The team known as Metaforce is being sent to San Francisco to gather information on a robbery. A millionaire Lepidopterologist, Robert Hum, was beaten .  His collection of rare butterflies was stolen.  He says a group of monkies wearing baby kabuki masks forced him to open the cages. The security footage backs this up. The Agency has declared this a Metacrime.

Haywire took off in the night in a car.   To be honest, what with the Patty Dane situation,  William Powers didn't even notice.

He took off to Langley to report on his partner's condition.  His perfect memory was going to help sort this all out.  He hopes.

Powers gave the Metaforce a back burner file about some stolen butterflies.  It was in San Francisco,  far away from the "Dane Situation."

So Singularity, Sleetstorm, and Mindgames drove off to investigate why there was a burglary over butterflies and why Kabuki Mask wearing Monkeys were involved.

The heroes made it to Professor Hum's apartment without incident.   He was very co operative and showed them around.   They reviewed the footage, what there was of it, and it was fit what was in the report.    Since it was a few weeks ago,  the apartment had been cleaned up and there was nothing new to search through.


Mindgames wanted to know if he was doing anything with the butterflies that could be weaponized or proven dangerous.  Proffessor Hum just said he was crossbreeding insects for beauty and to help pollinate food grains faster.   The butterflies taken were rare and in a few cases, unique.

The trio went to Berkley University to research Proffesor Hum's published papers.   After two days of reading the really dry works, they gave up.  All was on the up and up.  Proffessor Hum was a legit scientist doing legit research.     A new angle had to be worked.

They thought that maybe other butterflies were stolen. They went to the zoo and checked out the conservatory.   Sure enough,  there was a break in and some butterflies had gone missing.   It was impossible to inventory the missing insects.   The keeper did say that some fur was found, but since animals do sometimes break out and roam, nothing was thought of it.  They confiscated the fur sample and went to the monkey house.

The monkey keeper was interviewed.  Sure enough a few months prior, Jacob Keeler was arrested after he stole 12 macaques and sold them to person's unknown.    He took tranquilizers and drugged them up and smuggled them out.    He was an ex con hired as a janitor who worked only a few weeks before this happened.

They drove up to the state penitentiary and set up a meeting with Jacob Keeler.

He was not very forthcoming.  He only said he got 15 thousand dollars a monkey and lost the money.  He said he didn't know who wanted the monkeys and didn't care.   

However, he didn't realize that Mindgames was a telepath.  While talking, he gleaned that Keeler's money was hidden in a duffle bag in a friend's storage unit.  He was working for Mama Ito, the owner of the Kabuki Dinner Theater, a restaurant near the docks.   The group left and went to their hotel and made a few calls.

They found out that Mama Ito was a Japanese ex patriot, wanted for questioning for many things involving money laundering, drugs, prostitution, extortion and even murder.  She has connections from New York to Beijing.  She was too hot for the locals to touch right now, so the police have been observing her for years.   She is an elderly invalid, over 400lbs and walks with a walker.  She does have licensed helper monkeys...

So they went to the restaurant for dinner.   Singularity, what with her looks, decided not to go in.  She thought it best to go around back and just observe.   Sleetstorm and Mindgames went in.   The food was great.  The menu told how Mama Ito makes each Kabuki Mask herself from clay flown in from her hometown of Kyoto.  They made a note of that and watch the performance.

After eating, Mindgames tried to contact Singularity via telepathy.  Her thoughts were odd,   like  a radio signal with static.  He put money on the table and the two went out to investigate.

They saw Singularity jumping into the water.  She had a monkey on her back.  This was not a metaphore, she had a literal monkey on her back!  A kabuki mask wearing macaque!

She hit the water and sank.    Sleetstorm blasted the monkey with ice, forming a small ice burg, as it tried to swim away from the sunken Singularity.

Singularity managed to shake off the mental effects and jump out of the water.  Mindgames and Sleetstorm  were attacked by three other masked monkeys.   

The three heroes defeated the monkeys easily. 

They looked around when everything went dark.  Pitch dark!

In this void, they heard growls.   Each were attacked by animal claws.   Sleetstorm's ice armor took the hit for him,  and Singularity's dense skin absorbed her attack.   Mindgame was not so lucky and was rent and went down bleeding.

Singularity reacted to the attack by  infusing her fist with gravity and punched the unknown assailant.   She heard a smack, then a crash.   She tried to look for Mindgames in the dark, but the darkness was absolute.

Sleetstorm felt the air displace as something swung at him.  He dodged and blasted but his ice attack hit Singularity.  She was unfazed. 

Sleetstorm felt the  air moving again and this time he was struck by a fist, or foot, or something.  It got passed his ice armor. He reacted by shooting ice at the direction of the attack.  He hit and the darkness was gone.