The 2004 Thorn League (2004)
The 2004 iteration of the League of Extraordinary Investigators should never have existed. Though this sentiment was only constructed with the gift of hindsight, it nevertheless should have been obvious to the many institutions responsible for the group's creation that such a league was all but doomed to dysfunction for a host of undeniable and alarming reasons. Before these issues can be explored and described in detail the circumstances surrounding the league's conception must be explored first.
The early 2000's would unfortunately mirror the 1990's in regard to proliferation of once thought to be destroyed monsters returning en mass. In 2002, the Shape of Haddonfield succeeded in finally slaying his sister, Laurie Strode. Similarly, the transformed serial killer Charles Lee Ray returned on to the scene in 2004, this time as part of family assemble of killer dolls. Even some of the 1994 FBI League's constant foes, like the masked serial persona of Ghostface and the comical Jack Frost, returned to commit another round of murder sprees in the first year of the millennial in 2000.
These reemergences and others, along with the tragic events that occurred in Raccoon City that forced the US government to utterly destroy the zombie infested city with a thermobaric missile, inevitably prompted the FBI and the US government to once again restart the LXI program to deal with the apparent rise in supernatural activity that was plaguing the nation. While many long-time officials familiar with the LXI project feared a repeat of the failure of the 1990's League, the increasingly powerful and influential long-time Ambassador to Great Britain, Damien Thorn, was able to leverage enough of his lingering pull from his days as an aide to President Ronald Reagan to force the committee that was debating the need of a new league to immediately give the new iteration the go ahead for activation and recruitment.
Despite his ambassadorial duties, Thorn somehow managed to have a considerable amount of influence when it came to deciding who would join this new League of Extraordinary Investigators. Though many of Thorn's suggestions for the league were rightfully considered by veteran FBI agents and other US officials to be dangerous liabilities rather than assets, their refrains were largely ignored, resulting in several notorious criminals and outright monsters being assigned to the 2000's League. Regardless of the unease and suspicion that many had this iteration of the LXI program it would nevertheless come about despite immense reservations. The members of these ultimately disastrous and ill-formed League were:
Members
Leon S. Kennedy: Something of a legend amongst the S.T.A.R.S. task force in the wake of his heroic actions during the tragedy in Raccoon City in 2003, Kennedy was selected to led the new LXI team on account of his nigh unbelievable rescue of US President Roger Graham's daughter from the Los Iluminados cult. Though a more than capable officer and detective, Kennedy found wrangling this incarnation of the league to be a challenge that he quickly found himself unable to truly contend with.
John Kramer: The infamous killer known as Jigsaw was likely the second if not most infamous member of this iteration for the LXI. Once a normal, if highly intelligent, engineer, Kramer went insane when his unborn son died in the womb due to his wife's assault, a tragedy that was compounded by his own cancer diagnosis. Due these tragedies he went to become feared throughout the US as a serial killer obsessed with not only complex traps but also for forcing people, he deemed unworthy of their lives to fight for them in games of morality and survival. While an incredibly effective killer who was deftly able to use intellect and acolytes to evade capture years, Kramer was eventually caught by the FBI and gang-pressed to service the LXI.
Herbert West: A former member of Thorn's first attempt at creating a League of his own, West's assignment to the group was essentially a given. West was a former medical student at the infamous Miskatonic University whose experiments in the esoteric study of "scientific necromancy" led to not only two localized zombie outbreaks but also his rise to fame and infamy as the "Reanimator." This morbid renown led to West being recruited into Thorn's League in the 1980s but given that group's failure in its first mission and subsequent dissolution, West was forced to once again flee governmental authorities once he lost Thorn's protection. West would once again need said protection in 2003 when he was caught by police and sentenced to life imprisonment. In exchange for a commute of his sentence, West was offered a position in Thorn's new league, an opportunity the scientist readily took up.
Annie Wheaton: One of the few survivors of the now infamous Rose Red expedition of 2002 that saw several psychics attempt to investigate the haunted residence in Seattle, Washington. In same vein of the 70s LXI member Carrie White, Wheaton possessed telekinetic powers that allowed her to contend with not various supernatural threats despite her young age at the. Though this made her undeniably powerful, her young age and mental impairments made her inclusion in the league a decision that few in the FBI considered prudent, never mind her guardian's desire she not join it. However, these concerns were quickly swept away and her duction in the league accelerated by the manipulation of Thorn, who was adamant that she become a part of the League.
Sebastian Caine: Formerly a molecular biologist working on a secret military experiment that tried to reengineer the serum that made Hawley Griffin invisible, Caine not only succeeded in recreating the formula but also Griffin's depraved criminal spree. Having made himself a test subject for the serum, Caine's already fragile mental health only became more fractured once he gained the power of invisibility and found it impossible to change back. Though his original teammates tried to stop him, the madman not only killed them but also escaped the facility in which the experiment was talking place, allowing him free reign to terrorize the country. Although Caine was eventually caught by governmental authorities and forced into joining the assembling LXI project, his sanity had only deteriorated further.
Brigitte Fitzgerald: A Canadian citizen who had been generously "loaned out" by Canada's own LXI equivalent to serve in the United States, Fitzgerald's origins were especially tragic. Infected by her own sister with the lupine curse, Fitzgerald went through a similar, if mildly more controllable, transformation into a werewolf. Notably, another Canadian teenage werewolf by name of Thomas P. Dawkins was also considered for a spot in the League but was passed over for Fitzgerald. As it turned out, Thorn was once again responsible for this decision, the ambassador apparently wanting a more "feral" and "wild" werewolf to be part of the League.
Team Dynamics – Utterly Disastrous. While the 90's LXI team lacked deep comraderies due to its divided nature and the 70's squad was afflicted with an intense rivalry, the LXI of the new millennium was something else entirely. Hindsight shows that the league was more or less without a single healthy personal relationship, with the only possible exception to this rule being the almost familial bond between team leader Leon Kennedy and the young psychic Annie Wheaton, the former in all likelihood having seen it as his responsibility to protect Wheaton as best as he was able given the dire circumstances she had been bizarrely forced to be apart of. Beyond them the rest of the League's relations were fraught and contentious.
Despite Kennedy's best efforts, he struggled to lead a team that had a volatile teenage werewolf, an infamous scientist, an ingenious serial killer, an invisible stalker, and a psychic adolescent as members of its lineup. In particular, Kramer seemed to subtly try to undermine Kennedy's already weak grip on the unharmonious group by utilizing his almost supernatural abilities of manipulation to turn some of the League's already volatile members (Caine, Fitzgerald) against him. Similarly, a decidedly self-interested West was a difficult figure for Kennedy to control given his formidable intellect and pride, while the aforementioned Fitzgerald and Caine were seemingly almost always on the verge of directly disobeying Kennedy's orders.
Cases
- The first case of the league took them to an obscure part of the Appalachians where several disappears had taken place. While the disappearances of hikers and spelunkers was not uncommon for the area, sightings of pale-skinned creatures around various cave mouths did concern the FBI given the monsters similarities to the C.H.U.D. mutants that once terrorized underground New York City in the 80s. The team first tried to track the creatures using the heighted senses of Fitzgerald's werewolf form but found the teen apprehensive about shifting. With no other recourse, the team used an experimental pheromone bait synthesized by West to attract the creatures to a kill zone filled with Kramer's traps. The plan would turn out to be overly successfully as dozens of the "crawlers" assailed the league and overwhelmed Kramer's traps despite them thinning their numbers. If not for the powers of Wheaton and Fitzgerald the monsters likely would have overwhelmed the league entirely. Unfortunately, while the crawlers were seemingly defeated, both a feral Fitzgerald and an opportunistic Caine used the chaos of the attack to escape into the Appalachian wilderness. Although both were eventually recaptured by the FBI, it would only be after the two went on separate criminal sprees, with Fitzgerald having slaughtered nearly thirty people while in her werewolf form, a fact that left the teenager riddled with guilt once she regained her humanity.
- Numerous bizarre and especially gruesome deaths in an apartment building in Chicago, Illinois, prompted the league to investigate the area for any supernatural activity. They would quickly find it after Wheaton's psychic abilities picked up the presence of an apparition haunting the apartment complex. An overnight stay at the most haunted apartment in building would see the league plagued by strange visions and heated emotions that nearly set the already fractured group in a internecine frenzy, with West and Kramer engaging in a battle of wits that soon turned into a philosophical screaming match while Fitzgerald nearly lost control of her human form several times throughout the night. This strife would only be broken up by the league being confronted by a family of murderous apparitions revealing themselves and their intent to kill the investigators. Like with the crawler case, the deadly spirits nearly overwhelmed the league, being only barely repelled by Wheaton's powers while the other members of the league being largely powerless against a quasi-material foe. Realizing their odds, Kennedy attempted to get the group to retreat from the apartment. Fortunately for him and the rest of the investigators it turned that the three spirits or "onryō" attacking them were not the only supernatural threats plaguing the building. Just as Kennedy was about to killed by one of the spirit another rival onryō entered the apartment through a television set and began to assault the three spirits in what would be later estimated to be some kind of territorial dispute. Though confused by the new arrival, Kennedy was quick to exploit it and evacuated his league from the apartment. Afterwards, a specialist group from New York City would be tasked to deal with the feuding spirits, much to the chagrin of the league's dissatisfied handlers.
- The last major mission of the league would turn out to be an unmitigated disaster. Though tasked by Thorn himself to go to the town of Silent Hill to ostensibly determine the cause of the mysterious mist that permanently surrounded the town, the truth was that Thorn wished to either co-opt or destroy the cult that resided in the town. In particular, he was determined to see 'The Order' of its god, which he saw a possible for his own "infernal" designs of the world. Unknowing of any of this, Kennedy would assign Caine to "infiltrate" the town and return with information on its layout and current activity When he did not return, Kennedy assumed the worst and attempted to mount a rescue mission for the missing invisible man, a plan that both Kramer and West balked at but were wrangled into it. Said plan would fall part almost immediately with the whole team being quickly shallowed by town's supernatural mist and separated. This made them easy pickings for not only the remaining cultists that lived in the town, but also for the various monsters that populated in the wake of the eldritch disaster that warped it. Though Kennedy and be the last of his team taken by the town's monsters, he too would eventually be caught and bought to the main lair of the Order. There, he and the rest of the league would discover that Caine had indeed been captured by the Order and had even been skinned by them in an elaborate ritual. The rest of the league would have been suffered a similar fate if not for Wheaton's abilities suddenly becoming overcharged due to the presence of a spirt that apparently sought the cult's destruction. With the cult distracted by the spirits of those they had slain over the years, the league was narrowly able to fight their way out of the cult's lair and make it out of Silent Hill. Given not only the death of Caine as well as the league's utter failure to perform a vital mission in Thorn's future plans, the US ambassador opted to dismantle the league entirely once its ragged survivors returned to LXI headquarters and instead turn to be more effective catspaws.
Final Fates
Kennedy would return to Division of Security Operations where he would be heavily involved in the organization's efforts to investigate and stop domestic and foreign bioterrorism. He would also be involved in the eventual downfall of the infernal Thorn regime in 2006 during the June Rebellion.
Kramer would finally die of his cancer in 2006 but not before recruiting several more apprentices and assigning them numerous final missions that would lead to a rash of copycat murders that would continue for more than a decade.
West would disappear entirely with only sporadic unsubstantiated sightings throughout the 2000s, the most notable being his possible connection to a confined reanimation outbreak in a Los Angeles apartment building in 2008.
Wheaton returned to her sister's care but would eventually come into contact with Carrie White and Tina Shepard and join their school for psychics after nearly being lured to the town of Derry, Maine. Notably, she would meet Kennedy again in 2006 when she and several other psychics joined the alliance that overthrew Thorn in the June Rebellion.
Like West, Fitzgerald would disappear from the FBI's auspice for some time after the league's final mission but she would eventually be spotted near her hometown of Bailey Downs, Ontario, having completely succumbed to her werewolf infection. Carmilla Karnstein and Martin Mystery, agents of Canada's LXI's equivalent, would be the ones to finally put her down.
Denouement – As mentioned at the beginning of this entry, this final iteration of the LXI initiative should never have been created. It's many glaring liabilities in its membership, and the strange circumstances surrounding its every conception, should have served as an immediate cause for its termination. Unfortunately, that was not the case. Instead, the 2000's LXI spent its singular year of activation going from one troubled mission to next. The ones that didn't end in failure would later turn out to be largely to the benefit of the League's benefactor Damien Thorn, whose infernal true nature would be revealed to the world in 2006. While the details of Thorn's attempted to usurpation of the Presidency and demonic murder spree cannot be explained in great detail in this account, its occurrence does shed some light on many of the League's actions and unusual mission assignments. It's fallout also helps explain that the rash of demonic possessions that were so prevalent in the 2010s…