ic Bounding Dreams [IC]

[Avenger Assembled]

"Honey, I'm an old lady. I ain't gonna fight a whole trailer park'a goons." She could, as it happened, but there was no reason to let even a new friend know that. Lotta tough ladies in this burg, she mused. "Gonna send a friend. Just wait by the vending machine by the landlord's office, and keep yer eye on the sky. Things around here have a way of fallin' out of it." She winked at Alyia - and then suddenly was gone, invisible to the eye and the ear except for footprints that rapidly appeared on the damp concrete of the alley before vanishing altogether. 

[BlazingCoconut]

SFX

Alyia nodded and smiled, "da!  Thanking very much for this tips..." she said even as the self proclaimed 'old lady' disappeared before her.

 

With a sigh, she stepped back into the store to check on the girls.  Regardless on anything that happened, she wanted to make sure that they were safe.  As she stepped back into the locker room, they swarmed around her, giggling and asking a million questions.  "Coach Aliya, are you all right?"

 

"Da, is being fine little ones.  Please to call mothers and fathers, practice is having to ending early tonight," she said to the assembled group.

 

"Did Coach Paul not pay the bills again?" one of the younger one's asked her with aching innocence. 

 

"Nyet, was just misunderstanding.  Do not being worried.  Just call parents please."

 

It was 30 minutes later when the Russian Gymnast was finally alone.  Changing into a black skinsuit, she closed the door and made her way to the indicated place.  While her benefactor didn't mention a time, she'd check it out and figure out what was going on.

[Avenger Assembled]

Joule didn't have much company at the mobile home park, which was impressively large - bigger than it had looked from the nearby road. She could see activity in some places, smoke rising from chimneys and bonfires, people moving back and forth between the mobile homes, and of course various scruffy-looking men and women idling in the parking lots and elsewhere, but for the most part things looked quiet. Of course - even in Bedlam, criminals didn't typically hang around on street corners (or in mobile home parks) doing crimes. And after all, she wasn't the sort of person to attract that kind of attention - yet. The vending machine was only sixty cents for a can of Coke, a good deal if you ignored labels on the big fat plastic buttons so faded that they looked to be the logos used before the beginning of the decade. Surely it had been changed since then, right? 

 

Joule felt a brush at her hip, and found a sticky note attached there where nothing had been before.

 

"COMING DOWN. EYES ON ME. NOT ON YOU. DO YOUR-" 

 

A minute or two later, the sky opened up. There was no other word for it - there was a flash of brilliant light from the Sun and a figure stepped out of it with a boom as loud as if a jet had passed by overhead. She was tall and gorgeously platinum blonde, her face half-concealed by the mask underneath a pharoah's crown, her linen dress adorned with gold and jewels like something out of an Egyptologist's fever dream. In her hands were twin ankhs, glowing almost impossibly bright, and as she stepped out of the sunbeam that had brought her there she was practically in a spotlight of attention. 

 

"LO!" called the goddess called Lady Horus, a figure everyone in Bedlam knew. "I have come among you burdened with great purpose! There are those among this place who have poisoned this fair city! Who have dared lay their hands against children and women! I have heard tales told that thou art so swollen with haughtiness, arrogance, pride, malice, villainy, rashness, superciliousness, ignorance, and stupidity that there is nothing to surpass you! COME, AND BE TESTED!" 

 

 

[BlazingCoconut]

Joule

Alyia really wanted to know the trick to get the sticky note attached to her, but that would have to wait for another day.  Because, like something out of a sci fi movie, one of the most gorgeous examples of Egyptian radiance descended upon them.  For a moment she was stunned, although it was in part because of her over the top speech as much as her looks.  Which, if Alyia thought about it, probably would have gotten her at least a couple of places at her last Worlds.  

 

Whispering to herself, "is never hearing of city being called fair..." she smiled as she waited until people moved towards the very showy deity.

 

With all eyes and perhaps anger directed at Lady Horus, Joule quietly walked slowly along the building line looking, and smelling, to find this greasy spoon that her friend in the gym had told her about.  With any luck she could get some information before either everyone was rendered unconscious, or someone or someones found her and tried to put a stop to her snooping.  Keeping eyes sharp, she could only imagine the chaos behind her as she looked for the lady with her curds and burgers.

[Avenger Assembled]

She found the lady in question, a skinny, indifferently toothed woman who smelled faintly of tobacco smoke, staring out the window at the battle behind them. It hadn't taken long for Lady Horus to attract the attention of a half-a-dozen bikers, all of whom seemed to be trying to intimidate the sun goddess to limited effect. "...you, uh, you really want a burger now?" asked the woman who had to be "Doris" from the name on the side of the food cart. "I can't believe Lady Horus is actually here!" They didn't get a lot of superheroes in Bedlam - depending on the numbers you used, Lady Horus was the only one. 

[BlazingCoconut]

Joule

Joule looked behind her at the commotion, then shrugged trying to feign indifference, "da.  Food is being better than watching stupid boys being fighted by superheros.  Am sure there will be other fights when not being hungry."

 

She pulled out a few crumpled dollars as she leaned up against the food truck and unceremoniously tossed them on the counter, "will be having fried cheese bits and burger very please."

 

Hearing the commotion behind her, she really really wanted to turn around, but she forced herself to wait hoping Doris would begin making the food, "so... perhaps may be seeing of things in area beyond this fight, no?  Truck is in good place for this."

 

To emphasize her point, she pulled out her last $20 from her pocket and set it on the counter with her finger stabbing the middle of the bill.  She tilted her head and gave Doris a questioning look.

[Avenger Assembled]

"...mmm." Doris took the twenty and looked squarely at Joule. "'S five bucks for the burger 'n curds, two bucks for the burger or the curds, two for fries if you wannem." She looked over Joule's shoulder as Lady Horus hit a biker with a glowing ankh hard enough to flip the man over the side of a trailer and promptly land in the snow-covered tree nearby. Bedlam was cold this time of year and the city didn't bother to do much plowing this far outside its territory. If not for the people at the mobile home park, the food truck probably wouldn't be doing much building. "Seen some things," she admitted, warming up a little bit to her new customer. "Got some good customers here, some not so good. Better'n workin' in Calabrian territory, you know what 'm sayin', though?" As she spoke, the burger was soon sizzling on a grill that looked to have absorbed the flavor of years; the cheese curds too sizzling in a fryer that must have been at least as old as Joule herself.