Acadian: Much of this Book is simply picking up the pieces left behind from the Battle of Belle Isle and the end of Season One. This current stretch of posts will be part of that process of creating the new path forward for the Great Lakes Alliance, and the Sisters of the Raven.

Jan does have a huge collection of friends and allies. Honestly, it can seem like a lot. But it is in keeping with one of the major themes of the Crowverse - that no one is an island, doing it all on their own. January succeeds precisely because she forms these relationships with other people, everywhere she goes.

I could not resist the Minsc and Boo remark, given that Avery and Ryo are both gamer nerds. As soon as I wrote the part about Lighthammer commenting about the rat, I knew I had work in a Boo-like squeak.

It won't be a super suit for Xochitl. She's only 15! Though granted, she wants one already.

That nit was supposed to be 'wore' rather than 'was', thanks for catching that.



WellTemperedClavier: If I only had the time and energy, I would love to do spin-off shows to concentrate solely upon characters like Viuda and Calypso in the Caribbean, or Riven and Thunderbolt in San Fran, or Silverlight in DC.

Blood Raven's teleportation network has grown far beyond what I originally intended it to be. But it is working out nicely, allowing me to move the story to locations beyond Detroit upon occasion.




As always you can follow the team's progress on the Stormcrow Google Map


Book 11.18 - Raven Sisters

"She sprechen sies Yankee doesn't she?" Lighthammer raised the back of one hand over his face as he murmured to January. His raised eyebrow gave January the distinct impression that he was being facetious.

"That's ok, I can translate for you Lighty," Xochitl smiled and pressed forward. She said something in Spanish to Viuda, and other woman replied in the same fashion. It all went by much too fast for January's High School language classes to keep up with.

"Lighty?" Cleveland's superhero puffed up his chest in mock injury. "Can we at least stick to Lightguy?"

"Come on Marteau de Lumière," Blackhawk mock punched Lighthammer in his armored shoulder. "She said come on board."

"You speak Spanish?" January wondered. "I mean, aside from French?"

"Hell no," The Canadian replied as she stepped into the ship. "What else would she be saying, eat my shorts?"

January followed her and the others on board. As she had expected, Gadget was practically in love with the spidercraft. He ran his armored fingers across the stringers and hull plates with envy, and stared out the windows to marvel at the eight nacelles outside that powered the craft.

"It's good to see you again Widow," January said as she stepped into the back of the Charlotte. She shook hands with Viuda and smiled. Then she made introductions all around. Viuda stopped her when she came to Xochitl.

"We introduced ourselves already," Viuda explained. "So you have an apprentice now? That's interesting."

"It's sort of a work in progress," January rubbed her hand along the back of her neck. "I'm still learning things too. But at least we can learn together. And I have a lot of sisters who can help."

"Speaking of which, how are things going with your boyfriend, in the Sargasso Sea," January winked to Calypso.

"Oh, not you too," the aquatic heroine sighed as she climbed aboard the spider craft.

"Boyfriend?" Lighthammer raised an eyebrow. January could not tell for sure, but for a moment she thought she sensed a genuine pang of distress in the man's voice.

"Janos is not my boyfriend," Calypso huffed, "in spite of how much certain busybodies might like to make it so."

She shot a look to Viuda that made it plain who said busybodies might be.

"Janos?" Now Gadget was the one to ask.

"The Technocrat," Viuda answered before Calypso could reply. "She calls him Janos, because you know, he's totally not her boyfriend."

"He doesn't like being called the Technocrat," Calypso said. "It's a name his critics put on him when he was Chancellor of Avarica. He's just a friend, and an ordinary man."

"Sure, an ordinary man over a century old, living in a robotic suit, who invented quantum mechanics, led the most advanced society on the planet, and has been to Jupiter and the Sun." Gadget summed things up succinctly.

"Damn, when you put it like that, what chance has a brother got," Lighthammer murmured under his breath.

"Oh, you are doing rather well so far Lightguy." Calypso smiled and tapped the light-based hero on the shoulder as she walked by. Her form shifted then. Away went the scales and spiny frills. She returned to her human form, with dark brown skin and a halo of curly black hair.

Lighthammer smiled then, and suddenly January realized that he and Calypso had been flirting! Usually it took her at least a week to notice that sort of thing. Clearly, she had leveled up her social perception skills.

"I have been working with Janos - and other scientists and engineers and even fishermen - on cleaning the oceans of plastics and other wastes," Calypso explained more seriously. "It is hard work. So far everything turns out to have... complications."

"It would have been pointless of us to save the world Monday night, if we just go on to destroy it ourselves." Ôkami's voice came from the shadows between two of the hull's structural supports.

"Honestly, I don't think people like us can save the world from humanity," Viuda breathed. "Only humanity can do that, through political action, legislation, treaties and the like. We can't fix the entire planet's problems on our own."

"Careful, someone might accuse you of being a Socialist," Gadget murmured sarcastically. "Won't someone think of the billionaires?"

That brought snortles from all around. Viuda ensconced herself in the pilot's chair. January motioned for Gadget to join her up front in the co-pilot's seat. As she expected, he immediately began questioning the spider-themed heroine on the nature of Charlotte's propulsion and other systems.

Soon they were off talking about Coulomb's law, electrostatic attraction and repulsion, and the like. Gadget was like a child on Christmas. January could tell he was excited, because he started talking with his hands. He only did that when he was really, really geeking over something terribly technological.

The Charlotte rose up into the air even as her owner explained her inner workings. January imagined that only Gadget understood any of it. For the rest of them it was the view out of the windows that captured their attention, for as the spidercraft lifted up, it gave them an expansive view of the island which they had teleported onto.

To the west lay the long, concrete runways of the airport. It ended before a two-lane road roughly half a mile from Blood Raven's waypoint. Now they could see that the teleportation point was situated in a wide swath of wetlands, bordered on the north by the emerald green waters of a large lake. This in turn was dotted with numerous islands, and its irregular shoreline often blended seamlessly into the marshlands around it. So sometimes it was hard to tell where one ended, and the other began.

To the east stretched out the suburbs and downtown areas of a massive city. It looked like half the island was taken up by the urban sprawl. Here and there small patches of green interrupted the streets and buildings. But mostly it was the latter. The shores were lined with white sand beaches, and dotted with numerous marinas and resorts. People flocked to and fro, like tiny ants in the distance.

The waters were a mouth-watering turquoise where they hugged the shore. The edges of the reefs underneath were clearly delineated by the sharp transition to a deep blue in color that the waves took farther out. January imagined that in these points the depth of the water must increase dramatically, and she suspected that underwater cliffs must plunge down into total darkness at those points.

She shivered slightly at the thought. She had read enough Lovecraft to imagine the horrors that might dwell in such cold, lightless depths, forever hidden from the rays of the sun. Surely loathsomeness dreamed and waited in those depths, waiting for decay to spread across the tottering cities of humans. January had no desire to meet such loathsomeness. She had more than enough of that lately.

"So you're from around here," Lighthammer asked Calypso casually. "That's why Blood Raven has a teleporter down here?"

"Yes, in fact, I grew up right over there, down by the water." The Bahamian superheroine pointed out one of the bubble view ports on the side of the craft. "My parents came over from Haiti in '94, and I was born here after that."

"So how did you meet Blood Raven?" Xochitl asked.

"When I was twelve she was here on a case. Embarked upon a quest as she might say," Calypso smiled warmly. "My parents helped her. My mother was working at the Grand Hotel at the time, and my father is a taxi driver. So they knew the ins and out of Nassau in a way a Detroiter never could, not even a Witch Queen such as our mentor."

"Afterward she told me that the way I swam, and could stay underwater for ten minutes at a time, was unusual." Calypso explained. "She said it was magic, and I was the one using it. She said that I had been doing so all of my life. That is when she started teaching me."

"So do your parents know then?" Xochitl asked. "About the magic I mean?"

"Oh yes," Calypso said. "They were fine with it. In fact, they were usually there when Blood Raven was teaching me. She would come right to the house. It was on the down low so far as anyone else knew of course. She wasn't flying in with all the flowing red hair and cape and all. That would have drawn a lot of attention."

Xochitl took some time to digest that. January could easily imagine what she was thinking. Should she tell her parents about her being a magician? For the moment they were completely in the dark. That certainly seemed the safest way for everyone. But January knew better than most that keeping parts of your life secret from the people closest to you had a way of wearing on you.

She pushed those thoughts away, and stopped being a teacher. Instead she forced herself to relax, and just be a tourist for a while. She looked out one of the windows to take in the view below. The entire island was relatively small, January would guess only about twenty miles or so from end to end, and much narrower along its waist. In no time at all the Charlotte flew clear of the land entirely, and soared out over ocean. January noted the differences in the water below. To one side it was that deep, nearly indigo shade that spoke of great depths. To the other was that soft turquoise, that hinted at shallow reefs and sandbars below.

They followed a great stretch of these shallows, and islands both large and small flanked them to either side. Viuda took a sharp left turn as a massive landmass came up to the south. She indicated that it was Cuba, and from there she headed east along the Great Antilles. More islands passed by to either side, the small Turks and Caicos to the left, and the large landmasses of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico to the right.

It was simply breathtaking. Even with that slight twinge of thalassophobia in the back of January's mind, she could not deny the natural beauty that surrounded her. The water looked so clear and pure. The islands were rimmed with white beaches that rose to green mountains. It was paradise. January wished she could stay, for a day, or week, or all month. After everything that had happened recently, a vacation would be nice.

"Now this a place to live," Blackhawk said what January was thinking. "I envy you spider woman. Your morning drive to work is incredible."

"It's not all sunshine and rainbows," Viuda murmured. "The last half a millennia has not been so kind to this part of the world."

"Yeah, lot of that going around," the First Nations heroine nodded along soberly.

Spiderwoman puts Gadget in the copilot seat and much technogeekery ensues!

A little more info on Viuda and even some flirtation with Lighty.

Jan is very different from Blood Raven and this shows in how she handles her role as Xochitl’s mentor. Jan is young (unlike Blood Raven) and doesn’t have all the answers (also unlike Blood Raven) so I think she is wise to lean in to that and emphasize that there is much that she can teach her young apprentice but perhaps just as much they will learn together.

Still looking forward to learning what Jan's purpose down here in the Caribbean is.

All: I think I will go back to the once a week schedule. It looks like that will be easier for everyone involved.


Acadian: I knew from the moment that I introduced Viuda, that Gadget was going to be geeking out over her flying spidercraft.

This section of the story in the Caribbean is going to be heavy on the flirtiness. Maybe being paradise, it just brings out the horniest in people.

As ever, while January is obviously heavily influenced by Blood Raven. She definitely does things very differently than her mentor. She could never have the same kind of relationship with Xochitl that Blood Raven would.

We are getting close to finding out what the Crowpany is doing down in the Caribbean. By next week's episode we should finally get to it. For now, more flirting.





Blackwood's Villa 01

Blackwood's Villa 02

Blackwood's Villa 03

Blackwood's Villa 04


Jean-Paul


Ouran High School Host Club





Book 11.19 - Raven Sisters

They finally came to a stretch of land and sea that January recognized. It was the Independent Virgin Islands, so named for their decades-old independence from both the United States and Great Britain and their union into a single polity. Flying past below was the island of Saint Thomas, and its major city of Charlotte Amalie East. This was where Harper had gated January on her previous visit. From there she had flown to Blackwood's estate under her own power. She even saw Blackbeard's Castle pass by underneath them. From there it was all familiar ground, air, and sea.

Now they hopped from isle to isle, to the far end of the island chain. Viuda took another turn as when they reached this last island. Rather than continue straight ahead and fly over the large city within the spur of land that ran to the south, they instead banked in the opposite direction. They followed the land to the north, around a cape and a tall hill. Here she brought the spidercraft down to hover low over the beach, and finally touched down upon the soft brown sand below.

They filed out of the spidercraft, and took in their surroundings. The air was hot, but when January breathed in deeply, it was refreshingly clean and clear. A few white clouds scudded across the blue bowl of the sky overhead. The sea crashed noisily upon the beach under their feet, inviting them all to wet their toes and come in. Opposite the turquoise waves rose up a steep hill, covered in greenery. Here and there were breaks in the trees, revealing estates of the wealthy.

Viuda led them to a wooden stair that curled up the rocky, brush-studded hillside. January had not even seen the path from the air, thanks to the way the tree tops closed in over most of its sinuous course. They came to a fork in the steps, and the Caribbean heroine led them to the left. In no time at all they went through a wooden gate, and January noted the light upon its surface that began blinking as soon as they entered, and the cameras ensconced high in the trees above.

So they had done the equivalent of ringing the doorbell. Granted, Blackwood was expecting them. But it was only polite after all.

Soon they were standing beside a large rectangular building made of wood. January recognized the Japanese architecture immediately. It was part of Mr. Blackwood's estate, which sprawled across the hillside with several such buildings. In fact, she recognized the building itself. This was his workshop, which lay set off to one side of the two main houses. She saw those as they circled around the shop. From there another path led up to a garage, which bordered the single road that curved around the hillside.

But they took another path, which wound farther across the slope to the two main houses. Both of these were also rectangular. One was three stories tall, and rose up farther back in the hillside. The other was only two stories tall, and was set kitty corner to the first building. They seemed to grow together at the corners, making them look like they might be a single structure.

Tall windows filled the walls of these main houses, and balconies protruded from the higher floors. These provided shade for the deck that lined the ground floor, and ran from one building to the next. An infinity pool stretched out on the side of the houses facing the water. Its edges were bordered by a Japanese zen garden and carefully manicured trees. A narrow wooden bridge even gently arced across the water to the far side, flanked by small, artificial waterfalls that tumbled over several large stones. A tiny island even rose from within the pool, sprouting a decorative tree.

Standing on the patio, January gazed out past the infinity pool. The way the hill dropped out of sight, it gave the impression that the pool stretched out into the blue waters of Caribbean Sea beyond. Green islands rose up miles in the distance. Some were long fingers of land, others only tiny bumps against the horizon. Small boats slid between them with brightly-colored sails. White clouds drifted by lazily overhead, and in the distance January heard the distinctive long, squealing trill of a Caribbean crow.

"Allo my friends," came a distinctly French accent. January and the others turned to see the author of the sound. It was Jean-Paul. He was clad in a brilliant red swimsuit that left none of his physique to the imagination. His lean muscles ripped in the sunlight, revealing a least a six pack of abs, if not an entire case of them.

"It's good to see you again Jean-Paul." Viuda beat January to greeting the attractive young man with a short hug. He stepped from a family room or lounge area, which was dotted with comfortable looking couches and chairs. To one side was a long table, with wicker chairs pulled up to it. The walls facing the sea were filled with floor to ceiling windows. One of the back walls held a widescreen television, from which an anime that January could not recognize played.

"Ouran High School Host Club," Gadget nodded to the TV screen. "You have good taste in anime."

"It is an oldie, but a goodie," the Frenchman declared. Gadget stepped forward to shake his hand. "It is good to meet you in the flesh. You should send us a 3D scan. We can reproduce your armor, and make it form-fitting as Viuda's is. I would love to... sculpt you."

"Well, that's a hard offer to turn down," Gadget murmured. "How would you do me?"

"Well, I make a three-dimensional duplicate of all our customers of course, so that Mr. Blackwood can properly tailor his work to them." Jean-Paul explained. "But I also often make preliminary sketches. Mostly to provide options for art design, color combinations, decals, trimming, and the like."

"Why don't you take your helmet off Gadget?" January gave her partner a knowing look. "You must be thirsty after that long trip. Maybe Jean-Paul could get you a drink?"

"Oh I'm not really-" Gadget fumbled over his words when January nudged him in the armored ribs. "I mean, yeah, I could really go for one of those tropical drinks right now."

With that he raised his hands and twisted this helmet to the side, breaking its airtight seal. He lifted it free of his head, and took a moment to run his armored fingers through his low-cut, curly black hair. He tucked his helmet under the crook of one arm. The softness of his brown skin was contrasted by his strong nose and jaw. A fine stubble dotted his chin and upper lip, and his dark eyes glittered in the sunlight.

January was not attracted to men. But like Michelangelo's David, she knew beauty when she saw it. She suspected that Jean-Paul's reaction was not quite so philosophical to her best friend's aesthetic charms however. He beamed from ear to ear, revealing a smile of perfect ivory teeth.

"I would love to get you something," the young man smoothly. "My Virgin Rum Punch is the talk of the isles."

"How uh, stiff is that?" Gadget smiled and cocked his head sideways.

"The stiffest," Jean-Paul insisted. "But it might be too much..."

"Oh, I like it hard," Gadget shot back. "Give it to me straight up, standing at attention-"

"Okay you two, enough flirting." Viuda insisted. She took Jean-Paul by the arm, and encouraged him to lead her away. "We are here to meet Mr. Blackwood, not play the Dating Game."

"You know, Blackwood might not appreciate you bringing a young stud to sniff around his main squeeze..." Lighthammer leaned down to whisper in January's ear as they followed the others through the compound of buildings.

"What are you talking about?" January wondered in hushed tone. "His main squeeze?"

"What, you think Blackwood just happens to have a guy who stepped off the cover of GQ working as his assistant?" Lighthammer replied. "Wake up and smell the coffee girl. Those two are..."

Cleveland's superhero made a rude motion, thrusting one of his fingers through the curled thumb and forefinger of his other hand. All the while he sang softly and nodded along to the beat he had created.

"Bow-wow, chika-wow, wow-wow..."

"OMG!" January hissed back, covering Lighthammer's hands with her own. She stared back at Jean-Paul. I mean, she knew that he was gay. There had never been a doubt in her mind. But she had never really thought that way about Mr. Blackwood. He was... old after all. Surely people that age did not think of sex, let alone do it! The very thought of such a thing boggled January's nineteen year old mind.

But come to think of it, the very first time they had met him via video conference, Hannah had instantly declared that the older man was gay. How had she missed that? She was a lesbian after all! She was supposed to have her gaydar in finely tuned order. But apparently her ability to read men was just as bad as that to read women, at least in that regard.

Then she frowned. Hannah. She had gone entire hours without thinking of the other woman, entire hours. She was so over and done with that. Definitely moving on with life. Without a doubt.

I agree with that very first statement from 11.7. I've been to Michigan before, my family has a bunch of relatives in Lansing and a couple other towns. Never saw any monsters or demons. That'd certainly affect tourism, though!

Interesting cast of characters today: Lighthammer, Okami, Blackhawk, Gadg-man, and the teen. Looks like Xochitl is starting Mysticsm 101 today.... X O C H I T L holy beans Batman, I got her name right! -- They're teaching her a few things today. Ah, back in the Bahamas. Wonder if they're going to pay a visit to Michael Caine's covert headquarters, today.

Calypso is here. I love this. This is so CW-ish! I can just picture the camera panning around as the water woman walks through the door. Calypso's got her own music, which plays lightly in the background whenever she appears. Like... flutes and piccolos



I bet it is. I'd love to take a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the notes you've typed up to keep track of all these individuals. Or do you just do it all in your head, Florens? - Me? I have to take notes. Even while gaming (no story).

Anyway, the two supers flirt. That makes sense. Must be tough to try dating outside of their superspectrum.



Good luck with that! I wonder if such a thing will ever be done. Well... it is well known how in Japan crime is so low, people rarely lock their bicycles, for instance. Police sometimes get bored enough to try inventing ways for perps to tempt themselves into committing acts, and so on. Which means it is possible we can fix our own foibles.

They're flying in the Charlotte, sweet.

I'd say Xochitl should NOT tell her parents about her magic abilities & friends. Not unless they are already conditioned to accept mystical forces and such. Doesn't sound like they are, though. She tells her folks, next thing she'll be sent off to reform bootcamp or something, to douse those wicked ways.

Ah, they are here with Sir Blackwood. Michael Caine was perhaps THE most prolific actor on the scene for a while back in the late '90s into the 2000s. Seemed like he was in every other movie back then. Hmm, is he going to make a suit for the teen?

Blackwood being gay don't surprise me. I bet he's played on both sides of the fence during his days.

Blackwood’s villa looks awesome! And it looks like the old armor artisan has himself a boytoy. It is so in character for Jan’s ‘gaydar’ to miss that on her first visit. Her naivete is an adorable part of who she is. So Viuda and Lighty are flirting, as are Jean-Paul and Gadget. And all poor Jan gets is a painful memory of Hannah. But she’s so over Hannah. Right? Definitely. Without a doubt.

And I appreciate this answer. Yeah I can imagine this would drive some bigots and such crazy.

I've never been to the Caribbean, but your descriptions really conjure a unique vibe for the place: limitless sea and sky, both so blue they almost hurt to look at, and all that beneath the hot sun.

Good to see the Blackwood Estate again. Looks like they're going to get Gadget fitted. And that Gadget may have unwittingly stumbled into drama.

Chuckling a bit at January's naivete regarding older people. I was the same way at her age.

Renee: Michigan is really nice if you like the outdoors, hiking, fishing, boating, hunting and the like. Once you get out of the few big cities like Detroit, it is just hundreds of miles of farmland, forests, and lakes. It actually is a big tourism state for that kind of thing.

Getting a haunted reputation would help the tourism industry! Ghost tourism is really big now. Everyone wants to go stay in a haunted hotel, and go on ghost tours. IRL the old Eloise state mental hospital was bought up by a guy who wants to turn it into a haunted hotel. Eloise has a reputation as being one of the most haunted places in the state.

Which makes me start to think that there definitely would be dragon tourism now that the Battle of Belle Isle is over, and the ghostly image of Y Ddraig Aur is floating in the air over Belle Isle. People would want to see that. When you add to that the various sites of battles that January and the Alliance have gotten into lately, like the Big Tire, downtown Ferndale, Eloise, etc... and there just might be superhero tours in the future. Especially when you consider that Jan and company are definitely friendly to the public. You just might get the chance to meet them if you went to Detroit. That is something I will have to try to work into things in the future. Maybe Jan and company could come across a cape tour taking place through the city.

You know, I am not sure what Calypso's music is. I do have theme music picked out for most of the characters. Like Lighthammer's is Protect Ya Neck by the Wu-Tang Clan, and Gola's is The Old God's of Appalachia, season two theme, by Landon Blood. I suppose Calypso's should be something Caribbean, like calypso music, or reggae? I don't know. Maybe something like this, it has a sense of majesty that I think fits her Or better yet, Now We Are Free from the Gladiator soundtrack sounds perfect for her.

I take a ton of notes. I have a whole folder of various text files of notes. I make one for every book with the plot of what happens. I also have others with my notes on people, places, and things. One on a timeline of events. Others of monster types. Others with future plot ideas. Plus a ton of subfolders of pictures to use for reference, especially of places. For every picture I post here, I have a about 4 or 5 more that I have saved.

The whole question of should Xochitl tell her parents about her magic is going to be an issue. Jan and her will be getting conflicting advice. On on hand there is people like Calypso who are all for it, as it worked out great for them. OTOH, there are people like Riven and Silverlight, who will caution against it, as their parents were both conservative, and equated magic, any magic, with devil-worship. I think you have the right idea, in that what Xochitl does needs to be based on how her parents are likely to react.

Michael Caine has had an amazing career. He was a hot young stud in the 60s and 70s, and he's still making movies today.


Acadian: I found Blackwood's villa on a house hunting site. It was going for a few million if I recall. It is the kind of house that if you have to ask the price, you can't afford it.

Everyone is flirting and having fun in the summer sun, except for Jan. But as you noted, she is sooo over Hannah. Absolutely.

I did not put much thought into Jean-Paul the first time he appeared a few books ago. I just knew that Blackwood would need to have some kind of Man Friday to help him out with things. I gave him a little more thought with his appearance in this book. He's a young artist who was blessed by genetics, who is basically spending a few years essentially living a life of adventure. He gets to meet supers from all around the world, without the danger of being blown up. In a few years he will want to move on and settle down to do his own thing. But for now, he's having the time of his life.


WellTemperedClavier: I have never been to the Caribbean either. It looks really nice though!

We should finally be getting to the reason for the Alliance's visit with today's episode.

I am channeling my own experience with January and her inability to process that fact that older people do indeed get busy. When I was in my 20s and even 30s, I could not imagine someone in their 50s having sex. It just did not compute in the slightest for me that that could even be a thing. Live and learn.








Video of Blackwood's Estate (RL Villa Katsura)

Mr. Blackwood

The Good Witch Azura

Y Ddraig Aur



Book 11.20 - Raven Sisters

"So you're an artist?" Xochitl chirped. The teenager pressed forward to walk beside Jean-Paul. "I'm an artist too! Can I see your work?"

"Sure, look around," Blackhawk spoke up. "He's the one who did the medicine wheel on my armor. And the racing stripes on Viuda's power armor."

"They are the crimson webs of the Widow, muahahaha!" Viuda announced in an overly exaggerated Transylvanian accent, as if she was trying to imitate Caribbean Dracula.

"I do some sketch work, mostly when I am spit-balling ideas," Jean-Paul said quite seriously. "Then I do another pass in color with those ones that pass the smell test. I have some sketchbooks laying around. Most are up ahead, in the workshop."

It was back there that Jean-Paul led them, to the first building that they had passed upon entering the compound. He paused at the door, and January had the distinct impression that some form of electronic scanning was taking place. It was not from anything obvious, just from the way he stopped and looked dead ahead, as if waiting for something. Now that she recalled, on her first visit Mr. Blackwood had done the same thing when he had led her within as well.

The double doors swung open, as if of their own accord, and Jean-Paul led them inside. An entire open room filled the ground floor, lending the impression of great space. January smelled sweet cedar from the numerous planks of wood that comprised the floors, walls, and struts that crisscrossed the ceiling overhead.

As with her previous visit, several long tables ran the center of the room, while racks bursting with various materials packed the walls. January recognized ordinary substances such as cotton or wool, and metal ingots that she took for steel, bronze, brass, and the like. She also recognized other, less common things stored within, such as kevlar and dragon silk. Finally, a cluster of bowls revealed a cornucopia of uncut gemstones and other bits and bobs.

An original Bob Ross painting depicting a snow-covered cabin before an icy lake decorated one wall. A cool blue aurora wove through the sky above the scene, and a snowy mountain rose up in the distance, completing the alpine setting. It was about as opposite as one could get from the real life tropical paradise that lay outside the building. Which January imagined was the entire point. It was probably the only time Blackwood or Jean-Paul ever saw snow.

Blackwood himself stood amid the long tables. Stretched out there was a white, long-sleeved tunic cut in gentle curves. A purple mantle covered the shoulders in a star-shaped design, and keeping with that theme, a gold star was set into the throat. Along with this was a long purple skirt, and big white floppy wizard's hat, with a purple interior.

"The Good Witch Azura!" January cried out the moment she saw the outfit.

"You know the anime?" Blackwood raised an eyebrow, and glanced down at the nearly finished outfit. "It is one of my cosplay commissions."

"Of course I know it, the Owl House is awesome!" January beamed.

Blackwood was a slender man, who January imagined might be somewhere between fifty and fifty thousand years old. It could be difficult for her to tell when they got up there. His short, curly brown hair had gone to gray at the temples, and he wore a pair of wire-framed glasses. He was dressed in an immaculately tailored suit, with creases that looked sharp enough to cut steel. The bright tropical flower pinned to his lapel softened his look though, as did the yellow tie that he wore.

He strode to meet them at the entry, and traded short hugs and handshakes all around. Blackwood knew everyone of course, except for Xochitl, whom January once more introduced as her apprentice. She wondered how many times she would have to say that for it to begin to feel normal? Apparently at least one more time.

"So my Allies, you said that you wanted to make a minor update to the appearances of your suits," Blackwood said. "Do you have a team livery that you would like to display?"

"Something like that," Gadget declared. "Maybe more of a declaration of solidarity. Something that tells the world where we stand, and whom with."

"Did you have something in mind," Blackwood inquired. "Jean-Paul here is a skilled artist. He performs all of the more challenging painting here."

"We already have something," January insisted. She looked to Xochitl. "Show him what you did for us."

The teenager pulled her phone from her purse, and spent a moment tapping its screen. Then she held it up for the older designer to see. Upon the rectangular screen was a watercolor painting of a golden dragon. One that looked quite similar to that whose image still glowed softly over the empty battlefield of Belle Isle.

"This is good," Jean-Paul noted. The young Frenchman took the phone gently from Xochitl's fingers to take a closer look. "The colors are vibrant. They really pop. This should show up well upon armor. Where did you get this from, if I may ask?"

"I did it!" Xochitl beamed. She looked almost as if she was about to explode.

"I should have known when you said that you were an artist," Jean-Paul shook his head ruefully. "My apologies. You have real talent."

"She does," Blackwood took the phone, and gave it a good look before nodding himself, and handing the device back to Xochitl. "I can work with this. It will be a simple affair to transfer the image to each of your armors. Or..."

"Or?" Blackhawk wondered.

"You might consider entering a pilot program for a new feature I have been working upon," Blackwood explained. "Rather than having to constantly return to me to upgrade your livery, I have created an outer layer to press over the suits. It is reactive to specific input, and allows one to change colors and designs at will."

"How thick is it?" Blackhawk asked. "Is it bulky?"

"Not at all," Blackwood insisted. "It is only a single molecule in width. So it will in fact be thinner than a standard coat of paint. Naturally it is self-regenerating, as all my meta-materials are."

"Sign me up," Viuda insisted. "It might be nice to do some temporary changes for things like holidays, or to show critical support for others."

"Absolutely," January nodded. She was already imagining a trans flag across her breastplate for the next Pride. Too bad it was a year away. Hopefully she wouldn't have to fight Nazis or Abyssals next time.

The others all agreed as well. With that Blackwood went to work, taking each member of the team in turn and upgrading their suits. Even Gadget - while his powered armor was of his own creation - accepted the cosmetic overlay. In the meanwhile Jean-Paul led the rest of them back to the main houses and the patio. There he served tropical drinks all around. January found the little umbrellas in each delightful, and indulged herself with a non-alcoholic Pink Mocktail.

When her turn came to receive the upgrade, she returned to the workshop. There she used the changing room upstairs to strip out of her suit, and hand it off to Blackwood. Soon enough he returned it to her, and she suited back up and returned to the others. For the moment it looked no different.

Once they were all complete, Blackwood showed them how to use the control interface. At the moment it used a simple phone app. Ryo quickly piped up that he could rewrite the code easily enough, to integrate it into their digital assistants. For the time being however, its controls were plain enough. One could change the color and texture to any portion of the suit. One could also upload any digital image, which the software could then add to the design.

January and the others soon went to work at this, and in no time at all Xochitl's rendition of Y Ddraig Aur rode upon all of their shoulders. Even Viuda and Calypso joined in by adding the dragon tags to their own armor. As Gadget had said, it was a show of solidarity.

Gadget of course, being Gadget immediately began playing with the options. In just seconds he had transformed his armor into brilliant rainbow of colors. With a few more tweaks, it was literally pulsing with each shade of light, and a disco ball popped up in one corner of his breastplate. It began to spin, scattering brilliant stars of light that swept across the face of his armor.

With that he began doing the classic dance moves from Saturday Night Fever, thrusting one finger skyward, while holding his other hand as his hip. A moment later his PA system began belting out a hip hop remix of Staying Alive.

"Now that is a man who is secure in his sexuality," Blackhawk nodded along to the beat.

"These days, yeah," January laughed along with Xochitl and the rest of them. Avery was always much better at parties than she was. "It took a long time for him to get there though."

"I used to think my life got weirder since I met you." Lighthammer shook his head. "But this takes the cake."

As if to belie his own words however, the laser-powered superhero joined Gadget on the ersatz dance floor and began a dance battle with the younger man. He was not as nimble on his feet as Gadget. January imagined that his prosthetic leg had a lot to do with that. But he made up for it with upper body moves and occasionally bursts of flight and aerobatics.

January could not stop smiling through it all. Today was a good day.



Gadget's changing suit colors was inspired by Captain Marvel

* * *

Correct, yeah.. especially with all those lakes y'all got up there. I remember going to Grand Rapids as a kid, to visit relatives and stuff. Lots of grand old homes and buildings, truly spectacular. Micigan only gets its urban reputation outside the state because that's where all the cars are made. Or were made.

Nice, didn't know that about Eloise. And with all the daily sightings of heroes in the area, super tours wouldn't have any problem attracting tourism dollars. Everybody'd want to see Blood Raven, though. The fact that she's the most elusive one would make quite a challenge.

Ha ha yeah, I thought of that too during the week: Calypso's music should involve steel drums or whatever those big, shiny bowls are called. The music gets made while tapping the inside of the bowls. That gladiator music could also work, but probably for when all the supers are gathered, like after they've pwn3d their latest foes.

That's right: Xochitl's parents were kind of conservative, I remember this. I recently saw Michael Caine in some movie from the '60s; indeed he was pretty darn cute back then (and thin). I had no idea his career spanned for such a long time!

-------

Hey, he's got a Bob Ross!





Hmm, a team livery. See, now this is something I'd imagine could only happen in this post-Branwen era, right? Or am I wrong? Such livery suggests more of a Lawful sort of compilation, rather than Neutral or Chaotic. Everyone's on the same page. Ah, so Xochitl is making the contribution, here. Interesting.

Disco music is really fun. One of the clubs in Baltimore had an awesome disco night back in the '90s, it wasn't the Hippo though, it was some other club. Anyway, Jan is actually smiling and fully relaxed, for once. Too bad the moment won't last!

The blondie in the Captain Marvel video looks sort of like Jan.

So the nature of the mysterious quest to Blackwood’s lair reveals itself. While very fun, it also showcases Xochitl’s skill as an artist and, as Gadget notes, the ability to display solidarity. So the Raven flock is now the Dragon coven. Dragonistas? Gotta work on that. . . . With the ability to flash anything from rainbows to Christmas lights, I should think today’s disco party to be just the first of many creative possibilities.

I must say it would be awesome if, at some point, the Good Witch Azura joined the Dragon club – replete with pointy hat and staff.

Like it or not, image matters. And that's especially true for superheroes. You have to have a distinct look that tells people what you are (or at least what you want them to see you as) and which stands out. Just glancing at Batman or Superman tells you a bit about how they operate.

And the Alliance is making good use of that here. They have some of the best designers working on their uniforms. Like any good super-team, there's a lot of individuality.

All in all, there's a very pleasant vibe here. A bunch of heroes with nerdy tendencies chilling paradise. Though if there's one thing I've learned it's that relaxation usually means trouble in the near-ish future.

Renee: Blood Raven would be the most elusive one to see, but she is not exactly who most people would want to see most. Unlike January and her pals, she does not go out of way to be friendly and open, quite the opposite. She uses her charisma and presentation to deliberately create a brooding aura of mystery and danger around her. She wants to scare, because then they leave her alone. Granted, she did open up some after meeting January, to the point of even sometimes taking selfies with fans. But she is never going to share a hot dog or a slice of pizza with people on the street, not like Jan and company will.

Blood Raven was never a team player to begin with. She preferred to be a loner. So she would never be in the position to wear a team logo. That is all January. She is the one who brings people together.

Brie Larson could indeed be an older version of January, for when she is in her 30s.


Acadian: The Great Lakes Alliance does need a team sticker, so this trip down to Blackwoodville was in order. It is part of the whole theme of this book being about the aftermath of the Battle of Belle Isle. The entire team really coalesced there, with Gadget finally joining in his powered armor. Now it is time for them to make it official, with their own version of the X-Men's "X" logo, or the Avenger's "A". The dragon was just perfect.

It also gave me an ideal place to include Xochitl in the story as more than just a student. Even though she is a long way from putting on a suit and fighting evil-doers, she still has contributions to make.

It would be awesome if the Good Witch Azura could join the club, even if just for a crossover episode. But Disney would sue me.


WellTemperedClavier: January worries that her mostly black outfit projects too daunting an image, and often things of doing things to lighten it up with other colors. But she is a crow, so that makes it tough. There are some black and white crows in Europe however, so she might actually be adding more white to her outfit as well.

This was one of those situations where I just wanted to show the team having fun and enjoying the super life. Unlike some writers, I don't want my characters to be grim and dark and depressed all the time (looking at you Zack Snyder). Super hero stories are wish fulfillment at their heart. I never want to lose sight of that. It is supposed to be fun and filled with the Rule of Cool.

Though as you noted, danger will rear its head soon enough. The Dogman is still out there after all.











Lake Saint Clair underwater

Manta Rays Swimming


Book 11.21 - Raven Sisters

July 14th, morning

Lake Saint Clair stretched out around January. As the Great Lakes went, it was definitely the red-haired stepchild. So much so that it usually did not even make the official list. Compared to the other lakes, like Huron, Michigan, or Superior, it was tiny. From where she soared high in the sky, she could see its entire outline spread out below her. She imagined it could only be a little over twenty miles across at most. That was a long way to walk or swim, but nothing for one in the air such as herself. It was certainly nothing compared to those other, much larger lakes.

She aimed for the center of the blue mass, and nosed down. She picked up speed in trade for sacrificing altitude. In no time at all she was moving at a good clip, faster than any propeller plane could manage at least. But she was still nowhere near breaking the sound barrier, as Lighthammer could do without even working up a sweat.

Even so she had to feather back her wings to slow her descent as she neared the center of the lake. She saw small boats here and there within the waters below, filled with people casting fishing poles to and fro. Off to the west she noted a massive lake freighter slowly making its way through the shipping channel, easily dwarfing every other vessel on the lake.

To her north she noted a lone buoy floating in the waters. She lifted her eyes from its blinking lights. Miles away she noted the estuary of the Saint Clair River, whose many fingers groped out across the surface of the lake. There at their south-western tip lay Gull Island, and the site of Jobbie Nooner.

It had been what, two and half weeks since they had fought the Summoner and his small army of minions there? Only two and a half weeks since she had learned that her brother had been her nemesis. Something she had only learned upon seeing his bloody corpse. It felt like years had passed since then. She had to forcefully remind herself that barely any time had gone by at all.

The water was coming up fast now. That pulled her from her ruminations, and back into the here and now. She was going to crash if she was not careful. Granted, she came out here intending to get wet. But she wanted to do it on purpose, not because she was not paying attention.

She beat down hard with her wings, and arrested her descent. She took a moment to concentrate, and separated them from her arms. That meant less power and fine control, but she would need her hands soon enough.

She noted a boat a short distance away. It was small, perhaps fifteen or twenty feet long at most. A single outboard motor hung from its rear. One man sat behind the steering wheel at the center of the boat, and appeared to be drinking from a beer can. The only other occupant was a man who stood upon the flat deck at the bow, holding a fishing rod over the water. Both men were large, round, bearded, and clad in baseball hats and camo. Pretty much what January would expect from a fisherman. The only surprise was the maple leaf flag painted on the side of the boat. That reminded January that technically she was in Canada, rather than the US.

Well, so long as they did not ask to see her passport, she imagined everything would be ok.

January turned from the fishermen, and closed her eyes to better concentrate. She shifted her senses to the astral. Immediately the world around her leaped into a brilliant display of light. The lake water was glowing with life beneath her, from individual fish, to plants along the bottom, and even the algae that bloomed within its flowing waters. The two men nearby were large spots of light amidst this seascape, but clearly mundane given their lack of color and incandescence in the astral.

She did not simply see the world around her however. She smelled it too, heard it, and felt it. The magical reality filtered itself into her awareness through all of her senses. She could feel the life below her. She could taste it on her lips, and hear it reverberate through her ears. It was a kaleidoscope of awareness, that she had to pick her way through to find what she was looking for.

Thankfully she now had experience at doing just that. She willed away the layers of information that she did not wish to experience. Like filtering out different hues in a picture, she was able to sweep away the things unimportant to her. First she swept aside the small background life such as the algae and other tiny organisms in the water. Then she deleted the larger animals such as fish and humans, and finally the blanket of plant life that lined the bottom.

She was left with a bare minimum of intrusions upon her awareness. One of them smelled familiar, like ravens. It tasted coppery, like blood, but felt as soft as a crow's feathers to her magical touch. To her astral eyes it was a beacon of colorful light, shining with brilliant energy. She turned toward it, and pulled up her power.

It was easier than ever to gather and weave her magic while her senses were here in the astral. She could do more than just feel it in general. She could see the strands of energy, touch them, and smell them. They were putty in her fingers, allowing her to stretch and shape them with her will. She now wove that power around her face, and created a bubble of breathable air.

Her oxygen supply ensured, she ceased the unconscious beating of her wings. That caused her to drop like a stone. Her feet knifed into the water below seconds later, with the rest of her body close behind. Her wings caught at the waves like a parachute, and she was obliged to pull them in so that she could continue her descent.

Only when she was halfway to the bottom did she deploy her wings again. Granted, that was not far. Lake Saint Clair was shallow. Even here in its deepest area, it was not even twenty feet to the bottom. But that gave her plenty of space to spread her wings and fly. Not as a bird did, but as a manta ray would.

She had done this before of course. At Jobbie Nooner she had to face off against the Abyssal oniare on and under the water. That had obliged her to learn to use her wings underwater. She had spent time watching videos of mantas and other rays since then. They did not swim beneath the waves, so much as fly. Now she emulated their graceful sweeps and undulations, and found herself propelled through the water just as smoothly as them.

She was pleased to note that her water breathing spell worked. She had plenty of time to perfect it after Julian's death. That had sidelined her from the pursuit of the Hierophant, while she instead stayed with her mother and grandmother. There was only so much time one could spend sitting on the couch being morose however. It had not taken long for her to start experimenting with her power. The fight at Gull Island had shown her the value of learning to become more at home under the waves. There had not been a lake handy to experiment within. But her Grandmother Sarah's bathroom sink and tub had more than enough for her to perfect the art of breathing underwater.

Thanks to bringing her own air with her, she was able to just breathe normally. She was not sure how people with gills did it, like Calpyso. They would have to literally breathe in the water. Which was obviously something a land-dweller's body like her own really, really did not want to do. In spite of how much her brain might tell her body that it was ok. Perhaps those like Calypso were just more disposed to it, precisely because of their innate connection to the water? Maybe the next time she saw the Bahamian superheroine, January would ask her about it.

In any case, January gave no more thought to her breathing, and flew through the water toward her destination. It really did feel similar to flying through the air. In some ways it was easier. Here gravity was not a constant weight trying to drag her down. The liquid all around countered that, and made her feel practically weightless.

On the other hand that liquid could act as a drag, and push against her as she tried to move forward. At times it could feel like flying against the wind. She had to practice at sliding through it, rather than against it. When she did, she found that it was not so much a hindrance, as it was a hand holding her aloft.

She took a moment to show off, and arced her head and neck back. The rest of her body bent with the motion. She instantly went into an underwater Immelmann turn. Lighthammer had taught her how to perform the aerobatic tactic in the air. Now she did it beneath the water, essentially looping backward, until she had turned in a complete circle.

After all, what was the point in having these abilities, if you did not have at least a little fun with them once and a while?

Once January was back to the same orientation that she had started upon, she went off in a straight line toward her destination. It was a section of the bottom that appeared no different from any other. With her awareness still firmly in the astral, and everything living pushed from her awareness, it had become a bland, empty spot.

Except for the enchanted item that lay buried within the bottom under her feet. That was a bright light in her awareness. She flew down to it and knelt upon the lake floor. Her fingers dug through the clay. She knew that in the mundane world this would be kicking up clouds of mud and debris into the water around her. But she sensed none of this with her deliberately limited astral awareness. There was nothing to distract her from her goal.

She had the artifact in her hands in no time at all. Blood Raven had buried this one herself, as that had been before January had learned to breathe water. But January remembered it. It was Thetis. She and Blood Raven had named it. They had made it together. Their magic and blood had forged its enchantments, even as their mundane fingers had wrapped its wires and screwed its pieces together.

Thetis was a bizarre doll. She was made of an old Fae Cola can. A camcorder's lens sat atop it like a head, and a pair of headset microphones were lashed to either side of that in the place of ears. A pair of plastic hands from a children's toy were screwed to the trunk of the can, along with two bent spoons for feet.

Blood Raven had related that in the old days she simply would have hand woven a doll from cloth and stuffed it with hay. But this was a new age, and it was time to evolve with it. So they had turned to Isaac and his junk heap to provide them with the raw materials. With this flotsam and jetsam of modern industrial society, they had forged their Abyssal summoning detectors.

These poppets had served them well, forming an early warning system of impending Abyssal summonings. They had enabled the team to instantly respond to the summonings at Jobbie Nooner and later at Belle Isle. In the latter case, one had even enabled January to sync her aura with that of Blood Raven's during the summoning. That had allowed the elder heroine to purge the poison from her blood, and at least give her a fighting chance against Nátthrafn and the hordes that followed him.

But the very thing that empowered these enchantments to warn them of the summonings also posed a hidden danger. Each was connected to January and Blood Raven's auras. Through them, one could cast magic directly into either woman. Not an ideal situation for a superhero. Even now as she handled the poppet, January could feel the thread of power that directly linked her to it.

She reached out to that thread and took hold of it. Just as it posed a possible threat to her, it would also be the key to her work today. Her connection to the enchantment would be the very secret to her unraveling it. Without it, she would have to either use brute force to destroy the magic, or employ a very a careful form of surgery.

She did not believe that she possessed the raw power to do the first. Nor did she suspect that she had the skill and experience to do the second, at least from the outside. But this, this she could do. She had no doubts. She had made Thetis herself, she could unmake it the same way.

Besides, a conjure woman who doubted was a conjure woman who failed. She was not going to do that.

So January crossed her legs and settled down to the bottom of the shallow lake. She held the poppet in her hands, and turned all of her attention to it. The rest of the astral world vanished from her awareness, even as the physical world had already done so. All that remained were the brilliant colors and scents of the magic item, and her own power.

She sent that power surging down the link between her and Thetis, like electricity through a wire. Once there she did not simply smash or burn with her energy. Instead she thought back to the end of the Battle of Belle Isle, and to how Blood Raven and sliced apart her father's gateway spell one piece at a time. She had surgically cut out key vertices in the web of the enchantment, so that eventually the entire thing collapsed. January had been given a perfect view of it all, having been linked to the elder magician's aura in order to provide her with more power. Now that memory served as a lesson to guide her in the present.

Her link to the poppet gave her this chance. It put her directly inside the weave of its creation right from the beginning. So she would not have to crack her way in from the outside, as Blood Raven had been obliged to do to the gateway at Belle Isle. Instead this was like having someone leaving the door wide open for her to simply walk inside.

January studied the web of the enchantment that she and Blood Raven had themselves laid upon the poppet to create it. She felt down those lines of power, and those wells of emotion, that were bound up within the artifact. Her magical fingers went to one nexus of energy after another. Like a candle flame pinched between her fingers, she snuffed them out one at a time.

One after another they evaporated, and sent the mana that had created them into astral space. Soon a cloud of released energy surrounded January, haloing her with color and sound in the magical realm. The freed mana was bright and glowing with power, lending illumination to all of astral space around it. Anyone else within the astral realm would likely be able to sense her with ease now, as she was doing the equivalent of starting a campfire in the middle of the night with the energy that she was turning loose.

She ignored this and pressed on. It had seemed a daunting task at first. But now that she set herself to it, it really was as easy as snipping away at a skirt with a pair of scissors. A little here, a little there, and soon enough she had shredded the entire thing. It just took some time and effort. But the result was never in question. She had forged this enchantment, she could undo it as well.

Finally she was finished. The last of the mana that had been bound up within the poppet floated off into astral space. The lines of power that had inscribed its use likewise had been rubbed out of existence in the higher realm. In the end she was left with the weird hodge-podge of modern objects. It was undoubtedly strange, but now just a mundane piece of artwork nonetheless.

With that she allowed her senses to fade from the astral and back to the physical. She took in the world around her. The cloud of mud and loose particles kicked up by her digging had thinned out by now, and the water had returned to normal. Fish of varying types swam about her. She could not tell if they were bass or muskies or trout. Calypso would probably know, or those fishermen somewhere above the glassy surface of the water.

The bottom where she sat was a carpet of greenery. Short stalks of what seemed like grass, or maybe even algae, carpeted the bottom in irregular patches. Tall weeds rose up here and there like trees. In some places the vegetation completely shrouded the bottom. In others it thinned out, revealing bare clay and sand, which was dotted with shells and small stones.

The water around her had a green color, that faded to a mouthwatering teal as her eyes rose toward the surface. As she was less than twenty feet down, sunlight bathed the entire expanse of water. She found herself wishing Xochitl was here. The young artist would probably appreciate the play of light and color across the scene. As it was January brought up Sága to engage her helmet camera, and took a few pictures to show her apprentice later.

With that out of the way, she pushed up from the bottom and sped toward the surface. She deployed her wings once more, and snapped out with them to gain more speed. In moments she darted out of the water like a missile fired from a submarine.

Once back in the comforting embrace of the open sky, January took a moment to flick some of the water off of her. Then she reached into her utility belt and withdrew her bag of holding. The plain, burlap sack was folded down into a flat square of material. She unwrapped it, again and again, so many times that it opened up into a vessel far larger than one could have imagined at first sight of it. Once finally expanded to full size, she opened its lip and stuffed Thetis inside. Then she folded it back down, and tucked it back into her belt.

Maybe she could place it and the other poppets in a display case, back at the Raven's Nest? That might be a good way to start filling up the empty space left behind from Blood Raven's passing. Freyja knew that the place needed something to make it their own.

She paused for a moment to look around. The lake freighter that she had seen before was now miles away, about to vanish into the entrance of the Detroit River. The Canadian fisherman she had seen earlier were still in the same place as before however, and they waved to her with wordless shouts of welcome. She returned the wave. Then she turned her head skyward, and turned on the speed. She had many other poppets to gather up, and places to be in the afternoon.

* * *

Manta rays are fun to watch. Just don't be like Steve Irwin. Truthfully, I don't think mantas can pwn us like stingrays can. And yeah, that is true rays and skates and other prehistoric animals from their family. They don't swim really, they fly. OR float or propel or hover.

Ah, so Lighthammer is way faster than the others, neat.

Whoa! They put one of those poppets underwater. Not just underwater, but in the muck, underwater. Just imagine if Jan had gone all the way back to find this particular one, only to discover it's been removed.



So does this mean Branwen is still "online"? In the sense that if one of these poppets pings with danger, the elder witch can still pick up this signal in Boston? Or wherever she's gone to retire? - Ah, I see. She's dismantling the thing. Pretty neat that all of this is happening underwater. Yah Alteration spells!

Yeah, she should put these poppets (or this one) in some sort of storage. Later on maybe all of these formerly magical items can be on display in that same museum or whatever, along with her first Stormcrow suit.

She paused for a moment to look around. The lake freighter that she had seen before was now miles away, about to vanish into the entrance of the Detroit River.

I love that. Something about really large vessels moving along.

Prudent to undo those poppets, lest they endanger Stormcrow or Blood Raven. Neat that she takes on the Jan Cousteau poppet first. A wonderfully detailed description of her magic at work as she undoes the arcane doll. Flying through the water with the grace of a manta and bursting the surface like a missile into the air must have been a blast! I hope Jan finds dismantling the other poppets as enjoyable and trouble-free.

Definitely hear you on avoiding too much grimdark. At a certain point, too much darkness just becomes unintentionally funny.

Huh, I've never even heard of Lake St. Clair, so yeah.

Wow, only two and a half weeks. A lot's changed... though I suppose the change was building up even before the fight with the Summoner. The fight just made it official.

Really cool the way she's scanning the lake. And it's a useful talent. There are so many times I've been stymied by not being able to find something just because it was beneath some loose paper or behind a desk or whatever. Having all senses engaged would be helpful, too.

Dang, I want this power.

"After all, what was the point in having these abilities, if you did not have at least a little fun with them once and a while?"

Really can't argue with that.

The poppet network does feel a bit like the Internet. Gives you a way to keep an eye on things, but also means everything else can keep an eye on you. Though does she really want to get rid of them just yet? Or would they not be able to detect the Dogman?

Nice finish with the Canadian fishermen.

Renee: From what I remember, Mantas do not have stingers, and are filter feeders only. They are basically giant sea cows.

Lighthammer is way faster than anyone else in the air, including Blood Raven. He can do over Mach 2 at this point, and that is only going to increase as he gains more practice. I can foresee him eventually learning how to transform his body into light. At that point he will also be able to travel at the speed of light. Which will have complications, since that causes time to dilate.

If someone had taken that poppet, Jan would be very concerned. But given that she is magically connected to it, it would be easy enough for her to trace her way back through that link to where it was. Then someone would have some explaining to do.

I am glad you mentioned that first Stormcrow suit. I put that on the list of items that will be on display in the new Raven's Nest.

Back when I was working downtown, I'd often see those lakes freighters going down the Detroit River. They are something to see, given how huge they are. The biggest ones are about a thousand feet long.


Acadian: I mainly did the underwater poppet in that scene because I wanted to show off January's water breathing magic. Plus I wanted to show that she had ranked up her Enchantment skill, so that she can now disenchant items she has made. So it was a two for one situation.

Plus the lake was an interesting place. It has history for Jan thanks to Jobbie Nooner. Plus this is Michigan, we are the Great Lakes State after all. So it was nice to use a place that reflects Michigan, rather than just the top of some generic telephone pole in the suburbs.


WellTemperedClavier: I was surprised when I looked back through the timeline and saw it was only 2.5 weeks since Jobbie Nooner. A very lot happened in a short amount of time. But that is why I have the timeline, so I can keep that sort of thing straight.

Her Astral Sight was definitely worth the experience points she spent to buy it. Given how magic works in her world, being able to see and act in the astral means being aware of all things magical, and many things not. She can essentially see through walls, tell if a person is meta, magician, or mundane, and more, identify spells and enchantments, etc... It's a huge power.

The Dogman is an entirely earthly creature. So the Poppet Network is useless to detect him.

I included the fishermen because when I was doing my research on the Lake Saint Clair, a lot of it came from fishermen. Almost all the underwater videos I found were from bass fishermen. Apparently small mouth bass is a big thing in that lake. So it felt right to give them some representation in return.






Dragon Ball - Turtle School

The Old Master trope

Kaci (RL Kaci Walfall)

Ryo's finishing move



Book 11.22 - Raven Sisters

July 14th, afternoon.

Adin's House of Pain was a simple affair. Located in a strip mall along John R Road, it was just a few blocks from there January had captured the Death Dealer and shut down his Crystal Death operation. Well, except for those neo-Nazis he had sold a batch to beforehand. January was growing accustomed to these little landmarks now: places all over the city where she had fought villains, or otherwise gone into action.

In spite of the melodramatic nickname that January had given it, the Madison Heights Academy of Martial Arts was just a simple suburban dojo. It was one of many humble businesses located in a shopping strip just south of 11 Mile Road. A security guard company sat to one side of it, and a tiny event space lay on the other.

The interior of the martial arts studio was as ordinary as the outside. There was one giant open space just inside the door, filled with padded mats. Numerous heavy and small punching bags lined the back wall, along with a few wooden dummies. Doors to changing rooms and showers lay among them, and finally a short hallway led farther back into the building, with bathrooms on one side, and Adin's office on the other.

Being Sunday, it was open mat day. That meant that the studio was open to anyone to come and spar, whether or not they had a membership there. Adin's was one of the few dojos in the area that had them on a Sunday. Most studios closed altogether. So they usually brought in a good crowd of people there to compete, or just to watch.

"Remember, the honor of our school is at stake," Adin murmured into January's ear. "Use your Turtle Style, and you will defeat our rivals from the evil Crane Hermit dojo this day."

"Is that like, Dragon Ball Z?" January wondered. Avery would know for sure. He was practically a scholar of anime.

"Dragon Ball," her old instructor explained. "Dragon Ball Z came after. Well, it's complicated."

Adin Bernstein - no relation to the attorney's, or the bears - was a man with tan skin and tightly curled black hair. He had grown his facial hair out into a neatly trimmed beard since January had last seen him. That gave him an older, wiser appearance. Though he was still a long way from the classic white-haired martial arts master, who automatically received a x3 damage modifier due to his age and wisdom.

January was about to shake her head, but Adin was fitting the padded helmet around her skull, and she had to keep still. Her long hair was tied back into a braid to keep it out of the way, and her hands were already safely ensconced in a pair of gloves. Like many of the others in the studio, she wore her karategi. The smooth cotton uniform had once been something of a super outfit for her. At least it was before she had gotten her real one.

January nodded that she was ready, and Adin clapped his hands to begin. Everyone else in the room had moved back to the walls, to leave the main floor open. Most sat cross-legged on the floor, but some stood behind them. Only one man remained in the fighting space: her opponent. Even now he and January bowed to one another. Then they each dropped into fighting crouches and moved in toward one another.

Her adversary this day was none other than Ryo himself. The Japanese-American wore a white judogi, as befitted his judo training. He began to circle January, looking for her to make a mistake that he might pounce upon. She on the other hand, immediately moved to cut off the ring, and pushed right up into him. It was something she had learned from watching George Foreman fight Ken Norton.

Like Foreman, January led with her right to parry, and kept her left hand back for counters. Whichever way Ryo moved, January stepped in to intercept him. She used her hands as well as her feet, sending probing jabs to cut him off, and pin him in place. The first time she caught him that way, she was able to press in close, and unleash a flurry of punches into his midsection.

Naturally, she was holding back. She would never dream of hitting someone full-force in a dojo. Nor use her elemental foci to perform inhuman feats of endurance or agility. That would give away her secret identity in no time at all. Of course this also meant no wings or lightning. It was just pure fighting skill.

It was kind of refreshing. She could not rely upon becoming Earth here, and simply shrug off any attack that came her way. Nor could she become Water, and bend or stretch in otherwise impossible arcs. She only had her training to help her now.

Ryo was of course in the same boat. He could not fade and allow January's attacks to pass right through him. Nor could he draw his katana and do what samurai did best. Like January, he had to make the most of his hands and feet and brain.

He had a lot to make the most of. As January already knew from previous sparring sessions, Ryo was fast, lightning fast. He was faster than she was. She had to anticipate his moves, and start her counters before he made his attacks. Otherwise she could never hope to keep up. So she studied not his face, but his waist, and shoulders, searching for any clues that he was shifting his weight in preparation to strike. Sometimes she succeeded, and blocked or slipped aside from his attacks. Other times she found herself laying on her back, and staring up at the ceiling.

January noted that among the audience was a certain young woman, the same age as her and Ryo. Her brown skin was soft as silk, and her eyes were ensconced with a pair of large, pantoscopic glasses. Her dark hair was done up in micro braids, one of which had fallen errantly across the side of her heart-shaped features.

Like the others strictly there as onlookers, she was dressed in normal street clothes. In this case a blue crop top that left her midriff bare, but with a sleeveless striped shirt over that. A striped miniskirt left her legs bare, but for the strappy sandals she wore underneath. Gold hoop earrings hung from her ears, and either a single necklace looped its way around her neck three times, or she wore multiple smaller, yet otherwise identical slender gold chains.

Another goddess, where did they all come from?

She spent too much time looking at the other woman. She paid for it when a power punch graced her chin. Her head rocked back, and instantly moved her eyes away, and back to her opponent. Ryo was closing in. This was the moment she had been waiting for.

He followed up his punch with a high kick aimed at the left side of her head. She saw it coming, and slipped to the right. That sent his foot over her shoulder, just inches from her ear. She instantly charged forward, and pressed her left forearm against the back of Ryo's exposed knee. That sent him off balance, and toppled him over onto his hands and knees.

She moved to try to wrap her arms around his waist as he rose to his feet. That would allow her to perform a suplex. But he was too quick. He wormed his way up to his feet, and pulled her hands up to his shoulders.

That was it. January felt his weight shift under her. He had one of her arms in a lock, and in a seemingly effortless motion, he bent forward from the waist. The judo throw sent her flying over him, to land flat on her back on the mats below. She stared up at the ceiling tiles overhead, and fought to regain her breath. Before Ryo could move in, she tapped out and ended the match.

She hoped that it had all looked good.

January rose to her feet slowly, and found Ryo waiting for her, standing at attention. She bowed to him, and he did likewise. Only then did they move out of the fighting circle, and allow another pair of fighters to take their places.

"Really?" Adin clucked as he helped unlace the gloves from her hands. "I saw that coming from Toledo. Your mind must be a thousand miles away. Or..."

He followed her gaze to where Ryo sat down beside the young woman in micro braids. She looked ecstatic, and alternated between clapping him triumphantly upon the shoulders, and moving in for a short hug.

January had to fight the urge to raise an eyebrow in Spockian incredulity. Then she reminded herself that it was mainly skin to skin contact with others that Ryo was adverse to. Touching him through clothing usually did not stress him out, usually. Right now he was wearing his judogi, which covered him from neck to toe. So it was probably tolerable for him.

But still it was notable, unusual even.

"You did not throw a match just to make him look good in front of his girlfriend." Adin sighed.

"Of course not," January said with as much sincerity as she could muster. "That would be disingenuous, and foster bad habits, and be unethical, and... Ryo's a damn good fighter. He was just better than me today."

"Riiight," the way her sensei shook his head showed that he clearly did not believe any of that. "So what is name of this girl who had absolutely nothing to do with the fight?"

"Kaci," January said. "Ryo really likes her."

* * *

That'd be awesomesauce, Lighthammer actually becoming light as he becomes more adept at his particular powers. WOOSH!!!

"Causes time to dilate..." I had this weird moment some time in my youth when I completely understood what this means. Hard to explain. It was like my brain was able to comprehend what the Fourth Dimension is all about (which from our perspective seems like a measure of time). It was just for that one moment, like a super +INT moment. Probably was reading one of those New Age books when it happened: Time is an Illusion, perhaps.

Right, the Titanic was 882 feet and some change; learned this recently after watching all those Ocean Gate videos. And so modern freighters are going to be even larger at times!

Jan's back in her martial arts class. That must be surreal. Like a world famous rock star who's played stadiums and concert halls returns to the club where it all began. And nobody who knows her here knows she's also Stormcrow, right?

Well, Ryo is here. Ha, this is interesting. See, now that they're sparring in front of others who are ordinary students, they can't use any of their superpowers. They have to go back to fists & feet! They have to "pretend" they're not the same figures who just saved the world.

Hee hee, yup. This gets mentioned in the story. Hmm, who is this aluring young woman?



Indeed. I'm getting ... a bit excited just reading about her. WHOA.... she's



Hmm, maybe I'd better put that last bit in spoiler tags. Don't wanna ruin the surprise if someone inadvertently reads that last part.

Interesting observation regarding Lighthammer's growing hyperspeed. Might time travel be in his future?

*

Back to the old training ground for h2h sans superness. Wow, a match against Ryo! That he is faster than Jan has to be a huge advantage. Turns out though that clever Ryo didn’t really need his speed. It was his attractive distraction that undid Jan.

Given Ryo’s social awkwardness and introversion, it is great that he has been able to find himself a girlfriend. I can hear Jan now, “Hey Ryo, does Kaci have a sister?”


Nits?
-’In spite of the melodramatic nickname that January had given it, the Madison Heights Academy of Martial Arts {was?} just a simple suburban dojo.’
-’She had to anticipate his moves, and start her counters before her {he?} made his attacks.’

This kind of thing is actually excellent training. Since a superhero relying too heavily on their powers has a pretty massive weakness (and if there's one thing comics writers love doing, it's depriving supers of their powers). Thus, a no-magic duel in a dojo is a smart thing for January to try.

Good to see Ryo's got a girlfriend.

Renee: Time dilation is a weird thing. Basically time does not move at the same speed throughout the universe. In areas with higher gravity, time slows down. In areas with less gravity, time speeds up. On top of that if you move really, really fast, as you approach the speed of light time also slows down. For example, the satellites in orbit that make up the GPS system have algorithms that constantly update their internal clocks and reset them to ground time, because they are moving through time at a different rate than we are down on Earth.

Most lake freighters clock in around 700 - 800 feet long, so a little smaller than the Titanic. But there are about a dozen that are over 1,000 feet long. They are just giant. From a distance they look sleek and needle-like. But up close, they are incredibly wide. They look like giant sea tubs. Ocean going container ships are even larger I think.

You called it. No one at the dojo knows that January and Ryo are supers. So they have to fight the old fashioned way, with wits and muscle.

And you also called it on Kaci. Ryo does not like to be touched in general, though mostly that is on his bare skin. Through clothing is easier for him to tolerate. It is a common experience with many neurodiverse people. Their sense of touch can be very sensitive, to the point where they often cannot wear a lot of clothes, because it overstimulates them and just makes them feel weird. All of Ryo's behaviors like this go back to things that were told to me by a person with Asperger's Syndrome.

And yes, that is a big deal for Ryo. I went back and added some text to make that more clear in case other readers do not pick up on it. He is serious about Kaci.


Acadian: Lightguy might get some sort of time travel in the future, but only in the form of him getting to the future faster than everyone else. The first time he tries out going lightspeed he might take a trip around the moon and back. For him it might only take seconds, but minutes or hours may have passed for everyone else on Earth when he gets back. I don't really know how to do the math calculations.

Speaking of time dilation, while only a few weeks have gone by in story time, several years ago in our time since Ryo asked January for advice on dating, because he had met a girl he really liked. That is back in Book 7: Hammer Down. It is when January realized that Ryo was a magic-user. Well, this is that girl. And January's advice was to just be himself. Among her suggestions was to bring her to Adin's dojo on open mat day so that she could see him spar. Now here they finally are, and January is making her Homie look based.


WellTemperedClavier: One of the big parts of all the characters is that they are not just a bunch of powers. They all have skills that round them out. January and Ryo are fighters. January is also a gymnast. Ryo can code. Gadget is a science nerd who builds things. Lighthammer is a pilot and combat veteran. Cray is a hacker, etc... January herself started down the magic route while building her fighting skills. I always try to show in her fights that she is thinking, and using the tactics of real fighters like Roberto Duran or George Foreman to draw inspiration from. Or like how Lighthammer used his flying skills to outmaneuver some of the flying Abyssals during the Battle of Belle Isle, and used gravity to put himself into a near stall, before rolling over directly on their tails.

And January will get that obligatory "no powers" moment herself in the distant future. I have a multiverse story arc planned for probably season three or four. Early on she will get sent back in time about a thousand years, when magic still worked, but was at a really low level. So she will not be able to fly, or call lightning, or see in astral space, or any of that cool stuff. She will have to rely on her skills more than ever, even as she has to figure out how to travel through the multiverse to get back home. I see her learning to fight with a sword at that time, and forging her own magic sword in the process.






Book 11.23 - Raven Sisters

July 15th (Monday)

January stared at the comic book in her hands. Its cover depicted an African-American woman with a silver arm. She wore a blue and gold uniform cut like something from the Napoleonic Era. One side of its double-breasted tunic was left unbuttoned, revealing a white shirt beneath. She swung from a rope like a pirate, saber clutched in her free hand, while a devil-may-care smile lit her features.

Artemis Argent and the Secret of Mystery Hill #1 was the title above her head. It was a mouthful, and it filled the entire top of the cover. But it was hers, and it worked. January flipped the comic open to the first page. She smiled once more to see her name listed there as the writer, right above where Rus was listed as the artist.

They had done it. They had made their comic book. Well, at least the first issue of the six that their Jumpstarter campaign covered.

"Woot! Woot!" January crowed like a Mad Fae Corps fan. Now all she needed were a pair fake elf ears, face paint, and a bottle of Fae Cola to be a true Faegallo.

Her phone dinged with the arrival of a new text message. She fumbled with the cheap Hamsung, and waited patiently for its screen to unlock. Then she waited even longer for it to respond to her tapping on the new message icon. She continued to wait while the device thought about whether or not it felt like doing anything, until finally it relented and displayed the text.

The first episode of the podcast is up on the host, it will propagate across all platforms shortly.

It was from Ryo. Where Blackjack was their sound engineer, in charge of the actual recordings, the Japanese-American was their editor. So not only did he splice in things like the opening and closing music, he also handled the technical side of publishing. Usually one person did both. But since they had an embarrassment in riches in this case, the two had decided to split the tasks between them. In any event, having someone else handle the technical details meant that January and her mother Barbara had the time to read books and articles, and write the scripts for the actual content.

She had always thought podcasting was just a couple of bros yammering aimlessly into a microphone. Well, some of them were that. But the ones with actual content turned out to be a lot more complicated than that. Thankfully she had a network of friends to help out, as always.

A knock at the door brought January down to earth. In this case it was literal, as she had been jumping about the rotunda of the Witch House. She set the comic book down on the lower steps that curled up the central space to the upper story. Then she walked to the nearby foyer. She was surprised to find her mother standing on the porch when she opened the door.

She had not been expecting to see her today. It was a Monday, which normally meant a work day for her mother, especially in the afternoon. Worse, she had her serious face on. January knew that one from more than one talk during her childhood. The last time her mother had worn it, was when she had announced that she was moving out of the Witch House.

January's heart instantly lurched, and a chasm threatened to open up in her stomach. Something was wrong. Was it her grandmother Sarah? She was about a thousand years old. Had she died? Had her mother lost her job? Had her father done something disgusting again? Or had something new and unsavory about her brother had been brought to light by reporters?

Or worse, did her mother know about Stormcrow? Had she figured out that her daughter January was indeed Detroit's crow champion? As much as January had already considered telling her about that, she really did not think she was ready to spill those beans.

"Honey, we need to talk about something." Barbara spoke in her serious tone. It was the one that went with that face. There was no mistaking it now. Something bad had happened.

January let her in, and led her through the house to the kitchen. It was still one of the only furnished rooms. The Witch House was practically a mansion. In the very least it was big, really big. There was no way that January could afford to buy furniture for it. She still did not even own a TV.

They sat on the stools that lined one side of the kitchen island. That is when January realized that the grown up thing to do was to offer her mother a drink. She knew that her mother liked coffee. But January did not have any, much less a machine to make it. She never liked the smell of the stuff. So instead she pulled out a carton of almond milk from the fridge, and poured glasses for both of them.

"You are still the same girl as ever January." Her mother smiled down at the liquid that filled the Nightgirl commemorative glass January had put in front of her. Burger Baron had put out an entire line of glasses over a decade before, as part of a tie-in with Marvelous Comics. Naturally January had gotten one for every character. It had been a moral imperative. She took the Ms. Miracle glass herself, as she was her second favorite fictional heroine, after Nightgirl of course.

"Who else would I be?" January wondered. As much as she dreaded what it might be, she wished that her mother would get it over and drop the other shoe already.

"You know honey, that is something I admire about you," Barbara turned to face her. "You know who you are, what you are meant to do, and you don't flinch or compromise when it comes to that. You're like Stormcrow that way. It's like your Aunt Branwen says. You don't try. You just do. You are both so certain that way."

"Mom, is something wrong?" January worried. "What happened?"

"Remember when I said that I was feeling lost, and I wasn't sure what I should be doing with my life?" Barbara said. "How it was like I had been sleepwalking for decades, not really seeing what was happening in the world around me? Well I have been thinking a lot about that since Julian's death. And with the Battle of Belle Isle, that is just in so much sharper focus. What has happened to this world, while my entire generation has been asleep at the wheel? What are we going to do about it?"

"Isn't that what our podcast is about?" January probed. "I mean, we are talking about how the world got this way, with garbage patches in the ocean bigger than Texas, fascism on the rise, an internet filled with hate..."

"I think it's time to do more than talk," Barbara took a deep breath. She put her hands on her hips, and stared deeply into January's eyes. "I am going to ask you something that isn't fair. But I have to ask, and you have to decide. I can't do it, because this is going to change your world as much as it will mine."

"Mom, what is going on?" January did not like the sound of any of this. Of all the places she could imagine it going, well, some were pretty grim.

"You know about how Senator Harding went to prison, and how there's going to be a special election to fill his seat?" Barbara said. "Well, I want to run. I want to take that spot, and go to Washington, and change this world for the better. If Stormcrow can fight for this state, then I can do it too."

"But I can't do it unless you are ok with it," Barbara slowed down and eased her voice. "If I do this, it's going to mean a lot more media attention. More than we have had already with your brother's death. They're going to be bringing that up over and over again. And they're going to be digging through both my past, and yours, looking for anything they can find to make me look bad. So they're going to be talking about my abortion back when I was in college, being busted for pot, about your suicide attempt, and being trans, and everything."

"Wait, you were busted for pot?" January held up her hands in a gesture to halt. Her mind boggled at the words her mother had just spoken. "You mean like, the devil's lettuce? Mary Jane? Like that kind of pot?"

"Well, we called it weed too - and the wacky tobaccy - back when we rode on the stagecoach to work," Barbara laughed. "Yes, you may find this hard to believe, but I was your age once upon a time. I had fun. I went to parties. I went to concerts. I even had S-E-X once or twice!"

January tried not to wince openly. The thought of her parents doing that was just too horrific to contemplate.

"Anyway, it was just a misdemeanor offence, no big deal," her mother shrugged. "I paid a fine and went home. Now if my skin had been a different color that might have gone a lot worse, a whole lot worse. That's one of the reasons I am running."

It suddenly struck January that her mother - the person who had always been warning her not to drink, or do drugs, and go to wild parties - was the one actually doing those things. Or at least she had done them in the past. January's idea of the hard stuff was Fae Cola. Her only drug so far had been a restore fatigue potion of Kaelin's after the Battle of Belle Isle. Well, a few of the alchemist's healing potions too. But those did not count. That was healing after all, not a drug. January's idea of a party was a gaming all-nighter. Compared to her mother, she was a nun!

Then January considered the other things her mother had just said. This would mean more media attention. It would not just be reporters dragging through her past and throwing it all over the internet. It would mean them following her in the present, shadowing her, watching her. People looking for her to make some mistake or miscue, or just misunderstanding that they could twist into political or economic capital.

That was not a good position for someone wearing a cape to be in. Sure, there were laws in place that made it a crime to out a superhero. That did not mean that someone would not do it anyway, especially if they were from the conservative end of the spectrum. Those people were already calling for Stormcrow's murder. They had been for some time, and the Battle of Belle Isle had not made a dent in that attitude.

January knew from experience that nothing ever would.

Even worse, if she was revealed to be Stormcrow, how far behind might Avery and Ryo's own identities be? All it had taken for Blood Raven to learn the identity of the Hierophant was the name of January's own brother: Julian Ward. After investigating everyone who had ever been connected to Julian, she had eventually ended up within the Hierophant's very sanctum. It would not take a reporter nearly that much work to link January's friends to her, and then to the Great Lakes Alliance.

This was bad, really, really bad. She had to talk her mother out of it. There was no other option.

"Of course I am good with this." January declared confidently. "If this is what you feel is right for you to do, then I am with you all the way. Whatever it takes Mom, I have your back."

"Are you sure about this?" Barbara said. "I mean, you barely thought about it. Maybe you should take the night to consider how it will affect you, affect both of us."

"No," January shook her head. "I understand. But it's like you said. Stormcrow doesn't waver or waffle in the face of a threat. She fights for all of us. We can't do any less ourselves."

"Ok then." Barbara let out a long exhalation of breath, as if a great weight had been taken from her shoulders. Or maybe as if one had been added there? "I've filled out all the registration forms, but there is one more thing. I need a petition with ten thousand signatures to run for the office. Normally it's a lot more. But they've truncated some of the rules since this is a snap election, and there isn't the amount of time there normally is."

"Oh boy, I don't think we can get all those in one day," January frowned.

A part of her was secretly happy. If they could not get the signatures, then her mother could not run for office, and none of this would be a problem. That would fix things, and keep her secret identity a secret.

She also hated herself for thinking that. That was taking the easy route. Worse, this was something what her mother clearly wanted. January could not hold her back. She could not crush her dreams. She had to be better than that.

January still remembered when she had finally worked up the nerve to tell her parents that she was trans. Her mother had not believed her. She said that she was just going through a phase, and would grow out of it. Her father had not even done that. He had not said a word. He just left the table and disappeared into his study.

January had slit her wrists later that same night.

She was not going to turn around and do the same thing back to her mother.

"Maybe we can reach out to some other people to help get the word out?" January mused. "Maybe some people with a little more notoriety?"

"What do you mean?" Barbara scrunched her eyebrows in bewilderment. "What other people?"

January fished out her aging, discount smartphone once more and waited patiently for the screen to unlock. Then she waited longer for the phone app to start up. Then she waited even longer for it to dial and connect.

"Hey January, what's up?" Avery's voice came over the other end of the line. Thankfully the speaker phone was off, so her mother could not hear him.

"Hi, umm Stormcrow?" January only had to half pretended to be flustered. She could only pray that she succeeded in her Deception roll, and her mother believed that she really was talking to the superheroine in question. "Ms. Crow? This is January Ryan. Well, January Ward. You said that if I ever needed anything I could call on you and the Alliance. Well, I do have a favor to ask..."

* * *

Yeah, that is pretty surprising Okami would allow himself to be not just touched, but fullblown hugged, and iN public. Hmm, is Kaci the gal from Baltimore? Let's find out. Today it's July 15. Hot town, summer in the city...

Jan's on her Hamsung. I love that she's "still" got a cheap phone. You don't know how many times in the past decade I've heard "Wow, you still got one of those?" ... or .... "T-mobile's got this excellent new family plan...just in case you ever want to upgrade." Yeah.... 'upgrade'. Like clamshells are so horrible. Can Jan type a text message without needing to look at the buttons? I can! Can she accidentally drop her cell out of her purse without worrying if a crack's now running across the screen? -- Or how about this... can she fit her phone conveniently into any pocket without needing to stuff it in (so that there's this huge rectangle bulging its way through her clothes)? Pff. Upgrade my 4$$.

Sounds like their podcast is about to be up and running. That is true about podcasts. Some of them are just somebody just sitting there yammering into the auditory version of a shoebox, others are quite professional; made in an actual studio, and so on. It's like zines in the '90s. Most of them were folks using scissors and gluestick, cutting/pasting pictures & words late at night in Kinko's, but there were others which were made on actual computers programs and such.

Uh oh. Yeah, why does Barbara have the "mom/concerned" look? Look at all those thoughts of worry cascading through Jan's head, just from that one look.

Jan hasn't got TV or even a percolater, because she's too busy flying literally around the world. She really is like a rock star.

DAmn. Barbara's doing the woolgathering thing. Combined with the Look of Death upon her countenance. This is suspenseful.





Whoa. She's going to run for office. Phew. Hey, at least she's not about to blow Stormcrow's cover.

..." And they're going to be digging through both my past,..."

Yup. They'll be all over that, especially if she skips the grassroots local campaign stuff and just aims straight toward Washington. I mean, the scrutiny wouldn't be as intense as it is for Hillary or George Santos; Jan's mom is a politcal nobody at this point. But there would be some scrutiny for sure.

In any event, it's pretty obvious Barb is subconsciously cluing in to her daughter's true identity, right? She keeps dancing arond Stormie's name. Jan's worried about this. But truthfully, there's a pretty good chance it'll never even get that far. Because her mom is a politcal nobody. She'd likely barely register at the polls, which is a GOOD thing so far as January Ward's concerned.

Then again, this is the Stormcrow story. Mom's sudden desire to shift into politics wouldn't get written up unless something intense was eventually coming.

Oh wow, what a position Jan finds herself in! I can’t think of a good resolution here. If her mom goes into national politics it will be every so risky for Jan to try and maintain her secret identity. And if she is outed via either media attention or political opposition research, that would be painting a target on her mom’s back. So. . . telling her mom that she is Stromcrow? I’d suspect that both she and her mom would agree that a US senator and a superhero in the same family are very incompatible and prudence would dictate they choose one or the other. And who has better potential to help improve the world: a white hat superhero or one of a hundred US senators in a political body that moves slower than grass grows and can’t agree on anything? I’d argue the former.

Definitely hear you on the importance of heroes having personality. I'm no comics expert, but my understanding is that Marvel was the first to really run with this, and was a big reason they became so successful in the '60s. Is that more or less correct?

Wait... is Fae Cola this world's version of Faygo? Feel like I should've figured that out earlier.

Okay, so I love where this chapter went. It's such a great way of exploring January's own superhero identity. Mom doesn't have the option of going into costume and fighting evil, so she's going to try politics. Which matters! You can have all the grassroots activism you want, but at some point, someone has to step up and take things to city hall/state capital/D.C.

But as January realizes, this is a huge risk, and not just for her, either. Still, it's not so simple as just dissuading her mom (assuming her mom can even be dissuaded). January empathizes with her mother's situation.

I almost wonder if it'd be better for January to tell her mother about the Stormcrow identity ahead of time. At least that gives her mom some forewarning in case that gets uncovered later on. But telling mom also presents huge risks of its own. I'm not sure what the best path forward is, since they all have pitfalls.

That maybe but I went for the artwork.

Renee: Kaci is not the gal from Baltimore I had been working on. Instead she turned out to be a he. But a he who wears makeup, because he's a hwarang. He won't appear until about midway through the next Book.

January will have that cheap Hamsung until it literally breaks, and can't be fixed. Then she will buy the cheapest thing she can find to replace it. Jan is not rich.

You are right that at this point Barbara is a political nobody. So the scrutiny is going to be low, so far. But things are going to heat up. This is something I have been teasing for much of Season One. Season Two is going to revolve around Barbara's run for office, and the Christo-Fascists who want to stop her, and kill the Alliance.

It's not so much that Barbara is cluing into January being Stormcrow. She is inspired by Stormcrow. Villains like Darth Vader intimidate and frighten people. Heroes like Captain America inspire them. They encourage them to make themselves, and their world, a better place. Inspiring others is probably the most important thing that January will ever do as Stormcrow.


Acadian: It is a mess of spaghetti, with no clean way out of. Season Two will be filled with more of these messy, imperfect situations, with characters not taking what is necessarily the smart or at even carefully plotted out paths. It's more people flying by the seats of their pants, being driven by what they feel is right, and what they know they can live with, vs what they know they cannot.

January's world is in many ways a mirror of our own. So it has the same problems ours does: climate change, extinction, the destruction of the middle class and growing disparity in wealth between billionaires and everyone else, the rise of fascism, and so on. Writing this story has shown me that superheros are incapable of dealing with such slow, creeping threats. They can't give people healthcare, or housing, or a livable wage, or make education affordable, etc... Just like all humans in general, they are good for facing immediate and highly visible threats, like monsters. Terrible when it comes to creeping corruption.

This is something that will come up more and more in the Crow-verse, though I have been touching on it already. Just as January does not win her battles alone, superheros cannot solve the world's problems by themselves. It will take people like Barbara to really change the world for the better, through the glacially slow and excruciatingly boring process of legislating and policy making. I understand your cynicism when it comes to the latter. Given my age, I share much of it. I have seen how much damage both bad and just indifferent actors in government can do. OTOH, my state just go un-gerrymandered for the first time in decades, and it has made a startling difference.

So none of this is going to be easy for Barbara. She has a long and circuitous road ahead of her, with a lot of setbacks and changes of direction. However, I do see a long term political career as her future (not necessarily in the US Senate mind you, she is not going to win every political battle), along with being a podcaster. I always wanted to do a lot more with her character. Mothers are usually background characters at best. I want to buck that trend, and make sure she always has an active role in events.


WellTemperedClavier: Marvel in the 60s was really good at making their characters relatable, and taking on issues that meant something to the readers. Where DC was filled with characters like Batman and Superman, who were millionaires, or literal aliens, Marvel came out with Spider-Man. An ordinary high school kid, that readers could all relate with. Since then they have had several everyman style characters in the same cloth, who have been as popular: like Shadowcat of the X-Men, and most recently the newest incarnation of Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan). They also used supers to tell stories that resounded with people, such as how the X-Men are an allegory for civil rights, and remain so to this day. Professor X and Magneto are often compared to Martin Luther King jr. and Malcom X for example.

Fae Cola, or FaeCo, is absolutely the Crow-verse's version of Faygo. It is a Michigan made brand, like Better Made potato chips, and Koegels hot dogs. I only just had the opportunity to work in the Insane Clown Posse Mad Fae Corps tie in. I do have a vague idea of having a story take place at the Gathering of Faegallos sometime in the future. Woot! Woot!

As I said above, Barbara is inspired by Stormcrow to change the world. As you noted, Mother Crow cannot don a cape and fight Abyssals. But she can fight in other ways, perhaps in the most important way of all. She really can change the world as a civilian leader, in a way that January could never hope to do wearing a cape. Her run for office is partly inspired by Stacey Abrams in Georgia, and partly by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the Bronx.

It will be very risky. But January is already thinking about that. We will see her machinations come to fruition in the next Book, as Barbara's political campaign really starts to get moving. Someone will be telling Barbara about their super identity by then as well, just not January. She wants to do so, but also doesn't want to, at the same time. It is messy.


macole: The old Jack Kirby style!








Ingalls Mall and the rest of the University of Michigan can be found on the Stormcrow Map


Book 11.24 - Raven Sisters

In less than an hour, January was standing within the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor. The tall sandstone edifice of Burton Memorial Tower rose nearly two hundred feet into the sky behind her. It was flanked by the red walls of Hill Auditorium on one side. To the other lay the lower, but wider, Modern Languages Building, with its alternating rows of red brick and eggshell colored concrete.

Before them was the long, open plaza of Ingall's Mall. It was flanked by lines of trees to either side, and wide sidewalks led from one end of the space to the other. The walkways surrounded manicured lawns that filled the rectangular area, while a fountain lay near its center. The latter was a strange affair, and January had to study it for some time to discern that it was a sea god blowing water from his trumpet, while his merfolk children clung to him.

The Michigan League Building rose up on the opposite side of the mall. It was a sprawling brick structure that could have fit into any Ivy League school. A stone facade decorated its main entrance, and tall, slender windows ran its length. Its roofline was dotted with dormers, but only on one side, giving the structure an uneven look.

Thankfully January had been able to convince her mother that by splitting up, they could gather more signatures. That allowed her to change into her Stormcrow armor once she was out of her mother's sight. That armor now popped with a bright golden dragon emblazoned upon her left shoulder plate, thanks to Xochitl and Mr. Blackwood.

People flocked to her now, and she paused to take selfies with them as they passed around her mother's petition to run for office. It did not take long for her to run out of paper. But thankfully some students arrived with a ream of printing paper, and they began to use that instead.

January knew that she was going to have to take proactive measures to protect her identity. Her mind still reeled with her mother's latest bombshell. This could go so wrong, in so many ways. But her mother was right. January did not doubt that she needed to do this. So January had to back her, and find some way to keep it from blowing up in their faces.

She considered the Nightman comics. The fictional superhero was a billionaire playboy by day, and dark crusader for justice by night. He always garnered a lot of attention in his civilian identity as Brice Vayn. He even did so purposely, and used it to cultivate an image of Brice that contrasted sharply to that of Nightman. In the comics, it insured that no one would even consider that one could be the other. Could January do something like that?

But somehow January suspected that pretending to be a vapid dilettante was not going to work for her, much less a party girl. The whole womanizing part was right out. January's only real relationship had lasted shorter than a head of lettuce. Even that had been a shot in the dark to begin with. Hannah had been a real unicorn. January was never going to find anyone like that again.

Hannah. How long had it been since she had thought about her? Hours at least. She was so over her.

So what else could she do to keep Stormcrow and January Ryan apart, even as she was doing reckless things like she was right now, and only drawing them closer together?

January snapped her fingers. Maybe that was it! Maybe she did not need to add distance. What if instead she put Stormcrow right next to January Ryan, and in pictures no less? Nightman had done the same trick several times in his eighty odd years in comics. She recalled that once he had used holograms to make Nightman appear beside his alter-ego Brice Vayn in public. Other times he had his sidekicks like Darkwing or Blue Jay impersonate his super self, while he appeared beside them in his civilian ID.

Maybe Gola could help? The raven mocker had a way of making people see things. But then again, that had not worked on camera. Gadget had seen right through the undead medicine worker's illusions via her suit cams, even when January had been totally dumbfounded herself. No, she would need something more physical.

But at least now she had an idea to start with. The next time she did something like this, she would have something in place to protect all their identities. There had to be some kind of magic that could do it. She just had to find it. But that was a tomorrow problem. Today she had her mother's senatorial campaign to think about.

The crowds parted as a newcomer arrived. January recognized her as Priya O'Neill, the same local news reporter who had been there in the aftermaths of both the Gull Island and Belle Isle battles. As ever, her towering, red-haired camera operator was with her as well, filming every step of the way.

January took a deep breath, and steeled herself for what was to come. Meeting with the public had become almost easy, nearly second nature by now. She just had to be herself really. But where the Fourth Estate was involved, things always got trickier. Now the whole world might be watching. She had to be on her toes.

"Stormcrow!" the television reporter smiled. "Would you like to talk about this petition you are gathering signatures for?"

"I would," January nodded. So far so good. "It is always good to see you again Ms. O'Neill. As you know the special election to fill the seat of former Senator Harding is coming up soon. Barbara Ryan has decided to enter the race, and I am out here collecting signatures to put her on the ballot."

"Barbara Ryan?" January could see the mental gears turning behind the other woman's eyes as she ruminated upon the name. "Wait, do you mean Barbara Ward, the mother of the Summoner?"

"Yes, they are the same person," January tried not to frown. "She changed her name when she divorced her husband. Well, her former husband. That was before the Summoner was killed by the Hierophant, and his identity was revealed."

"You clearly know a lot about her," Priya noted.

"Of course," January nodded. "We investigated her entire family during our search for the Hierophant. That research is how we eventually found his sanctum, here in Ann Arbor in fact."

"So, isn't this a stretch? You went from fighting her son, to now supporting her?" Priya asked.

"I don't see it that way at all," January insisted. "Her son acted of his own accord, without the knowledge of the rest of his family, and certainly without their consent. None of them are responsible for the heinous acts which he perpetrated."

"But still..." Priya said.

"The Great Lakes Alliance is here for everyone," January insisted. "That means everyone. We are not anyone's enemy unless they make us so. I threw down alongside gangbangers and supervillains to hold back the Abyss. I'll fight for anyone who is committed to making the world a better place."

"And do you believe that is Barbara Ryan?" Priya asked. "Isn't she a... librarian, is that it?"

"I do believe that is Barbara Ryan," January nodded. "I think that she at least deserves a chance to make her case to the people. In the end, Michigan will decide. Do we want the same venal politicians from aristocratic families that consider themselves to be above the law? Or do we want someone who is not a millionaire; someone who has actually had to live in the world, rather than above it all?"

"Those are some pretty strong words," Priya said.

"How many years is the former senator serving in prison again?" January shot back.

"And how does the rest of the Alliance feel about this?" the reporter asked.

"Ôkami and Gadget are out gathering signatures as well," January declared. "We didn't reach out to Lighthammer and Blackhawk, since they are not Michiganders like we are."

"Should superheroes be campaigning for politicians?" Priya pressed. "Some people would say that it's not their place to tell others how they should vote."

"Because I wear a cape that means I don't have a right to have a voice? I disagree." January shot back. "It never stopped Riven and Thunderbolt from making their politics clear in California. It didn't stop Arizona from campaigning for FDR during World War Two, or for Truman afterward. Nor has it stopped countless others from doing the same."

January took a moment to flex the wings from her back, and leaned back to run her fingers through their feathers.

"I can use these wings to hit monsters like the Abyssals," she said. "But a cape's job is not simply to punch people. If that is all we do, then we are just thugs. It's on us to do what we can to make the world better, to help people, not just hurt the bad guys. The same is on every one of us, meta-human or not."

"Superheroes cannot save the world from climate change. We cannot stop the pollution of our planet, or reverse the extinction event that is going on right now, which is being caused solely by humans. We cannot guarantee everyone a living wage, or health care, or a roof over their heads. It will take everyone for the human race to have a future. Not just people with capes."

"To be honest, sometimes I think people like us distract from the deep-seated issues that our world faces," January went on. "I mean, we are great for dealing with sudden and immediate threats, like monsters on Belle Isle. But it's harder to engage with the slow erosion of our world, and the disenfranchisement of the working class. It all seems so big, and overwhelming. It's easy to punch things, it's hard to tackle social and economic disparities and the entrenched power structures that reinforce those disparities."

"I know some of us are trying to do something. Calypso and Janos Heisen are working on clearing garbage patches in the ocean. Stinger and Zero Point are building a fusion reactor in Chicago. But these are just pieces of a much larger puzzle. For example, even if they clean all the plastics out of the oceans, that will not stop corporations and countries from continuing to hurl even more garbage and raw sewage right back into them. That's how it all got there in the first place! So these actions alone aren't going to save the world. As Viuda said to me recently, it will take legislation, and policy, and regulations to do that. For that, we need political representation. Only everyone - together - can make all that happen."

"That starts here, by voting," January insisted. "The Constitution begins with the words: 'We the People.' We need candidates who are of the People, who will support us, rather than billionaires and corporations. Only all of us - again together - can save this world from ourselves."

* * *

"Looking good Cray." January nodded with satisfaction as she walked through the Raven's Nest. The quadrant that had once been Blood Raven's modern occult studies area had been entirely empty since her mentor's departure. But now she saw that the hacker had been doing some decorating. Several old arcade games now stood along the walls, such as Pac Man and Space Invaders. The bright colors of their tall cabinets livened up the area, which was now dominated by a pool table that took up the center of the space.

"It's a start," the hacker leaned back from the pool table with a cue in hand. She saw a smattering of balls across the table, and surmised that he had been practicing. "If you've got any ideas for filling this place us, bring 'em."

January took a deep breath. "I know what you're going to say. I know it's a bad idea, getting involved with my mother's senate campaign. Believe me, I know everything you're going to say."

"I believe you," Cray smiled. "And it is a bad idea. It's a really, really bad idea. You are playing with fire here. This is going to place a great deal of scrutiny on her - and by extension - on you. You are going to have to be a lot more careful about suiting up from here on out."

"I know." January pulled her helmet off so she could run her fingers back through her hair. "But I've been thinking about that. I can use the waypoint network when I go out. January Ryan can walk into the Witch House, and Stormcrow can appear Downtown a second later. It's essentially what my brother did during the Abyssal summonings."

"It did throw us off his trail," Cray cradled his jaw thoughtfully in one hand. "That's good thinking. Keep working on creating alibis like that. Make it plain to people that Stormcrow and January Ryan are two different people, so the thought never enters their minds. Other public figures have done this successfully."

"I can use my video camo more as well, especially whenever I suit up." January said. "That way no one can ever get that on film."

"That's good too," Cray said. "It's good advice for everyone. It's too bad the teleportation network is keyed to your blood. If the others could use it, it would help immensely."

"I mean, I could try to add their DNA to the authentication protocol," January mused. "But I think they'd still have to be mages to activate it. So really only Ryo would be able to use it."

"You can do that?" Cray looked surprised.

"I mean, I think so?" January shrugged. Then she thought about, and set her mind to it. "A conjure woman who doubts, is a conjure woman who fails. So I know so. I just don't know exactly how, yet..."

"Your great-grandma was good at this sort of thing, keeping secrets that is," Cray said. "But she was never good at playing with others. If only she was, she'd have set things up to be more inclusive for others."

"Speaking of playing well with others..." Now it was the hacker's turn to visibly take a deep breath. "The whole security issue was not the only reason I asked you to come here. There's something I wanted to talk to you about, concerning your mother's political aspirations."

"You think I should talk her out of it altogether, don't you?" January sighed.

"No," the hacker held up his hands in surrender. "That's not it all. I think it's a great idea. To be honest, I think she could do a lot of good. My generation thinks of politicians as all a bunch of cynical, self-interested snobs playing legal and procedural games, and getting rich while accomplishing nothing. All with no idea what it is like to actually live in the real world, because they move in such rarified circles that they have never had to even once go grocery shopping for themselves."

"Yeah well, one of our political party's sole goal is to obstruct, oppose, and undermine everything the other one does," January murmured sourly. "Their only message is that government is broken, and they do everything in their power to make that reality. Then they blame the other side for not stopping them."

"Yeah, exactly," Cray agreed. "The senate has been a deadlock for a decade now because of that. It's split dead even. Just one or two seats will flip it in either direction. I think your mom's what we need. She can break the stalemate, and tip the scales. That's why I'd like to help."

"I'd like to ask her to be her campaign manager."

"You... what?" January blinked her eyes several times in a row, as she tried to process that information. Her brain had heard it. But it did not seem to want to make those words make sense.

"I think I can help her election," Cray said. "You know I'm good with information management. It's true I've never ran a campaign before. But I've seen it done. Blood Raven and I were hip deep in Granholm's second run for governor, back in 2006. She had a meta-human stalker who was trying to kidnap her. She gave us complete access to her campaign and personal life. In the end it was one of her staffers, and he tried to kill her when he realized he could not have her."

"Blood Raven actually worked with a governor?" January raised her eyebrows in Spockian incredulity. "Now that is something I'd have liked to have seen."

"Well, it wasn't about her being governor," Cray explained. "As I'm sure you picked up on, Blood Raven's always been an Anarchist at heart. Granholm was just someone in trouble, and Blood Raven did what she always does. She fought for her."

"But it did give me a good look into how the election worked," Cray said. "I had to go through her campaign from top to bottom to find our perp. As you kids might say today, I was all up in their business. Every in and out, I saw it. So I think I really can help."

"Besides, I've been cooped up in this tower for too long," the hacker admitted. "Blood Raven could live like that. Not me. I need to get out, and make friends, and actually do something besides this cape thing. I need a life."

January had been thinking for some time that she had not really known much at all about the elder hacker. He had been the calm, cool voice in her ear through so many battles and emergencies now, that she felt like she could rely on him at all times. Blood Raven had been right when she had told her that! But he was still a stranger in so many ways.

Well, this certainly seemed like a good way to change that.

"I think you're right," January nodded. "I think it's a great idea. Especially since I don't think my mom will be able to pay anyone to do it..."

"I'm like the fish who was an actor," Cray smiled. "I work for scale."

* * *

So Jan is all in for her mom, despite the risks. No surprise since she embraces the same philosophy as Buffy in this regard: ‘When it comes to those I love, I don’t count the cost.’

Yet, Jan is not dumb and her wheels are busily turning to try and minimize the risk. She is right though that trying to have Jan and Stormcrow seem opposites will not work for her; they both have that perky phone voice.

Blood Raven is right in that it is good – very good – to have Cray on her side to help with this project.


Nit: "As you kids might say to today, I was all up in their business." - - Superfluous ‘to’ before 'today'?

That article on the Hwarang is really interesting. Goes far in-depth into yet another cultural phenomenon a silly Westerner such as myself has never heard of! Well, looking forward to hear more about Kaci.

Absolutely, the Stormcrow inspires and unites, rather than frightens and divides. But good gosh. She's changed from Jan to SC right in the same building! -- Wait, is she collecting signatures while dressed in her superhero getup? Goddess, that girl's bold. Well if anything, the fact that Barb's being supported by a superheroine is going to put this "politcal nobody" mom to the forefront.





Oh my gosh, she's talking to a reporter. Seriously. What about her Perky Phone Voice? One of these days, somebody's gonna run some voice recognition software and then...

...But then, maybe it will never go anywhere even if somebody (some CIA tech, perhaps) ever does run Stormcrow's voice. After all, January Ward is not on anybody's radar. Nobody's captured her voice algorhythm in some database for any sort of reasons, I assume.

Sorry. Overthinking, as usual. Or, maybe not. Seems she's slipped up a bit, when she reveals that Barbara Ward = Barbara Ryan. Not that this would ruin her hidden identity, but why would the world-famous Stormcrow know such a detail?

Good gosh, STOP TALKING, Jan1!!! Argh, this is nerve-racking! ... SC knows all these personal details!! How would she know all these things?? That's what I'd be wondering if I were the reporter.

Cray is talking. I can't help hearing the voice of Mister Rogers as he calmly explains why involving herself in her mother's campaign is not ideal. So gentle, so affirming. If the Crow Show ever gets onto the CW this particular scene's going to be surreal.

Hmm. Well, I think Cray could do it. Be a campaign manager, that is. Yeah, sure, why not? He'd probably be good at it. Maybe it'd be a bit awkward since Jan would now have Mister Rogers in her life for two reasons. 💡 The conspiracy theorists are going to have a field day if anyone gets wind of this, that's for sure.

Who is Granholm? I assume somebody real, or based on somebody real. Hmm... Jennifer Granholm?

Neat, Ann Arbor. I've actually been there (albeit, only for a few days)!

The campaign seems off to a good start, and I really loved January's monologue on what supers can and can't do. Yes, they absolutely are part of the solution--but it'll take everyone pitching in to solve the kinds of problems that the world is facing. And that's why it's so important to have good people taking charge of politics.

Interesting offer from Cray, as well. It does sound like he'd be a good choice for this kind of thing, though that potentially presents more operational security problems for the GLA. Then again, maybe having Cray in that position is the best kind of protection they can get.

Acadian: Jan is always all in. Ironically, that is one of the things that her mother admires about Stormcrow.

Jan will have some plans in place by the end of this Book, which she will implement in the next one.


Renee: I am not sure where I first came across the Hwarang. It might have been in the early 2000s when I was doing research on Queer people around the world. Or it might have been later in the 2010s when I came across K-Dramas like The Great Queen Seondeok. The hwarang are a neat phenomena that was very specific to Silla during this one period. But I understand that recently Koreans have been embracing them as a symbol of cultural heritage. They certainly are in TV shows at least.

January is definitely bold! That is one of the ways she inspires people like her mother to act.

Having people like Stormcrow, Gadget, and Ôkami getting signatures is definitely going to put Barbara on the radar. I have been reading stories recently of would be candidates literally buying petition signatures to get themselves put on the ballots. Not votes mind you, just the initial petitions you need a certain amount of signatures for to even get in the race to start with. They are all rich ghouls (seriously, some of them look like Liches) giving away gift cards to everyone that signs their petition. And they still cannot get on the ballots.

Having genuine supers in her corner is going to be a huge initial boost to Barbara's campaign. Especially hot on the heels of the Battle of Belle Isle as this is. Still, that's not enough to get elected. Every candidate has celebrities endorsing them after all. In a world of supers, I don't see how they would not be in the same mix of people boosting the people they like.

The good thing about voice recognition software is that it is all BS. To be honest, most modern forensics is just nonsense, made by people who are just guessing, and have 8 hours or less 'training' from a seminar they took in their respective fields. Lie detectors are well known as being useless, enough that they are not even allowed in courts. Voice print analysis is no better. Blood splatter analysis is just plain guessing. Even finger prints are not all they are cracked up to be.

Jan is not worried about someone getting suspicious about why she knows so much about Barbara Ryan, because she and the others literally investigated her and her entire family in the hunt for the Summoner. Of course she knows these things. That is her job. That much is part of public record now, since the press conference that Blood Raven, Jan, and the governor gave after Belle Isle. I am glad you brought it up though. I went back and added in a few lines of January explaining exactly that.

Cray being in the mix in her private life now is going to make things a more complicated, and a little weirder. I was originally going to create a new character to be Barbara's campaign manager. But then I realized that Cray was right there, and I was not really using him for anything other than the computer guy doing exposition dumps every adventure. This way I can hopefully flesh him out more as a person, and bring him more fully into January's orbit.

And it just so happens that Cray and Barbara are about the same age, and have a lot in common outside of the supers they both associate with. So they are a natural fit together. Especially given that they are both divorced, have kids from previous relationships, and are now single...

That was Jennifer Granholm that Cray was speaking about. She was Michigan's governor for two terms back in the late 2000s. I did not realize that she was still in politics. Good for her.


WellTemperedClavier: I have been to Ann Arbor (or A² - now that I figured out how to type the superscript) as we sometimes call it. I went to the Ann Arbor Art Fair a few years back. Which was a lot of fun.

I actually went back and added a little more to Jan's monologue, to help underscore why supers cannot save the world on the own. Its why Viuda brought it up on the ride to Blackwood's place. What is the point in cleaning all the garbage out of the oceans if people just continue dumping more into them? It needs to be stopped from happening to begin with, which can only be done by civil servants.

One advantage Cray has is that while he's a member of the team, the public never sees him. He's always the invisible man behind the keyboard, at most a voice over a speakerphone. He's kind of like Charlie from Charlie's Angels that way. So he's not recognizable as a super. Which of course he really is not. He's a hacker, he has no super powers. But being embedded right in the middle of Barbara's campaign, he will be at ground zero if anything happens, like neo-Nazis trying to murder her...




The Ann Arbor Art Fair

The Coney Island is a fictional place where the Panera Bread is located in Real Life.

Drawing dicks on walls is an ancient military tradition (probably NSFW)

It is just as popular today

The Michigan Dogman

The Legend


Book 11.25 - Raven Sisters

July 18th (Thursday)

"This is bad. This is really bad. How did we miss this?"

Gadget rubbed the back of his armored head, a sure sign of distress. January felt like smacking the palm her hand against her forehead when she looked out at the crowds that packed the streets below. The roads nearby had been shut down to vehicular traffic in order to allow people to mill across them. Mill they did. They were often jammed in like sardines, from one side to another.

"With the Hierophant and Summoner defeated, I stopped tracking major events," Cray explained through the team-wide comms. "I had no idea this was the first day of the Ann Arbor Art Fair."

Ôkami said nothing. He just stared stonily down from the rooftop which the three of them had taken up a position upon. They stood upon the School of Kinesiology building. It was a brick and glass structure that rose four stories into the Ann Arbor sky. It was not the highest building in the city. But it did sit at the north rim of the Diag, one of the major plazas within the University of Michigan campus. That position gave them an excellent vantage point over the art fair below.

The divided thoroughfare of North University Avenue lay right at their feet, directly north of them. On its far side a wide set of steps colored with brilliant red and white geometric designs rose up to Hill Auditorium. The building itself was fronted with a Classical facade of white columns, but was surrounded by fiery red brick on all sides.

To the right lay Ingalls Mall, which so far as January could see was really just an extension of the Diag, only on the other side of the North University Avenue. It was the same place where she had collected signatures just three days before for her mother's senate campaign. But it was amazing how much it had changed since then.

Now the street below was filled with a double line of white kiosks that ran down along the red brick island that normally separated the two directions of traffic. The open-faced tents were arranged back to back, so each row of them faced one half of the divided road. Even from her high perch, January could see that the kiosks were filled with paintings, hand-crafted jewelry, glazed pottery, elegantly carved wooden clocks, and every other sort of hand-crafted knick knacks.

The streets in front of them now teemed with people. Young and old, rich and poor, every spectrum of the rainbow, everyone was represented. There were people dressed up, and people dressed down. There were families, and coteries of friends, and people just hanging out. It was a melting pot of humanity.

All of this spilled out beyond University Avenue and spread up Ingalls Mall to the north as well. It ran down the plaza's entire length, and ended with a stage for musical acts. Within was a veritable sea of both humanity and artwork, hundreds of thousands strong.

Even more kiosks lined the cross street beyond Ingalls Mall. But thankfully that was the end of them, at least in that direction. But to the west, the art fair also stretched farther along University Avenue, and branched off to the north and south as it met more cross streets farther away. It just went on and on throughout the city, like a bowl of spaghetti that had been up thrown down upon the map.

Even the roads that were not directly taken over by the fair were filled with travelers on wheels and feet, going from one place to the other. The restaurants and bars and other businesses were likewise packed. January imagined that this must have been one of their biggest weekends of the year, given the throngs of humanity that were known to descend upon Ann Arbor for this famous festival. It was the largest of its kind of all of Michigan, if not the entire United States. She could see with her own eyes that everyone wanted to be here.

One of those restaurants was their target of course. Laham's Coney Island sat across the intersection of University Avenue and a cross street that stretched away to the north. That put it directly north and west of the Kinesiology building upon which January and the others stood. That also placed it right alongside the fair below. That meant there was a constant stream of people moving past its front doors at all times, not to mention going in and out of the restaurant.

"Do we even know if this intel is good?" Blackhawk's voice came over the comm. January had only recently learned that she did not use a radio or phone. Given her power to control not only magnetism, but the wider electromagnetic spectrum, Toronto's resident superheroine was a living communication device herself. "No offense Cray, but how solid is this really?"

"Well, there are rarely any guarantees, but I have a good feeling about this one," the elder hacker explained. "Bill Nadeem is part owner of the Coney Island below. It's a family-run business, and has been for seventy years, when it was founded by the eponymous Laham. The important thing is that Bill is also a member of the National Guard. He was called up for the Battle of Belle Isle. As near as I can tell he was not involved in any fighting. But his unit was stationed on the island itself after fact."

"He was listed as missing the next day, on the 9th," Cray went on. "His commanding officer assumed he had gone AWOL. But he turned up again on the afternoon of July 10th, just in time for his unit to be deactivated and sent back home."

"And the morning after was the attack on the Big Tire," January nodded along to herself. "So maybe?"

"That's a big maybe." Now Lighthammer's voice came over the comlink. "He might have just gotten hammered, slept it off, and then staggered back to his unit. Trust me, I know enlisted men, it's what they do when they aren't drawing dicks on the walls."

"Hey, some of us resemble that remark!" Cray laughed. Then his voice grew serious once more. "But he is the best lead we have so far."

"So what did you dig up in the arcane department Crowgirl?" Gadget asked. Even as he spoke, Lighthammer came down beside him for a landing in a blur of blue, white, and silver armor.

"No joy with the Scripta Mortis, or John Dee, Eliphas Levi, or any of the other books I have in English," January frowned. "But I did learn that we Michiganders have our very own cryptid, and he's the Michigan Dogman. The first sighting was in Wexford County in 1887. Two lumberjacks saw a creature with a man's body and a dog's head. From there he appears off and on up until today."

"Where is Wexford?" Gadget wondered.

January did the most Michigan thing ever. She held up one hand in imitation of the mitten shape of her state's lower peninsula. Then with her other hand, she pointed to a spot a little below the tip of her pinky finger, and slightly inland.

"About here, south of Traverse City." January declared.

"In 1937 the Dogman was in Paris, Michigan not France. He's was in Allegan County in the 1950s, and Manistee and Cross Village in '67. In '77 he was in Oscoda. Supposedly he appears once every decade, on the year ending in the number seven. But I've found stories outside of that, like one from the summer of '73, when a deliveryman saw a large, dog-like animal pawing at something on the side of the road. Then it stood upright like a man."

"There is even a song," January explained. "A radio DJ made it back in 1987, and released it on April Fool's Day. I think that's where the idea of the ten year cycle comes from. The song is all BS of course. He even admitted that it was a joke, which of course doesn't stop people from taking it seriously. It's a good song too. But it makes it really hard to tell what he made up for the song, and what was folklore from before it. So it's hard to make any sense of it."

"So we have stories, and songs, and maybes," Blackhawk's voice did not come over the comm link anymore. She was speaking in person now, as she came down to land beside the rest of them atop the university building.

"Honestly, that's more than we usually have," Lighthammer admitted. "At least we know what you learned from your first encounter with him."

"Yeah he's big, hairy, and very angry," Gadget mused. "If he was a little shorter, and had adamantium claws, he could be-"

"Hey, let's not get sued here," January laughed. "Besides, this fella is not the best there is at what he does. Seriously though, we might be able to reason with him, especially if we can catch him during a dormant stage. We just have to keep him from going berserk."

"Yeah, a berserk Dogman with a magic flail in the middle of this is a bad, bad idea." Blackhawk waved one arm toward the thousands of people who thronged the street below.

"I feel that proceeding now would be a mistake," Ôkami finally spoke. "It would place far too many innocent lives at risk. We should wait until after the fair is over tonight. We can follow him home and face him there, or perhaps stop him on the way."

"Are we sure he's even in there?" Lighthammer wondered.

"He's one of the people who owns and runs the place, and these have got to be their biggest days of the year," January pointed out. "He must be down there."

"I've got eyes on him right now," Gadget said. They all turned to face the powered armor hero. He now stood on the edge of the rooftop, and stared to the north and west. "He just walked out the front door."

"Spleck!" Gadget swore a moment later. "He's got eyes on me too. He just ran back inside!"

Some very rich scene setting here. I was impressed by the hand/map gesture that Jan did. It simply screams of her local ties to Michigan.

When you described Blackhawk’s command of the electromagnetic spectrum as her power, it reminded me of the X-men. I hadn’t thought of that before – where superheroes are considered mutants. Though the common thread among them in Stormland seems to be more of a natural affinity for magic instead of some sort of ‘X gene’.

Ah, so we learn they are there in pursuit of a dogman lead – only to discover it is fair time and the city is swarmed with people. Okami is right to urge not barging in now.

Uh oh, not sure how much of a problem the mutual sighting between Gadget and their target will be. . . .

I didn't know that about the A Squared (not sure how to do that here), but it's cool to know! And I liked the addition to January's speech. It's not enough to simply clean up the mess; we have to learn how not to make them (or at least make fewer of them).

This does seem like quite a happening fair. Which is great, but does mean more of a problem for our heroes. They have to be pretty careful as to how they operate.

At least it seems they have a lead. I got a kick of Lighthammer's description, but have a hunch that Nadeem did something (or had something done to him) a lot more dramatic than enlisted shenanigans.

Also, nice reference to the mitt. A company I once worked for had a Michigan-based client, and I learned about that from them. Is there anything like that for the Upper Peninsula?

People buying signatures? Good gosh. That's even worse than ppl buying endorsements for their influencer pages!



By "she", do you mean Stormcrow? Well sure, SC would know a few things about Barbara, especially since she's collecting signatures. It's just knowing all those more personal details! Sorry, I just get worried. Even though this is a fictional story.


Today is July the 18th. In Maryland we have Artscape, which sounds like the Ann Arbor Art Fair. It's been several years since I've gone, but last time I went Cake played for free! Anyway, AAAF sounds just as crowded as Artscape. Crowded...sweaty, I don't understand why they have these fairs in the middle of summer instead of fall, when it's nice & cooler.

Blackhawk is her own hotspot! 📻 Anyway, why are they all here? Seems another baddie's about to make some sort of showing. Dogman, eh? I love how there's all this research surrounding this canine-dude. All these facts about which particular year and where, etc.

What?? He's maybe here, at the fair? Weird!! Spleck, indeed!

Acadian: I don't know how you people in other states navigate, without being able to use a part of your body as a map!

Magicians have always been a subset of the super hero genre. With a handful of mages like Doctor Strange, or Doctor Fate, or Black Knight. The Crowverse is only different in that the protagonist is one of these mages, who are otherwise only sparsely represented. Even though January herself and many of the people around her are magicians, most of the other supers are still essentially mutants. People born that way because... who knows. Like Gadget, or Lighthammer, or Blackhawk.

It is time to wrap up the Dogman. The rest of this Book will be all about the hunt for him.


WellTemperedClavier: A squared and the D are some Michiganisms, along with the Soo, Yoopers, Trolls, Ipsi, and the like.

I am walking a fine line with the environmentalism in this story. On one hand I know many supers would want to use their powers to do more than just beat people up. Some of them are in a position to create real, positive change for the planet. But OTOH, I don't want to just handwave away all the world's problems by having just a handful of people solve them with what is essentially a magic wand. Real change does not happen that way. Its only when people act in a collective that real, positive change takes place. So I am trying to use supers as a catalyst for that, but not the be all and end all.

One of the podcasts I listen to is Lions Led By Donkeys. It is a military history show done by a former enlisted man, who is now a historian and sci-fi writer. His show is different from most, in that it is mainly about how stupid war is. By which I mean just how dumb the people who lead armies and nations tend to be. Hence the Donkeys in the title. One of the things that crops up over and over again is that enlisted men have not changed one bit in two thousand years. They were drawing dicks on Hadrian's Wall back then, and they are doing it right now in some base in America.

I think I have seen people stick a finger out horizontally to stand in for the UP. But I am a Troll, and live way down in Metro Detroit. So needing to know actual places in da UP rarely comes up, eh. Chicago is about as close to me as the Mackinac Bridge. I went to Cleveland once, and that was also a shorter drive than to the bridge.

Renee: In one of the recent Philadelphia city council elections a bunch of the candidates never even bothered to get the petition signatures to run, so they never got on the ballot!

That is cool about Artscape. We also have Arts, Beats, and Eats here in Metro-Detroit. It just happened last weekend. These days it is in Ferndale. It used to be in Pontiac, which is when I used to go. I saw the band Live there for free (they were really good too!).

They are all crowded, hot, and sweaty! I guess that's how people like it. It was in the upper 80s/low 90s and humid when we had it here last weekend.









The Coney Island Entrance

The booths and kitchen area

A better view of the kitchen

The Fastball Special

Lighthammer's Theme - Wu-Tang Clan - Protect Ya Neck


Book 11.26 - Raven Sisters

With that January's best friend leaped off the rooftop. His armor blossomed with blue light, and a trail of ions spilled out behind him as he soared across the sky. January's wings were out an instant later, and she followed right behind. Along with her came the others, flying and leaping to the crowded street below.

January soared over the white kiosks and the heads of hundreds of people below. Her downward angle translated into greater speed, which at first was ideal. Right up until it was time to stop. Then she had to feather back her wings to slow herself. She pulled a trick out of Lighthammer's bag, and nosed straight up. Gaining altitude bled off her speed at a dramatic rate, and she came to stall. From there she was able to simply drop to the pavement below.

The others flew down alongside her, each in their own way, given how their flight worked. Lighthammer made it all look easy of course. He zoomed in ahead of them all, and swung up right before eating the pavement. He managed to land on his feet, as easily as if he had taken a step out of the shower. Blackhawk just sort of levitated through the sky, as if a giant invisible hand was holding her aloft and moving her about. Gadget was a little wobbly in the air. January could tell he needed more practice. Ôkami was the only one who could not fly. He simply leaped the four stories down to the pavement, and then faded through everything and everyone in his path as he made his way to the Coney Island.

All around the civilians stumbled out of the way, stopped to gape in shock, or pulled out their phones and began to record in amazement. Someone immediately asked January for a selfie. She and the others had to weave around and through them to reach the door. Expect for Ôkami of course. In spite of Lighthammer having arrived there on the sidewalk earliest, the samurai was the first one to actually get into the building. Unlike the rest of them he did not have to go through the front doors. Instead he was able to simply walk through the walls, and people around them.

January was still trying to reach those glass doors at the corner of the building, when a hand stretched out of the building and took hold of her arm. The next thing she knew, Ôkami pulled her through the wall. In his other hand he held Gadget. Over her shoulder, January saw Lighthammer push his way through the front doors, with Blackhawk in tow.

The interior of the Coney Island was basically a large, square room. The center was filled with wooden booths, and the partitions between each row of them were capped with marble or decorative stone. A glass case filled with cakes and pies sat near the doors, along with a sign that instructed patrons to seat themselves.

The back wall was lined with large windows, with the name of the store frosted upon them. But January could still see the kitchen through it. A wide, open doorway led back to it on the left side of the building. To the right of the kitchen was a short hallway that also led into it. A pair of bathrooms stood across this hall, in the very corner of the building. A large TV hung from the ceiling overhead.

The restaurant was packed. Every booth or small cafe table was taken. More people milled about just inside the door, waiting for an open seat. Like the fair goers outside, they were of all ages, genders, ethnicities, etc... It was a veritable sea of humanity. All of them were packed inside of this building, with what might be a berserk monster.

The smell of broiling hot dogs and seared beef competed with other savory and sweet odors. All wafted into January's nostrils as she tried to make her way to the kitchen. It looked like something was happening back there, but she could not see exactly what. The way there was crammed with too many people, who were now all looking at her and asking questions.

"Fastball." January turned to Ôkami, and the Japanese-American nodded. January took hold of his armored collar with one hand, and the back of his belt with the other. Then she hurtled him through the air toward the back of the restaurant. He faded into a blur as he somersaulted over and through the heads of the diners. A moment later he passed harmlessly through the kitchen window, and disappeared from view.

January leaped up onto that little divider between rows of booths. It was a few inches wide, and had a flat top thanks to that decorative stonework. It reminded her of a balance beam, something she had spent plenty of time upon in her years doing gymnastics. She used it as an avenue to run straight to the rear of the building.

Gadget cursed as he tried to fly up and over the heads of the civilians. But the ceiling was too low, and he clearly decided that he was not up to attempting such a tricky maneuver with so many innocents around to get in the way. So instead he dropped back down to the floor and tried to thread his way through the crowd.

January cleared the booths and hopped lightly down to the floor. She took the open doorway on the left into the kitchen. At the same time two people wearing aprons scurried out. January took a moment to make sure they made it safely, and gently guided them away with her arms. She did not like the looks of fright that etched their faces. But at least they did not seem to be injured.

She finally made her way inside the kitchen a moment later. Stainless steel ovens, sinks, and refrigerators lined the walls, and a long metal grill ran the length of the windows that faced the dining area. Several short kitchen islands bisected the space, filled with plates and utensils. January felt her stomach rumble at the sight of a Reuben sandwich and waffle fries sitting on a plate nearby.

She heard screams, and her heart sank at the reason for their utterance. The Dogman was there in all his glory. Even with his hunched over posture, he easily cleared seven feet in height. His upper body fairly burst with muscles, so much so that it created an almost ridiculous juxtaposition to his extremely skinny waist. As before, he clutched that three-headed flail in one meaty paw. Even as January watched, he swung it at Ôkami, who stood across one of the kitchen islands from him.

The samurai/ninja ducked low, and the sharpened spikes that dotted the thick cylinders of the flail heads whistled through the air overhead. They smashed plates and glasses off the surface of the island, and showered Ôkami with hot dog parts and Fae Cola. He replied by leaping back to his feet before the Dogman could recover from his swing. He used the island as a springboard, and bounded feet-first into the cryptid. But the battering ram attack just bounced off the monster. That forced Ôkami to roll away to avoid the counter swing from that terrible flail.

In the meantime a woman stood in the middle of the kitchen and screamed. She was middle-aged, had tan skin, and her hair was a long, ebony waterfall. She wore a green apron over her other clothes, and her hands were covered by rubber cleaning gloves. She continued to yell, but now began to do so in coherent words.

"No, leave him alone!" she cried. "Stop it!"

January had the sneaking suspicion that she was not exhorting the Dogman to halt, but rather Ôkami.

"That's Sunita Nadeem," Cray's voice was in her ear. "She's the spouse of Bill, and also one of the co-owners of the Coney Island."

January darted forward, and used one hand to spring over the kitchen island that separated her from the clearly distraught woman. January took her gently, but firmly, in her arms. She deliberately placed herself between Sunita and the Dogman. That meant turning her back to the ravening beast. Her shoulder blades itched in anticipation of an oncoming blow. But she did not hesitate to do it. If a hit was coming, she had to take it rather than Sunita. Finally, she inexorably pushed the older woman back toward the doorway.

"Tell him to stop!" she yelled in January's face. "Don't hurt him! He's my husband!"

"Bill Nadeem, he's your husband?" January continued to maneuver Sunita back to the doorway. "That's him, right?"

"That's him, that's my husband," Sunita nodded. "I don't know what happened. He just ran back inside, and he turned into this... this... thing!"

"We are not going to hurt him," January insisted. She glanced back over her shoulder, and saw the Dogman send a terrific overhand blow down at Ôkami. The samurai slipped to the side, and the spiked flail heads sliced clean through one of the kitchen islands. Once more shattered crockery and foodstuffs erupted everywhere.

"I just wish he felt the same way about us," January murmured.

"No kidding," Lighthammer breathed in her ear. "But that's the job."

Cleveland's superhero had just pushed into the kitchen. He stood beside January now, and raised a palm to take careful aim at the Dogman. January instantly reached out to pull his hand down however, nodding to the people that milled about the dining area beyond.

"No shooting," January insisted. The restaurant was still packed to the gills with people. One ricochet or errant shot, and this would turn tragic. "Not in here."

Lighthammer shook his head ruefully, but he lowered his hand. Instead he took up a kick-boxing stance. It was exactly as January had taught him months ago, at the same time he had been teaching her to fly. At the same time he spawned his shields from his forearms. Discs of hard light, they created large ovals around each of his arms to lend him added protection.

"Don't shoot him!" Sunita cried an instant later.

"We aren't going to do that," Gadget now insisted. He had finally made his way into the kitchen as well. It was growing crowded. January passed Sunita back to him, and the powered armor hero took her out into the dining area.

"You need to move this fight, before he levels the place," Cray said over the comlink.

January noted one of the hacker's drones floating in the air now. Small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, the devices flew via an anti-grav device, and possessed an array of sensors. All of the Allies now had a pair of them attached to their utility belts, ready for Cray to activate and put to use. January glanced down at her waist, and realized that it was a drone from her own suit, for its spot in the side of her belt was now empty.

"Samurai man, if I can distract him, can you fade him through the wall?" Lighthammer asked.

"Hai," Ôkami nodded.

He once again dodged a strike that sliced a trio of furrows down the stainless steel face of a refrigerator. In reply he took the curved blade of his katana in his left hand, and swung it around in a backhand blow. Chujitsu's hexagonal crossguard made contact with the Dogman's cheek a moment later, and snapped the cryptid's head to the side with the morte-strike.

The monster simply turned his head back a moment later, and growled.

"Close your eyes everyone. I'm about to light things up in here!" Lighthammer declared.

"The rest of you, get back out in the street to intercept them," Cray said.

January followed both their instructions. First she moved out of the kitchen and back into the dining area. At the same time she screwed her eyes shut. To make up for her lack of sight, she stretched out her senses into the astral.

The Dogman's presence was a hot flame behind her, coloring the astral realm with bright shades of tremendous magical power. But it was not a clean, wholesome energy. Instead it felt warped, corrupted, like a poison. That toxicity was centered upon the flail he carried. Alsaahiq was its name - as with all magic items, January simply knew this when she sensed it. She had no idea what it meant, other than it sounded Arabic. But it gave her the feeling of crushing or smashing.

She pushed her awareness away from her foe, and instead used her astral radar to pick out the hundreds of people within the Coney Island. Many were now on their feet, and they clogged the route to the door. Many tried to get out, but others from outside tried to get in. Even more simply milled around and stared. It formed a massive traffic jam of people pushing in all directions at the same time. But at least now January knew where each and every one person was.

Once again, she leaped up onto one of the dividers between the rows of booths and danced down its length. Blackhawk hovered up overhead, and with a gesture from one of her hands, Gadget joined her in the air as well. That was one advantage of having a mistress of magnetism on the team. If the Gadget armor ever had a flat tire, she could probably fix it with her mind.

Even with her meat eyes shut and head turned away, the flares of light that blossomed in the kitchen were insanely bright. They painted brilliant afterimages upon the insides of January's eyelids. It was not just a single burst of light, but a whole string of them that went off over and over again. She could hear the people around her react instantly to the blinding flashes with cries of surprise and distress. But at least it could not hurt anyone.

I see, so you all have some insane humidity there, too? I wonder where the break is, the break which causes humidity to not be as common. Rocky mountains, I guess. It's why the west coast has such awesomely easier weather.

Uh boy, here come the supers. Look out, Dogman, your day in the sun is done. Hopefully. Yeah that would've been funny if Avery crashed at this point. Seems he's not that bad at flying, not as bad as when he tried to get to Belle Harbor.

"Someone immediately asked January for a selfie...." omg, really? You want to get one now?

Mmm, waffle fries. With powdered sugar, and a side of lemonade. 🍋 Gosh darn looks like WHOA there he is. There's the Dogman. There goes one of the concession stands. Gosh I hope all these complacent summergoers stay out of the way. Whoa, this is crazy. The Dogman is married? Sounds like maybe she don't know her husband so well.

Random thought: I wonder what happens when Bill and Sunita have a fight, and she kicks him out for the night? Now he's in the doghouse, hur hurr.

Yikes, shattered crockery, food flying everywhere! This is awesome! But it seems as though they can't really pwn the doggie, right? 🐶 It'd be really hard for them to outright kill the guy, with his wife standing right there.

Eh, just tryin' to throw the guy a bone. Do what you will to stop this guy, Dream Team. Doesn't sound like "roll over" or "go fetch, boy!" is gonna work.

The whole crew descends upon the restaurant, and sure enough, Dogman’s doing his thing. A prickly situation to navigate for sure, between the tight quarters, crowd and Dogman’s confused mate. The supers handle it well, so far.

A lot of work for a Reuben sandwich and waffle fries that gets trashed before Jan can even take a bite!

Clever use of the various talents that these heroes each possess, ranging from tossing Okami through all obstacles to more quickly close with his target, to Lighthammer basically disorienting everyone (good and bad) with his strobe show.

We’ve yet to see if Okami is able to maneuver the Dogman out into the street. Then there’s the challenge of trying to restrain him while he’s trying to smash and kill everyone and everything. I’m guessing that somehow separating the Dogman from that evil flail would be a good start.

Renee: We have the Great Lakes all around us here, so in the summer we get massive humidity, and in the winter we get lake-effect snow. And gray clouds are pretty common year round (we are one of the cloudiest states in the US)

Hah! We only get about 70 days of sunshine a year in Michigan, so all of our days in the sun are done!

I am cracking up over all your dog puns.


Acadian: Like the fight at the Big Tire, the Dogman alone is really no match for the entire team. He's a tank that can take a lot of hits, but he's still just one supervillain. So to make him a credible threat I placed this encounter in the middle of a crowded city. That forces the heroes to spin off half or more of their team to pure crowd control and protecting civilians. That is literally all Gadget and Blackhawk will be doing the entire time.

The Ann Arbor Art Fair was a nice famous annual event for me to put some focus on to give the city some more character. Season One really instilled a joy of using local festivals and events as a backdrop for things in the story. It adds some more flavor to what would otherwise just be ordinary cities and ordinary streets and ordinary people. I have a list of annual events, that I can pick from when the date range is correct.

I think that is something I first learned playing the game Soul Caliber on the Dreamcast. It was a 2d side-scrolling fighting game, like Mortal Kombat. But each arena had a different background of some exotic location. Like an Ancient Greek temple on a mountain top, or the lava-filled depths of an active volcano. It had absolutely no bearing at all on the fights. It was literally just a static background. But it lent a feeling of coolness (for lack of a better word) to the entire thing.

At least with writing, I can also go a step beyond Soul Caliber and put those fascinating backgrounds to use, and make them part of the story. So they can influence how characters behave.

Good call on the flail. Put a pin in that, we will be circling around to it in the future, a lot. But first Ôkami has his parts to play, and Lighthammer has more tricks to pull from his bag. So too January.








The battleground

A Double Double

January's Fight Music


Book 11.27 - Raven Sisters

One moment she felt Ôkami in the astral, back in the kitchen. Then he just vanished, as if he had turned invisible in the higher realm. At the same moment the Dogman nearly faded away from her awareness as well. What she could sense of him went quickly through the wall of the kitchen and the hallway that flanked it. Next it went through one of those corner bathrooms, and finally he ended up into the street outside.

The Dogman snapped back into sharp focus now that he was in the road. So too did Ôkami, who now stood right beside the cryptid. The samurai/ninja was just suddenly there in her awareness once more. It was as if he had momentarily popped out of existence for a moment, then popped right back in.

January did not sense any others in the immediate vicinity, say within ten feet or so of the pair. So even as she tried to make her way to the door, she entreated the clouds overhead, and they answered with low rumbles of stirring power.

"Ôkami stay clear of the Dogman," January said. "Blackhawk, can you channel my lightning, so it doesn't hit anyone but him?"

"Does a bear sip a double double in the woods?" the Canadian heroine replied coolly.

"Come back in for me bro." Lighthammer added over the comm. "I'm headed for the bathroom."

January felt the samurai move away from the Dogman, and fade back through the wall at the rear of the restaurant. She turned away from the front door. The way to it was jammed solid with people. The fight would be long over before she ever got out that way. Instead she turned back to head in Ôkami's direction. Blackhawk had evidently come to the same conclusion, for she turned in the air with Gadget in tow, and also headed to where Ôkami had reentered the building.

January sensed the Dogman pursue Ôkami toward the building. He raised his flail to smash down the wall between him and his prey. With that she turned her head up to the ceiling, and entreated the sky that she knew lay above. It answered with a deafening blast of thunder, and a brilliant crack of lightning.

The spike of power lanced down into a field of electromagnetic energy that sprang up around and above the Dogman. January could feel it surround the bolt of lightning that she brought down. It caught up her electricity like liquid pouring down a funnel. Sparks glittered in the air around the edges of the barrier, creating a brilliant show of light. Yet none of that energy escaped the magnetic bottle to the street beyond.

Thusly contained, the bolt of lightning lanced into the Dogman an instant later. It was surprisingly quiet. Usually a lightning bolt striking the ground nearby was deafening, as well as blinding. But it barely made a sound through Blackhawk's electromagnetic barrier. As far as the shockwave went, there was nothing at all. Clearly the First Nations heroine knew her stuff.

But while the lightning strike was muted outside the barrier, it was clearly not so within it. The blast of power sent the Dogman reeling away, back into the street. January could swear she saw tendrils of smoke rising from his singed fur. He shook his head and staggered, apparently dazed by the blast.

Ôkami had already ferried Lighthammer through the wall by the time January reached it. Her turn came a moment later. His armored glove reached through the wall, and plucked her out of the physical world long enough to pull her through the barrier. She rematerialized back in the street outside, and opened her eyes once more.

The side of Hill Auditorium lay directly across the street from them. The tents of the art fair packed University Avenue to their right. To their left the street was blessedly open. But onlookers still crowded the sidewalks nonetheless. Most crouched or hid behind cars parked on the side of the road, or a line of trees that ran down one sidewalk. But a few people of course, stood right out and held their phones up to record.

The Dogman loomed in the center of the street now, still clutching that terrible flail in one fist. He blinked his eyes hard, either from Lighthammer's strobes, or the lightning, or Ôkami's previous blows. Or perhaps it was due to all three? Yet he showed no sign of letting up. His teeth bared into a snarl that sent drool dripping to the pavement below. His knuckles fairly popped as he gripped his weapon even tighter.

"Sessrúmnir waits for us all," January murmured.

"Sessy-who?" Lighthammer wondered.

"It's Freyja's hall in Asgard," January explained. "She's the goddess of love, magic, and death."

"Sounds like a few of my ex-girlfriends," Cleveland's superhero laughed.

The impromptu conversation was cut short when the bright flash of a smartphone's camera caught the Dogman's eye. It came from the milling crowd within the fair along University Avenue, just twenty or thirty feet away. While silent, the brilliant flash of lightning had still gotten people's attention. Now so too did the superheroes and the cryptid in the street. More and more people turned away from the displays of the art fair, and crowded to the north to see what was happening outside the Coney Island.

The Dogman leaped for the throng, and brandished his flail high in the air. Blackhawk threw up her arms, and a shield of translucent energy sprang up between the cryptid and the fairgoers. The Dogman crashed into it a moment later, and brilliant streams of color sprang up within the force field. They flowed like an aurora beneath the spot of the barrier that he had bounced off of. Then the colors slowly faded away, even as the Dogman fell back to the pavement and regained his feet.

The cryptid tried to race down the street to the west, back toward the Coney Island. But Gadget got there first. The powered armor hero created a blue-lit plasma window in the monster's path. Like Blackhawk's force field, this energy screen also held back the monster. Behind both energy fields, the fairgoers alternately screamed and fled, or stopped and stared in a mixture of what must have been mute horror and amazement.

Lighthammer took to the sky to get above the Dogman, while January and Ôkami moved in on foot to try to trap him against the two force fields. But the Dogman was too quick. He leaped away in the only open direction, to the east. In a moment he was racing across the red and white steps of Hill Auditorium.

People in his path shrieked and fled. Lighthammer was quick enough to zoom past the Dogman. He scooped up a woman twice his size wearing a sundress and a big floppy hat, and soared away just seconds before the cryptid could steamroll through her.

Ôkami called for another fastball, and in an instant January hurled him through the sky with all the strength that she could muster. He raced through the air like a missile. As Lighthammer had, he was able to snatch up another pair of onlookers before the Dogman could pulverize them with his flail. In his case they faded with him. Then the samurai took them straight through the Dogman and a nearby tree, and finally through the walls of the auditorium nearby.

Blackhawk followed close behind. She continued to extend her force field as she went. She kept it between the Dogman and the mass of festival-goers on the road to the south of the auditorium. Gadget too, came flying in, but like January he was playing catch up. It was not until the Dogman passed the steps and reached the grass and trees at the edge of Ingalls Mall that they were able to head the monster off.

The tents of the art fair turned north here, to travel along the pavement that ran through the center of the large, rectangular plaza. That put it directly in the Dogman's path. Blackhawk turned her force field around this corner and sent it north, once more blocking him off from the civilians. Now Gadget was close enough to erect one of his own plasma windows behind the Dogman. It was in the same spot Blackhawk's force field had been a moment before. So it continued to shield the people on the avenue to the south. The two barriers met an angle, so that together they formed a 'V' shape, with the Dogman at the point.

Ôkami was back now, and he joined January. The two of them rushed into the open end of that 'V' to cut off the Dogman's only route of escape. In the meantime Lighthammer flew in over the Dogman's head. The light-based hero threw out his hands and dipped into his bag of tricks. Rather than emitting his signature hard light, or a standard burning laser, he sent forth a wave of heat. It created a ripple effect within the air beneath him, like the heat-haze on a highway.

This debilitating heat fell directly upon the Dogman. Any of the energy that spilled away was turned back by the twin force fields behind the cryptid, protecting the civilians from the searing temperature. January had read that this active denial system was actually something the military was working on for crowd control. It was not lethal - supposedly - but she had read that it was really, really painful.

The Dogman leaped skyward to swat at his airborne oppressor. That left the cryptid open for a counter. For once he was off the ground, he could not dodge aside. January sprang up to meet him, and slammed into him before he could reach Lighthammer. The two went soaring to one side, and careened off Gadget's plasma window. Blue light flashed underneath the pair as they bounded across the energy screen for a moment. Then they finally dropped back to the earth below.

January did get a taste of that active denial ray of Lighthammer's just then, before he was able to shut it down. It was hot, really hot, the kind of heat that got under your skin and made it feel like you were burning from the inside out. But as it turned out, it was not nearly as bad as a face full of lava. She would know after all.

Ôkami moved in on one side, and Lighthammer came down to the ground on the other. The latter called out for the others to shut their eyes, and January did so just in time for another series of brilliant strobes to go off in front of her and the Dogman. Again - even with her eyes closed - bright afterimages sprouted against her eyelids.

She turned her awareness back to the astral. It was just in time for her to be aware of Ôkami using the distraction to move in to batter at the Dogman. He once more took his katana by the blade with his left hand, and released his hold of the grip with his right. He then swung it backhanded in a single-handed murder stroke, as one would in Western longswording. The sword's octagonal crossguard cracked home with one of its points, and the Dogman bellowed with rage. He literally flailed blindly at the samurai in return, swinging that deadly flail out in a wide arc.

Ôkami was forced to head January's way to avoid those whistling spiked heads. She spread her wings out wide, and an instant later she felt Ôkami's boots step across them. He turned perpendicular to the ground, and now ran from one of her wingtips to the other. She became Earth, and planted herself to the spot. She was just in time, as an instant later those spiked flail heads came crashing across her feathers, in pursuit of the ninja. But she was adamant now. Nothing could harm her. The flail merely kicked up sparks of angry energy as its heads skittered impotently across her body.

Lighthammer stood on the other side of January. He pulled both his forearms up in front of his chest, and extended his personal force shields from each. They combined to create a shell of solid light in front of him, covering him from head to toe. Ôkami - still running horizontally - leaped against this shield and used it as a springboard. He shot directly back at the Dogman, and crashed into the monster's chest with a lowered shoulder.

The Dogman had now completely turned his back upon January. So while the cryptid wavered under Ôkami's human battering ram attack, January sprang into action herself. She pulled her wings in and folded them up on her back. At the same time she leaped forward and up. She laid her left hand on one of the Dogman's shoulders, and used it as a springboard to propel herself higher still, over his head. A second later she came down with her opposite elbow, and crushed it into the back of his skull.

It was the now famous Stormcrow Elbow Drop - which January had yet to invent a snazzier name for. With or without extra lightning, it had felled foes great and small. The Michigan Dogman was no different. He was driven to his knees by the titanic force of the knockout blow. He wavered there for long moments. Finally he loosened his grip on his flail, and it fell to the grass below.

"What, what happened?" a distinctly human voice issued from his throat. "Where am I?"

"Bill?" January eyed him cautiously, even as she backed to a safe distance. Her eyes moved from him to that flail. She was keenly aware that he could snatch it back up at any moment, and slash at her with those wickedly spiked heads. "Bill Nadeem? Is that you in there?"

"Yeah, I'm Bill," the Dogman gasped. His body seemed to convulse, as if in the grip of pain. One of his hands clutched at his stomach. January noted that it was a hand - an entirely human hand - not a massive canine paw. He doubled over. As she looked on in horror, the long hairs that bristled from his frame shrank, and retracted into his flesh. He jerked and spasmed, and his face collapsed in on itself. The long, dog-like muzzle packed with fangs vanished, and was replaced with an ordinary human visage.

"He's turning back."

January felt like Captain Obvious for saying it. But it was true. She spread her wings out around the man, and covered him from view as best she could. His face did not need to go out all over the internet. If her hunch was correct, in the end he was a victim here too, the same as the people he had nearly killed in his alter-ego as the Dogman.

Your pre-episode comments were both helpful and insightful. The challenge during this fight was indeed to try and neutralize Dogman while preventing him from rampaging into the everpresent crowds. That challenge was perfect to help mute the combined power of Stormcrow’s mighty crew.

Ôkami’s ferry service! Shadow ninja really came in handy here moving folks around. So did the shields from Blackhawk and Gadget. As did Sparklehammer’s less than lethal tricks. All setting things up so Stormcrow could do a smackdown with her famous elbow of doom.

I suspected once Dogman dropped that flail, he might revert into Bill. Hmm, gonna have to somehow dispose of that flail. Knowing more about its curse might help them.


Nit? ’Usually a lightning striking the ground nearby was deafening, as well as blinding.’
My guess here is that you probably had a couple edits that ultimately went a bit arwy. Perhaps, ‘a lightning strike hitting the ground’ or ‘a lightning bolt striking the ground’ or just ‘lightning striking the ground’ without the ‘a’?

Edit: Oh, I forgot to mention how much I enjoyed the banter among the heroes as Blackhawk talks about what bears drink in the woods and Lighthammer laments his girlfriends.

So it looks like the dog days of summer are coming, but not for this dog. 🐕‍🦺

Lake effect snow. PLEASE weather gods, PLEASE send all of Michigan's snow our way. I'm still pissed off about global humidity messing up our snowfall during the last 3 years. I'll take ALL your snow. Anyway, when I lived in Oregon (about half-hour from Pseron Wyrd, though I had no idea back in those days) we had a lot of cloudy weather, as well. I can remember not seeing the sun for an entire month, this being in the late '90s.

Yikes, they actually are trying to get rid of Dogman. Jan just asked Blackhawk to channel her lightning bolt. ⚡ So Blackhawk essentially becomes sort of a capacitor in this situation.

But what about Sunnita? Guess she's gonna have to find a new dude.

Isn't it true we never really know all things about the people we love, though? Sigh.

Uh oh, Dogman gets struck by lightning. He's really pissed now, I bet. Easy, boy. Heel!

He's going for the crowd? BAD DOG. Seriously, that's weird. Why not try to attack the supers? See, I wonder if Dogman is sort of like a werewolf, then, like he can't control his actions 100%.

And really, it's odd that there still IS a crowd, know what I mean? It it was me, I'd be sooooo out of there. Not even messing with the camera/phone. I'd just be off in a building somewhere, door locked. But maybe the Michiganers are used to this sort of thing. They've become so accustomed to some sort of grand battle between the forces of good and mal-intent during one of their outdoor events. They even look forward to such moments.

Really love how the focus keeps shifting back and forth between physical and astral planes. Your special effects team's got a pretty decent paycheck to make all this happen.

Holy [censored], he's morphed back to being a human?!! ... So did Bill Nadeem even know he was also Dogman? Will he be able to continue life just as a pure human, or is he just dead now? If he's a human & still able to live, does this mean he'll have legal charges against all the murders he's committed? ... Or will he be treated like an animal: either killed, or caged and returned to wilderness where he came from. Well, I assume he was never in wilderness...

Well as the saying goes, let dying dogs rest.

This debilitating heat fell directly upon the Dogman.

Man, I totally missed this one! I mean, the joke is so obvious!

Maybe the keyboard player can say it!

Love the description of Gadget launching into action!

This many civilians is scary. Fights between supers and monsters almost can't avoid some collateral damage, so I suspect the team's going to have to do a lot of crowd control here. That sort of thing is scarier to me than most monsters (getting pulverized is one thing, dealing with a dozen lawsuits quite another--maybe the team should set up an LLC).

The dogman has an interesting physique. Sounds like they'd be pretty top-heavy, which maybe January can use to her advantage.

Oh, this is interesting. Does Sunita have some connection to this?

Yup, she does. And things have gotten more complicated.

Probably a good call on January's part to not have any shooting. Way too easy for that to go wrong here.

Very impressive use of powers here. They coordinated to avoid collateral damage and get the job done. It's like watching a well-executed raid in an MMO. And it does seem like the Dogman's another victim here, so the next step is to help him out. Once they can get him under some level of control, at least.

Acadian: Last week's battle was a nice opportunity to showcase the various abilities of the team, and how all of the working together brings them success.

The flail is going to be next up on the To Do list for the heroes. But it is not going to go so easily into that good night.

I had fun writing that banter, like Blackhawk's Canadian double-double, and January trying out a new catch phrase, that is a little too obscure for others to understand.


Renee: I used to think that the Dog Days of Summer just meant when it was really hot. But it turns out it is when the star Sirius is in the sky. Which just happens to usually be in August, when it is also really hot.

We don't get a lot of snow anymore in Michigan. Certainly not compared to when I was a children in the 70s. It is not even like when I was a courier in the early 2000s. Back then during winter we would reliably get two good snowfalls every week, about 2-3 inches every time. I had to drive in it, so I was very conscious of the weather. Now we are lucky to get that much in a single month.

Whoa, Jan and company are not going to kill the Dogman. That's not their style at all.

I have noticed that in the internet age there seem to be three kinds of people when disasters happen. There are the people who run away. The people who stand and gawk in shock. And the people who pull out their phones and start live-streaming. That is how we get to see all these videos of disasters on YouTube. I suppose there is a fourth type, those who step in and actually try to help. But those are the rarest.

The legal fallout of being the Dogman will be addressed at the very end of this book. So it will take a while to circle around to. But there is long-standing legal precedent for this sort of thing in the Crow-verse.


WellTemperedClavier: I am not sure about how to handle supers and lawsuits. In most super fiction it is just completely ignored, especially in the Marvel movies. People just destroy cars and trucks and buildings without a second thought. In the first Incredibles movie they did touch on it. The federal government paid for all the damages that supers caused. Until Mr. Incredible finally went too far and they stopped the funding all together, ending superheroes at the same time. I really don't know what route I want to take it. In the very least it is just taken for granted that super damage is covered in things like homeowners insurance, or auto insurance, etc...

The Dogman's physique is based on RL hyenas, just taken to an extreme. And of course a picture I found of Yeenoghu, the Demon lord of Gnolls. I mostly went with the 3rd Edition version of him as my inspiration for the Dogman's appearance.

That is how the Dogman started out. I was looking to round out the posse of magical monsters that the Hierophant had gathered to face Nátthrafn after summoning the Dark Lord. So I cracked open my Monster Manual and Fiend Folio and made a list of creatures that might work. Gnolls were one. From there I found Yeeoghu, and I got the idea for the general look, and the flail. Then I continued to work on it, and decided to go a were-creature route, with the flail being a curse causing the transformations. The cherry on top was the Michigan Dogman, a 'real' cryptid here in Michigan with a canine appearance.

How the team treats the Dogman is a very revealing thing, it will show a lot of their personalities and goals as supers. I often read in writer's forums that a battle in fantasy writing should reveal something about the participant's personalities. In this case, I was able to pull that off.








My inspiration for Bill Nadeem is Jay Ali

The Children's Hospital Green Roof


Book 11.28 - Raven Sisters

"Get away from him!" A woman's scream brought January's head around. Racing up to them from the Coney Island was Sunita. She still wore her work apron, over a pair of mom jeans and a green top. But she had discarded her rubber kitchen gloves. She only skidded to a halt when Lighthammer stepped into her path and held his arms out to bar her passage.

"Hold up there," he insisted. "It's not safe."

"Safe?" she scoffed in a low voice. "He's my husband, now let me through."

She ducked under Lighthammer's arms, and darted the rest of the way forward. She got there just in time to see her spouse complete his transformation back to human form. His eyes rolled over in the back of his head, and he fell back down toward the earth. Gadget was there to catch him however, and gently lowered his head to the grass.

"How is he?" January worried. They did not want to kill him after all, certainly not in front of his spouse. But it was hard to gauge how hard to hit someone who could wreck semi-trucks and destroy landmarks.

"He's out, but I think he's ok," Gadget nodded after examining his eyes and checking his pulse. "I think he is just wiped from transforming back."

January looked around for the flail. They had to get that thing under wraps as soon as possible. Perhaps simply removing it from Mr. Nadeem's presence might break the curse. But even as she cast her eyes this way and that, there was no sign of it.

"Umm, where's that cursed magic weapon?" Blackhawk wondered as well. She moved up with the rest of them. The First Nations heroine now reformed her force field into a bubble that surrounded them all. Its normally translucent surface now brightened with color, and transformed into a brilliant green aurora that completely shielded them from view.

January turned around herself, and looked this way and that. There was no sign of the flail. She was still sensing in the astral. It should have been a bright beacon of power, impossible to miss. But somehow she could not find it. It had been right there a moment before! But now it seemed to have vanished into thin air.

"I think it's like that thing Blood Raven does with her swords," Gadget mused. "How she can just summon them to her, and then make them vanish when she no longer needs them. I always wondered how she did that. Does she store them in a dimensional pocket? Or does she just teleport them to her from some normal place, like you do with your armor when you suit up?"

"This will make things harder," Ôkami said. "I sense that flail is at the heart of this. I can only feel a bare residue of magic around him now. But when the flail was out, he and it were both alive with power in the astral."

"So it does go dormant, like we thought," Cray said over the comlink. "Well the good thing is that means he's not a threat right now."

"Not until he wolfs out again," Blackhawk noted.

"What are you people talking about?" Sunita knelt down to cradle her husband's head in her lap. "My husband is a good man. He's even in the National Guard! He's not a monster."

"Lady, in case you haven't been keeping up on current events, your husband just tried to rip half the Art Fair apart, including your Coney Island." Lighthammer noted.

"You're Sunita right, Sunita Nadeem?" January remembered her manners. "I'm Stormcrow, that is Lighthammer, Ôkami, Gadget, and Blackhawk."

"We all know who you are," the dark-haired woman nodded. "Yes I'm Sunita Nadeem. And whatever is going on, my husband Bill is not responsible. He's a good father. He's not a... supervillain."

The sound of sirens came to January's ears. That reminded her that while they were speaking, the world was indeed going on around them.

"We need to clear this guy out of here while we figure this out," Gadget said. "Can we take him to the Raven's Nest?"

"There's a better place, the bunker underneath." Cray said over the comlink. "Blood Raven kept it for just this sort of thing. It's a hardened facility, good for keeping dangerous prisoners, or training dangerous metas. It's in the waypoint network, that would be the best way to get there."

"Ok, there's another node north-east of here, on the roof of the children's hospital," January declared, "I can get us to the bunker from there."

January leaned down, and gently lifted Bill in her arms. He was just an ordinary man now. With wavy black hair, a strong jaw, and a prominent nose, she imagined that he was quite handsome. She would have to ask Avery about that later. He would know. In any case, the difference between him now and that half-human, half-canine form was just astounding. It was no surprise that he was able to vanish so easily after the attack on the Big Tire. If she had not seen it herself, she would never have imagined that he was the Dogman.

"Wait, where are you taking him?" Sunita cried. "You can't take my husband. This is kidnapping!"

"We can leave him here for the cops if you like," Lighthammer declared. "I'm sure that will work out really well for you."

"Listen, Sunita, we are trying to help him," Gadget explained. "Whatever is doing this to him, we are going to find a way to stop it, and fix him. But we can't do that here in the street."

"Not without me you're not!" Sunita insisted. "Where he goes, I go."

January looked to the others. They just shrugged back at her. "Okay then, you're coming with us too. Do you need to sort anything out with your family before you go?'

"Crap!" she swore, and fumbled for her phone. "Let me text the kids."

"I'll take that for a moment," Gadget snatched the phone from her hands, and connected a cable to its USB port. A holographic keyboard sprang up in mid air in front of the powered armor hero, and his fingers flew across the keys. The screen on the smartphone lit up for a moment, and then Gadget handed it back to Sunita.

"There, I've disabled the GPS, and locked out your social media apps from spying on you."

"When this is all over, remind me to tell your husband that he doesn't deserve you," Blackhawk said wryly. Several of the metal plates of her armor snapped out in mid air, and transformed into flat discs. She lowered them to the ground, so that the normally ground-bound members of the group could step onto them. Then they all rose up into the sky.

January led the way to the hospital. She knew it. She and Blood Raven had used the waypoint there before. It was part of the complex of hospitals that clustered in the north-eastern corner of Ann Arbor. The Huron River made a wide loop to the north of them, and a park took up the space between the arms of the river. The hospitals themselves stretched across the base of the loop, skirting the very edge of the urban area.

The children's hospital itself was the tallest of the buildings, at some twelve stories high. Its walls were made of blue glass, alternating with cladding of varying soft earth tones. It had an irregular shape, sort of like a rectangle. But one of the long faces had several curved, triangular sections that jutted from it. They sort of reminded January of fangs jutting from a dog's mouth.

January led them to the roof. It was remarkable, because it was covered in grass and other plants! It was a literal green roof, and the normal rooftop appliances and utilities rose up from the little meadow on raised platforms. Among them were elevated metal walkways that ran across the space, connecting one section to another.

January avoided the helipad that rose up in one corner. Instead she took them to the top of a small structure on the opposite side of the building. It was the roof of a glassed in stairwell that ran the height of the building. January set down upon its white concrete roof, and waited for the others to land as well. Then she stretched out with her magic. The pentacle hidden within the cement below glowed to brilliant life in answer, it smelled her blood, and unfolded space under her magical touch.

As she had numerous times now, she flipped through the rolodex of the waypoints Blood Raven had inscribed into the teleportation network. Then she had the rune she was looking for. January had never been there before, but she could clearly sense that its location was directly beneath the penthouse of the Raven's Nest. She imagined that it must be hundreds of feet below the earth, given the great vertical distance between the two.

She focused her will upon that site, and brought it to the fore of the index. The magic inscribed within the rune connected it to the waypoint that she currently stood upon. For an instant both existed in the same place and time as one another. Then she allowed the magic to subside, and looked around at her new surroundings.

You were right. Getting rid of that pesky flail is going to a challenge. Gotta locate it first.

Taking Bill to a safe room at the nest is a great idea from Cray. Not surprisingly, Sunita objects. Lighthammer’s response was brilliant and readily gained her acquiescence. . . though I knew she’d insist on coming along. Good call on Gadget’s part to render her phone ‘safe for hanging with supers’.

Once again, you show us how neat Blood Raven’s wayshrine network is. I love that it’s attuned to her blood – and therefore Stormcrow’s as well.

I hope they don’t have to beat the crap out of subdue the Dogman too many more times before they can sort out how to deal with that mysterious flail.


Nit: "How she can just summon them to her, and then make then [them] vanish when she no longer needs them. …’

Correct, the dog star, Sirius.

Ah, so that's a bit more snow we got in Maryland back in those days, not piles of snow like we've heard. So it's sort of like the giant catfish the size of cars, living in the Great Lakes; another myth busted. Still, y'all get more than we do. I'll take it! (though plenty of Marylanders disagree...)

I am definitely the first camp; That's me, running away! In the Bethesda forums whenever a thread came up saying "What would u do if u were in cryodil?" my answer was always "I'd go hide in whatever city is nearest, and never leave!" My characters are the ones who've got all the bravery.



I bet it will. See, because there currently wouldn't be much on the books: clear ways to prosecute him, that is. How do you prosecute a monster who's based within a human? If he were simply a monster at all times, that's easy. But he's also a person. And on the defense side, I guess his lawyer(s) could go for an Insanity defense, that comes closest, but it goes further than that, because it's not that he's not in his right mind when he becomes the dog, he's not even IN his mind at the time. 🐕‍🦺 Only if it's proven that he's willfully causing himself to change into Dogman. Doesn't sound like he knows what's happening, though.

Assuming all of that get ironed out, the guy gets charged, how would sentencing work? Think about that for a moment. Let's say it's proven he knows he's changing into Dogman. Does this mean he changes over with the intent of murdering someone specific (First Degree)? Or is this more of a random thing (second or third degree)? Etc. etc.

Pretty sure there have been cases which used multiple personalities as a defense successfully. Hmm. Hopefully they won't have to face prosecution which takes a more dogmatic approach. Alright, enough.

The CIA would want a piece of Dogman, along with a bunch of other agencies like DoD. They want to discreetly lock the guy up perhaps, so they can study ways to enhance our military.

.... looks like Clavier's also looking at things through the legal lens. Hey, it's fun mental exercising to speculate.

-------------

Uh oh, here comes Sunita. Ah, okay, so the flail he was toting might've been the cause of all this. Wouldn't that be something? -- Dang. Sunita really doesn't know. She's totally in the dark about her man. I bet if she really thought about it though, there'd be all sorts of questions in her mind. Times he disappeared which never got explained, and so on.



So true! It's hard sometimes to predict sometimes whether someone's regarded as hot or handsome or whatever, if we're the opposite sex.

That's awesome. Gadget disables the phone's GPS like the rest of us would prepare a cup of coffee, like he's done it a zillion times.

The hospital's green roof sounds neat. Unexpected. Like Central Park in the middle of NYC.

Off they go to Raven's Nest. I bet Sunita's head is spinning.

Oh, I don't blame you at all for not wanting to explore how liability would work in this context. While it's kind of fun to speculate on, actually researching the relevant laws is probably exhausting and dull unless you're really into that kind of thing.

Gnolls are a good choice. I do remember Yeenoghu from my AD&D days.

Battles are a lot more interesting if they reveal something about the personalities of the characters involved.

Okay, good that this guy is okay despite the pummeling he received. I don't blame his wife for being freaked out though.

The bunker sounds like a good plan. Putting Bill in the hospital would NOT be wise, at this point.

It's realistic that Sunita doesn't want the team to take him. And wow, Lighthammer was pretty blunt about it! Good thing Gadget and January can smooth things over. Good move on Gadget disabling the GPS. Ugh, sometimes I hate the way tech watches you all the time.

The green roof is cool! I'd not heard of that before.

Acadian: That pesky flail is going to push the team to their limits, and beyond in fact.

The Raven Bunker that we are about to visit is something I have had in the works for years. It was originally going to be a decommissioned Nike missile base just a few miles from the Witch House. There was a RL former missile base there, that used nuclear weapons. Also, just a few miles from where I live too! But then I realized that I really don't need to make it a separate location. I could just build it into, or at least under, the existing Raven's Nest. I think it works better as an extension of that location, rather than an entirely new site.

There will be one more beating the crap out of something coming, though not necessarily Bill Nadeem.


Renee: We did get giant piles of snow every so often. Every year we were good for at least one, if not two, 12 inches or more snow days. Those were a nightmare as a courier, since I still had to drive through it with a van.

You are getting to the legal problems that both prosecutors and defense attorneys face when it comes to a meta-human world. As you said, if someone cannot prevent themself from transforming into a wolfman and going on a uncontrollable rampage - or even aware that they are doing that in the first place - then that person is not aware that what they are doing is wrong. At best you can put them in a mental asylum, rather than a prison. But if they are suffering from a magical curse, a mental hospital cannot do anything for them, except keep them locked up for the rest of their lives.

The Dogman actually would not be much use to any organization trying to weaponize him. He turns into the Dogman because of the Flail, and it's an ancient magical artifact that cannot be reproduced. So you can't study him and then make a factory that builds more Dogmen. Well, you could try to make more Flails. But we will soon learn how it was made, and no one would ever want to try that again.

Granted, some arcane scholars would probably be interested in studying the Dogman, to see what makes him tick. He's more of a magical curiosity, when he's not being a physical danger.

This kind of thing won't even work with suits of powered armor like Gadget's. It is the meta-human power of their creators that make them work, not science. So they cannot be made on an assembly line. Every piece of meta-technology is hand-crafted by an individual meta-inventor. Way back Gadget once explained that the cold fusion reactor in his Geo Storm only worked on Evian. No other water would work. The Junkman tried making his own cold fusion reactors for his cyber cabs. But Evian would not work for him. He had to use another source of water. Meta-human abilities are finicky, and inextricably tied to their possessors.

By now, Gadget has disabled the tracking features in phones and the like so many times that to him it is second nature. He can do it in his sleep.


WellTemperedClavier: I remember a few years back my neighbor and I did an MCU marathon. He remarked that it was too bad that the heroes had to keep getting distracted by civilians, whom they had to drop everything to keep safe - rather than just going straight out and fighting the bad guys. I pointed out to him that this is what made them heroes in the first place. Any thug can punch someone else. It takes a lot more to put yourself in danger to protect someone else, and take the bullet meant to kill them. That's what is heroic about them. Not leaping over tall buildings or shooting beams from their eyes.

That is one of the things that I try to convey with my super fights. The Alliance always puts lives first, winning second. The whole Flying Dutchman fire was purely that. There was no fighting at all. It was just January literally leaping into the flames to rescue people, no matter what it cost her. While on the other hand villains will go out of their way to attack innocent bystanders, and use them as shields or distractions.

Lighthammer is blunt, but honest. The only options here are wait for the cops and let them take Bill, or instead they take Bill with them and try to cure him themselves. The cops - needless to say - are totally incapable of doing the latter. And they probably won't be very nice about it.

I have used the Children's Hospital and its waypoint before in the story. But at the time I did not realize that it had the Green Roof. So I will probably have to go back and update it. I know some cities have made a lot of them, like Portland I think.

Honestly, when I am watching TV shows and movies, it just boggles my mind how many of their writers are so blissfully unaware of how all-pervasive surveillance is on our society. They commonly show people breaking into places like mansions, without wearing gloves, and leaving their fingerprints everywhere. And they always take their mask off inside the house, where the cameras that every rich person has will capture their faces on video. The Bourne movies are among the few that actually acknowledge that cameras are everywhere, you can clone phones, facial recognition is a thing, etc...

I was recently watching a pretty good Marvel animated series. At one point in it a bad guy stole the phone of one of the main characters. It had the interface for an uber weapon in the phone, the only way to control it. The villain escaped with the phone, and the heroes were at the wits end trying to track them down. I was practically yelling at the TV at that point. The villain had her phone, which was turned on. The phone with the GPS built into it, the one whose number the heroes knew. The one they can instantly track to within 2 meters of its location. *ggrrrr*



The Detroit Police Stress Unit


Book 11.29 - Raven Sisters

It was pitch dark, so dark that there was literally no light at all. Gadget turned up his suit lights so that they could see. Lighthammer also lived up to his name, and provided even more illumination. That revealed the contours of the space that they found themselves within, though it was still shrouded in deep in shadows around the perimeter.

Then a moment later the lights came on. Cray had not been kidding when he called it a bunker. She stood within a huge, open space. It was surrounded by concrete on all sides: floor, walls, and ceiling above. The floor was plain gray, and the walls were covered in faded and peeling white paint. A target range was set up along one wall, where a long series of tables sat across from a row of targets. January noted the scorch marks and bullet holes in the wall behind them. Farther down the chamber, a street front had been constructed from what looked like wooden facades, many of which also revealed similar signs of damage. Another area was caged off, and January saw numerous firearms of varying models locked up in racks within.

At one end was an observation room, sealed off by a thick glass window that January imagined was bullet-proof, if not stronger. Inside she could see electrical panels and control consoles. But all were quiet and dark. January walked that way, and went through a short hallway that led into the room. A glance showed that the corridor snaked around behind the room, leading somewhere deeper beyond.

By the time they walked into the control room, its consoles were blossoming to life with light and sound. Screens revealed environmental data for the entire building, along with a row of security camera feeds. January noted that these showed numerous key areas within the skyscraper. They included the entrances to the building, the stairwells and elevator shaft, and other choke points. She also noted what looked like prison cells, all of which were empty.

There were several office chairs in front of the consoles, and a long couch along the back wall. January gently laid Bill down upon the latter, and stepped back so that Sunita could fuss over him. In the meanwhile Gadget sat down at one of the consoles, and went to work on its keyboard. After several moments Cray's voice came over a loudspeaker in a corner of the ceiling.

"This entire bunker is one giant Faraday cage," the elder hacker explained. "No wireless signals can go in or out. The only external communications are via a single hard line. But so long as it remains up, I'm fully connected with the bunker's systems from up here in the Raven's Nest."

"What is this place?" Blackhawk wondered.

"Blood Raven built it after she bought the building back in the 70s," Cray explained. "She made it using earth elementals, and with the help of a previous apprentice of hers named Terra. She was good at that sort of thing. It is situated underneath the foundations of the building, and surrounded by multiple layers of concrete, granite, Chobham armor, and if need be, force fields, thirty feet thick altogether."

Gadget whistled in appreciation. January imagined that nothing short of a nuke was getting through the walls and ceiling above.

"So who was Terra?" she could not help but ask.

"She was before my time," Cray admitted. "She was an earth mage. But she retired a long time ago and moved to Arizona. I think she's in her seventies or eighties now. In any case, this is where Blood Raven performs training that might be dangerous. Like familiarizing herself with modern firearms, or training meta-humans with seriously destructive powers. There's also cells for keeping prisoners short term. But we haven't needed them in a long time."

"Isn't that called kidnapping?" Blackhawk said dryly.

"Sometimes handing a prisoner over to the cops is a sure way to get them killed," Cray shot back. "Look up the Stress Unit if you want to hear about Detroit's very own police death squad from the 70s. Even if that's not the problem, sometimes there's also a danger of prisoners blabbing what they know, and endangering people working undercover. In the end it's only a temporary thing, for emergencies."

"You are not going to lock us up here, are you?" Sunita asked.

"No, we are not," January insisted. She did not know how she felt about Blood Raven keeping her own private prison. On one hand, she could see the real need, given the situations Cray had just described. On the other hand, Blackhawk was still right about it being kidnapping.

"Ok, so what's our next move here?" Lighthammer said.

"I think it's time for me to hit the books again," January said. "I have a name this time: Alsaahiq. I can start researching from there."

"Alsaahiq?" Gadget wondered.

"It is the name of the flail," Ôkami said.

"You can tell that?" Blackhawk asked.

"We can sense it, yes," January said off-handedly.

"Right, magic stuff," Lighthammer sighed. "Why is it always magic stuff with you guys?"

"Just lucky I guess," Gadget said. "I could call up some neo-Nazis if you'd prefer."

"Naw, that's aight," Lighthammer waved a hand in dismissal. "I'm fine with the were-dog-man fella here."

"Cray, can you bring up Silverlight's annotated Scripta Mortis on one of these consoles?" January asked. "I want to go through it again, to see if I missed anything."

"Roger that," Cray's voice rang out from the speaker. One of the consoles came to life with an electronic book reader, and January parked herself in front of the monitor. Lighthammer came over to look over her shoulder, and she began to search the digitized pages of the ancient book. Silverlight had translated it from Latin into English, and added in her own insights in additional notes. But none of her search terms came back with any real hits. There were no Dogmen in the book, nor anything or anyone named Alsaahiq. She did find quite a bit on werewolves. But none that seemed connected to what they were dealing with.

January sighed, and tried several of the other ancient and recent tomes that they had digitized versions of. But they too, came up empty.

"I hate to be a Lucas killjoy, but I have got to jet," Lighthammer murmured.

"Got a hot date, hotshot?" Blackhawk winked at her counterpart from the other side of Lake Erie.

"No, worse, a job interview," Lighthammer said.

"Hey, that's great Lightguy!" Gadget said. "I didn't know you were looking for something."

"I need to do something with my time," the other man said. "And at least I can put my degree to use."

January remembered that from when she has visited his home, in the converted church in Cleveland. A framed degree in Aeronautical Engineering had hung from one of his bedroom walls.

"What are you doing?" Blackhawk asked. "I mean, what job are you going for?"

"An engineering job for an aircraft firm," Lighthammer said. He did not seem very excited by the prospect. In fact, he seemed rather glum. "I'd be designing wings, fuselages, that sort of thing."

"You don't sound all that enthused," January noted.

"I mean, it's a good job, and I can work remote, so you know, it won't affect my hammering," Lighthammer answered.

"But?" January said.

"It's not what I saw myself doing with the rest of my life," he said. "I'm a pilot. I always thought I'd retire from the Air Force, and become a bush pilot knocking around Africa, or at least Canada. Or maybe I'd become a crop-duster, meet some nice lady, and settle down in a friendly little small town."

"And learn the true meaning of Christmas," Gadget breathed. "Sorry, not trying to dump on your dreams. But maybe you should, well, do that instead?"

"I dunno," Lighthammer frowned. "I mean, we can't stay Lost Boys forever can we? We have to grow up at some point?"

"I hope not," Cray snorted through the PA system. "Otherwise I am really screwed."

"Well, I gotta fly, and think about it," Lighthammer said. "How do I get out of here?"

"The corridor behind the control room leads back to the freight elevator and emergency stairs," Cray said.

"I'll go with you," Blackhawk said. "I've got things to do too. I still have an interview I need to do for my current book."

"What are you working on?" January wondered as she led them back through the corridors behind the control room. There was a warren of passages and side rooms back here. Some appeared to be for storage, others were clearly dormitories, and other living spaces, and still more were mechanical in nature, dedicated to keeping the place running. Finally, sealed off from the rest of the complex was a cellblock. It all looked like something out of a World War Two movie. She expected Winston Churchill to round the corner with a coterie of RAF officers in tow, giving him the latest updates on the Blitz.

"A history of First Nations veterans who served in the Second World War," the Canadian replied. "I'm talking to as many of these guys as I can, before it's too late. They are in their 90s now, those that are still left at least."

"Based," Lighthammer nodded. "Tell 'em Hooah from a fellow vet."

"I will," Blackhawk said. "To be honest though, I am thinking of putting it on hold. I think writing a book on the Battle of Belle Isle would be a better idea instead. I've already seen some weird and disturbing conspiracy theories about it flying around. One is that it was all caused by the Jews. Conspiracy theories always go back to them. I'd like to set the story straight, without revealing secret identities of course. I know some of it hit really close to home."

Suddenly January felt very small. Here she had been so proud of making a comic book about a magic-punk character, and writing short stories about witches and wizards. Blackhawk was writing about something real. The other woman had something to say that mattered, about people who had changed - and made - the world. In comparison she was just creating amusing trite.

January tried not to frown, and silently led them to the exit. It was sealed off by a massive metal door. She imagined that it might have been made of some combination of steel, cubic boron nitride, and ceramics. She also noted a row of emitters built into the wall in front of it, which might project some form of force field.

A panel on the wall revealed a keypad and retinal scanner. January punched in the same code to access the loading dock, and then hunched down to allow the machine to scan her eye. With that a series of loud clangs reverberated through the massive door in front of them. It finally swung open, to reveal that it was at least six feet thick. Its rim was lined with retractable rods that would evidently slide out and lock into the tubes she saw bored into the walls, floor, and ceiling.

Beyond this uber bank vault was the same rickety old freight elevator that she was accustomed to, and the stairwell that flanked it. January led them into the elevator and took the car up to street level overhead. There they got out on the loading dock, where she let them out into the narrow alley between the Radiator Building and the raised parking structure next door.

Lighthammer and Blackhawk made their final goodbyes, then flew straight up into the sky. January closed everything up behind her, and made her way back to the control room. As she did, she felt her way along the concrete walls with her astral senses. She could sense a lingering scent of magic there, where they had been shaped by elemental hands.

"I think we need to call in help," January said when she finally returned to the control room. "Maybe Blood Raven knows what is going on here."

"I disagree," Ôkami insisted. "She brought us all together for Xochitl's training session because she wants us to work together. She wants us to carry on her legacy, not go running to her every time we hit a brick wall."

"So what do you suggest?" January wondered. "I'll admit it, I'm lost right now."

"We reach out to our Raven Sisters instead," Ôkami declared. "There must be one of them who can help with this."

January considered that. Who might know about this curse? Riven? She shook her head. Her eldest sister was a fighter, not a scholar. Xochitl? She was still just learning. Kaelin was a potion maker. Calypso was the mistress of the sea. That left..."

"Silverlight!" Both January and Ôkami spoke their arcane sister's name in unison.

* * *

Cheyenne Mountain would be jealous of Blood Raven’s bunker. Having it crafted by magic eliminates a lot of headaches and logistical details about how it was constructed.

It was neat learning a bit more about what Lighthammer and Blackhawk are up to when they’re not hammering or hawking.

I hope Silverlight is able to help unravel the secrets of that flail. And fairly quickly since, until they can figure out how to keep Bill from going all Dogman, prudence would suggest keeping him as a guest of the bunker. Not a great choice but probably beats the alternative of having to kill him.

I just think the CIA would get involved, or some of the more shadowy agencies. They'd basically have to kidnap the guy, and then nobody would ever hear from him again because he'd be sent off to some super-secret location. But hey, guess we'll learn his fate in The Stormcrow.



I see. Maybe these agencies will hit a wall trying to replicate the Dogman's powers or the flail which seems to control him. They'd at least try. But again, let me shush.

So Avery's hit a secret: French mineral water is the answer to all the world's energy problems! If only...

Off-topic: I was listening to NPR on Saturday as I was driving around shopping and heard the story of Gabby Rivera, which fascinated me because I didn't know this writer. One thing which struck was how she described growing up without much LGBTQ material to read that wasn't oriented toward depressing coming-out stories, rather, Gabby wanted to write something which was dynamic and even fun, portraying characters who aren't straight, or even asexual. Learned something new, as I often do while listening to public radio.

Anyway, where did we stay? Where the heck are they? A Faraday Cage, I see. Whoa, it was built with earth elementals??? So they actually exist!

It's interesting how Mister Cray is still being described as a hacker. That's what he can do for sure, hack into stuff, but such an EVIL term! Such a shame he can't live up to some other, more congenial term. Mission Specialist, perhaps, no wait.... Well my point is, he does lots more good than evil. Then again, there was that teenager from England who did some pretty evil things, yet when he turned himself around, and even began working with authorities, he was still just a hacker. Ach, can't remember the kid's name. Mixed-race, curly golden hair. From England. Lived and hacked in his parents' basement. Eventually turned his life around, but the FBI still caught him at a convention in Las Vegas. Dang! My memory sucks.

I see, so they're keeping Bill down here temporarily. Probably best.

Lighthammer has a job interview? Can't wait to hear what he gets hired as. Ah, aeronautical engineering. Yeah, he'd be good at that, even if he does find it rather mundane. Thing is, none of these supers are really making money at just being supers, right?

Aw, don't feel bad, Jan. You're still contributing.

Looks like Silverlight's going to get some screentime pretty soon, that's good. I think she's my fave in a way.

Hoo-ah! 🛸

I have to admit that I kind of get why a lot of media doesn't bother dealing with surveillance. While the avoidance of such can be interesting (and works quite well with certain genres), it also gets tricky to incorporate without completely derailing the plot. This goes double if the point of the work is action or adventure, which can be tricky to maintain if you're figuring out how the heroes avoid surveillance.

This is quite a setup that Cray has here.

Ah, so it was a joint venture with Blood Raven. Magic and tech working together. Huh, the prison aspect is a little troubling, though it does sound like you would need something like that. Especially when you can't always rely on law enforcement. I hadn't heard about the STRESS unit. Terrifying stuff.

Oof, job interviews. I hate those. Good touch of realism though; like Marvel heroes, the team here still has to make ends meet.

Quite a project Blackhawk has. An important one, too.

This situation would call for a more experienced magician. Luckily, it sounds like they have good options here.

Acadian: It would have been a huge undertaking to build such a bunker the old-fashioned way. I have been watching the TV show Nazi Megastructures lately, and they go into a lot of old German bunkers and tunnel systems like this. Some are truly titanic, like the U-boat pens in France, Project Giant, or the ME-262 factory, which was completely underground.

It is important to me to show that the supporting cast do have lives of their own. So little things like Lighthammer's job interview or Blackhawk's book ideas are things I want to get in to show that. I can't show everything. This would turn into a million page series if I did. But do want to make it clear that they are all people with lives of their own.


Renee: Oh yeah, I know the character America Chavez. She was a minor character in the recent Dr. Strange movie. They took out any hints of her being Queer of course. Though they did keep in her having two mothers though. Xochitl is partly based on the actress who played her: Xochitl Gomez.

That is basically why I started writing The Stormcrow. I realized that the only way I was ever going to see a Trans or even Gay superhero was if I wrote it myself. The comics companies will do it in print to a limited amount, with characters like America Chavez. But not in films. That always gets cut. So I did it myself. That is also why I make an effort to present a diverse cast of major and supporting characters as possible. Not only is that simply realistic, it is important to me that people who are often erased to be seen.

I am not used to there being any negative connotations around the term hacker. Quite the opposite, I usually see it used as a mark of some distinction. It is someone who can get things done with a computer. The terms White Hat and Black Hat hacker are often used to break down a hacker's motivations. The same with Hacktivist. But other than that, hacker itself is pretty neutral.

None of these people are making money at being supers. Only those with legal empowerment receive a paycheck from the government. So Jan and crew need to find their own jobs to pay their bills, in addition to supering.


WellTemperedClavier: I might be used to casually dealing with surveillance thanks to years playing the game Shadowrun. It is set in a dystopian future, where high tech meets magic. A decker (hacker) is standard for every team of runners, and their number one job is usually to disable or otherwise hijack surveillance and security devices, so that the runners can sneak in undetected. We saw Gadget doing this in some of the early books in fact. He and Cray don't have to do it much lately, because they have not been sneaking around much. These days the team is usually doing things very out in the open and above board.

And January still has her video camo, that makes her invisible to cameras. And when she faced off against the Junkman way back in Book 2, his robots also had a camera jamming gizmo. And of course, she wears gloves, she covers her face, she takes basic measures to protect her identity.

The STRESS unit is sadly not unusual. A lot of major cities have had equivalents, and they always end really badly. LA had the Rampart unit, that the TV show The Shield was inspired by. Miami had one for a while made to fight the drug trade. It wound up running a lot of it instead. Chicago had their own secret black ops sites for torturing prisoners. The NYPD, well, they are pretty infamous for their corruption.






The Baltimore Teleportation waypoint can of course be found on the Stormcrow Map


Book 11.30 - Raven Sisters

January stood beneath the steel girders that supported a divided elevated highway. Cars and trucks passed by in a steady roar overhead, going in either direction, depending on which span they traveled. Massive concrete pylons rose up next to her to support the multiple roadways above. In sharp contrast to all this metal and cement was the green grass beneath her feet, and the bushes and trees that stood to either side of the expressway, sprouting up in the gaps where the sun fell down from between the roads above.

January looked over at the off ramp that split off from highway above, making a third elevated roadway. It curled around and down to the ground in a wide loop, and curved back around behind her. Between it and the two main roadways was a thick clump of low trees and high grass. A single, tall metal lamp post anchored here shot up high in the sky, far enough to reach over the elevated roadways above. Encircling it all was a chain link fence, adorned with numerous signs that advised those outside against trespassing within, as January was of course doing herself. Finally the road from that off ramp finished its encirclement of the entire area, only to join a surface street to the south.

So far Baltimore looked exactly like Detroit. Granted, the bottom of Interstate 95 was all January had seen of the place. Sága's map app told her that she was in the eastern half of the city, at the edge of what it identified as Greektown. Detroit's Greektown was just a single street with a bunch of restaurants and a casino. But this one looked like an actual old neighborhood. At least from what she could see on the map.

January sat down to wait. As she usually did during these downtimes, she began with some basic Yoga stances, then she moved on to more complex poses as she limbered up. At the same time she closed her eyes, and concentrated on the mana within her. She called it up, felt it flow through her, and let it sink back down into the well of her being. Over and over, she ran through her exercises, physical and magical, so that both blended seamlessly into one another.

She felt Silverlight approach long before she saw the other heroine. She was a beacon in astral space, a shining moon that cast her light across the magical landscape. She came from the south, moving fast, but slowed as she approached January's location. She lowered herself down between the two branches of the upraised highway, threaded her way past the rimming trees, and gently set her feet down upon the grass beside January.

"Hi Stormcrow," the other woman greeted her. "I hope you didn't have to wait long."

January opened her eyes. She was balanced in the Crow Pose. Held aloft solely by her hands, both of her legs were drawn up tightly to her chest, knees against her upper arms. She leaned back and let her feet touch the ground, and then stood up in one graceful, flowing motion. She did not drop her connection to her mana however. She allowed that to continue to percolate through her being.

She saw that Silverlight was in her gray and white super outfit. Her skin was white marble, and she carried her lunar staff Mene with one hand. January noticed that its phase had changed slightly from the last time she had seen it, a few days after the Battle of Belle Isle. So as she had suspected, it did adapt to match the moon's current face.

"I've learned how to use quiet times like this to help stay in shape, physically and metaphysically." January replied.

"So I see," the other woman declared. "I could sense you as I approached. Your power grows."

"Yeah, we've all gotten a lot of experience points lately," January remarked. "Thanks so much for coming to help us. It means a lot."

"Think nothing of it," Silverlight insisted. "It was good to meet you the other day. It was good to meet all of us Raven Sisters. Blood Raven should have done that a lot sooner. Besides, it is nice to be back in the old neighborhood."

"The old neighborhood?" January wondered. "I thought you were from DC?"

"I live in Georgetown now, but I grew up here in Baltimore." Silverlight nodded her head toward a line of trees just beyond the elevated roadway to the north. "Just past the train tracks over there in Greektown in fact. My parents still live there. I used to meet Blood Raven here all the time to train, or we would go back to her sanctum."

"So that's why this waypoint is here, like the one in Nassau, or the one by Mount Shasta." January wanted to plant a palm on her face.

"Yes," Silverlight nodded again. "I think Blood Raven created one of these waypoints whenever she took on a new Raven Daughter, at least those of us from outside her usual neck of the woods."

"So did your parents know?" January asked.

"Oh, absolutely not," Silverlight shook her head. "They are very religious, and set in their ways. They still won't stop pestering me to get married and have kids. They think it's a literal scandal that a woman might not want to do either. They never could have handled the fact that their daughter was learning magic - real magic - from a superheroine."

"That sounds a lot like what Riven said too," January mused.

"The cape alone is a lot for anyone to deal with, and those are absolutely legitimate concerns," Silverlight said. "But for some people the very idea of magic is equal to devil-worship. You are probably too young to remember the Satanic Panic. But back then a lot of people thought daycares were run by devil-worshipping pedophiles, that Dungeons and Dragons taught people real spells, and that they both performed human sacrifices every night. It not only destroyed families, but sent innocent people to prison."

"That is just... crazy," January murmured.

"Moral panics always are. Sadly, behaving rationally has never been a highly prized human trait." Silverlight observed. "Are you asking because of our newest sister?"

"Yeah," January nodded. "She wants me to teach her, rather than Blood Raven. To be honest, that's what Blood Raven wanted too. So now I am retracing her steps, so to speak, and trying to figure out how she did it."

"Well, if it helps, Blood Raven left the final decision up to me," Silverlight said. "It was my life after all, and it was not like she could really stop me from telling anyone if I was determined to. So ultimately I think you need to leave this in Xochitl's hands. She knows her parents better than anyone else. All you can do is give her advice. My own counsel is to be cautious. Especially with someone who is in their teens, and physically dependent upon her parents."

"I know," January said. "That is the part that worries me most. They could literally throw her out on the street. They haven't done that because she is trans, so that's a good sign. But I can tell that her interest in Wicca - just Wicca mind you - is a sticking point with them. I'm afraid adding real magic to the mix might be the final straw. But on the other hand I might not be giving them enough credit, and be depriving her of a system of support. It's so damned hard to tell. Punching giant spiders is so much easier."

"It is," Silverlight laughed. "All we can do is our best."

"The others must be wondering where we are." January cleared her throat. "So without further ado..."

She reached out and took the other woman's hand. Then she closed her eyes, and allowed her mana to connect with the waypoint hidden beneath her feet. She felt its power awaken and connect with her blood, the same blood that she shared with the rune's creator. The other waypoints in the network sprang to life in her awareness, each a separate page in the website of the system. She chose the one for the Raven Bunker, and allowed the rune to do the rest of the work. A moment later they both stood within the main chamber of the underground base.

The other woman whistled as she looked about herself.

"I haven't been here in decades. Not since I first trained. I had some trouble aiming my elemental light spells, especially when I focused them through my diadem." Silverlight raised one hand to touch the silver crescent moon jewelry that rode upon her brow. Then the older heroine gestured to the scorches that blackened the wall of the target range. "I made some of those marks!"

"Elemental light?" January wondered. "You mean lasers?"

"Well, you could call it that," Silverlight shrugged. "I do too sometimes. It's the diametric opposite of elemental darkness, physically, magically, metaphorically."

"We call that radiant damage in Dungeons and Dragons," January noted. "It's your cleric or paladin's best friend."

"Very appropriate," Silverlight smiled. "I suppose I might be a cleric then, or a wizard."

"You can be both," January insisted.

"She's back!" Gadget's voice came over the PA system. "I was about to break out the gaming manuals and teach our guests how to roll some new characters."

"We were just talking about that!" January grinned. "We could roll ourselves up as characters!"

She led Silverlight back to the control room. January heard a familiar voice as they approached the door. It was her mother Barbara's in fact, the last thing she expected to hear down beneath the Raven's Nest.

"In his late teenage years Janos went hiking in the Bavarian Alps, reading Plato's Timaeus. He also recounts having philosophical discussions with his fellow students and professors about understanding the atom."

Now January understood. It was their first episode on Janos Heisen: the Technocrat. Apparently Gadget had decided to listen to the podcast to pass the time.

"Yes, as one often does when they are a teen. I am sure we all remember those heady days of youth, when our adolescent minds were full to the brim with musings on science and philosophy. Wait a minute, I think I just described friend of the pod Avery..."

January heard her own words reply. As always, hearing her own voice on a recording was strange. It did not sound like herself. She had read that it had something to do with the way our skulls enhanced some of the sound wave frequencies, literally altering them to our own ears, but not to others.

They stepped inside the control room to find that Bill was awake. He sat on the couch next to his wife Sunita. They both cradled cups of coffee in their hands, and looked up nervously. Gadget reached out and put the podcast on pause so they could speak.

"How are you feeling Bill?" January asked.

"Like I've got a hangover," the older man replied with a wince. "But I guess that I should be asking you that, all of you."

"It's nothing that won't buff out," January said casually. She unconsciously reached up with one hand. Her fingers slid across the spot on her cheek where his flail had clocked her good enough to draw blood during their first encounter at the Big Tire. Thanks to the healing trance that Blood Raven had taught her, not even a scar remained of the wound. But her body still remembered nonetheless.

"I don't know what to say," Bill stared blankly down at the coffee cup in his hands. "I don't know what happened. I really don't. I just have these... blank spots. I just remember getting angry, really angry. Then... there's just nothing. But your friend showed me what I did on video. I'm sorry, really sorry. I don't know what's happening to me. I picked up that damned flail after the Battle of Belle Isle, and now my life's a giant nightmare."

"Oh hush dear, you never meant to hurt anyone," Sunita fussed. She turned from him to January, and her tone turned harder, more serious. "So what now, are you going to arrest us?"

"No one is arresting you sister," Gadget shook his head. "We aren't the cops."

At first I was like "huh?" but then I guess it all comes down to context. Like, the writers of Dr. Strange shouldn't highlight this fact unless it was pertinent to the story, I guess. Anyway, it's good America has seen screentime outside of Gabby's writings, that certainly brings her more attention.

Yes, I can remember when you began this story in 2019. "I need to strike while the iron is hot," you said. Something like that. Write what you know, that's the maxim writers often state.

I imagine there'd be a long, long list of rich folks who'd want to hire a Lighthammer, or a Silverlight, or a Calypso, to do their own bidding, and then these supers could be rich beyond belief. "Sir, might we be able to contract you to guard my private island in the Azores?" These folks could easily make some money; I'd imagine some m/billionaires and such would be handing over blank checks with their signatures in place sometimes! But this story can only go in so many directions, and it would suck in a way if one of these folks gave in to guaranteed paychecks for life.

Actually, was it mentioned that Calypso had done some work underseas, like for a government or some private industry?

Baltimore Waypoint, woo hoo. Okay, that's located just east of Highlandtown, I've been there plenty of times in my 20s & 30s. That's close to where the Sip 'n' Bite is located. Back in the day, that diner was a great place to go after we'd been to the clubs and were hungry for some chow. Didn't matter if it was 4 am or whatever.

Highlandtown is very sort of "white" (or it was). If you've ever seen The Wire, the second season, when that series focuses on shipping containers and not quite as much on the drug culture, is probably where some of The Wire was filmed. Highlandtown, Dundalk, Sparrow's Point, etc. Basically the more Caucasian areas. Other, way more dangerous parts of B'more, were used for all the other seasons.

Silverlight is here. She wouldn't have too far to go, traveling up from Georgetown. Especially if she's flying. 🌙 Yep, she sure is.

Now that it's

Yes, I can remember DnD being linked with satanism! Poor Gary Gygax had to hire bodyguards at the height o his fame because of this.

I can see why they're cautiously discussing Xochitl. It's like 'what do we do to meld this child into the proper direction?' Because nobody else is going to attempt to do so, so it's up to the supers in an unofficial way. It would be wicked if Xochitl winds up becoming really powerful with her magic, eventually.

WHOA, no [censored]! So Bill's troubles with becoming Dogmaster are all recent! Because he picked up this flail, and Belle Isle was literally not long ago. This was probably mentioned before, so I missed that part (or forgot it). I was assuming he'd been changing into dog form for quite some time, and had gotten lucky with Sunita not discovering this.