Liliya

[Interest Check] Masks- A New Generation

I like to think that Network does, in fact, own a battle skirt. Like, it's some gadget left over from Nucleus's old stuff from some job or another, and he just has it in his closet or something. So how old is Network? Does he go to Halcyon High with the rest of us? And how does his mentor feel about him being on a team with a bunch of kids who have never really went through the kinds of horrors he has? I mean, she must know that regardless of our issues, no one on this team (to the best of my knowledge) has ever killed anybody. Do we know that he's done any of this, or to us is he just some kid who Nucleus took under her wing? @Tengri

[Interest Check] Masks- A New Generation

<Snipped quote by Liliya>

Yeah, probably someone with an immense stick in their ass and some serious issues. Also, most likely not a people person

@Tengri

Well, they'll fit in great with our little group. I think every character here has some pretty nutty issues. ^^ I mean, no one with Moon Knight multiple personalities (yet) but at least half of them are wound up tighter than f#$% all. I'll be back on in three or four hours (got lunch/Doctor Strange plans) but if anyone's around I'm sure they'd probably be willing to help you if you need any, bounce ideas off of, whatever.

[Interest Check] Masks- A New Generation

<Snipped quote by Liliya>

It was very helpful to me, and I'm grateful. I also took a very quick peek and think that I would be better being the Protege here. In a vein of being someone like the Question or even the Moon Knight: strange, quirky and sometimes relatively useful. Is this fine?

@Tengri

Sure, a Protégé would be great for the team. We've got a Doomed, Outsider, Janus, Legacy, and Nova so far, and maybe now a Protégé, ya? ^^

[Interest Check] Masks- A New Generation

I'm interested in the whole superhero setting, and if you do not mind a complete newbie, may I also take part in this?

@Tengri

I can't speak for Joshie, our GM, but as far as I'm concerned, especially with whatever is going on with Harlequin, you should absolutely play if you want.

@Raijinslayer I gotchu fam

@Grey

This is the character sheet (which are called playbooks) link, if you are really new to roleplaying in general just message me if you need any help with whatever.

[Interest Check] Masks- A New Generation

All things considered, we did well and impressed an established hero. Who was it? Felitrix.
Yeah, that day… I don’t talk about it much. I mean, I’m over it and it’s cool, but it was pretty nuts. Me and Andrea got an alert about some kind of disturbance, big time stuff, over Felitrix’s dark app. The Guardians responded, but all of them were twenty minutes out, and it was Class A, lots of civvies were in danger. We were a few minutes out, tops, and I beeped in. Normally they’d have shot down my request, I’d have gone anyway knowing how far out they were, but this time they didn’t. I knew it was big shit when they accepted and sent over an asap order. I threw on my costume, and we flew over. Dragoon is major league, like we shouldn’t be fighting this kind of villain, but that’s how the job goes sometimes. There are these three costumes just going at it with Dragoon, Andrea knew at least one of them from a previous job, but just from looking at them I knew that they were kids, and not the legacy types like us. I don’t know how they heard about the situation, too fast for it to have been on any of the big news channels, probably facebook or twitter, “Er mah gerd, super villainy at fourth and main! It’s Dragoon!! E’erybuduh Run!!1! #catsignal,” or something. Bugs f#$%ing everywhere, the literal animal kind, and I really don’t like bugs. Dragoon’s just smacking these kids around. She’s one of those former supers turned baddie, I hear it isn’t her fault, some kind of mind f#$% courtesy of our old friend Doctor Zondervan, yeah, the Doctor Zondervan, but it doesn’t really matter.

She was a danger, and we had to do something about it. Dragoon is a professional, usually wouldn’t have set off any kind of alarm, we’d only have heard about it after she was gone and everything was said and done. It was some kind of fancy lab, one of the ones with Grade A Scarborough Enterprises security systems, and she must have done something off script because she wound up getting boxed and having to fight her way out through robot security drones, made a lot of noise in the process. Anyway, Andrea’s throwing everything she’s got at her, and I take advantage of the distraction to just light her, Dragoon, up, laser beams and then a flying broadside punch, me and Andrea’s regular approach, but this is no ordinary supervillain. She dodges Andrea’s stuff, my lasers, and then swats me off like I’m a fly when I went in for the physical stuff, and I wind up right next to this monster lookin’ guy. Like, seriously monster looking, horns and everything, this blue fire that you just know isn’t normal in the physics kinda way dancing and arcing off him, all big and badass looking. He’s firing some beam at Dragoon, and the street is just melting away, nasty stuff that fire, and I’m getting to my feet. Dragoon dodges, I mean even with her armor no one wants to take something like that straight on, and this horned devil is just honing in on her, real focused you know? Tunnel vision must’ve set in, happens to all of us, because he clearly wasn’t paying attention to where we were in relation to each other.

I learned later that some of that fire, which as I had assumed at the time was no ordinary flame, was arcing off of him and went a little too far to his left. At the time I just remember looking at Dragoon and seeing an opportunity, then there’s this burning like nothing I’ve ever felt, I mean not like, “ow, hot!” more like my skin is covered in boiling cheese and is just bubbling up, like I’m seriously melting, and everything the bubbling guck touched on me was just instantly changed into the same awful crap. I guess it didn’t stop me, because the next thing I know I’m in midair, I have Dragoon’s helmet off somehow and I’m just dragging the back of her head along the street, at speed, crushing her head in with my left hand. I’m right handed, and I remember thinking it seemed wrong that I was using my left, but it didn’t matter enough for me to stop and consider the thought for any length of time, I was kinda busy after all. So I drag her like fifty feet, felt like fifty miles, and I just kinda fall. Not like collapsed to the ground, but I wasn’t flying anymore, just standing there crushing this chick’s face in. Her head looked like someone took a bat to it. I remember looking down and realizing that thick, dark, goopy blood was all over her face, her neck, her chest, and knowing that it shouldn’t be, wrong angle, like it was just falling down onto her from somewhere while she looked up at me, her eyes all big and wide and unseeing.

Next thing I know I’m floating, like literally floating, horizontal to the ground looking up at the sky. I tried to reach up and cover my eyes with my hand, right? Because of the sun and all, but it just wasn’t moving. So I look down, and my hand is just wrong somehow. I think it took me three whole seconds to realize that half of it was missing, in a semicircular cut from the bottom right side of my wrist to the tip of the index finger, including my pinky and ring fingers, and everything but the left half of the bottom section of my middle finger. I mean, you’d think it would have been some instantaneous understanding kind of thing, but I really had to puzzle out what was different about it, like seeing someone who you think changed something about their hair but have to make sure before you ask. I guess I mumbled something about it, like, “where’s my hand,” or whatever, but I mostly just remember feeling abject terror, and then Andrea was talking to me, telling me everything would be alright or whatever. I wasn’t paying attention to her, at least not enough to remember what she said, I was just looking at what was left of my hand, didn’t even occur to me to ask why the rest of it was missing in the first place. Never even realized that my costume was half burnt off, or that my hair was half burnt off, or the small factor that most of my ribs, along with some organ and intestinal tissue, were showing through the big ass rend in my chest.

I next woke up in what easily takes the place of the worst pain I have ever felt, and I’ve been nearly cut in half by, what it turns out to be, is known as hellfyre. I learned later that Andrea had gotten me to some Guardian safe house, and then they took me to some kind of hospital that they operate for dealing with the weirder kinds of injuries you might happen to receive in this line of work. Normally the hellfyre would have spread decay through my system, the flesh would have turned necrotic, I’d develop sepsis and die. Better to cut off anything touched by the stuff, but you can’t just cut off a deep chest wound. Anyway, they had some old connections to some interesting people, and got some monk or something to show up with some kind of hoodoo potion, boiling wine, herbs, supposedly, “holy,” holy water, though I doubt whatever that thing was happened to be a Catholic priest, what with the tree bark for a face and antlers sticking out of its head, the blood of a dove, eye of newt, f#$%, the shit was probably Drano for all I know. What I do know is that when you boil it and pour it into an open chest wound, and maybe this is true of any boiling liquid poured directly onto muscle and organ literally inside of your body, it is easily worse living through than losing your hand. The pain is actually necessary, too, like at least according to Tree Face I couldn’t be on a pain med drip or anesthetized until after going through it, cleanses the soul.

I don’t know if I felt any holier afterwards for being conscious through the process, and I kinda think in retrospect Tree Face was probably just pissy about being made out of wood and wanted to watch me squirm, but I lived, the flesh didn’t turn necrotic, and after I went through having the shit poured on what was left of my hand, including the missing parts which creepily I could swear I felt just as plainly as if they were still attached, and then I was just out, some kind of gas from one of those hospital nose tube things they’d put me on. I woke up, Andrea was there holding my hand, mom was yelling at Gravitron how she was going to castrate that mongrel pestilence before he could spawn any more of his ilk, to which he kept saying that he was just a kid and probably wasn’t evil, Felitrix was sitting on a chair in the corner typing something into a tablet, and I remember thinking to myself, “wait a sec, Andrea’s holding my hand. That’s new,” I don’t mean she’s never held my hand or whatever, I mean the hand was literally new. Or at least it was as good as new. I could feel her skin on mine, even in the pinky and ring finger that were completely cut off, and I squeezed her hand just to make sure I wasn’t dreaming, not so hard that it would hurt her, of course, even drugged on that bed I remembered what I could do if I wasn’t careful, but it was enough to get her attention and satisfy my new hand curiosity.

I asked her why they cut my chest open; in my blood loss and drug induced delirium I guess I thought they had to start my heart with boiling oil or something, and forgot all about what side of the body the heart is on, and that people don’t start hearts with boiling liquid. She just told me that the wound came from the same place as the other one had, and called the adults over. So they showered me with affection for, like, five minutes, and then berated me for another ten. It was really f#$%ing weird too, like I just kept looking over at Felitrix and occasionally squeezing Andrea’s hand while Gravitron and my mother acted like a couple parents going back and forth between loving and scolding after their idiot kid got herself hurt. She didn’t seem to notice anything was wrong with this picture, though, just kept playing with her tablet, hardly even looked up when Andrea told everyone I was awake, and I guess I was just letting my own internal knowledge get outwardly expressed in my head onto her. So, being as everyone else really had to get back to their real world duties, they all started leaving, followed protocol. I mean it’s one thing for Lodestar, Polaris, Doktor Faust, Felitrix and Gravitron to be missing all at the same time, but for Lodestar, Polaris, Doktor Faust, Felitrix, Gravitron, Savannah Newman, Alex Hathaway, Andrea Faust, Anne Scarborough, and Jan Poole to all be missing, for what turned out to have been nearly eighteen hours, right after a very big, very public battle like that? Way too risky to everyone’s secret identities.

Andrea and Felitrix stuck around the longest though. After mom left, Felitrix pulled her chair up next to my hospital bed, one of the rolley ones that adjusts up and down and sideways, and lifted my torso up with the push button controls before sticking her tablet in my face. I took it, in my left hand, I didn’t want to move my right one from Andrea’s considering, and I read the article headline. “DRAGOON APREHENDED AFTER DECADE LONG MANHUNT, BUT NOT WITHOUT CASUALTIES,” and right below that is this big honkin’ picture of me bent over dragoon, on fire, bleeding like a stuck pig from my side, tit flopping out of where my costume used to be. They didn’t even have the decency to give me one of those censored bars, just one of those microscopic little blurred out star things over my nipple, --, f#$%ing bastard news media reporters. The first line of the actual written part went, “Bold new super hero team in Halcyon City?” and it goes on to talk about the five of us, speculations on who we are and what our super hero names might be, old articles about me and Andrea, Polaris and Doktor Faust I mean, something about some girl in a costume who was seen fleeing the scene of a crime after bodily interrupting a police investigation who they thought was the same person as the bug controlling hero of the day, pondering on whether the six and a half foot tall demon looked like that regularly, if it was some kind of prosthetics used as part of his elaborate costume, or some kind of activated transformation.

They wished me the best in my recovery, of course, all the while capitalizing on my injuries, vulnerability, and nudity, simultaneously hoping that I had died from my injuries so that they could cover the death of Lodestar’s daughter for some extra publicity, f#$%ing assholes. Of course they speculated whether or not Dragoon would survive her injuries which gave me some intense feelings up and down the spectrum. I mean, I hadn’t thought about her or what had become of her up until that point. Last time I saw her she looked pretty f#$%ing dead, and it was at my hands. Guess I’d just forgotten, what with the whole nuttiness of the ensuing eighteen hours. On the other hand, I didn’t know if I was glad she was alive, but I certainly didn’t want to have been responsible for killing another person, either. Squeezed Andrea’s hand hard enough to hurt her while looking at the picture and reading the article, hadn’t realized until she subconsciously squeaked out a protest. Guess she was just looking out for me and didn’t want to say anything, Andrea’s good to me like that, but I loosened my grip and muttered out an apology anyway. Down at the bottom, with like a hundred thousand likes, was a comment from Felitrix’s official account, the one used for correspondence between her and the Guardians and the newspaper. She had basically said that she was incredibly proud of this burgeoning new team, and that had we not acted the Guardians wouldn’t have been there in time to have prevented Dragoon from causing massive damage to life and property in her, likely successful, attempt to escape.

I looked up at Felitrix, and she just looked back down at me, waiting for me to say something. I didn’t know what to say, of course. It had been a hell of a day, I hurt everywhere, had a naked picture of me on the front page of the newspaper, had recently been cut nearly in half, and sewn back up after getting boiling liquid poured into the hole in my chest. I really just wanted Andrea to crawl into the weird rolley bed and hold me, cry for like an hour, the gross sobbing kind of crying, too, with like zero chill or composure, have some morphine dripped into my veins and forget this whole day had happened for a little while. Didn’t matter, though, Felitrix wanted me to say something, the right something, and she always managed to get people to do what she wanted. “We aren’t a team, Anne,” I said to her, dumbly, clearly flailing for something smart to say and just flopping instead. “Of course you are, says so right here in the paper,” she countered, feline smile spreading across her face. She’s pretty, Anne Scarborough, but she has the biggest mouth, and the evilest grin I’ve ever seen. Like, Jagger big mouth. Like, Jagger Face on the Cheshire Cat big mouth. Wonder if that’s a meme somewhere? It should be. “Never met them before in my life,” somehow her grin got even longer, wider, and I was starting to think there might be morphine in my drip after all. “Sure you have, Alex,”.

I thought to myself, “Holy shit, have I?” like a total tool, and squeezed Andrea’s hand, making her squeak again before Anne finished her sentence. “you fought off Dragoon together just a few hours ago… Did really well, too,” she leaned over me and pushed the bookmarks button on her Scarborough Enterprises psyPad Septum, pulled up some website. We were all over the Halcyon City page, the city run one for upcoming events and names of important people next to their business numbers and job titles, and people were actually cheering for us. Like, really applauding us for what we did. I mean, half the comments were about my boob, but most of them were people thanking us for finally doing what the Guardians had failed to do for ten years. One, I read it aloud and showed the screen to Andrea, was this lady, Maria, saying Dragoon had killed her eighteen year old son on the first day of his internship with some indie newspaper company, and that she had night terrors for years thinking about if she might show up and do the same to some other poor woman’s baby, and said that the night before was the first time she had gotten a good night’s sleep since her son, Victor, had passed. She posted his picture along with the text, and it just went nuts. Like a hundred people wrote on it that they remembered Victor and what a good guy he had been, and it just spread from there with hundreds of other people posting pictures and stories of how Dragoon had killed this person and that person. It seriously blew my mind.

I mean, first of all, I’d always known that there were some real baddies out there, but not kidding, thousands of people posted about how Dragoon had killed someone that they loved. It reminded me how in over our heads me and Andrea were in going up against her, but I think it’s where I first realized just how much people really need super heroes. I mean, Dragoon had been doing this shit for a decade, and had hurt who knows how many people, reasonably okay people, in the process. I don’t have an official list from anyone, but I sure as hell saw enough people on that website to feel like what me and Andrea had done was worth the scars. “I always thought you two would wind up on Ken’s team, but I guess it’s time to let that one go, for now,” Anne stood, put one of those canvas book bag briefcases stamped, “Scarborough Enterprises,” all officially on the foldey flap part onto the folding tray on the hospital bed’s left arm rest, collected her tablet, and made her way to the door. “Clearly you five have a lot of good work to do. Keep the other supers on their toes,” and she left, still grinning like some caricature of a person. Andrea said something about that being super awkward, and I nodded, patting the briefcase down with my left hand, still refusing to take my right from Andrea’s, before reaching into the main partition of the unzipped sleeve. There were five phones, Scarborough Enterprises pay as you go psyPhoneGo brand ones, stupid name really, and a blonde wig, for some reason. “Wait, what…?”

"Where is my f#$%ing hair!?!?!?!?"

[Interest Check] Masks- A New Generation

@Liliya

I know a little about 'Ursae'... but lets get to know more about you, 'Alexis'.

Let's just pretend that you couldn't bench press Ethiopia. Your mom is not one of the greatest heroes in present time Halcyon. Your mom isn't well known at all. You are just a beautiful, normal teen attgending Halcyon High. Surely, you have dreams of what you want to be. What are they?

Oh yeah, and on the subject of Halcyon High, it came to my attention (Riley, if you must know) that Halcyon High is kind of ran by cliques. The students there are very image conscious, whether by looks or reputation. Were you aware of this?

And where do you think you stand on the scale of 'coolness' at Halcyon High? Why?

@Joshie

Just Alex, b. Alexis is a name for some bubbly blonde happy person. Assuming my best, well, only friend wasn't stuck into some contract with a demon that's slowly eating her alive, and my mom was just some former Lonestar City cheerleader who came to Halcyon City to try and be an actress or something stupid like that? I mean, I have this idealized vision of myself just having been a happy, normal kid who had friends, went to the mall on the weekends, cried about my boyfriend breaking up with me instead of my friends being in mortal danger. I mean, I see them all the time; the girls who, even when they're unreasonably sad about something, just bounce back because there is no permanence to their troubles. Like one week their world has ended because Robbie Bowman didn't jump to correct them when they said that maybe they could stand to go on a diet in front of his friends, and now they're, "fat and ugly and," and what? Doomed to never get a f#$%ing date with Robbie Bowman? Next week they’re over it and still running off after Robbie, of course, as though nothing ever happened because nothing ever did happen. Nothing permanent, anyway, not the kind of thing supers deal with, and knowing you can’t be that makes it all the more obvious when other kids get to be. In my vision I’d be one of those bitches, just fumbling around in the dark trying to feel wanted, validated, loved by someone, but devoid of any real, serious complications. Really though, I’d be kidding myself if I thought things would be that simple.

Maybe I get it from my mom, but I occasionally think I have a serious martyr complex. Like, even if I was some normal kid I’d find something to get into, some cause, probably something to do with digging wells for poor people in the third world like my dad. I’d still be fumbling in the dark, just like I am now even with super powers, but I’d be overcome by the soul crushing guilt and understanding that if we as a people, as a species, would only just come together, work together to try and make the world a little bit better, lives of actual people could be saved, entire cycles of poverty and death replaced by a reasonable quality of life and health and happiness, instead of being crushed down by the understanding that to act means my eventual death and to not act means the immediate deaths of other people, totally okay people who didn’t have to die. If you haven’t noticed by now, I’m killer fun at parties. Good thing I’m tall and blonde and hot, otherwise there’s no way anyone would put up with my bullshit. I really do think it’s a brain chemistry thing, though. Like I’m not really crazy or anything, I just feel like I for some reason always have to, if I’m flattering myself, “stand in the way of darkness,” or some stupid shit like that. More realistically I think it’s just more comfortable for me when the sky is falling all around me and I feel like me and mine are the only ones who can, or will, do anything about it, even though it hurts us.

We’ve established that I’m not a particularly selfless person. I really do care how other people feel, but I think I care more about how bad I feel when I see people in pain than I care about how they’re feeling. Maybe everyone’s like that, maybe I’m just not a totally okay person, but really I can count on one hand the number of people who I care more about how they’re feeling than about how I feel. Like, my mom has that prayer of St. Someone of Assisi hanging in, like, seriously every room in the estate, right? The one that goes, “seek not to be comforted, but to comfort,” yeah, that was my dad. I don’t think he was religious, we never went to church, and my mom’s one of those Southern Christians who hates gay people and Papists and somehow justifies it against Jesus telling people to love their neighbors, sinners, and Samaritans, however that one goes, but he really lived that prayer. He’d have given you the shirt off his back, and managed to keep a functioning charity and some old money estate going strong without stepping on any little people, basically an impossible feat in modern Halcyon City. He dies, my mom hands financial control over to the supposedly, “proper,” money people, and suddenly the estate lays off its employees, most of whom have been here longer than I’ve been alive, hires illegal immigrants and threatens to call Immigration on them if they aren’t basically slave labor. Meanwhile, Savannah Newman-Hathaway talks on every conservative talk show about how much we need to build a wall and set up a deportation task force.

But I don’t say anything, do anything. I feel bad for them. I could stand up to my mom, but I don’t. This isn’t abnormal, either; you can easily demonize the woman behind the mask of Lodestar for being a total c#$%, which she is, but this is just normal for people with the kind of money dad’s family had. He was one of the only holdouts who wasn’t doing this kind of awful shit, because he was a good person. Three super heroes live in this mansion, while wage-slaves keep up the grounds and robot butlers cook our food, because we can. I mean, it isn’t Andrea’s fault, she doesn’t know what’s going on here, but I do. We actually have bunkhouses on the grounds for the families who work the property, and most of their pay is in room and board. It’s f#$%ing gross. Don’t even know what happened to the groundskeepers I grew up around, the ones that were paid well and taken care of, dad sent their kids to university, the whole deal, and mom just threw them out with the last of dad’s clothes. I mean, at the time I thought she was just going through a lot, I mean I was going through just as much, but I hardly noticed, just kinda in a daze for weeks after he died, you know? But she never brought anyone back on, and if they’ve tried to contact me to figure out what the hell happened I have no idea. At the time I was more concerned with secreting dad’s clothes up from out of the trash and into a box in my closet.

That got dark fast, sorry. I’ll change course, --, have I mentioned I love computers? Like, not as in social media and all that, but the actual construction and programming of hardware and software? I know that I’m the muscle in the group and all, but I’m actually really smart and good at stuff. I tried to open up the robot butlers, see how they tick right? Reprogrammed one to drive, did the software myself, and it actually worked. Not on surface streets, never took the project that far, but it could recognize obstacles I set up on the property and intelligently respond to them. Talk about a science fair winner, assuming I could bring one of these things into school, which of course I can’t. Felitrix was impressed with my code though, real neat, tight, efficient, great stuff, --, for an amateur. I didn’t take it as a slight, I mean she is Scarborough Enterprises, and they are technology. If anyone can call anyone an amateur in that field and not sound like a bitch it’s her, she is modern robotics and supertech. My dad was an engineer, or educated as one anyway, before he was in charge of the Hathaway Charitable Foundation. We used to solder little circuits together, and I could get some pretty cool stuff built up by the time I was around eight. Maybe even in some alternate universe where I wasn’t a super I still would have wound up at Scarborough Enterprises doing some kind of research and development type of stuff, working for Felitrix. I guess I’d have known her as Anne Scarborough in that world, but still.

We used to play chess, too. I got pretty good just before my dad died. We’d sit and talk and play, and he’d tell me all about the different moves and strategies and the history of it all. I never won, unless he let me, and he could never bluff well, too honest maybe. Maybe I just knew him well enough and recognized his tells, or maybe he’d have had an easier time bluffing someone that wasn’t his daughter. I’d get mad if he let me win, throw a fit and all, so I always lost. I learned, though. He was a grandmaster, young one at that. Guess it isn’t hard to get to that point if you’re smart and basically have unlimited resources, but he did have a job and me and other stuff going on, so maybe he was just really good at the game, couldn’t say. Maybe in some other world I’m a chess geek, I’d wear those thick rimmed glasses that were ironic for a while but phased back into being lame real quick, and I’d get open mouthed stares when this six foot tall blonde hottie walked into a chess tournament and actually took games off of fat nerds. I kinda like that alternate universe. In this one, I haven’t touched a board since he died. I mean, unless I actually did join the chess club I don’t have anyone to play against, and if you’re going to play yourself in this day and age may as well just play the computer, right? Besides, it’s one of those memory things. His death doesn’t hurt day to day anymore, why open old wounds?

As to the day to day life of Alex Hathaway, the high school senior, things are in a grey area. It’s busy, I take AP classes and hardly have time to study, so I manage a B- to C+ average just trying to pick everything up on the day I walk into class, I’m on the cheerleading squad because my mom is bribing the dean of students to keep me on the team, even though I’ve made maybe half the games and probably less than half of the practices, and literally no actual cheer events, and I eat lunch alone and on the fly more than half the time. I say, “eat lunch,” because supposedly that’s what high schoolers do at lunch break, more realistically I eat half an apple from a school lunch cart or picked from off of some freshman’s tray while walking hurriedly between classes and the computer lab trying to get homework done that’s due in my next class. I had a date to homecoming, who bailed for some more prestigious prize, which turned into a total disaster thanks to Ian, and wound up dateless, covered in hot fudge and chicken feathers, and all in front of the entire school. I considered Carrieing him right then and there, but didn’t, and am now known as Hot Fudge Sunday. Most people wouldn’t actually say that to my face, I think they think I’m like a weird dangerous person or something, probably because I’m taller than most high school senior guys and eat lunch alone, plus my mom is the crazy Build a Wall chick from the TV, but even so the kids say hello.

I’ve never been disliked, or uninteresting enough for everyone to just ignore me. I think that would have to be worse than what I’m dealing with, the kids that no one says hi to, talks to. I say hi to f#$%ing everybody, which is probably another reason people think I’m weird. Not that I’m terribly nice to people as a rule, I’m not, but I don’t walk by human beings and pretend like they’re not f#$%ing there because they’re what, below my station? Now there are a lot of short, fat, nerdy, friendless freshmen who have asked me out because I say hi to them, which would be awkward if I had time to let it be, but mostly I just turn them down and make it clear that I’ve never even been on a date the way my mom is, and the way she keeps my schedule. I think they understand. Everyone knows what a right wing bitch Savannah Newman-Hathaway is on the TV, I assume they think she’s the most overbearing parent on the planet and just accept that I’ll probably never go out with them or anyone else which, unfortunately for me, at this rate I probably f#$%ing won’t. Hell, at this rate I’ll wind up going to prom with Andrea, if I’m lucky and she doesn’t have a date. I think Riley pays more attention to the game then I do, tries to play it and use it to her advantage. I don’t need leverage over high schoolers, she does, it makes sense that she works her pheromone thing and gets people to like her, offer her the goods and services she needs.

[Interest Check] Masks- A New Generation

So, pre-warning, this is a work in progress, and I really hate posting anything that isn't done. However, because there is a large amount of relationship/team building in this game, I'll go ahead and put this out there in case anyone wants to fill those sections with my character. Just let me know what you're thinking if your interested, and we'll hash something out.

Alex/Polaris

Legacy Name: Ursae Minoris.
Real Name: Alexandria Stella Hathaway.
Look: Woman, White, Trendy Clothing, Predecessor’s Costume, Simple Symbol Insignia.
Abilities: Super Strength, Eye Beams, Flight.

Labels:
Danger -1
Freak 0
Savior +2
Superior +1
Mundane +1

Conditions
❑ Afraid (-2 to directly engage a threat)
❑ Angry (-2 to comfort or support or pierce the mask)
❑ Guilty (-2 to provoke someone or assess the situation)
❑ Hopeless (-2 to unleash your powers)
❑ Insecure (-2 to defend someone or reject others’ influence)

Backstory

• How does the public perceive your legacy?
Well, that depends on who you ask. I mean, besides the people who are philosophically opposed to supers getting away with the crazy shit they do on a daily basis, which would be very illegal for anyone not wearing a costume, in general no one really, “dislikes,” any legacy as long as there haven’t been any villains to come out of it, and Ursae Minoris has no blood related super villains to speak of. So far as how different people and the public look at the family, it’s not like most kids dress up as Lodestar on Halloween. There’s always a few, though, and despite being definitively eclipsed in popularity by Felitrix and Gravitron she’s close to the top. Adults sometimes point to her clearly being a Lonestar City implant to the city, but this is Halcyon, more than half the people here are from somewhere or another, including Gravitron. Of that little group, Felitrix is probably the only really popular local super. Of course Lodestar is still very popular in Lonestar City, saved the daughter of the owner of the football team in a very public fight with some villains who kidnapped her, to ransom her or whatever, the usual bit, and he gave her lifetime season tickets as some kind of thank you gift. I think it was mostly for the publicity, “buy tickets to the games, might just see a super hero there,” you know? Lonestar City isn’t known for having a prominent super hero community, so a local who is directly attached to football’s bound to be popular. Plus, she wears that stupid uniform… Have I mentioned how much I hate the costume?

The story behind the outfit is kind of asinine. Lodestar, Savannah Newman I mean, mom, was actually a cheerleader for the Lonestar City Steers. Not in a super hero capacity, but actually was employed as a regular person as a cheerleader for the team, back before she moved to Halcyon. So she’s at work, there’s a loud bang, and plumes of green and purple chemical smoke just start pouring out from some plant a few miles away and the tv news reporter people on the field start talking about their having been some kind of attack. So Savannah, mom, back before Lodestar was a thing, just walked off the field and responded to the call of supervillany in Lonestar City without having had time to change into something less ridiculous. So here’s this super powered blonde cheerleader, in Lonestar City, punching it out with some eco warrior type who got it in her head to use experimental chemicals to make herself a weapon capable of fighting for her agenda, against the company that made said experimental chemicals. Of course everyone in the city loved it, “evil liberals threaten the mild mannered and well to do businessmen and factory workers of E-Star-Chems Inc., who were only dumping a possibly harmless little bit of chemicals into the ecosystem,” and who comes to save the day? A literal hot blonde cheerleader with super powers. I mean, as you can imagine everyone was just blown away, it stuck, and people just assumed that it was a recognizable enough costume while still remaining somewhat anonymous, and that she must be a fan of the home team, like everyone else in Lonestar City.

The semi-sheer lace veil with all the embroidered constellations and the white gold tiara with the Ursa Minor constellation ornamentation came later, after Lodestar was an established hero and resident of Halcyon City. The first mask was an actual wedding veil. Why? Some tailgaters were celebrating a couple members of their party having just gotten married in the stadium parking lot in their dresses and tuxes, yeah, that’s how important football is in Lonestar City, and mom, Savannah, swiped the bride’s veil off the backseat of their no doubt rental convertible on her way towards that chemical plant. She says it was the first thing she saw that could be used as a mask, but if you ask me, she’s just kind of a bitch and wanted the veil. I mean, I love my mom and all, but I know her too, and that’s just the kind of thing she would do. That woman spent years accusing the hero, who would come to be known as Lodestar, of having taken her wedding veil, too, but most just assumed that the rightly unhappy bride was just some bitch who wanted attention and thought she could get it by accusing the hero of the day of having stolen her property, and just wrote her story off as obvious fiction. Really, mom could have just dropped the thing off on the lady’s front door the next day and left a note, “hey, sorry, had to take the veil so I could go fight that super villain,” instead of letting people think that she was some raving lunatic. Mom kept the veil, too, it’s on a mannequin head in the parlor.

That’s the parlor on the second floor, not the one on ground level. Did I mention the legacy comes with some money? Why does it come with money? Well, there are rumors of illegal gambling rackets, but the money really came from my dad. Our legacy was traditionally working class, which in Lonestar means ranch hands and service sector types. Back when the first Ursa Minor, known more commonly as Little Bear, was working the local stuff in and around Fort Alexandria, and yes I was named for a city named for a fort named for some old Macedonian guy, oh, and the middle name’s an obvious star reference like the rest of the legacy stuff which is in turn a reference to Lonestar, the most any of the supers in the family could afford was a tin roof and porridge, maybe some bacon on Sundays. Those who still remember the first Little Bear, and those aware of the second Little Bear, look at the legacy as paragons of Southwestern cowboy culture. Not the ones who have shoot outs in every other major thoroughfare twice daily on the tv, the ones who actually drove cattle and fought off the occasional bandito and horse thief who spent their lives dirt poor despite keeping the rest of the country in fresh meat. In Halcyon the opposite is true. Lodestar can fly, and yet owns a jet. There’s a hidden landing strip in my backyard, which is itself on acres of land in the heart of Halcyon City. Felitrix and Lodestar together are probably worth more than the lower twenty percent of the entire city’s population, real champions of wealth.

• How does your legacy tie into your reasons for being a hero?
My legacy is my reason for being a hero. I don't mean that in the, "me and my family have super powers, b, so obviously we do this hero thing," kind of way. I mean that I don't actually want this joke of a life. Not like I want to die or any of that emo shit, but I don’t want to be a super anything. The only reason I'm doing this is because I've been drilled since childhood to expect that this was coming, that whole, "with great powers comes great responsibility," yada yada. You know I've literally never been on a date? I'm f#$%ing eighteen. I’m smokin' hot. And sure, I can be kind of a bitch sometimes, whatever, but seriously. No one asks out Savannah Newman-Hathaway’s daughter. Even the people who don’t know that Savannah is Lodestar are turned off by the whole, “hey, isn’t she that super important Southern politico of the weirdly far right always ranting about Mexicans on the TV,” thing, and not being able to have friends over because the house is a computerized death box with twitchy biometrics scanners, and not being able to stay out because the robot butlers make sure that I get home or else they come flying out to find me, death rays blazing and everything in between considered collateral damage? Yeah, that is totally not helping things. Putting on the, “uniform,” did help, though, in its own way. I mean, I can go out for, “work,” now, without the mall being destroyed by flying robots ala mom. It doesn’t change the fact that this is a miserable way to live and, chances are, die.

I’ve watched people, totally reasonably good people, die in this line of work. In the end it really doesn’t matter all that much that they were super strong, super tough, super fast, super smart. Some villain gets it in her head to put you down one day, and, “blammo,”. There you go, super smarts spattered all over the pavement in some filthy, jank little alley somewhere, and your husband and kids are left mourning over the goop, and after they cry about it for a while they stop and realize that they barely even knew you at all to begin with. My dad wasn’t a super, wasn’t even particularly above average. Just some totally normal guy, loved sunsets and beaches, real passionate about digging wells in developing countries to get clean water to poor families living in the muck. He did more good for more people around the world than Gravitron and Lodestar ever did. Sure as hell are never going to see either of them with their hands in the dirt and their boots covered in mud. Yeah, they’ll take a picture holding a shovel at a worksite for some charity to get those donation monies flowing in, but it isn’t the same. Not that you should really compare supers to normal people like that, I know full well that we didn’t ask for these powers and they didn’t ask not to have powers, plus a horde of shovel wielding average humans couldn’t stop a super villain that Gravitron could have knocked down in his sleep, although that would be hilarious to watch and would make a killer pay per view, but that’s hardly the point.

When I first punched through my desk all the way through the floor of the second story and down into the basement just setting down a glass of water, it wasn’t my mom who walked me through the sobs, existential dread and absolute terror about being a total freak. It was my totally normal Joe, every day, regular old dad who had no powers and couldn’t have put a hole through that desk with a hammer if he tried. Where was Lodestar you might ask? She was off fighting some King Kong wannabe on a jungle island in the South Pacific with the other Guardians. You think its awkward having your dad walk you through getting your period the first time? I had that too, mom was doing some political thing in the Midwest somewhere that time, and in retrospect I can guaren-f#$%ing-tee you that it isn’t anywhere near as shitty as having a normie try to tell you that there’s nothing wrong with accidentally causing thousands of dollars in damage to the house because your super powers are developing, and that’s what, perfectly normal for a girl your age? Thanks dad, but no, I’m not stupid and I’m well aware that being able to bench the combined weight of the entire varsity football team is not normal for a girl, or woman for that matter, of any age. Even worse, it wasn’t until I was about fifteen or so that I realized it hadn’t been his fault for trying, and failing, to console me, but that this was something me and my super powered mother should have discussed, were she around to have had the conversation.

But it all comes back to the same thing. Being a super hero means that you aren’t, can’t be around to deal with the normal stuff that comes up with your family. The good times, the bad times, the just kinda okay times, you spend off fighting the woes of the world. It’s like having a parent who’s a soldier, except they’re leaving a box in your closet that will one day open unexpectedly and drop a loaded gun in your lap with no safety and a trigger that’s directly attached to your nervous system. Oh, and there isn’t a manual or, like, classes or whatever to teach you how to respond to what’s happening when it invariably comes, and your literally incapable of knowing that your carrying the thing before or after it’s put in your hand. Like, one minute you might be stronger than average, maybe even a lot more than average, but not anywhere near strong enough to cause serious damage to anyone unless you were really trying to, and the next a high five might take the other chick’s arm off without you realizing what was happening until after it was over and done with, no take backs. Plus, you can’t put the damn thing down, it’s just there, attached to you like some parasite that didn’t apparently exist one day and the next it’s just attached to your brain stem, never to go away, and all you can do about it is learn to control it and use it to beat up on super villains. I couldn’t have told you that before it actually happened to me, though, and normies couldn’t understand.

Relationships

You trust Andrea/Doktor Faust and told her an important secret of your legacy.
Maybe everyone trusts someone, even in this line of work, where secrets are more dangerous then bullets and, keep in mind that this is coming from a chick who can punch through a cement wall, in this case knowledge really is power. I’m no different, I have no desire to die or get maimed or whatever, and I hate that my lineage has put me in a situation where I have no choice but to be a soldier in some endless, pointless series of battles until they eventually kill me, but if I could make a deal with Mephistopheles to trade my right arm for Andrea’s life I would. I wouldn’t tell her that, of course, certainly not in anything even close to those exact words, seriously I have to call her a bitch with the same breath on the rare occasion that I tell her I care about her, but I would. Lodestar, I mean Savannah, mom, and the former Doctor Faust were teammates, I’ve known Andrea since we were babies who didn’t know supers from cats. Her family secret is hardly secret to anyone even remotely attached to the former Doktor Faust in a professional capacity, and I remember when she realized that not only was her dad going to die, but that she would die. Not like, in eighty years, when she’s old, broken, crotchety and well and ready to move on to whatever comes next, but when she was reasonably young, healthy, happy, and it wouldn’t be pleasant going. It’s gotta be hard enough to swallow that pill for yourself, but to know that you’re leaving it for your daughter? It was awful.

Andrea really gets what this is all about. Whether or not she feels the same way as I do about supers and the whole lifestyle, as far as I’m concerned, me and the Doktor share a common bond, while the others, well… Swarm is a bratty kid playing at being a superhero, and Riley is even worse; some idiot alien who got lost on a foreign world who, were it not for the protection of the group and super heroes in general would have been picked up by some evil organization or another by now. No shortage in Halcyon City of super villains looking either to experiment on her to discover the genetic secrets of her shapeshifting, or mold her into a weapon for their own crazy purposes, maybe a doomsday cult looking to send a message to the people of her home world by publically killing her in the hopes of inciting some war of the worlds just to keep things interesting. Hell, all it would take is some wealthy collector of rare and exotic aliens to learn about her existence and the next thing you know she’s in a cage in some creepy take on a zoo. Andrea gets that this isn’t a game, this is real life and being a hero is always dangerous, quite often terrifying, and will get you killed in the end. Who could understand that better than her, after all? She’s going to die, sooner or later, specifically because of the same malevolent source from which her powers derive. How could the others understand what it actually means to be a superhero, the actual cost that this life truly demands?

Of course I told Andrea that my dad, Ron Hathaway, the mild mannered executive of the Hathaway charitable foundation, wasn’t actually my dad. Like, he was great and the best dad you could ask for, but I mean in the bio sense. My father, the biological one, as it turns out, is in fact Gravitron. Scandalous, to be sure, but that’s so often how things go in this line of work. Of course, there were always rumors that mom, Lodestar, and Gravitron had something going on between them other than simply being members of the Guardians of Halcyon City, but there was never anything definitive to point to and it was for the most part simply ignored by the public at large. After all, Gravitron and Felitrix were publically known to be married at that point, and other than happening to have saved one another’s lives on multiple occasions and having shown some degree of concern and feeling for one another when the other was injured or in danger there was nothing to really suggest that there was anything going on between the two. I mean, there were also rumors that Lodestar was a lesbian, that she was an alien, and that her and Felitrix ran an illegal gambling ring to fill their personal pocketbooks on the side. Mostly people just like to talk about supers. We’re prevalent in the public eye, but lead very private personal lives as a matter of necessity, which leads to speculation and then to rumor, it’s simple human nature. At the end of the day most conclude, however, that members of teams care when one another are in danger, after all.

Then again, usually they don’t care in the kind of way where they happen to produce a child together, while both are married to other people, and especially when one is married to a member of the same team. According to my mom, Gravitron doesn’t know. It's probably true, too, or at least if Gravitron knows he hasn't told his son, the legitimate one by Felitrix, who has been trying to pick up on me since I first developed boobs. Which, I mean, is really just gross, but it isn’t Ken’s fault. Ken, my half-brother I guess though it feels alien thinking it, is the sweetest guy, and I hate feeling like I’m the asshole for treating him like some weirdo no one knows showing up to the office Christmas party and eating all the nachos. He doesn’t deserve it, but I don’t really know what to do about any of it. I can’t exactly just tell him he’s my brother from another mother. I had never told anyone before Andrea, hadn’t even known myself until after my father, the one who raised me and that I had obviously presumed to have been my biological father, had died and my mother eventually told me the truth. Hard to say why I told Andrea in the first place, but it felt good to talk about it. Then again, it left another human being holding a very big secret that would cause real world ripples directly affecting me and my mother should it ever get out. Besides, she has her own problems to worry about, and I hardly needed to compound it all by venting my shit on her.

Influence
You’re a part of this team, for better or worse, and you care what they think. Give Influence to all of your teammates

Legacy Moves
❑ Never give up, never surrender: When you take a powerful blow from someone with far greater power than you, use this move instead of the basic move. Roll + Savior. On a hit, you stand strong and choose one. On a 7-9, mark a condition.
- you get an opportunity or opening against your attacker
- you rally from the hit, and it inspires the team; add 1 Team to the pool
- you keep your attacker’s attention
On a miss, you go down hard but leave your opponent off balance and vulnerable.

❑ Symbol of authority: When you give an NPC an order based on authority they recognize, roll + Savior. On a hit, they choose one:
- do what you say
- get out of your way
- attack you at a disadvantage
- freeze
On a 10+, you also take +1 forward against them. On a miss, they do as they please and you take -1 forward against them.

Legacy
Lodestar is still active and prominent in the city.
Ursa Minor (Little Bear) the First is retired and quite judgmental.
Charles Newman who would be the third Little Bear is the next possible member of your legacy.

Whenever time passes, roll + Savior to see how the members of your legacy feel or react to your most recent exploits. Before rolling, ask the other players to answer these questions about your performance. Take -1 to the roll for each “no” answer:
- have you been upholding the traditions of your legacy?
- have you maintained the image of your legacy?
- have you made the other members of your legacy proud?
On a hit, one of them offers you meaningful encouragement, an opportunity, or an advantage. On a 7-9, another is upset with your most recent actions, and will make their displeasure known. On a miss, something you did stirred up the hornet’s nest—expect several members of your legacy to meddle with your life.

Team Moves
When you share a triumphant celebration with someone, tell them whether you see them as an equal. If you do, give them Influence over you and mark potential. If you don’t, shift Superior up and any other Label down. When you share a vulnerability or weakness with someone, tell them a secret about your legacy (including your own true feelings about it) to clear a condition and give them Influence over you.

Potential >>>>❑ >>>>❑ >>>>❑ >>>>❑ >>>>❑
Every time you roll a miss on a move, mark potential.

Advancement
When you fill your potential track, you advance. Choose from the list below.
❑ Take another move from your playbook
❑ Take another move from your playbook
❑ Take a move from another playbook
❑ Someone permanently loses Influence over you; add +1 to a Label
❑ Rearrange your Labels as you choose, and add +1 to a Label
❑ Unlock your Moment of Truth
❑ Take a Sanctuary from the Doomed playbook
❑ Unlock the remaining two powers of your suite

When you’ve taken five advances from the top list, you can take advances from the list below.
❑ Unlock your Moment of Truth after you’ve used it once
❑ Change playbooks
❑ Take an adult move
❑ Take an adult move
❑ Lock a Label, and add +1 to a Label of your choice
❑ Retire from the life or become a paragon of the city

FACE FISTED: Billuh Vs. Gonad

Despite the roar of the atmosphere giving way for the two large masses which were speeding down, down, quickly and more so still, through its web-like folds and yet seemingly picking up the pace despite what resistance the air should have forced upon them, and the reverberations of the chorus of Valkyries which had grown exponentially louder and more profoundly visceral with each inch the Gnome traveled toward his certain death, a calm stillness overcame his being, a silence sharp as any blade or broken glass cutting its invisible path to what remained of Billuh’s mechanical auditory system. Soon he would be feasting, drinking, doing battle with the greatest warriors to have ever lived --, who’s to say, perhaps he would even meet someone who could explain what the primordial force of sheer manly brutality which had brought him back from the dead was and why it had chosen him of all the warriors to have ever lived? Why shouldn’t he be calm and still, a worthy challenge is all he had sought out in life and dying with the knowledge that he had finally found an opponent who was every bit the warrior he was while engaged in the combat which he so loved is the greatest of deaths Billuh could have hoped for.

“Hrah! A Gnome’s name be Billuh Bob. Billuh Bob Gnome remember mighty giant Gonad well, when together we feast ‘n drank ‘n do glorious battle in Great Mead Hall!!” Time seemed to slow to a crawl in this, the last moment of the life of Billuh Bob Gnome. Should it have been a moment spent in reflection, or wonder of what adventures and pleasures the next world might stand to offer, of regrets over things not said or done in life that were now too late to rectify or accomplish, perhaps even a moment spent in prayer to the All Maker the Gnome would soon stand before as one of the chosen few warriors of the Last Battle? Maybe. Instead the moment was spent in the complete stillness of satisfied contentment, just as one might sit in an armchair sipping at a tumbler of a strangely named though pleasingly strong foreign spirit or flagon of good ‘ole Gnomish ale after a long, enjoyably tiring and particularly productive day, clear and empty minded, and oddly happy with the way things had worked out. Sure, he was going to die, no way out of that now, but with this death he would seal his name in the tales of those few who escaped from the collapsed arena, the saga of the epic battle of Gonad the Barbarian and Billuh Bob Gnome would be told throughout the ages.

This moment in and of itself wasn’t all it seemed, however, something was clearly wrong here. Though Billuh had no eyes with which to see, the feeling --, no, the knowledge that the world had stopped around him was as plain as though he was watching his descent cease in mid-air through some trick of witchcraft. This gave the otherwise stalwart Gnome a sudden start, the instantaneous soul crushing understanding that not only had he been passed over by the Valkyries after being crushed into what must have amounted to a gooey, metallic pancake on the solid stone floor of the cavern despite having fought an epic battle against a titan of an opponent, but that yet again he would remain in this cold, dark, lonely void, blind and deaf, unable to quantify the passage of time and left to drift aimlessly for eternity. Something between a scream and a shuttering moan welled up in Billuh’s heaving chest, though no sound came forth from his lips --, mute as well. He had been returned just where he had left off, senseless but for the conscious awareness that he was without ability to interact with anything, even the ones and zeros of the Other would never again come to interact with him, it had died as the Gnome had been returned to life. Billuh was in Hell.

Perhaps the Gnome should have spent his last moment of life praying. The afterlife in Valhalla he had imagined would be his, if only because of the obvious interest the Valkyries had shown in this, his last battle, couldn’t be any more different then the void hell he had wandered and drifted through for so many sleepless years up until this point, and would so again for the rest of eternity. Had this all been a fever dream? Had any of it been real? Would he truly once more be condemned to this unchanging, unwavering, unflinching torture? That is to say, until something did change. Visions of monstrous snakes and fire came before Billuh’s mind’s eye, a great battle looming in the not so distant future, creeping, crawling, carnivorous things skulking and lurking in the deep, dark recesses awaiting the dread war horns which announced the beginning of the great battle, the last battle. One in which Billuh as well as Gonad would do battle together against the pervading darkness before the end of everything, standing high atop a snow peaked mountain in a land foreign to Billuh alongside seven other figures, basked in the gleaming light of the Valkyries who watched on sullenly above them awaiting their final collection of souls, the only light to be found in the darkness with exception of the seemingly world consuming fire, and clothed only in glorious facial hair and the burning embrace of the Beardforce which united their number.

He wasn’t dead, not yet, anyway. For a few more fleeting moments Billuh had something to do, a divine calling that must be accomplished and would be rewarded by ascending to the Great Hall of the All Maker. This is why he had been returned, called forth from the clutches of the void nothingness of death by the Beardforce. He could see it all clearly now, as though suddenly something of a seer or oracle, not flashes of the life he had lived which many of those who brush up against death later speak of having witnessed, but an open eyed understanding of what was to come, the true purpose behind these seemingly random happenstance events. Billuh could neither read nor write well enough to record what he saw, and there certainly wasn’t time to discuss any of it with anyone who could before his death --, but even if he could have, it wouldn’t matter, wouldn’t change anything. It was foretold, would come to pass with or without anyone’s prior knowledge. Having been given the chance, however, he would inform the opponent who had featured so prevalently in the kaleidoscopic tableau of disparate images forcing their way to the forefront of Billuh’s mind as though drawn to him in the same manner as the Beardforce had been, primal, powerful, protruding in its call.

“All Maker sees far, has shown Billuh. Not join Billuh nor Baldor or the other great warriors this day shall mighty Gonad. Great battle first must Gonad face. Big Snake returns to Mountain of Trolls. Big Snake brings Big Family, Big Family brings Big Fire, Last Fire. Gonad must return, train students in manly way of Beard. Only when Beardlords of Beardhold living and dead number eight and one shall Last Battle be fought. Gonad will grasp Big Wolf by fang and be eaten, but Twilight of Gonad will not come until Gonad in turn eat Big Wolf. Gonad reunite with friend Baldor only then, feast and drink and fight in Great Mead Hall with other warriors for a time before Last Battle, Last Fire, at Hall of Beardlords during last days of May. Horn important, blow must son of Baldor when ninth Beardlord of Beardhold is called and Beardlords return to three once more, only son of Baldor blow horn and only then, as Last Fire consumes Fremennik and all hope fade away and burns to ash in fires of Geilinor at End of Tingy-tings. Place horn in Hall of Beardlords must Gonad, there must it be when son of Baldor need it, protect it must Gonad and students of the way of the Beard or Big Snake will devour Gielinor,”

Billuh was without sight save for the visions flashing before his eyes, but Gonad was not. He would see that everything had, for a few brief moments, actually stopped. Drips and drops of water from the cavern walls, spurts of blood, bits of bone and mechanical scrap which had come undone and been forcibly removed during their altercation having fallen from body toward solid earth and yet were left hanging in the air, the combatants bodies held together and seemingly weightless along with the rest of the falling garbage, and all besides the Gnome’s premonition and Gonad’s own voice had fallen completely silent. This was not the silence of a crisp, chill autumn morning in a hunting cabin in the country somewhere, far removed from large human settlements and in such sense seemingly silent, but that of a windless, sunless forest whose fauna had detected a nearby predator and ceased all those noisy bodily functions, and who needs those anyway, in a desperate attempt not to be the first to get picked off. Images of fire flashed across what remained of Billuh’s one eye plainly visible for all so interested to see, though it would be unlikely that Gonad would notice --, he could plainly see why the world had forgotten to enforce such arcane notions as gravity and the laws of physics.

The light was soft, warm, embracing --, that of a crackling hearth and spitting pit roast after hiking twelve miles through a fierce blizzard wet, weak and weary on one’s way back home, though the faint whisper of a deep, pervading melancholy was unmistakable, as though the light fully possessed the knowledge that though returned home it was less a member of the party, lost somewhere along the way and left in the snow, the both of you now alone. The two Beardlords fighting in this cavern, however, were not alone. A being floated alongside them, nearly as large as Gonad, and a whole hell of a lot prettier --, seven feet tall, hair the color of soft gold worn down and resting at the shoulders in length, and piercing eyes of glacial ice radiating with the same soft glow as filled the rest of the cavern, wearing a nearly sheer white dress with grey trim pinned with a gold and emerald brooch over the right shoulder and a winged helmet the color of silvery blue beveled steel, a pattern etched and gilded in gold with a diamond shaped blue stone set at the center brow, carrying a massive green hefted spear tipped with a blade of the same color as the helmet, along with soft brown leather sandals.

The Fremennik may well have recognized her, if only from the pictures, had perhaps even come across her at one time or another. This was Eir, whether Valkyrie or Goddess it could not be said, but she was imposing enough a celestial, spiritual being to have apparently stopped time to allow Billuh to deliver his premonition to Gonad. The awe inspiring appearance of such a being on the mortal coil could not be understated, of course, and no doubt may very well have left the Fremennik speechless. How often does such a creature deem it necessary to personally come before mortals before their deaths, even such mortals as the Beardlords? Once, twice, a dozen times throughout the entire known history of the world? As Billuh finished speaking the soft glow began to gently recede, and with it Eir from Gonad’s view as time and the natural order slowly returned to their proper functions, the darkness of the cavern alongside downward momentum returning slowly as the visage of the Divinity equally slowly grew increasingly transparent, fading away just as she had so suddenly appeared and watching, waiting, allowing a few moments for Gonad to respond to Billuh or perhaps say something to her, though for no action that would take any longer, until the pair came to within an inch of the ground below and her image faded entirely save for what appeared to be the faint outline of an outstretched hand.

It was snowing, not the fierce blizzard of a winter storm but the still, windless drifts of a high peaked mountain top in the later half of spring time, without any of the belligerent fury of the earlier months but not yet having quite given up on the last fleeting snowfalls before the melting truly began in earnest. A Great Hall stood out no more than fifty feet away, though it didn’t appear to be occupied, or nearly so magnanimous as something befitting the hall of the All Maker. Gonad no doubt would recognize that this was somewhere he had been before, and not where he could have expected even three seconds ago to wind up. This was Beardhalla, or what was left of the place. If anyone had been alive inside, they were no longer. The structure itself was half smashed, and the damage appeared to have been done very recently, images of snakes devouring their own tails in a backdrop of flames were painted on every exterior wall in blood. It had been tossed by the Snake Cult, clearly they had been looking for something. He no doubt would also realize that, though still stark naked he was completely without injury, as though nothing of the epic battle which had just taken place had been anything but the fever dream of a great warrior wishing for an opponent who could present him a legitimate challenge. Nothing, that is, but for what lay at his feet.

The beaten, mangled, and broken body of Billuh Bob Gnome lay in the snow, slowly, steadily being buried underneath the falling drifts. Though Gonad appeared to have escaped the cavern without injury, it was clear that Billuh had not been so lucky --, the Gnome hadn’t been healed of his metallic wounds, and from what it appeared had indeed hit the cavern floor at full force without his barbarian opponent in tow. What was left was something akin to metal scrap that had been put into a furnace and only lightly stamped out a single time, not yet fit for properly recycling into new parts. There was no flesh left on the steel of his endoskeleton, and of the biological tissue which had been only the mighty golden beard remained collecting snowflakes on the ground and surprisingly neither burned to smithereens or lost along the way. The engine that was his heart was exposed, cut cleanly into two pieces, and subsequently smashed as if by a car crusher. The long protrusion which housed Billuh’s artificial brain that had been covered by his conical leather hat seemed to be in good repair, however. It had probably been severed early, cushioned from the worst of the force by his torso and simply bounced off of the cavern floor. The tip and mouth of the protrusion were both open and hollow, and especially wrapped in leather did seem to resemble a horn.

FACE FISTED: Billuh Vs. Gonad

Steel holds many advantages over flesh, this is no large secret. Far more difficult to damage let alone destroy if forged properly, capable of withstanding forces that would crush something of similar weight were it made of your average biological tissue, and generally very capable of surviving repeated exposure to blows while taking little to no damage outright, save for the occasional surface scratch or dent. This barbarian had outright drop kicked conventional wisdom through three feet of concrete when he decided to tear through metal with naught but his bare hands and the will to do as such. The Gnome’s body was ravaged, almost all of his limbs missing or severely damaged, his head turned to scrap and tossed about every which way, much of his hardware clipped and torn into solitary bits of wire and silicone. Without some form of divine intervention Billuh would not be leaving this cave, though he wasn’t keen on allowing his opponent to simply walk away from this with a few broken ribs and stubby arms. He couldn’t see, but in a cavern this wouldn’t be so much an issue as it may have been outside --, not with what he had planned for his final, desperate attempt at delivering two souls rather than one to the Valkyries this day.

Billuh had felt his opponent freeze up after his blow had landed upon him, temporarily locked into a vice though otherwise unmoving, likely unaware of his surroundings if but for a fleeting second. Wrapping his one remaining leg around the giant’s torso, in so much as such a disproportionately small creature could manage, and counting on his opponents vice to hold the two locked together in mid-air despite the Gnome’s intentions. Billuh’s steam ports along the right hand side of his torso burst forth, in an attempt to flip the two and send them spiraling through the air, and then what he assumed was down, toward the earth at rapidly increasing speeds. Whether or not Billuh had actually sent them toward the ground it hardly mattered, in every direction there was a significant amount of solid rock and, even if they were inadvertently heading back the way they came literal tons of concrete. The Beardforce would presumably serve as it had before to offer seemingly supernatural degrees of speed to the two combatant’s descent, as if compelling the air to offer no resistance and, if anything, force the combatants further, faster, propelling them towards some form of brutally solid surface somewhere close by upon which, if Billuh’s attempt were not stopped, the two would crash at incredible speed, head first.

Gonad may well be able to rend steel with brute strength and nothing else, send his opponent crashing at speed through cement and solid rock, capable even of preforming seemingly impossible feats of aerial combat and acrobatics that for all intents and purposes defied the laws of physics by simple merit of being unaware of such laws and paying them no heed, but could he survive hitting the ground at speeds approaching those small aircraft would be envious of head first? Billuh almost certainly could not, even though if everything went as he intended the human, being far larger, would probably hit first, somewhat cushioning the smaller combatant’s blow to some degree. It wouldn’t matter. This kind of impact could pancake a semi --, what chance would a half ruined robot have of avoiding the same fate? Of course, if his opponent regained his senses he might well release his vice over the Gnome in time to avoid the worst of the collision, or even stop it outright through some clever physical maneuver fashioned to remove the speeding, steam spitting robot from his person before reaching speed of any true importance. It was still the best chance, the only chance really, for the Gnome to avoid becoming the only soul leaving this cavern today, and he was taking it. “HRAH!! BILLUH BOB GNOME!!”

FACE FISTED: Billuh Vs. Gonad

Billuh could feel something occurring within his mental faculties, those of the automaton rather than of the essence or soul which now served to drive him. What this meant he could not say with certainty, but as the massive forearm of his human opponent crashed like a battery powered jackhammer again and again against the exposed steel of his robotic skull as he was being towed along and held in a vice like grip at the neck and head, he was keenly aware that the metal was bending, warping, coming undone against the massive forces being released upon it. What was this man? To be able to bend and warp steel with his bare hands, well, the stubs of his forearms anyway, and seemingly without experiencing what must amount to some of the worst physical pain known to biological entities? No doubt the bone he was striking the Gnome with had long since shattered in a thousand pieces as if glass, the flesh and muscle adorning it liquified under the extreme pressure of repeated blows to solid steel at ludicrous speed, ligaments and tendons snapped and curled like slinkies once held taught and now left to their own devices, and yet still he persisted in clobbering the Gnome, presumably until there was nothing left of him.

A sharp, wrenching sound echoed off of the cavern walls with each blow, the visceral biting of tearing metal, each utterance of which further disfigured the Gnome’s face and head until it was more ingot than orb in shape, entire chunks being ripped off and sent flying after the first few blows as if they were wood or brittle plastic being struck with an axe or hammer rather than solid steel met by organic tissue. Though he did not feel pain, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that the message being sent from his internal faux electronics and hardware meant something along the lines of, "something had broken," and the system was not long for this world should it continue to be forced to undergo such extreme duress. “Screech!!” another blow, or so the Gnome assumed. He hadn’t seen it. His one remaining eye blinked off. Whether it had been removed under the repeated pressure, or whatever served as the mechanical equivalent of an ocular nerve had been damaged Billuh had no clue, but he was keenly aware that he could no longer see. “Errr --, pthhunk, clang!!” another blow, another chunk of head tossed away somewhere into the dark recesses of the underground tunnel to take its place with the rest of the bones.

Though still conscious, Billuh felt his grasp over his physical and mental capacities quickly fading, increasingly feeling as though he were an outside spectator than an active participant in the carnage. The chorus of a thousand Valkyries cascaded over his entire being, far more fanfare than he had been met with the first time he died. Perhaps this is why he had been allowed to return, the renowned warriors and deific lords in their great halls in the next world had wanted to give him a second chance to prove himself a warrior worthy of dining and doing battle in their company, a glorious placement one who had died of an excess of food and drink simply could not hope to attain. Whatever the reason, there was one more thing to be done before joining the rest of the dead wherever he might be heading. The Gnome did not telegraph his blow, didn’t wind up or do anything to increase his output of force --, he didn’t need to. The steam vents on his one remaining leg opened up once more and, given his small stature and Gonad’s hold over him, he sent one final strike toward Gonad’s heart, with all the power steam and the Beardforce could muster him. It might not kill his opponent, might not burst his heart or send him into cardiac arrest, but if he didn’t manage to do something about it perhaps it was the only thing that could give a titan such as Gonad a moment of pause.