ic Tales of the Castle Crowd

[Avenger Assembled]

Some time later: 

 

Aquaria leaped on top of the large ventilated storage box and opened her mouth. She reached out with her tongue and grabbed the sliding door on the front of the box, yanking it open with a flex of her powerful muscles. Booming lustily as she noisily hopped up and down on the box, she called "Go! Go! Go!" as the occupants of the box scuttled free and into the corridor near the pool. Six big, meaty lobsters, all of them fresh and live from the local grocery store, scuttled out, their shells adorned with eldritch signs in glow-in-the-dark paint and also Roman numerals. Sometimes her friends liked to take bets. 

 

"Go Three!" she called as she scrabbled along after the lobsters, clinging wetly to the ceiling as she went. She had placed a small bet herself on that likely-looking fellow. And then if he won; as the worthiest of the lobsters, dinner would be hers!  

[Tiffany Korta]

Ms Grue

Daphne was trying to follow along with whole thing, she wasn’t total sure about using animal for entrainment. As a telepath and empath she could feel creatures confusion and pain, and it was never a pleasant experience. Luckily these crustaceans seemed relatively calm, and they weren’t exactly the most expressive or smartest of creatures.

 

“Remind me again what's going to happen to them after the race? We’re going to let the winner go right?”

 

She knew that most creatures needed food for survival, but that didn’t mean you had to be mean about it all.

[Avenger Assembled]

"Let them go into my belly!" croaked Aquaria joyfully. Hopping along, she considered that Daphne did not like this sort of thing very much. Certainly Aquaria herself was all burbling joy and hunger, the sort of thing that might have been intimidating if the Grue didn't know her so well. "Probably!" she hastily extemporized. "The rest we will house together, and perhaps the strongest of them will breed. And then more lobster!" 

[Avenger Assembled]

Meanwhile, something else entirely was happening up near the castle roof. The figure that swooped down low over the castle rooftops came in slowly, crackling with invisible energies that were familiar to the castle's sensors - magnetic, powered by a powerful internal battery. When Eira landed in the upper courtyard flying visitors to the DuTemps Castle sometimes used, she put her hands on her hips and smiled. She looked older than when anyone had last seen her by a solid decade, a woman in her mid-twenties rather than a girl of sixteen. Her short blonde hair and her blue eyes were perfect, if she did say so herself (and she did), a careful balance between her own preferences and perfectly calculated aesthetics. Her muscular form was hugged tightly by a blue and yellow outfit with a large S across the chest and a flowing golden cape behind her. Her skirt reached her knees, the shorts she wore underneath quite a bit shorter. 

 

"Tantes!" she called with cheerful anticipation as she carried out a conversation with Bluebird that was invisible to any human senses. "I am here early!" 

[Gizmo]

There was a brief pause before Kimber appeared, beating anyone else to the roof by taking the most direct route, right through several floors and out into the open air. She was more obviously translucent in the direct sunlight, all pale blues that might have almost been a trick of the light. Her outline was further obscured by ankle length cardigan that billowed around her, untethered by any affectation of gravity while she focused on the new arrival with an ear-to-ear smile that was as impossible to miss as ever. "Ohmigoodness sweetie, you look outrageous! How do you feel, everything's a good fit? I know this sort of thing can be a lot all at once, so don't be embarrassed if anything seems off." She floated in a circle around the cape clad young woman to get a better look at her new body, lips pursed with auntly concern. "You computer bits are all 'online' or 'downloaded' or whatever? Powers are under control? Are your boobs sore?"

[Avenger Assembled]

Eira laughed and adjusted herself unconsciously. "No, that is the advantage of making my own," she said with a grin, "there was no actual puberty." She had had a lot of help from Miss Americana, of course, who had done her the favor of putting her in touch with the same specialists Gina had met with back in the early days. "Both hardware and software have been fully transferred, and all systems have been fully tested. A friend is working on an implantable drone for the upper torso but this is me for the future. Finally." She spread her arms and pirouetted, looking very pleased with herself. "One me, in any event." She smiled as a flexible plastic outer shell that looked like flesh rearranged itself slightly, her hair turning blue and her nose and brow piercings re-emerging from where they'd vanished. Her clothes rearranged themselves too into a jacket and jeans combo that showed her regular fashion sense hadn't changed very much. 

 

She bit her blue-painted lip. "You see? Who would think that flower would have such petals. Here, let me show you this. Go ahead and go translucent," she offered, the word having been what she'd first called Kimber's incorporeal state when she was a small child just learning English from someone who only spoke it as his own second language. When Kimber did, Eira clenched her fists and they were suddenly wreathed with lightning. "Don't worry," she offered, "I tried this with Sharl when he was projecting and he assured me it did not hurt..." She reached out and touched Kimber's arm experimentally, and sure enough there was a distinct sensation of electrical contact there for both of them. 

 

"There!" she said, her eyes lighting up. "You see what science has done!"