Avenger Assembled
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"Oh, the teachers are all very nice," said Judy immediately, "and there are lots of nice people. Ah think Ah'm actually getting to know people, and that's good." Aware of what she hadn't said, she finally said, "Did you know a lot of super-people before you came here?" she asked. "Like, did you grow up around them?" When she got a negative response to that, she said, "Ah saw a few superheroes when, uh, Ah was a kid, but Ah'm from a totally different world." She swam, then stopped for a breath at the end of the pool. "Almost everybody here acts like their powers are some wonderful gift from God. Even the nice girls like Danica, this is the best thing that ever happened to them." She clutched the side of the pool, then said, "My powers ruined my life. The only reason Ah'm here is because Ah needed help not dying from them, or hurting anybody else." There were other reasons, but she sure as hell wasn't going to share those with Corinne only a few minutes after learning her last name.
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A somewhat bleary-eyed Comrade Frost was waiting for Mr. Murk inside the club, nursing a glass of (of all things) honest blood kindly provided by the club's substantial larder. The days-old pigs blood tasted monumentally foul and had been warmed in a microwave but truthfully Frost appreciated both things. It was never good to relax too much in a place such as this, or enjoy your meal too well. "Murk! Come, sit, we shall tell you such tales," he called out, knowing full well that his companions would not be far away. His body hurt, and so did what passed for his soul - but truthfully the outing at Murk's hand had been far from a defeat. Even if he would hardly admit such a thing on his face.
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"Dancing is nice, Ah-um, Ah've known people who were great dancers." She paused for a moment, almost lost her place in the water, then resumed swimming. "Ah used to ride horses," she said, "but they don't have a good equestrian program here, and we can't go that far outside the city just for me." She fell silent for a little while after that, conducting a full lap, tense at having said so much about herself before she said, "Ah heard they're gonna do target shooting with the intramural teams, that'll be nice. Don't tell Ashley," she said with a wink, "but Ah'm actually a better shot than she is." She knew that to be true, target practice with her erstwhile sister having been one of several means of bonding they'd tried.
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"Hi, Leroy!" said Judy with a ready smile. She looked cheerful this afternoon, her denim tutu dress oddly fitting her tanned complexion and long, dark hair. As usual she wore just a little tasteful makeup, gold cross gleaming around her neck. "Thanks for talking to me." She took a seat opposite Leroy and looked him over, setting her small packet of books and pamphlets down between them. "Well, um, why don't you tell me how you'd like to start?" she offered. "If Ah'm gonna talk to you about this, Ah want to talk about things that are important to you."
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"Hi, I'm Judy Smith," said Judy, shaking her hand with the one not clinging to the side of the pool. She had a Southern accent, but not as thick as Lulu's - and more education when she spoke. "Ah'm supposed to do laps," she said, almost apologetically. "It's the best way for me to exercise." It sounded like a sentence she'd been told by other people, a sentence she didn't necessarily approve of. "Let's get down to-I mean, uh, let's get going!" Pushing away from the side of the pool, she began a slow, careful backstroke, the mark of someone who'd perhaps swam a lot but mostly in a formal setting. "So you're a senior this year, right? You must know a lot about Claremont!"
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"Oh, hi, Corinne." Looking up, she saw Judy Smith standing above her - her long hair carefully hidden away beneath a black swimming cap that matched the colors of the dark one-piece bathing suit she wore. "Ah guess it's just you and me in the pool today. That was real pretty!" she said, pointing to the spot where Corinne's power had just manifested. "Ah've never seen you do anything like that before." "Corinne has lots of interesting powers," added Ashley Smith, appearing by the water's edge next to her sister. "I'm going to hang back and work on calculus. You do your thing." She shot a skeptical look down at Corinne, then took a few steps away from the water. In her leather jacket and jeans, she didn't look to be ready for swimming. "Don't mind her," said Judy as she carefully reached for the ladder. "Ah just have to do laps today. Safest way to exercise," she added, a little bleakly. "You wanna take a break from what you're doing?" "
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October 2018 Boy's Common Room Kord Dormitorium First Floor In the corridor, Ashley ventured again what she'd said a couple of days earlier. "I don't know about this, Judy." "Ah know it may not work," said Judy with a faint smile, her arms wrapped around a small bundle of books and pamphlets. "This is not the first time Ah've tried to mission to someone. But Leroy is a nice boy and we're gonna have a nice talk, and talking about Jesus is a good way to do that." She grinned. "Do you know how hard it is to get people to ask most of the time? Anyway, maybe he'll take me to the fall dance if things go well!" She locked eyes with Ashley, stunning her bodyguard enough to let her slip into the boy's common room without another word. Damn! Ashley thought, unable to keep grudging admiration out of her thoughts as she adopted a scowl and stepped into the room after her sister, giving a few hard glares at the boys who were looking their way. Well she knows how to shut me up, anyway.
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Judy gave Leroy a considering look. Claremont students (and her powers) being what they were, she knew that not all questions along those lines were sincere. "Ah'd be happy to talk to you about that later, Leroy - maybe we can stop by your common room after dinner." Come to think of it, neither of the two girls had been seen eating in the cafeteria; one of the many odd things about the Smith sisters. For her part, Ashley shot a quick look from Janus to Leroy; then offered, "He'll volunteer if he's smart. The Grue hunt traitors to their blood," she squeezed Judy's hand a little tighter at that, "he'll want to make sure his friends know how to find Grue, how to knock them out of their shape, and how to hold them if they're prisoners. If he is your friend, that is." And if the dragon prince there was talking about lethal force, now he's the jerk.
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Ashley held her breath, giving Janus her most peevish teenage glare. She'd bet the pot when she'd seen Judy crumble away from the first conversation she'd been enjoying for weeks; was she going to clean up? She had her answer a moment later when Judy sighed and said, "...She's right, Ashley. You can't judge somebody based on where they're from. Maybe you shouldn't trust them as much anymore and you surely should ask them some questions about who they really are and what they really want, but you can't just reject somebody because of how they were born. You're the one who said we're all God's creatures." Good girl! And then, because Watchdog's saving grace was her love for her sister, Ashley reached over and took her sister's hand. "...all right. All right, fine. But you don't just trust a Grue because you happen to know some nice ones. If nine out of ten are your enemy," she said, looking over at the others, "don't decide this one has to be your friend because they give you the puppydog eyes and a sob story."
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Judy looked miserable. What she wanted to do was scream at Leroy that he didn't know anything about the real world; that not everybody with powers was the damn Centurion, and just because you had powers didn't mean everything was going to be great. But Cahill girls didn't scream and they didn't curse either, so instead she swallowed and tangled her fingers in her hair nervously. "Ah...ah don't know what to do about it either. Just tell him to publish what he wants, Ah guess, nobody's gonna listen to scum like him." She took a few deep breaths, then swallowed hard and passed the sheet over to her sister. Ashley blinked, looked surprised, then nodded. "...all right, last one. A super-friend comes to you and makes a confession - he's actually a Grue who came to Earth as a spy but decided he liked humans better. Well that's easy." Ashley smiled thinly, her eyes visibly lighting up at the question. "Maybe you don't put him down," she said with the air of one making a great concession to the morals of her listeners, "but you sure as hell put him away, amirite?"
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Let me know when you want Frost to pop back in, SC
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"That's a stupid assumption," Ashley growled at Leroy quietly. "Where we're from, assuming you know everything about someone by looking at them can get you killed." "Ashley, honey, it's all right, he didn't know any better," said Judy soothingly, reaching over to pat her sister's gloved hand - well, if you counted gloves with no fingers on them as gloved. "Ah don't know anything about superheroes from here, Leroy," she said with a beauty queen's studied politeness, "but Ah know people who've had their whole lives ruined because their secrets were exposed. Even you should know just being outed for having powers can hurt you; much less for being a full-on, um, superhero. People can die of it. Or wish they had"
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Group 1 A triumphant smirk didn't fit the character at all - so with regret, Ashley simply glared at Janus like the slow-witted teen anarchist she was supposed to be. "That is a problem with secret identities," agreed Judy. "But there are people whose lives would be ruined if other people knew what they were." She tapped her pen on the pad before her, then said, "What if you did a change to the law, where violating someone's secret identity was illegal? Then you could tell that guy he'd be going away for even longer if he started revealing secrets." Her brow furrowing, she added, "But then you'd have people just making up secret identities whenever they wanted to do something, so that can't be right." "Combine it with the first one," Ashley suggested, looking away from Janus and back to Judy. "Make the supers work for the government, so anyone who outs them goes away for a long time. Course anybody who did that would _deserve_ to have their secret ID outed..."
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"Hmm," said Judy doubtfully. "Ah don't think Lady Quanah would like adventuring with an assassin. Unless the assassin only killed enemies of the Lion, Ah guess." Despite her teasing of Ashley earlier, she wasn't entirely sure what to make of Gauss - but she supposed playing a game with her would help with that. "What do you think, Selena, do you want to play an assassin for the church? I bet there'll be lots of bad guys out there!" "Watchdog is black," said Ashley, sitting next to Judy around the table and giving everyone else a once-over. Well, scary-looking or not, these kids seemed mostly harmless. No reason not to play along. "And big, like a draft horse somebody mounted. And she's got a scar over one eye, so you know she's a tough warhorse."
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"What does segregation have to do with it?" asked Judy, sounding more baffled than offended. "That was good people of all races coming together to make America a better place; it wasn't the Centurion flying in to tell everybody how to live. And super-people aren't like normal people; you can't be oppressed _and_ have the power to set people on fire," she said confidently. For her part, Ashley visibly scoffed at Janus's eyerolling, her face set in a hard scowl, and looked like she was about to say something in the Danger's direction before Judy broke in with a tight, "Ah don't think we should get distracted. The next thing we're supposed to talk about is what do you do if a supervillain finds out the secret identities of all the heroes on your team, and says he'll make sure everyone inside finds out too..."
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"You're thinking too small." Dammit Well this was one way to keep the heat off Judy, anyway - and keep Judy from saying something to Janus that might give them away. "Maybe system has a right to know if a tank with legs is about to walk into the mayor's office - just makes sense. Your job is to keep the proles in line, you need to know about the ones who go outside the line." She smirked and spread her hands as if she was speaking wisdom. "That's why you need to get rid of the system." Ashley smacked the table lightly for emphasis. "That's what's keeping us down." "Well Ah really don't think anarchy is gonna solve anything either. All that gets you is the biggest and strongest fighting." Judy swallowed. "Ah just think that if you're gonna go outside the law, even if it is for a good cause, you can't call yourself a superhero. Once you start making decisions based on what you think is right, and using your power to push 'em on other people, you are sayin' you're better than other people because of who you are. Just because you have super-lungs doesn't mean you have the right to yell so loud nobody else can hear."
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"Ah understand that, but having powers and putting on a costume means you're not-not like other people." said Judy, a faint tremor in her voice. "And they know it, too. Maybe that's how the whole thing happened. What if normal people just got tired of special favors for super-people," her hand tightened around her cross, "and said if they're gonna have all that, we deserve the right to keep track of them and know who they are." Ashley opened her eyes and sneered, "Supers didn't accomplish a damn thing where we're from. Maybe ones here should be more proactive." In her head she was thinking of her great-grands dying in a ditch outside Saigon and the stories her grandfather had told about the re-education camps before they'd come to America; but she wasn't going to let herself get baited. Much easier to play the witless thug; even if she couldn't push it too hard around Judy "We're, um, we're getting off-topic," said Judy nervously, looking from face to face in her group. "It sounds like we think the law is unjust, and that it's okay to protest it. But what if you're called on to enforce it? Can you just decide a law is unjust if enforcing it is your job?"
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"Well, ah mean, this is America," said Judy, her cheeks darkening slightly. "Ah don't think something like that is very likely." After a moment's consideration, her face a mask of teenage ennui, Ashley said, "Could set a precedent, amirite?" She looked around from one face to the other, eyes almost closed, as if she was assessing their take on her words. "Government pushes us around - we push back." From the lazy confidence in her voice, she was looking forward to such a battle. Judy swallowed, definitely blushing now, and shot her sister a look as she fidgeted with the gold cross around her neck. "Ah don't think fighting the government is such a good idea, Ashley. And going around probing people before you decide to follow the law, that doesn't seem right either. If super-people start...start deciding what's fair and what's right for everybody, just because they think they can, how are we any different than New Freedom?" It was one of the longer sentences anyone had heard her say; and certainly one of the more impassioned.
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pl 8 Mister Strix (PL8) - Grumblefloof (Gold)
Avenger Assembled replied to Amelia's topic in Archived Characters
APPROVED -
"Pfft, pity the poor fool who tries to make _me_ register," said Ashley from around the toothpick she was chewing on, one of the longer sentences her classmates had heard her actually say aloud. Ashley rather regretted that she couldn't have a real discussion with the teen supers about this; but this was not a subject where dimensional refugee turned outlaw vigilante Watchdog would be particularly reasonable. It occurred to her that she had no idea what Judy thought of it, until the latter spoke. "Hah-hah, that's funny," Judy laughed nervously when Leroy finished. When the others had gone, she said, "Ah guess it just assumes it's in America, since that's where most supers live." Judy tapped the paper in front of her with a neatly sharpened pencil. "Ah'd like to know more about why the law passed; if there was a big disaster, or meta-terrorist attack or something like that. That's a pretty big change, and laws don't just pass because people feel like it - somebody must have wanted it." She tapped again, then said, "Even if it's not a good law, it's a superhero's job to follow it, isn't it?"
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1PM Philosophy Class "All right, everybody," said Judy Smith, smiling nervously as she looked around at the others in her four-person study group. (Well, three if you didn't count her sister.) The large room was full of the chatter of small groups as the divided students discussed the packet of documents the instructor had handed them; or alternatively peeked at their phones, or chatted when the instructor was across the room. "The first one says 'You are a superhero in the United States in 2020. A law has passed that says everyone with superpowers must register with the federal government. Your friends are divided on the subject - some of them think the law is a good idea because it will keep people safe, other people think the government can't be trusted with that information. Do you agree with the law? What'll you do about it, whether you agree or disagree. And there are the longer arguments...so what do you guys think?" she asked, looking around at the others. "This seems pretty easy."
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"Ah think Selena is sweet on you," murmured Judy on the way back from the common room, which the two of them had found blessedly free of trouble. She had that nervous smile that showed she wasn't sure if she was taking the teasing too far. "Seems unlikely," was Watchdog's only response, figuring that she and Judy might need to have a conversation about this sort of thing later. Still, it was nice to see the girl relaxed - even if she'd need to discourage any hint of setting her up with other girls. I think she forgets I'm not actually sixteen sometimes. "Okay, ladies, gentleman," said a broadly-smiling Judy once they were back at the dorm room, "Ah got us space and a table! Follow me!" Ashley could tell how nervous Judy was, but it was nice to see the girl taking the initiative too. She's really into this nerd stuff! Ashley had never actually played these games before, but it seemed to be working already. "
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That got Monica a scowl and silence long enough that it was almost a surprise when Ashley spoke, looking down at her fingertips as she spoke. "School for supers, isn't it?" "Ah got powers," agreed Judy, sitting on the couch next to Ashley,"but they're not, um, real, interesting or anything." She reached up and fiddled with the cross around her neck for a minute. "Just over radio and stuff. Like, I could hear that TV before it was turned on," she said nervously. "And other stuff." "Couldn't leave her where she was," said Ashley, her tone surprisingly gentle.
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Ashley blinked behind her shades, considering this situation cooly. Well, she'd have to make a show of defiance of that at some point - and taming the infamous Watchdog would be another way of showing the Headmistress's power. (She had no objection to doing that, given what Callie was already doing for her - and how much she knew Callie Summers was holding back the deluge of super-teens here). But it certainly was an idea; if it was truly enforced. That didn't look like the Raven's bluffing face, though, not by any means. She shot a glance at Judy next to her but her erstwhile 'sister' didn't seem too affected by this news, instead watching with her hands folded neatly on her lap and a pleasant, carefully calculated smile on her face. Judy Smith, with her dangerous powers and ignorance about the real world, wasn't someone who'd had a lot of late-night patrols in her future anyway.
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As the new people came in, a serious-looking Ashley Smith scanned the teen heroes with her pocket device, then nodded in satisfaction, or at least acceptance, after each one. Behind Watchdog's too-cool-for-school teenage glare, Ashley kept her own council. Getting Judy friends would make the poor kid happy; and making friends in venues besides patrolling would mean her friends wouldn't be trying to get her into dangerous situations. That was the theory, anyway. She fixed her gaze on the telepath for a moment but said nothing; if Callie said she was all right, she was all right. "Well, okay, looks like a good crowd of people," said Judy, making her introductions for herself and her sister as the new people came in. Neither of them had dressed up; Ashley was in the leather jacket, white tank-top, and jeans she seemed to prefer - Judy was in a loose-fitting green blouse and skirt that went down well past her knees. "Nice to see everyone here," she said, pronouncing the first word as "Nahce." "Ah guess Ah'll go make sure we have space in the common room. Don't wanna be kicked out for canoodling after curfew!" she said cheerfully as she headed out, followed closely by her sister.