Acadian: I was thinking of the Highlander training scenes on mountain tops when I wrote that. I try to think about settings more these days, and how to create an engaging backdrop for whatever is happening. It is hard to compete with the top of a mountain. It was also a nice way to bring out a little more about Riven, who she is where she came from.

I started working on what Blood Raven has been up to in Boston, and outlined a first book of a series of her own. Now that I have the details, I decided to work that into January's story as well.

January turns 20! She's not a teenager anymore. That means all those bittersweet feelings that come with growing up, as you realize that you have left a part of your life behind you. As well as moving forward into a new life.

That is really sweet what you said about invisible friends! That is something to cherish.


Renee: Riven is definitely a cutie.

People tend to think of California as really progressive, full of New Age hippie peace and love types. But it is big, really big, and with a huge population. They have a cross-section of people, the same as anywhere. There are places there with as extremely conservative a population as any part of Texas, Florida, or Alabama. Orange County is one. That is where the John Birch Society got started. They thought Nixon was a commie. Nixon! That is how extreme some of these people are. I did some research, and the county with Mt. Shasta is the most republican in all the state. So that is where I put Riven's birthplace.

It does not hurt that it is also a hot bed of UFO sightings and conspiracy theories. Which is not an accident, since those things go hand in hand with conservatism.

Remember that Blood Raven has been active in Detroit for 50 years. 50 years under the same name and identity. People were staring to notice that she had literally not aged a day in that time. It was time for her to move on, as all immortals have to do eventually. She had long overstayed her welcome as it was.

January's original name was August. So I wanted that to be her birth month. Plus her father Romulus was big into Greek and Roman history. So she was named after both the month, and the Emperor Augustus. Just like her brother Julian was named after the Emperor Julian, and the month of July. Then I found out that in the year she was born there was a Friday the 13th in August. So that had to be her birthday.




Book 12.9 - Broken Arrow

August 14th (Wednesday)

January rode her motorcycle down Fourth Street through Royal Oak, passing numerous small businesses such as salons, real estate agents, and even an aluminum siding company. She nervously counted the addresses on her left. She knew her destination had to be here somewhere. She would be at Main Street in a few more blocks. Then she definitely would have gone too far. Had she passed it up? Should she turn around and go back, in case she had missed it?

Unfortunately one of the downsides to riding a motorcycle was that she could not just take out her phone and look at a map app. She was tempted to pull over and do just that. Or perhaps even do that most unmanly thing of all, stop and ask for directions! Once again, she was thankful that she was a woman, and thusly did not have to feel ashamed for even contemplating such a thing.

Then she saw what she was looking for. It was a low, one story brick building along the side of the street. It was narrow, but ran back a long way from the street in a long rectangle. Its front was all red brick. But the long flank of the building was painted in alternating bands of soft earth tones, and plants hung from each window.

January pulled up into the parking lot beside the building. It appeared to be shared with the insurance agency next door. She found a parking spot, and went through with her usual routine of shutting off her electric bike. That involved not only turning it off and pocketing the keys, but also engaging Avery's matter wave adhesive doohicky to glue it to the pavement below. Finally she drew off her scraped up helmet, and took a moment to smooth down her hair.

Then she rose from the Victory Empulse and strode to the door. She wore her new leather pants and boots, along with an old fitted jacket. She paused a moment at the door to once again make sure that she was presentable. There she noted a mural painted within the inset doorway. It depicted a ribbon wrapped around itself in a figure eight. The words "Always Changing, Ever Becoming" were written around the infinity symbol, which was painted in multiple colors.

She swallowed hard and went in. The waiting area inside was humble, to the say the least. It was a tiny cubicle, with a pair of threadbare couches against two walls. A door led deeper into the building, and an even smaller receptionist station sat in one corner. The latter was empty, but a sign in sheet sat there upon the counter before it. January walked up and found that the sheet had a list of names signed in. So she added hers to the bottom, using the pen that was tied to the clipboard with a string. Then she took a seat on one of the couches and waited.

She knew that she should have taken the opportunity to meditate. That was how she normally dealt with empty times like this, especially when on a case. But waiting for supervillains to show up was one thing. This was actually nerve-wracking. She just did not have the wherewithal to order all the thoughts that fought for space in her head.

What was this new therapist going to be like? What was dealing with the mental health insurance going to be like? Would it be a nightmare again, like the last time? How was she going to explain how she had stopped going to therapy? How much could she even tell this person? Her life as Stormcrow was obviously right out of course. But how much else was safe to say?

Just then the door opened and pair of young teens came out. One was a tall, slender young woman wearing a miniskirt and crop top. The other was an equally lanky man with long dark hair and glasses. The woman had a smile on her face, the man just nodded to her as they both left together.

Young teens. January caught herself. They were probably the same age she was. Here she was acting all mature, when so often she felt anything but.

"January?" A woman's voice issued from the open doorway. January rose from the couch to see a short, round woman with curly hair and large round glasses standing there. If she had been about a foot smaller she could have been a denizen of the Shire. As it was she projected an earthy, unassuming exterior, bolstered by the large smile that crested her fair features.

"Yes," January rose, shook the other woman's hand. She hoped that her palms were not sweaty.

"I'm Juniper Kozlowski," the older woman said. "I don't have a receptionist, so it's just me. Ready for your first session? Let's go back to my office."

January nodded, and followed Juniper down a short hallway. Several doors lay to either side. The door at the far end was open, and it led into a large, auditorium-like area. Within January saw a dozen chairs arranged in a circle. But Juniper stepped into one of the side doors before that, and January found herself in a small office.

Again, it was simple and humble. A scratched up and battered desk lay against one wall, piled high with papers. A laptop hummed at its center, and an aging laser printer lurked on a stand in one corner. Across the room another pair of couches and chairs were set up along the walls, along with a small coffee table, and finally a faded fabric chair sat facing them.

January noted several degrees and certifications on the wall, including a Masters of Social Work and a Professional Counselor's License. There were also certifications for Domestic Violence Counseling, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, LGBTQIA+ issues, and others. It certainly looked impressive enough.

Juniper walked to the desk, unplugged the laptop, and brought it back with her to the sitting area. She motioned for January to join her, and they both sat down. The therapist fiddled with the laptop for a few moments. Then she raised her head and looked January in the eye.

"Okay, so you filled out all the forms online ahead of time, that makes things easier." the older woman said. "It says here you were seeing a psychologist for several years, since your attempted suicide. But you stopped a few years ago."

"Yeah," January murmured. She stared down at the old scars that crossed her wrists. "It just didn't seem to be going anywhere at that point. And honestly, the insurance company was driving my mom insane. They would never reimburse her, unless she called them over and over again for months. Then the next time she had to do it all over again. It was a nightmare."

"And how about now?" Juniper asked.

"I'm still on the same insurance from my mom," January frowned. "So I guess now I'll be the one having to constantly harp on them to pay up."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Juniper sighed. "I know what nightmares insurance companies can be. I wish yours was in-network. But since it's not, all I can do is give you a receipt that you can submit for reimbursement from them, the same as before."

"So you said you were not getting anywhere anymore," Juniper went on. "What changed? I mean, what are you hoping to achieve now? Which is another way of me asking exactly what is it I can do for you? You just said gender counseling on the form."

"Well, like I said in the form, I transitioned after my suicide attempt, when I was twelve. I was taking puberty blockers at first, and then later started hormone replacement therapy. I've been living as a girl, as a woman, ever since. And I'm happy that way. I'm more than happy. I'm myself for the first time in my life. Well, almost. I want to have gender confirmation surgery, and I can't do that without two therapists signing off on it first."

"Yes, I have had many trans clients who have had surgery." Juniper nodded. "I can certainly help you with that, and prepare you for what you will have to deal with to make it happen. I know several other therapists that I can refer you to for the second opinion, and I know surgeons that you can consider. Plus I can tell you what they want to see and hear, and what they don't."

"What they don't?" January did not like the sound of that.

"One of the doctors here in Detroit..." Juniper spoke carefully, as if considering each word. "He's an excellent surgeon, one of the best really. But he's also an older gentleman. If you show up to meet him wearing pants, or even tights, he'll refuse you."

"What?" As outright offensive as that was, none of it came as a surprise. All of her life January had been forced to act out a role - project an image - to make everyone around her happy. That had increased tenfold since her transition. She had to always be the perfect girl, but not too perfect. She had to be feminine, but not too feminine, otherwise she would be accused of trying too hard and overcompensating. But if she was not girly enough, then she was just faking. Like by wearing pants instead of a dress for even one day.

"Yes, I am afraid so," Juniper frowned. "As I am sure you know, there is a lot of gate-keeping involved here. Most of that comes from a genuine desire to help you, and make sure that you are making the right decision. Right now you can detransition and go back to your old life at any time. But you cannot go back from surgery. Once it's done, it's done. We want to make sure you are ready for that."

"Unfortunately, some of the people involved are from older generations, and have some archaic views on what a woman or a man should be. And don't even think of bringing up non or third gendered people with them! You can butt your head up against the wall with them, or you can navigate around them to get what you want."

"But if I was cis, I could just walk into any surgeon's office and get a boob job, or vaginoplasty, and all they would ask is 'check or charge'? Or I could tell my family doctor that I wanted testosterone pills, or Viagra, and they would just hand them right over without question. But when I need gender affirming medicine, I have jump through all these damn hoops like a circus animal."

"Yes," Juniper agreed with her. "I sense you are angry, and frustrated. Tell me more about that."

"You're damn right I'm angry!" January fumed. "It must be so fraking nice to be born with the privilege of being human."

"I won't say that you have a right to be angry," Juniper said. "You do not need a right to feel angry. You don't need a right to feel anything. Your feelings are yours, and require no justification. What you do with them, or what you allow them to do to you, that is what matters. That is where they can make your life better, or worse. I can help you with that, I can help you with anything you share with me. This is what I am here for."

"Please don't think of me as just someone you need to appease in order to get what you need from life," Juniper went on. "If surgery is right for you, then I don't doubt you will get it. I will help you get to that point. In the meantime I can also help you with other things too. That is what people pay me for!"

* * *

January stopped at Avery's place on the way home from the therapist. She threaded her way past his car in the driveway. His yellow Geo was the only one there, so that meant his mom was probably working at the hospital, as usual. She pulled her nearly silent electric bike to the back porch, and locked it down as usual.

The back door was open, allowing air to flow in through the screen door behind it. January knocked on the frame, and a moment later Avery came trundling up from the stairs below. He led January inside, and she noticed his grandmother sitting in the kitchen, staring listlessly at a Sudoku puzzle spread across the table before her.

January gave her a wave, but the old woman did not seem to notice her, or acknowledge her in any way. She followed Avery back down into the Gadget Cave, where she saw he had a video game open in one computer screen, and what looked like a technical readout in the other. Sitting on the workbench was his Gadget helmet, connected to a bunch of wires leading back to his PC.

"So how did it go?" Avery leaned against the old, beat-up punching back that hung from a stud in the ceiling. "Good, bad, ugly?"

"I guess it was all right." January plopped down upon the frayed and torn couch that took up the center of the basement. "I mean, I went to therapy for years when I was younger. It's nothing new."

"Yeah, but you weren't... you know who back then." Avery put his hands together, and made a pantomime of a pair of wings flapping upward, like a bird. "All of our lives are different now. And you weren't this close to getting surgery then. You're an adult now. So it's actually possible."

"It is," January murmured. "It's just that... life has changed so much lately. Kell's moving away. Blackjack, I think he is too. My mom's doing this senate thing. My brother... well there's that. My father's a useless chud. And then there's that... thing of ours."

"Yeah, I know, this thing of ours can be hard to juggle," Avery said seriously. "Are you having second thoughts? You know, your great, great gran was not wrong when she said that there is no shame in not doing it. You can quit, just quit, and walk away and live your life."

"No, I can't do that," January insisted without even thinking. "I mean, that's not it. It's not a problem."

The Hierophant screamed as his body was dragged across the marble floor of the Belle Isle Casino. Dragged to his horrific doom, as blood spurted, and his body turned into spaghetti.

"I can deal with the cape life," January declared. "It's just all together, it's a lot sometimes."

"Hey, look on the bright side," Avery mused. "When your mother's a senator, she'll get that sweet, sweet socialism that all federal employees have. That means you'll get that socialized medicine as a dependant. Not the capitalism healthcare the rest of us plebians get stuck with."

"I'm sure that would make dealing with the insurance company a lot easier." January nodded. "If she wins that is. It's hardy a guarantee."

"What does Blood Raven say: A conjure woman who doubts-" Avery began.

"Is a conjure woman who fails," January finished the sentence. "I know, I'm usually the one telling Xochitl that."

"See, there you go, all wise martial arts master again." Avery smiled. "You already have one disciple. Soon enough you'll have an entire Crow School of Kung Fu. But you'll still have to defeat your rivals of the evil Cobra Pi! Muhahahaha!"

"You know, that's the easiest part of life," January said. "Punching things-"

The sound of tires screeching snapped January's head around sharply. Something felt wrong. Something felt very, very wrong. She was on her feet in an instant, and her mind was already in the astral. She did not sense any obvious red flags. There were no magical menaces approaching, no corrupted stains in the astral. The only meta-human she sensed was Avery beside her. But she did sense something out toward the street.

There were two auras out there, either on the sidewalk or in the road. One was hunched over, as if seated, and she imagined that might be someone in a car. The other was standing upright before the first. Both were entirely ordinary. But the sharp stink of fright clouded the one in the car, while the other was hidden in a fog of confusion.

That is when January realized that the house above them was empty.

"It's your grandma," January cried. She leaped for the stairs, and landed halfway up them with a single bound. She tore through the back door and into the yard at top speed. She could feel Avery behind her, racing as fast as his feet could carry him. But he had not spent years honing his body into a magical armament. Without his suit of powered armor, he could not hope to keep pace with her.

January dropped her astral sensing when she turned the corner and headed down the driveway. She could see the street ahead with her meat eyes now, and did not need to distract her physical senses with her magical ones. She continued at full clip, onlookers be damned, and was in the street in seconds.

Avery's grandmother stood there. She was dressed in her housecoat and her hair was in curlers. She just stared around herself, as if dumbfounded. Sitting just a few feet from her was a massive pickup truck, idling its engine. January smelled burnt rubber, and saw a fresh streak of it lining the road behind the truck. Clearly, it had been just an instant away from running her over. The man behind the steering wheel looked like he was ready to scream, or faint. There was no telling exactly which one.

"Nana!" Avery screamed from behind January. That brought his grandmother's head around. Then January was upon her. She planted herself firmly between the frail old woman and the truck. Not all the monsters in the Abyss could have gotten past her then, let alone a simple Dodge.

"Nana, what are you doing out here?" Avery had reached the two of them, and he reached out to hug his grandmother. "You can't do this."

"What did I do," she wondered in a thin, trembling voice. "How did I get here?"

"You must have walked out in the street," Avery said. His voice sounded calm. But the fear in his eyes was plain for January to see. No, not fear, it was dread. Like her, he was plainly looking beyond this single, sudden incident. As he had said before, she was growing worse, slowly but surely.

"It's just moments now," his Nana said as he led her from the street. January followed close behind, and waved the pickup on. "Everything is just moments now. They've come unraveled."

"What's unraveled." Avery asked gently.

"The moments," his Nana said. "My memories. I can't keep them all stitched together. They're like a loose thread, the more I pull at it, the more they all just fall apart."

"That's ok," Avery insisted. "I'll keep it all stitched together for you Nana."

But the look that he gave January told her that he knew he was lying.

* * *

Interesting story about her name.

Oh no, no no... not all of Cali is progressive, some of it is conservative, for sure. Oregon is the same. Portland, Oregon (where I lived, Turija still lives up in Vancouver, and Wyrd lived on the outskirts, although we didn't know each other) is very quirky and artsy and all that, but you go 30 miles, especially to the east, and it gets more conservative and typical. Gun shops, gas-guzzling pickups, and so on. One time we saw a motel which advertized that only Whites need walk in, although the wording was cleverly disguised of course. This was near the Idaho border.

Anyway, you're right. I myself was shocked about Riven's upbringing, still.



A-ha!

Why does she have to engage the matter-force device to make her bike "glue" to pavement? Is this so nobody steals it? 🛵

Aye, she's more nervous facing this health counselor it seems than most of the demons and baddies she's battled against.

I hope she does get that surgery at some point, partially because I want to know how it's done. I don't know much about it. Would she have to go to Mexico or Thailand or wherever, to find a really good doctor? And so on. But also just from your standpoint as the writer of this story, it'd be quite intense to write up, I'd imagine. Or at least ambitious. I dunno how I'd put it. It'd be a project, for sure, which would take up some time maybe, as much as writing about The Hierophant took a lot of time.

***

Avery still has a Geo. How can this be possible? A girlfriend of mine had a Geo way back in the '90s, my gosh that little car was fun to drive/easy to park in B'more. But how can he still be driving one of these, and it's not a puddle of rust?

Maybe it's because he's an inventor. He's able to keep this relic on the road instead of garaged somewhere.

Whoa... grannie's gone? Oh, okay, phew. That sucks. Dementia (whatever she's got) is awful. My mom's in the early stages as we speak. As busy as Avery is as a youngster, he's going to maybe unfortunately think about putting her in a home. Because even without his career as getting involved with metas he still can't always be around.

Two challenges for the price of one.

Firstly, Jan is trying to navigate the challenges of pending transition surgery. In ESO, Buffy knows two Argonians who simply had to ask the Hist. She also knows an Atmeri mage who simply cast a spell. Would be grand if it was so simple.

Secondly, Avery is dealing with his declining grandmother as she slips further away. Fading away is the ability, it seems, to leave her ‘unsupervised’. Poignant, tragic, powerless and exhausting for those who have dealt with it. Like the first challenge, it makes me wish medicine was as advanced as it is in Tamriel.


Nits:
”Plus I can tell you want {what?} they want to see and hear, and what they don't."
’Avery put his hands to together, and a made pantomime of a pair of wings flapping upward, like a bird.’ – Don’t think you want that ‘to’ in front of together. And I think the ‘a’ in front of made should go behind made?

Okay, I'm back!

Good to see the GLA's participating in the cleanup. Should probably be a requirement for super teams, even if only for PR reasons. And it also reminds the reader of just how devastating this fight was.

Definitely good that the Abyssal corpses don't want to stick around. Can't imagine rotting eldritch bodies are great for the environment.

Y Ddraig Aur in full glory! Maybe there's a more appropriate symbol for the Detroit Renaissance, somewhere, but there's probably not a cooler one.

Forgive me if this is something you already mentioned, but is the reason for Kaelin not being a superhero just that she acts in more of a support role? Since alchemy does sound pretty super.

I don't know if I'd consider beer a restore fatigue potion, but it sure makes me feel better after a long day.

This garbage rune sounds pretty handy.

Filling craters and planting new grass after a day of work. You know, I'm amazed superheroes don't just enter the landscaping business en masse.

I knew a guy who said that, as a Lions fan, he was used to disappointment.

Yeah, even a superhero wouldn't want a wild party after spending the entire day fixing a battle scene. That's the situation that calls for something more chill.

I'm also a lightweight when it comes to alcohol. Oh, but that does make sense if she lacks resistance to poisons (since alcohol is, well... a poison).

All in all a nice way to wrap up the day. But it sounds like January missed something important...

Okay, now we pivot to Cray and Barbara. Uh oh, looks like the hormones might be messing with his professionalism.

And here's a reminder of the psychological toll a superhero identity can take on you. Also some thoughts on Blood Raven's departure. The world doesn't always visibly change when someone leaves. But it changes, and we all feel it.

Grimly realistic that so many are trying to profit off the carnage.

Oh, Cray's going to tell her about himself?

Huh, has Cray cleared this with the GLA? Does he have to, actually? But it does seem like one person's operational security is everyone's operational security.

Uh oh. He's giving up way too much info here.

"No, you don't love a goddess... You just survive her if you can." I like the way Cray phrased that. There's a pretty huge gulf between someone like Blood Raven and a normal (or even extraordinary) human.

You know, baseball cards actually are pretty nerdy now that you mention it.

Okay, I'm getting worried here. Cray should really not be showing her all this without clearing it with everyone else (especially January).

I like Cray, but I don't blame Avery for being furious. That was... beyond reckless.

Yeah, it always hurts when a mentor figure doesn't live up to their archetype. Though sometimes that's the most valuable lesson of all...

Cray's stance here is pretty interesting. Since yeah, if you did all that, wouldn't you want people to know? I can see how that'd be another weight on his shoulders, like that of the deception itself.

Hm, I'm glad everyone's being so understanding. But I have a feeling there will be repercussions to this.

Just finished 12.5, and will resume with 12.6 this weekend.

Renee: Yep, she glues her bike down so it cannot be stolen. That's all there is to it.

There are plenty of really good sex reassignment surgeons in the US. It is places like Mexico where you will find the hacks. Aside from getting the money and jumping through all the many hoops placed in the way of people trying to get it, the biggest problem January will face is her invulnerability, and her vulnerability to poisons. Under ordinary circumstances, no scalpel can cut her. Making surgery a problem. But at the same time, toxins and poisons are much more powerful against her than normal, and shut off her invulnerability. So a normal dose of anesthesia would likely kill her.

People still drive Geos today, that is why I chose it for Avery. It fits his personality of always trying to be on the down low, and not attract attention. Plus it is really fuel efficient. Not that gas mileage really matters to Avery. He replaced the engine with a cold fusion generator running of Evian spring water. But other people don't know that.

Nana has Alzheimer's. Barbara brought it up a few episodes ago, in one of the podcast episodes. At that time Avery said his grandmother was getting worse. This was an example of that. It is why he has not moved in with January, as Ryo did.


Acadian: January wishes she could just ask the Hist, or cast a spell to make her problems go away. Same with Avery and his Nana.

Someone on Reddit recently asked me why I write in a world that has bigotry (when in sci-fi and fantasy you can chose have an egalitarian setting if you want). I explained that it was because in addition to facing fantasy problems like supervillains and Lovecraftian monsters, I also want to show my characters facing real life issues, that everyone has to deal with. Medical issues fall under the latter. Sooner or later we or our loved ones face them, and sometimes they cannot be resolved.

As ever, thanks for being my unpaid editor and finding those nits.



WellTemperedClavier: Good to see you back oh expertly tuned keyboard.

OTOH, imagine selling Abyssal steaks! Yum! Get 'em while they're steamy!

Kaelin mentioned in the previous book that the stress was too much for her to take an active role in supering, the same with Harper. Being in a support role is where they feel most comfortable. I did that because I wanted to show that not everyone is cut out for dealing with the danger. Even January - who is very much a fighter by nature - is now suffering from PTSD because of her super life.

The people who built the pyramids were paid in beer! So it's been an unofficial restore fatigue potion for thousands of years!

I tried being a football fan. But being a Detroiter, it is was just too hard. I gave up on them a long time ago. The irony is that right now they are just one game away from being in the Superbowl. That hasn't happened since the 90s. In fact, it is the farthest they have ever gone in the playoffs, ever.

Cray's whole coming out to Barbara was a big messy situation that was absolutely not a chess move. It was impulsive and foolish. That is why I wrote it that way. It is how real people act all the time. As much as we love to think that we are logical, rational beings, a great deal of our behavior stems from simple emotion, and we just rationalize it afterward, if at all. I don't want the characters to seem too perfect, which I am often afraid they might appear as. January especially. She rarely acts impulsively. The last time she did, she brought home a stranger to the Witch House (Hannah), and the last time before that was she attempted suicide. I want them to make mistakes, and live with the consequences.

Cray of course was simply running on his emotions, which he could no longer live with. That gave me a way to put some more emphasis on him, and make him a more visible character.

And naturally in the end the team is going to understand. It is what they do. Their empathy is what makes them heroes, not their powers. They might not like how messy this makes things, but dealing with un-ideal situations is just part of life after all.

As far as January coming clean with her mother, that is a reckoning that is perhaps inevitable. At some point it passes from trying to protect her mother Barbara's peace of mind and turns into selfishness on January's part. That's not to say that January will recognize that point, or even do something if she does. I don't want her to be perfect either. It is even more complicated by the fact that if and when January tells her mother that she is Stormcrow, she knows that Barbara would instantly realize that Avery and Ryo are also Gadget and Okami. It's a complicated situation, which as a writer I like, since it drives conflict.












The Detroit Arsenal can be found on the Stormcrow Map

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce

An Inhabitant of Carcosa by Ambrose Bierce

M1 Abrams tank

Start up of an M1 Abrams tank



Book 12.10 - Broken Arrow

August 18th (Sunday)

Josh climbed into the turret of the M1 Abrams tank. No one had given him a second glance so far. The only ones to even give him a first glance - like the guards at the main gate - had looked at his old military ID and just passed him by. It was only natural. The Detroit Arsenal was an Army base, and he was a member of the US Army. Or at least close enough. He was in the Reserve these days. But he had been in the Army, once upon a time. He knew how to talk the talk, and walk the walk.

The thunder of the explosion was deafening. It literally blotted all other sound from Josh's ears. At the same time the concussive wave of the blast lifted him from his feet and threw him like a rag doll. He sailed across the checkpoint, and did not stop until his back plastered against the wall of an apartment building.

The next thing he knew, Josh was staring at a great pyre of black smoke that now erupted skyward just down the street from his checkpoint. His ears rang, and blood tasted hot and salty in his mouth. His eyes traced the smoke down to its source. A crater had been gouged into the center of the pavement. Within it sat a twisted mass of burning metal, only barely recognizable as having once been a large vehicle.

All around lay the bodies, so many bodies, broken, bloody, motionless, and burning. Those still living staggered and stumbled through the wreckage. An instant before it had been a busy Kabul street. Now it was a scene from hell.

Something nearby caught his eye. Josh glanced over at the wall of the apartment beside him. Thrust into it was a jagged sheet of metal. Upon one side he could make out a red and white caduceus: two snakes intertwined around a staff. He had seen it a thousand times. It was painted on the side doors of most of the ambulances in Kabul. Like the one he had just waved through the checkpoint a few moments before the blast...

A few more inches, and the jagged plate of metal would taken his head off.

Maybe it should have.

Maybe it had. Josh still could not shake the feeling that none of this was real; not the bombing, the hospital, coming home, working as a handyman, or being in the Reserve. It all felt so unreal. Had he died then? Had that chunk of ambulance door taken his head off? Was all this just his final thoughts, stretching out into infinity in the instant of his death?

Was he even now falling from Owl Creek Bridge, the noose about to snap his neck?

The loud whine of the tank's engine turning over brought him from his reverie. It sounded like a jet engine. A tanker he had known Over There had once explained to him that it was essentially that - a gas turbine engine that could crank out 1,500 horsepower. He felt those horses shudder under his fingertips now, eager to be turned loose.

He had not needed to climb through the turret and down into the driver's position in the hull to the start the tank. As they always did now, the vehicle just did what he wanted. All he had to do was touch it, anywhere, and imagine what he wanted it to do. Then his wish became reality. He did not even have to reach up and pull the hatch closed over his head. He simply willed it to happen, and the hatch shut on its own.

From the commander's seat on the right side of the turret he could see out of a series of vision blocks that completely encircled the cupola above him. He could have if he had wanted to at least. A joystick sat before him, not that he needed to use it either. Behind it and all around were numerous display screens and control panels. But like the manual controls, he had no need for any of that.

No, even with his eyes closed he could see through every periscope and viewing port in the tank at once. It was as if the vehicle was a part of his body. The tank was his body. He saw through its eyes, heard through its ears, and felt through its steel skin. They were one being now, alive and moving.

He simply thought what he wanted to do, and the tank did it. Well, that was not quite right. It was like getting up and walking. You could think about it, but that was not enough. You had to just... do it. This happened the same way. He wanted to move, and the tracks of the tank responded just as his legs did whenever he walked across the room.

He pulled the tank out of a line of identical vehicles that sat in a massive lot. He saw maintenance crews turn to look his way. But no one stopped what they were doing. They apparently just assumed that he belonged there, and that he was doing what he was supposed to. Just like the men who had let him in.

Just like he had done, when he had waved that ambulance past in Kabul...

He spun the turret around. All of the tanks had been parked with them facing backward, with their guns stretched out over their engine compartments. Josh imagined that was so that they did not stick out in front of the tank and snag on things. But he really had no idea why they did it. To be honest, they all looked silly that way, like ducks sleeping with their heads backwards.

He had it facing forward long before he crashed through the main gate of the armory. Then he rolled the Abrams out onto Elven Mile Road beyond. He wasn't really sure where he was going. He just knew he had to go. He had to move. He had to get in action. People were depending on him.

Belle Isle, that was where he should go. That was where the battle was. That was where they had airlifted him and other reservists who had happened to be on duty when the call came in. Monsters were attacking Detroit. Monsters from beyond the universe they said. According to some they were demons, others said angels. Maybe they were even aliens. The only thing anyone did know for certain was that they were here to end the world.

A nightmare floated in the sky above Josh's head. It was made up of layer after layer of rings, one nested within another. They all twisted and spun in different directions, and were lined with glowing eyes that stared every way at once. Deep within the heart of these ever-spinning wheels was a shifting mass of... Josh had no idea what. But in the center of that amorphous heart dwelt yet another eye, this one massive in size and utterly malignant in intent.

Josh stared at that eye. As he did so, he acted robotically, as he had been trained to do. Without really thinking about it, he lifted his AR-15 and emptied its magazine into the monster. Around him the other men in his unit did the same. But the monster barely noticed the gunfire that peppered its twisting and turning frame.

But barely was enough. Now it did notice him. It saw him. It looked deep down into the confines of his soul, stripped him bare, and found him wanting. Then the world began to turn white, and Josh found it harder and harder to move. It was like his entire body had become stiff and solid. He wanted to run, but it felt like his legs had been turned to stone. He tried to reload his weapon, but his hands were stiff as rocks. He tried to look away, but his head was locked in place. His entire body was trapped, like he had been encased in concrete, or like he had become concrete. Slowly all awareness faded, and everything vanished into empty white nothingness.

Then some green-haired goth chick in a mask was standing over him. An empty vial was clutched in her hand, and Josh felt drops of warm liquid drip down his chin. Standing behind the goth was the steel-armored form of Blackhawk, the Rock of Belle Isle. She had been there with them on the bridge the entire time. She was still there at the end.

"You're going to be ok now," she said.

If only that had been true.

The glass towers of the Renaissance Center loomed in the distance, like the ghostly battlements of long lost Carcosa in that Ambrose Bierce story. Josh recoiled at the sight. Belle Isle would be nearby. He did not want to go there. He could not go back. Seventy tons of tank lurched under him, and he spun the armored vehicle around to race off in the opposite direction.

He could not go back. He could not go back. He was not ok. Not even close. He could not go back. Not to Kabul.

Or was it Belle Isle?

Was he really dead already?

* * *

Uh oh, this doesn't sound good. He's in the army but not active. So he shouldn't be climbing into some tank, I'd assume. Ah, he's reliving the past. Sheesh that's deep. He's not even sure who he is, if he's really alive. PTSD.

Josh seems to have a touch of the supernatural. Nice! He's become one with the tank. There's a Stephen King book called The Tommyknockers, in which at the end the main protagonist gets into a spaceship, and then he sees everything from the ship's view. As King put it, you basically become the spacecraft as you fly. Everything around the protagonist vanished, so it was like he himself was flying through space. This sounds similar to what Josh is doing.

Yeah, Josh seems pretty confused. Is any of this (at Belle Isle) actually happening? I suppose it's possible he could somehow be experiencing some bleedthroughs from that other reality.

The birth of a super (villain/hero)! Wonderfully tantalizing glimpses into how he became what he is. With that tank, he can be sort of like Gadget with his own 70 ton armor suit! Neat ability to make the machine respond to his will though. The problem seems to be Josh’s head – it is not on quite right. That combined with his super abilities could make for a dangerous combination. . . or potentially a strong ally. He is clearly. . . unfinished. If he crosses paths with the Stormcrow, will she be able to rescue him like a tree’d kitten? Or will she have to add him to the pile of corpses in her wake?

12.6

Oh, is the date new? I don't remember seeing that earlier. But good to get a specific time for this. Though I don't imagine it'll be fun for the GLA to deal with the pandemic. I guess some of them already have masks, at least?

Okay, sounds like they're settling in without issues so far. The place certainly seems secure. All these wards remind me of how little security we have IRL.

Heh, I especially liked "Corsica Drift". Actually, with Scott having just made that Napoleon movie, who knows?

Starry Night? Nice! Probably smart just to tell people it's a copy. They'd have to be billionaires to afford whichever version people think is the real thing.

Huh, Dogs Playing Poker. Brown (or Blood Raven?) truly had eclectic tastes. Eclectic's more fun anyway.

Moving on to 12.7...

Definitely makes sense for Barbara to be impressed with all the books.

Yeah, you definitely notice the march of time more as you age. That resonates.

Interesting comment on the importance of activism when compared to the flashy heroics. In a context where superpowers exist, you do need heroes to fight back against those who abuse such powers. But at the same time, individual supervillains are easier (or simpler, at least) to take down than social ills that have wrapped themselves around nearly every facet of the world.

Sad but believable that these pundits would look to put Heisenberg's efforts over everyone else's. And also shows how difficult--if not impossible--it is to maintain control over your own image once it's public. While Heisenberg did the right thing here, there will still be folks saying: "Oh, he was just saying that because he had to, he's actually one of us", or something like that.

Good overview of the history here. I've always wondered though, to what degree social status (and the desire for the same) influenced behavior in prehistoric times. Obviously survival was the most pressing need, and groups that got too wrapped up in petty social squabbles would die out--but that doesn't mean it didn't happen plenty of times. And even though there wouldn't be taxes or laws, there would still be the problem of dealing with a popular person who doesn't like you. Smaller groups obviously couldn't afford to exile people on a whim, but they could still give something like the "cold shoulder" treatment you mentioned.

Moving on to 12.8...

Whoa, this is quite a change of scenery! Did they get to NorCal via the Witch House?

Oof, yeah. I don't have much experience with snow, but rocks under the stuff will still hurt if you fall on them.

Very true about California once you get out of the metro areas (and the metro areas have their own problems...)

Good detail on the Singaporean-Chinese bit. That kind of thing does matter.

Ah, very clever of Blood Raven. Nobody would expect her to go as someone imitating a former student.

This birthday scene's quite touching. You can feel the warmth from the text.

And here comes time, marching on some more. It is a weird feeling in your early twenties, with so many of the folks you'd assumed would always be around start splitting off to other parts of the world. January knows this, intellectually; but it hits different when it actually happens.

Moving on to 12.9...

Speaking as a guy, I never really felt that I couldn't ask for directions. I've certainly done so (usually when I'm looking for an item in stores). But I know that does bother a lot of guys, so maybe it's just me missing another social cue or something.

Ah, okay, January's going to see a therapist. I'm guessing she can't tell them about being Stormcrow, which might make things trickier.

Dr. Kozlowski seems quite well-informed and understanding. Good. Though this surgeon sounds like a particularly unfair hurdle. Not good.

Damn. That was a scary scene. Avery's a good grandson for doing this, but I can't imagine how hard it must be on him.

I'm really enjoying these looks at the "normal" lives of these characters. Too many stories forget the importance of downtime; often, you learn more about characters when they're off-duty.

Moving on to 12.10...

Abyssal steaks? I'm curious...

That makes sense regarding Kaelin. Even someone able to withstand that kind of pressure for a while might need to step back after a certain point.

And I absolutely agree regarding Cray: it is quite believable, and that's what's important in a story.

All right, so it looks like Josh is a veteran of the Afghanistan War. His scene resonates: I've heard and read accounts about people coming back and wondering if they really did, and why.

And judging by the Owl Creek Bridge reference, he's reasonably well-read.

Okay, so he has powers over machinery. Kind of like a rigger in Shadowrun, I think.

Now we see some of the lasting damage these kinds of conflicts can do. It looks like Belle Isle brought back some bad memories for Josh, and that he's not in a good state to handle it. He'll like need help.

Renee: Josh should definitely not be doing what he is. His story is based on two real events where people stole tanks and went joyriding with them. One was in San Diego, and that ended badly. The other was just a few years ago in Virginia, where an army guy flipped out, walked onto an national guard base, and drove off with an armored personnel carrier. That one was more humorous, as no one died.

What Josh is doing is very much the same idea that Stephen King had. It is a common trope in cyberpunk. You link your nervous system to the vehicle or machine you are controlling, and you pilot it with your mind. They call them Riggers in the game Shadowrun.


Acadian: Josh makes for an interesting minor antagonist. He's not going to mastermind a big plot, or drive an entire story on his own. But he does make for a challenging side quest. Especially because he's not really a bad guy. He's a broken guy. Not that that makes him less dangerous. But that does put an important spin on how the team will react to him.

January is really tired of the corpses she is stacking up in her wake. The last thing she wants is more. But she does not always get what she wants...


WellTemperedClavier: I started putting in dates a while ago, since Renee was wondering how much time was going by between events. I have an entire timeline written out in my notes too. I found that was a necessity given how often a character will think back to previous events, and I need to know if it was a few days, or weeks, or months since then.

I still have not decided whether or not I will include Covid in the Stormcrow fic or not. Masking up won't be an issue for the team of course. They are superheros, they wear them already! I used to think that myself every time I put my mask one before going into the grocery store. I was masking up just like Spider-Man or Deadpool.

I understand that Napoleon movie was not very good. It managed to tick off the history nerds (who lets face it, were going to invent something to be pissed off about anyway) and everyone else. It just went some weird places, especially with the Napster's sex life.

Godzilla Minus One, now that was a really good movie.

January often laments that punching giant spiders is easy. Combating wage theft, wealth disparity, disenfranchisement, climate change, housing, conspiracy theories, and so on, that is just beyond the scope of someone who can lift heavy objects. The best January and company can do is act as ambassadors or inspiration, since only mass collective action can make a dent in any of that.

I have gone through the gradual loss of friends due to simply growing up and growing part, the same way January is doing. So that was easy to write, along with her bittersweet feelings about it all. Life is like that, people come and they go, but the world turns on. It is one of the hardest parts of growing up and adulting.

That surgeon that the therapist described is based on a real person that lived and worked here in Detroit, about twenty years ago. He was a great SRS surgeon. But you had to be careful to present yourself as his ideal of what a woman should be, or he would not take you.

I like writing the characters in their civilian lives as much as I do as their super selves. The cape scenes make for great fantasy. But the ordinary stuff is what really grounds them down into reality for me, and makes them feel like actual people. Because that is when they deal with the same things we all do: birthday parties, family illnesses, family drama, going to music festivals, moving house, and so on.

Josh's experience with the ambulance bombing is based on a real life occurrence that took place in Kabul, and killed just over 100 people. I simply put him in that spot, as the guy who let the ambulance by.

I wrote his uncertainty about whether he was alive or dead as an organic thing. It just took shape on its own as I was writing with his guilt, depression, and PTSD in mind. Just a few days ago I learned that there is an actual name for it: Cotard's Syndrome. But the more I read on that, the more that seems to be caused by physical damage to the brain, and less from emotional distress. So I decided not to name drop it in the story.

I actually read An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge in school. I think Junior High, maybe even in the 5th or 6th grade. It has always stuck with me. Bierce was a great writer. Once I included it, I had to also go with the Carcosa line, as that is from another of his bangers. So Josh at least likes him some Ambrose Bierce.

A rigger in Shadowrun is exactly what I had in mind with Josh! The Rigger might be his official super name in fact. The same is true for The Rook of course too. Though he did it with magic, and could only do it with his bird-plane the Ravenwing. I circled back to the same idea on purpose here, to show another example of the same power at work. It will come up again near the end of the book as well, when we finally get to Keep 19 and the final resting place of Rook.


Come to think of it, here is the timeline so far, up to the current point in the story:
2019

March 24 = The Summoner summons an Abyssal (a goblin) during the Nain Rouge Parade. It is not anchored, and easily banished
May 4 and 5 (Saturday and Sunday) = Stormcrow 1 Rising
May 4 = January's first battle as Stormcrow against Lighthammer at ConFabulation in Southfield.
May 5 = January teams up with Lighthammer to capture conflict diamond smuggler Bhavin Subramanian at the Flint airport.
May 5 = The Summoner summons an Abyssal (flying head) during Cinco De Mayo, using elemental symbols to anchor it, making it immune from banishment
May 14 and 15 (Tuesday and Wednesday) = Stormcrow 2 Recycled
May 14 = January's first battle against Archie at Source One Metals
May 14 = January overhears her parents argument about her being trans.
May 15 = January's second battle against Archie, then meeting with Isaac.
May 24 = January's Mom files for divorce
May 25 and 26 (Saturday and Sunday) = Stormcrow 3 Burning
May 25 = The Summoner summons an Abyssal (buggane) during the Technofest, anchoring it with an animal sacrifice
May 25 = The Flying Dutchman fire.
May 26 = Blood Raven reveals her identity as 'Aunt Branwen' to January
May 27 = Memorial Day. January and her mom move into the Witch House.
May 27 - June 1 (Monday -Saturday) = Stormcrow 4 Pride [Ferndale Pride on Saturday]
June 1 = The Summoner summons an Abyssal (djieien) during Ferndale Pride, anchoring it with a human sacrifice
June 1 - 9 = Stormcrow 5 Crystal Death [Motor City Pride]
June 1 = Chad overdoses on Crystal Death at Leland City Club.
June 3 = first Crow Tales, featuring Frankenstein
June 8 = second Crow Tales, featuring This Spell For Hire. January stops the Death Dealer. Blood Raven humiliates Nazis at Motor City Pride
June 9 = Nazis on Crystal Death attack Motor City Pride
June 10 - 14 = Stormcrow 6 Eloise
June 11 = January records interview with WNN and Comes Out as Trans.
June 13 = January quits working at the dojo, starts working on Artemis Argent with Rus
June 14 = January's interview is aired in its entirety, as well as in print and on WNN's website. It generates massive waves of both support and backlash against her. The same night she faces off against Gola at Eloise.
June 16 - 24 = Stormcrow 7 Hammer Down
June 16 = January does first aborted taping of Crow Tales Podcast
June 17 = January does second attempt at Crow Tales Podcast
June 17 = Lighthammer ambushed at Cedar Point
June 18 = January's mom moves out.
June 20 = January meets Michigan AG.
June 21 = January meets with Ohio state AG, DEA, and Lighthammer to make a deal.
June 22 = Fourth Crow Tales, featuring Winter Tide, by Ruthanna Emrys.
June 22-23 = January and Blood Raven patrol downtown, while the Detroit River Days festival takes place. They are joined by Ôkami, and all 3 intervene in a truck accident on the Ambassador Bridge.
June 24 = January does her first book signing at the library.
June 25 = (afternoon) January joins Lighthammer in a joint police raid on a ship in the Cleveland port.
June 25 - July 5 = Stormcrow 8 Blood
June 25 = (evening) Ryo gets his armor and sword at the Witch House
June 26 = January encounters Hannah and her father at Lakeside Mall
June 27 = Blackjack's song Crazy For This Crow debuts on streaming services.
June 28 = The Summoner ambushes January and Blood Raven at Gull Island during Jobbie Nooner, summoning another Abyssal (oniare).
June 29 = fifth Crow Tales, featuring Nemesis, by April Daniels
July 3 = Funeral of the Summoner.
July 5 = Entire team trains on Green Island. Hannah melts down.
July 6-7 = Stormcrow 9 Ashes
July 6 = Crazy For This Crow has long since gone viral, making Blackjack a star.
July 6 = January captures tiger, does brief interview with Gilda Gadfly
July 6 = January's parent's divorce is finalized.
July 7 = Battle of Montserrat, January meets Kaelin, Harper, Viuda, and Calypso
July 8 = Stormcrow 10 Alliance - Battle of Belle Isle
July 10-? = Daughters of the Raven
July 10 = The Daughters gather to give Xochitl her first magic lesson.
July 10 = (evening) Blood Raven leaves Detroit.
July 11 = Corvus arrives in Boston, rescues McKenna Yeboah.
July 11 = January meets Blackjack at the airport. The first encounter with the Michigan Dogman follows.
July 12 = First recording (not release) of Heroes and Villains
July 13 = The Allies + Calypso and Viuda get new suit upgrade from Mr. Blackwood.
July 14 = January gathers up all of the Abyssal Summoning warning poppets and destroys them.
July 15 = First issue of Artemis Argent is released to Jumpstarter backers. The first episode of Heroes and Villains drops on the inernet. The same day Barbara asks January for her blessing to run for US Senate.
July 18 = (Thursday) Final encounter with the Michigan Dogman.
August 8 = (Thursday) Stormcrow 12 Broken Arrow. Numerous supers help clean up Belle Isle, including the Allies, Raven Daughters, Technocrat, and Gaia Sisters
August 10 = (Saturday) January, Barbara, and Ryo record another Heroes and Villains episode. Ryo has moved into the Witch House. Barbara has taken a leave of absence from the library.
August 13 = Japanese Obon Festival of the Dead, at Cranbrook.
August 13 = January's birthday. Artemis Argent #2 ships.
August 14 = (Wednesday) January goes back to therapy for Gender Confirmation Surgery.
August 17 = (Saturday) Joshua Nelson (the Rigger) steals a tank and goes on a dangerous joyride.





Witch House floor plans

The M-59 and Mound Road Waypoint can be found on the Stormcrow Map

M1147 Advanced Multi-Purpose Round (AMP)



Book 12.11 - Broken Arrow

January punched hard. She twisted her hips with the blow, so that her entire body turned around it like a fulcrum. That put not only all of her strength - but all of her mass - into the power punch. The blow landed squarely in the center of the punching bag that hung in Witch House's gym.

That it did not disintegrate under the force was testament to its unusual construction. A gift from Blood Raven, it was made of the same dragon silk that had provided the base, flexible layer of her old armor. The chain and frame which held the bag aloft were constructed from Armex steel. January did not know all the particulars about that metal, just that it far outstripped ordinary steel in strength and resilience. Enough so that Lighthammer and many other capes used it in their armor.

The sound of her phone caught her attention. January's ears instantly perked up. It was not the mundane ringtone of an incoming call, or the ding of a text. This was the emergency, all hands alert.

She immediately stopped what she was doing, and took a moment to center herself. Her phone continued to go off, but she blocked it out, along with everything else. She reached down for her magic, pulled the energy up through her, and let the power spread through her being. Once she had built it up to a peak, she willed the mana to create the change that she desired.

Fire give me passion and energy. Transform me in the night sky.

An instant later her workout clothes were gone. Instead she was now clad in her Stormcrow armor. Now she took a moment to reach down to her phone and shut it off. Then she raised Sága to her eyes, and pulled up the alert upon its interface. She heard the communications link click on in her ear, and listened as Ôkami announced himself.

"Stormcrow here," she followed a moment later.

The others began to check in even as she scrambled out of the gym. She left her phone behind on a stool beside the punching bag. She never took it with her when she suited up and went on a mission. None of them did with their personal phones. It was a matter of operational security. Gadget had done everything possible to secure their devices. But there was no point in tempting fate after all. Instead they all used communications gear built into their suits, such as Sága.

She raced through a short hall that was flanked by the utility room on one side, and a bathroom on the other. Then she was in a small intersection. On one side it led to a still-empty family room in the back corner of the house. Dead ahead was the kitchen and its attached dining nook. To the right was the rotunda in the center of the home.

She darted into the latter and leaped up through the two-story space. She soared over the railing that ringed the second floor balcony and landed softly on the hardwood floor. Then she headed to the loft in the corner of the house, directly above the front door on the floor below.

She raced inside even as Ôkami faded through the wall from his bedroom, which bordered the space. With a touch upon the wards that protected and ran through the Witch House, the northern wall of the room vanished. That revealed the stairway up to the sanctum overhead. She and Ôkami both sped up and into the magical chamber an instant later.

All the while Cray's voice was in her ear, updating her and the others on the situation.

"Someone just stole a tank from the Detroit Arsenal and Tank Command on 11 Mile Road." As ever, the elder hacker's voice was smooth as finely-aged bourbon. "He's headed straight north up Mound Road now."

"What kind of vehicle are we talking about?" Lighthammer's voice came over the link. Given the wind noise in the background, January could tell that the former bomber pilot was already airborne and pushing his speed limits. The last January had checked that was well over Mach 2. "Is it a little M113, or something bigger."

"Something bigger," Cray explained. "It's an M1 Abrams, the latest model too. So it's one of the heaviest armored tanks in the world. It's got a 120mm cannon, machine guns, the works. The Army transferred a bunch of them here after the Battle of Belle Isle."

January barely glanced around at the sanctum when she and Ôkami came to a halt within it. It was a place that was not a place, both everywhere and nowhere at once. As ever, it adapted to conform to her idea of what it was at that moment. Because of that it instantly shrank from the size of a massive football stadium to a small room. She found herself standing within its center, and reached down with her magic to touch the teleportation system beneath her feet.

A pentacle glowed to life in the floor as the magical network responded to her blood. In her mind's eye it presented her with a list of nodes that she could connect with, like people that she could match with on a dating app. She flipped through her options until she came to a waypoint that she had never tried before. From what she could gather, it was near the Witch House. She imagined it was just a few miles away, given how it felt through the network.

As she had done dozens of times by now, she swiped right and joined this node to the one that she and Ôkami stood upon. She simply willed the two to link, and the magic imprinted within the runes at each site made it so. For a moment both waypoints existed in the same place at the same time. Then the magic faded, and pair found themselves standing in a dense thicket of trees.

In fact, it looked like an actual forest. January wondered if she had been off in her estimations, and the waypoint they had been sent to was within the nature trails that ran along the Clinton River, behind the Witch House. She could hear cars on a roadway nearby, but the wall of trees in all directions hid any landmarks from view.

There had been no time for Ôkami to get his hoverbike. So she wrapped her arms around the high-tech samurai from behind. Then her legs pushed her high into the sky, and her wings snapped out even as her leap reached its apex. She took a moment to turn in mid-air, and quickly found her bearings.

She saw that they had emerged next to a sprawling parking lot beside a massive movie theater. Just beyond the thirty-screen complex was the sunken highway of M-59. She looked to her right and saw the back of a strip mall that faced east. A second line of stores ran farther away at a right angle to those shops, anchored by a huge Dalmart store. The divided lanes of Mound Road lay just past the latter big box store.

So she had guessed right after all. She was only about two miles away from the Witch House. January had noted that there were two kinds of waypoints within the teleportation network. Some led to the interiors of specific locations, such as the Raven's Nest or Witch House. Others led to out of the way places, like the abandoned factory in Eastern Market, or the stairwell in the parking garage next to the Raven's Nest. These latter nodes would provide a means of accessing the network without one being seen entering or leaving one of the private interiors.

It was a handy way for a cape to get into and out of living or working spaces without being seen to do so.

January banked hard to the right and arrowed south along Mound Road. She called upon Air to give her more speed, and the wind buffeted her armored face. It would have been a pleasant experience, if not for the uncertain fate that awaited her at the end of their journey. Still, it always felt good to be up in the air and feeling the forces of nature upon her skin.

Ôkami tried something they had only experimented with once in training. He faded not only himself, but January as well. As the two of them nearly winked out of the world, the hard, cold press of the wind nearly vanished completely. There was still some feeling of the air around them, but it was slight, nearly nonexistent. Likewise, the tug of gravity nearly disappeared entirely as well. It was almost as if they were hurtling through the void of space.

It was an idea Ôkami had borrowed from Hungry Ghost. The Chinese super spy performed hyper leaps by both jumping and turning his body intangible at the same time. That left him immune to wind resistance and practically weightless at the same time. Ôkami's fading ability was not exactly the same, but end result was similar. It allowed January to propel herself through the sky far faster than she normally could.

It was also a reminder that while she nominally flew as a bird did: manipulating gravity, velocity, and the forces of wind across her flight surfaces, in the end it was ultimately due to magic. She would not be able to fly at all were it not for her elemental power, even with her wings. In the end those were perhaps more an expression of her identity, rather than a true necessity for her aviation.

She and Ôkami shot like lightning down the divided north and south-bound lanes of Mound Road. January put them right over the grassy island in the center of the roadway, and skimmed over the street lights that ran its length. To either side light industrial complexes passed by, along with a few small businesses.

She idly noted that Source One Metals was in one of those industrial buildings. It was the site where she had first squared off with the Junkman's robot sidekick Archie back in May. It was hard to believe that had only been a few months ago. It felt like years had passed, she had grown so much since then.

The miles vanished beneath them in moments. Soon horns blared in her ears, and competed with the noise of sirens. The flashing lights of police cars blossomed from road blocks that had been set up ahead of her on 14 Mile Road. They blocked off cars on the cross street from using the intersection with Mound. That left the latter street wide open to the north.

Painted a light shade of tan suited to a desert, the M1 Abrams was impossible to miss. It was a seventy ton behemoth that roared up Mound Road like a jet plane. It was wide, and low, which gave January the impression of a giant pancake. But she did not find the comparison amusing. Not given the massive gun that sprouted from the front of its turret, nor the smaller machine guns that crowned its roof.

It roared up Mound Road and sailed past the road blocks on 14 Mile Road. It continued north beyond the intersection, then swerved to one side. January was not sure if that was because it had seen her and Ôkami approaching it head on, or if it was for some other reason. That sent the tank careening into a cement business beside the road. It was a sprawling lot filled with giant piles of crushed concrete, sand, and pebbles. Semi trucks and their trailers were parked everywhere, along with smaller personal vehicles like cars and pickups.

To one side of its main entrance was a low office building, appropriately made of concrete. To the other was a small private home, whose tiny lot extended a short distance into the industrial complex, and was bordered by a wooden wall that was painted white. January guessed that whoever owned it really had not wanted to move when the concrete company had bought up all the property around it.

The tank headed straight for the home, and January banked hard to intercept it. But she knew that she was going to be too slow. She was just about to reach for the sky above and stir lightning from the clouds, when the Abrams veered off its course once more. It now jerked to the left, and rather than plow straight into the house, it threaded the gap between it and a line of trees that ran along the edge of Mound Road.

January breathed a sigh of relief. But it was short-lived. For now the armored vehicle crashed straight through the wall and into the parking lot of the concrete company. Cars and pickups were simply flattened underneath the wide treads of the tank. Then it hammered into the side of a trailer and simply shredded it, as if it was made of tissue paper. Afterward it plowed into a semi truck, and sent it bouncing sideways like a toy. Then the tank corrected its course somewhat, and ran in a straight line between two rows of parked semis and their trailers.

In spite of all the noise and racket, two men stood in the middle of the dirt and gravel lot, directly ahead of the tank. They both turned to stare as it approached. But rather than dart aside, they appeared to be rooted to the spot, like deer frozen in the headlights of an oncoming car.

But January was on them now. Only she was coming in too fast. If she tried to grab one of them at her current speed she might rip his arm off, or simply pulverize him. She braked hard with her wings, and tried desperately to bleed off speed. But she knew she would be too slow.

They faded back into reality as Ôkami relaxed his power. The wind hit January like a brick wall. She felt like a cartoon coyote slamming headfirst into the side of a mountain. It did not truly hurt, but it did get her attention. Now she did lose speed fast. But still not fast enough.

But Ôkami was quick enough. While he had turned January solid again, he had remained out of phase himself. That sent him flying forward free of her embrace. He soared directly into the two men below, both arms splayed out. He took each by the shoulder, and they both faded into the shadows with him.

That he did not rip the men apart as January feared she would have came as a relief. She knew that when he faded, Ôkami escaped the confines of the material world. The rules of physics just no longer applied to him, nor to anyone he brought with him. Kinetic energy no longer mattered when neither you or what you touched were physical objects anymore.

An instant later the M1 Abrams ran straight through the spot that they stood within. January held her breath until it passed. As the dust that was kicked up in the wake of the massive tank cleared, she saw her ninja friend standing there with the two men, all completely unharmed.

January went down to earth ahead of the tank. Even though she had slowed down considerably, she still came down hard. Earth and gravel erupted around her as she gouged a crater into the ground. Finally she came to a halt with a trench of earth torn up behind her, and a small cloud of dust and pebbles rained down around her.

She turned just in time to see the tank bearing down upon her. She reached out with one hand, and curled her fingers inward to beckon it forward. Even as she did she called up her connection with Earth, and used it to anchor herself to the spot.

Earth give me strength, keep me grounded, protect me from harm.

The tank hit her full force an instant later. It was seventy tons of metal racing at over forty miles an hour. It crashed like thunder in her ears, and filled her eyes with that tan-painted metal. The Chobham armor of the tank bent and cracked under the blow. But January was unfazed. She did not move an inch from the spot. She was part of the Earth now, as invulnerable and inviolable as the planet itself.

The tank literally bounced off her. Its rear end climbed high into the air, even as the entire hull went skittering sideways. Then it slammed down hard upon the pavement. But that twist it had taken in the air brought it down at over a ninety degree angle from where it had originally struck her.

Whoever was driving it recovered quickly however, astonishingly so in fact. The tank changed gears even as it slipped away. Its treads reversed, and instead it sped away backward in the same direction. That sent it directly into another trailer, and it crumpled a fissure straight through the metal of its frame and walls.

January let go of Earth then. While bonding with it made her completely invulnerable, it also rendered her motionless, literally grounded to the spot. She twisted around and sprang after the armored vehicle. Her foot had just left the ground when she saw the smooth bore of the tank's main gun blossom with yellow fire.

She knew what that meant. She even saw the round coming for a split second. It looked like a standard bullet or missile, a tube that narrowed to a rounded head. But this had a long, slender dart that stuck out the back, fixed with wide stabilizing fins. It reminded her of a giant, fat lawn dart.

Then it struck her full in the chest, and the world exploded into flames. The next thing January knew, she was sailing back through the air. The wind had been knocked out of her lungs, and she struggled for air. She was not sure if she even had a chest anymore in that moment. She was only vaguely aware of tumbling through the air, and smashing through something hard, once, twice, and a third time.

By the time the stars began to fade from her eyes, and her senses began to return to her, she found herself lying on the concrete surface of Mound Road. She shook her head and stared down at her chest. Her breastplate had been shattered. What remained hung in jagged strips and chunks from the straps that fell from her shoulders.

Mr. Blackwood's fabric meta-material directly underneath had been completely annihilated. It was just gone, but in a smaller, circular hole. That left the skin of her breastbone bare under the shards of her armor. It was one giant black and blue bruise. But even though it hurt to breathe, January did not see any actual blood or bone protruding through her skin, so that was a good thing.

It was hard to tell though, because she was still a little on fire. Unlike the ball of flames that had surrounded her on impact, these were small blazes, localized in tiny fires around her suit. She did not even bother to try to put them out. They were vanishing even as she watched. Mr. Blackwood had made the armor to be fireproof. It had already stood up to molten lava after all, the day she had fought that salamander in Montserrat. So it could not be the suit itself that was burning. Instead it looked more like chips of wood and paint, and whatever she might have smashed through to get in the road.

She idly noted that her modesty was also intact. The round had struck her dead center in the chest, so nothing untoward was showing but some skin over her sternum. Apparently not being especially well endowed by nature in that department was a good thing, at least in this instance. Still, she bet Blood Raven never had to worry about things like this...

"Crow, are you alright?" Gadget's voice was in her ears. It came not from the comms, but from the air around her. She looked up to see that his powered armor glowed softly next to her, comprised of solid blue plates over a flexible layer of black hagfish armor. A trail of ions dissipated in the air behind him. That revealed that he had literally just dropped in from the sky above moments before.

She climbed to her feet with his help, even as she fought for breath. Between gulps of air, she looked back the way she had come. She had been thrown clear through a truck, a wooden wall, and finally a tree. She could literally see a Stormcrow-shaped hole punched through them. Thankfully the traffic on the road behind her had stopped. She was vaguely aware of several police cars there, now blocking off traffic on Mound as well as across 14 Mile Road. So she at least did not have to worry about being hit by a car.

"I'm ok," January gasped, once she found the breath to do so. She took a moment to casually whisk off the last bits of burning detritus from her shoulders. "Break out the hot dogs though. That guy brings the heat."

"The Army's got a new advanced multipurpose round called the M1147," Cray explained. "I think that was it. It looks like all the tanks stationed here since Belle Isle have been equipped with it, in addition to their depleted uranium rounds."

Josh and his runaway tank generate a Crow alert and the Alliance moves to intercept. Round One to the Stormcrow as the speeding M1 bounces off her. Round Two however goes to the M1 as a HEAT round strikes center mass on its target. I had to chuckle at the Wiley Coyote image conjured as you described the Stormcrow-shaped holes Jan made as she was propelled backwards through several obstacles. I have to say, Stormcrow really is like a Timex – she takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’. With a little help from her friends – notably Blackwood this time.

For Round Three, go for the treads, Boo! That is where the beast is vulnerable.


Nit: ’Januar{y} did now know all the particulars about that metal, just that it far outstripped ordinary steel in strength and resilience.’

Somewhere on the internet (or on some show) there is a guy driving a tank through ordinary traffic, yes. One of those car chase shows.

Whoa, look at this timeline. I'm actually gonna copy-paste that! Should make a good reference. Hmm, I already have it copied. But not since July of 2022. Heh, Crystal Death! 💀 Also, that's a nice gap from July 18 to August 8. Nice to know she got some time "off".

Also, interesting to see that Hannah really wasn't that long ago. ... Hannah, aka Yoko Nono.

Uh oh. The emergency ringtone. Yeah, that's clever, not bringing phones along. I know Jan doesn't have a smartphone, but does anybody else? Like, what about Avery? And Ryo? I'm gonna guess Avery does. He's the technology guy after all.

Dalmart!

Sheesh that's crazy. It's like Okami made her insubstantial. This is very CW-ish, all this flying and whatnot.

Look at all this destruction. Here's a situation during which normal police and even military can't really make a difference, not immediately anyway. Military would have to mobilize some solution. Hence, somehow Jan and Ryo are going to make a diff.

Cripes. Oh my gohs. Gosh.

A friend of mine thought the Napoleon movie was pretty good. Personally, I'm kind of over worrying about what history nerds think, despite ostensibly being one myself; a movie's a movie, not a documentary. I can understand getting upset over a particular stance a movie takes, but when it comes to nitpicking over historical minutiae, I'm just over it.

And yeah, I think it's a loss a lot of people go through. I live in a pretty big metropolitan area, so some of my friends stayed in the area. Not all of them, though. Plus, people can drift even if they live near each other.

Unfortunate the surgeon was so rigid in that. Seems rather baffling from my perspective.

Yeah, Josh's situation sounds a bit different from Cotard's. I'd have guessed more general survivor's guilt, but that's just my layman's opinion.

Thanks for the timeline!

Hm, I suppose super training equipment would need to be a lot more durable than normal.

GLA moves fast!

Huh, interesting the Army would transfer heavy armor in response to the incursion. I'd actually guess Detroit is one of the less likely place to be attacked like that again, but I can see the military's logic. Sort of.

Looks like the network system works pretty well.

Yeah, the Junkman encounter does feel far back. So much has happened...

That's one good thing about going after a tank thief: there's no way for them to hide it. Can't think of anything else good about it, but that's one.

Oh damn. No surprise that the tank's doing tons of damage, but actually seeing it is something else.

I like that January's thinking about the rescue. Usually you see it where the hero just swoops in, but at these velocities, that'd have a good chance of killing the civvie (and possibly the hero as well).

And oof, that's a hard brake. But needed to be done.

Wow. January's probably the first person to survive a direct hit with something like that. Though I bet a lot of governments would love a way to mass produce armor like hers.

Bad as the M1147 is, maybe it was better to get hit by that (as a superhero) then by depleted uranium. Regardless, January and Okami have their work cut out for them.

Acadian: Wiley Coyote is exactly what I was going for with the image of January being thrown through several objects. I do want this to have some humor, as well as the serious stuff. Superhero stories are supposed to be fun after all.

As ever, thanks for being my unpaid editor and finding that nit.


Renee: I have not thought about exactly what her emergency ringtone is. A crow cawwing? No, that would be too obvious, especially if other people are around when it goes off.

Jan has a smartphone. Everyone does these days. Hers is just cheap is all.

The military could bring out a helicopter gunship and destroy the tank with a missile, killing the guy inside, and anyone unlucky enough to be nearby. But that is obviously going to be the last resort.


WellTemperedClavier: The Detroit Armory is part of a larger complex that includes the US Army Tank Command. It is the administrative command of all the US Army's armored forces. Right next door a factory where the M1 Abrams were built. I think there were two factories total, and this one made half of them. That was back when they made them. They stopped making new ones a while ago, and the factory got sold off and repurposed to civilian manufacturing. But the tank command is still there. I remember seeing a bunch of M1s on a railroad siding a few miles away at the General Dynamics plant up the road as well.

So while Detroit and Michigan don't really have a lot of military bases, and certainly not infantry ones, we do have a few tanks that are sometimes here. After the Battle of Belle Isle, I imagined that the Army decided to beef things up in and around the city as a show of force, if for nothing else.

I was originally going to have it be one of the depleted uranium shells that hit January. But it just became too much of a mess writing the aftermath, given the toxicity of the dust particles that they create. Odds are it would give January cancer in 20 or 30 years. And in the short run she'd have to find some way to decontaminate both herself, and all her attire, and the place she was shot. I didn't want to deal with all that. So I went with another type of ammunition. That is when I discovered that new M1147 round, and used it instead.








The Amassona Hub can be found on the Stormcrow Map

Amassona Interior Pic

Another Amassona Interior Pic



Book 12.12 - Broken Arrow

Lighthammer flashed by overhead in a streak of white, blue, and silver. Gadget took a moment to toss a pair of palm-sized surveillance drones into the air for Cray to follow the action through. Then his armor loosed another stream of colorful ions as he rose to the sky to join the other man. January spread her wings and followed them into the air. Once she got up high enough to see past the wreckage of the cement lot, she was able to trace the path of the tank beyond.

It led directly to a massive building next door to the concrete business. It was a giant, rectangular structure that looked like a warehouse or factory. The structure was made of white-painted cinderblocks, and its front face was partly dotted with windows on either side. Several garage doors were set in the center of the mass, large enough for trucks to drive in and out. Numerous pedestrian doors lay to either side, some set in the plain walls, others within glassed areas that looked like lobbies. A sign ran atop the upper story of the building, proclaiming it was an Amassona.com hub.

"Ok, I've got the skinny on our joyrider," Cray's voice came over the communications link. "His name is Joshua Nelson. He's a US Army vet, same as me. But unlike me, he was infantry, and served in Afghanistan. Oh no... He was working a checkpoint in Kabul a few years ago, and passed an ambulance through it. It was packed with explosives. It went off a few seconds later, and killed over a hundred people. Our man was hospitalized afterward for six months."

"Is he disabled?" Lighthammer's voice sounded in January's ear.

"Physically, no," Cray responded. "His injuries in the blast were negligible. He was diagnosed with severe PTSD and depression. He blamed himself for the blast. It says here that he was not even sure if he had survived it at all, or if he was really dead and imagining everything since."

Gadget whistled, echoing January's own feelings.

"Oh crap, it just gets worse," Cray went on. "The Army gave him an honorable discharge, since his hitch was up by the time he left the hospital. He came back home and became a maintenance man at an apartment complex. He also joined the Army Reserve. He was doing his two weeks annual service when Belle Isle happened. He was there, on the bridge with Blackhawk. He's one of the people who were turned to stone by that Abyssal throne; the thing made up of all the spinning rings and wheels."

"Son of a bitch, this poor guy can't get a break, can he?" Blackhawk sighed over the comm. January glanced around for her, but the First Nations heroine had yet to arrive on the scene. Living in Toronto, she had a long way to come, and she could not fly nearly as fast as Lighthammer. No one could.

"He's a victim, not a bad guy," January murmured as she sped forward after the tank. She was just in time to see him crash directly into the side wall of the massive Amassona building. Cinderblocks shattered under the impact, and their remnants went tumbling aside. The tank did not even slow down. It just smashed right through, and disappeared from view.

"He is a victim." Ôkami agreed. "But he is going to turn other people into victims too, if we do not stop him."

In spite of being the only earthbound member of the team, the samurai/ninja was the first one into the building. He did not need to use a door, or even the massive hole that now gaped in the side wall. He just leaped through white cinderblocks and vanished within.

"We can't let him shoot that gun again. He might use depleted uranium next time." Lighthammer warned. He darted into the building an instant later. He did use the hole that the tank had caved into its side. Gadget followed a moment later. January brought up the rear, still trying to fill her lungs with air.

The interior of the building was an open space that looked big enough to park the Hindenburg within. It was a combination of a warehouse and assembly line. A forest of industrial storage racks rose up six stories high near one end. They were packed to the brim with pallets loaded down with boxes and bound up in shrink wrap. A sea of workstations sprawled out across the floor beyond these great cliffs. Each station's tables were loaded with scales, computer screens, label printers, and the like. Surrounding them were stacks of folded boxes and wheeled racks filled with goods stored in yellow plastic bins. It was everything you would need to box up and ship an order.

Conveyer belts stretched out through this ocean like causeways, and down them rolled box and after box, like blood through arteries and veins. These were deposited at collection points farther on, where they were loaded up on pallets or packed directly into waiting trucks.

Within this industrial forest hundreds of people toiled. Many were clad in bright yellow high visibility safety vests. But others wore just jeans and tees and the like. They came in all ages, ethnicities, and gender expressions. They were a veritable smorgasbord of the working class.

Most of these people quite prudently went running and screaming as the M1 Abrams crashed through the packages and pallets at their workstations, and sent both folded and assembled boxes hurtling everywhere. Goods from books, to gaming consoles, to microwave ovens were crushed under the tank's treads. It was instant mayhem.

"Are we sure it's only one guy?" Lighthammer asked as he zoomed down near to the ground. He gathered up a woman in his arms who was about to be crushed by a falling rack of televisions, and zoomed away an instant later. "It would take more than that to drive it and shoot the gun."

"There is only one man inside the tank," Ôkami stated clearly. "I can sense his aura. He is a meta. I believe he is a rigger."

"A what?" Blackhawk asked over the link.

"Someone who controls vehicles through a direct neural interface," Gadget explained. "It's a cyberpunk and gaming thing."

"Okay, that'll be his cape name then: the Rigger." Cray said calmly. "Ôkami take him out. You can get in the tank the easiest. Everyone else is on rescue duty. Keep the civvies out of harm's way."

"Ryōkai," the Japanese-American acknowledged. He prepared to leap toward the tank. But Gadget set down beside him an instant later, and stopped him.

"Fastball!" the powered armor hero cried. He then picked up the samurai, and hurled him across the massive warehouse. Ôkami soared directly at the tank. But then it swerved and fishtailed into one of those six story tall warehouse shelving units. The armored vehicle's rear end smashed through one of its corners, and sent the entire thing toppling over.

Ôkami hit the ground where the tank had been moments before, even as it sped away. Rather than go after it, he ran in the opposite direction. That sent him down the quickly shrinking canyon between the falling industrial rack and the next one over. He grabbed up two workers there, and faded out of reality with them. A stack of wooden pallets crashed into the space they had occupied a moment before.

"Speckt!" Gadget yelled, and darted to the spot. January got there before him, just in time to see the first rack topple into the next one over. In her mind's eye, she could imagine the domino effect that was about to happen, and send them all careening over one after another. There were far too many people underfoot for them to all escape the coming deluge of merchandise and wooden pallets. This was about to turn into a disaster.

She grabbed hold of the second bank of industrial shelves by one of its steel uprights, in one corner of the structure. She shoved back hard against it. Her wings beat furiously against the mass of the falling storage rack, and momentarily halted it. But the opposite end continued to go, twisting the entire thing around beneath her hands. Worse, a waterfall of boxes and pallets crashed against it from the first rack to tip. That struck more of the same in this rack, and started another chain reaction of objects falling to the floor.

Then Gadget zoomed past with a trail of ions, and he took up the vertical support at the far end of the shelving unit. With the two of them pushing, they were able to stop its fall, and finally slowly tip it back toward the way it had come. But many of the pallets and boxes within it still went crashing to the floor below in a waterfall.

Thankfully Ôkami was still on the scene. As he had just done previously, he snatched up people in the way and faded them through the avalanche of merchandise. Then he darted back again to continue his rescue mission. January could only glimpse Lighthammer out of the corner of her eye. But it appeared he was doing the same across the building, lifting up people from the path of the rampaging tank and whisking them away to safety.

Where was Blackhawk? They really needed the mistress of magnetism now, more than ever.

The First Nations heroine announced herself not with words, but through action. Suddenly the first rack to tip over reversed itself, and rocked back over its original place. The steel of its bent and broken uprights seemed to turn liquid for a moment. They flowed back into their initial, unbroken shapes before turning solid again. A moment later the rack that January and Gadget pushed against tilted back onto its feet as well, and stood upright on its own.

January breathed a sigh of relief, and took a moment to look out over the warehouse. It was a scene of pandemonium. The tank had driven a looping swath of destruction through its interior. Workstations, conveyor belts, stacks of pallets, and the like had been crushed underneath its treads. That created a chaotically winding river through the massive collection of merchandise.

"If aliens get lit, that's what their crop circles must look like," Gadget noted wryly as he flew up beside January.

The tank had stopped. Blackhawk hovered in the air in front of it. Her banded steel armor was painted blue and green, with a large medicine wheel emblazoned in the center of her chest. It was bisected by a cross, and each of the four sections that created was a different color as one went around it: white, yellow, red, and black. A white thunderbird was set in its center, and three black feathers fell from its underside. Finally, a golden dragon was emblazoned upon one of her shoulders, as it did upon the uniforms of all the members of the Great Lakes Alliance.

The tank went quiet then, and January realized that its engine had shut off. One of the hatches in the top of its turret creaked up, swung over, and then finally clanged open upon its surface a moment later. From it emerged a slender man clad in green fatigues. His hair was short, and his fair skin was weathered and drawn tight over sharp features.

"It's... it's you," he gasped, clearly referring to Blackhawk. "Are the monsters gone? Is it over?"

"They are gone, we stopped them." Blackhawk said softly. Her armored frame remained upright as she floated through the air toward him. Finally she came down to stand upon the turret directly in front of him.

"It's over."

He began to shake, and an instant later he collapsed into her arms, even as tears streamed down his face. Clearly all the fight had gone out of the man, merely at the sight of the First Nations heroine.

"You're going to be ok now." Blackhawk insisted. She wrapped her arms around the other man. It might have been as much an act of pinioning him, as it was an embrace. In any case, it accomplished both at once.

She was right. Just like that, it was all over.

January dropped down to the floor alongside Gadget, and breathed another sigh of relief. A glance down at her chest revealed that Mr. Blackwood's meta-materials were slowly but surely regenerating. The hole in the fabric layer of her tunic had shrunk to half its original size, and the strips of metal that made up her breastplate gradually flowed together and reformed into one, solid piece.

Blackhawk took charge of the Rigger - Joshua Nelson. January could see that he was a meta-human when she viewed his aura in astral space. She imagined that his power was geared toward controlling machinery, and perhaps only vehicles at that. Otherwise he was an ordinary man. And to be honest, he looked all too skinny and unhealthy to be an actual physical threat to anyone.

He seemed to be almost entranced by Blackhawk. Given that he had literally fought right next to her on the bridge to Belle Isle, it was not hard to see how he might have built up a sense of trust in the First Nations woman. January had heard many veterans of the bridge battle express that openly. They had named Blackhawk the Rock of Belle Isle.

January recalled that while she and the rest of the capes had followed Blood Raven inland to the foot of the gateway to the Abyss, Blackhawk had remained behind to hold the bridge with all the mundane defenders of the city - military and civilians alike. She had fought the entire battle at their side. She was their comrade-in-arms, their leader, and their inspiration.

Blackhawk reminded the police that Joshua needed to be hospitalized. Obviously that would ultimately be up to a judge and mental health professionals to decide. January certainly hoped that would be the case though. He had nearly killed her, and a lot of other people. But it was clear to her that he was not an evil man. He was a broken one. Besides, he had literally been a member of the Army of Light. That had to count for something.

In any case, the First Nations heroine did not simply pass the Rigger off to the police. Instead she got into the back of a police car with him. From there she accompanied him the rest of the way to his incarceration.

That left the rest of them to finish with the aftermath. It had become a standard part of every event now, along with the other more obvious phases, like the mobilization, and the actual action itself. As ever, she and the others worked side by side with emergency services like police and firefighters to comb through the wreckage. They made sure no one was trapped or harmed, and were sure to get the latter to paramedics.

Thankfully there had been no fatalities, and the worst of the injuries were no more than a few bumps and bruises. January imagined that her breastbone had fared the worst of them all. Granted, no one else had been shot by the tank. She made a mental note to add that to the list of attacks she had sustained. It was a new one after all.

But there was still more to do. Afterward they had to return to the Raven's Nest and write their after action reports with Cray. It was not glamorous. But those reports did provide them with an ever-growing list of dossiers on every villain they had ever faced, and might someday face again. Even if not, there was always something to be learned from every encounter. Part of the process would involve them all going over the drone and suit camera videos to review what they had done well, what they had not, and how they could improve. The super life was never as simple as it appeared in movies or comics!

That sucks. He allows the explosives ambulance past his gate and so he feels guilty. Not his fault, but I bet he beats himself up for it every day. Yup, "he blamed himself." How can you not, in a way?

That's right, he served at Belle Isle, best he could.



Interesting. Who would you say is the slowest flyer?

Yeesh, Jan needs to take a break. She gonna have a heart-attack! ... I bet Joshua's gonna beat himself more once he realizes who he shot.

Off-topic a bit, but my nephew's in the army. He was telling me about one of our Bradley tanks, recently defeating the most brand of expensive Russian tank in the war, a T-something. David versus Goliath story, basically. But he also mentioned the Russian tanks are waaay inefficient. They use too much fuel, and therefore haven't got as much range. Something like that.

That would be hot, getting an unexpected ride from Lighthammer! 🦸‍♂️ Sign me up! - It amazes me there's still people walking around this complex. Place must be noisy or something, if they can't hear an Abrams coming their way. Edit: I forgot tanks nowadays can move really fast. Highway speed. My nephew actually just told me this the other day.

Uh oh, here he comes out of the tank, and he thinks he's done good. It's like he's still stuck hallucinating the monsters of Belle Harbor. Heh. Well, he won't be too pleased if can grasp the real reality of what just happened.

"The super life was never as simple as it appeared in movies or comics!"

Indeed not.

Oh noes! I hope this doesn't mean my Amassona order will be delayed!

Neat how Cray jumped in to take charge and direct a good plan. Uh oh. . . you know what happens to plans as the focus quickly changes entirely to casualty mitigation. Each member of the Alliance was in good form, doing what they do best.

Blackhawk’s metal manipulation really helped save the day. Even better, her mere presence triggered Josh back toward reality. Perceptive of her to ‘get’ what was going on in Josh’s head and play along – even to the point of going with him in the police car as support and to help make his case.

I’m sure the Alliance makes plenty of points by their habit of sticking around to pitch in with the clean up after their rather messy encounters with baddies. Then back to the nest to review the tapes.

Ah, thanks for explaining the stuff about the tanks. Makes sense.

Looks like the GLA has a lot of eyes in the sky, which is good standard practice.

Belle Isle is the gift that keeps on giving. But these kinds of events are never done in one. Even if the instigator's gone, the effects will remain. Sadly true to life.

Huh, wonder if the Abyssal Throne's transformation sparked his powers?

Oh no, there are tons of people here. I suspect they'll need to have at least one super to direct the crowd as best they can. Or move really fast to stop Joshua from doing any damage. Tall order either way.



Had to admit, I chuckled a bit at how you described that.

All right, they're definitely keeping an eye on the crowd as they usually do. Good work all around.

Makes sense Okami would use Shadowrun terminology.

Blackhawk to the rescue! Magnetic powers can be quite useful.


Ha!

Whew, glad Blackhawk knew what to do here. The guy doesn't want to fight, he just needs help to stay stable, and to control his powers.

I like the detail that Joshua Nelson (misread that as Norton at first, which would be... interesting) knew and trusted the GLA from the Battle of Belle Isle. Glad they got that wrapped up. Wonder if Nelson will be joining the GLA after some time to cool down. His power could be pretty useful.

You know, I'd never really thought of it, but being part of a hero group probably would involve a lot of paperwork. Disturbingly realistic.

Monsters from the Id are difficult to defeat, permanently.

Renee: Right now Gadget is probably the slowest flier, because he is still learning. His suit has the capacity to go fast, he just needs the time and experience to get used to using it. But at least he's not running into trees these days...

You are right in that once Joshua comes to his senses, he won't be thrilled to learn that he just threw down against the good guys, his allies in fact. That's not going to help the depression or guilt he already feels over the bombing in Kabul, or the trauma from being petrified by an Abyssal at Belle Isle. They poor guy really has been given a shit sandwich.

The Bradley is a weird thing. It was supposed to be an armored personnel carrier that would replace the older M113s from the Vietnam era. But as they designed it, they kept throwing more and more things on it. Let's put a gun on it, let's put some missile launchers on it. Let's put this on it, and that on it. Well There's Your Problem did an episode on it, with a guest who served in one. It's not a bad vehicle. They just want it to do too much and wound up over-designing it.

TBH, all modern main battle tanks are horribly fuel inefficient, because they are insanely heavy and at the same time need speed, so they have massive engines. The M1 Abrams gets about 1/2 a mile per gallon. It weighs 70 tons and has a literal jet engine with 1500 horsepower. Even with that it can only do about 45 mph at max speed. That is fast for a tank. But slow for anything else.


Acadian: Don't worry, I am sure Geoff Bezo will force the workers in the Amassona Hub to work overtime without pay to make sure no orders are delayed.

It was a good plan that Cray had. As you noted it lasted about as long as any plan does. This was one of those fights that was not about the fight. It was about saving lives from an unfolding disaster. Blackhawk's reaction to Josh here was part of that. He's not the enemy, he's a victim too, and he needs their help the same as everyone else. Even if he is also posing a threat to everyone at the same time. I liked writing this, because it is an extremely complicated situation. How the Alliance handled it reveals what kind of people they are.

The Alliance sticking around is definitely becoming more and more of a regular feature. Blood Raven was not one for that sort of thing. It sort of clashed with the mysterious loner dark avenger lurking on Gothic steeples motif she had going. But January and her pals are not the same. As the cleanup of Belle Isle showed, they are all about helping, not simply fighting. Honestly, that was one thing I liked about the most recent Batman movie. In the end he was not fighting a personal vendetta against crime, but simply helping people during a disaster.


WellTemperedClavier: The ghosts of Belle Isle keep on haunting. The fallout from that battle is still not over yet.

I had not thought about being turned to stone activating Josh's powers. I had not really thought of when they had in fact. But that would be ideal timeline-wise. So now that was his inciting event as a super.

Josh would be a good driver for a team vehicle, if the team ever gets one Or just a drone operator, like many Riggers in Shadowrun. Right now though, I don't really have an any plans for him. I don't think he is mentally up for it, or likely to be any time soon. I could see him one day operating heavy machinery like a back hoe or those giant cranes they use to build skyscrapers, where you need to be extremely precise with a massive vehicle. I can imagine him doing this with his eyes closed.


macole: Sadly, you are correct. Josh's mental health will likely be poor for his entire life. As much as I would like to put him in action again as a hero in the future, I think his mental state would be just too fragile. January is in a similar boat with her PTSD. I don't see her ever being 'cured' of it. I don't think anyone ever is. At best she will just learn to manage it as best as possible, and go on in spite of it. She is lucky, in that she has a strong support network of friends that she can lean on.












January

January's Poe miniskirt

Avery

Ryo

Eleni/Silverlight

Xochitl

Kensia/Calypso

Jeri/Riven

Kaelin

Harper




Book 12.13 - Broken Arrow

August 18th (Sunday)

The back yard of the Witch House spread out around January. The grass under her was soft and springy. To one side the concrete driveway ran back past the house, along the side of the yard, and ended at a detached garage. Avery's yellow Geo Storm was parked in front of it. Beyond rose up a line of tall trees. Those oaks and evergreens went on to ring the entire yard on three sides, and blocked the outside world from view. The Witch House itself stood behind her to complete the ersatz atrium and conceal them from the street.

January knew that other houses rose up to either side of them. But the trees and bushes blocked much of them from view. The far end of the yard however, simply melted into a forest that stretched out to the nearby Clinton River. She knew from her past sojourns that the system of nature trails back there stretched out along the river for miles in either direction.

But even without all the trees and the looming presence of the house, they were shielded from prying eyes. The magical defenses throughout the Witch House and its grounds insured that. All it had taken was the magical equivalent of January flipping a switch, and the wards around the property had gone into dark mode. Now the arcane security system obscured all within from any form of surveillance and intrusion: visual, physical, magical, or electronic.

It was nothing obvious, like a giant glowing wall of impenetrable energy. Instead the wards used the existing landscape - such as the trees, bushes, house, and garage- and painted in all the blank spaces between them to trick the eye into believing that nothing was there. It reminded January of a magical camouflage net that concealed all within from view.

January wore her Poe miniskirt, printed with numerous passages and images from the 19th Century writer's works. She left her legs bare underneath, and wore a black tank top above. Silverlight looked like a real estate agent in her business casual jeans and blouse. Ryo wore a simple black tee. Xochitl was clad in a colorful sundress. Calypso looked like she came straight from the beach, in a pair of cut-off shorts, sandals, and a strappy tee.

Riven was clad in mom jeans and a New Kids on the Block top. Kaelin was her normal punk self, in a plaid miniskirt, multicolored hose, and a halter top. Harper sat beside her, in their usual blend of masculine and feminine styles: a pair of skintight black pants, and a checked sport coat over a white shirt and black tie. Even Avery was present, clad in a plain white tee and cargo shorts.

They all sat in a circle in the middle of the yard. Standing in the center was Silverlight. January was still not used to calling her Eleni. Given that none of them were suited up, it really was appropriate to think of her that way however. Sitting on the ground beside the cultural anthropologist was Avery. His phone was laid out on the grass beside him, and he was listening to something on it through a pair of earbuds. He seemed to be in his own world as Eleni gave her lecture.

"The world we know - and think of as reality - is not the real world," Eleni began. "It is only half of it, if even that much. Right beside our world of material reality is another world, one of magic, and power, and feeling, and will. It is inextricably connected to the mundane world, so much so that the two literally cannot be separated. For one cannot exist without the other."

"Now I call this otherworld the aether, the aether realm, aether space, or the aetherial," Eleni went on. "Most other magical practitioners these days refer to it as astral space however. As all things magical, everyone has their own terminology. No one is right or wrong. What is right for you is all that matters."

Xochitl shot up her hand, like a student in class. Eleni nodded to the young woman, who then spoke eagerly. "This is like, As Above, So Below right? What happens in one plane, flows to the other, and vice-versa?"

"Yes, exactly, that is what that statement is all about," Eleni said. "As best we know that came from the Emerald Tablet. It was a stone tablet which was commonly referenced by Arabic sources as early as the Eighth or Ninth Century. Later it was widely adopted by the European Hermetic traditions. The idea goes back even farther than that of course, being built upon Greek works from the Second or Third Century BCE. These referred to Hermes Trismegistus - the 'thrice great' - whom Hermetic Magic is named after."

"No one knows if Hermes Trismegistus was a real person or not; or if they were an extension of the god Hermes; or if they were just made up by someone. It does not really matter, because modern Western magic is founded upon his ideas and works, not his birth certificate. Even if he was not real to begin with, he is now, in every Westerner who uses magic. We made him real."

"But I digress..." Eleni glanced down at the fully modern tablet in her hand. It was the computer kind of tablet of course, not the ancient stone kind. Clearly she had this lecture written down there.

"In the Latin the Emerald Tablet is read as: 'Quod est superius est sicut quod inferius, et quod inferius est sicut quod est superius'. In English that translates to 'That which is above is like to that which is below, and that which is below is like to that which is above'. However, in the earlier Arabic it is actually: 'That which is above is from that which is below, and that which is below is from that which is above'."

"Note the 'from' in the Arabic version. I think this is more accurate. For these two worlds are not simply mirrors. They are connected, two sides of the same thing. Actions in the aether ground down to directly affect the physical. Actions in the physical rise up to alter the aether."

"Now magic itself is inherently aetherial in nature," Eleni continued. "The aether is the ultimate source of all magic. By this I mean aion, or raw magical power. Or you could say teotl, or mana, or mojo, whatever you want to call it. People love to argue this, and point out that the earth is where magic comes from. Where I can attest that the moon is where it comes from, as I can directly harvest power from it with my staff when it is in the sky above."

"You have a moon rock on the head of your staff," January noted. "I mean, a real stone from the moon, brought back by the Apollo astronauts. As those of us who have read about sympathetic magic know, things which have been in contact with one another maintain that link, even when physically separated. So the head of your staff is still part of the moon, right?"

"Exactly," Eleni agreed. "I see someone has been reading their theory. But we digress once more. What I was working towards was that the earth, and the moon, and the rest of the universe, all lie parallel to the aether. There is no place in our universe that does not touch the aether, and vice-versa. So when one feels energy rising from the ground, what they are really feeling is it rising from the region of the aether that overlaps with the ground."

"Everything in the physical, mundane world casts a shadow in the aether," Eleni continued. "So when you sense in the aether, what you also see here, you will see there. But it will not be the same. Inanimate material, especially that which has been removed from its original settings and reshaped and worked by humans, is only a pale, transparent shadow. Take a brick wall for example, or a wooden chair. In the astral they will barely be there at all. You can look right through them."

"Other inanimate objects still in their natural environments - like sand on a beach, or stone in a cliff face - will appear more solid within the astral. Eventually enough of it will block your sensing, especially if you are looking straight down into the planet. This goes back to why some people say magic originates from the earth. Eventually the aion welling up from that part of the universe simply blots out everything else. It is kind of like looking around under the ocean, eventually the water clouds over everything, and you cannot see farther."

"Living things however, will appear solid and tangible in the aether. In fact, they will typically glow with an inner light. This is all living things, from microbes to elephants. Though you might need to fine tune your sensing to detect the smaller stuff. But put enough of that in one place, and it is hard for even an amateur mage to miss."

"Algae and phytoplankton blooms are like that," Calypso - Kensia Toussaint - nodded. "They can be blinding in the astral. I have to work hard to not see them."

"Every living thing has an aura that is visible in astral space," Eleni nodded to the Bahamian woman. "Every aura is different. Think of it as magical DNA. It shows everything that we are. Our sex, our gender, our age, our eye color, our current physical and emotional states, the old scar on your finger, the chicken pox marks on your forehead, every freckle, everything. It is all there in your aura."

"It is a lot to take in. It takes time and practice to get so granular that you can see it all, and more importantly, understand what you are looking at. Some things are simple however. A meta-human will stand out starkly when compared to a mundane. So too, will a magician stand out from them. There are vast differences between all three, which are always clear and present in the aether."

"Okay, time for some hands on practice." Eleni said. "I would like you all to sense into the aether now. You may find it easiest to close your eyes, and if possible, even cover your ears or other senses. I know some of you are old hats at this. But for our new students, sensory information from the physical world can fight with that from the aether. The two together can become very confusing and even jarring."

"Avery here has generously volunteered to serve as a guinea pig... erm, artistic model for us today. He's here because he is not a magician, but a meta-human. I would like you to study him in the aether. Compare what you see in him to the mundane plants and animals around us, to the rest of us mages, and even to the inanimate objects like the driveway. You will see the differences between magical, meta, mundane, and artificial."

Eleni motioned down to the young African-American who sat nearby. He nodded his head to whatever it was he was listening to through his ear buds. Not being a mage himself, this lesson was not for him. As Eleni had said, he was the equivalent of a model who posed for artists to draw. He seemed to realize that he was being talked about, because he lifted his eyes to the crowd around him. He smiled and gave a peace sign. Then he went back to listening to his smartphone.

January did as Eleni asked. She closed her eyes, and felt for her magic. It was there, as always, a calm pool of energy deep within her being. She brought it up through her body, and imagined that she was a tree. She slowly inhaled, and the mana flowed up through her trunk like sap. Then it spread out through her limbs, and suffused her body with power. She exhaled just as slowly, and now the energy dripped off of her skin like dew. It fell to the ground and soaked into her roots. From there it rose back up into her body with her next breath, to begin the cycle all over again.

Over and over, she practiced this simple exercise. She had read it in one of her books on Wicca and Witchcraft. She could not remember which at the moment. It had served January well ever since. Not only did it help her feel and use her magic, it also was just a nice, calm way of relaxing herself.

As Plato had said, it was a way to remain silent in the presence of the divine. It removed the clouds from her eyes and enabled her to see by the light that issued from herself. Not to see what she thought was good, but what was intrinsically good.

Then she stretched out into the astral. All around her the yard sprang to brilliant life. It was colors, it was sounds, it was smells, and even touch. She could smell the power within the mages around her, pleasant as the aroma of freshly baked bread. She could feel the life within each blade of grass beneath her legs. She could hear it as a symphony within the trees all around, and the river that twisted and turned nearby.

Avery was a bright, but monochrome image before her. Right beside him was Eleni/Silverlight. The cultural anthropologist was a brilliant flame of color, just jumping at her brighter than a 4K television screen. So too were the other mages around her. In contrast the trees and grass were soft gray shades. Avery's Geo parked in front of the garage was barely visible. It was just a transparent set of lines, like a dim wireframe display on an old computer game.

The garage itself and the Witch House behind her glowed with energy, much as the mages did. Each witch bottle placed within the house or around the grounds shone as a nexus of power. Rivers of mana flowed from them to link one bottle with another. They created a spider web that surrounded first the property, then the house and garage, and finally the individual rooms within the home.

This magical energy was impermeable within the higher realm. January could only sense through it all because Blood Raven had taught her to connect with the wards and control them. She knew that for the others, the barriers they created would be impenetrable. Well, at least unless January chose to lower the protection of the wards. Like any security system, they could be turned on and off.

Eleni then moved from one of her students to the next. She lingered the longest with Xochitl and Riven - whom January had recently learned was actually named Jeri. The latter two struggled to sense into the astral at all. January waited patiently as Eleni coached them to simply relax, and attain a state of gnosis.

It was that condition where you both lost yourself, and track of the world around you. It was like when you were driving, and forgot that you were driving. January had read that in ages past this was the most important part of all magical workings, the key to accessing your innermost powers. But Tunguska had changed all of that of course. Whatever else that mysterious event might have been, it had also been a wakeup call for magic. Ever since the Siberian fireball, it had become far easier and quicker for mages to manipulate magic, and the resulting effects were more powerful than ever.

Yet January had learned that the old ways and techniques still had value. Things like gnosis were a good way for one to get to know one's magic. Just like Plato had said, it helped one to remain silent in the presence of the divine.

A crow came down from the sky and landed on January's lap. She took a moment to study it there in the astral. In fact, she took more than a moment. She stared deeply into the aura of the bird. It was a gray thing in the magical realm. Its life gave it solidity. But there was nothing special about it. It was just another bird, neither magical, nor meta, simply an ordinary part of the world around her.

Or was it so simple? January took to heart what Eleni had said about one's aura showing you everything that they were. Surely this bird was a masterpiece of evolution? After all, billions of years of random mutations and chance and genetic drift had resulted in this one being before her. Generations upon generations of life had culminated right here, with this individual on her lap. That was nothing to scoff at.

She felt down into the crow, which looked calmly back at her. She could sense its stare. She could feel down into its eyes, into its brain, into its heart, and it unfolded before her like a rose.

January caught her breath sharply as the crow came to life before her astral eyes. No longer was its aura just a plain blob of gray. Now she was able to parse out individual colors. It was like white light that had been shot through a prism. Now she could see all the colors of the rainbow within the bird's magical self.

Thanks to her newfound level of awareness, she could separate each aspect of its aura into clear, discernible threads. There were its bones. There were its muscles. There was its blood. There was the oxygen that flowed through its veins. There was even the mush of the worm it had just recently eaten, bubbling in the acid within its stomach. It was a canvas of color before her eyes, and a symphony of sound to her ears.

It was beautiful.

She looked up to see Avery. He too, was no longer just a bright image of gray and white in the astral. Now he glowed with vibrant shades of color. Again, she could see the lines of power that told her that he was African-American, that his hair was curly, that he was a man, that he was gay, it was all there. So too was a curious violet cord. It stitched its way all through his aura, like veins through marble. She glanced back to the crow, and the grass underfoot. That violet was not there. She looked back to Avery, and realized that this was the marker for his meta-humanity, at least in her astral eyes.

She looked to the others. They too, were works of art, masterpieces within the magical realm. Unlike Avery, they were stitched with threads of gold rather than violet. She noted Eleni looking back at her. Her eyes were brilliant silver holes, and January realized that the other woman was looking back at her through the astral as well. January smelled a cloud of emotion roll off the woman. It reminded her of vanilla. It smelled like satisfaction.

"I sense that you have had an epiphany January," Eleni said. "Can you describe it to everyone else?"

"I can see... everything," January said quite honestly. "I can feel everything. It's like a painting, like a really bright, colorful one. Like a Van Gogh, the way his colors just vibrate, and pop off the canvas. Each brush stroke is a story of our lives. I can see where you broke your arm as a child Jeri. I can see that you ate fish for breakfast today Kensia. I can see that Avery is thinking about his boyfriend Corey, because he's, well... I can see how satisfied you are Eleni, because I actually got something out of this."

Right. I think for Gadget, flying is maybe not as intuitive. Jan had her mistakes for instance, but overall it seems like the process to fly was almost like she adapted into it. Almost like a spiritual process. Whereas Avery, seems like he can only glimpse the process by expanding what he knows from a gadgetary point of view. Hope that made sense.

Wow, you sure know your military! I get the feeling you didn't have to wiki any of that info about Bradleys and Abrams and so on. I watch that video later. Gotta comment on Stormcrow, and then go back to High School first.

Nice, look at Jan. WHOA look at Avery. Shesuz if I was 20 again... *ahem*. I look at the rest later. Too impatient to see what happens with Joshua.

Ryo: looks like a bandito gangbanger, que pasa?
Silverlight: Classic suburbanite. I'd guess her for a real estate agent.
Xochitl: Other than a highschool student she reminds me of America Ferrara
Calypso: Looks like a dancer from In Living Color. One of the Fly Girls.
Riven: whoa. Soccer mommy. ⚽
Kaelin: cutie behind the counter at the record store or book shop.
Harper: Like a concierge, but really it's the garb she's got on in the picture.

Again, I love Jan's security system. It's insular. No outside parties involved. How close are the neighbors?

*Likes Silverlight's sermon* Emerald Tablet. Gonna have to read about that later. Sounds facinating. "In the Latin the Emerald Tablet is read as: 'Quod est superius est sicut quod inferius, et quod inferius est sicut quod est superius'. In English that translates to 'That which is above is like to that which is below, --- Love that part.

This is fascinating. I'm limiting commenting on everything just to save space. But the back and forth between all participants has me engrossed. Her lecture confirms things I've read in other texts, other books, etc.

Edit: Such as: how close do dreams come to astral? Or are they always completely separate realms? What is an example of a bleed-through? Bleed-throughs are moments when other realms bleed into our everyday life here on Earth. Anyway, that's what I'd ask.

Avery's got earbuds in during a personal lecture. Sigh, Millennials. Sure Gen-Xers might do this too back in the day, but usually only the stoners.

For Jan, going into the astral is second-nature by now, but even she seems to be fine-tuning her perceptions, right? I wonder what Xochitl's experience is gonna be like (if it's written up). She seems the least experienced, besides the techno-oriented Avery.



Supposedly, a lot of these senses blend once we're outside of our material world. Colors have sounds associated with them, smells can have colors. And there are other senses outside of our Five as well.

Van Gogh. Was just down at the museums in D.C. this past week; they've got three or four Van Goghs. Immediately I teared up. I can't look at his work without sobbing a little (nor most of the Impressionists' work). Roses got me this time. According to the lady who was giving the tour this time, the roses were originally red, but Van Gogh's brother supplied the paints at the time (Van Gogh himself didn't have any money), which were all cheaper paints. So over the past century they've gone from red to white. 🌹

Anyway, great write-up. Time to go back to High School now.

A wonderful review of what the various members of this growing alliance look like.

As with all your detailed descriptions of things magical, I enjoyed Eleni’s instruction. Totally helpful I’m sure for Xochitl. And, we learn, for Riven as well. Even Jan leveled up her astral sensing. Buffy is jealous that Jan can do this without having to ‘lay on hands’ to sense the true nature and physical medical history/condition of another.

Importantly, Jan can now discern magicians from nonmagical metas.

Glad the stone-activing-powers thing was helpful!

Good point about Josh. He's dealing with a lot of trauma, and being a super probably wouldn't help him (or anyoen else) right now.

Dang, the Witch House sounds nice. And maybe not too expensive, given the location? Sorry, I'm in California and even the crummiest house here is absurdly overpriced.

Sounds like a pretty effective and convenient security system.

Hm, so is that the rule with supers? Real name when out of costume, hero name when in it? Makes sense.

Good history lesson here regarding magic.

The "from" here definitely matters. And fits in with larger ideas about interconnectivity.

The stuff about inanimate materials on the astral reminds me a bit of Gnosticism, though in reverse (kinda).

Was Avery supposed to be listening?

It's funny how difficult it is to shut out sensory stimulation. I'm sometimes able to do it when I'm really focused on something, but I'm not usually able to control what I focus on.

Normal or not, the crow feels like a good omen somehow.

So this magic is like full spectrum imaging almost, but more powerful. Interesting.

And all is one!

Renee: Avery's picture is Shameik Moore. He voiced Mile Morales in the recent Spiderverse movies, among other roles.

Jan lives in a suburb. So her neighbors are as close as any others in a burb. Basically right next door.

The Emerald Table is real, and as Eleni said, it is one of the foundations of Western magic. That is why I included it. I like bringing real things into the story to keep it more grounded in reality. Or at least in a sense of reality.

I never thought about dreams and astral space. I have no idea really. Maybe someday I will explore it, if I have a character that it pertains to. Like Dreamer from the Supergirl TV show.

I have always liked Van Gogh's work. I love his colors, their vibrancy, and how they flow across his canvases. He is one of my favorite artists. I did not know that about Roses! Well, if I did, I forgot it. I only have so much room in my databanks. Sometimes I have to delete old info to make room for new things, like knowing what the kids today mean when they say something is "dope" or that "it slaps", and the like.


Acadian: This was originally a longer lecture, but I trimmed it down to the parts that are going to be important to the story. Otherwise I was afraid it was going to be too droning and lose the audience. January's leveling up of her astral senses is going to matter later on. So to the discussion of undead and the stone tape theory in today's episode.


WellTemperedClavier: I don't think there is any such thing as a non-expensive house anymore, with corporations buying them all up and just sitting on them forever to drive up their value. I just did a quick search of Sterling Heights houses, and they tend to be in the $400,000 to $600,000 range. The Witch House is big, so it would be at the top end of that, if not beyond.

Avery was not supposed to be listening. He is not a magician. So he is never going to be able to sense the astral. He is there simply as an artistic model, so the mages can see what a meta-human looks like in astral space. I went back and tweaked the text to make that more clear.

One problem I have always had with working in corporate america is shutting out all the people around when I am in cube city and trying to concentrate on my work. I usually put in earbuds and listen to music to drown everyone else out. Otherwise their conversations always distract me. It is one reason I prefer to work alone.

Crows are always good omens for January.

Everyone perceives magic and astral space differently. It all depends on one's personality, and how one relates to the universe. I imagine a Khajiit would perceive much of it through smell. An intelligent shark mage through their electrical sense, smell, and other senses. Jan's own perceptions are very visual, because that is an important sense to her, given her avian nature. But even she still smells in astral, feels in it, tastes in it.

That is even more the case with Xochitl, as we are about to see. She is an artist. So the world to her is one of colors and shapes and brush strokes. If we saw it from her perspective in a movie, it would shift from live action to animation. To her astral space is a literal painting, sort of like that Oblivion quest where you go into the painting.






Starry Night

Wheatfield with Crows

Sunflowers


The Stone Tape theory



Book 12.14 - Broken Arrow

"I can see it!" Xochitl shouted. January felt power rise to a height she had yet to see before within the young woman. As with Eleni, she could sense that her apprentice had shifted her senses into the astral. "It's like you just said: Van Gogh. He was always my favorite. This astral world, it's like one of his paintings. It's like that copy of Starry Night you have, or Wheatfield with Crows, or Sunflowers. I can see the brush strokes, and each line is a different facet of one's aura. It is all light and color and tones and shades. It's beautiful."

"Excellent! That just leaves you Jeri. Still having no luck?" Eleni asked. But January knew that she already had the answer. She could see that Jeri was not sensing within the astral, unlike all the others now.

"No," Jeri answered curtly. January could see the dissatisfaction spread across the other woman's aura like a bitter dark cloud. "This wiz bang stuff is just not for me. I'm a fighter, not a spell slinger."

"I have an idea that might help," Ryo surprised January by speaking up. He rose to his feet and walked over to Eleni and Jeri. "I watched the video of you fighting on the MacArthur Bridge. You have a way of knowing when an attack is coming from behind you and blocking it. It is like you have eyes in the back of your head."

"Yeah," the older woman said. "It's sort of a danger sense I've cultivated. I listen, I smell, I sense air currents, it helps me feel when someone is sneaking up on me."

"It might be more than that," January spoke up now. "A while ago Blood Raven told me about astral sensing. She said that you could sense emotions and even intent within someone's aura. Magic moves lightly about a person who is filled with joy, and darkly about one intent upon cruelty. She said that some had even learned to hone their astral senses in order to feel impending danger. Some did not even need to be actively sensing in the astral to feel incoming threats. They just knew it was coming, and responded to it automatically."

"That kind of sounds like it," Jeri considered. "You think that's what I'm doing?"

"The Spider over in New York could do that, back in the day." Kensia said. "But he was a meta-human, not a mage. It was just one of his in-born abilities."

"Stand up, and we shall learn," Ryo insisted. He paused a moment, and peeled the t-shirt from his body. In the astral, it was nothing but thin gauze, barely there at all. He handed it to Jeri, and motioned to her face.

"Put that around your eyes," he said. "So you cannot see a thing."

"Okay, I think I've seen this movie." The San Franciscan heroine laughed. But she did as the younger man asked, and tied the black cloth around her upper face. "Should I feel the Force flow now?"

"You should fight." Ryo declared. His left hand snapped out, and tagged her on the chin. He was not hitting hard. January could see that in the astral. His energy was tightly constrained. It was just a love tap really.

Jeri's head snapped back, and the others all scrambled to get out of the way. Even Avery looked up and sprang to his feet with a look of concern. But January held him back. She thought she understood what Ryo was doing.

"Hey, what was tha-."

Ryo jabbed again, only this time Jeri slipped aside at the last moment. That left his hand whiffing nothing but empty air, albeit just inches from the side of her head.

"You said you are a fighter, so fight," Ryo insisted. He went with an uppercut at her midsection. She blocked low with her forearms, and stopped the attack. She replied with a combination, leading with a left jab that caused Ryo to slip to one side to avoid it. Then she followed with a right cross, aimed directly at the spot he had moved his head into.

The blow would have connected. But Ryo faded from reality. Even in the astral, his aura dimmed and nearly vanished from January's senses. He had become a ghost. Jeri's hand went straight through him, and he did not fade back into reality until she had withdrawn it.

That was new. The last time January had sparred with Ryo - and they had really gone full out with their powers - she had been able to hit him. That was thanks to the magical nature of her attacks. Clearly, Ryo had worked hard enough that he could now fade from even arcane assaults. Or maybe January needed to upgrade her fists to +5 weapons in order to defeat his new defenses?

Ryo - now once more clearly visible in the astral - followed with several low kicks aimed at her knees and shins. Jeri jumped back out of range of the blows, hands up in a defensive position. When he pressed forward and went for another jab, she easily parried it with one hand.

"There, you know it's coming," Eleni declared. "Now see it in the astral. Don't think about it. Don't try it. Just do it."

Ryo pushed forward again, bringing his punches up to Jeri's face. January decided to up the ante, for better or worse. She leaped skyward, and came down behind Riven. She led with her elbow. That elbow, the one that ended things: Ragnarok. But before she could connect, Jeri ducked and rolled aside. That left January falling down to her knees upon empty grass, and her elbow struck nothing but air.

"I can see you," Jeri said, when she sprang to feet once more. "I can see you!"

January smiled and rose to her feet to face the older woman. She threw a few half-hearted punches her way. But Jeri easily slipped and sidestepped each one. Finally January held up her thumb to her nose, and waved her fingers at the other woman in a ridiculous gesture.

"I can see that too!" Jeri now laughed.

"Okay, that's enough mortal combat I think," Eleni said.

"How did you know that would work?" Jeri asked. She peeled the shirt from her face, and tossed it back to Ryo.

"As you said, you are a fighter. Your natural inclination is to meet force directly. I have a friend who is a lot like you." Ryo glanced sideways at January. "But you are even more that way than she is. It is who and what you are. It is all over your aura. So it stood to reason that fighting is how you would find your way."

"So now that we are all seeing in the aether, time for more lecture," Eleni declared. That brought a chorus of groans from all, and they all settled back down into their teaching circle, with Eleni in the center...

"This is important kids, so pay attention," Eleni wagged a finger dramatically. "Now we know how to sense into the aether, we know how to interpret what we detect there, at least somewhat. We know that magic fills this space. It gives it that steady background glow it has, even in the middle of the night. We know that magic moves from one plane to the other, and that includes spells. I can cast a spell at you through the astral into your aura, and its effects will ground down into the material world, and cause actual physical wounds. That is essentially how the arcane bolt spell works. It is probably the most generic magical attack there is. It cannot be stopped by mundane armor, because it is inherently magical and aetherial in nature."

"But there are also creatures that live in the aether," Eleni went on. "These are magical beings, which can sometimes move from the aether, down to the physical. Elemental spirits are one example: think of undines, salamanders, and the like. They often reside entirely within the aether. But they can also move themselves down to the material world if they wish. I know some of you have had personal experiences with them."

January silently nodded. It had taken the entire Alliance to defeat the fire elemental at Gull Island. In fact, that was the first time Blackhawk had joined them. Then later she had met Kensia while fighting a lava elemental. It had taken the Bahamian, January, and Viuda all working together to stop the creature. It was safe to say that both experiences were burned into her memory.

"There are other beings as well. We often call them nature spirits. Mishipeshu is one example, the Underwater Panther that came to my aid during the Battle of Belle Isle. These beings can come in all shapes and forms, with all manner of motivations. Not just confined to the more specific examples of elementals."

"Then there are undead spirits," Eleni said. "I know some of you have encountered them as well. Some are literally the spirits of the dead, continuing on within the aether. Some are confined to that place. But many can move down to Mundus - the physical world - or at least project themselves into it in order to act there."

"People love to argue about undead at the Aura," Harper spoke up. "Are they proof of life after death? Or are they just a lingering impression in the astral, created by strong magic and emotion? Or is it both? Can someone's consciousness continue on after death, either in a physical body or an astral spirit? When that is destroyed, do they finally die for good, and meet whatever reward we all do, which might be nothing at all?"

"Ah yes, the stone tape theory is one of those ideas," Silverlight nodded. "Emotion, energy, and will do have a direct effect upon astral space. They alter it visibly. Go to a concert, or football game, or revival meeting, or any gathering where a crowd of excited people are present, and you will experience it. If it goes on long enough in a specific place, that can create a lasting impression in the astral. Believe me, you don't want to go to a prison or a death camp. Astral space is a dark cloud of the worst emotions in such places, even long after they have been shut down."

"But beyond creating a general impression within astral space, yes, an individual can leave a lasting impression on the place they died. I don't believe this is permanent however, as astral space has a way of recycling itself over time. But it can seem like a long time to those with our life spans. You can tell these cases because the stone tapes are essentially stuck in a moment, endlessly repeating it and reacting to others though that lens. They can't break free of it, or even do things like hold a separate conversation with you. They are like a song playing on repeat."

"The thing about all this is you have to take each and every case individually. We do know that undead beings exist, and that some have consciousness and will. On the other hand, I have had personal encounters with undead that I could only describe as walking puppets, possessing no agency of their own, and nothing to their auras other than the spell used to animate them."

* * *

As we have seen in the last couple episodes, there seems to be more unique ways to sense and interact with the astral than Baskin Robins has ice cream flavors!

Very cool how Seven of Nine Jeri can sense attacks coming even without seeing them. And no surprise at all how Xochitl sees the astral. Ryo is a bit of a one trick pony but my goodness, his ability to fade and unfade is stunningly effective and valuable in so many situations.


Nit: I think you want a closing set of dialogue quotations at the end of your very last sentence.

Van Goghs.... 🤦‍♀️ Starry Night. What is it about his work? It's like you can see into Vincent's turbulence... and then it's like: damn, this guy never even got paid. Yet we all know about him. Something about Van Gogh. Manet, too. Manet's very intense. I mean, cripes, look at this painting. It's so evocative. It puts you right there, right in that room from 150 years ago. Look at the expression on her face. Cassat... Mary destroyed me a couple weeks ago, in the museum. Anyway.

Xochitl's getting a glimpse. Yeah, that's it hon. Whoa, Jan can see Xochitl's other self.

Next is Jeri. Jeri can't see it. It's fine though. Not everybody can. Some folks just aren't built that way. Others are very attuned to other realities.



This is the CW moment when music changes from calm to dramatic! Yah, Ryo's a badass. If some gangbangas saw Ryo they'd either look to see if he's got any colors, or they'd try to recruit him. Not that he would join, but just saying. Thing is, he's got his energies turned the right way. He's doing the right things (imo). This edpisode's intense. Episode's.

And yet, Jeri is able to sense a few things. She just doesn't know how to focus them, yet. It's really good being able to picture them all, seeing their faces side by side like was posted last week. OKay, that's really cool, how they're all able to help Jeri/Riven get to where they're at. Nice!

People are groaning because of more lecture. Does the aether have anything to do with those little patterns I am able to see when I close my eyes in a quiet room? I see these patterns, sometimes in color, sometimes just images. I can make them more intense just by thinking of making them more intense. If not; if they are not looking into the aether: What are those patterns? That's what I'd ask Eleni.

Whoa, yikes. Creatures in the ether. Yeah, first thing I thought of was Jan when she went to the volcano, and fought that salamander. But that's frikcin' scary. If that's true, it negates ALL of the stuff we've told our children. "Monsters are not real", for instance.

Great question, Harper.



First question: I'd say they are proof of life outside of life. As in, our life here on Earth.

Second: don't know.

Third: I think we do continue "after" death, although supposedly Time is an Illusion. Which means there is no after.... only Now. Sort of. But I think there's too much energy involved just getting us to Earth, with all our faults and Intelligence and quirks, all of that is energy. It's foolish to think we don't come from somewhere else, therefore we're not going somewhere else.

Supposedly the Astral is just a state of being, tied to our physical existence. There's more out there than just that 'one' state, there are zillions of states, as many states as there are stars in all the galaxies. Meaning: there's more than just an astral spirit. 👻

Fourth: We never die for good. Well.. our physical body does, but everything else continues. Always exists. Which makes no sense to me, but let's see what Riven's response is.



YES, what she says about lasting impressions is true. There's this feeling which continues after a great event like a concert. It can be negative too, like the feeling which lingers after an argument.



Sorry for the Quote-a-rama. This is important, though. Interesting what her answer is there. "astral space has a way of recycling over time", wow.

Interesting that she's using that term Undead, too. Alright.

Time for High School.

$400,000-$600,000? That's cheap by southern California standards (at least in the cities). Yeah, things are bad in that regard. Another part of the problem here is that most of the metropolitan area is already heavily built up. For the last few decades we've been building out, but that creates its own issues--longer commutes and damage to natural habitats (which is why coyotes are so common in the cities now).

Los Angeles is at least subsidizing some low-income housing. Not sure if there's much hope for San Francisco. That city might just price itself out of existence.

Sorry for the digression.

I love the way you describe Xochitl perceiving the astral. It's a great way to show how personalized the interpretation really is. Makes me wonder how I'd see it.

Ryo's impromptu sparring with Stormcrow is a good demonstration of sensing danger through magic. And how it ties into a person's natural inclinations.

All this talk about cursed locations and undead feels like foreshadowing.

Acadian: Magic is an intensely personal thing. So it is different for everyone. Embracing that diversity has really helped me with fleshing out individual characters, since everyone will interact with magic according to their own personality.

It is funny you mention Baskin Robbins. I just watched the Ant-Man movies, and in the first one the protagonist - who is fresh out of prison - tried to work Baskin Robbins. But they found out about his ex-con past and fired him. He goes back home and his roommates are all saying: "Baskin Robbins don't play." and "Baskin Robbins always finds out." Like they are this ominous evil corporation.

Ryo is indeed stunningly effective in his niche.


Renee: Doctor Who had a really good episode with Vincent Van Gogh. It always makes me tear up. The thing that makes great art great is that it makes you feel.

As Acadian noted, Ryo is stunning in his own way.

A lot of what I am using as the basis for Astral Space in the Crow-verse is inspired by the table top RPGs Shadowrun and Earthdawn. Some of the people who wrote those parts were modern neo-Pagans/Witches, like Steve Kenson. So its a mix of real world belief systems bound up in the game's systems.

The stone tape theory is real (as in it is an actual idea, not that it has any basis in scientific fact), and there was even a movie with the same name back in the late 60s or early 70s I think, made in the UK.


WellTemperedClavier: You would see astral space according to your personality. If you are very visually-oriented, you would receive a great deal of visual information. If your sense of smell is keen, you would smell much of it. If you are big aficionado of music, it would be notes and songs. Etc...

Riven is a weapon-master. She's a high level fighter. Since that is her personality, her means of unlocking her talents had to come through fighting, and really being pushed by someone.

All the talk of cursed locations, undead, and the stone tape theory will be very important once we finally get to the wreckage of Keep 19 and those missing nuclear bombs.










Senpai of the Pool Meme


George Takei's comebacks to trolls



Book 12.15 - Broken Arrow

August 19 (Monday afternoon)

January sat at her desk in her bedroom, eyes glued to her computer's monitor. Her fingers flew across the keyboard. Characters scrolled across the screen as she plunged on. She was on a roll now, and the words just came as if conjured up by magic from the depths of her brain.

Her main character Alexandra DeWitt navigated a world that was so much like January's own, but yet so different. It was a place where women seemed to only make up a quarter of the population at best. Where no one grew up remembering their mother, because women always died either in childbirth or soon after. That was of course when they were not dying in order to directly motivate men to take some form of action - usually of a vengeful nature against their killers.

In other words, it was the world of so many fictional stories, where women were not people, but rather things that only existed to advance a male character's story. Or even less than that, they only existed as an afterthought. They were simply proof that the main character was indeed virile and desirable, and perhaps more importantly of all: heterosexual.

Her own protagonist Alexandra was slowly realizing that something was very wrong with all of this, and that she was perhaps not what the writer had intended her to be. Could she break free from the shackles of misogynistic writing, even as she watched all of her friends from school die in just their twenties: from childbirth, car accidents, cancer, and of course, murdered by supervillains and stuffed into refrigerators. Could she create a new world, where women were not disposable objects, or ready-made victims, but actually people in their own right?

Her phone rang. It was just the regular ringtone, not from a friend, and definitely not that ringtone: the one for cape-related business. So she just ignored it and plunged on. A few moments later her phone dinged with a new text message. Again, it was not the important, look at me now tone. So she continued to ignore it and pressed on.

Being on a roll - really in the zone - for her writing was a good thing. Some days it was a chore that she had to slog through, and she had to struggle to put out even a few pages. But in times like this, hours just vanished. Half a day could go by before she even considered coming up for air. It was nice, and not an opportunity she wanted to waste.

After all, she would be back in school in just a few weeks. She glanced down at the date and time in the corner of her screen. It was less than a few weeks in fact. Her first day at Lane State would be the next Wednesday. Once that started, she was going to get busy. She would not have the same amount of time for writing side projects, not to mention things like gaming, or otherwise having much of a personal life. She imagined it would all be Artemis Argent and school projects that she worked on.

Not that she minded working on the comic book with Rus. She liked Artemis Argent as much as she did her other characters. She was even considering writing a novel just about her. But it was nice being able to move between Artemis' magicpunk world of an imaginary 1800s, and Aela and Loria's completely original fantasy world, and whatever else came up, like Alexandra DeWitt's literally fictional world. Variety was the spice of life after all.

Her phone rang again within a few minutes. She glanced over at the cheap Hamsung that lay on her bed. Again? Finally she rose with a sigh and walked across the room to stare down at its screen. She did not know the number. Still, it was not too surprising. She had been expecting something like this sooner or later.

After a long discussion, the Allies had all decided to release an abridged version of the Hierophant's journal to the press. They had removed all the parts about the Rauðskinna, and how the Abyssal summonings worked of course. Likewise, they had removed the real name of that terrible manual's creator: Nátthrafn. They could not take the chance that someone researching him might discover the Rauðskinna, and follow in the Hierophant's footsteps. There was no removing Nátthrafn entirely of course. He had been far too prominent at the Battle of Belle Isle, as well as within the Hierophant's own motivations. So instead he was referred to as the Shadow King in the edited text.

Finally, every mention of January and her brother Julian's blood relationship to the newly christened Shadow King had been removed. However, this still left plenty of mentions of them both within the journal. It still included everything about how the Hierophant had manipulated Julian and turned him into his henchman: the Summoner. The key to that having been Julian's bigotry and imagined sense of persecution of course. All of which had coalesced around January, his trans sister.

So she had been expecting to hear from the press again after all. It was only natural that they would want to circle back around for more comments from January Ward, the sibling of the Summoner. She was tempted to let the call go, but it was well-trod ground by now. She had been through it over and over already with reporters. She knew what was coming, and had all her answers rehearsed long ago.

So she walked over to the bed and picked up the phone.

"Hi, this is January!" Her perky phone voice once again slipped its tether and galloped loose.

"Hi, this is Priya O'Neill of Channel 5 News." The voice on the other end of the line was quite familiar to January. She had spoken to the other woman numerous times now, but always as Stormcrow. Not as just herself. This was definitely odd. "I was wondering if you would like to comment on Patricia Fine's recent statements."

January's heart doubled its rate at the sound of the other woman's name, and her free hand clenched into a fist. Patricia Fine had been the third host of the Crow Tales Podcast. Just two months ago January had been a guest on the show. There she had been subjected to a torrent of transphobia from Patricia, much to the consternation of her two co-hosts. In the end January had hung up on them, only to redo the entire interview a day later without Patricia.

They had fired her from the show in the interim. It was a podcast - a labor of love - so fire was perhaps too strong a word. Kicked off might be more accurate. January had not heard anything about Patricia since then. Granted, she did not read the magazine that she worked for, and she certainly did not seek out transphobic content creators out of habit.

"I don't know what you mean?" January wondered aloud. "Is there something I should know?"

"Oh boy, you haven't seen it yet then?" Priya replied. "You should look. She wrote an essay for her magazine: Vanity Bazaar. But they refused to publish it. So she went ahead and posted it online herself. It names you specifically. Vanity Bazaar dismissed her afterward. Now she is all over social media and the talk shows saying that she is under attack by cancel culture. Vulpine News just had her on the Sean Carlson show."

"Oh no, it's the consequences of my own actions!" January could not help but to sarcastically ape in a snotty English accent. It morphed into a snotty Southern accent, because she was not at all good at that sort of thing. Blackjack would have done both much better.

She walked back to her desk and sat down in front of her computer once more. She paused to set her phone to speaker, and laid it down in front of her monitor. She took care to save what she was working on before she opened up a web browser. In no time at all she saw what Priya had intimated.

Priya had been generous in describing Patricia Fine's work as an essay. The now former reporter's piece was a full-on manifesto, in true Unabomber style. It was a long, rambling screed on the dangers of trans people. How they threatened women by invading their spaces, how they were all just pretending to be women so they could rape 'real' women like herself, how doctors were mutilating children to make them trans, and so on.

January only skimmed it. It was nothing surprising. Not even the claims that all trans people were pedophiles was original. However, the insistence that what Patricia referred to as 'transgenderism' had to be eradicated from public life entirely - at every level - was new. Though granted, the genocide rhetoric was the next logical step in the moral panic that she was repeating and amplifying.

And then January's name came up, along with her addresses; physical, social medias, and old fashioned email. That explained why her phone was ringing constantly. She made a mental note to get the number changed. The rest, well, she could delete emails in bulk. As far as her home address went, she looked forward to any fascist acolyte rolling up on her at home. That would be a great way to work out some anger issues...

Patricia claimed that January had forced the Crow Tales Podcast to fire her, in order to silence her voice. Because Patricia spoke for all women of course - never mind that no one had actually said that or appointed her to do so. She then went on to accuse January of forcing Vanity Bazaar to do likewise, and claimed that she was part of a vast conspiracy of transgender terrorists. It was all part of what Patricia termed the so called 'Radical Left's' plot to destroy the family, women, and America.

"Would you be willing to take part in an interview?" Priya's voice soared from January's phone. That nearly caused her to jump out of her seat. She had forgotten that she still had the phone on. "I would like to get your side of the story out there."

"I..." January briefly considered the idea. She just as quickly shot it down. "No, I don't think it would be a good idea for me to say anything right now. It wouldn't be fit to print, or air on television."

"Ok, I understand that," Priya responded. "But if you change your mind, call me back at this number. Oh, and are you going to be at your mother's fund-raiser tonight?"

"Yes, I was planning to," January murmured. Her eyes were drawn back to her computer screen. It was like looking at a train wreck. It was ugly, and it was about her. It named her specifically. She had the gnawing suspicion that this was probably going to get worse, before it got better.

She reached out and ended the call. She could not help but pick up her phone and open her Twitt app. As usual, it took forever for the social media site to open on her cheap phone. Once it did, she saw that she was already getting comments. She had never seen so many on her feed. It was not hundreds of replies, or even thousands, but tens of thousands. Some were positive and supportive. But the vast majority called for her to be raped, tortured, and murdered. That was aside from a torrent of bigoted slurs of course.

Her hands shook, and she dropped the phone. Worse, she nearly crushed it when she caught it and held on too tightly. She did not need to be buying a new phone. She had enough bills as it was, and it would be hard finding another phone cheap enough for her to afford. This one had been $50, but it had been years since she had bought it. She imagined that even the most budgetiest of phones were more expensive than that now.

She tossed it on her bed and stormed off from her room. Literally as it turned out, as lightning lit the windows, and the door slammed loudly behind her. She did not bother with the stairs. She simply leaped over the balcony that ringed the second floor, and dropped to the wide tiles that crisscrossed the rotunda below.

She made her way to the gym that she and her mother had set up in one corner of the house, on the opposite side of the front wall from the foyer. She stepped up to the punching bag and let loose. Thankfully it was made of Armex steel and dragon silk, because she was not holding back. She gave it everything she had, and more. Punches, kicks, elbows, knees, she worked over the bag from top to bottom. After a while, she lost track of time as she simply pummeled the heavy bag.

Finally, she rested one hand on the top of the bag, and used that as a springboard to leap up into the air. What went up, had to come back down again. When she did, she brought down her elbow hard. The super steel chain that held it aloft snapped, and the dragon silk bag rocketed across the room. It crashed into a rack that held her free weights, and sent them flying like bowling pins around the room. One of the iron weights came straight back at January and bounced off her face. But she did not feel a thing.

Ragnarok. Blackjack had been right. It was a good name for the elbow drop. After that, it was all over.

She sighed and strode out of the room. At least it was more slowly than when she had entered. She walked past the utility room and bathroom that flanked the short hallway from the exercise room. That put her in a little intersection. To her right lay the rotunda in the center of the house, with the foyer and front door directly beyond it. To her left was a family room in the back corner of the house, with a fireplace, tall windows, and nothing much else right now. Finally dead ahead of her lay the kitchen, and the back door of the house at the far end of its attached dining nook.

January turned into the rotunda and stalked up the stairs to the second floor. She found Ryo sitting on the balcony above, just outside of his room. He was literally perched with his knees folded up, balanced on the thick wooden banister that overlooked the steps below. As January climbed up, she saw out of the corner of her eye that he rose to his feet. He walked along the thick wooden handrail, and made an opposite circuit of the octagonal space.

He finally hopped down to the floor and met her at the top of the stairs. It was in the little intersection between her bedroom, another large empty room in the corner of the house, and a bedroom kitty corner to that. Ryo's face looked stoic. Well, his face always looked that way. But this was more somber than usual, if that was possible.

"You saw social media then?" he asked plainly.

"Yeah," January fumed.

"Did you break something downstairs?" he went on.

"Yeah," January once again replied.

"Are you going to say something stupid online now?" he pressed.

"Yeah," January repeated.

She pushed past her friend, and walked back into her room. She noted that her phone was no longer on her bed. She turned back to Ryo, and she now saw that he held the Hamsung in one hand. She walked back and reached out for the phone. But Ryo simply faded from reality, and took the electronic device out of reach with him.

"Damn it, Ryo, give me that!" she cursed.

"Not until you promise to not do anything stupid." His voice issued from the shadows that now loomed in the doorway of her room.

January sighed again, much more loudly this time. "Fine," she snapped. "I promise not to do anything stupid."

"Now say it without lying," Ryo insisted.

"Arrrgh!" January turned around and stomped to her bed.

Once more, thunder rolled and lightning cracked deafeningly outside. Through the windows that lined the back wall of her room she could see the back yard, and the tall trees that rose up to form a screen around it. Several crows flapped through that space. They joined those who already sat upon her windowsill. More came by the second. She even noted a few magpies among them, as well as a rook and raven.

For some reason, that brought her a little peace. Crows did not care about social media. They did not care about bigots spouting hate speech, no matter how blatantly genocidal. They did not care about hate mobs on the internet. They lived lives blissfully free of such things.

But they did care about her. At least January had them, and friends who didn't let her get in her own way.

"I have a pretty good perception stat." Ryo's voice floated from out of nowhere. "I have noticed that you like to meet force head on, with your own force in direct opposition. It is the Rocky Balboa approach. You break your opponent's fist with your face. However, in judo we learn that rather than meeting opposing force directly, we use that force against itself. We divert it, and subvert it instead."

"Oh wise senpai of the pool, what is thy wisdom then?" January's voice dripped with sarcasm. Granted, Ryo was not the kind of person to realize that. In spite of the 19 he had rolled for his perception attribute, he did not pick up on that sort of thing.

"I have always admired George Takei and his online presence." Ryo stepped out of the shadows, and held out the phone before him.

"George Takei?" January wondered, "the old Star Trek guy?"

"Yes, I follow him," Ryo said, as plainly as ever.

That brought a raised eyebrow from January, one that a Vulcan would have been proud of. Aside from the Knights of Nerddom, January did not know that Ryo followed anyone. In fact, for someone whose literal job was computers, he spent almost no time online at all. Which January reflected probably made him the sanest of them all.

"His replies to bigots are some of the best," Ryo explained. "He does not stoop to their level. Instead he has some simple, wry comment that turns their words back on them. Usually by laughing at something they said and turning it into a joke. Failing that he just corrects their poor grammar."

"Now I see why you like him," January nodded. Ryo was always the "well, actually..." guy that everyone just loved at parties.

"When I am angry and upset, I try to be more like George," Ryo insisted.

"Okay, okay, you convinced me," January said. She held out her hand to her peer. "I'm not lying this time."

Ryo handed her the phone. She took the discount Hamsung in her hands and waited for its screen to unlock. Then she waited even longer to start Twitt, and even longer to open a window to make a new post.

She considered what Ryo had said. Her mother liked to say something similar: "Don't wrestle with a pig. You just get dirty, and the pig likes it."

So instead of matching the cruelty, or getting in a shouting match, she needed something simple. She needed something to laugh at, something to make Patricia look as ridiculous and full of it as she actually was.

Then she had it.

Wow, if I knew I was such a villainous mastermind I would have gotten myself a cool spinning leather chair, a cat to sit in my lap, and learned to speak with an English accent. Maybe I can at least find a used monocle cheap on Ebuy...

* * *

Jan is busy writing a new story! Hey, I have a Hamsung phone too!

I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so angry! Bang! Bam! Bong! Grrr! Gosh, you couldn’t pay me enough to have a public persona.

Ryo, despite his nerdism, does seem to have a maxed perception stat. And his advice to Jan is spot on. Wow, George Takei’s editing skills rival my own! Seriously, when I'm tempted to vent at someone online, I always try to bite my tongue and remind myself of my interweb rule #1: Be Gracious.

Her ultimate post in response is brilliant and perfectly done.


Nit: ’It was a place where women seemed to only made {make?} up a quarter of the population at best.’

Doctor Who. That's a Tardis, right? In the beginning. The guy with the red hair kind of looks like Vincent. There it is, Starry Night. YEAH, the redhead, that's what happens! Standing there tearing up in public.

Phew. Okay, never played Shadowrun or Earthdawn. I wanna text one of my old group from H.S., see if he ever did. Outside of the DnD-type games we played, he was also into a lot of the Avalon Hill stuff: anything to do with our Civil War or some of the earlier wars from the 1800s & 1900s. But I'll send him a text. Anyway, that's neat you're basing some of the Crow Show on lore from those games.

August 19, so this is the next day. Goodness. Alexandra lives in a horrible world. Good thing the phone rang. Yeah not that ringtone.

Whoa, she's going back to school, wow.

Hamsung! Yeah, somebody's really trying to get a hold of her. We all know the feeling, hon. Wonder who it could be, though?

Why did they need to release an abridged version of the journal? Is it to keep others from trying to do the same nefarious magics? Sort of like when the Pentagon (or whatever agency) releases classified material, they black some parts out. Because they don't want certain segments of population trying to know the secret to some bomb-making or whatever.

Let me shush.

Good gosh, Patricia released her info to the world? What the??? That's beyond annoying, it's dangerous. Criminal, maybe. Does Patty know Jan = Stormcrow? Hmm, doesn't seem so.

Wow. She's getting hammered by all this nonsense online. Didn't see this coming in the story! When that phone call happened, I initially thought it might be Hannah, calling from a different number.

I love the little conversation between Jan and Ryo. Already, they're talking like housemates: terse sentences, because they know each other so well. It's like a borderline argument because he cares.

The end is true. Ha ha, "spinning leather chair...." All of that is true. .jpg]Dr. Evil had the hairless cat, even.



I know, right? So glad we didn't grow up in today's world. My kid's way into social media because she grew up with it. I'm glad our generation didn't, though.

That makes sense, regarding astral space.

Ah, was wondering when we'd get back to that missing bomber...

That's as good a description of writing as any I've read. Amazing how fast your fingers move once you get into it. Or maybe it's more the feeling of ideas leaping from your mind to your screen.

Ah, was wondering if that's what January's idea was leading up to. Good call.

This reminds me that I should probably get a specialized ringtone for people I know. I do have specialize text chimes. But yeah, way too many scams out there. Smart of January to be careful.

I hear her. Some days it's easy, others it's a chore. Just have to keep at it, regardless.

Juggling superheroics with school at least gives January some preparation for the working world's reality of not having time for anything.

Wise of the Allies to redact their findings. Though that reminds me: they'll have to be careful about anyone snapping a photo of the writings (either of this, or some other questionable tome). If someone does, it'll be pretty easy to spread the word online.

Huh, at some point does Sean Carlson interview Putin in a desperate bid for relevance?

Oh no. But I have to say, January's taking this in stride. She knows what actions to take. It's sad that she had to be so prepared. I do not blame her for being angry.

Online discourse so often seems to default to toxicity. Obviously you have to stand for what's right. But sometimes it's also best just not to engage directly.



Ryo is wise! And Takei does have quite a wit.

Good start for January here!

Acadian: I also have a Hamsung phone! Like January's, it was one of the cheapest ones I could find.

Sadly, you don't even have to have a public persona to be the victim of these attacks. Like Nex Benedict. I included this side quest because this is just becoming such a common thing IRL. Also to reintroduce Patricia Fine, who will become much more prominent in future books.

On a cheerier note, Keanu Reeves and puppies

Ryo always has a 19 Perception in the D&D style games I create him in.

George Takei is a great editor! I am glad I have you to fill in his shoes for me!

I had to work for a while to come up January's response. George Takei was the key, I looked over how he handled trolls, and eventually that led me to Jan's Dr. Evil-like reply. Then I added the stuff with Ryo bringing up George Takei afterward, since it seemed only fair to acknowledge the inspiration.


Renee: The blue phone box is a Tardis.

Alexandra's world is literally that of the vast majority of movies, books, comics, and other forms of fiction. Count the number of women in the next action movie you see, and then see how many of them are also the romantic love interest of the white, male, cisgender, heterosexual protagonist. And note how many protagonists do not have a family, because they were all murdered by the bad guy.

Yes, they don't want to put everything in the Hierophant's journal out there because it would teach people how to summon Abyssals. Not to mention it would tell them that January's blood line is the key to obtaining the Rauðskinna.

What Patricia is doing is extremely dangerous. It absolutely gets people murdered. But sadly, acts of stochastic terrorism like that almost never see any criminal charges brought against the people who commit them. Chaya Raichick, who whipped up her followers to murder Nex Benedict even bragged about it openly. She has faced no charges for doing so, and I do not believe she ever will.


WellTemperedClavier: We will get back to the bomber, I promise. We just have to get through this last side quest, before the main quest picks back up again.

That is the problem with the internet. It makes keeping secrets really, really hard. It is why Blood Raven refused to turn over the Hierophant's journal in the first place.

Sean Carlson probably will do exactly that! Or maybe it will be Tucker Hannity. It's hard to keep track of them.

Unfortunately for January, her feud with Patricia Fine is just starting, and it won't remain on just the internet.










Detroit Riverwalk


The Roosterbeak is based on the IRL Roostertail


January in her fancy outfit

Avery being fancy

Ryo's gold and black outfit

Barbara

Cray




Book 12.16 - Broken Arrow

January stared out the window of the huge ballroom. The Detroit River spread out before her. Its waters gently lapped against the stones that lined the shore at her feet, beside the Detroit Riverwalk. At its simplest level it was just a wide concrete sidewalk that ran beside the river. But given the cafes, parks, pavilions, and the historic lighthouse that lay along its route, it was really an attraction, or a whole series of them linked together.

The Riverwalk stretched down the shore for miles to January's right, went past the Renaissance Center, and only came to an end near the Ambassador Bridge at West Riverfront Park. She knew that particular place well, because she and Blood Raven had staked it out during the River Days festival back in June. They had been concerned that the Hierophant might strike nearby. That was where Ryo had officially decided to become Ôkami, and the three of them had assisted in preventing a truck accident from turning fatal on the Ambassador Bridge.

To her left the arches of the MacArthur Bridge stretched out across the river to the shores of Belle Isle. Right in front of her lay the island's south-western tip, the site of the recent battle. A battleground that January herself had fought upon. Thanks to the most recent efforts of her friends and allies, the once blasted and ruined landscape had been restored to one of bucolic natural beauty. Grass waved over gentle hills, and trees rose to meet the evening sky overhead.

Of the buildings that had once graced this portion of the island, there were still none left. The Police Harbormaster that had sat to one side of the bridge was just completely gone. The same was true of the Boat House - which had really been a massive event space. Now only grass and trees remained. Even the concrete streets that had once crisscrossed the end of the island had disappeared, subsumed by the reinvigorated natural world.

Most evident of that reinvigoration was of course Y Ddraig Aur. Her eidolon rose hundreds of feet into the sky. That made her clearly visible from anywhere on the river. As near as January was, there was just no missing her. Her light literally spilled across the water, and competed with the electric lights overhead to illuminate the space within which she stood.

It was the Rooster Beak, one of the biggest, high-classiest event spaces in Detroit. January had heard about it all of her life. It was the kind of place people held weddings or proms at, and radio stations did shows from for events like the hydroplane races. All of this made it the ideal place for January's mother Barbara to hold a fundraising event.

She had rented out an entire floor of the massive event hall. It was all very white. With a white peaked ceiling high overhead, and narrow white posts between the ten foot high glass windows that lined two sides of the space. The round tables that filled the event hall were likewise covered in white tablecloths, and their chairs sported ivory cushions. However, LED lights set in the ceiling bathed the walls with a soft shade of lavender, and the chandeliers that hung down from the ceiling threw off an orange glow. All of this competed with the warm yellow aura that streamed in from the dragon that towered over the river nearby.

The dragon that towered over the river nearby... Even for a magician like January, that still took some getting used to.

"What a difference a month makes," Avery murmured from beside her. "Detroit's gone from being the Motor City to the Dragon City."

January turned to look at her best friend. He cleaned up well, and was dressed a blue-grey tweed sport coat over a black shirt and tie. A diamond stud (well, January knew it was actually zirconium) glittered from one of his ears. Ryo too was done up in style, clad in a soft gold sport coat decorated with diamond-shaped patterns, over a black turtleneck.

January imagined that if Blackjack had been there, he would have been sporting his tuxedo t-shirt. Too bad he was off making his movie. Then again, making a movie was a much better way to spend a night than at a political benefit.

January herself wore her best outfit. It was the same one she had worn to her first book signing at the Warren Library. It was a pink floral A-line dress, which she slung a long, dark velvet blazer over. She had upgraded her strappy flats from that appearance to a pair of stiletto heels. Her mother said walking in them was turning into a lost art. January would not want to fight in them. But she did love how they made her legs look, and how they clicked on the floor when she walked.

She was glad that Avery and Ryo were there. Otherwise she would have been bored senseless by all the old people that filled the hall. It was a fundraiser after all, that meant people with money to spend on a plate for a political candidate. That pretty much ruled out anyone else from her generation attending, or even the generation before hers.

As it was she could not stop thinking about her phone, and the melodrama unfolding on Twitt. Part of her wanted to reach out and swipe her phone from Ryo's back pocket to check it. Another part of her was thankful that she had given the device back to him. She did not want to see the train wreck that her online life had turned into. All because some disgruntled fifty-year-old woman had found out the hard way that the world did not revolve around her.

Well, part of the world still did. And that part was up in arms. They were always up in arms. If it was not for outrage, they would not feel anything at all. Without Vulpine News and other propaganda outlets like Len Schapiro and the Everyday Wire feeding them a constant stream of rage porn, they would have nothing live for.

The dinner part was over now, as was her mother's speech to the audience. It was nothing really outstanding, except perhaps that January knew that her mother was actually earnest when she talked about medical care being a human right that needed to be available to all, rather than a privilege reserved for the wealthy. Or that the prison-industrial complex was a clear and present threat not only working-class people, but all people. Or that a basic, livable wage should not be a thing to remember from ages past. Or that women's bodies were theirs, and theirs alone. Not objects for others to legislate over, and force them to give birth - or be sterilized - against their will.

Ok, some of that was downright radical in America. But in the rest of the developed world it was all taken for granted. Her mother's positions had her labeled as an extremist by some. But an actual leftist would have laughed at that. It was not like she was calling for making landlords illegal, or the redistribution of land to the poor, nationalizing corporations, or erasing borders; much less wheeling out a guillotine for the oligarchs.

Privately, January thought that if the billionaire oligarchs and plutocrats were smart, they would listen to liberals like her mother. Giving the common people enough to live on with a modicum of comfort and security was the surest way to avoid a revolution. Squeezing them until they literally could not survive under the current system left people with little other options. When you had nothing, you had nothing to lose. January had read enough about the Russian and French Revolutions of late to understand that.

But if January had learned anything about the upper class, it was that their wealth and privilege isolated them from reality in a truly stunning way. So it was not surprising that none of them had learned a thing from Nicholas II or Louis the XVI. They lived in a different world from people like her. Not even an invasion from another universe could wake them up. At least not until the guillotine blade came down...

Revolution and murder, January sourly considered that they were truly wonderful thoughts to muse upon for a Monday night. She wondered if she should share her insights with the hoity-toity boosters that filled the event hall. Then she thought better of the idea.

At least she no longer had to play the role of the dutiful daughter standing beside her mother and looking serious. Now she could just kick back and do what, party? That was not something she did even on her wildest days. Not even at the two end of the world celebrations she had been to recently at the Aura. Maybe she could break out some dice and get Avery to run his Shadowrun campaign...

Avery's chuckle brought January's head around. She raised an eyebrow of Vulcan incredulity, and leaned over to look over his shoulder. He had his phone out, and was scrolling through a social media feed. All the while he giggled with satisfaction.

"What?" January asked. "Did someone post a video of a kitten riding a lamb?"

"No, even better," her best friend crowed. "You know how Twitt refuses to take down any of the threats and slurs against you that clearly violate their terms of service? Well someone hacked the site. Now all those people just got doxxed. Their real names, phone numbers, addresses, emails, it's all appended to each post they made. Best of all, their statements have been forwarded to all of their contacts on and off the site. So now everyone they know can see what pieces of spleck they are."

"I suspect they already knew that," Ryo observed.

"Maybe, maybe not," Avery murmured. "I mean Patricia Fine worked for Vanity Bazaar, and they didn't know about her until she went out of her way to show them."

Normally January was not in favor of doxxing. It could do more than just embarrass someone. It could get them killed. But given that Patricia had literally just did it to her, turnabout felt like fair play. She was glad that the mysterious hacktivist had done the same in return to Patricia and her hate mob. Maybe she would feel differently about it later, but not today.

January could not deny that it felt sweet right now. Let people see them for who they really are. Stripping away their anonymity was literally the least one could do. Especially given that the social media app it was taking place on refused to act on it. They had not even suspended Patricia Fine's account, even though she was committing stochastic terrorism on their platform.

Who knew, maybe a few of the hate mob might even get fired from their jobs. Granted, that was a big assumption. But unlike Twitt, it appeared that other employers did not want to be associated with people making death threats. That could come back at them legally. January did not doubt that was why Vanity Bazaar had fired Patricia in the first place, rather than any sense of empathy or loyalty to marginalized people. Corporations were soulless entities after all, whose only interest was self-interest.

"That's not all either," Avery went on. "Over half the comments were by bots, and three quarters of them all go back to troll farms. Most of the people attacking you are fictitious."

"As usual, it is a small group of reactionaries pretending they are the silent majority," Ryo noted. "In actuality they are the very loud and obnoxious minority."

"Well, that's something," January murmured. It did feel a little better know that most of the outrage against her had literally been manufactured, but only a little. Seeing it all in text had a way of short-circuiting her rational, logical brain, and just punched her right in the emotional gut.

"So who is organizing the trolls?" She wondered.

"Think of the usual suspects," Avery reasoned. "Ever since Gamergate, a right wing pundit singles out someone to attack, and their followers blindly do so. Once it gets traction, billionaires like the Kuhn brothers and hostile foreign powers jump on the bandwagon, and add their troll farms to the mix to destabilize things even more."

"Since the pundits are paid by billionaires, it happens quickly," Ryo added. "Len Schapiro, Peter Jordanson, and the like are all directly supported by the Kuhn brothers, through their think tank the Augustus Institute."

Divide and conquer, January considered. Her recent presentation on the Labor movement had made it eminently clear that this was an ancient tactic of the ruling classes. Find ways to set the working class against itself, so they cannot act in common purpose. It was how they broke strikes and wrecked unions. And that was just for starters of course. It always got much worse.

"At least by now we've seen it before, and know their game plan," Avery went on. "Our mystery hacker was definitely ready for it."

January took a moment to wonder who that hacktivist might be. Her first glance was to Avery of course. He definitely had the chops to pull something like this off. Then again, there was also Cray. If Avery was a hacker, Cray was an uber hacker.

But she had been around both of them the entire evening. Neither had the time or opportunity to craft and execute such a complex cyber attack. So maybe it really was just some anonymous hacktivist out there, doing what they felt was right. Cray and Avery were not the only keyboard commandos in the world. It might just be that she had more friends than she realized, as well as fewer enemies.

During so many of their team's actions, January and her friends had been the ones to swoop in and rescue people in danger. It occurred to January that now she knew how that felt. Well, she knew again. She never would have survived school without the help of others after all. Only this time she had no idea who her mysterious benefactor had been, and she imagined that she probably never would.

"Your mother is on TV." Ryo noted. "Tell her to mention the podcast."

"I am not going to tell her to plug our show here and now," January rolled her eyes.

"You should," Avery said. "That is how capitalism works. Today you plug your podcast. Tomorrow you have the CIA lead a coup against a democratically elected leader because he gave unused land to poor people."

"Yaay me, the United January Fruit Company." She ambled over to where her mother Barbara spoke to Priya O'Neill. She came along in time to catch the end of it. From what her mother was saying it was plain that Priya had asked about the recently released journal of the Hierophant. It of course had included much about Julian and his motivations to become the Summoner, and assist the Hierophant with the Abyssal summonings.

"...I don't know if I will ever move on from my son's death, not exactly." She heard Barbara say. "It's so... difficult to come to grips with. I suppose I can take some solace in the fact that he did not directly kill anyone. It was the Hierophant who did that. But Julian still helped him do it. He was a part of it, and he knew what was going to happen. He made a conscious choice to do terrible things. I feel so badly for the people he hurt, and the people they left behind. I never imagined that he was capable of that. But I suppose every mother says that about their child. If I had known, I would have called the police, or better yet Stormcrow. She'd have stopped him."

"Still, this should stand as a stark lesson for anyone else out there right now who might be tempted to go down the same path. You might think you are a mastermind, and that you are playing 4-D chess with the authorities. But in reality you are just a tool, nothing but a useful idiot for someone else's harebrained scheme, just like my son was. Eventually you will end up the same - betrayed and murdered by your 'friends' once you are no longer useful."

"Even the Hierophant was no different. He thought he was a genius outsmarting Blood Raven and the Allies. But in the end he was nothing but a pawn too. His own journal showed that there was a trap in the ritual he used to summon the final Abyssal: the Shadow King who led their army. He thought he was so clever finding it and reversing it. Yet it still killed him in the end."

"Because Stormcrow reversed it back," Priya pointed out.

"Because he did it in the first place," Barbara countered. "He did all of it to himself, after he did it to other people. He voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party, and then the leopard ate his face. I am sure he was narcissistic enough to be shocked that his actions came right back to him. But no one else is."

"I was just joking, you don't have to talk to her," Avery murmured into January's ear as she strode over on clomping heels to stand beside her mother. He reached an arm out for her shoulder, to lead her away, but January held firm.

"I may as well say something," January whispered back to him.

She forced a smile to her lips when the local news reporter turned to her. She saw her giant, red-haired cameraman likewise turn his TV camera to her. The light on it indicated that it was still recording. Priya lowered her microphone to her side, and smiled at January.

"Would you like to make a statement?" she asked. "I can't guarantee that the station will run it. But I can try."

"I guess so," January said. She had decided to do this, but could not feel enthusiastic about it.

"Ok," Priya turned back to the camera, and raised the mic to her lips. "This is Priya O'Neill of Channel Five News. I am here today with January Ward, the daughter of Michigan senatorial candidate Barbara Ryan. Miss Ward has been undergoing an online assault today, conducted by followers of gender critical activist Patricia Fine."

"Let's be clear, there's no such thing as 'gender critical', that's just garbage," Barbara interjected. That prompted Priya to turn to hold out the microphone to her. "She's a transphobe. There is nothing special about her. She just hates women. Trans women like my daughter are just the easiest to attack and get away with right now. But the fact is that bigotry against any women, is bigotry against all women. It rolls down on all of us in the end."

"Take these bathroom bills. They are supposedly meant to attack trans women. But there are a lot more cis women than trans, and a lot more of them don't fit a bigot's idea of what a woman is 'supposed' to look like. So more of them are harassed, outright assaulted, and arrested then actual trans people. That's not to say it's ok to target minorities of course. It is simply proof that you cannot truck in this nonsense without it harming everyone else too. I don't think that is an accident either. It is a deliberate attack on all women."

"Look at the people who support her," Cray spoke up as well. "They are all anti-women, anti-feminist conservative organizations that actively work to roll back women's rights. Some of them even proudly self-identify as fascists. One is the dictator of a hostile foreign power. It's not a flex to have people like that supporting you. It should be a wake-up call that what you are doing is wrong."

"January, what do you say about Patricia's Fine's allegations that you had her fired from her job at Vanity Bazaar, and her previous podcast?" Priya turned back from Barbara to her daughter.

"Utter bollocks!" January insisted. Thanks to Blood Raven's genealogical research, she knew that she had some English ancestry. Apparently she had channeled one of those forebears to come up with that particular remark. Or maybe it was just that Ravi Prasad - one of the hosts of that very podcast in question - was a Londoner with a habit of saying the same.

"The Crow Tales Podcast asked me to come on their show as a guest. I did so, but was ambushed by Ms. Fine, who continually made transphobic slurs about me, and even the characters in the fiction I wrote. I hung up rather than be subjected to that. The other hosts of the podcast contacted me afterward, and insisted that they did not know she was going to act that way. They kicked her off the show, not me. I did not even find out that they had done so until after the fact, when they asked me to come back on the show and re-record the episode, which I did the next day."

"I honestly have not thought about Ms. Fine since then," January continued. "She's nothing special, certainly no one memorable. It's not like she's ever created anything in her life, or did anything of note. I had no idea that Vanity Bazaar had fired her over her manifesto, or that it even existed in the first place. The first I heard of it was when you called me this afternoon. Honestly, I had forgotten all about her."

"So how do you feel about her allegations, and of the mob of people online who are now inundating your Twitt account with threats and insults?"

"It's bulldrek..." Avery rumbled from the background.

"I feel pity for her, and them," January replied. That was not exactly true. She felt like breaking their faces. She was sure that she would have done exactly that, had one of them been in front of her. But Ryo had been correct when he had observed that sometimes the best way to meet force was not head on, but rather by subverting it.

"This is all they have in life. The only way they can feel good about themselves is by punching down against communities and individuals that are already marginalized and oppressed. They hide behind the internet and spread hate-speech in mobs. All they have is cruelty. I pity them."

"By tomorrow I won't even think about this," January insisted. It was not true, but she was not going to admit it. She knew better than to show weakness to bullies. Her mother had taught her that in junior high school. "Patty Cakes and her trolls are not worth thinking about. I have things to actually do with my life. Like my writing career, and the podcast that my mother and I create. By the time I wake up tomorrow, I won't remember any of this."

"You have a podcast?" Priya asked. She looked genuinely surprised. January wanted to smack the palm of her hand against her forehead. In fact, she did just that before she could stop herself. Could this day get any worse? Now she was going to be all over TV looking like some gauche, shameless self-promoter.

"Heroes and Villains," Avery piped up from over January's shoulder. "You can find it on all podcast apps."

"Ryo Kuroda is our audio engineer and editor," Barbara added, motioning to the young Japanese-American standing beside January. "Blackjack Schwartz of Epic Fail did our music. Avery Green here is moral support, and apparently our hype man. And of course January and myself research and present the podcast."

Well there it was, she had plugged her show after all. January hoped that Avery and Ryo were happy. It was another victory for capitalism.

Then a soft blue light crept into the room, and January turned her head to find its source. It was Gadget, and his powered armor gave off its ionic glow as usual. Striding beside him was Stormcrow. The superheroine wore her black armor with its white Raven Banner insignia upon its flat chest plate. Her large, ebon-feathered wings folded in as January watched, and tucked up tightly against her back like a twin-forked cape. Finally there was Ôkami, clad in his black, white, and gray samurai armor. As ever, his katana Chujitsu rode at his hip.

January had to blink at how uncanny it was. She stole a glance at Avery and Ryo beside her. Yes, they were still there, just as she was. She looked back at the three newcomers. They were not cosplayers, but the real deal. Those wings on Stormcrow's back were plainly real, as was the Gadget armor, the katana at Ôkami's hip, and everything else.

But more than that, they were the right height and the right proportions. Stormcrow's eyes behind her helmet were the right blue color, and the bare skin around her mouth was the right pale shade. They even spoke in the right voices as they came over to Barbara and the others.

"Ms. Ryan," Stormcrow said as she walked up, and offered Barbara her hand to shake. Then she looked to January herself, and echoed the greeting. "Ms. Ward."

January shook Stormcrow's hand, even as the television camera rolled. Introductions were made all around. January did not have to pretend to be star struck. She just had to let her all-too natural feelings of literally meeting a double of herself take over. It was so very, very weird, and strange, and just uncanny. It kind of made her doubt reality.

This had all been her idea of course. It was a plot she had hatched after seeing Kaelin create a potion that had polymorphed her into a hyena. Just as she had suspected, with some samples from herself and her friends, the alchemist had been able to make potions to perfectly mimic them as well. This would go a long way in protecting all of their secret identities going forward. It was living proof that they were separate people after all.

So in a way it really was Stormcrow, Gadget, and Ôkami that stood before them and wished her mother good luck in her senate race. In the very least, it was perfect duplicates of them, wearing their real super suits. There was really no way to tell that it was actually Kaelin, Harper, and Lighthammer under those suits, at least not without some serious magical senses.

January did not detect anyone with such powers as she looked out across the crowd of boosters. They were just as amazed and excited as her mother Barbara, if not more so. So far as she could sense in astral space, none were mages. Well, a few did possess some minor magical talent. But none were sensing in astral space. Certainly none would be able to see through the ruse. They did begin to crowd in closer and closer however, as everyone wanted to meet the capes.

They barely managed to get in a group photo before the trio of superheroes had to leave. Barbara's campaign manager Frank - January still found it strange thinking of Cray by that name - stood back to take the picture. The TV cameraman did the same with his professional video camera. He promised to send everyone copies, so they could post them online or put them up at home.

After all, it was not every day that ordinary people like January got to meet real superheroes, was it?

* * *

Cray’s picture link would not come up for me.

Jan in stiletto heels! Wow!

My initial thought about Jan’s helpful hacker was that it might be Cray. Cool how the same idea occurred to Jan.

Whoa! Kaelin’s polymorph potion finally bears some real fruit as January meets Stormcrow! A brilliant follow up after she saw how it worked vs the Dogman. This is a massive boost to her ability to protect her identity. And by extension, helps protect Barbara – which is important given her increased scrutiny as a wannabe politician.

Cray's pic is working for me on multiple different browsers. Maybe you just had a slow connection?

Earlier it was throwing an error 404 but now is working fine. I'm sure it was your magical presence that fixed it.

Imgr is has been running really poorly lately. That is probably why.

Imgur has been acting up lately. All pics look okay from here. But a couple times recently, a pic I've posted (and which I know works on this Windows 10 browser I'm typing thru now) will not display on my cheapie laptop, or vice versa, or on some other computer (like the ones I can access at work). But this happens while a second and third link right below the missing pic DOES display. Sigh.

Right, plus what Patricia's doing would be hard to prosecute.

I hear ya (in regards to movies).

Detroit Riverwalk looks pretty. In B'more we've got the Inner Harbor, which looks wonderful from all those scenic pictures such as this one. Get up close to the water though, and there's the trash floating around. Trash, occasional dead fish, oil slicks floating on discolored waves. Blecch. Somehow, I think the Riverwalk isn't as yucky.

Aw, look at them all in fancier clothes.

"eidolon" there's a new word for me. noun,plural ei·do·la [ahy-doh-luh], ei·do·lons.
1. a phantom; apparition.

2. an ideal. Very nice.

Rooster Beak sounds like direct opposite of that other event from earlier in the summer, the outdoor one with all the drinkers. Can't remember its name at the moment, dangit. The one where Jan's brother lost his life, if I'm not mistaken. Edit: JOBBIE NOONER!

Ah. So here's Barbara trying to raise some money. 💰 I like the detail, describing how colorful and decorative this place is.

And indeed, while all this fancy stuff is going on, there's this online sense of DOOM. Due to the wrath of Patty. Hmm, the Provocation of Patty.



thank you.

Uh oh, why is Avery scrolling??? And giggling while doing so? -------- Oh my gosh. Holy crap that's .... I don't know. It's bad and it's good. Nobody should have their info posted like that. But then, it's also sweet revenge, in a way. Since they pretty much did the same thing to Jan.

Doxxing, another new term. Dictionary hasn't got a meaning, so let's head to Urban Dictionary.

someone who reveals personal information such as an email address, phone number or home address.
“hey did you hear how max dressler doxxed that girl on tiktok??”

“omg why would he do that??”
“because he’s a little b1tch DUH”
“yo facts”



Interesting. Okay, so most of those thousands of replies on Twitt were just auto-generated, huh. Crazy.



This. Very pertinent. It just kills, to see bad text uploaded for all to view.

"hacktivist" another new term, although this time don't need a definition. I can see why she didn't want to plug her podcast due to all the stuff going online, but let's say none of the Patty Cakes stuff happened, would that make any difference?

The cosplayer part is wacky! I'm sort of confused, but that's okay. I should read that part again later this week. Edit: Okay, I get it now. Kaelin, Lighthammer, and Harper are "behind the suits". Still, that's really freakin' risky though, to put likenesses of the three capes in front of the three actual capes who're being represented!

On the other hand, that's going to make potential donors and voters take notice. The heroes who saved the world stand behind Barbara Ward. Well, I believe they already are known to be backing her, but now they're in front of her as well. Like, literally in front, making their support more overt.

Nice introspective moment for January to reflect on some of the recent events. She's gone far.

Important though the fundraiser is, I can empathize with January's boredom. I'm somehow never in sync with those kinds of events.

Calling the platform "Twitt" seems more and more accurate these days (though I'll admit I was never a fan of the platform, even before Musk).

And yeah, January's right. If the people on top want to stay on top, that means they have to give up something.

Hm, seems like someone's on January's side, at least. Though I can understand why doxxing of any kind would feel uneasy. That sort of thing can spiral out of control, regardless of the original intent. Also can't help but think of that old phrase, something about how the enemy of your enemy is only the enemy of your enemy, nothing more.

I'm sure you've heard that RL Twitter is mostly bots these days. It's kind of creepy to think about, honestly.

Barbara's doing some difficult work here. Ultimately, it's probably best for her to just be open about what happened. Everyone already knows, anyway.

January understands the politics of the situation demand a certain level of comportment. Not fun, but politics rarely are.

Wait, she's shaking Stormcrow's hand? Huh?

Ohh, I see. Clever move to to use the polymorph potion this way. Plus, it helps disassociate January from Stormcrow in the public eye. Seems like a productive night all around!

Acadian: January is not much of a girly-girl, but she can work her feminine charms when she wants to.

I originally was thinking that the team might have Gola use her illusion powers to trick people into seeing January and company alongside the Alliance in their super suits. But that had issues, namely that Gola's powers are telepathic. They affect people's minds, but not video cameras. Then when I was working on the Michigan Dogman chapter and came upon the polymorph potion idea, I realized that it was the perfect solution. Now it has finally reached its fruition.


Renee: The Detroit River does look nice up close. No garbage or dead fish or oil slicks or anything like that. It just looks like river water. You know, not that crystal clear blue of the Caribbean, but that murky greenish brown that freshwater lakes and rivers get because of all the mud and plants in them. People go fishing on the river, and even swim and kayak around Belle Isle where that is safe (the main channel is dangerous because of freighter traffic, and it can have some really dangerous undertows and riptides). Here is a kayaking video I just found that shows the river.

The Roosterbeak is the exact opposite! Jobbie Nooner is just a bunch of drunks on boats converging on an uninhabited island. The RL Roostertail is a classy event space.

I am surprised that doxxing is not in your dictionary. It is a pretty common term nowadays. Sadly because it is a pretty common thing since Gamergate. The same with Swatting, which it is often tied up with.

January would not want to plug her podcast on TV in any case. As she was thinking at the time, it just feels gauche and like shameless self-promotion to her. And it is, and everyone does it anyway. Which is why Avery was all for it.

It is not that risky of Kaelin and company to impersonate the Allies. They are using polymorph potions after all. They *are* physically identical to January and the others. As January noted, they have the exact same voices, the same shades of skin coloration, same bodies, etc... Only a skilled mage looking in astral space would have been able to see through it.


WellTemperedClavier: At this point in the story so much has happened, that almost every place January goes to has some sort of memory tied to it. Or to a location they pass to get to it. Like Belle Isle, or Gull Island, downtown Ann Arbor, etc... It is kind of neat. I like how that makes the world feel more real and solid.

My other alternate name for Twitt was Titter. I never got into it either. I remember when it first came out a friend explained it to me, and I just thought it was moronic. I never thought about how it could be used to promote toxic and outright evil propaganda upon the world. I just don't give a crap about what some stranger has to say about what they had for breakfast, or what they thought of a movie, or anything else.

The doxxing part made me feel uneasy too. That was ultimately why neither Cray or Avery was behind it. They would not have gone that far, because of how dangerous it can turn out to be. At the same time though, there was no denying how good it would feel to them to see it happen, given that turnabout is fair play and all. So this time it is an anonymous hacker. Which I did like, as it gave me the opportunity to show that not everyone in the world hates January. She has people on her side that she does not even know about.

Now January has proof that she is not Stormcrow. And a pic that she can put on her fridge of her shaking a real superhero's hand! Now that I think of it, it makes me think of Office handshake meme.











Witch House Floor Plans

MRAP

The Keffals Swatting was an inspiration for today's events




Book 12.17 - Broken Arrow

August 20 (Tuesday morning)

January lay on the cold marble floor of the Belle Isle Casino. A runic circle was drawn out around her in little yellow ridges of cornmeal. She traced the path of these from the circle she was trapped in, to an even larger summoning circle not far away. A third and final circle was connected to that as well. All three joined together to create a "V" shape. As Avery had once described it, it was a simple circuit: with two power sources feeding into a load.

She tried to kick out and sweep the small lines of cornmeal away. But her foot struck an invisible barrier, and bounded away helplessly. She rose to her knees next, and beat upon this invisible wall with her fists. But they too were turned aside like a leaf striking a glass window.

Then she heard the voice. It was a mocking laughter that rolled across the marble floor and filled her ears with dread. She knew it. It was the Hierophant's voice. It was her brother Julian's voice. It turned her heart to ice, and her knees to water.

She looked up and saw that the sound issued from a figure clad in a black and white Dominican friar's robe. A cloth mask covered his face. But somehow she could see through it regardless. It was the face of the Hierophant. It was the face of her brother Julian. It was the face of her father Romulus. It was the face of Patricia Fine. It was the faces of the bullies who had tormented her in school. It was even the face of a giant spider, that massive green-eyed djieien that had nearly killed her at Ferndale Pride.

The figure raised his hands and the ritual started. Only this time he was not the one who was thrown to the marble floor, and dragged across its cold, smooth surface. No, it was January who felt the air crushed out of her lungs. It was she who felt that invisible force smash her down into the marble below. It was she who flailed with fingers and toes against the smooth, polished stone.

What had gone wrong? It wasn't supposed to happen this way. It was supposed to be the Hierophant who was killed by his own spell. She had changed the runes, and reversed their working. What had happened? How had it gone wrong?

She stared wildly at the symbols in Elder Futhark that bordered the runic corridor that she was being drawn down, the one that led inevitably to the summoning circle at the heart of the massive rune. They were the originals. They had not been altered. Why had she not changed them?

Where was Gola? The raven mocker had been there before, and had distracted the Hierophant while she subverted his ritual. But there was no sign of the undead Cherokee woman. Not a single feather. Even the corpse of the original Dogman was missing, as were the other supernatural henchmen the Hierophant had gathered. There was only her nemesis, mocking her from his own circle that controlled the ritual. It was just her and him now.

And that terrible end point, which she now careened inevitably toward. She heard a new laughter now. It was a low, thick baritone, rich in cruelty and command. She instantly recognized its owner as Nátthrafn, her eight times great-grandfather. He was the Shadow King and harbinger of the world's end, and he was triumphant.

His laughter rose up all around her now, even as she felt her legs stretch out longer and longer. In a moment they popped out of their sockets at the ankles, then knees, and finally hips. Her flesh and bone stretched out beyond all recognition. They turned into a hideous form of spaghetti, pulled and twisted all out of shape or recognition.

A new series of screams came to her ears now. This was a desperate, high-pitched wail. It was a screech. It was the plaintive call of a lost soul that knew it was damned.

Finally it dawned upon January. She was the one screaming.

January bolted awake. She was at home in her bed. The light of the morning sun glowed through the windows that faced the back yard. That made it easy for her to see how rumpled her white sheets were, in addition to the dampness from sweat that now soaked them. The watermelon-colored comforter that usually topped them had nearly completely fallen away, and now lay half on the hardwood floor nearby.

She sat there for long moments and gasped for breath. With a conscious effort she willed herself to ease up, to slow her breathing, and feel her power. She drew up her magic from within herself, and allowed the cool stream of mana to wash through her frame. She tried to push out thoughts of the nightmare. Instead she concentrated on her breathing, and felt of the magic course within her.

Soon enough her heart slowed to a steady beat and her lungs relaxed into slow, regular breaths. She dragged her fingers through her long blonde hair, and let it hang down behind her shoulders and along her back.

It had just been a nightmare, again. It had not surprised her when they had started after the Battle of Belle Isle. She had been kidnapped and nearly murdered there after all. But she had thought she would have worked it out of her system by now. Obviously that was not the case. The bad dreams still came so many nights. So too did the all-too real flashbacks during the day, and less vivid ideations about the Hierophant's death.

She would just have to work through it. What else could she do after all?

She glanced at the glowing numbers on the electronic clock that sat upon the plain white end table beside her bed. It was still early. But January was a morning person anyhow. She might as well get up and get moving.

Maybe it had just been the sunlight that had caused the nightmare and woke her up? Sure, that was it. It was totally not that she was carrying around a load of trauma caused by the horrific events she had lived through. She was a superhero after all. That sort of thing did not bother people like her. Everyone knew that.

Maybe if she just kept telling herself that, she would believe it?

She was in and out of the bathroom, and was in the process of getting dressed when a new sense of threat blossomed within her mind. It was the witch bottles around the house. They were going off inside her head like a silent alarm, warning her that someone was coming up the driveway. In fact, it was a lot of someones, riding in numerous cars and vans and even an armored truck.

Through the wards she felt the auras of the men - it was almost entirely men - who rolled up to the house. They were dull with mundanity. But dark clouds of aggression roiled around them, tinged with the acrid stench of apprehension. Hands wrapped around rifles. Eyes dashed this way and that, looking for targets. Fingers lurked near triggers, ready to wrap around them and just squeeze.

January's bathrobe vanished, and she was in her Stormcrow armor an instant later. She ran out of her bedroom to the balcony that ringed the second floor rotunda in the center of the house. The grand staircase to her left curled down to the ground floor below. But instead of taking that, she bounced up to the handrail, and leaped across the space to the far side.

She was just in time to see Ryo spill out of his bedroom. He too was clad in his gray, black, and white Ôkami armor. The two of them raced to the loft in the right front corner of the house, the one that bordered the driveway. Through its windows they saw a fleet of police cars, SUVs, and even a military-style MRAP covered in armor plate.

Red and blue lights flashed brightly from the vehicle's roofs, while men in body armor spilled from their doors. They carried AR-15s and a few sniper rifles. Leading the pack of black-clad infantrymen was a cop holding a battering ram. It was a bright red steel cylinder capped with a wide flat head, which he held by handles that sprouted from its rear and top.

He raced straight up the steps of the front porch. His compatriots were just a step behind, their rifles at their shoulders and trained upon the windows. The first cop did not pause at the front entrance. Instead he used his momentum to send the battering ram directly into the face of the door, beside its knob.

January braced herself for the shock of the door splintering under the impact. But instead the cop and his weapon simply bounced off harmlessly. At the same time the wards attached to the house warned January of the impact. But she could also feel through them that they were quite intact, thank you very much. Keziah Talmadge had crafted those defenses. It would take far more than one man with a hunk of metal to break them down.

January balled her hands into fists. She heard her knuckles pop loudly as she raised them in front of her. She reached out to open the window. She had no idea what those cops were doing. But right now she did not care. Lightning flashed brightly against the sky outside, and Valhalla yearned for new arrivals...

Ôkami raised one hand to hers, and gently pushed her fists down. She glanced at him, and he silently shook his head. He did not need to say anything. At this point she had known him long enough not to need words to understand him. He was once more reminding her that this was not the time to meet force with force, but rather to subvert it.

He turned and went to one wall of the corner room that they stood within. His hand stretched out, and the secret panel that hid the stairway leading up to the sanctum magically melted away. January followed, seeing his plan. Along the way she spoke to the mini-computer built into the left forearm of her armor.

"Sága, call Cray, emergency," she said clearly.

They charged up into the sanctum a moment later. But they did not pause to take in the grandeur of the space-warping room, which was both a cube, a triangle, a sphere, and numerous other shapes and sizes all at once.

Instead January summoned the waypoint hidden within the mosaics laid into the floor. It responded to her blood, and a moment later it glowed to life as a pentacle around them. January flipped through the rolodex of other waypoints, and settled upon the Raven's Nest. She focused her will upon that place, and the power within the runes joined her waypoint to it.

The magic faded, and then they stood in the western quadrant of their skyscraper headquarters. This had once been Blood Raven's genealogy study. Now it was a Gothic-Victorian sitting room, with red velvet couches and chairs set around elegantly carved wooden tables. Through the windows outside rose the tan stone and decorative columns of the Book Cadillac hotel, and the Brutalist concrete skyscraper of the Federal Building.

They both strode through this lounge area to Cray's computer domain, which lay kitty corner to the south-east. Now the Detroit River and a forest of skyscrapers rose up beyond the French windows that lined the wall. The hacker was not there. But his computers still glowed with life around them. Ôkami strode to the massive table computer that took up the center of the space, and began tapping upon its screen.

"Cray here," the elder hacker's gruff, but mellow tones filled January's ears from the earpieces in her helmet.

"We need you at the Raven's Nest," January explained crisply. "The police are trying to break into the Witch House."

"What!" Cray exclaimed. "What the hell? Why?"

"We were hoping you could tell us that," Ôkami's voice echoed through both January's comlink and the air around her.

"I'll be right over," the hacker explained.

January waited while Ôkami brought up the security cameras they had long ago installed around the Witch House. January had never imagined that they would be needed for more than identifying possible porch pirates stealing packages from the front door. She had never expected to need them to observe a full on assault upon her home.

Welcome to America.

"This has something to do with Patricia Fine," Ôkami declared as they both stared at the video camera footage around the house.

"Crap, yes," January planted one palm against her forehead. "She doxxed me all over Twitt yesterday. But I was expecting angry letters, threatening pictures, swastikas spray painted on the sidewalk. Not the cops."

"Remember the Death Dealer?" Ôkami referred to the errant chemist who had created Crystal Death so recently. It was the name the state police and later the media had used for him. But January had never liked it. It made him sound too cool, like the protagonist of a Frank Frazetta painting. He was just a loser with a chemistry set who had killed a lot of people, and reduced others to brain-dead vegetables. He was more like the Crystal Choad in her mind.

"His henchman lost to a kid on World of Guncraft, so he called the cops on him," the samurai reminded her.

"Yeah, what was that guy's name?" January wondered aloud. That was when she had met the Emergency Response Team of the State Police, and that asshole who led them. Then again, it was also when she had met their sniper Nyah: yet another goddess to add to the list. Where did they all come from? Was there an island of super hotties that they just floated out from at regular intervals?

"ThunderRhino666," Ôkami noted. How he could remember that was beyond January. She had almost completely forgotten the guy.

"Oh yeah, Mr. Midlife Crisis himself," January murmured. "That guy blew their whole operation, over something as petty as being tea-bagged in a video game."

"This is why we have to keep our cool," Ôkami declared. "I use people like that to remind me of how not to behave."

January felt her cheeks redden at the remark. She had been ready to go out and throw down with the cops on the front porch of her house. What had she been thinking? The answer of course was that she had not been. She had simply been reacting on emotion. In her case, the instinct to fight back when attacked.

Even still, when she looked at the police milling around her home, she wanted to ball her hands into fists and punch something. As a Queer person, the police had always been amongst the greatest of the boogeymen in her world. They had a long and sordid history of institutionalized violence against people like herself after all. Fighting back against them had been what Stonewall and the Gay Liberation movement had been all about.

But as an albeit vaguely defined leftist, January's natural instinct was also to work with others in a community. That liberation movement had not secured rights for her and others through individuals acting alone, but by groups organizing and acting in concert. It was the same reason there was an eight hour work day, and a forty hour work week, and the like. People acting together were always stronger than by themselves.

January's whole super life had been that way. Right from the very start she had had a partner in Gadget, giving her real time intelligence during every fight, and even just lending her advice. She never would have learned to use her wings without Lighthammer. She never would have survived the djieien at Ferndale Pride without Blood Raven. She never would have defeated the salamander at Montserrat without Calypso and Viuda. She never would have survived the Hierophant's summoning circle at Belle Isle without Gola. She would never have escaped the Abyss without Hannah.

Even before then, she never would have made it through school with people like her gym teacher allowing her to change in her office. Not mention without her mother and Adin to teach her martial arts. Then there was Blackjack and the other Knights of Nerddom, who were always much better than she was at cleverly insulting the bullies when they picked on her.

All of her successes came with the help of others. So naturally as a cape she wanted to work with authorities like the police, and attorney general, and governor. But times like this made it really, really hard not to take the Blood Raven approach instead.

Cray came in while she still fumed. The normally impeccably dressed hacker wore his pajamas and a threadbare bathrobe. His graying hair was a mess above his glasses, and a half-eaten bagel protruded from his mouth.

He mumbled something through a mouthful of his impromptu breakfast, and raced over to the table computer. His fingers flew across the screen that stretched out across the table top, and one holographic window sprang up after another in his wake. Reports and other data flowed down these floating displays.

January and Ôkami stepped back and let him work. January could not keep up with everything the hacker was doing. She did realize at one point that he was cracking the Sterling Heights Police Department's network. More data spilled out afterward, among them was an email sent to them earlier that morning, along with the City Manager, Mayor, and members of the City Council.

"Hello, my name is Jen Ward…I am a transgender person. I have had enough of you anti transgenders being in positions of power and oppressing us. You finally broke me, you cisgendered transphobic a-holes. When this is over this entire city will remember my name. I have killed my transphobic mother and today I will be going out to city hall and shooting every cis-gendered person I see with a gun I illegally acquired."

A photo of an AR-15 was attached.

"This was sent earlier this morning," Cray murmured. He moved down along the table computer, and created even more screens. She saw email addresses, IPs, and MACs flowing across display after display.

"January would not misspell her name as 'Jen'," Ryo noted. "And the rest of it is just nonsense. It is a conservative's idea of what a progressive sounds like."

A really well-done and effectively haunting dream that really emphasizes that sometimes the fight’s not over just cuz the killin’ stops. On a lighter note, it shall be some time before I’m able to enjoy a plate of spaghetti without imagining poor Jan.

Swatted! Jan’s initial response is predictable; after all, the force at her door has clearly violated the Buffy doctrine. Fortunately, Jan’s voice of reason does not dwell inside her but is her sage roomie. The cops don’t know it’s a Swat yet and if Jan responded with force, they’d be victims too.

Hopefully, Cray can sort out the culprit behind the assault. Jen Ward indeed.

Okay yes, that doesn't look so bad in that video. When we get outside the Inner Harbor as it leads closer to the Chesapeake that's also not so bad. It's only close in, ironically where all the tourists are. Granted, most of them ain't looking into the water...

I looked up Doxing at Dictionary.com! Actually, I spelled it with two X's last week, that's why it didn't show. Because I just tried it with one X and now a definition pops up. ... But then you also spelled with like doxxing. Hmm. Mystery.

Ah, I see. She's not wanting the "look at me" thing going on, now that she's in front of a bigger audience. And okay, got it (about the cosplay part). Uh oh. Why is she lying on a cold floor? OKay, seems like this is ... she's having a flashback. Or a nightmare.

OH my gosh, Nátthrafn is laughing. All these evildoers, they just love to laugh, diabolically so. EEsh, this is messy. He's tearing his 8x great-grandbaby apart. Come on, now.



That's a great statement. So true. I used to say stuff like this all the time as a new mother during the 2000s...

Whoa. Rifles? Red & blue lights. Big trucks. Remind us, how close are the Witch House neighbors? Are they gonna be able to see all of this as they head to work, get kids ready, etc.?

Had to look up Frank Frazetta's work. Here's some of it, anyway.

World of Guncraft! There are some humor moments during this scene, despite all the ruckus going on. I'm LOl'ing a bit, which I kinda feel bad about. "Island of super-hotties!" It's like Ryo & Jan are so accustomed to being surrounded by chaos they can make jokes, even as the world's falling apart.

Gotta say though, it is weird they're trying to break into the house at all. Why not just knock? Makes me think something really powerful is going on. Maybe President Frump himself is somehow involved, trying to stop Barbara Ward. Or something.

Yeah exactly. Jen Ward? That's exactly the first thing I noticed too, that's not how her name is spelled at all, even casually. And why would she sign her own name to such a document anyway?

Sheesh.

Your story does have a strong sense of place and that's partly because of the attention to detail you provide.

I think Twitter would have been silly but mostly harmless had it stayed as a microblogging platform. What genuinely baffles me is how it became the preferred platform for discourse despite being uniquely ill-suited for the job. But I'll stop myself here so I don't rant (again).

Ominous scene here. At first I thought this was a flashback, but it instead seems to be a nightmare. Evil wears many faces, but never really changes.

Oof!

All right, nightmare's fading at least. But that sounded like a nasty one.

I'm also a morning person. Always get drowsy after lunch.

The thought about trauma does make me wonder if there's some kind of therapy network for supers? Because that's a group that'll run into trauma pretty regularly.

Oh shoot. She's been swatted?

Still love this waypoint system.

ThunderRhino666. Name definitely checks out.

Huh, is this a deepfake? Seems like we're getting closer to that IRL, which is not something I care for.

That was one seriously intense dream.

Acadian: January is nearly invulnerable physically. She shrugs off the hardest hits. But her nightmares and continued struggle with PTSD are a way I can still show that she is vulnerable, and that things still hurt her in other ways. It helps me keep her human, in spite of being a superhero.

I got the spaghetti reference from descriptions of falling down a smaller black hole. The gravitational forces are so wildly different just a few feet apart that it rips you apart like spaghetti as you go in. You get spaghettified.

Thankfully a calmer, wiser head was there to reel in January. She was ready to send some souls to Valhalla. She will have the opportunity to return the favor to Ryo in today's episode.

Now it is time for Cray to show why he is on the team.


Renee: Now that I think of it, I don't think I have ever seen the term "doxxing" with only a single "x". I had no idea it could be spelled that way.

The Witch House is set back from the road, but the other houses are otherwise the 'normal' width apart. So her neighbors are going to get an eyefull.

That is Frank Frazetta. He did all the Conan covers. He loved drawing scantily-clad barbarians bursting with muscle and swooning maidens at their feet.

It is a swat raid. They don't knock. They just burst in with no warning and point guns at people. No-knock raids like this are very common, and very dangerous for everyone involved, including the cops. It is a great way to start a gunfight.


WellTemperedClavier: That was probably January's worst nightmare, in the literal sense. She's a long way from being over Belle Isle and the hunt for the Hierophant.

I don't see there really being any sort of super therapy. If you were known as being the therapist for the supers, that would put a huge bullseye on you. Individuals might seek out help on their own, but how much they tell their therapists would obviously be a calculated decision. One January will be forced to make in the future.

It is an email, not a video.


macole: I worked on that dream for a bit, taking what really happened, and then subverting it to its worst possible conclusion. Ironically it is what would have happened if January had taken Blood Raven's advice and killed Gola. With the raven mocker out of the picture, she never would have survived the summoning.







Jeffrey Fagan is based on RL Geoffrey Fieger

Sabaton - Winged Hussars


Book 12.18 - Broken Arrow

"It's the only email that has ever been sent from the account," the hacker explained. "It's from a burner phone, paid for in cash from a gas station. It's the only time it was ever used. It's not active now. If I had to guess, I'd say it's probably in pieces in the back of a garbage truck by now. But I do have its last location."

"The Neo York Inn?" January read from over his shoulder.

"It's just off Central Park, in New York City," Cray added. "Oh look, they charge both daily and hourly. Whoever sent the email used their Wi-Fi. But that's a good thing. Unless it is wide open, you probably have to rent a room to get on their network."

"Patricia Fine lives in New York." Ôkami pointed out.

"We don't know it's her yet," Cray argued. "I mean you're probably right. But we don't know yet."

"I know it," the samurai intoned. "She attacked January online yesterday. January spoke out against her last night. This is her response. We need to strike back and end this for once and all."

His right hand fell to the hilt of his sword. January could swear that she could hear his knuckles pop as they clenched about its cloth-wrapped grip. He looked like a coiled spring, ready to burst at a moment's notice.

"Whoa, slow down," Cray cautioned. "Don't go off half-cocked. It won't make things any better, just worse. We need to be strategic in our response."

The room remained silent for long moments. January of course, agreed with Ryo. In that moment her own dander was up. If Patricia wanted to throw down, she was here for it. If the other woman had been there in front of her, she could not say what she would have done. Well, yes she could. She would have killed her in a heartbeat.

This was different from her other battles. The djieien at Ferndale Pride had been trying to kill her, so too the Nazis at Motor City Pride. Even the Dogman would have pulverized her if given the chance. But none of them had attacked her, specifically, personally. She had just happened to be there when they went their rampages. They had targeted her because she had been right in front of them.

But this was personal, in a way it was almost intimate. Patricia Fine had gone out of her way to single her out of billions of people on the planet to attack. It was all about her and January. It was not just a fight that January happened to show up for, nor was going through January a means to an end. It was the end itself. This was a personal vendetta.

But a better valkyrie of her nature reminded January that while sometimes it was appropriate to meet force with opposing force; at other times it was better to subvert it, and use it against itself. January forced her fingers out of the fists that they had balled themselves into. She had not even realized that she had done that. She had been so ready for a fight.

"Remember ThunderRhino666," she reminded her friend, and herself. "Let's not make the same mistakes he did."

Ôkami finally relented, and eased his hand from the hilt of his weapon.

"You are correct," Ôkami finally said. He sounded as emotionless as a Vulcan science officer. He placed both of his palms upon the table computer, and leaned forward over its screen. "I will admit this has me very... upset."

It was easy to forget that her neurodiverse friend had feelings, given now stoic and guarded his exterior always was. But this was a clear reminder that he felt things just as deeply as everyone else, as passionately as January did herself. He just did not know how to express those feelings to others most of the time.

"So how do we fight back," January sighed. She really, really wanted to work some anger out on someone, like some cops or Patricia Fine. But as much as her blood thundered for vengeance, her head told her this was the time to calculate and strategize.

"We fight fire with fire," Cray declared. "In this case, we fight the law with a lawyer. Did I ever mention that we have one on retainer? Blood Raven saved his life once, when he got into a pretty sordid blood dance with one of our state's previous attorney generals. We still have all the dirt on him. He's been working for us ever since."

"That is 'attorneys general'," Ryo helpfully chimed in.

"You're blackmailing your lawyer?" January said incredulously.

"Well, he was blackmailing the attorney general." Cray said. "It's a whole slimy affair, with illicit sex, campaign funds being funneled into secret accounts, and a hit man... They were all dirty. Blood Raven prevented any deaths, and kept it out of the news. But she also kept all the evidence."

"So she had an attorney general and a lawyer in her pocket," Ôkami nodded. "She could have schooled Machiavelli..."

As Cray had said, it all seemed - well - sordid to January. She would just as soon have seen them all sent to prison. But then again, perhaps Blood Raven had put them to some actual positive use instead? It was not like January was a huge supporter of the prison-industrial complex herself. It just made the bad people worse. At the same time it provided corporations with ever cheaper slave labor, and deprived still others in the working class of a living wage.

Cray's fingers flew over a new screen, and a moment later a phone app appeared in the air above the table computer. She heard a ringtone buzz through the air, and a moment later it picked up. Finally a rough male voice came over the line.

"Yes," was all he said.

"Mr. Fagan, this is Cray," the hacker replied. "We have some work for you."

"I thought Blood Raven had retired," the other man said.

"Don't concern yourself with that," Cray insisted strongly. "Just remember who has the receipts."

With that the elder hacker filled him in on what was happening, and gave him the address of the Witch House. Cray's tones, while normally gruff, lost their normal softness while he spoke with the lawyer. Instead his voice was the harsh grind of a tank tread. January knew exactly what those sounded like now. When it was done, the hacker disconnected the line, and leaned back with a heavy sigh.

"I do not like that man very much," he said in tones that were once again soft and grandfatherly. "He's a bully. You can't let him push you around."

"Jeffrey Fagan is our attorney?" January said with amazement. "I mean, even I have heard about that guy. He's like, in every high profile case this city ever has."

"Yeah, he loves to see his name in the papers," Cray murmured. He went back to work and started in on the motel that the threatening email was sent from. More screens popped up, and code began to flow across them, like milk spilled across a tabletop. "He'll take any case that gets him publicity, or a big payout."

"Everyone deserves a defense," Ôkami shot back.

"Yes they do," Cray agreed. "But this guy's a parasite. He isn't burdened by ethics or a conscience. He's the reason why when people have a revolution, the first thing they do is kill all the lawyers."

Cray unearthed even more information as Fagan headed to the Witch House. The hacker cracked the network of the Neo York Inn with ease, and accessed both their booking database and security cameras. With it he was able to compile a list of guests who were there at the time that the false email was sent.

Among them was a familiar former journalist who had paid in cash for an hour-long stay under a false name: Janice Raymond. The name threw them off at first. Then January remembered it. She was a prominent transphobe from history. Raymond was one of the founders of what had grown to become modern TERF ideology.

The camera feeds at the front desk and in the hallways however clearly showed Patricia Fine checking in at the same time that particular name was rented a room. The middle-aged woman with straight blond hair was readily distinguishable, especially given all the pictures of her in the news of late. Being cancelled had put her all over every media outlet after all, as it always did with every conservative who claimed to have been so treated.

The security cameras showed her walk from the lobby, down a hallway, and vanish into a room. They did not extend inside. Five minutes later the email was sent. She left just a minute after. That gave her a total stay of just six minutes. Clearly she had just gone there to use their Wi-Fi.

"She thinks she's clever," Cray noted. "She probably saw something like this in a movie. But she could have saved her money and just gone to a library. A lot of other places have open Wi-Fi networks too."

Cray sent all of this off to Fagan. In the meantime January and Ôkami used the waypoint network to return to the Witch House. There they changed out of their armor and back into normal clothing. They left their uniforms in the sanctum. No cop was ever going to get into that room, much less find them there.

They also did a quick once-over of their rooms to make sure there was nothing else to link them to their super identities. There was not of course. Operational security was something that Cray and Blood Raven had always been stringent on. If for no other reason, they had ordinary people in the house on the regular after all. People like January's mother Barbara and the other Knights of Nerddom. It would be rather embarrassing to leave a cape just lying around for one of them to stumble upon.

Finally they strode to the second floor loft in the corner of the house, directly above the front door. From there they watched their new attorney speaking to the police in the driveway. They could not hear what was said. But his gesticulations made it plain that Fagan was impassioned. Given what January knew of the man's reputation, he was probably threatening to sue both the individual cops and the entire city out of a fortune. That would not have been an empty threat either, given Fagan's history.

January recognized the head cop out there now. It was none other than Dale Nowakowski, the chief of the Sterling Heights Police. Unlike most of the other officers on site, he was not decked out in full tacticool military gear. Instead he wore a plain cloth uniform. He looked practically antiquated that way, like cops from movies in the 70s or 80s.

January remembered him from the last swatting incident she had been involved in. That had once again been during their hunt for the maker of Crystal Death. His henchman ThunderRhino666 had called the cops on an innocent boy because of a video game. Only that time it had been the State Police's Emergency Response Team that had been doing the swatting. Nowakowski and his own people had shown up later, after Gadget had called them to act as some sort of balance to the state troopers.

Nowakowski had seemed like a pretty level-headed guy at the time. Granted, it had not been hard to tell that he had been more than a little miffed at the Staties conducting an operation in his city without his approval, let alone knowledge. In the very least he had been willing to work with January.

They had at least forged a strong enough relationship for Nowakowski to later call her in for a meta-human disturbance at the Lakeside Mall. That had resulted in January's first meeting with both Hannah and her father - Hungry Ghost. Granted, he had seemed a little exasperated when she had called him back afterward to tell him that she had not apprehended anyone, and that it had all been just a big misunderstanding.

But that had all been in January's identity as Stormcrow. He did not have any relationship at all with January Ward: student and writer. That left her with no leverage at all with him, except for hopeful goodwill. Well, goodwill and a good lawyer. January suspected the latter would get her a lot further than the former.

Trusting to that lawyer, she and Ryo finally came out when Fagan waved for them to do so. Up close, she saw that her attorney was a slender man with a mop of brown hair that had started to turn gray. He had a long face, with a prominent nose and narrow eyes that were practically slits. The latter gave January the impression that he was a snake, rather than an attorney. Then again, the Venn diagram between the two was a single circle.

Chief Nowakowski made a stark contrast to the lawyer. The police chief had short, jet black hair that was impeccably combed. It looked like it might have been molded to his head, like the hair of a plastic doll. No, action figure, January reminded herself. Boys had action figures, dolls were for girls.

In any case, Nowakowski was a veritable Polish prince, standing tall and straight, with chiseled features and a rock hard frame. January could easily imagine him as a Winged Hussar in another lifetime, riding to break the Siege of Vienna with a Sabaton song playing in the background.

January and Ryo instantly got everyone's attention the moment they stepped out of the front door. It was an unpleasant sensation, having dozens of guns pointed at your face. January knew that she was bullet-proof, and that Ryo could make himself intangible. So there was really nothing to be afraid of. But that rational part of your brain became very quiet when you were staring down the barrel of a gun being pointed at you with hostile intent. Well, with any intent really. It was not like guns were picky about whom they shot.

January also noticed several TV news vans parked on the shoulder of the street out front, with their antennas cranked up high into the sky. A cordon of police held back both cameras and reporters, and just random passersby. Given that her house was set back from the street, they were far enough in the distance that it was hard to recognize individual faces. But January imagined that most of her neighbors were there.

With a word from the police chief, the SWAT team and assembled patrol men and women lowered their weapons. January realized that they had both stopped in their tracks. Now she and Ryo stepped forward once more, and walked up to Nowakowski and Fagan.

"These are my clients, Ms. Ward, and Mr. Kuroda," Fagan said. "As you can see, they are surrendering themselves and cooperating in every way. Not that there is any good cause to suspect them of a crime, as the information I have provided you clearly shows that neither of them were responsible for the email that was sent earlier this morning."

"So you have continually - and strenuously - asserted Mr. Fagan," the police chief grumbled. He did not look happy with any of these events. He turned his head from the attorney to January and Ryo. "We have a warrant to search the premises and your persons. Your legal counsel has it in his possession at the moment. But it seems that you have very strong doors and windows."

"Good old Michigan oak," January murmured. "I guess they don't make it like they used to. The door's open now though."

She glanced back, and reached out through the astral to the witch bottles within the house. A moment later the front door creaked back opened, as if of its own accord.

"You are welcome to go inside and look of course," January said.

With that both of them were searched by police officers. It was quite an uncomfortable - and invasive - experience. January had to restrain herself from reacting when they grabbed at her nether regions. Her logical, rational mind told her that it was a place where people often hid weapons and other objects. But again, that part of your brain went out the window when someone was getting all up in your private parts.

"You know, the last time someone did that she kissed me first."

January did not know where that brazen, witty remark came from. Surely she could not have come up with something that snide and clever on her own. Usually she could only do that after thinking about it for a week after the fact. Then again, it was technically accurate. The last person to have touched her down there was of course Hannah, and she had indeed kissed her first, numerous times in fact.

The witch bottles around the Witch House's grounds told January that an old Ford Bronco had arrived. She turned her head to see her mother and her campaign manager, Frank Wigand, step out of it. Frank - actually Cray of course - looked calm and self-assured. Her mother was the opposite. Her eyes were as dark and ominous as the sky overhead, which was now blanketed with heavy thunderheads.

"Is this really necessary?" The anger was clear in her mother Barbara's voice when she finally stormed near. Her hands gesticulated wildly in the air to underscore her point. "Why is my daughter being treated like some... some... gangster? Is she under arrest?"

"Ah, Ms. Ryan, the candidate..." Chief Nowakowski turned to face Barbara. "We received an alarming threat of a terrorist attack this morning, under the name of your daughter. We are currently investigating the matter, and conducting a search of the premises."

"That's preposterous!" Barbara exclaimed. "My daughter is no terrorist! Besides, she's much too smart to just tell the police that she is going to commit a crime ahead of time. Who does that? This is clearly someone impersonating her. And I don't have to wonder too hard about who that could be, given that a lunatic doxxed her online yesterday."

"We are aware of the evidence that Mr. Fagan has presented to us," Chief Nowakowski explained patiently. "But it will have to be confirmed by our own investigation. Given that it involves another state, we will have to work with the New York City authorities. That could take some time."

"Am I under arrest?" January asked. She kept her chin up and put up a calm, assured front. In reality her heart raced as wildly as it had in any of her battles against supervillains. But she was not about to show her apprehension. She knew better than that.

"Never let the bullies see weakness or fear. Never let them know how much they really bother you." Her mother had told her when she was twelve. "They are predators. When they smell blood they will just attack even more relentlessly."

"No."

January let out an audible sigh of relief just the same when the police chief gave his answer.

"We will still need January to come in to the station to make a statement, and Mr. Kuroda as well." The police chief went on in a stiff, formal tone. "And we will need to complete the execution of the search warrant. Given the severity of the circumstances, I have to fully explore every avenue of investigation."

"I do agree that this all has a smell to it." Nowakowski's voice finally eased up. "It's very similar to another incident with an online streamer that happened in Ontario recently. In fact, the text of the email looks the same, word for word."

"She didn't even have the originality to make her own fake email," January said under her breath. "She had to copy someone else's"

January already knew that the police would do nothing about Patty Fine. They would drag their feet, claim interdepartmental delays, file the paperwork, and ultimately just ignore it. That was typical. On the other hand, at least it looked like she would not be spending the night in jail. Let alone the rest of her life.

Still, she wondered if she could bring a civil suit against Patricia Fine? January was not by nature a litigious person. The thought had literally never entered her mind before in her life. But now that she had an attack dog of a lawyer, it seemed a shame not to let him off his leash. Besides, Cray had a point. If Patricia Fine wanted to use the law to attack her, it was only appropriate to strike back in the very same manner.

* * *

They don't knock but I imagine they're gonna feel mighty embarrassed after this 'raid'. Not much to find in the Witch House, anything they'd get curious about might get cloaked over by magic. It's all based on false information. Not the first time SWAT teams have been misled, of course.



It's because Twitter is so text-based, right? At least this was true before it became X, or whatever it's supposed to be called nowadays.

I like how Cray tempers Okami early in the story. See, that's one of Cray's 'super' powers, the ability to reason and add temperance, in addition to all his computer skillz. Patty's to blame for trying to subjugate January online, but is she really behind organizing the raid? I have a hard time seeing her using a burner phone, thinking that far ahead.

Good thing their lawyer is a bully. Gonna want that when facing the opposite side, if things get that far, at least.



Lord, have mercy! And she also was the one to use that burner phone, it seems. Crazy. It's like she went through that trouble. Normally this might be enough to get away with it; she just could never anticipate a Cray would not only figure out her movements, but get a capture of her on camera as well.

"tacticool"... another new term! Found it on Urban Dictionary once again, not at Dictionary.com. 1.) A derisive term for cheap knockoff versions of real, high-end tactical firearm accessories such as red dot sights, holosights, flashlights, lasers and scopes.



Boys have journals, diaries are for girls. Men have man purses and 'bags', actual purses and pocketbooks are for women...

Yeah that's gotta be a moment. Having guns pointed at them. Even though chances are the lawyer's gonna set this right, there's still that moment. Jeez, and the press is also here? :facepalm: Need a facepalm emoticon here at Chorrol.

Ooooh, they gonna do a search! This should be interesting!

This entire section of the story is different than earlier episodes. No monsters or demons, now it's more about politics and insinuations and ... people!

Calmer heads prevail and the situation, while not pretty at all, gets resolved without bloodshed.

And the old hacker catches Patty in the act! An interesting twist as Cray brings in Blood Raven’s pet lawyer. This could get fun!

Speaking of Blood Raven, I came across a song/vid that just screams Blood Raven in Boston. Her appearance has changed of course but you can tell from the young group of witches under her wing and the magic she uses that it is her. Though the vid is +13 min long, only the first 4:10 are relevant. Blood Raven in Boston.

Nit: ”And I don't have {to?} wonder too hard about who that could be, given that a lunatic doxxed her online yesterday."

You're absolutely right about a therapist for supers being a huge walking target, so it makes sense there isn't one. But that's gotta take a huge toll. Good thing the GLA can at least offer some support to each other.

That's right, an email. Sorry, got a little mixed up somehow.

Impressive that Cray tracked the burner. And tempting as it would be to go all out, he's right; they need to be strategic. Which is all the harder because, as January knows, this is much more personal than most supervillain fights. It gets right to who she is.

Wow. Blood Raven knew that having the forces of magic at your beck and call is fine, but if you want real power you need to have the dirt on a big lawyer.

I don't blame January for having misgivings. But she needs whatever help she can get right now.

Nowakowski seems pretty reasonable, at least. Though we'll see if he treats January with the same deference he offered Stormcrow.

Awful experience all around. Hopefully the lawyer will be of use.

Renee: Honestly, everyone is tempering everyone else in this story. Just an episode ago it was Ryo warning January not to go off half-cocked and attack the cops. Now it was Cray's turn to do the same. It is an example that they all have feelings, and are all capable of allowing themselves to be ruled by their emotions is they are not careful.

There is nothing difficult about using a burner phone. It is just a phone you can buy in cash along with prepaid minutes, so you don't have to sign up for a contract or anything to use it. They are cheap and disposable. Gas stations sell them. Then all you have to do is open it up and send an email from it. Anyone can do it.

When I was researching this I found a guy who had literally called in a hundred swatting incidents over just the last year alone. His victims joined together and hired a private detective to find him, and finally took him to court.

If you look at pictures of cops today and compare them to the 70s or 80s, the difference is stark. In the past they wore plain cloth shirts and hats. Now they are clad in military body armor, helmets, and tons of other tacticool bling.

You are right, no monsters or demons now. The rest of this season will focus on more stories like this: where the enemy is fascism. That is one reason I had January's mom Barbara go into politics. Just as the superheros fight the fascists by socking them in the jaw, Barbara is doing the same thing where it matters even more, at the ballot box and in the legislature.


Acadian: The whole swatting incident was one way of showing an issue that people face in reality. Putting January and company in that boat was interesting because unlike most people, they are fully capable of killing every one of those cops in just seconds. It is not simply a scary, life-threatening event for them. It is a real test of their restraint. Those cops are just lucky that Blood Raven was not at home...

That is a neat video. I looked it up, and it is from a video game called Ace of Arenas 2. I took some screen caps of the headdress the head witch had. I might use something like that for Blood Raven's new suit as Corvus. I have the general idea for how it looks, but have not settled on the helmet itself. I have been thinking of something raven shaped, with a long beak protruding from the top of the head. But that feathered headress look from this video might be better.


WellTemperedClavier: There was a DC story line called Heroes in Crisis that had a therapist for supers. A bunch of the patients wound up being murdered, setting off an investigation story.

These last few episodes really showed me that Cray is just as much a member of this team as January. I used to think of him as a sort of helper or support person. But he's really front and center here, showing what he is best at. He's like a classic detective character, but instead of a fedora, trenchcoat, and .38, he has a sweater-vest and a computer.

I based January's experience heavily upon that of RL Keffal's swatting. January just had the advantage of having a home that no one can get into unless she wants them to, so she was able to have her lawyer present when she came out to face the police. Otherwise she and Ryo would have been arrested on the spot and hauled off to the police station for questioning. And then after 8 or 10 hours finally been released like Keffals was. January won't always be this lucky with the law in the future however.







The Turner Diaries is sadly real, and has directly inspired numerous terrorists such as Tim McVeigh.

The Accountant is inspired by a combination of Roger Stone

and Rubel from Claymore

Point Pleasant and the Mothman




Book 12.19 - Broken Arrow

Bismarck waited. He whiled away the time by reading his favorite book: The Turner Diaries. It was a work of fiction, but it was so prophetic that sometimes he wondered if it had been written by a time-traveler.

He could see the very same Globalist authoritarian government taking control of his beloved country in real life, just as had been portrayed in the novel. It was so plain that the System of the novel was in reality the Deep State of the real world. And just like in the novel, the Deep State used proxies in its battles against the White Race, such as the Blacks and the Asians, and Gays. Most recently it was the Trans menace that they had employed to commit genocide upon the Natural Order of White America. But these were just puppets of course. Just as they danced upon the strings of the Deep State, the Deep State itself hung from the strings of the Cultural Marxists, who were in reality nothing less than the Ancient Evil of Judaism.

Bismarck did not need to thumb through a hard copy of the book of course. Not like that dog-eared version he had bought at a gun show back in the early 90s. He could read it all in his head now, thanks to his cybernetics. He only had to issue a few mental commands, and the computer built into his skull opened up the file. Then it displayed the electronic version of the book in the heads up display within his cybernetic eyes.

The sound of metal scraping against concrete instantly caught his attention. He closed out the window that displayed the book, and instead concentrated upon the noise. His sensors extrapolated where the sound had originated from and highlighted it in his vision. Then his night vision kicked in and stripped away the shadows there. That revealed a short, slender man approaching.

The newcomer walked calmly across the dusty concrete floor of the abandoned warehouse that they stood within. He wore a suit that must have cost more than the Idaho farm that Bismarck had grown up on. A pair of round, wire-rimmed glasses hid his eyes, even from Bismarck's cybernetically enhanced vision. Instead the sparse light that filtered in from the skylights overhead reflected off the lenses of the glasses, and turned them into solid white sheets.

"Mr. Harris... Bismarck," the newcomer began. "My employers are concerned that you are losing focus."

"Accountant." Bismarck made a show of rolling the cybernetic muscles that fairly burst from his frame. He took the time to reveal his bulk. First he languidly stretched out his arms. Then he laced his fingers together, and cracked his mechanical knuckles with a series of loud pops. Only when he was certain the smaller man was good and cowed by his performance of superior might did he continue.

"Did you bring it?"

"Yes." The other man's voice was even more robotic than Bismarck's own. Sometimes he wondered if the slight man was even a man at all, and not a full machine. "Though I must confess, it was against my better judgment. I have warned my employers about you. I calculate that you have your own agenda to serve, rather than ours."

"Just hand it over," Bismarck demanded. He stabbed out one hand, fingers opened, and waited.

It was in the middle of August, and even in the shade of the warehouse the heat was blistering. But the Accountant still wore a long coat. The elements never seemed to bother him. He reached within the folds of his coat and produced a clump of silvery electronics. He held it up before Bismarck's eyes, but did not place it in his metallic hand. The neo-Nazi was forced to take a step forward, and snatch it from the other man's grasp.

"Good!" Bismarck smiled. "This is exactly what I needed."

He lifted the cybernetic device to his head. At his mental command, a metal panel flipped open in the side of his skull. He slotted the new device within, and his metal cranium sealed shut behind it. He could feel the electronics within his skull morph and move about, and make way for the new module. His internal screens flashed as the new hardware was detected and integrated into his operating system. Then it was online, and he gleefully studied the new readouts that spilled down his HUD.

"Yes, this will do nicely."

"That was not easy to obtain," the Accountant admonished. "Very few meta-inventors are capable of creating such wonders. I still would like to know exactly what you require such specialized tech for."

"To find a lost puppy," Bismarck murmured. "Two lost puppies in fact."

"Remember, we have work for you soon," the Accountant declared. "Do not let yourself get distracted from the true cause."

"Oh, I'm not distracted," Bismarck insisted. "I know exactly what I'm doing."

"Do not forget, we made you, literally," the Accountant declared. "We can unmake you just as easily."

"Your institute knows better than to try that," Bismarck boasted. "They need me. You need me. I am the future."

Besides, once he had finished what he was about to do, the Accountant and his employers at the Heritage Institute would be irrelevant. With two sacred flashes of atomic fire, the race war he had long waited for would begin. Then the old world and its leeches - the Jews and the Accountant's billionaire employers alike - would be nothing but fuel. And he was the cleansing flame.

* * *

August 21 (Wednesday)

"This is Gilda Gadfly, and I have a small but super update. As you all know, Joshua Nelson went on a rampage through the Detroit suburbs last week in a stolen tank. He was a veteran of the US Army and Reserves, was wounded in Afghanistan, and was literally turned to stone by an Abyssal during the Battle of Belle Isle.

Well, the very same members of the Alliance who stopped him last week testified on his behalf in a fitness hearing yesterday. Thanks to their support - and more importantly the advice of a mental health professional who interviewed Mr. Nelson - a judge declared that he was mentally unfit to stand trial. Instead he has been remanded to a psychiatric hospital for treatment."

January smiled and turned off Gilda with a verbal command. At least something good had come of the last few days. She only hoped that this time Joshua would get the help he needed, and would eventually emerge from the hospital in a better place. Only time would tell.

She now winged her way across the eastern United States. From thousands of miles up, things certainly looked different. Ohio had been a quilt of interlocking fields under cultivation, occasionally punctuated by cities such as Cleveland or Akron. Western Pennsylvania was wilder, with more forest and less cropland. Both reminded her of Michigan, as her home state boasted each in turn.

The mountains that began to rise on the eastern horizon were a new thing however. They were not as high as Mount Shasta had been, not nearly. But that mighty West Coast peak was a barren wasteland of broken stones, at least where it was not covered in a blanket of snow. These mountains, though much lower, were coated with a carpet of greenery. Trees and brush and grass covered every inch of the upraised land. So while Shasta possessed a stark and serene beauty, these new peaks were a bustling landscape vibrant with life and energy.

January separated her arms from her wings. She lost speed, as her wings possessed less power on their own. But it did allow her to glance down at Sága on her wrist. The map app built into the computer showed that she was now in West Virginia. That meant she was over half way to her destination. She idly wondered if Point Pleasant was anywhere nearby. She had already fought the Michigan Dogman. Maybe the Mothman could be next?

She fused her arms back into her wings. That brought her speed back up again to where it had been before. She was not sure how fast she was going. But it felt like her best time yet. Faster even than when she had flown to Columbus with Lighthammer. He had said they had been doing 280 knots then, whatever a knot was. She was definitely pushing beyond that now.

The practice helped. This was her longest flight ever, longer even than her trip across Michigan to find Gola her new home on Garden Island. She was pushing herself harder than she ever had before. That was the whole point. She wanted to work herself out. That was the only way to improve. So far it had not been tiring, but rather exhilarating. Being in the air was practically a tonic for her. It set her free, and helped her forget about the rest of life. Up here, she felt like she was really home, in the place where she belonged.

She could have used Blood Raven's waypoint network to skip over much of the distance and simply teleport to Baltimore. But that would have defeated the point of getting the exercise. Besides, she had plenty of time. She had the entire day to herself in fact. With the new school semester coming up, she would not have as many opportunities as this in the foreseeable future. So it was good to make the most of her mini-vacation to the nation's capital.

She passed over the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians, and found herself in a gigantic valley. It must have run for hundreds of miles to her left and right, and was surrounded by the mountains on all sides. A long, narrow mountain, really more of a ridge, even stretched out along its center. It reminded January of the pupil in a great, elongated eye. Equally narrow rivers stretched like ribbons to either side of the central spine, and joined up to the north of it, where they continued on as a single watercourse.

January guessed that this was the Shenandoah Valley. Farmlands stretched out below, standing in contrast to the otherwise wild forests that surrounded the cultivated fields. Here and there January picked out towns and small cities. Then the mountains that bracketed the eastern edge of the valley came up before her eyes.

These had to be the Blue Ridge Mountains. There was a definite azure haze about them in the distance, though that vanished closer up. She had no idea what created the optical illusion. But it lent a sense of beauty and tranquility to the scenery. She resolved to look up why they did that when she got to her destination.

Speaking of which, she had to be getting nearer now. Once she crested the far slope of the mountain range, the land spilled down before her. That had to be the regular Virginia, rather than the western one. From as high up as she was, she could see that it was more forest and farmland, with some small towns interspersed here and there.

She had no idea where she was. So once again she pulled her arms out of her wings and consulted Sága. This time the digital assistant told her that she was near Waterloo. That was funny, she thought that was someplace Napoleonic, like in Europe. But Napoleon did not have concrete highways, like the divided thoroughfare she saw running past this Waterloo.

That was ideal. Sága revealed that this road would lead her straight to DC. So she traded some altitude for speed, and got down to just a thousand feet or so in the sky. That put her well under the mountains she had just passed over. She picked up even more speed from the maneuver, and soared through northern Virginia faster than ever. She imagined that meant she was passing over some old Civil War battlefields, though she had no idea what or exactly where those might be.

The small towns turned to large towns, which in turn transformed into small cities as she continued along the interstate. She noted an airport off to her left, and gave that plenty of space, as she usually did around those places. The last thing she wanted was to run into old friends at a thousand feet.

Then the suburbs of Washington DC stretched out below her. She looked for Megaton and Tenpenny Tower. But it seemed that the video game universe those were from did not exactly match real life. Well, in her timeline there had not been a nuclear war, at least not yet. So that more than made up for their loss.

Arlington Cemetery was a green circle amidst the streets and buildings of suburbia. Nearby stood the distinctive five-sided Pentagon, and beyond it lay another airport. The Potomac River twisted and turned immediately beyond, and cut its way across her view from left to right. A small island rose up directly east of the sprawling graveyard and its assorted monuments. January soared across it to the far side, and into DC proper.

Now things got really built up, really fast. Buildings rose up in densely-packed streets in nearly every direction. The only real digression was the National Mall: a wide valley of green that cut through the jungle of concrete and steel. The white stone of the Lincoln Memorial rose up here at its western end. January passed over it and followed the Mall down its length to the east.

The long reflecting pool stretched out before her, and January could not resist trading away even more altitude for speed. In moments she skimmed along its surface, jetting faster than ever through the air. She pulled up at its end, topped a war memorial, and broke out over an expanse of open parkland.

She traded speed for more altitude here, and climbed higher into the sky. The White House lay to her left, and a wide tidal basin stretched out to her right. Straight ahead rose the thin needle of the Washington Monument. She went completely vertical here, and winged her way up along the white stone surface of the obelisk. She feathered back her wings once she crested the monument, and came down to a landing atop its aluminum capstone.

That made her remember the aluminum plates that she and the others had found in the attic of the Witch House. Emperor Napoleon III had used them to show off his wealth to other royalty. This capstone was clearly meant for the same purpose. Only it was the nation, rather than its individual ruler, that had done the peacocking here.

She squatted down atop the pointed metal peak, and noticed that there was writing on it. Like Blood Raven's handwriting, it was done in elegant calligraphy. It was a little hard to read upside down, but from what she gathered, it was the names of the people involved in the design and in charge of the construction of the monument. Along with them were dates of events like the laying of the cornerstone.

As she had noted in her multipart series on Labor for the Heroes and Villains podcast, there was no mention of the people who had actually built it however. They were never in the history books. It was only the people who stood back and gave orders that ever received credit for existing.

Still, cynicism aside, January spent a moment to just take in the view. It was incredible. She had never been to her nation's capital before. She had only seen it in movies and TV shows. Here in its very heart, the city was all Neo-Classical memorials and museums, parks and ponds. All of the greatest hits were on display for her eyes. The columned front face of the White House, the great dome of the Capitol Building, the smaller dome of the Jefferson Memorial, and of course the majesty of the Lincoln Memorial behind her. Even more museums and memorials and gardens stretched along the edges of the long, narrow band of the Mall. There were too many of them to count, and January honestly had no idea what most of them even were.

Only farther out could she glimpse the real meat and the bones of the city. It was thousands of other office buildings, apartments, and townhouses where people lived and worked and went about daily life. But these were only half seen rooftops and canyons between tall buildings. There was nothing definite that she could pick out from the general background of the city skyline.

The Michigander in her could not resist checking the time to see how long the journey had taken her. It turned out to have only been an hour and a half. That was a lot better than driving! It was five hours in a car just to go from Detroit to Mackinac or Chicago. She had gone so much farther in so much less time. She could definitely get used to this...

But she was not here as a tourist. She had an actual mission to perform in the nation's capital. Thinking about the Crow Tales Podcast recently had reminded her of how one of its hosts - Ravi Prasad - had been wearing a bootleg Stormcrow tee during one of their interviews. It was bootleg of course because there were no official manufacturers for such a shirt.

She was here to remedy that. The Transgender Equality Project was a nonprofit that supported trans people by working with local groups around the country to fight discriminatory laws, provide legal support, shelters, and even fund suicide hotlines. She had come from a family privileged enough not to need their help. But January knew that most were not as lucky as she was. Many of her brothers, sisters, and non-binary siblings were living on the streets, simply because of how they were born.

Her wings could not give them safe homes. Her fists could not provide them with jobs. Her astral senses could not get them out of jail, and her lightning would not pay for their medical care. But an official line of Stormcrow clothing and merchandise could mitigate those issues, at least somewhat. So here she was, about to meet with the nonprofit to set it all up and do a photo shoot. The pictures from that would be used for a whole new line of Stormcrow shirts, hats, and the like. All of the proceeds from which would go to the TEP.

She brought up Sága and began tapping on her screen to bring up the phone interface to call them. But before she could finish, the sound of an explosion caught her ears. Her head jerked around, and she saw a thin trail of smoke curl up from one of the many museums that lined the Mall below. She instantly leapt out into space and caught the sky with her wings. She soared down the narrow parkway, even as she spoke into her mini-computer.

"Sága, call Cray, emergency." she said clearly. Then she fused her arms back into her wings in order to gain more power for her flight. She called upon Air to give her even more speed, and raced across the sky to the source of the distress.

She passed by numerous museums to her right and left. To one side lay the Natural History Museum, a massive Neo-Classical affair topped by a great dome. To the other lay what looked like a medieval castle that was made of brown sandstone. Beyond that was a giant, ring shaped building, whose concrete face was painted with people's faces, and draped in huge cloth hangings.

Finally she came to her destination. It was a gigantic structure built in the Modernist style. Comprised of alternating sections of white stone blocks and floor to ceiling glass walls, it stretched on and on, and rose high into the sky. She saw from the sign out front that it was the National Air and Space Museum.

She heard her comms click. A moment later the gruff - yet soft - tones of her team's elder hacker sounded in her ear.

"Cray here," he said smoothly.

"Is something happening in Washington DC?" January asked. People streamed out of the main entrance of the building now, and ran onto the sidewalk and into the street in a panic. But other than that, and the trail of smoke that rose from one of the glass sections of the building, she could see nothing obvious.

"In DC?" Cray wondered, "Give me a minute."

"I won't have that long," January murmured. "Prepare to receive video from my drones."

She detached her arms from her wings once more. That allowed her to reach down to her belt and unhook two of the little, spherical remotes that were clipped there. She held them both in one hand, and slid them around in her gloved fingers like giant marbles. Then she banked hard and rolled over. That sent her straight down toward the roof of the museum. She aimed for the broken pane of glass which the smoke issued from, and she darted through it in seconds.

She pulled in her wings to avoid them clipping on either side of the jagged opening. At the same time she tucked into a somersault, so that she came down feet first. Once inside she snapped out her wings once more to feather her descent like a parachute. She tossed out both of the drones as she did so, and allowed them to float away of their own volition. Cray could worry about them from there on out. She had other things to deal with.

Glad you enjoyed that video. I confess to being a fan of the whimsical and quirky music of Alan Walker.

Bismarck sounds like a neat meta comprising the best of both organic and machine/technology – a very cool idea.

Stromcrow’s been getting lessons from Lighthammer it seems and zooms across the country reveling in her need for speed.

Uh-oh, looks like DC’s in trouble. Somebody trying to blow up a museum?

I confess to rather glossing over the politics since avoiding that for a time is one reason I come to Chorrol.

No monsters or demons, wow! I like it, though. Jan and the others are gonna have to shift the ways they think. Maybe a lot of their superpowers won't come into play as often.

Cybernetics, what is that? Oh cripes. It's in his head! Sort of like what Elon Musk is working on (supposedly) lately. Probably he's not the only one. It's just that Musk has the money to really go for it, huh?

Whoa, this story's intense. That's so freaky. He's got a disc drive slot on the side of his head, yuck!

"We made you, we can UNmake you as well". Just as disturbing, Bismarck is conspiring to go against those who made him. There really is no honor amongst thieves.

Heritage Institute... sounds so respectable. Broken Arrow is gripping, 'Rosa. I love how the scene switches from covert conspiring to Gilda's upbeat voice.

Being from Maryland, I did hear about Mothman from other kids at summer camp, which was in West Virginia.

280 knots = 322 mph.

HA HA, yes indeed, there is no Megaton or Big Town in real life! Old Olney is actually just Olney, a quiet, respectable place which isn't ever in the news (except for maybe an overturned truck). Germantown's police station is not full of supermutants! Fairfax Ruins are not ruins, Fairfax itself is mostly higher-income residents.

No snit. She's here to get ahead of some bootleggers.

I know that brown stone building on The Mall. Never been in there, despite going to the museums all my life. I used to think that's the Archives building, but Archives in on the other side of the art museums, more or less. Maybe I'll visit that brown building next time I'm on the Mall.

So if there are any superheroes down in Washington, they're going to be surprised that a member of Michigan's consortium beat them to the scene.

Acadian: Bismarck has some even more unusual qualities, as will be revealed in time. He's a very dangerous foe.

Stormcrow has been getting lessons from Lighthammer for a long time now! He is the one who taught her how to fly after all.

Someone is not blowing up the museum, but they definitely want something inside it...

When I work on creating villains, I get my inspirations from reality. I listen to a lot of history podcasts, and there are so many people to choose from! It also means I can find some variety to them as well. I don't want them all to be magical monsters all the time. I think that would get dull. So I want to get a blend of mad wizards, extra-dimensional threats, undead menaces, as well as corporate ghouls, religious zealots, neo-Nazis, mercenaries, terrorists, thieves, and even just mentally ill people with more power than they can control. Sometimes I feel sorry for Cray and Gadget, given that their tech skills are wasted upon ghosts and magical curses.


Renee: Spending a little more time dealing with human foes means that Gadget and Cray get to do more with their technical skills. Like hacking enemy databases or even suits of powered armor worn by the bad guys.

Cybernetics/cyborgs are people with high tech prosthetics. Think the Six Million Dollar Man. There are a number of supers in the comics with cyberware, and the whole genre of cyberpunk is filled with them.

The Heritage Institute is named after a couple of real conservative think tanks: the Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation. It functions in pretty much the same way too. January's world just has supervillains like Bismarck for them to fund as well as the usual propaganda outlets.

It's not so much getting ahead of people pirating her image for clothing and the like. Though granted, the bootleggers are the only market at all right now. January could really care less about people making their own Stormcrow shirts and selling them. Really its more about creating a revenue stream to help people who need it more than January.

There are indeed supers in Washington, and they are going to be surprised to see January showing up! And relieved. We know one of them already, and will be meeting her next.






The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum can be found on the Stormcrow Map

U2 "Dragon Lady"

F-15 Eagle

SR-71 Blackbird

The New York Central Mercury



Book 12.20 - Broken Arrow

She was in a huge exhibit hall. The single, massive chamber was open from floor to ceiling and side to side. It was the size of an aircraft hangar, and it was only one portion of the museum. Within that gigantic space were actual planes. She recognized some of them from video games and movies, such as the F-15 Eagle and various models of MiGs with swept wings. Hanging from the ceiling nearby was a black U-2 spy plane. With its spindly wings and narrow fuselage, it reminded January of a stiletto with wings.

But the real beauty was the SR-71 Blackbird. January felt a natural affinity for the space age aircraft. Granted, that might have been simply because of its name. It looked like something from a comic book. Black as a raven's wings, it had a long, flattened fuselage and twin tails that jutted above its two massive engines. It was standing still, but it looked like it was going a thousand miles an hour. January really, really wanted to fly in that thing.

Clustered around and winding their way through the planes that sat upon the floor were numerous panels filled with information. There were also display cases showing off various artifacts from the age, such as mannequins dressed in flight suits and uniforms. Other glass cases contained equipment from the planes, such as ejection seats, radios, parachutes, and the like. A huge jet engine was even on display, which had been cut neatly in half to reveal all of its internal workings.

Screams and shouts rose from the ground below. People ran and stumbled and fell among the displays and kiosks. Among them loomed figures clad in black. January had seen their like before. The shiny boots, German Eagle buckles, SS runes, and coal scuttle helmets were unmistakable. So too were the swastika armbands, and the half skull masks that covered their lower faces.

These masks gave them the appearance of possessing both the lower and upper jaws of a grinning skull. Even the area around their noses appeared to be raw bone. Then the masks ended and left the upper halves of their faces bare. That revealed their eyes and the pale skin around them. It was an unsettling aesthetic, and made their wearers appear to be half-dead, and half-alive at the same time.

Nazis.

Many of them were surrounded by bubbles of transparent energy, that January took to be force fields of some type. A few were solid black, and she recognized them as shields of elemental darkness. She had fought mercenaries wearing the same during her very first quest as a super, at the Flint airport. Also like those hired guns, most of these fighters were armed with regular firearms, in this case AR-15s. As with the police officers who had recently swatted her, these were all tricked out with loads of extras, like scopes, laser sights, vertical handgrips, and such. It gave January the distinct impression that their wielders were overcompensating for deep-seated feelings of inferiority in other areas...

But the neo-Nazis had not gone unchallenged. Hovering in space above the floor was a familiar figure. She was clad in loose gray and white robes. Her eyes glowed bright silver, and her skin was solid white marble. She held a staff tipped with a lunar stone in one of her hands, and bolts of brilliant white light lanced out from the crescent moon diadem that sat upon her forehead.

Silverlight!

She was doing battle with a man who floated in the air before her. He appeared to be her polar opposite, and they seemed to be evenly matched because of it. Like the other neo-Nazis, he was clad in a black uniform. He did not wear a helmet. Instead a black hood covered his head, and a matching cloak hung down from his shoulders. Like the others, a white skull mask covered his lower face, and left bare the strip of pale flesh around his piercing blue eyes.

Pure darkness spilled from his cloak, and trailed off around him like smoke from a fire. Shields of similar blackness sprang out of nowhere each time one of Silverlight's lasers stabbed at him. This elemental night nullified the heroine's radiant attacks. In fact, each seemed to cancel the other out. The lunar heroine switched her attacks to standard arcane bolts. These golden-colored magical attacks seemed to have greater effect. In the very least, they pushed him slowly back.

He replied by hurling blasts of his elemental darkness back at her. But she countered by creating arcane shields of pure white light. Like her attacks, these spilled from the crescent moon diadem on her brow. Each of his assaults shattered the ward. But at the same time, they fizzled out the bolts and prevented them from going any farther. Then before his next attack she was ready with yet another force field. The two were deadlocked.

Down on the floor was a man riding a motorcycle, of all things. Given that it was completely silent, the vehicle had to be electric, like January's own Victory Empulse. She recognized his bike as one of the newer Willendorfs made in the Technocracy. So that was a serious motorcycle, way out of her price range.

The rider was clad in what looked like medieval Korean armor. January recognized it from the K-dramas that Ryo liked to watch. Its base layer of cloth was blue and trimmed with purple. A lamellar cuirass was laid over that, and fell to his mid thighs. Its small rectangular plates of metal were sewn together with purple thread. A pair of lamellar pauldrons protected his shoulders. Similar lamellar gauntlets and boots sheathed his hands and feet. His legs were clad in a pair of blue cloth pants, once again ornamented with purple thread. A tall lamellar helmet rose from his head, topped with a red horsehair crest that hung in a loose plume. It left his face open, but a domino mask in blue surrounded his eyes, and soft red lipstick gleamed on his lips. January made a mental note to ask him what exact shade that was later...

He raced around the event floor on his motorcycle. But he used neither of his hands to steer. Instead both held what was shaped like a traditional, composite bow. But it was made of shining golden energy. Every time he pulled its arcane string back to his ear, an arrow of yellow energy appeared from thin air. He fired these out directly behind him, having twisted completely around in his seat to make the classic Parthian shot.

Like the bow, these missiles were clearly magical in nature. January did not have to push her senses into astral space to know. She could smell the power from a mile away. In fact, she wondered if the bow was even a bow at all. She had a sneaking suspicion that both it and the arrows were a spell, manifested physically that way because that was what suited the nature of their creator. Everyone's magic was different after all. Like art, it was an expression of the maker's soul.

Arrayed against the motorcycle archer were numerous neo-Nazi foot soldiers. Their force field generators held up to the Korean's arrows with varying ability. Some were merely staggered by the attacks, but kept on firing back at him with their assault rifles. Others went down. January was not sure if the latter were from the culmination of multiple earlier hits that she had not seen, or if they were just lucky shots.

Finally what January could only describe as a gleaming silver Art Deco train that masqueraded as a man stood upon the floor. His powered armor was tailored into sleek, curving lines that swept back across his shoulders, chest, and helmet, which gave him a sense of perpetual motion. A wide circular emitter appeared to be set within his chest, like the headlight on a train.

He held out his hands, and steel spikes flew directly from his palms. January did not see any barrels or emitters there. They just seemed to take shape from the surface of his gauntlets, and spat out as if of their own accord. These hammered into the force fields of several Nazis, and sent them reeling away.

The trio of heroes had their hands more than full with the pack of terrorists. There had to be at least a dozen of the Nazis. That was too many for them all to keep track of, especially given that they had spread out through the exhibit hall.

January thought she saw one of them. He was a tall, wide man who fairly burst with muscle. But most of his body was covered in shiny pieces of armor or maybe even cybernetic implants. That included half of his face. His hair was snow white, at least where his scalp had not been replaced by metal plate. A bushy mustache of the same color sprouted from his lip, and stretched across even the metal-plated side of his head. Shiny metal covered his spine, at least until it disappeared beneath his black tunic. What January could see of his arms were both mechanical as well, and there was no way to tell how much of his torso or legs were likewise cybernetically enhanced.

He appeared to be entranced by one of the artifacts on exhibit. The shattered glass of its display case lay at his feet, and he held up something with one hand. It looked like a parachute, or perhaps part of a flight suit. He brought it before his face, and a curious white light shone from one of his eyes. This glow spread out in a cone-shaped field, like some sort of holographic display. Something appeared to be scrolling through the image, numbers or words, January could not tell. It was too far away, and she did not have time to concentrate.

She had no time because she now noted a trio of neo-Nazis who were not busy with the heroes. Instead they had their guns pointed at a group of young teenagers who they had corralled against a row of tall display panels. January idly noted that the latter were a series of pictures and images of early jet fighters, and something about the Korean War. One of those jets looked suspiciously like a MiG that hung from the ceiling above, with its snub nose and swept back wings.

The foot soldiers appeared to be taunting the youths, who appeared to be junior high school age. January saw one adult among them. He was a balding man with glasses, and was clad in a tweed sport coat. He looked like a classic professor. That made January wonder if they were part of some sort of school trip. It was August, but she did seem to recall that Avery had thought about coming to DC on such a school trip a few summers ago. In fact, it might have been to this very museum. In the end it had been too expensive however, and he had remained at home.

In any case, the teacher or chaperone tried to stand between the Nazis and the students. But one of them hammered him with a rifle butt from behind. That sent him crashing to the floor with blood flowing from his scalp. With that the three neo-Nazis laughed. Then they raised their guns to point at both man and adolescents.

But January got there first. She called upon Air once more, and rocketed through the exhibition hall. She swooped down upon the group, and did not try to slow her descent once she was upon them. Instead she used her wings like a scythe, and the leading edge of one struck the darkness field that protected one of the Nazis. It sliced clear through it, and caused it to collapse into nothing but wisps of fading darkness. It continued on to hack his AR-15 in half, and nearly took one of his arms for good measure.

Afterward January changed the direction of her wings to present their flat surfaces forward and back. It was like slamming on the brakes, and she rapidly bled off speed. That was good, because now she caught up the teacher in both arms. Thankfully she was now moving slowly enough to not harm him by doing so. She pulled him along with her and dug her heels into the floor. That gouged a pair of trenches through the marble surface, and slowed her even more.

She heard gunfire open up now, and felt numerous impacts upon her wings and body. Her back was now to the gunmen, and she saw the early teens right in front of her. Their faces were etched in terror, and screams erupted from their throats. Thankfully there was no blood, nor signs of injuries among them. She took every bullet meant for them.

January pushed the semi-conscious teacher across the floor toward the students, if that was what they were. Then she leaped straight back toward the gunmen, with the flat surfaces of her wings still facing them. That insured that they would continue to absorb the bullets they continued to fire. Once she was close enough, she slammed them both together with the last two neo-Nazis between them. The two of them tumbled into one another, and then fell to the ground in a heap. Finally she spun around and faced the terrorists. She lashed out with her wings again. This time she used their leading edges however, and sliced one rifle in half, and then the other.

With that all three of the neo-Nazis scrambled to their feet and began to flee blindly away. They ran straight into the man in silver powered armor. He had a different fist for each of the first two, and a kick for the last. That laid them all out in neat order.

"Hey, you're that Crow-chick!" the armored man exclaimed. Then he turned away. The metal from his lower legs turned to liquid, and flowed down to the floor around his feet. There it formed into a pair of wheels. The formation of these pushed his body up above them, and the next thing January knew, he rolled past her to the civilians.

More of the metal flowed down from his suit to the floor behind him. There it formed what looked suspiciously like a child's metal wagon. Only this was not red, but steel-gray. Nor was it small. It possessed a large rectangular bed, which was surrounded by narrow safety rails, and stood upon four metal wheels. It looked absolutely ridiculous. But January was in no mood for laughing.

It also stripped some of his legs and torso bare of that metal armor. Its absence revealed that he was clad in a gray and silver suit of interwoven fibers underneath. It distinctly reminded January of Mr. Blackwood's work. He was the premier fashion designer for supers after all.

"All aboard the Mercury Express!" he boomed. He gently gathered up the injured teacher with both hands. Then he looked to the students and nodded to the makeshift passenger car behind him. Once they were all onboard, he zoomed off with surprising speed and vanished from sight around a corner.

"Stormcrow, that was Mercury." Cray's voice was in January's ear. "He's a train nerd from Philadelphia. His suit's based off the old New York Central Mercury. That archer on the bike is Hwarang, the flower knight. He's Korean, and well, pretty self-explanatory. You know Silverlight of course."

Six Million Dollar man! That show sucked! Well, my 7-year old opinion anyway. In the beginning credits they showed Steve Austin running along at a thousand miles an hour but any time he did something super during the show they'd put the camera into slow-motion.



Ah, I see. Indeed, she's too busy to get involved doing anything about bootleggers, I'd imagine.

And right, Silverlight lives in Georgetown. Still, she's gonna be like "Whoa girl, whatcha doin' down here?"

Oh gosh, 'swastika armbands' skull masks and so on. These fools, they'll never learn.

This fight between Silverlight and the nazis must be visually stunning, at least. Elemental darkness versus blasts of light. 💡

K-drama! I've probably watched a few myself. Korea's got quite a lot of TV series & movies. Such a fount of creativity, despite being just below the awful North.

Whoa, the art deco train is really a superhero? This is a crazy scene. Must be one of D.C.'s, eh? "I'm Metro Man!" or some such.

She's a Crow Chick!

And ah, so he's Mercury. So that's why he's metal, yet also able to morph into all these shapes. Flower Knight, too. But going back to Mercury. So he's from Philly. Odd that he's also an out-of-towner then like Jan, who's in the right spot when all this happens.