The Pitt
Our tale begins on December 22nd, 1987, somewhere over rural Ohio. We begin by looking in on the Witness, a disembodied intelligence cursed to wander the earth, drawn like a moth to the flame that is flare-ups of paranormal power. Before he knows it, the Witness feels an irresistible tug of power, greater than anything he has ever experienced before. Helpless before it, he follows the power to its source.
Arriving in Pittsburg, he flies up to see a strange man in underwear, about to do something to a bent dumbbell. The sensation building beyond reason, the Witness tries to stop the strange man from doing whatever it is he's about to do... but it's too late. As he almost catches up to the man, hovering a good ten miles above the city, the Witness feels the power within the man build up... and everything goes white.
When his vision clears, the Witness finds himself surrounded by a mammoth vortex of air and debris, and tries to fly away from it. Once he's cleared the maelstrom, he looks down only to finally learn what has happened. The strange man seems to have caused an unbelievable explosion, literally annihilating Pittsburg and its surroundings - as well as the very earth beneath it - for an unknown number of miles.
It turns out that this vortex of air is in fact being caused by vacuum action, since the very air in this portion of space has been eradicated. The surrounding air is rushing in to fill that void, and dragging all manner of detritus with it - from houses to buildings to cars to entire families, like the Robinsons. As the staggering horror of what he's seeing hits home, the Witness rapidly sinks into terrible despair.
Detecting an anomaly coming from the Pittsburgh area, the Army scrambles its men, and activates Colonel MacIntyre Browning. Despite the man's 'covert' status, the Air Force picks him up as fast as possible under the orders of President Reagan himself. Making his way to Ohio as fast as possible, he makes the trip from Washington D.C. to Wright-Patterson A.F.B. only to be put on a fighter jet.
There, Colonel Browning is flown over the Pittsburgh area, and finds he cannot reach anyone on the ground. Furthermore, insane turbulence from the huge hole in the earth (which he cannot yet see) is buffeting his aircraft, and thus he is forced to head back to base. But before he does, the Colonel makes one very important phone call - one to mobilize the C.I.A.'s expert troubleshooters - Project: Spitfire!
Within minutes, the plane carrying Project: Spitfire's chief field operative, Jenny Swensen, is in the air. Once in position, she launches out over Pittsburg in her Mark III M.A.X. Armor, and begins to perform reconnaissance throughout the area. As Jenny enters the area, the Witness begins to experience bizarre delusions, thinking he is seeing the dead populace of Pittsburgh - only to find them unhappy with himself.
And considering his own half-dead nature, it's hard to tell if they really are illusory, unreal ghosts. As the Witness is chased down by his possibly real phantoms, Colonel Browning is making his way to the edge of Pittsburgh, only to find the way barred by an unbelievable amount of debris and rubble. He can't help but remark how this disaster is unlike anything else ever seen in the world - man-made or otherwise.
While the colonel tries to sort out just what could've caused this horror, Jenny Swensen has made it to the bottom of the crater that formerly held the earth below Pittsburgh. At first thinking her suit's sensors are malfunctioning, she finally realizes that she is in fact fourteen miles beneath sea level. Diving into the rapidly forming lake at the bottom to get a chemical sample, she encounters the Robinsons!
This family of four somehow survived the fifteen mile fall into the crater in their V.W. Beetle, and as the only survivors she spotted thus far, Jenny felt the need to rescue them. Trying to carry them out, she noted that the environmental seals on her suit were malfunctioning, and the strange matter accumulating at the bottom of the blast crater was seeping into the M.A.X. Armor!
Undaunted, she continued to haul the Robinsons out of the gloop around her, and then began to rocket them to safety. Of course, the weight of the thing was causing problems with her suit, and she had to remove them from their Beetle in order to finish the flight. This took some doing, since the Robinsons were (naturally) panicked beyond reason, but Jenny managed it somehow and saved them (and herself) at the very last second.
Landing just outside the rim of the crater, Jenny delivers the Robinsons to the waiting Army, and then debriefs Colonel Browning on just what it is she saw inside the massive hole in the earth. Horrified, he shared this information with his superiors, who gave him absolute authority to seal the area off, in the event that whatever caused the massive disaster was still ready to cause more destruction.
After Jenny repairs her suit, she's horrified by the Colonel's actions to seal the area off from interlopers, including his ordered destruction of a civilian news helicopter. Already disgusted with the man, she loses it when he orders her not to search for survivors, but to instead get more information about the area surrounding the hole in the earth that his men were ghoulishly calling the Pitt.
She takes off in a huff, hoping to indeed find more survivors, only to momentarily encounter the Witness, who himself had just finally shook off the ghosts of the dead - or his delusions of them. Even he wasn't really sure at that point. But what he didn't notice at first was that, despite normally being invisible, somehow Jenny Swensen could actually see him! Panicked himself, he hid in the gloop at the bottom of the Pitt.
When he vanished, Jenny decided the man was just an optical illusion, and made for greener pastures, having been unable to find any more survivors in the immediate area. As she did so, the Witness realized he'd hid from the one person that could see him, and raged at himself - before vowing to find the strange man who caused all this devastation... and to somehow make him pay for all this!
Finally, as he shook off the results of Jenny Swensen's abandonment of his mission, Colonel Browning discovered that his efforts to keep the world unaware of what was happening there were all for naught; Soviet satellite photographs of the area were released by them - in order to prove their own innocence in the matter. As such, he realized that he didn't need to kill those civilian reporters at all.
Of course, the horror of everything else going on sort of deadened him to the things he'd been doing since he arrived at... the Pit...!
Persons of Interest:
Colonel MacIntyre Browning: a high ranking Army intelligence officer, Colonel 'Mac' Browning was called in to investigate the Pitt disaster. The man did his best to contain the situation, but it was naturally beyond his - or anybody else's - understanding. Colonel Browning comes in Classic and Saga styles!
the Famileech: though they survived the Pitt disaster thanks to the heroism of Spitfire, the Robinson family was mutated as a result of their exposure to 'Pitt-juice'. This change caused them to merge their form into a grotesque, man-eating monstrosity dubbed the 'Famileech'. It comes in Classic and Saga styles!
Ken Connell - the Star Brand: while riding about on his dirt bike just outside of Pittsburgh, Ken Connell met an old man who gave him a weapon of infinite potential: the Star Brand! Ken tried using this item as a super hero at first, but his own bumbling almost destroyed the world... Comes in Classic and Saga styles!
the Star Brand: itself a paradox, the Star Brand came into being when the universe was compressed into a single point of space for a mere microsecond. Its infinite power requires a sentient being to reside in, however, so it promptly created Ken Connell to bear it... the Star Brand comes in Classic and Saga styles!
Jenny Swensen (before the Pitt): the first Spitfire, Professor Jenny Swensen became an armored heroine after recovering her late father's M.A.X. suit from the evil Fritz Krozte. After this, Jenny began to help the government battle the proliferation of dangerous technology. Jenny Swensen comes in Classic and Saga styles!
Jake Travest: though an unrepentant, cold-blooded killer, the mentally imbalanced Jake Travest was assigned to be Jenny Swensen's assistant during her time with Codename: Spitfire. When she abruptly quit the group, Jake was chosen to pilot her armor in her absence. Jake Travest comes in Classic and Saga styles!
the Mark 3 M.A.X. Suit: the first (and only) M.A.X. armor built by Jenny Swensen, the Mark 3 was a dramatic improvement over the creations of her father. Of course, she built it with government backing, and the finest weaponry their money could buy. The Mark 3 M.A.X. armor comes in Classic and Saga styles!
the Witness: temporarily blinded by the White Event, Nelson Kohler lost control of his vehicle and was left brain-dead in the resulting accident. While he perished shortly after, his mind continues on to this day, as his paranormal power allows it to exist without a body! The Witness comes in Classic and Saga styles!
Extra Goodies: