alderwitch

Taylor gave a little wave to Stesha as she darted off. "Well, she might be in a leotard, but at least she's not letting it all hang out like Dark Star." Taylor turned innocent, laughing eyes up to Derrick from the plushie he'd been handed, as she added sweetly, "I hear he flies through space totally stark naked." She quickly put the cloak back on the action figure before pausing as she saw the Knights all arrayed in a row. Her smile turned breifly wistful for a moment before she turned her attention back to Derrick, "Oh, the fan art room. Definately."

When Atlas looked like he had the questioning in hand, Phantom turned her attention away from the small group of huddled hobos to begin searching the sewer tunnels with her mystical senses. If Atlas couldn't get them to talk, she might find a clue somewhere down one of these twisting tunnels. Floating incoporeal, she had little to fear if the hobos somehow managed to turn aggressive. More, she trusted Avenger with her back. Under the dark cloak of her hood, her eyes began to glow with a soft white light as she sent her senses out into the dark.

Taylor turned her face into his chest, fingers clenching the fabric of his shirt. The shuddering breath she took in made it quite clear how close to the edge Taylor was running. She didn't speak as she struggled to force her frozen brain into motion. Struggling with rage and terror, it took her several long moments to organize her thoughts into something like order. "No. No, not yet. I don't know where to start looking." Taylor tipped her head back, her eyes dry at least. "I'll need to cover his absence. We're going to get him back, so we'll need to make sure he has a life to come back to. Then, we need to know what we're facing. If its a full scale invasion, they're going to hit hard. Every scrap of information we can track down could save countless lives. So our first step is doing exactly what they want us to, tracking down where he was taken from. Eventually, we won't follow the script but until then, let them think they've got us right where they want us."

"I meant the plushie Dark Star." Taylor explained, quickly setting the mask down with a laugh. "The only way she'd want an Avenger mask would be if it was strapped to a target practice dummy."

"Hey, not sure if you know everyone. Have you met Stesha? Stesha, this is Lynn." Taylor waved at Lynn once she'd elbowed Ace when it looked like he might start heckling Jack. She blushed at his dedication, glad for once that she was holding a glass in one hand to at least cover the bit of fluster. "You have got to have seen weirder things than us, Derrick. Well, maybe not." She admitted with a grin as she glanced around the assembled guests. "As odd, at least. Right?"

Taylor shifted uncomfortabally at the feeding thing again, one hand going to Jack's back. She understood Lynn's need to ask, of course, but for someone as private as Taylor was in general, the whole conversation was more than a little uncomfortable. Except for the flags of color burning on her cheeks, she did a good job of keeping her face studiously blank at the questions. "I'm not so sure that things can be made 'simple', but we'll give it a go."

"James Prophet? What - in specific - happened to him?" Mark had her full attention now, "I might be able to do something but I need details. What's going on?"

"What?" The tone was curt if borderline unfriendly. Phantom was already having a terrible Halloween, but she still had a job to do despite all of that. Thus, luckily for Mark, she was answering her phone.

Taylor shook her head slightly, refusing to send him off on some epic goose chase. She rubbed her hands up and down her arms, trying to chafe warmth back into limbs that felt leaden. There was nothing to even lash out at, and Taylor hated that. "Thank you." She said finally, looking up at him. Taylor looked lost for a moment as she reached out to catch his hands, "I don't know where I'd start looking. Wrath was an interdimensional black magic dealer. Not exceptionally powerful, except for deception and misdirection. I needed Grim to help find him last time. Wrath's got to be working for something much larger. He traveled the primal dimensions before we stopped him last time. Now, working with the infernals, he could take Jackson to any number of hell-shards."

"Going after him is the one thing I can't do, Jack. Not now." Taylor bowed her head once and her voice was as raw as Jack had ever heard. She straightened her shoulders and looked up at him, her hands tightened into white knuckled fists at her side, "That's exactly what they want me to do which can only mean one thing. They're gearing up for something big. Something cataclysmically big. Which means I can't go anywhere, not even for my family. Not even for my brother."

With deliberate, almost jerky movements, Taylor snapped the phone closed. Her voice was like her movements, too tightly wound. Jack had seen Taylor angry before, of course. She'd knocked him into a wall before. Taylor's anger generally ran the same course. A quick burst of temper, usually violent, followed by grumbling until she let it go. This was nothing like that. "An enemy took my brother. Jackson. They took Jackson. They called because they want me to follow." She dropped the phone on the table. "Those damned spy-imps. I must have led them right to my family."

"You have to start with a classic. How 'bout Survivor, Eye of the Tiger? You could borrow Ace's leather jacket and everything." Taylor said with a grin that was downright impish. She pressed a quick kiss against Jack's cheek in thanks before she answered Derrick, "It is fun. And you don't have to go buy yourself. You can sing in twos or bigger groups if you want. I'm not sure how much good the alchohol is going to do this group anyway as far as liquid courage goes. You can also set it up so that you have to sing whatever comes up on random. That can get a little wacky." Taylor glanced around. Actually, she rather thought more than half the group was metabolically challenged when it came to alchohol consumption.

"It's a cloak," Taylor muttered under her breath before picking up one of the Avenger hockey masks. As the 'official' Avenger mask had come from a sporting goods store, they were probably the most accurate things on the table. She didn't flick a glance to Derrick but she did let out a sound that sounded suspiciously like a strangled laugh, "You have to get that for Stesha."

Halloween early evening, part of the lead up for shtuff. Jack's apartment.

Taylor was in the middle of leaning over to towel dry her hair when she heard the distinctive phone chime from somewhere out in the living room. It wasn't quite full dark yet on Halloween so Taylor had taken advantage of the lull before the storm to stop at Jack's for a quick shower before what was almost always a busy night. It was possible that there were any number of her contacts that might be calling her about any number of magical problems, but the chime was distinctly the one she used for her family. Of those, only Jackson had the number and that was only for emergencies. Frowning, she twisted and ran through the walls, phasing intermitantly to take the most direct path to the phone. She scooped up the silver flip phone and checked the number. "Jackson, what's--" "-Wrong?" The voice that crackled mockingly across the phone's metallic speaker made Taylor's blood run cold. That voice, that wrong voice. She'd heard it before, months ago. A creature of dark, wet places and the hiss of the storm moments before it broke. A shapeshifter given human form and face. "Wrath," Taylor hissed the name. Her hand clenched the phone so tight her knuckles went white. "Phantom. Or should I say Taylor? No matter. Here, say hello to big brother." Despite herself, Taylor flinched at the sudden scream that echoed in the background before breaking into rasping curses. Pressing the heel of one hand against eyes that burned, Taylor's voice came out so cold she didn't even recognize it at first, "You had best pray that I don't find you. Because when I do, hell itself will look like paradise when I'm through." "Promises, promises." The line went dead.

"Its no big deal. Programming the Doom Room should be all kinds of interesting! I wonder what laws of A.I. they're using. I'll have to do some research," Alex said cheerfully, "I think he went easy on me, honestly. Its probably very difficult to calibrate it so that my mental senses even affect the simulations. I think that its a fascinating piece of science. We did quite well at it!"

Taylor snagged one of the printed guidebooks as they entered the convention proper, "So where did we want to start our browsing? Art gallery? Merchants? I wonder how many of these things they hold a year."

Notice, Sense Motive: 1d20+10=26, 1d20+10=15

Ace had about a half of a second of contact with his hand on Taylor's rear end. Startled, she automatically phased which left Ace's hand passing through her midsection. Taylor rapidly scooted out of the way of everyone's hands so she could solidify without there being a messy incident. "I think that being the birthday girl means I don't have to go first." Taylor announced once she'd put Jack between herself and Ace again. "Besides, I promised Stesha I'd have a drink with her first."

"I already have a costume for Halloween. I wear it every year." Taylor said dryly but she was smiling as she snapped a few quick photos for Stesha and Derrick. She handed the phone back and added, "I even have a date this year for the holiday."

"Thank you," Alex said politely, her glance at Mr. Archer curious. There was no sarcasm in her tone as she added, "That should prove interesting." As that seemed to be an obvious dismissal, she fell into step with Erin to head out of the Doom Room.

Taylor sighed but obediently slung an arm behind Derrick's waist in return and flashed her cheesiest grin with a thumbs up sign. When the picture was done she glanced around. "It looks both cold and uncomfortable but to each their own. I had no idea they even had these kinda things. Learn something new every day."

Taylor blinked once as she was dragged in for a snuggle and a kiss on the cheek by some handsome stranger. As she knew perfectly well that Jack didn't have a brother, she narrowed her eyes at Ace. "Very subtle," she informed him in a tart undertone. She returned Derrick's greeting with a smile as well and used Jack's bearhug of his 'brother' to catch up to Stesha at the bar. "Well, it wouldn't be a party without 'Vince'. Who else is going to be the first one up on stage?"

Taylor stopped abruptly at the costumed college kids, "Whoa, some of these folks take their super-hero fandom seriously. I don't see a Dark Star, though. I suppose that's lucky as that would be an awful lot of latex body paint. Which would be cold. I should have brought a camera. Why would anyone dress up in a costume if they didn't have to?" The last was said under her breath. Taylor's fondness for her leotard was well known to her friends, after all.

"If he's in the city, he's hiding from me." Alex spoke up finally, opening her eyes and shaking her head to clear out the images of her search. "I can push to try and search the world but that's even more of a needle in a haystack. Especially if he's hiding. Oh, hi, Mark." Alex flashed him a smile as she uncurled from the ground and stretched. She glanced up as phones were out, hoping someone would catch her up on anything she'd missed.