alderwitch

"Well, you were missed enough for someone to show up on my doorstep. Well, Stesha's doorstep. I implied you were on Knights business." Taylor said as she examined his costume. Deciding it was clean, she turned toward his bedroom to put it away. Her voice floated back over her shoulder. "Why does anyone know about me anyways? I dragged him out to the alley before he did the hissing eye glowing thing so Stesha didn't see anything but you might want to have them send someone more subtle. Or at least smarter."

"Don't worry, I know what it looks like," Alex said with a smile as her grandfather went back to banging on the teleporter. Apparently he shared some of Chris's fondness for percussive maintance. Alex scrambled over some of the debris and pressed her palm against the pad by the door which opened with a soft whoosh of air. Inside the storage bay there were the remains of what had obviously been neatly organized storage but now the shelf units had no real rhyme or reason to their contents. Alex sighed and rolled her sleeves up, "Lets empty it all out, clean it down and then we'll have a place to put everything."

"Hello, Erin. Good to see you," Kevin Caldwell was a robust man still although his hair had long ago faded to pure white from its one time red. "I think we're going through storage today. I'm hoping the two of you can help me find a replacement coil." His weathered face creased into a smile as he ruffled Alex's hair and gestured vaguely to one of the manor's many underground storage rooms to start in. Several decades of superheroing apparently led to a lot of stuff accumulating.

"Interdimensional particle physics. Fifth dimension stuff." She explained cheerfully, completely misunderstanding Erin's question. Alex looped an arm through Erins and set her fingers on the belt buckle as she chirped. "Two to beam up!" There was a twisting sensation and the girls landed on what did look something like the teleporter from Star Trek although a little dusty. It certainly had sixties sci-fi written all over it, but of course this actually worked. Alex reached out to brace herself as she reoriented her senses, and cheerfully called out, "It's still kicking at the last minute, Granpa. I think the fourth coil's still surging on the re-intigration. You okay, Erin?" They were standing in the base proper. The manor above was a gently aging sprawling house but below it was all very dusty sixties sci-fi. It was more cluttered than the last time they'd been through as Alex's grandfather was clearly puttering through trying to get the base back in heroing order. The place was huge enough that it was going to take more than a weekend or two to fix everything up.

"Nope, I've got the prototype to test out." Alex said proudly and lifted up the hem of her shirt to show off the shiny F-shaped buckle on her jeans. "Granpa's pretty sure that the ol' teleporter's running again and this is the first beacon. I should be able to activate it and 'port right onto the pannel. Want to ride along?"

"Cleaning out the HQ. It's covered with grime and I don't want Granpa to try and do it all himself. I can help with the heavy lifting after all." Alex said with a grin as she released her textbooks to juggle them telekinetically, "Wanna come?" As she spoke, she gestured for the books to fly over to her desk and began stripping out of her good clothes and pulling on some very faded (for Alex) old work clothes.

"He's not a monster, Ace. Look me in the eye and tell me that your hands are clean. Tell me that you've never made a mistake. Lie to me, Ace. Tell me that grace is something that you can only attain once in your life," Taylor said with a defiant tilt of her chin. "We both know that if the world was ever so simple a place, it isn't any longer. We are nothing like Force Ops. You have such grand ideals. Such high hopes. You make the same mistake as Dark Star by refusing to stand example. I strongly suggest that you refrain from making a second mistake by acting before you think. I can assure you, you will regret it." She slowly crossed the room to Jack. Taylor was still pissed, and oh they were going to have some words later, but she wasn't going to make him stand alone for this. "I think, Dark Star, that you've answered your own question best. We are heroes. There is much we can learn from each other. There is much that we must learn from each other. In your own words,I think you'll find whatever you came here today looking for." Taylor looked up at Jack before she stopped and took up a place at his side, hands still fisted and examined the room, "This doesn't have to be the end."

The clatter of Phantom's chair getting knocked back was lost in the crackle of lightning that sizzled accross the room and caught Jack square in the chest. The blast was enough to lift him off his feet and send him to smack against the opposite wall. "This isn't about you, Jack." Taylor hissed as she dismissed her costume without a thought, for once looking no less dangerous in jeans that she did with the cloak and cowl. With her hands fisted at her sides and a black scowl on her face she spat out, "I have had enough of being threatened and I have had enough of being insulted. All anyone has managed to do is prove Dark Star right. Either you trust the people on this team, or you don't. No demanding their secrets, or throwing the ones you know in their faces. This isn't about trusting each other, it's about trusting your own damn judgement. Either you do, or you don't. Period."

To hit roll: 26 Grapple Check: 1d20+24=43 Move action to throw him accross the room and into the wall.

Init: 1d20=10

"Nope, never had that moment of instant attraction. The one boy I might have had that for, I've known since we were in pampers." Alex said with amusement, as she put the decorative clip in. It was a more subdued clip that was a pure silver rather than anything that sparkled. The design was abstract and small and it nestled into the curls of her hair. It was something that Zoe had seen in her mother's jewelry box when she'd played dress up as a kid. "You can't base your judgments on what may or may not happen. Instead, you should decide what you want to have happen and pour your efforts into making that come true. Then, even if things go poorly, you never have to wonder because you'll know you tried." With that last little bit of advice, Alex gave her a quick hug and a small smile, "You look very pretty. More importantly, you look happy. Don't run too fast or you'll blow that hairdo all around. Now go have fun."

"Not a problem, Ace, we'll re-enter the party from a different direction." Phantom dropped the thug uncerimoniously on the ground as he passed out and glided down to where Avenger and Ace were standing. She landed next to Jack as she solidified, and her smile flashed below the cowl of her cloak, "You just showed up to give the last blow and take the credit. It doesn't count if no one shoots at you." She grinned up at Jack, her eyes sparkling with the lingering adrenaline high of the fight, "Right?"

The demon gave Avenger a final, almost confused look, before it vanished in a belch of sulfur. Fortunately, neither of the heroes near it needed to breathe. Phantom waved a hand, pulling water from the small lake to douse the remaining flames before she landed and stomped over to the remains mini castle. She was muttering under her breath, none of the words in English and none of them sounding terribly polite. She gestured with one hand, which still hurt as her hands were still healing up under the gloves and there was a grinding, crunching noise as the pink castle was lifted in the air and crushed into a thick ball of plaster by the black energies Phantom wielded. At least Phantom's temper worked in Jack's favor as she was too pissed at being the target of another demon attack to focus on it following Jack's questions. Or even question that Jack had been able to 'intimidate' the monster, "There's got to be a summoning circle around here." She gestured to clear the last of the rubble away and leaned over the hastily scrawled pentagram in the ground beneath the castle. "Hmph."

"Well, I told them to," Alex did point out. Even the boys of Young Freedom who were really wonderful people, were still teenage boys and teenage boys almost never came up with the idea of cleaning on their own in Alex's personal experience. "But of COURSE they weren't going to be angry. Even the most oblivious would see that you were hurting." Alex gave her hand a little squeeze back before releasing her to finish putting the last of the clutter away and flipped back the covers on her bed as she gave Zoe a chance to recover. "No one minds. Honest. I can tell."

Taylor nodded and tucked her legs up under her, covering a small yawn with the pillow hugged to her chest. Letting her head rest against his shoulder, she gave Jack most of her attention although her eyes remained on the screen. "I never get the territory thing, really, but my patrol is so wide. Worlds wide, really. I can be in Hong Kong in three seconds. Or Erde. Or Anti Earth. Or Hell." She smiled and glanced up at him, "I keep telling myself that someday I'll use it to spend a week lying on a beach somewhere. Never actually going to happen but it's a nice fantasy."

Alex smiled and in the mirror, Zoe could see the pins and various things float in the air around Alex and into her hands as she needed them. "It's not really girly, so much as childish. I like bright colors. I always have. It seems silly to tone it down because of what other people think. I don't pick my clothes because they make anyone but me happy. Well, most of the time at least. If you're happy with yourself and comfortable in your skin, you really don't need to worry about what other people think. After all, you can't please everyone." She pinned the mass of it and then started turning the knot that came out of the top into thick curls with the help of an iron. She frowned, trying to follow Zoe's rather tangled concerns, "Well, I don't know the Eddie you know but this Eddie is very sweet and certainly nothing to be intimidated about. He talks about girls but, honestly, I kind of doubt he's done much more with any of them than it sounds like you've done with him. You certainly shouldn't do anything that you're uncomfortable with." Alex stopped curling her hair and rested her hands on Zoe's shoulders, her hazel eyes solemn, "Don't rush through this, Zoe. It's not all about making out and you certainly shouldn't be making out because you're scared of what he'll see in you other than sex. Enjoy this time. It's not about the end of the road, its about the journey. Relax, have fun, and take things slow. I know you're impatient but there are moments that only happen once. You don't want to rush them. Just have fun, and be yourself." She squeezed Zoe's shoulders and went back to finishing making up the curls before she began brushing them out so they were less corkscrews and more waves. After a moment of silence, she added, "And if he pressures you to have sex, let me know and I'll send Mike out to have a chat with him."

Phantom's attention was diverted from Ace's speech as a note slipped into her lap. After glancing at it, her lips compressed into a tight line that could have been mistaken for irritation. To the few who actually knew Taylor without her mask, she was desperately trying not to laugh. While she ducked her head down so that her hood concealed her face until she was certain her emotion wouldn't show, Phantom let the note dissapear from between her fingertips with a flick of her wrist. Once she was certain she had her expression remote again save for a faint smile, she lifted her face to give Ace the rest of her attention even as she gave Avenger a small nod.

"I think this is an old access tunnel. There's like a Y-intersection and we want to veer left at it. I think this goes for a ways, though." Alex called up from the back after breifly conferring with Mark on the little legend at the corner. The kids trooped down the corridors that weren't entirely even. In someplaces water had leaked in, leaving stagnant pools that had to be skirted on the ledges or floated over. Or tromped through for those that didn't mind a little bit of muck. It did, as Alex had stated, gone on for a few ways and the tunnels diverged a few times until it was anyone's guess what exactly they were under. Eventually, a twist took them to a tunnel that seemed more carved out of rock than an old access tunnel. The ground was thick with grime and empty wall sconces were filled with a heavy layer of dust. From the back of the group Alex opinioned, "Creepy."

Lets have notice checks or search if someone is actively looking for traps.

I'm somewhat confused. I thought the dino rampage was to cover our unauthorized use of the transporter or do I need to scavange up / bypass security codes?

Alex made an agreeable noise in her throat that seemed to imply all of that was taken care of. She finished brushing the tangles out of Zoe's hair and began braiding it into the same loose braid that she usually put her own hair in for the night. "He won't think that. Mark blew up the Doom Room once. A few dents in the wall is nothing for Claremont. Don't worry about it." She finished with the braid and knotted a skrunchy around the end. Alex let one hand rest on Zoe's shoulder and smiled at her in the mirror, "There you go, all cleaned up. You need to get some rest, tonight. If you'd like, I can put you into a deep enough sleep that you won't dream. You do sleep, right?"

Alex blinked at the tinkerbell-meets-morticia thing that Zoe had cobbled together but she gave it a judicious look and commented, "It's an awful lot of black, don't you think?" She did however dutifully scoot around to quickly lace together the back of the dress. She looked at the laces, more black, then brightened. "Wait, I got something better for this." Alex returned in short order with a long length of purple ribbon with silvery glitter stars that she threaded through the rings of the dress instead. Once she'd fastened Zoe into the dress, she began twisting Zoe's hair up with quick efficiency. "I think I can manage something like that. I might even have a clip for it. One without sparkle butterflies or flowers, even. I know not everyone shares my fashion tastes." She pressed Zoe down and, after quickly brushing the thick hair out, began to slowly twist the mass of straight waves into the beginnings of an up do. "Are you nervous?"

Taylor laughed at that, it was quiet, but a genuine chuckle none the less. She pushed back the sleeves of the sweatshirt. It was too big. That's why it had remained with its tags in the pocket, of course, she'd always meant to return it, "I don't mind the fights. Sometimes, I think I actually enjoy the thrill a little too much. Its when I have to return someone to a world they'd give anything not to have to go back to..." Her voice trailed off as she watched Gene Wilder's classic comedic performance although her thoughts obviously somewhere else. After a moment, she tilted her head up to look at him with curiosity. "A super-hooker? Was that before or after the hockey mask?"

Alex seemed remarkabally unflappable in the face of the icky mess. She had the forethought to bring spare clothes from Zoe's dressers, standard Claremont sweats and a t-shirt, but they were clean and smelled of fresh laundry. She helped strip Zoe and pushed the soiled clothes down the laundry shoot while Zoe washed. "We do have plenty of towels for that," Alex pointed out with amusement as Zoe rubbed her face against her sleeve. It didn't take much to see that Zoe could use a few minutes to calm herself down. She might move at sonic speeds but that didn't mean she could emotionally recover at the same speeds. "Here, sit. Your hair's gotten all tangled." Alex pressed lightly down on Zoe's shoulder to seat her on the edge of the tub and pulled out a hair brush. It was obviously hers with the day-glo yellow handle and cheerful blue bubbles across the back of it. Alex rested her hip against the sink and set about untangling Zoe's hair, "I'm happy to be here. Nightmares can be really rough. Eventually our brains always try and make us find a way to face thingss. I know I've had a few doozies. Want to talk about it?"

Phantom gave both Fleur and Dark Star a gratefull look as she placed a hand on Jack's shoulder and teleported them to his apartment. When they were out of the void once more, Taylor was standing in the jeans and tank top she'd put on for their date tonight. She slid her hand from his shoulder to close around his arm as she peered up at him. Obviously he wasn't okay and it would sound inane to ask. "You okay?" She bit her lip and shook her head before he could answer. "Of course not. You were missed, by the way, but I think I covered and alluded that you were off on Knights business for the creep that I met earlier." Taylor released his arm to tug at his jacket as she said gently, "Let's get you out of this, okay?"