alderwitch

Psyche relaxed when she saw the images filter down the link. Something was making it, which meant that something could be undone. Taking the data from Phalanx's images and filtering those out to the group, she switched over to communication with all of her far flung team. "Okay, here's what I think we can do. Edge, I'm going to help you safely break down all of those mirrors into harmless components, okay? But I'm going to need to lock in deeper to your brain so that you can use my knowledge with your powers. You think we can do it? You'll have to really trust me for it. On the off chance that doesn't work, they're picking up the light, which means, if we break that light up with something like some serious cloud cover or an eclipse, they'll be much less effective. Zephyr and Hellion, that's your job. Cloud cover's the easiest but get Dark Star or Archetech standing by. Meanwhile, Wander and Phalanx, lets get that balloon moving so that its out of the direct alignment with the sun, towards the ocean. How's that sound?"

Taylor was used to the disorientation of this realm but she felt Stesha tumble through after her. She flailed a gloved hand out for her blindly, grasping onto whatever she found. She could hear the baby's shrill and frightened crying and sense him but she was just as blind as Stesha visually. "Its okay, its okay. Mommy's right here." Taylor soothed as she towed Stesha towards the cry, reaching towards the baby with her free arm. "You're safe. Just..." Don't teleport blind again. The very idea was enough to set Taylor to shaking all over again.

"Jack!" Taylor gasped from behind Phantom's mask. Without pausing to do more than notice the hum of magic in the air, she reached out to rend a large gash in reality, leaving a ragged edged portal hanging in space and dove after the baby, without sparing a second thought for Zealot. She vanished through the inky black rip in reality, searching about frantically for the thread of her son's mystical presence.

Powerstunting a dimensional movement with the portal extra off my magic array. Burn my HP for the fatigue that causes. And leap after my complication. I mean, baby :D

Taylor's gonna use the void a-splosion: AP: Damage 11 (Eldritch Burst; Extra: Affects Corporeal, Area/Burst [General], Selective; Flaw:Action/Full; Power Feat: Affect Insubstantial 2) {35}

Taylor noticed the presence of the closest thing she'd come to having as an arch nemesis and her eyes had narrowed. Before she could do much to react, however, he was making with the speeches and vaulting out of the shadows to snatch Jack Jr. up in his arms. The fact that he seemed to think that he was 'protecting' the baby from their fell sorcery did little to mitigate her panic. She remembered all too well what that whip could do and had really no idea what its ability to drain magic could do to the baby. She didn't want to find out. "Give me back my son and I might not feed you the back end of your whip," Phantom gritted out as her costume exploded out of the Eye of Heshem with a crackle of Eldritch power that thundered in the small clearing and all over the ground, reality itself started to rip into small rents, spilling the Void into the clearing with unnatural shadows and bolts of lancing white power.

"Uhm, that's not going to hold. We're gonna have to move it but moving its also likely to make it likely to rip. We might be able to do something to help keep it from ripping itself apart. Its magnifying solar energy would be my best guess. Harnessing it somehow into a giant beam like a kid with a magnifying glass on much, much bigger scale. What defuses a beam of light... think, Psyche!" That was shared with all the team-mates although the last part was directed to herself more than anything else. She touched the com-link again, " Apologies, Colonel. We have our hands a bit full and I'm afraid I was a bit distracted. Thank you for that data, we'll work on processing this and ending this problem." Psyche pressed a few more buttons on her com-link, "Persephone, I'm giving you access to the AEON computers, please pull that information and give it to me as you correllate it, please. In the meanwhile, that balloon is going to pop soon. Let's get it out where it'll do less damage while we come up with a way to diffuse that beam. It might be a chemical reaction of some kind, Phalanx, can you see down on the microscopic level and see if there's anything strange. In the meanwhile, lets move this balloon."

I don't have interpose and I will hold onto my HP and let him grab the baby for comic value.

"Well, we're all founding members, so more founded than joined, but yes." Psyche pointed out with her usual need for specifics. She looked up at the woman curious if she was going to pretend to have forgotten her name or not. It didn't matter much to Alex, she knew how sensitive people could be about the secret identity thing. A phenomena she could understand if not share. "And what sorta neighborhood you wanna live in?"

1d20=10 You're going first, I think, AD.

Alex listened, her fingertips laced in her lap and her hazel eyes wide and thoughtful as she nodded occasionally. She sighed softly when he seemed to have wound down and shook her head, "James, you're a 'player' only when your emotions are not engaged. When you really care, you're as vulnerable as any of the rest of us. Of course you're not going to be able to be all 'smooth' over this, because it matters. The only real question is whether or not its worth fighting for to you?" She paused to set her soda down, her slender fingertips moving to emphasize her points. Alex talked with her hands when she was involved in a conversation and her fingertips waved in front of her with agitation, "The fact that Erin went out with someone is a really, really good thing. It means she's healing. The chances that this is going to actually be the big love of her life are small to none. Not impossible, but certainly nothing to bet on. Asking her out isn't going to ruin your friendship. Worst case scenario, she's flattered and irritated that you didn't mention it before and doesn't feel the same. But that's nothing that friendships are going to die over." Alex looked at him and made little pom-pom shaking gestures, "So... Go! Fight! Win! Better to lose then never try, right?"

And here it is! Prom!

"Oh, that's not important. I just hope everyone has fun," Alex said with a bright smile as she turned around to face Mike and held still for him to pin the delicate flowers to her dress. When he was done, Alex smoothed her hands over the lapels of his jacket before adjusting his tie and beaming at him, "Don't you look handsome! You're going to dance with me tonight, aren't you?" Alex tucked her arm through his as they strolled to the door as students started to trickle in.

Claremont's jr. Prom. If you were a student in the last year, including new graduates, you're invited. If you want to go and are not a student or the guest of one, let me know here and how and why you're attending. Other than that, have fun!

It took some doing, but if there was a student unaware of the end of the year party at the new AEON building, it wasn't for lack of trying. Now, while some students had... concerns over Alex being the entire decorating committee, when they arrived at the large ballroom near the top of the luxury building, those doubters were pleasantly surprised. The entire room was decked out in creams and dark blues, gold serving as the accent. It was both a nod to the school colors and an elegant color scheme for the high quality linens. There was a dance floor, of course, and a dj set up in the corner along with a small stage. In another corner, a photographer was set up to do professional photos. It was staffed with AEON personnell who had been gently coached to look the other way at any sudden displays of power. Alex had been over seeing the set up for much of the day, but she did vanish to her office to change and reappear shortly before the doors were scheduled to open. As tasteful as the ballroom was, it was no surprise that Alex was a bright spot of color in a dress that started in a butter yellow color at the neckline and slowly deepened to a deep red at the fluttering hem around her ankles. She was standing in the center of the dancefloor, looking up at the net of balloons attached to the vaulted ceiling, making certain that it wouldn't drop away early.

"For about a year now, I guess." Psyche said, glancing up from the monitors to swivvel her chair around. "We made our super hero debut at a ball game last summer when there were these wannabe super thugs. And we found the base on my birthday and started fixing it up." She tilted her head to the side and politely returned the question, "What about you?"

"More the latter. How do I explain it..." Alex's brow furrowed as she tried to form the metaphysics into simpler terms, "I can provide you a... waking dream, basically. Overlay your thoughts and reactions with hers and build her world around you with a simple day in the life to react to, but like a dream, you'll have that emotional distance from it when you 'wake up'. Does that make sense? You'll experience things the way she would but it won't be an actual memory of hers that you're reliving." Alex waved her hands a little, "You can think about it of course. If you really wanted to peek in her head, I'd let you but I think this way is less awkward."

Taylor watched him, her expression inscrutable. She didn't often do that inhuman stillness that Jack pulled off regularly but she had that now, neither blinking, nor breathing. "You don't understand," Taylor said after a long pause, "And I suppose that's my fault. Let me tell Jack I'm going out." She turned and walked through the wall only to reappear a few moments later. Taylor silently held out a hand for James to take, which meant their method of travel was going to be through the Void. "This is not a conversation for the kitchen. It requires.... visual aids."

Taylor nodded slightly and held the baby out for Jack to take. When her hands were free, she reached into the Void with the table concealing the action from the rest of the patrons. Her left hand vanished and reappeared with a small and battered wallet. She flipped it open and pulled out a thick stack of pictures and pushed the little wallet folio across the table to Erik to take. It was a series of her relatives, a huge family of several siblings about the same age as Taylor and her parents, nieces and nephews. Taylor reached over to flip it to her closest and favorite brother, a tall lanky chinese man with the same dimples making a face with her at the camera. "I get where you're coming from, Erik. I really, really do. I was exactly the same way. I didn't trust my family with my secrets and I didn't trust my friends with my family. They got drawn in anyways and because of it we almost lost him to something that was my enemy. I kick myself for it every single day. I'm not saying you have to trust us with your family but you should trust someone, because when you're out of commission and they're vulnerable, it'll be a huge relief to know that someone's going to look out for them." Taylor said and pulled her hand back from the pictures, leaving them on the table. "The point being, we're not going to invade your home. They'll never see us, or know about us, but you should remember we're all on the same side. If you called and said there was trouble for them, we'd be there in a heartbeat with no questions asked and all the powers we have out to protect them. I know you're not going to believe me, I was twice as stubbornly determined to keep everything separate and I well remember it." She sighed and reached up to fiddle with her amulet, her fingertips plucking at the chain and twisting it through her fingertips, "Which is really what we're here about today. Jack's worried - I'm worried - that people are going to forget if we do this thing that we're all on the same side. Grim's joke with the stake Jack dismissed but I haven't. It's not a funny joke. She wouldn't be amused if someone even pretended they were going to wave around an iron crowbar. We all spend too much time facing real danger to all be put at risk over some ego and with some of the people involved, things can get heated fast. You weren't around the last time a super-hero group exploded but it wasn't pretty. With actual combat and real temper behind it, it wouldn't hard for people to get hurt."

"Something that mattered more to you than you thought it did?" Alex asked quietly and gave him a tiny smile, "No, I'm not reading your thoughts and I wouldn't. If you want to tell me, you can, but you know I won't do anything to dig around before that unless its really needed. I don't think it is right now. I think you just need a friend that's going to do nothing but listen with empathy for a little bit and I've got the time." Technically, she was making the time but Alex was good with priorities. "So is it lost for good? Or is it lost for right now?"

Alex pivoted to face him, pulling her hands out of her pockets. She looked at him with wide eyes that were almost alien in the depth of their perception. She reached up to touch one of the barrettes in her hair and straightened it like any sixteen year old would do but the gesture didn't match her expression. "No, I'm not. I was five. We were five. They were benign and they could have been much worse. Kind where they could be. I got to live with my parents under surveillance and instead of kindergarten, I went to a government think tank. We still played with toys and games, its just they were all carefully structured to test our abilities, our psychological leanings. Our strengths. Our weaknesses. I was the Psyche project. Its a name I wear with neither shame nor pride." She let her head tilt to the side, her expression turning sad again, "I've always been a telepath. Always. My powers didn't come at puberty, they came at birth. I saw their fear the same way I saw the fear in the eyes and hearts of the people here. It exists. It will always exist. But it can be lessened."

Boom baby: 1d20+15=33

"Okay, enough. Time out." Taylor spoke up, frowning. "I really am going to wait outside if this is what the conversation is just going to be. I don't actually need to eat at all and I have, literally, a dozen other things I could be doing." She shifted like she wanted to fold her arms up and scowl at them both but all she ended up doing was jiggling the baby a little bit. It was not so easy to look tough while bouncing a baby, but Taylor did fix both of the men with a scowl. "The point of this meeting is to talk about the fight that this whole thing is eventually going to blow up into and make sure its not a debacle like the last time. And if it does explode spectacularly, that no one is going to get seriously hurt and that includes your family, Erik. The reason we're here is to show you that we already have that information and we're no more going to use it than what you know about us. Along with any other ground rules that need to get set down. And ground rules do need to be set down." Taylor turned her frown from her husband to the swashbuckler and just shook her head, "Clearly you ARE worried that we'd actually harm your family or you wouldn't be so upset that we called you at home. We didn't do anything to break your cover and we're not planning on doing anything to break your cover and I really can't think of a better way that we could have proven that today than what we've done. Can you?"

"I have - or will have - a daughter. She's beautiful and bright and so funny.... and so sad it would break your heart. She gets my hair and her father's eyes and the same energy that mutated me and her father will give her the sort of powers that can destroy the world. Someday... Someday very soon, the same sort of groups that was responsible for the ten years that I and everyone like me spent in government controlled facilities will realize if not the actual girl, the potential for her to exist. They'll try and pass more laws so that our rights will vanish one by one. We'll lose the ability to marry, to have children. The rights that every man and woman irregardless of race or sexual orientation or religion should have. Unless the public tide of opinion turns against those sorts of groups, they'll be able to do it." Alex tucked her hands into her pockets and began to quote a speech that Erik might have recognized, "They came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist..." She trailed off for a moment, the only sound the soft shuffle of her sneakers on the concrete and her gaze straight ahead and very introspective. She straightened her shoulders, her chin lifting up a fraction and she shrugged, "It affects my family, but in the end, that sort of thing affects everyone. So this is me, speaking up basically."

Stesha and Taylor vs. a Foe From The Past. Dun dun dunnn....