Electra
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Freedom City PBP: A How-To Guide
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Fleur had begun the exercise by standing back and letting the students take point, but she'd been keeping a close eye on things through the trees and the grass. She didn't like what she saw. So far this baddie seemed to be confining itself to property damage, but that could change quickly, and she honestly had no real idea of what it could do. There were so many different types of damage on display here, that either it had unseen allies or it could do things she'd never seen a villain do before. Either alternative was not good. She hated having to intervene so quickly, but it was better than letting the kids get in over their heads on the first night. The fact that the odd-looking creature had some kind of insider information on them only made things more hazardous. A quick teleport took her across the park, swallowed quickly by one dandelion and coughed up by another, just in front of Nightscale. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave," she told the creature firmly. "This park belongs to the people of Freedom City and you can't destroy it for fun." If anything, that shark-toothed smile only got wider. "Ah, and the lonely goddess," it purred. "Beloved but never loved, remembered only when she is useful. Is it so virtuous to content yourself with scraps?" Fleur paled, her hands clenching into fists. She could feel the creature pressing against her mind, but better villains had tried that before. "That's none of your business," she said coldly. "Will you leave peacefully?"
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Fleur also makes that will save. Gonna have to get me a better monster.
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The shadowy figure looked up as Nightscale approached. Even in the dim light from distant streetlamps it was a strange creature to look at, its features seeming to shift subtly from moment to moment. One second it was a human male with pale skin, one moment an olive skinned female, then suddenly a Deep One for a second, another human, then suddenly the smooth metal visor of an Omegadrone, changing on and on without pause. The mouth, though, remained mostly the same, wide and smiling, showing many pointed teeth. "Ah, dragons," it crooned, its voice barely more than a sibilant hiss through those teeth. "How entertaining. The unwanted cub, tossed from the nest and stolen by humans for a pet, and the monster who clipped her own wings when she started to fear her teeth. This world of prey must chafe like a steel collar." Both of them could feel a sudden push against their minds, like a hand trying to reach in and rummage through a drawer. For Nightscale, it was though he managed to shut the drawer barely in time, though he could still feel something unwholesome and slimy tugging at the handle. For Tiamat, that hand managed to sneak inside, quick as a blink, and began pulling. For a moment, her whole mind was full of old things she tried not to think about too much, scenes of carnage she had caused, sentient beings dead or maimed for her amusement or convenience. Worst of all was the sense of enjoyment, and the way that for just a moment, it was hard to tell if it was the creature's emotion or her own.
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I'm gonna need a couple of Will Saves, from Tiamat and from Nightscale, unless either of you has some natural resistance to telepathy. Difficulty to beat is 25.
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"Or he'll say we harassed a perfectly innocent group of cyclists out for an evening bike ride," Raina suggested with a wry twist of her lips. "I know how it works. Only way to win is not to play. Problem is, none of those cops even took a statement from us, let alone pulled security tapes or interviewed witnesses, so they're probably incompetent or dirty, or both. Could definitely be both." Merlin chirruped agreement at that. "Biker guys are going to be back on the streets soon either way. At least they won't have their bikes." She looked with some satisfaction at the shallow-water artificial reef she'd created from motorcycles. "I better get home and start spreading the word."
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Muirne headed further into the park, towards the noise. She quickly found what was a nice little gazebo and playground area, emphasis on the "was." The monkey bars appeared to have been squashed flat as though some massive foot stomped them down, while the swingset was off its legs entirely and fetched up against a fence that had bowed out from the force of its impact. One bench appeared to have had a baseball bat taken to it, with several large dents but nothing worse. The other bench was a pile of ashes, with the smell of woodsmoke still drifting on the breeze. The gazebo was the strangest sight: it looked as though it had taken some kind of terrible energy blast that vaporized part of it, then left the remainder of it rotting at the burnt edges, like a necrotic wound. It looked almost like the damage from an Omegadrone's power pike, but how could that be, here and now? None of this damage could be very old, or Doctor Metropolis would've fixed it like always. On the far end of the park, across a wide expanse of surprisingly unscathed soccer field, a shadowy figure stood near a trio of garbage cans as the cans seemed to rip themselves out of the ground and go rolling away.
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Muirne, let's see some Notice, Search, and Stealth checks to see what you find, and if it finds you back.
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Jessie sat quietly where she was put, texting furiously on her Archephone. She didn't have a lot of contacts on her phone, but "Erin(W)" was right at the top of her list. how do u know if ur arrested? The response was quick. !!! wtf are u ok Jessie frowned. ok for now. went to hospital bcuz missing baby. police have us in room w door locked. think they r sus of A and weird guy i don't know. they called A before we left home to ask ?s. no star squad i think. Jessie surreptitiously tilted her phone to snap photos of Ghost and the police officer, then sent those along as well. The reply was again quick ask if u r under arrest. if yes, ask for a lawyer and dont say anything else. y did u go to hospital if they were already asking questions? we wanted to help if they arrest you, call me and i will send the lawyer. it's bullshit because you are ex-PF and they're afraid of deep ones. maybe next time stay home tho. That didn't seem like the most helpful advice under the circumstances, but it was true that Jessie only rarely had terrible things happen to her when she stayed at home. She had gotten arrested there one time, though, so it wasn't infallible. Setting the phone aside for a moment, she looked at the police officer. "Are we under arrest?" she asked plainly. "We haven't done anything wrong, and I know you don't arrest most superheroes who come to crime scenes to try and help people."
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"I'm sure that even if they can't give you an update on her, they wouldn't think you're a creepy stalker," Fleur reassured him. "It's only natural to want to see if things turned out all right for someone you helped. You know how often we only get to see a tiny slice of somebody's story, usually the worst or scariest part. It's just nice when you can occasionally see the happy afterwards." Her phone buzzed in her hand, and she looked down to see Ammy's goodnight check in. It was a tradition, no matter what adventure Stesha was on or where Amaryllis was visiting, one text to say goodnight. Smiling, she texted back with a line of kiss and hug emojis, also traditional. "It's later than I realized. Time zones always mess me up."
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"No, we're not going to go into the hospital, we're just going to see if there are bad guy around who need stopping-" Jessie tried, but Aquaria was long gone. With a sigh, she perched on the windowsill and leapt off, arcing through the open air until she hit the roof of the building next door and started running. Running and leaping was less efficient than flying but it did cover the ground quickly, and was probably the only part of hero work that Jessie really enjoyed. Being at the top of the leap, suspended weightless for a long golden moment before gravity kicked back in, that was maybe her favorite way to feel. She'd tried to paint it a thousand times, but so far nothing had ever been quite right. It was enough to get to feel it, especially on a beautiful spring evening where even in Freedom City, a few stars were beginning to dot the heavens. As she got close to the hospital, Jessie turned her attention from the sky to the ground, trying to spot any disturbances that might spell trouble. There were always people around a hospital, and she spotted a clot that looked like probably reporters, and lots of police cars. If magic people had stolen a baby, they could be very far away by now, but it was also possible they weren't. Magic sometimes made people pretty dumb.
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Jessie looked dubiously from the television to her roommate. "Maybe it's not a very good idea for you to be going down there then, if they're already asking you questions about did you take the baby," she offered. "We could call the lawyer Erin got for you and ask her what she thinks. You don't want to have to go answer questions at the police station again, right?" Even as she said it, though, she was distracted by the images unfolding again and again on television. Heroes were supposed to help people, and that family really needed help! "Maybe we could go and just look around quickly," she finally offered. "In case there are some bad guys hanging around." She went to put her uniform on, hoping that this wasn't going to be a bad idea.
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As each hero passed through the gateway, they were momentarily bathed in soft green light and the scent of growing things. The portal opened into a dark and well-groomed outdoor space not too different from the one they'd left, except this one was near a sign reading "Freedom City Veterans' Memorial Park." In early March the park was rather brown and sparse, a few daffodil spikes starting to push up around the base of the sign. "Hmm," Fleur mused as she stepped through, letting the portal close behind her. "It's been too long since I spruced up the plants in this park. I'll have to stop by again later. My portals can take me anywhere on Earth, any Earth," she explained to Nightscale. "I'm pretty useless in space, I'm afraid," she admitted with a laugh. It was cut off when a loud crashing noise came from nearby, like someone was smashing garbage cans with a hammer. "All right," she told the students, "time to get a look at what we're dealing with. Try not to draw attention to yourselves if you can, assess the situation first and we'll make a plan."
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Danica looked immensely pleased as she watched her friends coming over to make friends with her fuzzy surprises. There was a brief moment of concern with Eira, and for a second Danica thought there might need to be another quick hallway conference to make sure she was okay, but Pan was on top of the situation and soon Eira was getting puppy kisses too. It was awesome! She nuzzled the warm black nose of the puppy she'd been holding and then passed him off to other eager arms. From a box in the corner of the pen she began pulling out toys: rubber balls, squeaky bones, chew ropes, all kinds of fun things! The music was back to the cheerful pop of her iPod's party playlist and Judy had done a good job of making sure there were plenty of snacks and drinks available still. It was, Danica decided, a totally radical party.
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Jessie didn't typically watch the television news. She got news articles on her phone and tried to keep up with the highlights of what was happening in the world, but television news programs tended to make things as scary and sensationalized as possible, and it wasn't great for her equilibrium. She made a special exception for Freedom City Today, though, because she liked their cooking segments and could always just flip to something else when the news segments were on. This morning's Amber Alert had cut right through a piece on making your own sourdough starter, though, and Jessie hadn't been able to look away. "It's so sad," she murmured. "How could they have gotten through all that security to steal a baby? Who would do that?"
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"That's not funny," Danica muttered, turning away and heading slowly towards the stairs. Usually she would wait til everyone else had gone down because going first meant people behind her had to wait, but she was not inclined to stand around with anybody right now. She guessed that for somebody who worked for the president's kid, thousands of dollars wasn't a big deal to have to pay, and for a kid who could fly, losing your walking transportation didn't matter very much. She certainly couldn't blame the Lor pilot just for telling her the truth about the likelihood of ever getting her scooter back. It still didn't mean she wanted to hang around with any of them at the moment. 'Look at the bright side,' her mom would have said, probably would actually say once she got done freaking out about the Segway, and Danica was usually pretty good at that! It was still good to be back on Earth, and nobody got hurt, and the accidentally-kidnapped kids would be going home. It wasn't like her scooter was a person, not for real, not even despite what stupid Pan said. It was just special because it had been hers and now it was gone for good, along with all its specially-chosen decals and familiar quirks and the awesome sense of freedom it had granted. She was going to miss it, was all, and it was going to be a long trip home.
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Fleur laughed at Muirne's comment about dying. "I'm not sure what sort of paperwork the school would want you doing, but you'd probably be on the hook to bury me in a sunny spot so I could regenerate, and that wouldn't be fun for anybody. Luckily, that sort of threat isn't on the table for anybody tonight. You never know exactly what you're going to find on a patrol," she added in Luke's direction, "but there are usually warning signs you notice if things are going to get sticky. I know you all get training on evaluating situations in your classes, and that's great. It's honestly at least as important as any of your combat training. The last thing you want to do is go unprepared into a situation and wind up becoming a distraction, or worse, a victim who needs rescuing." Opening a pouch on her belt, Fleur removed a couple of tiny seeds and tossed them on the ground. They sprouted immediately, making long vines that arched up without needing a trellis, and soon created a living doorway. "Like I mentioned, tonight we're going to run down a few tips that came in on the Freedom League's public line. While we're doing that, we'll practice initial size-up and hopefully give you a feel for how things happen on a patrol. It may end up being very boring," she admitted with a smile, "but to be honest, that's how it happens a lot when you do it for real. You learn to appreciate quiet nights when you can get them." She double-checked her phone quickly. "For this one, we're heading for Memorial Park. Somebody called the line about forty-five minutes ago to say they heard 'animals fighting, but like, really big animals. Big like horses.'" So that could be a lot of things. Let's head there now and we'll check it out." She gestured everyone to the portal she'd made, which now glowed with soft green light.
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"Every new way you describe that makes it sound worse," Sparkler pointed out with a grimace. "You look like a ghost, only I don't see any psychopomp around... oh, wait! You're that guy who's always getting in the paper for dumb superhero tricks, right? The Ghost? Man, that editor must have a real hate-on for you or something." She looked around as though suddenly expecting a tabloid reporter to have shown up and started taking pictures. "Nobody's going to write an article about this, are they? I'm not ready for that, I haven't picked the place I want to be left to die of embarrassment yet."
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The large screen Agent Irons was displayed on suddenly split in two, with Irons and his simulated room on one side, a large graphic of a microphone with a line through it superimposed over the screen. The other side suddenly displayed a marquee card that looked like it could've come straight from Spongebob Squarepants, reading "Meanwhile, in blocked memory files:" A video started up on that side, a first person view of a Foundry installation creating 3-D printed, low-sophistication but high-power versions of Jack Simmons drones. Several Foundry members were guarding the production equipment, which quickly led to a fight with the first-person viewer and their accompanying AEGIS team! The accompanying audio was Agent Irons himself yelling "How did they do this? Those bastards! How did they do this?" Miss Americana walked back into the room as the video was playing through a second time. She studied it, frowning. "Thanks, Jared, can you move that to Monitor 7?" The video obligingly slid away to a screen in the corner, out of Agent Irons' camera view. "The AEGIS agents have left," she told the other scientists blandly. "They're awaiting our findings at our earliest convenience."
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"If you'd like to describe the fight you certainly may," Paige told her, "but we do have some footage of the event that we can play to show viewers how it happened. I think the audience would be interested in hearing about parts that didn't make it onto the news, what happened after the fight and once the whole incident was over with. I imagine it must have been a difficult time for all of you, first believing that your friend was willing to fight you, and then finding that the person you were fighting wasn't your friend at all."
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"Maybe she needs a distraction for something she's doing," Danica mused. "Like, we didn't check to see if anybody got robbed or pickpocketed while we were fighting that Ragin." She looked briefly chagrined. "Maybe we should have! I didn't think about it though, and nobody said anything about getting robbed." She briefly turned in her seat as though debating going back, but was far too late. Instead, she thought some more. "She might get, like, power from people having bad emotions, and making bad-emotions monsters gives her a return on the investment? Or she might be possessed by an evil spirit inside the guitar that's compelling her to play it and create those monsters! Or it could be practice for something she wants to do later. Sometimes villains can start small and escalate, so you have to be careful even if it seems like a villain is doing something small and dumb." Danica ticked these possibilities off on her fingers, then realized how many there were. "Yeah, I guess maybe you'll have to ask her. But hopefully not today, I need my new wheels!"
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"Um, yeah, it can, actually!" Danica poofed her shell away and slid off the stool, walking over to an empty place in the garage. She scrunched her face and concentrated. A new shell appeared around her, this one oriented with the black and gold dome pointing up. It was easily large enough to encompass an average minivan. "I can keep the front plate off when the shell is this way," she explained, her voice echoing from inside the shell, "so it's kind of like a tent, but I don't think I could drive very well like this. But I never have to worry about finding a garage!" she added cheerfully, walking out through the shell's front arch. "It can get a little bigger than this, I think, it seems to grow some every year. I just don't use the really big size very much because it's not as strong as when it's right on me."
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"That must have been scary," Stesha mused sympathetically. "Especially if you had trouble holding your shape at first. I've been so glad that there are schools here for this generation of kids at least, they won't have it as hard. I count myself lucky that I got my powers in my twenties, but even then the first few months were kind of wild!" She considered the question of Vicki for a moment. The name and description weren't familiar, but there were a lot of children who passed through the school. "Nicholson is pretty closed-mouthed with information about their students," she told him, "but it couldn't hurt to ask, especially if you can verify it was you who helped rescue her in the first place." She smiled. "Or maybe you'll see her turn up on one of the teen hero teams one of these days."
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"Oh yeah, control is basically the first and most important part of power training," Stesha assured him. "Some of the little-littles end up in private tutoring until they get a handle on whatever they're doing enough to be sure that they won't hurt themselves or anybody else, but the kindergarten teacher has power-nullifying abilities just in case, and there's never been a serious incident." It was entirely possible that Stesha's idea of serious incident would not match up with that of parents used to a more mundane world, but nobody had been badly hurt, psychologically scarred or killed, so at the end of the day it wasn't too serious. "And lucky for us, Ammy's gravity control is something she only does when she wants, so it stays in training or the bee meadows. They think it's very funny when she makes the flowers float. How old were you when you got your powers?"
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The monkey gave Ghost a look that, combined with his faint hiss, informed Ghost that he had already heard all the jokes and was not impressed by them. "Yes," Raina told him blithely, "but don't call him that if you value your online identity. This is Merlin. So you just punch people inside their bodies?" She thought about that for a second. "Yeah, not sure that's less creepy. Do you know who those guys were?"
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"I don't think this is one we can crack on our own," Paige decided, looking through the papers again. "You've gone to most of the sources I would've thought of to go to, so we're already scraping the edges of our ability as TV investigators. We can put the research team on it, but none of them are really part of the hero community and I'm not sure they will be able to get the kind of access we'd need for something like this." She looked down at the folder, then up at Richard. "We're going to need to find somebody in the hero community, one of the investigative types, and try and get them invested in this can of worms."