[] Participate in Final Frontier as a social activity instead of a main activity.
Realign 14.16
Monday, August 20
Your foot taps impatiently as you wait for the screen to connect. It has been only ten or so seconds, which is far from slow when you consider that Perfect Storm is also hacking into one of the most secure systems in the world, but you have a good reason to be impatient. Finally the text on the screen changes, and a familiar voice asks,
"Hello, who is this?"
"Legend, it's Calamity Witch." It feels strange to call him out of the blue like this, but you do not feel like you have much else in the way of options. "Do you have a moment to talk about that… organization we have explored and discussed?"
The veiled reference to Cauldron may or may not have caught him by surprise; it is hard to tell when there is no video to accompany the audio.
"This line is secure," he says in lieu of a simple yes or no.
"What's on your mind?"
"I know this is probably a strange question, but Alexandria mentioned that Cauldron pulled capes from other worlds. Do you know if they were ever from worlds less advanced than Earth Bet?"
"More often than not."
"And… did you ever have to reveal yourselves to the people of these worlds? Not just the person Cauldron was bringing back, but others who would still be around to spread stories?"
"…Is there a specific reason you want to know?"
A grimace crosses your face. You had hoped he would not figure anything out just yet, but that was a fool's hope from the start. "I might have found myself in a bit of a situation, and I don't know what to do or if I should do anything at all or what would end worse. It's complicated."
"I'm picking up on that. I have a few minutes if you want to talk about it."
"It might be easier to show you?" you tell him in a tentative voice. It is hard to imagine demanding time from Legend of all people, but that is what you are doing. You do not know that you would trust the opinion of many other people on something like this. "If you have time, at least."
"I don't think I can squeeze that
in before my next meeting, but how about in an hour or so? I can meet you on the roof of the Protectorate building."
That will do, and you tell him so. This issue has obviously been building for a while. An hour or two will change nothing.
Despite knowing that, you wind up teleporting to the top of the main Protectorate office fifteen minutes later and pace for another fifty minutes. You spin on your heel to move towards the opposite corner of the roof and find Legend hovering in the air just off the side of the roof and watching you with a bemused smile on his face. "Impatient, are we?"
You take a breath to refute that before letting the air out in a sigh. "I guess. I found out about what's going on last night, and I'm not sure what to do about it. At all."
"Okay," he says, drifting close with his hands up as though you are a wild animal about to lash out. "Let's take a look, and we'll see if we can figure out how to fix it."
That pulls a self-deprecating laugh out of you, which in turn does not seem to reassure Legend one little bit. Your sigil expands beneath your feet and swirls, and in a rush of light you are no longer standing on a building in New York City. Instead you are in the middle of a plain on Earth Vav. Wildflowers stand all around you; most of them have closed with the night covering the land, but a few fern-like plants have stretched out and are glowing a beautiful bioluminescent purply-blue. You stretch out your hand into the distance and rise into the air. "Follow me. It's this way."
Without Missy around scrunching space, you are sure it will take you at least a few minutes to get to the village you found. You last two minutes before the silence becomes almost oppressive. "Did you talk to Standstill about taking the job as a liaison?" you ask, as much to break the silence as to get information.
Legend nods, the movement visible in large part due to the glow that seems to ripple beneath his skin. "She was willing to do it. Almost eager, in fact. No idea why." The dry voice he uses cracks through your worry and puts a smile on your face. "We've arranged for a housing and food stipend since the program does not come with actual pay, although she is understandably worried about what will happen to her current apartment. Residence in New York City isn't cheap."
"Who says she has to leave?" you ask him, getting a curious look. "Samantha and I can teleport. Dragon has teleportation tech. It wouldn't change anything if she continued living in New York and just traveled to visit us. Considering how much we are using Dragon's headquarters as our base of operations, she won't even be traveling more than we already are."
"I see," he says in a soft voice. "I had assumed that the rest of your team, of the Arcana, were also residents of Philadelphia. Is that not the case?"
You open your mouth to reply, but then you shrug one shoulder. "Who knows? When you have globe-spanning teleportation, they could be from anywhere."
Personally, you do not have a problem with Legend knowing that much about the team – it was a reasonable assumption on his end, after all – but with how tetchy Laura can be about her identity, you will keep some details close to your chest until you have a chance to talk about them with the whole group.
"Regardless, I am sure she will appreciate that."
The tall temple looms in the distant night, and the pair of you slip through one of the glassless windows at the top of the building. It is impressive that they managed to fix the damage your Solar Wrath did to the roof so quickly, particularly when the roof is made of large blocks of stone, but that is not what caught your attention and cuased your concern. "So a little bit of background information," you say as you drop to the floor. "This world is really, really primitive. Bronze Age level. And they
might consider parahumans to be living gods."
A sound comes from Legend, and it takes you a moment to place it. It sounds more like a stifled laugh than anything else. "Oh dear," he says, his amusement even more obvious in his voice. "That can go all sorts of ways. I assume you did something to bring attention to yourself?"
"We… found out this temple, this village, was under the control of a villain, and we didn't feel like letting that stand." You point to the far wall. "They have a mural. Starts there. Reads right to left."
Legend floats through the room, over the trench your scythe blade carved into the floor that is now filled with glowing embers, and looks at the start of the mural. With a silent sigh you drift over to join him.
The first panel is nothing special, just a relatively crude painting of the village. Interestingly, there is no temple present here. The next panel explains why. The people of the village are prostrated on the ground, their hands pointed in the direction of three figures. A man wreathed in blue flames, a woman painted a brilliant green, and the last another woman gowned in white with insectoid wings sprouting from her back.
The teleporter, the shapeshifting Blaster, and the insect-controlling queen.
In the next panel, the queen again looms large, though this time a whip is in her hands. Next to the village is another building, this one a halfway-built temple that stands completed in the panel to its left. The complete temple is surrounded by green shapes similar to a curved 'x', no doubt a depiction of the various insects the Blaster made for the queen.
"I can see why you took exception to this group," Legend says, his glowing eyes lingering on that panel. "They do not seem to be a pleasant group."
"They weren't. That green woman? She was a Blaster who could turn people into giant wasps the queen could control if they did anything she didn't like. She was a Master."
"A Master with control issues. Color me surprised," he says with no little sarcasm.
You shrug and point to the next panel. "This is where things get… problematic."
The next image is more detailed than those before it. Whether that is because they used a different artist or because the artist was more happy about what he was painting, you do not know, but this one shows a sunset on one side of the temple. Hanging in the sky on the other side is a dark storm cloud, though you know it was not raining when you and the others came here exploring. Artistic license, you suppose.
Finally there is a section that does not showcase the temple, but what it portrays instead is damning in its own right. The three villains stand on the right side of the block, knives in their hands even if in reality this is yet again wrong. On the left side stands three new figures. Up at the top is a small woman half the size of any of the others, a light, almost sky blue in color with white wings like a bird's coming off her back. Between her hands is a conical swirl that you could easily see representing a tornado. Below her is a woman whose head is surrounded by a yellow disc, almost like painting of saints from the Renaissance. This woman's arms are painted the same yellow, standing out against the red of her skin. In front of them is the last woman who has an almost feline head and is flanked by two large grey spotted beasts.
Only because you know what really happened can you identify them as Cassiel, Missy, and Samantha.
"This is their depiction of the fight, I assume?" Legend asks. "It wasn't just you and Samantha, then. Other members of your new team?"
"You could say that."
The next picture is the most cringeworthy, and you do just that when Legend snorts again. The three villainous gods are no longer standing. Instead they kneel on the ground, their heads bowed in defeat. A streak of red is smeared between them and the three new 'goddesses', but only in this painting are they joined by a fourth. Standing twice as tall as any of them, this individual is pitch black everywhere below her neck. Hair of that same color streams behind a bone-white face, and curls of fire float above her head. One hand points imperiously at the fallen 'gods'; the other hand holds a staff capped by a red skull with its mouth hanging open.
"The fire I can understand, but why is there a skull on your staff?" he finally asks.
You look away from the awful depiction. "When we first got here, I had Perfect Storm try to translate for us. I guess they figured the only way he could speak was if he had a head. Doesn't explain why I look so evil, though."
"I wouldn't say evil," you hear him say in a thoughtful voice, and you return your eyes to him to seem him still examining the painting. "Dark, for sure, but it would be hard to think of someone as evil when they save your village. As for why you are so intimidating, between the fire and the apparent assumption that you have a person bound to your staff, I have to guess that they think of you as a goddess of death." He finally turns to you and sweeps his eyes over your outfit. "For a culture this primitive, I could see how your outfit would influence their thinking. It is more elaborate than anything they can likely produce, appropriate for the queen of the underworld."
"…Queen of the underworld?" you finally ask in a squeaky voice. Where was he getting that from?!
He jabs his thumb over his shoulder at the mural. "You're taller than anyone else who fought by your side. I can only assume they believe you were the most important and the most powerful of everyone you brought, which means you were in charge. And if I had to guess, you aren't just any goddess in their eyes. You are now their chief deity."
You groan. "I guess that explains the last painting."
His head tilts, and Legend keeps moving to the most worrisome painting. You are not depicted in this image, though there are several men whose faces are painted red or white in contrast to their brown bodies. No, what disturbs you is the bonfire in the center of the frame and the three large heads that look to be falling into it. One wrapped in blue, one entirely green, and one with wings coming from the back of the skull.
Legend stands silently for a moment. "Oh. All jokes aside, now I see why you are concerned. Have they… sacrificed anyone else to you?"
"I don't know!" Your hands leave your staff and rub at your temples. "I have no way to tell. I popped over here on a whim just to see what was going on and found this. I suppose just leaving it alone isn't an option."
"It is." You look up at him in surprise. That was not what you expected his reaction to be. "If you want nothing more to do with this, you don't have to do anything. Let their culture develop as it would normally. That being said, considering they revere you as much as they do, there is not telling what they will do to earn your attention or your blessings. Cultures all over the world practiced human sacrifice, and this one could very well be the same."
"I don't want them killing people in my name," you tell him mulishly.
"If you want to guide what they do, that means keeping an eye and an ear on them and actively taking a role in their religion." He shrugs. "This isn't a usual circumstance for most capes. I can't tell what the right answer is. It depends on your priorities."
"What did Cauldron do?"
"We stayed as far out of things like this as possible. On occasions where we were spotted, we did not interact or try to guide them." He shrugs. "We also didn't pop back in and think they were performing human sacrifice, either. None of us wanted the responsibility of trying to lead an entire culture from the position as a godhead. You aren't us, though. You should do whatever you think best. Maybe that is leave them alone, maybe it is make a public appearance, or maybe it's just to build something to record their practices to have more information on which to make a final decision. Only you can make that call."
A gasp accompanies his speech, and you both look over to find the source of the noise. A little boy poked his head out from around the corner, his open mouth revealing his missing teeth and his wide eyes staring at what seems from his perspective to be two gods standing around talking and admiring the artwork. You open your mouth to try to hush him, but he vanishes and his voice rings through the building. Excitement rather than alarm seems to color his words.
You cannot understand his cries, but nevertheless you have a fairly good idea what he is saying.
"Are we staying so you can greet your loyal subjects and priesthood?" Legend asks in a carefully bland voice.
"Nope. Nope, nope, nope." You grab his arm, and your sigil spreads out beneath you yet again. "We are getting the hell out of here."
I've had this scene prepared and waiting for a while. I don't know where it will go in the future, but it has possibilities. 
It's time to pick and choose our characters' new spells. You may notice that Missy is not on the following list. That is because she HAS to buy a new skill since she has 7 XP and doesn't have any advanced spells that a WTF spell can grow off of, and there is no point in hoarding XP. Non-template characters can only learn one spell per week.
Operation Pentagram has also spent their XP. You can check out their purchases in the character sheets.
Laura: 4 XP
[ ] (Laura) Learn a spell (
Basic tier or below)
[ ] (Laura) Save XP
Kayleigh: 4 XP
[ ] (Kayleigh) Learn a spell (
Basic tier or below)
[ ] (Kayleigh) Save XP
Lacey: 4 XP
[ ] (Lacey) Learn a spell (
Basic tier or below)
[ ] (Lacey) Save XP
