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Showing results for tags 'wander'.
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September 1, 2013 Typhoon City (formerly Qalansiyah), Free Kingdom of Socotra From the perspective of Freedom City, anyway, it started small. A freak storm in the northwestern Indian Ocean, lashing coasts as far as the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa. A sudden media blackout on the island-nation of Socotra; with even its ample (and often illegal) Internet going dark. Socotra was on the radar of only a few people in the city with its lord and master gone largely into retirement, and a brief blackout was an occasion for concern, but not alarm. Of course, some people had closer ties to the Socotran royal family than others. Standing on the roof of the royal palace of Typhoon, on its best days a magnificent palace of Arabian and Indian styles, surrounded by ever-flowing fountains of fresh water that were among the tallest such in the world, Mark Lucas stared at what lay in Qalansiyah harbor, and beyond it, and for one of the few times in his life honestly had no idea what to say. He took the hand of his girlfriend Nina al-Darsah, princess-turned-college-student, and when he made eye contact and saw the fear she would never, ever, ever admit to having, he said the only thing that made sense. "I'm going to call for help." "Well...I suppose," said Nina, putting her arm around him, the shadows in which they both stood casting her dark face into gloom. "Normally this is something the royal family would handle amongst ourselves, of course, but this, yes, this is something that your friends could help with." She hugged him, stepped aside so he could disappear without her, because what princess would leave her kingdom in a time line this? and said "Hurry." With a nod, Mark's costume flashed up around him before he vanised himself - reappearing in the main foyer of the famous Midnight Manor! "Trevor, Erin!" he called out loud as his shoes creaked on hardwood floors. He'd been gone just half a day, but what a day it had been! "I need your help with something! Something...big!" He had to laugh at the absurdity of it.
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August 15, 2013 The messages arrived in different ways for different heroes - Cannonade and Wander had theirs delivered to one of the anonymous tip drop boxes the Liberty League used to collect correspondance, Wail had his delivered by standard mail to Keith LaMarr's home address, while Willow's came via a scanned copy emailed directly to Vince. They were instantly recognizable as odd - the envelopes weren't paper but vellum, some sort of processed animal skin, and the stamps affixed to them were wildly overpaid, as if someone had bought a chunk of postage and slapped it on an envelope without knowing how the value of postage actually worked. Inside the envelopes lay a simple message written in thick, heavy block printing - again on vellum, albeit by something that looked more like a pencil. HELLO YOU ARE INVITED TO THE ADULTED HOOD CELEBRATION OF RUNS-WITH-FANGS-BARED. PLEASE COME TO BATSTO VISITOR CENTER AT SUNSET TOMORROW IF YOU WANT TO COME. WITNESS MIGHTS OF WITH-FANGS-BARED CLAN AND RAPTOR EMPIRE. A quick trip to Google found the Batsto Vistor Center easily enough; a historic "living history" village deep in the heart of the Wharton State Forest. Heroes who remember the encounter with emissaries of the Raptor Empire will recall Runs-With-Fangs-Bared, the teenage daughter of the raptor commander who learned a lesson about not calling humans apes all the time.
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ooc
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Saturday, April 6th 11:32 AM Cannonade usually wouldn't have been in costume and about town this early on a Saturday. But he, like the rest of the Liberty League, had been on high alert the last few days. There'd been a number of suspicious thefts in the Freedom area over the last few days, and if the pattern held up, odds were the thieves weren't going to take a day off. Midnight had been the first to notice the pattern. On Thursday night, at around 3 AM, several items went missing from the Harcourt family vault at Eastern Seaboard Bank. They could tell the time because the disappearance of the items had set off the motion detectors and pressure sensitive plates in the vault - even though the thieves had not. There was no sign of breach, no sign of forced entry, and no sign of electronic subversion of the vault's countermeasures. Then, around midnight on Friday, someone had done a smash-and-grab on the Valert mansion in the North End and had stolen several antiques from the family's private collection. Two thefts that might, by themselves, be either coincidences or the sign of a particularly brave gang of robbers. But the Valerts had a reputation for considering private acquisitions the family hobby. Their collection was rumored to consist of pieces that might better belong in a national museum - bits of Greek architecture, Renaissance painting... and paraphernalia from the homes of Hitler's inner circle. Likewise, the Harcourts had a black sheep in their family tree - Roland Harcourt, who it was rumored had made a bank securing Nazi funds in American institutions. Some of which he might have actually kept. So it appeared that somebody was going about stealing Nazi assets - or, worst case scenario, relics. Which was why Cannonade was on patrol in Midtown, keeping his eyes locked on the Super Museum. Midnight had been able to narrow down a few "avenues of interest" for the robbers to strike at, potential assets that the thieves might strike at - private collections, arcane libraries, and so forth. The Museum was hosting another retrospective on the heroes of WWII, this time focusing on some of the artifacts belonging to the Reich's own superpowered operatives. There was little chance anything was going to go down in the light of day, but he'd volunteered to keep an eye on Downtown. And hey, nothing wrong with spending more time at the Super Museum. "Nothing big so far," he said into his communicator. "Anything on your ends?"
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The Liberty League and Sage try to figure out who's stealing Nazi relics. The answer? Fascist leprechauns. Yes, really. As the thread starts, odds are each hero is checking out their own possible Freedom-based cache of former Nazi belongings - dusty storehouses, old banks, mansions of the morally dubious, and so forth. Feel free to describe the scene.
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Trevor Hunter was more than a little glad when the attendant announced they would be landing at the Cote d'Azur Airport shortly, though anyone unfamiliar with the stoic young man would have had no inkling. He'd grown no more fond of air travel in general but at least the trip had not been plagued by the interruptions that so often appeared in the life he shared with the auburn haired woman in the seat beside him. He hadn't been entirely sure how interested Erin would be in attending the Grand Prix despite her developing skills as a mechanic. He'd originally had somewhat more elaborate plans in mind for their anniversary but after the events of the new year something more terrestrial had seemed to be in order. At the end of the day, however, one could do much worse than taking a few days off from their respectively hectic schedules to visit the Principality of Monaco. Something also appealed to him about a celebration that was by their standards fairly low key: the implication that there would be many more opportunities in the years to come. Rolling his stiff shoulders against a seat not designed with his tall frame in mind, he ensured his sunglasses had remained in place and looked over to Erin. "So far, so good?"
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May 1, 2013 Midtown Cafe "It's okay, Mom, she'll be here," said Mark reassuringly, watching his mother nervously sketch human figures on the napkin. Even with a ballpoint pen on a cafe paper napkin, his mother's talent came through as Martha made the figures seem to dance and pace on the paper before her. "You know Erin, she's a very good friend, and she's always been there for me." The good cheer wasn't entirely false, but Mark was nervous, albeit not as nervous as his mother. When she'd called him and told him her work had put her on psychiatric leave, he'd heard the raw edge of tears in her voice, and even now that she'd calmed her voice and wiped her eyes, she was clearly pulled tight as a wire. When she'd told him _why_ she'd gone on leave, he'd gotten pretty tense too. "...still can't believe they put me on leave after all the years I've given that company," Martha muttered in reply, her flowery sundress looking out of place in the Midtown cafe full of urban professionals. But then, his mom had always been a little out of place in the real world, embracing a lifestyle of the generation before her upon marrying her older husband. "Just because I criticized their golden boy, suddenly it's 'you need a break, Martha,' 'you need a vacation, Mrs. Lucas,' blah blah blah bunch of old hippies in their tie-dyed..." She made a hard scratch with the pen that actually tore the paper, then sighed, setting it down with an unhappy look before looking back at her son. "At least there's somebody in the world who still believes in me." They embraced over the table, and Mark said the only thing he could. "I always believe in you, Mom." And he did.
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March 2013 Mark sat alone on the beach, his heavy jacket keeping the chill of a Freedom City spring off his body. He was out of costume today, resting after a long morning with his mother. He knew his mother was sick, knew it in that twisting place inside of him that all the good intentions in the world couldn't fix, and it was a bad feeling. His mom had done some bad stuff, but that had been because she had problems, not because she had a problem. Whatever had happened, Martha Lucas was still his mom. And that was good, because she needed a friend. He skipped stones for a while, his mind wandering as he in fact lost track of why he was on the beach at all. The ocean made him think of Nina these days, his girlfriend having gone back to Socotra for Typhoon's birthday celebration. Nina wasn't exactly a conventional girl, either, but she was still his girl. Maybe he needed to do more things for her....
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Trevor Hunter was very good at doing things for very good reasons. A personal moral code that allowed for no compromise and a keen, analytical mind meant that very few of his actions were left to chance, the end result always kept in mind. As such he had a number of excellent arguments for asking Erin White to move into the mansion to which he was heir. She'd stayed at the manor for a time after they'd moved out of the Claremont dormitories and the arrangement had proved agreeable. Even one of the bedrooms would very nearly afford more room than the entire apartment she was staying in currently, to say nothing of the other facilities. Being closer to the hidden headquarters secreted under the foundation would likely prove useful in their shared work as members of the Liberty League. Ultimately, however, honestly compelled him to admit privately that the core reason was that he really wanted to. That note of emotion over logic had the young, dark-haried man pacing nervously across the lobby in a most uncharacteristic display as he waited for Erin to arrive.
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With the heroes and two-thirds of the ship's complement beamed down into the heart of the Curator's central control room, it was just Jill and Vrix-117, and of course Quickstep as well. Vrix wasn't as talkative as Samran or Shepard, and admitted that as she showed Jill how to read the panels that showed everyone's life readings inside the Curator's construct. "Commander's tactical, Shepard's science, but I'm more engineering. I mostly keep the ship running while they're on missions." Vrix had removed her helmet too, revealing bronze skin and hair as red as a lollipop. "I...oh!" she pointed as one of the wall panels lit up to reveal a flash of light from the distant perimeter of the ringworld, a silvery saucer ship flying through the gap. "I don't know that design, but they're not local. Hang on." She tapped a button on the panel in front of her, then shook her head. "Damn. I can't reach the commander, but I got a tachyon squirt out to the fleet. They'll be sending reinforcements. Friends of yours?" she asked, cocking her head Jill's way. Dorothy peered at the screen and said, "Looks just like a flying saucer from the movies!" - The saucer erupted into the Curator's system as it dropped from FTL, spilling a wash of tachyons and neutrinos along with a spray of visible light. They were between the ringworld's star and its structure, and for a moment the sheer size of the magnificent construction, known to be one of the largest structures in the Milky Way, filled the scanners of the ship. Thanks to the Curator's famous paranoia, it had been a long, long time indeed since anyone had ever gotten this close. 'Beneath' them was an ocean big enough to swallow multiple Earths, a storm playing across it that could have covered the entire planet, with distant shores visible even to the naked eye beyond before the ring curved away into invisibility. Trillions of people were down there, living their lives, perhaps never knowing about the Curator. Above them, close to the star, hung a black sphere the size of the Earth's moon, part of the circle of rotating black squares the size of planets themselves that made day and night for the people below. It was the central control unit of the entire structure, the geniuses aboard could tell at a glance. And inside that sphere, somewhere, was Steve. And attached to the side, visible as they got closer and closer, was a white pod the computer recognized as a Lor military vessel.
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From the album: Character Pictures
Erin Keeley White (Wander) circa Young Freedom 1.0, 2009. Drawn by alderwitch. -
The group of young heroes and their Lor allies stepped onto the transmitter pads and vanished, their atoms quantum-tunneling five hundred miles through solid computronium and re-emerging in the central control room of the Curator - the mighty cybernetic intelligence whose vast power and arcane manipulations of their world had brought them to this place. They found themselves standing in a vast, cathedral-sized hall lined with dark and silent monitors cut in a triangular shape, the too-bright silver light overhead a source of stark illumination inside the central hub of the Curator's lair. The air was stale and smelled musty, a relic of however many eons it had been sealed inside since the Curator's original construction. At the 'altar' of the room sat a massive chair, almost like a throne, covered in the same silver-black pyramids that were the Curator's symbol, tentacles of computronium rising from it to infiltrate the wall behind. Sitting in that chair, its head bowed ever-so-slightly, was a still, silent Curator drone, its three eyes dim and dark. And standing next to it was Dr. Sebastian Stratos, lightning crackling around his fingers. "Hey, kids!" he called with a wave. "Got your hive going, eh, Barry?" He chuckled. "I wondered if I'd see you again. You didn't happen to bring any food with you, did you? Because I am _starving_!" He waved his lightning-covered hands around for emphasis. "I found this zoo a couple of levels down, but most of the animals tasted terrible, and one kept trying to shapeshift into my mother or something. It was awful!"
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Ready for anything, the heroes erupted from the pyramid ship, weapons raised as they prepared to do battle with unending robot hordes! But instead they found...stillness. The lights were bright, just as VINCE had suggested, the sharp white glow of the central spine overhead casting harsh shadows everywhere. There was a scent in the air vaguely like the stuff added to natural gas back on Earth, and everywhere there were robots! Eerie humanoid skeletons with three eyes and clawed limbs, ferocious-looking guardians of the Curator that were doing absolutely nothing. For a long time, Harrier eyed the robots, his armor having chunked open over his skin, before he spoke in a voice loud enough for them all to hear. "Look at them. They are not arranged. They are not armed. They are...immobile." And sure enough, the robots were silent and still, caught in the middle of walking, pressing buttons, circulating around the hangar bay, but not a single one moved a metal muscle. Harrier walked over to one, still wrapped in armor. "It does not react." "So what does that mean?" asked Quickstep, scrubbing her hands along her arms as she leaned out of the ship. "Is he waiting for something? Is this really his base? Are we were we're supposed to be?" She wrinkled her nose against the smell. "What do we do now?"
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The night of January 15, 2013 2 AM The call went out to le Renard Rouge's, Cobalt Templar's, and the Liberty League's line, one after the other, at a time that just happened to catch them all when they were otherwise indisposed. The woman's voice on the other end is rough and raspy, with the tension clear as she speaks. "
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Shazam
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Cobalt Templar, the Liberty League, and Eve Martel deal with some bad medicine.
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Friday, June 29th, 2012 8:47 PM It had been a perfectly ordinary evening for the Liberty League. Then someone had to tempt fate. There had been the usual security briefing at the Midnight Manor, with a discussion of movements amongst noted villains, possible security risks, and other matters of importance. Someone had brought up the fact that the Super Museum was doing another wartime theater retrospective, including some of the safer treatises of Lady Celtic. And not fifteen minutes later, the silent alarm had gone off, instructing Midnight and everyone gathered around the table that four people who weren't supposed to were stomping about inside. One teleport by Edge brought the League into the lobby of the Super Museum, the statues of Freedom's fallen looming dark in the night. They could hear traces of movement down the hall. "All right," whispered Cannonade. "What's the plan?"
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Wharton Hill Harrier watched, as amazed as anyone else, as the Curator's ships gathered up the severed Freedom City and began to carry it away into the perpetually grey sky overhead. Over the distant rumble, he called, "We should not remain this area long! The subsidence from the city's removal may cause a collapse...and if the Curator's ships do come hunting for the missing ones who probed the sky, they will pass through this area early in whatever search they make. We should avoid being taken by the Curator...again," he added, chewing on that thought unpleasantly. "His attentions will not be in our favor." He was carefully not looking at Blue Jay or Bee-Keeper, eager not to resume the arguments that had nearly gotten the armored warrior and young (so young, was I ever that age?) archer captured by the collecting vessels.
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OOC thread
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December 15, North Bay The sun was just setting on another short Freedom City winter day when Erin pulled up in the driveway of the Hunter Mansion in her salt-streaked and dusty blue pickup truck. She swung out of the cab and tossed her knapsack over her shoulder, then shut the door and jogged the rest of the way up the drive. Most days she'd detour to the garage and code her own way into the house, but today she went straight up the front steps and tapped on the door. She hadn't seen much of Trevor and Travis lately, everyone had been busy with other things since Thanksgiving. Between work and patrol, Erin never had too much time for socializing anyway.
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The Liberty League deal with the Crime League, a new hero, and other weirdness.
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Elsewhere Test Site I Freedom Hall Blue Jay woke up in a ditch, the smell of ashes in her mouth. She was in her costume and fully armed, the quiver at her back weighted with arrows. Raising her head, she found herself surrounded by a vision from Hell: a bombed out Freedom City laden with debris, ashes, and the broken remains of what once might have been bodies. She'd seen the effects of power pikes well enough to recognize their work. And there, screaming down from the sky like the armies of the damned, came the all-too-familiar sight of an Omegadrone troop carrier, big as a small jet liner but covered in the spikes and weapons she knew all too well. It roared overhead, antiproton engines screaming loud enough to nearly deafen her, and headed for what looked like Freedom Hall. Baxter awoke from a dream, and found himself in Hell. Bee-Keeper III felt the vibrations in his suit before he saw the ship come roaring down out of the sky; a monstrous vision of technological hell as it swooped overhead and plowed into a nearby street hard enough to rattle his teeth, careening along a street to plow into a nearby building. He noticed the apocalyptic surroundings next; the ruined Freedom Hall behind him, the smashed windows and fallen bodies of what looked like the aftermath of a grim and terrible battle here at the heart of Freedom City's heroing, and then finally what looked for all the world like a shattered city all around them. Jill O'Cure's eyes snapped open and she found herself in an empty hospital. She could tell that right away; the red, flickering emergency lights exposed a scene of wild chaos, torn and fallen beds and equipment in a mad jumble, but no sign of life, or death, for that matter. She knew this place, the waiting room of the clinic in City Center just down the street from Freedom Hall. She was in costume, not her scrubs, but before she could take further stock of the situation there was the brief scream of mighty engines and then a nearby BOOM, as if a plane had hit the ground just a few blocks away. Bones. Bones bones bones. Wander had seen plenty of those in her life, but the pile she was standing over was impressive. Smashed and broken, they were scattered over the front steps of the City Center Clinic like a child's much-abused toys. She could make out the familiar sight of skulls and other big bones, but these bones hadn't rested easy: something had disturbed the remains, if they'd come here first inside bodies. The ossurary at her feet was new; the burning city all around her wasn't. Suddenly, the familiar sight of an Omegadrone troop carrier roared overhead and disappeared over the nearest high-rise with a BOOM that shook the ground beneath her feet. When Harrier awoke, strapped into the recharging station of a heavy combat Omegadrone, Steve found himself frozen to the spot in the mortal terror of an awakened nightmare. He wasn't conscious of anything about his surroundings, only the sudden, horrible surety that his life was a dream and he was about to be taken away and dissected by the Physician. WAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUP-the crash interrupted his frenzied mental shouts and tore him loose from the station, sending him bowled end over end against a hard steel wall before he realized the ship had crashed and that he was all alone inside it. Taking a moment to steel himself, and think of Gina, the Omegadrone chose to meet his fate head-on: armored up, he blasted out the nearest hatch and burst forth onto a murdered Freedom City street. It wasn't so strange, really, he'd seen many of those in his time. He distantly saw an armored figure in yellow and black nearby, and moved towards him with pike raised defensively.
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December 21, 2012 An ancient civilization on an isthmus much to the south of Freedom City had called this day the end of the world, but for one visitor to Freedom City, their culture had provided the theme for an interesting Christmas party. As Feliz Navidad played over the speakers, the roughly-scarred second in command of HAX security was dishing out cups of Mayan hot chocolate with festive peppermint canes in them. "The bitter goes well with the sweet," he said to one of the programmers, the obviously memorized speech not doing much to impress the weedy-looking fellow. With a sigh, the man working the hot chocolate machine moved onto his boss. "A festive crowd," he offered to the chief as she approached, handing her cup and cane to go with the festive holiday theme. In a puffy red sweater with a white reindeer on it, the drone looked downright Christmasy himself. "I did not think so many would show, but I suppose those with family parties will make them on the day in question." Gina had put him off plans to spend the holiday together, but he had his own ideas about how he and his girlfriend would share each other's company over the holidays. "Is your young man coming?" he asked curiously, not wanting to pry when he already could guess the answer. "I know Mara is bringing her young woman."
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October 31, 7:30pm Halloween night had not been an especially auspicious night for the last several years in Freedom City. If it wasn't zombies rising from the grave or demonic forces attempting to take over the living world, it was cold, rainy weather that kept the little ghouls and goblins in their homes. Tonight, though, Halloween was crisp but not too cold, cloudy enough to be menacing, but without any actual rain. It was about as ideal as the holiday could get, and the trick-or-treaters were out in force. Tony North Bay didn't have as many wandering children as some newer neighborhoods where the McMansions crowded close to each other and the street, but for those who were enterprising and fearless, the haul could be worth the effort. At the end of one long driveway stood an especially dour and dangerous-looking manor, stark black and looming like a giant animal over the landscape, thanks to a few adroitly-placed spotlights in the backyard. A van full of middle-school children pulled up to the curb outside, disgorging a gangly vampire, an AEGIS trooper, Lady Liberty with most of her outfit obscured by a puffy pink jacket, a very short Midnight, and a yellow Angry Bird. The group milled around for a few moments, checking flashlights and treat bags before turning their attention to the very intimidating road ahead. The trees were thick with spiderwebs, and the bushes lining the lane seemed to rustle even with no wind to stir them. A line of luminescent footprints down the driveway beckoned the brave to continue, past the hooting of night birds and the ominous creaking of invisible wood and ropes. Somewhat hesitantly, Midnight led the way, playing his flashlight over the footprints and making his way down the path with the others close at his heels. It wasn't long before the music started, faraway and eerie, just loud enough to be heard in the still night.
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July 28th, 2012 Hughes Residence, North Bay, Freedom City It was just after 11 in the morning, and Corbin was actually pacing a bit nervously at his home's front door. His parents were out for the day, having one of their many "date days", and had told him to not make a mess but otherwise he was welcome to have friends over. He'd decided to take a mild risk and opt for another double-date. The last one had been....unique, but this time he figured he had a few things in favor. He and Quo-Dis were more comfortable and established, the whole setting was less formal, and Erin and Trevor were two of the most unflappable people he'd met. He doubted Quo-Dis could phase them terribly after being around Mark for several years. Still, it felt slightly odd having people over like this; this house was definitely bigger than what they'd had in St. Louis, though it was a bit more modest than some of the oldest ones in the area. More than that, he just generally didn't have people over; not because he didn't want to, but because it never seemed the "right time". 'Well, we're all high school graduates now, and we know each other pretty well. Besides, I've had Blake stay here a few nights here and there, and Quo-Dis certainly stays often enough...' His pacing eased, but he was still just a bit nervous.
