META Facility outside Boston destroyed

[Devilpants]

Just west of Boston, near Waltham, META built a facility. This facility is now in ruins.

It happened at about 3 AM, on October 24th of 2022. At first, nobody was sure what the cause was. First one beam of bright blue-green light from space hit the facility and punched through the roof, but caused very little real damage. This prompted an evacuation from both the facility and the nearby Waltham homes.

Minutes later, a second beam hit, this one several orders of magnitude more powerful. It started at the main building before drifting north, annihilating both the main building and the previously concealed underground complex.

Photos and video of the event were spread across the internet immediately, the first major successful attack on a META facility since the agency’s founding, but with no fatalities and minimal injuries. Just the building itself and the equipment within were destroyed.

Some thought it was an attack by a foreign government with an experimental orbital weapons platform, but people were barely given any time to speculate before the culprit took credit, posting videos on multiple platforms, from multiple accounts.

In the video, Kenneth “Beacon” Welles, founding member of the New York based superhero team the Rivals, claimed credit for the attack. In a minutes-long rant about anti-mutant discrimination and oppression, he announced it was time for mutants join him, to rise up and take back their lives. The “unpowered,” as he put it, would no longer dictate the rights and lives of those who did not ask to be born differently.

This immediately sparked a wave of debate across the nation. Anti-mutant discrimination became an even hotter topic than it was before, with anti-mutant hate groups arming and organizing and openly calling for violence in retaliation, forcing mutant aid organizations – such as shelters and schools – to prepare for even more violence against them than normal.

Overnight, Beacon became the most wanted man in the United States. Tungsten, another founder of the Rivals and its current leader, denounced Beacon’s violent approach and emphasized that only through peace and unity would humans and mutants learn to coexist. Protests are expected to last well into November, and META has put its other facilities on high alert, as well as issued warrants for Beacon’s arrest.