Virtue is its Own Reward: 2.0

[Sofaspud]

"What is it about my accent that fascinates you lot so much?"

"I can't explain it, it's just sexy," I replied, earning a disconcerted look from the Chris fellow as we entered the restaurant. Seeing that
he didn't believe me, I sighed. "Excuse me," I said, tapping the shoulder of the young lady -- blonde, college age, tight shorts, perky -- in
line ahead of us. She turned, a puzzled frown on her face, and I beamed at her, turning to stand next to her so both of us faced Chris. "Say
something," I said to him.

"Er, what?"

"Something more than that, c'mon!"

"This is a bit silly, isn't it, Rhea?"

Ignoring his question, I turned to the girl at my side. "Is that a sexy accent or what?" I asked her brightly.

She blinked, a grin forming on her face. "Yes, yes it is," she admitted. "Friend of yours?"

"Oh, I just met him tonight," I replied.

"Hmm. Well, good luck!" she said, turning back to the counter. I giggled, turning back to the others. "... what?" I asked at their
expressions.

"Did you... wait... I... um... wait, what just happened here?" Chris inquired.

"You got hit on by a girl," I informed him. The girl in front of us suppressed a laugh, refusing to turn around.

"Well, of course he's having trouble," Nene put in. "It's a totally new experience for him."

"Hey!" Chris looked indignant.

"Now, now, be nice," Silver -- er, Uni -- chided. "You shouldn't tease the poor guy. It's not his fault Australian girls don't
notice the accent. He should have come here sooner, is all."

I grinned and turned to peruse the menu as Chris made incoherent spluttering noises and Uni and Nene laughed. I could feel Spud holding back his own laughter
as well, which was a very odd sensation, not entirely unlike when Whiskers is laughing at something but different somehow. I took a deep breath and paused as
odors assailed my senses. Wherever Whiskers and I were, it might be primitive by the standards I was used to -- that's what Chris said, anyhow -- but if
the smells were any indication they knew how to do a burger right. Which goes a long way in my book towards making it a nice place to be.

Not that I'd want to stay here -- I had to get back to Lisa and Terr, Mr. Whiskers and I needed to sign some papers next week for his cartoon show, and the
manager at Second Skin wanted my opinion on the new lines for fall. And that wasn't even counting all the hero stuff, which I loved doing and which Mr.
Whiskers had to do, it was his duty!

But right now, the important thing was food. I was starving. Or Spud was. I shivered at that thought, and caught a flash of him giving me a dirty
look.

I'm used to having Mr. Whiskers' voice in my head, but this guy...

I don't know if the others were as hungry as I am, or if it was something in the air, but we ended up ordering a lot of food. Uni saved the day for us
when one by one we realized none of us could pay -- Nene had what's-his-name's card, sure, but no ID; Chris was from another country; and as for me, I
had my ID, but who carries cash or credit cards in Paragon? I just charge it to my account, the entire city accepts it and that way I don't have to worry
about it.

Uni rolled her eyes at us and handed the confused cashier her credit card, saving the day. I hugged her. "Thanks!"

"Um, sure," she said, seeming a bit disconcerted.

We found a booth big enough for the four (six? eight? ow, my head!) of us and dug in. Between chomps of my burger and tub-o-fries (it was HUGE!) I
people-watched and tried to follow the conversation, which was a continuation of the one in the car, about how we needed to lay low and couldn't let the
government get involved and how we'd get arrested for using our powers and things like that. All of which was very annoying and I was trying to figure out
how best to point out that, hello? We'd be helping.

(This could be a problem, Rhea,) Whiskers told me.

"Listen, guys," I said, and stopped as a pair of men came up to our table. Well, young men; I figured them for college students -- which wasn't
surprising, most of the people in here this late at night appeared to be students, sipping at their shakes, chowing down on fries (and some sort of pink sauce,
weird), and perusing books and laptop computers. These two weren't bad looking, I thought, and focused on what they were saying as Whiskers cleared his
throat at me.

"Sorry, don't mean to be rude," the taller one was saying, "but ... we heard you talking about superpowers?"

"Yeah!" his buddy added. "Which system do you use?"

I raised an eyebrow and turned to Uni, who looked back at me, her eyes wide, and shrugged. Chris groaned softly next to me. "(Busted,)" I heard him
mutter.

"It's a new one, we're beta-testing it," Nene replied brightly. I blinked. Slowly all three of us turned to look at her.

"Oh yeah?" The shorter guy was the excitable type, I noted. "What's it called? Who makes it?"

"It was written by a friend of ours," Nene said smoothly. "It's called, um, the VIRTUE system."

"That's a wierd name," Tall Guy put in.

Nene shrugged. "Hey, we're just testing it. What can you do, right?"

"Think we could get in on a game? We've got characters with us, they're GURPS so I bet we could adapt them easy..."

Game? GURPS? I tried not to look as blank as I felt, even as Spud groaned -- not out loud, thankfully -- and I had the sudden image of him dropping his face
into his hand.

"Sorry, not tonight," Nene was saying. "We're just about done here anyway, y'know? Maybe next time?" She smiled up at them and I
giggled. She knew how to play it, that was for sure.

Ah, the power of redheads.

"Aww..." Short Guy said, but his friend nodded agreeably enough.

"No problem, see you around then." He dug in his pocket for a moment and handed Nene a card. "Call me next time you've got a game going?
Or, y'know, whenever."

It was delivered casually, not rehearsed, just confident. My estimation of the Tall Guy went up a notch. That was smooth.

Nene blinked, her mouth hanging half-open.

Okay, well, she got ten points for being quick on her feet, but lost a few for thwiffing at the pitch. Rhea to the rescue! I leaned forward and smiled at the
two of them. "We'll be sure to do that. You guys look fun."

"Yeah," Nene mumbled, still stunned. "Fun."

They grinned and waved goodbye, heading back to their own table. I leaned back and stole one of Uni's fries -- she wasn't eating them anyway -- and
waited.

"Did they--" Nene began.

"Yes," Chris said flatly.

"Eeep."

"That settles it," Uni noted. "We need to find a way to change Ben back."

Ben? Oh, right. I shook my head.

"If this happened to us, it happened to others," Nene said, dropping the card on the table with a shudder. I snagged it and tucked it away -- only
Chris noticed, I think, and I answered his questioning glance with a wink.

What can I say? I like confident, and Tall Guy was cute as well.

(Focus, Rhea!)

I tried to ignore Spud's resigned grumbling in my head -- like a muttering voice heard through walls, I couldn't make out what he was saying but the
tone was Not Happy -- and finished my burger. I'd lay low, sure. If using powers here in everyday situations would get me in trouble, then I'd try
not to use Mr. Whiskers powers. Simple.

But it'd be a cold day in Hell before I stood by and did nothing if someone needed me. I wasn't sure how to tell them that, so I didn't.

(This sucks, Fuzzbutt,) I sighed.

(We'll figure it out,) was his calm reply.

---

--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs

[Unicorna]

I sat there poking at my fish and chips after the two guys had left. I'd not actually eaten anything, and saw Rhea reach over and steal a couple more
fries. I pushed the tray towards her a bit. "You want the rest?"

She grinned. "Really? Thanks!" A part of my mind wondered WHERE she was putting all that, especially after that tub-o-fries. But she dove in without
hesitation.

Across the table Nene looked closely at me. "Hey, are you okay?" Her eyes narrowed and I found anywhere to look at besides her.

"I'm fine, I'm just not hungry."

She cocked an eyebrow in a way that screamed Ben to me. "If you're not hungry, why did you order that much food?"

"Look, I don't know, okay?!" I snapped, immediately regretting it. "I'm sorry. I'm... hungry, I think. But that food, well, the best
way to explain is that every time I think of eating it I get all squeamish and nauseous. I want to chow down, but I can't eat any of that." I waved my
hand at the table, my voice a combination of irritation and embarrassment to my own ears.

Nene went silent and began eating her own chicken strips as I sighed. Folding my arms on the table, I rested my head on them and closed my eyes. "I
don't know what's wrong with me."

Rhea got a concerned look on her face and was about to use her radiant aura to try and heal me when Nene reached over and got a hold of her arm.
"Don't. This isn't something that needs that trick. And this isn't the time or place to be trying it."

Rhea glared at Nene as Chris looked at me and pondered. "Hey Uni?"

"Hmm?"

"What did Silver eat back in Paragon?"

I raised my head and looked at him in surprise, before trying to think. "She... uh, she didn't eat. Silver was completely self-sustaining."

Chris was thinking hard too. "Well, my bet is that your instincts are trying to, well, synchronize with Silver's body. Hunger is one of those, but
obviously food isn't what's needed to satiate it." The other three of us remained quiet while Chris turned over the issue in his head. "What
did Silver eat back in EoW?"

My eyes were blank for a moment before it clicked and comprehension dawned. "Of course!" Nene's eyes widened as she realized what I was talking
about and Chris had a smug look on his face. In my opinion, he was entitled to it right now.

Rhea gave the three of us a confused look. "What are you guys talking about? EoW?"

"Echoes of War, a game we used to play," Nene answered offhandedly, her attention focused elsewhere.

Chris nodded. "Quicksilver didn't first show up in Paragon, she showed up years ago in another game the three of us were part of. She was a nanotech
back then too, but she was more... fleshed out, pardon the pun." That sent Nene into a fit of giggles as I just shook my head at MD. Some things never
change.

Rhea ignored them and laid a hand on my shoulder. "Are you going to be okay?"

I nodded and grinned at her. "Yeah, I'm great. I know exactly what I need. And I bet I can find it in your garage." I looked into her eyes with
an almost-feral grin that was meant for the other personality in there, and Rhea felt the presence in the back of her mind shiver slightly.

[Dragonflight]

Okay, you say. So I got a handle on shapeshifting, at least learned the basics of summoning up electricity, and even had the forethought of examining my
equipment and making sure I could repair stuff. So what does a would-be heroine do to follow it up?

Actually, I spent most of that evening using the MIDS Hero designer to come up with ideas. Since I had Marvel-Kara's memories and skills, it stood to
reason my electrical power should be that powerful too. The piddling little bolt I'd pulled off of one hand was the weakest attack in the game, and was a
tiny drop in the bucket by Marvel-Kara standards. But as I studied and compared notes, I realized the two characters were closer in power than I thought. Or
should be, at any rate. The Marvel version had Monstrous damage every ten seconds. The City of Heroes character could fire less powerful bolts on average, but
had a really powerful sniper power. Assuming they approached the same power level around there somewhere, then 'Zapp' should be roughly what I was
doing regularly before. And might again if I could get a handle on the power level. But for now, best to roll with the punches and master what I already had
before I started messing with stuff I didn't understand.

I think I mentioned before that I wasn't weirding out as much over stuff I actually had done versus what these new memories said. I just treated it like
more knowledge. Of course, some of it still weirded me out something fierce, like Kara's many trysts with her girlfriend Cassandra. Considering her
girlfriend enjoyed the close mental communion that accompanied sex with a telepath, Kara and Cassandra indulged in it fairly often. And I tried very hard not to get too hung up on those memories. I mean, they weren't real, right? Even if I could still remember the last
time Cassie and I had made love...

I stopped that train of thought and focused on what I was doing. Bad enough that a figment of my imagination was in a steady relationship, but to think that it
had a more active sex life was just adding insult to injury. So best to let it slide and focus on what I was doing.

While working with the MIDS designer, I realized there was a problem. If this duplication thing allowed me to have CoH Kara's powers, then it stood to
reason I should be able to use "enhancements" to improve them. The problem is, what the hell is an enhancement in real life? Is it more training? Or
something else?

The MIDS designer listed a whole lot of strange radiations and mutagenic compounds for the mutation origin character, but damned if I was going to expose
myself to weird genetic mutagens... assuming I could even find something like that here. No, there had to be a more reasonable way. And after thinking about it, I knew what it was. But it would have to wait for the next day.

I awoke the next morning, somewhere around ten-ish. After taking care of the basics (and verifying I was still a guy during this, yes), I went out to hunt up a
good testing environment.

Ottawa is blessed with an abundance of many things. One of them is a line of industrial-strength power towers which run through a section of provincial land
behind a high school near where I live. And if you've ever seen shows of people holding up fluorescent light bulbs under those things, you'll know that
sometimes - if the transformers up top are in bad shape - the insulation frays and you get excess power radiated into the environment.

In the Marvel game, my character had enjoyed a brief power spike when in the Savage Lands, blamed on all the radiant electrical power in the region. If that
had any basis in reality, my power should be improved around the towers. Practicing around these towers would get me
used to a heightened level of power, and I'd learn to generate more power, more often, thus increasing the strength of my bursts. Thus, my available power
would grow as well. As for the in-game accuracy, I had a theory, which I tested with the targeting system.

I'd found the salvage storage in that strange dimensional otherwhere everything was stored. And one of the items of salvage I had was a rare item: A
military grade Head's-Up Display. Fitting that to the arm-computer had taken some time, but eventually with the functionality added, the standard HUD I was
issued was now capable of acting as a targeting system in conjunction with my powers. So I practiced with the tiny electrical power, following the crosshair as
it moved around my field of view, shooting tree stumps and patches of ground in the stretch of forest around the power towers every time the crosshair turned
red. I got pretty good at it too, although I noticed my accuracy sort of fell off when I didn't use it. Oh well, more to work with in the future. For now,
it was enough that I had a short-term boost which made me more accurate.

Eventually I got up the nerve to fire a two-handed burst, and boy was it more powerful. Each bolt of lightning made a snap-crack sound, very different from the video game. They didn't sizzle in the air like the game either. They flashed through the
air so fast, it left a brilliant afterimage on the retina before fading away. And the bigger, double-handed bolt sounded like a rifle shot on reverb, with
echoes that must have been heard off in the community.

I got some distance at that point. I know the police get calls about firecrackers and possible gunshots. I didn't want to stick around in case they came
looking. But that made it harder to practice as well, if every time I fired off a bolt it sounded like I was firing a rifle. This would take some thought.

I knew I would eventually have other issues. Washing the costume wasn't a problem. The roommates were pretty oblivious to each other's activities, so I
could manage that without them noticing. But as Kara I'd have to wear something new eventually. And while I'd
been tossing back and forth the idea of recruiting my sister, I didn't know how she'd react to the whole thing. I'd have to think about it. On the
other hand, what she didn't know about picking out perfect outfits and accessorizing wasn't worth knowing, so she was the ideal person to get help from. If I could just work up the guts to explain all this to her.

I mulled this over in the shower after my practice run. An unexpected side effect of all the practice was that it was getting easier to use the powers. Less
tiring. I could only hope this effect carried over for all the other training I'd have to do later.And I dreaded what came next.

According to my memory, Foxfire had just begun to master the power of flight. She'd done so much the same way Marvel-Kara had. The original character had
the ability to generate pure kinetic force in addition to electricity. So personal forcefields, flight, and stuff like that should be possible. In-game, it was
my justification for her developing a flight power, and why she was so resistant to damage. But that was for later.
---
Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do.

[Morganite]

[Author's note: !$%!$%! yuku ate the original version of this. I don't feel like not posting anything tonight, but I may need to edit this later as a result.]

(Time: Morning after the Virtue Event)

I wasn't exactly the sharpest hammer in the bag in the morning. Until I'd both eaten and showered, I might be 'up', but it'd be pushing the definition of the term to call me 'awake'. (I'd even joked that I was at my most dangerous during this time of the day, as at this point I wouldn't be quite up to handling abstract concepts such as "mercy".)

So it wasn't until after I'd gotten out of the shower that I started contemplating how weird this situation really was.

I knew the face in the mirror. It was, after all, my own, at least in a sense. The version of me who went by Alexis Morgan. The same one I'd been playing City of Heroes as the night before. I doubted that was a coincidence. But not just a copy of the game character. There'd always been little details that the creator couldn't handle, or I couldn't figure out how to get the way I wanted them. I wouldn't recognize that face in the mirror.

That didn't explain this outlandish getup I'd woken up in though. Sure, it was fine to go to sleep in a t-shirt and underwear. But I woke up as Alexis Morgan! The *transformed* Alexis Morgan. As a traditional magical girl, being transformed meant a traditional magical girl outfit, and this did not qualify. Okay, sometimes being Alexis also meant waking up *naked*, but this didn't fit that pattern either. This broke the rules I knew, and it was making me kind of nervous.

Well, I knew one way of resetting this system, even though I felt a bit silly doing it. "Lexi Flash!"

Having your clothes tear themselves to shreds around you and reassemble into an entirely new form is a weird feeling, but I felt a lot more comfortable being back in the old sailor fuku. Now maybe I could settle down and try to find out what the hell had happened.

* * *

Unnoticed on the floor by Morgan's bed, a white staff-like object shimmered and dissolved into nothingness. With it's parent mode inactive, it's presence was no longer needed.

[dark seraph]

Sera was grinning like a loon as she returned home from her "testing" session, as far as she could
tell, all her combat powers still work, it been hard to access this world magic, but after a while it got easier and easier. She still hadn't tried any of
the Big stuff yet, but that's could wait till a later day.

She entered the kitchen and began looking for something to eat, she spotted a note on the table. Picking it up she read it while she grabbed some left over
beef curry from the fridge.

"Josh, gone shopping for cloths, be back soon, mum."

Sera blinked at the paper for a moment. Josh, you know, my name before I changed? A little voice at the back of
her head chimed. She was mildly shocked, she had goten so used to thinking her self as Sera that she had almost forgotten her own name. Okay… that is probably a bad thing, must remember my own name.

She was about to stick the curry in the microwave when she became aware of a smell, after a couple of seconds she realised it was her. Gleh… need a shower. She put the curry away and headed to the bathroom, she was about to strip off when another thought
entered her head. This be the first time I've seen my self naked… well, the first time I've been naked and not
had doctors poking me. She froze, her mind trying to come to grips with her current dilemma.

She turned to the mirror and stared at her reflection. Okay… I can do this, this is my body so I shouldn't get
freaked out by it.

She pulled her shirt off. See, no problem… god damn their
huge! Okay okay, now is not the time to ogle my self… it took a couple of seconds to realise she was in fact
ogling her own reflection. Crap.. okay look at something else, looks at something else. The floor? No that's
didn't work. The roof, yes I can do that. Staring straight at the roof she manage to finish getting undressed and in to the shower.

---

Half and hour Latter.

Sera emerged form the bathroom adjusting the towel she wrapped around herself, her neck hurt from staring at the roof, but she had done it, she had a shower.
See not so hard… even if my neck hurts like a bitch. She was about to head
off to her bedroom. She was stoped as her mum entered the room.

"And what do you think your doing?" she asked.

"Er, just had a shower, getting change of clothes?" she replied.

"Even though none of it fits?"

She was right, her transformation had shrunk her by at least a foot, so her pant's were all a bit on the long side, luckily most of her shirts were a size
or two too big before the transformation.

"okay… so what do you have for me?" she asked.

Her mum gave her a few bags and told her to go off and try the stuff on. Grumbling Sera went to her room and started changing.

A few minutes later she returned in a pair of plain jeans and a white dress shirt. She kept fidgeting and rubbing her shoulders.

Her mum just smiled. "Having trouble?" she asked.

Sera mumbled. "Stupid thing cut's in and feels weird."

"What dose?"

Sera looked around for a few seconds and replied in a whisper. "The bra."

Her mother gave her an odd look before she cracked up laughing, after a few seconds she waved Sera over.

"Let try." She turned Sera and rolled up her shirt, tutting she carefully fixed the straps and
turned her back around. "Better?"

"Yes… sort of… still feels weird as all hell." Sera grumbled.

"Good, now I'm heading back down the street to meet your sisters, you can tag along and we might get you some more cloths, okay?"

"Er… down the street… as in going out in public?"

"No as in walking up and down the street, what do you think?"

"I think it's a bad idea, that's what I think."

"Look, you can't hide inside all day, you have to get out and about… and I'm not giving you a choice."

Sera slumped her shoulders. "You have noticed I kinda stand out?"

"So? Look, if you come I'll get you ice cream."

Sera's ears twitched. "Fine... you win."

Sera sighed, she had to do this sooner or later. It's that… or become a hermit.

[Foxboy]

July 6, 2009, 1:23 pm EDT -- WXYZ News room, Detroit, MI

"This is legit?" the news director asked.

"Very," television reporter Mary Wilson replied. "I have video from three other cell phones of the same event, this is just the best one."

"Okay. We'll run with it. Think you can have this worked up and polished by six?"

Mary smiled. "I've got it ready to go for 1:30, complete with 'human interest' interview with the little girl. If you didn't already have me on retainer for the weird stuff, I'd have already posted it to YouTube."

"Great!" The director beamed. "I'll work on getting this into the network then."

The computer screen behind him ran the video of an honest-to-goodness superhero, tights, cape and all, rescuing a kitten from a tree and flying away.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

[Rev Dark]

Okay. So I now have what can only be described as superpowers.

Thousands, perhaps even millions of people would gladly trade places with me for the opportunity to be something more than human.

Well, this is the part where I show my ingratitude to the universe that so gifted me and bitch about a few things.

My powers, such as they are, transcend the limitations set by the mechanics of the game. Coolness. Yippee for me. Special enough that Jerry Lewis can
hold a telethon for me. There are problems. The first being that most of the mechanics of the game do not carry over to the concept of the character that had
been held in my mind.

I can live without the Nemesis staff, base teleporter and strange nebulous cash equivalent, but the big one that is missing is costumes.

In the game one only has to hit a button to change clothes. It is a game mechanic reminiscent of Clark Kent tearing open his shirt in a phone booth, or an
endless succession of Japanese heroines tearing off their clothes to the accompaniment of flashing lights, swirling colours and uplifting music; a
transformation method one stripper pole away from an endless stream of small bills.

It was not one that I particularly embraced for Excalibastard, and thus I am stuck in a pair of shorts and a bright red T-shirt with "I am an
assassin…. Shhh" spelled out in small letters.

For the record, this outfit will not strike fear into the heart of the common criminal, the uncommon criminal, the super criminal, or even the average
kindergartener. I would have more luck scaring criminals by opting for the magical school-girl route and hope that the display would be sufficient to cause
them to tear out their own eyes.

However, my lack of appropriate combat dress is not a primary, secondary or tertiary concern. The tertiary concern is that I am about to do something
public. In an age where more people have a mobile phone cameras than can quote more than three lines of Shakespeare; I am fully expecting to be on Youtube
before the hour is over. I will likely get less hits than Susan Boyle; so I can take some comfort there.

Secondary concern is the demons; or rather what I had labeled demons. I will be getting back to them shortly.

Primary concern is my lovely wife, who was logged out at the time of the Virtue incident due to the Darkling bouncing vigorously atop her bladder.

For the record (again with the record - I want this on MP3) there is a reason that pregnant women are so often cited in the 'ideal victim' book of
clichés. Perhaps this is a renewal of life ideal. The supposed sanctity of motherhood. I have another theory.

They do not flee well.

Fleeing is very important in these situations. The best practical self-defense skill to have is being able to run like a fucking bunny for two kilometers,
and then turn around and reassess the situation. Thompson's gazelles, squirrels, rabbits and blue jays are all excellent at the whole fleeing thing.
Women in the third trimester of pregnancy are in the same category as Galapagos tortoises and salmon who have run aground. This may be an unfair comparison to
the tortoises.

Therefore, I can't count on Cindy's fleeing skills. I need other options.

Back to the Secondary concern. The demons.

And then I realize they aren't demons.

They're angels.

[Terrenceknight]

Opening my eyes the first thing I notice I feel far more refreshed than I've ever felt, but brushed it off as euphoria from what I sure was a amuseing
dream, at least that was untill I moved to stand up from my recliner that has served as my bed for a few years now, gone..was the usual feeling of being
sluggish, the creaking joints and the difficulty of standing. Replaced with what felt like incredible almost unrealistic amount of energy, a Vitality that
coursed through the every fiber of my being "W..what?, what the hell?" Even my voice was similar yet different stronger and deeper, with a hint of
the savage nature. "....No way, it wasn't a dream yet how can this be? Even my wildest..fondest dreams can't compare to the sensation courseing
through my veins now"

"I Feel so alive!"

My exclamation echo'd through my roommates condo, He had already gone to work so I had time to think as I made my way downstairs 'Last night..I
remember wakeing up to my computer's screen saver moveing the mouse to get things going the screen flicked on to it showing I had been kicked out back to
the main City of Heroes Login screen..I had been really groggy and had just turned off my computer figureing I can just log on in the morning to apologise for
suddenly bailing on the ITF like that, Of course when I had gotten upstairs I felt weird but had attributed it to my antidepressants acting up..'
"But..what happened? and..It can't have been just me...can it?" I mused as I took a seat at my computer desk a large bowl of cereal joining me as
I fired my system up 'I had just written last night off as some hallucination after examineing myself in the mirror..but today after a long nights rest it
really seems like it wasn't the case' "This..this is real..hmm?" I was disturbed from my internal museings as I tried to log onto City of
Heroes..only to see there was no Virtue server.. "What the fuck?..."

Curseing I logout and logged into my hotmail account..deleating the spam ".....Hate spam.." Opening my friend list I pull up Spuds and Sweno's
email addresses, since I didn't have anyone else on the list that plays CoX with me and began to type a message

'The weirdest thing seems to have happened overnight..can you tell me if anything has happened or heard of anything happeneing around your area? I seem to
have had something..change last night but I had brushed it off as some Hallucination, obviously..not so much so please reply to this message as soon as
possible'

Terry

[firvulag]

I crashed almost immediately after my shower and woke up about noon when my stomach decided it wanted food and now. I stumbled out of bed and into my kitchen,
blinking at the sun light and opened my fridge to figure out my options.

Carrying a bowl of my favorite tuna & corn ramen-ish dish I rather sadly wheeled the punctured remains of my office chair away from my desk and sat down on
one of the cheap folding chairs I picked up somewhere along the way. I'd miss that chair, especially since I didn't really have the means to replace
it what with living on my TA's salary and NSRC grants...

That thought brought me up short, forkful of noodles and fish halfway to my mouth. My degree! How the hell was I going to finish my degree like this? Three
years and tens of thousands of dollars were swirling down the drain before my eyes, made all the worse by the original Alicia managing to loose her PHd.

A gurgle from my stomach got me eating again and I toed my computer's power button. I rather dejectedly ate my noodles while Windows booted. First things
first, I'd check the forums, then I'd start figuring out what to email my supervisor. 'Yeah sorry Prof. Thanks for securing me NSRC funding for
the summer, I'm bailing on you.' Oh that would be just great.

There were only a handful of replies but reading between the lines it seemed like I wasn't alone in this. That was a small comfort at least.

I swapped to the Carleton portal site and stared at the email composer for the better part of an hour before closing it. Screw it, I didn't have any
meetings with Prof this week, I could procrastinate a bit. I could even go in to the office. I wasn't TAing during the summer term so I didn't have
to interact with too many people. Just my supervisor, his neighbor and the one guy I shared my office with. A strange girl showing up might freak him out a
little, but I hadn't seem him since mid-June so I figured he probably wasn't in town.

As Alicia I'd let the burns she'd suffered, and the unfortunate, and long hospital stay they'd required stop me from getting my degree. Take the
life she'd worked so hard to build away from me. It was *not* going to happen again. I could find a way. I would find a way.

Which left only the looming thesis deadline and the incompleteness of my research standing in my way.

Feeling a bit better about myself I turned on the radio. It was almost time for the hourly CBC news, and I was feeling a little disconnected.

[Dragonflight]

Midafternoon. As I mentioned a few times, I don't have cable, don't listen to radio. Basically unless it shows up on cbc.ca, I pretty much don't
know it happened. So I was pretty much in the dark about events occurring halfway across the city. For myself, I had other issues.

I'd relocated to Bruce Pit. A collection of nature trails that had started out as a rock quarry beside a high school, it offered me plenty of leafy
opportunities to get well and truly lost. Oh well, I'd find my way back eventually. But the other thing it gave me was a little privacy.

Checking my memories, I learned that it was possible to trigger the clothing-swap thingie under special circumstances. Only recently added by Paragon techs, it
let heroes instantly swap outfits, while making their 'look cool' rolls at the same time. I know, I don't understand it entirely either. I mean, in
game it was a cool extra feature. Click on an emote and choose your outfit. Bind it to a keypress and tap the buttons for in-game cinematics. But apparently
they'd done it in the Paragon I remembered too. I guess if you have a whole world of supers, and an economy at least partly based on supporting these supers, you'll eventually start to get off on all the really cool things you can do with these people. Makes
me wonder what their movies are like.

The computer device had a recognition mode, that supposedly would let it work if I combined a power with a posture. So what the hell. I set it up for my
character's lightning power, and went into the back end of nowhere to see if it worked. I'd noticed that every time I used a power, I became Kara. That
may or may not be a permanent thing, but frankly, I had too much on my plate right now to try to train myself out of that. Besides, I'd rather have this
automatic transformation thing in place, because if people saw me using lighting powers, I'd rather they take pictures of Kara than me. Besides, she's
more photogenic.

So there I was in the back end of nowhere. Looking around self-consciously, I struck the pose, right hand up at the sky while at the same time summoning the
electricity inside. It pulsed around my hand, then it got weird. The sparkly electricity immediately started to crackle around the other arm, both legs, and
across my body. There was a really loud crash of thunder, and I found myself staggering back, clearing the spots out
of my eyes.

Okay... Next time I try that, close my eyes. Got it.

When I next looked at myself, I realized several things. I was Kara again. I was wearing the combat armor.

And there was a little boy standing at the end of the path with an open-mouthed expression on his face.

I gave him a nervous grin, held my finger to my lips in a 'shh'-ing motion, and ducked down a side path. Several minutes of cautious jogging got me far
enough away I figured that he'd never find me.

I leaned against a tree trunk and took several deep breaths. Stupid! Extremely stupid! I hadn't seen him before
the change, so he'd probably run up when he saw the flash of light. I doubt he saw me as a result. But he'd seen enough. Depending on who he told, word
might get around way before I wanted it to. Thank you Chaos theory.

After finding an old section of the quarry and ducking under some tree cover, I finally felt confident enough to try the second part. The Paragon Kara had
developed a hover power before the change. Marvel-Kara could generate kinetic force with practice. The CoH character had a device built into her belt which
harnessed stupid amounts of electrical power to essentially generate a counter-kinetic force. In my case, it took that power from me instead of a generator,
since I had power to burn. Not really antigravity, because it wasn't negating it. Instead, the machine generated a
field that created a matching negative kinetic field aimed at the highest gravity potential. For instance, jump into the air. As you peak and begin the trip
down, you're generating kinetic energy. This is caused by your mass interacting with Earth's gravity. What the device did was it created a field that
matched the pull down with a negative kinetic effect, which would basically cause me to come to a stop. It had safeties built into it so that it only kicked in
when your motion toward the gravity potential was greater than zero. So jumping up with this thing on wouldn't put you in space, but you would stop at the top of your arc and just sit there. It was the method used by most tech-based flight types in Paragon whose
technology didn't originate from somewhere else.

I turned it on and hopped into the air. Sure enough, I came to a stop roughly a couple feet off the ground. The machine was presumably drawing off of my
electrical power, but I didn't feel it. Strange that I could be essentially tapped for power and not notice it. I leaned forward, as they'd taught me
in City Hall, and the machine translated that into forward motion, playing a shell game with the counter-gravity thrust and my pull to Earth. It got up to a
reasonable rate of speed. about that of an idling car. But it really didn't go any faster. And unlike the game, there were no sound effects. It was
completely silent.

I settled to the ground by angling my body downward and turned it off when it touched down. I closed my eyes and concentrated. I was trying to use the
Marvel-Kara's power to duplicate the technique. Just enough to hold steady. When I thought I had the construct in my mind, I hopped lightly into the air.

I rose for about four feet before I wobbled and dropped to the ground. I didn't care. It worked, and that was what mattered. I could refine it down the
road. And if I could generate thrust this way, it meant I could actually fly, even if only with the belt at first. Counter grav combined with thrust equalled
speed. Once I knew what I was doing, of course. But I had two really big reasons for trying to master the flight powers myself. First, I couldn't
possibly fix that thing if it broke, so I needed an alternative. Second, it was just damn cool.

I struck that pose again, gathered the electricity and concentrated on becoming myself. Another massive thunderclap later, and I was walking out of a side path
in my shorts and polo shirt. It actually worked.

By the time I reached the car, I realized I still had two more hurdles to overcome. First, I needed a way to keep track of things happening in Ottawa. Second,
I still needed to talk to my sister. Yes, I was putting that off, because I had this feeling I knew how she'd react after the initial shock had worn off.
And coward that I am, I wanted to delay that inevitability at least a little while longer. Not that it mattered in the
long run...
---
Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do.

[Sofaspud]

Matt "Positron" Miller felt uneasy. He wasn't sure what had hit him, exactly, but he'd woken up at his development console in his private
office, a massive headache pounding at his temples and an hour missing from his memory.

And the Virtue server status icon blinking angrily at him from one of his displays. On the center panel, the City of Heroes login screen -- production
version, dev tools enabled -- stared back at him, informing him he'd lost his connection to the server. Which was ridiculous, they had a permanent link...

He jumped on the horn with the guys in California right away, snatching his not-often-used desk phone up and punching the 'red alert' button that
connected him directly with the Network Operations Center. No, they weren't sure what had happened; yes, they'd been trying to call him and the other
developers, but nobody was answering their cell phones; yes, the server hardware passed all its diagnostics, whatever it had been it seemed to be transient.
No, no clue what it was.

"Well, fire it back up, then," he sighed into the phone. "And someone call CS, we're going to have a flood of angry emails to deal with
tomorrow morning."

He hung up his desk phone and frowned. His team was dedicated and professional; they always answered their cell phones when the NOC was calling. He fumbled
his own out of his pocket -- or tried to. He didn't seem to have a pocket.

He glanced down and froze.

He didn't have a pocket because he wasn't wearing pants. Instead, he was wearing a suit of high-tech armor. Very familiar armor, and why
shouldn't it be? He'd designed and built it himself.

With a growing sense of wonder (and no small degree of fright), Positron held up one hand and watched as energy flickered into being above it.

"This could be ... interesting," he said aloud, staring at the green ball hovering placidly above his hand.

---

The better part of two days later, he was certain of two things:

One, this was the most incredible, fantastic, and generally awesome thing he'd ever heard of.

Two, they were going to be in a world of hurt -- legally, financially, and most likely personally -- if things weren't handled very carefully indeed.

After removing the armor and congratulating himself on having changed the storyline so that Posi could, indeed, function outside his armor without blowing
stuff up, some discreet inquiries had revealed that he wasn't the only developer affected. Based on that, he knew players had been affected as well.
There wasn't any direct proof, not yet, but he was a fan of wierd news and there was a LOT of it cropping up, from a mysterious sonic boom on Interstate
20, to reports of a kitten-in-a-tree being saved by Superman, and more.

And the gaming public seemed to have sensed it, somehow. Their higher-ups at NCSoft were ecstatic -- a tremendous spike in subscriptions, both renewals and
new sign-ups. The servers were groaning under the load -- more so than usual.

He knew that if he suggested pulling the plug -- which was his first instinct, admittedly -- he'd be shown the door in a heartbeat.

Fortunately, he -- or Positron, he wasn't sure if it was his brain or Posi's super-genius intellect at work here -- had another idea. He picked up his
phone and dialed a number he always dreaded seeing when it came up on his display.

"This is Miller. I need to speak to the head of Legal."

He drummed his fingers on his desk impatiently.

"Chris? Yeah, it's Matt. Listen. We've got a situation here that needs your expertise." He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
"You remember that billboard we based off of you in the game?"

---

The strike team was well-prepared and comprised of experts from various branches of the government. The FBI, of course; also the CIA. The NSA had sent a
quiet little man along who wore thin glasses and the tactical body armor with the ease of long practice. The BATF wanted in, but had drawn the short straw;
their men were the drivers, chafing at the bit and waiting impatiently in the large black SUVs in the parking lot. And the Army had sent along some forces as
well, currently holding in reserve a half-mile down the road.

They wanted this to be quiet, after all. It wasn't quite illegal -- an understanding judge had issued a search warrant, even if the siezure part they
planned was not covered by the document -- but it was definitely in the gray area.

Which was fine with these men. All of them were used to operating there.

The point man opened the door and stepped through boldly, standing to the side and holding the door as the others came through in rapid single file. The lobby
was empty, except for four men sitting comfortably on a large leather couch facing the front doors. These men rose as the strike team entered.

"We have a warrant--" their point man began, and the four men facing them smiled as one. One of them raised a hand calmly.

"We'll look at it in just a moment, if you please. Introductions are in order, I think. My name is Chris Jenkins; I'm the head of the legal
department here. To my right," he said, indicating a pleasant-looking man wearing a business suit, "is Mr. Smith, from the ACLU. To my left is Mr.
Jones, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. And to his left," Jenkins said, his smile growing wider and more predatory, "is Senator Kelly.
I'm sure you know who he works for."

"Now what's this about a warrant?" the Senator boomed, raising an eyebrow.

---

From the secured server room, Positron watched the proceedings on a laptop hastily wired into the network and the closed-circuit cameras. He trusted the
lawyers and the Senator -- and what a stroke of luck THAT had been, discovering a senator that not only played the game but who had a vested interest in
keeping it safe -- to tie the whole matter up, to prevent anybody from seizing the data on the systems that could be used to identify affected players -- a
massive invasion of privacy by anyone's standards, but something he'd been afraid of ever since realizing what had happened -- or seizing the equipment
itself, to see how it had done whatever it was it had done.

But in case the legal stall didn't work... just in case...

He eyed the machines humming around him and sighed, hoping it wouldn't come to that. As Positron, he could blank the data on these things in a heartbeat.
He didn't want to, and he knew that that would be a stall at best -- the credit card users, at least, could still be tracked -- but it would be MUCH
harder.

It also meant at the very least he'd be out of a job.

However, it appeared the high-powered legal team Chris had assembled was doing the trick -- for now. The men were leaving, baffled looks on their faces and
reams of paperwork in their hands, while the legal eagles stood there looking smug.

Matt nodded and made a note to thank Chris directly, when he could. For now, he was staying put here. He had a cot in the corner and he could have food
delivered; until this was resolved, he wanted to make sure nobody could misuse the data he'd suddenly found himself the guardian of.

It was, he noted with some amusement, much like being back in Paragon City. His job was to stay put, to make sure that other heroes had their chance.

He could live with that.

---

--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs

[Ankhani]

The idea was simple enough. Get on, get in, get out. Keep characters 'active' enough to prevent any problems. It was a pity not to be able to stay
around, but hey, better than the alternative. The night was coming to a close and I had just gotten around to the last character on the list. The loading
screen took a bit longer than usual, and it was at that time that the laptop decided to be irate and shut down. Of course, I was not unused to such behavior,
and swore again to myself to get a better computer as soon as I could. The timing had at least been somewhat convenient. Not having anything else worth doing,
I did the reasonable thing and got to sleep.

Waking up was all together uneventful. It wasn't until I had had some tea that I noticed something feeling undefinably off. A cursory glance downward
showed no signs of awkwardness, there was the same body that had convinced the rest of the clan that I was going to be very useful after all; wasn't it?
Something still didn't seem right though. If I wasn't sure I was awake, it could almost be passed off as what I was remembering was a dream or wishful
musing.

The morning was rather routine. Practice, exercise, check the email and web boards. The boards had some interesting things about a server crash in the middle
of an ITF. Curious, but nothing important. The email, on the other hand, was quite intriguing. It didn't appear to be directed at me entierly, though it
was certainly our code and easy enough to read. Apparently Misty (it felt odd thinking about her) needed some assistance.

Would certainly be more eventful to make contact with her than to sit around and ponder why I was feeling off. I hated boredom.
---

The Master said: "It is all in vain! I have never yet seen a man who can perceive his own faults and bring the charge home against himself."

>Analects: Book V, Chaper XXVI

[Wiregeek]

July 5th, 2009, 3:35pm AKDT.

I sat down at my computer chair with a sigh, and stared at the ceiling in exhaustion. After running myself ragged for the last several days preparing for a 4th of july megabarbecue, and with the temperatures as high as they had been, I was bushed.

I felt a bead of sweat escape the back of my head and go chasing down my neck, and leaned forward to scrub at it with the handy towel. I shifted in the chair to allow the window fans to cool me, and took a slug of beer.

I finished the first of the six-pack I had brought home, and fired up my faithful computer. Beer in hand, I started CoH updating, figuring to steal a few hours in-game before I tried to get some rest, and threw up a browser window to read the boards while I patched and updated.

Beer Two went the way of the dodo while the updater abused my filesystem, and I contemplated the empty bottle. I've spent about a year of my life in the bottom of a bottle, and ever since, have been extremely sensitive about my alcohol consumption. Given the absurd temperatures recently and the amount of work I'd put into the barbecue, as well as the one-time nature of the day, I figured I was doing OK.

Beer three landed on my desk with a healthy swallow missing, and I moseyed out of my bedroom to the neccesary. I turned my alarm clock on on the way by, and took care of business. Afterwards, I pulled a pack of d6 out of the cabinet in the living room. Returning to compy, I sat down and fed CoH my login info. Server select was an easy decision, as always, and my character roster on Virtue stared at me while I consulted my beer.

The dice seemed like a better call, and I rolled a few times, boozily thinking about methodology. Given my rare and light alcohol intake, I have very little resistance, and was, with 2.5 bottles of Alaskan Amber in me, drunk. I stifled a yawn, fatigue and heat teaming up with alcohol, and handily threw a pair of d6 into my mouth. I jerked forward, coughing and choking, and bashed my skull into the keyboard.

Fade to black doesn't cut it. 'Crash Cut to Darkness' is a better term here.

I woke up staring at a pair of d6 showing snake eyes, beady black dots on white cubes. The muted sound of the alarm clock continued, a morning DJ exhorting me to 'enjoy the only station that plays the Beatles tracks you don't find on the white album'. I wobbled to my feet, stumbled, and threw my hand out to catch myself, and fell through my bed, landing on the floor with bits of klik-clak couch everywhere.

Grateful for the protection afforded me by my armor even when unpowered, I levered myself back to my feet and managed to silence the alarm clock. I popped my helmet off on the way to the bathroom and hung it on its coat hook, next to my hat. Shave took a few minutes, and by the time I had finished that and gotten all of my upper body armor off, I realized something was up.

I closed the bathroom door and eyed myself in the full length mirror on the backside. Shoulders, chin, belly, hair, eyes, check check check. Pile of blue-and-white hybrid Flexmetal/Hardshell armor pieces, check.

Wait. Check? What?

I shucked the bottom half of the armor, more similar to putting on (extremely!) heavy jeans than one would think, and considered the pile.

This just wouldn't do for thinking on.

I wended my way showerward, leaving the pile of armor in the bathroom, and headed off for work.
"No can brain today. Want cheezeburger."
From NGE: Nobody Dies, by Gregg Landsman
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5579457/1/NGE_Nobody_Dies

[Ransan]

July 6, 2009 – 2:30pm

Downtown Middleton, WI

 

Roof hopping was thirsty work - especially when the
temperature was around 90 degrees, Fahrenheit, or 32 degrees Celsius. He had taken
the day to hop around the town and basically enjoy his new body. He was on his
way back to his house now, but he really needed a drink before he got
heatstroke. Knowing where he was, he leaped off of city hall and ran down the
street to a local convenience store.

 

The Air Conditioning felt wonderful as he sauntered over to
the beverage refrigerator. His instincts said to go for the Mountain Dew, but
another part reminded him that caffeine dehydrated the body, not hydrated it,
plus he didn’t need all that pointless sugar and corn syrup. Sighing, he went
to the water section and grabbed some fiji water.

 

He then realized something. He had left his wallet in his
jeans – HIS jeans.

 

Yo, Nam? You in
there?

 

[No. I decided to
take the day off and went to go see “Transformers 2”. OF COURSE I’M IN HERE,
YOU JACKASS!]

 

Ow! Hey…’No Need for
Shouting’…heh.

 

[Bite me.]

 

No thanks, I’d feel it. Did
you have any money? I, erm, left my wallet in my other pants.

 

[Moron.]

 

Well, I was a little
confused this morning! Bite me!

 

[Can’t. I’m non corporeal.
And yes, I keep my wallet in the same place I keep my spare clothes.]

 

It
was a little harder with short sleeves, but Ran managed to access the personal
storage space and pull out a simple black leather wallet, much like several he
had had and lost ost or destroyed prior to the cheap NERV wallet he had bought
at AnimeCentral almost 10 years ago, and was still in perfect condition.

 

Ran
opened the wallet and pulled out a couple of dollars. “Okay this should…..wait.
Who is Michael Lewis, and why is he on my dollar bills?”

 

[Isn’t he on yours?]

 

No. Let’s see….Bruce Rogers, Jack Emmert, Matt Miller….oh wait….they’re the
Developers for City of Heroes,
old and current!

 

[Huh?]

It makes sense. In my world,
the founding fathers of the US
are former presidents. But Paragon
City is a Video Game.
It’s “founding fathers” would be the developers.

 

[I see. So what does it
mean?]

 

Your cash is useless.

 

[Dammit!]

 

Yep. Going to have to
wait until I – wait do you see what I see?

 

[Of course I do.
Guy…slightly older then us-]

 

Then YOU.

 

[Then US,
physically…wearing a hoodied sweatshirt on a 30 degree day….okay that is
suspicious. What are you thinking?]

 

The news. Over the
last week there’s been a rash of convenience store robberies in broad daylight.
The suspect is a white male in his early twenties, wearing a nondescript grey
hooded sweatshirt.

 

[Sounds like our man
here. Lets be sure. Close your eyes, find your spiritual center, then open them
again.]

 

Ran did this with suprising ease. He had never been a spiritual
person really, but if he had it would have been eastern religion. Now opening
his eyes, he could see the wavy clouds surrounding the man and the clerk. The
clerk looked fine, though his aura was streaked with fear and apprehension. The
man’s aura on the other hand, was dingy and corrupted. There was no sign of
desperation and no red strings trailing off of him, so he wasn’t doing this out
of need to feed his family. He was just a crook.

 

He was now much closer to believing.

 

Ran watched as the man pulled a gun out of his hoodie
pointing it casually at the clerk, positioning it with his arm to keep it out
of the camera sight. Ran could see it just fine, however.

 

Bingo. Now…watch this.

 

[What the hell are
you doing?]

 

Saw this in an anime
once.

 

Ran moved forward as if going to check out. He tripped –
deliberately – on his own feet and staggered forward, bumping into the man.
“Oops. How clumsy of me!”

 

The man grunted and tried to elbow Ran away – except that
his gun hand was firmly pinned to his own side, the gun now pointing uselessly
at the floor.

 

The clerk took the opportunity to hit the “panic” button
under the counter.

 

The man growled at Ran, finally breaking free. He turned to
Ran, pointing the gun at him. However, Ran’s hands were too fast. In a flash,
Ran’s hands whipped out, hitting pressure points on the man’s wrist. He dropped
the gun, holding his wrist in pain. In a flash, Ran’s foot came up, and the man
went sailing back, crashing back into a “Pepsi” display. He fell into
unconsciousness as cans rained down around him.

 

The clerk gaped at Ran, who stood there smirking. Without thinking
about it he said “Feh….like a punk.” It came naturally. The words were Nam’s. Yet they
felt so right.

 

Ran turned to the gaping clerk, then smiled sheepishly. “Uh…I
forgot my wallet.”

 

The clerk looked at the bottle of water Ran was still
holding. “On the house.”

 

Ran shook his head. “Can’t accept that. Tell you what…” Ran
turned to the unconscious man and after a moments hesitation, reached into his
pocket and pulled out a wallet. “Mind if I borrow this?”

 

The man stirred and showed signs of consciousness. A right
cross quickly deprived him of this. ”Didn’t think so.”

 

Ran pulled a fiver out of the wallet, threw the waller back
at the punk, walked over to the counter, and plopped the bottle down. After a
moment, he grabbed an energy bar from the shelf. “One of these, too. Keep the
change.” He slapped the fiver down, gave the clerk a loose two fingered salute,
grabbed the stuff and left the store before the cops arrived.

 

[Hey, where did you learn to
do that?]

 

Do what?

 

[Taking money from the
robber like that.]

 

Oh. Lina Inverse.

 

[…]

[Bob Schroeck]

Monday, July 6, 4:59 AM EDT

I'd stayed up too late the night before playing City of Heroes so I wasn't really inclined to wake up yet. However, an insistent poking was driving me closer and closer to full consciousness. "Dammit, Peg, whaddayawant?" I mumbled without opening my eyes.

My only answer was another poke that prodded me a little closer to wakefulness, this level high enough that I realized that a) Peggy was still snoring and b) she was on the other side of me from the one that was getting poked.

"...the hell?" I mumbled as I felt the warm, fuzzy sensation of sleep behind my eyes drain away. Growling, I squeezed them tight, swiped at them with the arm that wasn't wedged under my pillow, and then opened them. The bedroom and its contents were faintly limned by pale grey light of the predawn sky leaking through the translucent venetian blinds that covered the windows -- enough to make out familiar shapes, but not even enough to lend color to the scene.

Whatever it was poked me again and I growled in annoyance. Rolling to my right I reached out and fumbled the three-way lamp on my nightstand to its first "on" setting, casting a soft fluorescent light over the nightstand, the bed, and the penguin that was staring at me, eye to beady eye.

Wait.

What?

Penguin?

"Do forgive me for the rude awakening," the penguin said in an exquisitely upper-class British accent, "but I urgently need to speak with you."
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Sweno]

(July 7th - 8:24 am)

I'm not sure if it was a side affect of what I am now, or just the mistake of sleeping while running a systems diagnostic, but I had the weirdest dreams. Like most of my dreams I couldn't remember any of the details of it, but I know it wasn't that far removed from a sysiphean drug trip; boring, repetitive, and utterly confusing. I read over the feedback from the diagnostic and was pleasantly surprised by how many things came back 'operational'.

When I was first flung across the dimensions, I had arrived in paragon city disoriented and damaged from the middle of a battlefield. To say that my initial reaction could have been better was an understatement. Waking up this time in a secluded location, and with a confusing mishmash of memories, was much more preferable. My internal teleport matrix was online and operational, though tossing several errors about not finding any of the Medicom or Supergroup networks. The shield projectors reported back as fully operational. The C&C modules were up and running, but reporting back error after error as they failed to establish a connection to any of my bots, the construction equipment in my small corner of SGbase, or any of the standard trusted communication channels I used. My internal repair systems were reporting back a higher than normal concentration of biological contaminants throughout my systems, but aside from that perfectly fine. I didn't think too hard or long on what that was.

My own little section of PocketSpace (copyright Aeon Corp, all rights reserved) was still accessible, not that I was all that surprised. I had to take apart and put back together three of the official, space warping, magi-tech infused, Aeon Corp black boxes before I understood the principles behind them enough to duplicate it. Getting the same affect out of my teleportation matrix had not been an easy or cheap task, but now it was worth every penny. Sadly, not because I had a plethora of raw materials at hand (all I had in it was my laser rifle and arachnos mace). But because it would make gathering parts and materials to construct replacement bots here much much easier.

Knowing what I had in terms of resources, while a little depressing, calmed some of the fears that had been circling in the back of my mind. I knew where I stood. And I knew where to go next, Amazon and Newegg. It is truly wonderful the things you can legally acquire without having to ever see another person face to face. I spent the better part of the morning bouncing between 'ooh need one of those' and wincing at what it would do to my bank account. Emergency band radios, car batteries, waterproof containers, solar panels, mini pc boards, wireless cards, and an assortment of other gear took a significant chunk out of my savings. But it would be worth it for peace of mind, and that is exactly what I would get once this was all done.

Once I was done with my not so little shopping spree I got around to checking my email. A reply from my boss at work telling to me take a few days off, and telecommute if I wanted to. No need to get the rest of engineering sick with whatever I had. That brought a wry smile to my face and laugh to my lips. A laugh that died half way through when I heard the sound of my own voice.

"Oh this isn't right." But I knew that to be a lie as soon as I had said it. Some part of me insisted that I always had sounded like the love child of a high end speech synthesizer and the brass section of a band. As I sat there and quietly freaked out about how I sounded I realized that more than just my voice had slipped past my notice. I was sitting the attic of a foreclosed home, laying the groundwork for a long term conflict with the local authorities, and making as little noise as possible.

Granted all of these things were probably not bad ideas given the shaky status of my personal rights. But I should have had to think through this, instead it was just second nature.

Further navel gazing was put on hold when I saw the second new message in my inbox. It was from Terrence consisting of roughly equal parts vague and urgent. The timing and phrasing were enough to send up a few red flags and make me question my initial assumption that I had arrived just as alone here as I had in paragon. Hitting the DW forums showed a thread full of oblique references and half hidden hints. I didn't post there myself, some part of me was not comfortable at all with linking myself to what had happened on a public forum. But I did shoot a reply to Terrence, little more than 'Doesn't look like your dreaming, or alone' along with a link.

The realization that others might have come across as well had me quickly setting up another email account with a much more familiar handle. I fired off a quick email to any and all contacts from the infamous that I could think of. Nothing that would make sense if there was someone else using the email id, but enough to let any of my former SGmates know I was up and about.

---

"Bubbles and Lasery Death are eager to meet you.
Feeling a little lacking in the laser department.
I can keep you up and feeling strong when things get hot and heavy"

---

Even if someone did find that after the fact, I doubted they would consider it anything more than one more piece of spam from a malfunctioning botnet somewhere. While keeping an eye on my email client for any replies I pulled up google streetview. If there were other heroes here, it was all the more important that I had a defensible base and production facilities. The attic I was currently hiding in counted as neither, I needed an abandoned office building. And I had a good eight or nine hours to find one before I could head out tonight.
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy

[Dragonflight]

Getting home from my busy afternoon meant declaring some time off and vegging out. Or at least trying to. Both Karas had much more active lifestyles, and very
different ideas of what constituted "after hours" activity. Paragon Kara was working her way into Icon's good graces by putting in some time
there. She'd developed a flair for creative costuming, and often helped others put new outfits together. The coupons and discounts didn't hurt either.

The original Kara was a lawyer who became a fashion designer specializing in lingerie and naughty housewear. Given that she was part of a semi-illegal SHIELD
cell for a while, that was necessary to generate income while they were hopping around fixing things. After everything settled out, she'd gone on to become
a full-time agent of the aforementioned organization, receiving among other things, full training in the kinds of things an independent agent needed to know.
All sorts of things I tried not to remember too clearly if I could avoid it (I couldn't, but I could lie to myself about it real well.)

What limited me was my conscience, and the lack of the kind of resources the first girl could have called on. So, most of her money making schemes were either
right out, or strictly emergency use only. And there weren't any emergencies just yet. Paragon Kara used the nebulous money system maintained by the city
known as "influence" which sounded really creepy when you thought about it. But it had a number value, and represented her buying power with the Hero
ID she'd been issued. It also linked to her Influence account, which could buy her things that just simply weren't for sale the normal way. If you
didn't have Influence, you couldn't buy these things. A nice and simple way to guarantee a closed system that supported the heroes in the middle of a
conventional city inhabited by everyone else.

Kara had been earning money the normal way of course by working at Icon's. But that didn't help me here. And like me, I suppose, she didn't believe
in carrying paper money around. Too many muggers, I guess.

I checked the DW forums. There were a few posts, mostly hinting at the same stuff. Some of it was pretty blatant actually, if you assumed they'd also been
affected. I wasn't sure how I'd go about broaching the subject to the others, but at least some of them would understand what was happening to us. Then
of course, I logged on to City of Heroes.

Virtue server was grayed out, but I had other servers. Protector had been my main for the longest time, so I had a lot of characters there. I was working on a
couple on Infinity server for the Tuesday night Marvel IST game, so I messed around on Infinity for a while leveling up a character there. I kept an eye on the
Legendary chatter while doing so however. I figured if anyone had been affected, the game chatter would be the logical place for it to come out.

While on, I checked out the DW post about wizard of speed and time. And I found myself wondering if the guy had worn a
mask or not. If not, he probably swallowed a lot of bugs...
---
Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do.

[Rev Dark]

Angels.



Or rather someone's idealized idea of angels.



Someone who reads a lot of Jack Chick tracks.



And takes them seriously.



Buff, chiseled features, long robes, halos, big flaming swords and very, very,
Caucasian.



Now, there are two distinct possibilities here.
Possibility one. These are angels, servitors of the god of the desert, who
smote Sodom and Gomorrah, and killed the firstborn sons of Egypt.



Let me be the first to say, I have my doubts.



Second possibility. These are projections based
on someone playing a City of Villains Mastermind concept character who has gone so fruit loopy that Toucan Sam himself would slip into a diabetic coma and join
the dead parrot in a state of un-voomed-ness.



I don't like that explanation either; but the evidence of my own situation points to
option number two being much more likely.



On the plus side, I don't have to be worried about being the worst dressed superhuman
in the room.



Not that I am going to spend a lot of time worrying about that. Time to get stuck in.



I pick a choke point and settle myself into it.
JC and the Sunshine Band are going to have to get through me to continue their pursuit of the patrons. There are other
ways around. Time to focus them in. I normally don't like to talk in a
fight. Silence is scarier. Much, much, scarier; but I need them focused on me
and only me.



"So quick question. When you were slaying
the first born of Egypt. Did you get wood?" Me and Jack Crow, the very
souls of discretion and polite discourse. "I bet it was Gopher wood. How
many cubits of trouser ark did you build?"



You would think celestial beings would be more serene.
Well you would if you haven't actually read the Old Testament; or much of the New Testament for that matter.
Not serene. Not serene at all.



"What?" Instant manifest
rage. Flames leaping bright blue from their swords. Faces creased with
emotion.



"It wasn't Gopher Wood? Perhaps it was
Shittum wood. From The acacia tree. Perfect for the Arc of the Covenant, and
proof positive that the boss-man likes it up the shittum; despite what Leviticus has to say on the matter."



Seconds are valuable. Every single one of them is
a few feet of travel for the people trying to get away. Every second reduces the chances of someone becoming an
innocent bystander hurt or killed. I just gained another ten.



"Blasphemy!" Okay. Very angry. The power of the voice sending my pony tail flapping. Obviously from the 'if you can't be clever, be loud' school.



"Hey. You're right. Sorry. I shall be as contrite as... you know who."
I raise my arms in cruciform fashion. "You guys do the M-C-A part of it.
You can get yourself clean, have a nice meal…"



The angel's sword rose, gripped in both hands, the flaming edge ready to split me
from crown to taint.

[Valles]

It's amazing, how much information you can find in a state capitol when you can be invisible and are willing to spend a few hours following people and waiting 'till the wee hours of the night. Very little of it, of course, was of any good to me, though I took pictures of some of the more personally embarassing things hidden in certain offices. Really, people get so careless about their kinks.

Overall, though, by thirty hours after I'd woken up, I had a fairly robust idea of what had happened and what the general response within the halls of power was.

Sachie would've been shocked, I think, and I was pleasantly surprised. Not the slightest hint of open hysteria, no 'dissapearances' or exertion of influence - influence as a ninja would view it, at least. There were plenty of schemes to hire those of us who'd been changed, as anything from paramedics to interrogators to researchers to heavy lifting, and the opening stages of a massive internal brouhaha between the various organs of the state and federal governments over who got first dibs on the choicer talents.

Personally, I was betting on NASA as getting the lion's share, given the nature of the player base. Space travel has a lot of 'cool' and not a lot of getting yelled and/or shot at.

Then I went back to Nathan's apartment and went to sleep. Like I said, I'd been up a while, gathering information as quickly as I could because I didn't have any way of knowing how urgent things were or weren't. With my most urgent questions answered, I could afford to stop pushing and be more cautious.

I woke up to a ringing cellular phone, and didn't regret the fact in the slightest. Sachie hadn't really had the temperment to be bothered by nightmares, and Nathan hadn't had much in the way of source material to work with, but combining a conscience and a dose or innocence with the memories of someone who'd first killed while still under the protection of every child pornography law on the books - who could and had made knee-high piles of corpses with her bare hands and never cared...

Even that was probably saying too much.

Anyway. I was glad to be awake, and grabbed the phone immediately. It took a moment of thought before I checked the number and opened it on the third ring, though. My biggest worry, for my family's safety, had been directed at obscuring the connection from the government... which was, given my research trip, as close to a settled concern as it was going to get. That being the case, I could risk at least phone contact, for the sake of my own peace of mind as much as theirs.

"Hi, Mom," I said.
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[Logan Darklighter]

"Okay. This is embarrassing. And I'm glad there's no one around to see it."

As I carefully extricated myself from the brush and bramble in the stand of woods north of the freeway I had landed in, I made a mental note and promised
myself that I would post said note on a forum sometime in the future as a cautionary tale for any other speedsters who might have gotten themselves caught up
in this... event.

That note would read something like this:

"Just because the game no longer imposes a limit on your speed doesn't mean there isn't a PRACTICAL limit to how fast you can go, at least on the
GROUND!"

So, what had just happened?

I'd always thought Interstate 20 was pretty ruler-straight. Between the Grand Prairie Muni Airport to where the road splits temporarily going up the modest
ridge to Duncanville it certainly feels that way - if you're going 60. If you're going at a considerably faster speed though...

Look, rocket cars and jet fighters look very similar because mother nature pushes back HARD at those speeds. When you get down to it, to reach those speeds -
to reach for the sound barrier - you have to present as small a profile to the oncoming wall of air as you can while piling on as much power as possible.

Well I'm not a car, and I'm not very aerodynamic, but I was pretty sure I might've broken the sound barrier somewhere back there in the five and a
half miles between where I jumped up on the freeway and where I shot off the top of the ridgeline like going up a ramp.

It had been more than a little disconcerting to watch the 408 Interchange with it's multistory overpasses slide by -underneath- me and try to change
direction in mid-air like you could with "superleap" in the game, only to discover that mid-air course correction was another game-ism that
hadn't translated over. By my best guess, I'd plowed into the woods about a mile or two further on and a couple of hundred yards north of the freeway.
I remember putting up my arms to protect my face as the branches broke my fall.

As I stepped into a clearing and looked up at the moon in the night sky, I replayed my memory for the approximately 25 seconds I had been on the highway. A
little over twenty seconds to go from about 110 MPH or so, to... I blinked at the HUD display.

773 Miles per hour.

All of a sudden I was glad this was in the middle of the night. It occurred to me then that a sonic boom in the middle of rush hour traffic back up
would've been incredibly bad. I know I passed at least a couple of cars out there. Hopefully they were all right. I'd check as soon as I got out of the
woods.

But if I had gone airborne like that at the top of the modest ridgeline the freeway was cresting, why the hell hadn't I done so before that? Air resistance
should've insured that I flutter like a leaf in the wind. There should've been no way for my feet to even stay planted!

When I did a more detailed memory review, playing the whole sequence out in slow-mo and running a full systems record, I found the answer. My body could
generate a sonic barrier at speed. As the pressure wave formed in front of me, an autonomic subprocess activated my sonic fold, shaping the pressure wave into
a cone pointed in front of me. Ah... now that I thought about it, I hadn't actually felt much wind, despite my speed. With the sonic fold in place, it was
deflecting most of that around me. (Good. That meant that I could carry someone at speed and not harm them.)

But even though the sonic fold could be shaped to help me stay on the road, it could only do so much. That's why when I hit the curve of the hill at the
top I had gone flying. Funny, I'd never thought of that hill as a ramp when I was driving up it, but at over Mach 1, oh yeah...

Right. One lesson learned. How many others? I checked my inertial compass and determined approximately where I was. Crouching and then leaping, I bounded over
the treeline and onto a nearby street.

I made good on my earlier intent and retraced my path (at a more "sedate" 180 MPH) down the freeway, but saw no wrecks and no one pulled over with
problems. Good, that was a relief. I may have scared hell out of someone briefly, but that was all.

As I ran, I took a moment to marvel at a couple of things. I never felt tired, for one thing. And once I was at speed, I could sort of go on
"autopilot" and let my autonomic processes handle the details. If I wanted to pay attention, I could focus on my running and maneuvering, but I
didn't have to.

Another thing was, this was incredible fun. And I hadn't enjoyed running in... I could never enjoy running really. I'd had asthma as a child and it
seemed I'd never quite fully recovered. I could exert myself as much as anyone else for short amounts of time, but I'd always wind up out of breath
sooner than anyone else. Now I needed to breathe only to talk and maintain a lifelike appearance. It was also useful as one of my cooling elements.

I needed to test my abilities further, and it might be a good idea to get far away from the Metroplex in the process. I considered which direction would be
best and came up with an old, familiar answer. I smiled as I poured on some more speed and followed I-20 out of Fort Worth to the west. Mom lived in Ruidoso
New Mexico and was always asking me to come and see her out there when I had a chance. I actually loved the town and would have gone out more often if I had
the funds and time to do so. Well now, won't she be surprised! It would allow me to both open up the speed out in the flats of West Texas and to practice
maneuvering in the twists and turn of the mountains.

And then I almost laughed out loud as I remembered I'd be going straight through Roswell on the way. I'd be a URO - and Unidentified Running Object!
HA!

----------

[Matrix Dragon]

***

Day Four

By now, teleporting across the planet after work was becoming almost normal. Drive home, go inside, feed the cat, shift into Tam for less mass, then fire up
the teleporter. Next thing I know, I'm in America and wandering up to Ben's attic loft.

"Heya OM," I declare as I come in, pausing as always to take in the technological wonder that she'd put together around her original computer.
"... Is that thing even bigger?" I wondered.

"Yeah, Amy and I rewired some circuit boards, tweaked a few other systems, and, well..." she gave me an evil grin and pointed towards the corner of
her room. I followed her finger, and found myself looking at a suit of half dismantled pink and red powered armor.

"Where the heck did THAT come from?" I squeaked, rather surprised.

In response, Ben's evil grin only widened. "Oh, it turns out I had my 'costumes' stored in here," she said, brushing her hair back to
reveal a small red gem in her ear.

"A subspace crystal?" I laughed. "Oh, that's fantastic. And you stripped one for parts?"

"Just the one," Ben agreed. "I'm keeping the others around for when we need to do hero work, but lets face it, Sylia made these with
computer technology way more advanced then anything on this Earth."

"Except maybe the latest Creys," I pointed out, then made a face. "Bleh."

"Mental collision?" she chuckled. I nodded. "Wonder if that's ever gonna stop," she mused. "Anyway, I'm assuming you've
sorted out your final look there?" She said, looking me over.

After deciding to create identities for both forms, mostly out of an odd reluctance to give up the form that had no real place in this universe, Ben had
pointed out that it'd be a good idea to add a few years to Tamara if I wanted to avoid Truancy officers. So, I'd spent some time in front of a mirror,
adding a few inches of height, tweaking my face and proportions slightly... essentially making myself look more like I was in my early twenties. I'd still
be carded a lot, but I didn't want to find out the hard way that yes, I did still have to age properly in both bodies. (And before anyone asks, yes, I did
add a little to my bust. Not too much, just an inch or so. What? A girl likes a little confidence, especially around a Sexaroid and Rhea, who may not be huge,
but had a certain style to her.)

Ben smiled, handing me two envelopes. "Everything you need for Chris and Tamara Wood, both immigrants from Australia, Chris with a work Visa, Tam with a
green card."

Opening one of the envelopes, I looked over the drivers license and grinned. "You are an artist, you know that?"

She leaned back on her chair, hands behind her head. "I have my moments. And before you ask, they're fully real, and totally legal." The smile
turned playful. "As far as the governments computers are convinced, at least," she added. "We'll need to be careful though. I saw some
mentions of them implementing 'Paragon' computer security."

That got my attention. "You think they've already got some experts on staff?" I wondered.

"Seems likely. I mean, for some of the mad scientists back home, the local computer industry would be a gold mine waiting to happen. Heck, I'm tempted
to go and get a job at Google." As I snickered, she added, "I could make their new OS a thing of beauty."

"Very true," I grinned, putting my signatures on the back of both credit cards. "Any word on the NCSoft front?" I wondered.

Ben frowned. "Well, I did get in earlier and renamed... um... us," she said, frowning slightly. "I keep everything else there for now to avoid
setting off alarms and such, but... There was a message there. From Positron."

It took a moment for that to sink in. "Wait, not Matt Miller? Positron?"

The red head nodded. "Yep. An open message to any 'Refugees from Virtue.' It said, and I quote, 'I've got things under control here.
Don't break this stuff, I like my job, but I won't let them get at it.'"

As I put my id away in my purse, I had to laugh. "He's probably ready to nuke the servers if anyone tries anything. Impressive." Ben nodded in
agreement. "So... Dynasty Warriors Gundam?"

"Sounds like a plan," she agreed, as we headed back downstairs.

***

The body had been sprawled out on the floor since the moment a game and reality had collided. Breathing had stopped almost immediately, even before the Change
could work its magic on it. It was a simple, tragic side effect of the players character, a blueside character that had supposedly been a fragment of the
Clockwork Kings tormented mind. The spark that gave it life was universes away, forgotten as the bodies true host was seemingly snuffed out.

But by the third day, it had become clear that the change was still at work. Skin began to stretch and warp, rippling as though there was something moving
underneath it. The sound of grinding gears could be heard as blood began to escape from the poor mans mouth, nose and eyes. Bones cracked and splintered, flesh
was consumed and the body became increasingly disfigured.

On the fourth day, the skin tore away, revealing the deformed metal figure within. With a metalic screech of metal grinding against metal, and powered by the
last embers of a slaughtered soul, the Clockwork demon pulled itself out of its skin, grabbing at the computer desk for support. The computer, having gone into
standby mode days ago, began to rattle and shake, the power cord sparking as the machines interior began to warp...

***

[Foxboy]

Fox/Misty

Day 2 (Monday Afternoon)

I'd run into my first brick wall trying to get myself squared away legally: the DMV had closed its branch in town, so I'd have to schlep down to Claremont. I knew that it was going to take forever to get them to believe me, so I figured Tuesday morning would be my best bet, as I had the day off from work.

Speaking of which, I settled the magatama containing Inari around my neck, smoothed down my massively oversized work shirt and tucked the tails into the new khaki pants I'd bought earlier today at Wal-Mart. I peered in the mirror in the ladies' room and smiled at the effect. I was damn sexy. I had a bit of mental collision at that. The "old me" was plotzing over being in the ladies' room, and the "old Misty" was plotzing on discovering that she was sexually attracted to herself. She had had a couple years to get used to the idea that men were going to look at her like a side of beef. After all, as a Hanover kunoichi, she'd been trained to take advantage of the fact. I therefore had some mental armor against the lustful and jealous looks of the general public.And, they were looking. Despite the wageslave uniform being terribly unflattering, the comportment the Hanover kunoichi clan had inherited from the Hanagawa overcame the dowdiness.

I planned how today was going to go as I approached the time clock. I should only have to apply genjutsu to four supervisors to not draw attention to the fact that "Misty" didn't belong there. As I was working cash register today, with all the turnover that implied, a new face shouldn't draw much attention from the other cashiers or the baggers. The simple genjutsu should tell the supervisors that "Logan" had shown up and worked his shift. Considering that he had, despite what the evidence of unaided senses would have told them, I didn't feel too bad manipulating them.
The supervisor came up and sent me on my mandated lunch break, and I began to undertake my normal routine, grabbing something to eat and drink, consuming them and heading over to the Borders next door for the remaining time of the break. I got as far as beginning to eat the roast beef sandwich, absently noting that I wasn't as picky about things such as tomatoes and mayonnaise when I looked up at CNN playing on the television in the food court.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

[Merior]

I was tired.

I was cranky.

I really shouldn't have been awake.

But I was so close to leveling that, despite it being half three in the morning, that I kept promising myself 'just one mission more'...

My normal account was on the European servers, Defiant and Union being my typical haunts, but one gift of a trial code had me enjoying myself on Justice for once. Half the people I knew, or knew of, online played on the US servers so 'rebuild' an alt or two while the code lasted seemed worth it to play alongside some of them.

Given that I'd started playing just after lunch I'd maybe been on a little long even for me.

My left hand ached vaguely as I held it spidered over the keyboard, hitting tab with my pinkie as various mobs were reminded that any bunny associated with 'Caernbannog' was not anyone to be trifled with. Especially since holy hand grenades were yet to be issued to the Lost.

An Aberrant Rector took a dirt nap, courtesy of a battle axe to the face (or so I imagined), and fireworks went off on screen as I finally dinged. In real life I sagged in relief for a moment as I reached my intended goal and got ready to call it a night.

Well, after I used the boost which accompanied leveling to wipe out a few more Lost.

And after I'd gone to actually level at a trainer.

"Any minute now..." I muttered to myself as Inspiration icons started to blink as their durations came to an end. I hit F1 and added another yellow to the mix on top of my now half full fury bar. "I'll just stop in a second."

Perhaps a moment later the world seemed to reach out of the screen and smack so hard that I thought I could really see the scene in front of me. That I could make out the carefully white cotton tail that Caernbannog wore for luck when 'working', smell the salt of the sea from the harbor in which she stood, note the fall of her blonde hair, and see the way that the black outfit hugged her curves...

As a painful blackness suddenly claimed me, it crossed my mind that either the universe really wanted to help me keep that promise or else it severely disapproved of where my thoughts had been headed.

---

Apparently God does hate such thoughts. That was the only conclusion I could come to as I woke up after my stint of unconsciousness.

"If you're out there, God, the hatred is mutal." I blearily told the ceiling from my position sprawled on the floor by my computer. My voice sounded a little weird and I tried again, "Testing? Testing? One, two, knee?"

Contralto?

Sitting up I instantly regretted it. Some substantial feeling extra weight around chest level was impossible to ignore, even if you were used to it like I was, and was more proof that the little signals from my hindbrain about something being wrong should be listened to. Looking down at revealed a rather fetchingly covered expanse which concealed a portion of my lap.

"Can I supersize that hatred to Purest Loathing?" I remarked, glancing up for a moment, before back down at myself. Sweeping a hand above my head had my fingers come in contact with something, but for now I left the bunny ears alone as I didn't know where I could get another set easily.

I experimentally rubbed my hands down my bare legs, taking in the low heels which I had on my feet, and the contemplated the nail polish on my fingers. As far as I could tell I was wearing Caernbannog's costume, complete with details as I'd imagined it but couldn't show in game, and filling it all too well.

Did I piss off Dr Aeon or something? I mean, he didn't seem that annoyed when I made him write that paper for TV and I promised to make it up to him even if he was a little short on the tongue...

"That's not a good sign." I muttered as my mind caught up with my train of thought and I realized just how wrong it. Pinching myself didn't help matters and so I just sat back down at my computer to try to think matters through. "Not good at all."

Two sets of memories in my head disagreed about important matters and I needed to sort them out.

On the one side, I had a Scottish man (a glance down confirming that I hadn't regained that status in the meantime) who lived in a mundane world. Someone who'd gone back to university and who was a week away from starting a summer job poking at computers before starting his final year there. And whose room I was apparently sitting it.

On the other side was a young woman from Paragon who still regularly paraded around in the bunny suit from her old job at a gentleman's club. And who has been placed in the Zig after she'd picked up an axe and... defended herself from anything which moved when a fight during Rikti raid had spilled into her workplace. Including one hero.

"Round One : Fight!" I couldn't help but announce to the room, giggling for a moment as the absurdity briefly lightened my mood.

While one side of me wanted to simply freak out, the other side was far more accepting of the situation. I had my favorite axe after all, the reassuring weight laying across my thighs, so it couldn't be that bad could it?

And, after all, what was the appropriate response to waking up and finding yourself a woman?

Inspiration struck and, a moment later, I was scrabbling to dig out one particular t-shirt. It was a rather tighter fit than it had been, with my 'girls' sort of stretching the image on it a bit much, but it was just too ironic not to wear.

"Squish squish." I muttered to myself as I tried to smooth the t-shirt down, fighting back a fit of giggles. Blushing a little I experimentally suited action to words before quickly stopping. That has been... interesting, but not something to start just now. Really. Maybe when I next had a bath. Or a shower? You could adjust some shower heads and...

I cut that train of thought off hurriedly.

"I'm so not thinking about that. Bunny, bunny, bunny, oops, bunny, bunny, bunny, oops!" I declared, using the repetitive nonsense to quash the associated memories of just what could be done by a lonely girl with the right sort of showerhead.

I sighed and stood up, "Maybe a walk would help?"

---

"It's five am in the morning. Do you know where your children are?" I asked the empty street as I stepped outside. Sensibly enough it declined to answer the crazy woman. Man. Whatever.

Which I was, or at least thought of myself as, was a matter I'd have to get around to addressing sometime soon. Any decade now. Really.

Locking the door behind me out of habit I walked down the drive, gravel crunching beneath me feet, and absently hefted my keys. There was something off there. I'd been holding my axe in both hands, picked up the keys with one hand, then had my hands free as I headed to the door... and now the keys were gone again.

And back again when I thought about it.

I started heading up the road, and uphill, as I toyed with this little phenomena. It was too easy to be termed a trick, and seemed completely natural when I didn't think about it, but when I thought about them the keys where there. If I didn't for a few moments then they tended to just... go away?

That I had two different axes and sundry other objects, from some IR goggles I'd liberated from an arms dealer to my Vanguard communicator, also vaguely 'at hand' was definitely neat though. I looked longingly at the bunny ears headband then finally distracted myself from it as well.

After all I wasn't 'on the job' just now.

It all fit the way I'd thought about Caernbannog's powers, and explained a bit about what I remembered happening around me in Paragon, but was far more disturbing when applied to mundane life. Especially as I knew that I never seemed to remember such things for long.

"Great, I've turned all Marauder: the Axe Murderess." I sighed then absently sliced a stray branch out of my way as I continued walking. That made me pause and, blushing slightly, I carefully made my way back to the pavement and out of someone's garden.

Trespassing wasn't the biggest no-no I'd done, it being far faster to take short cuts through private property, but it'd attract attention and I didn't even trust potted plants when I thought about the Devouring Earth.

Making a mental note to see if the Campaign to Pave The World existed in this place, and if they had a record of my regular donations, I continued along the sidew... pavement. The streets were well lit and it was a warm night so I didn't have any real worries. I hadn't even see a car pass by yet, let alone a passerby or potential mugger, so I was safe in that regard as well.

With a jolt I realised that while distracted I'd come further than I intended to. Turning around, I looked down the road, down the slope towards the harbor with the homes and city center laid out between me and the dark night see. As I looked at the lights of the city spread out before me a realization struck. My heart froze as something in my mind clicked and revealed that I was in my worst nightmare.

Where were they?

Where were the War Walls?

A city skyline greeted my gaze, stars visible over head, and only a faint glow of light could be seen without a trace of the great fields which civilized places still needed.

The Rikti would be coming.

I hadn't heard an announcement of an attack, but the Rikti must be coming if the War Walls were down. Even the Rogue Isle needed them to keep safe. I started to pant as I looked around, the weight of my axe in hand no longer a comforting things, and strained my ears for the sound of the incoming teleports.

Something in the back of my mind tried to remind me that this was wrong. That it made no sense and that there hadn't been, nor reason for, such huge force fields. But I couldn't think about that. I couldn't, just couldn't, listen to that corner because I realised that the Rikti were coming and I didn't know what to do...

The magic letters!

I cowered behind a low wall as I seized on that reassuring thought, no longer worried about the idea of a Devouring Earth ambush because the Rikti were coming, like a woman seizing hold a life preserver.

I could use the three magic letters.

... the pointy, spikey things the mercenaries had thrown on the floor were -ruining- my nice heels. There were already holes, and red stuff, where I'd trodden on some. More red stuff came out as I took another step, but now she was within reach and I had my axe in hand...

The magic letters had always helped me before. They'd summon help, they'd get people who could help me kill the Rikti like the other times the War Walls had come down.

...and the burny red fire washed over me again, but this time an emerald flame followed it from behind me. The green hurt as the burnt flesh crumbled away ash, leaving healthy skin in its wake, but now I was close to Infernal and I knew what to do...

Surely they won't fail me now? Would they?

Fumbling my axe, letting it fall and fade as my attention strayed, I yanked out my communicator. Hurriedly I flagged my status appropriately then, with shaking hands, I tapped the three magic letters into the communicator and hit send.

[Broadcast] Caernbannog: LFT

I did it again.

[Broadcast] Caernbannog: LFT

And again...

[Broadcast] Caernbannog: LFT... please?

---

And, yes, I do own the t-shirt of this [ http://www.sgvy.com/archives/Edda1/Issue1/Page6.html ] sad as it is to admit.

[Valles]

Yes, I confirmed to my mother, I had been playing on the affected server when things went strange. Yes, I was different now. Yes, I remembered being two people. No, I didn't feel like two people. Honestly I wasn't sure if I was still 'me', but it didn't matter, really. Changed, replaced, or whatever, I was how I was and I had a mother, a father, and a sister.
Yes, transferring some money to my own, otherwise empty accounts would be helpful in building up clothes that fit. Actually I was about the same size, clothing-wise, but the shoes and undergarments wouldn't work at all and the pants were too short now. Yes, I'd come home if she wanted to see me. No, I wouldn't be taking up vigilantism, Sachie hadn't been the type and I thought it was smarter to stay low until I knew how things were going to shake out for Virtues and the rest of the world. No, I'd be fine, but I worried about her.
I'd check my email and then get right on the road, absolutely. Yes, I still loved her, too.
Finding out that the Hanagawa drop accounts were extant in this world shouldn't have been the surprise it was, of course. I'd been slow and careful about things - that'd be Nathan's influence, likely - but I'd known Fox was on Misty at the time and she certainly wasn't as cautious. Finding mail from someone named Goodhue - when I'd known, also, that that was his real last name, was worrying, though. Sloppy. I'd have to talk to her about that. New Hampshire would be a hell of a drive for me, and worse for Rina - who'd left a drop of her own - since I recalled Ankh as having been located in Georgia. Someplace closer to the middle.
I RSVPed, of course, for a couple days hence - and suggested finding someplace in DC or Baltimore to talk things out in person.
Fitting into my car took some adjustment, since Nathan had been something like thirty centimeters shorter, but not an impossible amount. I checked the tires and the oil the way he'd rarely been thorough or thoughtful enough to, and Sachie had never really known to, and found everything in working order. I locked up behind me and drove north. Kanawha Boulevard for three, four blocks to the interstate, onramp on I-60 and it turns into I-79, then north for a hundred miles 'til Weston and US 33 turns off to the east for another thirty-five. Two hours or so at the speed limit, which was my and Nathan's style if not Sachie's.
When I got in I took a moment to look up at the house, to brace myself in all honesty, then pulled the key out and went inside.
===========

===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."

[Dragonflight]

[EDIT]: I got my times mixed up. Merior's post was late Sunday/Early Monday, and it's Tuesday evening for my character. Might still have the opportunity when we catch up to each other, but for now, that didn't happen.
Sorry! ^_^
---
Those who fear the darkness have never seen what the light can do.