The Stormcrow, A Superhero's Tale Options

[Renee]

Ah, so that is The Donald. See, I didn't even know he tried to get 'extramarital' with some ladies in such a way, yicch. Doesn't surprise me, though.

Okay, I see (about Black Raven & Cray). Sorry, as you know I love speculating. The writer always knows the story best of course, so now Branwen's methods of recruitment were not threatening as I was assuming. Still, Cray got a pretty sweet deal after getting 'rescued" by the Raven. Most convicts when they get out don't have such luxuries; they wind up washing dishes or bussing tables, their parole officers always on call. Somebody with tech skills like Cray might find themselves heading toward the Dark Web or some such, looking to continue their hacking careers, because it's what they know best. So what I'm saying: the chances of Cray straying from his sweet job so he can find something sweeter seem just about nil. He's got job security up the wazoo.

Anyway, thanks for the explanation. Wow, Detroit looks really clean in those pictures. Baltimore's so grimy in comparison! Huge dips and potholes in pavement, all sorts of diesel dust on the sides of buildings, and so on.

"Isn't this place abandoned?" Heh. If she didn't already know & trust Cray, she'd be out of there! Even Mister Rogers types can be serial killers. 🔪 Sometimes because they appear so non-threatening. Alright, let me shush.

"Wasn't there a bunch of murders here, years ago?" -- Holy cripes.

"You met her once," Cray said. -- Actually didn't they meet several times? But as relatives. But yeah, from Cray's perspective, he might not even know Barb & Branwen are related. I actually hope not. Because if he does know they're related, wow. The list of secrets keeps growing and growing.

I'm hearing Cray's voice as Mister Rogers when he speaks! ... I can just hear him, talking in his soothing voice, like Rogers did when telling young children about the trolley. 🚃

Nerds don't bathe? Oh. Maybe the types who work all-hours, sleeping in their offices and such.

"It's still warm, did you feel that?" -- Mm hmm. A bit of innuendo, perhaps.

***

YES. Totally, Gadget. I totally get this perspective! Still, how can the guy hide such a secret if he's going to be working so closely to Barbara? It was only a matter of time.

She knew that she was the last person with a right to throw stones. After all, she had brought Hannah home to the Witch House after just meeting her. That really was no different from what Cray had done.

The difference is that Hannah had already proven herself to be a super, mostly in the same league as Jan, herself. And who else is is Jan supposed to date, anyway? She'd feel most comfortable being with someone who's similarly 'super' as herself. So she meets Hannah, they do some super things together, things no other mortal can accomplish with magic and such. So of course she's gonna want to share her life immediately. It's like when two famous actors date & marry. Sometimes that's all they can date, is someone who's in the same profession as themselves.

Hmm, lost my point there. It just seems like with Hannah, there is no need to keep secrets because they'd just met. Whereas it seems Barbara and Cray have mutual ppl in their lives whom they've known for a while. And Cray KNOWS this. The secrets are already ingrained. With Hannah and Jan there were two open books. No secrets, and Jan chose not to start any. Hope that makes sense.

I love Cray's answers as to why he did what he did. Indeed, the guy's super-lonely. In an ideal world he'd be talking up some lady who's not Jan's mom, but things don't always work out ideally.

Yah, Ryo's not into hugs. COVID was such a relief with the social-distancing thing, for antisocial folks like himself.

This post has been edited by Renee: Dec 27 2023, 07:18 PM

[SubRosa]

Acadian: It was good to catch up on the Raven's Nest and once more give a description of it in its current, evolved form. I have had the chance to figure out what Blood Raven is up to in Boston, and in the process I realized that she will no longer be using the Blood Raven armor (or that name). So I decided to add her old armor to the display cases. It makes a nice book end with the original Stormcrow suit, to form borders for the trophy space.

Cray's scene there was good to write. It was only about half-way through that I realized it was a Queer allegory, which led me to the ending quite nicely.

Conflict is what drives story, so I am hoping to work in more internal or at least less overt conflicts like this into the story.

Ryo makes for a great straight man in any comedy scene.


Renee: He was not bragging about having affairs in that circumstance. He was literally bragging about how he just grabbed women by the genitals whenever he felt like it. He thought bragging about committing sexual assault made him look cool. Which obviously it did, since people voted for him.

There are parts of Detroit that are just as grimy as B'more I am sure. And likewise parts of Baltimore that are as shiny, if not more so. Every city has its rich and poor, and the investment placed in the infrastructure always reflects where they stand in society.

Cray knows all about Blood Raven's family. He had to investigate every singe one of them when they were hunting the Hierophant and Summoner. Remember, January was a suspect in the beginning, as was her dad. His whole job is to do research like that.

Nerds not bathing is stereotype that sadly often is borne out in reality. There are some real hard core types who just never leave their computer desk to take a shower.

Ideally to January, Cray would indeed be hooking up with someone who is not her mother. But people fall for those they are around, and that is someone Cray is indeed around.










Mimic

Napoleon III's dining set was real

Starry Night

Systema Naturae

I For One, Welcome Our New Insect Overlords meme



Book 12.6 - Broken Arrow

August 10, 2019

January stretched her senses out into the astral as Avery drove the van up the driveway. She sat in the back, and immediately felt his aura in front of her. That of Ryo was a bright light in the passenger seat beside him. She pushed her awareness beyond them, to the world outside of the vehicle.

She touched the wards that surrounded the Witch House. They came in several layers. The first ringed the entire grounds. It started at the edge of the sidewalk before the massive front lawn, and circled around to the depths of the woods deep in the back yard. The next ring surrounded the very walls of the house itself. Then finally yet another set of barriers ran between the rooms within, like water-tight compartments within a ship.

She partially activated the outer-most shell of defenses. This left it possible for others to physically cross them, but obfuscated all within from clear view. The house was surrounded by trees to begin with, creating a partial barrier to sight. This magic played upon that natural barrier, and filled in the gaps. Now it was impossible to accurately see or hear anyone or anything within. Best of all, it was not obviously hiding anything. From the outside it still looked like a house with many trees around it. Only one sensing within the astral would know the difference.

Avery pulled his uncle Jerome's old Ford up to the garage and parked it there. It was old enough that you actually had to put a key into the ignition to start it, rather than use a fob. Avery pulled the archaic device from the steering column and dropped it in his pocket as he exited the van. Ryo slid out the side door, and January herself popped open both back doors and hopped down to the concrete.

"Ok, we are free from prying eyes and ears now," January told her two friends. She turned and reached back into the van. It was packed with furniture, cardboard boxes, and overstuffed garbage bags. She pulled out some of the latter, and tossed them to one side. They were not filled with trash of course, but rather Ryo's clothing. January had learned from her two recent moving experiences that simple plastic bags like this were ideal for stuffing with clothes.

With those out of the way, she pulled out a silvery aluminum suitcase, and set it down on its wheels beside the van. Avery stepped up and popped it open. Unlike the garbage bags, it was not filled with clothes, well, not exactly. The ultra tech metal of the Gadget suit lay within, all neatly flattened down and perfectly fitted to the space. Avery literally stepped into the case, where a pair of impressions matched his feet. He took a moment to tap the screen of his digital watch. Then he lowered both arms, and stood perfectly still.

His blue suit of powered armor leaped up into the air and clanked into place across his body. In just a few seconds it covered him from head to toe. It glowed to life a moment later, and spilled its soft azure illumination around the driveway. The now fully armored Gadget stepped back then, out of the empty aluminum case. He picked it up and set it out of the way beside the van.

January reached in the back of the van and pulled out the head and front boards of Ryo's bed, and handed them to the powered armor hero. He tucked them under one arm each, and headed for the back door with ease. She followed him with the side boards next, and picked up a dresser with her free hand. Ryo came last carrying the mattress with both hands. Rather than slide it out of the doors, he simply faded them right through the walls of the van.

January did not have to race ahead of Avery to open the back door. She simply reached out to the wards around the house with her thoughts, and a moment later the door swung open on its own. They tromped through the house to the rotunda in its center. Rather than walk the steps, Gadget simply flew up to the second floor with a stream of blue ions. January leaped the distance herself, and dropped lightly upon the banister that ringed the balcony which encircled the upper story of the rotunda. Ryo turned up the speed, and half-ran, half-leaped horizontally along the side of the wall with the grace of a mountain goat. Even with the wide mattress clutched in both hands, he made it look easy.

"This goes a lot faster with powers," Avery noted from the top.

"Yeah, we should get it all unpacked in a quarter of the time it took us at Ryo's parent's house," January noted.

Ryo had picked out a room for himself already. In fact, he had taken its measurements, and created a three-dimensional rendering of it in his computer. He brought this up on his tablet, and January saw that he had even added his belongings to the model. He had the location of every piece of furniture planned and plotted ahead of time, measured down to the inch.

So thanks to his obsessively precise nature, they wasted no time moving things here or there to see how they looked. Instead they were able to get his room set up in no time at all. Granted, Ryo did not really have much. It was just the contents of his bedroom that they were moving into the Witch House, not an entire home full of belongings.

January was thinking it was time to call for a pizza, as was the time-honored tradition after moving house. But both Avery and Ryo surprised her by insisting upon venturing up into the attic. So she dutifully led them back out onto the balcony that ringed the second floor of the rotunda in the center of the house. There she reached up to the ordinary hatch in the ceiling, and pulled both it and the folding ladder attached to it down to the floor.


"I'm not sure if we should be up here..."

She tromped up the wooden slats of the ladder and entered the attic. She cautiously eyed the boards of the roof that sloped sharply inward from each side, and hoped she would survive this expedition without bumping her head. The floor under her feet was coated with dust, as were the numerous crates, barrels, boxes and other containers that filled the space. There were even ceramic jugs that looked suspiciously like Roman amphorae, still sealed tightly with stoppers of fired clay and mortared shut.

"Nonsense," Ryo insisted. He had simply faded up through the floor, without the need of physical assistance from mundane things like ladders. The young Japanese-American reached out to dramatically pull a moth-eaten white sheet away from a large lump that rose up from the floor. Free of the cloth, a clearly modern reclining chair was revealed beneath. Ryo pushed a few buttons on the side, and its foot rest popped out. With another button press, the frame slid back with a faint hum of electricity.

"This is where Keziah put all of her stuff before she moved on," January noted. "I don't know if she'd want us fiddling with it..."

"Think you, such an act of defilement might vex her mightily?" Avery said with a twinkle in his eye. He had slid the faceplate of his helmet back to reveal his features. He had been the last to enter, having taken the steps after January.

He traced his armored fingers across a tall, rolled up carpet that leaned against one wall. "Seriously though, I do not think she would mind. If she really wanted to keep people out, she would have at least locked the door. Or set up a monster like a hellhound or skeleton to stand guard over it all, or maybe left a mimic to bite the unwary hand."

The meta-inventor made a show of reaching for a massive chest, only to sharply yank his hand away for dramatic effect.

That reminded January of the Hierophant's secret lair, and the wight that had formerly guarded it. Until Blood Raven had found it and done to it, what she did to those who vexed her mightily.

Now Ryo stepped up and did open the chest that Avery had pretended was a camouflaged monster. He drew forth a curious dinner plate. It was made of silvery metal, and its rim was decorated with an ornate frieze of palm trees. A coat of arms was engraved just inside the rim. It was as complex as the frieze, and depicted an eagle under a crown, with a pair of scepters crossed behind it.

"Is that silver?" January wondered. Her curiosity got the better of her, and she walked over to see more plates within the chest, carefully packed away in straw. Along with them were cups, platters, pitchers, utensils, and the like. It was an entire dining service. Apparently one fit for a king.

"No, too light," Ryo handed it to January, and he drew up a cup, which also bore the same royal-looking seal.

"I think this is... aluminum?" January thought aloud as she turned the plate this way and that in her hand. "Who makes plates out of aluminum, and puts a fancy seal on them?"

Avery snapped the face plate back down over the front of his helmet. A light sprang from his eye pieces a moment later, and spilled out across the plate to scan it.

"This is the royal seal of Emperor Napoleon III of France," He reported a moment later.

"The mini-Napoleon," January remembered.

"2 Napo, 2 Leon," Avery quipped.

"Nap de Leon 3 - Corsica Drift," Ryo remarked dryly.

Avery apparently studied something within his helmet. "Teh Interwebs say he reigned from 1852 to 1870. One of his baller moves to peacock in front of the other royalty of Europe was his aluminum dining set. This is back before people had figured out how to make the stuff, so it was worth more than gold. When did Keziah leave?"

"Earlier than that," January considered. "I think Blood Raven said 1840-ish? Give or take a few decades?"

"Well clearly she considered time to be merely a suggestion, rather than a Law of Nature." Avery quipped. He once more opened up his helmet, to make his face visible. "Sort of like gravity is to anime characters."

"We should bring this stuff down and start decorating," Ryo drew forth a portrait of a very Enlightenment-looking man striking a dramatic pose on horseback. "Even I think this house is bare and empty."

"I mean, he's not wrong," Avery agreed with the other young man. "You really need to spruce up this place. Most of the rooms are completely empty. It's supposed to be a Witch House, but aside from just a few rooms, it's just a blank house."

"Have you been furniture shopping? I can't afford that." January shook her head, and looked to Ryo. "We can't afford that. None of us are billionaires."

"Exactly," Ryo declared. "That is why we should take all this downstairs and start setting things up. At least get a living room going. The library could use some work too. Well, a lot of work. Hey, I like this one."

He pulled out painting from a stack of covered frames. It depicted a deep blue sky, filled with golden stars that swirled with color. A cypress tree rose up in the foreground, along with a sleepy little village. The flowing brush strokes and vibrant tones gave it an ethereal quality, like it was from another world.

"I know that one!" January cried. "That's... that's..."

"Starry Night," Avery nodded appraisingly. "Vincent Van Gogh."

"I wonder if it is the original?" Ryo mused.

"Isn't that in a museum someplace?" January said.

"It might be," Ryo declared. "But someone who can go back and forth through time at will might have easily picked it up in the future, and brought it back to the past."

That sounded exactly like something that Keziah Talmadge would do. The Witch who had taught Blood Raven herself magic, she had created the Witch House within which they stood, including its space-bending sanctum. All of that was just a work-study program that she had used to teach herself how to travel the multiverse. She did not strike January as a woman who was easily daunted or swayed.

"We'll just tell people it's a copy," January declared.

"Now this, this is definitely going up!" Avery laughed out loud as he pulled out one of the most iconic portraits ever made: a group of dogs sitting around a table playing poker.

"Clearly, she possessed a sense of humor." Ryo observed in his usual dry tones.

"No, no way," January laughed. She reached for the painting, but Avery danced away, holding it just out of reach.

"It can go right over the grand staircase, in the center of the house!" he cried. "That way everyone will see it!"

"It'll go in the bathroom!" January insisted. "That's where it belongs."

"Well, you do have a point there," Avery considered. "The bathroom it is. Downstairs or upstairs?"

"Hey, look at this." Ryo opened up another chest, and drew forth a handful of books. They were all hard covers. Some were bound in faded and cracked leather, others in worn cloth, and even a few had covers of wood.

"Systema Naturae, 1735," the Japanese-American read from one of them. "I think this is where Linnaen taxonomy came from."

The promise of books was more than enough to distract January from Avery's canine portrait. She walked over and stared down into the chest. There were more books that looked like they dated back to 18th century, and even older. But some looked brand new. She pulled out one of the latter, and looked at the slip cover.

"Modern Witchcraft, by Branwen Renner," January noted. "It's from last year. It's the last book Blood Raven wrote under that name. I wonder if Keziah read this before or after she met Blood Raven?"

"Now that is just weird," Avery murmured. Like the others in the Alliance, he knew that Branwen Renner was Blood Raven's secret identity. Well it had been until a month ago, when she had moved on to her newest life in Boston. "Imagine if Keziah already knew that Blood Raven was going to be a magician, before she even met her and trained her. It would be like me going back in time and teaching physics to Einstein."

"You know, you guys are right, we do need to decorate," January looked over the books and smiled. "I'll start with these."

"Leave it to books to change her mind," Avery laughed.

"I am consistent," January nodded. "You would do the same if it was video games."

"I would steal the Devil's own game collection!" Avery insisted. "That guy's got to have the best stuff, without the parental advisories or cut content, and every DLC ever made!"

January stared at the sun that slanted in through the window. "We are going to have to pick it up. My mom's coming soon to record the next podcast series."

"So what's up next?" Avery asked.

"Labor: from prehistory to today," January said. "I've even got a poem to start it out with."

"Dope," Ryo nodded. "It is something that affects the lives of everyone."

"Yeah, it is. But it's sort of unintentional," January explained. "I was going to do the Russian Revolution. But as I worked on the early stages, I had to read up on Marx to get context. Then to understand what he was talking about, I had to read up on the Industrial Revolution. And to do that... well, you can see how it dovetailed. I decided to start with just Labor in general. Then maybe in the future I can do an episode on Marx and Engels. Then maybe one on the Paris Commune, and then maybe I can finally get to the Russian Revolution."

"I for one, welcome our glorious overlords from the Soviet Union," Avery cried in a comically bad Russian accent. "Workers of the world, unite! We must rise up and seize the means of casting pods!"

* * *

[Acadian]

A fun episode that spills a lot of detail about the witch house and tantalizes with all kinds of tidbits about Keziah. Yes, thinking about manipulating time can make your head hurt!

When Gadget suited up, I had visions of Tony Stark donning his Ironman outfit!

[Renee]

Mimics are annoying. Urgh.

The Aluminum page taught a bunch of stuff. Like... it was actually rare and even valuable! Did not know that. Well, I knew it was rare, but did not know it was valuable.

Starry Night (any Van Gogh, really) I can't look at those and not get emotional. There's something about that man's work... hard to explain. He really was able to transcend.

Whoa that's crazy. The Witch House has barriers which are unseen, but actually work. That's better than ADT. Problem with security companies is now you're involving an outside entity directly into your personal home. Which also means dealing with all the false alarms (not a pun) which occur. First two calls are free, after that they charge for each time the alarm triggers, but nobody's there to access the keypad in time.

Ha ha, Acadian is right! He's got an Ironman outfit! 🤖 Ah, so the two dudes are moving into the house. That's a good idea. Place is so huge and cavernous, from what I recall. And Jan barely had any possessions to fill it.

Despite all the gadgetry and magic, it all comes down to an old-fashioned pizza.

Did Gadget really just say "teh" instead of "the", or is that a nit?

Nerds not bathing is stereotype that sadly often is borne out in reality. There are some real hard core types who just never leave their computer desk to take a shower.

Ah, I see. Sheesh.

This post has been edited by Renee: Jan 4 2024, 04:11 PM

[SubRosa]

Acadian: The Witch House is a pretty cool place. It is fun to explore it some more, as we move things forward with Ryo moving in.

I too instantly thought of Tony Stark when Avery suited up. That was something I tried to avoid actually. But I think it is just impossible with the Marvel movies making him the icon of all powered armor characters.


Renee: I was surprised when I learned about that history of aluminum myself, from the Mini-Napster's plates, to the cap on the Washington Monument. It is weird to think that it was a power move back then, given how cheap aluminum foil is today.

Van Gogh's really impress me too. He has a real mastery of color that just pops off the canvas, and his brush strokes are really soothing to the eye. The guy was amazing. That was a really cool Doctor Who episode featuring him. You can find a clip from it on YouTube, where the Doctor takes Van Gogh to the future to see how he has been remembered.

That was an absolutely intentional "Teh Internetz".





Beethoven's 5th Symphony on Electric Guitar

Questions From a Worker Who Reads

The cookie meme Barbara refers to

Bloodhound Gang - The Bad Touch


Book 12.7 - Broken Arrow

By the time her mother did arrive, January and the others had at least filled the den with books. There were more than January or the others had even guessed at. Every time they emptied out a chest or crate, another container seemed to almost magically appear with more. In fact, January did not think it was almost magically at all. They ended up with more empty containers than they had to start with. If the same remained true of all the furniture and decorations, they would have more than enough to fill the entire house, and still have plenty to spare.

"Where did you get all the books!" Barbara marveled when she got her first look at the new den. Now the shelves that lined its walls were packed with volumes both new and old, large and small, on every topic imaginable. New lamps stood from the floor, along with a few small tables, some comfy chairs, and even a couch. As ever, the gigantic globe rose from the floor in its massive wooden stand, and the huge desk that was their recording studio loomed over it all.

"An estate sale," Avery said quickly. He had ditched his Gadget armor before she had arrived. So he was back in street clothing once more, the same as the others. "I showed up early, and got it all for a steal."

"You should have called me, I would have helped you move it," Barbara said. "I'd have helped you move in too Ryo."

"Aww, it was nothing," Ryo said, somewhat abashedly. "I do not have much. The three of us took care of it in no time at all."

"It's good that you moved in," Barbara said. "I'm glad January has some company in this big, old house. I thought you would have moved in first through Avery."

"I wish I could," the young man rubbed the back of his head, his sure tell of distress. "But my Nana's Alzheimer's is getting worse. I need to be at home as much as I can. We talked about putting her in a nursing home. But she wants to spend her last... Well she belongs at home now."

"I am so sorry to hear that," Barbara murmured somberly. "Time comes for all of us someday."

"How is your campaign going?" Ryo's change of the subject was abrupt, as was his wont. But it was not unwelcome. January had known Avery's grandmother all of her life, just as she had known Avery all of that time. It was hard to imagine a world without the old lady and her housecoat and curlers. But people moving on - one way or another - seemed to be happening a lot lately.

"Slowly," Barbara frowned. "I don't know how you did it, but getting the Alliance to campaign for signatures to put me on the ballot really helped. But the news cycles turn quick these days, and I don't have a lot of money to spend on advertising. Not like the other guys do. Galpin and Harding each have an entire political party behind them. I've got, well - you guys - and the Allies."

"With the leave of absence you took from work, you at least have more time now," January noted. "And there is that fundraiser you've got coming up. That should at least get some cash flow going to the campaign fund, such as it is."

"Yeah, it's good." Barbara said. "It's going better than I ever imagined really, especially since Frank came on to be my campaign manager. He's been a godsend. It's just, a lot."

January of course knew that Frank was Frank Wigand, aka Cray. The latter was a fact which they all knew now, thanks to his coming out to Barbara. But Barbara did not know that they knew, much less that they were in fact the Allies. This web they had woven was complicated. She hoped they would not trip over it someday, keeping all these secrets.

On the other hand, January wondered if it was time for the Alliance to make another gesture to help her mother? Part of her wanted to shout from rooftops. But another part of her was cautious. It would be dangerous to associate Barbara Ryan's name too closely with that of Stormcrow.

Given that she was her daughter, inviting extra scrutiny was not wise. But even that aside, creating too strong of an association between Barbara Ryan and the Allies posed an added danger. Villains both mundane and super who lacked the nerve or wherewithal to attack the Alliance might go after Barbara instead. Bullies punched down after all, not up.

Besides, people needed to be listening to her mother because of what she had to say about reforms. Things like raising the minimum wage, providing healthcare for all, and other changes that would make people's lives better. Capes had a way of overshadowing all of that with the glamour that came with them, even if it was undeserved.

"So is Mr. Jack here yet?" Barbara looked around the room for their audio engineer.

"No, Jacob could not make it," Ryo shook his head. Only he called Blackjack - or Mr. Jack - by his full, given name. Even his parents called him Jack. "He has a part in a movie. He had to leave for Vancouver."

"Really, that is totally rad!" Barbara grinned. "You kids don't say that these days do you? What is it you say, it's sick?"

"Totally dope," Avery nodded.

"Dank," Ryo added.

"It slaps," January rounded out the terms of approval. "It's a small part. He's only in a few scenes. But it's a start, and he gets to play opposite the Stone."

"That is Duane Johnstone," Ryo corrected January. "He does not like going by his old wrestling name anymore. I do not think he owns the rights to it."

"Well that's still dope," Barbara nodded. She slung the purse from her shoulder and plopped it down on one of the new reading tables. "Let's get to it. The last time we did this it went on for hours."

"Good," Avery noted. "The longer the better. Listening to podcasts really fills up the dead hours in the day, like cleaning house or doing laundry."

They walked over to the large desk that was their recording studio. Avery hung back and stayed out of the way. He was just a fly on the wall. Without Blackjack, Ryo took over full engineering responsibilities. Once he fired up his laptop they pulled on their headphones and began their usual testing.

"So Belle Isle is looking better," January said into her microphone. She glanced over to see Ryo fiddling with his software, and continued on. She knew from experience that he would need them to talk for a bit to make sure everything was coming through correctly. "It looks green again."

"Yeah those Gaia Sisters from Oregon are really something." Barbara said into her own microphone. "And everyone else too! The Allies sure have a lot of - well - allies. I can't believe they cleared out all the broken concrete, made new topsoil, and planted new trees and grass. With magic they say. It's incredible."

"Good thing too, given that the president refused to release any disaster relief money," Barbara continued. "It's not even his money. But he refuses to do anything that might help a state that isn't run by his party. We really are all on our own."

"Oh come now Mom, he refuses to help the people who voted for him too!" January interjected. "But as long he is hurting the people he is supposed to hurt, they will still vote for him anyway. That's why we need people like you in government."

"I think he's just upset that the battle was won - and run - by women," Barbara went on. "Remember his dig about 'Those Women from Michigan'? Blackhawk led the defense of the bridge. She's the Rock of Belle Isle now. Blood Raven led the overall fight, and she's the one who summoned the dragon and destroyed the gateway. Stormcrow is the one who actually defeated that Abyssal Shadow King and sent him back where he came from. A First Nations woman, a white woman, and a trans woman saved the world. It must really grind his gears."

"Well, Stormcrow did not exactly defeat the Abyssal General," January found herself saying. She was careful not to use his name - Nátthrafn. They had all worked hard to keep that under wraps. Someone might be able to trace that name to the Rauðskinna, and then with that terrible book summon him all over again. "She just sort of knocked him back through the gateway."

"Good enough," Barbara insisted. "That took him out of the fight long enough for Blood Raven to finish destroying the gate. Besides, from what most people say, she's the one who created the Alliance in the first place, not Blood Raven. That's really Stormcrow's greatest power, she inspires people."

"Well, the latest rumor on the internet is that Janos Heisen is responsible for winning the battle," January frowned. "According to right wing pundits like Len Schapiro and Peter Jordanson, he single-handedly killed all the Abyssals and 'scienced' the gate shut. Not surprising that they like the former Nazi."

"Yeah, I saw that," Barbara sighed. "But Heisen shut that down pretty quick. He actually released an official statement stating the facts: he and the other Europeans only showed up at the end and pitched in to help, but Blood Raven led the battle and won it. He even put the Alliance's golden dragon badge on the shoulder his robotic suit."

"So when do we start recording?" January looked over to Ryo. "Are we coming through?"

"We have been all along," the young man nodded, and raised a thumbs up in assent. "It sounds good."

"Oh great, maybe I can throw out a few slurs about the president while I am at it!" she laughed.

"Well, I'm not going to stop you," Barbara said. "The First Amendment protects your right to free speech."

"Ok well, I guess we should get going then." January said. Before she could stop it, her perky phone voice leaped out. "Hi! This is a podcast. I'm January Ward, and my pronouns are 'she' and 'her'. See, I got that right this time."

"And I am Barbara Ryan. My pronouns are 'she' and 'her' as well." January's mother chimed in. "Our audio engineer and editor is Ryo Kuroda, so everyone say 'hi' to Ryo. Those slapping beats you heard in the intro was Beethoven's 5th Symphony, performed on electric guitar by Blackjack Schwartz of Epic Fail."

"What is this Mom?" January asked.

"What do you mean, it's our podcast dear," she replied.

"No, I mean what podcast, so the listeners know."

"Oh, yeah, right." Barbara slapped an open palm against her forehead for a moment. Then she went back to speaking into her microphone. "This is Heroes and Villains. Because real life is messy - and so is this podcast - and sometimes we are a little of each."

"This time it's my turn to present," January said. She looked over her tablet, and stared at the script she had written out there. It was long, page after page after page. Avery was going to be happy, because this was going to be another four part series. That would give them a month of content.

"Our topic for this series is the history of Labor." January began. "That is with a capital 'L', as in people who work, not the act of giving birth. Which I suppose could be an episode of its own someday too... I am going to start with a poem by Bertolt Brecht, called Questions from a Worker Who Reads."

Then she launched into it.

"Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you will read the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?

And Babylon, many times demolished,
Who raised it up so many times?

In what houses of gold glittering Lima did its builders live?
Where, the evening that the Great Wall of China was finished, did the masons go?

Great Rome is full of triumphal arches.
Who erected them?

Over whom did the Caesars triumph?
Had Byzantium, much praised in song, only palaces for its inhabitants?

Even in fabled Atlantis, the night that the ocean engulfed it,
The drowning still cried out for their slaves.

The young Alexander conquered India.
Was he alone?

Caesar defeated the Gauls.
Did he not even have a cook with him?

Philip of Spain wept when his armada went down.
Was he the only one to weep?

Frederick the 2nd won the 7 Years War.
Who else won it?

Every page a victory.
Who cooked the feast for the victors?

Every 10 years a great man.
Who paid the bill?

So many reports.

So many questions."

"So, what is labor?" January asked. "Once again, I don't mean those people with uteruses using them to give birth, which is certainly laborious. I mean the other kind of labor: working. We have a whole working class, we have workplaces, we have - occasionally - worker's rights, we have working mothers-."

"Back in the 80s we had Men at Work," Barbara interjected. "They came from a land Down Under, and made us wonder Who Can It Be Now?"

"Please mom, no vegemite sandwiches," January murmured. "We have avocados these days. But you know who did not have avocado toast? People living before history. They also did not have those other things I just mentioned. They did not need such social classes, or distinctions. In fact, there is good reason to believe that the very idea of social class had not even been invented."

"Back in those halcyon days before history, before even MySpace, life was shaped a lot differently from now. For most of that period Homo sapiens lived as hunter-gatherers. How much hunting, how much gathering, would have varied wildly from place to place of course. It is hard for us to speak in anything other than generalities, since by definition prehistory means before written records. So we don't have firsthand accounts from people who lived 40,000 years ago to work from."

"We do have archaeology, and we do have anthropological studies of modern hunter-gatherer societies," January explained. "These can help us fill in gaps, and form a picture. But it is important to stress that we don't possess exactitude here. Every society is unique, and has its own specific customs and beliefs. Which is just as true for people today as it was for those in the far past. Even now hunter-gatherer societies are not a monolith. They are not all identical copies of one another. You will find all manner of variations between them."

"So looking back, what we do know is that things like employers did not exist. Companies did not exist. Landlords did not exist. Bankers did not exist. Money did not exist. Credit did not exist. Taxes did not exist. These are all extremely new concepts, things we literally made up in the last few thousand years. Ugg the caveperson would have no concept of these things, which literally shape and especially constrain our existence today."

"So what was Ugg up to back then?" January went on. "Well Ugg was first and foremost trying to not starve to death. This is pretty much the first priority of every living thing, and remains so to this day. Some of us may have the privilege of not having to consciously worry about it. But we sure notice when the fridge is empty! So Ugg's most important job, their work, was to hunt and/or gather food. Again, how much hunting went on, versus how much gathering, varied wildly depending on the environment. For example, if you look at people living above the Arctic Circle, you will find that hunting sea creatures takes up the vast majority of this equation. Go to people living in a temperate forest and that will shift dramatically."

"So when Ugg was not digging up tubers or throwing javelins at antelope, what was Ugg doing? Well No. 2 job was pretty much trying to not get eaten. For much of human existence we have not been on the top of the food chain. For example, do a Googol search on saber tooth cats. Those things were real, and they really ate us. Same with prehistoric crocs, hyenas, and even cave bears. I read that the latter were not carnivores. But if a human got in their way, well, that was a bad time to be a human."

"So Ugg's got food, Ugg's not something else's food. What does Ugg do next?"

"I am thinking that being nothing but mammals, Ugg might be doing it like they do on the Discovery Channel?" Barbara laughed.

"Ok that was not in my script, but yes, I am sure sex - both for fun and procreation - was in the mix too." January shook her head, but she had to fight to suppress a smile. "What I am getting at is that there are some things that Ugg needs to survive. Or things that while not absolutely necessary, do make life easier for Ugg, or at least more pleasant."

"Because Ugg made and used stone tools," January went on. "The same was true of some other pre-human ancestors of Ugg. With fire and tools, Ugg was able to more efficiently hunt animals, defend against being hunted by other animals, and even more easily skin and otherwise process the meat taken in said hunts. Ugg was able to make clothing to stay warm during those chilly Ice Age nights. Ugg was able to make shelters to keep the rain off when the weather was bad."

"All of this tool-making requires work. What we today would recognize as work. Some people listening to this might even be making the same sorts of tools that Ugg was using 200,000 years ago: such as hammers or cutting instruments. Only they are getting paid to do so - I hope - and Ugg was not. Because Ugg had not invented money yet, or the need for money yet."

"Ugg did all this work because it was helpful. It was not fun, but it did improve life, so Ugg did it. It was not because he was from an underclass that was forced to do it for some higher, ruling class. That had yet to be invented. At this point, there is no reason to believe that there was any division of labor based on class, or specializations within specific kinds of work. There is also no reason to believe there was even an idea of property yet, not in the way we look at it now."

"These people lived in what were probably small communities, as hunting and gathering does not lend itself to concentrating large groups in one place for long. That exhausts the resources in the immediate area too quickly. They definitely had some social organization, as some of the hunts we have archaeological evidence for shows that they took down massive animals such as mammoths, which required planning and teamwork."

"Now as I said before, we do not know exactly how these societies were structured," January went on. "But looking at modern analogues, we can expect that they were not authoritarian or hierarchical. Rather they were probably quite egalitarian, and very 'live and let live' by comparison to modern, industrialized societies. If someone had what sounded like a good idea, people would follow them and do it. The next day they might likewise follow someone else with another idea. There were no gods or masters in those days."

"For example, one practice that has been recorded in a hunter-gatherer society was that of not quite shaming, but of deliberately giving a cold shoulder to hunters who tried to get too big for their britches. These are people who try to win too much favor and influence over society as a whole. They would essentially be ghosted by everyone else, who would refuse the food or objects the wannabe big shots might be offering up as bribes to others to become their followers. Eventually the would-be big man would learn their lesson, and go back to staying in their lane."

"If you took our friend Ugg and dropped them in the modern world, they would probably not be able to cope with it," Barbara frowned. "Not because of technology. I think Ugg would adapt to modern clothes, and food, and cooking easily enough. He is literally just as intelligent as we are after all. But he could probably never grasp written laws, that are bigger than people, or that other people he had never met had power over him, including the power of life or death. His first encounter with the police would probably end with him either being dead or in prison. That would probably be before his first day here was over."

"Yeah, we've made a world that to Ugg's eyes, would be insanely stratified and organized and regimented and above all constrained," January sighed. "That is not to say that life in Ugg's world was paradise. It was tough. If you made it past one year old you were lucky. If you got sick, if you broke a leg, if there was a drought, if there were floods, there was a real chance you were not going to make it. Mother Nature is harsh and uncompromising, and there is no reloading from a previous save game in real life. There is just no reason to believe that in general people went out of their way to make it even harsher for each other, yet..."

"Which brings us to agriculture," January continued. "This changed everything. It is one of the most momentous shifts in the planet's existence. Modern humans have existed since 300,000 years ago, give or take about 50,000 years either way. But starting roughly 12,000 years ago people began to invent agriculture. It was not a sudden switch, where one day they were hunter-gatherers, and then next they were farmers. It most likely was a slow drift that took place over thousands of years. People and their descendants probably went back and forth from one to the other and back again through that time. But in the end we saw large populations of humans living in a single place year round, and growing crops for their sustenance."

"That is a huge timescale," Barbara observed. "Literally from 300,000 BCE to 10,000 BCE - almost all of human existence - we were living an Ugg's life. Sedentary life is very, very new, and radical, and unusual. It really brings home how new and untried our current model of living actually is. People tend to fall into the trap of thinking the world was always the way it is now, and that nothing ever changes. The ultimate takeaway from that line of thought is why bother to even try to create change at all? But when you look at time like this, it is astounding just how vastly the human experience has transformed in a relatively short period."

"Yeah, it's staggering when you really think about the gulf of years when you look back so far," January agreed. "Time just sort of becomes flat after a while, it is so hard to comprehend compared to what we are used to."

"But back to my script. With this radical change, suddenly the idea of ownership became real: the ownership of land, the ownership of animals, the ownership of people. With that came the idea of social classes. The people who worked, and the people who ruled them. The haves, and the have-nots."

"We also began to see real divisions of labor. We have people who tilled the fields, and that is all they did. We have people who mined the earth. We have people who worked bronze. We have people who sailed the seas, and brought tin and copper from far off places for the previous people to turn it into that bronze. We have a priest class, who gave the kings and pharaohs the divine legitimacy to rule. And so on."

"We now have people with specialized roles, with jobs. These people do one thing. But that one thing cannot support their life. They need stuff from other people. Like food, and beer, and shoes, and the like. So they had currency. People now get paid for the work they do, and in turn they pay others for the things they want or need. I am sure everyone listening is familiar with the concept. But it would have absolutely blown poor Ugg's mind."

"Our oldest form of money appears to have been clay tokens that date back to about 8,000 - 7,500 BCE. By the time of Ancient Sumer silver and cattle had become currency. At first their writing system was primarily used in contracts for trade goods and assets. Royal contracts like this even had a cylinder seal that was rolled over them to create an impression in the damp clay of the tablet. These acted as a sort of ancient credit card, that guaranteed the goods or services specified in the contract to whoever produced it."

"So to recap, we started with communal societies where everyone shared and contributed together, because that is the only way to survive in nature. Then we shifted to complex urban centers where technically that was still happening. But it was taking place under this added layer of commerce, and property, and ownership, and law."

"Most important is money I think. Money changes everything, now doesn't it? It has been noted as being the root of all evil. It inevitably overrides those bonds of community, as people discover that money means the difference between starving or not, freezing or not, living or not. Worse, money and wealth are zero sum propositions. There is only a specific, finite amount of it. For one to have it, means someone else does not. The only reason billionaires can exist today, is because billions of others have nothing."

"And you can't just print more money," Barbara added. "People keep trying that, and it always works out badly, really, really badly. Even though money is literally something we made up, it still obeys its own laws of nature that we can't change, even if we want to."

"So we created a world where everyone must compete with each other for money, the imaginary thing we now need to survive," January went back to her script. "Instead of working together to obtain food, clothing, shelter, medicine and the like - the things we really need to survive. We have stratified the world into working classes and middle classes and leisure classes, based solely upon money."

"Ideas like nobility were invented. It was a PR move invented to explain away why some people had more than others. They deserved it you see, because they were born special, better than everyone else. As I alluded to before, the same was true of organized religion. One of its most important functions was to legitimize the rule of the king, or pharaoh, or other ruler. It isn't just an accident this guy lives in a literal palace of gold. It's because Marduk, or Ra, or Yahweh said so. And sometimes these religious organizations even competed with the king for power."

"We still have a form of both today in the prosperity gospel," Barbara interjected. "Rich people deserve to be rich because God wants them to be. Likewise poor people deserve to be poor, because they are immoral. I don't think it's an accident that when Gene Roddenberry created Star Trek, his utopian society of the future did not have money."

"And to be clear here, I am not talking about religion or spiritual belief in general," January added. "Religion existed long before sedentary life. The Circumpolar Bear Cult goes back to the Neanderthals after all. I am talking about formal institutions which are often directly tied into the state apparatus. In some cases they literally were the state apparatus. These organizations did not simply lead worship, they were part of the control and direction of the people on behalf of the state, or even just for themselves."

"And of course you can add in weaponized bigotry for the trifecta," Barbara added. "It is how the capital class has divided the working class for centuries. You have your factory owner with ninety nine cookies in a pile, a white guy with one cookie, and a black guy with none. Then the factory owner tells the white guy that the black guy is trying to take his cookie..."

"Put a pin in that," January murmured, "because we will be getting to Haiti, and the racist laws that the Big Whites created to divide the Small Whites and the Free People of Color. Not to mention the dawn of what can be considered the modern Labor movement, when the Gilded Age robber-barons did the same thing against labor unions."

"If you scooped up your average Nin or Sippar from Sumer and dropped them in our modern would, I am sure they would have little trouble at all," Barbara nodded along. "Oh, they would be amazed at all our shiny gadgets of course, and have to be told not to stick a fork into the light socket or walk in the street. But unlike Ugg, they would understand that beneath all our gleaming phones and TV screens, the world really has not changed much from when they were living in mud brick houses in the shadow of the ziggurat."

"But you know what won't stick a fork in the light socket, or walk in the street?" January fumbled when Ryo signaled her to make an ad transition.

"I don't think we can make that guarantee..." Barbara murmured.

"The products and/or services that support this podcast," January went on. "Assuming we have ads by now. If not, when the outgoing music ends, you might hear the intro music immediately start up and bring you right back. We don't know, isn't that great!"

"Did we mention that we have a Paetron account now too?" Barbara added. "Simply subscribe to our lowest tier level of two dollars a month, and you will receive our episodes in advance of the regular feed, all ad-free. If not, that's fine too. You can still find us on all the standard podcast feeds. Do what is right for your financial situation. We use this money to support the podcast. Or we will at least. Our first goal is to buy equipment, so we don't have to keep borrowing microphones and headsets. Being able to buy research materials like books and pay for news and magazine subscriptions someday would be nice too."


* * *

[Acadian]

Magic boxes full of books and furniture has really filled out the Witch House. Reminds me of Candlekeep. . . dusty old tomes, bookcases nearly spilling – oops, wrong story. Can you tell I’ve been playing BG2?

A long podcast but hey, Jan and her mom are trying to cover hundreds of thousands years of human history and apply their take on societal evolution.

[Renee]

The funny hting about teh and hte is I write teh and hte more often than I write "the". Probably a lot of typists do. It's just taht those mistakes are constantly getting corrected, either with our fingers or auto-correct. It's also because we're using left index finger/ right index finger/left middle finger... tap tap tap! Do it too fast, and teh or hte are the results!

Ha ha haven't seen that Bloodhound Gang video in ages.

No, us nerds/geeks always have way more books than we realize. 📕 And then we want more! It's almost crazy that I work in a bookstore nowadays; there are literally hundreds of publications I'm curious about. Anyway, it's good they're getting the house together. Nice to see they've got downtime, and it's being written up just like saving the world is. Yin & Yang. ☯

Yeah, that'll be interesting to see how Barb gets funding. Maybe this'll become a Daria versus Goliath situation. Those who have way more money for ads and stuff won't just topple those who don't.

She hoped they would not trip over it someday, keeping all these secrets.

Ha. I have a feeling somebody eventually will, trip over that is. That'll be one heck of an episode! - Besides that though, it's hard not to feel a bit worried about Barbara being in the dark all the time. They're really tiptoeing around her in this episode, trying not to say the wrong thing.

"Villains both mundane and super who lacked the nerve or wherewithal to attack the Alliance might go after Barbara instead." - YEesh, this is true. Gosh darn, this is very true.

I've heard of rad, dope, gnarly. Sick. Da bomb. Cool (prob the term which started it all, from our parents' generation). Kids still say cool. Never heard "it slaps" though. Wonder if that's a Michigan/Midwest term, sort of like "wicked" belongs to New England.

This is pretty fun. The entire podcast is being written up. 🦸

Very true. Money is nothing but a concept, which us humans made up at some point. And continue to reinvent rules for. Technically, America shouldn't be at the top of hte world, we're so far in debt to ppl who are sometimes technically enemies. See... hte. But because of some tweaking and the way economy really works, we still are, somehow.

Ugg reminds me of glargg. Anyway, this fascinating.

"He is literally just as intelligent as we are after all." -- THIS. We didn't just get intelligent in the last 4,000 years or so. We've had large brains for much longer than that. Every single day (literally) there are discoveries being made. "Huh. We didn't know they could do X back then," the archaeologists and anthropologists (etc.) are constantly saying, "back then" might only be 8,000 years ago instead of 200,000. As if we were still banging rocks together not long ago.

Sorry. Let me shush. Interesting how the concept of ownership turned into labor divisions and such. And things haven't really changed that much underneath it all.

This post has been edited by Renee: Jan 7 2024, 03:03 PM

[SubRosa]

Acadian: I am working towards doing more with the Witch House as a setting. Part of that is more people moving to live there, starting with Ryo. And of course that means decorating!

I can tell you have been playing BG2. I have been thinking of going back to BG1 or 2 soon too, thanks to playing the new game a few months ago.

I know, its a long podcast. Juggling those scenes is tricky. I don't want to write what would be a full episode of a podcast. But at the same time, I want to show what one really looks and sounds like. And the good ones require a lot of context before you even get to the meat of the story you are trying to tell. The ones i listen to often have an entire episode of just front-loading context like this, and then an entire episode on the actual subject. Because you cannot understand what is happening today, unless you look at what created those events in the past.

It also gives me a chance to do more with Barbara, which has been one of my goals for Season Two. The advantage of this particular podcast episode is that it ties in nicely with Barbara's political campaign, and her stance as a progressive fighting for the working class.


Renee: I envy you for working in a bookstore. I would love to work in a place like that, surrounded by books. Though I am sure it has its good days, and it bad ones. The same as any other job.

When I stop to think about it, it is wild how money is literally just a thing we made up one day. We cannot live without it now. But for nearly all of our existence it did not exist at all.

The timeline of human existence keeps getting pushed back farther and farther as we discover more and more remains. When I was a children we used to put anatomically modern humans at around 50,000 to 60,000 years ago. Now it is back as far as 300,000 years, give or take about 50k in either direction. And those people were literally no different from how we are today in terms of intelligence or physical ability.






Riven (RL Jeri Ryan)

Mt Shasta Peak pic

Mt Shasta from above, looking west to the valley below

Mt Shasta from above, looking north

Belly to Belly Suplex




Book 12.8 - Broken Arrow

August 12 (Monday)

The view from fourteen thousand feet was breathtaking. Northern California spread out beneath January like a carpet of green forests, blue lakes, and brown earth. To the west lay a nearly flat valley, whose floor lay some ten thousand feet below. A small, rounded hill rose up from the middle of this otherwise level plain. The land around it was crisscrossed by roads of gray concrete. These connected one small town to another down the length of the valley from north to south.

January and Riven stood high above all this on Mount Shasta. They were on a small, roughly oval-shaped gradient. To either side the slopes of the mountain fell away starkly to the east and west. But the ground gradually sloped upward to the north. Then it suddenly jutted nearly vertically to form the highest peak of the mountain. It was less than a hundred feet above their heads, if even that. Ice clung to some of the jagged rocks, while others were left bare in the summer sun.

January could trace several lines of footprints in the snow. They ran across the relatively open space that she and Riven stood upon, and wound their way up to the peak overhead. That made it clear that climbers had been there recently, perhaps only a few hours earlier.

That snow now crunched under her booted feet and those of her Raven Sister - and current teacher - Riven. Even though it was mid August, the air bit at their lungs, and puffed out in small clouds of frost with every breath they took. The horizon was a hazy, gray band, which turned to soft azure the higher January lifted her eyes. Overhead the sky was clear blue bowl, which melted deeper velvet the higher January gazed.

Like January, Riven wore her super suit. Hers was primarily red, but had white accents in the belt, boots, gauntlets, and around her neck and shoulders. A white cape cut to resemble sword blades hung down her back. A pair of domino-style goggles covered her upper face, but left her long, blonde hair free. As usual, a layer of transparent golden light glowed over her suit. It reminded January of a force field that had been shaped into a suit of armor. In fact, that was clearly what it was, as January discovered every time she grappled with the older woman.

"We went through leg locks last week, and arm holds the week before that." Riven began. "So now we get to do the fun stuff: suplexes."

"Ooh, I know the German suplex!" January cried with delight. "I used one against a bone wraith once, sent it right out the window."

"Ok, so that's one down," Riven remarked. "But there are over twenty more I can show you. Let's start with the belly-to-belly. As the name implies, we start out face to face."

Riven stepped close, uncomfortably so. Well, under normal circumstances at least. They were wrestling after all. The blonde heroine wrapped her arms around January's waist and locked their bodies tightly together. Then she lifted January from her feet and spun them both around. Finally she slammed January's back down upon the snow below.

The rocks below, as January quickly discovered. For the layer of white fluff hid a field of rough stones. These cracked and shattered under the impact of the blow, and a small cloud of broken rocks and snow kicked up into the air above them.

January was ready for it however, and was not fazed. As Riven was on top of her, the older woman rose first to her feet. January took her proffered hand up, and then it was her turn to do the same. She could not quite manage the suplex the first time, nor the second either. But with a little tweaking of her hand holds and the shifting of her balance, January eventually got the hang of it. Finally she lifted the other woman from her feet, then sent her crashing on her back to the snow-packed rocks below.

"You know, you could have just come to my dojo in San Francisco for this," Riven remarked as she took January's hand to rise to her feet. "I have actual mats on the floor, instead of rocks."

"This is closer to the waypoint," January said. She glanced to one side, where one of Blood Raven's teleportation nodes lay invisible under the blanket of snow. "Besides, the view from up here is amazing. If this was a movie, the training montage would absolutely take place here."

Riven laughed. "If only life was as easy as a thirty second montage, learning new skills would be so easy."

The older woman's eyes turned down to the valley that lay at the base of the mountain's western slopes. Her gaze wandered to the towns nearby, and a frown crossed her features.

"It's not all wine and roses though," she murmured. "The people living here... well, they're not the nicest. They're more the torches and pitchfork types."

"This is where you grew up isn't it?" January asked quietly. "That's why Blood Raven put the waypoint here."

"Yeah," the other woman nodded to one of the small town's below. "The view was great. The homeschooling sucked. 'A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.' You don't want to hear what they say about brown people, or LGBT people, or anyone else. People think that California is a liberal haven. But lots of it is as conservative as anywhere else."

"Christofascism for the win..." January breathed. "You said your parents would have murdered you if they knew about your learning magic. You really meant it then, didn't you?"

"Yes, absolutely," Riven turned back to face January. "Blood Raven saved me from all that, from that life. She didn't sweep in and fly away with me. But she showed me that I could think for myself, and respect myself. She showed me that I had value - not as an incubator for white babies - but as a person in my own right. I couldn't wait to get out of there."

"And you went to San Francisco, the gayest city in the world, and married a Chinese-American." January noted. When she had been a child in the mid 2000s she had read all about Riven in magazines. The older woman had been one of her heroes growing up. Riven was fierce and kind and glamorous. She was a woman who always fought the good fight, and never gave up. What was there not to like?

It still seemed strange to actually stand beside her, and just talk to her like an ordinary person. Much less learn a new martial art from her. But a lot of things that used to seem strange had now become normal for January.

"Rick is Singaporean," Riven corrected her. "Well, Singaporean-Chinese. It's complicated."

"It usually is," January chuckled. That was the reason for her and mother's podcast after all. "I found out my ancestry from Blood Raven a few months ago. I'm Danish, and Irish, and Polish, and Italian, and West African, and... Well you see what I mean."

"And one of those ancestors is the undead Shadow King from beyond reality who tried to end the world," Riven shook her head. "Congratulations, your family's got even more skeletons in its closet than mine."

"Literally," January agreed.

Before Riven could see it coming, January leaped in closely and wrapped her arms around the other woman's waist in a bear hug. She had her off her feet in an instant, and then they were twisting through the air. They came down hard upon the snowy rocks below, and kicked up another geyser of stone chips and frozen water. It was a perfect belly-to-belly suplex, exactly as Riven had just taught her.

"You are unwise to lower to lower your defenses!" January laughed.

Sága dinged then, and January looked down to see that a text message had come in from Silverlight, telling her to check Gilda Gadfly's latest update. She bounced to her feet and took a step back to give Riven the space to rise. Then she spent a few moments tapping at her digital assistant. In a moment its screen was filled with the gossip reporter's wide features, and her voice issued from the speaker.

"Hold the phone, stop the presses, pause that download, and don't click that link. This is Gilda Gadfly from Worldwide Network News, and I am bringing the dish for you. I have an inception alert for you my pretties! You heard it here first. A totally wicked new cape has just taken flight in Boston, and her name is Corvus!"

Riven stepped closer, and January held up her forearm so her sister could see Sága's screen.

"I had to do some digging to find this, because news of this event went unnoticed at the time by major media sources. It seems that a certain beloved Crowgirl of ours was laying the smack down upon the heinous Hyenaman at Detroit's Big Tire at the exact same moment this event unfolded. And I am afraid that the Alliance accidentally overshadowed this other event."

"So almost exactly one month ago, a group of children were playing in an abandoned school in the North End of Boston. Then a meta-human of unknown origin or even name attempted to kidnap one of them. Well Boston's newest superhero was having none of that. She was on the scene and immediately rescued the child. Then she threw down with the phantom stranger."

"The battle that ensued leveled the school, literally. We don't have footage of it, as it all took place out of sight inside. But here you can see the aftermath. The center of the building fell in upon itself and collapsed into the basement. However, our new heroine was again fast on her wings, and was able to save the children who had yet to flee the building."

"Yes, you heard me right, wings. She has them. Our new finely feathered friend introduced herself as Corvus in an interview that she gave to a local influencer immediately afterward. As you can see here in the video he took, she wears a black and white outfit culminating with a great set of black feathered wings. When asked if she knew our other blackbird friend from the Dragon City, well, here is what she had to say:

"Stormcrow and I have yet to be formally introduced." The audio changed to a clearly less polished source, and the masked features of the corvid-themed heroine filled the picture frame. "However, I am certain we shall get along gloriously shall we ever meet. We are birds of a feather after all, given that we share the same mentor."

"There you have it," Gilda's voice once more rang across the link. "Not just a new super, but yet another student of Blood Raven. They have come to be known as the Daughters of the Raven, or Raven Sisters. Blood Raven may have taken a well-deserved retirement, but her legacy lives on in the other capes that she has trained. From Riven to Stormcrow, from Boston to San Francisco. Welcome to the party, Corvus!"

January closed down the Worldwide Network News app as the pre-recorded clip came to an end. She lowered her arm, and turned to her eldest sister.

"That was no 'student' of Blood Raven," she smiled.

"Hell no it wasn't. She's got a new name, and a new look. But that was the old bird herself." Riven grinned. "It is brilliant though, rebranding herself as one of her own students."

"Now if anyone notices any similarities between her new identity as Corvus and her old one as Blood Raven, she can just put it down to her training," January mused. "It's genius!"

Then Riven wrapped her arms around her, and January forgot all about her newest sister of the traveling raven. A moment later she went crashing to the snow-packed rocks below, and the lesson went on.

* * *

August 13th (Tuesday)

"Happy birthday dear... Janaury..., happy birthday to you!"

January leaned forward and blew out the twenty candles sprinkled across the cake before her. It was round, with white vanilla icing: her favorite. Written out across its surface in blue lettering was her misspelled name - Janaury - surrounded by pink flowers created from frosting. Cheers erupted from around the table as the candle flames winked out, and a small cloud of smoke rose up in the air in their wakes.

January leaned back and reached for the conical party hat that was slung over her head via a rubber band. But Rus batted her hand aside, and prevented her from removing it. He and all the other Knights of Nerddom were gathered around the kitchen table in the Witch House. The table was something that she, Avery, and Ryo had found in the attic. Made of light brown oak, its rounded edges were carved with scrollwork, and it legs curved out gently to mimic sinuous feet.

"We are not getting a cake from that bakery again," January's mother Barbara shook her head after glancing at the misspelled name. "Still, I think you might be getting a little old for all this."

"Never!" Blackjack cried out from the phone that Ryo held aloft. He was still away in Vancouver, so he had to join them via video chat. "We will never grow up!"

Ryo himself had only just returned from Obon - the Japanese festival for the dead. Cranbrook held a celebration of it every year for the city's Japanese-Americans. While he was a Buddhist, Ryo himself was not very traditional. Like January - and all the other Knights of Nerddom - he was a product of the 21st Century. In some ways, they all lived in vastly different worlds from their parents and grandparents.

But his parents were traditional. There was no question of them not attending Obon. If Ryo was anything, he was a dutiful son. In that way, he was indeed very traditional as well. So there was never a question of him not attending with them.

All of that slipped from January's mind when her mother leaned forward to cut the cake. She smiled in spite of herself at the sight of the spongy yellow filling within: her favorite. In the meantime her grandmother Sarah went to the fridge and pulled out a box of vanilla ice cream. Again, it was January's favorite.

Kell leafed through the newest issue of Artemis Argent and the Secret of Mystery Hill. It was the second of their six issue series, literally hot off the presses. January would start shipping them tomorrow to their Jumpstarter backers. The bearded young man had to put the comic book aside when a plate filled with cake and ice cream was pushed in front of his face however.

"This is really cool," Kell murmured through a mouth full of ice cream. January was not sure if he meant the ice cream, or the comic. "I am going to miss you guys when I move Up North for school."

"When do you leave for Houghton?" Sarah asked. "It's really nice in the autumn. My late husband and I went up there once to see the fall colors."

"Two weeks, at the end of the month," Kell murmured through a mouth full of food. "Classes start on the 28th."

"Naah, we're just a vid call away," Blackjack declared through Ryo's phone. "We can still do video gaming."

"Besides, you are going to be partying and rolling with the fine ladies of da UP, eh," Rus teased in a mock Yooper accent. "And if you get bored, you can go out hiking and look for the Michigan Dogman."

"Nah, they found him!" Blackjack exclaimed through the phone. "The Allies put the smackdown on that furry fiend! Stormcrow gave him the Crowbow, and his dogging days were done!"

"The Crowbow?" January wondered.

"The elbow drop," Blackjack said. "Yeah, it needs some work. She needs to hire a writer - or a pitchman - and workshop this stuff."

"Like how the Stone has the People's Elbow," Rus added.

"He prefers Duane Johnstone," Ryo finally spoke.

"People's Elbow?" Avery said in his terrible Russian accent. "Sounds like the finishing move of the mighty hero of the Great Patriotic War - Red Snow. Na zdorovye!"

He held up his glass of milk, and January leaned over to clink her own glass against it.

"The Valkyrie's Elbow," Grandma Sarah ventured another possible name for the finishing move.

"Valhalla's Thunder," Barbara offered.

"Ragnarok," Avery considered. "Because when it drops, it's all over."

"I so gotta twit that out," Blackjack murmured through Ryo's phone. "Stormcrow follows me you know. She'll like that one."

"She was at the airport when you came back the last time," Kell said. "That is so awesome that you got to meet her and get selfies. I wish we could meet her and the other Allies someday."

"Maybe if you write songs about supers, they will come out to meet you too." Avery suggested. "You know, I think White Fell is single, and you know she's a wild one."

"Yeah, she's a werewolf!" Rus laughed. "Your song could be Werewolf of Minnesota! AAAAAWWWWOOOOO!"

January bit her tongue, as was reflex whenever the topic of Stormcrow came up. It was just so weird, hearing the people she knew talking about her, without them knowing it was her. She did not know how Avery could be so cool when talking about the Allies. It was like he never worried about someone putting two and two together. Or maybe he just blustered through it all so well, that it just seemed that way. She should probably take a few cues from that.

Ryo was a cipher of course. But he was always taciturn by nature. So no one ever noticed his lack of participation in a conversation. That was just normal for him.

The time for presents rolled around soon enough. The Knights had made a rule a long time ago to not give individual birthday presents to one another. Instead they all pooled together to give one present to whoever's birthday it happened to be.

Given how they all seemed to be going their separate ways these days, January privately wondered how long that could continue. Blackjack's career was taking off. If things continued to go well for him, it would mean more time he was in Vancouver, or Los Angeles, or wherever else he might have to go for his next movie role. Assuming of course he got another one. January certainly hoped he would.

Kell would be gone soon, off to Michigan's Upper Peninsula for three years to finish his electrical engineering degree. That would leave just her, Avery, Ryo, and Rus from the old adventuring party. She did not see Avery or Ryo going anywhere soon. Ryo had just moved in with her after all. But Rus, well, he had never made it a secret that he hoped to make it just as big as Blackjack was doing, and be off to someplace like New York to pursue a career in art. Given how well Artemis Argent was doing that no longer looked like merely a pipe dream, but a real possibility.

January took a long moment to look around the table at her friends, there both physically or remotely. She was the youngest of them all - albeit just barely - so this was the last birthday of their gang for the year. Would this be the last time they were all together? Did this time even count? Or were the Knights of Nerddom already a thing of the past?

She knew that it was normal for people to move on with their lives after high school, and eventually drift apart. People did not remain with their childhood friends forever. They had all turned twenty this year, starting with Blackjack and Ryo's birthdays in February, only a day apart. Most people would have already moved on by now, to different jobs, different schools, and different lives. She supposed that she was lucky, to have held on to all of her old friends for even this long.

"Ground Control to Major Tom," Avery quipped, waving a hand in front of her face. That brought her out of her reverie, and back to reality. There were presents to open, and she was the birthday girl. So she could not tune out on that.

She resolved to live for the moment. For right now, and enjoy it while it lasted. So with a grin she ripped into her gifts with wild abandon, just as if she was still a child on Christmas morning. She found all of her presents to be based upon her motorcycle. Her mom had given her a pair of skin tight leather motorcycle pants. The Knights had gifted her with a pair of racing pants in black, white, and pink. Finally her grandmother had given her a pair of calf-high motorcycle boots, with stylish laces that ran up the sides. They looked rakish enough to be something that Artemis Argent would wear while swashbuckling from one airship to another. She vowed to talk to Rus about that, and include something like that in the next issue he drew.

* * *

[Acadian]

The scene with Jeri Riven did indeed conjure images of movie training montages such as Sean Connery and his apprentice in Highlander.

So Blood Raven reemerges with a new identity! A superhero disguised as a new superhero. Brilliant indeed.

Nice birthday party and you presented the bittersweet nostalgia nicely as Jan realizes that, with twenty summers behind her, hanging onto childhood friends can be challenging -

I had an invisible friend when I was six. We used to spend our days playing. Then as life filled with the demands of school, more school and career, I lost her. It took me over half a century to find her again. . . and now we spend our days playing.


Nit: ’She smiled {in?} spite of herself at the sight of the spongy yellow filling within: her favorite.’

[Renee]

Whoa, Riven is cute.

They're wrestling on a mountain, huh. Riven's thought is my first thought: why are they doing this outside, with rocks and snow all around? But maybe it's because it's more like real-life, eh? When fights occur in the real world, they rarely happen in studios.

Ugh. Sounds like Riven's upbringing was pretty doggone conservative.

Gilda is like Three Dog, but without the occasional condescending remarks.

Hmm, this Corvus, she's another white hat from the sound of it. And okay, yeah, she's from Boston. Which is where Branwen went (sort of.) OHHH. So Corvus == Blood Raven. Good gosh. Did not see that coming. I wonder why she changed her name.

Jan's a Leo. I never tried guessing, but if I had to I would've gone with Aries. Another fire sign, but cardinal rather than fixed. Somebody misspelled her name.

Nice. She gets a bunch of gear for her flying Vespa. That's what all her friends are seeing, all her friends who don't know her alter-identity, anyway. They see her flying around town on her cycle, so from their perspective, THAT bike is the newest thing in her life. Because they don't know the other side of her.

This post has been edited by Renee: Jan 16 2024, 01:44 PM

[SubRosa]

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.

* * *

[Renee]

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.

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.

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.

[Acadian]

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?

[WellTemperedClavier]

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.

This post has been edited by WellTemperedClavier: Jan 27 2024, 04:57 AM

[SubRosa]

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?

* * *

[Renee]

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.

This post has been edited by Renee: Jan 31 2024, 12:12 AM

[Acadian]

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?

[WellTemperedClavier]

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.

[SubRosa]

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."

[Acadian]

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.’