Gizmo

"Ch-charming you think you could tell any of us to -- hnh -- do anything we didn't wish," Winifred forced out with all the poise she could muster through the aches and passing spasms, giving Robin a tired look that at least attempted to be a small smile, even if it failed. "Wouldn't want you to think -- ah -- I was doing it for the attention, Sanderson but pilfered sweets s-sound an excellent plan. Has anyone f-found my cane? I -- ahh!" Attempting to rise to her feet, the alchemist winced and grabbed at her side, awkwardly adjusting the overlapping coat and poncho with her free hand in an effort to maintain some modicum of modesty. "...she shot me," she recalled with a note of indignation before the wince dominated her expression once again. "H-head... throbbing. More than normal."

I think we're all still figuring out how the Lighthouse forum is going to be used in practice but we're on the right track now! durf makes a good point, I think, in that this ought to be a threat that's not so wide-spread it would be a site-wide event or right in the city where the heroes would have a better chance to regroup and organize beyond the League. A giant monster definitely fits the bill and meets the 'very public' requirement, too. The 'out of control heavy hitter' thought reminds me of the Graviton sequence at the beginning of the Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes animated series, which also works!

"Congratulations, that was the longest it has ever taken an immortal to go from meeting me to making some reference, veiled or otherwise, to my junk," Erik sighed with the weariness of a man who had come accept very specific trials as part of his day to day life. "Well, not counting Fleur but she was dating her asshole ex when we met and Willow brought it up with her eventually anyway." He raised his hands as he got back up from his crouch. "It's a pattern, s'all I'm saying. And if you ever meet my old man's side of the family the fertility charm thing is going to seem a lot less comically wacky, cielo." He placed his hand overtop of Talya's as she touched his face, offering a small smirk. Looking off in the direction the object of their dimensional quest had gone he made a sound of consideration in the back of his throat. "Are we waiting for Ace? Seems like something that might take a while but if you want to be here when he's done, I get it. Pretty lousy situation." Given the importance Erik placed on family and what might have been called an overabundance of empathy he didn't have to exaggerate his concern, any past friction between himself and the adventurer easily set aside for the moment.

Cat's Pyjamas - Midnight and Wander Hunter-White Manor, North Bay When Erin had nightmares, they tended to be intense but predictable. Her brain had a fairly limited repertoire of horrifying scenarios it preferred to cycle through, mainly involving zombies, solitude, and the deaths of everyone she loved. The nightmare about being buried alive was new and fairly disturbing. In choking darkness, she clawed at the oddly textured dirt that covered her, only to realize it was strangely soft against her hands and smelled like fabric softener. She opened her eyes to find herself buried under an improbably large mound of her own blankets and sheets. It actually took her a few moments to dig her way free and look around. Everything seemed bizarrely attenuated, far away and larger than normal at the same time. “Trevor?” she called out nervously. “What’s going on?” She heard a grunt as something soft thumped against the mattress on his side of the bed, trying to roll gracefully to the floor and misjudging the distance. There was a pause while her husband reassessed his position followed by thrashing about in the sheets no more dignified than her own. Finally an oblong shape popped free, looking like a football made of pale lavender felt stood up on its end and topped with a mop of black. An oval of darker purple formed a nose with the horizontal cut beneath it puckered in consternation. Glossy black and red semicircles set under comically exaggerated eyebrows looked down at little hands with three stubby fingers and a thumb each. “...do not have a good answer to that,” the puppet admitted in Trevor’s flat baritone. “Oh my gosh, Trevor!” Erin paused as the words coming out of her mouth didn’t quite match what she’d intended to say. “What happened to you?” As she reached out for him, her hands entered her own line of sight. Pale orange, missing a finger, surprisingly soft. She leapt to her feet, and fell off the bed on the other side, but managed to land in a crouch. A slightly better-judged leap got her on top of the bureau so she could look in the mirror. “Oh, fish.” Freed from her blanket prison, Erin stood perhaps thirty inches tall, from bare felt feet - four toes - to her auburn-colored yarn hair. Her face was pale orange and almost completely round, with a button nose and a very wide mouth that flapped when she spoke. The blue tank top and shorts she’d worn to bed had apparently shrunk with her, so at least she wasn’t naked. Dark eyebrow lines appeared suddenly as she glared at the mirror. “Do you want to call Mark or should I?” Behind her Trevor had lifted an arm to better inspect the unsettling seams connecting the noodle-like appendage to his torso. “Hnn. Doesn’t seem like him.” The misplaced whimsy and disregard for all sense and reason suggested their friend, certainly but Mark tended to be quite careful when it came to physically transforming other people. “Still.” He made a small ‘after you’ gesture before planting his hands on what would have been his hips had he still possessed any conventional skeletal structure and calling toward the ceiling, “Redbird.” The autonomic machine intelligence’s holographic avatar appeared in one corner of the room, dressed in her slightly unconventional chauffeur’s uniform. “Yes, what-- gyah!” She recoiled as she caught sight of the puppets, hands raised protectively in front of her. “By the Silver Tree, what foul mockery of life are you?! What have you done with the battlemates?!” Before Trevor could do more than open his wide mouth she declared, “Initiating lockdown!” Redbird’s image disappeared and the whirring of hidden machinery announced the heavy metal plates a moment before they snapped shut over the room’s windows. Elsewhere in the manor all entrances were being similarly sealed and all avenues of electronic attack being cut off. Unfortunately that included the landlines and internet access. With a strangled noise, Trevor covered both eyes with felt palms. “Autonomic machine intelligence suffers from automatonophobia. Of course.” Erin looked down at the phone she’d finally managed to pick up and manipulate with her soft and frictionless fingers. No Service. “Cell phone’s gone, let me find my communicator.” She had to jump back onto the bed to fish it out from under her pillow, only to find that, instead of her normal League communicator, she had a vaguely communicator-shaped blob of silvery felt. “What the hoo is going on here!” she demanded, shaking the useless felt thing. “Why are we puppets? What are we doing here? Why is my phone still a phone and the bed still a bed but the communicator is felt? Why am I orange! None of this makes ANY SENSE!” She began to run in circles on the bed, flailing her arms wildly. Puppet or not, she was still extremely fast. After two laps, she misjudged a corner and fell off the bed again. More conservatively, Trevor shuffled across the bed before hopping down, trying not to think too hard about the actual mechanics of his legs, which seemed to be hanging from his waist much more than actually supporting his weight. Stooping, he helped Erin haul herself upright, noting that their puppet proportions seemed to be in intentional contrast along with the colouration of their felt. “Alright?” Erin scowled, her eyebrows reappearing like stormclouds. “‘M fine,” she muttered as she brushed herself off, obviously embarrassed. “I don’t even know what that was. I feel kinda weird, like it’s harder to focus than usual. Maybe it’s the felt brain.” She shook her head and immediately decided she wasn’t going to consider the implications of a felt body anymore. “So, lockdown. We need to figure out a way around that. Some way to get out, or at least to use our phones. All the windows are covered, but we can still move through interior doors, right? Maybe there’s an area that’s less shielded?” “Systems above ground are biometric,” Trevor noted, shoulders slumping dramatically forward with a level of emoting he never reached while flesh and blood. Straightening back up as though a string on his head had been pulled he added, “Manor uses older tech. Password protected.” Getting to the hidden entrance to the subterranean base would take some doing given their diminished stature, as would adjusting the hands of the grandfather clock and gaining access but at least it was a workable plan. “Basement it is,” Erin agreed with a nod, adjusting her clothes one more time before reaching under the bed for her bat. Even in its fully collapsed state, it was a sizable weapon for her in this form, and she felt better holding onto it. “Stay close, god only knows what else is going on around here.” A careful leap got her high enough to open the door, and she swung with it out into the hallway, where the coast was clear. They’d gotten all of ten yards down the long hallway when Erin heard the familiar clicking sound of claws on hardwood. It didn’t register as a possible threat until suddenly Charlie rounded the corner and nearly butted Erin’s felt sternum with his nose. From this angle, Erin suddenly noticed how long Charlie’s claws were, how sharp his teeth. “Mmmrrrow!” said Charlie, a predatory gleam in his green eyes. “Ah. Hello, Charlie,” Trevor greeted the uncomfortably large feline in a slow, measured tone, taking a cautious step backward, his long, thin puppet limbs making it less subtle than he might have liked. If he hadn’t been able to convince Redbird they were actually themselves he was less than confident the sentiment could be communicated to the cat in a timely manner. Looking sidelong to Erin he suggested, “Running now, I think.” “Yes,” Erin agreed wholeheartedly. She wanted to think she could’ve taken the comparatively giant feline in a fight, but she had no desire to hurt her pet, and even less desire to learn the hard way if her floppy felt arms were actually any good for fighting. Her legs could run, though, and even made little vroom vroom noises like a friction-motor engine as she picked up speed. She grabbed Trevor by the arm and dragged him behind her as she raced down the hallway. “Bad kitty!” she called over her shoulder. “You are in so much trouble!” She could hear the cat’s footsteps as he followed them at a brisk clip down the hallway until she took a sharp left into one of the guest bedrooms and put a door between them before he could catch up. “Okay,” she said, trying to take a deep breath and feeling more than a little strange when it didn’t work, “how do we get into the Manor like this?” In his new, lighter form Trevor’s feet had left the ground as Erin had sped off with him in tow and when she stopped momentum sent him sailing further into the guest room to skid along the carpet for several feet. He remained there face down for a long moment, sighing. Lurching back up to his feet he did a brief inventory to make sure everything was still in place before walking back the way he’d flown. “Clock is the only manual entrance we can reach from inside,” he considered, a faint grumble making its way into his voice. “Which means going down the hall. Past Charlie.” “Of course it does.” Erin scrunched up her face, which looked truly alarming in her new form, then straightened up and regarded the door with great resolve. “Okay, here’s what we do.” She crossed the room and climbed up the bookcase, retrieving a small bag of colorful objects. “I go out first, and I throw the jingle balls. While he’s distracted, we make a run for it. I’ll take the flanking position, you just run for it. Don’t stop and don’t look back. I’m not going to hit him if I don’t have to, but that might mean he gets a bite or two in.” She leaned in and kissed him, an odd sensation with no lips, for all it made a loud smacking noise. “See you in the drawing room.” As they parted Trevor moved to put a finger on Erin’s lips, though with his noodly appendages it was more that he pressed his palm into her face. Removing it he produced something that looked a bit like a juggling ball from somewhere in sleep clothes, presenting it for her to see before lobbing it across the room. Where it struck the floor with the sound of an out of tune kazoo it burst into a flurry of black confetti that enveloped an unlucky armchair. Trevor opened his mouth then closed it again in muted consternation. “Meant to be a smoke bomb. Still.” Reaching down he pulled forth two more handfuls of the confetti balls. With as much gravitas as lowered felt eyebrows could convey he insisted, “Any plan that involves you being eaten by a housecat is not a good plan.” “He wouldn’t eat me, we’d just smack each other around a little bit,” Erin protested. “But I guess I don’t really want to have to think about what I’d be losing if I started losing fluff, and whether it will come back properly when we fix this.” She considered the situation for a moment. “Okay, you get up on my shoulders and I’ll run us both down the hall. When you see Charlie, throw the jingle balls or the confetti balls, whichever seems like it’ll keep us intact longer.” Even with its limited movement Trevor’s felt face managed an impressively glum expression at the impending demise of his dignity. “Think we can agree not to discuss this ever again,” he sighed in resignation, gathering a pile of prospective projectiles into his arms before scrambling onto Erin’s shoulders with some difficulty. “Whenever you’re read-- eeeeeee~” The last syllable was drawn out into a long siren as she launched them down the hallway in a jingling blur of orange and purple, trailing bursts of confetti behind them.

I think you misunderstood what I'd said a little, Ari. A transitionary thread was a given but I didn't want the focus to be on the retiring NPCs rather than on the PCs. Having them respond to a large threat and publicly debut as the new lineup would make perfect sense, let's just avoid several pages about the NPC Leaguers before we get to that part.

September 16, 2016 With the summer months come and gone sundown was coming earlier to Freedom City with each passing day. Even in the dim dusk the lamps flanking the monorail track cast stark shadows on the cement ravine below, the pillars that held the track aloft creating even bars of light and darkness. Marring that pattern came a pair of headlights, accompanied by screeching tires and unmistakable bursts of gunfire. The rust red sedan crashed through the steel link fence, hanging in the air briefly before slamming down onto the sloped cement with a great crash and screech of protesting metal. Almost lost in that cacophony was the whisper quiet purr of the inky black motorcycle in pursuit. Clad similarly in black its rider practically melted into the bike's silhouette in the dim light, a crimson wing pattern up its sides the only detail separating it from a black brushstroke across the scene. It easily followed through the path opened in the fence and sped after the sedan, wearing back and forth to avoid the increasingly panicked fire from the car's occupants.

Hooks Opposed Grapple Check: 1d20+17 21 He fails by more than five so he's pinned.

In practice I think it will be less 'threats are rarely bad enough to call in the League' and more 'threats are rarely bad enough to call in the whole League'. As you say, with any PC team it's frequently unwieldily to have a full six or seven person roster in a single thread but having three or four members of that team responding to a situation is much more manageable and it's usually easy to explain away the absence of the remainder. When a thread is constructed with the whole of the team in mind it's naturally an appropriately sprawling, epic moment! I wouldn't worry overmuch about 'side teams' just yet, not while the main roster is still being hammered out (how's that coming, by the way?). If Comrade Frost decides he needs to call in some other practitioners to deal with a mystical threat he can just do that, we don't need to have established a 'Freedom League Dark' ahead of time. If there's a grouping that happens repeatedly then great but trying to proactively form teams of all the magic users, all the stealthy heroes, all the space-worthy characters and so on very quickly puts us in Justice League Unlimited territory.

Becky had her mouth open to say something about statuary and foliage when Eve casually mentioned her family wanting to visit. "Wait, what?" The brunette scrabbled up to her feet in a sudden panic, looking about the room and inadvertently giving her fiancé an out of focus view of the lower half of her swimsuit over the video chat. "Oh god, my apartment is terrible. They're going to hate my apartment and then they'll hate me. Wait, no. They'll want to stay at a nice hotel, I'll come up with some sort of excuse. Fumigating! No, god, they'd think I have fleas." The feed shuddered as she picked her laptop up from the coffee table covered in candles and sat back down of the couch, the sound of furious typing clacking its way through the speaker's of Eve's phone. "Restaurants, I should make reservations now, somewhere fancy. Do they have food allergies? Wine! I need to learn about wine!"

I think you're on the right track in terms of the things a prospective member would need to demonstrate, Vahn, namely in-character development and the trust of other Leaguers and an out-of-character demonstration of quality from the player themselves. Putting specific amounts of PP earned or a codified voting process into place seems needlessly artificial, however. Historically a PC joins a team when there's discussion between that character's player and the players of the team's other characters that leads everyone to think it's a good idea. A character being too underpowered to keep up, not being at a place where it makes sense in-character or friction between players who would have to write together are all legitimate reasons to decide against an addition and I think it's healthier to discuss them openly than hiding behind a certain number of votes. The Freedom League is a bit of a special case, sure, in that as a community we needed to discuss here how we wanted to use that setting concept going forward and the inherent prestige may make the process of adding or removing characters a little more fraught than with other PC teams. All the more reason, then, to be flexible and thoughtful. If a long-time player used a PL12 slot and worked with other players to create a character with strong ties to a Freedom League legacy would we want them to get up to PL14 before even having a discussion about them joining the team? I also wouldn't want people to think that once they've earned a certain amount of PP their character is entitled to a League position only to be disappointed if doesn't happen for other reasons. In-character I think vouching process has some merit since you'd probably want to see a new character team-up with League members a few times in the process of developing and reaching the point where joining the team made sense but what about a character like Comrade Frost where part of the idea is that nobody really likes working with him? The benchmarks you're suggesting make sense, it's just a little too easy to think of times we'd want to bend them and make exceptions. There probably needs to be an understanding that a brand new player with a brand new character won't be having them join up but that already goes for any PC team and I think most new players would be hesitant to be thrown onto centre stage like that right away anyway. I might be underestimating the number of characters/players who will be jockeying for a spot of the team in which case these 'qualifications' might bear revisiting but I think for now we can afford to be more organic about it and just treat the Freedom League the same way we would any other PC team.

"Hooray team," Kimber drawled just loudly enough to be clearly heard across the table. It made sense not to walk Harrier into whatever had killed all of the drones on that world, not without knowing more but it was another thing for Americana to say that she 'wasn't a portal traveler' as if that explained everything. Sharl was a proudly soulless computer program who didn't believe in magic but he was still willing to hop through a tear in the fabric of reality if it meant helping out. The same couldn't be said for his mentor evidently. There was probably a good reason for it, the poltergeist tried to remind herself but she couldn't help remembering the phone conversation she'd had with the futurist after the original Sharl's fight with the Curator. "Anyway. Two hours gives the rest of us time to get ready," she added more loudly, turning her attention over to Daphne. "Wraith and I worked with free Grue during the Communion incursion. Saving the galaxy." She didn't expand on that but the emphasis she put on those last few words made her point clear enough.

Since we've gotten to a point where people are now summarizing each others summaries I think we can safely say there's a general consensus on the overall route to take here! In the interests of moving forward I'd say the next step is to hammer out which PCs - and which players - are interested in being part of the initial line-up, starting with those already associated with the Freedom League. Off-hand, that would include Comrade Frost, Fleur de Joie, Gabriel, Gaian Knight and Velocity though there are other characters who would make sense as well. Perhaps that might be best sorted out through a round of PMs from the Guide team? Once there's a roster work can start on an actual thread for those characters.

The first scenario you suggested is the closest to what I would go with, durf but I think it can be done with a much greater focus on the PCs. Bear with me as I reiterate a bit! As you said, Captain Thunder, Lady Liberty and the Raven as the retiring trinity has a nice feel to it and doesn't require any great fanfare on-panel. Pseudo and Montoya heading to space is similarly tidy. Daedalus takes some time to focus on science and research rather than active heroing. Siren and Doc Metropolis fit easily into the idea of the FLAux as 'part-timers' who can show up if and when we need them. Rather than have Bowman act out of character in forming the government team, however, I'd have him acting in a spokesman and mission control role for the PCs. He can take to the field as needed but he'd be most useful in-story as a way to deliver exposition and move the plot along, not directly ordering the PCs around but providing them with the bigger picture as needed. I'd also say that Johnny Rocket's powers make it easy to have him off on his own as much as necessary, popping up at the speed of plot now and then. Beyond that, though, I think any 'new status quo' establishing thread should be about the PCs not the NPCs. Mention the retirements and trips to space in the first post then have the PCs - probably more or less the current FLAux line-up for the time being - take part in a big adventure so that the public can see what the current Freedom League looks like. Those characters are already on the League so we don't need to have any artificial recruitment drive or killing off of NPCs, the PCs are simply being called on more frequently. Certainly we could add in a couple of new PC members at the same time if we wanted but it's all about the PCs being heroic rather than wasting a whole thread or event focusing on shuffling the NPCs off the board. I'd also suggest that the government team be a new group of NPCs and not be in direct response to the Freedom League roster changes. They've been training and preparing for a while and now they're ready for deployment, plain and simple. While it would be good to square away the membership and specifics ahead of time they don't even need to be mentioned on-panel until a thread comes up where they're useful to the story.

A few thoughts on this stemming out of a discussion in Chat tonight. To simplify quite a bit the core dilemma as I see it is that on one hand it's a very useful narrative device to have a group of NPCs ready to serve a common benchmarks, mentors and 'quest givers', in a position of authority that makes them - while not antagonists - not necessarily friends to the PCs in the way other PCs might be. On the other hand having a group which is explicitly viewed as the best of the best in-setting and making it off-limits to PCs is galling and strains credibility a bit when the PCs are the ones naturally dealing with the actual crises we see 'on-panel'. That said I don't think there's any reason we can't have both. First I think it would be helpful to shift the construction of the Freedom League away from the Justice League model - "these seven characters are just the most special" - and more toward the Avengers model - "a respected organization that may have more than one active line-up at a time". Personally I'd lean away from going full-on Justice League Unlimited however, where everyone is under one banner and doesn't have much say in who they work with day-to-day. This would be pretty easy to achieve. Several NPC Leaguers should realistically be retiring and we could move Daedalus into more of an R&D, advisory position since that's typically the role he serves in threads as it is. From there I'd start with an initial, 'core' line-up, probably of characters in the higher end of the PL range. I'd keep the FLAux around but make it more explicitly the characters who are serious heavy hitters but who don't live on Earth-Prime full time or otherwise have other demands on their time, your Dr. Stranges and your Namors, basically. If down the road it's useful to have some other Adjective Freedom League line-up that would totally be doable but no harm starting simple. Those PCs could still serve as mentors and advisors to other PCs when their players were available and NPCs like Daedalus can keep doing what they're already doing in terms of narrative purpose. It sounds like we're largely on board with all of that as a group, save for hammering out some of the details. Where I might go above and beyond is also setting up a new NPC team to fill in the 'respected big guns the PCs don't always agree with' role without being the big guns, full stop. This is still very loose but my proposal would be a government sponsored team, probably run as a branch of the military. To be clear, however, this wouldn't be a black ops team or morally dubious or a standing metahuman army. I'm thinking individuals with powers who wanted to make a difference and decided the best way to do that was by signing up rather than acting as a vigilante. They'd be patterned more after search and rescue operatives than soldiers and only operate in other countries if explicitly invited by the local government. That, then, should be the sticking point for PCs even beyond the antiestablishment types. This team wouldn't be patrolling city streets at night or jumping in their supersonic jet to go to Monster Island on a scrap of intel. They'd respond to big, visible threats and then clock out at the end of the day. They'd have to be more aware of bureaucracy and politics which sets up plenty of opportunities for differences of opinion with PCs. They're not villains, they don't have a lot of dark secrets or a sinister agenda, they're just well-liked heroes in a position of authority who can butt heads with the PCs. When you need somebody to talk down a bit to an inexperienced PC or bring someone in for questioning over a misunderstanding or scoff at a hard-to-believe warning from a disreputable source, these would be your guys. I doubt they'd see any more use than the NPC Freedom League does now - which is to say very little - and it's easy to explain why they aren't dealing with every little thing in every thread but they'd be available when useful. The functionality of an NPC Freedom League without the baggage. As I said it's a loose idea but I think it's worth developing especially if it helps get everyone on the same page with the first half of things.

"I'm not sure whether or not I did," Winifred admitted, turning the headphones over in her hands. The surprise had faded from her eyes and know there was only the analysis of a scientific mind reflected in the way they flicked back and forth. "It's an opera, a portable, personal orchestra. But if you can reproduce the sound so uncannily then one player could be an entire section, couldn't they. Layering." Absently her index finger traced something in the sheets of the bed, going through the motions of jotting down the notes she was taking in her head. "And then 'metal'. Metal because the instruments are made-- no. Qualitative, not descriptive. Strong. Durable. Cutting?" Finally looking up again she met Matthew's eyes. "Show me the one that is your favourite, then."

Behind the growing group the empty burnt orange muscle car with the stripe of chipping black began to fold in unsettling ways, panels retracting and rotating only to reform. In moments it had reconfigured itself into something sleek and matte black save for the blood red wing pattern that swept up either side. Nor was it empty any longer, the simulated view through the windows flickering once before fading to a dark tint. The driver's side door opened with an almost imperceptible click and Midnight stepped out, the brim of his hat low over the ominous red eyes of his mask. He didn't say anything or move to join the others by the picnic bench, only folded his arms and leaned against the vehicle.

Compared to Huang's booming chants whatever Set and Sekhmet were doing was silent and subdued. There were no higher beings to call upon, no arcane names to invoke. For all they wore flesh these were fundamental concepts made manifest, crystalline pure power reaching out to the infinite complexity of a mortal soul and finding resonance. It took but a blink of will but the danger lay in the balance. Power of that kind could turn even a readied mortal to salt and ash or drive them to madness in an instant while opening up even a god at the fullness of their power to vulnerabilities few were willing to invite. In their diminished states, however, the Heliopolians could afford no caution. Every scrap of righteous fury, every mote of mystical might would be needed and damned be the consequences. It was the thunder that sounded first, booming overhead just as winds began to kick up around the seated pair. Set's brow furrowed in concentration while Sekhmet's lip curled away from pronounced canines. The wind was joined by circles of golden flame, orbiting around the goddesses, faster and faster. Brick red dreadlocks lifted into the air in defiance of gravity along with bangs in tawny-striped black. Little points like the negative afterimages of fireflies danced about wildly. A thin trail of brilliant ruby blood escaped from the corner of Sekhmet's mouth. The muscles in Set's bare shoulder's went rigid as she made a pained sound. Their eyes shot open as one, blazing pools of silver and gold. "Witness true wrath divine, you @#$% poseur," Set muttered under her breath in the sudden vacuum as the flames disappeared and the sky went silent. In that held breath of an instant the heaven opened up with a deafening boom. Crimson lightning streaked down in a dozen jagged shafts of sizzling power, converging on Woodsman and engulfing him. Simultaneously a single shaft of light so strong and so pure it burned as liquid metal surged down alongside the lightning, washing over Nighthawk. Everything was light and heat and the cries of thousands of years of warriors raising their weapons in defiant promise. Behind Ouroboros the Heliopolians slumped quietly to the grass, unmoving.

Staring into space and gnawing at her lower lip Winifred was completely silent until the track had played to completion a second time. Slowly removing the headphones she placed them in her lap before holding one palm against her chest. She focused intently on her own heartbeat; it had accelerated, certainly but she didn't detect any of the too-familiar strain of muscle tearing itself apart and reweaving all wrong that started there when she lost control. "I... have questions but I am not sure now to best articulate them. I lack the words," she admitted softly once she was sure the hounds were not going to have to demonstrate their purported durability. "I'm not sure what I was expecting. Ah, I must seem the ignorant savage being shown printed word for the first time." The teenager's cheek's coloured perceptibly and she instinctively tucked her chin downward to hide them. She seemed a little stunned by the experience, eyes unfocused as she tried to decide whether or not she'd actually liked the song and found she lacked the framework.

The first thing Winifred was aware of as she came back to her senses was throbbing pain in her hands that extended up her forearms and well past her elbows. She was always sore and bone weary after reverting from her monstrous state but this was acute and she could only surmise that the Alkahest had spent a significant amount of time punching something impervious even to its formidable strength. She reflexively tried to push herself into a seated position as her senses crystallized enough to string Smith's words together into meaning and the arm gave out on her. Pulling the poncho and her lab coat against herself she huddled for a moment, jaw set in defiance at the indignities visited upon her. Somewhere beneath the ache and exhaustion she couldn't shake a feeling of violation, an ember of righteous indignation she could not immediately place. She had managed to raise her chin by the time the Headmistress was addressing them and a hacking cough wracked the alchemist's petite frame when parents were mentioned. It might have almost been a humourless laugh had it not sounded more like one of her organs making a bid for freedom by way of her throat. She opened and closed one hand with effort, looking down at the knuckles as the word 'injuries' finally registered. She turned her head as far as it could, taking inventory of the faces around her. "Wh-hakkk-who?" she demanded with another cough.

Swinging hurriedly out of the way with a clatter of chains the swordsman overhead shouted a number of things at Willow which Jack of all Blades certainly wasn't about to translate. He was focused on the remaining pair from the House of Swords anyway. He didn't know how the shadow wreathed figure had disappeared entirely from his senses - even the stench of corruption had abruptly stopped when they'd disappeared - but mulling that over only made him think of Talya and her own vanishing act. His target seemed to notice the hard look that entered his eyes, taking half a step back as though retreating into their own shadows but they were an instant too late. Erik's sword lashed out at the apex of his lunge, a smell like hot coals being pressed into waterlogged wood rising into the air as flame cut through smoke. The figure was solid enough to make a sound when they hit the ground with a grunt. A hand stuck out from the darkness, scrambling for purchase against the uneven stone but the pale flesh, riddled with dark veins, faded in and out of view erratically. "N-no...! Can't... can't..." "Tomás!" the red-haired young woman cried, a note of panic cracking through her focused demeanour. Whatever was going on in her head she'd obviously trained to the point where it didn't affect her body's ability to react. She defended on Erik's turned back with a vengeance, striking hard at his shoulder before he could hastily spin about and fend off her other five blades. "I won't let you hurt him!" "Are you --hff-- @#$%ing kidding me?" the older fencer shot back, steadying his breathing with some effort and ignoring the throbbing from his new wound. He'd have been impressed by her bladework if he hadn't been so angry. "You came at mi familia, chica. How did you think this was going to go?" "You don't understand anything!" the man with the hook blade snarled as he swung overhead, launching himself toward Min like a human missile. "We've sacrificed for this! We've earned this!" He came down in a brutal two handed strike with all the added power afforded by gravity in a blow that would have sheared through meat. Unfortunately for him the arm the dryad raised to block the attack wasn't encased in meat. The curved tips of his weapons caught in preternaturally hard wood, catching but doing no real damage.

Butterfly Standard Action: Attack Jack of all Blades: 1d20+15 29 Jack of all Blades Toughness Save vs DC 20: 1d20+8 17 Hooks Standard Action: Charge Min: 1d20+16 24 That's a DC 21 Toughness Save for Min again but he's in range for a counter attack this round. 28 - Jack of all Blades - Bruised x1, 5HP 25 - Butterfly - Bruised x1 19 - Hooks - Uninjured, -2 Defense 19 - Shadows - Staggered, Dazed > 11 - Willow - Bruised x1, 1HP

Jack of all Blades Move Action: Taunt Shadows, DC 29 w/ Skill Mastery Standard Action: Energy Sword vs Shadows; Power Attack 5: 1d20+15 23 Shadows Bluff Check vs DC 29: 1d20+12 13 Reflex Save vs DC 21: 1d20+10 28 (Fort Immune vs. Affects Objects) Toughness Save vs DC 29: 1d20+6 15 28 - Jack of all Blades - Uninjured, 5HP > 25 - Butterfly - Bruised x1 19 - Hooks - Uninjured 19 - Shadows - Staggered, Dazed 11 - Willow - Bruised x1, 1HP

Kimber rubbed the hand on Tarva's back in slow, reassuring circles. "Wasn't planning to vacation there," she promised with a weak smile. She noticed the look 'Murdock' gave Daphne but addressed Daedalus instead. "You wanted perspectives and I'm sure we all already have... feelings about the Terminus. Miss Grue is as far outside the box as you're going to get, I think we'll all be glad she came along." It was partly in defence of Tarva's choice and partly to reassure the hesitant alien girl but it was tough to miss the implied message that the former Omegadrone needed to cool his jets a little. Maybe literally, she didn't really know any specifics about the cyborg's physiology. She closed her eyes briefly and reminded herself not to get snappish. "Robots make a lot of sense," she agreed more evenly with Miss Americana after a moment, "but I still think I should go with them. The Terminus has... resources for affecting ghosts but they're a lot less likely to have those immediately on-hand if it is a trap. I ought to be able to get back well before they can bring anything to bear that I need to worry about." She looked to the other blonde woman beside Murdock with as much amusement as she could muster, the ice crystal patterns on the shoulders of her coat glittering preternaturally along with the light in her eyes. Bombshell had to be Dimitri's favourite non-volcanic person so the poltergeist assumed she could appreciate a little icy undead dramatics. Under better circumstances she would have been excited to finally meet the Englishwoman in person. "If we're being theatrical, 'brink of oblivion' is just about my natural state, eh? Robots in first, though, by all means. Don't have a second death wish!"

Kimber would be an easy inclusion if there's going to be anyone there who doesn't already know her. If Huang's there I could also make the case for Set!

Jack of all Blades / Jill O'Cure (5) Mystery at Bedside Manor (2) Exes and Ohs (1) Interceptors: Terrance and Emily (2) Ghost Girl (2) Down the Unfamiliar Road (2) Reagent / Alkahest (3) Looking For Treble (2) Final Exam (1) GM / NPC 2 * 2 = 4 Interceptors: Terrance and Emily (2) Ref point and rollover can go to Reagent, thanks!