Director Richards, holding a freshly lit cigar in one hand and a clipboard filled with papers in the other, strode through the hallways of MetaOps Headquarters. He approached the door that read 'Briefing Room' at the end of the hallway, stuck the cigar into his mouth, breathed in the harmful chemicals, then opened the door. Inside, MetaOps' newly organized strike team sat around passing the time before they were given their new assignments. Crosscut was the first to see The Director enter the room and immediately stood at attention. "At ease," The Director said to Crosscut and any other operative in the room doing the same. Pulling a remote from his pocket, The Director used it to turn out the lights and turn on the projector in the back, before walking up towards the front of the room. The Director took a look at the various operatives that sat before him, paying special attention to the more eccentrically dressed of the group, before speaking. These were the best of the best. Well most of them at least, some were just cannon-fodder. "At 0900 yesterday morning, a highly classified facility was broken in to," he said. A slide appeared, showing the outside of the building. "This facility, which we will from hear on out call The Forge, specialized in one thing and one thing only... creating the nastiest, most destructive weapons known to mankind." A new slide appeared on the wall, this one of a more present picture of the facility from earlier, complete with a man-sized hole in the side of it. "This is the outside of The Forge now. Only one thing was stolen out of all the deadly devices inside, and that was the weapon that Project: God Complex had almost finished creating." Another new slide, this one of a room strewn with bodies, rubble, and broken scientific equipment.

Crosscut was the first to speak. "What is this weapon that the project had been making?" he asked.

"That information is being kept on a need-to-know basis. Right now, none of you need to know," The Director responded. Crosscut leaned back in his chair, irritated by the answer given. Director Richards continued with the briefing, "As you can probably guess by the fact that you're the ones being told all of this and not Seal Team Six or Delta Force, the perpetrators of the theft were meta-humans. Unfortunately for them, we know almost all of their identities. The powers they used to pull this off are pretty uncommon. Only problem is just going to be finding where they all scurried off to. We got a few locations that we suspect, but until we're able to narrow it down to something less than an metropolitan city, we'll be sitting on our hands. Shouldn't take more than a few hours. Until then, I don't believe any of you have actually met before. You'll be working together to find these 'super-terrorists' as my superiors have taken to calling them, so might as well get used to each other. Crosscut, you're in charge." The Director turned the projector off and the lights back on before making his way to the door. Before he could leave, Crosscut called out to him.

"Sir, the identities of these guys. You didn't say who they were," Crosscut asked. He already knew what answer The Director would give, but it was worth a shot.

"All in due time, all in due time," was the only response he got.

Crosscut was irritated with the way The Director was treating this mission. Teams were built on trust, and while he knew that sometimes there was information that was better left to be known by a few people, MetaOps leader was keeping them all in the dark. Crosscut ignored his dislike for their commanding officer and walked to the front of the room where The Director had stood earlier. "As you heard, I'll be the leader of our rag-tag little team. My name's Ray Stevans, but on-mission we will exclusively using our designated code names. Mine is Crosscut. I've been here at MetaOps for awhile now, so you might know me by name, but in case you don't, here's what you need to know: I've been an operative for most of my life, and if you want to get to the same position I'm in right now, all you need to do is follow my orders. I don't keep my past a mystery, so if you have questions, go ahead and ask." Crosscut went back to his chair and sat down. Whether the rest of the team wanted to introduce themselves formally like he did, or if they wanted to just wander the room introducing themselves in a more casual way, he didn't care. As long as they all socialized, this should be able to get the team to know and hopefully trust one another. That's what mattered.