ic New Goblin Markets (Open) - IC

[Tiffany Korta]

Downtown Freedom

10am December 24^th 2021, Christmas Eve

Thanks to local weather conditions, or maybe a weather controller it was hard to tell either way, snow was gently falling on the decorations setup throughout the area. Even though the streets were packed with people shopping for last minute gifts or out celebrating the upcoming day. Those patrolling for danger were finding for now that it seem crime was sleeping.

 

For those hoping something interesting might happen were about to find that they were about to get there wish, a Christmas miracle.

 

Suddenly with a pop a small creature, around 3 feet tall, came into existence. Green skinned with large pointed ears and enlarged lower canine, a traditional Goblin dressed (thankfully) in suitably medieval type clothing. With wild eye glee the little humanoid began to explore this wondering world it had just arrived, much to the shock and surprise of the normal unflappable locals.

 

Then with another pop there was an another, and another, all running around like excitable toddlers with no care of any danger to themselves or others...

[Avenger Assembled]

"Hey! Domovy!" 

 

Comrade Frost rose with a barely audible sigh from behind the FREEDOM LEAGUE AUXILIARY desk where he'd been sitting, leaving the civilian staff who had actually done most of the work that morning behind. Crowds were heavy on Christmas Eve, but most people had been too busy with their shopping to sign up for the League's charity fundraising drive even with the chance 'to get a picture with a League member.'

 

The truth was, he wasn't sure why he bothered with the League much these days. His difficulties with the government in Moscow hadn't really changed now that Putin was taking a more hostile line with the United States, but as he was no traitor, that mostly meant he was shut out of many of the Freedom League's most high-level meetings. He had - perhaps not made all the friends in Freedom City that he could have, though at least he'd kept his old ones. Sometimes he wasn't sure what he was doing here. But now...well, this was something he could do. 

 

Calling out to their mothers in Russian, he reached into his parka and pulled out what looked to the untrained eye like the business end of a large butterfly net, which he went about assembling by screwing a telescopic handle onto the back. "They are trying to celebrate American Christmas!" he added for the benefit of the locals about. 

[alderwitch]

"Well, those are not the Menehune that my Tutu told stories about," Leilani commented as she stepped forward into the void created by startled shoppers moving out of the way of rampaging goblinoids. She didn't look too out of place - Freedom City was more of a melting pot than many places on the Eastern Seaboard, except she was dressed in a light tanktop and shorts despite the chilly, snowy weather. The more keen eyed might notice - if not distracted by goblins - that the snow melted as soon as it touched her hair or skin and her sandaled feet left the concrete below them dry as she moved forward. Lifting one hand to wave at Dimitri cheerfully, "I thought you said it would be a boring day if I wanted to stop by. You're going to use a net? Have you tried bananas and fish?"

 

She shifted her way through the crowd, kicking off her sandals so her feet were bare in the snow. "It's a lot of little feet running around. I don't suppose these are Santa's elves here to give out presents, hm?" As she reached Dimitri's side, she offered a small smile and bumped the ambient heat up a notch to counter the omnipresent chill of the vampire. "Want a hand?"

[The Sailor]

"Snow... not unwelcome, but not expected..."

Mary Masterson, the recently absent buoyant bulwark of Freedom City had been absent. She'd been recovering at a naval hospital in DC after a nasty illness struck her, leaving her floating in the atlantic where a coast guard ship brought her back to land. Her body seems to have been going through changes since she was last in the city's borders. Her body seemed a bit less defined, like she put on a couple pounds. Her eye glow was a bit more visible when out of the light... she still felt like her insides were re-arranging, but it wasn't something that would hold her back, particularly with the strange goblins showing up.

She walked around the main display in Downtown, observing the number of little green men... Goblins... starting to appear.

For now they seemed not too threatening but... Maybe someone should talk to them...

Pulling back the hood of the blue cloak she wore over her new costume she managed to stand between a goblin and wherever he was going. "Ahoy! Mind if I talk to ya for a minute? Seems you got some friends popping up around here. What's the skinny, mac?" She said with a smile on her face. Looking as non-threatening as she could.

[Tiffany Korta]

Triakosia

You’d think with super-speed it would be simple to do everything well in advance but as usual Dancia Devons was rushing around, at normal speed, trying to pick up last-minute Christmas gifts.

 

“How will Santa get these presents in time?” as the bundled up form of her eleven-year-old, Katie (sort of it was kind of complicated).

 

“With teleporters just like most sensible people!” Dancia replied with a grin “I’ve heard Raven make him all sorts of cool gadgets!” she added making Katie giggle.

 

Any further discussion of Santa dynamics was halted by the sudden arrival of first one goblin, then another and another. Dancia looked around to tell Katie to stay when she saw her daughter had put on a little domino mask.

 

“We don’t have time to discuss this but you’re still too young to get properly involved in heroics young lady. Stay here and keep people as safe as you can.”

 

A few goblins deciding that there were too many people, and goblins, on the path had ventured onto the bit with only the shiny metal boxes. As shocked as everyone else the driver of the car braked but it looked like it was going to be too late to stop...

“Hello there!” Triakosia said to the shocked goblins holding the car over her head “I suggest you all get off of the road now.”

[RocketLord]

Casper could, of course, just not catch a break.

 

Jessie had agreed that she and Carrie would join him on a trip to look at the lights and decorations, and things were going well, they were all happy and enjoying themselves... and then Carrie had noticed the green Elves that were causing chaos all around them.

 

He didn't want to do this, but... one look at Jessie was enough. She got it. Of course she got it. That didn't mean she looked like she liked it at all.

 

"C'mon, Carrie. Let's get out of here. Dad will keep track of those things."

 

It kind of hurt to let them go, but even with the other heroes Casper was spotting, he couldn't exactly do nothing.

 

He pulled his mask and goggles out from inside his jacket and quickly pulled them on. It looked kinda silly with a big fluffy jacket, a christmas sweater, jeans and his mask and goggles, but eh, no time to change.

 

Ghost moved towards a group of goblins, staring to call out as he floated above them. "Hey, hey, calm down! I've heard it ain't easy being green, but how about we get along anyway?"

[The Sailor]

Mary looked up at the hovering hero above her and the throng she had moved towards. She opened her cloak and waved to Ghost. "Ah! Seems someone else got the right idea!"

At least knowing there was someone else with powers on the scene gave her some comfort. "Name's Torpedo Lass. Back in town! Maybe we could get these guys to stand still for a moment so we can find out what's going on with them suddenly appearing here?"

The dots connected. "Might be tied to the weather, now that I think of it... I mean... the weather forecast didn't say we'd have some flakes falling today." She quirked her head. "Then again, it's just a guess. These guys might have nothing to do with things."

Edited December 2, 2021 by The Sailor

[Nerdzul]

"Stop! You freakin' green pest!" Luke was dashing through the crowd, chasing one of the goblins with his fists clenched and a light golden glow in his eyes. That damned thing had stolen the present he just got for his little brother... 

 

Yes it was Christmas Eve already. Yes he shouldn't have reduced himself to the last second. This time though, he did kinda, sorta, had an excuse. Money. He wanted to get something special for Gabbo given how little he had been able to spend with his 'bro since he had gotten back to school after the summer and well... that meant that he wanted it to be kinda expensive and (as usual) Luke was pretty much bereft of cash. In fact he had been running deliveries since the day before in order to scrape by enough for the content of the package before a green imp appeared out of thin air and snatched it from his fingers.

 

The creature, of course, gleefully ignored the teenage boy and kept jumping around, hopping fast from place to place, with the brightly colored package precariously locked within its grasp, unhampered by the crowd, unlike its pursuer who, despite at time wanting to, could not just trample the people that were crowding the busy street and had instead to clumsily navigate around them. 

 

I'm gonna personally fry you alive, you little...  

 

Finally, there was an opening in the crowd. You're not running away from this. Luke darted in. But he suddenly bumping with an Hawaiian woman that was dressed in an attire that was perhaps a tad unusual given the freezing temperature and snow.  "Sorry..." He tossed. His eyes already scanning the crowd to look for the creature, now if only there wasn't a small army of those things around...

 

Edited December 2, 2021 by Nerdzul

[Avenger Assembled]

"It would be my honor, my fiery flower," said Comrade Frost, taking Volcanic's hand and kissing it gallantly like an Old World gentleman. Which he could be, when it suited him. Looking at the goblins and the net he held in his other hand, he said, "This is no ordinary net! I got this from magical circus in Austria in 1957, with man who-got you!" He swung the net down atop one of the goblins, who skittered away at the last moment and earned a curse from Frost. 

 

"Well...many hands make light work," he said with a toothy smile for Volcanic. "And it seems we are not alone. We will catch these little rats yet." He raised his voice and called, "I have magical goblin-catching work but only works on one at a time! And someone has to hold the little rats still!" 

[alderwitch]

The woman Luke bumped into was much warmer than she should have been. Leilani automatically shifted to a stance that grounded her a bit better as she rocked with the impact, her hand still in Frost's. She turned to look at Luke with arched brows. "You need some help, kiddo?" Leilani asked as she took a step towards Frost as she raised one bare foot slightly off the ground before slamming it back down, heel first. A small wave shivered through the ground as the elementalist connected with the soil below and seized control of the stone well below Freedom City's streets. Beyond them, stone walls sprung up at Leilani's command, cutting off avenues of escape from the market. The stone hissed as it came into contact with the cold and snow. 

 

"You're going to want to back up a bit," she told Luke, not unkindly. "It's going to get warm around me."

 

Summoning the heat that burned just below the surface of her skin, Leilani's kicked off the ground with a small trail of flames in her wake until she was hovering high enough that her heatwave wouldn't accidentally burn anyone but still in conversational distance from Frost. "I'm going to get a good look above. Maybe we can round them up for your net to work it's magic, 'mitri? It's a lot of 'em and they're running all different directions looks like."

[RocketLord]

"Torpedo Lass? I've heard of you, good to see you back in action."

 

Oh, that was good. She could probably do something about all those green skins that were running around. Then again... so could Casper.

 

He spotted Comrade Frost not too far away, flailing some net around. A woman flew up with a trail of fire behind... and that dragon kid was getting mixed up in this too. Why wasn't he surprised?

 

"I'm just the friendly neighborhood Ghost."

 

Right, Frost was there, so Casper should put in the work.

 

Letting himself drop to the ground, he went solid once more as he made a perfect three point landing, then focused. Pattern and shapes of transparency spread out from him in the ground, towards the goblins that surrounded them, snaking around him and catching up to them. Any of them caught in the transparent started sinking into the ground, at least until they reached their ankles, enough to, hopefully, stop them in their tracks. He even let it spread up to some of the walls that the burning woman had created, catching a few goblins inside those walls.

 

"Anyone wanna grab them, now's the chance!" 

[The Sailor]

"This could go wrong in so many ways but..."

Torpedo lass takes a few steps back, opening her cloak and pulling up the hood on her costume. She knows once that net comes into play there has to be someone making sure no civilians get caught in it... who knows how violent these things can get if trapped. "I'll look for stragglers." She sees a couple moving outside of the throng of green-skinned annoyances and she leaps landing in front of them hoping the sudden appearance would scare them back to the crowd.

[Nerdzul]

"Get warm?" Luke echoed Leilani with a puzzled expression, in truth, he quickly realized that the temperature around her already was more than a few degree higher than it should have been, plus her attire probably should have given him the idea that something out of the ordinary was going on with her anyway, right? And her companion didn't exactly screamed 'ordinary guy' now that he thought of it... 

 

He was still lost in his thought (and looking for the goblin who stole his present) when all hell broke loose. "Woah! Woah! Woah..." He jumped on his feet as he saw wall of rocks enclosing the area, raising clouds of steam as the snow and ice quickly melt. He followed the woman with his eyes as she flew up above. "Uh.. ok... Cool. (pun intended)" He scratched the hair on the back of his neck as he realized that this wasn't the only 'miracle' going on. "Oh hey..." He waved at ghost, smiling as he a crowd of goblins was swallowed by the now semi intangible surfaces they were jumping around.

 

The distraction however, was more than enough to make him definitely lose sight of the specific green pest that he was looking for. Still, he did have a trick up his sleeves too, albeit perhaps one a bit less flashy than the other assembled heroes. He closed his eyes and called a bit of his magic, powering him through his innate connection with what, in a way or another, was his. "There." He grinned as supernatural senses pointed toward the rogue-ish imp's hiding spot. Still, the matter of actually catching the creature was still one he had to solve. He had managed however, to overhear an interesting snipped of the conversation about a net taken from 'a magical circus in Austria in 1957' (plus it was kinda hard to miss, when looking at the guy)

 

"Hey... Do you mind helping me catch one of the goblin with that?" He asked. "I mean... he stole something important to me."

 

Edited December 9, 2021 by Nerdzul

[Avenger Assembled]

"Eh? Ah, yes, if there is particular one who is trouble for you..." Frost had been watching Leilani admiringly, his skin visibly pinkening as the air around them warmed, but he snapped to attention when the boy directly addressed him. What the Hell, help out this small child, see if you can do someone a favor for once..."Point it out to me," he said, net over his shoulder with almost military discipline. When prompted, he advanced slowly on the singular imp, leaving icy footprints behind him before he brought down the net with great speed. 

[Tiffany Korta]

Triakosia

“Here’s one!”

 

Holding a goblin not but bigger that herself was a young teenage girl dressed in for the weather with a mask other her face. If she was intimated by being around adult heroes she didn’t show it in the slightest.

 

“We’re not going to hurt them are we? I mean they seem pretty harmless!” realising that they might have question she added “Oh wait I supposed to introduce myself, I’m …”

 

“Someone who doesn’t listen to instruction!” floating in the sky, with two struggling goblins in either hand was Triakosia “A friend of mine asked me to keep an eye on our little hero here!”