the newtype community. Moderate was fine with him - really he just wanted to write songs about wizards and shit, and with more than enough money to get by, he was content. A lot of newtypes from CC High keep in touch through Bob.
Bobbi Laffington: At university Bobbi calmed her father down, studied several sciences, got involved in a student newspaper and decided she liked it. She got her Ph.D. and spent some time as a science journalist, reporting on newtype issues and doing special features on TV, before freelancing as a high-ranking science advisor to the ZODIAC, SHUTDOWN and the Earth Federation.
Bradley Staples: Bradley successfully lobbied for the right to swim professionally, provided he took power suppressants under scientist supervision before every event. With a relatively harmless power he attracted less controversy than Suzi and even earned himself a few medals. He also married a nice young girl from his hometown despite the whole armpit thing.
Darryl Thompson: Darryl continued contributing 80s-style music and weird Australian vibes to Bob's alternative band. He also continued not talking to anyone much, though he is almost always with Bob when he hangs out with other newtypes. From what Bob says, apparently he has an internet girlfriend named Chloe and wrote some tabletop gaming supplements.
Frederic Lee: As a completely mundane person brought into Chelsea Clinton on a sports scholarship at a time when nobody was sure if it would be a newtype-only school, Frederic did not have many adventures. Eventually he joined a Martian soccer team and did pretty okay. Nobody got around to telling him he was not as smart as he thought he was.
Grigory Andropov: Grigory used his super-strength to score a high-paying job as an extracorp mercenary and gets to fire a hilariously expensive minigun at aliens. Sometimes other extracorp mercenaries. He is one of those guys you don't really talk to after high school.
Hai Kannagi: After studying business in university Hai used her saved pocket money and her trust fund to found Kannagi Enterprises, an extracorp which explores new markets based on cutting-edge space tech, psi-core advances and alien research. She works with SHUTDOWN and the Shuffle Riders like the Japanese girl version of Tony Stark, funds the Felicity Institute and helps ZODIAC; Hai loves having friends she can help out with her riches so they mean something. The holiday manor on Alpha Centauri is nice too though.
Helen Mycock: Helen achieved her dream of being smart enough to not flunk out of high school, and went even further beyond by not flunking college either. Afterwards she was hired by the Shuffle Riders in a support role and is basically the voice from mission control guiding them on their adventures.
Itsuki PA-5: Itsuki was hired by Dr Kannagi to bodyguard his daughter, but decided to shoot for something more. After some soul-searching she decided she shouldn't feel bad pursuing a similar field and joined SHUTDOWN with Hai as a security specialist. After further coaching she is capable of hanging out with people in a friendly way without giving the impression that she is a bewildered alien.
Jacki Lewis: Jacki accepted SHUTDOWN's offer of lots of money to nullify people for them and currently assists them and the Shuffle Riders. She spends a lot of her free time partying and watching movies and is careful to separate her personal and professional lives; most people know her as just some newtype socialite that hangs out with Vera.
Lotte Summer: Lotte decided to get into acting, and used her body-altering powers and talents to talk her way into starring in a series of superhero films. She still works with Isabel and the rest of ZODIAC on newtype awareness projects in her free time, and is still dating Vasyl.
Luke Picard: Luke hooked up with Rena, went to university, and did some other things that aren't super important because he was lucky enough to hook up with Rena. Damn, dude.
Michiko Maboroshi: Shortly after graduating, Michiko mysteriously won the lottery and invested her winnings in some really good stocks. When the government went to have Words with her, she successfully negotiated the founding of the Maboroshi Institute of Divination, a Federation-sponsored group dedicated to collecting and dealing with psychic forecasts. Michiko herself went to Obama University for fun before joining MaID full-time.
Mikhail Sergeyevich: Mikhail disappeared shortly after graduation, presumably to NERU space. Intel and subsequent DNA matching suggests he was a whole or partial clone of a high-ranking NERU government officer. Everyone knows someone who knows someone who was friends with Mikhail, though, and rumour says he's alive!
Naomi Kanzaki: Naomi was hired by the government for a stupid amount of money while they looked for a way to turn her healing spores into medicine. When that mostly fell through, they paid her slightly less silly amounts of money to heal people with her powers. Sadly her powers need time to recharge and big stuff is very draining, so she can't cure all the cancers. She's useful to SHUTDOWN though!
Nathaniel Spencer: Nathaniel eventually got bored of using his powers to look at boobs and totally did not become a ghost working for the government, because that would be ridiculous and also mean most of his public records have been suppressed since he got hired to be a spy. There has never been an Agent Spencer, don't be ridiculous.
Paige Readerton: Paige hooked up with the ice-powered Radimir and ended up taking up a lot of science work out in the colonies. She has a daughter, Cirno Poem, who is probably following in her footsteps.
Sean Collins: Sean maintained his relationship with Leichia and did some other stuff which probably isn't as interesting as being married to a mecha scientist. Housekeeping, probably.
Suzi Raiji: Suzi took the plunge and tried swimming competitively for a while, but her electric powers caused controversy - Suzi was constantly dogged by concern trolling sportscasters, anti-newtype bloggers and in one case, another swimmer trying to fake an electric shock. After fighting her way to an Olympic silver medal, Suzi gave in and retired early. After advising international sports federations on new rules for fair newtype integration into sports, Suzi decided to settle for her second-favourite thing: music. Later, as she reclined by the pool of the Martian villa she bought with the proceeds of her movie deal, a reporter asked DJ Suzi if it was worth it. She replied that yeah, things had turned out alright.
Venus Clayworth: After further research, scientists working with Venus finally helped her learn to encourage plant growth in less hospitable places. After taking a few biology courses to get an even firmer grip on her powers, Venus joined the Martian Terraforming Initiative and began work adding plants to certain sections of Martian surface (mostly near cities). She is currently pushing for the founding of a new, green Venus City. (She will accept Clayworth.)
Non-Students
Durwood Ames: Durwood continued rolling as normal: as a kind of cool military dude with his fingers in an unreasonably large number of government pies. He still helps run SHUTDOWN and still looks like Gendo, even more so now that he can use the latest biotech to reverse his balding. Win/win!
Agent Bob: Agent Bob decided he'd had enough shooting psychic kids for a decade or so and semi-retired to train new SHUTDOWN agents, Jacki and the Shuffle Riders included! From what Jacki hears he is currently engaged to another government agent nobody has ever heard of because she has a desk job.
Doctor Bailey: Doctor Bailey went home to his wife, finally. It didn't take long for him to want to start working on alien tech again, but this time around he was provided with a base much, much closer to home and all kinds of sweet assistants! He is now the foremost non-Libra expert on Superstar technology.
Doctor Kannagi: Doctor Kannagi re-stated his intentions to avoid relying on the Archive's technological power, then struck a deal with the Archive to build and furnish its new ship in exchange for rejuvenating his body. (That totally does not contradict what he said earlier, because it is a business deal). He's retaining most of the old-guy look for wisdom cred, though. Despite still heading Kannagi Corp as it heads into space, he is very clearly grooming Hai for a leadership position so he can retire to a beach somewhere.
Patrick Liefield: After Naomi trained her healing abilities by removing his cancer, Patrick decided to re-connect with his ex-wife and continue teaching kids how to fly mecha. He also does history!
Meta-05: Meta-05 continued to hang out with and assist Owen. Many of the rest of the Meta units were offered cushy jobs here and there and Metas are now found all over Earth space, but Meta-05 is clearly one of the best. He still hangs out with Owen.
Major Powers: Major Powers continued working at the school even though it is clearly more exciting than the job he retired to relax from. He plans to retire eventually though.
Nina Pudding: Pudding continued teaching at the school. Most Earth newtypes have been taught by, or at least know, Miss Pudding, and she has met a lot of the rest touring universities. She is also technically the oldest newtype since she had been an adult for a while before the Archive wound her back to a young adult and gave her clairvoyance. She mostly uses that power for shits and giggles.
Natasha Temple (Mindfreak): Though it's scientifically impossible to subdue her powers without dangerous drugs or a giant, stupid hat, Natasha managed to live something kind of resembling a normal life.
"Friend": Who knows? Dude fucked off to a distant star system. The government sure does wish it knew how his gate worked though.
Guilliame Delacroix: Jail, probably.
m0m0t4r0: After rehab, m0m0t4r0 picked up work at SHUTDOWN as a ship pilot. Why not, right?
Zodiac
At the end of their high school adventures, Lucas and the others resolved to bring back their little club. With the help of Durwood and other allies, ZODIAC was resurrected as a pro-newtype foundation with a focus on newtype rights, research and public relations. ZODIAC works very closely with its sister group SHUTDOWN and even has its own cool spaceship, the EFS Orion.
Kyle (Aries): Lucas' developmentally disabled brother has been getting the help he needs for a while now - after a few years of work, he is able to suppress his hallucinogenic aura for a while and is on the same mental level as a seventh-grader. Lucas is pleased at his progress, and though Kyle doesn't help with ZODIAC much, he lives on their ship and finally hangs out with people.
Felix (Taurus): See PC entry.
Vasyl Ulyanov (Gemini): Vasyl joined with ZODIAC and was appointed Captain of the Orion by Madison. When not flying the ship around the system and helping oversee projects, Vasyl delegates boring work to other people and sits on the ZODIAC council. He is still dating Lotte.
Vera Ulyanov (Gemini): With Isabel's help, Vera realised she could help ZODIAC by being a celebrity - appearing on talk shows and at movie premieres, raising newtype awareness among teenage girls and generally being paid to be a socialite. It's a tough job, but someone has to date musicians and go to parties, and Vera has heroically volunteered to take on this burden.
Tom Auditore (Cancer): Tom managed to get to Obama U to be closer to his girlfriend Isabel. Somehow being able to see his girlfriend more often made his relationship less stable, at least at first; they seem to have gotten most of the arguing out of their system now. Eventually Tom lost some weight (not that Isabel minded) and took up a vital, but boring, administrative role at ZODIAC.
Bass Nemea (Leo): After an accident at ZODIAC with power suppressants, Libra's technopathy and gamma radiation, further power was prematurely awakened in Leo: now he can transform into a much smarter Leo whenever he feels extremely contemplative. This almost never happens. On the upside, power suppressants still work; after receiving an injection and a chat from Madison, his smarter alter-ego began to leave Leo notes to help start him on a new journey of self-discovery and improvement. He still doesn't know how to talk to girls though.
Isabel Delgado (Virgo): Izzy decided to shift her focus from medicine to newtype research, possibly so she could go to more parties at Obama U. Isabel did a lot of work for newtype public awareness, including a pro-newtype advertising campaign which mostly involved posing for cameras and became unsurprisingly popular. Eventually Isabel took command of much of ZODIAC's research division, though she continued the PR stuff for fun - who wouldn't like being a celebrity scientist?
Libra Asimov (Libra): Her enhanced cognitive abilities are no longer expanding at the rate they did in her teens, but she hasn't peaked yet. After receiving a research grant with more zeroes than she cared about (someone said "science" and she lost focus), Libra founded the scientific Asimov Institute. When she realised people were associating it with some dead guy and not her, she changed it to her old first name - the Felicity Institute. (She also changed her middle name to Felicity to make sure people got it.) The Felicity Institute used recent scientific discoveries to develop rudimentary psi-core technology - devices which manipulate or are powered by exotic particles and strange energies. Psi-core technology eventually became the basis of the Flick Drive. Libra now has thirty-five honorary doctorates and is mostly capable of taking care of herself.
Madison Squires (Scorpio): Madison spent the next few years training for ZODIAC. When not studying/partying at Obama U she received tutoring from Durwood, Pudding and others, and when she settled into her place on ZODIAC's ruling council she finally achieved the goal she was shooting for since she first joined Zodiac: Helping people and newtypes alike. Madison spends a lot of time traveling between the New Dawn and various colonies, extracorps and research institutes to have talks with important people and has been through six boyfriends.
Kareem Furan (Sagittarius): Kareem already had what he wanted: SHUTDOWN backing to go beat up and occasionally murder criminals. Kareem was responsible for shutting down nearly all human trafficking on Earth (mostly by getting other telepaths to help him work out which throats to slit) before Durwood and Tsubaki decided to reign that shit in for reasons that had nothing to do with Madison berating them constantly and a lot of telepaths getting injured. Kareem was convinced to stop with the murder thing entirely and instead moved to SHUTDOWN, where he continues to use his telepathy to beat up people and is negative helpful for newtype public relations. He retains his Sagittarius post as an ambassador to ZODIAC and is probably partly responsible for anti-telepathy laws.
Evelyn Roberts (Capricorn): Capricorn made it all the way to his graduation ceremony without people working out that "Bob" is his last name. The money-obsessed portal maker studied business at Obama U, sold a lot of portals, founded several companies and secured a fine contract to help the Felicity Institute study Nega-Space. After trying to get a lucrative contract to work for ZODIAC and being berated by Madison for an hour, CapriCorp agreed to supply much of ZODIAC's needs for a slightly less lucrative one. Capricorn eventually married an Irish model, something Leo finds tremendously unfair.
Lucas (Aquarius): Despite the fact that he does not and never will have newtype powers (he did get a body upgrade from the Archive, but has apparently turned the powers down), Lucas swiftly rose to the top of ZODIAC and has proven himself an excellent helmsman. Something about being the brother of two newtypes but a "normal" himself endears him to the public, and his appearances on public talk shows have done even more for newtypes than Isabel's legs. Once ZODIAC was in place, Lucas proposed to Libra (after a brief period of confusion during which Libra thought he was asking her to learn to cook and then screamed happily a lot) and is unsure whether children are a good idea.
Tsubaki Tsubaki (Pisces): After finally working up the courage to talk aloud for more than a few moments, Tsubaki focused on her comic dreams. Eventually she produced several popular series about newtypes, one of which - NESMecha - spawned a TV series and a few movies. After dealing with accusations that she was mediocre at best and received preferential treatment because she was a newtype and wrote about a popular topic, as well as "fans" who kept getting really weird about her "cute" image and asking if she would follow in the footsteps of a father seriously nicknamed the King of Hentai, Tsubaki decided to flame out of the industry and produced Transhuman Phase Mars, a dark and gritty thriller about mankind struggling to retain its humanity while under attack from prehistoric aliens which basically insinuated that her fans were autistic freaks who would die alone. It is considered one of the most influential works of modern times and a prequel is in the works.
Jeff (Serpentarius): Jeff was eventually released on parole and made an agreement to not interfere with ZODIAC for the sake of his brothers. He gave up the "Serpentarius" title (since he made it up anyway) and moved to Jupiter, where he is rumoured to be a high-ranking agent of either the Earth Federation or some extracorp. He still visits Kyle sometimes and is known to bring him video games.
Monopoly
Parker Robinson: As a brain in a jar (at the moment, anyway), Parker had few options. Also, even allowing for the possibility that discovering aliens made him a little crazy, he was still kind of a dick. ZODIAC eventually cut him a deal - spend a few years of "jail time" in the jar, then the Archive would whip him up a new body. He used most of the time to write a book and some stuff for Wheel's new company. After getting off early for good behaviour, he tried to sue Taishi for copyright infringement then left to work for some megacorp.
"Taishi": Taishi continued to date Satsujin. He is considered the "first friendly alien" by much of the public despite staggering evidence to the contrary, but he is totally rolling with it. He mostly gives interviews and stands near politicians to make them look good. Technically he is also a Superstar ambassador, but frankly they had better people for that job tucked away in their Dyson spheres.
Penny Knight: Penny became a somewhat functioning person thanks to the magic of therapy! She was hired by ZODIAC to give her something to do that wasn't a military thing, and ended up being posted on the EFS New Dawn as one of their liaisons. Her job mostly involves surfing the Net, talking to her friends and working on her social skills. She likes it very much!
Kyung Chun: Kyung somehow got her hands on a lot of money (it may have been from Leichia as an apology for killing her) and used it to set her family up with a nice life before rolling off to college. She used her shrinking powers for publicity and eventually hosted the reality TV series Kyung On The Wall, where she sits on famous people while they go about their daily business and interviews them. It's very good for newtype relations.
Charisma Takano: Charisma went to university despite having a) no idea what she wanted to do really and b) loads of money from that whole Monopoly business. Luckily, it didn't take her many days of relaxing on one of Hai's beaches in a bikini to decide what she wanted to do: More of that! She also started hosting a talk show to show she could be engaging and likable to people without her mind control powers, and is one of ZODIAC's best television assets. Her friends still call her "Cha-Cha", a name which has sadly not stuck with the general public.
Kylie Delacroix: After cruising through university like only a technopath with a sexy foreign accent and nice curves can, Kylie was hired by Leichia. They denied it was to help develop psi-core systems for robots. They are currently making breakthroughs in the field of psi-core systems for robots. Her favourite creation so far is a line of stuffed robo-toys that respond to emotional feedback from their owners.
Rhombus Ramasubramanian: Rhombus avoided most of the consequences for stuff he did in Monopoly despite being kind of an ass. He dated Madison just long enough for Madison to decide she didn't want to date him and did some boring HR stuff at college before ending up in a boring office job for some sub-department of ZODIAC.
Scottie Dog: Scottie the telekinetic dog was given a health check-up by the Archive himself and eventually adopted by Leichia.
Wheel: Wheel had a problem. While it was generally agreed that he was a kind of cool dude, he was also an advanced AI with an grasp on human ethics only slightly better than an eight-year-old's and the ex-pawn of aliens. With some counsel from trusted newtypes and the Archive, though, Wheel found the perfect niche for a super-intelligent AI with social interaction issues: the lead designer of his own MMO company.
