Liliya

MASKS- A New Generation

So I was thinking about this, and as much as Alex thinks she's super suave and her secret identity is secret, literally everyone on the team knows Polaris is Alex Hathaway. Ian, Ian's mother, Andrea, Malcolm, Hana, and Riley all have a reason to have put it together, and she's just totally oblivious, thinking no one but her little group know. ^^

MASKS- A New Generation

Well, yeah, but I think it's bugs being all tiny and crawly that offends Alex. Like, I don't think she'd actually freak out about a really large bug, but many little bugs? She'd burn them up with her laser eyes, or fly away all dramatically. I bet she's probably actually screamed publically in front of the group at the sight of Swarm's masses of bugs on multiple occasions, like all high pitched and zero chill, too.

MASKS- A New Generation

@Grey
Network Journal, 51

"Found a bug in my room today. As in, literally bug. Had to dispose of. Getting rusty. Must remember. She has eyes everywhere. Have to keep vigilant. Haven't slept for three days now. Bugs are watching."

@Tengri

This just should be a thing. All of us are super paranoid of bugs, courtesy of Swarm. Like, Alex is afraid of bugs anyway, but now every fly is a spy! :o

MASKS- A New Generation

But I already had, like three thousand words on the Dragoon thing. ^^ We're the Dragoonslayers!

Dragoon

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!?!?!?!?"

Seriously though, we could go with this ant invasion and either scrap Dragoon or just have that be something that happened at a different time, either way.

[Interest Check] Masks- A New Generation

I'm sure we know each other (and if Ermine's cool with it, you should know Andrea, too). Like usually no one would know Alex's secret identity, but all the kids associated with the Guardians know each other and have worked together. We even have an app. ^^

[Interest Check] Masks- A New Generation

Also, I don't think I've put this out there, but Alex is half-alien. Like, only Andrea and Alex's mom know that, but her actual bio dad is Gravitron who is some superman-type alien. Now that I think about it, I probably should have mentioned something about that before now, seems reasonably important.

The only person Alex seems to care about at all besides Riley (the human), and Andrea is Ian, who coincidentally is Riley's hang out buddy. This shit just writes itself. I mean, it could all just as easily be happenstance coincidence, but it seems awfully easy to connect the dots all the way back from Riley choosing to stay on Earth up to the modern day and difficulty establishing just what it is she wants to look like if it all boils down to she's trying to impress Alex, and hasn't figured out how to do that yet. ^^ I mean, maybe I'm just an attention whore, but it seems like it could totally work. Either way, if you're interested in pursuing that let me know. I'm also going to bed, though, so night all that are still up.

EDIT: One more thing, how do we actually identify Riley? Like, thinking about the possibility that she literally just followed Alex around and changed appearances to keep Alex from noticing got me to thinking. If my friend, uh, let's call this human person Taylor, right? Well, if my friend Taylor was a dark, tall guy yesterday, and today walks in as a short blonde girl, I wouldn't just be like, "Hey Taylor!" I mean, no, this chick would walk up to me and start talking and I'd be like, "Do I know you?"

EDIT EDIT: Okay, I swear I'm going to go to bed at some point, but what if courtship on Riley's homeworld is literally this? They have no pre-established gender or appearance, but at some point decide they like someone, follow them around, get as close as possible to them (as in inserting themselves into the other person's life) and go through this elaborate ritual dance type of thing trying to find a form that's pleasing to the other? I mean, that just seems like it should be a thing somewhere. It even plays into the whole Masks theme of self discovery and how much your view of yourself is based on that of others. Like, literally they discover what their biological sex/gender/whatever is based on finding the malleable meat suit piloting brain they like, and then the two just try out different shapes until they find one mutually pleasing to the other, and then that's just who they are from then on. I mean, they probably continue to shapeshift for combat and survival purposes, but then that just is their default appearance, and they have their mate based on what each other finally settled on based on what the other was looking for. It's even kind of twisted and romantic. In a creepy kinda way, but still. Alex for whatever weird reason just is already what Riley was looking for, and so now she's just doing her side of the dance trying to get to the point that she thinks Alex wants her to be.

I bet Riley didn't even run away from her bus in this potential universe, like she just straight up told her teachers that she found her courtship partner, and in their culture that's just that; she found the one, her one, and that's sacred, now she has to do what she has to do to make it work.

EDIT EDIT EDIT: @Hyper Harlequin Maybe I'm just not going to bed. So, Riley's people are aquatic, right? Well I doubt they have a whole lot of long, drawn out conversations. Obviously they're capable (at least in human form) of speech, but what if their primary ways of communication in their natural habitat are body language and pheromones? Like, smell is super important to them, it's their version of what speech is to humans, and even beyond that it's how they identify who they want in a partner. So basically, this field trip is way more than just that (after all, they just as easily could have watched a Magic School Bus). It is a way for them to explore different places in person, all with an either implicit or at least understood idea that they do this when they reach sexual maturity with the express purpose of looking for a mate. They have to go in person because they're literally looking for someone whose natural smell and pheromones match what the particular alien person is looking for. It all makes sense, too. I mean, why do we have sexes before reaching maturity? For humans, it's because we can't radically change our forms, but for shapeshifters? There would be no reason they would have a biological sex until they reached sexual maturity, found a mate, and worked it out so that they found some form of mutually acceptable form. I dunno, but I'm super stoked on the idea. If you don't want to do it of course we don't have to, but if not I'm totally using it for some other project down the line; I love this idea.

[Interest Check] Masks- A New Generation

@Liliya
"even doing questionable shit she wouldn’t be worth enough to pay for a place to live"
Entschuldigen sie? She can actually become a client's wildest sexual fantasy and has rampant sexual pheromones, how can she not actually get 2k a month for sexy times? Even if she was posing as a human and not a shapeshifty alien, she could basically be an entire catalogue of girls for her clients' choosing! I'm not saying, however, that this is a plausible outcome since she'd likely not be aware that prostitution would be an option. Just had to get that rant off my chest xD

Technically, Alex is an option. And with this angle being opened, it would actually be very interesting if Alex was jealous about Riley roping in someone she was interested in just for Riley to be quietly fawning after her. But how much would Alex actually like her?

@Raijinslayer
We can go with the confusing little sister/brother/other angle. It just makes the inevitable "How does the penis work?" talk that much more amazing ^~^

@Hyper Harlequin

Alex meant, like, questionably legal paperless odd jobs, I don't think she'd have considered prostitution as a reasonable career path (I mean, she isn't dumb, but I seriously doubt some rich kid who's mom is a conservative talk show politico from Dallas, Texas thinks that way). That's what I was thinking, like in some roundabout way Riley got this guy (who coincidentally is also named Riley) fawning after her because she thought to herself, "I like Alex, and I want Alex to like me. Alex likes this Riley human, and I like Alex, so why not get him to like me? That's sure to make Alex like me!"

Now I have this whole alternate universe idea in my mind where Riley's on her field trip, goes to Halcyon High with the rest of her alien class, sees Alex and is like, "I like that human!" and seriously follows her, taking different faces and shapes (body types, I mean) to stay hidden, for, like weeks. So she eventually misses the space bus, and sticks around as this alien super, does what she needs to do, and rigs the system to wind up as close to Alex as possible. Sees that Alex likes this Riley human, so she takes that name. After that doesn't work she switches around trying to find some form to see if it gets Alex to like her (because, after all, she sees that Alex clearly likes both this Riley human and this Andrea human, so why would she naturally pick either gender) and this whole time she's just been trying to get Alex to realize (in her alien way) that she wants her.

[Interest Check] Masks- A New Generation

@Raijinslayer
How does Riley's alien face/plant water equal holy water? o~o
Edit: I probably missed something, hence the confusion ^///^

@Liliya
Depends on who's the most receptive to her upbeat, chaotic, weird bullshit. But Ian's already one of the two connections and is already considered quite receptive to it.

@Hyper Harlequin

I don't think it should be Ian. I mean, do whatever, but I love the idea that he's supposedly this total lust demon incubus thing, but literally none of the girls on the team seem to pay his, "charms," any mind.

@Raijinslayer Is Ian into Riley? Like, does it bother him that she's a guy half the time?

Although, I had an idea at one point that Riley totally stole the guy that Alex has been crushing on since she was five. I never put it out, but I still have it somewhere...

The rest of those idiots, though… I didn’t, I really didn’t care about any of them. I never set out to try to care about any of them, either. I don’t treat them well. I mean, I literally live in a mansion that they’ve never seen, and probably never will. I’m sure as shit not purposefully putting myself, Andrea and my mother along with who knows who else in danger by giving any of them any information about my actual identity. I know Riley is homeless. She doesn’t say anything, at least not to me, but it isn’t all that hard to see through her. I’m not Felitrix smart, but I’m not stupid. She’s an alien castaway, obviously doesn’t have a job lacking papers, and even with that skeevy pheromone thing I doubt she’s conned anyone into letting her live at their home in Halcyon City of all places rent free. Apartments here cost two thousand double dollars a month for a person sized tube, even doing questionable shit she wouldn’t be worth enough to pay for a place to live. My mom owns three properties and, using shell companies for obvious security reasons, the Guardians have a network of safe houses, apartments, armories, hangers, even a warehouse with one of those diving tank pools that super soldiers use to train for open ocean ops. I could have her on a monthly stipend and put her up in a Guardian apartment tomorrow just on the basis of her being a super on a team I belong to, mom loves throwing money my way to make herself feel better about never being around, but I choose not to.

Why? Well, first of all, I don’t want her or anyone else on the team for that matter knowing that I have access to the Guardians or can request their assistance, monetarily or otherwise. I mean, they aren’t stupid, obviously they know that Lodestar is the mother of, “Polaris,” and everyone and their mother knows about Lodestar and her stupid jet, and chances are anyone with a jet is probably worth enough to be able to pay for a two thousand double dollar tube for a fellow super, but that isn’t the same as knowing that I, Alex, can get cash monies from the grown up supers, for business stuff anyway. If this team finds itself in real danger, I’ll beep my mom. Until then, we get by with what resources we can scrounge together, which is basically enough to buy coffee and hang out in the alley behind the Circle-K. If we can’t do it on our own, what kind of super heroes are we? Hell no am I going to Gravitron or my mom unless my back is to the wall for realzies. Also, her f#$%ing pheromone thing got the quarterback of the high school football team, Riley, beautiful guy, really, crawling all over her. I mean, not like I ever asked him out or anything, but he pays more attention to her than to me. Before her, there were other girls I guess, but at least they played it fair and square, and he always talked to me first. She waltzes in and next thing you know he’s looking her way an awful f#$%ing lot, and it is not because of anything natural… Bitch.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t care if she got hurt, though. I mean, I kinda want to smack the shit out of that little, --, whatever she is, but if someone else put a hand on that girl in a bad way I’d rip it off and beat them with it, and I know that if I saw her crying I’d break the f#$% down and cry right along with her. I dunno, it’s confusing, maybe I don’t have all my shit together, but that’s how it is between me and her, on my part anyway.

[Interest Check] Masks- A New Generation

@Raijinslayer
But Ian's already the hang out guy (actually friendzoned, holy shit o~o)
Also I'm unsure if you meant to tag Grey earlier or me because I don't know what Hana did to burn Ian's face.

@Hyper Harlequin

I don't think I've ever seen someone get friendzoned in a roleplay before it even started, and I've been doing this for a while. Legit kudos on that one.

[Interest Check] Masks- A New Generation

@Raijinslayer
-Riley blows into her palm and a bubble of water forms over her hand before offering it to Ian-

@ to no one in particular
I think I'll spend this roleplaying as a time to figure out who Riley needs to have her secret crush on as per being an Outsider. Suggestions are welcome :3

@Hyper Harlequin

Well, Malcolm has already been established as being super hot, and is almost as much of an outsider to normal human culture as Riley. Hana already has someone crushing on her, but is also a real outsider type, so I guess if Riley's into that. Ian actually likes people, and is reasonably warm and good natured. Andrea is probably the only likeable girl on the team, and has the best of both worlds with regard to being both outside and inside the normal human societal stuff. Alex probably seems more alien than Riley half the time (with her mom? Shit, she didn't watch TV until she was like seventeen, and has never had any friends besides Andrea) and just doesn't get memes, jokes, puns, any of it. Like, she's picked up some of that from Andrea, but she herself is totally clueless, and probably prefers computers and robots to anyone besides Andrea, and occasionally Ian.