Avenger Assembled

Fcfcfc! "I'm not-I am gay!" The words burst out of Ashley before she could take them back - and for a moment she and her sister had identical expressions of open-mouthed surprise. "Wait, _what_?" demanded Judy, pulling back from Leroy to stare up at her bodyguard. Ashley looked for a moment like she wanted to disappear into the ground. "I...well, I am actually bisexual," she said, her skin flushing. "So I guess not gay, but definitely not straight. I'm sorry, Judy," she said apologetically, "I didn't mean to lie to you." "You didn't mean to lie to me!?" exclaimed Judy. "Ah asked you to your face when we first met if you were gay and you told me no! Ah understand if you thought you couldn't trust me then, but you know you can trust me now!" You are a seventeen-year-old child who wants to run away and marry a dragon prince! thought Ashley. What she said was "It was not actually the first time. And...at the time, I thought of myself as straight, but since then I've had some experiences off-campus and on my own time," she added heatedly, "and, uh, well, I am not afraid to say that...I am a bisexual woman." She said the last part tentatively, even as she realized inside her head she'd never said the words out loud before. In front of a bunch of teenagers. Including the President's daughter. FC!

"Leroy, darling, Ah would be happy to stand by your side. As for more secrets..." Judy looked up at Ashley, whose reserve broke to give her a questioning look. After a moment's pause, Judy said with a sigh, "Well, um, this is a bad one, Ah guess, but Ashley isn't actually-" "No!" said Ashley firmly, stepping close and not quite taking Judy by the shoulders. "We...are not discussing my sex life with your friends, now or ever." "It was for a good reason!" Judy insisted. "You didn't want a lot of creepy teenage boys making passes at you, and Ah understand that! You know, Ah never would have gone to the GSA if Ashley hadn't suggested it for her disguise," she said in her friend's defense. "And you know how much going there changed mah life!" she added.

The birds flew around and around the group, not directly hostile but certainly still agitated. Her weapon out, Watchdog was clearly contemplating chucking another grenade into the flock before it spoke again. "Gifts!" squawked the flock. "And friends!" They landed amid Mia's bread and began digging away at it, fifty thousand eyes watching the teen heroes as if expecting them to go for them at any moment. Watchdog was doing the math on her fingers, wondering if she was going to tell this story to Fa'Rua...or not. "Okay. So without humans on Earth, the Grue took over the Lor, and they rule the galaxy. F*ckin Grue, amirite? But the...the telepathic pigeons chased them away. Okay. Okay." Thank God I can't smell! "We feast!" came a great mass song from around Mia's bread, and certainly the pigeons seemed to have dived right into the mass. Now they were all surrounded by tens of thousands of singing, eagerly gobbling pigeons - with the exception of those still watching Davyd.

Initiative time! The monster gets 11

It was indeed getting hot. Oh, I'll help you. First, I need to get you out of that sweaty uniform, though... This sort of thing didn't exactly help Ashley go to sleep. But she spent a long time thinking about things beside her job, her ward, and the superheroes of Freedom City. It was a very good night.

Cheval opened the door to what had been the master bedroom. To a scene of writhing. There'd been a battle here too, or maybe a massacre - char marks on the floor from multiple explosions, showers of gore and organic things, broken litter from beds and debris, but the organic things were writhing together in a slow, sickening motion like pieces of red quicksilver slowly merging together. But it was clear no single body was reforming, multiple smashed forms were rebuilding themselves into one single, writhing mass. As the heroes looked on, the mass seemed to sense their presence, rising organic tentacles 'sniffing the air' as they wriggled their way towards the broken door with a wet, unholy sound.

There was a notable pause as Ashley took a moment on her phone to try and work out exactly how far that was. She wasn't really sure of her math when she was done, just that it was 'really f$(#ing far'. I guess people like to have tribes. I still have cousins on both sides who don't like that my sisters and I are Eurasian. Personally, I believe in reaching out to new people and new places. She bit her lip and looked around, reminding herself that even if somebody did come into the living room, they weren't going to look at her phone. So... Are you in uniform, Scout?

The upstairs looked like a bomb had gone off in the half-rebuilt grand hallway - and come to think of it, from the damage and distinctly crimson splatter on the walls, one probably had. There were parts of what might have been something up here - bloody bones and tattered flesh, the epicenter somewhere near the top of the once-ornate stairs. There was an open window here, the chill wind the only thing that cut the distinct scent of gore and rotting flesh. The couple of upstairs bedrooms were empty and in fact completely unfurnished, but the bathrooms had a distinct slaughterhouse smell about them. But they were nothing before what had once been the master bedroom, its door hanging loosely on its hinges, and the distinct sound of wet, sinuous movement inside. There was a single bloody handprint on the doorknob.

"No!" said Judy immediately, her tan skin coloring slightly. "Mah parents are not racist," she said with feeling. "Maybe they're not...'woke' like some people here," she said, making quotes with her fingers for that last word, 'but that doesn't make them racist, just because they, um..." She took a breath. "And my mom is Comanche, technically, but she's funny about it. They wouldn't like Leroy because Leroy's very...not like normal people," she said, giving her boyfriend an apologetic look. "But that's what Ah love about him!" she added, giving him a long hug.

Sounds exactly like my mom. She considered a lot of things about her mom and how she herself had grown up, first in a conservative immigrant neighborhood, then in a conservative part of the Cajun South. I honestly don't know how my mom would react if I said "I'm dating an Amazon from space." She'd explained what an Amazon was when they were actually together, under better circumstances. I envy you. she admitted. If you want to be with someone, you can just do it, and not worry about who they are, or what people will think about it. Speaking of which, how far _are_ you from Earth, exactly?

"Ah decided Ah was tired of lying to everybody," said Judy immediately. "It wasn't right to begin with, and Ah wasn't gonna keep doing it even after Ah knew Ah could trust y'all." It was the heaviest her Southern accent had been yet - and also the closest she'd come to actually criticizing her parents. Ashley considered saying something about how this was _not_ what she'd signed up for - but Judy had it hard enough as it was, and this was her moment, anyway. "It was Judy's call to make, not mine," she finally said with a small shrug. "I don't really know where I'll go after this." "A lot depends on next year," said Judy softly. "If we're still here, if Daddy's still President..." She shook her head, then admitted, "Ah think Leroy wants us to live on his homeworld when we're married."

Cheval broke down the door - and immediately discovered a body. The corpse was male, this one dressed in a chef's whites, and stabbed through the back. No, _shot_ - the jagged-tipped bolt that protruded from the center of the man's chest had gone so far through his back that the bulk of it was coming out the front. Turning around, there was an extra body part here. The body part that Cheval had nearly stumbled over coming in was a head - a man's head, that had been placed directly in front of the door when he entered. It looked as if the head had been chopped free with a hatchet. Of course, now that he was spending so much time looking at the heads, Cheval could spot there was something peculiar here. Both the dead chef and the bodiless head had decidedly inhuman features - long bat ears and rat-like teeth, and bulging, staring eyes frozen in an instant of pain. He was standing in the foyer of the half-reconstructed house, plastic sheets and stripped paneling everywhere - and the spirits for a moment showed him the house alive, unholy symbols on the walls as pale, decadent guests in the fashion of decades long past danced as sinisterly off-key music played - and then it was gone, and all was still again. Except for somewhere in the house, the distant sounds of wet, slippery movement (which seemed to come from above) and a slow, methodical chink-chink of metal from somewhere lower down in the body of the house.

There's lots of Earth I'd like to show you. Food that's better than bar snacks, music that's better than Old Town Road. Places where you can actually enjoy the scenery and not worry somebody's gonna blow it up. She talked more - telling her about the Vietnamese neighborhoods in New Orleans East, where the food was always good and the streets were familiar, and dragon parades and fireworks for Tet. Ashley had loved her home neighborhood intensely, and had been bitterly disappointed when her mother and sisters had moved away when she was about Ju'Deth's age. I haven't been back there in ages. More fun with a date. She thought about that for a minute, reaching down to absently scratch behind the ears of a passing German Shepard, who responded by whumfing down next to the couch. My mom doesn't know I have a girlfriend.

Anyone who rolls more than a 20 on Notice can spot Woodsman's bike - It's

"No, Leroy, Ah don't think we can," said Judy, earning a surprised look from Ashley that the latter quickly stifled. "My parents would never approve of me marrying somebody like you," she said with a long, deep sigh. "The way things are, it wouldn't work." She reached down and took Leroy's hands. "That's why what we need to do is get your mother here to Earth-Prime."

If you need initiative, Rocket Lord: watchdog: 17 Daystar: 11

"It's probably not even real!" Ashley hissed loudly at Pan. "And even if it is, you can't just go mucking around in the past!!" Dammit, where was that Boston asshole when she needed him? Judy closed her eyes - and when Daystar opened them, they were glowing. "We can't just...we can't just watch these people die!" She looked at Ashley as she ignited. "I can hear them!"

@RocketLord, Cheval notices a trail of gore leading from the Hummer towards the nearest door of the house.

The inside of the Hummer was full of blood. And other things. There were, Persephone judged, two bodies. One was almost discreet in its own way. She could make out a collared shirt, open at the neck, and a gold chain hanging down between muscular pectorals, what had once been fine jewelry on his hands, fine pants and polished leather shoes. She couldn't make out anything in great detail, though, because this man's head was gone, gore from the red ruin of his neck having spilled out everywhere. The other body wasn't so discreet. The young woman had been a partygoer perhaps, though the cool weather of a Vibora November meant she was wearing a jacket over her shirt and pants. If a head had been removed from the other, other things entirely had been removed from this one - there was little left between the ribs and the pelvis. Brown eyes frozen stared at Persephone, and freshly dried blood glistened everywhere. There was no answer to Cheval's call but the silence of the night.

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Judy smiled thinly, thinking about how boys were the same even if they did have tentacles and a beak. (Leroy was an exception, of course.) At least she could relax more around Ben, which was nice. Ben, Thanks again for your message, but I've got to get back to studying. I could use extra arms when trying to write these papers, ha-ha! If you do still want to come worship with us, we meet after the chapel at 10 every Sunday morning. Your friend, Judy She sent the message, still thinking. "Do you think he's on drugs?"

Ugh. I made it get heavy. Well they couldn't all be conversations about what the other was wearing. Though Ashley was curious. She bit her lip, and remembered telling Fa'Rua that she'd never actually done anything like this before, and how much she'd enjoyed that. Pleasantly warmed by the memory, she wrote back: Lots of stuff out in the dark can eat you if you turn your back on it. Just gotta be ready with a rock. It wasn't universally applicable advice, she supposed, but it had certainly worked for her in the past. Then there's the multiverse, and don't get me started on that #)($. Universe where everyone's a cannibal, universe where the Terminus got everyone, it's the worst. How long do you think you'll be in the Scout Corps?

Torque spotted something hissing in the grass like a discarded firecracker - but when she approached, it suddenly exploded with a distinct and fiery bang! The blast wasn't strong enough to hurt the robotic shifter but she could feel the heat from what must have been a powerful chemical reaction, and watch the flame as it began to lick across the dry, half-dead grass of the lawn.

Gonna wait on everybody else one more day

Doctor Tomorrow Tomorrow's eyes lit up. "This must be Nicholas! Hello!" he said, practically bubbling with excitement at the sight of the other man, who got a very firm handshake from the famous time traveler. He paused momentarily to remove his gloves, then signed at Vox in ASL: I can talk this way if you prefer. There was a tactical advantage to things like hiding your command of a particular language from an enemy, but Tomorrow lived by the idea that friends weren't enemies. "Are you well? Is there anything I can get for you boys?"