Team M.E.C.H.A.

Team M.E.C.H.A. is the titular team of Team M.E.C.H.A., who fight mech battles and cross over with other series a lot, including Dvandom Force as part of the Grand Tour crossover. They operate out of Springfield in southwestern Missouri.

Initial Membership

The founding members of Team M.E.C.H.A. were:

• Mike, who found an abandoned military base full of mechs in the Ozarks. Becomes the team's leader by default.
• Summer, his teenage sister, who loves superheroines and wanted to be one. Later powered up by nanomachines, merging her with her hardsuit and allowing her to morph into various machines and interface with computers.
• Adam Douglas, power-armored freedom fighter, son of ex-special forces officer Fairbanks Douglas.
• Lincoln 'Link' Douglas, his brother.
• Sarah Conner (no relation), Adam's girlfriend. Actually the princess of the magical kingdom of Terrania, who becomes a magic user herself

They wielded mechs including the Bahamode motorcycles which combine into the mighty Bahamode Sigma!

Over time, they were joined by:

• Ray Sterling, Veritech pilot who comes from a Robotech-based dimension. (And who moved on from the team after the Industrial Revolution, see below.)
• Doctor Odd Science, mad scientist who has a real doctorate, thank you very much, unlike his villainous cousins Weird and Pseudo.
• Princess Ariella, Sarah's twin sister who was raised in Terrania.
• Roger, a thief and Ariella's fiancee.

Their early enemies included the diabolical Doctor Zwarghoff and Admiral Morgan (the Most Evil Woman in the Universe). Perhaps most prominent were the farm punks turned evil sentai, the Mighty Muddy Power Grangers, who Team M.E.C.H.A. took on in a massive chaotic battle in Bob City alongside many other heroes.

Industrial Revolution and Grand Tour

When the Industrial Revolution – a devastating conflict between science heroes and mages sparked by the actions of the mage Radian – broke out, Team M.E.C.H.A. was in the thick of it. Adam joined the magic-exterminating Revolutionaries, seeking revenge for his mother who was killed by a mage, while the rest of the team tried to stop them. Fallout from the Revolution led to the team temporarily disbanding.

During the hiatus, Summer went to Austin to join the Teen Team, Adam went on a spiritual journey where he learned to use a kind of magic, Ariella and Roger got married in Terrania, and Mike went to college and took on a fellow student who was building explosives, which led to him putting back together a provisional version of Team M.E.C.H.A.

Post-hiatus, the team was joined by:

• Phobos, AKA Mason Kramer, power-armored hero formerly of the Teen Team, who'd started dating Summer
• Jenny, the Teen Team's AI, who'd been programmed by Mason and granted sentience by Summer; she works alongside both teams.
• Superchick, AKA Pinto Sally, formerly of the Grangers, who'd fallen in love with Link.
• Spectrum, AKA Lawrence Brown, disgraced hero who'd aided Team M.E.C.H.A. in the battle of Bob City and fought them in the Revolution, who turned to them for help after his original armor was stolen by lemurs.

Not long after the team was reestablished, they found themselves entangled with the Looniverse thanks to the schemes of DeFacto V. This led to the Grand Tour storyline, which crossed over Team M.E.C.H.A. not only with Dvandom Force but with many other internet fiction groups Chris Meadows and friends wrote for. Mike, Summer, and Mason ran into their counterparts in several of those worlds.

Summer was integral to defeating DeFacto V using the mind-combat skills she'd picked up in the RoboMACs 2163 world, aided by a psychic afterimage of her RoboMACs Exodus counterpart. However, DeFacto "killed" the other Summer in her mind, which would have an enduring traumatic impact. Though Summer lost her conscious memory of this due to Kopikat's MAC-Smasher program that took down DeFacto, the knowledge of what had happened still remained deep inside her.

The Irregulars

These guys are a bunch of losers who even the LNH would think twice about admitting.

— Lorrie Thomas, The Irregulars #2

When Team M.E.C.H.A. came back from hiatus, they held an open audition for potential new members. It was a disaster, flooded by a crowd of confused would-be heroes with silly powers. To get them off their back, Mike instituted a support team which would include some of them – the Irregulars!

They are:

• Lorrie Thomas, a girl who was transformed into a squirrel, who became a squirrel who can transform into a girl! She is the sister of Larry Thomas, the College Anarchist, and helped Mike defeat him. Became leader of the Irregulars.
• Joe Moore, Mike's college friend; joined the provisional Team M.E.C.H.A. but mostly ended up hanging around with the Irregulars.
• Alex, brother of the 000SUPERGUY version of Chris Meadows.
• Colgate Pump, who fights evil with the power of toothpaste!
• Pedestrian Man, with the power to manipulate traffic lights!
• Amana Man, who wears powered armor built of washing machines!
• Argon, with the power to not react to other elements!
• Unnoticeable Man, with the power to be unnoticed and forgotten about by anyone who comes into contact with him... ah... what were we talking about again?

And Perpetually-Late Man, who can never make it to the meetings on time.

They protected Team M.E.C.H.A.'s stomping grounds in Springfield while the main protagonists were jumping around parallel worlds.

After the Tour

Once the massive and prolonged Grand Tour was completed, the series eschewed any further crossovers. However, the impact of the crossovers with the Looniverse and the RoboMACs world would continue through story arcs to come.

Shortly after the Tour, they were joined by:

• Lita, a cyborg who appeared to be an extradimensional counterpart of Summer, who was found in a junkyard and rebuilt by Doctor Odd Science. Dr. Science considered her his adopted daughter and was reluctant to let her join Team M.E.C.H.A., but naturally, she did.

Summer figured out that Doctor Science's fear of Lita joining in was motivated by guilt over something he was hiding. It turned out he'd concealed the true nature of the nanites that had created her: they were the RoboMAC nanoplague, sent across dimensions from De Facto's body by a warp created when the time loop that led to his origin was broken.

The first enemies Lita faced on the team were the forces of the shadowy techno-terrorist PenumbralPerson (tm), who had an unexpected ally – another villain originating from the Looniverse, the Master of the Net! The Master created a computer virus which killed Summer, fragmenting her consciousness; Jenny sacrificed her life to save Summer, giving back the parts of Summer that she'd given to her.

In the process, the virus took on a life of its own, becoming a being called Eris (no relation) who took over Lita's body. Summer defeated Eris in cybernetic combat with the help of an intelligence called Chet. She was able to reconstruct Jenny, Chet, who was actually a RoboMAC named Comlink whose memories she'd inadvertently absorbed, and PenumbralPerson, who was actually Penny, a teenage girl engineer from another universe. Together, their minds moved in with Jenny into the Team M.E.C.H.A. mainframe.

Second Hiatus and After

After the emotionally exhausting battle with Eris, Team M.E.C.H.A. ended up taking a break for several years. Mike went to work at a radio station. Dr. Science began studying the RoboMAC technology they'd gathered from the Grand Tour. Summer and the Irregulars picked up the slack, now joined by Jenny and Comlink in new RoboMAC bodies. Things were pretty quiet during this period...

Until a mysterious thief named Sherry Chaser showed up to steal the supposedly cursed Hopeless Diamond – a thief who strongly resembled Summer! Sherry and her accomplices had their own MAC – K-Flight, which took the form of a helicopter – leading Mike to dust off his mecha and rejoin the fray. His teammates were called back in and they found that the thieves had been hired by none other than Dr. Zwarghoff!

Sherry was actually Summer's biological sister, who Zwarghoff had used as a pawn to lure her in. She and her band of thieves escaped Zwarghoff to aid Team M.E.C.H.A. and the Irreglars, and<more>

Additional Notes

For more information, see the Superguy webpage.

And no, "M.E.C.H.A." doesn't actually stand for anything.