Since they were potentially bound for more Halloween festivities, Mistral once again donned the illusory Mystique cosplay.  Blue skin, yellow eyes, scarlet hair and a white gown ornamented with skull accents.  She gazed out over the tent city in the old stadium where refugees of the New York apocalypse took shelter.  In the supervillainess voice Mistique wondered aloud, “Still there is no place for them all.  One wonders if the city will ever return to its former scope.”

She approached the trucks where workers and the children were presently offloading some form of cargo, where Talion had just left and Noah arrived in full dapper-dragon form.  Mistique raised a scarlet brow and remarked, “Bonsoir, mon dragon. Hiding would never do for you, non?  And so the world will meet a dragon.”

Turning to one of the elder of Talion’s children, she asked, “What is it that is happening here?”

With the Hunter threat dealt with for now, Michael joined the others in his costume and looked around at what could be done to help.

Fate joined the group quietly, still in costume.

 As Grey munched happily on her new tass candy, the eldest boy (Jamie, who was dating Amy, the mayor's daughter (she was there too)) turned around and spoke up. "It's a charity event. We're setting up to feed all the people who lost everything in the storm."

 Meanwhile, there were many people shocked at the sight of Dapper Dragon, but just as many who wanted pictures. He was becoming something of a celebrity.

 As the table got set up, the mayor took his place on a stage. "Hello, my fellow New Yorkers. I've come here today to address each of you who have been impacted by this disaster. Thanks to a generous pledge of time, money, and manpower, we are now on track to begin the reconstruction of the city. This same benefactor has likewise pledged material support for all those currently taking shelter here in the form of food, water, and places to live."

 There were murmurs of growing energy and building expectation as Mayor Watson put the mike up and Talion took center stage. He paused for a long moment, taking a deep breath and letting the silence build before he took the mike. "Hello, everyone. Before we begin, there is something I wish to address. There have been recent breakthroughs in synthetic medicine, leading to a few pioneering individuals having undergone full body prosthetics."

 He briefly gestures to Noah in the crowd. "He is one of many. Because of this, the good Mayor has finally managed to pass through legislation granting basic human rights to synthetics."

 The energy in the crowd had turned to confused muttering. Talion continued. "This tidbit of information is important because of what comes next."


 He gestured to the big screens above him which flickered on, revealing a legion of trucks. Some were carrying relief supplies. Others were carrying building supplies. "With the aid of synthetics, we will rebuild New York... and we will do it faster than anyone will believe possible.

… and now for a special guest to help with the Halloween Festivities."

 Over the loud speaker came the sound of something that sounded almost like... sleigh bells.

Noah offered the mayor a flash drive before he was speaking to everyone. "This contains the picture and a scan of the photo ID of everyone who has abused their synth, including a detail of the damage done. I surrender this information to you with no expectation, though I do assume what you will do with the information."

Noah leaned down with a wide smile at Mistral. "Indeed, It's been a plan from day one of the change. Helps with paradox to if people are able to go 'oh, that is how he comes out of terrorist attacks unharmed.'" His great wings spread wide. His voice dropped into its deep baritone. "Oh, and this is for all the times you bamph and scare the life out of me." He wrapped his wings around her hiding her away, a public act of affection that he did so attention would be drawn to her. If she wasn't in disguise and entirely untraceable as Mistral he wouldn't have done it. But as she was extremely well disguised... well, it was a fair game now.

If she didn't escape of her own efforts he was sure to pull the wings back before the main event started.

He did wave at people as if there was no other explanation as to why he was a giant scaled monster from myth. "It was this or one of the spider tanks from the classic Ghost in the Shell anime." He winked at the kids.

This was not Noah's first appearance as a supposed mecha-dragon, so Mistique wasn't entirely surprised by his intent to go public.  Amused, she shook her head and sighed, "Spectacle typique."  The dragon then proceeded to enfold her in his wings, to which she reacted with a small yelp.  She did not vanish nor become insubstantial, which Noah knew she would have if she'd a mind to.  Instead, Mistique looked up from the wing cocoon and said, "You are fortunate I am déguisée.  You are not concerned for the optics of the dragon consorting with a villainess?  The public may be concerned you have joined the Brotherhood of Mutants and are planning mischief.  The latter is certainly true, at least."

Then came the presentation from the Mayor about the disaster relief Jamie had mentioned, followed by announcements from Talion.  Mistique listened, but her attentions were more on gauging reactions from the crowd.  Mayor Watson and Talion both had enemies, and security was not exactly airtight at this open refugee camp in a stadium.  She took particular note of the crowd when Talion announced the granting of synth rights, which remained a contentious issue among regressive thinkers.

Then, Santa Claus seemed to be coming for Halloween.  Neither Noah nor Talion could resist the temptation for showmanship, it would seem.

 As Talion gave his speech, the mayor took the flash drive. "Thank you. I will see that this gets to the proper authorities."

 As Mistral looked around, she realized that there was more security here than she realized. The military had been brought in as part of the relief effort and there were several dozen soldiers in uniform in various places in the crowd. Trying anything overt would be extremely stupid (not necessarily impossible, since stupid people did indeed exist). If an enemy to this movement did exist, any real threat would be of a more subtle nature.

Without looking away from the presentation Mistique whispered to Noah and Fate if she is nearby, “One of our kind at four o’clock, a dozen paces out.  Do you know him?”  Her scarlet lips moved with quiet intonations of magic.

"I always knew you would be the means of my evil origin story." Noah chuckled. When she asked about the mage he stood upright and looked about without turning his head, with a focus on his left eye as it held the Omnisight.

 The sounds of sleigh bells get louder and louder until a bright red light appears over head and a sleigh pulled by 9 reindeer (the lead reindeer being the source of the red light) lands in the middle of the stadium in front of several hundred Sleepers.

 In the sleigh was War, dressed head to toe in black and red leather lined with white fur, a scarf, and aviator goggled. Rather than being a fat man, he looked very much like a bodybuilder and stood nearly 7ft tall.

 As he took off his headphones, you could hear "back in Black" playing.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjJe1rBdm9U

 He stepped his massive muscular body out of the sleigh and lifted the massive burlap sack. "oh! Hoho!"

 The sound seemed co come more from exertion than any fake belly laugh as he sat the massive sack (fully three times his own size) on the ground. "Happy Halloween everyone!"

 All of the children present... and even many of the teenagers came to gawk at buff Halloween Santa.

 One of the children looked up at him. "Santa! Why are you here? It's not Christmas!"

 To which he responded by kneeling down and ruffling the child's hair. "If Jack Skellington can invade Christmas, then surely I can come down and help good little boys and girls in their time of need?"

 Their eyes lit up as he opened the sack filled with costumes and Halloween candy as the trucks pulled up and hundreds of synths dressed like elves poured in with food of all shaped and sizes, from all over the world, and in such quantity that even a few thousand people would need several days to eat it all.

 Among so many filled with elation at the food and gifts for their children, there seemed to be a growing number of adults that were offended by Halloween Elves... or perhaps by the presence of so many synths.
This message was last edited by the GM at 08:12, Sun 28 Mar 2021.

“He took the Who’s feast, he took the Who pudding, he took the roast beast. He cleaned out that icebox as quick as a flash. Why, the Grinch even took their last can of Who hash.” The tip of Noah's long tail snaked about and found it way between Mistral's shoulderblades granting her access to his laundry list of spheres. "Don't know that one. Though I can only think of a hand full of peoples who would be spreading hate and discontent." He leaned down. "Thinking it's a demon pawn but I can't be entirely sure without pinning them down. We could alert Talion but that would be brain surgery with a sledgehammer."

Michael was certainly amused at everything that was going on including War Santa and the synth elves. Again, never would have thought something like this would have happened a month ago. Mages are crazy.

Even Fate found herself amused at this display of the holiday's cheer. She smirked more to herself then anyone when she heard Noah reciting the piece from the Grinch who stole Christmas.

Noah nodded once and sent a message to the Cabal server. -There is a mind mage screwing with the crowd. We are gathering information, but half a guess its earthbound. Nothing confirmed yet-

Michael read the message from his slate and casually looked up at the crowd. His supernatural vision was still active from when he saw Fluffy.

Fate read the slate being sure not to make a scene and sharpened her eyes to look around in the crowd.

 As the angry mumbling continued to mount, War Santa was bombarded by the questions of children, things like "Why aren't you fat?" to "Are those real reindeer?".

 Meanwhile, Talion stepped down from the stage and back into the crowd. Behind him were synths dressed as elves setting up what looked to be a fireworks display on the stage he had vacated.

 As he made his way back toward the group, he was stopped by a woman berating him on how "inappropriate" it was to bring in such a realistic Santa and how she had always tried to keep her son grounded in reality.

 He took her berating for a minute or two before he cut her off. "You sound just like the nuns. 'Keep the children grounded in reality, don't turn people into dragons, reindeer aren't supposed to fly.' I bet you're real fun at parties."

 He left her with her mouth open, trying to process what he'd just said. He took a bottle of water from the cooler nearby and took a swig. "Seems like my experiment regarding suspension of Disbelief has been a success."

Someone is messing with the flow of natural events using magic. There may be more than one.was the message Fate sent through the slates.

Mistique appreciated the appearance of muscular Santa of War and Generosity, but there was no time for that now.  There was work to be done.  By the time Noah’s tail made to snake her way, she was already gone.

The blue-skinned supervillainess quietly sauntered up alongside the covert willworker and without turning her eyes away from the spectacle she inquired of him in a low conversational tone, “You are warded, mon ami.  You will be going nowhere unless I allow it.  With that said, what is it you think you are doing?”  Mistique stood with one hand on a hip and tapping a thin iron wand against a thigh as she awaited an answer.

 The man was dressed to fit the part of someone who has been living in a tent for the past several weeks but closer inspection revealed that he likely had not been. He didn't take his eyes off the scene. "The same thing any Willworker with any sense should be doing. What we have here is just another in a series of massive rips in the Veil. Synthetics are enabling it all to happen. Each and every one is an arcane construct walking around Sleepers. Each and every one is a magnet for Paradox."

PM

Noah tilted his head side to side at all the comments about reality. "'You cant do that' should never stand in the way of 'watch me'. This is reality, some times people go to great lengths go give children back their laughter. Sometimes people make the world a better place than they found it. And maybe, just maybe, tomorrow can be better than today if we bust our backsides enough."

Noah grumbled as Talion came up. "Minor situation, It's being well handled. Is it too late to name the new city all "Grey's Halls"?"

Mistique spoke a single supernal syllable while twirling the iron wand gently at her side, and in one fell swoop shut down this disguised stranger's attempted will-working.  She said, "A commendable sentiment, but I am afraid that you labor under a misunderstanding, mon ami.  Synths do not cause paradox.  They mitigate it."  Those with arcane sights active would recognize that the magical fabric of reality in the area had just been repaired in the wake of her casting.  Mistique asked succinctly, "Who are you with?"

 The mage stopped and turned to Mistral. "Mages already broke the world once trying to bridge the gap into the Supernal Realm too quickly. So much magic made so fast couldn't possibly have been proofed against all forms of paradox.

 When God broke the world, he didn't smash it. He touched it. What more damage could a god like this do, stomping around the foundations of reality? We are the Sons of Roc and we are dedicated to making sure that a titian does not obliterate the foundations of our world."

 He gestured with his hand at the ruins around him as if to confirm his statement.
This message was last edited by the GM at 01:35, Tue 30 Mar 2021.

Fate flicks her fingers covertly at the mage she see's before her. Then she send another message through the slate, I see one, but there are definitely more.