alderwitch

"It's not how it sounds. He just showed up and said I was a crime against fashion and the next thing I know, we're in Paris and he's dragged me to some shop that sold things even I couldn't pronounce," Taylor protested with a blush, "And I didn't let him pay for it either." Thank goodness. She cleared her throat and changed the subject, her tone amused, "The cloak does give me some bulk and I regenerate. Everything. If I pierced my skin, I'd have to do it again everytime I wanted to change earings."

They followed the trail through the winding streets until they came to a ramshackle and slightly run down house squished between two larger and newer buildings. Phantom ran her fingertips over the doorframe delicately as she murmered, "Warded. I'm concerned it might be protected against my insubstantial form. He has been very intent on sidestepping me. I can blast it off its hinges, but that might be more noticible than we'd otherwise prefer." The house had very little in the way of regular locks other than what one might except of a run down house in one of the sketchier neighborhoods.

Taylor relaxed slightly at that. Of course, in the circles she ran in, she had heard of the Prophets, "Doubtless you're correct then. I'm sure Jack will be relieved as well..." Her gaze slid back to her boyfriend and one brow quirked sardonically as she added, "When he's finished his dance, of course."

1d20=13

James emerged in a rather abandoned looking toolshed. The items in the room were covered with rust and a thick layer of dust and cobwebs. It was dark and rather dingy until Alex opened the door, the rest of the team loosely gathered around behind her. "Hey, James. You found the broom closet, looks like." After that cheery greeting, she scooted out of the way of the other kids.

Alex practically lit up at the mention of activities and assignements and finished jotting a few notes on her notebook. Although Alex really didn't need it, she found it saved time to take notes during class as more often than not she ended up making copies for Mike anyways. She slanted a glance to her best friend and enthused over their mental link while they trooped down the stairs, 'Oh, I hope he'll have some real work. I mean, the getting to know your fellow classmates intro stuff has been nice but won't it be cool to jump right into to astrophysics?'

Phantom gave Ace a droll look but didn't protest acting as bait although she did point out very mildly, "Lets hope they can't affect me. Otherwise this will be an entirely unpleasant experience." With that statement, she waited until everyone was moving into place and teleported to Ace's suggested location, and hovered there ephemerally. "I somehow doubt you all possess the neccesary permits for these."

Alex had relaxed into her seat with a chuckle and hadn't really done much more than let out a squeak at the one or two lurches. She grinned at Erin, "Oh, come on. My nana could drive faster than that. I know you want to gun it a bit. Go for it, I think you've got a good handle on the car. You're not going to do any harm here. I'll bet you that you can't do the cone course on the first try."

"Well, I think we can touch on the addage of if power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Contemporary psychological theory dictates that the actual prevalence of psychological abberations are woefully underdiagnosed. I think that idiosyncracies such as that are simply more pronounced in the very high profile antics of metahumans." Alex gave Raylis a small smile, "The brain and all of its workings is something that modern science is still just at the tip of the iceburg of. I suspect neurology is going to turn up all sorts of fascinating discoveries in the next few decades."

Taylor switched her frown to Ace, and made a tsking noise at him. "Very pretty words, Ace, but empty nonetheless. I'm well aware that angry or not, I'm no one to turn heads. I like to think that I make up for it with a sterling wit and a nice right cross. I'd rather you answer my question than tweak my nose over Jack." She inclined her head to him, her voice dropping to a husky murmer that would hopefully be lost to anyone but Ace, "My sixth sense is nagging at me but I don't know these people. You do. I think its either that young woman or her previous dance partner."

Taylor gave Ace a faint and long suffering sigh at his unceasing innuendo. She threaded her arm through his and all but dragged him back the way she'd came. Fortunately, Ace was much to suave to ever be dragged anywhere so their pace accross the ballroom looked much more effortless than it might have otherwise. "I need you to tell me who a few of these guests are." Taylor began as the crowd parted naturally in time to see Jack lead Angel onto the dance floor. Taylor narrowed her eyes at her boyfriend as he flashed the girl his most charming smile. That hadn't been quite what she meant by 'engage' them. Taylor's voice was flat although fortunately for everyone it wasn't Phantom's echoing boom. "Let's start with her."

Taylor snickered and tossed a napkin at Stesha, "Of course I don't look like a bad ass in my civvies. I'm almost five foot one in my socks. Even if I was some sort of chinese american ninja, I don't look it. Dimples do not strike fear in the hearts of criminals." Taylor shook her head firmly, "And I am definately not shopping with Ace for leather and whips. The underwear shopping trip was bad enough"

"He started with the 'Raaah! Gonna eat you, girly!' and began getting all fuzy when we hit the woods. It lost the scare factor when Jack knocked him down, however." Taylor said with a laugh. "Sometimes it seems like I get all the monsters"

"I would think that it would just be depressing to hear that its the same song, different verse," Taylor said dryly but after one mostly joking sigh, gave in. "Lets see, we went to the drive in for a double feature, which was likely the first mistake. During intermission, while my date headed off for the restrooms, I was alone in the car. Of course, this thug showed up to jimmy the trunk and of course after seeing me, he comes after me." She did try to keep Jack's name out of the story. No reason to ruin Stesha's mood, "So after a brief wrestling match for the door, I couldn't exactly blast him in the middle of the drive in. So, I scrambled out the driver's side - barked my knees doing so, too - and let him chase me into the woods. To add insult to injury, my date punched him in the back of the head and he fell down. Game over."

Alex brought her hand down on the table with a resounding smack and with one finger pointed at Zoe, raised her voice to a near shout, "I don't care if you come from the dimension of the man-apes, you don't talk to people like that and you sure as shooting don't talk to me like that! I can tell you're hurting but I'm not going to sit around and let you swear at me, or at my friends. We've been nice, and really, very trusting. But this is my line right here, and you've hit it. So this is me telling you, right now, cut out the attitude or we will leave you with the Freedom League and you can make your own way in a new world. We don't owe you a blessed thing. I can tell you one thing, we're certainly not sisters because my mother would have grounded me so fast if I'd ever talked to anyone like that." Alex finished her speech, half standing, her eyes narrowed and hands flattened on the table.

"I think we should take her to the school. It'll be the fastest and Mr. Summers can contact the League if its needed." Alex observed her with a slightly knit brow, her expression very focused and her head cocked slightly to one side, the last of the small group to speak. A moment after Zoe stopped speaking, Alex's expression cleared for a moment. "It's not all lies, and no, I wasn't probing into your deeper thoughts. If you have secrets you want to keep, I'm not going to interfere with your privacy." Her mother's ethics hadn't changed in thirty years, "Zoe, I can only help you if you're willing to tell me what's bothering you. I hope you know you can always talk to me." If her father had been the stalwart defender, than her mother had been the quiet nurturer. Always there with a comforting shoulder or a quiet word of encouragement. The same slightly worried expression was in her hazel eyes as she reached out to touch the back of Zoe's hand and offer what comfort she could, "I'm so, so sorry about your family."

Psyche/Alexandra Albright AEON Foundation

Taylor looked at the other couple dubiously. It was the quickest route to finding out the answer but... "Well, you might want to engage them in some sort of conversation unless you want to be an uncomfortable voyeur to some secretive hook up in a broom closet." She murmered as she brushed a quick kiss against his cheek, "Unless I drastically misread the interplay. I'll have a quick chat with Ace and come find you." With that, she slipped her way through the crowd. At least Ace was always easy to find. It was working the way through the circle around him that would prove difficult.

"I don't think I'll ever feel safe sleeping there again. As it is, I'm sure the memory of waking up with some sneaking into my bedroom while I was sleeping three feet way is going to bother me for a good long time. That'll teach me to do something other than nap on the couch." Taylor gave a small shudder and shook her head firmly. Her mouth twisted at the memory, "As for how he got in, he teleported. Which is fortunate as thats what woke me up. I might have lost the fight but at least I had time to summon clothes and leave enough collateral damage that whoever came looking for me knew a fight had happened." She gave Jack a faint half-smile at that and finished answering Stesha's question, "I doubt he's found anyone else yet. He was too fixated on who I knew and where they were. If he'd had anything like a lead, he would have asked more pointed questions. That's easier to do than trying to break someone completely. He was good enough at questioning to know that."

Sense Motive: 17 Mind Reading Check: 26. It is subtle, and just a surface thought read.

It didn't take long for the kids to arrive at Champions, with Zoe still treated with the occasional measuring glance from one or more of the kids. After a short wait, they were all shuffled into a booth. Alex slid in next to Mark and turned her attention to Zoe as she cut right to the heart of the matter, "You said it was complicated?" Unlike Mike, she could carry on a mental conversation through their link without looking like she was. Usually, they both tried to keep from chattering down the link when in mixed company as much as possible and even when she did use their link, Alex tried to acknowledge the activity with her body language. This time, Alex ignored her manners as she was more interested in accessing Mike's memory of the encounter with the hope he'd been less blinded by the psychic feedback than she'd been. It was a futile hope. As for what Zoe could sense, she felt the vague background presence of communication as Alex wasn't yet tuned in enough to keep the conversation as private as she might like. Alex did manage to keep the words garbled as she reached out to Mike, What did you see?

Taylor glanced up at Jack as she tried to find words to explain that there were really monsters out there without terrifying Stesha. Jack was really better at the pretty lies than she was and it was so very tempting to try and find pretty lies to explain the very real danger to Stesha. However, Taylor owed Stesha so much more than that. "Stesha, this sort of threat. It's not really like the Beekeeper or others of his ilk. He's a nut case, yes, but one with a cause. He thinks anyone with magic is tainted by that and its his duty to scourge them from the face of the planet. He's not looking for a slug fest, he's looking for annhilation. It wasn't a fight. He held onto me for almost a day because he thought I could tell him what I knew of my friends," Taylor spoke quietly, her gaze on Stesha, "It's not something to freak out about and hide yourself away from the world over. You need to know he's out there because he has the ability to stop magical abilities. You take a reasonable level of precaution, like you would if someone in your building got robbed. Nothing more, and nothing less."

I'll get the update on this today :)

9/7 - Vestige Added.

9/6 - Ace, Divine, Grim added. Bonus Pics updated, List updated