Avenger Assembled
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Taking advantage of his own lack of dress, Jack kicked down just his shorts and a shirt, sitting down at poolside with his gargoyle buddy. "Hey there, little, uh, guy." He definitely was that! Funny how they always left that out of pictures of cute creatures elsewhere. "The water's really not that bad, you know. If you hold your breath underneath, you can go a long ways." He absently scratched the little guy behind one ear, earning himself a friendly whimper and nuzzle. And then, suddenly a lick with a tongue almost too big for that face. "Ack!"
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First there was a wind from nothing, a brush of hot desert air in the cool basement that raised eddies and whirlwinds in the corner like a brush of the Arabian Desert. Then came the glow of light, softly shimmering in the air in the middle of Phantom's magic circle, falling to the Earth like grains of magical sand, followed by a trickle of glowing light spreading upwards like a breath of air. Before suddenly, powerfully, the Third Prince of the Brass City simply erupted from the air itself in a wave of titanic magical power, the wall of glowing light slamming into the edges of the circle as a booming voice shouted "WHO DARES SUMMON THE EMIR OF EXCITEMENT? THE CALIPH OF CATACLYSM? THE IRREPRESSIBLE IMAM? THE SUPER-SHIEKH? THE...oh, Chosen of Heshem, it's you!" When the glare of light faded, the figure inside came into being. Azim-al-Aziz had frequently altered his form back in the day, sometimes small enough to stand by Jimmy Lucas' side, other times large enough to swat Nazi jets from the sky. Here he was a modest ten feet tall, the perfect figure of a massive, muscular man with huge black mustaches, archaic Arab dress complete with open vest and turban, his bright blue skin gleaming in the artificial light. He studied the group for a moment, his black eyes cautious, as Mark looked on in wide-eyed wonder. "Is...is it really you?" The all-powerful genie looked at Mark and suddenly a huge, grandfatherly smile broke out across his face. His voice boomed off the ceiling yet, and he lowered it with an apologetic finger over his lips. "Mark Mason Lucas! My boy! I knew you'd find me at last!" He shot a glance at Erin and smiled too. "Hello there! You super-women certainly are watchful!"
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"Have entered many places stealthily, said Avenger. "But trust your judgement. Have own issues with magic, but should be fine if suitably cautious." He hrmmed, not quite ready to be as trusting with his face as Taylor...but ultimately deciding that if she'd made that sacrifice, he could too. Pulling back his masks as if he hadn't said anything, Jack went on, "It might work best if we split, honestly."
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Fortunately, this was one thing Jack was sensitive. "Ah yes, I did put the clean bathing supplies in the poolside closet." He had no idea if the ladies suits there would actually fit Stesha; he'd bought a half-dozen or so just in case of necessity, but had never actually tried to size them. "You can change in the adjoining bathroom, Stesha, there's plenty of room." It was designed for Atlas, after all, so it had a lot of space. The gargoyle on his shoulder suddenly took off, but Jack caught him in the air, the baby creature bursting into fits of hissy wails that sounded absolutely pitiful. "I think this guy's about ready for a swim."
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When Hellion showed his face, Avenger let himself be seen for the first time. "Just glad you could make it." This mission also let Jack avoid the feeling of butterflies he felt around Taylor these days whenever he let his mind wander too far into the future. "How long in Hell should we prepare for?" He crouched low as he joined them, putting his considerable height below the other two.
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"Thanks, Derrick," said Jack, smiling a little. "We actually made that commitment on the battlefield during the invasion, but I wanted to give her a real proposal in a nice place, surrounded by friends and well-wishers." He thanked Ace for the cigar, but didn't light it, instead toying idly with the expensive piece of Cuban tobacco. "I'm sure you can understand that this is something that's going to be very difficult for us, given Taylor's work and my nature. We're going to be very dependent on our friends to make this work."
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Mark was unsettled; an unfamiliar feeling he didn't like one bit. He paced the floor as Phantom worked, careful not to walk over any magical lines of the floor. He knew nothing of magic, but luckily his guesses tended to be right ones as he kept an odd track on the floor. "You don't need to worry that much," he told Erin automatically. "The genie was a nice guy. My grandpa always said that. They were superheroes together. This one time my grandpa made a wish and he turned a whole company of Nazis into geese." Mark didn't seem particularly bothered by the magical breach he was describing.
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Jack waited until they'd all taken a seat before he spoke, Ace's private room giving them a chance to unwind without any prying ears around. With the look on Taylor's face, he knew what he wanted to say and do. "Well, there is one big thing. This is something Taylor and I have been talking about for a while, and I don't think there's a better time to do it than in front of all our friends." Well, Ace and Stesha were Taylor's friends, but they still counted in the way he meant. He slid out of his chair and onto the carpeted floor, kneeling at Taylor's feet. Reaching into his suit pocket, he pulled out a little black felt box that held inside it a simple diamond ring. "Taylor Chun, you have changed my life for the better. I love you. Will you marry me?"
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Jack applauded the latest number as well, looking quite pleased for Dr. Archeville's performance. "All right," he said jovially, "is that everybody once Grim goes? Because if it is, I know some people who are ready for an encore." He grinned. "It's a long night, and there's plenty of music in that thing." He turned to Taylor and said, "I think you and I owe the crowd a duet."
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Mark folded his arms, unusually irritated thanks to all the worries of the day. Man, she's bossy. And here I thought she was James' friend! I'm going to have to have a talk with him. Mark did live in a simple world, as it happened; there were helpful adults who appreciated him, and then there were those who didn't. Well, except for Mr. Summers. "She's not my girlfriend. And I would like your help," he said firmly, "in summoning Azim-al-Aziz, the Third Prince of the City of Brass," he said, the words coming flawlessly. "He fought with my grandfather sixty years ago against the Nazis, and I need his help now to solve a problem with my family the demons raised when they invaded."
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Ever the leader, Mark stayed between the two of them. He might have been a little thick, but he wasn't actually stupid. "Hey! You were supposed to come here to help me out," he reminded Phantom, looking annoyed. There wasn't a trace of magic around Erin, but suddenly there was something visible behind Mark Lucas' eyes. "If you can't do that because my friend's here, then we can handle this ourselves. There are plenty of students around here who know how to handle magic."
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"We can trust Derrick," Jack agreed, muttering a word he was pretty sure little baby things weren't supposed to hear. Especially when it was directed at them. "It'll be all right. There's nothing here that can't be replaced," he told Taylor, being supportive even though he was not thrilled by all this. "Just as long as these guys don't go crazy or anything." He shifted his gargoyle buddy onto another shoulder, earning him an unhappy squeal of protest. "Aw, it's okay. We'll take good care of you." It was a good thing the fridge was locked down.
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"Hello, Phantom!" said Mark exuberantly. He missed the tension between the two women entirely, but he did wander between Wander and Phantom in an unconscious shield. "Glad you could make it. This is my friend Wander, she came along for moral support. And because she's dealt with people from other dimensions before. Did you have a good trip over here?"
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"You remember when that demon talked about the City of Brass?" Mark asked Erin as he idly paced around the edge of a magical circle. "Back in the graveyard when we were trying to rescue James. He talked about it like _I_ was from there, which is weird because I've never been. My grandpa was the last human to visit there for more than a couple of hours; the efreet closed their gates after the Nazis attacked. Even my dad never actually talked to Azim-al-Aziz. I'd just, I dunno, like to get some answers and figure out what was going on." He smiled. "If nothing else, maybe I can get some good stories."
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"You're my friend, Erin," said Mark simply. "That'll be enough." He smiled at her, then led the way over to the Kord dormitory and down to the basement there. Those students still on campus had just gone out to enjoy the spate of good weather, leaving the two teenagers with privacy down in the stone-lined basement with its rune-strewn walls and arcane-circled floor. Also, there was a brand-new Playstation 3 over in one corner, attached to an old big-screen TV.
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"Phantom, that woman who helped with the invasion thing, is going to try and do a ritual for me," he said confidently. "To summon my grandfather's genie. It's going to be a pretty important conversation, and...well, I'd like a friend there. You can even bring Oliver, I guess." He smiled faintly. "Cats are supposed to be good at that, right? It's down in the basement of Kord in about, uh, five minutes or so."
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A few minutes below, Mark was knocking on Alex and Erin's door a floor below his. He'd originally hoped to bring Alex along, given her perceptiveness, but somehow finding Erin down there felt right too. "Hey, Erin?" Mark asked, the look on his face as serious as it got outside of battle. "I hate to ask this, but could you do me a big favor? It's kind of important."
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"Can you meet me in the basement of the Kord residence hall?" he asked hopefully. "I can give you the GPS coordinates if that would help your teleporting. It's the room our TAs use for their magical stuff; it's got some predrawn ritual markers. I'll bring a friend along with me," he added.
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"I couldn't get ahold of the robot's landline," said Jack with a shake of his head. Though startled by Dead Head's rather abrupt arrival, he ran with that. "What matters is, all of us are the kind of people who don't play very well with others. For one reason or another," he added with a nod James' way. "This is a very nice city. But most of the people here, the other heroes? They don't really understand what it's like at midnight in the Fens, when the lights go out and there's nothing but monsters on either side of you. We can deal with that. We are those monsters. And we can keep the city safe, together. Just like we did during the Invasion."
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"Um, actually, I'd rather not talk about it over the phone," said Mark apologetically. "It's kind of a family problem. But have you ever heard of the famous Jimmy and his Genie?" That one took Taylor a minute to parse out the pop name from the real name. Back in the 1940s, Wilhelm Kantor had successfully used certain artifacts stolen from ancient Arab cities in Libya to summon a prince of the efreeti, a nigh-omnipotent demigod who might have won the war for the Nazis in a month if said prince hadn't fallen into the hands of an utter naif from Freedom City with connections to the Liberty League. Mystics didn't like to talk about Jimmy Lucas and Azim-al-Aziz; that sort of relationship _wasn't supposed to happen._
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"I need to talk to someone who lives in another dimension," Mark replied. "And I'm not supposed to use any of our equipment for that without authorization." He hesitated a bit, then said, "Have you ever heard of the City of Brass?" Of course Taylor had heard of the City of Brass, home of the efreeti, source of a Thousand and One Nights. The inhabitants were ludicrously powerful on Prime, though the version of the Pact they'd sworn with Simon Magus meant they were tightly bound by oaths and strictures when not on their own soil. Only a very few had been active on Prime in the 21st century, and those minor scions who had somehow slipped through the cracks.
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"Hello, Ms. Chun?" asked Mark with his usual automatic deference to adult superheroes. "This is Mark Lucas. We spoke earlier in the month? I was wondering if you were available for a consultation." He sat in his desk chair, eyes casually wandering his roomates' posters. It looked much nicer over there without the Linkin Park album covers.
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Gargoyle-boy had decided to start poking Jack's face, gentle pats with stubby fingers that somehow came to sharp points all the same. "Yeah, hi there," Jack shot a look at the phone, wincing a little at the idea of yet another person finding out where his super-secret headquarters was. "Yeah, that'll be all right. Ask him to pick up some air freshener or something too, would you?"
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It was a gloomy day near the end of November when Mark decided to call Taylor Chun, having spent a long day at home in his father's study reading up on the City of Brass. Amid all the horrors and wonders of the demonic invasion earlier in the month, those taunting words from the demon in the graveyard had stuck with him. He knew perfectly well what the City of Brass was, of course, he'd been raised on stories of the place for much of his life. Azim-al-Aziz, his grandfather's friend and ally during the Second World War, had been a prince of the City of Brass, an efreet kidnapped by Nazi sorcery and held in their clutches before being rescued by the Liberty League. It was supposed to be a wonderful, magical place where the Arabian Nights had never ended, a place where a thousand wonders lay just beyond the veil. But he'd never visited there himself; his grandfather had passed on a warning that with the end of the Second World War, Azim-al-Aziz had encouraged his people to seal up their dimension to make sure they could never be taken against their will again. That also meant they didn't visit Earth much anymore. With the issue still nagging at him as he sat in his dorm room, Mark had decided to phone a friend. That's what friends were for, wasn't it? As his cell rang, the rain outside stopped. Maybe today was going to be a good day after all.
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Mark and Phantom talk summoning