Search the Community

November 2010 It was early November when all the members of Young Freedom, well, all the ones on campus regularly, were summoned to the headmaster's office. Though some arrived fearlessly and others with trepediation, all of them were met with Duncan Summers and a man who was a familiar face for all of them but especially familiar to those who had helped save his life. King M'Balla, the White Lion, had recovered entirely from his trip to the Lost World, and looked a charismatic, chiseled figure in a neatly-pressed suit. His voice was low and dignified as he greeted all the teens by name, his handshake firm without being bone-crushing. He had a very faint accent, but his English was otherwise perfect. "It is a pleasure to see all of you again, and some of you for the first time." He smiled, nodding to Midnight among others. "I am an old hand with super-teams. I know how quickly you come and go. I have come to America for two reasons. One to thank you again for coming to my defense earlier, and the second to invite you to Dakana as my guests." "Mmm." Summers folded his hands, looking up at the students as they found their seats. "The White Lion and I have arranged for the members of Young Freedom to spend the week before Thanksgiving in Dakana as guests of the King. This will be a working vacation," he added with a firm look at everyone, "one in which I will expect all of you to return with a report on your observations of the kingdom, but...it will be a vacation nonetheless, as you will be excused from all but ongoing assignments for that week. Are there any questions?" Mark raised his hand and M'Balla's eyebrows furrowed briefly before he said, "Yes, Mr. Lucas?" "Are we going to see Lion, the great and powerful spirit of the people, who empowers the line of kings as his champion? Or travel to Ayesha the Immortal's realm and battle the great enemy of the Lion clan, the immortal Egyptian princess who ever seeks a worthy man as match for her great and deathless realm as co-ruler?" "....no," said the king gently, wincing ever so slightly. "I prefer to fight my own battles, rather than send the sons of my old friends and their friends to fight my enemies for me. We will climb the slopes of Kilimanjaro, dig for daka crystals with our own hands, and see the world outside of Freedom for a little while. I can promise you all adventure, but danger will, inshallah, pass us all by this time."

Late November 2010 After an exhaustive background check, Harrier had been granted permission to meet with someone who he'd first heard of some weeks after his arrival on Earth-Prime. Prometheus was like him, an Omegadrone, but free from the power of Omega! But of course Prometheus himself had been terrified at the thought of meeting another drone, and truthfully Harrier had needed to work up his nerve to even ask. But his background had been checked and his mind probed by psychics, and so on the edge of the Claremont campus he'd been introduced to the boy who was Prometheus. It had been heartening and disheartening all at once. Prometheus looked tired and sick outside of his armor, the way all the lesser drones did, and his mind wasn't terribly sharp. Murdock wasn't at all sure what future the boy had...but at least it was the future of a free man, making his own choices and living his own life, and never again forced to kill and die at Omega's whim. Prometheus was a lucky boy; his mind was free of any memories of the Terminus, those circuits destroyed by the powerful gravitic blast that had blasted him free of the control of Omega in the first place. Truthfully, Harrier was a little envious of him. After their meeting, the two drones headed to the gym to work out, something Harrier hadn't had the opportunity to do in months, Prometheus stopping to change into his now-camouflageable armor along the way. Prometheus, like Harrier, was a firm believer in wanting to know how to kill Omegadrones, and Harrier's more recent liberation and his programming as a heavy tactical unit meant that he knew better that most sacred of arts. They stood together in the boxing ring, one in his armor and with Harrier's covering his arms and legs so he could wield his own pike. "Remember. Under the chin. Destroy the brain. Even the heavy units are underarmored there." He said, gesturing with a hard upwards gesture. Prometheus watched avidly, as he always did when taught. Neither drone noticed the heroine watching them from the door.

Taylor had been stretched to the breaking point and then some. After some terse words exchanged with Jack (and perhaps a chair or two thrown), she'd been forced back onto yet another emergency but something had tickled in the back of her mind. Had been tickling in the back of her mind so this time, after the emergency, she'd waited around and spent some time doing some serious scrying and spell casting to check her suspicions. What she'd found left her more coldly furious than Taylor had ever thought she could be. Normally, her return to the library was soundless as she filtered in from one reality to another but this time, Phantom ripped time and space asunder, leaving bolts of eldritch energy flashing and crackling through the windows and a fell wind knocking over papers and sending them whipping around the room. She seemed unaware or uncaring of the magical storm she was causing in the library as she tore through it, tossing priceless volumes aside in some sort of personal quest.

Since early November, Erin had been called much less to watch little JJ and with a good deal more forewarning for normal things like 'date nights' or an afternoon of extra work, rather than several days a week. The Faretti's themselves had seemed happier and getting handed over JJ's care by Taylor had grown a lot more common. The house that Erin provided directions too led them first through the palatial estates of North Bay, each more grand than the last. It was one of the oldest and wealthiest parts of Freedom City and the drive took them down a street that began winding its way up the hill. The estate that they came too was... a little different from the rest of the environs. It was old, certainly, and expensive but the entire thing was surrounded by a large stone wall with a large wrought iron gate that opened without Erin having to buzz in. She'd called ahead, thankfully, so they were expected. Once the gate shut, the lawns looked a little overgrown and the manor itself was old and with gothic stylings. Behind the house there was even a graveyard to complete the spooky environment with cracked tombstones and even a mausoleum. The drive, however, was well kept gravel. The front door was thick and heavy, with an overly elaborate knocker attached to it.

November 22nd 2010 Supercape was inspecting one of his lattices of quantum matter. the Lab was not yet fully complete, and had many teething problems, but it was operational. He really had to get down to the particle smasher in the sub levels and take a look at that... Glancing at his waistcoat watch (A nice new addition he had treated himself to, that tucked in nicely to his morphic costume), he noticed it was time to meet the public - in this case, some student had been assigned to him. He could have teleported down, but he decided to take advantage of one of the three elevators. May as well utlize the facility in full he thought. Ping. Going Down! Ground Floor! chimed the Lift.

The box Erin had been waiting for arrived with the morning mail, much to her delight. It was pretty big, too, so even better. From what she'd read on her counterpart's Facebook, things were looking up for Roger at work, so the White family's finances were not as stressed as they'd been this time last year. And even then, they had sent her a birthday package. Since Alex was busy doing something with her company on her computer that Erin couldn't begin to understand, she headed out into the common room with Oliver at her heels, sitting down at the table and picking the tape off the box carefully, just to prolong the anticipation.

Date: August 18th, 2010. Evening. Freedom City was no stranger to flying people in its skies. One such figure, carrying a black doctor's bag, was flying east, from the ultra-tech sector of Hanover to the posh Old World neighborhoods of North Bay. "Jack? Taylor?," Archeville's rich tenor voice called out as he touched down in their front yard. "Sorry I am a bit late; dings got a bit... messy at de laboratory." Doktor Archeville had been by many times since the birth of Avenger & Phantom's child, in part because he knew how stretched everyone's schedule got to be.

10 am, September 21, 2010 Interceptors' Brownstone, West End "Everyone is looking forward to meeting you," said Mona as she and Erin landed, "Even Jack. Well, here she is: the Brownstone." Sweeping one arm wide, she indicated...a large three story house on a tree-lined street. "Really beauty isn't she?" she added while heading up to the front door. She hoped everyone was available. Yes, officially this visit was for a tour, but frankly a base was only as awesome as the team that dwelt therein. She wanted to provide the full tour! Not to mention she didn't know the nuances of the place as well as the long-time residents. Grim, Colt or Jack, on the other hand, were the go-to people for the full package tour. Not to mention the decor was their handiwork. Opening the right side doors, she motioned Erin inside and peeked around, "Anyone home?" The entrance opened into a perpendicular hallway running the length of the house. Just ahead, the archway to a large living room loomed, and on right, another hallway, stairs and a large, open room.

Phantom dropped into the mansion, feeling more like one of the ghosts in it rather than a flesh and blood woman. She was back to not knowing what day or time it was in Prime. She had to check both the clock and calendar as that last 'quick jaunt' had turned into days and days. "Jack... honey?" She called as she floated through the house, peeling off her mask. The laceration on her face healed as she phased through walls, looking into the rooms her family usually occupied. "JJ...? Hello?" Eventually, she found the note. From the baby sitter. Her shoulders slumped and after looking at herself in the mirror, she gestured, changing her cloak and cowl into a faded sweater and jeans before blipping to the park, where she squinted in the day light like she was the creature of the night. Eventually she spotted Erin and her son out on a picnic blanket and headed over. It took her longer than usual to fade into existence, almost as if she was forgetting how.

Early November, 2010 Though Mark was fairly sure none of his friends had 'sold him out' as such, he found himself asked a lot of pointed questions after his return from Anti-Earth with the other Young Freedom kids. When had he learned to heal people's injuries? Why had he used that ability there, and not elsewhere? Evidently his answers weren't good enough. He'd talked about a hero's duty to protect life, even the life of the guilty, but that hadn't seemed to satisfy Dr. Marquez in debriefings that he slowly, slowly started to realize were just extensions of his ongoing therapy. Had it been arrogant to save a version of himself when so many other people needed saving, people who deserved it a lot more than that other, evil Mark had? Had it really been just an extension of his own self-crisis that he'd sought out the good in any version of himself just so he could believe the values he'd been raised with were true after all? He hadn't thought so at first, but the unceremonious shutdown he'd gotten from his friends, especially Erin, when he brought the subject up made him wonder. He'd learned only too intimately recently that he could be a flawed, fallible person, and the idea that he'd made a mistake on Anti-Earth still rankled. Saving life was the right choice, he still believed that, but maybe he'd put himself in a position where even the right choice was the wrong one. It was a complicated moral dilemma, just the sort of thing he hated to have to try and wrap his mind around. Even as the visit to Anti-Earth joined his father's disappearance on the list of annoying things he had to talk to Dr. Marquez about, even after reassuring the Doctor that everything was fine, Mark decided where his priorities had to lie. Wherever his own motivations were, whatever problems he had, he had to get back together with his friends post-haste. Having friends was what was really important. And since Erin was one of his oldest friends at Claremont, that meant getting back together with her first. Thinking about what she'd lost and what he could do for her, Mark talked to his mom about good places to shop in town, made a few off-campus visits, and then finally with a couple of boxes under one arm headed for Erin and Alex's room one Friday night. Alex would probably be out with Mike, which meant Erin would probably be there alone.

After the city wide epidemic of rampaging zombies had abruptly come to a halt, Trevor had wanted to speak with Erin immediately, concern for how she was handling the severe trauma competing with guilt for prioritizing the his mission over her well being. He was fairly sure she understood his reasons, but even after taking out some aggression on the undead hordes, or perhaps because of it, logic was still taking a backseat in his thought processes. Unfortunately, her single-minded insistence on scouring all of Freedom personally to ensure the threat was ended forced him to wait. His endurance simply couldn't match Erin's, and after the evening's exertions and having forgone sleep for the better part of a week, he was in no condition to keep up with her. Days passed, and urgency slowly turned to awkwardness as the time continued to elapse. The dark haired young man finally steeled himself against his own angst, unwilling to let the issue fester to be brought up at a later, unknown and likely inopportune moment. Wearing his matte black jacket unbuckled over a light brown shirt despite the autumn chill, Trevor headed outside, a pair of covered travel mugs in hand, the brim of his fedora pulled down over the oval lenses of his sunglasses.

It was a bright, clear afternoon as Corbin Hughes was, once again, sketching. He was doing that a lot lately, finding that it helped him better cope with his new situation, and helped keep his skills sharp. Whether he was drawing Freedom City skylines, his fellow students, or (as he was today), some part of the Claremont Academy grounds. Today, he was perched in a tree, resting on one of the thicker branches with his back against the trunk; he was facing the two dormitory buildings, with their oddly different styles of architecture. He was perhaps halfway through his work at the moment, just slowly tracing the lines of the buildings, glancing up every so often to make sure he had a good reference. All in all, it wasn't too bad of an afternoon.

In our world, when his son and his friends rejected the Utopia he'd built, a grief-stricken Rick Lucas recognized the error of his ways and fled into the multiverse in shame. But in a world perilously close to this one, when his son and his allies attempted to overthrow the worldwide dictatorship he'd constructed in order to put the Lucas family in command of the world, a bitter, vengeful Rick Lucas fled into the multiverse to plot revenge on his wastrel son and his callow gang of hooligans at the Syndicate Academy Two Weeks After the Events of 'A Trip Between Two Worlds' Duncan Summers listened as a rather battered Psyche told her story, the young telepath recovering far better than most students would have after the experience she'd had. Erin's sudden nighttime assault had nearly killed the sleeping Alex, only Psyche's incredible mental speed letting her reach into Erin's mind and shut down her attacker. It had only taken him a few minutes of evaluation to confirm what Nurse Joy and Ms. Harcourt had already told him: this Erin White, with the blood under her fingernails and haggard face, even in psychically-induced sleep maintained by the best psychics at the school, was not the Erin White of their world. And that particular disease seemed to be catching. Luckily, the school was prepared for that. Though dopplegangers of Kid Cthulu, Rift, Midnight II, and Edge had all appeared in bursts of magical energy around campus, the new inter-universal security system that Mrs. Harcourt had installed in previous weeks had worked like a charm. Though the dopplegangers had unfortunately escaped from campus, he was completely confident that Young Freedom, the Alterni-Teens, and the Next-Gen would track down the warped, morally inverted doubles of his students. It's a good thing we're prepared for incursions, thought Summers, bending down to pet the unhappy cat curling his orange tail around the headmaster's cane. If we were oriented towards offense rather than defense, who knows how long they could have kept up the imposture? -- Mark Lucas rarely had particularly elaborate dreams. Indeed, usually he didn't remember anything about them. Tonight, though, his REM visions were exceptionally unsettling. He was confronted by a vision of his father: not the father he knew, but a grim, furious version of Rick Lucas with a goatee and eyepatch, wearing a black and red leather uniform as he confronted his son. His 'father' informed him that he and his friends were being tested, tested to see if good really was better than evil, if courage was a stronger talent than cleverness. He wasn't alone, he realized: Erin, Trevor, Blake, and Warren were all there too, each as paralyzed and mute as he was in the dreamscape! Before he could respond, he was suddenly plummeting into a deep black void... -- Mark woke up in bed, starting awake with a cry, and then nearly fell out of bed entirely when he realized he wasn't alone in his room. Or his bed. "Dreaming about that witch again?" asked Daisy Gibbons. The beautiful blonde prom queen yawned and stretched, giving Mark a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Don't worry, Pathos and Assault aren't going to harsh your buzz today, not unless those Loonies get their heads handed to them ahead of schedule. Are you getting up?" "Uh...yes?" Mark looked around wildly, staying in control of himself by sheer force of will. Don't panic. Figure out what's going on. Daisy wasn't actually naked, thank God, but she was in a skimpy harem-girl outfit that didn't look like comfortable pajamas. She had scars on her body that looked new, some on her stomach and some on her back, where a large S-brand was clearly visible. A more thoughtful man might have panicked, but Mark was all about rolling with what was going on. "All right," allowed Daisy, her bare shoulders relaxing as she slid out of the king-sized bed and headed for the kitchen. When the hell did I get a kitchenette!?! thought Mark as Daisy went in, the door she opened showing that Mark and Mike's dorm room had been transformed into a suite as big as a luxury hotel's. "Bacon and eggs as usual, and..." She stuck her head back in the room and gave Mark a stare. "When did you shave off your beard?" she asked him. "I'm trying something new," Mark improvised as he sat up, trying to figure out where his pants were. Surely all this black leather couldn't be his. "Do you like it?" he asked her, giving her a half-smile. "I like anything you do," Daisy told him without hesitation, something behind her eyes closing off as she stuck her head back in the kitchen. Something in her eyes even got through to Mark, and he felt a little sick. Oh God, did I actually go to Hell this time? C'mon, none of it was illegal and everyone had fun! When Daisy was gone, Mark started looking for his clothes in a hurry, and his commlink to go with it. Last time he'd gone to Hell, his friends had come to rescue him. If that dream had been a reality...well, he owed them all his life already.

As the sun began creeping over the horizon, Trevor Hunter was balanced on the gymnastic equipment on the Claremont campus, one booted foot perched on a balance beam while the other hovered in the air. His shirt hung nearby on a sawhorse next to an empty mug and his fedora as he remained perfectly still for a long moment before abruptly swinging down so that he was hanging upside down on by the same foot, hands shooting forward to grasp the next bean and vault him into an aerial somersault. Inwardly, he kept his mind studiously blank, concentrating solely on the exercise, the sheer physicality helping him achieve a crystalline clarity.

This used to be a nice neighborhood, Erin thought ruefully as she leapt from rooftop to rooftop in the Southside neighborhood, looking for the landmarks she'd marked on her map and getting the lay of the land. Some parts of it were still nice, but a lot of it was going to seed. Where she came from, most of it was a burnt-out ruin that had only been stopped by the freeway and the river, so at least it was better than that. It was good to keep low standards sometimes. In any case, she'd set herself the goal of getting familiar with the whole city before she applied to the Freedom League, and this was just one more step. From her perch above a shoe store, she suddenly caught sight of a man running down the sidewalk, looking as though his life depended upon his speed. Curious, Erin watched him, wondering exactly what was causing him to run like that. Victim, villain, or neither?

Autumn brought cooler weather and shorter nights, but the darkness and the late hour wasn't too much of a bother. The garage at the Claremont Academy was well-lit, and the two people who occupied it didn't need a lot of sleep. Erin sat on the floor of the garage and passed tools to Trevor, who was hip-deep underneath the chassis of her blue truck, tinkering with the fuel injector manifold. Erin's mechanical skill was still that of a knowledgeable amateur, but it was nice to sit in the peace and quiet of the garage with him, and interesting to watch him work. They didn't get a lot of peaceful and quiet time together. "So, how fast is this gonna go when you're done with it?" she asked.

It was the early morning hours at the hospital when Mark decided to give Erin on a call, sure on a whim that his friend would be awake and with time on her hands even this early in the semester. His mom had gone home, and he was the last family of his grandma's still over there. He couldn't just leave till he was sure she was okay, but he didn't want to be alone either. "Hey, Erin. It's me, Mark," he said unnecessarily. "Are you doing anything?"

Through A Glass The sky was gray with the dust and smoke that came with a collapsed building, billows of it that turned everything it touched a waxy, corpselike white itself. The invasion was over, but at the moment it almost seemed like the least of their troubles. This time, unlike in the invasion of hell, the damage remained behind after the invasion was over. And there were a lot of people who needed help. Right now, many of them were waiting outside of a hastily erected barricade, watching her silently and begging them with their eyes to make things better. Erin did the best she could to walk lightly in the rubble that had once been a five story apartment building. Psyche, working remotely from halfway across the city, had assured her there were people alive in here, people who needed help. There were dogs and equipment, not to mention other heroes on the way, but it might be too late on a day like this with so many disasters. One superhero at the right time could make all the difference when lives were on the line. She reminded herself of that even as her stomach churned and twisted, the acrid smell in the air triggering sense memories she couldn't afford to go back to right now. The job was the thing now, and saving lives, and not letting all her power be for nothing this time. “Hello?†she called, straining her ears for any noises. Her ears were her best sense, but she was no Psyche and no search dog. It was almost worse to walk through this carnage and know that there were living people somewhere nearby, that she could help them but only if she didn't screw up. She was listening so hard that at first she thought the noise she actually heard was a figment of her imagination, it was so faint. But it was real, a scratching from halfway across the collapse site, as of someone trying to move the debris. She resisted the urge to leap, unsure of what a landing would do, and instead raced as quickly and lightly as she could to the source of the sound. “Can you hear me?†she called. There was a murmur from the families watching beyond the barricades at her sudden movement, but they quieted quickly, knowing that their silence was her success. “Here!†came a voice from down in the piles of rubble. “We're down here, help us!†Young, Erin thought, sounded like a kid. God... “It's all right!†she called. “I'm Wander, I'm from Young Freedom! I'm going to help you! Just hold on and be brave, okay?†Working quickly and carefully, she sorted out the massive pieces of fallen building, pushing them aside carefully so as to try and disrupt the pile as little as possible. She'd had extensive training in disaster relief as well as combat; she knew what a shifting field of debris could do to a trapped victim. It was an endless five minutes before she opened enough of a clearing to see through to the victims. Two boys, she realized, one maybe twelve or thirteen, the other younger. It looked like they'd gotten lucky, wedging themselves into a closet that had collapsed into a protective triangle over their heads. “We're okay,†the older boy said, his arms wrapped around what had to be his younger sibling. “Kind of... my leg hurts,†he admitted. “My mom... my mom was over in the kitchen, just next to us,†he told Erin urgently. “We heard her yell out when everything was falling. Is she okay? Did she get out?†From where she was, Erin could only see a little bit of the rest of what had once been a decent apartment. She shifted just a little bit to get a better idea of what was around, catching a glimpse of a metal sink and pipes that said kitchen. “Just a second...†Sliding her way across patches of crumbled drywall, she made her way over there and shone her flashlight into a gap between joists. Her light picked up the blood first, and then the casualty. Adult female DOA, Erin told herself, making herself be clinical about it. She had work to do. Returning to the boys, she blanked her face to impassive concentration. “I'm going to get you out of there,†she promised again. “You're going to have to be very brave.†It was only much later, long after the boys were reunited with their father and that building and many others like it were cleared that she allowed herself to acknowledge how long they were going to have to be brave for.

Earth-XX September 3, 2010 Trailing her usual aura of good feelings and cheerful optimism, Marcie Lucas walked through the halls of Clairemont Academy with a smile on her face and a spring in her step. For once she wasn't in uniform, either her Edge costume or the blue and gold of Clairemont's cheerleading squad; rather in a pink sweater and blue jeans that wouldn't have looked out of place on a girl her age back in the 1950s. Maybe her mother's disappearance a few months earlier had changed her life for the worse, but she wasn't going to let that get her down! Books under her arms, she headed into the nearly-empty science building. "Hey, Aaron!" she said with a cheerful wave as she caught sight of the hunky loner Aaron White, walking into the same corridor of the science wing that she was. Aaron wasn't exactly her type: she preferred guys like that hunky Zach Harris, even if he was a little too angry for her tastes, but she could see why so many of her friends secretly had the hots for the dimension-hopping powerhouse. He certainly filled out his uniform well! She ran after him, her Sketchers squeaking slightly on the tiled floor. "Are you taking the expanded physics class too? Isn't it cool that-" - Earth-Prime September 3, 2010 "...we can get out of the whole first semester of senior physics just by being here for a few experiments! I guess it's more important for us to learn about super-science than boring stuff like physics." Mark grinned at Erin as they headed inside. "Looks like we're here first." Ms. Harcourt was there to greet them both, nodding a polite hello. "Mr. Lucas, Ms. White! Nice to see both of you." She smiled. "I always appreciate volunteer assistants. I'll be especially glad to have someone here who's as resistant to trans-dimensional radiation as you are, Erin. Why don't the two of you get started setting up the equipment," she said, pointing to the large Y-frame set against one wall, "and I'll get the others going when they arrive."

The Freedom City Medical Center was seen as a safe haven to many before the announcement earlier today. Its staff was measured in the thousands and had state of the art medical equipment; there was no where in the world where you could get better attention. As violence swept the streets, the hospital was soon filled to the point of breaking. Now if Atlas's threat comes to pass, the hospital could very well turn into a feeding ground with a death toll measured in the thousands.

A couple of weeks after prom, Mark invited his friends over to his house. Well, the people who still were his friends: he wasn't really talking much to Eddie these days, but most of his colleagues from Young Freedom were on the list. He was standing outside the door of the Lucas house to greet them when they arrived, the lawn looking just a little grubbier and the house a little dingier than when the Young Freedom members had been there last. Mark himself was out of costume, but also out of the black, depressing clothes he'd been wearing most everywhere but prom for the last couple of months. In a white shirt and slacks, he looked downright respectable.

Erin was usually very good at keeping to a schedule. She had to be, it wasn't as though she'd been given or allowed herself a lot of free time in the past year. When she wasn't in class she was training, when she wasn't training she was in therapy, when she wasn't in therapy she was doing homework, when she wasn't doing homework she was working with her teammates. But sometimes her schedule inevitably slipped off the rails, usually when someone tried to schedule an extra meeting in on her. That was why she was running late today, and still in her slightly-singed uniform as she raced for the headmaster's office. It wasn't as though she wanted to be going to this meeting anyway, she thought rebelliously. She'd tried this mentorship thing once before and it hadn't worked out. She'd done everything Thunderstanding had told her to, and been dropped with little explanation anyway. Why did she have to go through the whole thing again? It wasn't as though she didn't do enough training already. Brushing her hair flat and trying to wipe the scowl off her face, she walked into the headmaster's office.

The swashbuckling hero known as Jack of all Blades rarely patrolled too far outside of the West End, but with the slow expansion of what he viewed as his personal protectorate, he found himself swinging through the more developed parts of Freedom City with increasing regularity. The brilliant blue summer skies had drawn him toward Liberty Park and its surrounding condominiums. Flipping through the air as he released his grapple line from one building and launched it immediately to the next, his acrobatics took him over the heads of the citizens below, royal blue greatcoat flapping behind him, and a fierce grin of sheer athletic joy fastened to his face.

It was just another Monday, and Gregory rubbed his eyes. He had his third cup of coffee in his hand, and was sipping it slowly. He had just finished trimming the claws of the butt-ugliest cat he had ever seen. As much as he shuddered, it was one of God's creatures and he knew that he had to help it. He was standing in the lobby of his office, relaxing. It was a fairly trim and sanitary-looking office, with white and green tiled floors, and beige walls. Pleasant paintings adorned the walls, and several magazines of the doctor's office variety were placed on racks. He sighed. It was a fairly slow morning. The lobby was totally devoid of people. Boring.

As he climbs out of the taxi in front of the massive gate tower that mark the front of the prestigious Claremont Academy, a tall, dark-skinned, blonde haired young man glances around, a bit hesitant. The whole place is a little upscale for what he was used to, and it's not like his grades really warranted a place like this, but Mister Albright had insisted. "I don't see why I should go to a boarding school, let alone a boarding school a mile from my house." "Now, John, Claremont Academy isn't an ordinary school. It's run by an old friend of mine, Duncan Summers. He's made the school into a place where young men and women can learn to use their powers responsibly, and to work with others, as well as getting a good education. In the long run, this will be good for you. A chance to make new friends who understand what you're going through, teachers who understand what you're dealing with, and training that ensures you'll be ready for it. Not to mention, it's far more secure in case someone does try to follow you home or attack you when you're resting." "Well..." "And I'm sure there are plenty of girls your own age who'll be happy to meet the new Beacon, dressed in ways that seem absolutely scandalous to someone my age..." "That's exploitative and insulting to my inte- let me go get my bags, old man." Signing in with the security desk inside the tower, John is quickly processed and directed inside. "You just need to find the administration office, they've got your paperwork already, they just need you to pick up your things and get assigned a room for the semester." "Alright, thanks for the help!" Bag tucked under one arm, he practically bounces out of the room, into the main quad, smiling brightly and breathing deep as he takes in the campus itself... "So... This is it, huh? I don't hate it..."