As spelled out in title 28, section 553 of the U.S. Code, the presidentially appointed secretary of Metahuman affairs is empowered to create and operate a branch of law enforcement and investigation dealing with matters falling under his or her office. That agency is known as the Department of Extranormal Operations.
The D.E.O is widely believed to possess the most complete archive of information regarding supernormal events and individuals in the world. Their supercomputers and data analysts are able to pull up information regarding any one of a thousand past threats to the world, and tens of thousands of exceptional people, hero and villain alike.
The predecessor to the D.E.O was the Central Bureau of Intelligence. Most of C.B.I.’s functions were rolled into the D.R.O.’s charter at its time of inception, or were famed out to other intelligence agencies. The head of the C.B.I, “King” Faraday; widely regarded as the best intelligence operative of the 20th century, was a natural for the role of the senior director for the new agency.
The organization known as Task Force Delta (or Task Force X), once centrally organized by Office of Strategic Services at the end of World War II, has been resurrected by congressional aid, Amanda Waller, and now has been divided up among the regional branches of D.E.O. It contains such specialized and highly classified units as the Suicide Squad (covert operations), Knightwatch (high-power combat response and security), the Orphanage (Education and Training of Exceptional Youth), the Wabe (Analysis and Containment of Exotic nonhuman terrestrial life), and the Agency; later known as Checkmate (international espionage).
Trivia[]
- Also under the office of metahuman affairs is a substantial research branch, collectively known as the National Metahuman Research Foundation. It funds, in whole or in part, several scientific organizations, including Project Cadmus (meta-genetics), S.T.A.R. Labs (exceptional technologies), and the Institute for Metahuman Studies (Social effects of the metahuman phenomenon). Though not strictly beholden to the D.E.O., the organizations of the N.M.R.F. are often called upon to assist their sister agency.
- In the wake of cataclysmic incidents, there are inevitably individuals who have manifested new exotic abilities as a result of the stress they experienced. D.E.O counsellors are available around the clock to assist these people in adjusting to the new lives they face. The agency may even tender an offer of employment to individuals they feel are suitably gifted and young enough to train.