A Bloodstained Mantle

A few days pass as you try to juggle both the endless patrols and emergency response which have come to define your life and the new inclusion of training your new teammate? student? sidekick? Student, student was better. Training your new student.

Regardless, you've been getting by, if only barely, cramming in short lessons between what feels like eons of action, and both giving him a huge pile of books to read and getting him to enroll in one of those first aid classes that you and Adamant sometimes asked people to attend.

That's all been going decently from what you've heard, and it's been saving you a lot of time going over the basics, though right now the two of you are dealing with an almost thornier problem than how to handle someone with a broken leg or get someone out of a burning building.

The problem is, of course, one of names, specifically what to call your new student (Thomas, in his civilian guise) when he's in the field, especially since Ice-Pal was shot down in utterly brutal fashion.

The two of you sit in your living room, it is unspeakably late at night, the only time you sometimes get enough of a breather to have these short lectures and talks, you lay splayed out across the couch, a laptop on your chest as you watch your new student paces across the room.

"So," he asks, "Has Paladin been taken?"

You almost wince at the sheer naivety, but keep it off your face out of respect, you'd went though the same gauntlet when you'd just joined up. You give it a quick search on the internet and… "Ah, sorry, it's been taken by about two dozen people across the world… and a few of them are pretty big names." You do your best to keep up the good cheer, "Sorry, it's been a hundred years, most of the good names are, you know, taken."

He nods absentmindedly at that, thinking for a moment before he asks, "Ok, what about… Crusader?"

That one cracks your mask of ever confident support, pulling out a pained wince. You don't even need to look that one up to warn him off it, "Don't go for that, a million people are running around with some variation on it and some of those white hooded nuts have turned it into a bit of running theme," then, trying to throw him a bone, you say, "Try something more ice specific maybe? Everyone wants to be a knight, but nobody calls themselves Snowman without having a very specific sort of power."

At that he- Thomas, his name is Thomas now, he groans, but keeps pacing back and forth across your living room, "Alright, how's Snowman, or- oh, how about Glacier?"

Once again, after a quick search you're forced to be the bearer of bad news, "Snowman has been unused since the beginning of the 2010-ish but the last guy killed himself and i don't think you wanted the name anyways and…" you don't even need the search to shoot down the second one.

"Well, sorry again," you explain, "But Glacier is a big shot over east in Foundry City, leader of the local STAR branch, which is… well it's not great to try and take a famous hero's name, even if they're dead it's just super confusing."

He nods along as he finally sits down on the couch next to you and glances out the window into the open water, the moon and stars reflected by the swirling waters of the bay. "Ok, actually, maybe this will help, how'd you pick your name Chimera?"

You shift to place your feet on the table in front of you and put the laptop to one side, "Oh, well I thought it sounded cool and nobody else was currently using Chimera, properly using Chimera I mean, instead of, like, Red Chimera or Chimera-Man or whatever," you wrench yourself away from that side tangent and continue on to the interesting bit in a flash,

The words come easily to you, this little piece of information having always proven easy to remember, "Anyway, fun fact apparently the last guy to have the name actually died in a hotel in Las Vegas of all places, he was gambling off what he'd gotten from his last job when he met some pretty lady one thing led to another and it turned out she was a super, injected him a spider venom sort of thing and then sucked his insi-"

You're cruelly cut off in a single disgusted groan as your friend waves his hands in a panic, "Ugh, please, no thanks. I gathered what happened when you said spider venom." He says, eliciting a gleeful little giggle from you at his expression.

Your student recovers quickly, flicking a tiny snowball at your face as you laugh at him, "Ok ok, that went nowhere, let me think, Hailsword or Hailspear or something, how does that sound?"

A second pair of arms emerge from your stomach to manipulate the keyboard as you wipe the snow off your face with the old pair, "Ok… that's promising, they're not currently in use, no genuinely horrible crimes committed by previous holders, at worst just some rob- oh,"

"Hailspear really doesn't work, apparently the name's last holder belonged to the lover of the leader of the Red Hands," you explain, "And I really don't want that on my plate along with everything else."

Hailsword is thrown onto the maybe pile, and then the ideas continue.

"Alright, what about Shining Armor?" He asks.

"Not unless you want to be constantly compared to a kids show about Ponies," you answer.

"Fine, what about Challenger?" He asks.

"There are more than a hundred Challengers," you explain.

"Lancer?"

"Used by several middle of the road famous heroes and villains, seems like it'd be confusing."

"I'm probably going to regret asking, Iceman?"

"A surprising number for how bad a name it is."

"This is going to be a long night isn't it, Jesus Christ."

"More than 70 people over the last century and almost none of them were ever all that well liked, anyone else?"

The night continues on like that, and the night after that, until finally the two of you come up with…

O-O-O-O-O

A few more days pass, a few more bits of slow, draining reaction, where your greatest foe is a matter of exhaustion and sheer numbers rather than any true, genuine danger to life and limb.

Even Preston can tell you're not acting like yourself, he doesn't ask you to play with him anymore, just sits on your lap and lets you hug him to sleep until your duties call you away from him.

If coffee did anything you couldn't do to yourself you're pretty sure you'd have burned through a small ocean of the stuff, and that's barely an exaggeration.

Regardless, you're still trucking along, still working day in and day out as you keep trying day after day after day to make your, to make Adamant proud, when, oddly enough, you get a message while you sit on top of the local church, simply doing your best impression of a spectacularly lazy, Gargoyle when a message arrives.

You fish your phone out of its appointed flesh pocket and accept Thomas's phone call, dreading the coming conversation, ever since he learned about… um… memory guy (his name escapes you at the current moment) he's been super eager to go ask him to take a look at the two of you.

Unfortunately for the both of you when you asked the memory man he couldn't promise anything would actually pop out, and he said it might take hours of unconsciousness before anything surfaced, there just hasn't been the time, which would be so much easier to throw at your new student as a very good reason not to do it at such a chaotic time if you weren't so damn curious yourself.

Luckily for you, his words are not the resurrection of an old argument, or dire warnings of some new calamity. Instead they seem to have been taken out back and drowned out by an entirely new problem fate has brought to your front door, filled entirely with new challenges. Fun.

"Chimera," he asks, "Are there supposed to be some people in boats with guns sailing up to the island?"

You wrack your brain for a moment, growing and dismissing a new one in your back before… "Yeah, no, there definitely shouldn't be anyone down there, why do you ask?"

You wince as the very stupid question passes through your lips, but to his credit you still get a serious answer, "Because there are people in boats with guns sailing up to the island, pretty sure they've got grappling hooks or something so they're trying to scale the cliff sides, what do you want me to do? I already put Preston in the panic room. What do you need me to do?

O-O-O-O-O

Rolls

???'s Stealth: 4+12=16
Thomas's Perception: Nat 20+2=22

[ ] Write in a superhero name for Thomas

Some suggestions

Now then, obviously you're going to rush back and you'll get there in somewhere between one minute and three, but what do you want Thomas to do before you get there?

[ ] Get in the Panic Room

[ ] Fight them, you can trap them between the two of you.

[ ] Grab Preston and Run


Very, very sorry for the delay.

Your whirling mind flashes through a dozen scenarios as you weigh risk of injuries compared to the danger of letting someone ransack your house and make your decision, "Capture if you can, shred them if you can't manage that, don't overextend yourself I'm on my way," you answer as a pair of mountainous wings spring from your back.

Your return is as swift as can be, great wings beating like thunderous drums as the rest of your body narrows itself into a more aerodynamic form as your eyes sharpen, almost zooming in on the little island you call your home.

The battle starts with a flash of ice you only notice due to the way it reflects off the light's of the city as it lances out, catching someone in the chest just as they scale the cliff side. An instant later the spear shatters and the man tumbles down into the drink below, missing the boat he climbed from by scare feet.

The island's edge lights up in response as from six points an endless spray shining lights surge out to savage the house as they bounce off of icy armor or narrowly miss his plated form to riddle the wall behind him with tiny craters and sparkling shrapnel.

Thomas reacts quickly, a transparent shield growing from his gauntlet as his spear flashes out to bring up a blinding cloud of dust from which he emerges with a yell, charging at them with a glaive suddenly in hand.

The four of the six remaining assistants scatter before the charge with ever so slightly inhuman speed, trying to wear him down with blaster fire as he rips through the two who face him down in a ten second blizzard of violence.

Blood splashes into the overturned grass as the glaive slams into a man's gut with a twist and a snap as he leaves the blade behind to slam the shaft-turned tree trunk into the second man's head, sending him spinning into the ground with a powerful clang.

But even as the second man falls a bolt finds a flaw in his breastplate and fractures begin to spread across his form as the barrage beats against his armor from both sides like a hellish drum.

Thinking quickly he begins to backpedal back to the safety of the house, hiding behind his shield of ice and tossing his weapon at the nearest of the four, which shatters into a storm of blades with a snap of the finger.

The armored assailant proves less than willing to take the hailstorm head on, diving beneath it to let what few razors proved low enough to strike him bounce off his armor, in the end it barely slows their fire rate.

With a grunt, Thomas, Polar right now you suppose, grows his shield into an enormous glacier blue dome of ice as blaster fire pounds into it, ricocheting away to tear up the lawn into a field of upturned mud.

You're almost there, your wing beats slowing slightly as you twist them into silence, it's for the best you catch them by surprise.

Only scant seconds before you're on top of them the furthest back of the four pulls something from his belt, preparing to toss it at the opaque blue dome when a knight clad in ice leaps from a second floor window, propelled by a pillar of ice.

A huge lance of ice, thrown like it was as heavy as a bundle of feathers, slams into her, the blunt tip sending her sprawling to the ground as the grenade slips from her hands and rolls off the island's edge, detonating into an enormous maelstrom of fire some halfway down the cliffside.

Then you're on them, just as Polar lands and hurles a spear at one of the attackers furthest from him, who dodge and bring up their blasters to refocus on him just as you ambush them from behind on silent wings.

And just like that, it's over. The two of you wrap things up in short order, leaving only the grim work of grabbing the one who went flying into the water before removing all their weapons as you take the lead on triage, first aid and interrogation.

Now that you've gotten closer and can examine these people in a moment of calm you recognize them, their gear at least, this is what Wind's favorite goons were wearing when you met them not too long ago.

Pulling off the armor to treat their wounds pretty much confirms your suspicions once you get Polar to check the police database. It is possible these are flash grown clones of Wind's retinue given weapons from the same source she got hers in an attempt to trick you into escalating things and putting pressure on the elements. But you wouldn't bet on it.

Unfortunately, of the seven people who tried to attack your house, only two of them are unhurt enough to be awake right now, a guy you're pretty sure is named Dave and a woman named Jane. The both of whom have clamped their mouths all the way shut.

This is, of course, something of a problem. You'd very much like to know why Wind sent seven people into your backyard to steal or break who knows what, and why they didn't send along a proper superhuman.

Because if they weren't here, then there's something else they're doing tonight.

O-O-O-O-O

Plan voting is probably the best available decision.

What to do with your new prisoners, the unconscious ones, keep in mind most of them still need medical attention.

[ ] Keep it simple, just call an ambulance
Pros: Simple, easy, requires almost no effort from you.
Cons: scary elite goons, they might escape or get busted out

[ ] Get Polar to bring them to the hospital and sit on them until the danger has passed.
Pros: pretty much removes the escape risks
Cons: ties up your second most effective asset in the coming few hours

[ ] Just keep them chained somewhere in your house and put something really heavy in front of the door
Pros: They're definitely not escaping
Cons: some of them might die

How are you planning on getting information from the ones still able to do that

[ ] The Mary plan, drug them and see what you can do with the full force of superhuman charisma
Pros: you don't have to pay memory guy anything or trust that he can keep his mouth shut about anything secret that's in these people's heads.
Cons: these two aren't as… you know, loopy as Mary, there's a chance you won't be able to pick much out of them in time to helpful.

[ ] Take them to the memory guy and see what he can dig out.
Pros: You're going to get something useful pretty quick, minutes hopefully, the several hours thing doesn't apply to memories this fresh.
Cons: You have to pay memory guy, and trust he can keep any secrets he might learn, well, secret.


Very sorry this took so long. Was beginning preliminary work on another thing and that sorta ate time for this