I thought it might be helpful to have a post detailing the contents of the cape mission series, since some of it is a little unconventional, and, for some builds, downright difficult. Here is what I found on my quest for a cape.
Step 1: Visit the city representative in City Hall in Atlas Park. She is your contact for the missions. If you are over 30, the first mission she offers you unlocks the auras. I assume that, if you are between 20 and 30, she just offers the cape mission. She tells you to talk to people who were touched by Hero 1.
Step 2: You now visit three NPCs in succession. For me, they were in King's Row, Skyway City, and Independence Port. This is very straightforward-- Just follow your waypoints and read their stories. When you finish, return to the city representative.
Step 3: Now comes the tricky part. The city representative asks you to go see a time capsule left behind by the Omega Team. You will get a mission that assigns you to defeat all the villains in the area, and protect the capsule.
The "Protect the capsule" part is the twist. You can do the first two floors normally, but on the third level of the mission, the Ritki will begin to attack the capsule as soon as you encounter them. Watch for them to say something like, "Destroy the capsule!"
You will need to keep them from destroying the capsule by killing them first. To make matters more difficult, they will open a portal in the room and port more Ritki in.
Clearly, this will be rough on a slow-killing build. So, my first reccomendation is that non-solo friendly builds group up for this mission.
My second reccomendation is not to make the group too big, so that the number of Ritki doesn't get too high to control. With a full team, they could do significant damage to the capsule with their alpha strike before you could lock them all down. Two or three should be good.
If you have a tanker or scrapper in the group, it will be helpful for them to try to grab aggro from as many Ritki as possible before beginning to killing them. The Ritki aren't that focused on the capsule, and it will help greatly if you can limit the damage it takes.
Then, concentrate on taking down the portal. Once it's down, you're ready to mop up the remaining Ritki.
With my Katana/Regen Scrapper, I had a few tense moments, but got through by myself without too much trouble.
Once the mission is over, return to the city representative. You will get a yellow message saying, "Capes Available," and can now go to Icon and pick one out.
That's my experience with the mission. I found it exciting to have a new sort of goal, and a mission that presented more challenge than usual, but I didn't want people to be taken by surprise by the new objective.
If anyone wants to add their thoughts, or post a walkthrough for what happens if you fail this mission, please feel free.
