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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 2, 8:00 PM; Hanover Second National Bank All seemed quiet on the streets of North Freedom. Most businesses had closed hours ago, and the few that had remained open after sunset were beginning to lock their doors and count their registers. Pax flew high overhead, relishing the crisp night air upon his face as he made a quick circuit of Freedom City. It was like nothing he had ever seen, and so very far removed from the landscape of his native Hawaii. Man, this is awesome! His quiet contemplation of the cities wonder's were interrupted by a loud crash below. Halting his flight, he looked down upon the streets and saw the source of the commotion: half a dozen humanoid robots had crashed through the double doors of Hanover Second National! Uhh, I didn't see them a second ago... weird. Pax felt something uneasy in the pit of his stomach, something he hadn't felt since his mother took him rock-diving for the first time. He was nervous, maybe even a little scared. Never-the-less, he descended upon the crowd of robots ready for anything.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?"

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

August nights were muggy and hot at the Claremont Academy, far enough from the river that the breezes didn’t reach, and isolated in its little enclave from the rush of city traffic. They were longer, too, the sun setting earlier and rising a little later with each new day, even as the campus filled once again with its usual school-year complement of superheroes-in-training. It would be a few weeks before things settled down into their normal schedule, but for some people, the day and night cycle just never seemed to quite work out anyway. It was still dark in the small hours of the morning when Wander slipped into her dorm room, stripped off her mud-encrusted costume and tumbled into bed, too exhausted even to shower. It had been four days since she’d slept more than a twenty-minute catnap, and tonight’s patrol, which included dragging a car full of giggling, drunken teenagers out of a very dirty pond, had pushed her past the limits of her endurance. She hadn’t even waited to see if their car still worked, much less waited for the police to show up. It was time to sleep, even if she knew what she would find there. Despite her foreboding, her eyes closed almost immediately, and she fell into sleep like someone falling off a cliff into dark water.

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.

After the meeting with James to set up the new team, Erin procrastinated for days before going to see Trevor. First it was too soon, then it was the thing with Trevor's eyes, but she eventually had to woman up and do it. If they were all going to be on a team together, it was only fair that Trevor be... not warned, she told herself. It wasn't like James was going to come after Trevor and try to stab him, not when he was in his right mind, anyway. Apprised, maybe, that was a better word. Trevor should be apprised of James' mixed emotions, even though she was pretty sure what James had told her had been told in confidence, but it wasn't really fair to make her keep that a secret when they were all going to be working together, especially with a telepath on the team who would probably suss it out in about two seconds flat once she started in with the mindreading and it was certainly the last thing any of them needed to have on their minds when they were going into dangerous and lifethreatening situations on other planets because that was just stupid-- Erin broke off that increasingly unproductive train of thought and went to go find Trevor already. Playing a hunch, she headed for the school garage. He spent a lot of time there with his bike, and if he wasn't there, maybe she could go for a drive instead! Damning herself for a coward, she stalked into the garage, and was half-relieved, half-dismayed to hear the sounds of engine work coming from the stall where Trevor usually kept his bike. It was hot outside, hot enough to have her in the vibrantly colored shorts and top she'd gotten from the amusement park last summer, but the garage was air conditioned and pleasant. Deliberately relaxing her gait, she headed in the direction of the noise. "Hey," she called, "you busy?"

A few days after Erin took part in the rescue of Fusion, the Portland heroine, from disaster, she received a hand-written letter sent to her care of the Claremont Academy. Inside, she found:

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.

Trevor Hunter brought his hand down hard on the shrill alarm clock next to his bed with an annoyed grunt, and let his eyes drift open slightly. Immediately regretting it, he threw the outstretched arm over his face, brushing through the small cloud of midnight mist he'd instinctively released to block out the offending rays shining through the window of his dormitory room. Casting about with his free hand, he located the pair of sunglasses he'd recently taken to wearing and stiffly donned them, rolling cramped shoulder blades with a mild grimace. The young man realized that he was still wearing the pants from the day before, having barely managed to toss his shirt into the growing heap of laundry in the corner of the room before collapsing into bed. Grudgingly, he admitted that he was probably pushing himself too hard; even given his trained stamina and copious amounts of caffeine, he couldn't keep up his current sleep schedule, or lack thereof, without increasing consequences. Hauling himself to his feet, Trevor reached into the open closet to grab a dark blue dress shirt from a hanger, squinting as he threw it on and waited for his eyes to adjust to the daylight. His time at Claremont had added a significant amount of lithe muscle to his wiry frame; though he was still notably lanky, the youth was slowly filling out to match his substantial height. Suppressing a curse as he accidentally stepped on a loose piece of machinery that had strayed from his workbench, Trevor continued to get dressed. Opting the run a hand once through his hair before covering it with his beaten fedora rather than a shower under harsh fluorescent lights, the teen stepped out into the hallway, making his way towards the common room and rubbing his eyes distractedly as he went. Hopefully a brief walk would alleviate some the pains left from an awkward night's sleep.

James nodded to himself as he took a seat. He’d sent the message to the others once he was ready. He didn’t want to meet at Claremont, not with nigh-omnipotent Summers there. He hadn’t said much in the message besides that he needed to meet with them about something relating to the “L†event. At the moment only Persephone and Phantom knew what he had in mind. While this wasn’t exactly super secret, it wasn’t something he planned on broadcasting either. This was more…off the books kind of thing. He waited for them in a parking lot of Dairy Queen, sitting on table and eating an ice cream.