LIVING LEGENDS ΣA: Lights, Money, Heroes! [IC]

by **Forest State** » Wed Jul 24, 2019 5:37 pm

SUPERHEROES & REALITY TV COMBINED? After extensive analysis of performances, the Hero League has determined a need for a new pipeline of talented individuals to its senior teams... The Futures Program was created to fill this role, bringing together some of the best talents from 18-20 to be molded into the leaders of tomorrow while learning as members of Team Futures today. However, there's a twist - this isn't any usual training program but one which will use the media to propel the members of it into superstar status internationally, with the help of the new highly funded reality show Lights, Money, Heroes! and a hefty advertising budget. This is no usual hero team... This is a hero team living life in the spotlight, and with members still figuring themselves out as adults, and figuring out their skills as heroes, there's bound to be plenty of excitement and drama. This, everyone, is the story of the definitely unorthodox but always interesting Team Futures, starting with their very formation as a team.

This is one of the IC threads for Living Legends. If this thread interests you, please check the OOC hub out here.

by **Lunas Legion** » Wed Jul 24, 2019 5:39 pm

SEASON 1 EPISODE 1 // FEEL JUST LIKE A ROCK STAR
Collaborative post between Forest State, Durmatagno, and Lunas Legion

DATE // AUGUST 2ND, 2025
LOCATION // WESTERN HEIGHTS, LOS ANGELES, UNITED STATES
CAST // Antares ‘Khione’ Gray, Yuli Rose, Lubi Yeh-Jin, Sun ‘Primace’ Choe

The Western Heights served as perhaps the main reminder of the significance of the Hero League in the western part of the United States - while the organization tended to place some of its most relevant teams in the east, it couldn’t be forgotten out west, and this large compound which housed multiple skyscrapers on its grounds was evidence of the organization’s power spanning from the southwest to the west coast all the way up to the Pacific Northwest and the mountains and shores of Vancouver. Operations in all of those places were coordinated from here, within the halls of the towering buildings and glass built marvels of engineering and architecture that were housed within the place.

So it was safe to say that the name Western Heights carried with it some credibility and that the main sign out front of the complex as a sight that many would immediately recognize, a sight that was… Prestigious to be standing in front of, right now, for the first group of heroes that had arrived in the western United States before their eventual trip to Canada for the start of their duties as members of the ‘Futures Program.’ Toronto, or rather the area around it, was the place they were going to work for now - not that they wouldn’t practically tour the world traveling as part of the Hero League’s intense efforts to raise their profile around the world, especially with some failures on the part of their most well known teams in the recent past.

For now, however, they were in Los Angeles to sign a few more papers related to the show, finalizing that they were not just going to be members of this program - which aimed to find the brightest and best younger talents and shape them into the heroes of tomorrow, but that they were going to appear on a reality show that was following the team, produced by the very valuable and prominent Eden Network… It was safe to say there was going to be pressure on them, especially with the turnaround time for each episode being quick, and with cameras following them even in the place that was going to be their home for the next months. Not months, really. Years, if things went according to plan and they didn’t end up sent home early.

The pressure wasn’t without its benefits, however. All of them had been living somewhat large for the past week after agreeing to join the program - the invitations had been sent out fairly recently and the Hero League had kept their plans about starting the program under close wraps until the date when they finally made the announcement and sent the invitations out - and it was culminating in this. The trip to Los Angeles, perhaps the entertainment capital of the United States and maybe the world, and a city where they would soon be rubbing shoulders with Hollywood celebrities and executives as they were thrust into an unfamiliar world where they themselves were suddenly in the spotlight.

It was a good tradeoff. A bit of pressure, an entire world of benefits.

“And here we are at the western headquarters of the Hero League, just outside of the city of Los Angeles,” said Svetlana Roux, one of the heroes that had been assigned to work with them… And a major star herself in the country of Canada, not just someone that had been thrown to the rookies because she wasn’t that big herself. She practically dwarfed them in fame, although that was to be expected when more of them were unknowns than not. “Our ride is going to let us off here… It’s a better experience walking through this place if you’re seeing it for the first time.”

That ride had been a high class luxury truck, not quite an SUV but not quite a full bus either. The League took good care of those that were part of its more prestigious programs.

“If you’ll follow me, we have some scenes to shoot in the main building. Specifically, you guys signing on for the show and the program and such officially,” Svetlana added, leading them forward through the large black metal gates which surrounded the complex, and opened up when they approached and the system detected them as being on the list of approved guests. There was no need for a person to be there. The automated system was good enough to handle the job without a guard post these days.

Antares had been silent on the ride over; she didn’t consider herself someone that was easily impressed, and even if she was she wasn’t about to show it and most certainly not in front of a bunch of strangers.

“What’re we filming?” She asked, keeping her tone neutral to hide the eagerness she felt deep down. She was excited, after all; she was far from home and, hopefully, about to be famous in a good way. Not everyone from the middle of Indiana could say that.

Yuli tapped her left hand on her leg as she waited. Her eyes, though only one could actually see, focused ahead of her. This was a big leap for her, one she had never seen herself taking. Afterall, few people enjoyed being around the horribly scarred, one eyed freak. There was a reassuring squeeze on her shoulder that made her shudder for a moment, physical contact was still difficult for her. Lubi just smiled at Yuli, and squeezed again before letting go. They weren’t very close, but they already knew each other, and Lubi was by far the more sociable of the two. Her red hair looked dyed, but she had in fact just made sure it grew in that color, such was one of her talents. They could only guess how they were going to be presented to the public, reality TV was afterall, edited to create the most drama and tension.

Commentary From The Cast

-] NASH LINWOOD // “What was your first reaction to arriving in LA and seeing the Hero League buildings for the first time?”

-] ANTARES GRAY // “Kinda overwhelmed but not? I suppose you could probably say that’s when everything actually clicked and I went ‘holy shit Antares it’s actually happening.’ Never thought I’d be here.”

-] SUN CHOE // [smug smile] “.... It’s another Saturday.”

-] YULI ROSE // “Nice buildings, but I’ve seen plenty of impressive buildings. Chicago, London, Seoul, New York. It’s not the buildings I was interested in, it was the people inside of them.”

-] LUBI YEH-JIN // “They were alright. Not the fanciest place I’ve ever been, but it was still nice. Different style than Seoul, was a nice change of pace.”

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While meanwhile, Sun Choe wasn’t fazed by the situation at all, having already experienced media pressure and having already seen sights that were in her opinion bigger than this - she was the former teenage hero known as the ‘Queen of Gangnam,’ seeing something like this was… Just an ordinary Saturday, although she had to admit the architecture of the building they were approaching was impressive. It was designed to look like a torch, with a fire burning at the top that was almost similar to the fire that sometimes burned at the former Olympic stadium some miles away from here in the same city.

“Technically, you aren’t part of the program or the show at the moment. We’re getting that finalized and the reason it wasn’t finalized before is because the producers wanted you here in LA to do it in front of the cameras, not back in your respective hometowns,” explained Svetlana as they continued down a main walkway lined with trees on either sides, the sightline directing the eye straight forwards towards the main building - the one with the fire burning on top and with a banner draped in their direction advertising the start of the show in only a couple of weeks. It didn’t have their names or faces on it… Yet. That would come when they spent more time with the marketing team. A marketing team that was as large as any from the largest corporations in the world.

Eventually, they were left standing outside the glass doors to the towering skyscraper, and they’d see the first cameras of the day… At least, the first cameras that were recording them so blatantly. There had been some cameras at the airport but these ones were closer to them and more obvious, an entire crew practically set up awaiting their arrival. “Cameras are rolling right now so… Try not to look shit,” remarked Svetlana, not paying them much attention. She was rather used to cameras after all.

They would also see a couple of people on site that they hadn’t met in person before, the producer of the show and the director - Amon Sadat and Nash Linwood respectively, the Emirati and British duo having come together for their second project after being hired by the Hero League to handle this one following previous documentary success with the organization. “This entrance will be in the final cut so make it good!” Linwood informed the cast members that were about to head through the glass doors, camera also waiting for them on the other side. It seemed they were quite insistent on putting this scene into the show itself, and so there was little room to mess it up.

Although it was a bit strange having to worry about messing up something as simple as walking through a pair of large glass doors. Linwood had more instructions, however. “And then you’re going to react to your other teammates on the inside, don’t make it boring!” he added, rather animated in his tone. It did help to get home the perceived urgency of the situation.

Antares took a deep breath. It was walking through a door, did he really need to make this sound like it was going to be the end of the world of one of them screwed it all up? Still, she knew she was lucky to be here, and she didn’t want to fuck this up, so…

Wait, why was she going to bother walking through the door in the first place when she could fly through it? Now that was better. She smirked, kicking lightly off the ground and just… Hanging in the air before she slowly flew forwards, cleanly pushing the doors open and flying through. Really, walking was overrated.

Antares kept her head held up as she stopped, still hovering, as she kept her head pointing forwards, her eyes moving across her new teammates as her previously neutral face broke into a wide, smug smirk that wasn’t entirely fake, as if she knew something they didn’t. Well, this couldn’t be too bad. Her reaction was in contrast to Sun, who walked through the doors rather simply like she didn’t have a care in the world, but in a way, her style had swagger also while not looking like she was overcompensating for anything, and she continued that trend with her expression when she entered, not making it seem like this was a big deal for her at all.

Yes, acting smug would make it seem like she cared too much about the bunch of strangers that were in the lobby. To her, this was just another day… And she was acting like it, not even particularly focusing on them beyond giving them a lookover to see what they looked like.

Yuli hesitated for a moment, before deciding what to do. Nothing fancy, but enough to cause a little flash, something for the cameras. She just walked through the doors. Not opened the, not pushed them aside. She simply stepped through as if the glass wasn’t there, the glass rippling like water as she stepped through before returning back to its normal state. Maybe a little clearer than before, but otherwise back to normal.

Immediately they could see the other group of heroes that they hadn’t yet met - they had all only just now been flown out from their hometowns to LA after all - looking them over. Obviously, those who had used their powers gained more attention than those who had made a normal entrance. “We’ve got what we need, no retakes required,” Linwood said, walking into the building after the group of heroes. “Let’s get you guys further into the building, eh? Might as well get a bit more footage and… We still need the big shots of the episode, that is, each one of you signing a contract.”

And so that was what they did. They’d also, of course, have a chance to talk to their new teammates for the first time other than the ones that they had arrived at the complex with. Soon enough, every one of them would have the spotlight on them personally as they signed onto the team, signing their life to the program for the next years or until the Hero League decided it was a horrible idea and pulled the plug… There was risk involved for all of them, yes. But there was also something else - a chance to profit massively.

by **Forest State** » Wed Jul 24, 2019 5:42 pm

SEASON 1 EPISODE 2 // 10 BANDS, 50 BANDS, 100 BANDS
Collaborative post between Forest State, Durmatagno, and Lunas Legion

DATE // AUGUST 2ND, 2025
LOCATION // CALABASAS, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES
CAST // Antares ‘Khione’ Gray, Yuli Rose, Lubi Yeh-Jin, Sun ‘Primace’ Choe

The evening wasn’t over with just signing on to join the team and appear on the reality show. Following that there had been promotional photoshoots, with a lot of work still left to be done for the debut of the show with only weeks to go until it was launching, and then the filming was starting back up again as the team members were sent some ways away from the Western Heights complex to the rich city of Calabasas, where they had an exclusive ‘house party’ to celebrate the fact that they were moving up in the world. Most of the attendees had Hero League connections of some kind, either by being members of the organization, friends of members, or those who had business connections to the organization.

And that house, more like a mansion, where the party was taking place was quite full, even with the large size and the fact that the party spilled out onto the lawn. “Some words of advice…” Svetlana Roux had told the team before they headed inside with cameras hanging around their general direction at all times. “Anything out of the ordinary that you do in there will end up on TV for millions of people to see. Don’t make a fool out of yourself.”

It had been an appropriate warning for a party where alcohol and, on the down low of course, plenty of drugs were available… Making a fool out of themselves was something that they could easily do in minutes if they weren’t careful, but with the show being a thing, getting rid of that reputation once they had been caught on camera would be a much harder problem.

Antares had said nothing, just nodding. Really, it wasn’t anything she hadn’t heard before or hadn’t learned for herself, albeit to a far lesser extent, through the gossip-filled world that called itself high school. Besides, this was a party, they were here to enjoy themselves, and first that meant finding herself something to drink. Which meant wading through the crowd, because sadly she couldn’t always fly indoors owing to annoyances such as lights and low ceilings and other irritating things.

Yuli found herself a good drink, a quiet-ish place to sit, and promptly did just that. Sipping at her drink and watching the crowd around her, getting a feeling for the different team members. She already knew Lubi, and they were mostly friendly with each other. Now she was observing and learning the others, all while doing what she would normally do and not mingle with the biggest groups. Her left hand tapped next to her, seemingly with a mind of its own, hidden beneath the glove she always wore over it. She knew she unnerved some people, generally people were put off by her scars and her glass eye, but here she could turn that into an advantage.

Antares would find that one of her other team members was already close to the alcohol table, which… Had quite a lot of options in various bottles - this was a Hero League party and they did things properly, after all. That team member was the pink haired… Boy? Girl? The one who had been one of the more smug and sly ones of the group to this point. “What are you going to be having tonight?” the… Boy asked, turning to her as she approached the table, seeming genuinely curious.

“Haven’t decided yet, actually. Not used to such a wide selection.” Antares said, levitating a few inches off the ground as her eyes moved across the wide variety of alcohol. Some of the stuff there she hadn’t even heard of, most of the time she just knew she was drinking alcohol of some form, being too drunk to precisely identify it. “You?”

Lupe chuckled, leaning back against the table. “For now, I managed to find a bottle of this Bacardi… Kinda rare,” he stated, holding up a bottle which according to the text on the back supposedly had a 75% alcohol content. “But later tonight… Who knows if I’ll feel like sticking to drinking. Lot of vices here if you know where to look.”
Antares gave Lupe a flat look, as if slightly confused by Lupe’s choice of drink. “You sure it’s a good idea to get started on the heavier stuff this early? Pretty sure you’re supposed to pace yourself when it comes to alcohol, you know.”

Lupe just raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that what they brought us here to do? Get drunk, have fun, get a bunch of footage of us for us to talk over afterwards when we’re not blacking out anymore?”

“True, I guess.” Antares shrugged. “I guess we’ll have to hope we don’t do anything stupid while drunk, pour me a shot of that stuff.”

“That’s the spirit,” Lupe said, pulling the cap off the bottle and chugging directly from it for a few moments before pulling it away when the burn was too much, spilling a little bit in the process. He extended the bottle to Antares next. “You want?”

“Give.” Antares grinned, holding out her hand. Lupe was happy to do so, reaching up to hand the bottle to the floating girl, a smug smirk settling onto his face. Antares took the bottle in both hands, holding it up and taking two long gulps from the bottle, some of it running down her chin as her throat burned from the alcohol and motioning to hand the bottle back towards Lupe.

“What, you tryna one up me or something?” Lupe asked, drinking back from the bottle again, lifting it all the way up and letting gravity do the work. At this rate, they were both going to end up drunk, but well, that was part of the point of coming here in the first place as Lupe had told Antares.

“Just a little.” Antares admitted with a wide grin. “I like being on top of things, it’s why flying’s the best shit.”

“You’re not going to let me win then, are you?” Lupe continued, holding the bottle back out towards Antares, switching focuses away from the alcohol and pulling out a joint and a lighter. It seemed they did indeed have access to more than just alcohol here if they wanted.

“No fucking way.” Antares said as she took the bottle back, holding it up to her lips and taking another long gulp as the Bacardi burned its way down her throat. “Actually, you know what-” Antares grinned viciously, a spark in her eyes. “Let’s make this a game of chicken, whoever has the bottle when it’s empty wins. You down?”

“I propose a counter offer,” Lupe said with a chuckle, words a bit more messy because of the quickly setting in effects of the alcohol. “Which is that I can hook you up with some stuff that’s better than this… Might as well get high if we’re getting blackout drunk, too.”

“Why not both?” Antares grinned widely, speaking slowly and carefully before she took another gulp of the rapidly dwindling bottle of Bacardi. “Not sure how much in the way of partying we’ll get to do, may as well enjoy it.”

“Sure, but let’s find somewhere else before one of us knocks someone over or falls through this table,” said Lupe, snatching the bottle back and taking another sip before turning with a smirk, looking over his shoulder at Antares as if gesturing for her to follow.

“If you say so.” Antares rolled her eyes, landing and moving to follow after Lupe. She wanted her alcohol back.

They ended up in some side room - not just any side room but a bedroom which provided a place to sit down. Lupe flopped down on the bed, apparently having lost some coordination because of the effects of the alcohol, and reached into a hoodie pocket for something else. “You can have the bottle back if you want… I also found this,” he added, pulling out a small plastic bag with pills in it. “Just don’t let Svetlana or Young catch us or something, dunno how they’d feel about their heroes doing illegal drugs.”

“They don’t know we’ve taken ‘illegal’ drugs if we take them all.” Antares shrugged, slightly unsteady as she rose back into the air, hovering off the end of the bed and grabbing the bottle of Bacardi off the floor, chugging down the last of the Bacardi before setting the now empty bottle down on the floor. She leaned forwards, rolling over in midair, squinting. “What even are those, anyways?”

“It’s E,” Lupe said in explanation, before taking one of the pills out of the wrapper and holding it up for Antares to see. “If you want it, come a little bit closer and get out of the air.”

“But I like it up here…” Antares whined, instead flying forwards on her front and hovering next to Lupe, reaching out to grab the pill. “You’re just jealous.”

“Guess you’ll have to miss out on a surprise, then,” said Lupe, closing a fist around the pill and quickly pulling back, keeping it out of the grasp of the girl for now, chuckling drunkenly in the process.

“For someone that knows how to party you’re such a killjoy, you know that?” Antares let out a drunken hiccup, before coughing. “Haven’t drunk this much… For a while.”

“Just wanted to make it easier to do this… But you’ve gotta be hardheaded,” Lupe said, placing the pill on the tip of his own tongue before pulling Antares down towards him and pressing their lips together, leaning back to pull her on top in the process as the drunken tension finally boiled over into physical contact for the first time.

Antares hung there in the air, motionless out of surprise and shock for a few moments before she flew up, wincing as she hit the ceiling and letting out a loud “Fuck,” as she rubbed the back of her head. “Bit forwards of you.” Antares drunkenly grinned down at Lupe. “I don’t mind though.” She added before swooping back down and pressing her lips back in. Lupe wasted no time pulling her down to the bed, their hands traveling each other’s bodies as they drowned out the noise of the outside world and focused on each other - even if right now, they hardly knew each other.

Commentary From The Cast

-] NASH LINWOOD // “What pushed you two to… Get physical so early on, as teammates?”

-] ANTARES GRAY // “[Incoherent Grumbling Noises] “Alcohol. There, done, said, can I go back to warmth and darkness and silence now…” [More Incoherent Grumbling Noises]”

-] LUPE CUEVAS // [chuckle] “I guess I was a little charmed…”

Eden Network 2025-2026 All Rights Reserved®

While Sun, meanwhile, stayed away from the alcohol for now and decided it would be better to keep her composure, mingling around for a little bit with some of the recognizable higher ups before making her way to Yuli, someone she recognized as being a fellow Korean. Or at least a Korean-American. “We’re pretty well represented here, aren’t we?” she said, chuckling as she approached from behind.

Yuli’s hand tapping froze as Sun spoke. She moved it quietly to her lap and took another drink of what was now clearly some kind of wine, though her sips were small and measured, as if she was watching her intake. She twisted to look at Sun, maybe the most famous of their little group. Nodding, she looked up at the woman.

“Pretty wide variety in general, but someone must enjoy having Koreans around if there’s what...three of us? To be fair, I was raised in Chicago, but I know you and Lubi are both from Korea itself. Been there a few times, visiting family.”

“Spent a lot of time in Gangnam… Before the song,” Sun remarked. “I can get the team’s business decisions, it’s a huge market over there. Demanding, though. Not so much like being a hero ‘round here, just from what I know. But what can I say? This is my first time in the States so… Wouldn’t know too much about this place.”

“West is different than the South-West, which is different to the Midwest, which is different to the South-East, which is different to the North-East. First time on the west coast myself, most of my family in the states are in New York, Chicago, or Ontario. Still, cities are the same everywhere. Loud, exiting, and plenty to do.”

“LA seems like more of a hero city than Seoul… Then again, Hollywood is here so I’m not surprised. You been ‘round this hero stuff for long or are you one of the true rookies?” Sun asked, looking Yuli up and down once more. “You look like you have some exciting fight stories in your past.”

Yuli laughed, somewhat bitter though equally amused. She used her left hand to gesture at the scars as she spoke.

“All this you can see right now? One incident, there was a meta that specialized in making things explode. I have other scars, and other fights, but what you can see was from a single fight. Two weeks in a coma, then months doing physical therapy. I wasn’t the only survivor, but I’m the only one not in prison. My...sisters saw to that, they came after us, we put them down.”

“Pfft. Something like that happened to me and my career would be done. Have to say I’m surprised you ended up here but that’s more my problem than a dig at you… Haven’t had much of a choice but to not let my looks slip for any reason. Comes with certain benefits, though, mainly making money off of it.”

“This is sort of the start of my career. Deal I made with my mother, Soyun Rose, though most people know her as ‘Yi Soyun’ instead. She’s also made my wardrobe for me, knows what I like and mixes it with her own style.”

“I’ve heard of her, have to admit it’s impressive. Me, I can’t say I know either of my parents or where my surname is from… Was raised by XR Industries as long as I can remember. Supposedly I was from the streets right before that, and well, I didn’t have much help with the hero stuff. I mean, I did from the corporation - you could call it one of the Chaebols - but never had a parent figure or something like that to push me that way. I guess I just did what was expected of me,” Sun admitted, pausing and looking off in the distance like the subject had captured her mind fully for a moment.

“My mother isn’t particularly happy with me doing this either, but she says it’s better than what I was doing before. My dad is still pissed I don’t want to be a lawyer like him, we don’t talk much. They both wanted me out of Chicago, this was my compromise.”

Sun shrugged. “Like I said, I wouldn’t know what it’s like to deal with that, but I guess one plus side of my situation is that the only people I have to answer to are shareholders. Whether it’s a better thing or a worse thing… That’s up for you to figure out. I think about it a lot.”

“Absolutely no clue, ‘bout the only time I think about stuff like that is when I’m on my bike.”

Yuli took another sip of her wine, and patted the couch next to her, telling Sun to sit down. Which made Sun raise an eyebrow but she did it regardless, sitting down next to Yuli and looking over to her. “What, you getting drunk or something?” she asked curiously.

“Maybe a little, not the whiskey or beer I’d prefer, but it’s only the first night. Save getting hammered for some other time. Besides, it’s a party. What kind of party would it be if I didn’t drink?”

“True,” said Sun, observing silently for a moment before looking off in the distance, a smug expression settling on her face. “Was just wondering if it had anything to do with you asking me specifically to sit down. You feeling… Playful or something?”

“Mmmm, I dunno about playful, I’ve had a hard time being touched by anyone since the fight that caused all this, but a little liquid courage did me some good. Let me at least talk to you. Gotta start somewhere, not everyday someone as cute as you can see past the scars.”

Sun just let out a slow resigned chuckle, closing her eyes and smiling softly. “You realize you’re talking to someone that’s contractually obligated to not get into relationships,” she stated, her voice somewhat flat when she said it before picking up again when she continued. “Can’t say I’d mind seeing it, though.”

“Pffffft, contracts always have loopholes. A phrasing, conflicts with local laws, something along those lines. I may not have become a lawyer like my ass of a dad wanted, but he did manage to get me to work towards the degree. Technically still supposed to, just at a slower pace.”

Yuli took a bigger drink of the wine, she hadn’t been intending to drink this much, but as she had said...sometimes she needed a little liquid courage.

“Besides, I’m not too special to look at, there’s plenty of better looking people here.”

“Dunno. If I were going to say something that could be interpreted as flirting, I’d say you have a certain rough around the edges appeal,” Sun stated, a sly grin on her face. “But since the corporation back home wouldn’t like that, I’ll just nod in agreement.”

“You not supposed to get into a relationship, or you just supposed to leave yourself perpetually available, because...those aren’t mutually exclusive.”

“I’m supposed to not crush people’s dreams, I guess. Some people… A lot of people, I guess, build an attachment. The company doesn’t want me breaking that by getting seen doing stuff with someone else, it’s part of the business, really… It’s been that way my whole career, never had too much of a problem with it.”

“Like I said, not mutually exclusive. Number of people that have huge harems is always increasing, so even if you get yourself a close friend, you can still be available to those dreamers.”

“Close friend, you say…” Sun stated, chuckling to herself before standing up, as if this conversation was a bit too much for her. She did set her bag on the couch though, looking for something and pulling out a pen. “Can’t talk much more about that kind of thing, the legal team has their eyes all over,” she added, leaning in close as she stood in front of Yuli. Looking from side to side to see who was watching, she quickly scrawled her phone number on Yuli’s collarbone before putting the pen away, picking her bag up once again.

“I’m sure we’ll talk again…” she added, turning on her heel.

“Hmm, yes we will.”

Yuli smiled before downing the rest of her wine, and leaning back. Their talk might be done for now, but she could relax, content in the knowledge she had managed even this much.

Some time had passed since the start of the party and, well, it was time for the team to change focus. The episode wasn’t done filming and they were going to include something which many people would want to see - the first fight for this team. All of them had received a text message leading up to the point where they were gathered by their instructors to leave: “PRODUCERS WANT AN EARLY FIGHT, A META MERC HIRED BY THE NETWORK WILL BE ATTACKING AUBREY GRAHAM’S MANSION, TEAM FUTURES WILL STOP THE ROBBERY AND GRAHAM WILL MAKE A CAMEO, PLEASE FIND YOUR INSTRUCTORS AND LEAVE IMMEDIATELY.”

But the caps lock and the fact that the text was sent multiple times in some instances wasn’t enough to get everyone to pay attention to their phones, or more specifically, it wasn’t enough to get two specific people to pay attention to their phones. Svetlana Roux found herself searching the building up and down for Lupe and Antares, the cameras following after her as she looked. After all, it was major news for the early show that two of the members were apparently missing, not being seen anywhere.

At least, they were missing until Svetlana pushed open one more door and saw where they were, hungover and their bodies still tangled together in one of the bedrooms. “What the fuck are you two doing?” Svetlana roared, her somewhat traditional side showing in the fact that she took offense with the two that she had just come across, her Slavic accent bleeding through somewhat also as she jumped back from the doorway in surprise, the cameras rolling behind her and filming her entire reaction as well as what was inside the room.

“Wha?” Antares mumbled out, rubbing her face as she sat up, only half awake and with a raging headache. She blinked, not saying anything else as she flopped back down to lying on the bed. “F’k off…” She mumbled out again, shutting her eyes, seemingly wanting to nurse the side effects of the large quantities of alcohol she’d consumed recently.

“We need you to do actual hero things right now like all the others are gathering to do, so get your ass up and come on!” Svetlana demanded, still standing in the doorway while the cameras recorded, before moving into the room itself. “I’ll drag you out of this room myself if I have to!”

“Fiiine…” Antares groaned, rubbing her face as she rolled off the side of the bed onto empty air as if it was just more bed, groaning again as she sat up with a foul look on her face as she flew over to poke Lupe in the side. Lupe stirred, sitting up after her, searching for the clothes that had been discarded by the side of the bed earlier.

They would be joining the others soon… Not under the right circumstances, though. It was… Quite the introduction they were making… And it was hard to tell right now if it would be a good introduction or a bad one.

by **Durmatagno** » Mon Jul 29, 2019 2:26 am

by **Forest State** » Mon Jul 29, 2019 6:21 am

SEASON 1 EPISODE 3 // SAFEHOUSE NIGHTS OUT IN CALABASAS
Collaborative post between Forest State, Durmatagno, and Lunas Legion

DATE // AUGUST 3RD, 2025
LOCATION // CALABASAS, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES
CAST // Antares ‘Khione’ Gray, Yuli Rose, Lubi Yeh-Jin, Sun ‘Primace’ Choe

Hollywood… Full of misdirections, false personas, and plenty more that was fitting for an industry that was built around pretending to be other people. Even in ‘reality’ TV, which was advertised on not being pretend, such things happened, they just… Happened in more subtle ways. In this case, the manipulation however wasn’t so subtle, even if it was firmly out of the public eye. The manipulation involved sending the new team of heroes, Team Futures, against what was supposedly a threat against a high profile celebrity in Calabasas. In reality, the threat might as well have been as threatening as a regular actor, considering the scenario was being staged by the show and the metahuman in question had really been paid by the producers to follow their instructors, communicating in detail with them in the days before filming on just how everything would go down. There’d even been a day or two of walkthroughs, albeit held secretly to avoid the public asking questions.

Yes, even this team that was based in ‘reality’ TV was involved in acting, in the business of Hollywood, even if all of the members hadn’t quite known they were signing up for that. That wasn’t to say that there wasn’t real danger there, however. While the fight wasn’t real per say, it was something of a live fire exercise and it was entirely possible there would be injuries if the Futures team wasn’t on the top of their game - and especially if they didn’t follow the instructions and went off on their own in the pursuit of glory in front of the cameras, assuming that they would be safe just because the result of the fight was already rigged. Of course, the fact that the fight was rigged was something that they knew but that the public didn’t, and everyone involved was stuck behind multiple NDAs on the matter.

Maybe in the future the public would find out. But by then, this fight would be far out of the spotlight and the discovery wouldn’t have the same impact if it ended up having any impact at all. There was a chance the news cycle would’ve moved forward enough that it just wasn’t relevant compared to more recent things. Still, for the heroes that were living right now in the moment, there was a very real chance that this was the biggest thing that they had been involved in up to this point… It wasn’t real, but to say that it wasn’t being taken seriously would be a misjudgement of the situation.

“Where is everyone, damn it? Not gonna go well if this thing doesn’t stick to the timetable,” said Young-gi Kang, one of the instructors and the one who was currently standing outside of the building, not far from the SUVs that were waiting outside to serve as transportation, and the numerous cameras that were waiting for the heroes within to exit the house.

Svetlana Roux, meanwhile, had just stepped out of the house after managing to wrangle one of the more hard to deal with members of Team Futures, Peyton Chase, also known as Stormcaster… If anything, Payton was mainly here to create drama for the rest of the team to react to and for fans at home to react to, being someone that wasn’t quite stable and possibly wasn’t even right entirely. Some might question why someone like Peyton was here in the first place, especially considering how dangerous an unstable person could be with Peyton’s ability, weather control, but it made sense when looking at things not from the perspective of a hero team leader but from the perspective of a showrunner.

Sometimes, the people that lived on the edge were the more interesting ones in a group, after all. Even if they were… Dangerous. To others, sometimes to themselves. For most of the members of the team, it would be a good idea to not think too hard about the logic of including Peyton. The logic that said that cash was more important than making sure that everyone on the team was safe.

“Lupe and Antares were screwing,” Svetlana said with a sigh as she stepped out of the house, holding Peyton by the arm and eventually letting the girl go, sending her towards the SUVs. “Or they were anyway, they were fuckin’ passed out when I walked in there… Told them to get their shit together and come on.”

“Who else are we looking for?”

“I don’t see the Koreans out here,” said Svetlana, her eyes scanning the heroes who were already assembled by the vans, now including Peyton but also including the largest member of the team, the Egyptian Fayza ‘Nefertet’ Ghazaway who towered over most of the others and could manipulate the terrain around herself for five hundred meters, making her one of the more valuable assets when it came to controlling the pace of a battle and setting up her teammates in good situations. Although, her size meant that the rides the rest of the team were fine with were… Uncomfortable at the least.

Yuli was nearly done getting ready, just triple checking everything to make sure that there were no...wardrobe malfunctions. As much attention as it would create, it wasn’t something Yuli herself was quite ready for. All that was left was the glove for her left hand. Looking at it for a moment, she sighed, before slipping on the glove and checking her flexibility. Grabbing her pistol, and the hard glass staff that went with the outfit, she holstered her weapon before turning and heading outside.

Lubi for her part was already ready, just waiting on Yuli and Sun before heading out. She stopped Yuli from stepping out, the three Koreans could step out in costume together. Her own costume was much simpler than the pink-purple-black affair Yuli wore, though it was armored and allowed her easy access to her powers and the pair of pistols she usually carried. She could use something heavier if she needed to, but generally she could avoid such measures, through different means. The two sisters, twins in fact, though only a few knew of this and there were no official records, smiled and waited together for Sun.

Sun, meanwhile, had reduced the complexity of her outfit from the one that she had worn in Korea with the Gangnam Stars - The bottom half of it was simply a pair of black fitted pants, the kind that wouldn’t be that out of place in jogging or in a gym, but they did show her figure well… The top, on the other hand, part of her midriff notably exposed by it, was white in contrast with the pants and had no sleeves, with Sun focusing on ease of movement and not overdressing… The top wasn’t overly tight but it also wasn’t baggy enough to get in the way. The outfit had been designed for lightness, to help her capitalize on her skillset, and this was the first time she was wearing it for the public.

She stepped out of one of the side rooms where she had went to change, managing to avoid running into any other occupants within the room who’d had similar ideas to Lupe and Antares, and she looked to the others. “What, you guys waiting on me or something?” she asked casually, getting ready to move on as she took a step down the hallway, no equipment in her hands. For now, she deemed her powers enough to get by, and adding more weight would just get in her way.

“Yes actually, thought we might all walk out together. Reveal us all at the same time. They’re already pitching us as ‘The Koreans’, though they’ll probably have a better name down the line. Who knows, they want us to stir up headlines though.”

It was Lubi that answered as Yuli fixed the glove on her left hand once more. It didn’t like to sit quite right, she’d have to change some minor details to get everything correct. For now though, it’d work. Yuli just smiled and nodded, not wanting to interrupt Lubi or her little speech.

“Guess they’ll finally get a look at us as a group then,” said Sun as she pushed her way through the front door, not making a big deal out of the entrance - she had already made plenty of entrances in her past, it was second nature to her, and she just had a knack for looking good during it even when she wasn’t actively trying. If anything, it would only look forced if she had been trying too hard, and so she relaxed, looking up to the cameras and offering a wave as she headed towards the SUVs.

“We’re here, nobody panic!” Antares yelled as she flew out of the same door that Svetlana had dragged Peyton out of wearing nothing but a skirt, Lupe clinging onto her for dear life before she set him down back on the ground, crossing her arms over her chest and scowling.

“You’re not exactly dressed,” pointed out Svetlana, looking Antares and Lupe over once before starting to gesture for them to go back inside and get changed properly, but it seemed she was overruled by someone else.

“As if the viewers are going to complain about that… It’s cable TV, the people have seen worse,” said Nash Linwood, striking down Svetlana’s complaints using his position as the director. He couldn’t help but chuckle at the boldness of the girl that had decided to come out in… Well, not much. “It’ll be good for ratings.”

“You shouted at us and sent us angry text messages in all caps which I only just read, I figured that getting here in time was more important than other things.” Antares added.

“It’s a matter of how a hero should act!” said Svetlana, getting animated again and throwing her arms up in the air. “You’re supposed to be a role model, not some… Not some Twitch thot!”

But they didn’t have the time to stand around and argue much. Kang gestured towards the SUVs and Peyton and Fayza had already gotten inside, and the Korean group was approaching the SUVs with less incident than Lupe and Antares. Soon they’d be holding up the group if they didn’t move on, which meant that Svetlana didn’t have much other option but to back down and turn around, frustrated but not saying anything more about the situation as she opened the door to one of the SUVs and climbed inside in the passenger seat.

The mansion in question was owned by a rather well known person, an Aubrey Graham specifically - more known as Drake, of course. It had been mentioned in songs before, and apparently, that made it a high value target for villains. Or that was the story that was being spun by the showrunners. In reality all of the parties here were on the same side, but the fight was being made to look like a real one that was happening because of the high value of the location and the wealth within it. All things that could attract robbers to a specific place like this… And as they approached on the street leading up to the mansion, palm trees and massive Calabasas mansions towering over them on either side of the road, they could see the first signs of trouble. Staged trouble, anyway.

There were plumes of smoke rising from the distance and when they turned the corner they could see some fires burning in the yard around the building, which… Did seem like a real danger to spread regardless of what the showrunners said about it being one hundred percent safe to the heroes. The SUVs came to a screeching stop when they were a relatively close distance away from the building they were looking for, and some of the crew members started piling out before the heroes themselves. “Alright guys, the villain that you’re dealing with is called the Burning Man… The dude’s actually a legit villain, just happens that he’ll do this for enough cash,” said Linwood, looking to the group that was assembled behind him.

“So uhhhhh… As far as the plan and such, you’re going to dodge the fires outside and you’re going to have a fight on the first floor that’s going to move to the third where the Burning Man is going to break a window and jump out into some bushes to escape you guys. But it’s basically going to be a win,” Linwood continued, not one to go into the highest amount of detail beyond what was necessary. “Any questions I can answer them, otherwise you guys should haul ass and get over there, the cameras are… Rolling now, and following you. Make sure to make a big deal of making the fires look like a threat.”

“They’re fires and I don’t feel heat. Temperature control, y’know?” Antares let out a chuckle. “I’ll just fly right over them. Other than that, nothing, I’m ready to go if the rest of us are.”

“You will not,” said one of the others on the production staff. “We didn’t set up something like this for someone to loophole it with some power like flight…”

“Maybe you should’ve thought more about who you were setting this up for, I fly basically everywhere.” Antares rolled her eyes. “It isn’t a loophole, stuff like that is what powers do, and it’s not like I can make the others fly.”

“I could level the place and I’m sure that would do something against the villain in there. And it would be a hell’uv a lot of fun,” said Peyton, rubbing her hands together in anticipation for the fight as stormclouds began to form in the sky above them, a crack of lightning splitting a tree somewhat near them as rain drizzled down lightly, the environment rapidly shifting to the will of the team’s most unstable member.

“With this outfit, I can fly...in theory. It’s more getting pulled along than really flying like Antares can, but if we fly two or three people over, they can probably be the initial engagement while the others dodge the fires and get into position to ‘drive’ our opponent to the third floor. Gives you a solid starting fight without to many participants, lets the others show off in different ways, and then leaves a second group to be the third floor fight. Should look good, not look staged, and allow the cameras to pick up everyone doing something different, giving you a highlight reel for commercials and the like.”

“Much better idea than leveling the place… DON’T do that by the way, Peyton,” said Linwood, looking to the girl who was still preparing to… Leverage the weather against the target in front of them. “Stormclouds and lightning only.”

“But what’s the fuckin’ point if I can’t use it?” Peyton whined, gesturing towards the mansion she wanted to attack.

“For one, this place is owned by someone else and we don’t have the license to just destroy it outright, which would also cause collateral damage, and second, we already have a plan for this fight. One that doesn’t involve just wrecking the place…” Linwood continued, seemingly placating Peyton for now even if she clearly wasn’t happy with this development that her powers were effectively being used right now to set the atmosphere.

Yuli nodded and after taking a breath, tested out her theory by lifting herself off her feet. She was a bit wobbly, it was a little difficult to keep the glass oriented when her personal orientation was shifting, but after a second she stabilized. She grinned, she didn’t know what speeds she could tolerate or reach, but as long as she had enough of this costume intact, she could do this. Probably wouldn’t do it often though, she didn’t like heights much. She left her pistol in its holster, gripping the staff instead. She’d needed to navigate the fires carefully still, she was still wearing glass after all. She saw a clearer path, the smoke funneled in a way that gave her clearer air and a cooler pocket. She would take that route, should avoid any glass burns.

Sun, meanwhile, started moving before she used her power at all, not having said anything during the planning phase but moving as if she knew innately what she was going to do, timing things somewhat well and jumping towards one of the fires… But as she was going to land in it, her body was covered by white energy, completely shifting her appearance, making her look like an almost ethereal or angelic figure as she wasn’t hurt by it and rolled to her feet on the other side of the flames, proceeding quickly through the maze of flames as she headed after Yuli on the ground, looking for her own angle into the building and spotting a side door which could serve as that.

Antares kicked off the ground, soaring skywards, seemingly not bothered by the heat of the fires but coughing as she passed through the smoke rising from the fires, moving in at a higher altitude than Yuli or Sun before shifting into a dive, coming to a stop hovering a few meters in front of the house, spinning specks of white beginning to swirl around her as she began to create ice to use as a weapon before moving to enter through the front doors of the house.

Sun was still making her way to the building on the ground, and when she reached the side door, she smashed her way through it with a punch that was enhanced with a flare of the energy that she could manipulate in this form, stepping through without getting cut by the glass and finding herself face to face with the man that they were looking for, the so called Burning Man, a man of about six or so feet who had no distinguishing features due to the fact that his entire body was covered in flames, which Sun could feel from here even if they didn’t actually hurt her. Soon after she stepped inside, there was fire cast upon the area in front of her, as the man backed away, the cameras also showing up on the ground floor shortly after Sun herself showed up there ready for a fight… It seemed they had shown up in a dining room of sorts that was attached to the kitchen, but like everything in this mansion, it was huge.

Antares came in from one direction, Sun from another. Yuli would create her own entrance. Pulling the same trick she used in the first episode, she simply parted the glass of a window, stepping through it as if it simply did not exist, though instead of reforming it, the glass reformed into small compact orbs floating around her. With her feet back on solid ground, she was off to another side of the Burning Man, though it left him a path deeper into the building, so he could shift floors as he needed to. She smiled, the orbs began spinning around her, the glowing blue-purple runes in her right eye stronger now as she was channeling more magic, they might actually show up on camera.

There were indeed a decent amount of cameras around, and more cameras approaching from behind as the three heroes made their approach on the building, the man they were looking for starting to back up in the direction of a doorway leading to another room. Sun moved forward almost in sync, applying pressure, jumping through the first layer of flames unharmed even as another layer was placed down right in front of her… Except, as she ended up between the two fires as the man retreated into a hallway and sent fire down to the ground to keep her at a safe distance, she felt her power wavering somewhat… It was one of these days.

The days when she was having a hard time keeping it up, specifically. She dropped low, fire still raging behind her and in front of her, holding herself up on one fist as she panted, gritting her teeth and trying… To force herself to get up and cloak herself in energy once again as she was stuck here in this hallway, her power being the only way out of it at the moment.

Yuli pursued, unable to simply leap through the fires, she instead launched the glass orbs down the hallway, as if a professional pitcher had thrown a baseball. The paths of the glass interrupted the flames for a split second. The walls would take some minor damage, but nothing that wasn’t purely aesthetic, they were instead designed to force the Burning Man back, letting them suppress the fires and free Sun. With the orbs launched, she twirled the staff in her hand, creating a large, thin plane of purple tinted glass, reinforced to prevent it from melting.

“Sun, back over the glass now, before it gets to hot!”

Sun pushed herself up, quickly moving over the glass after nodding over her shoulder towards Yuli, chasing after the one she was pursuing and finding that they were now in the kitchen, but the man had just slipped out of that room and when she ran through the large room and to the other side, she saw that there were multiple paths that could be the right one… But at least there wasn’t any more fire to deal with right now. She let herself drop to the ground, slumping against the island in the kitchen, breathing deeply as she tried taking a bit of a short breather before she would be back in action in the chase.

There was no sign of their opponent in the lobby, so Antares kept moving deeper into the house, just aimlessly wandering. Her sense of direction wasn’t the best when inside large, strange buildings anyways, and the darkness bar for the flickering light of fires or the pale moonlight didn’t exactly make it much easier as she ducked through doors or narrowly avoided bashing her head into light fittings. She hated fighting indoors already.

Yuli reformed her staff, holding it in her left hand where the heat could not bother her and moved to pursue. She paused when she saw Sun was short of breath, but decided the cameras wouldn't allow her to show the concern she wanted. She passed by, stopping just long to gather the orbs, fixing the ones that had cracked or shattered. She hoped the Burning Man would move to the third floor soon, where other people could take over the fight and let Sun rest. She doubted even the director would want to show Sun having difficulty, wouldn’t be a good look for her Korean fans.

After a little bit of time, Sun had pushed herself using the island to support herself, and the sounds of the battle spreading to a distant location within the building could be heard before… There was a loud crack of lightning as the building was struck, the reverberation sending Sun back to the ground nearly before she was able to catch herself on the island once again and position herself on her feet, looking around for where the noise had come from… Outside, of course. It seemed they were having a hard time reigning Peyton in, as another lightning strike hit the outside of the building quite noticeably.

“Fuck…” muttered Sun, either at the surprise lightning or at her own state and the fact that she had fallen victime to exhaustion from her powers. She triggered her energy form once again, managing to keep enough energy in the tank to chase after the general direction the Burning Man had went, finding a stairwell and starting to run up it with little concern for what would happen if she kept pushing herself and did too much.

Yuli put her staff in front of Sun as she reached the stairwell, looking up it with a mix of concern and amusement.

“Don’t. Plan had a second group engaging on the third floor, our part is done for now. We hold down here to cut of avenues of escape, and put out the fires to keep them from spreading.”

She knew Sun wanted to keep being the blazing...Sun of the fight, but they needed to spread out attention early on, and Sun was exhausting herself somehow. Yuli didn’t know the exact nature of her powers or why she was getting so tired so quickly, but it wouldn’t look good on the cameras if she kept pushing.

“We got our flashy entrance, drove him up. They get to finish it, now we’re on damage mitigation and recovery.”

Sun dropped the cloak of energy, transitioning back to her regular form and leaning against the wall by the stairwell. “Didn’t chase him up there to have Peyton or Fayza get the credit,” she said, sighing ever so slightly as she took a breather right here, pausing before speaking again. “Didn’t know you were calling the shots here either.”

“I can see you’re exhausted. Keep fighting and it’ll show up in the middle of the fight we’re they’re unlikely to be able to edit around it. Besides, we go up there now and steal the ending from them we’ll just be making enemies. Think it’s a little early for that.”

Yuli reached down to the pouches on her waist, most were filled with figurines, scouting instruments or even puppets for battle, but one had some other small things. She pulled out a little energy bar and offered it to Sun, she doubted cameras would have a good angle on them here.

“Besides, we’ll get to show off better when the real fights start.”

Sun took the energy bar, opening it up and shrugging somewhat. “Not afraid of pissing any of them off, I know I can handle them,” she said, her eyes still fixed on the stairwell where the fight was likely continuing - she could hear it continuing in the distance, even, it sounded like Fayza had managed to manipulate the terrain enough to get into the building, and outside, the winds were whipping in a way that had to be influenced by Peyton. “Just sitting around, giving up the spotlight, doesn’t help at all.”

“No, but there’s not a lot of prestige in this fight anyway. Dude’s outnumbered ten to one, surrounded, and we’re better equipped. Save your energy for a big fight, one where you can really let loose and show off. It’s why I haven’t shown these little babies, and their bigger cousins, off yet.”

Yuli pulled one of the figurines out, this one looked like a decent sized spider made of smooth black glass, and a little wooden bird sat next to it. She stashed them back in their pouches.

“Besides, gives us a chance to talk really away from the cameras.”

“Talk, eh… You feel like I left something unfinished before or something?” said Sun, still leaning against the wall as she conceded that Yuli wasn’t just going to give up and let her head on her way even if it was what she really wanted to do, her eyes checking out the figurines with a cautious interest. “Or…”

“Even then you couldn’t talk to openly, they had cameras everywhere. Right now, they don’t have anything on us, and if they do....”

Yuli snapped her fingers, the runes in her eyes flaring up, all glass that she wasn’t wearing or holding within about twenty feet of her shattered.

“Now they really don’t, and they’ll be focused on the fight upstairs anyway. I saw you in the kitchen, I can see you now. I don’t want you to collapse on camera alright? You’re someone I’d like to actually get to know better, not just play up for the camera.”

“I’m used to pushing myself,” Sun said quickly as if she wasn’t even entertaining the idea that she might end up collapsing on camera. “And there’s a lot of people that I’m sure would say that… Doesn’t mean I feel like dropping a chance to win just to talk to one of ‘em… Not like I even know you really.”

Yuli was quiet for a moment and lowered the staff.

“Fine, go if you want to. Sorry I ever bothered to worry.”

Yuli grit her teeth and returned to cleaning up the mess. No need to leave it in as bad a state as she had just created. She had hoped to have found a possible friend in Sun, looked like she was wrong. She turned away, and waved her hand, glass recollascing on everything but light bulbs, they wouldn't be fixed with just a wave of her hand

“Act passive aggressive if you feel like it, just because you don’t know what I can do doesn’t change the fact that I do,” Sun replied, charging up the stairs as her cloak of energy returned, her movements quickened from the ability as she made her way up two flights to the third floor where the fight was going on, finding another set of flames but running through it effortlessly without injury… When she could keep this form up, she was able to handle a lot more than she was as a normal person.

Soon, she was facing down with the scene of a wall which had been exploded into multiple chunks, the room beyond it inhabited by her teammate Fayza and the Burning Man, who had marked out the area around him with flames which were enough to keep Fayza back - her ability was more effective outdoors than it was inside. She had no terrain to control for here, the building not… Natural enough for her. Behind, there was a window, most likely the one that the Burning Man was set to jump out of, that took up a significant part of the space of two of the walls.

“Too slow,” Sun said in the general direction of Fayza, referring to how she hadn’t finished the fight before Sun had arrived… She sprung forward shortly after that, even heading through a burst of fire that was sent by the Burning Man, her shoulders hitting the torso of the target and sending the two of them crashing through one of the glass windows and towards the ground below which was… Hopefully covered in tall bushes as they had been informed before the mission. It wasn’t like Sun had checked before launching both of them out of that window, after all…

But at the very least, every camera in the area was going to catch it.

by **Forest State** » Mon Jul 29, 2019 4:48 pm

SEASON 1 EPISODE 4 // TILL I COLLAPSE
DATE // AUGUST 10TH, 2025
LOCATION // SEOUL, REPUBLIC OF KOREA
CAST // Lee ‘Blue Dragon’ Seo-Hyun

The Republic of Korea. Home to some of the world’s premier urban areas, with modern cities that had become recognized internationally as some of Asia’s busiest urban jungles… From the sprawling Incheon Airport and the Port of Busan to the sights and sounds of the Gangnam District in Seoul, South Korea was a country that had been in the spotlight for the past decade or so, maybe more, exporting stars from KPop to gaming and even producing films which were shown abroad.

One other thing that the country exported was superhero culture - the Koreans already had enough of an idol culture that superheroes fit perfectly into that structure, serving as stars that were just as big as and sometimes bigger than the top figures in the entertainment industry, blending their skills in the field with carefully crafted personas in public that oftentimes were managed in depth by large companies who owned the teams. Not every hero team in Korea was tied to the Hero League, corporations playing a bigger role due to the unique culture of the country. The expensive equipment used by heroes, after all, as well as other things such as insurance and paying licensing fees to the government, wasn’t that cheap. Corporations provided the money, and heroes received a decent cut of it most times in exchange for risking themselves in the field and lending their powers and brand appeal.

Whenever something big happened in Seoul, heroes weren’t far behind. It was a race, almost, to see who would get to the big events first, and to see who would get the ratings boosts that came from being active in the field… Seo-Hyun Lee was determined to not let her own team slip any more in that regard. They might have lost their leader to more lucrative overseas ventures but that didn’t mean they were ready to just roll over and die as a team. They’d slid… Ten spots in the rankings for South Korean teams since she had departed to be on the Hero League’s reality show. That ended now. And she didn’t care how many criminals she had to bust in Seoul to get their ratings back up.

The Gangnam Stars had not yet fallen.

As a bank robbery happened in the streets below, Seo-Hyun stood about six stories up and looked down at it from her post while informing the rest of the team of what was going on, preparing to jump in herself but ensuring she had proper backup… She was sure that if Sun was still here, they would already be moving into action, but they couldn’t count on her and her status as the strongest of them all, anymore. Tactics, movement, and the like were more important than ever - even if they had been trained in all of those since they were children.

Gangnam Stars Communications Channel
XR Industries Talent Management Division
-] [STARS #1] Seo-Hyun Lee // BLUE DRAGON // “Looking at three targets right now exiting and loading up a van, our window is shrinking…”

-] [STARS #2] Mikyung Cho // JOKER // “Are you able to do much from where you are?”

-] [STARS #1] Seo-Hyun Lee // BLUE DRAGON // “Six stories up across the street, but I have to be careful, they’re packing big heat…”

-] [STARS #3] Myeon Gin // BLADE LILY // “On my way there right now, you can jump in… You know I’ll have your back.”

-] [STARS #1] Seo-Hyun Lee // BLUE DRAGON // “Right. Going in, wish me luck.”

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED XR INDUSTRIES TALENT MANAGEMENT DIVISION®

The new leader of the Stars...

She moved like lightning, her body shifting to a pure energy form that was the reason why she had the name Blue Dragon in the first place - the form allowed her to zoom down the side of the building like a rocket, not affected much by the usual forces of nature, slamming down into the ground below but not taking damage as she shifted from a blur to an actual person, a figure that was made out of rippling and moving blue energy, an intimidating sight for the gunmen who were working on loading up a van with stolen money. They pointed their weapons at her immediately - there were a couple UMP and MP5 submachine guns in the mix, one of them had an AK-74U rifle and she expected there were others also that were still within the building but were just as armed.

Before any of them could pull down on the trigger, she used her enhanced movement to start running towards the van, launching herself into the air as she kicked off of the hood and went into a spin, bolts of energy flashing towards the ground and sending chunks of the pavement flying in each place that they hit, one of them shredding through the chest of the closest gunman and spraying Blue Dragon herself with blood from the injury… She landed behind the man and spun around, the back of her fist slamming into the man’s head from behind and doing extra damage due to the fact that she was in this form. The man dropped to the ground - he’d be dead without help but she wasn’t concerned with whether he was living or dying. There were active threats in the area to deal with and the first gunshots rang out… She had enhanced durability but she wasn’t going to do good getting hit with many of those.

She needed the help, and it came not long after she spun around and saw her ally moving in with a pair of wings that were made from a similar form of energy that Blue Dragon used - the team had a theme going, as far as their powers. Sun’s powers had been a part of that theme too, even if she wasn’t here right now… But Blue Dragon couldn’t think of that. Not now. Just getting distracted for a moment had allowed someone to sneak up on her around the van and point a gun at the back of her head, a K2 rifle… But that threat didn’t last long.

The sound barrier was shattered and windows along the busy narrow street broke, following a sonic arrow fired by Blade Lily. Blue Dragon spun around to face the person that had pointed the gun at the back of her head but found that the gunman had lost his own head entirely, having been hit there by the arrow which was nowhere to be seen… Of course it was nowhere to be seen, it had been an energy attack just like the rest of the ones used by the Stars. She gave a thumbs up in thanks for the save and then gestured to the other side of the van on the left side of the street. “Two more gunmen,” she said to inform her teammate of the threat there, and Blade Lily nodded, the bow in her hand dissolving as it was replaced by a familiar weapon, the blade that her hero name had been chosen because of.

The final member of the team showed up in a purple streak, before shifting back to her regular form, one hand in the ground to balance herself before she pushed herself to her feet and brandished a pistol, looking for the nearest threats. “Joker, on me,” ordered Blue Dragon, running towards the entrance of the bank and pushing the doors open, her teammate following after her and focusing on scanning the area for potential hostiles. “There!”

On Blue Dragon’s shout, the second hero fired three shots at the man who was rushing to move more bags from a hallway to the main lobby, probably to bring them out to the van. It seemed he hadn’t realized just how much the operation had been interrupted by the hero team, as the three shots ripped into his chest and left multiple stains on the blue hoodie the man happened to be wearing. “Gotta clear the rest of the bank, make sure there’s no one around the vaults or anythi-” started Blue Dragon, before she found herself shifting back to her regular form and dropping to the ground, holding herself up using both hands. “Ngh.”

The grunt was all she could manage to say, and the visible bandages on her body were once again turning red with blood… New blood, they had been changed recently and Blue Dragon was even able to look down and see that the blood was new. She was able to taste it somewhat. “Fucking…” she muttered in frustration, not finishing her sentence as she forced herself to stand on weak legs, showing a weakness that was a far cry from her power level in the previous fight. And she was showing that… She was human, and a human in pain at that. Not as invincible as her public image made her seem, to the people that were standing and watching and recording.

“Go!” she ordered Joker, sending her deeper into the bank to get a look at whether or not they had eliminated all of the threats. For now, she… She felt herself becoming unsteady and she collapsed on the ground in front of the gasping crowd.

by **Durmatagno** » Mon Jul 29, 2019 10:11 pm

SEASON 1 EPISODE 5 // I DON’T KNOW YOU
Collaborative post between Forest State & Durmatagno

DATE // AUGUST 19TH, 2025
LOCATION // GREATER TORONTO AREA, ONTARIO, CANADA
CAST // Sun ‘Primace’ Choe, Yuli Rose, & Lubi Yeh-Jin

The past days since the fight had been… Interesting for Sun. She had spent one of those days in the hospital, not because of over pushing herself with her powers but because she had jumped out of a third story window in an effort to take down the villain… She had made the highlight reel alright and so she considered it worth it, but that didn’t mean landing wrong and getting hurt hadn’t, well, been painful. The regenerative properties of her ability, however, had given her a quick recovery time and had let her join the team once again not long after the first fight, as they moved into their new house in Ontario, specifically in the region of Mississauga, outside of Toronto. House would be an understatement, however, because it was more like a mansion, large enough for all of them and with the modern comforts of a place that was being paid for by TV money.

She had also had to deal with the media, mainly the media from Korea but also sometimes the American press. Her actions in the first episode were still generating conversation, and yet, after what had happened during the fight, she just didn’t feel like entertaining the rumors much longer. She knew where she stood now - she hardly wanted anything to do with someone that believed they knew better, someone that she had shown an interest in but who also acted for much of the night like Sun should… Be something else that she wasn’t. That she should behave a certain way just because she could and the cameras weren’t around, and also someone who had tried to hold her back when she was at her most competitive. Sun didn’t take a kind view to those who kept her competitive side down, after all.

Some time after the rumors started, she had done her best to dispel them… Publicly, online for everyone to see, in a way that was seemingly much more genuine than most of her communications online. This hadn’t been written for her by a publicist, she had written the message herself and sent it regardless of what the consequences were going to be… Although she doubted the company that held her in a contract would be upset with what she was saying. They were the ones that didn’t want her getting too close to anyone here in the first place.

But now, days after she had sent the message that was very clearly aimed at Yuli, the person she hadn’t talked to since the fight, there was another turn. Things weren’t often simple for her, it seemed. She had been headed inside her room when she found something peculiar there, a box and a note on her bed… Which caused her to sigh momentarily, she knew someone had been in her room without knocking, it wasn’t like she was the kind of person to leave the door open or leave it unlocked when she wasn’t in it. Her career before coming here had shown her the value of privacy, after all, and it had also shown her that privacy wasn’t given unless someone actually took the proper steps such as locking their door… Rather than just assuming no one would come in.

Still, she was curious about what was there. She looked over the note, reading it over quickly, and she knew that it was from Yuli. Wasn’t like anyone else around here would have a reason yet to write something like that to her, because really… Yuli was the only one that had a reason to apologize. She put the note down after reading it over a second time and she reached for the box, opening it up and finding that there was a figurine inside - clearly modeled after herself, capturing her appearance well… Also from Yuli, she knew. It made sense. She figured the thing was glass, Yuli was the one here that manipulated glass, and so… It fit. She lingered, silently as she stood with it in her hand for a moment.

And then she placed it on her desk on the other side of her bed, deciding she’d show it there even if she wasn’t the happiest right now with the person that had given it to her. She decided that this was a good time to pay a visit to Yuli herself, to talk for the first time in… A little over a couple of weeks.

Yuli was in her workshop, little glassblowing workshop she had brought with her to any of their more long term locations. Both because she liked working with glass in her spare time, and because she could use it for her actual gear. Right now though, she was working on a little personal project. It was hard to get the exact size right without using her powers, and this was her fourth try for today. The heat of the furnace had her covered in sweat, and her safety gear didn’t help in the slightest. She could reinforce glass after it was made, but it wasn’t as efficient as what she was doing here. She worked her magic into the glass as she shaped and refined it, like how a smith might add flux to metal as they’re folding it. The workshop was loud, and she was focused on the glass in front of her, not on anything else. Not yet anyway.

Sun watched for a moment as she arrived, standing in the doorway to the workshop, before she finally said something. It was interesting but she hadn’t come here to see this, she had come here… To talk and maybe to come to a resolution to the tension that had lasted for the past couple of weeks with her avoiding Yuli and Yuli largely keeping to herself. “I came to talk,” she said eventually, keeping her statement simple, deciding she’d continue when she caught the attention of Yuli.

Yuli jumped at the sudden voice, messing up the draw she was currently making, overextending and bending the glass in the wrong direction. She sighed and shut off the furnace. Make that four failed attempts for today. She picked it up with her left hand, seemingly not caring about the heat of the still glowing material, and tossed it on the other failed projects. She could reuse the material once she had time, but for now it was just useless. Turning off her equipment, which was quite loud, she pulled her goggles off her eyes, and took off her gloves. She turned and wiped some sweat from her forehead.

“Alright, let’s talk...outside, it’s way too hot in here.”

Sun stepped out into the hallway, nodding, starting to speak as Yuli followed after her but not waiting for her to get in the hall before making her point. “I saw the note you left me… And the figure. I can’t complain about either of them,” she started, but of course, there was something of a catch. Things weren’t going to be as simple as making up because of one thing. “But… I need you to realize that if we’re going to be friends and hang out in the future, you’re going to need to respect the fact that I’m myself. I don’t… Don’t want anyone controlling me just because they think it’s for the better. I do what I do because I want to. I don’t need anyone pushing me to be something else just because it’s off camera.”

“It...wasn’t my intent to control, what I wanted was a chance to talk where no cameras could catch us, and to prevent another controversy. As Lubi painfully pointed out to me, I was treating you like the W...girls back home, who would listen to anything I had to say...within reason. I’m sorry, I wasn’t meaning to try and control you just...was trying to be friendly and help. It went really, really wrong. Can’t change what happened, but I can change how I act in the future.”

As Yuli spoke she tugged off the heavy safety gloves from the workshop, and while there was a brief flash of something odd with her left hand, put her normal single glove back on. Flexing the hand, she made sure it was sitting right before looking at Sun as she kept talking. Once she was one, sighed and shook her head.

“All I can do is say sorry really, no one here can change the past.”

Sun gave Yuli a hard stare, eventually relenting and shrugging. She… Wished they could change the past, but Yuli was right, it wasn’t going to happen. They’d just have to make due with the current situation here in the present. “You wanted a chance to talk about… What? You wanted me to be away from the cameras because you think that I’m going to speak differently when I’m not around them. You think it’s going to make me more open,” she said, leaning against the wall. “And you got offended when I didn’t go along with it as if you’re not the one with expectations and I’m not the one that’s just let you be. But whatev. It’s past, now. No changing it, as much as… As much as I’m sure either of us would want to.”

“It was more...I wanted to continue our previous conversation where it couldn’t blow up like the last one did. In the process though, I overstepped my bounds, and got so wrapped up in what I wanted then when you rejected what I was trying to do, it...hurt. I’m sorry, I’ll be doing my best to avoid it, especially after Lubi spent the last week beating me over the head about how stupid I was.”

Yuli sighed and stretched, she’d been in that workshop for a few hours now. She was thirsty and tired, but she could take care of that after their talk here finished. Normal color was returning to her face as she cooled off, temperatures in the workshop could get very high. She wiped more sweat from her forehead. She would need a shower soon, but first...something to eat and drink.

“Just hope we can start back over and try to be friends.”

Sun paused before extending her hand. “Guess there’s not much more to say other than that we can try,” she said, before shifting her attention to one of the other things she had come here for. “I also wanted to talk to you for another reason. Particularly, I need to head back to Seoul and sort out some things with my… My other team, in Korea. You wanted to know more about me… This might be your best chance yet for that, considering that team is where I grew up.”

Yuli shook Sun’s hand, small smile on her face. She blinked awkwardly for a minute.

“Ah damn it, got some dirt in my eye.”

Reaching up to her left eye, she popped the glass eye out of the socket, and used her powers to shift the glass, forcing the dirt to drop away. After checking it carefully, she popped it back in while considering what Sun had said.

“Well, I’ve always liked Seoul, have some family there. Might be nice to visit.”

She offered Sun a smile as she spoke.

Sun wasn’t that surprised by the fact that Yuli had an artificial eye - well, it was somewhat surprising, but based on her scarred appearance, it didn’t seem like it was unlikely for her specifically to have one. “I think you’ll find it… Informative to see what it’s like where I’m from,” she said, turning away slightly. “I’ll give you some more info in a bit, I need to be there in… A few days. We’ll talk again before heading out.”

“Alright. I’ll talk to you later Sun. For now, I’m going to go eat and take a shower. It gets insanely hot in that worksop with the furnace on.”

Yuli turned and shut the workshop door entirely, locking it with a key she produced from one of her pockets. She turned back to Sun and offered her a wave goodbye before turning and going to go get some food. Yuli was starving at some point, working on the arms was tiring work, and tiring work let her work up an appetite.

by **Lunas Legion** » Tue Jul 30, 2019 4:42 am

SEASON 1 EPISODE 6 // THE MAGNATE’S DAUGHTER PT 1
Collaborative post between Forest State & Lunas Legion

DATE // AUGUST 21ST, 2025
LOCATION // GREATER TORONTO AREA, ONTARIO, CANADA
CAST // Sun ‘Primace’ Choe, Antares Gray, Lupe Cuevas

“It looks like we’re something of a hit so far,” said Lupe Cuevas, sitting in the massive living room within the Team Futures house in Ontario, looking through articles on his phone while staring up at the ceiling and lounging on the couch, Antares not far away elsewhere in the room. “Look at all these articles… Let’s see what some of them say. ‘YOUNG LOVE ON SUPERHERO REALITY SHOW?’” Lupe continued, reading out one of the headlines and then looking to another one. “This one is good… ‘Antares Gray, who is the rising Lights, Money, Heroes! Star?’”

Lupe paused, looking through more pages of articles and social media posts from different sites, searching their names to see what the reaction was like from the initial two episodes. “Looks like some of the articles are curious, some of ‘em are praising, but half the readers seem to think we’re some of the most annoying ones on the show. Can’t win everyone over I guess…?”

“Don’t need to win everyone over.” Antares shrugged. “It’s been two episodes and all they’ve seen of the pair of us is us fucking around, Sun and Yuli and Fayza and even fucking Peyton stole all the screentime during the ‘fight’. We’ll have plenty of time to not be the annoying ones, don’t worry yourself. Peyton will get that title for herself soon enough, insane bitch.”

“I think Peyton gets some points for being crazy hot though. The kinda girl you might fuck around with even though she’s going to stab you,” Lupe remarked, sitting up and looking away from the phone and the articles for now. “You could’ve done more in the fight before and helped us out, ya know. Then again I didn’t do much but uh… Not much help for shapeshifting in a surprise fight like that one, eh?”

“Yeah, I kinda got lost and turned around inside that mansion and I think I took out at least two lights and flew into a chandelier or something.” Antares said, rubbing the front of her head and wincing at the memory of pain. “Anything inside doesn’t suit me, anything inside and in the dark less so. I need space to fly, for fuck’s sake. Just glad that wasn’t on the cameras.”

“Think we’re going to have to get used to doing stuff in buildings, we are in a major city right now,” shrugged Lupe. “Although, they said we were going to be traveling to take jobs in different areas when villains need dealing with. Not sure just who they’re going to have us fighting. Hopefully they’re interesting villains if we’re headed out of town to face ‘em.”

“They won’t send us out of town unless they’ve got something good lined up for the cameras, those’ll be like the special episodes probably. And I guess…” Antares let out a sigh. She didn’t like fighting inside, she was someone who fought better the more room she had to maneuver. “I’ll figure something out, it’s just a matter of leveraging powers right or that’s what the forums always say when comparing power-sets. Not sure how right they are, but I don’t see how it’s wrong.”

It was at that moment that Peyton entered the room, Sun not that far behind her. It was easy to understand why they were here… The team had been told that they would gather for something soon, and after breakfast, Peyton and Sun were likely getting here first. “What’re you two dipshits talking about?” Peyton asked as she entered the large living room, standing near the doorway and scanning with her eyes to see Antares and Lupe already there, the cameras not far behind her. Of course the cameras were there, she had a tendency to… Act out in ways that were perfectly entertaining for the camera.

“Media reaction to the last episodes of the show, nothing that big.” Antares said, not turning to look back towards Peyton. She didn’t exactly like the… Mildly unpredictable girl at the best of times, and the less she had to deal with her the better.

“Media this, media that, I thought we were supposed to be heroes… Guess I’m bored,” Peyton said, walking a bit further into the room with Sun also doing so, although she kept her distance somewhat from Peyton and she was really on her own in this case. “‘Peepeepoopoo, some media head doesn’t like me…’ You guys sound like clowns when you talk about that stuff.”

“Just because you don’t care what everyone thinks about you doesn’t mean all of us do.” Antares shot back, internally groaning. The last thing anyone needed early in the morning was exposure to Peyton.

“You’re right, just because I’m not a clown doesn’t mean that you aren’t,” Peyton continued, moving closer to Antares as if she wanted to draw some kind of response from her. She had said she was bored, so it seemed she was going to fix that problem by making herself a bit of a nuisance to the person who didn’t share her point of view on things.

“I would think she’s more known in the media for being other things than a clown,” Sun remarked slightly smugly, referring to the reactions to episode one, which was the one where Antares had picked up more screen time compared to the lower amount in the second episode. “Not sure if that’s a good thing or not.”

“Oh, fuck off Sun, not all of us are lucky enough to have pre-made fanbases or pre-existing hero whatevers, we have to get ourselves out there somehow.” Antares grumbled, but there was no real heat in her words, just tiredness. It was too early for any of this. “Besides, I don’t really care what the media talks about me as long as they’re talking about me.”

Sun’s reply was calm even with the somewhat hostile nature of Antares’ reply, and it forced a smile from her… One that, if someone read into things, they might identify as a sly smile. “Well, my fanbase wasn’t premade, it might surprise you but all of us on the Gangnam Stars worked for years before they allowed us to form the team. I’m here because of my hard work,” she stated. “I could offer you tips on growing your own fanbase, but I don’t think you’d like them much.”

“I don’t think they’d work, Korea and the US are different when it comes to superheroes and culture and all that stuff, besides, if you figured out how to do it I probably can. Worst comes to worst I just run with the rep I’ve gotten so far and play that up for all it’s worth. Might not be the best angle but fans are fans.” Antares shrugged, slumping down slightly in her seat, grumbling quietly to herself.

“Real celebrities can transcend one country… How do you think BTS ended up being so big here?” said Sun with a shrug. “Like I said, though, I’m sure you wouldn’t be that interested in my advice regardless. You would have to… Clean your act up a bit more. Some parts of the internet might not care much about that stunt you did back during the last fight with your clothes. Brands will, for sure. And the people that make decisions on these kind of teams.”

“Still got time to clean it up, that stunt wasn’t exactly intentional. When Svetlana comes running into your room shouting her head off and telling you to get somewhere you get somewhere and don’t exactly think about certain things like clothes.” Antares groaned. “I’m not exactly used to this, so I panicked, and I guess I’m stuck with being that hero now probably. Not like pics will just go away, but I guess it’s better than being a nobody with powers.”

Sun rolled her eyes at the casual attitude of Antares about such matters but didn’t say much more. The talk was interrupted somewhat when Svetlana entered the room once again, possibly with news about whatever it was they were supposed to get information about… The reason they had been called to the living room in the first place.

“You’re being gathered here because we’re filming for the arrival of a new team member… Specifically Noelle Ethier. I’m sure some of you might recognize the last name if you have any ties to this area and that’s because she is indeed the daughter of Alexandre Ethier, the man that owns significant stake in half the hero teams from here to Montreal, as well as some in France. Yes, we’re aware that this is a late addition, but we were informed that after initially being invited to the show and turning it down, Noelle has changed her decision following the new popularity of the show… There will be a helicopter arriving in a few minutes. See to it that you’re around for it and ready to meet the newest member of the team.”

“Great…” Antares groaned, rolling her eyes. “Congrats I guess people, we’ve done too well and now we have some rich fuck buying her way in or something. Probably. Or maybe she won’t be that bad, who knows?” But Antares had a bad feeling about this, this was TV and they wouldn’t just allow a late entry unless it was going to improve the ratings, and given what people watched shows like this for, that was not a good sign.

by **Forest State** » Wed Jul 31, 2019 2:51 am

SEASON 1 EPISODE 7 // THE MAGNATE’S DAUGHTER PT 2
Collaborative post between Forest State & Durmatagno

DATE // AUGUST 21ST, 2025
LOCATION // GREATER TORONTO AREA, ONTARIO, CANADA
CAST // Lubi Yeh-Jin, Fayza ‘Nefertet’ Ghazaway, & Noelle ‘Lux’ Ethier

The facilities at the Team Futures house were known to be of a high quality, and it made sense somewhat considering the worth of the organizations that were paying for this, the Hero League and one of their main corporate partners specifically. That included the training facilities, which were some of the best ones around for a hero team that had only just been formed less than a month ago. Despite the newness of the team they still had world class facilities and a gym which was equipped with just about everything someone could need to get in shape for fighting as a hero - including areas for mock fights to prepare for the real ones. One of those fights happened to be going on right now, not long after everyone had eaten breakfast. Later, there was supposedly something of note happening. Something they’d all be gathered for. Right now, however, there was a sparring match to conduct, within the sprawling gym in the part which was covered in mats rather than training equipment.

It wasn’t a proper cage or anything like that but it was a wide area with room to move forward and backwards and side to side as far as one needed without running the risk of slamming into a piece of training equipment or a wall. And in this case, the one looking over the fight which was about to happen was the instructor Young-gi Kang, someone that was… Experienced in combat to an extent himself. “You know the rules of this fight already… No powers, avoid going full speed enough to cause an injury, and the fight will last either five minutes or until someone is dropped or taps out… May the best hero win, I’ll be watching,” Kang said with folded arms as both Lubi and Fayza prepared to go at each other, standing about fifteen meters apart from each other in opposing directions, staring each other down in preparation for the start.

Lubi rubbed one shoulder as she got ready for the start. Her golden eyes kept a watch on Fayza, making sure they wouldn’t come at her before she was ready. Her hand to hand was alright, but she preferred guns, which was funny considering the close range nature of her power. Either way, she still had some basic training, nothing one could really call a specific martial art, but a variety of techniques, though she was better at grapples and throws than she was with striking. She got into position, waiting for the signal to start. She didn’t know what exactly Fayza knew, but she knew she was going to do her best to win this.

“Fight!”

The callout from Young-gi came and immediately, Lubi’s opponent sprang forwards, taking quick strides which covered a lot of ground thanks to her somewhat out of the ordinary size - well, out of the ordinary was an understatement, she was practically a giant at 6’10” and all of her weight was quickly thrown into an attack from the very beginning, in the form of a flying knee sent in the direction of Lubi as Fayza propelled herself off the ground right after the fight had begun, extending one knee forward in position to connect with Lubi’s face if it managed to hit… The flying knee was always a risky move, of course, and it was even harder for it to connect right at the beginning of a fight like this.

Lubi was fairly big herself, standing at 6’5”, but still Fayza was bigger than her. That meant she had a reach and weight advantage. Lubi stepped smoothly to the side, and brought her leg around in a roundhouse where she thought Fayza would land. She wasn’t amazing at this striking game, but getting into a grapple with someone Fayza’s size was a no go till she knew more about how she moved and fought. Whether or not the roundhouse connected, Lubi pushed herself back once it was done, increasing the distance between herself and her opponent.

The kick was indeed enough to deflect Fayza off her path, sending the giant tumbling violently to the ground, but it wasn’t enough to keep her down for very long even as she did land roughly, eventually rolling onto her feet and going into a low crouch, before propeling herself once again, having saved some of the momentum from being thrown to the ground and redirecting it into sending herself as hard as she could towards Lubi’s legs, looking to wrap them up and drag her onto the ground.

Lubi tried to side step again, she got one leg out of the way, but Fayza managed to grab the other one, and with it, knock Lubi onto her back. She didn’t just sit idle though, with her free leg she started kicking at Fayza’s arms as she tried to get herself on top. Either she was breaking Fatza’s hold, or they were going to fight for control of this grapple. Either way, with Fayza’s size she still had the advantage here, and Lubi needed to take it quickly. If powers were allowed this fight would probably be over the moment Fayza touched her. Lubi would make her feel enough pain to put most people in a ball.

Fayza focused all of her efforts on the one leg which she had been able to take control of, holding onto it and tightening her grip with both arms, rolling as if she was a crocodile trying to rip apart its prey which was caught in its jaw, her hands moving down as she shifted her grip towards the ankle and went into a crank, doing her best to apply passive pressure by forcing it into a different direction, a hold that was… Painful to say the least for the person that was on the bottom. And her aim was partly to limit the options Lubi had in terms of movement to keep her from being able to get on top. If she did shift dramatically, it’d likely increase the amount of pain she felt.

Lubi gritted her teeth against the pain, even if she ripped tendons to break the grip, she could heal that. Pain itself wasn’t much of a factor for stopping her, even when healing her powers liked to cause pain, she’d gotten used to it over the years. She twisted, and despite the pain, brought herself on top of Fayza to start raining blows onto her, going for the abdomen, she couldn’t quite reach her head till she let go. She was going to make Fayza let go one way or another, and after a few more blows, shifted her attention to Fayza’s ribs.

The Egyptian did release her grip of Lubi’s ankle, shifting her attention to throwing punches at the person on top of her, deciding the best choice right now would be to force Lubi off of her and stand up, giving her another chance to try again and take a bit of a different approach this time… Or to do better with the same approach, after wearing down a bit on her opponent.

With the grip on her ankle released, Lubi rolled away and got back to her feet, ready for the aggressive charges of her opponent now. She shifted back into a stance that looked like it was most ready to kick Fayza, but was in reality so she could get out of the way and capitalize on Fayza being off balance from her aggressive attacks. She silently cursed that powers weren’t allowed, but this was about skill and training, not winning, so she’d put up with it.

Fayza also reached her feet, sizing up the situation before moving into her next attack - she did indeed lunge forward, covering a lot of ground quickly, but she did something a bit different this time rather than repeating the previous attack outright. She charged in but where it seemed like she was going to go low, she level changed at the last moment that was possible to change her move, aiming to hook her arms under Lubi’s and lift her in the air to slam her back down to the ground if she managed to get her hands on her in the first place with this somewhat risky move.

Lubi rolled to the side, the aggressive tackles of Fayza were too much for her with her skill. She couldn’t counter them, she just had to avoid them. Once back on her feet, she twirled quickly, and tried to keep Fayza from recovering by pressuring her with rapid punches, going again mostly for the same midsection and ribs she had earlier, though she kept it varied enough to go for the face and torso as well. Fayza was a little predictable right now, she just kept going for charges to try and grab or slam Lubi.

The quick movement to the side resulted in Fayza ending up on the ground again, skidding for a second before ending up facing Lubi once again as she came to a halt, pushing herself up from where she had fallen only to find the punches pressuring her - she moved with surprising speed of her own, getting caught by some of the body shots but rolling her upper body and head well, knowing when to lean back or when to duck low to slip punches, going on the back foot and letting Lubi pressure her without much opposition before lashing out hard with a kick that was aimed at the lead shin of her opponent, with force she hadn’t yet shown before in a punching or kicking attack. She was mixing it up a bit more - and going to something she hadn’t shown yet during this match.

Lubi had gotten overconfident, and the kick...hurt. She backed away quickly, unwilling to stay in range for a follow up. That was going to bruise, though once the fight was over she could get rid of it, she didn’t want to break the no powers rule, even where she could probably get away with it. She resumed her stance, now favoring her right leg instead of the left she had been leading with. One way or another, the next exchange would probably end this. Lubi decided that if that was the case, she was going to switch things up and be more aggressive herself. Stepping forward, she went for a heavy push kick aimed for her opponents gut. It was risky, but if it connected it would hurt, if it didn’t her opponent would probably have her leg.

The kick did catch Fayza as she was coming in to go for another takedown, hitting her in the midsection and leaving her off balance as her momentum was redirected somewhat and she found herself losing speed from the kick, backing off and raising her guard to see what Lubi was going to do next, pacing carefully, moving backwards ever so slightly as if she expected that some kind of counter would come out of the kick landing. For someone that was as aggressive as her, her fight IQ wasn’t the worst in the world.

Lubi couldn’t just let her opponent recover from the kick catching her. She stepped forward and started to bring a side kick against Fayza, before suddenly reversing, and ripping around for a spinning heel kick. She was sweating now, Fayza was definitely better than her, her only hope was that she’d landed more solid blows because of Fayza’s focus on takedowns instead of strikes before now. Again she briefly considering using her power, a sudden spike of bone on the heel would make this kick far worse, but she didn’t. She’d rather not cause trouble by cheating.

She’d find that her kick connected with the head of her opponent, perhaps somewhat luckily, perhaps because Fayza was getting ready to come in for her own attack and left herself in the wrong place at the wrong time because of it - regardless the fight was essentially over there and it was apparent that it was over at that point, with the giant falling backwards, quite obviously not in control of her fall or even one hundred percent conscious as the knockout blow was landed. “That’ll be it,” said Young-gi from the background as Fayza hit the mat, still for a couple of moments before she sat up, realizing the situation she was in and… The fact that she hadn’t won the fight.

Lubi collapsed onto her back, panting as the pain in her leg and ankle snapped into full focus. Sitting up, she looked down at the swelling, she’d definitely sprained something in the fight. Putting her hand on the swollen ankle, the swelling began to dissipate, but not without more pain coursing through her, causing her to grit her teeth. No matter what she tried she couldn’t get rid of the pain. She’d deal with the shin later, but a large bruise was already visible, and it’d just get worse from there. Pushing herself back to her feet, she offered her hand to Fayza.

The massive Egyptian looked up at her former opponent standing over her, but rolled over onto her side and pushed herself up rather than accepting the gesture, moving towards the edge of the mat where their instructor was standing and watching. She paused, looking back over her shoulder. “That only happened because they would have complained if I broke your ankle on TV,” she remarked, referring to the original hold she had established following her opening takedown.

“Go for it. I can patch it back up once the match is over. Not the first time I’ve had to, won’t be the last. My last instructor broke three of my ribs because I wasn’t being aggressive enough.”

Lubi shrugged, pain was nothing new to her, and when she could patch it up the moment the sparring match was called, she would put up with it. Her English still wasn’t the best, she’d only started learning it about a year before joining this thing. Still, it could have been worse. She’d had a patient teacher. She rubbed her shin were the bruise was, using it to keep her grounded. Fayza wasn’t even using her full strength there.

Fayza lingered for one more moment, still looking over her shoulder at Lubi, before she started off deeper into the house without saying anything more, her original response speaking for itself and not requiring her to say anything else about what she thought of the result of that match. As she continued on, Young-gi looked down at his phone and a message from one of the producers, apparently. “Everyone is wanted in the living room for more filming, it appears today is the day when the new team member is arriving… Get yourself ready to show up there soon.”

There had been some talk in the living room about the new arrival that was going to be showing up there, and it seemed that a lot of what had been said was being confirmed by the fact that said new arrival was showing up in a helicopter of all things, at the helipad behind the house… The Ethier family didn’t spare any expenses when it came to things like this and everyone inside had heard the sound of a descending helicopter before the rotors went silent and after a few moments, the cameras started rolling as none other than their new teammate herself, Noelle Ethier, emerged from outside.

“You may know her because her father has a hand in a number of the hero teams from here and Montreal, and is considering entering contention for the position of Prime Minister here in Canada, or you may have seen her before as a junior hero in the past few years, but for now, you’ll know her as your teammate… Noelle Ethier is going to be joining us as a member of the team here,” said Svetlana, gesturing to the white haired girl, who entered in a way that was befitting of her, her outfit seemingly picked out just for this occasion and her hair swaying behind her perfectly, almost in a way that was… Perfect enough to be manufactured, the same type of look that one might see on the cover of some magazine or in a music video rather than real life.

And yet, the magnate’s daughter was indeed standing in front of them in reality, and while there were things about this show that were fake, this wasn’t one of them as far as anyone knew. They really were dealing with someone fairly well known, someone that had connections much higher than most of them could dream of at this point in their careers. Her look, however, wasn’t… The warmest in the world, it seemed like her status was also matched by her arrogance, or at least that was the impression most would get just from taking a casual glance at how she appeared when she first showed up. Like she expected the others to clap for her or something.

Commentary From The Cast

-] NASH LINWOOD // “You just saw your new teammate for the first time…”

-] SUN CHOE // “We’ll see how things go with her…”

-] PEYTON CHASE // “I think she looks like a clown.”

-] NOELLE ETHIER // “She says I look like a clown but I don’t even know who she is…”

-] LUBI YEH-JIN // “She looked like she was expecting more from her entrance.”

-] NOELLE ETHIER // “What can I say? I think I’m a valuable addition to this team.”

-] LUBI YEH-JIN // “Everyone thinks that, if we didn’t we wouldn’t be here. Let’s just see how you handle yourself. Like the hair though.”

-] NOELLE ETHIER // “Whatever, I already know what I can do as a hero, that’s more than you can say.”

-] LUBI YEH-JIN // “True, I was raised in the not-so-good parts of South Korea. Didn’t exactly let me keep track of teams over here.”

-] NOELLE ETHIER // “Do me a favor and Google me when you get a chance.”

Eden Network 2025-2026 All Rights Reserved®

Lubi stayed at the back of the room, quiet and observant as always. Leaning against the wall, arms crossed, and generally just staying out of the way. It was just how she was. How she’d grown up. It was better to watch and learn than it was to make a fool of yourself, or run your mouth for no good reason. If it was important, they would talk, otherwise Lubi would just stay out of the way. Besides, it got people to underestimate her, which was always a good thing in her mind.

Noelle’s eyes scanned the room as the rest of the group looked her over, and she seemed to be checking them out also. Exactly what her goals were, and what she was thinking, it was hard to determine at this point. It was still too early, they didn’t know her, but at the same time… It didn’t seem like there was much trust on either side in this relationship of theirs, between Noelle and her new team. “Not the response that I was expecting,” she said when she noticed that there wasn’t… Much of anything in terms of immediate reaction, just awkward tension.

She started towards the stairwell which would lead up the upper floors where their rooms were located and everyone was actually staying. The cameras, however, had already captured what they needed and that was the awkward standoff between the newest member of the team and the others - if it could be called a standoff, one side hadn’t exactly done much in it after all. But it seemed like for better or worse there would be a definite tension going into the next episodes going forward, considering some of the feelings that seemed to be going around the room about the newest member.

by **Lunas Legion** » Wed Jul 31, 2019 5:40 pm

SEASON 1 EPISODE 8 // T.N.B
Collaborative post between Forest State & Lunas Legion

DATE // AUGUST 25TH, 2025
LOCATION // TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA
CAST // Noelle ‘Lux’ Ethier, Antares ‘Khione’ Gray, Fayza ‘Nefertet’ Ghazaway

While Toronto was often stated to be a modern and cleaner version of New York City, and was definitely one of the main tourist attractions in Canada, it was still like any city in that it had its good and its bad parts. Some of those areas where there had been increased crime, metahuman or otherwise, had been marked by the Hero League for patrol, with much of this being handled by their main team in the city, the Toronto Northmen - that wasn’t to say there weren’t other teams. In a city such as this one, with millions of people living within its borders and its greater metropolitan area, there was practically an entire ecosystem of teams that had been set up to keep control of everything, some of them Hero League affiliated and some of them not.

The scene here rivaled New York City in its complexity and it was the world that the members of Team Futures were stepping into, as they went out into the city under the watch of the Toronto Northmen to see for themselves what it was like to patrol some of those more dangerous areas they had heard about. Of course, they weren’t headed out to address some immediate threat, so there wasn’t that much pressure for the team of Antares, Noelle, and Fayza, who had been sent a few blocks away from the Northmen to work on their own before the teams would meet up once again when they had finished covering the entire area.

Some people had recognized them and asked for autographs or pictures - they were a Toronto team now, after all, a part of the local city even if they came from all over and didn’t actually have any members that were from Toronto unless one counted Noelle, who spent significant time in Montreal and in Paris rather than in the English speaking world. But the stoppages were fine, it wasn’t like they were in too much of a rush here… If anything, their presence in these neighborhoods was more to discourage crime from happening. It wasn’t exactly the highest chances that they would run into something happening every time they went out, but most people would be more reluctant to commit crimes in an area where superheroes were seen in the flesh.

As for what they had actually gotten done, it had been mostly lowkey work so far. Antares had been able to fly to get someone’s cat out of a tree, they had watched as Noelle performed CPR on someone that had collapsed… Things that were good for PR, but it wasn’t exactly anything that people needed a superhero to do rather than a regular person, and it wasn’t action packed either. It was on Noelle’s mind - whether they would get some action today or not, that was, as they neared the end of the blocks that they had to patrol. They were set to meet the Northmen again soon enough and they’d head back to the team house, the cameras having gotten the footage they needed for the show and the League being satisfied with the amount of ground they’d covered.

Except, everything… Just wasn’t right at the moment.

“I feel something in the air,” said Noelle, a powerful magic user herself who had trained since childhood in the art. She stopped in her tracks, focusing on the feeling of… Magic being around. Magic that was just as strong as hers and wasn’t far from her, something that was hard to describe but definitely something that could be felt. It almost felt like the difference in air pressure that was present before rain - it wasn’t something most people could readily describe, but just about anyone could notice the difference. Although in this case, she was the only one in the group of heroes that was able to feel it. “Magic users around here, and I feel their presence heavily.”

“So… What then?” Antares asked, lazily turning over in the air as she flew above the group, rolling her eyes at Noelle going all Lord of the Rings on them with what she’d said at first. “There’s three of us, you say users so I’m going to spitball more than three of them, and given we’ve been a bit of a minor media circus I’m guessing someone’s decided to end the show. How powerful, at a guess between however many there are of them?” That was just a better way of asking the age-old question of ‘can we take them’.

“I can’t say just yet,” Noelle replied, closing her eyes and shifting her focus entirely on the magic she felt in the area, noting that it was getting somewhat closer to them. She took a deep breath, controlling her breathing and slowing it somewhat as she directed her own abilities towards detection rather than action. “I think… There’s a couple, at least. Can’t say how powerful either but this isn’t exactly some random people that just happen to be magic capable. They’re definitely trained.”

“I’ll up those numbers to four then, maybe five at a stretch, but I’m still guessing here.” Antares said, a hint of worry creeping into her voice. Three versus maybe five unknowns, probably four, but more than them and their own powers were a known quantity given how much TV time they’d had.

Team Futures Communications Channel
Hero League Communications Network
-] Antares Gray // KHIONE // “Lux has noticed unidentified magic presences, no numbers but she says they’re trained, at a rough guess equal numbers to us at a minimum. Advise engage or withdrawal?”

-] DISPATCH // MAGIC // “Await further orders… We’ll see where the second team in your area is currently located.”

-] [NORTHMEN] // Raphael Maddox // DEEPFREEZE // “You can remain in your current position… Our team should only be about three to four blocks from your location.”

-] Antares Gray // KHIONE // “Got that, holding position.”

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED HERO LEAGUE 2025-2026®

“Dispatch says hold position, the Northmen’s team are only three to four blocks away.” Antares said, the knowledge that reinforcements were relatively close seemingly having had a calming effect on her.

“Guess we will then,” said Noelle, although she didn’t stand calmly, she moved to use her ability to form a blade and a small shield out of hard light, the blade going into her right hand and the shield going onto her left arm, attached near the wrist so he didn’t need to hold onto it. Although, the diameter of the thing wasn’t large enough to stop major blows, but the smaller size allowed her to not expend too much energy making it and it allowed her to keep her mobility up also.

“Well… We might get some action,” Fayza spoke for the first time in a while. She didn’t do anything with her powers just yet, she simply looked around, her eyes scanning the surrounding area for any threat-

The threat showed up faster than any of them, even Noelle, could imagine, in the form of a blur - no, it was an actual person that had the guts to pull off a crazy move like this - that flew from the top of a nearby building, a multi story apartment, while firing a barrage of shots in their general direction, each one made of light seemingly. A laser attack? Each of the bolts wasn’t that large but there was a barrage of them all over the general area, and they were coming down like rain from above as the person fired the shots while falling from the top of the building, but it seemed gravity was only going to have its effect for so long as the person who had fired the barrage quickly blinked out of view, disappearing but leaving behind the hail of attacks which were headed towards the three heroes.

“Fuck me.” Antares swore, moving to swoop upwards, hoping to get out of the path of the attacks, turning around in midair to try and spot where their attacker had seemingly teleported off to.

“Check.”

The second burst of attacks, however, was directed up and from behind the current position of Antares. In the same direction that the voice had come from… Their opponent had ended up behind them, forcing Noelle and Fayza to turn around as both of them evaded to see where the threat was now, Fayza quickly bringing up a pillar of hardened dirt through the pavement of the road and Noelle going into a defensive stance with her shield forward. But it didn’t seem like the attacker was focusing on them. She’d fired another dozen or so small blast towards Antares from behind as soon as she moved upwards.

“Mate.”

She spoke again once the barrage was in the air, and they were able to get a decent look at her now that she’d stopped moving, spotting a relatively young looking face and an outfit that didn’t look all that out of the usual from what a civilian would wear. Noelle supposed it might help with blending in but it wasn’t every day that someone saw a villain wearing a plain skirt and a rather average jacket, almost as if she was coming back from some prep school that had a uniform as such. And yet, this wasn’t an average person, it was clear how trained her movements were, how trained her powers were… But when Noelle reached out to focus on her, she knew immediately that this wasn’t a magic user and that those she had detected earlier were still around.

“Very much fuck me-” Antares cursed again, this time just killing her flight and aiming to drop under the barrage, trusting gravity to move her faster than she could change direction. Normally she’d have more room to maneuver, being outdoors, but cities had buildings, and she couldn’t exactly fly into buildings, so going airborne was just making herself an easy obvious target as she shot back down towards the ground.

The lasers flew over Antares’ head, the attack narrowly missing as Fayza expanded the shield in front of her while attempting to raise the ground under their attacker to throw her off balance - however, Fayza’s power was weakened by the distance and they would soon find that there wasn’t just one attacker in the area, as Noelle had already deciphered. “Look up!” Noelle shouted, gesturing into the air as they spotted another person moving from the top of a building, someone slower this time, a female figure who was moving on wings of… Magic it seemed, just from the appearance.

If one had to describe the wings, saying that they were made out of purple fire would be somewhat accurate, and yet they were able to hold their owner up in the sky, before the magic user started to drop down onto the street in the opposite direction from the first attacker, as if to cut off the other end of the street and prevent a retreat from the heroes who were caught between the two. But what her abilities were wasn’t something that was immediately apparent - she seemed a little bit older than the first figure, dark hair escaping a hood that she had pulled up that cast a shadow over her face and obscured it somewhat, and her figure was more noticable, it was clear that she had more feminine curves and features than the other girl, who looked a bit more ‘normal’. Whether the appearance was natural or influenced by magic was unclear, both of those options were entirely possible.

But just because there was a pretty face there didn’t mean that their opponent wasn’t dangerous. She seemed aligned with the other girl, she definitely wasn’t one of the Northmen that had been deployed to this area now to help them. It didn’t seem like that team was going to get here soon enough for that. “Showtime’s over, ‘huns,” said the second figure, extending one arm to her side as the same purple fire was cast onto the ground behind her, not having an immediate effect.

“Part of something bigger,” Noelle growled, identifying the fire as being part of some kind of larger casting process. “We’re not going to be able to do much outnumbered between them… You two should get the fuck out of here, I’ll take the weaker one,” she added, channeling more magical energy into her shield and the weapon that was in her hand to strengthen the both of them.

“Then you’re sure as hell not going to do anything by yourself.” Antares growled out, now hovering barely half a foot above the ground, flecks of white ice beginning to orbit around her as she used her power to create ice she could use. “And the Northmen aren’t that far away, we can hold.”

“I’m not asking!”

Noelle’s statement was practically a shout as she discarded the shield entirely and shifted to dual wielding blades, one of them a rapier and the other one, the one that she had originally formed, a blade with a sharper end, made for slashing… Most people couldn’t fight with both at the same time but it helped that Noelle was the one manipulating the weight, shifting them to both fit her fighting style. She turned around, going back on her word that she was going to go for the weaker one, instead starting her run towards the opposing mage, ready for a fight.

She’d trained for this long enough. “Get out of here,” she said one more time, looking over her shoulder at her teammates as Fayza did obey the command, moving for an alleyway between two of the buildings that their group was wedged between. As Noelle charged into the range of the enemy mage, an attack didn’t come from the mage herself but from what was constructed out of the purple fire, which shifted from burning harmlessly on the ground to a number of constructs which were under the control of the mage… They took the form of skeletons, a number of them, that number seeming to grow every second as it went from two to three and then to six of them.

Except, each one wasn’t very durable, with Noelle dispelling one of them by stabbing through it with her rapier, swinging around and taking the head off another one with her stronger blade, forcing it to dissipate. The other mage didn’t intend to do the fighting herself… Noelle felt herself being surrounded and went defensive to avoid getting mobbed by the skeletons, but as she looked behind them, she could swear she saw the other mage smile at her in a condescending way, almost a smirk, as she worked on beating back the disposable minions.

“Fine then, you stupid bitch.” Antares grumbled to herself, slowly moving to head in the same direction that Fayza had been going but throwing the occasional accelerated shard of ice off into the mass of skeletons, trying to thin the numbers around Noelle and at least keep her from getting surrounded by her own stupidity and overconfidence.

It became hard to see what was going on around Noelle, the visible sights being her blades flashing in the sun as the hard light constructs tore through enemy after enemy, only for them to be replaced by more as the one who had summoned them stood behind the battle line with a smirk on her face as if it was amusing that her hero counterpart couldn’t break through to her. But the ones who had fled weren’t going to escape without being pursued, because there was still the threat of the other girl who was able to teleport, who suddenly appeared nearly directly behind Fayza and Antares as they ended up in the alleyway.

“Where do ya think you’re going?” she said from behind them, but she wasn’t the only one that was there in that alley… They would see that someone else was calmly walking from around the corner there, having showed up with the others that were apart of this mysterious team apparently. This figure was male, and tall, dressed in black which seemed to match the black hair of the boy, a white mask covering part of his face but leaving a bit exposed around the left eye, something of a stylistic choice. Didn’t seem like this team cared too much about concealing identities, anyway.

Perhaps more peculiarly, the black shirt which was worn by the boy was marked by red lettering in an aggressive font, but it was only three letters with no explanation for what they meant. T.N.B. That was the only clue they had right now of a possible affiliation of this group, but T.N.B. didn’t exactly mean anything to any of the heroes in the Futures Program. Maybe it would be the words of the boy that gave them more of a clue. “You support the actions of murderers…” the boy said with a chuckle. “We’ll see how comfortable you are in the position of your victims, soon.”

“Think we’ll pass.” Antares snarked, moving to face the opposite direction that Fayza was facing so they weren’t quite back-to-back, but it was close enough to count as she spun her vortex of ice shards faster, extending the orbit so that it almost covered the side of the alleyway she was facing, back the way they’d come, the temperature in the alleyway taking a noticeable dive as she used her other power on it. They needed to get out of here, or at least not die until the Northmen showed up. Whether Noelle survived just didn’t factor in at this point to her, she’d made her own, albeit stupid, choice.

The boy that was facing Fayza wasn’t all too concerned, holding up a small portable video camera while the girl backed up out of the range of the ice vortex but kept her vision trained on Antares. “Fly and I’ll shoot you out of the sky,” she threatened, while the boy remained calm.

“Since you chase after media attention instead of fighting for a better world…” the boy started, pressing a button to start recording with the video camera. “I’ll do you a favor and allow you to become martyrs on camera.”

”I’ll do you a favor and allow you to become martyrs on camera…”

Fayza was able to put up a shield in front of herself out of hardened dirt, after struggling to rip it up through the concrete, but she hadn’t realized that the threat was coming from the other side. At the command from the boy who seemed to be the ringleader, the girl with the lasers released another barrage directly into the alleyway, and Fayza had just cut off their path to getting out of the place and left them with no escape options other than upwards or pushing past the girl, both of the options presenting them with significant risks from the lasers.

Antares might’ve cultivated a certain image on camera, but that didn’t mean she was completely stupid, slamming herself into the ground and pulling Fayza down with her to avoid the barrage, something somewhere cracking and making her wince in pain as she hit the ground hard from dodging. She wasn’t sure she could actually carry Fayza even if she wanted to fly, and if she did fly with her they’d both likely be sitting ducks as she briefly looked upwards, eyeballing the distance.

No, those buildings were too high to simply fly up and over while using her shards for cover, which left forwards which was… Not the best option, but really at this point forwards was the only option. And of the pair of them, neither was particularly tough, and Fayza’s powers likely wouldn’t be much use in a breakout. Which, of course, left the job to her.

Brilliant.

Antares pushed herself up briefly, not enough to make herself much more of a target, as if she was a sprinter waiting for a starting gun, more ice swirling into the vortex in the alley in front of her. It wasn’t hard cover, but it made it harder to see for both sides. So she waited for the girl to make herself a target, something she could launch herself at from behind the barrage of her shards.

She responded with her own barrage of lasers as a counter to the vortex of ice, aiming to protect herself from as many of the shards as she could, although some of them did hit and she would find that Antares had hit also, slamming into her midsection and sending the both of them to the ground… At about the same time that the sound of jets could be heard and someone touched down behind the group from the sky, large rifle pointed in the direction of the villain.

“Do not worry… The situation is under control.”

It was the voice of one of the Northmen’s more prominent members, Rocket Man, who didn’t have powers himself in the traditional sense but was a good enough engineer to construct the suit of semi powered flying armor that he was using right now in battle. Made sense that he was the first one over, it was easier to move through a dense city like this through the air than it was on the ground. The man spun around, aiming the rifle at the summoner who was engaged with a battle by proxy with Noelle, firing several explosive rounds in the direction of the mage and forcing her to reform the wings that she had been using before to back off in retreat, the constructs disappearing away from Noelle as the mage was forced to shift her focus away from keeping them around.

It seemed they were somewhat safe for now, it was impossible to tell where the last member of the group was but one of them had retreated while the other one was stuck in a bad position and had a rifle pointed at her once Rocket Man shifted attention back towards the situation on the ground, hovering about four to five feet off the ground while Antares lay on top of the downed opponent.

“You can say that when this one’s as contained as we can get her and the others have been run off or whatever.” Antares said, rolling her eyes and moving to cover their captive’s eyes and keep her pinned to the ground. It didn’t matter what powers you had, using them while blind tended to be problematic at best, impossible at worst. But things were looking up a little, at least for now.

The girl that was under Antares paused before speaking out. “I fight for justice and you fight because people watch it. If I die, that’s more that you can say,” she said… And she took advantage of the mistake that Antares had made by closing into close range with her and tackling her, firing directly into her opponent multiple times, burning her arms as she grabbed onto them and shot from point blank range, eventually moving her hand and attempting to jam it under Antares’ chin to fire a shot into her neck.

Antares reflexively shot backwards, screaming out loudly in pain as she tore away from the girl, her face contorted into a mix of pain and rage from the burns she could feel along her arms as she summoned her ice shards and simply threw them at the girl, not caring if she lived or died at that point, only focused on getting rid of her and getting away from her.

The girl on the bottom winced at the shards going into her but it didn’t stop her from aiming one more smaller barrage of six or seven shots with her left hand before she took advantage of the chaos and her enemy backing up to disappear in a flash of light, leaving the scene behind and leaving them with the final result of this battle… They had won, it seemed. But it didn’t feel like a victory as much as it felt like they had just survived a fight that they were outmatched in, with the help of someone who had entered the picture rather late.

“Lesson learned, kill bitches and don’t bother trying to take them into custody.” Antares muttered to herself, wincing at the burns on her arms as the air around her cooled, trying to lessen the pain ever so slightly from the cooler temperatures. Trying to be merciful had just gotten her injured and she would not be making that mistake again.

Some of the other members of the Northmen were arriving on the scene now but they hadn’t gotten here soon enough to participate in the fight itself. They were able, however, to secure the perimeter and make sure that there were no more threats around. Noelle, on the other hand, had come out of her fight alive but didn’t look like she was one hundred percent in tact, with an injury on her abdomen standing out in particular… The wound wasn’t a normal one but one that had been dealt with magic, a faint purple glow existing around it that indicated the presence of the same magical energy that had been wielded by their enemy.

“Who the hell were they even?” she asked, making her way over to the others, having desummoned her blades once it was clear that the fight was over, placing her hands on her knees as she bent over slightly in exhaustion from fighting with two swords and taking out a couple dozen disposable constructs in the time that Antares and Fayza had been in the alley.

“Wherever they were, they’re here now, doesn’t matter.” Antares said with a pained wince, her arms still stinging. “I’ve got no idea who those self-righteous fucks were but I want them dead more than anyone else on this planet right now.”

Not long after they had gotten back from their excursion near downtown Toronto, where their fight had been located, the team would hear news about a video that was going around the internet and that was becoming the talk of the hero forums and other such sites… It was also ending up on some of the more mainstream news sites, having taken grasp of the collective attention of plenty of people due to the fact that it was riding off the success of the reality show up to this point. It was, after all, one of the most viewed shows on TV, even for viewers who didn’t follow the superhero world too in depth.

The video was rather ominous, of course.

On the screen at the beginning were two of the figures that they had fought in the earlier battle, their demeanor not too serious as if they didn’t seem shaken by the encounter despite being forced to retreat. There was the boy from the alleyway and there was also the summoner, this time with her hood pulled back to reveal longer black hair and purple eyes, another sign that something was off about her… She was definitely a good mage, and it seemed magic was something that was in her bloodline judging from her eyes. The two of them seemed to be recording from the top of some building.

“This is TNB Shogun,” said the boy, wearing the same black shirt from earlier underneath a black leather jacket, the same words marked in red visible across his chest. But it didn’t seem they were showing just what TNB meant at this moment. “And this is TNB Witch. You may not know who we are, because from what I’ve been told by our sympathetic friends within the Hero League, we have been ‘banned from TV’ so to speak. The fight where we nearly defeated your reality heroes, who needed the Toronto Northmen to bail them out, is not one that will appear on your show.”

“Because, of course, it would make your heroes look bad, and we can’t have that, can we?” Shogun continued, chuckling at the camera. “But, I think our plight is one that deserves attention, and since the producers are determined to protect their image of their team, I think we’ll have to take more drastic measures and force people to pay attention to us.”

Witch giggled, moving to take the center position in front of the camera, looking into it with her eyes now that her hood was pulled back. “Unless our footage is shown on TV by the Hero League and their team, we’ll be seeing you again, Team Futures. And this time we’ll be at full strength, so watch out! I think you’ll find that our team is much stronger together.”

Shogun stepped back in front of the screen, leaning closer as the camera focused on his one eye that was fully exposed by the mask. “You’ll get your due as apologists for murder in due time. The next time we see you… I suspect you’re going to be in a race to come to us. Well, that’s the only hint we’re going to be giving away for now. Closing words, Witch?”

Shogun stepped away, allowing Witch to close out the video. “I hope you aren’t afraid of heights, Team Futures. Because if you won’t show us on TV… We might just have to have this fight where everyone can see it.”

The screen went black and the video ended on that note, an ominous one that carried a threat with it. Whoever they were, it seemed like they were out for media attention and they were out to fight with the new team specifically, either because of some kind of grudge or because they wanted to steal the fame the team was currently finding themselves with.

Either way, it wasn’t the kind of video that gave a good impression for the future.

by **Durmatagno** » Wed Jul 31, 2019 11:33 pm

SEASON 1 EPISODE 9 // BLOOD ON THE CONCRETE
Collaborative post between Forest State & Durmatagno

DATE // AUGUST 25TH, 2025
LOCATION // SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA
CAST // Sun ‘Primace’ Choe & Yuli Rose

It had been one day since they arrived at the Incheon airport and made the trek to Seoul by train, before heading into the inner parts of the city where they were set to stay with Sun’s old team for a bit… The reasons why they were staying with them remained to be seen, it seemed that Sun also had some business here to work out with them, and it wasn’t just for sentimental reasons. But after they had arrived late in the night following their flight, this would be the first day that they would actually be up and around the team. Tense, maybe, considering the fact that there was something going on between them. Tension, one could call it.

One party clearly felt betrayed by the other, if social media was any indication. It seemed Sun was here to talk, and maybe right that, but there hadn’t been any talking at this point. While there had been fans at the airport to see Sun when she arrived, the team themselves hadn’t bothered staying up to come pick her and Yuli up which was somewhat understandable considering they had a schedule to adhere to but… It didn’t mean it didn’t hurt at some level. Sun wasn’t quite sure how it hurt, exactly. She just knew it wouldn’t have happened in the past, back when her and her teammates could actually be described as close.

“Me and the others are visiting an old spot we used to train in and getting breakfast on the way, if you want to come,” Sun said in the morning, standing outside of the room that Yuli had chosen for herself… They had plenty of extra space around here. There were only three team members after all and the place was paid for with corporate money. The entire place belonged to them, even the rooms they didn’t use. “Or… You can stay here. Your choice either way.”

“You think I’ll make things better, worse, or not change anything by tagging along? Been awhile since I’ve visited Korea, so heading out wouldn’t really hurt, and I’m curious to see where some more experienced heroes trained. I’ll leave it up to you, if you think I’ll make things worse I’ll stay here and work on a personal project till you get back.”

While Yuli definitely wore more casual clothes than she wore back at the other mansion, her left arm was still entirely covered and hidden, and simple black glove now covering the hand. She looked like she was just some random person on the street, except for the extensive scarring and the fact that she was standing in the building she was standing in. She wasn’t sure what the rest of the team thought of her, but she knew something was up between them and Sun.

“I don’t know. You’re going to have to meet them eventually, and if you did want to find out more about who I am… Well, this is one of the main places I grew up, you could say. And they’re like my sisters. Might be better for you to just meet them,” Sun shrugged, unsure about the matter herself but leaning towards Yuli coming. Although, she wasn’t completely sure why she wanted it… She wasn’t the most open person or one that talked a ton about her past, anyway. Maybe, she considered, it was because Yuli was a familiar face from her new life to help contrast with seeing the people from her old life once again.

“Then I’ll come with, lemme just grab my wallet. Was going to say keys, but I don’t exactly have my bike here.”

Yuli turned and dug around in one of her bags, pulling out her wallet, and tucking it into her pocket before stepping outside and shutting the door. She had also slipped one of her little glass birds into her other pocket. She wasn’t expecting anything to happen, but it was always fun to see kids reactions when she made the bird fly around and act as if it was almost alive. If she needed to get herself out of the way for a bit, that was one way to do it.

“Ready.”

Sun nodded without another word, more quiet the last two days than she usually was, stepping deeper into the hallway and starting towards the elevator, as they passed a large glass window which provided an overlooking view of a well kept courtyard and garden. The members of the team didn’t exactly live in a bad place, that was for sure. Their discontent seemed to come from… Things that were a bit deeper and more significant than just housing and the like. It didn’t seem to be a labor dispute over money, either. They were already some of the better paid heroes in Korea, and they definitely made enough for their talent level.

The elevator doors opened a few moments after they had pushed the button to descend, and on the ground floor Sun and Yuli would see the others waiting for them, the first and foremost of which was Blue Dragon, or as Sun knew her, Seo-Hyun Lee. She had been the leader of the team ever since Sun had made the decision to head to Canada for more money and a spot on the Hero League’s reality show, and she had also been the voice of the team recently. But she had perhaps overworked herself. One of her arms was still covered in a bandage and she had made the news internationally for collapsing very publicly while stopping a bank robbery in Seoul.

“You’re bringing the American?” she asked when she saw Sun, her eyes traveling to Yuli before looking back to Sun. She turned, not waiting or having a debate about the matter.

“For a little bit at least, yeah,” Sun replied, following after her. “I don’t think you’ll have much of a problem with her.”

Seo-Hyun didn’t say anything in reply to that, instead changing the subject to the topic of where they were going. “Right… The rest of us decided to head to a coffee place for breakfast and then we’re headed to the old annex like you suggested. I suppose I’ll wait until we’re there to give a rundown on the latest situation,” she said, before pausing, and lowering her voice a bit as they left the glistening apartment complex and stepped onto the busy street. “Besides, it’s probably safer there.”

Yuli stayed quiet for now, these were things she had no knowledge of or connection to. Instead she kept her eyes trained forward, hands in her pockets. She’d just hang out and listen for now, she’d wait till they were actually having coffee before talking about anything. No need to shove her nose into a topic she was likely unwelcome in, and there was likely nothing she could do about it. Still, she took note about the safety comment, which made her suspect that the bright and shiny building hid some darker secrets.

Sun walked a bit ahead of her, moving next to Seo-Hyun, and Yuli would be able to hear snippets of their conversation. But it was just that. Snippets. And she could hear some things from the other two girls, too… Ones that Sun had described as being like her own sisters.

“... And they said if I get uppity again I’m getting repatriated…”

“... Not possible…”

“... Easy for you to say after you’ve already left.”

“... Don’t tell us what to be afraid of while you hide in Canada.”

“If you keep talking in public, I’m slapping all three of you.”

The statement came from Seo-Hyun, who seemed the most security minded of the group and didn’t care for the fact that they were discussing their affairs, even in a low and hushed tone, on the streets. It was somewhat reasonable, really, considering how sneaky the media could be and how she didn’t seem entirely comfortable with the level of privacy they had in the first place, even in their own apartment. The group was, however, approaching a place where they could sit down. It remained to be seen just how much peace they would be able to get in this coffee shop where they were likely to be recognized, but the group entered regardless, ahead of Yuli, finding a table large enough for the five of them by the window.

“Look, I don’t know what the fuck you want me to say,” Sun said as she sat down, not paying much attention to her surroundings as she was immersed in conversation with her team, most likely about the fact that she had left. “And it wasn’t my idea to head to Canada, it was the corporation’s. I’d like to see you fight them-”

“What the fuck do you think we’ve been doing? You just haven’t heard about it since you haven’t paid much attention to what’s going on here ever since they said they were sending you away, and because the press has us on a blacklist when it comes to this shit,” Myeon Gin, also known as Blade Lily, replied as she sat down. “You have little room to talk.”

Yuli muffled a small giggle. She’d been watching a paparazzi since about five minutes after they’d left the house, maybe a little less. He hadn’t quite had a chance to take any photos, to many people obscuring the shot. Now that they’d settled into a seat, he was across the street, and had finally lined up a photo when his lens just...cracked. Yuil wasn’t looking at him, not directly anyway. Everyone thought she was totally blind out of her left eye.

“Speaking of media, that’s one paparazzi not getting a picture of us.”

Yuli kept her voice low, still not looking.

“Across the street, by the crosswalk.”

She still didn’t look, instead looking further into the restaurant as if she was looking for a server, and wondering what was taking so long. She could help but smile a little, the paparazzi had annoyed her even before she’d started making a name for herself.

“Sorry, don’t mind my interruption.”

The group seemed to look at Yuli before stopping their own conversation, putting on brighter faces as someone finally came over to hand out menus and take orders. Sun… Found herself without much of an appetite, ordering coffee without anything to eat, as the group seemed to suspend their talk and their general demeanor entirely in the presence of someone outside the group, an odd tension setting over the table as if they were just waiting for it to be safe to continue.

Yuli ordered herself some coffee, and a small breakfast. Nothing too special, she’d never had much of an appetite. Her left hand tapped on the table a little, before she stopped herself. She didn’t want to make an ass of herself in front of big names like these, even if she wasn’t entirely sure why she was here. Some part of her was still pretty sure she should have stayed back, let them get their talk out of the way without having to worry about her, but she was already here, so no changing that.

“As I was saying…” Sun said, looking to Yuli. “I think you should meet the others finally. Seo-Hyun Lee, Myeon Gin, and Mikyung Cho… The people that I’ve grown up with,” she continued, gesturing to each one of them as she spoke.

“Yuli Rose, nice to meet you all.”

She looked at each of them as their name was said, memorizing the name to face. She’d gotten used to this back home, plenty of new girls coming and going that she’d had to memorize the names of. Not much different, just higher profile.

It seemed that the others were examining her, she wasn’t exactly trusted by them yet, but at the same time, except for certain moments… This wasn’t a group that just showed off their true feelings to anyone very easily. The responses were more tempered, real feelings hidden behind posturing to an extent. “So what… Would bring you here to Seoul?” asked Seo-Hyun, the question somewhat obviously a testing one.

“Well, I do have some family here I wanted to visit, and Sun offered to introduce me to her friends back home. It was a good excuse to come see my family, and get to meet you all.”

Yuli wasn’t going to lie, even if she didn’t know exactly what the tension between Sun and her old team was. She had some hints, but she wasn’t going to make a judgement just yet. Especially not when she wanted them to actually like her.

“It’s touching that Sun cares that much to bring her friends here.”

The statement might as well have meant the opposite thing of the stated intent… It could be said that it was covered in enough layers of sarcasm to sound like a genuine remark, but that didn’t change the fact that at its core, a sarcastic remark was what it was. The others nodded in agreement at the comment, although it seemed they were agreeing more with the double meaning than the stated one.

“And your relation to Sun is…?” Seo-Hyun continued, still getting an idea of who she was dealing with here.

“Friends, despite what people may want to think.”

It was true, they were just friends. Sure they flirted a bit, but nothing had happened, not even the lightest of kisses. Besides, they both still had plenty of secrets, and Yuli was sure Sun’s ran deeper than her own. Regardless, she hopped they could at least be good friends. Lubi seemed to encourage more, but she’d been a fan of the group while she was her in Korea, encouragement had multiple motivations behind it.

“I find that surprising based on the first episode of your show,” Seo-Hyun pressed… And not hiding behind statements with the opposite meaning this time, and outright saying what she was thinking. “I don’t know… How much of the real Sun you’ve seen, but I have very good reason to be doubtful.”

“I’ve got a bit of...haphephobia, not too bad but anything more than like shaking hands, or brief passes while sparring will start to affect me. Used to be much worse, but it’s still very much real. We’re just friends, anything more is out of my reach.”

It was the truth, even if not all of it was there. She didn’t say the haphephobia was really a symptom of PTSD, she didn’t say she wished for more, she didn’t say that she could probably push herself to it if she wanted to. Right now everything with Sun was to unsure, to shakey for her to even think about anything like that, so she was going to tell the relevant truth.

“I don’t know what that is.”

The deadpan comment from Myeon seemed somewhat reflective of the general tension at the table, her voice completely flat as she spoke, and an awkward silence setting over the table for a few moments following it. Seo-Hyun, though, seemed to have accepted the answers given by Yuli.

Eventually the group finished up and they were ready to move on to their main destination, the place they had described as their former training ground. It wasn’t in the immediate downtown area that they were in right now, it was a place that they’d have to take the metro to get to, but according to Seo-Hyun, it was a safer place to talk. Whatever that actually meant. It wasn’t exactly clear what they were afraid of or what they needed to talk about away from the attention of others.

After the train ride, and some more walking, they had arrived in a more suburban area - or at least as suburban as one could get for metropolitan Seoul - that was somewhat run down compared to where they had just come from. There were no shining apartments here like the one they were in before and the building that they found themselves approaching was a bit worn down… But it was quite the large building, taking up quite a lot of space, and it looked almost like a warehouse of sorts on the outside. It wasn’t designed to be pretty, that was for sure, and when Seo-Hyun entered through a side door, leading the group, one could see that the place didn’t have a ton inside and that the interior was concrete, although there was some training equipment.

“You don’t exactly live large until the right people know that you’re going to perform. We started out here. It’s not luxurious and it could even be called dangerous depending on who you ask, but this is the spot where we spent a lot of our time growing up, training to become the stars that we are right now,” said Seo-Hyun, explaining the scene that Yuli was looking at and that Sun was returning to for the first time in a while. “You fuck up in training, you end up getting slammed on the concrete… There’s no mats or anything like that here to make things more comfortable for the teams that use the place.”

“Dunno if they still have anyone training here but they started us young, I think I was like… Five the first time I saw this place,” added Mikyung, stepping inside after Sun had and taking a look around.

“Mmm, I started learning my magic about that young, but the closest I had to group training was an old ring and some equipment set up under one of the bridges in Chicago. Even then it was just a group of people kinda hanging out, the show is my first actual professional group.”

Yuli wasn’t too surprised, pretty much everyone started in places like this unless they were from real, old money. Be it a boxer, wrestler, football star, or hero. She looked around, getting a sense of the size of the space. It wasn’t the worst she’d seen either, some of the ‘gyms’ she’d seen in poor areas were worse than even this, with basically just rusty sheet metal as a roof.

“I’ve had my face slammed into concrete like this before, chipped a tooth. My father was pissed, my mother just laughed it off and said it was the only way I’d learn.”

Yuli didn’t know if word had reached this group who her mother was. Among all the other things that's happened, it had been a fairly low key reveal. Not to much fuss over it from anyone else, they hadn’t even made a press statement just, ‘yeah that’s my mom’ kinda stuff.

Sun stepped further into the old building with the rest of the group, Seo-Hyun still leading the way. She seemed to be concerned with talking to Sun about something, to which she turned her attention to. “I believe I can show you, now…” she said, reaching to start removing the bandage from her arm, showing clearly the spots which had only just healed, not spots where she had been cut but spots which bled regardless. It seemed related to the incident where she had collapsed.

She was speaking to Sun in a hushed tone and the others seemed like they were in on it too, leaving Yuli as the odd one out, but whatever they were talking about was something that could cost them a lot of money if the extent of the situation ended up getting out… A hero had to appear healthy, at least in the eye of the public. Wasn’t uncommon to see injuries masked, especially ones that were long term in nature and would hurt someone’s position as a money maker.

Seo-Hyun shifted into the form that was tied to her power - her body transitioning into one that was almost like Sun’s when she was using her power, except the energy was blue and it was… More erratic, and appeared more uncontrollable in terms of its movements. And then she shifted back, grasping her body in pain after not being in the form for very long at all.

Snippets of the conversation could be picked up from outside of it. “So they said they were looking into it and I should expect something to take for it in about a week or so. But after getting back to number five in the rankings, we’re probably going to slide again if we have to do that. Well, if I have to do that,” Seo-Hyun stated towards Sun. “But… I’m nervous because the pills and such don’t work forever, it seems.”

Yuli frowned at what she was overhearing, deep in thought. She tapped her left hand absentmindedly against her leg. It was like how Sun had been exhausted, almost overexerted before she had even really been deep into the fight. If their powers were artificial somehow, it was either draining away or their body was building an intolerance to it. She wasn’t sure, what she did know was that it wasn’t good. She wondered how it would read to a skilled biokinetic, like Lubi or even her mother. Some part of it was biological, even if it was only the energy source. She kept out of the way, she wasn’t going to make them uncomfortable if she could help it.

The conversation continued a bit, Sun and her teammate speaking back and forth somewhat. “Basically, I’m out of commission until they fix it,” was one of the things that could be heard from Seo-Hyun, who seemed the worse off out of all of them, as evidenced by the fact that she was the only one in the group who needed to wear bandages to hide the fact that her body was wounded by something… Possibly by her power itself. “And it would be a lot better if you were around…”

“... The decision was made by the company…”

It seemed Sun wasn’t in Canada by her own decision or at least that was what she claimed, it was hard to tell whether it was the truth or whether it was an attempt on her part to deflect the heat she was getting from her team for walking out on them and heading to be a reality TV star instead of sticking with them now that it looked like things weren’t going so well for them. Eventually, Sun turned around to face Yuli. “I need to head out with Seo-Hyun for a moment, you’re going to be in legal trouble if you overhear it,” Sun stated towards her. “Hopefully you don’t mind.”

“Go ahead, I’m not here to cause trouble.”

Yuli sat down on the ground and pulled out her glass bird, animating it and letting it flap around. It’d distract her for a bit, and were generally useful exercise to keep herself acquainted with. Besides, it was entertaining for her at least, and it’d give her something to do while Sun had her important talk.

Sun paused before turning back around and heading deeper into the facility, which while it wasn’t advanced in any way was quite large, with her teammate… What they had to talk about wasn’t clear but it was easy to guess it had something to do with their powers and something to do with the situation at hand with Sun being away from the rest of the team in Canada… Something they clearly weren’t happy about from the way they had talked about the situation.

Heading back from the facility took about as long as it took to get there in the first place, requiring both walking and the use of the metro system. They were, however, able to eventually get back to the apartment they had come from in the first place. The results of Sun and Seo-Hyun’s talk either hadn’t reached the others yet or they were being very cagey and they hadn’t said anything indicating just what had happened during that talk, but it seemed there was still some tension. It was hard to judge the situation, really. The relationship between teammates here was… Complicated.

They took the elevator up and Sun followed the rest of the group into one of the apartments, a spacious one with a window view overlooking a busy street in urban Seoul on one side of the room, modern furniture filling other parts of it. The apartment for the most part had an open floor plan, the kitchen and the living room all being attached to each other as well as a dining room of sorts. Despite all the problems, they did have plenty of space to live large here, as well as enough things to fill that space with.

Didn’t stop the deep discontent with the situation from brewing, however. Because for as big as they got, they seemed to feel like they could get bigger if they were on their own.

Before they could settle into the living room, however, to continue talking about… Whatever the subject had been, Seo-Hyun looked down at her phone and then looked up to the others, almost confused in her expression, giving a look that she hadn’t given during the entire time Yuli had been here. Confused was really the only way to describe it, and she wasn’t the type that often had such an expression. “Manager says someone is bleeding out in front of the apartment,” she stated plainly, getting the attention of the others.

“Uhhhh....that’s weird pretty much no matter where you live. Should we...check it out?”

Yuli wasn’t sure what the groups protocol was for these things, but she knew that with all of them, including Yuli, they were better protected than pretty much any conventional security could provide. She straightened from her slouch, glancing around to try and get the feel of the room.

The group of more experienced heroes was already moving to see what it was about. “We’ll check it out and see if it’s something that we need to be involved in, this isn’t exactly the part of town where people end up getting randomly shot,” stated Seo-Hyun, moving after Sun out of the door… Whatever they were heading into, it was indeed unusual and it was indeed an unknown. It remained to be seen who had ended up outside of their apartment bleeding, but Seo-Hyun was right when she said that there was no way something like this could just be a random event.

No, something bigger was at play here, and it involved them specifically.

by **Lunas Legion** » Thu Aug 01, 2019 4:07 pm

SEASON 1 EPISODE 10 // BLACK OCTOBER
Collaborative post between Forest State & Lunas Legion

DATE // AUGUST 26TH, 2025
LOCATION // TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA
CAST // Noelle ‘Lux’ Ethier & Antares ‘Khione’ Gray

“Your false ideals won’t help you, now that you’re in the position of the victim…”

Noelle Ethier snapped awake, the words having replayed in her mind for… She wasn’t sure how many times she had recalled them following the fight with the mysterious villains known as TNB. But she knew that the words had originally been spoken to her by the enemy mage she had faced, the smug one who had been self identified as TNB Witch when the team released a video online as a followup to the fight. The video seemed to be doing its purpose, it was getting the group talked about even as Team Futures was told the fight wouldn’t be shown on TV, due to… The unexpected nature of it and the fact that it didn’t make them look good at all.

They had hardly survived it.

And yet now that she had made it out alive, the one thing on Noelle’s mind was the fact that the enemy had spoken to her and given her a statement about ideals, one that was cryptic to an extent in that she wasn’t sure just what was being referenced. She knew something was at play here that was bigger than the typical statements of a villain during a fight, but she didn’t know what. It burned at her because she had felt that it was a genuine statement and wasn’t just something said to throw her off or distract her.

Noelle pushed herself up from her bed, where she had been resting for much of the day. She had picked up an injury which didn’t seem to heal, one that was magic based and not just purely physical. She could still feel it in her abdomen, and it hurt. She didn’t intend to let it sideline her, though, even if it was one of the worst injuries she had sustained as a hero - not that she had picked up too many of them. Junior heroes didn’t typically take dangerous jobs and that had been her for the past… Few years before turning 18 and moving onto the world of real heroes.

They had to piece together what happened, she was sure, and her priorities as she got up reflected that. She didn’t like everyone that was on the team she’d been with yesterday, per say, but she understood their importance in figuring this out. No, she was fine with Fayza, actually. It was mainly Antares she didn’t like, and yet, Antares had a different perspective on things.

Even if she didn’t like her, she needed her.

“Get up, we need you to do more than make out with Lupe,” she said, arriving in the living room to find the pair making out on the couch, Antares on top of the pink haired shapeshifter. “I swear to God, you two are rabbits…”

She paused, before explaining just why she needed to break them up for now. “I’m getting Fayza and going over just what happened with that other team. Maybe if we put our heads together we can actually figure out what they meant in that video and what they’re planning to do next,” she said, her voice trailing off. “They have a grudge against us in specific, you know.”

“I don’t think I’ll be much help, you know.” Antares said, briefly removing herself from Lupe to speak. “Fayza saw everything I saw, heard everything I heard, you two can talk and then you can come find me when I’m not otherwise occupied and I’ll cover anything the pair of you’ve missed out.”

Lupe grabbed a handful of Antares’ hair and pulled her back in for a kiss, but Noelle didn’t seem satisfied with just leaving the pair of them alone for now. “If you cared about the team and not just doing whatever you want, you would come with us and give your perspective. You act like everyone sees and hears things the same way and doesn’t miss anything,” she stated. “And I think you had a better look at the last villain than Fayza did. You know… The one that burned you.”

“Fine.” Antares said, reluctantly levitating back off of Lupe, moving out of his reach. “I’ll be back later, don’t move.” Antares waved down at Lupe before doing a loop in the air, shifting from lying down to being upright and narrowly avoiding banging her head against the room’s ceiling. “Let’s try and get this over as quickly as possible I guess.” Antares sighed, turning to face towards Noelle. “I’m assuming you’ve already dragged Fayza to wherever we’re talking?”

“You can head into one of the briefing rooms, I’m going to grab her,” said Noelle, rolling her eyes at Antares flying indoors… It was little things like this that bothered her about her, that made a slight bit of anger flare up inside her every time it happened. Noelle didn’t show her own magic off all the time when they weren’t doing anything, so why did Antares have to be a show off when it came to her powers? The question stuck with her as she went off to find Fayza.

Huh. Antares had figured that Noelle would’ve gone to find Fayza first, since it was time spent sitting around doing nothing and getting bored, and she started getting quite twitchy when she was doing either of those things, let alone both. But she shrugged and flew off in the direction of one of the briefing rooms, setting herself down in one of the chairs, legs kicked up casually onto the table and hands behind her head, resting against the back of her chair. Hopefully Noelle didn’t take too long to find Fayza.

It didn’t take long for Noelle to enter the room with Fayza following her, the both of them sitting down on the table as Noelle shot Antares a look of annoyance for putting her legs on the table. “The table isn’t for your feet, you know,” she said, placing her laptop down so she could pull up the video once again. They had all seen it by now but since they hadn’t exactly made sense of the hints that TNB had given them, she figured it was a good idea to watch it again and see if they had missed anything.

Well… They almost certainly were missing something. It was just a matter of whether or not they could figure out what it was before it was too late and they were faced with another dangerous situation.

“Fine.” Antares rolled her eyes, shifting her legs off the table and leaning forwards. “May as well play the thing, it won’t have caught everything, pause whenever one of us starts talking to comment or say something about something that isn’t on-screen but might be relevant or whatever. Might jolt memories, you never know.”

Noelle pressed the play button on the video, which at this point had millions of views on YouTube. It seemed that by trying to keep the villain group off of TV, they had given them a lot of exposure through alternative means.

The playback started but Noelle paused it pretty early on, when the camera focused in on the faces of the ones who had identified themselves as TNB Shogun and TNB Witch. “Do they look familiar to any of you?” she asked, her eyes fixating on the image onscreen. “I just feel like… Someone here has to know someone connected to them, none of this feels like it’s just something random. It’s not that kind of crime. And their faces are mostly out, we have to be able to narrow things down somehow with that, right?”

“Never seen either of them before in my life, and I’ve a good memory for faces.” Antares shook her head. “But I’m from Indiana, I’ve never done anything on the hero scene before this show, I think you’re going at this from the wrong angle if any of us recognise them. Bar Sun and I think maybe Peyton, none of us have done any hero-stuff before and given all the stuff… I think it was Shogun yapping on about us being murderers and now being victims and whatever, I don’t think it’s targeting us as in us in particular as people.”

Antares paused, thinking. She normally didn’t consider herself to be that smart of a person, but that laser bitch had gotten under her skin and hate had a way of focusing people, even someone like her. “I think they’re after the team of the show, as it were, if none of us were on it and it was a bunch of completely different people I think they’d have done the same. If they’re known to anyone, it’ll be higher-ups in the Hero League, and given everything about murder and making us as victims and all that… Might be worth digging through archive reports, look for civilian casualties in missions, or just get a massive list of everyone who was a civilian casualty in a Hero League operation, see if anyone with similar physical features crops up. Given the whole focus on murder stuff, might be worth seeing if any of them had potential family killed which is where they’re drawing that from. Won’t help with friends but it’s a start I guess.”

Noelle paused, considering this angle as she stared at the faces, contemplating whether or not they were known to anyone here or not. “If they have a grudge against the team itself, I’m not sure exactly what it would prove. We haven’t murdered anyone because, well, we haven’t been a team for long enough to do anything in the field… We’re not tied to any of the League’s bigger name teams, I think,” she said with a shrug, but she switched tabs and started looking for news articles, for links documenting the number of casualties the Hero League had caused indirectly. “But uh… This is going to be a hard search, we don’t know what time span we’re looking for and the Hero League is an old organization, there’s tons of articles about this kind of thing from a lot of different dates, and we don’t have anything to narrow it down.”

“We don’t even know what relation, if any, these guys have to someone involved in one of these cases,” added Fayza, not speaking up usually but adding her opinion here. It seemed they would have to look through a mountain of info if they wanted to find something that was useful.

“Yeah, for all we know they might not even have been family, it could’ve been friends killed, or their friends or family could’ve been vigilantes killed in action, it’ll… Well, searching for needles in haystacks is far easier.” Antares groaned. “If we’re trying to link them, powers might be a way, you’re the magic girl Noelle, you saw some of what Witch can do, how much time training at a minimum to be that good? It might give us a time at which she gained powers, which narrows the time range we’re looking at a bit more.”

Magic, at least, was something that Noelle understood well. “She’s a black mage with a specialty in conjuration,” she stated, before pausing to consider the amount of training she likely had. “Based on what we saw, and the fact that she was able to summon dozens of servants without suffering herself - she didn’t break a sweat - I would say she’s an experienced mage with eight to ten years of training at least. Of course, she doesn’t seem older than the rest of them, who look pretty young, which would mean she’s been training since she was a child.”

“I’m spitballing here, but let’s assume they’ve all been training for that long. I don’t think laser bitch was a magic user, feel free to correct me, but she was good with her powers, and more importantly kept a cool-enough head even when I had her pinned, blinded and the Northmen guy had a rifle pointed at her.” Antares mused. “Well, we can narrow the search for people the Hero League have killed to the rough period Witch would’ve been a child, look for people who resemble her. Purple eyes aren’t exactly common after all, unless those are a product of magic.”

Noelle was silent as her hands moved rapidly across the keyboard, pulling up something which she stared at for a moment before turning the computer to face Antares - images of intense fighting in cities, of riots, of… Chaos across the country showed up. “There was the… Black October crisis in the early 2000s,” she stated, taking a rough guess, scrolling through the pictures which displayed more of the same. The sight of Montreal on fire, fighting in the streets of New York, flashpoints in Paris and London as things had kicked off in those cities in addition to North America. “The Hero League killed a lot of people then…”

The crisis, of course, had been caused by the Black Hearts villain group and their attempt to incite a revolution in favor of metahumans - unlike other groups looking for the same thing, they had experienced a reasonable amount of success and had managed to gain support from large parts of the metahuman populace before the tensions came to a head and things exploded in October, leading to fighting between the Black Hearts, their associates, and the Hero League in major cities across North America and later Europe and Asia. However, the movement had burned out and didn’t manage to last until the end of the year before the main villain group behind it ended up decimated by the Hero League, the movement falling apart as its figureheads were eliminated by some of the Hero League’s top teams.

“Lot of the worst fighting happened in Canada, too… Dunno if that make a difference, since we’re here and there was a Battle of Toronto back when it happened. Hero League won, of course,” Noelle added, enlarging a picture taken from that battle, showing some of the League’s top heroes standing near the Toronto waterfront with the CN Tower visible in the background, watching as fires burned around them as an aftereffect of a riot which had been dispersed by local authorities and the League.

“Convenient for them we’re based nearby.” Antares said dryly. “Well, at least we have something more detailed to look at for later, but sorting through the piles of records of KIA civilians and vigilantes during that will take a while to say the least. Can you bring up a list of active metahumans KIA or MIA in all that, just in case there’s any who could induce powers or give them or something. One of them and a bunch of impressionable kids could turn out who we faced, even if I’m seriously stretching at this point.”

Noelle moved to look for an article or a list, but she stopped and went back to image searching and found an image which displayed many of the known faces of the Black Hearts. The original group, not the many legions of associates they had found themselves with once they ended up igniting a conflict that would burn many of the largest North American cities. “This is the best image I can find with the Black Hearts main core,” she said, pointing to the image which displayed sometimes clear and sometimes grainy faces. “It also lists their known powers under each image… I don’t see anyone that can grant powers, though.”

She stared at the image for a moment, focusing in on the leader of the group. “Their leader doesn’t have much in the way of clear pictures so it’s hard to determine anything either way with him…” she stated, before letting her eyes move on and travel the rest of the image, eventually settling on someone who appeared to be a hooded woman like the one they had faced in battle. “Hold on, they had a mage that looks similar to the one that we faced… Alizee Lavigne, also known as the Black Witch and the Terror of Montreal,” she stated.

Pulling up another tab, Noelle put the name into the search bar and pulled up images, revealing a similarly cloaked woman who seemed to be a user of black magic, which was another connection. “There’s… Something to look into here. It seems like she was killed by the Montreal Hunters, a Hero League team. I actually grew up around them somewhat, although… Black October was mostly before my time.”

“Huh. Well, that’s one connection, Shogun didn’t actually do anything that I remember, check if any of their members had laser powers, light powers, stuff like that? One can be a outlier, two’s a convenient coincidence, if we can tie unnamed laser girl to one of them too it’ll be more evidence of a potential connection back to them.”

Noelle kept looking at the image, her eyes traveling through each row as she looked at both the faces and the powers. “I do see… Timo Kurz, ability is described as laser embodiment. Not quite the same as what we saw but I’m thinking it’s close,” she added, googling the name and waiting for the results to come up. “Killed in action by Team Aegis London while acting as the leader of the European movement of the Black Hearts. Happened near the end of the crisis.”

“Well, that’s two. Enough so that I think we can draw a vague connection, but given we have their names it’ll be worth checking birth records and stuff, seeing if they had any kids just to make sure although being villains their kids might not’ve ended up in the system.” Antares paused briefly, before continuing. “Of the top levels, who’s not KIA or is MIA? Someone who might’ve gathered them together.”

“Almost all of their top leaders are dead, the war between them and the Hero League didn’t exactly leave many survivors… It looks like there’s a couple of them that are imprisoned in a BMC site near Yellowknife, but I don’t think they’d be able to do much from prison. You could say the group was totally defeated, even if they did make the Hero League bleed in the process,” Noelle said, searching up images of Timo Kurz to see if she could find a further connection. “It does appear that Kurz was blonde, also… Hair like that would be easier to dye into the current color being used by the laser girl,” she added, before pulling up the images of Lavigne once again. “I don’t think any of their kids would be in the system since they were hardcore metahuman nationalists, but Lavigne looks almost exactly like TNB Witch.”

Noelle moved the image tab to a separate window and shrunk it down enough that she could fit it on the same screen as the video, rewinding to Witch standing in front of the camera and then gesturing towards the picture that was pulled up besides it, of Lavigne. “Might as well be identical, the outfit is very close also. Witch’s outfit looks like an imitation of Lavigne’s. But to make things more interesting, Lavigne herself was known as the ‘Black Witch.’”

“I think you mentioned that earlier, but yeah.” Antares nodded. “Look through them all for one called Shogun, Samurai, Ronin, something like that. We didn’t see what he can do, but we know what he looks like, we know he calls himself TNB Shogun, given Witch if we can get a third then I’m willing to say outright they’re connected for sure.”

“Let’s see… They do have a Japanese member, from what I can see here. Also killed in action. Ryota Matsushita… You can see the picture here, only thing is, Shogun didn’t actually look that Japanese to me and this guy never called himself Shogun. He called himself Blademaster, had metal manipulation as a power from what I can see,” Noelle said, before pulling up more images. “But he did wear an Oni mask with a break around one eye. Not the same style but the break looks quite like the one that Shogun has on his masquerade mask.”

“We don’t know who his mother was, he could be Blademaster’s kid and call himself Shogun as homage given his own non-Japanese appearance. But…” Antares gave a defeated shrug. “We didn’t get to see his powers in action, so he might not even have that as a power. Mask could just be coincidence, I’m not going to put having a similar style of break around the eye as enough of a firm connection. Too much room for doubt there.”

Noelle rested back in her seat, going back to the original image list. “I don’t see any others here that I think would be tied to them. Not enough info, we’ll have to figure it out some more when we face them again… They said that they have other members aside from the ones that we faced. And right now there’s… Inconclusive evidence on some of these things.”

She paused, looking down at her phone. “But with my dad owning sixty percent of the Montreal Hunters, I might be able to see if they know anything else about Lavigne. The old team from back during Black October isn’t active anymore, but they do have records and such… Probably more than we could find asking any of our contacts in the Hero League as a lower level team. My dad also owns the team in Quebec City outright and owns more than half of the Toronto Northmen, so… We have something of a decent network if we’re looking for info on Canadian villains.”

“Worth a shot, see what you can dig up.” Antares said. Maybe Noelle wasn’t quite as bad as she’d first thought she might be, even if she had done her utmost to get herself killed seemingly by staying alone to fight Witch. “Call all of us that are actually here when you’ve gotten something concrete or at least sort-of, the others probably deserve to know too, but I think we’re done here then?”

“We’ll have to look at the hints in the video in more detail later but… I think we should figure out who we’re dealing with first. So yes, you could say we’re done for now,” Noelle said, closing her laptop up and standing up, phone in hand. “And I have a call to make. Hope that the Hunters have a good archive system…”

“Good luck.” Antares said as she pushed her chair back, kicking slightly off the ground so she was levitating before moving to fly out of the room. She had been interrupted after all.

by **Durmatagno** » Sat Aug 03, 2019 1:59 am

SEASON 1 EPISODE 12 // BLOOD ON THE CONCRETE PT 2. (I CAN FEEL IT COMING IN THE AIR TONIGHT)
Collaborative post between Forest State & Durmatagno

DATE // AUGUST 25TH, 2025
LOCATION // Gangnam District, Seoul, Republic of Korea
CAST // Sun ‘Primace’ Choe, Seo-Hyun ‘Blue Dragon’ Lee, & Yuli Rose

They stepped out of the building to find someone bleeding out on the ground, just as they had been told by the manager of the Gangnam Stars by text. There was a small crowd of people formed up around the scene - not a large one, but it wasn’t every day that someone stumbled here and ended up collapsing while bleeding onto the ground, and when it happened, it tended to draw the attention of the people around… But now, the crowd dispersed a bit as the Stars and their guests from Canada emerged from the glass doors of the building, looking down to find the scene for themselves.

“Fucking hell…”

It was all Sun could say as she saw a college aged girl on the ground in front of the building, a pool of blood forming on the sidewalk, and a shocked group of people standing around and watching to see what the Stars were going to do. It didn’t take long, of course, for them to be ordered into action by their leader, Seo-Hyun. “Myeon, see what you can do about healing her…” Seo-Hyun said, not giving up on saving the girl just because of seeing the state she was in. She wasn’t in a good spot right now but she wasn’t dead just yet. But still… “She’s not going to make it that long on her own, damn it.”

“Going to be hard for me to heal her when she’s that bad off already,” said Myeon, but she obeyed and she dropped to the ground next to the girl on one knee, putting her attention into channeling energy into her body, doing best to close up what seemed like an abdominal wound… She had been shot but she had also been hit with some kind of bladed weapon from the looks of the wound. It wasn’t a bullet wound, that was for sure, the look of it was too different and the diameter was too wide, and the spot where her clothes were torn definitely wasn’t in the shape of a gunshot…

No, someone had really wanted her dead, enough to try slashing or stabbing her - Sun and the others couldn’t tell the exact details from looking at the wound but they could tell how serious it was right away. They could tell that it was also… Professionally inflicted in nature, not just the result of some random mugging or something along the lines of that. Some random robber wouldn’t have shot and slashed someone with what seemed to be a top grade weapon - the wound indicated that the person had used one, anyway.

Yuli had seen wounds like that more than once in her time in Chicago, sometimes she’d been the one to apply them. Whatever had happened to her, the person that had done it could still be nearby. She eyed the crowd as she opened a pouch of glass dust, dumping it out so it swirled and settled around her right arm, ready to be turned into whatever she needed of it.

“Damn it, that’s not a gunshot, which means whoever did it could still be nearby.”

She was tempted to gather more glass to herself, even from the teams building, she could replace it later, but for now there was no clear threat. Instead she decided to do one of the only things she could do. The glass dust formed a light crowd around Myeon and the girl, anyone tried to pass through it Yuli would know. It was about a foot away from them, and didn’t reflect too much light, so as not to create a dazzling effect.

“We’re not even going to know who did it unless they show themselves or unless we can get her to talk…” muttered Sun, looking down at the injured girl on the ground. “But based on her current state I don’t know how likely the former is.”

She scanned up and down the street with her eyes, wondering just where the attacker was located or if they even were on this street period. They could have… Attacked and assumed that their victim would be dead, not pursuing further. It was a pretty bad wound after all and if it wasn’t for Myeon’s healing the girl probably wouldn’t have a chance of making it out alive. But as Sun looked up and down the street, she…

She felt something in the air.

It was hard to describe what it was. Wasn’t quite tension, but at the same time, she did feel herself tense up when she noticed it, and she gritted her teeth almost instinctively, feeling… Unnerved at the moment for one reason or another, and the others in the group seemed to notice it also. It was hard to put a finger on it but they could feel something, something that wasn’t physical but at the same time it was… Palpable, something they were definitely sure was a real thing, something that… Felt as real as the pressure in the air bearing down on them. It was bizarre, really.

Yuli didn’t know what this feeling was, but she understood one thing. They weren’t done out here. She was going to need more glass. She’d draw from cars and windows first. Lights would have to be replaced if she drew from them. She didn’t even draw that much to her yet, just enough to form a single edged, curved sword, and she just thinned glass where she could help it. Once this was all over she could replace it, but for now, she was the one that needed it. She cursed that she didn’t have her costume, as it’d been built with her powers in mind and gave her materials to work with.

“I don’t know what that is, but I don’t think things are going to be as simple as healing the girl.”

Seo-Hyun had taken note of the feeling and she looked down to Myeon, who was still working on her healing as she was knelt down next to the girl. “Myeon, are you able to move her right now?” she asked, trying to see if they would be able to bring her inside where they could keep a closer watch over her.

“She’s not going to be in the best state but someone should be able to carry her,” said Myeon, looking up for further instructions. After a brief pause where she decided what to do, Seo-Hyun nodded and leaned down to pick the girl up and carry her over her shoulder, turning back towards the building.

“It’ll be safer in here.”

She pushed her way through the doors of the building and the others followed close behind her, but one thing they didn’t account for was… The presence was getting closer, whatever it was, the feeling that something dangerous was in the area getting stronger-

The first ‘attack’ came seconds after they had reentered the apartment complex, in the form of what would feel like a disorienting spike in mental energy, almost… An overwhelming feeling, the feeling of their heads being flooded with static for a brief moment to the point where it left no room for anything else, almost freezing them in place until the attack wore off. Fortunately, it didn’t last that long… But by the time the attack did wear off, after maybe three quarters of a second, one full second at most, shots were already flying.

The doors to the apartment shattered, and bullets entered the lobby itself - Sun didn’t turn around to see who was firing as she kept her head low and shifted into her ‘Primace’ form, knowing that even if she tended to get quickly tired by it these days, it would be better to brave the bullets in this form rather than in her regular form. But if she had turned around she would have seen a figure that was nearly invisible, an outline really, someone who was about as visible as a heat blur… But there wasn’t enough heat here to cause heat blurs, and heat blurs didn’t take the shape of a person.

Whatever they were seeing behind them did, and Seo-Hyun at least looked back soon enough to see the near-invisible person before turning her head back in the direction of the others and gesturing forwards, lagging behind somewhat due to the fact that she also had to deal with the weight of another person. “Back door,” she said simply. “We’re not getting trapped in here with whatever is back there.”

Yuli didn’t know for sure what was attacking them, but she knew two things. She could erect barriers anywhere, and in a city like this, she had practically unlimited material to work with. They’d even already broken glass for her, so no one could complain if she used it. She backed away with the rest of the group, glass swirling into a thin wall, and then with a little extra push, her magic strengthened the glass. Now a heavier weapon like a rifle could get through that glass, though it’s accuracy and velocity would be dampened, but smaller arms, the kind of thing Yuli faced most often, like SMGs, those were a different story. It’d take quite a good number of hits from those kinds of weapons. Of course, she wasn’t sure what their enemy was using, but she hoped to have at least slowed them down.

“I wish I had my bigger puppets with me, some extra eyes and ears would not be missed right now.”

“Focus on running,” Seo-Hyun said, as the barrier behind them seemed to be smashed by the person who was chasing them, who had simply thrown their body through the barrier before continuing on… But in the meantime the group had made it through the lobby and towards the back door, leaving them in an alleyway that separated their building from the one behind theirs… There were a couple of different ways that they could move, but before they could turn out to head to the street, on the right side, they would find that there were footsteps pounding in their direction-

Sun turned around to find herself facing down with multiple assault rifles. “Ah, fuck…” she muttered.

“Other direction… Mikyung, take the girl,” said Seo-Hyun, handing the injured girl over to Mikyung who threw her over her shoulder about the time the group of armed men at the end of the alleyway finished assembling. She shifted into her own powered form, grunting in pain slightly from the effects that the power had on her these days. But even if it hurt she wasn’t about to back down from this… She moved quickly, shooting up into the sky with an enhanced push off the ground, while bullets went around her, Sun grabbing Yuli by the arm in the process and pulling her after Mikyung and Myeon… “Come on,” she said, as Seo-Hyun came down in the middle of the enemy group and attacked with enhanced strength, keeping them from getting chased down just yet as they continued fleeing.

Yuli had a few options to her as she ran with the group, and she decided that, as dramatic as it’s reveal might be later, she was going to break out one of her newer abilities, or well, something new she could do with her magic. As they moved glass swirled around her, collecting, fusing, and ultimately becoming a second skin, only thicker. The glass was even opaque, hiding her features, and now her footsteps had a more distinct clanging noise to them as heavy glass footsteps hit the ground. Her voice came out distorted, though not muffled.

“You know your way around here, where to?”

The sword she’d made earlier melded into the form, becoming as much part of her ‘suit’ as it was still a weapon.

“That depends on what we end up facing…”

Myeon was the one to speak, running in the lead with Sun following behind Mikyung, who was the one carrying the girl that had been injured. They reached the other end of the alleyway after they turned a corner but, unfortunately for them, they would also find another armed group - black uniforms, black rifles, they were definitely some kind of military styled organization, whoever they were. But it didn’t seem like any of the team were familiar with them, per say, although it seemed the soldiers were familiar with what they were facing, or at the very least they weren’t fazed by the fact that they were going against a team of superheroes who were quite dangerous as a collective.

“You’re going to have to drop that armor,” Sun hissed towards Yuli as she backed up and glanced over her shoulder to make sure nothing was behind her, before looking up… Up was the one path they could go at the moment, and she could get up easily with the help of her enhanced form, and she knew Mikyung would likely be able to get up after her, but the one that didn’t have the advantage of their kind of powers was Yuli, which would leave… The only option for them to get out safely being Sun carrying her, possibly moving first while Myeon provided cover for her and Mikyung.

Yuli tracked Sun’s vision, looking up with her, before rolling her eyes, thankfully hidden under the armor. She didn’t have the physicality of pretty much any of this team, but she was currently surrounded by her element. Literally, just like her costume and in her first on screen fight. She didn’t make a show of jumping, or moving, instead pulling the glass around her upwards enough for her to make it to where Sun was looking. Once up there, she turned, and drew more glass to her, forming floating shards she could launch the moment her firing arc was clear.

Myeon delivered the first strike for the Stars when she sent a javelin into the enemy formation, one that was made of the energy she was manipulating that would then return to her once it had hit the mark and dissipated, and she then moved to cover their retreat as Sun started climbing up using the gutter and relying on her enhanced strength and Mikyung followed after her, struggling more due to the fact that she was carrying someone else with her and wasn’t the one that had the strongest direct combat powers out of the group in the first place. And yet… The building they were climbing wasn’t exactly a small one and even Sun found herself struggling to get up the side of it as bullets hit the wall, one or two of them hitting her but just ending up tanked by her power which also greatly increased her durability on top of the other effects.

It was called a prime form for a reason.

They did receive some help when Seo-Hyun burst down the alleyway and crashed into the middle of the enemy formation, determined to protect the team she had been chosen as the leader of, but there was only so much she would be able to do if they didn’t get out of here soon and change the fight into one where the objective was to run rather than win outright - they were up against an advanced enemy and that enemy already had the jump on them… Their chances of getting away were better than their chances of winning straight up.

Yuli launched her shards of glass, manipulating them to make sure they wouldn’t hit Seo-Hyun. Two dozen shards flew out from her, each going nearly 100 mph, and reinforced with the same magic she used to make her armor. At this rate, she was going to be exhausted by the end of the fight, but that was fine, she could drop the armor soon enough, and she assumed that meant Sun would be carrying her. She shivered at the thought, she didn’t like being touched, but the situation would let her stomach it. She clustered the shards in groups of six, each targeting a different enemy, trying to give Seo-Hyun the chance she needed to follow them.

Seo-Hyun moved quickly as the shards of glass hit - blood ended up on her skin but it didn’t belong to herself, and she took the sudden and mass distraction as a chance to propel herself high up the wall, a couple stories high specifically, before she found a foothold and started making her way up alongside the others, Myeon remaining behind for now and tossing javelins still until she was sure that it was safe to join the rest of them… Sun was the first one to make it up the side of the apartment, and when she reached it, she immediately moved to jump onto the slightly lower neighboring building which was on the other side of the one they were climbing up. Mikyung was the second one up, panting as she did the same as Sun, letting down the girl they were carrying briefly while she caught her breath, and as one of the fastest ones on the team, Seo-Hyun arrived not much longer after that but dropped her powered form, collapsing to the ground as she reached the second building but still remaining conscious despite her somewhat bad position.

With her covering fire having worked, Yuli pulled herself to the other building, before she could get out of sight though, a burst of fire hit her armor. Most deflected like it should, cracks spidering out from impacts before she resealed them. That is, except for a cluster that managed to hit her left arm, one of the rounds breaking through and shattering her left hand in the process. She grunted, and simply sealed the armor over where the hand should be, not bothering to reform it just yet. Once at the other building she dropped to one knee to grab Seo-Hyun, grunting from the effort as fatigue was starting to build in her to. Making the armor had tired her more than she thought, she still had some refining to do, but she could keep going for awhile longer.

“Where to now?”

She acted as if her missing a hand wasn’t a big deal, because for her, it wasn’t. She was too focused on other things to care about repairing it, for now.

Sun was the one to speak, looking over the situation and assessing it - one of the things she considered was Yuli’s missing hand but they didn’t have time to worry about things like that right now, they could only take a brief breather here before they’d have to continue if they didn’t want to get jumped once again by this enemy that seemed to have the numbers and the intent to take them out. “We keep going on the rooftops,” she said, speaking in Seo-Hyun’s silence.

But the leader of the team wasn’t one to let herself get carried by anyone else. “I can keep going,” she said roughly, pushing Yuli off of her as she moved towards Sun, who was at the front of the group. She was in her regular human form, meaning she didn’t have any protection against bullets and the like but… She didn’t have any other options here other than to keep going in this form. She couldn’t manage using her powers right now, after all.

With a running start she ended up on the next rooftop, the others following after her, all of them probably silently glad that the jump wasn’t very far between each building and that these jumps weren’t exactly forcing them to push themselves too hard. “Couple more buildings and we’ll try getting inside one,” Sun said as they continued moving. “And maybe from there we can lose these fuckers…”

Yuli followed along quietly, using the lapse in combat to rest a little, even if she was still having to use her magic. She was pretty sure they were well away from what the foot soldiers could do to them, but there was still another factor. The invisible one had smashed straight through the wall like it was nothing, and they knew nothing about what that things powers were. For all they knew, it was hot on their tails. She needed to be able to keep fighting if that was the case. She wished Lubi was here, it’d hurt but she could lift the fatigue a bit on Yuli.

They moved over the rooftops of a couple more buildings and were eventually able to find one that had an entrance to the lower levels on the rooftop, an entrance they intended to exploit… But it was locked. “Damn it…” muttered Myeon, forming a knife out of energy and jamming it at the lock until the thing opened up, pulling the door open and letting the knife disappear before gesturing to the stairwell inside for the others. She was the one to lead the way, while Sun and Mikyung followed her and Seo-Hyun stumbled inside, Mikyung placing the girl they were carrying down on the ground when they were inside the stairwell and in relative peace away from whatever enemy it was that was chasing them.

“I think we might be safe for now…” Sun said, looking to the girl. “We can either move out again, or we can stay here for a moment and see if we can find anything out from her about what the hell all this is… I think she needs more healing anyway, she doesn’t… Look too good.”

“Healing her is probably a good idea. She dies we won’t ever know what this was about.”

Yuli leaned against the wall, panting heavily. She pulled out one of the energy bars she always carried on her, and opened a slit in the armor to munch on it with. It’d only help a little, most of this fatigue would just need time to fade, but it’d help in the short term. She rubbed at the stump where her hand should be and then back on the door they used to get in.

“Guys with guns may be off us, but I’m still worried about the invisible thing.”

“I can’t sense them anymore… I’m not a psychic so I don’t know what the hell that was about but I could feel it before. Now… Not so much,” said Sun, breathing a quiet sigh of relief as they looked to the sleeping girl. “But as for her… I have the feeling she’s dragged us into something that’s going to be way over our heads, just from how things have gone so far…”

“Well whatever it is, we gotta keep her alive to find out.”

Yuli took another bite of the energy bar and shoved the wrapper away as she resealed her armor. She looked down at the stump of her hand, and rubbed it again. She could use two hands right now, but she couldn’t spare the energy to fix it till this was all over. She kept her ears peeled so that if they were approached again she would know, but otherwise just rested, for now.

by **Forest State** » Sat Aug 03, 2019 4:42 pm

SEASON 1 EPISODE 13 // OVERESTIMATION
Collaborative post between Forest State & Lunas Legion

DATE // AUGUST 30TH, 2025
LOCATION // DOWNTOWN TORONTO, CANADA
CAST // Antares ‘Khione’ Gray and Noelle ‘Lux’ Ethier

Media attention - it was something the members of Team Futures had always expected, and being able to deal with it was something that was expected of them. After all, they were taking part in an unprecedented superhero reality show, it made sense that they would quickly draw the attention of both the United States and the country they were living in for the most part, Canada… And media attention added a need to sometimes speak to the media, a need to keep the fanbase growing by interacting with the fans that they already had. Despite some rough spots, such as the fight with TNB, it seemed that they were catching on just fine with the population here in Toronto.

Which led to, on the 30th, the team being led out by their instructors to have a bit of an impromptu press conference downtown, not far from the sight of the CN Tower looming overhead, before they would meet some of their fans. The first time they’d had such a press conference in their established history as a team, not that they had been around for very long. They’d all seen the reactions on social media and on blogs. Now, they’d have a chance to respond to that themselves - for better or for worse. The producers were mainly hoping that if someone made a media blunder, it would at least be an interesting one at that, one that’d get people tuning in for the next episode after seeing snippets of it in the preview.

The team was arriving in somewhat stylish fashion - it wasn’t limousines or anything like that but the black Hummers they were showing up in did stand out from the rest of the traffic because of their size… Never mind the fact that they guzzled gas, they were using TV money here and they weren’t the ones that had to pay for it. The team members themselves had been told to dress up but not to come here looking like they were headed to a formal event… They were supposed to look nice, but not to the extent that it looked out of place surrounded by common people, or to the extent that it looked like it was manufactured artificially.

The Hummers stopped when they had reached one of the main plazas downtown, the CN Tower only a mile or two away from them at this point as they stood in the plaza that was between the Blue Jays stadium and a park that was on the other side of it, the entire area putting them around quite a lot of civilians who were here to check out the various attractions, of which there happened to be many across the span of this plaza and the area around it.

“Media are setting up…” Svetlana said, climbing out with the rest of the team. “For now, stand around and look friendly.”

“Hopefully this doesn’t get interrupted.” Antares muttered to herself as she climbed out of the Hummer, rubbing her arms with the memory of their last outing to Toronto less than a week ago more than fresh in her mind. Her arms still stung if she moved them or touched them wrong. She looked around briefly, doing her best to banish the darker, more pessimistic thoughts in her mind and doing her best to smile as she looked around. She still hadn’t exactly grown used to how big Toronto actually was, being from small town Indiana.

“Well, you have more support this time in case something goes wrong… We’re not getting caught with a team of three in an ambush again,” Svetlana said, before letting her voice trail off, deciding if she was going to add the last part to her sentence. She did, eventually, even if it changed the sentence to one that was a bit less confident and optimistic. “For now.”

For now. It could still happen, it just wouldn’t happen now when the entire team was out here, except for Sun and Yuli who would be getting back from Korea a little bit later. But not everyone on the team seemed concerned - Fayza, the one of the other ones who had been present during the attack, was quiet. The thing to understand, however, was that Fayza was usually quiet. It was her natural state, really. And it didn’t seem like she’d been changed much.

Noelle, on the other hand, was only slightly on edge as they climbed out of the Hummers and headed into the plaza itself, some people taking note of their presence as they entered. It wasn’t that hard to recognize them, they were something of a distinctive group, with one of them having pink hair, two of them having white hair, and well, Fayza being herself and being a giant compared to most of the population. They stuck out for sure.

“This is your natural environment, isn’t it?” Noelle said towards Antares, her voice containing a hidden dig - essentially, she was saying Antares was an attention whore, and doing it in a bit of a more diplomatic way. But her tone made it clear just what she thought of the girl, even if they had been able to put their differences aside for long enough to work on the Black Hearts mystery together. Just because they had been able to work together, though, didn’t mean that the feelings were gone. Far from it.

“Sort-of?” Antares shrugged. “On the one hand, media. On the other, not the kind of media I’m used to dealing with. I’m more of a social media type, not…” Antares gave a vague wave around them. “This. If anything press conferences and all that stuff are probably more your thing, not mine.”

Noelle just rolled her eyes at the remark, not really… Getting along with her teammate. Some days, she put less effort into hiding that fact than others, and it might be one of those days judging from how she was acting. “It’s not really my ‘thing,’ no,” she said, folding her arms. “It’s just something that I’ve grown up around. You know what they say. ‘Act like you’ve been there.’ Lot of heroes could use that advice.”

“Still more experience with these things than me then.” Antares said, falling into silence briefly. “And I wouldn’t know, bit difficult to act like I’ve been there when I’ve never been to one in my life, I don’t even remember watching one of these… Kinda terrified I’m going to fuck this all up, to be honest, since I know some things will come up because they’re the worst possible things for the media to ask so of course they will.” Antares paused again. “That, and I hate sitting in one place for too long.”

“We’re not sitting for this one, we’re standing,” Noelle corrected matter of factly, before pausing, her tone changing slightly - it was hard to read what she was feeling but it was maybe… Confusion? “The hell are you telling me all that for, don’t you know that I don’t like you?” she asked, genuinely confused by the confession. “Don’t you realize that you’re showing me your weaknesses? Unless. You’re just making it up, but I didn’t think you were that smart, out of everyone here.”

“Everyone’s got weaknesses, I’m just open about mine since I don’t see the point in lying or hiding them or whatever.” Antares said, tapping her fingers on the side of her leg in nervous anticipation. “They’re part of me, anyone who’s half-decent at people-watching will figure them out sooner or later and it’s not like they’ll get me killed. Know your weaknesses, own them and then you can make sure they don’t fuck you over too badly. Besides-” Antares smirked slightly. “It’s weakness through lack of experience, I’ll get used to these things after I’ve been thrown into the metaphorical deep end with enough of the things. Even if standing in one place is worse than sitting.”

Noelle let out a slow sigh as they reached the spot where they were supposed to stand and kept her arms folded, unsure of what to feel, knowing that she… Didn’t like the attention whore in front of her but also feeling like it’d be a bit unfair to continue competing against her when she had no idea what she was doing with this. After all, Noelle was the one with far more experience. “Well, I might be able to give you some tips or something,” she said in a lower voice, almost as if the offer of help was something that was… Dirty to her. “But if you’re just making this up, I’ll stab you.”

“Why’d I make this all up?” Antares cocked her head, looking rather confused. “I can’t lie to save my life, but I’ll take all the advice I can get with things like this. I’d prefer not to make an absolute idiot of myself, even if that means just being mostly an idiot instead.”

“You know… You want to be a bigger hero than me, so you play yourself off as… You play yourself off as someone that doesn’t know anything so you can slip under the radar and compete more. Or if you were smart enough, you might do that anyway,” Noelle said, shrugging, somewhat surprised that it didn’t seem Antares was making it up. “Maybe I gave you a bit too much credit assuming that.”

“You-” Anatares let out a laugh. “Yeah, you gave me too much credit for being some devious backstabber. Maybe if this was high school or something, but I’m not that kind of person. Anymore, at least. But what you see with me is… Pretty much what you get, no hidden depths, tragic backstories, mysterious motives, revenge stories or any of that stuff. Sure, I want to get famous and be known, but I’ll do that in my own way. No need to smash others out the way or whatever, not like there’s a limited number of chairs at the metaphorical fame table.”

“There are, when you’ve been around this a bit more you might see that for yourself… Growing up like I did around some of the top heroes in Canada, some of the top heroes in France too, you get to see that. But whatever… I’d feel bad going at you too much when you don’t know what you’re doing, at least as much as I thought you would,” Noelle said with a shrug. “So if you want to call this something of a peace and we can get to the press conference now… We can do that. If you want it, that is.”

“I didn’t even know there was a metaphorical war in the first place. Thought I left all that social backstabbing behind me at high school, but I’m down. Feel free to stab me or whatever if I accientally fuck you over, but… Not too hard?” Antares grinned, seemingly joking.

Noelle nodded, although it was hard to tell just how serious she was as she extended her hand. “Sure… First things first, I guess. I teach you how to not make a fool out of yourself for the cameras…”

by **Durmatagno** » Tue Aug 06, 2019 6:25 pm

SEASON 1 EPISODE 14 // BLOOD ON THE CONCRETE PT 3. (IF YOU WANT TO GET OUT ALIVE, RUN FOR YOUR LIFE)
Collaborative post between Forest State & Durmatagno

DATE // AUGUST 25TH, 2025
LOCATION // GANGNAM DISTRICT, SEOUL, REPUBLIC OF KOREA
CAST // Sun ‘Primace’ Choe & Yuli Rose

The girl that was sitting along the wall in front of them, despite her heavily injured state at the moment, woke up. She had been unconscious but alive before, but now her eyes opened slowly and she winced in pain, coughing a little bit as she looked straight ahead, not yet noticing the people around her and her eyes not focusing in on them yet as she leaned against the stairwell hallway, some of her blood still getting on the smooth floor below them. “Where… Where am I?” she asked, almost to herself out loud, letting out a slight groan from the pain she was still feeling.

“Stairwell, away from the people trying to shoot you.”

Yuli didn’t look away from the base of the stairwell she was watching, though she did move the cloud to create a thin blanket below them. If that invisible enemy came up from there, she’d catch it when it moved through the cloud. She wasn’t sure they were out of the woods yet, especially as the girl was still bleeding. Still, at last she was awake, that was better than her never waking up.

Myeon moved back down to continue healing the girl, but she… Still didn’t seem to see who was in front of her, her vision a haze from the pain that she was in and her current state overall. “Why…?” was the only thing she could manage to say, as if she didn’t remember exactly the reason why she was here. Not yet, at least.

“We were hoping you could shed some light on that.”

Yuli sighed and moved back to lean against a wall, her glass would tell her if anything came from below. She needed to rest for a minute, and that meant letting her control of the armor lapse. She was for the moment, essentially immoible. Of course, she could snap back into action if she needed to, but she needed some energy to put all the glass back.

The girl paused, Myeon continuing to do her work while the girl opened her eyes a bit more and looked around, her eyes going slightly wide as she realized what she was looking at - more specifically, she recognized who she was looking at… Apparently she recognized the members of the Gangnam Stars, which fit since she had collapsed outside of their team house after all, after she had apparently run there after picking up whatever injuries she had.

And then her head turned to see Sun and Yuli standing there slightly off in the distance, her eyes lingering on Sun before they eventually settled on Yuli, narrowing slightly eventually. “What the fuck are you doing with them?” she asked, forgetting all about the rest of the subject matter at hand and directing her attention to the fact that Yuli was with this group of heroes right now.

“How about we deal with why you were bleeding out everywhere, and why a bunch of people with guns and a meta of some kind wanted you dead. Then we can get to why I’m here.”

Yuli waved her hand, she wasn’t angry, but she thought there were more important things to worry about. She knew a lot of Sun’s fans didn’t like her, whatever. Fandoms were fickle and ravenous, she could deal with them. Right now though, there was something far more important than her hanging out with the Gangnam Stars and being in Korea.

“I don’t fucking know, maybe I’d have a better idea if I wasn’t shocked right now by seeing this. You don’t deserve to be with them,” the girl replied, her voice getting animated quickly.

“We don’t have time for this…” said Seo-Hyun, who was leaning against another one of the hallways within the stairwell, listening for footsteps. “For all we know, whatever… Did this to you is still out there. So tell us what happened and we might be able to protect you from it-”

“Ugh, fine… I… Don’t know all that much about this,” the girl admitted, pouting slightly. “I was walking around, taking pictures for my blog, checking some things out, and suddenly these camo dudes show out out of nowhere and they don’t say anything to me, they just start shooting… So I run, of course, and I figure if I get far enough into the city people will see them and I’ll be safe but… Ugh… I felt the worst pain ever and I realized something had stabbed me… I don’t know what it was, I couldn’t see it… And I didn’t last long after that before collapsing.”

“So it was the invisible meta that got her, must have snapped a picture of something they didn’t want people to know about.”

Yuli moved past the attacks from the girl, no need to bring that back up when they actually had her on task. She waved her stump, forgetting for a moment she was missing a hand and couldn’t point.

“Were you using a phone or a proper camera?”

“I… Was using my phone,” the girl said, with a slight sigh. “It might still be on me or it might have fallen on the ground when I was running… I don’t know… And who is ‘they?’ They didn’t say anything… They just started shooting. Granted, there was a warning sign, but I thought they would just yell at me or something… And I’ve never seen those camo dudes.”

“No clue, they busted into the building to get to us, probably because we had you. Chased us for awhile, shot at all of us. Now we’re patching you up and resting.”

Yuli pulled out a second energy bar to start munching on. She wasn’t sure how much a second one would actually help, but she was hungry and it’d help quiet that till she was able to eat a proper meal. She got to her feet as she ate, and went back to watching the stairwell.

“Where the hell were you photographing in the first place to get a reaction like this?” Seo-Hyun asked… But the girl remained silent, not saying a word. It caused the team leader to demand something more. “We can’t help you if you don’t tell us anything, you know? Where were you taking pictures?”

“I don’t want to say-”

“Then maybe we should leave you for the people chasing you if you aren’t going to take this as seriously as we are,” Seo Hyun cut her off, leaning forward and grabbing her by the collar, pushing Myeon out of the way slightly. “Are you going to tell us, or not-”

“I just went a little bit too far trying to prove or disprove some internet theories I read, alright? I’m just a blogger… Fuck, why do you have to be so rude? You never talk like this on camera-”

“We’re not on camera,” said Seo-Hyun, giving the girl a good knock to the side of her head with the side of her fist before Myeon pulled her back somewhat to keep things from escalating. They did, after all, need the girl in a decent state if they wanted to find out just what this was about and why they had people chasing them because of protecting her. “What do you think we should do? Leave her here or risk another fight?”

Seo-Hyun turned to the others, looking to Sun in particular. “The rest of you can decide… It’s your team,” Sun said rather neutrally.

“Not even my country, I’ll leave it up to you guys.”

Yuli scratched her head and moved to put the ‘helmet’ of her glass mold back on. If they were heading back out, there was a risk of more fighting, and she didn’t want to be exposed. That meant her voice would once more be grating, and crystalline as she had to filter it through the glass.

They didn’t get a real chance to make a decision. As they were talking, and before the others could pitch in with something, the door at the top of the stairwell exploded… Smoke emerged and then cleared but even as the smoke cleared, there was nothing there but strange distortions which pushed the smoke in unnatural ways and indicated someone was there. The invisible attacker they had tangled with earlier. “That’s going to be the one we fought before…” Mikyung said, pointing it out to the others as Sun shifted back into her ‘Primace’ state and Myeon helped the girl leaning against the wall up.

“She should be in a good enough state to run for now…” Myeon said, although the fact that her voice trailed off in the end made it seem like she wasn’t that confident in her own words.

“Yeah? No one is carrying her, so she’s going to need it,” Seo-Hyun stated, not shifting into her own powered form just yet as they stared at the… Hardly visible but still approaching figure.

Yuli whipped around as the top of the stairwell exploded, the glass from below flowing up and around her, forming into a blade and a few spikes that attached on the stump where her left hand should be. The nature of her armor made it dangerous just to touch, she shouldn’t be the one to carry the girl.

“Move, now!”

She was yelling specifically at the girl and moved to make keep herself between the invisible figure and the girl. There wasn’t a lot of room, so hopefully they could cover each other well enough to make sure the blogger got away or drive off the invisible meta.

The girl stood up and ran unsteadily, and not long after she did, a knife flew from the direction of the invisible meta and hit the wall where she had been sitting. Whoever this was had some aim… “We get to the ground floor and regroup from there,” said Seo-Hyun, shifting into her powered form and accelerating, moving quickly down the stairwell while Sun, Myeon, and Mikyung moved at a more regular pace, not looking behind them to see if the enemy was pursuing. But it didn’t… Seem like the pursuit was all that serious. That was to say, the enemy wasn’t moving as fast as it had earlier while chasing them.

“Yuli, come on,” Sun said, lingering back slightly to make sure Yuli was keeping up with the rest of the group.

Yuli lingered only long enough to fire the first of her shards at where she thought the invisible figure was, before following quickly after. She was hoping whoever...whatever was chasing them was more tired than they were and could dodge or pursue very well. This was going on for quite awhile, whatever the girl had snapped was major if they had hunted for them this far, and this hounded them this closely.

The shards might have slowed the figure down… They might have not… It was hard to see what exactly had happened, mainly because they couldn’t see the figure itself. However, what they could hear was shouting from the lower levels… The sound of another small explosion, too, one of an indeterminate origin. “Keep pushing forward,” Seo-Hyun said.

But when they finally did reach the ground floor, they were only met by something that they wouldn’t be expecting at all - a number of officers of the Metropolitan Police Agency, weapons drawn and pointed at them rather than the threat that was chasing them, which didn’t seem to continue following them after luring them into this situation in the first place. “What the fuck?” hissed Sun, the lobby of the apartment building occupied by enough of the police that an escape attempt seemed futile at this point.

Greeeat. Whatever she snapped a picture of was government.

Yuli thought to herself as she made no aggressive actions, quietly hoping that this was a mix up instead of something more serious. The cynic in her though was pretty sure they’d just fought government people. Maybe shady black ops stuff, but government nonetheless. She hoped that wouldn’t be the case, but with the guns pointed at them...she felt they were right and truly screwed.

Seo-Hyun was the first one to put her hands up, the rest of them following suit, shifting to their non powered forms as the police surrounded them, waiting until they were standing there without protection before moving to fix handcuffs to their wrists… “I don’t think we’re getting out of this,” said Sun, looking back to Yuli as the handcuffs went around her wrists, guns still trained on Yuli in the process. “But the corporation has a good legal team, whatever this is… Might blow over.”

Yuli let the glass surrounding her drop to the floor, including for the sake of argument, the rest of her left arm. She only had the one, so they couldn’t cuff her the way the could the others.

“Yeah well, this is going to be annoying.”

“It’s better than ending up dead,” was the only thing Sun said as the officers approached Yuli, and while they couldn’t handcuff her, they did point their guns at her and gesture for her to move with the rest of the group. They didn’t, it seemed, have any special instrument to arrest her without her arm - they simply left the implicit threat as enough motivation to keep her cooperating.

Yuli followed the police instructions. She wasn’t going to risk getting beaten or shot over what she hoped was a misunderstanding. Thankfully she was with a group of people that had a lot of media attention, so the cops were unlikely to do anything in the public eye. All she could hope for was similar protections from association.

The next proceedings after the arrest took place in a… Matter of hours. They had been taken to a station - and the media definitely was aware of this happening - and brought into rooms to be interviewed separately. They weren’t yet told exactly what they were in here for, or what the result was going to be for them based on the arrest and what had happened in the interviews, but Yuli would find herself as the last one up to talk to someone that was apparently a police agency detective.

She was offered a seat in a room which was better furnished than the stereotypical interrogation room, but it was still obvious what the purpose was, with a table there and seats on both sides. The detective, of course, sat down on the other side of the table. “Yuli Rose… Correct? And would I be correct in saying that you’re American in nationality?”

“Dual Citizenship actually, through my mother.”

Yuli was going to be concise with her statements. Get this over with as soon as possible. She was only even somewhat familiar with American law, she’d never studied Korean law.

“And your business in Seoul, given that the records indicate you came here from abroad?”

“Visiting family, traveled with Sun and was staying with her friends.”

The detective paused, stopping to write a couple of the details down before continuing with the questioning, his voice still calm. “And your connection to Mi-ran Soo?” he asked… A name that wasn’t exactly familiar but with the way the detective said it, it seemed like it was one that Yuli should have known.

“I’m not familiar with the name, but by elimination I’m going to guess that’s the blogger.”

The detective nodded. “Correct. You were… Obviously seen with the same group that was with her at the time of her arrest. We’ve already talked to the others, but we’d like to know if you have any words about your connection to her and the group’s connection to her.”

“Today was the first time I met her, after we found her bleeding in front of the team’s building. She seemed to be pissed I was hanging out with the Stars, said ‘You don’t deserve to be with them’, so I’d guess she’s a fan of them. Other than that, you seem to know more about her than I do.”

Noting those facts down, the detective continued. “And do you know about the circumstances that led to her bleeding in front of the team building? Did she say anything else other than that?”

“Said she was taking pictures, then she was being chased by men in uniform. Felt a sharp pain in her side and passed out, way she phrased it she seemed like she didn’t know where exactly she had ended up when she passed out. I do know that men with guns and something invisible were definitely after her.”

“And what did you and the rest of the group do after finding her passed out?”

“Brought her inside to heal her and find out what happened, then the invisible something attacked and drove us out the back into the alley. Out there is where we first saw the armed men that seemed to be after her.”

“But you don’t know what she was… Taking pictures of to find herself in that position?”

“Never got a chance. She didn’t want to tell us, and she herself didn’t even know if she still had her phone. We didn’t get a chance to check if she still had it before the invisible thing attacked again, and we went down to get away from it. Where you guys arrested us.”

“She did indeed have her phone on her. It’s already been seized,” said the detective, before standing up and moving to the door of the room. “I’ve been told to inform you that you and your friends are free to go. You’ll find them waiting in the lobby area for you.”

“Alright.”

Yuli stood up, at some point she had folded the sleever of her left arm so it was no longer just dangling loose. She sighed and looked down at her arm, she didn’t like walking around with just the one, but it’d take time to make a new one. She couldn’t just steal the glass for it after all. Yuli followed the detective to the lobby, and waved at the Stars and Sun. Sun was one of the first ones to look to her when she came back, nodding silently in her direction in acknowledgement.

“We’re going to have some media heat on our hands about being arrested, a lot of intrigue over that fight, and I’m not sure what the producers back home are going to think…” Sun said, letting out a slow sigh. “And on top of that, Mi-ran wants to come back to Canada with us. Says she needs to get out of the country after that happened. Doesn’t feel like whoever sent that metahuman is going to stop with that.”

“Probably not, but it takes awhile to get into the US on anything other than a short term visa, I believe it’s only slightly easier for Canada. Even applying for asylum takes awhile, though there are ways to get residency while she’s working on it, about the same in Canada to if I’m remembering right. I didn’t study Canaidan Law though, so I’m not positive.”

Yuli sighed and scratched her head. If she was inclined her father could pull some strings to streamline the process, but she didn’t particularly like Mi-ran. She rubbed her neck as she thought.

“My mother has some friends in Chicago she could pull some strings with if Mi-ran wants to stay in the US while waiting for everything to process.”

Those would be easier for Yuli to get used, her mother actually still talked to her and didn’t mind what Yuli was doing with her life the way her father hated it.

“Well… I don’t think she’s talking about coming permanently, but… Fuck, I’m not a lawyer, I don’t know how much that changes things. You could see if you can get those strings pulled, she says she’s afraid of something happening now though. Asked me if she could come on our flight back to Toronto and I told her I don’t know yet,” Sun said, running a hand through her hair in frustration. “I don’t know the right thing to do in this case.”

“Uhh, if she applies for asylum as soon as she lands they’ll hold her for a while before either releasing her for further proceedings, or rejecting her outright. In the US at least, Canada is a bit more lenient, so she might not even get held, but it takes time. If she wants a tourist Visa she’d have to apply for it here and wait for the interview, though tourist visas don’t have the same scrutiny of a work visa or green card.”

“And what is she going to say to them, that she wants asylum but she has no idea what danger she’s in other than the fact that she was chased by camo dudes… Who she couldn’t identify?” Sun said with a pause. “I guess she could try it but… I don’t know how well that’s going to go over. We were there and even we have just about no details of what would happen. Don’t know how an actual country will feel about that story.”

“She could get a tourist visa, they last up to six months and she can stay at a Korean embassy while she waits, as it’s considered Korean soil. While under the tourist visa she can either stay the full six months, or work towards a work visa or green card.”

“I’ll tell her that she can do that, I guess,” Sun stated, turning to head off to some other location but stopping first and looking back to Yuli. “And don’t say anything about this incident, even when we’re back in Canada. The rest of the group isn’t saying anything either. We might in the future, but it looks like it would be a smarter move to wait first and see if… Any more details are made clear before we involve ourselves anymore.”

“Got it, I’ll keep it quiet.”

Yuli waved Sun away before collapsing into a nearby seat. She was starving, her stomach audibly growling. After the amount of magic she’d used, she needed to eat, but she hadn’t yet. She also wouldn’t have a left arm till they got back to Canada, which was annoying and mildly inconvenient. She leaned her head back against the wall, sighing tiredly, her face paler than usual.

by **Lunas Legion** » Thu Aug 08, 2019 4:01 pm

SEASON 1 EPISODE 15 // ONE SHOT, OR ONE OPPORTUNITY (TO SEIZE EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED)
Collaborative post between Forest State & Lunas Legion

DATE // SEPTEMBER 3RD, 2025
LOCATION // TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA
CAST // Antares Gray

Things were relatively normal around the Team Futures house in Mississauga - the team had a training exercise coming up soon in Thailand, along with some of the other teams of the Hero League in what was set to be a televised spectacle, but before that, they would have some time around the house with nothing major coming up and no activities outside of the fairly routine ones such as basic training and going on low level patrols around the city. That wasn’t to say, however, that things weren’t about to change and take a step out of the ordinary - at least for one member of the team.

Antares would find herself receiving a text message from a number she didn’t recognize, and a number she hadn’t given her own number to in the past, and the words were… Slightly cryptic. Not necessarily bad, but one had to ask, just what was the meaning of it? The text itself didn’t exactly go far in explaining it.

TELL PRODUCERS YOU HAVE A MEETING AND STEP OUTSIDE

WALK EXACTLY TWO BLOCKS TO THE RIGHT OF YOUR HOUSE

LOOK FOR THE LAMBO HURACAN

GREAT PRIZES AND FAME AND FORTUNE AWAIT

Antares blinked, staring down at her phone with a slightly confused expression on her face. The number was blocked, so she had no idea who it was. Anyone else might’ve thought this was some obvious trap, but really, if this was a trap, it was so obvious that there was no way anyone would use this as bait. She turned her phone off, getting up off the couch she was lounged on watching some TV show but not bothering to turn it off.

You couldn’t just dangle something like this in front of her and not expect her to at least have a look, if there was no Lambogini Huracan around then she could just fly back. It wasn’t like it was a common car, after all.

She left the house’s lounge, heading towards the lobby, actually walking and not flying for once. She wasn’t sure if the message was being specific about that, but she felt it would be better to lean on the side of caution for once. As much as she loved flying, she was curious.

“Going out to a meeting, I’ll be out for a bit, you can call me if you need me since it’s not out of flight range if something comes up.” Antares said, giving a small wave to Sadat as he approached her in the lobby and pre-empting the inevitable question of where she thought she was going before he could even say anything as she pushed open the doors and left.

It was a bit colder than she was used to, but nothing unbearable as her power went to work warming her back up. Antares hummed to herself as she walked, not exactly fast but not slowly either, eager to see if there was actually anything to this and if it wasn’t just a prank or a trap or something like that. It wasn’t like she couldn’t fly two blocks if it was a trap.

There was indeed a Huracan on one side of the road, the windows tinted somewhat - but it was clear someone was looking at her from there… As she approached and grew closer to it, she could hear the engine rev as the driver pulled off the curb and accelerated in her direction, stopping at an angle next to the sidewalk and rolling the window down. The girl inside was notable for not seeming much older than herself… That, and for having fire red hair which stood out immediately even if it didn’t look natural.

And then there was the fact that she was stunningly attractive, again to an almost unnatural level. But she carried herself… Like a regular person, it seemed, taking the encounter casually.

“Antares… Feel free to climb in the passenger side,” she said, pulling up the sunglasses she was wearing as she looked at the hero standing outside her window, gesturing to the other side. “There’s a lot of things to talk about.”

“You got me curious, not every day I get random texts from hidden numbers.” Antares said, walking around the back of the car and climbing into the passenger, letting out a small sigh of relief internally that this wasn’t a trap or a prank from another member of the team or even the producers. “What’s this all about anyways?” Antares asked as she buckled herself in, briefly fiddling with her clothes.

“Well… You’ll see,” said the girl, not answering. She pulled off, keeping one hand on the steering wheel while she reached for a cigarette with another, accelerating but taking her hand of the wheel long enough to light it before pressing it between her lips. “I go by Linzey, by the way… Or just Linz,” she said, setting the lighter down and returning the cigarette to between her fingers as she kept one hand on the wheel and went into a tight turn. “And I assume I would be correct in saying our background research was right when it said you were after fame and fortune.”

“I’m not a hero out of the goodness of my own heart, I don’t think anyone is.” Antares said, shuffling around and trying to get more comfortable in the strange situation. “So yeah, that’s why I’m here, fame and fortune. More the fame part, although was it really necessary to offer it like some phone scammer?” Really, they were lucky that she was curious and indeed a little greedy, she wasn’t sure any of the rest of their team would’ve bought into it. They would be too suspicious of it, too tense or just didn’t care.

“You’re after fame and fortune enough to actually come despite it being offered like a scam. I’d say that was a decent enough test for our purposes,” said Linzey, letting out a slow chuckle as she took a drag from the cigarette. “I’d like to know… What you would think of getting a sizable boost to your fame. You see, believe it or not, I work with some people that would like to make you a star. A real one, not just a star on this show which is small time in the grand scheme of things. If you don’t believe me… Well, how do you think I ended up with this car? I can attest to their skill at what they do.”

“I’m listening.” Antares said, turning to face towards Linzey, her eyes lighting up ever so slightly. “Do you mind if I ask where we’re going?”

“You have a couple of options… We can head somewhere more high class than this to talk business, or you can get on a plane to New York and we can head somewhere else that’s going to blow your mind - the latter is a better demonstration of what my firm can offer you, of course. Either take something good and immediate or take something better and wait about an hour and a half… The choice is yours,” Linzey said with a shrug. “I was headed downtown, actually.”

“I think I have a few hours or so before the producers start panicking about where I’ve gone running off to, just have to hope nothing major comes up or I’ll have to explain why I’m suddenly in New York.” Antares said, her mind slowly kicking into gear. One person in a Lamborghini was one thing, but she wanted to see exactly what was being offered, just to make sure they could actually deliver. It wasn’t like it was clear what this firm even was, she hadn’t even heard the name being dropped and this was a lot of effort for a trap for one recent, albeit up-and-coming, arrival on the scene of superheroes. It wasn’t like she had any enemies willing to go to this much effort to go after her.

Linzey scoffed. “You tell them that you and your agent have personal business - these days, heroes disappear all the time for that kind of thing. Teams aren’t the biggest thing out there anymore, everyone has a brand of their own and that requires plenty of meetings, trips, and the like… Technically, it’s not a lie. You are leaving to do something for your brand, after all. But you do have an agent to relay this kind of stuff, right?”

“Not exactly?” Antares cringed ever so slightly, realising this was yet another thing that someone more experienced with this world probably would have set themselves up with by now. “I’m new to this whole celebrity business, but that doesn’t mean I can’t lie and say this is me setting myself up with an agent.”

“I can get you a good one in New York City, you’re going to get screwed in this business if you don’t have one… Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if the network is already screwing you since you didn’t have someone that knows this kind of thing to read the papers over before you signed… But I’m assuming this means that you want to head to NYC instead of downtown.”

“Yeah, NYC.” Antares nodded. “And yeah, the network probably is screwing me over somewhere, but if it’s ‘small-time’ as you said then it doesn’t really matter, I’ll be on to greater things after the first season of the show has run its course most likely. It’s reality TV, we’re here for one season probably and then we’re done and they’ll follow a new team.”

“Hero League has long term plans for this, they actually intend to give the team enough of a push to compete with Aegis New York at some point, although that’s probably going to take place over a number of seasons… Hard to compete with the top teams in the world with little experience unless you happen to be in a manufactured supergroup that takes members from a bunch of established teams - they think investing in the future is key to staying ahead of competitors. There’s a reason the contract you signed has an option for four more years… Of course, it’s an option the League can trigger, not you, meaning that if they want you for another four years and you want to do your own thing for more money, they’re going to win in the court since, well, you signed those years away yourself,” Linzey said, turning in the direction of the airport and shrugging. “Don’t ask me how I know all that.”

“I’m guessing it’s just one of those things I’m better off not knowing.” Antares chuckled. “That just means I need to get them not to trigger that option which… I barely remember thinking over, if I’m being honest, if I want to move onto something that pays better and doesn’t require sharing screentime with everyone else on the show. Some of us will get to continue, some won’t, new seasons will mean booting off everyone that’s not a favourite, wouldn’t be surprised if there’s an end of show public vote about who the viewership wants to stay on.”

“Stay right where you are, if you pull something to get them to drop you or if you don’t put the effort in, you’re not going to find yourself able to go anywhere with the Hero League in the future - that’s where we need you. And you’re going to be much better off taking the exposure and the constant popularity push than this in the long run than you’re going to be taking Emirati or Qatari money and disappearing to the deserts just because it pays more… Payment involves more than money, and the best paying jobs aren’t always the best ones for your career,” Linzey said somewhat adamnatly. “Few other heroes get as much help starting off as you and the others on this show. They’re invested in your success and that’s why my firm is interested in investing in you.”

“I’ve got no intention of getting myself dropped off this thing, sure the Qataris or whoever might pay more but I’m not shipping myself off to some tiny desert state.” Antares shook her head. “I’m just saying that the League might not trigger the extension period for me and I’ll be replaced in the second season.”

Taking another drag from her cigarette, Linzey chuckled. “You don’t want that to happen, you know. Look at it like this. They think you’re going to be big. They invested in you a lot already, bringing you out here and paying for you to live here and paying you what’s in your contract and funding your training and all that. If they’ve decided to drop you from the show for whatever reason, cutting ties with their investment, what makes you think any of their decent teams are going to give you the time of day? You want to be on, say… A Chicago Midwesterners or an Aegis London after this - not some affiliated team in Iowa or Idaho City because the big ones already see you as someone the League invested in who flopped.”

“True, I guess.” Antares said, cocking her head towards the window and nodding, watching the side of the road pass them by. “No one wants someone who could’ve been big but then was dropped, usually for some valid reason. I don’t think I’ll be replaced personally, and I’ll do my best not to be, I didn’t make it this far just to be told no after all.”

“Basically, we’d like for you to be the next big thing and not the next Timothy Teemo,” Linzey stated, referring to a hero who had been famous during his college days, the sensation around him gaining the nickname Teemomania, before he suffered a hard drop off when it came time to move on to bigger and better things. It was a sensation most fans of the superhero scene - and many casual followers - in the United States were familiar with. As Linzey spoke, they were arriving at the airport, and Linzey started towards… The parking for the section of the place where the private jets and the like took off. “Plane should already be ready for us…”

“Yeah, I’d much rather… Not end up with that particular fate.” Antares shivered ever so slightly. There was nothing worse than getting so close to your dreams and then having them torn out from just in front of you.

When they parked, Linzey stepped out of the Huracan and led Antares into the terminal itself so they could pass through the shorter customs and security line and head to the plane that was already ready to go on the tarmac. “The flight’s going to be about an hour… But I’m sure we won’t end up too bored,” she said, looking over her shoulder with a slight smirk, smoothing out her skirt and showing for the first time just how much it showed. “Depending on how adventurous you are.”

“I guess you’ll find out.” Antares grinned back at Linzey as she stepped out of the car, eyes briefly roaming over her before she turned her gaze away. “Let’s go.”

Linzey stepped out of a room within the back of the business jet, smoothing her hair out and adjusting her clothes - her new clothes, about in the same style with a skirt and a white button up shirt, but they were… More neat than the current state of her previous set. Still panting slightly but taking a deep breath to compose herself, she returned to the cabin with a slight smile on her face, placing a hand on the shoulder of Antares. “I assume my efforts have helped to sway you in these negotiations,” she said… And she had indeed gone all out with these ‘efforts’ she spoke of.

“Quite a bit, although I’m still curious about exactly what I’m seeing in New York, you’ve hyped it up an awful lot so it better not disappoint.” Antares said with a smirk, looking up from the chair she’d spent most of the flight over in, her own causal clothes now traded out for an outfit that matched Linzey’s. She figured showing up to whatever this was in just a T-Shirt and shorts was a bad idea.

They were descending towards La Guardia Airport as Linzey spoke, sitting down next to the window on the same row as Antares and looking at the city skyline as they made their approach and navigated the rivers and urban areas to come closer to the airport. “I guess you could say that I’m taking you here to seal the deal and prove our connections… The place we’re headed, you’ll find a lot of people in the business that you might recognize. Most of ‘em are heroes, I can get in because I work with several of them. Either directly or indirectly through the firm that puts cash in my pockets.”

“Well, it’s good to know that you’ve done this kind of thing before, means I’m not relying on amateurs if you and yours have experience with this.” Antares said, leaning forwards and watching the ground slowly rise up to meet them. For someone who flew everywhere, she still found flying in a plane slightly unusual. It wasn’t like she was used to this kind of flying.

“I will say one thing, though, which is to not stand out too much and draw too much attention… You’re not just seeing on camera personas around here. Which, you’re probably still seeing from most heroes even with your status as a member of the Hero League. You haven’t done enough to really see behind the mask when it comes to most of these guys,” Linzey said, her voice trailing off as they made their landing and started to taxi towards the apron. “That, and you’re too hard to blackmail since you’re utterly shameless.”

“I’m not sure if I should take that last part as a complement, an insult, or both. But I’ll do my best to keep my head down, no flying, nothing that I’d normally do on camera and generally stay quiet.” Antares nodded. “I can not draw attention if I want, it’s just doing the opposite of what I’d normally do.”

They were led off the plane and there was another ride waiting for them, not a taxi but another vehicle for Linzey to drive - the sedan was less high profile than the Huracan, but it didn’t seem like it was her main ride. When both of them climbed in, they started off from the airport. “And if you see someone from the show - actually, scratch that, I’m basically only talking about Svetlana or Young… Hide,” Linzey added as a word of warning. “There’s going to be a fuckton of questions we don’t want to answer if they see you here…”

“Not exactly good at hiding, trying to fly off would make too much of a scene and my hair kinda sticks out of a crowd so I can’t blend in.” Antares said, her tone slightly worried. “Might be best for me to wait outside wherever we’re going in the car, you can probably check if Svetlana or Young are in and then we go from there. Svetlana doesn’t exactly like my persona, shall we say, so she’d probably take any excuse to knock me down a little.”

“I’d be more scared of you ending up dead in the East River when she realizes you’ve got ammo to take her persona out,” Linzey replied ominously. “You haven’t exactly earned your way into this place, you can’t be blackmailed, and well… No one particularly trusts you. But you’re going to need me to get in the door anyway, and I have the feeling Svetlana might be distracted regardless… If she even is here. I know she’s not in Toronto, but I’m not sure where she actually is…”

“You’re really kind-of throwing me into the lion’s den then aren’t you?” Antares let out a small, reluctant sigh. “Wherever the lion’s den even is, I don’t think you’ve ever actually said.”

“It’s in Brooklyn, we’ll get there… Eventually. You know the traffic around these places. And I’m showing you a taste of what it’s like at the upper reaches of the business before offering you the chance to… Start heading in that direction yourself. Although, I can’t claim I don’t have an ulterior motive of my own…” Linzey said, letting her voice trail once again. “You’re headed to an event in Thailand soon, with the rest of your team. There’s going to be a lot of other Hero League people there for it, the whole thing is like a couple weeks. I need someone else on the inside of it, you’ll find out more about that later.”

She paused, continuing to drive. “But I think any risks will be worth it. After all, I’m setting you up to hang with the big dogs… Part of the reason I’m bringing you here, so you aren’t just a new face that’s going to get ignored by anyone important.”

“If you want me to do secret agent stuff you may have come to the wrong person, but I’ll see whatever it is when I get there. It’ll give me something to do when everyone else is probably bitching about the heat and the humidity and bothering me for ice to cool themselves down or whatever.” Antares said, keeping her voice neutral. “But nothing comes for free in this world, so like I said, I’ll see what I can do.” She was much more wary now, but given how Linzey was bringing her to talk with some of the high-ups in the Hero League, whatever she wanted her to do couldn’t be too bad.

“Not asking you to do too much other than form connections. For now.”

That was all Linzey said before they parked behind some building, one that was marked as a club but despite the large size of it, didn’t look like it was in the best condition and didn’t look like it was open to the public - there were signs about how it was an invite only place. “Don’t judge it by the outside, if the outside looked like the inside you’d have too many outsiders trying to get in,” she said, gesturing to the exterior of the building which looked like a converted warehouse, as she stepped out of the sedan. “Oh and uh… Since you’re an outsider and you’re basically a civilian to these guys, expect a cavity search when you show up. They’re pretty paranoid about spies.”

“You seem to imply that I mind cavity searches.” Antares smirked. “But it’s understandable on all counts, I think I’m forming an idea of what this place is, but I won’t say anything since it’s that kind of place.”

Minutes later, they had been allowed into the building, Antares losing her phone and being told that she could have it back when she left. The guards were pretty particular about that, and they gestured down a hallway where Linzey and Antares walked before pushing through a second set of doors at the end which brought them into the real club - even if someone had stepped inside the main entrance, they wouldn’t have seen anything of importance, really. But that was different in this part of the building, where the interior was bathed in a purple glow and where the architecture and the furnishings were modern, strobe lights shining in some areas and other areas being covered in shadows as if they were meant to obstruct the faces of the people that were hanging around them. The warehouse exterior of the building didn’t exactly compare to what the interior looked like, at all.

No, the interior was a lot more upscale and just had the general feeling of a place inhabited by the elite, which it was.

They continued down the main path through the club, and as Antares looked from side to side, she would be able to recognize some of the faces within, from some of the teams of the Hero League that she had seen on TV in the past, including one or two heroes from the Chicago Midwesterners, the team that had been mostly responsible for covering the local area where she grew up, in Indiana. Not that many things actually happened in that rural part of the state - it was a far cry from the gunfights and danger of Gary.

“Don’t stare and keep moving… But turn your head very slowly to your right side…” Linzey said in a low tone towards Antares, not turning her own head much but using her peripheral vision to keep an eye on a specific scene - none other than Svetlana Roux with some younger male hero from Denver, the two of them sharing a couch that was in the shadows and from the looks of things, even in the darkness, it was apparent they were making out.

Antares didn’t stop, only turning her head ever so slightly, her eyes only briefly flicking over in the direction that Linzey had indicated before quickly turning her eyes away, moving her head back the tiniest fraction so she was facing forwards again, still following Linzey through the crowd. It was funny, really, seeing Svetlana who complained so much about how she wasn’t a proper hero being no better than she was when safely away from the public eye. Not that Svetlana would ever know she knew, she wasn’t stupid and she remembered Linzey’s warning from earlier.

Not everyone was shameless like her, after all.

Continuing through the building and heading towards a stairwell that was near the back, Linzey slowly pointed out another sight. “Over there is Alexandre Ethier, the father of your teammate Noelle… And a couple of the members of the Montreal Hunters. I suppose they came here to talk without being bugged,” she said in the same hushed tone, her eyes traveling to the businessman who was conversing with a couple of out of uniform heroes, paying too much attention to the talk to notice Linzey glancing their way.

Antares didn’t bother turning her head towards them; she didn’t exactly like Noelle, and Noelle didn’t exactly like her, but they had a loose agreement not to really interfere too much with one another, so she didn’t particularly care that her father was here. It was just another face that might recognise her, and thus avoid given there was the… Tiny chance he might inform Noelle. Better to be safe than sorry.

They were getting close to the stairs, before Linzey saw something that surprised her, but she didn’t stop and stare and she didn’t point it out specifically to Antares, considering she didn’t want her to do the same thing. “Just saw some chick from Aegis London getting it on with someone,” she said, before pulling Antares into the stairwell, deciding it was better that the newcomer wouldn’t see such a sight and potentially end up in danger because of it.

“Anyway…” she muttered, composing herself slightly after the surprise. “Some of these heroes are going to be in Thailand for the Hero League’s exercises. Your team, also. I’ll have a list of ones I need you to talk to when that happens. For now, however, I think there’s someone on our payroll that you might be interested in meeting.”

“Mind giving me a heads up on who, or is that part of the surprise too?” Antares asked, keeping her voice low. She knew exactly what this place was now, and why Linzey had been so cautious when speaking about it too her. It was where everything that the heroes wanted to do in the shadows happened, where they could drop whatever masks and facades they wore on camera, to just be themselves and to meet in privacy.

She was lucky in that, she supposed, that she had no mask to wear on camera. One of the perks of being absolutely shameless and confident enough in your own sense of identity to own yourself utterly.

“I think you’ll recognize him,” Linzey said, leading Antares up the stairs and stepping out onto a second floor, one that was a bit less crowded than the first one but still had a decent amount of people - it wasn’t just heroes, after all. It was also agents, managers, and other people in the business… Even a few journalists who likely gave up their integrity by putting out whatever stories the heroes in the room dictated to them. In exchange, they received something that many of them wanted - access to the life that was off limits for the vast majority of them, which sometimes came with benefits when it came to breaking big time stories.

She led Antares to a more solitary corner of the room where they would see a youngish brown haired man attempting to charm a couple of women, turning his attention to Linzey and recognizing her when she came over. “Linz, funny to see you here right now…” he stated, having been interrupted somewhat. This, of course, was Scott Naughton… Otherwise known as The Hoosier, the one member of the Chicago Midwesterners that had been born and raised in Indiana - Bloomington, specifically.

He paused, however. “Bringing a newcomer? What… Would this be about?” he asked, before recognizing Antares from the show. “Oh, I assume she’s a fan since she’s from my state?”

“A little bit.” Antares admitted. “I didn’t exactly follow the whole hero scene much until I ended up in it, but you end up following the few heroes that’re actually from your state regardless of how much you’re into the whole thing.”

“Suppose that’s true… How’d you end up around here, though, with the whole reality show thing-”

“I brought her,” said Linzey. “She might end up on the payroll soon… Figured seeing you around here might help convince her.”

Scott let out a chuckle. “Well, I can say that I wouldn’t be here without the firm. Probably wouldn’t have made it all the way to Chicago either if it wasn’t for some help from there. We’ve both gotten boosts, F-”

Linzey lashed out quickly with a kick to the shin, cutting Scott off from whatever he had been about to say.

“... Ah, right. Linzey’s two cars are from the firm, I’m sure you get the idea. They take care of us, and well, they’re working to make things better for all us heroes. You’re getting more than just an endorsement,” he stated, as if attempting to sell her a car. Although, like most big time heroes, he had a charisma about him and he wasn’t the worst car salesman in the world.

“I’m not exactly seeing anything that screams out ‘no’ beyond some mildly shady things but hey, not everyone can get access to this kind-of thing.” Antares said carefully. She wasn’t really the cautious type, she had gone out to investigate an ominous text message after all. “So… Yeah, do I need to sign anything or whatever, how does this all work?”

“It happens not all at once. You’re getting an endorsement and we’ll get you an agent first, more… Management and stuff will come later. Doesn’t look good when someone goes from amateur to mainstream overnight, not to mention it’s hard to make that happen in the first place. And if you get too big at once… The powers that be will come down on you without mercy. It’s the reason we haven’t offered these endorsements to anyone that will take them,” remarked Linzey. “Hope you don’t mind that the endorsement is going to uh… Be from a VPN company, the number is undisclosed officially but it’s quite big for what it is.”

“Does it really matter who actually endorses you?” Antares asked. She hasn’t really assumed who her benefactor was, the way Linzey had phrased it earlier made it sound like it was from a completely different entity. “And yeah, if you get big too quick it’ll look manufactured and fake, but I can be patient and wait. I was willing to slog it out with the show for however long it took after all.”

“You’ll have to be in some advertisements and such for the company but other than that, it shouldn’t matter,” said Linzey, nodding. She led Scott and Antares over to a table, reaching into her jacket for a few folded sheets of paper and placing them down. “This is actually what you need to sign… Everything is for Super-VPN, my agency will… Deal more directly in the future. You can look it over. As you can see, the deal will give you a million over the next year. But that’s, um… A taste. Do more for us, and you’ll get more out of it.”

“Makes sense.” Antares nodded, sliding the pieces of paper towards her and briefly skimming them over, just making sure she wasn’t selling her soul to the devil or anything like that, literally or metaphorically. “I don’t see anything glaring, mind passing me a pen so I can sign however many scribbles need it?”

“You sign at the bottom,” said Linzey, taking a pen out and handing it over to Antares, watching carefully. She… Seemed satisfied with the outcome she had gotten here. “And after that I’ll tell your new agent to… Start booking you for a few things that will help you. And possibly us.”

“You wouldn’t be doing this for me if it didn’t help you in some way.” Antares chuckled, picking up the pen with her hand and scribbling her signature out where it said to sign. “But I think it’s a good enough deal.”

Linzey chuckled, leaning close to speak in Antares’ ear. “Yeah, it’s good enough… Welcome to the family, Antares. And remember these words which will get you places with the right people… Carpe Diem,” she said, adding a lower tone for the last part, stressing the words as if they were important before she backed away, stretching and standing up. “I have to go, I’m currently expected in D.C. in a couple of hours, but Scott will handle the rest, and let you pick an agent and such…” she said.

She paused, however, reaching into a bag and taking out something, a Samsung phone. “Oh, and if you need to contact me, this is the one to use. Never call me from your main number. This has my work number in it and my regular one… I’d prefer if you called the second one but if you really need me for something I’ll basically always pick up on my work one. Sound good?”

“Yeah, sounds good.” Antares nodded, reaching out to take the phone from Linzey, mulling the phrase over in her head. Carpe Diem, or ‘time flies’ or something like that. Slightly ominous, but distinctive and easy to remember. “I’ll put really need you for something under literal life and death emergency, regular just for if I want to talk about something or other or non-urgent advice. I’m assuming you’ll call me on this phone rather than my normal one?”

“Of course,” Linzey stated with a nod. “I’ll be in contact… Actually, I’m sure we’ll see each other again in Thailand. I’m going to be there, but there’s some things that it’d be easier for you to do… Anyway, I need to be in Washington, so I’ll see you… I hope today has been enough of a demonstration of why you should work for us in Thailand.”

“More than enough, and I should probably head back to Toronto.” Antares nodded. “The car will take me back to the airport and fly me back I’m assuming? I could fly back to Toronto myself, but I’d much rather not.”

“That can be arranged. I’ll make a call about it while I’m on my way back,” Linzey said. “When you’re with us, everything you could need is taken care of.”

“Thanks.” Antares nodded, grateful for that she wouldn’t have to spend the six hours or so flying back to Toronto under her own power. Flying at her maximum speed for such a long time was both boring and tiring. “I’ll see myself out, if you don’t mind.”

by **Forest State** » Sun Aug 11, 2019 2:13 am

SEASON 1 EPISODE 16 // P.T.S.D.
DATE // SEPTEMBER 6TH, 2025
LOCATION // PHUKET, THAILAND
CAST // Noelle ‘Lux’ Ethier & ‘Linzey Pennington’

Noelle Ethier wasn’t happy to be stirred from her sleep. Of course, it was the middle of the afternoon, but that didn’t exactly change too much about how she felt right now - she wanted her rest, what she didn’t want was to be caught up by a phone call. And yet, as she lay in bed staring at the ceiling, she could hear the phone next to her bed ringing once again as the caller remained persistent. This was the second time, and it seemed no message had been left after the first time. Lazily, she reached out for the phone before her eyes widened when she saw the name of the contact and the image - an image of herself and another superhero, in the midst of a media photo op.

The name, though, was the thing that had caught her attention originally…

Mystere.

“You know I like to sleep until three if I don’t have team shit, bitch,” said Noelle, answering immediately and bringing the phone closer to her ear.

The voice that came across the other end of the line was low and husky, heavily accented - the accent was French, in specific. It fit the word the superheroine had used for her stage name, really… It made her sound almost like a mystery. As she spoke, the conversation switched to French. “How is the reality TV life treating you… Bitch?”

“Better than free agency is treating you, bitch… But I’m hoping you didn’t call just to chat.”

Mystere’s next words froze Noelle in her place. “Guess who I saw from your team at the Void Club while I was in New York City?”

“... Who from Team Futures other than me even knows about that?”

“Apparently, Antares Gray does… But wait, there’s more-”

“Spit it out,” Noelle said, not having the patience to wait as Mystere messed with her slightly and drew things out.

“She didn’t find out about it on her own, she was with Linzey Pennington…”

“... The agent? Right. Sketchy as fuck one, connected with different heroes and groups, fuckton of money, no info on her?”

“That Linzey Pennington, yes…”

“The hell is Antares doing with her?”

“That, cherie, is why I’m calling you right now…”

Noelle forced herself to roll out of bed, ending up on her feet and stumbling for a moment before she gave a reply, looking for her clothes as she stayed on the phone. “I don’t know how she got in there, or what she’s doing with Pennington, I do know though that me and her made… A loose agreement. I have to wonder why she didn’t come to me if she was looking for an agent.”

There was silence on the line for a moment before the deeper voice returned. “I’m telling you to figure it out. I’ve seen the show. I don’t trust someone like her. Not yet. Not with something like this.”

“You’re one to give orders-”

“This is going to affect all of us if she burns us,” Mystere replied, her voice practically a hiss. “Including you… Including your father.”

Noelle just scoffed. “If she’s even smart enough to blackmail someone, I don’t think she’s the kind of person to do it. I’ve already given her too much credit earlier. But playing the game of social politics isn’t her thing.”

“How do you know that? Did she tell you?”

“Yes-”

“Then that isn’t good enough. It looks like your friend has more secrets than you thought when you first met her or made an agreement with her or whatever. If you don’t figure it out, someone else might.”

Noelle paused, frustrated to an extent. “I don’t give a shit… If you want to push, figure it out yourself. Pennington’s probably here. You can probably find her if you put your mind to it and ask her yourself what she’s playing at. I don’t have anything for you and I don’t intend to stick my head where it doesn’t belong figuring out what’s going on behind the scenes here.”

Silence.

Noelle wondered if Mystere was going to hang up, but the other girl seemed to accept this. “Fine. You feel like talking, you know where to find me. I’ll be… Not far from the bar a lot of the time.”

“Feel like talking? So you can berate me for choosing reality TV?” Noelle asked, hanging up the call before she could get a response and sighing, flopping back onto her bed and holding her head in her hands. Why couldn’t things be simple even when they were on a trip that amounted to a vacation? She supposed that was the life of the superhero but… She couldn’t help but feel things had gotten even more complicated since she had taken this contract to appear on reality TV.

It’s always the same scene...

It was the same as it had been before - the same as it always was. Fires burned, ripping through the local area, and winds seemed to carry them quicker than they could move naturally. The facility was in chaos - people who were used to showing up at work every day and doing their job without considering the inherent danger of it were now running for their lives to evacuate from the building, while soldiers in black or dark tan tactical gear lurked the area, AK-103 and FN SCAR rifles in their hands as they moved in small fireteams, barking instructions for the evacuation or checking certain areas for security breaches. And yet, despite the chaos of the scene, there was a chance it wouldn’t even make the news beyond one or two headlines with no footage attached to them.

The place was an island. An artificial one, created to allow for the workers of this place to stay for up to months at a time without the attention of the media and without outside distractions and scrutiny… It was safe to say most didn’t stay that long, but some of the higher ups practically lived here and spent most of their time here, either because of choice or because they found themselves glued to the projects they spent so much time working on. That work was coming back to bite them right now.

But this situation… It wasn’t easy on anyone.

Not even the ones who had started the fire in the first place.

The fire had come as a result of a metahuman’s powers, of course, it was the only way that it had spread so quickly and suddenly and taken the entire facility by surprise, and the winds that carried the flames were also the result of powers. And yet, despite being the ones to start this, the group of metahumans found themselves outmatched. The thing about an island was that there were limited ways in or out, and it was quite predictable that they were going to end up stuck in a spot like this, where they could either move for the guarded airfield and port and risk getting shot down, or they could get caught in the fire behind them.

Really, they didn’t have any option at all. It was just a matter of how long it took before they realized that fact.

“We have to go…” one of the others said. Plenty of voices were chiming in.

“They have the airfield locked down tighter than Area 51-”

“Should have thought about how they were going to do that before starting the fire that’s taking this whole place down…”

“They aren’t going to leave us, are they?”

“We started this, of course they’re going to leave us!”

“They never gave a shit about us in the first place!”

No one’s getting out without a fight.

The voices blended together into a mess of chaos and shouting and desperation, before the group started to push forward, away from the firestorm and the burning facility and towards the guarded airfield, where they would have to break in if they wanted to have any hope at survival. It didn’t take long for them to reach the signs - the spots where there were fences with barbed wire and warnings telling them that lethal force would be authorized if they continued.

And yet, it didn’t take very long for those fences to be broken down a little bit, to allow the group to move through thin openings.

Ahead of them, they could see plenty of soldiers, who were now pointing them out and raising weapons… Gunshots started, some of the powers of the group were triggered and flashes of light, bursts of fire, and other things were sent towards the men in black. That was to say, a battle had started. Now, it was just a matter of time to see if the group on the advance would be able to break through the defensive line in time to get off of the island before the fire reached them.

It was a race against time and, to a degree, they were playing from behind here.

Not the best spot to be stuck in.

“LINZEY!”

The shout from Scott finally caught the attention of Linzey Pennington, causing her to snap out of the trance like state she was in and shift her attention back to what was in front of her. “You alright?” Scott continued, looking to her with concern as they… Watched one of the staged training fights that happened at this Hero League event in Thailand, one which involved the power of fire going up against the power of water.

“Yeah…” Linzey said, scratching her head awkwardly and looking to her partner, smiling softly. “Just remembered something.”

Not entirely a lie, even if she hadn’t went into the full context. With that, she stood up and made her way out, disappearing into the masses of people in the area and acting as if she had never just frozen up.

by **Lunas Legion** » Sun Aug 11, 2019 3:17 pm

SEASON 1 EPISODE 17 // ON AND ON (IN MY MEMORIES)
Collaborative post between Forest State & Lunas Legion

DATE // SEPTEMBER 6TH, 2025
LOCATION // PHUKET, THAILAND
CAST // Noelle ‘Lux’ Ethier & Antares Gray ft. Rosana ‘Ruler’ Souza

On the Phuket beach, there was a scene drawing quite the attention from those who were here at this resort with the Hero League, and some of the members of the press and the public that had been lucky enough to get in - a match put on for the spectators, two titans clashing against each other, one of them taking an almost demonic form complete with wings and a pair of horns that had tiny fires burning on top of them, the other one having his entire body covered in some kind of hard material like concrete. The former, of course, was the more famous one… R-Beast, part of the Atlantic Coast Cosmopolitans, the super team the Hero League had constructed to keep their market share in the region high even with some of the failures of Aegis New York.

And the match was something to see - R-Beast dove into action against Rebar, the latter hero having the more unassuming power as well as the more unassuming name and staying put where he was, letting his flashy counterpart make the movements for now, but found that one of his punches did less damage against an opponent like this than it would against a normal person. And while Rebar’s power wasn’t flashy, the counterpunch from him did hurt as it came predictably, nothing too fancy but still having a decent amount of force behind it and knocking his opponent back before he connected with another hit, stringing together one more blow before R-Beast jetted backwards using his wings and reset, breathing fire in the area in front of the two to force them to separate for a moment.

Not that fire was going to do much against the concrete, but perhaps it was instinct from fighting against regular humans most of the time. Usually, a wall of fire was enough to stop them in their tracks.

There was a crowd watching the skirmish in addition to the plenty of cameras, some of them handheld and some of them the large kind that belonged to TV networks and the like. Among the crowd, one could find some of the members of Team Futures. It was also where Noelle Ethier would find Antares Gray, after searching the resort for her and eventually heading down to the beach which was located just beyond it - the resort itself was situated on a hill that overlooked the closest beach. “I’ve been looking for you,” Noelle stated, her tone not saying much about exactly why she was looking for Antares or what she was feeling at the moment.

“Any reason?” Antares said, not turning her attention towards Noelle, keeping her eyes focused squarely on the fight in front of her. It was like watching boxers in the ring, but she’d never gotten to watch anything like that up close.

The fight continued in front of them, Noelle facing the action and watching that happened next, too - R-Beast used his wings to propel himself into the air, driving himself down into Rebar from above and attempting to land a kick from that direction. The only result, however, was the demonic hero being thrown off by the cooler and more collected, albeit somewhat slower and less aggressive concrete hero.

“You were in the Void Club not that long ago. I want to know how you even know it exists, and how the hell you managed to get in as a newcomer with no connections,” Noelle stated calmly, keeping her voice low and speaking into Antares’ ear. “Well… I know you have one connection. Linzey Pennington, but that’s a shady as hell one.”

“The where?” Antares turned towards Noelle, falling silent for a few moments as she thought before letting out a long “Ooooh,” of realization. “Didn’t know the name.” Antares offered as an explanation for her brief moment of confusion. “Linzey took me there to meet one of the clients of an agent she knows who I’m setting up, nothing much. Didn’t even know the name of the place, couldn’t find it again if I wanted to.” Antares didn’t elaborate, but there were questions shifting through her mind. How the hell did Noelle know of it was an easy one, she’d seen her father there so he’d likely told her about the place, but how she knew she’d been there… That was another matter altogether. But she’d figure it out.

It was now that Noelle grabbed Antares by the back of the collar, pulling Antares’ ear slightly closer to her mouth, not making any overt moves but keeping a grip that was tight for sure. When she spoke, her voice was practically a hiss. “And what the hell were you doing with Pennington? You know she’s connected to dirty money or something, right? Heroes who work with her have these large contracts for strange companies that would never be able to pay it out… Ten million dollar endorsement from a coffee company and things like that? Everyone might not be in the loop about her, or the details of what she’s offering, but I am, so I think you should know what the hell you’re getting into with this… I don’t know who she is, who she’s working for exactly, but she’s sketch city in my opinion…”

“Mildly sketchy, yeah, but…” Antares shrugged. “She seems to know what she’s doing, I met someone else who’s worked with her before apparently and it all seemed fine. Not quite sure what you’re worried about here, or why you’re sticking your head into my business.”

“I agreed to help you, I believe that would involve keeping you from getting wrapped up in shady shit for no reason when you could have just come to me if you needed to get an agent. My father is connected to half the teams in Canada that anyone gives a shit about, and owns a good chunk of the ones that people don’t… I could have worked something out, I’d rather have done that than… Than have you get wrapped up in some dirty money scheme that might come back to bite you,” Noelle stated, keeping her voice low but showing a bit more audible frustration in it as she kept hold of the back of Antares’ collar.

“Hey, I thought the help was a one time thing with not screwing up in front of the cameras, not something where I could go to you for whatever.” Antares protested, holding up her hands in a placating gesture. “And yeah, it might come back to bite me if it’s as dirty as you keep insisting, but that’ll be my issue to handle if it does, not yours, so I don’t see why you’re making such a big issue of it.”

“Sorry to try to be a fucking friend,” Noelle said, releasing her grip on the collar and turning to push her way through the crowd, raising her voice slightly this time as she stormed off without waiting for another comment… If this was how Antares wanted to be, she could indeed let it be her problem - and not warn her about any red flags that came up in the future… She had the feeling this wasn’t going to be the last one. And if her help wasn’t valued… She simply wouldn’t give it next time.

Antares said nothing, just grumbling to herself as she turned back to watch the fight. She’d give Noelle some time to cool off, then she’d go and apologise. Sure, she’d gotten a bit defensive, but she didn’t think she was being unreasonable really. Maybe she could’ve explained her own end better, but she’d try again later, once she’d actually thought about what she was going to say. She didn’t want Noelle getting involved because it was her problem, so it should be hers to deal with, she didn’t want anyone else getting caught up in it if it did come back to bite her.

It was a couple hours later that day when Antares would find herself getting a phone call from the very person that had been the subject of the conversation with Noelle - the Linzey that she had met before. Apparently, Linzey Pennington. And it seemed that Lizney hadn’t just called to chat, but she had something for Antares to do right now. “Antares… You remember when I said I had some tasks for you, right?” she asked, her voice sounding distant, or more specifically, sounding like she was impaired with something - either drugs or alcohol, it was hard to tell just from what she had said so far.

“Yeah, I remember.” Antares nodded, leaning back in her chair on the balcony that overlooked the sea. “I’m assuming you’re here to say what it is? Oh, uh, while I remember, Noelle asked about you since she knows we met, she doesn’t know anything beyond that we met, you set me up with an agent and we met with one of your previous clients. Not sure how she knew we met in the first place though, just thought I should give you a heads up.”

“You have to keep her… On the outside,” Linzey said lazily, taking a long pause before she said anything else. “I’ll talk more about it later but… You have a music video shoot with Rosana Souza today and… I need you to come by my room and pick something up before you head to meet her… It’s one floor above you, at the end of the hallway…”

Rosana Souza was, of course, one of the members of the Cosmopolitans, their sole Brazilian member and someone better known by her hero name, Ruler. She had the ability to control people to an extent, but she was also quite well known for her music and acting career which was said to be one of the reasons she had been included on the team - it was easy for the team’s fame to reach far and wide if one of their members was known for things that were entirely unrelated to hero work. It was, however, a double edged sword - Ruler had a reputation for caring about her side projects to the detriment of her main career, sometimes missing team activities because she was recording or filming in Brazil or Miami.

“Give me a few minutes, I’ll be there.” Antares nodded, getting up and ending the call, leaving her mostly-finished drink abandoned on the table as she weaved her way through the hotel’s bar, actually walking for once rather than flying as she left the bar and emerged into the hotel proper, heading upstairs and humming to herself quietly as she walked. It took maybe a few minutes at most before she knocked twice at the door at the end of the hallway.

“Can’t move too might ri’now, come in…” Linzey muttered from inside the room, not getting up and moving from where she was as Antares knocked… Although her participation in this little excursion fortunately wouldn’t be needed much. The instructions were, after all, fairly simple ones.

Antares pushed the door open with a small sigh, shutting it behind her as she entered the room. “You got drunk, high or both?” She asked, crossing her arms and only slightly amused by the situation.

She’d find Linzey on the ground, resting with her back against the couch, a few blue pills and some other assorted things visible on the table in front of her. “Took somethin’ called… Laughing Devil… Made by a metahuman… It tends to uh… Knock you out a bit,” she stated, squinting and focusing her attention on Antares, attempting to pick out the correct one from the double image that she was seeing from her own perspective.

Eventually, she spoke again. “I needed it… Though. And I need… You to take the camera on the table and… Put it in Ruler’s room today. It’s uh… Real tiny, don’t miss it… It’s a pinhead camera to be… Exact.”

“I don’t need to know what it is or for, just where you want me to put it.” Antares said, walking over to the table and picking up the tiny pinhead camera between her fingers. “Any preferences on where in it and, uh, which room is Ruler’s anyways?”

Linzey was unable to give a response, simply closing her eyes as Antares took the camera. “I don’t fuckin’ know, I’m too high right now to be figurin’ something like this out… Ask Redfield if you need any help with this shit…”

“You couldn’t have sent a text yesterday before you got high, could you…” Antares muttered to herself, turning to leave Linzey to herself. First, she needed to find out where Ruler’s room even was, which would probably be done easily enough, just ask someone if they knew where she was, hope she was in her room, and if that failed she could probably just ask at reception, it wasn’t like it’d be that suspicious that one of the many heroes here would be asking to know where one of the others was staying.

Getting into the room was another issue altogether, but she’d figure that out once she knew what room she actually had to get into in the first place. Depending on where it was she might be able to use an open window to insert it at night, but she didn’t know how well lit the place was, so it might just be easier to find Ruler, get in her room in the more direct fashion, but that left the issue of finding a chance to plant the camera.

Getting a key might be another option, and really probably her best option. She’d have to steal one though, and the best option for that would be to steal one from the cleaners. They had to get into the rooms to clean them, after all, and since their keys would open all the doors, she only needed to steal the one key.

She paused as she shut Linzey’s door, plans still forming in her head until she finally had one. Step one, ask reception where Ruler’s room was, step two, find a key from one of the cleaners, open door, plant camera, leave with no one the wiser, return key to reception and say that she’d found it on the floor and didn’t know who’s it was.

It seemed like a decent enough plan, no real flaws save Ruler coming back while she was planting the camera, but how likely was that? Unless something else more opportune came up, she’d go with that. Simple and easy, as long as she could get one of the cleaner’s keys, wherever the hell they kept those. Eh, that was a problem for future her, she’d deal with that after she’d asked reception where her room was.

But before she reached reception, she would hear a voice from roughly the area behind her, even when there were no… Footsteps and not much in the way of a visible person - the only thing that could lead one to believe there was one was distortions in the air. “And where exactly do you think you’re going?” that low voice asked from directly behind her, neither the tone nor words giving an indication of the… Side the person was on, or even who they were other than the fact that the voice sounded male.

“To get another drink?” Antares said, turning around to face towards the mysterious, invisible voice. It wasn’t even a lie, she was going to get another drink, it wasn’t like Linzey had put her on that much of a deadline, she had all day to figure the Ruler situation out.

The voice scoffed - whether it was a truth or a lie, it wasn’t a satisfying answer. “You’re on a schedule… Either get to the recording booth now or work on getting into Ruler’s room now… You’re going to be wrapped up with this music shit for the next couple of hours. You should get started on the task now… Not go drinking.”

“Excuse me for replying with innocent answers when an ominous voice of unclear loyalties asks where I’m going, tell me where her room is and I’ll get on that.” Antares said, her voice slightly hushed as she bit down on the urge to snark further. “Already have a plan for getting in, would help though if you wouldn’t mind stealing one of the cleaner’s keys for me invisible guy.”

“First of all, I believe this is your test and not mine, and second of all, I would advise against doing something as risky as stealing keys… There are cameras around this place. You may be caught in the act… And if discovered, it would look very bad. I think that… This is a situation where the old fashioned way of getting into a room is called for - that is to say, convincing your mark to let you in.”

“I was figuring I’d get it over and done with quickly, but yeah, I was figuring I’d figure that problem out once I actually knew where the room was in the first place.” Antares shrugged. “Take plans one step at a time, no point in having a fully detailed plan if one of the early steps isn’t possible. Time to go put on a song and dance then for a few hours and see if I’m not sufficiently impressive enough for Ruler.”

Antares turned around, moving to leave and giving a wave behind her. “Bye, mystery invisible guy.”

“Don’t fuck this up, yeah?” the invisible voice behind her stated, as… Possibly something of a warning, possibly as just an open statement. It was hard to tell exactly what had been meant by it.

“Not willingly.” Antares said, shrugging again as she continued to walk, although to a different destination than she’d originally intended. “I don’t exactly want to see the results if I do.”

When she had been walking in that direction for a little bit she would quickly find herself in the midst of the corporate hustle and bustle that some of the larger teams carried with them wherever they went, publicists and camera people and other such aids following around certain people as well as crews of support staff such as makeup artists, sound people, and others - she didn’t run into all of that, but she did run into one of the aides attached to the Cosmopolitans. “Oh! Antares Gray, you’re the one that we’ve been looking for… Apparently your agent reached a deal to get you in the music video shoot today,” the young woman said after running into her and grabbing her by the wrist to pull her along with the number of others who were headed in the same direction, going deeper into the resort complex. “But uh… You didn’t record your lines ahead of time, did you?”

“Didn’t have a chance to.” Antares explained, shaking her head as she followed the aide. “Hope that’s not a problem?”

“Ah, fuck,” muttered the aide, which was never a good sign, reaching for her phone at the same time and texting with one hand to let someone else in the organization know about the predicament. “We set up something of a recording studio in one of the rooms, you should be able to do it here… You do have singing experience in the past, right?”

“I’ve done a lot of karaoke if that counts, pretty good too as far as I’m aware.” Antares said, nodding. She’d been drunk most of the time too to boot, so if she was sober she really probably couldn’t be that bad. “Slap the lines in front of me, give me what I’m singing to and I’m sure it’ll be fine. Not like I’m leading the song here.”

“You’re singing the hook,” the aide sighed, facepalming somewhat before leading Antares into one of the rooms where some of the sound people and the camera people also started setting up - at least one of the cameras was from the Eden Network which meant this was likely going to end up on the reality show. The aide looked to the producer within the room. “We’ve got this girl featuring on the hook and she has no singing experience, she just got this through her agent, how fucked are we?”

“Who approved this?” asked Ruler, before the producer could reply, standing in the middle of the room wearing a headset in front of a microphone setup which had been placed on top of a desk. “I didn’t-”

“Your agent, Ruler. I’m sure he would have informed you-”

“I didn’t say that you could put amateurs on my song! Especially not for the hook!” the Brazilian hero said, her temper - which was somewhat well known to those who were in the know about the hero scene - rising as she turned to face Antares, narrowing her eyes at her. “You think that you can buy your way into my art using money!?”

“In my defence I didn’t know I was going to be singing the hook, I was just told I’d be featuring somewhere when I agreed to the idea, thought I’d be a background singer or something like that.” Antares said, leaning back slightly under Ruler’s gaze. “How much am I singing anyways, can you shunt me off the hook to singing another part of the song or whatever because giving me the hook is not going to go well.”

Ruler simply gave Antares a hard stare, something that would intimidate most. “No.”

Her words were simple, and the producer at the edge of the room removed his headphones and jumped into the conversation to interject and explain why. “We’ve, uh… Already written and recorded everything accounting for vocal ranges and styles and such, we can’t just shift things around last minute,” the producer said, before turning to Ruler. “But uh, she’s not going to be too much of a problem, just apply some autotune here, autotune there, add some distortion, you know that lo-fi sad boy rap is all the rage right now, we can go for that kind of thing-”

“I never wanted that kind of thing!” the Brazilian hero roared, frustrated with the entire situation as she took off her own headphones and tossed them across the room, the producer ducking to narrowly avoid being hit in the head by them as they ended up slamming into the wall and hitting the ground.

“I’m just saying to think of it this way… Juice WRLD is all the rage these days, right? We can ride that vibe, or uh… Something,” the producer started to argue, before letting his voice trail off when the hero turned and stared him down.

“Fine. I’ll be having a talk with my agent after this,” Ruler stated, before one of the sound guys gestured for Antares to go up to the microphone.

The lead producer, meanwhile, was desperately writing something down on a notepad and tore off the sheet of paper, which apparently had the lines that Antares was supposed to use. “Here, uhhhh, this should work better than what we had before. Since you don’t have much experience, just focus on these few lines and we’ll loop it a few times for the hook,” he stated.

ON AND ON IN MY MEMORIES

YOU’RE STILL IN MY HEAD

STILL IN MY HEAD

“Just focus on that, yeah, and we’ll do some inventive editing to cover over any problems you have hitting the notes and the like? You do know how to read that, right?” the producer asked, handing her the torn off strip of paper with the lyrics and the rough notes.

“Passibly.” Antares nodded, her mind flashing back to too many attempts to learn instruments when she was younger. “It’d be easier if you gave me a sound sample of part of what’s been recorded if you can, notes on a page are one thing but they can’t carry how a song actually sounds, I’m not fucking Beethoven here. If you can’t I should be fine though.”

“Can someone get on that?” the producer asked, and someone else on the production team who was sitting in front of a laptop pressed a button to play what had been recorded already, the parts near the middle of the song missing as they were where Antares had to fill in between the two verses from Ruler.

“Thanks.” Antares nodded gratefully, letting out a long breath. Agreeing to this may have been a little bit of a mistake but she’d damn well do her best, not everyone got a chance like this. “Give me a signal whenever you’re ready, if the first take doesn’t fit I’ll do it until it does.”

The aide from the beginning looked down at her watch, checking the time. “Technically we’re already behind schedule, so if you could start singing now and we could get this over with and move onto the music video shoot before it gets dark out, that would be really nice…” she said with a hint of corporate passive aggression in her voice.

“Fine.” Antares rolled her eyes, before shutting them, the beat of the music, the lyrics and the torn piece of note-paper fresh in her memory as she began to sing.

“On and on in my memories, you’re still in my head, still in my head…” She stopped singing, sweat on her forehead. She really needed more alcohol before she sung, it’d make her feel better about it.

“AHHH MAKE IT FUCKING STOP!” was the shout that came from Ruler as Antares sung, except by the time she’d interrupted, they’d already gotten the snippet of audio that they needed. “Jesus Cristo, you really are an amateur, I mean, wow, that was something-”

“We have what we need,” said the lead producer, gesturing for the rest of the production team to get to work fixing up the clip of audio in the sound editing program.

“That’s going in the song-”

“Yeah, you wouldn’t believe what editing magic can do these days,” the producer stated. “Now, I believe you guys have a music video to record before the sun starts going down?”

“Yeah, take me wherever that’s being done.” Antares nodded, slightly apprehensively. She wasn’t exactly a bad dancer, but she was used to being slightly drunk and on a dancefloor, not in a music video.

by **Forest State** » Sun Aug 11, 2019 6:13 pm

SEASON 1 EPISODE 18 // RULER (OF THE SCREEN)
Collaborative post between Forest State & Lunas Legion

DATE // SEPTEMBER 6TH, 2025
LOCATION // PHUKET, THAILAND
CAST // Antares Gray ft. Rosana ‘Ruler’ Souza

After the recording of the song itself, both heroes ended up on the beach in Phuket, a part which had been cleared of bystanders and was being used just by the company for their video shoot. Before they could begin, however, they had instructions from their director. “So you know, Ruler has built up her brand over the years to be… Risque, I think, is one word to describe it. This appeals to the 18-25 market, men want to be with her and women want to be just like her… I think that, to reflect this brand, we should go in a certain direction with some of the things in this music video,” the director said, as if trying to sell the idea to both of them. “But, you need to both act like you don’t hate each other, for one.”

“Well, she’s got perfectly justifiable reasons for hating me for butting in where I really don’t belong, so…” Antares sighed. “Stupid agent not saying exactly what I’d be doing here, would never have agreed if I knew I’d be singing the hook…”

“You’ll both get your instructions on the direction of this shoot once you get changed - the clothes trailer is over there,” said the director, gesturing to a less crowded part of the beach. There was indeed a clothes trailer - although perhaps Antares would be surprised to find that the outfits inside were little more than glorified bikinis, perhaps part of the direction that the man had talked about.

A minute later, Antares emerged out of the trailer, changed into one of the outfits provided. “Not what I expected, but I don’t mind. Anything else?”

It wasn’t that long later before Ruler came out of the trailer also, having changed into something that wasn’t that far off from what Antares was wearing and also wasn’t that far off from some of the traditional outfits that could be seen at Brazilian festivals. “Well…” started the director. “During the part of the song that Antares sung, you two are going to be making out.”

“What!?” Ruler was the first one to react, clearly not happy with what she was being told here, turning her head to shoot a glare at the person that she was expected to… Get physical with during the music video.

“I believe we already went over the direction somewhat-”

“I didn’t know I was going to have to share the screen with an amateur who hasn’t earned it!” Ruler said, sighing in frustration before lowering her head and looking to Antares again for a reaction.

“I didn’t exactly sign for this either, you know.” Antares groaned. “I really should’ve pressed my agent for details, but I guess we might as well get on with it.”

Ruler rolled her eyes, the cameras setting up in the background to start capturing the scene when it did happen. There were… Enough cameras around them to capture things from all angles, and sound crews, and it was a wonder that all of this wasn’t going to end up in the final shot. But these people were professionals. They had probably studied the angles of the shot well enough to know where the safe zones for placing cameras and the like were and weren’t. “We can get this out of the way first, since it’s the worst part…” Ruler stated.

She did offer a glare, however, her face serious and the words she was about to say equally serious. “If you touch me below the shot, I’m going to paralyze you,” she stated in warning before she started to slowly move over to Antares.

“Hey, I may come off a certain way, but you’re telling me not to so nothing’s going anywhere, don’t worry yourself.” Antares let out an exasperated sigh, moving towards Ruler and just wanting to get this over with before Ruler went off on any more rants at her.

“Ugh… It feels like I’m lowering myself, doing it with you,” said Ruler, before attempting to hide her disdain for the entire scene as the director standing off in the distance signaled they were about to start filming soon. She placed her hands on Antares’ shoulders, looking into her eyes - in a way that seemed quite authentic considering that she was acting - and they received the signal not much longer after that.

“Take one!”

The cameras started rolling and Ruler dove into the task aggressively, her own hands moving across Antares as if this wasn’t something that they were both disinterested in doing, her mouth smashing against hers too… She was quite experienced in this kind of thing, she just didn’t want to use that expertise on this person in particular. But she understood her brand, and she was about getting her money - if this was what she had to do to maximize the views on the music video, she was totally willing to do it.

Antares didn’t do much, just placing her hands around Ruler’s shoulders, not wanting to offend her accidentally and risk another tirade, just softly pushing back. Ruler was a bitch, she did not want to be here, this was just for the sake of the film and she really needed to remember to check with her agent about this stuff first.

“Cut!”

Ruler looked over to the director to see what the problem was now, the frustration returning to her face now that she wasn’t acting. “Look, this is supposed to be a two way thing, you know? Antares, I know you aren’t used to this kind of thing and all but you’re going to need to put in some effort… Don’t look so passive,” he stated, causing Ruler to groan.

“Remember what I said,” she said in a lower tone, hands returning to Antares’ shoulders, her warning from earlier made clear once again by her words.

“Yes, I remember.” Antares rolled her eyes, pressing her face back in, pretending it was literally anyone else but Ruler there. Stupid fucking films.

Ruler reciprocated, the look on her face from before gone once again, her own body pressing against Antares and her hands moving quite actively… Until the point where the director signaled they could stop. “Alright, we’ve got the shot, that’s good!” the director shouted from the distance. At which point Ruler broke off about as quickly as possible, rubbing at her lips.

“Somebody give me some fucking water,” she commanded, looking around before someone tossed her a bottle of water. “I need to wash my mouth out after that… Performance.”

She did just that, spitting in the sand when she was done. “The things I do for checks…”

“You act like it was much better for me.” Antares snarked back, rubbing at her face with her hand.

“You should be happy to have gotten this chance,” Ruler simply replied, shooting another glare before turning and moving in the direction of another group of cameras for another one of the scenes - one that they fortunately didn’t need Antares for. It seemed she’d get a break for now… But she still had the rest of her little mission looming over her.

Before sundown, they had finished the filming for the video, as they’d promised. Much to the joy of the production company, they wouldn’t have to take another day filming and shell out the expenses of shutting down part of the beach for another day to do it. However, the music video wasn’t that big a deal in the eyes of the firm that was paying Antares. It had been a pretense to get into the room of Ruler, something that Antares still hadn’t done. As she headed away from the scene of the shoot, she’d hear the familiar voice behind her - the one that had belonged to the invisible figure from earlier.

“You still haven’t reached her room,” the voice stated, a figure materializing next to her at the same time from the same direction of the voice, a boy in a dark hoodie which obscured his face a little bit - but he seemed to be a bit older than her, and to have dark hair and a buzz cut, from what could be observed. “Time’s ticking…”

“Where do you think I’m going now?” Antares snarked, obviously not amused by the now-visible figure. “Maybe if you didn’t poke and prod I’d get on with it, I figure I owe Ruler an apology regardless so lemme get on with what I’m here to do?”

“Don’t fuck up,” the boy reminded her before disappearing again - it wasn’t exactly clear if he was staying around or heading separate ways… As the sun went down, it became even harder to make out just where he was, exactly.

“Stop telling me not to do that…” Antares grumbled, heading off in search of Ruler’s room. She did have apologies to make to her, after all. The room was in the same resort complex as the rest of the heroes, although the Atlantic Coast Cosmopolitans, as one of the richer teams and more famous ones, were staying in one of the smaller but more luxurious buildings, near the top of the hill that the resort was built along the side of, with a view that overlooked the rest of the resort as well as the beach. The only thing that was left was, well… Getting inside and making the apology itself.

Antares gulped as she looked up at the building the Cosmopolitans were staying in, mentally steeling herself as she glided up the hill towards the building, setting herself down in front of the building and moving to enter on foot. She figured once she was in she’d go from there in finding Ruler’s room, one step at a time after all.

There was no one stopping her from entering the building, being another one of the heroes staying at the place, but she would find that the atmosphere inside was subdued, the lighting rather dim and the hallways and lobbies not occupied by too many people - it made sense, the heroes staying here likely wanted it to be a retreat from the noise, and they were around plenty of people all the time… Somewhere to retreat from the crowds tended to be a nice thing to have, especially at an event like this with tons of media attention.

Okay, no one here so far which could be either a blessing or a curse, if no one was here at all then she might’ve come all this way for nothing but if Ruler’s room wasn’t locked, well… She wasn’t about to pass up an opportunity like that either. Antares moved deeper into the dimly lit building, hunting for stairs up. She had a valid excuse for why she was here, after all.

On the second floor she’d find rows of rooms just like the building she herself and her team were staying in, and they did indeed have labels on them. Some of the names of the members of the Cosmopolitans could be seen on the doors. She just had to find the one that said ‘Rosana Souza’. Not the hardest task in the world.

Antares let out a relieved sigh as she spotted the name labels, no need to panic and check literally every single room for Ruler. She began to pace slowly down the hall, swinging her head from side to side, looking at the name labels, waiting until she came to Rosana’s -Ruler’s- room. She’d find it, eventually, the name plate cleary displaying what she was looking for. The door was locked, however. Unless she had another way in, she’d have to knock and hope Ruler was there.

Antares knocked twice on the door, there was no sense in not knocking after all. No one actually came to the door, yet anyway… It didn’t seem that Ruler had headed back to her room just yet.

But there were footsteps, and Ruler showed up at the end of the hallway, headed back from the shoot and still wearing the same revealing outfit from earlier. Apparently, she hadn’t started back as soon as Antares had went to look for her. “Is there a reason why you’re standing outside of my door?” she asked as she approached, her posture casual despite the extravagant and fancy outfit.

“Figured I’d come and apologise for fucking everything up for you.” Antares said, taking a step back away from the door. “I don’t mind waiting though, I know I changed out of those stupid costumes ASAP.”

“You could have apologized by not doing it in the first place… And you can say what you wanted to say, I don’t mind the outfit. I’d rather not have had to break it out for someone like you, though,” Ruler stated, standing outside her door but not entering just yet. “So if you have something to say… Spit it out.”

“I’m sorry.” Antares said, bowing her head slightly, looking down at the floor. “My agent didn’t exactly give me any details beyond that I’d be appearing in one of your music videos, I figured that it’d be a background singer or dancer, cameo-type stuff, that kind of thing, not…” Antares gave a vague wave. “That. I know what I’m good at and not good at, and singing and stuff is not that. So… Yeah, I’m sorry for ruining your song and music video for my own personal gain.”

Ruler paused, looking her over before nodding. “Apology noted,” she said, opening her door to head inside… And shutting it behind her without giving much of a chance for Antares to enter the room with her. The ‘mission’ had taken an interesting turn.

Antares groaned. Alright. Plan A, failure. She couldn’t use the apology excuse anymore, she’d used that up and Ruler wasn’t just going to let her in. Plan B, the original Plan A, had been to find a card and enter that way. Also not an option. Plan C was just hope Ruler opened a window, fly in, plant camera on part of the window, leave.

Antares turned around, moving to leave the building, making a note of which room was Ruler’s relative to the corridor as she left. She figured she could at least take a look at the outside of the building from the ground, have a look for security cameras that would spot her, see if she could get to the windows of Ruler’s room easily. See if Plan C had a hope in hell of working and if Plan C wasn’t an option, well.

She’d have to think of something.

“Oh my fucking God, you fucked it up,” said a voice from behind her, the same one that had apparently been trailing her all day since she left to start the task in the first place. “Are you just going to turn around and tell Linzey that you couldn’t do it because… You were too scared to ask to go inside?”

“I’m working on another idea here.” Antares grumbled out as she walked. “Don’t complain at me I’ll figure something out, I’ve got time.”

“Whatever you’re thinking of doing is fuckin’ ill advised, I’ll tell you that much,” the boy said, still trailing after her from a relatively close distance. “I know the room is that way and you’re headed this way, whatever you’re working on… Can’t be good.”

“Yeah it’s a stupid fucking plan but I’m checking it has a hope in hell of working first.” Antares said, still walking and moving to leave the building. “But if it’s fucking stupid but it somehow works, then is it really fucking stupid?”

“Because I’m supposed to off you if you get busted, that’s why,” the boy stated plainly. “So uhhh… For both our sake’s, stay away from the high risk shit, yeah? This isn’t the movies. Whatever mission impossible shit you’re thinking of is nothing compared to some good old fashion social engineering, you know.”

“Well thanks for that tid-bit of info, I guess I’m on to plan-fucking-E then if you’re meant to blow my brains out.” Antares snarked back, still moving to leave. “I literally just came up with it and it might be a bit close to the deadline, but right now it’s the best safe option I’ve got.” Fact was, she had no in with Ruler. Not that was plausible, at least, and just flying up there or anything that risked getting her caught was not an option either.

This was why she’d have preferred a tiny bit more advanced warning, a bit more of a chance to plan and prepare and have back-ups. Important shit deserved to be treated like it was. Maybe if she had more time, her new plan of seducing one of the staff and having them plant it might’ve been a surefire bet, but under these circumstances it was more of a desperate last gamble to have someone else plant the camera on her behalf.

“There’s no rules on getting others to help of their own free will, right?” Antares asked casually.

“Let me stop you right there…”

There was the sound of a gun clicking behind her, after seemingly appearing out of nowhere, the gun pressed to the back of her head despite there being no visible person behind her. “You tell a soul about this and this is going to be your fate,” the boy reminded her. “I mean… If you want to commit suicide, it’s up to you.”

“Great, no seducing people to do it for me either.” Antares groaned, still walking. “Well, mind telling me how much time I actually have left? Sadly I can’t just turn invisible like someone, wait until she gets drunk tonight which she’ll almost certainly be doing and slip in behind her.”

“I’ll inform Linzey that the operation is a bust before you fuck up an admittedly simple task even more and do something stupid that will have bad consequences for all of us. Work harder on seizing the day next time, Antares,” the boy stated as the gun disappeared from the air, things returning to their original state where… It seemed like there was no one there - even if there surely was one person still there aside from Antares.

“I’ve never done anything remotely like this before…” Antares mumbled, moving to head back to her room in a defeated silence. “Maybe if I had more time to actually think stuff through…”

The voice was unrelenting. “I didn’t realize there was much thinking that went into knocking on a fucking door and coming up with an excuse to be there. It’s not rocket science.”

“I had an excuse and then I panicked, I always have the second excuse of coming up with an actual way of apologising and then going back to ask if she approves or not.” Antares paused, stopping in her tracks. “Eh, what the hell, she hates my guts already, worth a shot if you think it’s worth it or I should just swallow this as a fuck-up.”

“I suppose we’ll see if this works or not… Otherwise, my phone is right here and I can give Linzey a call.”

“Second time lucky, I’m not going to get a third.” Antares said, turning back around and heading back towards the building. “Besides, I do owe her more of an apology than just words anyways.” She knew where Souza’s room was, so it didn’t take her long before she was back in front of her room, knocking once again.

She’d find Ruler opening up wearing just her underwear and a bra, not particularly bothering to cover herself up but also not looking the happiest with being seen in this kind of state by Antares in particular. “I was working on changing, is there something else you wanted?” she asked, standing in the doorway and observing Antares to figure out just what the hell she was doing.

“I figured you deserved more than words as an apology for me fucking things up, you, uh, mind if I come in and no I don’t want to apologise like that, you don’t like me at all and I had a few ideas of other natures. If you want to finish changing first that’s fine, I can just wait out here or something…”

“No… That’s fine…”

Ruler stepped further inside her room, her tone unreadable at this moment, moving inside before looking to the side and glancing at Antares. “Though I do wonder what you need to be in my room for if you don’t intend on apologizing that way. I don’t usually bring visitors around here just to talk, you know,” she continued, poking at Antares’ intents.

“Intend, no, but if you want me to apologise that way I don’t mind. I just figured you wouldn’t want me to.” Antares shrugged, moving inside and leaning against the wall, slouching slightly. “That and I want to apologise, but I’m blanking here so I figured I’d ask if there’s anything at all. I could pay you some of my earnings for a bit, but that’s probably just drops in the ocean to you, I don’t have any connections or favours owed or whatever.”

Looking at Antares, Ruler’s eyes flashed, and Antares would quickly find that… She was somewhat locked out of her own muscles as a smirk crossed the face of the woman standing in front of her. “No, I can think of more inventive ways than payment - I already have the cash of a successful music and acting career, anyway. I’m not desperate for more,” she stated, causing Antares to walk slightly closer with a flick of her own hand.

“This is kinda odd.” Antares remarked at the odd sensation of feeling her legs move beneath her without her control. “Does it work on the flight? I’m curious.”

“I dunno. Something to look into later,” Ruler stated, moving her hand slowly, as if it aided with her ability, causing Antares to lay herself down without moving voluntarily at all. It was… Quite a potent power when she managed to get in a spot where she could use it as full strength. Although apparently, just from reports, this wasn’t even what her power was at full strength. “For now… There’s other things to think of.”

“The public, of course… Doesn’t find out about this.”

As the sun made its way through the windows, Ruler stood up from the bed and started walking in the general direction of the bathroom, stopping to turn and look at Antares first. “And this doesn’t mean I’m going to let you be in another one of my songs if that was what you were after…” she added, before stepping inside the bathroom and shutting the door, the water of the shower starting to run not that long after. It would be the first time that Antares had time alone here since she had entered - which meant she could finally work on planting the camera she had come here with.

“Of course not, and I don’t think singing’s for me anyways.” Antares shouted back, quickly getting to her feet and moving to retrieve the camera from her pile of clothes. She had time while Ruler was showering, and the sound of the water turning off would be enough of a warning to hurry the fuck up. She hovered up slightly, using her flight for levitation, moving to attach the camera to the end of the curtain rail. High, wide field of vision, barely looked at. Probably an ideal place.

The water continued… A sign that Antares would likely be able to get out of the room without trouble, after finding her clothes from the previous night on the ground. The curtain rail was, after all, not a spot that would attract much attention - it made it a rather good one when it came to camera placement.

“I’ll head back to my room if you don’t mind.” Antares called out, moving to dress herself. “Figure you’d appreciate me slipping out with minimal fanfare and you can hit me up whenever you feel like it.” She added, moving to leave and head back to her own room to shower and change.

Ruler’s reply wasn’t very long, but that was like her. “We’ll see.”

by **Forest State** » Sun Aug 11, 2019 11:16 pm

SEASON 1 EPISODE 19 // I GOTTA STAY HIGH ALL THE TIME (TO KEEP THEM OFF MY MIND)
DATE // SEPTEMBER 7TH, 2025
LOCATION // PHUKET, THAILAND
CAST // ‘Linzey Pennington’

“Rosana Souza… Brazilian superhero from Curitiba currently with the Atlantic Coast Cosmopolitans. Came up in Dubai with the Emirati Golden Eagles, took more money over there instead of starting her career in her home town… Far as I know, she attended a privately owned academy for supers in Brazil and they spotted her over there, and offered her a lot to come over. Eventually, she was given the offer to join the Cosmopolitans because they wanted someone with a connection to the South American market and her skills on the screen and with music made her an attractive option for that. Known for her short temper within the hero community, outwardly known for her flash and style and for being… Versatile…”

“I assume my research is correct?” continued the executive from New Day Electronic Systems, otherwise known as New Day and known to some as the company behind a few… Of the large endorsements some heroes found themselves receiving from the tech and VPN industry. Some of them were connected to New Day openly and others through shell companies, but some thought that New Day itself was just some shell company and that the entire thing was going to go down at some point for money laundering, corruption, or some other crime. It was hard to blame those people for feeling that way. Some of the things this company did were indeed in the territory of being sketchy.

Linzey Pennignton has always trusted Li Peng

Still, Linzey trusted them - even with her life. She didn’t trust a lot of people, but she trusted these ones, they hadn’t done her wrong in the past and she knew good and well the code that they lived by in this… In this clique. In this company. They had no lines. They would do anything they needed to accomplish their goals. But while they didn’t have moral lines in the same sense as others, they had one thing firmly established. No snitching. No betrayals.

And of everyone in the company, she knew and trusted Li Peng particularly. The Taiwanese national turned American businessman had not only been one of the ones to pull her out of her previous situation, but one of the main ones to help her search after what she was looking for - Even if she wasn’t sure what that was. Closure maybe? She didn’t know. She did know that whatever she was looking for, she was only going to find it in a specific place, however. The place they were working on finding.

“As someone that personally knows her, all of that is correct,” Linzey nodded. “Her temper isn’t fun to deal with, that’s for sure… But, I killed two birds with one stone recently. Tested out the initiate and had her plant a camera in Souza’s room. One of the tiny pinhead sized ones she’s not going to spot. Maybe some of the others would, but like I said, I know her and she’s not that observant for that kind of thing. Nor would she think to link it back to something greater.”

Li raised an eyebrow in response. “Yes, I know you’ve placed the camera in her room but I suppose my question is how this intersects with our goals. Would going after the Cosmopolitans really be the best option given circumstances? It would benefit you to hold off…” he said, pacing, trying to determine the risk-reward factor here. “What are you intending to do? Get her sex tape? Catch her letting her guard down and saying something that would get her cancelled in today’s climate?”

Linzey rested back in the couch she was sitting on, her feet propped up on the table in front of her while she thought, and ran a hand through her fire red hair. “It doesn’t matter what we catch her on as long as we manage to catch her. While she might annoy me, ruining her by getting her cancelled by an angry Tweetr mob would remove her usefulness. I just… Can’t work if I don’t have something on her.”

She stopped, reaching for her pack of cigarettes and flicking her lighter on, pressing the flame to the cigarette silently, her voice not so sure as she spoke. “I’m not sure she’s the kind of person that would panic at their sex tape getting leaked, though… If anything, it might just give her more publicity, of the kind she doesn’t mind necessarily. I think the cancelled route is the one that would work better.”

“Have you found anything yet that could get her cancelled?”

“Not really. She hasn’t spent much time in her room with anyone, so obviously, she hasn’t had a chance to say anything that she doesn’t want the public to hear. I’m sure it’s not going to be long, though. She hardly restrains herself in public when it comes to talking, I have my doubts with her ability to keep control in private. And as I said, she’s not the type to suspect that someone is listening,” Linzey stated, before taking a drag from the cigarette.

Peng paused, pacing around the hotel room in front of her. “And what is this use that you say she presents to us, that you want to blackmail her because of? You say you want to coerce her to our side?”

“At first I didn’t think she had much importance, but you see, when I was looking deeper into her while doing more research on everyone in the Cosmopolitans, and I looked back at some of her social media and her posts from back when she was in Dubai, I noticed that some of her endorsements were for these companies that I had never heard of. But she’s not one of us, and yet, it seemed sort of like the kind of deals we give out - large endorsements for something like a VPN company, and the like. Because I hadn’t heard of these companies, and you know I live on the internet so I’ve heard of most of the relevant ones sponsoring heroes, I did some digging and found that a few of them were connected to a larger company called Serafim Biochemical,” Linzey explained, after exhaling. “I can’t say for sure what they’re into but the… Field that they’re into plus their colors just makes me feel like it’s something from… The past.”

That caused the executive to stop pacing and focus in on Linzey. “I trust your judgement, but are you sure you can judge something like that based on the name of a company and the colors?”

“Their colors are purple and white, it just reminds me of some very distinctive things that I saw in purple and white… Back then. I don’t know how much of a lead it is but it’s more than we’ve had in a little bit and if we coerce her we can press Souza into looking into all of this deeper and finding out if there’s any truth behind it. If there is truth behind it, she might be able to help us push deeper - Obviously, I don’t think she’s the kind of person that’s involved in this type of thing directly. She probably, in her arrogance, just assumes she gets paid so much because of her natural talents… Which is partly true but only half of the story.”

“So you believe that they might not just be in the business of, well, experimentation, but also in managing or manipulating the heroes already in the field, you say…” stated Peng, pacing once more while stroking his chin in interest. “An interesting theory.”

“And I’ve made it possible for us to follow up on this lead and see whether or not that is what they are doing. If ‘they’ are even connected to all this shit, which they might not be,” stated Linzey. “We’ll see in the coming days, for now, I have to wait for something to come up that I can use against her, but since we’re here for a couple weeks, it shouldn’t be much of a problem…”

“Right. I’ll allow you to lead in this investigation. When you have something more for me about the validity of this theory, you know where to contact me,” said Peng, moving towards the door. “Unless you have something else to add.”

“I’ll be fine,” she said, offering a wave as Peng took his leave from the room and she slumped further into her seat, putting out the cigarette and letting out a long sigh.

As she settled into her isolation, she once again found it hard to keep herself from going back to the past, mentally. Especially right now, as she was without the high that she had relied on to keep herself afloat for some of the other days in the past. And yet, today was a day when she needed to be a productive addict and couldn’t simply slump against the couch and spent much of it in a haze. She had work to do, and just because she had accomplished one of her goals didn’t mean there weren’t others she was chasing after with the same intensity.

That was why the company trusted her.

That was why she had to get back into her rhythm, the same rhythm she had been in before she came here and managed to lose herself in the past once again, in the things that had happened to her, in the… The fire and the night when things had been made clear to her.

The night that had eventually and indirectly brought her into contact with her current allies, a bad thing happening to her and a number of others eventually turning into a good thing as she found herself pulled into something larger than her that seemed a quarter mafia, a quarter clique, a quarter revolution, and a quarter corporation. She… Often thought back about that night and the effects of it, even as she tried to stop herself, but she knew deep down that she would never have ended up where she was if it wasn’t for that.

Laughing Devil is a powerful drug.

It was a paradox. She wasn’t sure what to think about it. Right now wasn’t the right time to figure out things like that.

Reaching for the bag that had her ‘supply,’ she quickly found what she was looking for - Laughing Devil was a drug that had been created by another metahuman, who had an uncanny understanding for chemicals and the like and had come up with something potent enough that it was banned in even some of the more drug tolerant countries thanks to its effects. But for those in the know such as herself, it wasn’t hard to find, even if it was costly. But it wasn’t like she didn’t have money.

She closed her eyes as she placed the blotting paper on her tongue. She didn’t have to do anything other than that, the drug would do the rest, and she wouldn’t have to wait very long, it was the type that was fast acting and the type that you would know immediately as soon as it started kicking in. Nothing gradual about it, nothing slow about it. As she kept her eyes closed, she could see lights. Plenty of lights. Greens and blues and purples and yellows, but mainly purples, pinks, and blues specifically - though it felt like every color under the rainbow had its own place in what she was seeing…

Of course, however, her mental state upon taking the drug impacted what she would see. As well as what was on her mind. That was perhaps basic psychology or maybe it was a law of the universe that if one thought about something, it would come up more. And she knew she had been… Thinking of possibly the wrong thing, or maybe the right thing, to take this kind of powerful drug with.

The lights didn’t just stay in the form of lights, they shrunk down somewhat, it was like they were pixels, the same thing that formed images on TV when there were thousands of them or millions of them present, but the images here were decidedly more rudimentary, there weren’t millions of lights but there were enough to form up and make an image that was eye catching. The image… Flames, but they didn’t hurt her, even as she could feel something of a sensation, the same sensation she had felt that night of the heat blowing towards her, making her sweat, but not coming close enough to catch up with her…

She opened her eyes and she could see it - hallucinations of flames around her, colored blue and purple and sometimes green, not consuming the room but coinciding with it. She knew it wasn’t real. She wasn’t at the point yet of not being aware of her surroundings or what she had done to end up in this position. She was high… But she was aware enough to know that she was high. And as she sat there, the hallucinations still going on around her, she reached for her phone with an unsteady hand, taking about a minute to do the simple task but managing to put both earbuds in her ears before finding what she was looking for on her phone… Music.

Closing her eyes again and letting the scenes set in, she added to the entire sensation the sound of something that seemed fitting enough, from her playlist of things to listen to while high…

XR Cannoli OS v1.29
NOW PLAYING: Habits (Stay High) by Tove Lo
I gotta stay high all the time
To keep you off my mind
Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh
High all the time
To keep you off my mind
Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh
Spend my days locked in a haze
Trying to forget you babe
I fall back down
Gotta stay high all my life
To forget I'm missing you
Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh
Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh
Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh...

She didn’t fight the haze, she allowed herself to fade into it, knowing that she would have to get up in an hour or two and that she was playing a dangerous game that could wreck her productivity, but for now it was a dangerous game that she trusted her own skill in. This wasn’t her first rodeo with this kind of thing and while there would probably be some point when she forced herself to stop and rely on her own skills only to get by her problems, and not substances like this, but that day wasn’t today… Today, after the memories had been especially strong, she felt that this wasn’t just her whims.

No, this was something she needed.

by **Lunas Legion** » Mon Aug 12, 2019 4:16 am

SEASON 1 EPISODE 20 // PHUKET’S WILDEST PARTY EVER
Collaborative post between Forest State & Lunas Legion

DATE // SEPTEMBER 12TH, 2025
LOCATION // PHUKET, THAILAND
CAST // Antares Gray

Phuket’s Wildest Party Ever - that was what it was being branded as. The Hero League and the heroes that made it up sure knew how to market something, and on the same night that the music video that Antares Gray and Rosana Souza had recorded earlier dropped, picking up millions of views in the first day, the Lights, Money, Heroes! Show was announcing who would lead the teams in the much anticipated training exercise for Team Futures… Of course, there were two things to note. First, it wasn’t an announcement as much as a decision being presented to the fans - the team leaders were being chosen by the fans and they would pick their teams. Second, the show was going to be broadcasting live from what they were calling Phuket’s Wildest Party Ever, the members of Team Futures watching as the fans voted online for which of them would be the leaders.

And then, after the clock had struck midnight, they would pick the teams based on the results of a coin flip to see which leader would have the edge. There were already frontrunners of course - Sun Choe had already picked up a large fanbase in Korea that would happily vote for her while Antares had went from unknown to on the radar of many thanks to appearing in the music video with Ruler, while Yuli Rose had been sighted in combat with the Gangnam Stars and had also grown a Korean fanbase, albeit a budding one, from the clips which had found their way to the internet. And of course, others were marketable for different reasons.

Fayza was Egyptian and carried with her the population of a country that was definitely decent sized, Lupe appealed to those who were into fashion and style - something that the shapeshifter paid plenty of attention to. Noelle was known for her connections to her father, who had his hands in some of the most popular and famous teams in Canada, and she had spent time as a junior hero before stepping up to the ranks of the big leagues… Her junior hero career gave her more of a push than most did. Peyton wasn’t the most popular in the world but plenty of people would vote for her just to see what crazy thing she would end up doing if she became leader.

There were frontrunners but it looked like plenty of others would get votes, too.

As the ‘Wildest Party Ever’ took over a large chunk of the resort and spanned multiple buildings, with hallways packed with both civilians who had bought their way in and the heroes who had been the main invitees in the first place, and every pool in the immediate area around the party being taken over by the partygoers, it grew closer and closer to the time that the results of the voting would be revealed… But focusing on that was jumping too far ahead.

The producers had told them to enjoy the party and not to worry about the show too much for now. They would be called together when they were needed for the live broadcast of the choosing of the teams. For now… They were free to dive into the party itself, white smoke not an uncommon sight as well as blue lighting underneath the night sky - the Hero League knew how to make an attractive environment when they wanted to. Some marketing geniuses had surely worked for hours figuring out the aspects of the most attractive parties possible, and plenty of those aspects had been put together for this, the end result being something that was a cross between a college frat party on steroids and a professionally produced music festival.

The music was another thing. Maybe it really was the heart of the party because it was constantly beating in the background, and even when someone wasn’t paying immediate attention to it… It set the mood. Most of the music wasn’t soft and melodic but hard and aggressive, mostly electronic or trap in nature, and it set the tone for the areas which had become dance floors. When they said it would be the wildest party to ever happen here, they had meant it. It was enough to get plenty of heroes to drop their personas somewhat even if there were cameras around, which was saying something. Usually, the threat of a camera was enough to scare any hero into complying and only reading the lines that their agent or publicist wrote for them.

Tonight was a different story entirely. Sometimes, people just needed to let loose and let their hair down, and this was one of those nights.

And for someone like Antares, well. She rarely needed an excuse to just let loose and party, so that was exactly what she’d done, having wedged herself into practically the middle of one of the dance floors, a half-empty bottle of alcohol that she couldn’t read the Thai label of gripped firmly in one hand, held up almost triumphantly as she not quite stumbled her way through trying to dance. This was the type of thing she’d been promised when she joined, and she was revelling in it all.

Antares stopped dancing momentarily, pausing to take another gulp of her drink and glaring at the bottle when it finally ran out, as if it wasn’t entirely her fault for drinking it all so fast. She kicked off the ground, flying over the dance floor rather than trying to wade through the crowd to the edges of it where she set herself down, staggering somewhat as she landed but quickly catching her balance as she left the empty bottle on the bar, lingering there as if debating whether or not to get a second bottle before deciding against it. There’d be plenty of time to drink later, she needed to pace herself a little.

Antares turned away from the bar, walking off into the crowds in search of company. Not really with anyone in mind as she pushed and weaved her way through, just seeing who she ran into first. Drinking alone was a recipe for misery after all.

She’d find herself bumping into a young woman in a leather jacket who had bleached hair, and… It was impossible to tell if she was with the hero crowd or not. She could just be some civilian, from the way she had stopped and did a double take as if she recognized Antares. “You’re Antares Gray, yes?” she asked, her accent… Heavily French sounding as she spoke, her voice low and somewhat raspy.

“Yeah, the one and only.” Antares nodded, speaking slightly slower than usual so as not to slur her words. “You a fan or whatever?”

“Comme ci, comme ca,” the girl said with a shrug, looking her over one more time as if confirming that it was her. She spoke again only after a slightly awkward silence fell over the two of them. “You know, Noelle is asshurt about your whole agent thing and about how you’re going to get voted over her tonight,” she continued, clearly being more familiar with the subject matter than her original question had indicated.

“I’m going to apologise for all that, just never found a good moment really.” Antares said, sighing. She still did need to do that at some point, but she wasn’t even sure where Noelle was and looking for her in all this would be difficult. “And nah, if anyone’s gonna win the vote it’ll be Peyton. Don’t discount everyone voting for the crazy chick to lead us for shits and giggles, if there’s an online poll the Internet’ll rig it for the funniest option.”

The girl chuckled, offering a shrug. “Maybe… There’s two winners, Noelle doesn’t see herself as being either one of them - I was hanging out with her earlier in the night, but she’s having a category three bitchout up there,” she said, gesturing to the building at the top of the hill, the one that the rest of the resort complex radiated out from. It seemed all the way up there, further removed from the heartbeat of the party, was where Noelle had set herself up. “And since her daddy’s involved in all the Canadian teams, she has like twenty people up there to vent to… I dunno how she’s going to be by midnight.”

“Either worked it out of her system or drunk and ranting, probably.” Antares said, her eyes following where the girl had pointed. “And if she’s in full-on bitchout mode I’m really not sure poking that nest of hornets is… The best idea in the world right now.”

“I’m not sure waiting would be the best thing either considering you caused this bitchout. Can’t admit I wouldn’t be entertained seeing her send twenty heroes after you if you showed your face up there, though,” the girl chuckled, turning to face the upper building completely, staring for a moment and looking for… Something. It was unclear just what she was trying to see, but after a moment it became clear she was probably looking for a shadow.

“I can see you looking through the window up there! Hi bitch!” she screamed from where she was - it probably wouldn’t be heard, but she held a couple of middle fingers up towards the window to add something more visual that might get noticed. “Ahahahaha… She’s looking down here right now, you can see it if you look at the window.”

“I’m looking,” Antares rolled her eyes. “And thanks for getting to notice me with your little stunt, I totally needed that right now.” She just wanted to drink and party, she could apologise to Noelle when she was sober, not hungover and Noelle wasn’t trying to set a Thai record on the richter scale for bitchfits or whatever.

“Oh, she’s not the happiest with me either… But I can play both sides,” the girl said as a smirk set in across her face, eyes traveling back to Antares. “Noelle was different before she became a reality TV bitch, you know… God… We were on some savage shit in Montreal, she threw it away because it’s more dollars to be just another hero in her father’s management company and to take the money from the show than it is to be something… Originale, you could say. Me, I’m a free agent at the moment… Still waiting on some team that’s not going to tell me what to say and do.”

“I’m still a bit confused how I ended up here and kinda stuck with it owing to contracts and all that.” Antares said, still watching the building. “And yeah, you’re playing both sides by pointing us at each other so thanks for that too. I don’t really know much about the whole business with teams and control and all that since, well, I’m about as new as you can get to all this and actually be here, so I don’t know how it can get out there when it’s not mostly perfectly curated by producers.”

“Hey, I’m not just talking about the hero game… She was different in general. Now, she just sticks to the acceptable image. But that’s another story,” the girl shrugged, putting her arm around Anatres and leaning in slightly. “And blame me all you want but I’m the one that gets crucified by her once you two stop fighting. I have nothing to gain here… Other than the entertainment factor of her maybe sending her people after you.”

“So, what, you want me to go up there and talk to her or something? You could’ve just asked, you know, or she could’ve.” Antares slumped slightly, letting out a long sigh. “Why is nothing straightforward with you people…”

“I mean…” the girl started, turning on her heels so she was standing directly in front of Antares. “If you wanted, you could give me clout instead, I ain’t pushing you in one direction or the other. But, y’know, I just have a gut feeling Noelle might come down from there and crucify both of us if you did that. I’m sure you know what I’m getting at.”

“Yeah…” Antares nodded slowly. “Well, wish me luck, I’ll try not to piss her off even more or get metaphorically or literally crucified in the process or whatever.”

“Damn, cold… Well, I guess I can’t say I didn’t influence that decision somewhat,” said the girl, taking a step away, offering a slight wave. “I suppose I’ll just have to find someone else to hang out with and someone other than you to lift clout from…”

“You can always find me when I’m done, I’m just doing it before the alcohol runs out and I reconsider. Depending how it all goes I maaaay be a lot drunker then.” Antares waved back, levitating slightly off the ground as she flew up towards the building. She didn’t exactly know which room was Noelle’s, sure she’d seen her earlier but that didn’t mean she remembered exactly which floor or which set of windows Noelle had been at and for all she knew she might’ve moved, so coming in from the ground it was.

When she reached the door to the building she would find it unlocked but there were multiple rooms on the inside and it wasn’t clear which was the right one to head to - she did quickly find herself with company, however, a woman that could be identified as Montreal Hunters member Daniele Lachapelle, otherwise known as Shieldmaiden, stepping out of one of the rooms almost as soon as Antares entered. “You’re looking for Noelle, yeah?”

“Yeah, figured I’d talk to her before I can change my mind or the alcohol leaves my system and I pussy out.” Antares nodded. “Which one’s hers?”

Even without the mechanical armor that she had her name because of, Daniele was pretty strong - she immediately reached for Antares’ collar, moving to push her against the wall. “And you know she’s mad at you right now, yeah? You know it’d probably win some favor with her if I beat you up here, yeah?”

“Why do you think I needed some alcohol in me before I came up here?” Antares said, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. “Believe me I know she’s fucking pissed at me otherwise I wouldn’t be here and yeah, it might for a bit. I probably deserve a punch or two for it anyways, but really it should be Noelle doing that, not you.”

“Noelle doesn’t want to lift a finger on that kind of thing, honey. I don’t even know if she wants to talk to you,” Daniele replied, keeping her grip on Antares’ collar as she pressed her against the wall, not giving her the option to move without a fight. “And honestly… I don’t intend on making her do that work.”

“Well, if she doesn’t she’ll just throw me out of her room and then you can beat the crap out of me.” Antares offered.

Daniele paused to consider this, not removing her grip. “Fine,” she said eventually, moving to drag Antares by the collar towards one of the rooms near the back of the building, pushing the door open as the sound of music playing inside grew louder as well as the sound of talking. When Daniele practically threw Antares inside, Antares would be able to recognize that there were plenty of heroes from across Canada, France, and a few other places in here, almost all of them female - it seemed this wasn’t a male problem, and it was reflected in the demographic in the room.

The room certainly seemed full enough that fire inspectors would likely complain, but then again, there were a lot of things at this massive party that they would complain about if they had to do a surprise check. It was considered the wildest party that the city was having to date, after all, and that meant pushing the edge a little bit… Sitting on one of the beds in this overcrowded room was the one that Antares was looking for. Noelle Ethier herself, although she was flanked by a couple of other heroes.

“You have a lot of nerve coming here to talk to me less than a half hour before you’re going to win the vote after you switched up on me,” she stated, her eyes immediately traveling to Antares, her face one of dissatisfaction with hints of anger that weren’t immediately apparent from looking at her.

“If I win I’m going to be stuck leading with Peyton.” Antares sighed, not moving to sit down and instead just standing in front of Noelle. “And yeah, you were right about all that business probably, I just figured that it’s my problem so the only person who should get fucked over by it is me, so I wanted to keep you and anyone and everyone else out of it.” Antares added. “I’m sorry for not asking you for help about all this first, I really, honestly should’ve but… You know I’m new to this, I panic, nod and now God knows what I’m stuck dealing with. Help? Please?”

Noelle narrowed her eyes, giving a long and hard stare before she said anything, eventually speaking in a low tone. “Why? Why shouldn’t I let this business eat you alive…? After all… You didn’t need my help in the first place, eh?”

“You could.” Antares admitted. “And I’d accept that because if it does, well, I deserve it really. But… Please, Noelle. I thought the help was a one-time thing, if you’d had offered it before this whole business I’d have happily accepted. You don’t have to help, but…” Antares looked down at the ground, not looking at Noelle. “I’d greatly appreciate it if you did. I can’t exactly give away being leader if I do get chosen, but that doesn’t mean you can’t lead it in all but name, it’s not like I know what I’m doing there anyways…”

“I don’t care about a fucking exercise, I care about the fact that you’re about to screw me over in the voting… I don’t know why you’re even here, I could have everyone in this room beat the shit out of you right now but… Fuck…” Noelle tightened her grip on a glass that was in her hand, causing it to explode in the process as she narrowed her eyes once more and gritted her teeth, partly from the situation, partly from the pain as blood and alcohol dripped onto the bed. “Why are you even asking me and not asking Pennington? Or Mystere for that matter?”

“Who the hell is Mystere?” Antares asked, but she didn’t dwell on the question. It wasn’t relevant. “And yeah, you could have them all beat me until I’m a bloody mess but I’m still here, aren’t I?” Antares leaned backwards slightly, trying to relax and not just run, she could feel the alcohol wearing off in her system even now. “And I’m asking you because I know you and unlike those two I actually have any degree of trust whatsoever in you, Noelle. Pennington is… Well, you know full well why, and assuming Mystere’s the girl I met down at the party I didn’t even know her name until you told me it.”

“If you want my help… Then stop fucking with me by doing things like going off with Pennington and Mystere, I don’t know why it has to be… Fucking complicated!” Noelle said, her voice practically a shout before she looked down at her phone and saw something which made her groan. “Fuck… Producers want us downstairs for the voting results about now. You can go, I’m going to stay right where I am.”

“If I’d have known it would be so complicated I wouldn’t have agreed to getting in this pile of shit in the first place.” Antares said, not moving to leave. “And I think you need to get all the shit aimed at me out more than I need to see voting results, not like I have my phone on me anyways to see them telling me to get down there.”

Noelle’s breathing picked up, and she gave a long stare, eventually gesturing with her hand. “No. Get the fuck out of my room. Before I do something regrettable. OUT! Leave me… THE FUCK! ALONE!”

“Fine, fine, going…” Antares held up her hands, backing away from Noelle and towards the door, moving to leave. “Only because you asked.”

But Noelle wasn’t in the mood to talk much more. “Go drown yourself in Mystere,” she growled, picking up a second glass from beside her bed and tossing it towards the direction of Antares, the glass hitting the frame of the door and shattering as Noelle herself looked away and turned to the protection of the heroes that were situated around her, none of them… Too happy with the way the meeting had went.

Antares said nothing, just turning and flying out, a bad taste in her mouth. She… She’d probably try talking to her again later, when she’d calmed down, if Noelle would even talk to her. For now she had to go and see who’d won the votes, which she was betting would be herself and Peyton if what everyone had said about it was right.

by **Durmatagno** » Mon Aug 12, 2019 11:54 pm

SEASON 1 EPISODE 21 // PHUKET’S WILDEST PARTY EVER PT. 2
Collaborative post between Forest State & Durmatagno

DATE // SEPTEMBER 12TH, 2025
LOCATION // PHUKET, THAILAND
CAST // Sun ‘Primace’ Choe, Yuli Rose, and Lubi Yeh-Jin

As the party continued raging on around the lower parts of the resort, the music still audible even all the way up here closer to the top of the ascending series of buildings, Sun Choe was at a relative peace - she was in her own room rather than on the ground floor of the party, or in one of the many pools which had been appropriated by partygoers, or in front of the cameras, or anywhere else for that matter. No, she was doing her own thing, sitting on her own bed with her headphones on drowning out some of the background noise as she decided she wasn’t going to head out in front of the cameras until she had to, tonight. It was a wild party. Things would happen, the cameras would catch them, and they would end up managing to look bad in one way or the other.

The winning move was not to play and that was what she was doing right now as she kept to herself - but that didn’t mean she was sitting here in boredom… She did have the company of the others in the ‘Korean Clique’ with her in this room, as she herself sat around on her phone in anticipation for what was going to come eventually, but not yet… That was, of course, the call to come down for the results of the voting. Something that was actually somewhat relevant to her, considering she was probably going to be one of the two team leaders.

Neither Lubi and Yuli were much for parties themselves. Yuli was fine with the drinking and drugs, but generally she preferred smaller groups, and mostly people she knew. Lubi for her part had no problems either, but wasn’t a fan of the noise and commotion. She liked her quiet moments and nights, and generally preferred even smaller groups than Yuli. A handful of close friends to enjoy the night, not the hordes down below. Yuli tapped away on her phone, texting with some of her friends back home in Chicago, where it’d be noon when the announcement was made. Lubi was instead playing a game, and occasionally commenting to Yuli about something in it. Both wondered who Sun would choose to be part of her team, but right now they weren’t going to bring it up.

Sun herself found herself glued to her phone for much of the night, making conversation some of the time but keeping her headphones on a lot of the time too… Which was kind of an automatic conversation killer. It was hard to talk when one side was listening to something, after all. But she did eventually pull the headphones back, as she reached for the alcohol bottle on more time and raised it to her lips. “You know, I was wondering if you had any opinions on something,” she said towards Yuli and Lubi, setting the bottle down and still looking at her phone, her headphones off however.

“About what?”

Lubi was the first to speak, as Yuli was drinking some of her beer when Sun spoke. Once she was done, she wiped her mouth and nodded.

“Probably, I have opinions on many things.”

Lubi elbowed Yuli, rolling her eyes. Yuli could be strange sometimes, even by Lubi’s standards. She shook her head and looked back at Sun. Just waiting for whatever she was going to ask about. While she waited she took a swig of her own beer, she didn’t want to get too hungover. Same reason Yuli wasn’t dipping into anything stronger.

While they were showing some moderation, Sun wasn’t necessarily afraid to try something stronger - which was perhaps why she was being somewhat open for once, when her personality was usually… Carefully constructed and controlled, both by herself and by the team behind her that had propelled her to these heights of popularity and success in the first place. “Was just thinking of fucking around with someone when we get back to Canada, don’t know how good or bad of an idea it is… Am I just thinkin’ this because I’m drunk right now?” she asked, rather openly.

“Uhh...no clue.”

Lubi raised an eyebrow to the question. She didn’t know if it was a good or bad idea, and most certainly didn’t know if it was because she was drunk.

“Depends on who and where. They can’t expect you to be celibate, you gotta be allowed to have some kind of fun.”

Yuli offered her own opinion. It was somewhat...guarded, but she gave it anyway. Without more information she couldn’t know if it was a good or bad idea. Only that Sun’s Korean fans might not like it if it went public, considering how they reacted to Yuli just getting her number.

“You’ve never been on my team, I don’t think you get what the demands are,” Sun said with a shrug. Yuli had spent time with them in Korea but she had never been a part of the team, had never been under Sun’s management company, she… Genuinely didn’t think it would be an easy concept for Yuli to grasp. “If the public finds out, obviously I’m in trouble, but even if the company finds out… Well, I’m still in trouble, just a bit less. Or with less people, anyway.”

“They are micromanaging you, it can’t be healthy. Whatever the case, have your fun if you think you can keep it from being too big a deal. Don’t know what they’d do if you went too far, but I doubt it’d be pleasant.”

Lubi stayed quiet, mulling this all over. That level of control was...shady. It raised some flags for her she didn’t like. ‘Course, it wasn't unheard of in Korea for companies to be so controlling of their stars. One only had to watch for a little while to get the feeling they preferred to dictate to their stars, not guide or influence them.

“My career numbers would say that they’re doing something right,” Sun said with another shrug, not overtly leaning too much in one direction or the other… But she did make it clear she didn’t necessarily have much of a problem with where she was and what they did. Even if certain aspects of it could get to her at times. “I guess I just don’t want it to end up on the internet causing some big scandal, you know… Fuck.”

“Well, if you can keep it quiet, go for it. If not...well, the level is up to you.”

Yuli didn’t really know, she’d never had to worry about those kinds of scandals, even with the Sun thing that’d cropped up, she hadn’t felt much of the heat as she didn’t have an agent or anyone that’d really care that much. Lubi hadn’t even felt that much, she’d kept her head low so far.

“Never dealt with anyone like that before, so the risks are really up to you.”

“Big help,” muttered Sun, putting her headphones back on and sitting up, reaching for the bottle once again and pressing it to her lips, cocking her head back as she drank from it. Wasn’t often that she got drunk, because it wasn’t something her public image permitted, but she could definitely handle alcohol when it did end up in her system. Perhaps it was a side effect of her power but she recovered quickly and she tended to be a productive drunk rather than the kind of person that would simply… Pass out.

Yuli didn’t have a lot of advice for Sun, she didn’t know the company, nor who she wanted to fuck around with. Without that...there wasn’t any real advice she could give. She didn’t know what would happen if it got out, what the chances were, or any of it. Sighing, she went back to her phone, watching the time as she continued texting. Lubi kept playing her game, she didn’t talk to a lot of people, even over text. Wasn’t going to start now, though her thoughts did linger a little on...nevermind, that wasn’t important right now.

“I’m headed downstairs,” Sun stated, putting the bottle down and rolling out of bed, heading towards the door and stepping out into the hallway, not waiting to see if Yuli or Lubi were following before she started towards the outside of the building, the music getting louder as she moved closer to the source of it, the blue lights and the crowds of the area down below now visible when she stepped out of the building and into the night air… Maybe saying she was frustrated wasn’t the right word, but it did seem like she had something weighing on her, and she was… Less talkative.

She kept going, moving down the many steps and coming closer to the party itself, stopping at the top of the final set of steps before she’d reach the ground area where they were going to conduct the live recording for the voting results. But she didn’t move there yet. They didn’t need her there yet. For now, she was able to stand around and… Observe, they really just needed her for when the votes were actually being announced rather than right now.

Yuli and Lubi looked at each other, and nodded, giving Sun a few minutes before they emerged. Yuli headed down, while Lubi just went to go find somewhere quietish, as close as one could get here anyway, until she was needed for filming. Yuli for her part went and got herself another beer, trying out a new brand instead of what she was drinking earlier. She eventually spotted Sun, but after a moment, decided that if Sun wanted to talk to her, she would be, so instead hse found a good, comfy seat to wait out the time till filming in.

Sun remained where she was for a few moments longer, having seen Yuli but not said anything to her, looking back to the crowd, her face unreadable as she did so - it was impossible to tell what she was thinking deep inside and it was even more impossible to tell how much of that was genuine and how much of that was the alcohol working, but regardless… She decided to put the spotlight on herself. She took a running start, pushing herself up on the stone barrier - there was one on either side of the concrete stairway - and running down it before reaching the end and launching herself into the crowd of the party, taking the partygoers by surprise but well… No one was exactly going to complain about the sudden appearance of one of their heroes.

And attention was something that Sun did get, as she found herself lifted up by a crowd… This party was quite large, after all, there were easily hundreds of people just in this one square that would be used soon for the filming - the camera crews and production people were far outnumbered by those who had come here for the party, some of them having Hero League connections and some just being civilians who had been lucky enough to end up getting in an exclusive event like this…

As Sun was lifted up, the numerous hands around her blending into the feeling of one as she was held by the crowd, she scanned the area for Yuli, stopping when she had made eye contact and offering a wave - although her intents weren’t one hundred percent clear. One way to read things, though, was that she was making a statement. A subtle one, but a statement nonetheless, that if Yuli wasn’t going to pay attention to her, plenty of other people would.

Yuli sighed as she watched Sun immerse herself in the adoration and attention of the crowds. She took another swig of the beer, and while she wasn’t exactly happy with how things had gone, she had enjoyed spending time alone with Sun, she offered Sun a toast. She hoped Sun enjoyed herself till the vote, because apparently Yuli wasn’t entertaining enough for her. She grumbled to herself and leaned back, the seat was still comfortable, but now her mood had soured a little. She drank and watched, wondering just what was going through Sun’s head.

Sun didn’t reply to Yuli’s gesture, remaining high on the hands and shoulders of the crowd before she eventually found herself lowered down, disappearing into the masses as she… Moved elsewhere. The little stunt had been interesting to say the least, it was unclear where she was headed now that it was done with. When she showed up out of the crowd once again she was… Nearby a bar that had been set up, where she quickly ended up with another drink in her hand before she turned her head back to the higher elevation, eyes scanning once again, looking for the same person they had been looking for before… Yuli.

Yuli was still in the same seat she’d been in last time Sun had been looking for her. She’d settled in, listening to the music, watching the crowds, and generally just keeping out of the way. She preferred not to make a fool of herself, and this party...it was a breeding ground for scandals and headlines that under normal circumstances she’d never care about. ‘How dare this celebrity wear the same shirt more than once a month’, ‘how dare this celebrity eat gasp fast food?!’, it was that kinda crap these kinda parties generally created. She didn’t care for it, and celebrity gossip be damned.

With alcohol running through her body, Sun perhaps wasn’t the same as she always was, her movements were rather twitchy, different in a way that was fully visible to someone that was used to the calm and collected way that she moved normally, her walk having been created by a dozen different researchers who had come up with what they believed was the most appealing walk possible, her movements never taken without plenty of thought beforehand - none of that seemed to apply on this night, but there was a variable that was different on this night and that was the fact that she was, well, drunk. A productive drunk but a drunk nonetheless.

Reaching down for her phone, she sent a text to Yuli finally, deciding that she needed something a bit more direct than looks and gestures.

stop ignoring me

She didn’t need to type too much to get across the point and she put her phone away following the text, turning and moving deeper into the party, checking the time briefly but seeing that there was still a bit before it would be midnight and the results of the voting would be announced publicly, on live television. For now, she was free to disappear into a trail which led through the trees - though it had still been effectively taken over by partygoers just like the rest of the locale.

Yuli arched an eyebrow at the text she got from Sun. It was...odd. Sun had walked away from her, disappeared into the party with no indication of where she was, or where she was going. But...Yuli was somehow the one ignoring her? Sun was obviously drunk, but Yuli had no clue where this line of logic could even have come from. Sighing, she stood up, and brushed herself off, her left arm covered as always, even if it was circulating that she was missing it by now. She would just have to go look for Sun to get to the bottom of this.

But Sun was heading into the crowd and there was no stopping her, when she had turned and moved she hadn’t stopped to see if Yuli was following after her, and the only real indication of her path was that she had went into the forest somewhere, a place where there were still throngs of people and a few concessions areas set up, parts of the forest just as packed as the fully open outdoor area. It was unclear what Sun had been planning, yes… Because just this area and these crowds were enough to get someone lost looking for someone.

Yuli was in the forest among the crowds, but there was no Sun in sight. She growled to herself, left hand clenching hard enough a soft cracking could be heard, which only took a moment to fix. Sun was playing some kind of drunken game, and Yuli was not in the mood for it. She took a breath, forcing herself to calm down. After a moment, she sent her response, seeing as she couldn’t find Sun the old fashioned way.

Where are you?

Sun looked down at her phone but didn’t stop moving, from deeper in the forest, and with slightly shaking hands, she worked on sending her reply back while she continued to talk, her pace brisk, not stopping as anyone looked at her and recognized her, some of them calling out her name as they realized that she wasn’t just any ordinary visitor to the party but someone that was possibly the most famous hero of all the Team Futures members that were in attendance.

the forest

She didn’t give very much information as she kept walking, the path turning and letting out of the forest so Sun was facing the beach now, lit under the moon, not as many people all the way out there compared to the numbers from the forest and the common area she had just come from, or even any of the stairwells and pathways in the inner resort. If Yuli reached this far, she’d likely run into Sun. Wasn’t like there were as many people in the way around here.

“Great...so helpful.”

Yuli muttered to herself before shoving her phone back into her pocket. She picked a direction, and just went with it, past the crowds and into more isolated areas. She wandered around for a few minutes, grumbling to herself about the wild goose chase Sun had her on. She was tempted to send out one of her birds, they’d cover the area faster than she would on foot, but then she’d just be sitting here till it got back. Eventually, she did finally find Sun, on the beach...not the forest like she’d said. Yuli sighed and called out.

“Sun! There you are.”

“Took a lot to get you here,” Sun said without turning around, her hands in her pockets as she watched the water, away from the crowds for now and able to speak a bit more… Openly, perhaps.

“It took awhile to find you.”

Sun finally turned around, revealing that there was something of a hint of exasperation on her face. “I waved to you and looked for you and you stayed where you were, you didn’t have to go on a hunt for me, y’know,” she said, the alcohol evident in her voice.

“You were basically crowd surfing, I couldn’t get close. When they let you down, it was in the middle of them and you disappeared again. Right up till you texted me, since then I’ve been looking for you.”

Yuli sighed, she hadn’t really dealt with a drunk Sun yet, she didn’t know what kind of drunk she was or how it was going to go.

“...besides, you’re the one that walked away without letting me know where you were going. I only say there because I couldn’t find you in all the crowds.”

Sun paused, glancing off into the distance - into the water, and the dim light of the moon. “Fine… I… Ugh. I guess I just wished you would be more interested in me, is all. And then I try to get your attention again and you just… Ignore it.”

“I was sitting right there with you, content away from the party. Then you...left, and disappeared into the crowds. If I wasn’t interested, would I have spent the last ten minutes looking for you?”

Yuli sighed and took a big swig of her beer. This was not how she had seen this night going. Not by far. She’d expected something closer to the party and...quieter for the most part, not that it wasn’t quiet all the way out here.

The party spread into the woods...

“I…” Sun started, looking at Yuli before falling silent, eventually reaching out and grabbing her by the collar, pulling her close as if they were going to kiss… But she stopped at the sound of footsteps, their lips hovering about an inch apart from each other for a split second or two before Sun shifted her decision and put her arms around Yuli for a hug - something that looked suspect depending on who you asked but wasn’t the same thing as being caught red handed kissing. As it turned out, Sun could only last so long without attracting attention.

“Can I get a picture?” someone was asking, and with one or two people noticing, more people noticed also… Fitting that the timing happened to be right now. It just seemed like the kind of thing that would happen to Sun and Yuli based on how things had went so far for them.

“Uhhh, yeah,” said Sun, backing off of Yuli to pose for a picture with one of her fans, doing her best to discard her drunken expression and replace it with a more manufactured smile, the kind she could summon at will when the cameras were around.

Yuli slunk back into the shadows as Sun got distracted by fans, her heart racing between fear and and the excitement of what had almost happened. The hug had almost made her panic, she hadn’t been expecting it and she didn’t like being touched very much. She leaned against a tree, letting her breathing return to normal, and just watching Sun with her fans. Her left hand cracked a bit again, this wasn’t a combat arm after all. She rubbed at the hand, fixing the cracks as she waited. She had wanted that kiss, more than she had thought she did, but now it probably wouldn’t happen. Not for awhile yet anyway.

The amount of people that managed to turn up to this little part of the beach was quite a decent one, and Sun remained with them until both her and Yuli received texts from the producers telling them where they had to be, along with everyone else on Team Futures for that matter.

Almost midnight. Need all you guys in the main plaza.

The instructions were simple and were enough to allow Sun to break out of the crowd and start heading back the way she had came, through the pathway which went through the forest, but even as she left, she didn’t say anything more to Yuli and didn’t even turn to look for her - a contrast from her earlier act, but it was hard to tell if it was an intentional change or not, and whether or not Sun just happened to be in a rush.

Yuli fell into step behind Sun, there wasn’t anywhere safe to talk about what had happened, and what had almost happened out here. She finished off her beer as she walked, tossing it into the first can she found as she stayed behind Sun. Once they started to hit more crowded areas of the forest, she broke off to clear her head away from Sun by taking a longer route. She needed to be calm during the shooting, and they couldn’t let this leak, it’d cause another Korean firestorm for Sun.

When Yuli showed up, Sun and many of the others were already at the plaza, where a small area was being cleared for them to stand while they were shown a screen, which was where the results were going to be announced. “Where is she, where is she…” one of the producers was muttering under his breath and it became apparent that even as the rest of them formed up, they were still missing someone, Noelle specifically.

“Haven’t seen her…”

“Check her room…”

“No time to go on a search…”

“Clock’s fucking ticking.”

Plenty of statements could be overheard from the staff, but eventually, the conversation shifted from Noelle to what the team members should do now that they had gathered up - with the exception of her. “Alright,” one of them stated, gesturing to the screen. “You guys form up facing here, the order doesn’t matter…”

Sun only gave a brief glance at Yuli to see where she was going to be setting herself up at. She stood near the front herself, her face not showing much emotion either positively or negatively, her hands stuffed in her pockets as one of the makeup people came over to clean her face up a bit - she had sweat on it, after all, and that wasn’t a look they wanted on a highly publicized part of the show they’d been advertising for weeks.

Yuli took a position closer to the middle, with her height she’d be plenty visible anyway, even with the taller women. Lubi took something further in the back, using her height to her advantage there as well. It’s not like this part mattered to much, everyone knew who the team leaders were going to be by now, what mattered now was the teams they were going to choose. Lubi hope she stayed on a team with Yuli, but in the end...she kind of wanted to be on a team with Fayza as well.

It was midnight and before they knew it, they had cameras pointed at them from all angles to catch all of their reactions, and there was another camera focused on the presenter who was going through a pre written speech. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is what you’ve been waiting for, the conclusion of the fan voting for the Team Futures battle at Green Flag 2025, here in Phuket, Thailand… As was promised, the results will be starting right now, at midnight. But a rundown on the rules first - there will be two leaders in this survival and combat challenge, and each fan can vote two times, with the two leaders being the two heroes with the highest vote counts. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s get to the results… In order of least to most votes.”

The face in front of the cameras.

The presenter opened up an envelope, looking at the names and the vote counts within. “First up, from Seoul, South Korea… Lubi Yeh-Jin! Someone has to finish last in these things… I’m sure your teammates are sorry it had to be you,” the presenter stated, before moving onto the next name. “From New York, New York, in the United States… Peyton Chase! Not the highest in terms of votes but also not the lowest…”

Continuing, the presenter read off more of the names. “From Asuncion, Paraguay… Lupe Cuevas! From Cairo, Egypt… Fayza Ghazaway! And now, we’re getting into some of the bigger names, some of the names that you more casual viewers are definitely going to recognize… From Ville de Quebec, Canada, and Paris, France… Noelle Ethier!”

That was something of a shock - Noelle had likely predicted herself to come higher than that and even the betting odds believed that Noelle was going to come higher than that. Anyone who had made a bet on Noelle coming in low was suddenly receiving a good return for what they had bet. “From Chicago, Illinois… Yuli Rose!”

The words left the leaders of the team announced at that point but they didn’t know the order of them. That would be determined by the next words of the presenter. “From Carmel, Indiana… Antares Gray!”

Which meant that Sun had won the entire thing.

“And the Queen of the Gangnam District, from Seoul, South Korea, Sun Choe is our winner!” the presenter concluded, applause coming from the live crowd in the background as the screen shifted to showing highlights from Sun’s career up to this point - both with the stars and in the one fight she had been in since joining Team Futures. “Of course, we’re not done yet, we still have one thing left to do…” the presenter continued, pulling a coin out of her pocket. “Sun will be represented by heads and Antares will be represented by tails…”

The presenter flipped the coin…

“And it is tails! We’ll have a brief commercial break everyone, and as soon as we come back, we’ll start with Team Antares making the first choice of the draft for the Team Futures Green Flag battle!” the bubbly presenter continued, before stepping off camera as the scene concluded and the heroes were free to talk with each other for a few moments before they would have to start with the voting, which was going to be conducted elsewhere in the resort - particularly in front of the bar Sun had been at earlier.

Yuli was somewhat surprised with how high up in the polls she’d ended up. She’d fully expected Noelee to come ahead of her. Lubi being in last wasn’t much of a surprise, she hadn’t done any showing off yet, and hadn’t had a lot of screen time. She was tricky, and watching the other members though. With everyone breaking for the moment, Yuli slipped forward to be closer to Sun, though not clickbaitey close.

“You have any plans for later tonight or something?” Sun asked Yuli in a low tone, glancing from side to side to see if it was being picked up by anyone before her eyes settled back on Yuli, managing a small smile as she extended her arm, reaching out and brushing a little bit of Yuli’s hair out her face with her thumb, the alcohol perhaps in her system still.

Yuli blinked, Sun was on her left side so she couldn’t really see her, all she knew was that she’d done...something to her hair. She swallowed, she was good at hiding a blush so none came to her face now. She kept her face forward, though she relaxed a little.

“Not currently...no.”

She kept her voice quiet, she didn’t need people overhearing.

Sun also kept her voice relatively quiet, offering the slightest of shrugs. “I would make some… But I know this is going to wear off when I’m sober… Or I think it is, anyway,” she admitted honestly, stating that she was nervous to make any plans because, well, she didn’t want to stand Yuli up when she came to be sober again and realized what she had agreed to.

“...yeah, kinda figured. Got...way to much oversight for even what happened to be possible most days. Still, I have no plans, so even if it’s something public...we can still hang out for awhile.”

Yuli was disappointed, even if she knew that a hug and kiss were definitely her limit for now, didn’t mean that the enticement of something more wasn’t...tempting. She sighed and shrugged, scratching at her face for a moment.

“Still, the thought is...nice.”

Sun just offered a nod, turning and looking off in the distance again as the producers gestured for them to come on and start setting up around the bar for the draft that would happen following the end of the commercial break, which was already in progress. She would have a lot to think about, that was for sure. Some of it good, some of it she was unsure about. She had been a bit different ever since her arrest… But now, some of it was finally slipping out.

She wasn’t sure what she thought of that.

by **Forest State** » Tue Aug 13, 2019 1:46 am

SEASON 1 EPISODE 22 // DRAFT DAY
Collaborative post between Forest State, Lunas Legion, & Durmatagno

DATE // SEPTEMBER 12TH, 2025
LOCATION // PHUKET, THAILAND
CAST // Sun ‘Primace’ Choe, Yuli Rose, Antares ‘Khione’ Gray, and Lubi Yeh-Jin

As the cameras set up around the bar area the time ticked down until the commercial break would be over and they would be back on air - which meant the producers practically acted like slavedrivers when sending the camera people and sound people into the right positions, attempting to avoid an incident where they’d come on air without having the scene set up. “Where the FUCK is Noelle?” someone was asking, while others hurried around and continued placing cameras, microphones, and a number of other things and some of the makeup artists came over to touch up the faces of the heroes before they would end up back in front of the camera.

All in all, their effort was commendable and had all the speed and effort of a Formula One pit stop, the makeup people fleeing from the scene just like a pit crew attempting to not get run over by a speeding formula car. The presenter returned, standing in front of the bar with the heroes assembled around her, the team leaders standing on either side of her after being positioned there by the producers - they planned out every detail of these things, including where the important people would be standing in each shot.

“Alright where the fuck is she…?” someone else was asking, walking by to speak to director Nash Linwood about how Noelle just wasn’t there. “Nash-”

“No, I haven’t seen Noelle, I thought I said you were supposed to-”

“And I haven’t fuckin’ seen her!”

One of the other members of the staff came up, the clock counting down steadily until they would be back on TV. “She might be up in her room but no one up there opened the door, I don’t know,” the newcomer said, butting into the conversation. “Either way we’re forty five seconds from being on TV again and I don’t know about finding her in that-”

“Son of a bitch!” shouted the first producer that had come up to Nash, throwing down a clipboard in frustration while the director gestured for everyone to calm down.

“It’s a drama show, we have some drama on our hands,” Nash said, shrugging and letting out a drawn out sigh. “Not under the circumstances we wanted but we can work with this.”

“Yeah and we’re not going to get any face off between her and any of the other ones that finished above her if she flat out disappears-”

“You can’t have everything, I suppose. I believe we’re about to be on the air once again-”

“TEN! NINE! EIGHT! SEVEN! SIX!”

“Yeah, that’ll mean we’re about to be on air,” Linwood said, turning in the direction of the production assistant that was counting down the time until they were on the air…

“ONE!”

The presenter’s face livened up as the cameras started rolling once again, directed towards her and the heroes that were standing around her. “Welcome back to Phuket, Thailand, where we’re partying before the Hero League’s Green Flag exercise starts for real! We’ve selected the leaders of the teams for the Green Flag Team Futures battle, and now, those team leaders are going to pick from the rest of the team and determine which side is going to have who when the survival and combat exercise comes around! Starting off… Team Antares has the first pick.”

The cameras shifted to Antares, waiting to see what the small town girl was going to do under the pressure of this moment, surrounded by throngs of people and on camera for countless more watching behind their TV screens. And it was a live broadcast. Any fuckups would result in it being seen by everyone with little chance to cover it up. “So, Antares… You have the first pick out of both teams in the draft. Who are you going to take number one overall? You can take the teammate that you think is the best, with your pick.”

Antares was silent for a long moment, her brain going into overdrive. She wasn’t the best at strategy, tactics or any of that, so she’d be choosing off probably the simplest criteria possible; who she’d actually fought beside and who she trusted.

“Well, she’s not exactly here right now, but I’ll take Noelle as my first choice. She’s the most experienced of all of us, one of the best fighters, and I’m sure why ever she’s not here she has a very good reason for it.” Antares said, only sweating a little as choices and orders began falling into place.

There was a loud “oooooohhhhh” from the crowd as the first pick was made, a bit of drama added to it by the fact that Noelle wasn’t here when she was clearly supposed to be here, and how no explanation had been given for it the entire night. The presenter smiled, looking into the camera. “Perhaps unexpected, but an interesting pick… And now, let’s turn to the leader of Team Sun, Sun Choe herself-”

Sun had already jumped onto the bar, taking it upon herself to generate some hype for this event. “How’s it going, Phuket!?” she shouted, hyping up the crowd where Antares hadn’t bothered to - perhaps that was the advantage she had. They both had their popularity, sure, but Sun’s greater experience told her what the rules were and when to bend them. That was to say, she knew when to go out of the box. “You guys remember me!?”

She’d shown her face in Thailand a few times before, of course, when she was with the Gangnam Stars - and the crowd responded with a roar, as Sun stood on the counter, glancing down at her competitor below her and smirking slightly. She was definitely in her competitive zone right now, even as the alcohol from earlier wore off. She didn’t stay drunk for very long, after all, and seemed to have a superhuman recovery speed in that area.

“With the second pick… I’m taking Peyton Chase!” she said, waving to Payton from her elevated position on the counter before jumping back down to the crowd, eyes traveling to the nearest camera and giving it a charismatic wink as she pointed to it, striking a pose for just a brief moment before she turned herself back to the presenter and placed a hand on hers, pulling the microphone closer to herself. “You guys are going to root for me instead of her, right? I mean… I’ve been here before I was famous, and I don’t even know where the fuck she’s from.”

The crowd responded once again, the locals seemingly swayed by the fact that Sun’s reach extended here - it didn’t help Antares that while she had been able to ride off a big fanbase, the majority of that fanbase was Brazilian. And they weren’t in Brazil right now. They were in Thailand. “Interesting statements, Sun…” the presenter said, pulling the microphone back away as Sun smirked. “Antares, who will you be taking with the third pick?”

“For my second, I’ll take Fayza.” Antares said simply, not bothering to try and emulate Sun’s style here. It would just look like copying, so she’d keep it cool and professional. She’d never been out of the US before, Canada didn’t really count in her eyes, so it wasn’t exactly surprising people didn’t know her out here.

Sun chuckled, seeing that her opponent hadn’t responded. Sun took the microphone again, or rather, she took the presenter’s hand and moved it as if the presenter wasn’t there. “Now, now, now, I know there’s some rumors going on and such about me and I know certain corners of the internet are saying stuff, so I’m going to see just how strong the internet is and I’m going to ask the crowd who I should pick…”

There was plenty of shouting - some of it blending together, some of it sticking out, it was a wall of noise either way and it made Sun chuckle. She could hear the most prominent name, however, just like they all could. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. I’m taking Yuli with the fourth pick,” Sun said, waving for Yuli to come up in front of the camera with her.

Yuli wasn’t very surprised she was on Sun’s team, she was surprised there was popular support for it. She strode forward, her surprise couldn’t be read on her face. She would pose with Sun for the camera of course, but once it was time for Antares to pick again, she’d fade back into the background. No need to try and hog the spotlight, that was what showing off in the fights was for.

And Sun did indeed pose for the cameras, putting on the same smile she often used for the media as she put her arm around Yuli for a moment, the cameras clicking in the press crowd in the background before she disentangled herself almost as quickly as she had made the move in the first place, the presenter going back to Antares. “There’s only going to be one more pick in this draft… Who are you going to take?” she asked, extending the microphone to Antares.

“Save the best till last, right?” Antares grinned slightly. “Lupe, get up here.”

It didn’t take long for Lupe to make his way from the crowd, where he’d been mingling instead of standing with the other heroes, standing in front of the cameras and almost immediately pressing his lips against Antares’ in a rather unexpected and public display of affection. It wasn’t… That surprising, really. They were lucky they were on cable TV and not network TV, as with the live broadcast, there wasn’t much the producers could do to edit it out even if they wanted to, short of cutting the broadcast entirely.

“See, shit like this is why you’re the best.” Antares said, still grinning slightly after she pulled back from returning Lupe’s kiss for a few long seconds. Not enough to annoy the producers, but enough to make sure people got a good view of it.

“Knew you’d pick the only person as shameless as you,” chuckled Lupe.

The presenter turned to the camera, the draft having wrapped up for the most part. “And that means Lubi will be with Team Sun as the only one left unselected,” the presenter stated. “Stay tuned for the exact dates and time of the first battle broadcast! Coming this week!”

She looked over her shoulder as if she was looking for something, the cameras focusing on the air rather than on the heroes, and one of the largest fireworks shows that most of the heroes in this plaza had seen before began in the background, flashes of gold and white and blue and red shooting into the air from all different angles and different speeds, not that far relatively from where they were standing, creating quite a bit of noise as they lit the sky up above and a very thin but still visible layer of smoke drifted from the launch site over the entire plaza.

“Well, that was an adventure…” said the director, Nash, now that they were finishing up the broadcast, the fireworks still shooting off one after another in the background, the sky a collection of different colors with enough bright lights to make someone on the ground feel like it might just be daytime.

by **Lunas Legion** » Tue Aug 13, 2019 3:14 pm

SEASON 1 EPISODE 23 // SAID IT’S TOO LATE (TO APOLOGIZE)
Collaborative post between Forest State & Lunas Legion

DATE // SEPTEMBER 14TH, 2025
LOCATION // PHUKET, THAILAND
CAST // Antares Gray & Noelle ‘Lux’ Ethier

Antares Gray had a bit of a problem on her hand. That problem came from the fact that she had drafted Noelle Ethier with her top pick, someone who… After their previous argument, decidedly didn’t want to work under Antares. Maybe it had been a nice gesture. But Noelle hadn’t seen it that way - you didn’t tell someone like her that they were going to be working under the person they had just argued with, regardless of whatever the intention behind it had originally been. And so, so far, Noelle was… Well, a no show, and they were about to head out for rural Thailand within the next hours, which meant if Antares still wanted Noelle on her team, she would have to… Work to get her there, and give her some reason to show up.

Still, a few hours would hopefully be enough to find Noelle, and given that Antares could fly, well. She could cover a lot of ground very quickly in her search for her missing teammate. She wasn’t going to leave Phuket for rural Thailand one person down if she could do literally anything about it, so there she was, flying just above the buildings, moving slowly and methodically in case Noelle was outside. If she couldn’t see her, then she’d go to her room, but if Noelle was hiding then her room was one hell of an obvious place to hide.

She would find that Noelle was in one of the courtyards, not just standing still but engaged in an intensive activity - not any activity, but training for… Something. Facing off against someone else with a saber in her hand, keeping her distance and lunging forward every so often, countering the opponent blows expertly. Seemed she was working with Mystere, the girl that Antares had met a couple nights before. The one that claimed Noelle was only hanging out with her while her feud with Antares lasted. If she wanted to approach… She’d have to approach both of them, and she’d have to figure out a way to interrupt.

Well, that wasn’t so hard, but Antares hadn’t exactly considered that Noelle would be so easy to find which meant she… Didn’t exactly have what she was going to say formed up in her head. Well, she couldn’t exactly just hang around up here in the air, one of the two would notice her eventually, so instead she descended towards the ground where she was, setting down on a path a short distance away on the edge of another courtyard, out of sight hopefully.

Antares was just buying time for herself, and she knew it, shutting her eyes and letting out a long breath as she centered herself and focused. She opened her eyes again, letting out another long, almost nervous breath as she turned to leave the courtyard she’d used as a landing site to head into the courtyard Noelle and Mystere. Maybe she’d have a bit of time to watch before they noticed her, maybe not. As long as they didn’t stab her she could probably call it a win really.

Noelle stopped and lowered her saber almost as soon as Antares showed up, Mystere doing the same thing as both of them looked to her, Noelle placing her hands on her hips in frustration as soon as she caught sight of her teammate. “Fuck are you doing coming here? I’m sure you know already I’d rather catch hear from the producers for being a no show than fight on your little team after before.”

“Figured I could at least try to change your mind about that, at least then I can say I tried.” Antares said with a small shrug. “What’s the worst that can happen from just letting me talk for a bit, if you’re not going you and Mystere will have plenty of time to fence or whatever while the rest of us are in the jungles.”

“Should have thought about these things before you decided to insult me further by putting me on your stupid team,” Noelle growled, waving the saber towards Antares. “I don’t know what the fuck is going through your head to make you think I want to talk to you after you did that.”

“Yeah, uh, you kinda lost me there.” Antares said, backing away slightly as Noelle waved her saber at her. “Mind explaining how that was an insult?”

“Use your fucking brain for once, like you should have done when you were making your choices,” Noelle replied, pacing and eventually settling for leaning against the wall, keeping her eyes on Antares the entire time.

“I did actually think about those, you know.” Antares said after a few long seconds of silent thought. “Granted, that was mostly from the view of what’s the easiest way to hand Sun and company their asses, but…” Antares let out a groan. “Let me guess, it’s because you want to be in charge or something, slap me if I’m wrong or whatever since I probably am, I can get a bit obtuse about this stuff at times.”

“Don’t care as much about that as I care about not working under you,” Noelle stated, glaring. “Not after before…”

“Yeah, believe me I know I fucked up with that and here I’ve fucked up again, I should probably start getting used to the pattern here.” Antares said, shrugging but otherwise remaining indifferent under Noelle’s glare. “And who said anything about working under me? I picked you because you know this stuff a damn sight better than I do and good leaders know when they’re shit at something and someone else isn’t.”

“I don’t give a fuck about that, it’s not good for my optics and I don’t particularly give a shit about this exercise, I gave a shit about this voting and you already jumped in front of me on that… But you couldn’t even just let me get through the exercise in peace with the other team, could you? You had to try and drag me back over to yourself…” Noelle said. “I don’t know why you thought it was a good idea given how our last talk went.”

“I’d take having no one over having Peyton.” Antares said. “Yeah, taking you as my first choice might’ve been a bad idea, but if you really just want to stay here then I’m not exactly going to pick you up and drag you over there.” She let out a sigh, shifting around slightly to sit down on seemingly nothing. Flight was useful like that.

Noelle gestured with her saber once again, frustrated. “Might have been a bad idea? Look, if you’re here to justify yourself and your decisions… Just get the fuck out. You’ve done enough. Only reason I didn’t have someone beat the shit out of you for that decision was because you have to go on TV soon and someone is going to ask what happened. But don’t test my patience. You need this show more than I need this show, I can survive some controversy,” she said, starting to walk for the exit of that particular courtyard.

“You’re the one who joined the show late and now you’re, what…” Antares paused, trying to figure of how exactly to describe what Noelle was doing before giving up. “If you don’t need it why the hell did you bother joining it in the first place or stick around? Hell, for someone who’s been complaining about votes just sulking about the whole thing and not showing up isn’t exactly the best way not to have the same thing happen next time.”

Noelle turned, offering an exasperated sigh and shrug. “I could ask you why you haven’t bothered to take any time to think of your decisions despite coming here looking for fame and fortune,” she started, locking eyes with Antares. “And I’d rather write my name here than be the dozenth promising JuHe prospect turning pro this year, but that’s not something I have to justify to you.”

She reached for her phone, staying where she was but tapping at the buttons as she made a call. “Daniele? Yeah… I need you to deal with this… Thanks,” she said, ending the call and lingering for a moment more to see if Antares had anything else to say.

“You do know I could just fly away, right?” Antares said, raising an eyebrow. “Daniele and I had a… Well, I guess you could call it a chat before our last meeting, I’m no genius but I can put a few things together here.”

“I’m aware,” Noelle stated, lingering still. “Don’t come to me again, Antares… I may have thought that I could help you, but from what I’ve seen further into things… I believe you’ve made yourself a natural enemy of mine… The next time you come to me, the talk isn’t going to be so quiet and peaceful.”

“Do you have to be quite so dramatic about it all?” Antares groaned. “You could’ve just told me to fuck off, you know. I don’t exactly get why you insist I’m your natural enemy since I don’t exactly want to be, yeah I’ve fucked up continually around you but I guess we’re just from two different walks of life with two different mindsets.” Antares continued, kicking off the ground and rising to a few feet above it before falling silent, keeping her eyes wary for wherever Daniele - Shieldmaiden - might show up.

“It’s not like you’ve fucking tried to improve. Or if you have, you haven’t put any effort into it, haven’t put your mind into it. Either way… Not the kind of person that I can deal with,” Noelle stated, Mystere moving in the background.

“Noelle, do you just want me to fuck this girl up?” Mystere asked, looking to Noelle and circling in the opposite direction, eyes on Antares. “I’m gonna need something out of this…”

“I’ll throw you 10k I guess,” Noelle stated, as Mystere continued circling, moving closer ever so slightly as she worked on judging her approach.

“Can’t improve if I don’t even know what I’m fucking up in the first place here Noelle.” Antares said, moving to rise higher into the air, moving backwards away from both Noelle and Mystere, not using her powers beyond her flight quite yet. “Don’t have to give me another chance though, I can read where this is going and I’d much rather not get injured.”

Mystere, however, gestured back to herself, particularly to her waistband and an apparent gun hidden there. “Get back on the ground, eh? Unless you trust yourself to take your chances with a desperate person with a gun.”

“Eh, I’d give you 30-70 odds at best of drawing, aiming, firing and hitting me if I start running, but-” Antares stopped, instead descending back to the ground with a light tap as she landed. “I’m not exactly in a gambling mood right now and I figure I owe Noelle this much for putting up with me this long.”

For Antares, Mystere would flicker out of her vision and it would seem like there were a number of her, all in different directions and distances compared to her, nothing immediately showing which ones, if any of them, were real… Before the other ones disappeared and there was only one left, behind Antares, who quickly drove a knee into her spine before forcing her into a choke hold… It didn’t seem like this was going to be a light punishment.

Noelle didn’t seem interested in staying to watch. “I don’t particularly feel like sticking around… So I’ll take my leave. Remember what I said, Antares. The next time is going to go much worse for you,” she stated, turning back towards the door before saying one more thing. “As is the next time you do something to cross me.”

Antares didn’t say anything, couldn’t really say anything considering she was in a chokehold. Oh, she had ways out of it, she could’ve summoned ice around herself to use as a weapon, she could’ve just shot straight up, but she didn’t really feel like escalating anymore either, so she just waited. She knew she could break out at any time, after all.

Except, in this case, breaking out early was a good way to end up dead at the hands of the Montreal mafia, and aside from that, there was a second figure showing up - the one that Antares had met earlier, Shieldmaiden.

“Well… It looks like you’re about to get your due for disappearing that night,” Daniele stated, entering the courtyard after Noelle had left and approaching the scene, brandishing a metal pipe in her hand as she made her way up to Antares, prepared to deliver a beating in the old fashioned way without her advanced armor that she would normally use in combat.

“Noelle told me to fuck off and I didn’t feel like having more things thrown at me.” Antares managed to gasp out with a strained voice, her eyes darting to the pipe, barely resisting the urge to roll her eyes. Typical. Why’d she even bothered trying to be nice to Noelle in the first place if she was going to be such an absolute bitch over small things?

by **Forest State** » Wed Aug 14, 2019 3:31 am

SEASON 1 EPISODE 24 // LOOKING FOR A STAR
Collaborative post between Forest State & Lunas Legion

DATE // SEPTEMBER 14TH, 2025
LOCATION // THE JACQUERIE, OFF THE COAST OF PHUKET, THAILAND
CAST // ‘Linzey Pennington’ & Ella Merx

The superyacht had just about everything that anyone could want - it was large enough that aside from the subtle movements of the waves, the rooms underneath the main deck made someone feel like they were at home, and not on the ocean, and the top deck had a great view of the surroundings… Phuket was busier now than it was at perhaps any other time of the year thanks to the Hero League descending on it as the host city of their Green Flag exercises, something that had been a very profitable connection through the years for both sides. And the yacht, it had a view of the tents and the resort and some of the activities, but from a safe distance. A distance that was removed, the people staying here living like they were in a luxury mansion even as they stayed not in a building, but on the water near one of the bays.

It was where Linzey Pennington had brought someone that right now, she considered very important. “The rundown of why you’re here…” she started, standing with her arms crossed over her chest, near the front of the ship, looking to the shore and to the dozens of people that were moving about on the beach to set up something that would be used in one of the exercises. “Is that it seems that the previous person that we’ve connected with, or should I say the only person that we’ve connected with on Team Futures, is too stupid for this game of chess and may be too stupid for this world entirely,” she finished plainly. “And because she doesn’t have all that much use beyond being a useful idiot, I think we’re going to have to do things the hard way and place someone on the team in the near future as a later addition.”

She let her voice trail off but she didn’t turn to face the girl behind her, her eyes still fixed on the beach or perhaps the blue waters in front of her. Really, the scenery was a far cry from what most people were used to. Even those who lived in luxury would find it different as the concrete jungles of cities such as New York and LA and Hong Kong and London were changed out for a place that was… Developed enough, but closer to nature. The resort was definitely manmade, but it seemed to blend in perfectly with the environment in a way that other areas simply didn’t.

“I’m talking, of course, about putting you on that show and letting you get into the Hero League system,” she continued. “More specifically, deeper than you’re already involved in it right now.”

“Doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together.” Ella said, her thick Flemish accent distorting the words as she spoke, moving up to stand next to Linzey and looking out over the beach, sweat running down her face. She wasn’t exactly good with heat at the best of times. “Any sense of timing for when I’ll be put in?” Ella asked, still all business.

“Depends on several factors including when they decide to look for someone else, whether we’re able to get them to put someone in without an opening, and whether or not Antares ends up off the show… As well as your own versatility and confidence in handling the tasks you’re given,” said Linzey, with a shrug. “Too many factors that’d go into figuring this out to just give a date.”

“You know I’m fairly good at what I do, or I’d like to think I am at the very least.” Ella said, her voice still rather guarded and neutral. “Not sure how I would fare in that group, however, but I can make do regardless.”

“Making do isn’t good enough, I’m afraid. If we just wanted to make do, we would rely on the useful idiot we already have in the group. I have my objectives, the firm has its objectives, we want them accomplished. I would have thought you would have jumped at the chance but I can find someone else to build into a star if you aren’t confident. Because trust me. You’re going to get nowhere with that if you aren’t confident,” Linzey said in reply, her voice sounding… A bit disappointed. “And I can hear the lack of confidence in your voice.”

“It’s a group that’s had a while to get to know each other and establish the order of things between them.” Ella said, leaning forwards slightly on the railing to look down into the water. “Any new entrant into that would and should be wary at best. I’m not sure on the plausibility of it given my own circumstances, but it may be a good idea if possible to get me in as a guest of sorts on the show. It’ll give me a chance to see how things actually are in person and off camera, doesn’t have to be for any more than a single episode, but it’ll give me a bit of a boost whenever I return. People always like characters who show up as guests and then return as regulars later on.”

“And since when have you had the clout to just show up on a show like this that’s dominating the ratings in North America and even breaking into, dare I say it, some of the harder to break down markets like China and the rest of the far east? I guess what I mean to say is, this show is all the rage right now, and you are mostly popular in an irrelevant country. People aren’t asking who the top heroes in Belgium are - they’re following the top heroes in the United States, in the United Kingdom, in France, Japan, you get the idea. We have to build you up… But if that might happen only for you to crash out of things from not throwing yourself in it fully…” Linzey started. “Then it might not be a good investment.”

“Believe me I’m fully aware of my lack of clout, that’s why I said it probably wasn’t plausible but thought it might be an option.” Ella gave a dismissive shrug. “I’ve never been a fan of reality TV in general, but ultimately…” She turned her head slightly, looking towards Linzey. “If it’s a matter of me doing exactly what I do anyways and just ignoring that I now have cameras looking over my shoulders then I can do it no problem. If you want me to have a particular persona for the show which is something I’m more flexible with, as you said no one really pays attention to who the best heroes of Belgium are, then I’ll need some time to settle into it. I just need to prepare myself mentally, if that makes any sense.”

“For one, you’re not going to get anywhere around this business with that prude thing you have going on, or at least, you’re not going to get as far as anyone you see on the show right now,” Linzey said with a sigh, pacing slightly without straying very far and eventually settling with her hands against the front railing. “Second, there’s a couple different ways you can end up on the show, there might be an opening and we might be able to push you to end up there, the other way would be winning The Ultimate Hero which is another show the League is doing except it’s for heroes that aren’t with major teams… But you’d have to win some fights in a tournament. Either way, I’m saying you’re going to have to step things up and fight like hell for it if this is what you want to do.”

“As long as you don’t expect me to end up naked in bed on camera in my first episode I suppose I can try, it’s just a matter of getting used to it like most things.” Ella said, humming to herself. “And it might be worth a shot entering me into The Ultimate Hero, I think my team is the definition of ‘not major’ and you know better than anyone how my power’s vague description really doesn’t match up to what I can do with it.”

“I’m not asking you to try, I’m asking you to do, and if you want to give half answers, I can push someone else that’s not going to backfire like the last investment did. I can push someone that’s from a similar background to my own or I can find someone from a shithole country that’s more willing to work to get out… You think I’d be getting half enthusiastic answers if I was talking to someone from the Philippines right now? If I told them they had to jump to be a big time hero they’d ask how high,” Linzey said in frustration, turning to face Ella. “Which is why I ask you now about how content you are to stay where you are and how hungry you are to be something more.”

“Try, do, same thing. I don’t let myself fail.” Ella said, her voice hardening as she gripped the rail tighter, turning to look back at Phuket and all but glaring at it. “Where I am now is better than I was. And I’m going to get somewhere better than where I am now.” To her it was a matter of when not if, any previous doubt or hesitation in her voice gone. “If that means getting myself on that show, then it means getting myself on that show, stay- no, not just staying on it. It’s reality TV and there’s always a winner, and I don’t lose.”

“In that case, I’ll tell the marketing team to start working on a brand for you and I’ll send them the sketches that I’ve already done for outfit designs - they’ll probably need to clean them up a bit considering I sketched them at four in the morning while high. You’ll hear back from them soon about your new look and I’ll talk to some people about getting you on The Ultimate Hero, but as I said, you’re not cut out for every part of this business and you’re going to have to start working on some of it effective immediately,” Linzey stated, turning around to walk further down the deck. “No place for prudes ‘round here. Not a fucking coincidence that the top people on the show are all showoffs to some degree.”

“My power’s good at letting me do that, although…” Ella let out an incoherent sound that was somewhere between a groan, a whine and a laugh. “Are you sure basing my costume off of designs drawn by you, at 4AM while you’re as high as a rocket are the best base? I’m sure the results will be glorious though.”

“I’m a very productive addict,” Linzey said in response, stopping in her tracks and turning to face Ella. “I’m sure you haven’t even noticed half the time I’m high… But as I said, the final design will be by the marketing department, and they’re good at what they do. If they can make Antares out of everyone seem appealing, they can come up with something decent for you.”

“I just hope it has some armour or something, my power can’t do everything for me on the defence as good as it may be.” Ella said, moving away from the railing. “And no, I didn’t notice, but if I don’t notice then it doesn’t matter if you’re high or not, only drug I’ve ever needed is my power.”

“And you wonder why I call you a prude,” Linzey said with a dismissive roll of her eyes. “And no, there’s no armor, that’s not exactly aesthetic. You’ll have to figure something out in the field, this is optimized for the cameras and the crowds. You’ve got the wrong figure to stick in heavy armor - doesn’t show enough of it.”

“The things I suffer through the lack of.” Ella sighed. “Well, I suppose I can make do without armour, it’ll mean I’m more mobile if nothing else.”

“If you can find something that doesn’t look horrible I can relay that to the marketing team and the construction team but I doubt you’re going to find something that gets approved based on what I’ve told them to go for. Anyway… You might be getting some other things too such as a mask and a new hero name but I’ll see about that later after I’ve already spoken to them,” said Linzey, turning. “This is going to be a new you… Don’t let me down after investing in making it for you.”

“I don’t intend on doing so, and I’ll have a look for something that has armour, or at least a bit, and might fit the angle.” Ella paused, thinking. “Would a shield work? Not sure how practical it would be, but given I use swords you could put it down a knight-aesthetic of sorts maybe. Just an idea.”

“Probably not, but I’ll talk to marketing… And knights are out of date and it wouldn’t fit the rest of the aesthetic,” Linzey said. “Truth be told, you’re most likely going to end up in leather and fishnets, not exactly knight material.”

“Of all the aesthetics, you went for that?” Ella raised an eyebrow. “I can’t say I’m surprised, you’re the one who drew the prelim sketches.”

“Unless you have a problem with that, I believe it will work with making you stand out on The Ultimate Hero and on the show,” Linzey replied, her voice sharp. “As long as you wear it with confidence.”

“I’m not exactly going to wilt from wearing it, it’s just very different to what my current costume is.” Ella shrugged. “But if we’re going for a whole new angle on myself then making it the exact opposite makes sense.”

“We’ll see if this little idea of mine crashes and burns or not,” said Linzey, pausing for a moment before opening a doorway and descending down the stairwell inside, heading further into the yacht where her persona room was and where she intended to contact the marketing team with the designs that she had spoken of, as well as make the calls that she needed to make - she had a lot to think about, that was for sure… She was overseeing a lot, after all, and in this case, she wasn’t so sure she had made a good call in her hunt for a star which could help their goals. More so than Antares, at least.

LIVING LEGENDS ΣA: Lights, Money, Heroes! [IC]

LIVING LEGENDS ΣA: Lights, Money, Heroes! [IC]

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