King Cosmos

Parahumans: Earth Drega

Hornet

You’ll adjust to arriving on time soon enough.

Coming from someone with Grandmaster’s reputation, that didn’t sound like a reassurance or a prediction; it sounded like an order. The guy had that kind of intensity to him; the kind of rigid professionalism that made her unconsciously straighten up her posture a bit more and left her feeling like she was about to be scolded for not polishing her costume more before she came here.

Maybe she was overthinking things, first day jitters and all that, or maybe the armour and all the guys with guns she passed on the way here and the fact that she was technically a government employee now put her in the mind set of thinking this was closer to the first day or boot camp than the first day of school. I mean, the Protectorate was an offshoot of the PRT right? They were kind of like a militarised police division or something; kind of like SWAT, but more specialised towards dealing with cape stuff? Yeah, that sounded about right. So the PRT and therefore the Protectorate and therefore the Wards, were all in the same vein as the police and the military.

Okay, yeah. Shit.

Probably best to think of anything Grandmaster said to her as an order and not a suggestion then.

Just in case.

Jessica wasn’t the last to arrive, but that wasn’t comforting information at the moment; if anything it just meant that she had the embarrassment of being late and still had to wait around for someone else before they could get started. The worst of both worlds. It sounded like whoever it was that had yet to show up was someone the heroes knew as well; one of the former Wards maybe, or an out-of-towner they were bringing in? They had expectations placed on them from the sounds of it, which probably meant they were different from the new recruits like herself.

She would find out soon enough. In the meantime, Jessica stepped forward to get a closer look at whatever glowing tinkertech thing Axiom had just placed on the table. Special earpieces that blocked out Master powers were cool and it was good to know that they were protected from some of the scarier Parahuman abilities out there, assuming they worked as well as the pitch made it sound, but at the same time looking at the innocuous devices gave her a sense of dread. It was the same as her armour; reassuring in their presence and at the same time deeply concerning that she needed them at all. Reaching out to pick one up, Jessica cracked it open to look at the small earpieces inside. She was wondering whether or not she could pass them off as off-brand AirPods or something when she felt someone new appear on the periphery of her power.

Well, truth be told, with her range there were more than a few people walking in and out of her new sense in a building this busy; learning out to tune it out and not get distracted was something she had been working on. But this particular person was walking down the corridor that led straight to this room and was moving with the brisk pace of someone in a hurry to get somewhere.

Guess this was the person they were waiting on.

Even that forewarning didn’t prepare her for the girl’s entrance though. Not the door flying open, nor the brightly coloured combat gear, nor the… everything else that came with the girl’s appearance, attitude and general demeanour.

As the newcomer stomped into the room, snapped at a member of the Protectorate and put her feet up on the table like she own the place, it wasn’t hard to get the impression that this girl was kind of full of herself; loud, obnoxious, a disregard for everyone else in the room and a clear disrespect for the supposed authorities in the room. Hell, Jessica couldn’t imagine being bold enough to act like that towards a seasoned cape, let alone with someone like Grandmaster in the room who, as she had previously noted, kind of scared her. But this girl was acting like she was the one in charge here, or at least acting like no one was in charge of her.

If Jessica didn’t already know exactly who this was, this first impression alone would have given her plenty of reasons to dislike this girl; she wasn’t looking to deal with someone’s overinflated ego with everything else that was going on. As it was, it was still a bad impression and she still didn’t like this girl, but that was slightly overshadowed by the fact that this was Shattercrash she was dealing with. The vigilante had a bit of a reputation in this city, to say the least and even someone who didn’t follow capes religiously like Jessica knew about the girl who was both a huge help to the PRT and an embarrassing thorn in their side at the same time. Any annoyance Jessica might have felt at the girl’s attitude problem was tempered by the fact that said girl could fold her up like a newspaper if she so felt like it.

So she wisely bit her tongue, folded her arms under her chest and didn’t say anything.

Why Were We Reincarnated as Orcs?!

Akeno

Thankfully, the bullying Orc wasn’t persistent enough to follow after her once she’d made it clear she was trying to leave; Akeno had been worried that he would take her walking away as a challenge or some kind of disrespect and take either as a reason to harass her further. People like that didn’t need logic to drive what they did or who they went after, often they just needed an excuse. Maybe things were different with Orcs, it wasn’t like she had any idea of Orc society worked after or, or she had misread this one and he wasn’t like that, either way it was probably better to just leave and not look back just in case.

Still, that left her with the problem of what to do next. She’d investigated one of her leads, sort of, and found it to be a dead end; Akeno didn’t know anything about farming beyond the absolute basics and if this guy knew to fertilise the soil then he was probably fine to figure out the rest. There was still the Shaman to ask, but she’d been talking to another young Orc earlier so maybe she already had things covered. The blacksmith needed wood or ore; Akeno could maybe swing an axe well enough to cut down some trees given a couple pointers, but from the sounds of it ore was the bigger issue and Akeno knew about as much about mining as she did farming.

That left the hunter, who might need some help skinning and gutting all of those creatures that she and the other Orcs had been bringing in today. Once again Akeno was in the position of not really knowing anything about the kind of work that was required of her, but she could at least handle a knife better than a saw or pickaxe. It was better than nothing, as far as leads went, so Akeno began to approach the far west side of the camp where the hunter was located.

If Akeno didn’t know why the hunter had chosen to set up shop so far out of the way before, she sure as hell figured it out once she got close enough to smell the fumes. Tanning the hides that came from their kills was… pungent work and more than once Akeno considered the idea of going anywhere else instead of pushing forward. She stuck to her decision though, continuing to walk forward and breathing through her mouth until she reached the hunter’s hut.

“Hey! Do you have any work that needs doing?”

@Zeroth

Parahumans: Earth Drega

Hornet

---

Protectorate HQ, Changing room, 8:37 AM
June 19th, 2021

Jessica held her helmet between her hands, stared into the glossy black eyes as she hesitated to put it on, and wondered if it was too late to change the design of her costume. The original drafts she had seen, after sending in some rough sketches and some notes on what she wanted, includes a helmet that was just a blank yellow plane, featureless and inhuman, and Jessica had rejected them on the basis that it would be too intimidating. She’d thought that the eyes and the black lines here and there to break up the expanse of yellow would help it look more like a face, but now those shiny black eyes bore into you and you could see yourself in them if you were close enough and maybe that was worse. The effect was more intense that she expected and she couldn’t help but think about what it would be like to be stared down by someone wearing this.

Letting out a sigh, Jessica put the helmet down on the bench next to her and procrastinated having to put it on by checking the rest of her costume for the fifth time.

Wearing her costume still felt strange to her. It was heavy with all of the armour on it, but not as much as you would think; the plates at her chest and back weighed on her shoulders more than a regular t-shirt would but less than her school backpack did when it was full of books, the gauntlets on her wrists made every movement of her arms feel like the swing of a pendulum and her helmet added a weight to every nod and turn of her head that felt uncomfortable. But overall the whole ensemble didn’t weigh so much that it felt like a burden to walk around in it. More distracting than the weight was the inflexibility of it all; not that it was restrictive exactly, whoever had designed and made this had been sure to provide her with the normal range of movement she would have without it, but she could still feel the rigidity of what she was wearing every time she moved and it was… distracting.

Everything she wore felt new, like the stiffness new clothes tended to have, because it was. The feeling was like a reminder that she didn’t quite fit yet, that she hadn’t had time to settle into her costume or the role that came with it; she’d barely triggered two months ago and now she was supposed to be a Ward and in a couple years she would move up join the Protectorate and then Jessica would have stand alongside people like Grandmaster and Axiom and Trinity. Barely two months since she’d gotten hurt, since her friend had… since she’d triggered. It didn’t feel like enough, even though a week ago it felt like too long. Two months of getting used to her power, of training to fight and defend herself, of getting a crash course in PRT protocols and rules and all of the jargon that came with being a Cape.

Two months of recovery.

It felt like too long at the time. It didn’t feel like enough now.

Picking up the helmet again, Jessica didn’t risk getting caught up in its blank stare again and just slid it over her head and felt its uncomfortable weight setting into place.

Everything she wore felt heavy and rigid. Because she was wearing armour; bulletproof armour, because now she was in a situation where that was a thing she needed. Her power made her invincible in short bursts, made her super strong and let her hop around the place so long as there were people to hop to; but that wouldn’t be enough, so the armour was there to catch her when all of that failed to keep her safe. Because being a Ward was dangerous, because the city was dangerous right now even if you were just a normal person, because even though Confessor was dead and gone Bridgewater was still a mess and the gangs were out of control. Jessica had triggered in the first place because things were dangerous and the whole reason she was being introduced as part of a whole new team, and not just as a new Ward member, was because all of the old Wards were gone; either quitting and moving to a new city or dead at the hands of Confessor. Dead along with who knows how many civilians and who known how many more killed or hurt in the instability that followed.

Turning to the floor to ceiling mirror in the changing room, Jessica got a look at herself in full costume for the first time. It felt strange to wear and the helmet was still intense up close, but she had to admit that she liked the way it looked; the sleek lines and smooth planes of the armour, the stark contrast between the black of the under suit and the yellow on top looked good. Even when you knew what to look for, between the full-face helmet and the way the armour hid the shape of her body, there was no hint of who was wearing it underneath; even if the mirror she could almost forget it was herself she was looking at. The only thing ruining the image was the slouched, hunched posture as she leant forward, so she straightened her back and tried to inject some of her usual confidence into her posture. When the effect was less pronounced than she liked she stood up as well, standing tall and with her head up and facing the mirror head on.

It looked better.

It looked like the Hornet she had seen in the costume drafts.

It looked like a Ward. Even if she didn’t feel like one yet.

---

Protectorate HQ, Meeting room, 8:56 AM
June 19th, 2021

Hornet hurried down the corridor towards the meeting room, her efforts to arrive early this morning still ended up with her being late with how long it took to get into her costume. As she approached the room itself and the people within came into range of her power, she could feel how many people were already inside; four, five, six, how many new Wards were they supposed to be getting?

There were nine people in the room total, the final three standing at the back of the room coming into range last. She resisted the urge to speed things up by teleporting into the room, figuring that jump scaring one of her new teammates was not the kind of first impression she wanted to make. Instead she just walked up to the door like a normal human being and opened it just wide enough to quietly slip inside without being noticed. Though given how brightly coloured her costume was compared to basically everyone else in the room, it was inevitable that at least one person was going to turn in her direction.

“Sorry I’m late.”

Why Were We Reincarnated as Orcs?!

Akeno

Following her instinct turned out to be a mistake. Instead of stumbling across some unforeseen opportunity to use her somewhat limited and niche skills of teaching karate to beginners to make a place for herself in the tribe, Akeno found herself being mocked by a clichéd trio of bullying Orcs who were harassing a farmer.

It was a situation that Akeno doubted she’d be able to just turn around and walk away from now that she’d been noticed and pointed out in the way she had, especially when the one doing the pointing was an Orc she vaguely remembered as being someone who regularly picked on the younger Orcs in the camp. Maybe she would try anyway, walking away that was; she wasn’t much in the mood to stand there and be heckled and she didn’t really want to start a fight to defend herself either. Not when it was three against one and she wasn’t sure she could beat this guy even if it was just one on one.

“Tsk.”

Making a sound of annoyance Akeno turned on her heel and walked away from the idjit’s, all four of them, hoping against hope that they would find it more interesting to go back to making fun of farmer than to keep their attention on her.

And since that hope was likely to go unanswered, she kept an ear open for the sounds of footsteps and made sure she was ready to either run or lash out as the situation demanded.

@Zeroth

Parahumans: Earth Drega

Hornet

Hornet

Name: Jessica Dane

Cape Codename: Hornet

Age: 16

Appearance: Jessica has a slim and athletic build and is tall for a girl her age at 5’ 8” tall. Her arms and legs are long and slender, but also visibly toned. She has a naturally pale complexion, along with auburn hair and light green eyes; her pale skin makes the rather prominent scar along her cheek even more noticeable, a long and wide line reaching from just below her left eye to just above her jawline. Smaller scars that are less visible can also be seen on her chin and along the left side of her jaw.

Her hair is about medium length, reaching down to her shoulders, and is straight. Jessica tends to keep it tucked behind her ears, leaving strands to often fall down cross her face; it has been too long since she has had it cut. Aside from the scar, her most prominent feature are her wide green eyes; she has a button nose, a small mouth with thin lips and a rounded chin on an overall oval-shaped face.

She tends not to wear much make-up beyond some basic concealer and lip gloss and have never bothered with covering up her scars. Not a fashionable person, in her own opinion, Jessica favour plain clothes in solid colours; she prefers whites and blacks over bright colours and long sleeves over short.

The costume that Jessica wears when she is working as Hornet is made up of yellow and black, with the under layer being the latter and her mask and other pieces being the former. She wears a black body suit under armoured sections of Kevlar and ceramic which are painted a bright yellow with lines of black to break up the solid shapes. These armoured pieces are mostly found on her upper body and on her forearms and shins; a chest plate that covers her upper chest and back, gauntlets on her arms and boots with incorporated shin guards. They are there to provide additional protection for situations where her invulnerability wears out or isn’t active, but are designed to be light enough not to be restrictive. Her mask is similarly protective; a full face helmet that also covers the top of her head over a black cowl that hides her hair. It is the same yellow colour and her armour and is similarly broken up by black lines and black eye lenses.

It is a little garish, but the bright colours are intended to be eye-catching for the purpose of drawing attention towards her, especially when she appears suddenly, to aid in her role as an ambush fighter and distraction.

Personality: Jessica is a person imbued with a lot of self-confidence in herself; a trait which has been an asset to her, but which is also the source of her biggest flaws and weaknesses. She feels at ease in social situations, finding it easy to approach people and be sociable in new environments, but can be a little forward and pushy in how she approaches people; as such her integration into the Ward team has been mixed, making easy friendships with some and souring early interactions with others.

She can be brash at times, hasty in her approach, which can be both a positive and a negative depending on the situation. On the one hand it means minor situations and things that are in her capabilities get solved quickly, but it also means that more delicate situations are not handled with the care that they should be. Jessica is at her best when matched with someone who can temper her impulse to dive right into the mix. Although this can be difficult to achieve, as Jessica is also something of a busy body who has a hard time keeping her nose out of problems, regardless of if they concern her or not.

Additionally, Jessica is a person who finds it easy to be passionate about things, whether that is a new hobby, a cause, a piece of media or a friend. If something catches her attention she can quickly become invested in something and start to dedicate a lot of her energy towards it. This passion can also give her something of a temper problem; though she rarely gets angry on her own behalf, Jessica has a tendency to quickly become angry on behalf of others.

Power Classification: Mover/Brute

Power Description: A Mover/Brute with the ability to teleport, but only if the destination is within a set distance of another person, roughly 1.5 to 2 meters, and also within a 100 degree cone within that person’s line of sight. This essentially limits them to only being able to teleport directly in front of people, relative to the direction they are looking at the time.

For a brief window following this teleportation, somewhere between 3 and 5 seconds, they are granted temporary invincibility and enhance strength. The obvious use of this power-up is to utilise it offensively, to teleport directly to a target and attack them while immune to retaliation, but it can also be used defensively, to teleport in front of an ally and use the invulnerability to shield them from harm.

Strengths:
Athletic: Jessica is on the track and field team in her high school. She competes in multiple events, but is only a starter in one of them, which is the high jump. The other events she competes in are the 400m and 800m races. Since gaining her powers, Jessica has also been taking kick boxing lessons to improve her ability to fight.
Observant: In most cases Jessica has a good awareness of her surroundings and the movements of people around her.
Weaknesses:
Conflict resolution: Jessica has a tendency to be quick to anger and can be overly aggressive when confronted; in general she has a hard time keeping her cool and backing down from a situation in which she thinks she is in the right.
Jumps to conclusions and to action: Favouring a hasty approach to most situations, Jessica has a problem of jumping to conclusion and acting on those conclusions. This can be an asset, but only if the conclusion she jumps to is the right one, which is less often than she thinks.

History: Originally from Chicago, Illinois, Jessica’s family moved to Bridgewater when she was ten years old when her father, who is a PRT trooper, received a promotion to sergeant and was transferred to a new posting in the city. At the time this was a difficult for her, having to transfer to a new school in a completely new city in the middle of the school year and she initially had a hard time fitting in; she was not bullied, nor mistreated, just isolated. She did not have the confidence to approach anyone and no one made an effort to approach her either. This didn’t change until middle school when Jessica made an effort to reach out by trying out for the track team of her school and found that she both enjoyed it and was good at it. Having found something that she could do well and with teammates that she had made friends with, Jessica became much more confident in herself and more outgoing as a result. She is now fairly popular at her high school, a well-known individual within its halls, and tries to reach out to people who are quiet or alone; she wants to be the type of person that she wished she met when she was alone.

A year ago, when Confessor unleashed his ghosts on the city, Jessica’s mother left the city to return to Chicago and stay with family at the urging or Jessica’s father, who cited that the city was going to be too dangerous for the next few days. He stayed, because it was his job to stay, and Jessica also decided to stay, both because she didn’t want to be away from school for an unknown amount of time and also because she was underestimating the severity of the situation. Both Jessica and her father made it through the Confessor incident with no harm coming to them and it wasn’t actually until some days later in the aftermath of the attack that something happened.

Jessica and a friend of hers from school were caught up in an attack by a local gang as part of a burgeoning war with another group in the city. It was sudden, they were outdoors, in public, then suddenly people around them were panicking, running from something up ahead, Jessica heard gunshots and then there was an explosion. When Jessica came to she was on the ground next to a wall, having been thrown around by something; either the blast or a power or just knocked aside by the fleeing crowd, she didn’t know. Her head was spinning, the left side of her face felt numb and was burning at the same time; blood was on the ground below her and more from falling as she watched, but she couldn’t process that she had been injured. She heard her friend screaming and tried to stand, looking around for her, but someone pushed her to the ground. Jessica tried to stand again and again and it wasn’t the third time that she realised there were people around her who were stopping her from getting up, hitting her, pushing her, laughing at her.

She sobered up then as the gravity of the situation settled in. She’d been hurt, she was surrounded by a few members of some gang she didn’t know, there was smoke and rubble and people running around and she could still hear her friend screaming. She tried to get up again, more urgently this time, and someone kicked her in the ribs, hard. Every time she tried to move they would do the same, hit her, shove her down, getting closer, hemming her in, still laughing, having fun with her mounting distress. She could still hear her friend screaming. She had to get away, she had to get away, she had to get to her friend, she had to get them both away.

Jessica triggered.

Jessica was able to escape, but her friend did not. From what she was told later, her friend most likely died in the initial explosion and it wasn’t even her she had been hearing while she was on the ground; it was unlikely she’d have been able to pick out one voice from everything that was going on anyway. Jessica still isn’t sure if she should believe that or not.

When her father found out that she had triggered, there was no choice other than for her to join the Wards; she would have chosen that path anyway, but with a PRT sergeant for a father it was always going to be the obvious choice. She debuted as Hornet a couple of months after her trigger and has been active as a Ward since.

Parahumans: Earth Drega

Hornet

Hornet

Name: Jessica Dane

Cape Codename: Hornet

Age: 16

Appearance: Jessica has a slim and athletic build and is tall for a girl her age at 5’ 8” tall. Her arms and legs are long and slender, but also visibly toned. She has a naturally pale complexion, along with auburn hair and light green eyes; her pale skin makes the rather prominent scar along her cheek even more noticeable, a long and wide line reaching from just below her left eye to just above her jawline. Smaller scars that are less visible can also be seen on her chin and along the left side of her jaw.

Her hair is about medium length, reaching down to her shoulders, and is straight. Jessica tends to keep it tucked behind her ears, leaving strands to often fall down cross her face; it has been too long since she has had it cut. Aside from the scar, her most prominent feature are her wide green eyes; she has a button nose, a small mouth with thin lips and a rounded chin on an overall oval-shaped face.

She tends not to wear much make-up beyond some basic concealer and lip gloss and have never bothered with covering up her scars. Not a fashionable person, in her own opinion, Jessica favour plain clothes in solid colours; she prefers whites and blacks over bright colours and long sleeves over short.

The costume that Jessica wears when she is working as Hornet is made up of yellow and black, with the under layer being the latter and her mask and other pieces being the former. She wears a black body suit under armoured sections of Kevlar and ceramic which are painted a bright yellow with lines of black to break up the solid shapes. These armoured pieces are mostly found on her upper body and on her forearms and shins; a chest plate that covers her upper chest and back, gauntlets on her arms and boots with incorporated shin guards. They are there to provide additional protection for situations where her invulnerability wears out or isn’t active, but are designed to be light enough not to be restrictive. Her mask is similarly protective; a full face helmet that also covers the top of her head over a black cowl that hides her hair. It is the same yellow colour and her armour and is similarly broken up by black lines and black eye lenses.

It is a little garish, but the bright colours are intended to be eye-catching for the purpose of drawing attention towards her, especially when she appears suddenly, to aid in her role as an ambush fighter and distraction.

Personality: Jessica is a person imbued with a lot of self-confidence in herself; a trait which has been an asset to her, but which is also the source of her biggest flaws and weaknesses. She feels at ease in social situations, finding it easy to approach people and be sociable in new environments, but can be a little forward and pushy in how she approaches people; as such her integration into the Ward team has been mixed, making easy friendships with some and souring early interactions with others.

She can be brash at times, hasty in her approach, which can be both a positive and a negative depending on the situation. On the one hand it means minor situations and things that are in her capabilities get solved quickly, but it also means that more delicate situations are not handled with the care that they should be. Jessica is at her best when matched with someone who can temper her impulse to dive right into the mix. Although this can be difficult to achieve, as Jessica is also something of a busy body who has a hard time keeping her nose out of problems, regardless of if they concern her or not.

Additionally, Jessica is a person who finds it easy to be passionate about things, whether that is a new hobby, a cause, a piece of media or a friend. If something catches her attention she can quickly become invested in something and start to dedicate a lot of her energy towards it. This passion can also give her something of a temper problem; though she rarely gets angry on her own behalf, Jessica has a tendency to quickly become angry on behalf of others.

Power Classification: Mover/Brute

Power Description: A Mover/Brute with the ability to teleport, but only if the destination is within a set distance of another person, roughly 1.5 to 2 meters, and also within a 100 degree cone within that person’s line of sight. This essentially limits them to only being able to teleport directly in front of people, relative to the direction they are looking at the time.

For a brief window following this teleportation, somewhere between 3 and 5 seconds, they are granted temporary invincibility and enhance strength. The obvious use of this power-up is to utilise it offensively, to teleport directly to a target and attack them while immune to retaliation, but it can also be used defensively, to teleport in front of an ally and use the invulnerability to shield them from harm.

Strengths:
Athletic: Jessica is on the track and field team in her high school. She competes in multiple events, but is only a starter in one of them, which is the high jump. The other events she competes in are the 400m and 800m races. Since gaining her powers, Jessica has also been taking kick boxing lessons to improve her ability to fight.
Observant: In most cases Jessica has a good awareness of her surroundings and the movements of people around her.
Weaknesses:
Conflict resolution: Jessica has a tendency to be quick to anger and can be overly aggressive when confronted; in general she has a hard time keeping her cool and backing down from a situation in which she thinks she is in the right.
Jumps to conclusions and to action: Favouring a hasty approach to most situations, Jessica has a problem of jumping to conclusion and acting on those conclusions. This can be an asset, but only if the conclusion she jumps to is the right one, which is less often than she thinks.

History: Originally from Chicago, Illinois, Jessica’s family moved to Bridgewater when she was ten years old when her father, who is a PRT trooper, received a promotion to sergeant and was transferred to a new posting in the city. At the time this was a difficult for her, having to transfer to a new school in a completely new city in the middle of the school year and she initially had a hard time fitting in; she was not bullied, nor mistreated, just isolated. She did not have the confidence to approach anyone and no one made an effort to approach her either. This didn’t change until middle school when Jessica made an effort to reach out by trying out for the track team of her school and found that she both enjoyed it and was good at it. Having found something that she could do well and with teammates that she had made friends with, Jessica became much more confident in herself and more outgoing as a result. She is now fairly popular at her high school, a well-known individual within its halls, and tries to reach out to people who are quiet or alone; she wants to be the type of person that she wished she met when she was alone.

A year ago, when Confessor unleashed his ghosts on the city, Jessica’s mother left the city to return to Chicago and stay with family at the urging or Jessica’s father, who cited that the city was going to be too dangerous for the next few days. He stayed, because it was his job to stay, and Jessica also decided to stay, both because she didn’t want to be away from school for an unknown amount of time and also because she was underestimating the severity of the situation. Both Jessica and her father made it through the Confessor incident with no harm coming to them and it wasn’t actually until some days later in the aftermath of the attack that something happened.

Jessica and a friend of hers from school were caught up in an attack by a local gang as part of a burgeoning war with another group in the city. It was sudden, they were outdoors, in public, then suddenly people around them were panicking, running from something up ahead, Jessica heard gunshots and then there was an explosion. When Jessica came to she was on the ground next to a wall, having been thrown around by something; either the blast or a power or just knocked aside by the fleeing crowd, she didn’t know. Her head was spinning, the left side of her face felt numb and was burning at the same time; blood was on the ground below her and more from falling as she watched, but she couldn’t process that she had been injured. She heard her friend screaming and tried to stand, looking around for her, but someone pushed her to the ground. Jessica tried to stand again and again and it wasn’t the third time that she realised there were people around her who were stopping her from getting up, hitting her, pushing her, laughing at her.

She sobered up then as the gravity of the situation settled in. She’d been hurt, she was surrounded by a few members of some gang she didn’t know, there was smoke and rubble and people running around and she could still hear her friend screaming. She tried to get up again, more urgently this time, and someone kicked her in the ribs, hard. Every time she tried to move they would do the same, hit her, shove her down, getting closer, hemming her in, still laughing, having fun with her mounting distress. She could still hear her friend screaming. She had to get away, she had to get away, she had to get to her friend, she had to get them both away.

Jessica triggered.

Jessica was able to escape, but her friend did not. From what she was told later, her friend most likely died in the initial explosion and it wasn’t even her she had been hearing while she was on the ground; it was unlikely she’d have been able to pick out one voice from everything that was going on anyway. Jessica still isn’t sure if she should believe that or not.

When her father found out that she had triggered, there was no choice other than for her to join the Wards; she would have chosen that path anyway, but with a PRT sergeant for a father it was always going to be the obvious choice. She debuted as Hornet a couple of months after her trigger and has been active as a Ward since.

Why Were We Reincarnated as Orcs?!

Akeno

While Akeno failed in finding anything resembling a kitchen or a cook for the time being, she did manage to find a few Orcs within the camp that caught her eye for one reason or another and was able to overhear a few little snippets of conversation that seemed interesting. A woodcutter who needed more wood to satisfy the blacksmith, a blacksmith who needed more ore for his craft, someone carrying a towering pile of baskets full of what might have been food who looked like he could use some help, a shaman who may or may not need someone to gather stuff for her, or maybe just an extra pair of hands for her work, a hunter and tanner who had a bunch of carcasses to skin and some kind of bigwig that she was planning on staying as far away from as she could. A cave to the south that some Orcs had gone missing in; given that she had just run away from a dangerous cave she wasn’t too interesting in finding another. An aspiring farmer and a clogged up spring that needed clearing.

Within that collection was more than enough opportunity for her to find some kind of job to do and hopefully start earning her way towards a place to sleep and some kind of stability in this place. Compared to all of that, the last thing she heard was almost not worth paying attention to; it sounded like idle gossip, or bullying. An Orc disparaging another for being too weak, in a tribe that made their children kill wild animals or die trying as a rite of passage. Given that she had just been musing about opening a dojo however, even just as a joke, hearing about an Orc who couldn’t fight seemed a little too serendipitous to ignore completely.

Rather than follow any of the more obvious leads, Akeno found herself drifting over towards the Orc who was mocking the ‘weakling’ to see if she could find out more. Her other options would still be there when she was done with this; it wouldn’t hurt to follow her instincts or to indulge her curiosity for a while.

@Zeroth

The Hunt, A Modern Fantasy Smorgasbord RP

Morgana Faith

Morgana couldn’t help the grimace that crossed her face at Madeleine’s request to dispel the curse trap hidden in the dirt. Dispelling curses was nasty, dangerous work and something that could easily become a specialty all of its own; they were dangerous and malicious by design and more often than not created in such a way as to resist being dispelled or to actively strike at anyone who attempted such a thing. There was a reason why curses laid over tombs could still claim victims, even thousands of years after they were initially cast. The easiest way to deal with a curse was simply to trigger it while diverting it towards another target like a poppet or a witches bottle; both of which acted half as a lightning rod and half as a facsimile of oneself that would confuse the magic of the curse. Failing that you would just set the damn thing off while protected by the strongest wards you could possibly create and hope they were strong that you would survive.

Unfortunately Morgana had failed to bring any poppets with her and while she was supremely confident in the strength and competence of her own wards, she wasn’t quite so confident as to metaphorically point a gun at her own head and pull the trigger.

“I’m afraid not. Just don’t step on any, if you please?”

That would have to do she was afraid and if Madeleine had any complaints about that then, well, she didn’t have time to voice them before the next problem made itself known.

The large, metallic golem that came crashing through the building towards the demon seemed to be something that even Madeleine couldn’t deal with easily. It pushed her back, overpowering her strength and resisting the blade and flames of her sword. This too was something that the demon wanted the witches help with, but unfortunately it was another problem to which she had no quick solution to.

“They didn’t. Constructs are not traditionally something witches dabble in; I’m afraid this is something my mother had nothing to do with.”

No, artificial constructs were not something a witch’s coven would deal in; certainly not one from England, or from anywhere else she had heard of. Perhaps one of the more modern magical orders would be able to make one, since those glorified old boys clubs tended to putter about with a little bit of everything with no rhyme or reason; a bunch of bored socialites trying their hand and anything that caught their interest and laying themselves in illusions of tradition and heritage. Something of this quality was likely above them however; most likely it wasn’t from Britain at all.

Where else could it have originated then? The places most associated with constructs of this sort would be Greece and the Scandinavia countries, possibly Egypt if you went back further, or even Italy due to their modern attempts at reviving the art. But the most obvious answer was that it was exactly what Madeleine had called it; a Golem. Though Madeleine had probably used the term in the more vernacular sense and not the literal meaning, it being a true Golem made the most sense given its seeming autonomous nature and their current location. The creation of Golem was actually quite common in the countries formerly of the Soviet Union.

That was the likeliest answer then, but even if it were true that didn’t bring them any closer to knowing how to defeat it. The nature of a Golem and the best way to go about stopping one could vary from maker to maker and if it was in fact not a Golem then the methods of stopping it became even more varied. The only thing that held true across all options, was the need for an operator or a handler to be nearby; someone to activate or deactivate the thing when it was needed or not and someone to hold onto the failsafe should something untoward happen.

“Try to keep that thing busy for now; I’ll be back in a moment. See if you can find its Shem for now; an inscription or decoration. Remove it.”

Morgana closed her eyes and took a few moments to steady her breathing, before breaking from behind her cover and running towards the building that the Golem had make its dramatic exit from. It was not a graceful run, Morgana being neither particularly athletic, coordinated or properly attired for this sort of thing. She’d known they were heading towards the woods, why hadn’t she worn more suitable footwear? Nonetheless, the witch made it to the building without being picked off by an errant cultist, smashed to pieces by a raging Golem, or dying from embarrassment from tripping over a tree root.

She darted inside, following her own advice as best she could to avoid any curses that may have been laid for them. Avoiding crossing thresholds was obviously out of the question, but she stuck to every other lesson her upbringing had taught her when it came to entering the demesne of an unknown magic user. Thankfully, there was nothing to trigger and even more thankfully no one she had to fight; all of the cultists seemed to have gone out to fight off their assault, or Madeleine’s assault as the case may be, or had already fled. For a moment Morgana was worried that the handler for the Golem may have done the same, or may already be dead, but a slight pressure from her wards alerted her to the presence of someone else in the building, along with the threat they posed before it could catch her off guard.

The door to her right was flung open suddenly, but not surprisingly, and the man that appeared swung his arm towards her to fling a fireball in her direction. The witch raised her own hand in turn, the newly enchanted glove she had spent all of the previous night making lighting up with a complex array of circles and lines that saw a small shield of magic appear before her hand. The fireball collided with the shield and rather than splashing around it or explode the flames were simply drawn into the shield, its energy being quite efficiently absorbed before being fired back at the caster as a bolt of pure, unadulterated magic.

The solid bolt struck the man in the chest and the concussive effect knocked him to the ground and the air from his lungs. Morgana raised her other hand and her other glove glowed with an entirely different pattern than the other as she fired her own attack at the cultist. An orb of blue light flew silently through the air to touch down on the supine figure rather gently, the light flattening out and spread across their upper body and sinking to the floor below them. By the time it faded the man would find his upper body and arms quite securely glued to the ground beneath him.

“It’s always fire that people go for first when the spells come out. Why is that? It’s no more lethal than any other spell and the conversion to heat energy is rather inefficient all things considered.” The man opted not to answer, instead trying rather vigorously to lift themselves off the floor now that they had caught their breath. “That won’t work; believe me. Are you the one in charge of that construct outside?”

No answer was forthcoming, but the way in which the man visibly pressed his lips tighter together was answer enough. Not much of a poker face on this one. Then again, Morgana was quite outside of her element trying to conduct an interrogation of any sort, so perhaps the two evened out in the end. A loud crash from outside, followed by a high pitched groaning and a subsequent crash that sounded rather like a tree falling over, informed Morgana of the continuing fight outside. “Tough little thing. It’s a Golem, correct? Did you make it?”

Still no answers, but the man had ceased struggling entirely now and resigned himself to being stuck where he was for a little while longer. The lack of noise in the room made the fight outside even more apparent; Morgana rather hoped the sounds were of Madeleine winning at the very least. “Well, I won’t pretend that I’m going to torture you for information; that act would fall apart rather quickly. Let’s just hope you were dumb enough to leave some notes lying around.”

That remark actually managed to provoke a reaction from the man, who suddenly looked worried as the witch stepped away from him to examine the rest of the room; a look Morgana managed to miss because she had already turned her attention towards a rather well used workbench against the far wall of the room. Several things lay on its surface such as the obvious collections of metal and woodworking tool, a few pieces of metal in the process of being worked and most intriguingly, a notebook.

Picking it up, Morgana flipping through the book to find that someone had indeed left a lot of notes lying around, almost all of which seemed to be related to the creation and animation of Golem. It was also, however, written almost entirely in Hebrew; a language which Morgana was unfortunately unable to read. The diagrams however, transcended language and it only took Morgana a few moments to find the page detailing where the Shem of the construct was located.

Slipping the book into the inside of her coat, Morgana strode past the now renewed struggles of the cultist and headed towards the front of the building. There she found the fight still in full swing, with both Madeleine, the Golem and most of the surrounding area much worse for wear. “Madeleine! Target the inside of its left thigh, slightly towards the rear; damage the inscription there.”

@Kumbaris

Worm: Earth Drega

Hornet

Hornet

Name: Jessica Dane

Cape Codename: Hornet

Age: 16

Appearance: Jessica has a slim and athletic build and is tall for a girl her age at 5’ 8” tall. Her arms and legs are long and slender, but also visibly toned. She has a naturally pale complexion, along with auburn hair and light green eyes; her pale skin makes the rather prominent scar along her cheek even more noticeable, a long and wide line reaching from just below her left eye to just above her jawline. Smaller scars that are less visible can also be seen on her chin and along the left side of her jaw.

Her hair is about medium length, reaching down to her shoulders, and is straight. Jessica tends to keep it tucked behind her ears, leaving strands to often fall down cross her face; it has been too long since she has had it cut. Aside from the scar, her most prominent feature are her wide green eyes; she has a button nose, a small mouth with thin lips and a rounded chin on an overall oval-shaped face.

She tends not to wear much make-up beyond some basic concealer and lip gloss and have never bothered with covering up her scars. Not a fashionable person, in her own opinion, Jessica favour plain clothes in solid colours; she prefers whites and blacks over bright colours and long sleeves over short.

The costume that Jessica wears when she is working as Hornet is made up of yellow and black, with the under layer being the latter and her mask and other pieces being the former. She wears a black body suit under armoured sections of Kevlar and ceramic which are painted a bright yellow with lines of black to break up the solid shapes. These armoured pieces are mostly found on her upper body and on her forearms and shins; a chest plate that covers her upper chest and back, gauntlets on her arms and boots with incorporated shin guards. They are there to provide additional protection for situations where her invulnerability wears out or isn’t active, but are designed to be light enough not to be restrictive. Her mask is similarly protective; a full face helmet that also covers the top of her head over a black cowl that hides her hair. It is the same yellow colour and her armour and is similarly broken up by black lines and black eye lenses.

It is a little garish, but the bright colours are intended to be eye-catching for the purpose of drawing attention towards her, especially when she appears suddenly, to aid in her role as an ambush fighter and distraction.

Personality: Jessica is a person imbued with a lot of self-confidence in herself; a trait which has been an asset to her, but which is also the source of her biggest flaws and weaknesses. She feels at ease in social situations, finding it easy to approach people and be sociable in new environments, but can be a little forward and pushy in how she approaches people; as such her integration into the Ward team has been mixed, making easy friendships with some and souring early interactions with others.

She can be brash at times, hasty in her approach, which can be both a positive and a negative depending on the situation. On the one hand it means minor situations and things that are in her capabilities get solved quickly, but it also means that more delicate situations are not handled with the care that they should be. Jessica is at her best when matched with someone who can temper her impulse to dive right into the mix. Although this can be difficult to achieve, as Jessica is also something of a busy body who has a hard time keeping her nose out of problems, regardless of if they concern her or not.

Additionally, Jessica is a person who finds it easy to be passionate about things, whether that is a new hobby, a cause, a piece of media or a friend. If something catches her attention she can quickly become invested in something and start to dedicate a lot of her energy towards it. This passion can also give her something of a temper problem; though she rarely gets angry on her own behalf, Jessica has a tendency to quickly become angry on behalf of others.

Power Classification: Mover/Brute

Power Description: A Mover/Brute with the ability to teleport, but only if the destination is within a set distance of another person, roughly 1.5 to 2 meters, and also within a 100 degree cone within that person’s line of sight. This essentially limits them to only being able to teleport directly in front of people, relative to the direction they are looking at the time.

For a brief window following this teleportation, somewhere between 3 and 5 seconds, they are granted temporary invincibility and enhance strength. The obvious use of this power-up is to utilise it offensively, to teleport directly to a target and attack them while immune to retaliation, but it can also be used defensively, to teleport in front of an ally and use the invulnerability to shield them from harm.

Strengths:
Athletic: Jessica is on the track and field team in her high school. She competes in multiple events, but is only a starter in one of them, which is the high jump. The other events she competes in are the 400m and 800m races. Since gaining her powers, Jessica has also been taking kick boxing lessons to improve her ability to fight.
Observant: In most cases Jessica has a good awareness of her surroundings and the movements of people around her.
Weaknesses:
Conflict resolution: Jessica has a tendency to be quick to anger and can be overly aggressive when confronted; in general she has a hard time keeping her cool and backing down from a situation in which she thinks she is in the right.
Jumps to conclusions and to action: Favouring a hasty approach to most situations, Jessica has a problem of jumping to conclusion and acting on those conclusions. This can be an asset, but only if the conclusion she jumps to is the right one, which is less often than she thinks.

History: Originally from Chicago, Illinois, Jessica’s family moved to Bridgewater when she was ten years old when her father, who is a PRT trooper, received a promotion to sergeant and was transferred to a new posting in the city. At the time this was a difficult for her, having to transfer to a new school in a completely new city in the middle of the school year and she initially had a hard time fitting in; she was not bullied, nor mistreated, just isolated. She did not have the confidence to approach anyone and no one made an effort to approach her either. This didn’t change until middle school when Jessica made an effort to reach out by trying out for the track team of her school and found that she both enjoyed it and was good at it. Having found something that she could do well and with teammates that she had made friends with, Jessica became much more confident in herself and more outgoing as a result. She is now fairly popular at her high school, a well-known individual within its halls, and tries to reach out to people who are quiet or alone; she wants to be the type of person that she wished she met when she was alone.

A year ago, when Confessor unleashed his ghosts on the city, Jessica’s mother left the city to return to Chicago and stay with family at the urging or Jessica’s father, who cited that the city was going to be too dangerous for the next few days. He stayed, because it was his job to stay, and Jessica also decided to stay, both because she didn’t want to be away from school for an unknown amount of time and also because she was underestimating the severity of the situation. Both Jessica and her father made it through the Confessor incident with no harm coming to them and it wasn’t actually until some days later in the aftermath of the attack that something happened.

Jessica and a friend of hers from school were caught up in an attack by a local gang as part of a burgeoning war with another group in the city. It was sudden, they were outdoors, in public, then suddenly people around them were panicking, running from something up ahead, Jessica heard gunshots and then there was an explosion. When Jessica came to she was on the ground next to a wall, having been thrown around by something; either the blast or a power or just knocked aside by the fleeing crowd, she didn’t know. Her head was spinning, the left side of her face felt numb and was burning at the same time; blood was on the ground below her and more from falling as she watched, but she couldn’t process that she had been injured. She heard her friend screaming and tried to stand, looking around for her, but someone pushed her to the ground. Jessica tried to stand again and again and it wasn’t the third time that she realised there were people around her who were stopping her from getting up, hitting her, pushing her, laughing at her.

She sobered up then as the gravity of the situation settled in. She’d been hurt, she was surrounded by a few members of some gang she didn’t know, there was smoke and rubble and people running around and she could still hear her friend screaming. She tried to get up again, more urgently this time, and someone kicked her in the ribs, hard. Every time she tried to move they would do the same, hit her, shove her down, getting closer, hemming her in, still laughing, having fun with her mounting distress. She could still hear her friend screaming. She had to get away, she had to get away, she had to get to her friend, she had to get them both away.

Jessica triggered.

Jessica was able to escape, but her friend did not. From what she was told later, her friend most likely died in the initial explosion and it wasn’t even her she had been hearing while she was on the ground; it was unlikely she’d have been able to pick out one voice from everything that was going on anyway. Jessica still isn’t sure if she should believe that or not.

Worm: Earth Drega

Having checked the wiki it looks like Vista got stabbed by Hookwolf at some point, though I couldn't find any more info than that – probably because the encounter occurred sometime pre-cannon and was only ever mentioned in passing.

@TheMushroomLord

Right, I think that was brought up in either Vista's or Clockblocker's interludes as a thing that happened pre-canon.

On a separate note anyone got any interesting concepts for characters? I've currently got a few ideas swimming about, but I'm not sure yet, probably a former villain of some sort since that's on the table.

@TheMushroomLord

Told myself I wasn't going to make a Tinker. Probably going to make a Tinker.

A Tinker whose creations lean strongly towards single-use, perishable, or easily destroyed devices; stuff that's strong, but balanced by the fact that they can only be used once before breaking, or they break as part of how they work. They would be able to replicate stuff quickly and easily reproduce past results though. Creations mostly have a defensive or support focus, rather than offense, but they can be flexible.