It’s no secret that Mason International was an exhibitor at the AHA Health Forum Leadership summit this past weekend, nor that the summit took place in San Diego the same weekend as Comic-Con. But the masked vigilante Fury of Solace has suggested that the pharmaceutical company’s attendance at the healthcare conference was just a smokescreen to hide their real agenda: namely, attempting to recruit superheroes to protect their CEO Max Mason from Solace himself.
While Solace was tracking down his own leads, a new player emerged on the scene: the administrator of a conspiracy blog called The Flashlight, who answers only to Uroboros. Uroboros, it appears, has something of a love/hate relationship with Fury of Solace: the blogger wants to see Max Mason brought to justice for his alleged crimes as much as Solace does, but Uroboros does not agree that bloodshed is the answer.
To that end, Uroboros donned a mask of his own, with an eye towards infiltrating Mason International’s supposed superhero recruitment program, and documented his findings through a handful of videos posted on the Flashlight.
Uroboros’ attempt to get information from this low-level Mason International employee was decidedly unsuccessful.
But apparently accosting the poor woman put Uroboros on someone’s radar, because shortly thereafter the conspiracy blogger was approached by a thug who is presumably also in Max Mason’s employ.
After a harrowing escape from the Mason thug, it appeared that Uroboros had obtained solid proof of Mason International’s true designs in San Diego that weekend.
But, like most of his paranoid theories, this latest, too, fell on deaf ears.
After Fury of Solace’s most recent assassination attempt on Max Mason, Mason International unofficially announced on their twitter feed that they had begun interviewing prospective superhero bodyguards for their president and CEO. Not long afterwards, Mason International announced that they would have a booth at this year’s Comic-Con International in San Diego, a first in the company’s long history. Mason International would like people to believe that these two events were unrelated… but Fury of Solace wasn’t having any of it. And he wasn’t the only one.
An obsessive fanof the masked supervillain badgered employees at the Mason International booth, but was promptly asked to leave by Mason’s head of security.
Eyewitness testimony from another convention-goer seemed to confirm that Max Mason was indeed interviewing would-be bodyguards at this year’s Comic-Con, and that the heroes in question were anything but cosplayers.
Late on Saturday morning, Fury of Solace posted a video online voicing his suspicions about Mason International’s presence at Comic-Con.
Fury of Solace was spotted by a number of Comic-Con attendees later that day, sticking mostly to the convention center where he could blend in with the bevy of costumed fans and elude detection by the San Diego PD.
Max Mason himself had put in an appearance on the convention floor only days earlier.
Though his location was a closely guarded secret, Fury of Solace did manage to learn that the millionaire was staying at the Omni (a breach in security which led Mason’s head of security to believe that the villain has a mole inside Mason International).
Loathe to walk the streets of San Diego in broad daylight, but determined to catch Max Mason in the act, Fury of Solace sent out a plea to his thousands of twitter followers, asking any and all of them to see if there were any messages for Mason at the front desk of the Omni. Internet personality Sam Proof (seen above ranting about the strange characters he saw at the Mason International booth) heeded Solace’s call, and relayed to the villain a brief message that was meant for Max Mason: “Sara Ward says to meet her for dinner at 7:15 at Lou and Mickey’s.”
Just after 7 p.m. that night, a purple-clad blond woman (presumably this Sara Ward) was spotted dining on the patio at the same steak and seafood restaurant mentioned in the cryptic message. But before her dinner date arrived, the mysterious woman was accosted by Fury of Solace, in front of an exodus of Comic-Con attendees. After a brief argument, the woman fled, Solace hot on her heels. Thanks to camera-phone clips posted on YouTube by a handful of witnesses, Los Angeles News Broadcaster Starla Carter was able to reconstruct the chase that ensued through the streets of San Diego.
The chase culminated with this Sara Ward disappearing seemingly into thin air. Perhaps literally, as some witnesses will attest: word has it that Ward flew away from her pursuer under her own power.
As soon as the Orphan received reports of Solace’s presence in San Diego, she braved Comic-Con traffic to try and get there in time to apprehend her arch-nemesis. But by the time she arrived on Saturday night, the drama that had unfolded that evening on the streets of San Diego’s Gaslamp District was long over. And even a world-famous do-gooder like Los Angeles’ sworn protector would not be admitted into the convention center without a badge.
Click the image below for a timeline of the events as they unfolded on twitter, in reverse chronological order.
Thanks to the the help of a handful of civic-minded members of the twitter community, the Orphan decoded Fury of Solace’s password-protected video detailing his plans to eliminate President and CEO of Mason International, Max Mason. This is what she found:
