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GM The Painted Desert, Arizona September 22nd, 2020 14:00 PM Doctor Alexander Macedon stepped out of the van, and into the bright light of the Arizona desert. If his heavy backpack weighed him down in old age, he didn't show. He was an older man, having pushed past 70 some years ago. He would tell anyone that bothered to ask that he was retired, and yet, he was, standing in the Painted Desert once again. Once again, the headmistress had convinced him to take a group of students on a survival class. He could only hope that it went better than the last time. Macedon's hair was thinning and grey, bordering on white. His beard was cut short, barely more than stubble. His left eye was hidden behind an eyepatch, with horn-rimmed glasses resting on the bridge of his nose. He wore khaki pants, a white dress shirt that was already starting to stain from sweat. His boots were heavy, but solid. Dressed for the weather. His well worn cowboy had was held in his hand, lightly fanning his face. He wore a slightly oversized revolver in a holster on the right side of his belt. Turning to the van, he grumbled something, before speaking up. "Alright, hurry up and get out here, kids. We don't want to waste more sunlight than we have to." The students were even younger than the ones in last batch. Fine. He'd deal with that. More of them were just regular people, no powers, just training or tech. He could respect that. He had even allowed them to bring their gear, as long as they carried it themselves. For emergencies, of course. Not just for the regular class. "Rule number one: I give an order, you follow that order. This is a survival class. You're going to learn how to survive if you ever end up in a place like this. No buts, if or maybes. As far as you're concerned, I am in charge."
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May 17th, 2021 Early Afternoon The Lab Voltage entered the room, and took a breath. A small crew of drones was busily flying about the room, dropping off pitchers of water and glasses. In addition, each seat had a tablet. He had sent word to Miss A that he was coming up with plans to get rid of the Doomforge in Kingston. She had agreed. He also sent word to the Atoms, in case they had any ideas. They sent their newest ally, Rocket, who would represent them in the discussion. He had plans to expand the scope of the discussion, and then the collective efforts to get rid of it, once the initial discussions were well underway. If he had too many voices in the early phases of the discussion, it might make it harder to establish. He took a deep breath. "I'm ready." He said over the comm.
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GM TOMORROW! The mighty beast tore through the hallways, running after the young man clad in red, white, blue and gold armor. The mighty Aliengator ran its claws through the wall as the Freedom Eagle blasted at it. He had reached his goal, a swirling circular portal, large enough to bring an army. He held a hand out towards it, and it came to life, a swirling rainbow portal opening. The Freedom Eagle turned just in time to see the massive humanoid alien alligator come running at him, grasping him and pushing him into the portal, leaving the empty hallways behind. The Sky Above the Millenium Mall April 24th, 4PM, 2021 An otherwise nice and quiet day at the Millenium Mall was interrupted. The sky above the mall crackled with rainbow energies and multicolored lightning. A massive circular portal in all the swirling colors of the rainbow opened, releasing two falling figures. The portal closed immediately. The larger, a large humanoid alligator clad in a white armor that left its arms, tail and face free, was grappling the smaller, clad in red, white, blue and gold. The smaller figure managed to kick himself free, spreading out golden wings to stop his fall, while the monster fell to the ground. Seemingly unharmed, aside from parts of its armor starting to break, the creature stood and roared to the sky. Of course, the winged man was not the only hero at the scene!
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March 17, 2019 Claremont Academy It was St. Patrick's Day, so naturally Judy had dressed for it; a green dress with white flowers that went below her knee, and a nervous, almost hesitant smile as she made her way to join her World Religions study group in the library. She greeted Danica, Pan Ayjay, hugging her book to herself before she said, "Um, Ashley said she can't make it today, so it's just us." She looked around at her study buddies and commented, "...so, Ah was thinking, that since we already know about Buddhism and stuff, and this is just review anyway, we could mostly just...you know, maybe do other stuff?" she asked hopefully. Judy struggled in some classes, and occasionally turned a bright, mortified red when particular subjects came up, but she'd always done quite well in World Religions.
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August 28, 2020 In the first week of August, a strange email landed in the boxes of certain graduates of Claremont Academy. It It had a scrambled sender line and was flagged high priority by whatever email system received it, with a header reading BIRTHDAY TIME, BITCHES!!! When opened, the email contained a truly obnoxious number of pictures of balloons and beer glasses, and the words Hey losers! Guess who's finally turning 21? That's right, basically all of us! But especially Raina! Come celebrate August 28, 8pm, the Evening Sky Lounge, Freedom City (it's lame but they don't care about magic, ha!) Monkey buys the first round, come dressed for fun. RSVP regrets only but you better not Those who looked up the Evening Sky Lounge would find a small bar in the Theater District, wedged in on the end of a whole street of bars and clubs. A small disclaimer at the bottom of the place's webpage said "cape friendly, no fighting!" Anybody who really dug in might turn up the fact that the proprietor was one Betty Munroe, a retired hero from back in the bad old Moore days, who'd once gone by the codename Evening. On the night in question the weather was clear and hot, the velvet shadows after sunset just beginning to close in by eight. The Evening Sky was not a huge place but it had a long bar, a half dozen tables and twice as many booths, and a small stage with a dance floor. A four-piece band was doing an enthusiastic cover of some nineties rock songs as they were largely ignored by twenty or so chattering patrons. In the corner was one very large round booth with a very large bunch of helium balloons fixed to one side and a monkey sitting on the table, eating pineapple chunks off a plastic drink spear.
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December 2020 The Smoothie Shack - Riverside, Freedom City Continued from Monkeys on Parade In the heart of Riverside the juice bar Ryder led Natalia to was afforded a little more street front real estate than it might have been further downtown, enough for a large arching sign with the name Smoothie Shack in bright capital letters, flanked by stylized palm trees and fruit silhouettes in a multitude of colours. Through the big front windows diner style booths in pastel colours could be seen, occupied by a smattering of patrons of wildly differing ages and aesthetics. The second storey of the building was given to more understated red brick and windows with shutters, presumably living space. Ryder stopped on the sidewalk to heft his bag over his shoulder with one hand and gesture proudly with the other. "Tada!"
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Elena was still waiting for her classes to start, but she figured there was no reason she couldn't teach herself. The sheer amount of information the people from the so-called "present day" was astounding. Though she had just begun to scratch the surface of it, it was certainly a far cry better than what she had in her own time: moldy dictionaries and old issues of Popular Mechanics. That, and the advice and teachings of other people in her tribe. El sighed happily as she signed off the library's computer, gathering a small stack of schematics and mechanical diagrams she had printed. The short time she had spent online had taught her what she may have learned in many, many months, if not years. It was all just right there! Her stomach grumbled loudly. Better get something to eat before I head down to the science lab. It is build-your-own-fajita day. --- Though some of the other students snickered behind her back as she went up for a fifth and sixth plate of fajitas, she pretended to ignore them. There was more important work to be done, and she needed plenty of fuel! Nevermind that it hurt her feelings pretty badly, she spend her lunch poring over the schematics. After lunch, she donned her armor, and took her gravity hammer down to the science labs. Surely there would be someone there to help show her the ropes! "Umm." There was no one there. "Umm." The facility was spotless, and fully decked out with lots of science equipment she had never seen before, much less heard of. "UMMMMMM." What started as an exploration into the knowledge of this world was quickly turning into a hopeless venture. She pulled her armor off, and tossed it on a table, and glumly sat down at a lab table. Crap!
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May 2021 After All Bad Bad Nevertheless The good news was that Sea Devil and Singularity had beaten the monster. Whether it was the injury Aquaria had done to it, or the terror Jessie had put in its eyes, Memento Mori had disappeared before it could attack the Project Freedom crews that had arrived on the scene. Singularity had even been talked back to Jessie before she could hurt anyone, thanks to the need to get Aquaria to a hospital and the nearby presence of people she knew well. The Kingston cleanup process was...going to be delayed for some time. Jessie's fast healing meant that she didn't have so much as a bruise by the next morning. There was just one piece of bad news. Aquaria still hadn't woken up. Out of her armor she looked decidedly bedraggled, a downcast look on her broad face, her eyes responding to light and her body to stimuli, but her mind seemingly elsewhere. Eve had found that Aquaria was indeed still in her head, but far away as if in deep sleep, and magical probes by Tarva and others hadn't gotten very much further. They'd taken her home to the castle where she could rest, in the deep wading brackish water pool where she was the most comfortable, but her quietude was alarming. No one else who had been hurt by the creature had stayed down like this. Even going back to the worst injury anyone had heard of Aquaria getting, the in all honesty probably too-violent beating from Nereid that had led to her initial arrest, there was no reason for her to still be unconscious, especially with seemingly no bruises herself, the next day. People had been in and out of the Castle all day, specialists from the League and elsewhere, but nobody had figured anything out yet.
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GM You don't know the time. You don't remember the date. You don't know where you are. You feel cold. Your eyes open, and you find yourself in a bed that you know is not your own. You appear to be in a hospital, with an IV drip connected from the back of the wrist on your left arm to a clear back that hangs by the side of the bed. You're sure that you're not dreaming. You are alone. The room is small, quadratic. Your bed is squashed up against the corner so you can see the door over the foot of the bed. The walls are light, grey. Monotone. Boring. The door is a slightly darker grey, barely standing out, if not for the handle and a small window that lets you see another door outside your room. There is a window on the wall opposite of your bed, with bars over it. It is closed. A single chair stands next to the bed. It seems to be made of a shiny metal. Aluminium, maybe. You don't remember how you got here. Were you in an accident? Did something happen? And realization slowly begins to set in. You are alone. And you are not dreaming.
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May 2021 Kingston This had once been a fine place, where Surfacers competed to live in the finest homes and own the finest things. Now hardly anyone lived here, beneath the terrible shadow of the doomforge that loomed squatly over the mostly-abandoned remains of the neighborhood. It made Aquaria sad to be here, sad to smell the death that lingered on the air and hear the mournful, echoing cry of the murdered soul of this place. There was not even anything good to eat that Surfacers had not brought here themselves, all but a few scavenging beasts avoiding the surrounding landscape with the sensible judgement of things that crawled and flew. Surfacers rarely did this. "With these brave heroes at our side, volunteers from Project Freedom," Councilman McGrath was declaring, his round face flushed red from the summer's heat, "I believe we can reclaim Kingston for the forces of life. Maybe we can't stop that - that thing - " he added, making a gesture from his podium at the doomforge as the cameras below flashed, "but we can bury our dead and let the land heal. The wounds of the past can be healed if we are strong enough to look them in the eye!" It was only technically true that Singularity and Sea Devil were volunteers. Ms. Wainwright of Project Freedom, sitting here on the platform with Singularity and Sea Devil, was an ally of George McGrath and had asked two of her most successful graduates to come along to show that McGraths' plan to clear away as much of Kingston as possible to let nature take its course had the support of the heroic community, at least as far as making sure his workers wouldn't be operating on their own. At least the waters hereabouts were clean, Aquaria thought, a little regretfully.
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February 27, 2021 The Lab The craft hovered in midair, its magnetic induction coils active as it gripped the Earth's magnetic field like the wheels of a racecar hugging the track. With a gesture, Angelic turned the boomerang-shaped flying wing back and forth, its gold and black polish gleaming in the light of a simulated sun. Stepping to the other side, she was barely visible through the faintly transparent hologram. "With a maximum velocity of 800 kilometers per hour, Winge will allow Chelone to cruise to her native Southwest in a morning's drive," she said with a cool smile on her face, "and is precise enough to allow for hovering as low as a few centimeters off the ground." She squeezed her fingers to magnify the hologram, and showed off the hooks for Chelone's feet, the matching helmet for her head that would give her a faceshield against the wind and provide her a computerized heads-up display, and the internal workings of the navigation system. "It is much too fast for an unassisted human brain to pilot safely but the internal GPS has a processing speed that will exceed a human brain tenfold!" When she dismissed the hologram, she was beaming. With her hair a brilliant platinum blonde shot through with streaks of blue, her labcoat a perfectly polished white, and her hands now folded behind her back, she looked a bit like a punk-rock version of Miss Americana - though the bar through her eyebrow and ring in her nose were all hers. "All that remains is to activate the 3-D printers and begin the work. I had thought of incorporating weapons or defenses, but Chelone is formidable enough on her own. What do you think, Voltage?" she asked. She looked, in her self-confidence and with her smile, actually quite a bit like the little girl he had first met years earlier.
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GM Heading West across the endless oceans... Heading towards destiny... The Forever Boy and the Thunderbird flew fast, across the endless oceans of Neverworld. On and on, as far as they could, and then, perhaps, a bit further. They had passed islands, lands and sea, ruin and wonder. And yet they did not stop. They could not stop. They must not stop. They had to fly, forevermore, not to rest, until their goal was in sight.
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GM 3PM, August 28th, 2020 Silberman's Northwest, Emerald City Silberman's Northwest was a nice place, even if it was very different from the original Silberman's back in Freedom City. Gretchen McDaniels, otherwise known as the Shrike, was, of course, retired. She had left Freedom for Emerald to get out of the hero life, but some times, you just couldn't. She had met Robin Lynne Langley on a few occasions. She had become a regular at Silberman's Northwest, and about a year before, she and Gretchen had shared an adventure into a magic book that was some knock off of the Wizard of Oz. They had managed to escape, and they had kicked ass and taken names, but even as they learned each others secret identities, Robin had respected Gretchen's choice to not be a hero anymore. Of course, things were different now, and Emerald needed all the heroes they could get...
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North Bay was very nice, Danica decided as she putted along the edge of the immaculately-paved road past the huge houses, but she definitely wouldn't want to live there. The houses were beautiful and the big old trees and sprawling gardens were probably super nice when the weather was warm, but everything was awfully spread out. Also there were no bus stops because it was a rich area, and there were very few sidewalks, because same. She'd had to find the nearest bus stop and then go on two wheels for nearly a mile to the actual place. Trying to keep her balky old borrowed scooter out of the slushy puddles at the edge of the road and also not get hit by cars was a little bit challenging. At least there wasn't much traffic! She was relieved to finally reach the address and turn down the long driveway. The driveway was pretty cool, lined with tall old trees whose branches arched high overhead and probably made a ceiling when the leaves were on them. It was also immaculately paved, without a pothole or a smidgen of gravel anywhere to be seen. It was also-also a bit of a wind tunnel, making Danica tuck her face a little further down into the scarf she'd wrapped around her neck, over the hood and knit hat she was also wearing. Between that and her sweater and two pairs of pants and puffy coat and mittens, she barely felt underdressed even without her shell on. Still cold, though. Freedom City was always so cold in winter! The Segway did not like the cold, either. It was in much poorer condition than her lost one had been, and was making sad rattling Segway-noises. At the end of the driveway she found a huge old handsome house, even bigger and handsomer than most of the ones she'd ridden past. Attached was a garage that looked like it could fit at least four cars and probably more, with its own little door out front. Ellie had said Mr. Hunter worked out of his garage most of the time, so she headed that way. Carefully dismounting from the Segway of Sadness, she adjusted the straps of her backpack and rang the buzzer by the door.
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March 20, 2021 HAX It was a quiet weekend at HAX. The boss and most of the staff were away with their families or working on projects at home, and for once the security director and her assistant had given most of the security staff the day off too. Drilling could come the next day, when they'd be simulating an attack by space pirates from the 22nd century on the building. When the door buzzer sounded in the main security office, Steve answered the message, holding the headset up to one ear and speaking into the microphone. "The building is closed." A pause. "Who may I say is here?" And then an even longer pause, with his eyes noticeably widening before he said with a tone that mixed reverence and a sudden, sharp skepticism. "...whose name shone brightly among all other in the branches of the Silver Tree?" The answer he got seemed to satisfy him, and he turned to Erin and said "There are Furions at the door. They say they have come to speak to the Dethroner."
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GM 11:30 PM February 12th, 2021 Jadetown, Emerald City The Night of the Chinese New Year Celebrations It was an evening of celebration in the streets of Jadetown, and on this evening, even the Takazumi-gumi seemed to be at ease, content to simply celebrate. It was the year of the metal ox. Some saw that as a sign, the year that the Steel Shogun would rise even further. Others simply enjoyed the festivities. Anyone and everyone in the city were welcome, at least for now. Perhaps the party, a smell of the supernatural at play, or something else entirely, would bring heroes to this night. While a parade made their way through the streets, a group of Takazumi-gumi that were defintely not in a party mood, led by a young man, led a young woman through the streets of the city...
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GM Some time between the story of then and now... Heading to Victori... Eira had left her companions behind. Her angelic form soaring across the skies of Neverworld, she had a first row seat to the destruction that the Hooked Man and his Sky-Pirates had caused across the world. Beneath her she saw ruined cities, displaced familes doing their best to survive in what had once been their homes. She saw slain beasts, passing by a capsized turtle the size of an island between New Avalon and Victori. And soon... she saw Victori, and Tham, the great factory city. The factories were still alive. Still producing the endless soldiers needed. Perhaps she would find the Mad Doctor that the Great Detectives had mentioned, or perhaps she would make do on her own. How long had the journey taken? It was difficult to tell. Time was, after all, strange in Neverworld.
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It was warm where she was, warm like a sunny afternoon even though there was no light. She could barely move, surrounded on all sides by the darkness, but it didn't bother her. There was no need to move, not when she could just rest, and drift, and let the hurting fade away. Something bad had happened, she remembered vaguely. Something had hurt so much, something had been so scary. It was all gone now, though, and it didn't seem very important. Time passed, minutes or hours or days. She thought she slept, but it was impossible to tell sleep from awake. She could feel her body knitting back together. Sometimes she thought she talked to people or things she could not see, and they told her important things that she couldn't really remember or understand. Maybe that was sleeping too. It was nice. Eventually she became aware of a change in her world. Everything was still dark, everything was still close, but the closeness was softer now, more like being wrapped in blankets than tucked into an egg. The sudden deafening noise of her own heartbeat startled her; she hadn't noticed its absence until just then. She sucked in an involuntary breath, something else she hadn't been aware of not doing, her body jerking with the abrupt resumption of essential activities. The movement seemed to trigger something or break something, and suddenly the closeness was gone, replaced by air and cold and LIGHT! She gasped as her eyes opened, memory and energy and sensation all flowing back in one overwhelming rush! It had taken hours for anything to happen at all after Tarrant had carefully placed the earthen pod containing his friend's body into the newly-tilled soil of one of Mayberry's most distant fields. As dawn crept over the horizon, a tiny sprout had appeared, growing steadily as the hours passed. Over the course of two days it had grown to the side of a cornstalk, then broadened until it was the size of a small tree, for all it was obviously intent on blooming one single, perfect flower. The flower bud started out the size of a basketball and grew to the size of a truck tire before bending towards the ground under its own weight, still growing. Just before dusk on the second day, the furled bud of the flower finally began to move. It gave a single convulsive jerk and then opened wide, spilling out its occupant. Stesha, totally healed, nude as the day she was born, and tangled in her own green hair, rolled the few inches to the ground with a soft thud and lay there on her back, looking around wildly.
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"Well," Paige asked puckishly, looking down at the sullenly unresponsive camera, "have we tried hitting it with something yet? That usually works." Fred gave her a look of unutterable weariness. "Paige, my dearest darling, I know you are a psychic, but that doesn't mean you need to channel Richard for us when he's not here." "Oh no!" Paige took two steps back, laughing, both hands over her heart as though mortally wounded. "Why would you say such a hurtful thing to me? Now I'm going to have to redo my makeup before I can go on camera." "That's probably okay, it's looking like we're going to have some time," Dave predicted glumly. "Damn thing was fine yesterday." "Are you sure you didn't drop it?" Eamon asked, mock-solicitously. "Cause mine's still working just fine, and the only difference there is operator skill..." Dave gave Eamon an eloquent reply by way of finger, though his heart clearly wasn't in it. "Can we do the interview with just one camera?" Vivi asked anxiously, hugging their elbows and looking from person to person. The youngest member of the team by a couple of decades, Vivi was not quite used to the on-set byplay. Paige took pity on the intern. "It'll be tougher, but we'll do all right," she said reassuringly. "We'll set the camera up over my shoulder to focus on the guest, and just cut the final together so we don't need any footage from me in this one. If we absolutely have to, we can cheat and edit in a shot or two of me from another interview we did in here, since I'm asking a lot of the same questions anyway. We just can't afford to waste time getting the camera fixed today, and Cobalt Templar is presumably well on his way here already. Everyone ready to go?" "Wait, wait!" Dave called, "I think it's starting up! The red light- no, it's gone again." He sat down at the offstage table with a defeated look. "How's your camera phone?" Eamon suggested. "You could always try filming with that." Dave's response was just as eloquent as before.
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One of the perks of having a show on the Discovery Channel was a generally cordial working relationship with public broadcasting systems all around the world. It was especially nice in cases like this, where instead of doing interviews on the street or in a rented conference room, they were able to line up a cozy little interview space at the FCTV studios right downtown. The SuperCrime crew had piled all their outdoor gear in an unobtrusive corner and taken an hour's break to thaw out, eat lunch and back up footage of the morning's work. Now Paige was redoing her makeup in front of a mirror in the corner, covering up a slight case of windburn with concealer while the crew did light tests and their waited for their guest to arrive. The studio was not very large, a living-room themed stage area big enough for perhaps four or five people maximum. It was set up with two comfortable chairs cheated towards the camera with a low table between them for coffee cups and looked very much like a thousand different news program sets. The crew already had all the cameras set up and ready to go, and the smell of coffee floated invitingly through the warm air.
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GM A warehouse by Kissinger, Southside, Freedom City August 24th, 2020 4:30 PM With the police arriving, Archer and Shooting Star had left the fight at the school behind, heading towards Southside. Before leaving, he had called Facsimile, told him where to meet them. Archer had not been amused being carried, and had insisted on a quick stop at one of his caches around town to stock up on arrows. Just in case. Now, they were ready. Standing by a rooftop on Kissinger, Archer just waited for Facsimile to arrive before they could get started.
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GM FCU Campus 3PM, January 6th, 2021 It had been a normal day for Jennifer. Which meant classes. Lots of classes. While leaving the final class of the day, she had been joined by the professor, one Martin Stillwell. He was a relatively new teacher at the campus, having taken over Jennifer's Computer Forensics class just a few months ago. He was somewhere in the early thirties, with short black hair. He was supposed to be something of a genius in his field. He pocketed his small round glasses as they left the building, heading out into the campus proper. The afternoon sky was starting to grow darker, with grey clouds hanging overhead. The forecast had the possibility of snow, but nothing so far. Stillwell was silent for a short while as they headed in the same direction, before finally speaking. "So, what do you want to do after your studies are finished? Any specific field you're hoping to enter?"
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GM Night February 25th, 2021 Across the rooftops of the Fens Callie had spent a lot of time patrolling Freedom City since being brought to the this time. She had gotten used to this future Freedom, gotten used to this new world she found herself in, where she existed twice at once: The headmistress of Claremont and the time displaced teenager. Things had changed in the poorer parts of the city lately. The Fens, Southside, Kingston... The shadows seemed darker. Ever since Raven and Nevermore had learned that the House of Usher had returned, the Raven Family had found mounting evidence of the Ushers' increasing presence in the city, especially in these areas. Now, she had been patrolling the Fens. It had been largely uneventful when she caught sight of a mugging in progress on the street below, near a street corner. Three men against one hardly seemed fair.
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In some ways, going to Claremont Academy was like going to any high school. There was plenty of academic work, meals in the cafeteria, sports, dances, all the same drudgery and fun that any teenager could expect from their education. In other ways, though, it was very different. Not all students, for instance, got signed up to do after-school study with members of the Freedom League! Patrol with the Freedom League was something of a pilot program this year. The Claremont students got to experience patrolling the city with experienced heroes who could offer tips and answer questions, and the League members got to serve their community and build ties with the school. It seemed destined to be a winning combination. At least, Stesha certainly hoped it was going to be. Fleur de Joie had been a vocal proponent of the program, and she was eager enough to see it succeed that she volunteered to take the first patrol shift. When she'd gotten the profiles of the students she'd be working with, well, it had been easy to decide who she'd ask to work with her. Tiamat seemed a natural fit, and it would probably be very entertaining to watch her interacting with the kids. Claremont patrols started fairly early, around 9pm, so at 8:45 Stesha was waiting outside the school gymnasium, wearing her costume and browsing through the League's text-tip line to see if anything might be brewing tonight. "Well, here we go," she murmured to Tiamat while they waited for the students. "Ready to teach the next generation?"
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Riley's Pub Peterborough, England'; UK. Saturday, March 20th, 20212:01 AM In the heart of rural East England and the center of Peterborough lied Riley's pub. Riley's was the very definition of a seedy pub. Though tough to see from the stained glass windows the lively atmosphere could be heard before one even entered. There were various billiards tables and tvs throughout the property. Though the noise itself made attempting to actually listen to a tv set a failed experiment. The clientele consisted of various roughnecks and known criminals. With hardly a full set a teeth among the lot. To say nothing of the smell. In the center of Riley's was a boxing ring. As Foreshadow explained, before the trio arrived, housed various underground bare knuckle boxing tournaments. The most well known of which was something called the Blood Brawl. Suffice to say, it wasn't exactly Cape territory. Various eyes following the members of the Vanguard as they made their way to the bar in the back. There sat an elderly yet muscular black man. He was missing an eye, half his arm, and an entire leg replaced with a prosthetic. Before Foreshadow invited them to come with him, he had explained they would be meeting this man as a favor. He was Gilles Gordeau the man who trained Foreshadow in Savate. And former kneebreaker for various organized crime families. And all around dangerous thug. Who spent his days now coaching underground bare knuckle boxers for still legally questionable pay. "Bonjour, Gilles. You know pubs should have shut down hours ago right?" Gilles didn't turn to look at the three members of Vanguard and instead dismissively waved his remaining hand. "Eh, I say to come alone. You bring children on to my establishment. Soft. Too soft. This is no babysitting service"
