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CONFLUENCE 25
A Confluence, capitalized, is the converging of one or more supernatural forces.
Whoever you are, whatever you had been getting up to - it doesn't matter, because suddenly you're falling. The sky opens up, and out comes you. You tumble towards the ground above the city of Little Love.
Something ancient and alien hums underneath the Earth. The spells in place Summoner vines that snap up to catch you catch you just before impact, carefully binding your limbs before easing you carefully down to the ground in front of a sign that proudly proclaims this to be Little Love,Kansas. Welcome to the world of Metaheroes.
Little Love is the kind of sleepy little town where nothing is really meant to happen. It’s the kind of town where people go if they want to start over. With space faring possible again, the population is notably… nervous.
Old technology appears to be coming to life. The moment the new arrivals touch down, they will hear the hitch-pitched hum of something dangerous coming alive beneath the Earth. Something golden glows dimly in the middle distance, and suddenly a fist is punching up and through the Earth.
A massive terraforming machine in the shape of an enormous scorpion has come back online. And it is intent on making this alien world more habitable for its long gone owner. The machine sets eyes upon the new arrivals and any who have come to greet them, throwing its arms out wide. The magic that set them down onto the Earth oh so gently turns in on itself, vines becoming thorny and lashing out at all present. The machine itself attempts to scan and douse any creatures that get too close with a mysterious chemical compound.
The machine might be attempting to destroy the crops and all life-forms, but that fluid has a shelf-life that is well past… mostly. Getting splashed with it has an immediate strengthening effect rather than a weakening one.
Fight to bring the machine down, and then get whisked off to the wonder of Arcadia.
The strengthening effect from that chemical soon fades… however, it isn’t without side-effects.
While the effects aren’t immediate for those doused, there are some… after effects. Throughout the next two weeks, you will find yourself surprisingly sensitive to different minerals. Some augment your strength and some weaken it. ARCADIA, WASHINGTON
Upon arrival, all newcomers will eventually be directed to Arcadia, which is located near Excelsior. This community has an unusual history for some of the Starfallen, but for the wider world, it's simply an AI-generated, AI-run community put together to offer metahumans a place to call home. Unconditionally (for the most part). There are two ways to get to Arcadia: through a building designated as a transport/teleporting point in Excelsior, or through the front door off the outskirts of the city proper. Either way is acceptable.
All newcomers will be greeted by an AI named Virgil. Friendly and welcoming, Virgil will do everything they can to help someone adjust and feel comfortable. Their goal is to help metahumans and Starfallen alike have a place to stay, and their housing complex acts as that for many. Always adjusting and always changing, Arcadia is an important resource, and it's helped along by funding from Winters Industries.
Virgil will provide everyone the rundown they might need, as well as their new living quarters. These quarters are fully adaptable to the needs of its occupants — aesthetically and otherwise. If someone needs special conditions to live, Virgil will work alongside the AIs that directly run Arcadia to help someone find what they need.
Arcadia offers additional resources to its' Starfallen occupants. If anyone's eager to brush up on their knowledge of this world, they can sit through a bunch of (only a little boring) informational videos. For anyone unused to powers, Virgil has designated training centers. However, all training centers are unavailable to metas who aren't affiliated with a Guild. All newcomers are recommended to join a Guild as soon as possible to receive additional support beyond what Virgil themselves is able to offer.
After settling in, all Arcadia occupants receive a credit card to manage their expenses (this card is typically intended to help someone buy food, clothing, and other necessities). It's very apparent that these stipends are provided by Winters Industries and not Virgil.
MISSIONSThe headquarters of the Guardian Alliance are easy to find. It’s located in one of the taller and more ornate skyscrapers of Central City
The first floor is something of a public space. There’s a small museum dedicated to the Alliance’s most famous exploits, standees of famous heroes for tourists to snap selfies with, and even a little gift shop! For metas, though, the real business starts upstairs. You’ll have to check in with a receptionist, who will unlock the elevator to HQ proper. There’s not a lot of visible security beyond that, but you still get the feeling that any kind of trouble here wouldn’t end well for the troublemakers.
The Guardian’s Club is the central hub of the headquarters. It’s an open and sunny lounge area with shining white walls and floors. The furniture is modern, in bright primary colors, and there’s a high ceiling that allows for people of any size, or those who just want to fly around for fun. Off to one side is a large games area - the main attraction is the large pool table, but there’s also some board games, co-op video games, a snack bar, and even a DDR machine. Bonding with your fellow heroes is a great thing!
Outside of this area is where you’ll find the mission board. It’s a modern touchscreen display, on which Alliance members can tap their member ID, input mission preferences, how many they intend to take out with them, and receive a mission.
Where the Guardian Alliance’s headquarters gleams, The Society’s headquarters is much darker. The two buildings are actually quite close to each other. Entering here, you’ll find a similar reception desk where your credentials must be verified before going into the headquarters proper. Security here is far more visible, with clear cameras on the walls and buff guards, often with visible powers such as rocky skin or hands that crackle with lightning, posted nearby. You have to imagine, though, that the real safeguards here are the ones you can’t see.
Inside the Society Lounge, the furnishings are classy in a far more toned-down sense. The furnishings are dark wood, with chairs and long couches upholstered primarily in reds and violets. Here, there’s a full bar! According to the sign posted above it, however, any disorderly conduct within the Lounge will be swiftly dealt with.
The mission board is a sleek electronic display posted on the back wall of the lounge. It’s quite high-tech, updating itself regularly. You can use the touchscreen to request a job. After inputting one's member ID and the amount of people they intend to take along with them, it will assign out tasks based off of what it thinks they will be able to handle. But be careful; who gets assigned what is all public information, and it sure would be a shame to fail.
Please fill out the form and post it below our MISSION REQUESTS header.
CHARACTERS INVOLVED:
GUILD: What guilds are the characters affiliated with?
REQUESTED DIFFICULTY: Easy/Medium/Hard
REWARD REQUEST: Is your character after money, or a specific item?
LIMITATIONS: What do you not want your character to get assigned? Please note we are happy to offer new missions if our initial offer doesn't work!
➢ New arrivals land in Little Love, where a terraforming machine comes to life and begins to terrorize the town. It douses anyone it can in a terraforming fluid which enhances their strength for a total of two hours, before leaving them with some strange sensitivities to earth's minerals. Line the colors of your favorite precious stones up with Kyrptonite for some fun effects.
➢ All Starfallen will be granted a place at Arcadia, though no one is required to take that spot. Everyone who decides to live there will be provided with a stipend, as well as fully customizable living quarters.
➢ Guild members are expected to participate in missions at least once monthly. However, this does not have to be the missions offered on this post and can be handwaved. PCs are also welcome to switch missions between themselves for one that better suits, if their monthly assigned one won't work for them.
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He lets go after Wiccan does, seems like the right idea to match his spatial needs. ]
Your world is on pause. It’ll be there when you get back.
[ That’s reassuring, right? It’s not to Tim, but his personal life is a disaster.
(Shit, so is Wiccan’s.) ]
I don’t think you’d listen to the familiar, and I like it when people talk a lot: I learn a lot.
[ Just constantly restructuring the arguments until he finds the one that works and puts him back at relative ease. Sans cats. ]
But you dying alone is someone else’s big loss. You’re too cute to die alone.
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You've got a point. I wouldn't listen to a familiar. ( though talking a lot isn't doing him any favors either. first he almost gets knocked over by a scorpion, then he gets flung around, dropped into someone's arms, a someone who just happens to be stupidly understanding and--a little dorkish, if the random eye statistics say anything about him. not that billy minds. he likes dorks. except he's an embarrassment who's gone ranted a little too much about his bleak future as a witchy cat hoarder who will forever be alone because he messed up and teddy left and there's no way to fix it. and even if there was, he's here. and rook's trying to make him feel better which is--sweet. very sweet. even if billy's fairly certain he doesn't deserve it at this point, considering he's just made a bigger mess. )
Thanks? You're, uh, cute too. ( this is a completely normal conversation to have, isn't it. ) And see? I told you that you're definitely the competent one here. I'd never stick a landing like that. Also - a houseboat owned by a supervillain? Sounds like a fun story, if nothing else. Like how many people could claim to have lived in one? Not many.
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When he’s in vigilante mode, he’s got the mindset sewn up. He’s working with his best skills, he’s showing off; he might not be assured in relationships, but the certainty of everything else bleeds over. He can deliver lines like “Chicks dig the cape” with panache.
Expectations let the side down. He wasn’t expecting to have the compliments turned back around at him by someone who’s plotting out his future as a cat gentleman.
Rook might be better equipped than Tim, but he’s still clearly fighting off a flattered blush. He looks to the side, pretending to be scanning for vines and enemy electronics. To Wiccan -
(No, that was a mistake.)
To the ground and then back up, because he’s thought of a clever response. ]
Technically, you stuck the landing, not me. You’re the one who KO’ed the robot, baited the vines and landed perfectly in my arms. Guess that makes you the impressive one.
[ See, Wiccan, he can get you just as tangled in compliments out of left field and then find something else to hide behind. ]
Did you see where my knife went in the middle of that awesome?
[ He has a decent sense of the trajectory and scuffs around at the grass to find it. ]
And you wouldn’t want the story to be yours. It’s a one liner only. The whole story is he called himself Moriarty, stalked me for months physically and electronically, made clay clones of my brothers, kidnapped the guy I was dating and tried to blow up the boat.
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( being able to fly and being able to catch himself before hitting the ground are apparently two entirely different things. the small smile he offers rook is a little playful, but more meek than anything else. he focuses on looking at the ground, searching through grass to try and find the fallen knife. but he hadn't been paying attention to it when he was busy trying to free himself, so - billy has no idea where it might have fallen. )
Clay clones, huh. I guess for going at it alone stories, that's nowhere near as fun as it could've been. I haven't been with my family in a little bit, but it's--complicated. I've got a friend who has a spaceship we've been traveling around in, given we haven't been able to go anywhere near home in a while.
( a wave of his hand, before he bends down to inspect what turns out to be a stick, not a knife. it's closeish. )
Was the guy you were dating okay? ( avoiding the words boyfriend and ex-boyfriend because the was makes it sound past tense, but he's not digging. repeating his words back at him feels more safe. )
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[ He knows it was a lopsided effort, but Rook wants to share the W out of sympathy for difficult days. There is something to be said for positioning and there's only so much the catcher can do with from the ground.
He's shining a flashlight on the tilled field to catch a glint off the blade. The light it throws back shows his face. He's upbeat and growing more chipper at the back-and-forth, despite mixing Moriarty into the topic. ]
I argue with speedsters regularly and of my own free will. You're not going to win the argument. Don't beat yourself up over that: I cheat and change the parameters the entire time. And yes, he was fine. Maybe a little traumatized, but it went better than the first time I rescued him.
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( less meant to inform rook, more meant to show he gives up already. he's not arguing with someone who chooses to start fights with someone who thinks their way through an entire conversation before he's even able to get in a word. not that tommy regularly starts arguments with him. and billy can win just as easily by just not participating except that's not really winning, but more winning because he refuses to start. )
As one of your save-ees, I'll give you full points. Very little additional trauma here, but you do have the advantage of catching me years after I'd put on a cape. So a few falls and almost deaths by mecha scorpions are unlikely to do much.
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[ Having found the knife, he straightens up and gives Wiccan a full grin. His index finger pointing at his own eye and then ticking over towards Wiccan with a perfectly timed click of his tongue. He thinks he knows so much about Wiccan's relationship with his brother that he could narrate his biography. ]
Full marks? I think the judge from Earthsea is inflating the scores. Everyone knows that you can't get full mark if the sav-ee screams twice.
[ And then, with the first sentence much more serious than the rest: ]
I'm glad there's no additional trauma. I hope that you continue to choose Rook for all your future saving services.
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( he is definitely having a life. becoming an avenger was a dream, but the events before and after it were... messy, to say the least. finding out he's wanda's reincarnated child and that he had a brother who was in juvie, who then moved in with his family for a bit because his parents are overly supportive, but left because billy is, well, billy. then the whole, teddy's parentage thing, watching teddy being dissected, cassie die, a lot of the mess in between--if billy hadn't already struggled with depression and anxiety, everything he's been through would have been enough to trigger it.
but they don't need to get into that. rook doesn't need to hear billy's whole life story, or every incident that's broken him or nearly broken him down. he doesn't need to know about his time-traveling friend who turned his life upside down but also jump-started everything.
instead, billy offers him a smile. )
Stick around long enough, and I'm sure I'll end up falling through the sky again at some point. Or being knocked over by something else. Or anything else equally embarrassing for someone who's supposed to be a reality warper.
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I’ll stick around until the higher ups take over.
[ Rook indicates the tent in the distance, card tables and chairs stacked up inside. They’ll be logging the new arrivals shortly. ]
And if you want to shoot for everything, you can, but I should tell you that Prodigy would probably tell you to keep your secrets. You can tell him I said that, too, so he knows I wasn’t digging for information.
[ He’s nosy, yes, but that’s a fair heads up for someone so concerned about being embarrassed. Rook has a long memory and longer reports. He has the impression that Wiccan wouldn’t want to be in them for reasons other than privacy.
(He’ll leave out the catch to be nice.) ]
But I’m not sticking around because I think you’ve embarrassed yourself. It’s nice to have someone watching your back. That’s why you’re on a team, right? I know it’s why I was. Reality warper or not, you can’t have eyes on everything.
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( billy'd argue he's usually a fairly decent judge of character. rook's nice. definitely a dork, which makes him billy's kind of person anyway. )
I've known Prodigy for the last. . . few months or so? Point being that like, he's my friend, but a lot of our history doesn't intersect.
( he has a feeling from that digging for information comment, the two of them have a thing going on. he'll ask david about it later. )
So anything I tell likely doesn't have too much to do with him, other than he probably knows it. I used to update my hero wiki page, most of what comes out of my mouth isn't more than most people already know. Or I guess, know back home. Since this isn't my Earth.
( most. because his newfound future as a sad cat person who lives forever with his parents after messing up with his boyfriend definitely is not on his wiki page. )
I used to update his, too, but I have a feeling his public information back home isn't what he wants shared here. ( because david is prodigy but everyone knows prodigy is david and apparently he's not sharing with rook. who billy'll have to look into later, because he doesn't seem like the kind of guy you'd need to hide things from. but maybe david's just being extra secretive. )
My team reasons were a little more complicated than that, and my team team's been broken up for. . . a while, but yeah. The makeshift one we'd been in--well. ( a loose shrug. ) I'm no Hulk, or Captain America, or Thor. I can only handle what I can handle, but I've got a good team to cover what I can't.
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First of all, I’d like to request you leave me out of your wiki-editing. Guild member or not, I prefer to be as close to an urban legend as possible in every universe. No “was seen chatting up newcomer Wiccan during the February Confluence in Little Love.” There’s enough of that in Rue Moore’s column.
[ And god, he’s so glad the paparazzi at home leave him alone. They hadn’t always, but they haven’t found his new place. He doesn’t need to be a TIL post. Please no. ]
Second, please tell me you’re only updating with things like “Rumor has it Wiccan is in Wyoming, building a new base with Bigfoot and Blue.” You’re not actually putting your real information on the internet.
[ He has Concerns. ]
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( why would he even consider doing that, rook. who just goes around spreading false info to people? )
But I won't touch yours. If you want to be an urban legend, I can keep it down. I guess it's also just not a thing most people do back home? Unless you count goggles, no one on my team even bothers with a mask.
( teddy shapeshifts, but he's also always been right next to billy, so it's not like that's helped him hide who he is any. eli and cassie used to, but most people knew who she was anyway. )
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[ He hums. He likes this idea. It might be time for some creative writing. ]
I’m … it’s what I’m used to. Maybe your world is better than mine. Better than this one, too.
[ That’s a warning. He doesn’t dare say more here. Corn has ears, and that he personally helped break Atomight out of prison is not common knowledge. Rook didn’t join the Alliance because he trusted them. ]
Everyone in my world wears a mask one way or another. You should consider it, or invest in glasses.
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maybe it's less about being better and more - not having much to lose. )
I don't think people would really care about who I am anyway. At least not here. ( because he doesn't have much to lose, does he. ) I could add one though, like - ( hand across his face, and a mask very similar to tim's own settles over billy's eyes. he shakes his head, and the lenses dissipate while the fabric shifts, little stars outlining the edges. ) but I don't think it makes much of a difference.
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[ And not all of it is in the Starfallen's favor. Like anything with money, the deal benefits the money.
Besides, he likes the mask that Billy comes up with. Maybe he just likes the aesthetic of a dark mask. Maybe it's vanity, that it's shaped much like Tim's, and he does think he looks cooler in the mask and has usually been the one making design choices. ]
You'd be surprised. A mask pulls focus - people see it and not so much you. It won't save you if someone runs you through facial recognition software, but eyewitnesses? Only if there's someone who really looks. Besides, it looks good on you. Who doesn't love a good domino mask?
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and there's a smile, spreading slowly across his lips as he looks to rook. )
But who's going to catch me and make cute dorky comments about my eye color if they can't see them?
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(It's not loud enough to pull attention from that face, who does Tim think he is, Superboy?)
The growing smile is met with a spike of sheepishness, a flash of a smile that's as much about reassuring Tim himself that he's still got this under control as it is for Wiccan. ]
I'll still catch you, but I've never made dorky comments.
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( his own smile grows--sheepish, a little softer. )
I never said dorky was bad.
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...
Oh god. They are. Maybe. Probably. And if they are (they are?) it's Tim's fault.
This is not the place. Nobody flirts in Kansas.
It's not flirting. They just met, and nobody's kissing anybody.]
Most people say dork like it's a bad thing.
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( nerd might be a more accurate word to go with, but he's sticking with this one currently for the sake of the argument.
billy stops in place, wraps an arm around his midsection. )
Thanks. For the multiple saves and--everything else.
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[ For a hero, Wiccan’s very willing to give the credit away, and Rook’s not going to let him. It’s hard enough to be dropped into a new universe without minimizing yourself. Whatever Wiccan decides when he meets with the guild, he should go in with confidence. They’ll sway him otherwise. ]
I’d be out of explosives. You can’t fight giant robots with a bo.
[ His eyes linger on the arm around Wiccan’s stomach. There’s some hesitation, but -
In at least one universe, he’s Prodigy and Loki’s friend. Tim’s hand twitches towards him. ]
Are you hurt?
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( a talent he didn't have a few years ago, but billy's starting to get his sense of style down. also: it's magic. nothing's cooler than that.
rook's eyes lower, and billy follows their trajectory after a moment. notes where they're focusing, and - unfolds his arms. )
No, I'm fine. Nervous habit.