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April, 2024 Nighttime. Claremont Academy usually had relatively peaceful nights. While there were plenty of super-powered kids and some of them were trouble makers, the school as a whole had enough activities that they rarely 'acted out', so to speak; between lessons of schooling and lessons of using powers. There were a few exceptions. One of these was Sam Durado, who had more than a little habit of leaving when she got too frustrated with the school. She was never gone long, but it had been a consistent issue, enough that she was starting to get a bit of a reputation for sneaking out at night and going off on her own- and often missing a few morning classes in the way. What Sam had not been expecting was for Michael to be waiting for her. This had devolved into an angry argument outside the dorm that people were very strenuously trying to avoid, not wanting to get between the two best friends having an argument on the dorm; this wasn't a full on fight, after all, it was just an argument. At least it was, until Sam stomped on Michael's foot and flew off while he was still cursing over the underhanded move. "Sam! Come on!" he yelled at her leaving back. "...You gotta be kidding me." he sighed, looking up into the sky. That is the scene that Mizuki and Vueriz ended up wandering into as Michael ran a hand through his hair and let out another swear. "...Oh...hey you two." he mumbled, offering a small wave.

Southside Freedom City, New Jersey Tuesday April 9, 2024. 4:30 PM Lexa Venn was busy in her new garage, located not far from Jordan International Airport in the southern part of Southside. The young woman had recently made the relocation back to Freedom City after some time in Bedlam in the mid-West. It had taken a bit of work, but she had been able to open the Chop Shop to start trying to provide souped up vehicles to the large number of superheroes active in the city. Of course, to help pay the bills until she could get that line of business established, she was also taking more typical mechanical work on sports cars and other non-stock vehicles. Lexa was just finishing up work on a Porche when she heard a voice call from the open door to the garage. "Pardon me, do you service electric vehicles?" It was a male voice, speaking with a distinct British accent. Turing around, Lexa saw a teenager, about sixteen, maybe seventeen, standing at the open bay door, he was just a bit under six feet tall, with short blond hair and bright blue eyes that seemed almost to burst with energy. Standing next to him was a teenage Asian girl about the same age, who was about Lexa’ s height with dark blue hair. It took Lexa a moment, but as the teenage boy smiled, she recognized him, although the last time she had seen him was when he had been ten years old. "It is good to see you again Rev. Been awhile." Lawrence Harrow said with a wide smile. ________________________ Lawrence had invited Mizuki to join him this afternoon after classes had finished to visit an old friend who had recently returned to Freedom City and opened a garage in Southside. On the drive over, he had explained that Rev had been one of the Claremont students that had been watching him when he was ten and the cosmic entity they had recently encountered had first tried to kidnap him, leading to them all ended up on CoVic Station 25,000 light years away.

Sunday February 18, 2024 Late afternoon After over a day and a half of fun in the water and sun at the Harrow estate on Wakaya Island, Fiji (in addition to some more serious topics), it was unfortunately time for the Claremont Academy students to return back to Freedom City for the start of the next school week. After about an hour or so of chaos, everyone was eventually gathered back on the large deck at the back of the main house for Lawrence Harrow to teleport them all back to campus. As the group of teens stepped into the temporal portal Lawrence created once again, they initially felt a similar sensation to what they had the day before when transported to the South Pacific. But suddenly, rather than stepping out the other side of the portal back at the Main Quad at Claremont, the teens felt as if something tugged on them, causing each to stumble forward and as the world reformed around them and they were not at Claremont Academy. Lawrence Harrow, Parker Powers, Mizuki Iwasaki, Baltazar Botez, Consuelo Nunez, Ryan Jacobs, Vueriz, and Michael Adon all found themselves in a dead end alleyway between a pair of three story buildings. Out past the open end, they could see and hear a large crowd of people gathered, though none seemed to notice the sudden appearance of the teens. The weather was cool, but much warmer than the February cold they had expected. The teens were still in the clothes they had been wearing, and Vueriz had her skyboard, but all the rest of their bags and other things were nowhere to be seen. Wearing a pair of jeans and a red Arsenal hoody, Lawrence looked about the alleyway, a concerned expression on his face before he seemed to focus on something distant and out of view. "This is not right." He simply stated, a hint of concern evident in his refined British accent.

Mid-late January, 2024 The End of January brings the beginning of February. As the first month ends, so to do many resolutions fall by the wayside. But change has not stopped occurring just because a new year has begun! In fact, often the last shackles of the prior year's poor decisions can only be thrown off during the first month of the new one! Our new group of heroes, having encountered a group of delinquents, are now in a position to restore some level of normalcy to the lives of 5 troubled young girls. ------------------------------------- Ashley did not like losing. She didn’t lose often, of course, and whenever she did it put her in a foul mood. She had excuses, of course. Ashley didn’t lose, she reasoned to herself. It was the other three; they couldn’t keep up their end of the engagement. She was fighting off two of them at once and winning, the other three had a numbers advantage and they couldn’t keep up with them. They were pathetic. What was even the point of all of them having powers if they were so useless! Power should go to the strongest! That was why she had the powers she did, after all. Those who weren’t deserving, shouldn’t have power. ------------------------------------- Felix didn’t care about losing, but he was annoyed. He wasn’t the strongest, after all, but he liked his niche; he liked the new powers he had. And he had barely gotten to use them at all before that British kid had made him so slow he couldn't even move. Which was whatever. Paradox had acted all high and mighty about it ‘that’s inevitable, you aren’t on his level; your borrowed speed can't compete with his natural abilities'. Paradox didn’t know anything about anything, no matter what he acted like. What really grinded his gears was the Bug Boy. The one who had actually knocked him out. That bug didn't really understand anything about how cool FX was. GBB? GBB was garbage compared to FX! He thought he was cool, but Felix was actually the cool one! He just didn’t get how cool Felix was. He was gonna show him how wrong he was about that. ------------------------------------- Ashley had always been entranced by the Starstone ever since she first saw it. It had as many facets in it as there were stars in the sky- something she realized was meaningful-, and when you looked through one of the facets you could see a constellation. Each facet had a different one stored in it. It was also a clear source of tremendous energy, something the girl given the codename Eclipse was always desperate for. It had given her a tremendous amount with the Draco constellation, but it clearly had more; there were 88 constellations in the sky, but there were only 7 Starlights right now. So there had to be more juice in the gem than it was giving. It sat on the stage of what had once been a bustling theater just off Michigan Street; a prismatic gem that shifted through the hues of every color imaginable- and some beyond that-, about the size of a man's chest. Ashley didn’t know where it came from- the other girls did, but they seemed uninterested in telling her-, but she didn’t care anyway. She floated over to it and placed her hands on it, concentrating and breathing in its energies. “...Now come on, give me what you’re hiding...” “Ashley!? What the heck are you doing!?” someone called behind her, but she wasn’t paying attention to them. She had something bigger going on, after all. All this stuff; the color coding, the ‘Starblights’. They were small time. She was Eclipse, and she was big time. ------------------------------------- Lawrence had been right about one thing; Michael had thought Mizuki was insanely cool for getting the abandoned boat house out of the Headmistress and the faculty. He hadn’t gotten all overbearing about it, but he was clearly appreciative of Mizuki being willing to share something she had obtained with her own hard work with her friends. What was maybe less exciting was the realization that both of the groups had been harassed by color-coded schoolgirls- and one guy-, though appropriate congratulations had also been given to Baz, Mizuki, and Lawrence that they had handled their group so easily while the one at the Aquarium had been a bit more troublesome. It had also been noted that Parker, Consuelo, and Carmen had been excellent, though. Parker had even managed to open a line of communication to one of them thanks to his gentle nature. That was what the group was doing now, after school two days later, waiting for Parker to call the girl who had given him her number to continue their communications. When everyone had arrived and was prepared- including whatever preparations they had made for this-, the number was dialed, and after three rings, it was picked up. “Alright, listen. I’m gonna talk for a second and then you can ask questions, but we need to be quick about it.” The voice definitely belonged to the orange wearing Orion from the Aquarium. “About 2 years ago, a weasel named Enoch approached me, Kitty, Ashley One, Zoe, and Jenny. He said he was being hunted by magical things from another dimension and turned us into the Starbrights. We got super powers that he gave us from a gem called the Umbra Star.” she clearly sucks in breath through her teeth. “It sucked. A bunch of terrible stuff happened to us because of it, and Enoch wasn’t exactly great at being a mentor. We were constantly fighting monsters sent by this evil queen named Solus, they were threatening and hurting our friends and family. Then, about a year ago, one of her monsters killed Enoch. And we didn’t even have him anymore. So we gave up. Stopped bothering to fight the monsters, didn’t really go to school. We only had each other. But sometimes the monsters still found us.” She talks fast but it’s not hard to understand her, and her frustration is clear even in just her words; she’s not a delinquent lashing out because it’s fun, she’s a girl their age who is hurt and wounded. “Ashley II and Felix weren’t part of our group. They ended up caught up when one of those monsters attacked us. But the Umbra Star that gives us our powers gave them powers too. They already had powers, so it just made them even stronger. We all could see they were a problem, even beyond us, but we couldn’t really do anything about it; we don’t decide who gets the powers and who doesn’t, only Enoch could figure that out and he never told us. So we had to stick with them. But it’s not gonna fly anymore. They’re way too violent, and they’re clearly working for some other purpose.” she was quiet again, for a second. “...If you take them out, get them arrested, beat them down and take them away to Juvie or some prison or something, maybe the connection will break. And we can be free of them. The others won’t ask this because they’re concerned about each other; no one wants to get blasted by Ashley or watch someone else get blasted. But I’ll do it, because we need the help. We don’t want to fight you. The others don’t know I’m talking to you, but if I show up with you, they won’t side with Ashley and Felix. If you help us, we’ll call it even and split, no hard feelings.” she paused. She was tense, extremely. And it honestly could have been seen as quite suspicious that a girl that had just been trying to punch everyone was now asking for help. "...Okay, sorry. I can answer any questions now." She finally said.

OOC for the other thread. We're going to split up after a bit but we'll keep this as the first thread; there will be a split when the team splits up, then reconverge in here. For now, feel free to give a little blurb about anything you would have done in between, or anything you would have brought to this little meet-up. If it needs a roll, we'll figure it out

Okay, pulling this out. @RocketLord @The Sailor @Huckleberry @MoonSimply Dragon Star Initiative 1d20+7: 23 [1d20=16] Puma: 29 Dragon Star: 23 Spaceman: 20 Rot: 20 Torpedo Lass II: 17 I have intentionally left it vague how you are entering; feel free to enter dynamically and cooly as you wish to; you don't have to just walk down the narrow corridor to the boss arena, you can break in through the ceiling or emerge from a hidden area upstairs and leap at her or whatever. Be explosive!

( @RocketLord @MoonSimply @Huckleberry @The Sailor ) Starlight Theater on Michigan street had once been a place of culture. 50 years ago, it held many popular plays. Lauren Hammond once performed there, in an adaptation of Carmilla, staring as the titular Vampiress. But not long after Hammond gave her curtain call, the theater followed not long after. Silver Scream had haunted the theater once, but eventually stopped; the despair of her major starring performance in the theater also being a horror-themed play made the spirit unwilling to stay there for long. Despite that, or rather, because she had been there before, no one had wanted to invest in the theater. That made it the perfect place for a group of disaffected, burnt-out teens to set up shop when the pressures of super-heroing and school life became too much. It had been the same reason that Ashley and Felix had gone to take a look around, unaware of the Starblights, that led to them gaining powers. And now, sitting on the stage was a gem that was the source of a beam of violet energy that shattered the roof and reached into the sky. While the gem was prismatic, it was slowly turning dark as pitch; with each star that fell from the sky to become one of those strange star zombies, one of the facets of the Gem turned black. This was what happened when Magic was twisted to dark purposes; the darkness became self-perpetuating, and given enough time, the Umbra Star would turn into the center of a Netherworld. But the star wasn't the biggest attraction, it was the Dragon. The Dragon was less solid than pure energy, made of a deep, rich purple. It had defined scales, each representing one of the constellations in the sky; it was western in appearance; two forelimbs, two back limbs, and two giant wings, a long, twisting neck, and a tapered snout. It's long tail didn't really end; it twisted and turned and disappeared into the Umbra Star like a tether, attaching the giant dragon to the gem in the center of the stage. There was a form in the very center of it; a human shaped bundle of darkness that was the source of it. And when the dragon opened it's mouth and Draco's voice boomed out of it, it was clear who that human was. "IT DOESN'T MATTER ANYMORE. I've never felt better! This gem is the greatest source of power I could have ever hoped for! I'm going to live up to my name now; I'm going to Eclipse the sun itself!" Then the dragon pulled back it's mouth and roared, loud enough to vibrate the entire theater. This was it's roar of challenge to Spaceman, Torpedo Lass II, Rot, and Puma. Amid the destroyed theater; seats of rotted wood, the collapsed second story boxes, the forgotten, faded posters, there was a Dragon, and there were those who wanted to stop it.

Claremont Academy Freedom City, New Jersey December 1, 2023, 3:05 PM The final class of the afternoon had just ended for what had been Vicki Adams' first day at Claremont Academy. After her rather eventful tour of the campus, Lawrence had gotten her to her classes for the afternoon and things had started to take on a bit of a normal routine. Of course, she was coming in at the end of the semester, so the school was working with the Atom Academy to provide semester finals that would cover what she had been working on there. As she exited the classroom, Vicki found herself in a crowd of students that included Lawrence Harrow, Mizuki Iwasaki, and Consuelo Nunez. The crowd the four teens were just exiting the building into the main quad when there was a flash of white light. The teens found themselves standing in the main parking lot for the school, or at least, it resembled the main parking lot. What appeared to be a wide racetrack ran through part of the parking lot, leading off into the wooded area around the school. The teens were still wearing the clothes they had worn for the day, but their bookbags were no longer with them. Each was standing next to what appeared to be a combination of a race car and a go-cart, each of a different color. The sound of cheers and applause filled the air, and glancing behind them there was a large stand of bleachers filled with almost cartoonish figures dressed in Claremont colors and bearing various banners and signs for "Team Claremont." Lawrence's eyes narrowed slightly as he regarded the scene, when suddenly a voice rang out. "Hey! Lawrence!" Glancing out onto the racetrack, there was a large figure with a spike shell on its back driving by on a four-wheel ATV, however, the odd figure's head seemed completely out of place, as it was a blond-haired man that looked to perhaps be in his early thirties, but with an impish, childlike grin. "You and your friends should hurry up, or you'll lose the race!" Following alongside the bazar figure was a small, pink racecar/go-cart, which was driven by a girl that looked to be five or six, with long blonde hair and wearing a pink princess dress. She had a similar impish grin to the other figure as she giggled as the two drove past the four teens and called out, "bye Law-werence!" "Quirk?" Lawrence said as he watched the two figures go by, before muttering, "oh, bloody hell." Lawrence looked over to the three girls and gave them an apologetic smile. "I am sorry you three got caught up in this, but we have been pulled into a game by a very powerful extra dimensional entity. I can tell you from experience, the best thing to do is play along, until we can find a way to beat him at the game." With that, the blond teen climbed into the car that was next to him and started up the motor.

Mid January, 2024 THE TERRORS OF HIGH SCHOOL! HOMEWORK! TESTS! COLLEGE PREP! RIVAL SCHOOLS! All of these things weigh heavily on the mind of the adolescent, even more on the mind of the adolescent Super Hero, who must juggle these with the duties of Superheroing! But what, dear reader, happens when the actions of the maturing Superhero overlap with the actions of the maturing high school student!? That is the focus of our story today! It was supposed to be, arguably, a fairly easy assignment for Biology. Several students in class had grouped up to go to one of a few preselected locations and examine the unique biology of the area; by comparing their findings, the class could see how even somewhat small differences in location- places within the same city- could change the biodiversity of the area. It was practical knowledge that could provide real world examples; perfect experience. Due to Mizuki's talents, she had been given the chance to take Lawrence and Baz out to look at the ecosystem that thrives around the Centery Narrows; where fresh and salt water mix to create an almost wholly unique ecosystem called an estuary. This also brings them quite close to the closed Ocean Heights Amusement Park, which is supposed to be closed for several more months; opening on Memorial Day in May. It's supposed to be guarded by Stronghold Security during the off-season, all the rides shut down and waiting for tourists and locales in the spring and summer. Which is why it was especially weird that, as they were out exploring the Estuary in a motor boat, they could see the lights on several of the lights start up, the Ferris Wheel start moving, and then, after a little bit, someone fall from the edge of the park and land in the frigid water, arms whipping against the current threatening to drag him out to sea.

An OOC thread for This Thread The Study group is out doing some school work when they are rather unfortunately drawn into some heroics, starring Torpedo Lass II Timeout Gamma Buzz We start with a security guard thrown from a great height, threatening to be washed out to sea!

Sub-basement of Claremont Academy Bayview, Freedom City, New Jersey October 2023, 9:45 AM Lawrence Harrow looked about the large room on one of the sub-basements beneath the grounds of Claremont Academy. The room was rather Spartan, with smooth white and grey walls, a floor that had a hexagon pattern and a high, almost cavernous ceiling. Along one of the walls, a couple dozen feet above the floor, was a dark set of plexiglass windows. "So, this is the Doom Room." The blond teen stated with his refined British accent as he looked back over his shoulder towards his roommate and gave a small grin. "Ready to show off what you can do Baz?" The faculty had arranged time in the school’s training room for several of the new students in order to start gathering baseline information on their powers for the year. As such, Lawerence was wearing the standard blue and yellow Claremont uniform, the morphic molecule costume tightly fitting his lean athletic build. The teen began slowly scanning the apparently empty room before his bright blue eyes fixed on the windows to the control room for a few moments. He then turned back to Baz. "Parker said he was in our testing group right? Wonder who the others will be."