Avenger Assembled

"The men of this age think play is a light thing for boys," said Owain cordially. "But play is serious business." He stepped back onto the mat and knelt down, planting his sword in front of him so it made the shape of a cross. "Oculus meus sit acer et ensis velox, Deus," he murmured before he rose to his feet. "I thank you for your estimation of my talents with the blade. I am sure you are equally skilled. So, then," he went on as he held the scabbard in one hand and hilt by the other. "To the first touch?" He drew his sword, the blade within audible against the rough metal lining of the scabbard, and carefully wrapped the blade itself in a light cloth the dojo kept close by for such purposes. There had been, to Erik's eye, a notable increase in the number of cats on the ground floor since all this began; many of them watching in eerie silence as the boys prepared to square off. There was not enough of them to actually get in the way of the fighters as they squared off, but there were certainly more of them now.

November 2021 Houseboat life wasn't always the most comfortable thing on the East Coast in November, especially when your lizard-brain was forged in the fires of New Orleans summers. Ashley woke up early on the hallway side of the bed, spooned against Fa'Rua's back, and decided it was too cold to get up. But of course she had to anyway so she reluctantly slipped out of bed, wrapping a button-down shirt around her torso. She'd gone to sleep in pajama bottoms, a habit she'd picked up at Claremont and never actually gotten away from. You never knew what you were going to wake up to. She took a moment to study Fa'Rua, hair dappled in the light of the Freedom City dawn, and smiled goofily before she turned to get herself cleaned up. This was going to be a big day, and not just because she was actually going to be going around town with her girlfriend when neither of them were working. Figuring Fa'Rua could get herself out, she fished leftover Chinese out of the fridge and parked herself by the side of the boat, away from the city where you could see the sunrise over the water. Damn. It really had been a good day. Nobody had wanted anything from the Patriot, or Special Agent Ashley Tran, or for that matter the lovely guest she'd been escorting around the city. And that, at least, was perfect.

After all the buildup, stepping off the bus was a bit anti-climactic. They were at Jordan International Airport but not near the high-traffic passenger areas, instead parked near a Learjet over in what was obviously the air-freight section of the airport. Without comment, the Patriot herself walked to the back of the bus to heft the archeological treasures they were escorting to DC, muscles rippling under her costume's jacket sleeves as she carried the sturdy box by its handles outside and out to the plane. Once there there were some forms to sign with the groundcrew (most of whom seemed very impressed to be meeting a group of heroes, even teenagers), the flight-crew to introduce to the teens, and then it was time to get onto the plane. Captain Ron and Navigator Irons both looked straight from Central Casting for commercial pilots, right down to the matching gold wedding bands and greying mustaches. They shook hands a little gruffly, but professionally - this was obviously not their first flight. Goddamit, that thing is heavy, Ashley thought to herself, looking the teens over briefly before she said, "Okay, Starshine and Freedom Eagle, let's see you get our cargo on board." Put the two quiet ones together, see what we get. "Kid Celtic, Patrioteen, they'll want your eyes up front for takeoff." Ron and Irons both nodded at that. Come to think of it, on closer inspection, both men had IRONS sewn above their breast pockets. "Kensei, you're with me," she added, leading the way up to the oddly protruding plane door. "As you can see, this plane has been specially modified for metahuman aerial operations!" she added, hitting the door with her fist. "This door is designed with an inner iris so in emergencies, you can operate any metahuman movement abilities outside the airplane and then safely return. It is not designed for screwing around, or opening the door to try and paraglide onto passing 747s, or..." Ashley stopped, cursing inside her head as she realized she was laying it on a little thick again. Come on. You're not a senior trying to control a bunch of first-years. You're a damn grown-ass adult. "Anyway! Let's get this cargo onboard so we can get moving." She stepped back, watching the kids do their thing.

Uhh... Neko blinked her large eyes, not sure what to say. But he was the one who talked to me! She considered quickly, then smiled a Cheshire cat's grin. "Can you tell me how to be a hero?" she asked ingenously, petting a fluffy white Persian that had appeared out of nowhere in her arms.

"This is 'traditional' for me," said Ashley with a faint shrug. "I went to Vietnam when I was in college, but everyone made me for an American the minute I got off the plane. It's the accent," she said, not wanting to get into how a Eurasian face could look Asian among white people and white vice-versa. "My dad used to tell me that the great thing about the United States was that you could have a piece of home here even when you were far away, but it was never quite the same." She thought about Socotra - like any US government agent, she was familiar with the details of the recent 'bloodless' coup there, and as a superhero the legacy of Typhoon's rule was something she knew very well. She couldn't blame Sharaf's parents for staying in the US when they'd made a new life here; she doubted her father would have gone back to Vietnam if somebody overthrew the Communists. She looked across the table at Sharaf, hesitated almost imperceptibly, then said, "Tell me about yourself. Not the line you feed your teachers at school, which I know you do because every single teenager does," she said with great feeling. "Tell me about yourself."

"Here and here," said Ashley laconically, steering the boy's hands towards her ribs. "Just hang on." She drove the bike fast without actually breaking any traffic laws, weaving their way through Freedom City traffic with a professional's eye. She wasn't much for talking on the way, communicating in the occasional shout over the noise of traffic until they reached their evident destination. When she put down the kickstand of her bike, they were in a neighborhood of Riverside Sharaf had never visited, a place with Asian writing interspersed with English on the walls, a neighborhood of check cashing places, inexpensive cellphone stores advertising low international rates, and the distinct smell of good food. They were in front of a restaurant just labeled SAIGON FOOD, and with a nod Ashley put down her kickstand. "Welcome to Saigon Food," she said. "This is the best place for New Orleans Vietnamese food in this whole damn town." Inside the place was packed, and from the look of things mostly from people in the neighborhood, with only a few tourists off in one corner. Ashley smiled big at the server, said something rapid-fire and handed over a tip, and the two of them found themselves in a small private room. The walls were adorned with pictures of Vietnam and New Orleans, and jazz was audibly coming over the speaker system as Ashley handed Sharaf a menu. Pictures were printed next to the names of the dishes, whose contents had been imperfectly translated into English. "I recommend the ca kho to, the 'family fish'," she said, tapping the laminated page. "but the banh min boys are good too."

"<Yes,>" agreed Eira warmly. She knew Pan well enough to tell when he was stalling, but she also knew that his stalling could represent everything from hesitation about her proposal to just messing around with her. "<I know from experience my brave adventurer isn't afraid of a little cut?,>" she said with a teasing grin.

Neko relaxed, her tail curling around her legs and ears rising above her head like uncurling paper. Ghost was not actually angry with her, and best of all the sight of a big-eyed girl in distress was making him kind. This was a situation she had learned to understand very well in her time in Freedom City. "I am from Iya Valley of Japan, sir," she said, "it is very small." She folded her hands in front of her and said with the air of one reciting a memorized line, "Japan has many superheroes but they do not visit the United States." And no one wanted to be responsible for training someone from the Hinomaru. She knew that fact well enough. "You are here for - mentoring?"

Aquaria didn't so much shout after the retreating queen as detonate in a voice like thunder - "THIS IS YOUR GOD!? PATHETIC! EAT MY-" followed by Lemurian oaths as she realized for the first time just how badly she stunk. Her suit, covered in insect guts and rotting things, hissed with a noisy eruption of energy, then a moment later was ultra-clean. "Pfagh,"she commented from inside the suit, hopping away with shining black trident in hand. "But you see!? They thought they could take this world - but they were weak. And we were strong!" She struck her trident against the ground with an air of decisiveness.

For a moment, Owain was indeed a boy; his ears folded back on his head and his tail between his legs as he froze in fear at the sight and smell of a being that strongly resembled his father. Wherever the Green Knight might be, in such a time as this. For another moment, even as he did his best to master his shamefully shaking limbs, he was about to let the Hunter take what he wanted. Owain son of Bertilak was not soft when it came to killing, not the way even boys of this age so often were. He had hunted from the first day he could carry a sling into the forest after birds, and knew that God had placed animals upon the Earth for the use of men. But he also knew other things - about a man's honor, whether in combat with beasts or men. Still in the shape of a wolf, he shook off his fear and crouched before the hunter. "It is a weak hunter that pursues babes-in-the-woods - and a frail one that would let someone else battle the most challenging prey," he growled, not quite in anger but certainly in deep suspicion. "I think thee a sidhe sent to tempt me from my path - or a devil in the same guise. What say you, man-of-the-woods?" he added challengingly.

Okay! Talos drops a solar flare effect on everyone - wait, how did Talos get a solar flare? Anyway, this is a rank 14 area effect. DC 24 Reflex save for half-damage, DC 29/22 Tou save depending on how you do. Evasion applies, as usual. https://orokos.com/roll/920841 Richard actually fails his first Reflex save, yikes! I will spend one of his HP to fight that - luckily the presence of his family makes that possible. https://orokos.com/roll/920842 well good thing that had an HP attached! Okay, Richard is fine.

Neko sipped her tea and wished unhappily that she could be as inexpressive as her friends, with their small eyes, flat ears, and tails buried inside their backs. Even with her illusions hiding much of her face from their eyes, evidently she wasn't as subtle as she had hoped. Well, you wanted people to understand you, she thought, perhaps they do and better than you could have known. She thought about telling the other girls about her own birth, how she had been one of four and of course the weakest had died as it usually was, and how Saiko and Sainenshō were as far from her was it was possible to be this side of the other world, but decided that was no suitable conversation for friends around the table. "Danica's rooms are very nice. Lots of - " she made gestures with her hands like fireworks. "Lots of colors. Very bright." She shifted a little in her seat, glad that the conversation had shifted away from difficult things. "I don't know what to do in my room," she said, "I have never had...a place I could build, like that," she added hesitantly.

Erik knew what the cats were for, at least via Raina's translation for his benefit. The spectral felines were directly linked to Neko and let her see what was going on when she wasn't around, a comfortable way of viewing the world for someone dealing with a lot of trauma. The more attention Neko was paying, the more cats were around. What that meant was that when Utsawa arrived, there were perhaps a half-dozen cats in various places on the first floor of the dojo, mostly white with brown patches and yellow eyes but a a fat, fluffy Persian and a sleek Siamese could be seen lurking in window sills, basking in sun beams, eating from a dish that wouldn't be there the next time you looked, and otherwise hanging around in situations of feline innocence. After a moment, the door from upstairs swung open and Owain stepped down. In his T-shirt and shorts, he was obviously dressed for a warmup himself, especially when you took account of the sheathed sword he carried over his back. "Hail and well met, Utsawa!" he declared cheerfully as he came down. "Erik," he said with equal good humor to Erik, though as usual he was obviously trying to catch himself before he said sir, "mine morning tasks are finished, and calculus doth sleep for another day. By your will, might I join the sword play?"

Ryder has already thought a lot about jail. He must be very worried! thought Aquaria sympathetically. She had not asked what the boys had done to wind up picking the two of them as their mentors, knowing that such secrets were theirs to share when the time was right. Ah, that one has blood taint, and that one...is a time traveler? Oh no! You know how the young males are from the television. Better act like you understand him, or he will think you are 'old and busted!' "Yes! There is no chance any of us will wind up back in prison!" she bellowed ebulliently, eager to support her friend as much as their temporary charges. "It is cold, and dry, and the food is bad, with hardly any meat! Very unpleasant." This was one of several areas where she was reasonably sure that the Deep One approach was better than that used by Surfacers, but she was reasonably sure that no one wanted to hear that. They rarely did. "We are taking you to a place in Freedom City that has many interesting things to see and hear, and some," her croaking voice grew noticeably more excited here, "even to smell and taste. We are taking you to-" - The Superhero Museum had been largely rebuilt in the wake of the last Terminus Invasion and was now a big, towering place like a mid-century railroad station, dominated by a huge silver statue of Atlas holding the world on his shoulders. The arrival of the bombastic Sea Devil and the subtle Singularity, not to mention their superheroic charges, attracted some attention even from the sparse crowd present outside on a weekday morning. Her helmet snapped down into armored anonymity, Sea Devil waved cheerily to the tourists, then bounded quadruped and lickety-split up the steps to where their guide was waiting for them. "Hello, everyone!" Gary Powers was the sort of chubby that sturdy men evolve into as they enter late middle age, his goatee and thinning hair mostly grey with just a few shades of red shot through. Welcome to the museum, my name is Gary Powers and I'll be your host this morning. Thanks to a very generous donation from the Hunter-White Foundation, our tour group will have the place all to ourselves for the next two hours!" His eyes lit up as he handed everyone a brochure, showing the kids how to download the museum's brand-new app on their phone for the audio tour. "This is going to be very exciting, because the four of you will be touring our brand-new exhibit floors we've just opened up for November. Right now our first floor is devoted to Champions of the Rising Sun: A Super History of Japan, and the second floor is Bugging Out: Insects and the Meta Community. You'll be the very first guests to see them!" This is perfect! thought Aquaria excitedly, hopping back and forth from one foot to the other. "Are there any questions?"

A little peevishly, Owain thought for a moment that negotiating with a great stag of the forest for the right to wear its skin took rather a lot of will when you came down to it! Those hooves were no joke, as he knew from personal experience. But eager to please his manly teacher, he was about to leap out of the tree after the deer when he sensed another presence in the forest - something dark and foul, and hunting the stag in its turn. Considering what to do, he hesitated only a moment before leaping down from the tree and briefly vanishing in the grass below before he emerged as a wolf. And not just any wolf! Owain had told Neko, though no one else, of how he'd met the wolf as a lad when roaming near his parents' estate. The wolf had been quite simply the largest he had ever seen, long as his mother was tall and as tall as a child when it stood, all thick muscle and grey fur, with an aura of power on it despite what he later found out to have been great age. It had come down from the mountains, where ice ran thick and men still wore fur and didn't shave their beards, a mighty legacy of the time before Brutus had brought civilization to Logres. A dire-looking wolf it was that bounded out of the grass and across the void towards the island that held the deer. He could not speak the tongue of a deer with a wolf's tongue in his mouth, so instead he bolted away from the great prey towards what would prey on them both!

Neko stepped back, hands folded in front of her, and didn't quite make eyecontact with the strange man. This definitely does not sound like Foreshadow - what is he thinking? Ugh, it is like talking to one of Ryder's machines. No, at least they act like they feel things! "I am sorry, sir," she said, her voice a little high, yellow eyes wide as she looked down at Ghost's feet. Her accent was thick, her English hesitant. "I have been...sleep." She hesitated, not sure if he was angry or not, but having learned from experience that it was better not to take any chances with men like that. And he is definitely not a ghost. "I do not know very much about America."

"Ma'am is fine," said the Patriot dryly. She studied the boy for a moment and thought, not for the first time, what a damn awful thing this was to do to a teenage boy. Surely they could have tried a little harder to get the damn thing off him. She considered another moment, then reached down and pressed a button on her bike. The red white and blue colors rippled for a moment before fading into a sedate brown. Another moment and she reached under the chin of her helmet to snap it free, displaying her face to the boy for the first time. The Patriot was an Asian woman who looked to be about twice Sharaf's age, her dark hair cut short and partially dyed a deep shade of crimson. "Come on, let's get out of here. My treat." she said, adjusting the helmet so it resembled a normal bike helmet and reaching down to toss another one the boy's way. "It's not gonna mess up your hair," he added not unkindly.

Owain knelt again, hand on his chin, lost in thought. He could point out to the dhampir-magus that this seemed illusion rather than a true place, and that bringing him an illusory pelt would be challenging. But such talk generally won one the reputation of being a 'smart-mouth', and the wrong sort of intelligence would hardly win him his coveted position at this fascinating young man's left side. In a true hunt at home he would have gone out with bow and dogs and likely emerged victorious, but bow and dogs were far away beyond the veil of ages now - and so was home if he set too much of a mind to it. He preferred not to do that. So instead he called upon the shape of a raven again and flew across the void to the hart's island, where he took shelter in the branches of a large tree and pondered his situation. The hart had so far not fled from his approach. He could take a wolf's form and leap upon the beast single-handedly, but he knew from prior experience that such a feat might not catch him his prize and if it did it certainly wouldn't give him an intact pelt. Say! Give -me-an intact pelt! Balancing carefully in the tree, he resumed his natural form and called below in the tongue of beasts. "<Great Heorot! One who would offer you a boon comes before you in supplication. May I approach?>" Well there was no harm in being polite, he judged, especially when dealing with powerful magical beasts.

"Yes!" said Aquaria. "It is also full of water!" She opened a hatch on her left forelimb to demonstrate, producing an impressive gush of brackish water before she closed it again. "I also keep fish there." Glad that Jessie had weathered the difficult subject of her sister with aplomb, she was about to say something else when she saw the Robugs in action. "Ah-hah!" Okay, they are made of metal, they are not food. Good to know! "They seem quite clever," she said, eying the preying mantis with one big goggle eye. "We had planned to take you on an adventure under the sea, but they said no, we should definitely not do that, because your guardians might be very angry. I forget sometimes that young males like you have guardians, because Deep Ones as big as you, oh, they can fend for themselves. Very tough!" she added jubilantly. She couldn't quite shake her head so she waved with her trident for emphasis, a twisting thing that looked like wrought-iron interspersed with greenish gold. "So I came up with a different idea. But first, I have to tell you something very important." She looked from one to the other, turning her whole upper body to do it, and said, "Jail is a very bad place to be. You do not want to go there." She waved her trident again for emphasis.

Okay! Tou vs 27 https://orokos.com/roll/919815 = 19 Bruised and dazed! He's now at bruised x3 with a rolling Tou of +15

Neko felt herself start to sweat, picturing in her mind a giant sweat drop forming above her eye but banishing the thought before it could become reality. "It was very interesting," she agreed, her voice a little shaky as she spoke to Danica. She'd missed several of the words her friend had used but she'd at least managed to get the gist of it. "I had to, um, hide myself when I went to school. Everybody did." Because if the government found out about us, they would come for us. And that's exactly what happened, isn't it? "I met Owain when we were..." She looked down at her water glass, big yellow eyes wide, and managed "children." I told Danica that I knew him before. She must not have understood there is only one before for me! Owain of course had had a great many befores - or at least more than the average person had had. Then she thought of the Human Tank and what the Katana had done to Tori's family, and bit her lip. She had been sleeping in a bed of ice when the Katana had quietly murdered the Human Tank and Gunner while they lay sleeping in their beds, but she had read the story. It had all seemed so...expected. The idea that the Katana had responded to the arrival of American superheroes by simply killing them without a struggle had been exactly what she would have expected him to do... Luckily the food arrived then, sparing her from a conversation that was growing increasingly uncomfortable, and thoughts that were spiraling out of control. She picked up her chopsticks with a practiced hand and dug into the sushi, nodding in satisfaction and closing her eyes almost to slits as she ate. "This is very good! I never had anything...so much before," she added, smiling. "Danica is...wicked keen!" she added, a phrase she'd picked up from her room-mate that morning.

Neko blinked in surprise at the new arrivals but mastered her shock quickly. If there is a kami in this place, we can't stand here talking to each other about it - we need to do something before it flees for the spirit world or shows its anger at our presence. "<Hello,>" she said to Ryder's sister in rapid-fire Japanese, "<Thank you for bringing the food. I am Neko Musume. These will help us with our spirit work.>" She moved quickly through pizza, smoothies, and alcohol, pulling off lids and opening boxes without actually making a mess, wrinkling her nose from time to time before she wound up with what appeared to be an acceptable amount of food - a few slices of pizza here, a vegetarian fruit smoothie, and two bottles of beer. She knelt down on the floor with her prize and admitted in awkward English, "I don't know...for a Christian spirit," she admitted, calling out in English "Owain! I need help!" Up above, the Owain-bird quickly wheeled around and ducked low over the heads of his fellow students before disappearing into a dark enclosure off to one side of the sanctuary. A moment later he stepped out, big as life and very human. "Here!" he said, jogging over quickly to sit down beside her. "Hello!" he added to the new arrivals. "Thank ye for the food."

The cats stared balefully up at Ghost, showing no interest in either departing or revealing themselves to be something else in disguise. They were joined by another, a sleek white Siamese, and a black cat that looked straight from a Halloween decoration. Up on the roof, Neko slipped her copy of Kwaidan into the pocket of her sleeve and peered down at the hero below. She was beginning to think that fellow wasn't Foreshadow after all, which meant her plan to approach him and thank him for the excellent collection of Japanese literature in the library here. I should just go, she thought, but he might complain about the cats. Some people, very bad people, did not like cats, she knew, and if this man was troubled by them, he might make trouble for her. So she slipped out of her geta, then leaped straight off the dorm roof and landed behind Ghost, her bare feet almost soundless against the dirt. The moment she touched ground, the cats vanished in a faint puff of fish-smelling smoke. "Hello," she said, folding her hands in front of her. She looked like almost any normal Asian girl to Ghost's eyes at the moment, except her yellow and gold kimono looked more like something from a tourist's image of Japan than the real thing. "Who are you, sir?" she asked, her eyes big and head tilted.

Knowledge (Arcane Lore): 29 Sense Motive: 17 ah, the perils of being a sidekick! Really should buy Skill Mastery for this guy.

Owain sat for a moment, hand on his chin, in deep thought as he pondered this arcane mystery. He knew spells that could cast a day's light in such a room like this, and a few that would light the corners of the magic circle with glowing flame. But all of those would take time, time he did not have if he was to demonstrate his talents for his mentor. He could transform himself into a wolf and see perfectly well in such light but that would be lighting himself. He considered the relative merits of going from lantern to lantern, lighting them with a spark from his fingers, but decided that would be too obvious an approach. So what then - aha! "The men of this age," he said, rising to his feet, "treat magic as if it were beyond the ken of normal men." Slowly he walked to the farthest wall and began to carefully feel around, careful not to make eye contact with the other enchanter as he did so. "But in Logres," he said, fingers dragging along the stone as he hoped he wasn't about to make a fool of himself, "we know it as...something..." He was sweating now despite the cool of the room, spinning his tale just as he'd seen Merlin do when a demonstration wasn't going exactly right. When he found what he was looking for, it took him a moment to recognize it - it was thick and old, more like what he'd seen in the 20th century rather than the 21st. Before he could delay himself with too much thought, he flipped the switch, and overhead the single old emergency bulb in the room's old-fashioned light fixture flickered to life with a crackle and glow. "...that a man might use, like any other tool." Cast in the overhead glow, he froze, suddenly wondering if this had been the wrong decision.