StV: Clothing as Evidence

The clock on the computer screen said 3:01 AM when Dave opened the door for Dianna, who'd either taken time to pull on slacks and blouse, or (more likely) was still wearing yesterday's outfit. "Okay," he said, "I was on call. Why are your still up?"

Dianna raised her eyebrows, but allowed herself a small smile as well. "How about I tell you once it works out?"

"Big secret, huh?" Dave stepped back as Dianna came into the room, and motioned towards the kitchen. "All right." He didn't mind Dianna keeping a secret or two; she was the auxiliary headmistress, after all, as well as a friend. "Kid's clothes are in the sink. They were absolutely soaked."

Dianna sighed and followed him across his living area, ignoring the scattered clothes and computer equipment. It wasn't that Dave didn't clean; it was just that he tended to do it in bursts, and with the latest security updates he was running behind. Dianna knew him well enough not to comment.

"Well," she said, looking down at the sink, "it's all very black."

Dave fished the jacket out and started going through the pockets. Dianna started to reach for the shirt, then paused. "That jacket still has a tag on it."

He turned the wet leather around. "It does."

"The shirt is very new, too. So are the pants. No signs of wear at all."

"Oh, good. So he stole this whole outfit in order to break in to the school." He hung the jacket on the back of one his kitchen chairs. It might be stolen, but it at least deserved the chance to dry out. 

"I'd say so," Dianna said, running a quick hand over the cloth. "No wallet, no keys, no phone... nothing in the boots..." She paused then, set the clothing back down. "You said he called himself Lucian?"

Dave nodded. "Yeah. More importantly, he said he was looking for his sister: Sophia Antonius."

Dianna stopped. "And you're just mentioning this now?"

"I figured it could wait, since she's away." He yawned. "Sorry. Tired. Possibly not thinking straight."

Dianna made a thoughtful little hmmm noise. "Just a moment."

Dave had never been sensitive enough to actually feel it when Dianna reached out with her power,  but he knew that shift her in attention, that slight re-balancing of the way she stood. "Are you sure-- no, there he is. Sort of."

"Sort of?" asked Dave. Did he run? He'd thought the kid would stay the night, but maybe he'd misjudged. 

Dianna blinked twice, and was suddenly fully present in Dave's kitchen again. "He's a blank. Completely walled off. I can't read him at all; I can barely find him. And on that basis alone, I'm entirely prepared to believe that he's Sophia's brother."

"Oh," said Dave. It had occurred to him that the boy's arrival might cause some problems with -- or for -- Sophia, but he'd forgotten just how much the girl had not wanted any further contact with her family. It was coming back to him now, though: Team Dragon's return, Sophia's arrival with them, her explanation of the Preserve and of Imperia, the last colony of the Roman empire, where she'd been born. She didn't want to go back, she'd explained. She didn't want anything to do with her heritage, her city, and especially her family. He shook himself, trying rattle his thoughts into full wakefulness. "Yeah, that might be a problem."

Dianna tapped her lip. "You left him with Charles?"

Dave nodded. 

"Just a second, then," she said, and he watched her fade out again even though physically she was completely present. She was back a moment later. "Charles says he's still there, and snoring." 

"I'm not surprised," Dave admitted. "Relieved, but not surprised."

Dianna smiled at him, the sort of full expression that she only offered in private. "So, walk through this with me?"

"Sure."

"This child, Lucian, comes to the school looking for Sophia. He says he's her brother."

Dave nodded. "There's a definite physical resemblance."

Dianna tilted her head, considering that. "Assume, for the sake of argument, that it's true. He shows up, ready to break in, but Cloudburst finds him first. Only they don't fight, and somehow she tricks him into waiting in the girls shower while she goes to get you. Right?"

"I don't think she tricked him, exactly," Dave said. "Maneuvered, maybe. But I think he went along with her."

"So he wanted us to find him?" Dianna frowned. "That would be one way to infiltrate the school, I guess."

Dave shook his head. "I don't think so. I think he really meant to break in, look around, and leave unnoticed..." 

"Optimist," Dianna muttered. 

"But, well... Maria was quite taken with him. I think it's more that when his plan went awry and she took charge, he decided not fight it. Maria's cute; I wouldn't be surprised if he found her attractive, too."

"Attractive enough to let her put him in a shower and steal his clothes," Dianna said. "He's not shy, this one."

Dave chuckled. "No. He seemed wary, but not hostile, and he went along with me the same way I'd imagine he went along with Maria: curious, cautious, but not too worried. I think -- from some of the things he said -- that he expected this place to be much worse than it is. Honestly, I don't think he's going to be any kind of a problem until he decides to be one -- and I think that's mostly like to happen when he finally meets up with Sophia."

"If we let him," Dianna said frostily. "We'll need to consult with her before that happens. Would you let Bridge know?"

 "Already done," Dave told her. He'd forgotten just how much of a problem this might be, but not that it might be a problem. "I'll send him a follow-up to emphasize how important it is."

"All right." Dianna shook her head. "I'll tell Jonathan what we know, and try to set up an interview between classes. Tomorrow is... Friday? All right. If I can't find an empty spot in the schedule, I'll have Sarah swing by and look him over, see what she thinks." She shook her head. "I keep telling myself that we've taken in more troubled, more dangerous students, but..."

"Yeah," answered Dave. "I worry about surprises."

StV: Electronic Reflections

Jinx? You're up? What's wrong?

Dave Jenkins blinked at the computer screen. He wanted nothing more in this moment than to type up a quick alert and go back to bed. It was... he glanced at the corner of the screen... a little shy of three in the morning, and nobody in their right mind should be awake right now. Except for Charles. And Maria, though arguably she's never quite in her right mind during thunderstorms. And the new kid, though with any luck he's asleep by now. But this was Dianna, so...

You sitting down? he typed.

The icon rippled to indicate that she was typing, then stopped. He could almost see her hesitating over her keyboard. What happened now? she responded finally.

New arrival. Calls himself Lucian. LOOKS like he was breaking into the school (black clothes, face mask) but Maria caught him on the way in.

Which Maria?

Cloudburst. Stuffed him in the first-floor shower on the girls wing and told him to stay put. Then she took his clothes and came to get me.

There was a very long pause, long enough to make Dave wonder if Dianna had just gotten up from her desk to come see him in person. Then: ...Do I want to know how she managed that? 

Probably not. She says nothing happened, and I believe her. 

Jesus. Why don't we have her on one of the teams already?

I'd have to check her file. I think we were waiting for her to get better control over electricity.

Flag that for me, would you? She'll be more help using her brain like that than she ever will with powers. 

Dave made a note on the pad he kept beside the keyboard. He had half a dozen ways of keeping up with tasks electronically, but there was nothing that quite matched the satisfaction of crossing something off a list on a physical piece of paper. 

Dianna was typing again, so he waited. You've still got the kid's clothes? 

Dave hesitated for a moment, knowing what would come next, and then typed: Yes. 

Good. I'll be right down.

Student: Indigo

Name: Arabella Elizabeth Campbell
Codename: Indigo
Age: 15
Appearance: 5'9" with medium-dark brown skin, frizzy blue-black, and warm brown eyes
Notable Skills: Dance, Gymnastics, Parkour, Aikido, Computer Programming/Applications, Bass (upright or guitar), Singing, Math
Quirks: loves animals and children, touchy-feely, punctual, polite/formal with strangers, afraid of heights

Ara is starting her first year at school, and has tentatively agreed to start dating Iris. (She actually really likes him -- they've been friends for years -- she's just not sure about "the dating thing".) Her mother is Glimmer, and as a result of her background and her (somewhat precocious) control of her powers, she was offered a chance to try out for Team Phoenix. She turned it down, however, on the basis that even if she could control her powers she wasn't ready yet, socially or intellectually. 

As a student and the daughter of a faculty member, Ara is careful to keep her grades in the high Bs and low As. Her real love is physical exercise, followed by music; she has recently taken an interest in programming, and found that she really enjoys the sort of thought-organizing and troubleshooting that goes with it. 

Ara claimed the nickname/codename Indigo in grade school, owing to her blue-black hair. (Her hair becomes more blue, and with lighter-blue highlights, after time in the sun.) As Indigo, she can absorb energy from other people within about one hundred yards of her, using sight to target them. She can use this effect to weaken her targets and put them to sleep, and if she's targeting a fellow anomaly she can also use their energy to power a number of psychic abilities.

Student: Iris

Name: Sebastian Warren Jenkins (goes by Warren)
Nickname: Iris
Age: 15
Appearance: 5'9" with curly, light-brown hair (think Jew-fro) and a narrow face with a high forehead.
Notable Skills: Gardening, raising rabbits, crafts, protest safety, sabotage
Quirks: tries to bond by talking about social justice issues, doesn't really know how to relax, doesn't want to hurt anybody (ever), clumsy (grown a lot in the past two years), loves to dance but doesn't know how

Warren is the son of Jinx, and is in his first year at Saint Vincent's; he's still figuring out how to have a social life with his dad being part of the faculty. His mother is a well-known pro-Anomaly activist who goes by the name of Sunset and is currently wanted for questioning by the FBI; she sent him to live with his father while she "sorts things out" and they remain on good terms. 

While he can be a bit socially awkward -- he tends to rant about social justice and political topics given the slightest opening -- Warren has made some friends and is getting better about recognizing social expectations outside of his mother's circle. His understanding of politics is still somewhat crude and very black-and-white. He is currently dating Indigo -- also the child of a faculty member -- and is trying very hard not to fuck that up. 

His codename Iris comes primarily from the fact that his eyes change colors with his moods; but when his eyes go black, he is also capable of hypnotizing anyone who meets his gaze, and sucking thoughts and memories out of their minds. This is a horrifying experience for everyone involved, and can result in genuine mental damage to his victims (lost memories, alterations in personality, inability to concentrate, nervous tics, etc.) so Warren has been extremely cautious about practicing with it and learning to control it.

Oomph

Okay, interesting week. Much as I've enjoyed filling the blog with characters for the last month or so, I'd like to go back to posting personal thoughts or little bits of fiction. And since it's my blog, I get to do that. 

Not today, though. One disadvantage of doing this whole Self Care thing is that I'm actually going to bed at more sensible hours and making sure I get a solid seven or eight hours of sleep. (Last night's dreams? Secondborn and I had ducked into this weird, maze-like theme park in search of a restroom. There restrooms were on a car on a roller coaster. Like, you sat down, pulled a privacy cover over so only your head was showing, and did your business while the whole thing went through its course. Which, in the waking world, seems like the worst idea ever, but when you're desperate enough you'll try anything.) 

(I've dreamed of that place before, too.)

So anyway, getting a full night's sleep cuts into my Write At Night time, plus we had a few evening activities this week that further reduced my available time and energy, plus our ERP (financial business) system at work has been acting up since late last Friday. 

It's been a busy week. 

We might have the software issue sorted out; I'll find out today. 

Wishing you all a lovely day and plenty of rest.

Public Figure: Adam McGrath

Name: Adam Edwin McGrath
Codename: N/A
Age: 46
Appearance: Tall, muscular, neatly-dressed man salt-and-pepper hair, clean shaven; 6'2"
Job: Genetics Researcher for The McGrath Institute and advocate for human-Anomaly unity

Adam McGrath is one of the top researchers into Anomalous biology and an outspoken advocate for peace and unity between Anomalies and regular human beings. Despite periodic accusations and tabloid articles, he appears to be an ordinary human himself, albeit one of considerable intellect and education, and as such is a highly controversial figure in certain quarters. 

In addition to its research, the McGrath Institute operates a small hospital for Anomalies whose changes have created medical issues for them; the facilities there include purpose-built chambers for Anomalies who can no longer breathe air, or whose presence is inherently dangerous to other people. The Institute is sustained by an anonymous endowment supplemented with a mix of public donations and federal funding, and its scientists are thus much more at liberty to publish their findings without fear of financial reprisals than those of some other organizations.

Student: Star

Name: Jacques Alain Darrieux
Codename: Star
Age: 18
Appearance: White hair, whits skin, pink eyes (albino) 5'11, rangy build.
Notable Skills: Hiking, wilderness survival, naturalist, hydrology and forestry, driving, computers
Quirks: wears very thick glasses; loves board games, card games, and TTRPGs; dislikes exercise; loves swimming and diving; wants a pet cat

Jacques is a student with a goal: he wants to get a position guiding big corporations towards renewable, sustainable practices and conservation of natural resources. He is a determined student and consummate outsdoorsman, with a strong love of nature which he is happy to share with anybody who's interested. He is not opposed to hunting, fishing, logging, and other use of natural resources, but would like to see it done responsibly and has participated in a half-dozen protests to this end. 

His power as an Anomaly is relatively simple: he burns. At low levels, he simply gives off visible light and/or heat -- he can emphasize one or the other, but can't produce either one without a bit of the other. At higher levels of power his aura becomes blinding and searing hot, producing an incredibly destructive ball of plasma around him. Current testing suggests that if he pushes his power too far it could result in a nuclear blast capable of leveling a city (and killing him in the process). At present Star has no way to target or direct his power, so he generally limits himself to minor effects like providing light or warming up cold rooms.

Faculty: Anacrusis

Name: Lauren Ann Hilcourt
Codename: Anacrusis
Age: 28
Appearance: 5'2" with curly red hair, pale skin, freckles, blue eyes
Job: teaches music and art and assists with dance

Ms. Hilcourt isn't an anomaly at all, but one of her first classes at the school decided that she needed a codename anyway (since all the other teachers had one), and after some brainstorming they came up with Anacrusis. She is very committed to seeing her students grow and thrive, and firm in her conviction that art and music are necessary parts of that. In addition to her classes, she does individual tutoring and helps Ms. Campbell with the introductory dance classes.

Villain: Bloodhound

Name: Janelle Aida Wilson
Alias: Bloodhound
Age: 17
Appearance: 5'7", bald, dark skinned, muscular. She favors long coats and loose pants, with either boots or sandals, and wears gloves to hide her claws.
Job: Anomaly-hunter for the CIA's DAAT program

Bloodhound is an Alpha Hound employed by the DAAT program, meaning that she is one of the few hounds considered trustworthy enough to operate without her handler present, or even lead a team of other hounds if the situation calls for it. Her handler operates under the callsign Hearne, and Bloodhound has no qualms about calling him in if she needs additional support, information, or resources. They stay in contact via a set of implanted communicators. 

As a hunter, Bloodhound's record is excellent; she is credited with successfully locating over two dozen targets. She hunts by scent; her sense of smell is discriminating enough that she can distinguish anomolous scents from those of ordinary humans -- though she does have the occasional false positive, from things like medical side-effects. Her initial powers included her sense of smell, enhanced physical endurance -- she can exert herself for hours without tiring or injuring herself -- and incredibly strong and sharp claws and teeth. Prior to being taken in by the program, she was constantly shredding her gums and the insides of her cheeks, as well as shoes, tools, furniture...

DAAT provided her with subdermal armor, a reinforced skeletal system, and a treatment to toughen the inside of her mouth so that her own teeth would no longer injure her. Later treatments increased her strength with artificial muscle mass. She is strong and fast and heals relatively quickly, but not inhumanly so.

Bloodhound entered the program at the same time as Gaunt, and the two of them were friends and rivals throughout their time in training. When Gaunt -- then called Greyhound -- broke out of the program, her reluctant admiration for him turned to full-blown rage; she would like nothing better than to capture him and return him to the program for rehabilitation. She has never quite forgiven herself for failing to report some of the things he told her before his escape, and if her rage contains any element of jealousy she refuses to admit it even to herself.

Student: Cloudburst

Name: Maria Daniela Ortez
Nickname: Cloudburst
Age: 17
Appearance: 5'2", straight black hair, medium-brown skin, round face and build, petite
Notable Skills: swimming, bicycling, electronics, music, sailing, skiing, surfing
Quirks: Loves K-pop and K-dramas, amateur singer, has no filter and says exactly what she's thinking, enjoys banter, hates any kind of formal occasions

Maria Ortez first discovered her powers when she saved her brother from drowning in a riptide -- but nearly electrocuted him in the process. Her parents were supportive, but once word got around her school the social situation became fraught; they started looking for alternatives, and the Saint Vincent School was happy to accept Maria into its ranks. She stays quiet in class, but earns straight As on her tests, papers, and projects. She has a number of casual friends at the school, but nobody with whom she's extremely close.

(Her mother is a programmer and her father is a graphic artist; she is their only child, and they dote on her and come to visit the school regularly.)

Maria has the power to control water and electricity. ("Don't ask me what the connection is; I don't know.") She can't create either one, but she can absorb and store them for later use, up to a point. ("Don't ask me where the water goes. I don't know that either.") Her control over electricity is limited, and she mostly uses it to shock people, fry electronics, or create equally simple effects. Her control over water is considerably more refined. Her favorite way of absorbing water is to stand outside during a rainstorm.

Villain: Bloodrose

Name: Shannon Marie McWilliams, but she never uses it anymore
Alias: Bloodrose
Age: 19
Appearance: 5'6", blonde hair, green eyes; demeanor varies from casual/tomboy (jeans, t-shirt, boots) off-duty to punk (leather jacket, spiked hair, face paint and/or mask) when pulling a job.
Job: None at present; supports herself via robbery and odd jobs (bodyguard, leg-breaker, arsonist) for known criminals

Shannon McWilliams' powers first manifested when she was twelve. Convinced that she had somehow fallen from grace and was in desperate need of correction and salvation, her deeply-evangelical parents had her sent off to a "halfway house" to try to cure her of her sins. As with many such programs, the environment there was deeply abusive on multiple levels, and when she finally escaped Shannon left behind her name, her faith, her morals, and any trust in other people... along with a number of corpses.

As Bloodrose, Shannon can summon spirit forms that manifest as demons that emerge from her mouth. The more effort she puts into their creation, the stronger they get. She has been known to summon up to six at a time, or to concentrate her efforts into a single, super-powerful manifestation. Bloodrose is scrupulous about keeping her bargains, and ruthless with anyone who breaks theirs. She will work with other people, but refuses to be put in charge of anyone else. She neither has nor wants personal relationships; if she has to deal with someone else, it's going to be strictly business.

Well, shit

I went to bed early last night so I wouldn't freak out waiting for the election results to come in (and, well, also because I was just freaking exhausted). I woke up this morning to the headline that Trump -- probably the least qualified candidate for public office in America -- has somehow managed to be reelected. 

And I'd say something like, "Oh God, another four years of this shit," but he's not coming in cold this time. He's got all the architects of Project 25 around him, all the Christian Nationalists and Fascist grifters with their plans to convert the country from an aspiring (if not always successful) pluralistic democracy to their own private country club/police state. They're going to do their absolute best to make sure that not only can they do all the horrible things they want and get away with it, but also that in four years we're not going to be able to vote them back out. Oh, it may still look like a democracy, and I've no doubt there will be elections; but those will mainly be for show, and all the legal and structural bulwarks designed to keep any one group from amassing too much power will be weakened, ignored, or simply removed. 

No, this four years is going to be a lot worse than the last. They're going to hit the ground running. And they're going to hit the country hard.

And I keep saying "they" because Trump is really just the tip of the iceberg. All he wants out of this is to be able to hurt anybody he wants to hurt without ever facing the possibility of being hurt himself. He doesn't have some grand vision for the country or some ultimate goal in mind; he just wants to confirm that he's special, that he's better, that he's above. Trump was never the cause of all this, for all that he pushed it along; he was the inevitable outcome of forty years of Republican policy and political planning, engineered mainly by the world's oligarch class and enabled by the institutions that they own. 

It's going to get ugly. Not for everybody all at once -- they'll go after the easy targets first -- but it's going to get ugly. Trump told us exactly what he was going to do, and now he's going to do it. Project 25 was right there, written almost entirely by people associated with his staff, and now they're going to follow through with it. 

It's also going to get weird. RFK jr. in charge of public health, planning to ban vaccines and Flouride in water? (Seriously, when was the last time you heard conspiracy theories about Flouride in the water? 1979? 1983?) News sources making editorial decisions based on the whims of their super-rich owners, or their investors' desire to stay on the government's good side? Elon Musk reorganizing the very government that basically keeps his companies in business? Ted Cruz somehow still in office? It's going to be surreal. 

Hang onto your hats folk, and start looking at mutual support networks. We're all going to need a lot of help to get through this, and the only people we have are each other.

And if you just can't escape despair? Be Eowyn, not Denethor.

Election Day

Yeah, it's election day. Secondborn has no school today -- ostensibly so that the eighteen-year-olds can vote, but I suspect actually because a fair number of schools are also polling places and the school district is worried about violence. And rightly so, given that no small part of the right wing is currently busy convincing itself that the election will have been stolen by Democrats -- unless their would-be dictator actually wins, of course -- and gleefully preparing for violence in response. 

I'm planning to keep my head down and only glance at social media sparingly. I don't think I'll be able to resist the urge entirely, but I also don't think we'll have a clear winner until at least tomorrow, and maybe not even by the end of the week. The folks responsible for running the election -- as opposed to the grifters and political operatives trying to manipulate it -- are going to want to have their facts line up as well as possible before making any pronouncements.

All in all, this is a good time to practice self-care: limit your doom-scrolling, make sure you're eating food and hydrating, get up and move around, do things -- non-political things -- to distract yourself. (Indiana Jones moves, for example, are famously apolitical.) I'd urge you to vote if you haven't already, but I doubt you need to hear it from me; if you're like the rest of us, every bit of media you consume has been inundated for weeks with the message that you need to get out there and vote. You know your conscience, and you're going to do what you think is best. Take good care of yourself while you do it.

Slowly Recovering

Woke up from a dream in which I was simultaneously helping Secondborn out with some perfectly ridiculous challenges (gathering treasure off a ledge while hanging by one hand from a metal beam above it, so I could use the other hand to pull a switch and let a small platform swing down for him to stand on) and helping him line up the elements of the video game in which those challenges were taking place. It was a weird contrast; the whole hanging-from-a-beam and leaping-across-ledges sequence was intensely first-person, while the meta- elements were much more abstract -- for example, each possible monster or opponent in the game was represented by a card from a standard deck of playing cards; you assembled a "full deck" by defeating everything the game had to offer. (I guess maybe the Jokers were optional random encounters? I don't know.) 

It struck me as I was sort of reviewing all this in my mind during the process of waking up that a lot of the physical challenges would have been... maybe not easy, but pretty matter-of-fact stuff in my youth. Nowadays, of course, hanging by one hand from a beam while doing something else with the other hand? I could manage it for a moment... maybe... at best. 

And it's not just because I've gotten older. I'm still unpacking a lot of this, but I'm increasingly of the opinion that a lot of it was because my former job just kind of... ground me down. Not obviously, and not even maliciously, but it just wore me down until all I really wanted to do was curl in on myself so I could stop being unhappy. Making some new local friends and being part of one the world's most epic D&D games helped pull me out of that, but changing jobs was what really did it. And frankly, for a long while there changing jobs didn't seem possible, because my job title ("web designer") wasn't actually something I did or could do, and what I could do and was doing was in no way reflected in my job title or official responsibilities (or my pay, but that's its own special three-page rant). 

It's weird not to feel trapped.

I mean, no it isn't, or it shouldn't be, but after nearly a decade of that bullshit it still feels weird. I don't trust it. I feel like I'm doing a much shittier job than my co-workers seem to think I'm doing, and I don't even know what a sensible metric would look like anymore. Being in what was, in retrospect, a pretty shitty job even if I was pretty good at it, well... it messed with my head. It messed with my health. Hell, it messed with my marriage and my parenting. It was a shitty situation and I'm glad to be out of it, and if you're sitting around on a Sunday night filled with a sense of dread about having to go to work in the morning, then I want you to stop telling yourself that your job is "really not that bad" and go find something you actually enjoy showing up for, or at least something that's enough of a change that you can approach it with some kind of equanimity. Because your job? It is that bad. It's bad enough that you dread going back to it.

I hit a point a couple of weeks ago where my whole system basically crashed. Like, I was sleeping fourteen hours a day -- I couldn't help it -- and my immune system just absolutely bottomed out, so every weird little occasionally-recurring health issue that I've acquired over the last decade or more all set in at once, and my ability to focus -- on anything -- was just gone. (That's part of why the last chunk of blog entries have been characters from Saint Vincent's School; not only do I need to have them prepared before I launch into a writing project, but I literally can't launch into the writing project itself yet. The energy and the focus just aren't there.) I'm coming back out of it, slowly, but it honestly felt like all the burnout I've developed over the last twelve years just hit me all at once.

...And then Daylight Savings Time came along again, but I digress. Honestly, my sleep schedule is weird enough right now that I'm not sure if my body will even notice that. 

My New Year's resolution -- which I'm setting for myself, right now, here at the beginning of November, because fuck arbitrary calendar dates for this shit -- is to get back to myself. I used to have a sense of humor; I'm slowly getting it back, but I want to be making more jokes, laughing more, saying stupid shit without being self-conscious about it. I used to be athletic; I'm not ever going to get back to my fifteen- or seventeen-year-old youth and fitness, but I'd like to slim down and at least feel sexy again. I'd like to be able to climb things without getting winded. I'd like to take up some kind of martial arts again, time permitting. One of the great gifts that the World's Most Epic D&D Campaign gave me was that it got me going on my writing again, and I'd like to keep moving forward with that. I don't have any interest in taking up running again, but I'd like for it to at least be an option. 

I'd like to be doing more than just getting through the day again, and I'm starting to believe that might be possible.

Faculty: Jinx

Name: David Anthony Jenkins
Codename: Jinx
Age: 43
Appearance: Tall, lean, gray-haired man, frequently unshaven or with a goatee
Job: teaches computers and technology, maintains the school's network and security, sponsors the photography club

Mr. Jenkins is a friendly, affable man with shoulder-length gray hair, frequently unshaven and sometimes sporting a goatee. He teaches computer science, programming, and related topics, and has a hobbyist's interest in photography. He's also the school's primary IT officer, assisted by Mr. Henderson for networking and security issues, and by a helpdesk team composed of interested students to handle basic troubleshooting and reporting. 

Jinx is honestly more of a nickname than a codename, as Mr. Jenkins is a more recent addition to the faculty and was never part of the original team (or any other teams, for that matter). He has the ability to adjust his eyesight out of the visible range and into either infrared or ultraviolet, a power which he has described as "niche" and "mostly useless". He is close friends with Ms. Salvatore and Wolfman Bob, and has a son (Iris) from a previous marriage.

Halloween!

Yeah, no, sorry: I've got nothing spooky cued up for today. Our house is suitably decorated and I'm ready with candy, monsters, and teeth to give away, but I'm just not quite into it this year. I'm honestly not too much into anything right now, even writing, except that I'm very much trying to get myself in order: diet, sleep schedule, exercise, new job, that sort of thing. Self-care, basic self-care, which we've all long known that I'm particularly bad at.

...And once I get home tonight, I'll make ready with the treats. 

Student: Harbinger [Team Kraken]

Name: Lyceus Antonius
Codename: Harbinger
Age: 17
Appearance: 6', curly black hair, olive skin, brown eyes
Notable Skills: wrestling, gymnastics, dance, knife-fighting, unarmed combat, poison, basic sorcery, politics & society, Latin
Quirks:enjoys sneaking around, very curious about his fellow students and the school, protective of his privacy, exercises to help himself relax, faintly Italian accent.

Lucian is the latest arrival at the school, having been caught trying to break in and then accepted by the headmaster. He had come from Imperia in search of his sister (Charm) after making his own escape from their family. He is still finding his away around, both academically and socially, but he's already starting to make connections.

Following an unfortunate accident with another student, Lucian was invited to try out for Team Kraken; he chose the name Harbinger because he liked the way it sounded. He seems to have two very different sets of powers; on the one hand, he has a number of physical advantages, and on the other he has a nearly-impenetrable mind shield that makes him inaccessible to telepathy and related mental powers.

Student: Investigator [Team Phoenix]

Name: Ryan Jacob Darling
Codename: Investigator
Age: 17
Appearance: 6'1", muscular, with shoulder-length brown hair and brown eyes, olive skin.
Notable Skills: Football, track, hockey, firearms, bows, various crafts, camping, riding horses
Quirks:enjoys knitting, sports fan, loves pizza/burgers/hot dogs, owns a horse, loves camping/hunting/fishing

Ryan enjoys working out and is in many ways the quintessential jock, participating in a variety of sports and outdoor activities. He works to keep his grades up, but almost always has some sort of crafting project going -- anything from minor woodworking, to leatherwork, to sewing costumes for the school's theater. He knits when he's sitting still; he says it gives him something do with his hands. 

His role on Team Phoenix is primarily exploratory and investigative; his extra abilities aren't physical, and the limited amount of telekinesis that he possesses is only moderately useful for combat. However, his ability to see and listen to events at a distance has proven extremely useful -- and his ability to sense psychic residue and past events by touching items or people has been invaluable. He can also locate objects (generally or specifically) by focusing on them.

Student: Catapult [Team Dragon]

Name: Paula Ann Stone
Codename: Catapult
Age: 17
Appearance: Blue eyes, purple hair, light brown skin
Notable Skills: excellent judge of character, tactical thinking, soccer, rock climbing, hiking & orienteering
Quirks:goal-oriented, enjoys socializing over card and board games, competitive but also big on sportsmanship, people-watcher, wants to be an astronaut

Paula is what most teachers consider an ideal student: focused, disciplined, and goal-oriented, but self-aware enough to include room for rest and social activities in her schedule. She's willing to take risks, but only after she thinks them through carefully. She intends to become an astronaut (one way or another) and tries to keep herself in peak mental and physical condition; working with Team Dragon is just another part of that. She also harbors a secret romantic streak; she would love to experience an irresistible, all-consuming love. 

As Catapult, Paula uses her power to tranfer momentum at close range to perform powerful leaps and equally powerful impacts, hurl objects (including her teammate Wrecker) and perform other tricks. Using her powers requires tactical thinking and precise timing, but Paula enjoys the challenge. She is well aware that she has no special resistance to injury, and even a single mistake could maim or kill her; but she would argue that the same is true (if less dramatically so) on the soccer field as well.

Villain: Shine

Name: Daniel William Morrison
Alias: Shine
Age: 28
Appearance: 6'3", blond hair, blue eyes; tall, athletic, and ruggedly handsome, with a fashionable haircut and expensive clothes
Job: President of V3 Investment Group

Daniel Morrison is an up-and-coming venture capitalist, and not at all shy about using his abilities to ensure his success. He is very much invested in his lifestyle and image: flashy cars, expensive clothes, exclusive clubs, and high-end hobbies (including his dating life); he has recently gotten into racing yachts. Some people want to be loved; he just wants to be worshiped.

Though he comes from a relatively affluent background, his power -- and his ruthless willingness to use it -- is what has allowed him access to the lifestyle he wants and the money to afford it. Daniel is an influencer; when his power is active he seems larger-than-life: charismatic, magnetic, dominating, and authoritative. Anyone under his influence finds it hard to disagree with him, refuse him, or ignore him. This is more subtle than actual mind control, and consequently harder to spot; the only tell is that when he's using his power, he glows -- an effect that he usually explains away as an imaginary by-product of his charismatic way with people.

In addition, when given time with a specific target he can focus his power to mesmerize them, influence their decisions directly, and even alter their memories. His power can also be used in reverse, making himself unobtrusive and hard to keep track of, but he essentially never uses it that way.

Faculty: Glimmer

Name: Grace Reshelle Campbell
Codename: Glimmer
Age: 38
Appearance: dark brown skin, black hair in tight braids, brown eyes, 5'2", tends to wear a lot of beads and colored patterns.
Job: dance instructor, gymnastics coach, teaches health and biology, RN and licensed physical therapist

As Glimmer, Ms. Campbell was always more adjacent to the original team than a part of it. She is able to project herself in a sort of astral form, but in order to do so she must put herself into a trance that leaves her body helpless. In astral form she appears as a transparent, ghostly image of herself and has a number of powers: invisibility, telepathy, telekinesis, cryokinesis, intangibility. Her astral form is almost completely immune to physical and energy attacks, but can still be engaged psychically. However, the vulnerability of her physical body and the fact that she can't remain in a trance for more than a few hours at a time have kept her in a more behind-the-scenes role. 

As a teacher, Ms. Campbell trains students in dance and gymnastics, and teaches the health, biology, and life sciences classes. She also acts as the school nurse, and is licensed to help students with longer-term physical therapy when needed. (This doesn't come up very often, since several of the students are capable of using their powers for one sort of healing or another, but it does come up.) 

Ms. Campbell is a very organized, focused woman but also very physically affectionate with her friends. She is currently dating a slightly younger defense attorney who has no idea that she is anything other than an ordinary faculty member at a very exclusive private school. Her daughter from a previous marriage (Indigo) is currently enrolled in the school; Grace was very disappointed when she turned down a chance to join Team Phoenix, but also very careful not to let her daughter know that.

Student: Wrecker [Team Dragon]

Name: Cedric Johnson
Codename: Wrecker
Age: 17
Appearance: Cedric has tightly-curled black hair, dark brown skin, and soft brown eyes. He has a swimmer's trim musculature, and a tendency to overdress for anything he's doing.
Notable Skills: Boxing, Driving, Socializing, Thinking Through Possible Consequences, Drawing, Crafting, Gamemastering.
Quirks: enjoys theater but isn't good at acting, loves animals, absolute fanatic for Thai food, bad at romance/dating (thinks he's unattractive), finds going for a drive relaxing.

Cedric is a devoted but not exceptional student; his academics are all passing, but not exceptional. Where he really excels is in drawing other students into games -- anything from cards to boardgames to tabletop roleplaying, the weirder the better. He has aspirations to be a writer, and is considerably better at it than he believes even if most of his writing involves characters from his games. Other students like him because he's low-maintenance and always willing to help out.

As Wrecker, he works with Team Dragon as both a tank (using his super-strength and near-invulnerability) and a blaster, using his ability to punch people with his super-strength at distances of up to fifty feet. He is deeply annoyed by the fact that his power isn't more subtle, and doesn't seem to lend itself to clever tricks. He's hoping to improve that, though.

Student: Razzle [Team Phoenix]

Name: Debora "Debbie" Vasquez
Codename: Razzle
Age: 16
Appearance: Debbie has thick black hair, dark brown skin, and dark brown eyes; she is lithe and lean, and generally favors dark-colored clothes that match her coloration.
Notable Skills: speaks Spanish, German, and passable Chinese; History; Politics; knows how to drive; theater kid with an emphasis on singing, dance, and acting; good at making people smile and deescalating situations.
Quirks: reacts badly to jokes about her Mexican heritage, reads history books as a hobby, loves having an audience and plays to any she finds, would love to be rich and famous, is a bit of a glory-hound.

As a student, Debbie's twin hobbies of history and languages have already forced the faculty to step up their game. She's bad at math, and usually behind in the sciences. She adores having an audience, and loves to perform for her fellow students, but reacts badly when people respond negatively to her attention-seeking. 

As Razzle, however, she is a key part of Team Phoenix, providing both distractions by way of conjured lights and ranged attacks by way of lasers. She is well aware of her physical vulnerability, and wears armor designed to protect her from harm. She wants to be the public face of the team, but Jade has managed to keep her under control so far. Razzle is aware of this and feels like the rest of the team is holding her back, but for now she's willing to go with it because of the opportunities it provides. She plans to strike out on her own after graduation: find an agent, maybe get a reality TV show, go from there.

Student: Gaunt [Team Kraken]

Name: Omar al-Rikabi
Codename: Gaunt
Age: 17
Appearance: Omar has moderately curly black hair, brown skin with silvery undertones, and brown eyes with tawny flecks; he is tall and thin with broad shoulders and a narrow waist overlaid with a wiry musculature and barely any fat; his face is gaunt and he looks vaguely as if he is starving.
Notable Skills: Basketball, Track and Field, Soccer, moving silently, hand-to-hand combat with an emphasis on grappling and restraint, lockpicking, guns, escape artistry, and mechanical restraints
Quirks: Loves burgers and french fries, hates public speaking and also speaking in general, will absolutely lose his shit at any evidence of bullying, good with animals and younger children, periodically brooding and depressed.

Omar al-Rikabi was an American-born Muslim; his father was a doctor and his mother was a dentist. He was twelve when he discovered that not only could he whisper to people silently and hear their replies, some people glowed when he looked at them just right. His best friend's parents (who were, he learned, already wrestling with suspicions about their own child) called in law enforcement and CPS when they found out, and the ensuing drama was enough to draw the attention of an experimental CIA initiative called DAAT (Deviant Asset Ability Training) who leaned on his Iraqi-born parents until they finally gave in out of fear that the agency was going to kidnap their son outright and then ruin their lives anyway. Omar left behind his family, including parents, grandmother, and younger sister Zahra. 

DAAT taught him to use his abilities to track down and capture his fellow deviants, subjecting him to experimental treatments designed to increase his strength, stamina, and overall toughness, and also to keep him biddable and firmly under their control. After his escape exposed the existence of the program, Dragon Team managed to intercept him before his fellow "hounds" could track him down. 

As a student, Omar is haunted by the memories of his experiences and training. He fears that the hounds might find the school, or take his sister; he fears that the experiments he underwent may have altered him permanently, turning him into something inhuman and horrible. Despite this -- or perhaps in an effort to escape it -- he is a voracious reader and does well in his classes. Other students tend to perceive him as shy, but Omar wouldn't call himself that; it's just that he doesn't have a lot to say, so he keeps quiet. His decision to accept the invitation to join Team Kraken was based on a clear understanding that if he ever did have to take on the hounds or their masters in DAAT, he was going to need help.

Student: Charm [Team Dragon]

Name: Sophia Antonius
Codename: Charm
Age: 16
Appearance: Sophia has black hair and olive skin, tawny eyes, and an elegant, slender build; she is graceful and poised from years of dance and deportment training
Notable Skills: Negotiation, dance, knife fighting, poisons, politics, herpetology
Quirks: has trouble with modern technology, occasionally stumbles when speaking English, loves dancing, enjoys learning, scared of her parents

Team Dragon recently found themselves in the city of Imperia -- which claims to be the last remaining colony of Imperial Rome -- located on the edge of the Preserve -- a hidden area of Antarctica where the last remains of the dinosaurs still roam. Metahumans in Imperia are consider Demi (short for 'demigods') and their unexpected arrival caused conflicts with several local Demi as well as local political and religious authorities. Sophia first encountered them during their imprisonment, helped them break out, and departed with them. She claims that her actions were based on a combination of outrage at the injustice of their treatment and a desire to see the world where they were born. She is the newest member of Team Dragon, but has shown consistent good judgement and a keen understanding of political and social interactions; she evaluates and quickly adapts to new situations. 

As the daughter of the goddess of one of the local mystery cults, Sophia began learning sorcery as well as social graces almost as soon as she could walk. While she lacked her parents' innate powers, her own native ability was a sensitivity to certain kinds of energy, which she used to cultivate her own personal mystic energies and tap into stronger cosmic powers, allowing her to master a sorcerer's spellcasting abilities in the space of a few short years. She is also sensitive to extradimensional magics, but extremely wary of making contact with them. Her go-to spells include shields, armor, elemental blasts and blasts of force, and a handful defensive or utility measures such as teleportation, healing, and cleaning. While she can design and empower other sorts of magic, she generally does that in advance and stores the prepared spell in her amulet.

She remains terrified that her parents might come to reclaim her.

Faculty: Bridge

Name: Larry Martin Hendrickson
Codename: Bridge
Age: 32
Appearance: A short (5'4") wiry red-head, with pale skin, a hint of freckles, and blue eyes, generally wearing converse all-stars.
Job: Teaches Latin, Fencing, European Swordsmanship, Guitar, English, and Research Methodology; sends teams to their destinations and retrieves them afterwards.

Mr. Hendrickson is something of a polymath, and frequently assists in various roles (costuming, stagecraft, music) with the school's theater club. He is friendly, good-humored, and popular as a teacher or guest lecturer; troubled students frequently choose him to confide in. He also helps maintain the school's computer systems, acting as a backup to Mr. Jenkins. 

His role as Bridge is to transport students and faculty to various locations as needed, watch over them, and bring them back afterwards. His power is a unique blend of clairvoyance and teleportation which allows him to view (and with a bit of extra effort, listen in on) remote locations. If he focuses hard enough, he can connect his current location to the location he is viewing, allowing himself and/or anyone nearby to step from one frame of reference to the other. There are a handful of administrators in the CIA who tried to recruit him for espionage over a decade ago, but Mr. Hendrickson found the idea distasteful and removed himself.

Student: Spectre [Team Phoenix]

Name: Baati Meleak
Codename: Spectre
Age: 16
Appearance: 5'9" with dark skin and tightly-curled black hair shaved into a fashionable cut, medium build, and a dazzling smile
Notable Skills: first aid, rock climbing, hiking, camping, track & field, history and current events, logic puzzles; currently learning to drive and fight
Quirks: loves pizza, likes being in the water (swimming/baths), follows the rules but isn't a narc, speaks Oromo (Ethiopian), afraid of dogs

Baati is the kind of kid who likes to make other kids feel included. He's studious, courteous, well-behaved, and at his most comfortable when he's been given a job to do and the tools to do it. Originally from Ethiopia, he came to the United States at age seven when his parents took jobs at a tech firm in Boston. At first deep in culture shock, he made it a point to learn flawless English, and can switch between American, British, and Australian accents with near-perfect accuracy. He also made it a point to learn how to make friends, which frequently meant learning how to reach out to other kids who also didn't have any friends yet. 

Baati's powers manifested at age thirteen, causing him and his family considerable distress before they came to grips with what was actually going on. The FBI caught wind of it and passed word to the CIA, which offered to place Baati in a special program called DAAT (Deviant Asset Ability Training); his parents decided that he was too young, and refused. Shortly after that, Headmaster Saint-Vincent got in touch with them and after visiting the school they decided to enroll Baati there. As Spectre, Baati can step slightly outside of reality to become invisible and/or intangible; he can also communicate telepathically, but only through physical contact. (This still works when he's invisible and intangible, though, so he's quite capable of "haunting" anyone who lacks psychic defenses -- though he would find the idea completely appalling.)

Student: Nightmare [Team Phoenix]

Name: Sandra Marie Livingston (possibly an alias)
Codename: Nightmare
Age: 16
Appearance: Any, but since joining the school she has gradually become more comfortable with presenting herself in what she thinks of as her "normal" form. 5'2", black hair, dark-ish brown skin with silvery undertones, brown eyes.
Notable Skills: Bluff, Acting, Sleight of Hand, Finding An Exit, Dealing With Emergencies
Quirks: blends her own teas, very slow to trust, moody/shy/violent, keeps a cache of supplies just in case, enjoys climbing trees (in any of her forms)

Nightmare was being hunted by the Halls County Sheriff's Office in Texas when Phoenix Team recruited her. Prior to that, she was responsible for a series of brutal deaths and injuries, starting in her home and then tracking through a series of foster homes -- always in response to abuse, neglect, or other mistreatment (not always of herself). Headmaster Saint-Vincent and the other faculty have been working closely with her to help her develop better social relations and coping methods, with mixed results; she still tends to turn into a beast and stalk away into the forest at the back of the mansion when she gets frustrated. 

Nightmare is powerful and subtle shapeshifter, able to assume animal forms, mimic individuals, and assume a "nightmare form" that seems to be an expression of her rage. In her nightmare form she is nine feet tall, mostly humanoid but with pitch-black skin and blood-red eyes, covered in spikes, and equipped with wings, a prehensile tail tipped with a stinger capable of delivering various poisons, and clawed hands and feet that are also capable of delivering powerful bio-electric shocks. She is both stronger and tougher than ordinary flesh should be, and is capable of flying at roughly seventy miles per hour. She acts as Jade's second-in-command, but has not formally accepted the position; she just finds it encouraging that people listen to her in emergencies.

Headless

I could hear the sound of the hoofbeats behind me, louder than the gasping efforts of my own mount. I urged my horse to greater speed, but the poor beast simply didn't have it in him; he stumbled, and I threw myself from his back before he could collapse on me. It was a rough landing, but at least I didn't have to worry about the horse; the rider wouldn't care about him.

The bridge was close now, mere yards away, and I made a dash for it: a covered bridge, its interior darker than the night around us, but spanning the stream that marked the edge of the rider's domain.

They drew up at the last possible moment, his black horse skidding to a stop before rearing up and screaming, its hooves no more than an inch from the first of the wooden slats. The rider held his seat, seemingly without effort, saber balanced in one hand as he drew back the hand that held his decapitated head. Its eyes were blazing with a horrible orange fire as he hurled it at me.

Fortunately, I had retained my cane. A gentleman should never be so undignified as to lose track of his hat, his coat, or his cane; and my cane, when I snapped it out to the side, extended a silvered blade from the tip. I pivoted, bringing the blade up at an angle, and sliced that accursed skull in half.

The rider drew back as if struck, the shift in his weight enough to cause his horse to stagger as well. For a moment we just stood facing each other: myself unharmed and staring, and the horseman headless but turned as if to look at me.

"All right, motherfucker," I said. "Let's do this."

The Horseman raised his saber, but his mount was too close to the bridge to charge. My blade parted the beast's throat, and it dissolved into unnatural black mist before fading away entirely; the horseman landed neatly on his feet, already placing himself en garde.

That was when Geoffrey hit it from behind, with a glass bulb of oil followed almost immediately by a lucifer to set it alight. The horseman whirled around, only to get generous coating of thrown salt; that was when I ran him through with my silvered blade.

Silver and salt, oil and fire. He was an old spirit, a strong one, but he couldn't stand against that. He writhed, cutting and flailing, but his time of reclaiming heads from the living was over.

And this, my eager pupils, is why we always hunt in pairs.

Student: Blink [Team Dragon]

Name: Tyler John Taylor
Codename: Blink
Age: 18
Appearance: 6'4"with broad shoulders and narrow hips, sandy brown hair worn long but pulled back, leather jacket that he will not be parted from.
Notable Skills: strategy games, particularly chess, basic cooking, camping, football, basketball, pop culture trivia, speaks French (Canadian)
Quirks: loves video games, works out to maintain his physique, doesn't see himself settling down romantically, night-blind, terrified that he might screw up and get somebody hurt

Tyler is a decent student, but frequently gets by on his looks and charm; socially, he's more of a follower than a leader, but he knows how to pick up on other people's cues and is always willing to lend a hand. In strategy games he is absolutely ruthless (but never cheats); in sports he's more laid-back. He's originally from Canada, but he's been in the States since shortly after his power kicked in and only occasionally lets his accent slip through. 

As Blink, he is a master teleporter, capable of teleporting either himself or others; he can still only teleport one person at a time, though, and he needs to either be able to see his destination or already be familiar with it in order to arrive safely. His role on Team Dragon is generally more supportive than combative, but his ability to teleport others gives him some offensive options.

Student: Nightfall [Team Kraken]

Name: Catarina "Cat" Altagracia Montoya
Codename: Nightfall
Age: 17
Appearance: 5' tall, with medium-brown skin, dark brown eyes, and black hair, with a gymnast's tight musculature; wears a black jeans jacket adorned with various patches that she's sewn in place herself.
Notable Skills: first aid, dance, gymnastics, driving, bluffing, reading reactions, speaks Spanish
Quirks: slow to make friends/keeps to herself, constantly polishing her glasses, likes animals better than people, nervous and has trouble relaxing, loves sushi

Cat is a relatively new addition to the school, as well as to Team Kraken. She's a solid student; what she lacks in insight, she makes up in persistence. She prefers not to interact with people she doesn't trust -- which is basically everybody -- and can come across as aloof or even hostile. (She is also quite capable of being actively hostile if she feels the situation warrants it.) She gets along better with the instructors and the younger students than she does with anybody close to her own age. 

Despite this, she has been recruited to the recently-formed Team Kraken -- in part for her power, and in part because of her absolute willingness to fight. She is working on developing more control, both of her power and of herself; she's been reprimanded for overdoing things during training once already, and doesn't want a second reprimand on her record. Cat's most obvious ability is the power to summon darkness, suppressing all visible light in an area of her choosing, but she can also shut off most electromagnetic radiation (notably including radio waves). When she extends a field of darkness around her, she can feel everything that happens inside it, so despite her lack of physical enhancements she generally has little trouble dodging enemies unless they can see in the dark. 

She once used her darkness to escape a particularly nasty situation, actually traveling through the darkness to take herself outside of a building where she was being held. She would love to be able to move around that way at will.

Student: Veil [Team Dragon]

Name: Chance Justin Rutherford
Codename: Veil
Age: 18
Appearance: 6'0" but lean enough to look taller, light skin, brown eyes, dark brown hair
Notable Skills: guitar, driving, boxing, track and field, basic handyman skills
Quirks: gay, enjoys brightening the school uniform with fashion accessories, loves theater, talks a lot (especially when he's nervous), wants to be an entertainer

Chance is a quintessential Theater Kid, with a flair for the dramatic and a deep love of being the center of attention. He is a decent but not exceptional student, strongly motivated by praise from his instructors. He took up boxing in middle school when he first started getting seriously bullied for his flamboyance, found that he enjoyed the exercise, and added track and field to his routines as well. When he's not entertaining an audience, he enjoys building and repairing things. 

In his identity as Veil, Chance is the second-in-command for Team Dragon, and the primary reason that they're largely undefeated. He uses his ability to create psychic illusions to keep himself hidden and ensure that the rest of his team is not where they appear to be, allowing them to attack unseen while their opponents attack non-existent targets. The power is not without its limitations; at present, Veil can effectively influence about thirty people at once, with a maximum range of about ninety feet. Because his power is psychic in nature, any cameras in the area will record actual events rather than the illusions. Nevertheless, it has proven to be a huge asset for the team.

Student: Armor [Team Kraken]

Name: Allison "Ally" Catherine Colvin
Codename: Armor
Age: 16
Appearance: 4'8", with a petite build, light brown hair that she mostly keeps shaved, and blue eyes.
Notable Skills: electronics, lockpicking, welding, soldering, math, physics, chemistry, Science!
Quirks: enjoys stress-testing her creations as much as inventing them, thinks hot dogs are the best food ever invented, forgets to practice fighting and related skills, doesn't like the sun, loathes spawn-campers.

Ally is the school's first gadgeteer, and the faculty are still working out how best to deal with her. Quiet and prone to wandering off on her own, she tends to get absorbed in what she's doing to the point of ignoring obvious dangers -- especially when her power has kicked in and she's busy working out a design for something that's going to be really, really cool, she promises. 

Her masterwork so far is the suit of power armor that she uses to make herself part of the newly-formed Team Kraken. Its design and creation has put a serious strain on the school's budget, but when she's wearing it she can monitor, decrypt, and disrupt all sorts of broadcast communications, use controlled EMP bursts to fry electronics and (potentially) send people into seizures, and recreate some degree of super-strength and damage resistance. She hasn't worked out how to make it fly (yet) but she has equipped it with jump jets that allow her to leap about sixty feet forward and forty feet up, along with a variety of non-lethal armaments to deal with combative opponents. Her real power, however, is that given the time and resources she can assemble the right tool to handle nearly any situation.

Faculty: Headmaster Jonathan Saint-Vincent

Name: Jonathan Charles Saint-Vincent
Codename: The Saint, but he rarely uses it
Age: 86
Appearance: 6'1" with broad shoulders and well-developed arms and torso; his legs are of regular proportions, but otherwise atrophied. His eyes are mismatched: one green and one gray, and his salt-and-pepper hair is neatly styled. Tends towards business suits. Owing to various attempts to cure the nerve damage caused by polio, he looks about half his actual age.
Job: Headmaster, teaches history

Jonathan Saint-Vincent presents himself as an affable older man with a variety of intellectual and political interests. He is considerably older than he looks, and is completely paralyzed from the waist down owing to a childhood brush with polio. He detests using a wheelchair and used to get around with crutches and braces, but recently one of the students (a gadgeteer named Ally Colvin) provided him with a supertech exoskeleton for his legs. (He still has to be careful about how he moves; the rig provides movement but not feedback. Ally says she's working on actual prosthetics but hasn't cracked the neural integration problem yet.) 

Jonathan is a sort of jack-of-all-trades psychic, with modest (but well-practiced) telepathic abilities, telekinesis able to lift up to about three hundred pounds, and minor cryo- and pyro-kinetic abilities. He can defend himself one-on-one, but generally avoids super-battles. He's far more interested in running his school and helping his students prosper. While he's an active and committed proponent of the idea that Exceptionals and Mundanes can live together in peace, he does sometimes have qualms about sending teams of students into potentially dangerous situations, and the recent business in Antarctica has dropped him back into his doubts -- despite the fact that Dragon Team returned completely intact, and with a new student/team member. 

Publicly, he is known as one of the world's foremost researchers into "deviants" and their origins and powers, and his stance on the need for well-considered policies that promote equality and integration garners him both support and opposition from various interested parties.

Student: Team Captain Jade [Team Phoenix]

Name: Emily Annette Hubbard (goes by Em)
Codename: Jade
Age: 17
Appearance: A six foot tall, athletic blonde with creamy skin and blue eyes, who tends to sportswear or jeans and t-shirts and keeps her hair short, giving her a somewhat boyish look
Notable Skills: Soccer, rock-climbing, spelunking, baseball; recently took up classical european swordfighting; good leadership skills with a (usually) easy-going approach; knows how to drive.
Quirks: loves animals, hates thunderstorms, dyslexic, sings to herself, bisexual

Em is very laid-back when off the playing field, but extremely focused and competitive when on it; for her, leading Phoenix Team is just a natural outgrowth of being a team captain for soccer or baseball. She's equally focused on her academics, and considerably more intelligent than her "dumb jock" persona suggests. Her power allows her to manifest shapes of shimmering green force. (She takes her code name from its appearance.) So far she has demonstrated the ability to create armor, sword, shield, axe, and spear, but only as objects touching her body; she would love to be able to throw them or create the effect at range. Her power sometimes appears to act on its own, and it's an open question whether it's simply reacting to her unconscious thoughts and desires or whether it's actually some sort of symbiotic entity that sometimes acts for itself.

Faculty: Salvation

Name: Dianna Dean Salvatore
Codename: Salvation
Age: 31
Appearance: 5'10", slender, with black hair, olive skin, and dark brown eyes.
Job: Auxiliary Headmistress; also teaches algebra, calculus, and trigonometry.

Ms. Salvatore (as even her colleagues usually address her) is graceful, reserved, and always attentive. She is also one of the top five telepaths on the planet, and in her identity as Salvation is renowned for her Salvation Sword, a construct of pure telepathic energy capable of bypassing all physical armor and damaging an opponent's psyche to produce a variety of effects. She also possesses minor and unreliable precognition, which she swears is more a burden than a help.

Together with Headmaster Saint-Vincent, she keeps track of the day-to-day functioning of the school, the students, and their teams. Budgeting, logistics, and accounting all fall under her purview, and she frequently serves as the school's investigator, using her power to resolve minor disputes, determine the truth of accusations, and in extreme cases prevent outsiders from remembering any of the school's secrets. She is very much by-the-book and has little sympathy for troublemakers. The students generally regard her as hard but fair, and nobody really wants to get on her bad side. 

Like this.

Faculty: Wolfman Bob

Name: Robert Edwin Craven
Codename: Wolfman Bob, or just Wolf
Age: 42, but looks younger
Appearance: 6'2", with brown hair and eyes and deeply tanned skin, broad-shouldered and lean. When transformed, he retains the same size and build but adds silver-grey fur, fangs and claws, and his eyes turn golden.
Job: Science Teacher, Track Coach, Outdoorsmanship

Fearsome as he sometimes looks, Bob Craven is a gentle soul who was practically born to be a teacher. He enjoyed school, loved learning new things, and was always trying something new. If there's a hobby out there, he's probably dabbled in it, and there's nothing he loves more than getting someone else interested in something that interests him. He loves running, and camping, and would have loved to settle down and have a quiet married life with lots of friends and family in it. Teaching at Saint Vincent's has finally given him most of that, though he still regrets never having found the right person to marry and have kids with. 

His abilities include near-instantaneous regeneration (including virtual immunity to poison, disease, and infection), enhanced senses, and a partial transformation that renders him fanged, furry, and armed with claws strong and sharp enough to cut metal. Transforming also enhances his strength, though only to about half again his usual athleticism. He hates that the only options his powers give him in a fight involve vicious, close-range violence, and has spent the last several years studying locks, holds, and other non-lethal ways of immobilizing opponents. He worries that if he's ever put in a position where he really has to kill someone, he won't be able to do it.

Having a Moment

Had a rough moment a couple of nights ago. I believe I've mentioned before that two of our married-couple friends (that is to say, two couples) have abruptly moved out of town. The first couple moved away about a month ago, just before the start of school; the second couple finally managed to sell their house, so they finished packing and departed this weekend, while we were away visiting Firstborn for Parent's Weekend at his college. 

I found myself awake in the middle of the night, feeling sad. Those two couples were largely responsible for me having any kind of in-person social life these past few years. Three of of them were my camping buddies, and as much as I love the state park where we used to go, the thought of camping there without them is almost as depressing as the thought of never camping there again. 

And I don't know why that was suddenly hitting me that hard, right then, though I suspect there were some extenuating circumstances: the trip up for parent's weekend, and the afternoon we spent at the renaissance faire. The trip up was always going to involve some complications, and I knew that going in, so I was coming into it with this weird combination of anticipation and resignation. We're staying in a hotel, and I didn't bring the CPAP machine -- which is okay, but not ideal. I can sleep without it, I just don't sleep as well and I need to keep my head tilted in a way that hotel pillows don't always want to cooperate with. My father -- Firstborn's grandfather -- and his wife wanted to come up as well, which meant bringing her brother along. (Her brother is living with them owing to a pretty comprehensive lack of any other options.) So that meant trying to coordinate with them (best case) and trying to wrangle them so everybody got where they needed to be (much more often the case). 

Beautiful Wife had spotted an advertisement for a local renaissance festival, and we decided to eschew the on-campus activities on Sunday and go try it out. This turned out to be a great decision, in that the event was quite a lot of fun despite being in its first year and still getting its feet under it. That did mean getting a bit more sun than I'm used to, though, which frequently knocks me for a loop. And, of course, before we left for the faire we took the time to figure out why Firstborn's car refused to start. 

Turned out the battery was dead, so completely dead that it wouldn't even unlock the doors when we hit the key fob. We were able to jump it, so it wasn't a completely loss, and I moved the car around to a spot where we'd be better able to park beside it if we needed to jump it again. Which seemed likely, seeing as I was unable to get it to start a second time. So we got back from the renfaire and dropped Firstborn off at his dorm (he had homework to finish for Monday), and then had dinner and went back to the hotel room to collapse... but, y'know, with the awareness that we were still going to have to deal with the car before we could head out in the morning. And honestly, a really happy afternoon with a lot of stimulating new things to see? It leaves a kind of emotional hangover.

All of which doubtless fed into me waking up at one in the morning, finishing a very good book, and then finding myself profoundly depressed and thinking about absent friends.

In the course of writing this out -- because that helps, strangely; I've always used writing to process things -- I keep reminding myself that it's not like they're lost forever. We're still gaming together online, fer Chrissakes. We can still go camping together, if I can quit burning through my vacation as fast I earn it at work and actually build up some time. It's not like we've lost touch and we're never going to see each other again. 

But damn it, I liked having them in town. I liked getting invited to go see a horror movie, or to come over for swimming and a cookout. I liked being able to just drive up for a weekend around the campfire. I liked playing D&D together in person. So no, it's not the end of the world; but yes, I do get to mourn this.

Travelin' Dog

So we've taken the dog on a road trip. He's riding with us in the van, and -- very sensibly -- he spends a fair amount of the travel time asleep on the floor. However, at one point we stop for a restroom/switch drivers break, meaning that Beautiful Wife and I go inside the rest stop while Secondborn and Crotchstomper remain in the van. 

I come back out first, and find that Crotchstomper has moved up from the center of the van to the passenger seat. Like, he's literally just standing there on the front passenger seat looking out the windows. Which is not okay, but it's kind of  okay because it's my turn to drive anyway. So I open the driver's side door, climb in, and give him the standard command for this: "Crotchstomper! Back! Get back! Back in the back!" 

He turns as if to go back to his spot... and then makes a full 360 and plants his butt so that he is now sitting in the passenger seat and looking forward, much as I have been doing for the last several hours. 

"I have an idea," says Secondborn, and goes to open the door. 

"Wait," I tell him. "Leave it. Your mom needs to see this." 

So Beautiful Wife returns to the van to find her loving husband ready to take over the driving, and her loving doggo ready to take over the passengering. Clearly, she is going to have to curl up on the blanket in the middle of the van; there's nothing else for it. 

"Crotchstomper," she says patiently, opening the passenger door, "Come on. Hop down." 

He obligingly exits the vehicle, and she closed the door behind him and the guides him back in through the side door. Anything to reclaim her seat, I guess...

Anyway, the dog has developed very definite ideas about how to travel in the van. 

Weird Dreams and Life Situations

More weird dreams this week, which is probably a good thing in that it indicates that I'm sleeping deeply and well enough to A) actually dream, and B) remember it afterwards. This is a distinct improvement over the majority of the last few years. (Seriously, if you take a look at the Dreams tag on the blog, you can see it in the way the dates are distributed. I've had several entries since I changed jobs; the last entry before that was back in March of 2023; then it jumps back to December of 2021; and if you keep scrolling down you'll find that I was having -- and blogging -- lots of weird, very narrative dreams right up until about the end of 2016.)

It's nice to have that back, even if the current crop are a bit troubled in tone. 

In the first dream, I (along with some of my friends) was playing D&D in some sort of Dimension 20-ish format, which was naturally complicated by the fact that I've essentially never watched that show. In the dream, we were all comfortably familiar with the D&D elements, but there were some cues and codes for the show format that none of us knew at all. Which... yeah, been feeling that way in real life a lot lately, so it's pretty understandable that my brain would reproduce that mood in a dream. 

The second dream involved being on a farm road sort of... facing off with a couple of truck drivers who were being pugnacious and recalcitrant about sharing the road. At one point they actually sort of drove over us -- not, like, to crush our care but so that the top of our roof was scraping across the underside of their flatbed. I wound up trying to chase them down and get a photo of their license plate so I could report them. But again, the general mood here was just that experience of getting run over like that, not endangered but just hugely stressful and a lot going on. I blame it on the latter half of 2024 just being a lot, and my brain maybe acknowledging some uncertainty about how to navigate it all. 

How about you? What's the weirdest dream that you've had lately?

Off-blog writing project

I've been fiddling with a writing project outside of the Blog o' Doom here, which -- in conjunction with some Big Life Changes that have thrown off the stuff I had going more regularly (Dark Armor, A Wolf In The Mundus) -- is why I don't actually have any significant content for this morning. So... music. 

Shall we go with some Metric? Sure, why not.

Weekly Challenge: Humor

(This post is part of the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge. You can find links to other writers' answers over at Long and Short Reviews. I have not been following along as reliably this year as I did in previous years, but I'm still participating! Kind of.)

Prompt: Describe your sense of humor

Addams Family meets Dad Jokes? I'm tempted to say, "I don't know, I only just recently got it back!" Which is actually more true than I'd really like to admit; turns out I should have moved to a new job years ago. Eh, live and learn, I guess. So all right, some examples: 

Example One

Me: "Well, the prerequisites installed just fine. The upgrade, however, did not."

Co-worker: "Why does it always have to be so difficult?"

Me: "Impiety."

Co-worker: "That is... not a word I hear very often." 

Me: "I mean, Herakles had his labors; Prometheus had -- or often lacked -- his liver; and I must therefore assume that I, too, have offended the gods. Probably by being better looking than them. Zeus gets real prickly about that sort of thing."

Example Two

Email to my boss about the same upgrade: "Well, I still can't get it to run. I shall now curse the gods for this unkindness and go to sleep. I'll try it again in the morning after food and some kind of pagan sacrifice."

Example Three 

There are small plastic skeletons in the breakroom. Just a few of them. One's on top of the fridge, one's inside a cabinet, another is on a windowsill, another standing on the top edge of the blackboard. There will be more of them, and in more areas, as we approach Halloween; I have bags of the things. Under no circumstances will I admit to being the one putting them in place. 

On a related note, there is a sign on our fence that says, "Caution: Velociraptor Enclosure. Licensed Handlers Only."

Bad Puns and Dad Jokes

If I fix myself myself a waffle and eat it in secret, would you consider that action syrup-titious?

If I were to fire up the old gene sequencer and cross a homing pigeon with a piranha, do you suppose it would come back to bite me?

Stone Walls, Iron Doors, part three

It was two weeks later when the guard named Nimod threw himself off the stone parapet. There was some discussion of how he'd even managed to get up there; the last anyone knew, he'd been asleep in the barracks. Still, there was little question as to how he died; nearby guards rushed over immediately in response to his scream, one of them close enough lean over the wall and watch him plummet to his death. They all swore that there was nobody else on the stretch of wall that he must have fallen from. 

Then again, he hadn't been known to walk in his sleep and his friends among the other guards swore that he wouldn't have killed himself. 

Caracas, securely trapped in his oubliette, learned this in passing from the friendly guard, who spoke sotto voce as he lowered the evening meal of vegetable mash and bone broth. 

"Why are you telling me this?" Caracas had asked, equally quiet. 

The boy had shrugged. "It makes me nervous, that's all," he said. "Can't say that to the other guards; I'd never hear the end of it. But I wanted to tell somebody, and I thought you might like to know."

Well, thought Caracas, once the young guard had gone, that was interesting.

Stone Walls, Iron Doors, part two

Somewhat to his surprise, food arrived the next morning, lowered in a small metal box at the bottom of a chain. Looking up, Caracas saw that the chain was ringed with spikes at various points along its length, likely to discourage any attempt to climb out. He opened the box and removed the tray, finding a bowl of gruel and a chunk of slightly-stale bread. 

"Ah," said a voice overhead. "So you live. After Nimod and Valkas pushed you in last night, I wasn't sure."

Caracas squinted at the silhouette of the guard above, then nodded and stepped back out of the circle of light. The box and its chain were pulled back up, and when that was done this new guard spoke again. "Next shift'll lower the chain again just before sunset. Take the food, and put the morning's tray and bowl in the box. If you don't, they'll stop sending down food until you do."

"I understand," called Caracas, "and I thank you." 

Then another voice called, "What're you doing, boy? We just feed 'em. We don't chat with 'em."

"Yes, sergeant," the guard replied immediately, and his shadow vanished from the circle of light on the floor. 

At least he didn't have to worry about how to dispose of his waste; that had been apparent immediately, from the smell alone. There was a hole in the floor, leading down to some sort of carved pipe that angled down until it came out somewhere beyond the fortress; he hadn't bothered tracing it any farther. It was still better then the conditions in the town, where sewage was dumped into the open gutters with no attempt at even basic sanitation. 

It didn't have to be this way, Caracas thought again. We could have made this world so much better.

Friday Morning

Finally managed to go to bed early, with the result that while I woke up feeling refreshed I'm still kind of logy and unfocused. My body is basically telling me, Oh, so you finally went and got enough sleep! You know what would go really well with that? EVEN MORE SLEEP. Which, after the recent string of late nights, I can't blame it. 

So we're taking it easy today, and hopefully for the rest of this weekend. I've got a couple of things to do, but nothing that should require too much brainpower. Might Baldur my Gate some more, or I might finally settle in and play Undertale. Oh! Or finish up The Entropy Centre. I have options, is what I'm saying here.

How about some music to get us through the day? This week, I'm listening to Mirabilis: 

Music: Kingdom of Cards

Bad Omens: 

College Dreams

Dreamt that I was going off to college, and having trouble sorting out everything that I needed to get done (find my room, get unpacked, figure out my schedule...). It wasn't a particularly long or elaborate dream, but it was very definitely a mood -- probably triggered by some combination of Firstborn being away at college himself (parents' weekend is coming up soon) and me settling in on the new job (which I think is coming along fine but there's still a lot I don't know). 

I'm also beginning to think that I might have some unprocessed trauma around going off to college so damned early myself, though I also don't know what we would have done otherwise.

Writing projects are currently at a stand-still; I think I need to give my brain some downtime. 

And sleep. Even with the weird dreams, I need to be getting more sleep. When I get enough sleep, everything else falls into place so much more easily.

Lordy lordy some late nights lately

So, the thing about trying to wrangle applications is that they're frequently, well, recalcitrant. And they frequently need important, unavoidable things like upgrades... that need to be done outside of business hours. This is true even -- hear me out -- even when when what you're upgrading is actually just a test environment, or one set aside for training people where they can't break your business if they make a mistake. 

You might think that those environments should be available for much more casual upgrades, since they don't affect the actual business that goes on in your production environment, and can be refreshed from Production if anything goes wrong. And in an ideal world, you'd be right about that. In actual practice, well, I had a couple of inconveniently late nights last week while trying to get an incredibly recalcitrant training environment to to fully upgrade so that we can start User Acceptance Testing over there before we just upgrade the production environment and commit our fate to the merciless hands of the Computer Gods. 

This would be a great opportunity for overtime, but here at the new job I'm on salary. Which is fine, and maybe even better, because not only am I getting paid more in general, if I have to (hypothetically) put in four hours on a failed upgrade Thursday Night and another four hours on a partially-successful upgrade Friday night, I can bloody well sleep in on Friday morning and again on, say, the following Monday. I need to inform my co-workers so they know what to expect in terms of when I'm actually conscious, but otherwise nobody cares. (And in fact -- kudos to the new job -- they encourage it.) 

I would love to be responsible for a piece of software that was well-documented, well-maintained, and properly tested for quality. This one is... not that, but that's part of the reason it's worth paying me this much to maintain it. 

On a possibly-related note, I woke up Saturday morning after a dream in which Vincent Price -- that bastard -- was in a wheelchair and trying to break open the bathroom door while I was getting into the shower, so that he could feed me to the marsh people. The marsh people had apparently lived here years ago, and been subject to cruel and horrible experiments; the one I was avoiding introduced itself as having been made from six other marsh people, and looked like a cross between a starfish and a stingray. So if I ever see Vincent Price in a wheelchair again, I'm going to murder him on the spot in self-defense. 

BUT THAT ASIDE, life is pretty good. I keep forgetting that Firstborn is no longer living with us, which is weird but otherwise fine; we've put Secondborn into some math tutoring because apparently middle school has taught him that it's both terrible and useless; the dog has very strong opinions about where we should go when we do walkies; and I'm running three different D&D games which I'm enjoying the hell out of in three different ways. 

If I get my sleep schedule back under control, I'll be unstoppable. 

Here's to you, my friends, being -- or becoming -- unstoppable too.

Stone Walls, Iron Doors, part one

Caracas fell when the guard shoved him over the edge. It was a good distance down, a fall to break bones; no doubt most prisoners made the descent with the help of a ladder, or at least a rope. These guards were looking to punish him well beyond the sentence he'd been given, and no wonder. He'd broken three of them, and they wanted to see him broken in turn. 

But the floor, when he landed, was stone; and stone would never harm him. His feet touched it and he rolled to the side, fetched up gently against the wall, and lay there. The chamber around him was shaped roughly like a vase, wider here at the bottom but narrowing as it curved up to the hole he'd been cast in through.

Two of the guards laughed when he didn't move, and Caracas marked their voices, matching them in his mind with their scents, the feel of their steps on the stone of the courtyard, the warmth of their bodies and minds. Down here in the dark, they couldn't see that he was looking back at them. After a minute or so, they swung the heavy iron gate shut over the entrance and slid the lock into place. 

When they finally moved away, Caracas considered his new environment. The walls were smooth, offering no grips for climbing, the entrance too high up for an ordinary man to reach. A shapechanger might manage it, but iron was widely known to imprison all manner of supernatural beings: beasts and spirits and sorcerers alike. 

So this is the Archon's justice. The judge, mistaking Caracas' reticent curiosity for weakness or at least humility, had declared himself merciful in sentencing the ignorant foreigner to be forgotten for a year and a day for his assault upon the guards, conveniently ignoring the fact that Caracas had been defending himself from them and not the other way around. It had been smoothly managed, too: Caracas had spoken his initial defense to the court, and then the guards had spun their story of his attack on them, and after that everyone had spoken of it as if he had attacked the guards.

After that he had held his tongue. There was little point in arguing with it, and even less in pointing out that he'd acted to prevent a rape and had had no idea that the perpetrators were members of the guard. More importantly, he didn't want to draw the attention of his cousin Jakar in his own demesne; he wasn't prepared to take on the gods. 

So: a year and a day in this oubliette, which was one of several along this side of the courtyard: close enough to daily life to hear it, but still easy to ignore even if he begged or screamed, and fully exposed if he somehow tried to escape through the grate. A land of laws, a domain of justice and mercy, would see him regularly fed and watered, even as it forgot him. Jakar's Imperium? He'd give it a week or so, just to see.

Caracas settled back comfortably against the stone.

Decisions, part seven

Antoinette opened the door and Chris went out, Elyssa following with the doll-child. He felt off-balance, distracted, out of control; he didn't like it. He wanted to grab the doll and race it to the rendezvous, to get this over with as quickly as possible, but he couldn't do that without revealing his full speed -- and Elyssa was making a real effort to cover for him. He wanted to tear apart their enemies, but their enemies were actually their co-workers; this was just a training exercise. 

He was trying to hold to that knowledge, but the image of a child tied to a chair... 

He shook his head, forced himself to focus, and wasn't sure if he'd succeeded. Thorin was nowhere in sight, which was simultaneously the worst possible scenario and exactly what he'd expected. "That way," said Antoinette, pointing. 

Elyssa started out, and Chris leapt up to an awning, and then across to a window sill on the far side of the street. If Thorin was tracking them, he'd take to the rooftops; Chris would have to make his way there more slowly. More likely, the great cat was off alerting the other two opposition teams, but it still wouldn't hurt to have eyes up at rooftop level. 

Half a block down, the rooftop was empty. Thorin was nowhere to be seen. So it's a question of who gets into position first. If Thorin and the others could set up an ambush, they could still lure the target in using the doll-child. If Antoinette and Elyssa got the child to the head of the house first, the House could withdraw and they would have effectively won. If everybody reached the rendezvous all at once, it would be a fight and the outcome could be anything. 

Chris shaped a tiny bit of Grey and whispered to Antoinette and Elyssa: "Move."

Decisions, part six

 They didn't just drive in here anyway, even knowing it was a trap. Surely they didn't... He could see it though: whoever had planned out this exercise understood the arrogance of the Old Houses. The head of the house wouldn't leave without the child; but at least they'd agreed to wait and let his team bring the "child" to them. 

Would the two other enemy teams realize? Would Thorin tell them? Probably. He's impressed with himself, but not enough to try to take on all three of us alone, and his magus is down. 

How fast could he get to them? "Give me the child," said Elyssa. "I'll carry her." She looked at Chris. "You run interference, but be careful." She turned her eyes to Antoinette. "Do you have enough Grey left to keep up with us?"

Antoinette said, "I'll do what I can." 

"All right," said Elyssa, and they started down the stairs.