StV: Florida Man, part two

"Okay," said Bridge, speaking into the driver's side window of the van. "I'm going to find a discreet place for you to appear. I'm going to be pretty tapped out after that, so use your comms and keep us posted. We'll have someone on the channel at all times, but it's going to be a couple of hours before I can pull you back or send anyone else to you. Once you've got a lock on your target, get your costumes on keep 'em on -- nobody shows their face until you're back here."

In the passenger seat, Cloudburst nodded. "If we have to abandon the van?"

Bridge shrugged. "If you have to, you have to. Try to leave it someplace where nobody will bother it for a day or two, and we can fetch it back later if we have to."

He paused, drew a breath, and his gaze went distant. Still distracted, he said, "All right. I'm going to put you through on the shoulder of the highway just a little southeast of Immokalee. All you'll have to do is come up to speed and merge onto the lane, and you'll be headed in the right direction."

The school's front driveway began to fade around them, overlaid with another landscape: a flat stretch of two-lane highway, grassy sand to either side, power lines running parallel to it behind a wall of brush on the right. There wasn't actually a shoulder, but when Bridge said, "Go," Tempest pulled forward onto the sandy ground and began accelerating. 

She was checking the traffic at the same time; fortunately, they had room to merge onto the highway and come up to full speed there. Cloudburst pulled out her phone and tapped the app for an encrypted connection to Team Kraken's support line. "Cell connection out here is crap," she observed, and shut off the camera. "Hey there. We're in Florida. How's Bridge doing?"

Jinx's voice came back, clear and comforting: "I've got him on camera. He's walking back towards the school."

"Good," said Tempest, loud enough for the microphone to catch it. "We're about an hour and a half from Everglades National Park, but maybe twenty or thirty minutes before we start hitting all the nature preserves. Gaunt, do you have a lock on our guy?"

Gaunt shook his head. "Not yet, but I've never been sure just what my range is."

"Well, we may be about to find out. Let us know."

"I'll contact you if we hear anything else on this end," Jinx added. "Also, keep an eye out for reporters -- Florida Man's gone and made national news, and I have an old friend monitoring CJIS info for anything that might help us."

"CJIS?" asked Tempest. 

"Criminal Justice Information Systems," Jinx told her. "It's, um, it's a national law-enforcement information system."

"Ah," said Tempest. "Good to know. All right, we'll keep you posted."

"Please do." 

StV: Florida Man, part one

"This is your target." Jonathan Saint-Vincent tapped a key on his laptop, and then turned to the screen where the projector was showing a mugshot of a scruffy, disheveled man with pale skin and dark circles under his eyes. His blond hair was cut in a mullet, and by his expression he was still half-asleep. "Tom Wilson, white male, age twenty-seven. Calls himself Florida Man. Robbed a string of liquor stores, convenience stores, and gas stations from Miami all the way up to Tallahassee, then shot two state troopers and fled all the way back down into the Everglades. In the process he wrecked four cars, took two people hostage, torched a fireworks stand to create a distraction, and very nearly set a gas station near Fort Myers on fire. Also wanted for tax fraud, dealing drugs, and overdue alimony."

Cloudburst glanced at Tempest, then the rest of the team before she spoke up. "Okay, we get that he's a walking disaster. Why is he specifically our problem?"

"Mainly because he's an Anomaly," Headmaster Saint-Vincent said easily. "He shouldn't have been able to survive those car crashes, but he walked away from all four. Gunfights with the police? Their reports say their bullets just weren't doing what they should have, and at least one officer reports that there was 'something wrong with him, with his face' but wasn't able to elaborate. And then the one night they had him in a cell -- for Drunk and Disorderly, because they hadn't connected him to everything else yet -- something came and busted him out -- right through the wall."

"Ah. So we might not just be capturing him for the authorities," Tempest observed. "He might have an accomplice." 

Saint-Vincent nodded. "That does seem possible," he admitted. "Team Dragon will be otherwise occupied, but we can have Team Phoenix on standby to help you out if needed."

Nightfall caught Cloudburst's eye and nodded. 

Tempest nodded cautiously. "Better safe than sorry, especially since we don't have a good idea of what's going on here."

"And the Everglades can be dangerous, too. So yes, keep in touch and be cautious." 

Colony Planet dreams

Crashed hard and had incredibly weird -- but very narrative -- dreams, probably inspired by the very final scene of Don't Look Up: 

We were on a colony planet. I'm not sure how many people there were, but there were some interesting little details -- the electrical wiring in our rooms hadn't all been hooked up correctly, so if my neighbor switched on his lights, mine went out, for example. (Put in a ticket with Facilities for that one, I guess.) There were snakes that lived in these... basically snail shells... and struck if you set something (a peanut, your toe) in front of the opening. The only good way to kill them was to drop something edible and then behead them when they struck. There were also other, more Earth-normal snakes. 

There were alien ruins and some aliens, who mostly ignored us -- I had the impression that there'd been a hard-negotiated political peace, but I didn't actually dream about that part. Some of the ruins still had active alien tech, too, like the twenty-foot-tall thing that seemed to be half organic and half mechanical. We didn't get too close to that one; it was definitely still moving around. 

There were also monsters: large predators, semi-domesticated by the aliens (or I guess really they were the natives and we were the aliens) in some places, and absolutely feral in others. So there was a very Old West "keep a gun and a knife on you at all times" vibe to the whole thing. Traveling through the semi-forest, even along a trail, was absolutely nerve-racking.  Frankly, so was creeping through the ruins.

All in all I wouldn't say it really went anywhere, but it was a fun bit of unconscious world-building. 

StV: Intruder Response

"Yeah, it was her again." Nightfox looked irritated, while Magehand looked resigned. "The same one Harbinger and I chased off Saturday night. Said she was looking for someone named Omar."

Sophia considered that for a long moment. Today was Wednesday, and it was mid-afternoon -- not an ideal time to break into the school, but then from what she'd managed to read of the reports this Hound had an extremely good sense of smell. Maybe she thought she just needed to get close enough to figure out if her target was here.  

It wasn't hard to figure out who her target was, either. He might not call himself Omar anymore, but Gaunt was the only one here who'd been trained by the hounds. That seemed weirdly out of place, though, considering that the Hounds had been hunting Emma when they first arrived -- but then, if her brother was right, those hounds were being led by the big were-creature. This girl seemed almost to be operating on her own. There was also the Age of Rebirth to consider -- if they were behind the sudden presence of the Hounds, then they probably wanted Harbinger and Jade and Nightmare more than anyone else. Maybe herself and Wrecker as well, and maybe Abigail if they'd even bothered to notice her. Speaking of whom...

"Was that a breach?" asked Abigail, emerging from the woods. The girl was definitely changing as she increased her knowledge and skill with the Art; her eyes had gone the pale silvery-blue of an Alaskan Husky, and her hair had fallen out, with the first hints of fleshy tendrils and a pattern of sharp spikes coming in to replace it. 

Sophia nodded, and turned to Spark. "Should we pursue?"

Spark considered, then shook his head. "Not right now. Not worth the risk of walking into an ambush."

Nightfox hesitated, then said: "She asked me to tell Harbinger to meet her outside the walls. I said I'd tell him tonight."

Spark threw up his hands. "Fine." He glanced Sophia. "We'll send your brother into the potential ambush, and coordinate with Team Phoenix so we can turn the situation if there is an ambush. Same plan as he came up with, basically." He turned to look at Blink. "Are you good with that?"

Blink nodded slowly, running a hand down the front edge of his leather jacket. "Yeah, still good."

Veil said, "Stay close. I'll need to hide your scents, and I can only do that for so many people."

"Should we check with Harbinger first?"

"Don't bother," said Spark. "If Jade asks him to do it, he will." 

A Solitary Hound, part four

"Are you fucking kidding me?" asked a girl's voice. She was covered in black fur and leaning back against tree, while the one-armed young man in front of her had drawn back with a look of surprise. 

"The hell is this?" he asked, warily lifting his missing arm.

"Sorry," said Bloodhound. "I'm still looking for Omar."

"Who the fuck is Omar?" asked the girl, whose flesh was rippling as she extended claws, grew fangs, and slid into a more feline configuration, the shifted towards something more lupine -- or vulpine?

"We used to be friends," Bloodhound said quickly. "Or rivals. Or something."

"There's no way they don't know you came over the wall," the boy told her, looking her over with an intensity that, while not quite hostile, was still threatening. "There'll be a team here to intercept you any minute now."

Bloodhound swallowed. "Sorry, sorry. I just--"

"Would you please go away and let us get back to the kissing?" demanded the girl.

"Um. Okay. I'm going. But... your other friend. Would you ask him to meet me outside? Even if none of you know who Omar is..."

"Fine! I'll tell him tonight! But until then, fuck off!" The girl's claws had slid out to an impressive length, and Bloodhound was suddenly unsure that she could actually take her. 

"Right. Yes. Going now."

She turned and scurried off until she reached the stone wall, then vaulted over it. 

A Solitary Hound, part three

"I really don't like this," Bloodhound said, pacing across her hotel room with her phone pressed to her ear. "I thought I'd be okay with it, but I hate being cut off like this."

"Relax," Hearne advised. He was a Hunter, and her handler, and while he wasn't that much older than she was, his voice was soothing and calm. "They wouldn't have left me with you if they were cutting you loose."

"No, no, I get it, I just..." She was going to start whining if she wasn't careful, and even knowing that Hearne would cover for her the prospect was humiliating. She was an Alpha Hound. She could lead teams, operate on her own,  strip a rifle, clean it, and reassemble it without opening her eyes. She could sniff out Anomalies, claw her way through steel armor, and get targets to give up their secrets without even realizing they'd done it. Why had Mongrel leaving her behind thrown her this far off balance? "I'm going out for a bit. I need a change of perspective."

"All right." Hearne didn't sound worried; he, at least, still trusted her. Most likely Mongrel and Huntsman did too, and she was freaking out over nothing. "Keep your GPS on, and contact me if you need me."

"Will do," Bloodhound said, and started pulling on clothing. She knew exactly where she was going, knew it was a bad idea, and still she couldn't stop herself. She needed this down to the marrow in her bones; she needed to know. 

"Damn it, Omar," she said quietly, and then checked to make sure she'd cut the call to Hearne. Fortunately, she had. It wasn't a disaster, just another small slip to be laid at her once-friend's door.  

Update: Holy Crap, Really?

So apparently Israel and Iran are having a (tentative, delicate) cease-fire, though I still think Trump is leaping in to take credit for something that would have happened anyway and over which he has very little actual influence. It also sounds like Qatar is doing most of the real work here, but it's hard to tell much of anything for sure.