ic Change is Necessary for Growth [IC]

[trollthumper]

GM

October 10th, 2011

The West End, Freedom City

The holiday was in full swing, and the kids of Young Freedom were doing their homework. The Columbus Day Parade was an annual Freedom City tradition. While it was nowhere near the size or intensity of the celebrations in New York City, the city's Italian population regularly congregated upon the West End to celebrate their heritage and the long road to America. Like any other city's celebrations, it had its share of controversies - several aldermen had tried over the years to get the parade officially renamed in the face of protests from Native American groups - but Headmaster Summers had put the fledgling superteam on assignment for a different reason.

"The police are often overworked at celebrations like this," he had told Young Freedom, "and sometimes, things escape their notice. Especially when the person moving about has talents that go beyond what the human eye sees. Then there are the opportunists. Most supervillains aren't above a simple hostage situation, and a parade is a good opportunity. While it's hard for a single villain to control a large number of individuals, if they have the right powers, they can net enough to issue demands. Stay on observation. Keep to the fringes of the parade, but move through the crowds when you can. Odds are everything will go smoothly - but if it doesn't, I want you to be the first to notice, and the first to respond."

And so, the Claremont students moved through the crowd and outside it, trying to keep a low profile. They were ready for if danger emerged... but maybe Summers was right. Maybe today would go off without a hitch.

[Avenger Assembled]

For all that Citizen sometimes looked down on the technological and cultural developments of Earth, he found the implications of Columbus Day endlessly fascinating. Only five hundred and some years earlier, this civilization had been burning unprocessed wood for fuel and only barely aware of the existence of half its planet: now they had space travel and their citizens were traveling not just across oceans in leaky atmospheric-powered boats, but to other planets in chemical-fueled rockets! And that was just the common people, not to mention super-tech: that they weren't as advanced as the Lor didn't mean they weren't endlessly fascinating.

Negotiating the crowd with any kind of grace wasn't easy given that he was after all an electronic projection, but at least all the wi-fi networks and electronic equipment set up to photograph the parade made it easy enough for him to get around. So he hung out in the middle of the crowd within eyesight of the rest of Young Freedom, looking like any other angsty teenager in a black leather trenchcoat, shades in his front pocket, and tried to keep track both of the parade and of any supervillain threats. Despite his ongoing worries about the Curator, alien menaces and computer hazards seemed very far away on this day devoted to the primitive past.

[Fox]

All other things being equal, Wraith would have much preferred clinging to the side of the buildings, scaling walls and jumping roofs to maintain a bird's eye view of the proceedings - both the parade and the possible villain threats. Orders were orders, though, so instead she mingled with the hard-bodied humans, slipping through the crowd with quiet, predatory grace. There probably weren't that many ways to subtly scale the sides of buildings with a crowd nearby, anyway.

Every once in a while her eyes would go pitch black between blinks, or she'd turn her head like she'd smelled something interesting, but mostly she wandered and watched.

[KnightDisciple]

Everyone else had decided to go incognito in the crowd; they could all get changed quickly enough, or had ways of hiding themselves even with so many people around. But when you're as big as a professional football player, people might remember you even without the added bit of you happening to disappear just as a big blue armored hero appeared. Besides, he didn't like getting stuck in the middle of crowds. Not enough room. So instead, he'd volunteered to fly over-watch, in costume. To keep a modicum of discretion, he tried to stick to the airspace above rooftops, and only a few feet above them. He quickly established a pattern that kept him mostly out of sight while he performed a circuit of the parade's floats and such. He kept his eyes both inwards and outwards, ready for something to pop up in the crowd, or try to come flying in from the outside.

'Maybe with me up here, they'll aim for the big blue guy instead of the squishy bystanders. Hopefully they don't hit too hard...'

Truthfully, it was kind of nice. He was close enough to hear all the music and so forth, and he could see all the floats and marching bands and so forth. It was the best of both worlds for him, really. He purposefully didn't try to seek his teammates out in the crowd, in case someone was watching him without his knowledge. Best not to tip their hand...

[Electra]

The Sierra Student Coalition float was crammed cheek by jowl with high schoolers from three different Sierra Clubs, which made for a lot of friendly strangers, and made it easy for one more student to go unnoticed. Koshiro had found himself a spot next to a very pretty college freshman in a hemp t-shirt and was pretending an avid interest in old-growth forest while their hands met in the bag of Smarties they were throwing to the kids in the crowd.

He was keeping an eye on things, of course, just in case some villain decided they had nothing better to do than ruin a stupid parade. What better way to keep an eye on the parade than by rolling along with it, right? And if he had a good time doing it, so much the better. Though he could've done without the babysitting.

[Gizmo]

The look of delight on Kimber's translucent blue face when Summers had assigned the team to patrol the celebration suggested that the phantasm hadn't really heard much after 'parade'. That bubbly good cheer took a substantial hit when she remembered that she wouldn't be able to pass for human in the broad daylight. With mingling amongst the crowd ruled out, she instead resigned herself to gliding invisible and immaterially through revelers and floats, nothing to signify her presence expect for the occasional crackle of static on a walkie talkie or storefront television set.

Her mood bounced back as she spotted a familiar face on one of the rolling entries in the procession. Speeding off after the float, the ghost slid next to Koshiro, still invisible and only sticking halfway out of the seat next to him. "Psst, hey! Hey, Koshiro! It's me, Kimber!" she whispered excitedly, the quiet voice coming from thin air. "I didn't know you were into protecting the environment and stuff! Y'know, I spent like fifteen years in the woods! I mean, I was crazy at the time, but still!"

[Electra]

"Gah!" Koshiro jumped at the sudden cheerful voice in his ear, looking around but seeing nothing. Of course, Kimber tended to disappear in strong light like the text on a laptop screen. She was apparently really nearby though, crowded in somewhere amongst all the tree-huggers.

"Did you say something?" asked the college girl, looking concerned at his sudden start.

"Uh..." Koshiro fumbled for a moment. "Got a call on my bluetooth," he fibbed, "had it turned up too high. Just a sec." He cupped a hand over his ear to hide the fact that there was no receiver there. "That's really interesting, we'll talk about it after the parade, all right? You have a good time." He mimed taking the nonexistent earpiece out and shoving it in his pocket.

[Avenger Assembled]

And then there were the people who didn't smell like people at all, or rather who smelled like ozone and humming computer parts. "So when you were living back in India," Sharl asked Indira curiously, "did they say anything about why the Eurozone people thought that there were Indians living in the Americas? I mean the local cultures were totally dissimilar, I thought, and the stone monuments certainly look nothing alike." Sharl had a shaky grasp of Earth history, but he'd spent enough time reading Wikipedia to know that some very strange choices had been made over the centuries. At least he'd been able to confirm that Indira's adopted civilization hadn't all fled the genocide here to resettle on the opposite continent.

[Gizmo]

"What?" Kimber blinked her invisible eyelids a few times in mild confusion as she tried to parse what Koshiro was saying before floating a little bit higher over the float and spying the comely coed on his other side. "Oh. Oh! Oooooh... Right, right..." she whispered a little more quietly, lowering her disembodied voice to a volume that objectively still wasn't that stealthy. There was a short silence before the ghost had to stifle a giggle. "I totally just winked but you couldn't see that, huh? Okay, have fun!" There was a brief chill in the air that might have simply been a stray autumn breeze and then the chipper phantom was gone, floating back into the crowd at street level. Unseen by anyone, she kicked at a pebble a little dejectedly, sighing softly as her foot went right through the tiny rock.

[Fox]

"I am not the best history student," Indira admitted, glancing around the crowd for a moment and wishing she was a little bit taller - not that she was very short for this planet, or so she understood. But still. "But I think the word is 'European'. My impression is not so much that they thought Indians were living in the Americas, but that they did not know the Americas were here and thought they had reached India by going all the way around the planet."

She thought on that for a moment, and frowned. "I do not know why they thought that, however - it seems as if the differences should have been more obvious, and the journey not so fast. I do not think I would go hunting with someone with such a poor sense of location."

[April]

Of all the things she's seen, faced down and helped defeat to be assigned to play minder to a parade was... a relief. This wasn't to suggest that she took the assigned duty lightly, but merely that she need worry about nothing more than keeping the peace.

She opted to patrol the crowd out of costume, though the choker she wore could easily transform into it if required, and spent much of her time at the fringes of the crowd. She was rather sort so she thought it best to go where her view wasn't totally obstructed.

[trollthumper]

The festivities carried on along Young Freedom, the scent of pizza and marscapone from street vendors filling the air around them. Koshiro, however, noticed from his position on the Sierra float that the road was starting to get rocky. The truck carrying the float began to jump up and down, as if riding along cobblestones.

The cause soon became clear. The crowds watched and began to shy away as the asphalt began to bubble and roil... and burst from the ground in twisted spires, turning into tall trees. Some of the floats swerved to avoid the forest growing up in the middle of the West End, but the sudden spurt of growth left many with the choice of plowing into the trees rather than turning off into the crowd.

"This is no cause for revelry!"

The clarion voice rang out over the rising panic. In the middle of the urban forest, a single flatbed truck with shaded windows stood, dedicated to a group calling itself "the Standard of Romulus." It had, up until that point, been a cheesy, Vegas-like exhibition, with a number of men in gladiator gear gathered around a Sicilian woman in a rather flattering toga. But as the woman rose from her throne of plasterboard, she waved her hand, and the glamour fell. The men in gladiator togs collapsed within their armor, turning back into hordes of birds and mice, and the woman's false face melted away, revealing the sorceress Medea.

"I don't care what faces you wear, Olympians," she called out, "or what empires worshipped you. No matter how hard you fall, no matter who you abandon, there's always some fragment of your glory. Your new home was sacked by barbarians, but its children still gather to remember the ashes of empire! Watch, now, as they suffer for your hubris!"

The cab to the flatbed flew open, and a man clad in steel emerged. Flexing cables emerged from his black exoskeleton, sensing the air. "Medea," said Devil Ray, "I appreciate the attitude, but we've got a job here, remember?" He turned to the crowds. "You heard the sorceress! We've got the streets blocked off! There's nowhere to go, so we're all gonna sit here and play the waiting game until the FCPD agree to our demands --"

"Yeah, right!"

Medea and Devil Ray snapped their heads around. A young man had emerged from the crowd. He couldn't have been older than 16, but he was built like a pro linebacker. He'd tossed aside a button-up shirt to reveal an Atomweave morphic molecule shirt in red and blue. A simple domino mask kept his face from the crowd. "How about you let them go," he said, "and you won't find out what aspalt tastes like?"

"You old enough to be out here without your mommy, super brat?" said Devil Ray.

"The name's Bastion," said the kid as he cracked his knuckles. "And I'm gonna teach you to respect it."

[Avenger Assembled]

As the supervillains made their appearance, Sharl disappeared, simply falling down through the sidewalk and taking stock of the situation a few feet underground. Donning his sunglasses and setting his chest symbol to blazing life made him Citizen, but only belatedly did he realize just how dark it was under the streets! Not wanting to go beyond his projector's limits, he clipped his way through the street, just his head sticking up above the road like a landshark as Medea, Devil Ray, and the vaguely familiar new kid had words with each other.

"Hey, you must be Devil Ray." said Citizen, suddenly erupting right out of the float and right next to the armored supervillain. He tended to assume that magic was the product of insane superpowered people and that crazy people weren't a threat, so he ignored Medea: besides, he wasn't equipped to fight her the way he was Devil Ray. "I'm Citizen, and I'm here to take your armor." He shoved his arm through the armored figure's head, trying to latch onto the programming mainframe inside. "And your pants!"

[KnightDisciple]

Cobalt Templar's eyes widened as things went from "calm happy parade" to "dangerous hostage situation" in the blink of an eye. In an instant, he was in "fight mode", his face expressionless as he sent a quick thought burst to Sage, and thus hopefully the rest of the team.

"<Sharl has Devil Ray. I'm moving on Medea. Can't let her risk the crowd.>"

He flew out over the middle of the street, lining up a shot even as he ended up leaving himself a bit open to attack. An idle thought crossed his mind.

'Well, that's 2 more members of the Crime League. Do they enjoy getting taken down piecemeal?'

He then called out to Medea, his voice booming as he raise his right hand and gripped (at first) empty air. The words he spoke were not English, but Ancient Greek!

"~Foul sorceress! Clinging to your dusty past! You made a mistake coming here, caster of spells and enchanter of the innocent!~"

Suddenly, what looked like a lightning bolt made of blue fire appeared in his hand, and was just as quickly tossed at her, striking the witch head on.

"~Petty witch! Go run to your Olympian masters! Despoilers of the innocent!~"

A second bolt of lightning joined the first almost before it finished striking.

"~Also, you're actually kind of ugly up close, and that toga does nothing for your likely plain figure.~"

[trollthumper]

"Masters?"

The first bolt deflected harmlessly off of Medea's arcane protections, as she began to move towards Cobalt Templar. "You impetuous whelp! They abandoned me! Neglected me in my darkest hour, when I had given all for my betrayer husband and he left me for the first noble he could find! I wouldn't accept their charity if --"

Cobalt Templar never found out what it would take for Medea, though, as the second bolt caught her right in the chest, sending her staggering backwards into one of her trees.

"Might want to reconsider that," said Bastion. "Think you're gonna need it."

[Electra]

Koshiro stood up along with the others on his float when the parade came to a halt. His face went grim for a minute, before he turned to the girl next to him with a sardonic half-smile. "Man, these jokers never just take a rest, do they?" He handed her the bag of Smarties, then reached into the outer pocket of his backpack and withdrew a paper airplane. "Hold my seat, would you?" With a touch, the airplane grew to twice the size of a skateboard and began floating, just before Koshiro leapt onto it and soared into the sky.

Once in the air, he steered away from the conflict his teammates were handling at the front. If the escape routes were blocked, that meant they might have bad guys flanking them, always bad news. Or it could be a stupid bluff, but he had to be sure. Koshiro headed for the nearest cross street to see what was happening.

[trollthumper]

Koshiro rose to the cross street, and saw the cause for jammed traffic - trees. More of Medea's magical oaks, surging up through the concrete and knotting together in such a way that the floats couldn't even drive on the sidewalk. If he could cut them down, or even uproot and replace them, the traffic would start moving again, and more floats could get away from the chaos. And that didn't seem so hard.

Meanwhile, Devil Ray struggled to move, but Sharl's overwhelming control of his armor made that a difficult proposition. "This town," he spat between futile attempts to pilot the armor. "No matter when, no matter where, there's always super brats!"

He managed to wrest control for one brief second - just in time to see Bastion's fist gliding in towards his face. The steel dented under the assault, and the criminal struggled to stay on his feet. "Yeah," he said. "You'd think you guys would learn."

[Fox]

On the one hand, the villains' interruption of the parade meant an interruption to the parade, which Indira had been quite enjoying; on the other hand, a fight was always exciting. Besides, a panicking crowd wasn't too bad a place to change shapes - all you had to do was wait until everybody was too distracted to remember exactly who had turned into the metal monster in their midst.

So turn she did, when people seemed to have hit the peak of their confusion: hair and clothes melted away as her features closed up and smoothed out into a familiar, three-eyed head. Her legs, now more smooth and abstract, twisted up on themselves, gaining an extra joint and a lot of bulk as she hunched down and then hurled up into the air over the crowd and straight at Medea.

Unfortunately, crouching down meant she'd missed Medea staggering back into the trees before it was a little too late; by the time Wraith landed, the maces her hands had become mid-flight hit nothing but the float, plasterboard crunching under the impact.

[Gizmo]

"I wonder if these guys are robots again," a disembodied voice asked thoughtfully just before Ghost Girl wavered into sight amidst a suitable startled crowd. Before they had much time to flee in abject terror, the ethereal teenager was floating through the air toward the villains, reaper's cloak flapping soundlessly behind her. "Columbus Day is sort of an American thing, so I'm not really sure why we're fighting over it," she admitted as she dove abruptly downward, passing right through Medea and out the back of the tree the sorceress was back up against, leaving behind a preternatural chill that sapped the ancient woman's strength, leaving her shivering uncontrollably. "I'm betting you really just want to ruin the parade 'cause you're big jerks, though!"

[Avenger Assembled]

"Wait, don't-" At Bastion's punch, Sharl's world went white as he felt his borrowed electronic body shatter and crack beneath the sheer force of the other teenager's mighty blow. He'd never taken a hit like that before while jacking someone's system, and for a moment he expected to wake up back in Miss Americana's laboratory after being fixed up. But when he could perceive again, he could hear Devil Ray cursing and fighting against his own hijacked suit, and hear the sparks and hisses inside from the suit's damaged systems. "I'm in here!" he yelled at Bastion, a moment before a bullet slammed into the other teenager's shoulder. When he didn't look more than scratched, Sharl hesitated a moment before he stepped right out of the armor, his vision clearing once he was out of the suit. "Listen, you fight this jerk, I'm taking it to the sniper."

And with that, he turned and flew soundlessly into the air, clipping his way through the apartment wall and confronting Orion directly. "You're shooting superheroes with bullets? Please." And with that, he slugged Orion right in the jaw. "You might as well have a freaking bow and arrow!"

[trollthumper]

Orion looked up at Citizen with just the barest flicker of surprise as Sharl's punch connected with his face. Pieces of shattered red plastic fell out from his goggles as he reeled with the blow, with most of his attention focused on keeping his hands on the rifle. He raised the rifle and pointed it at Citizen, but didn't pull the trigger; his hands were still shaking from the impact of the blow, and it looked like he was taking his time to make sure it didn't go wild.

"Funny," he said. "Find a lot of you die just like anyone else."

---

Meanwhile, back on the street, Bastion had his hand clasped tight to his shoulder. The damage wasn't deep - it wasn't even bleeding - but there was a long, shallow cut, not unlike what you'd expect if you ran your arm against a sharp counter. And definitely not what you'd expect from a .50 caliber round.

"Just try me," said Bastion. He was still up on his feet, and his hand was coming away from the shoulder... but he was gritting his teeth. The blow might have bounced off his skin, but the pain must have resounded with the novice hero. He raised his head high. "Just try that again, I dare you!"

[KnightDisciple]

Cobalt Templar was worried that they had a shooter (quite probably Orion, this group being what it was) on the scene as well. Thankfully, Sharl was quick to jump on that issue, while Koshiro was taking the initiative to clear the roads up. He glanced toward Eve before looking back to Kimber and Indira.

"Wraith! Ghost Girl! Let's keep the pressure up on this witch before we mop up Devil Ray, then go help Citizen!"

Taking his own advice, Cobalt Templar streaked through the air, pulling back his right fist for a devastating punch that was enhanced by blue fire-lightning swirling around it. The strike roared in directly at Medea's face.

"Parents taught me not to hit a lady, but you're not even trailer trash! We'll make sure your ugly self gets locked up for a long time!"

[trollthumper]

Medea hit the oak behind her with enough force to split the wood. Leaves rained down from the tree over her as Corbin's blow resounded through the tree, using Medea's body as the conduit. She gave Corbin a death glare, and opened her mouth to retort at his taunt - but couldn't get anything out before her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she hit the pavement, hard.

"Oh, great!" said Devil Ray. He'd regained control of his rig, but the blow from Bastion had screwed with him just as badly as Citizen's possession job. "Orion, you'd better have some kind of trick up your sleeve for this!"

[Electra]

Papercut watched with satisfaction as the whirring wings and cutting beaks of the crane swarm cut their way through the foliage blocking the street in front of the parade. Within moments, they'd cut a passageway wide enough to accommodate the parade floats, which began hastily moving out of the path of danger. The way cleared, he turned to help his teammates in the actual fight. The sniper seemed like the most obvious threat, so he whipped his airplane around and surfed through the sky and up to the rooftops, the cranes a white contrail behind him. Sparing only a quick glance towards the ground to see if anyone was watching the show, he gestured toward Orion with a sweeping wave of his arm. The cranes enveloped the hapless villain, pecking at his exposed skin with their thousand tiny beaks.

[trollthumper]

The flurry of paper cranes beset Orion, obscuring his view and causing his aim to go all to hell. "Damnit," he muttered, with the inflection of a man who'd just stubbed his toe and wasn't being attacked by a flock of paper cranes. "New brats, new tricks, new freaky stuff. This'll be one for the collection."

---

Meanwhile, on the street below, Devil Ray started to come to his senses, and started taking steps towards Bastion. "First I lose control of the suit," he said, "then you decide to play can opener. Hope you've got a will written up, kid."

Bastion, however, wasn't looking too good. The color had gone out of his face, and he was going slack on his feet. His teeth were clenched so tight it looked like they were about to shatter. "Y - yeah?" he said. "Like you could... could..."

Devil Ray chuckled. "God, kid, you look like you need a blankie and your teddy bear," he said. He clenched his fist, drawing power through the suit's damaged systems. "What do you say I put you to bed?"

Bastion stared down Devil Ray... and the wound on his arm started to writhe. The cut flesh gasped and shuddered, like it was breathing, and the convulsions traveled down his arm. He turned to the shaking arm slowly, like he wasn't even feeling it and only realizing what it was doing from an outside perspective. By that point, it had ceased to be an arm, the flesh shifting and running like candle wax until it was a multi-pronged tentacular appendage. He let out a scream, and lost control. The changes poured through his body as the screaming continued, until what came out of his mouth couldn't be defined as screaming anymore. Bastion's costume, made of morphic molecules, grew and shifted with his body, but there was a point he couldn't be said to have been wearing it so much that it was attached to his body. The teen hero's new form loomed large over the streets, and those who hadn't run from the initial conflict were taking off in blind panic, fighting against one another to get away from the gigantic monstrosity.

Stumbling like a drunken elephant, blind from the rush of new sensations, Bastion lashed out blindly at his surroundings. One tentacular arm came flying out like a bullwhip at Orion's little hutch. The limb missed the assassin, and the heroes that were confronting him, but it struck with the force of a wrecking ball, punching through bricks and mortar like papier mache and tearing away the walls above the heroes.

"...that one of yours?" Orion said, just a hint of concern - and, strangely enough, awe - creeping into his voice.