Halcyon Calling, Episode 2: Blood and Bourbon

So we all got a bollocking off Castor and Pollux, which I couldn't really argue with, but they gave us some shots too, which made me cough. The poor bastard in the back room needed blood, and not just human blood either after what Yigirel did to him, and we couldn't exactly take him to the hospital. People don't always come out of that place. So the hospital would have to come to him.

We stood outside Camden General while Billy sized the place up. There were Asterian peacekeepers on the doors. The roof was clear but he didn't know how to get there. I pointed out I can climb well with my claws, and Balae reminded us that she can fly. So Billy put his arms around me so I could carry him up, which felt pretty weird, but I concentrated on climbing and got the two of us up onto the roof while Balae floated up.

There was one of those manta ray sentries on the roof, and Billy tried to hide us with some smoke that Nigel the chest fish made, but the ray's eyes turned red anyway and an alarm went off and a janitor showed up. I don't know how Billy and Balae managed to convince him that we were actually window cleaners. He seemed pretty cool though, and he had a tattoo of a spider.

It was creepy as hell in the hospital and we kept spotting medical stuff being done, like those awful louse things chewing on someone. It's supposed to be good for them, but that's what they told me when I was being changed and it didn't make it hurt any less. When we got down to the basement I was ready to rip the door right open, but Balae said she wanted a go first and we were supposed to be being quiet. She did something to the keypad and it opened right up.

It wasn't long before I got to do my thing though. Balae and me started loading up with medical supplies, but Billy managed to run right into a pair of Asterians. I got there just in time to have one of their spears bounce off me instead of going right through Billy. I scared the shit out of that alien bastard, but his mate got me right in the neck and I suddenly realised taking on two of these fuckers at the same time wasn't the best idea.

Then Balae showed up and I didn't know what had got into her because she was beating one of them so hard I thought she might actually kill the host. I had to try to talk her down and that felt all wrong because she's the sensible one and I'm the one with stupid hair and a temper, but she did back off and he was still alive when the Asterian jumped ship. Nigel ate the little slimy thing, which kind of gave me the creeps.

We had to get out fast, now we'd got what we came for, except Balae was a mess. Like, a passed out on the floor mess. So I picked her up and carried her and Billy took the other stuff, and we legged it. There was a riot going on outside. I don't know how it started, but it gave us some cover, at least, and when we saw an Asterian hover vehicle unoccupied we knew we had our way out. Good thing Balae was waking up again since I've no idea how to drive the things. We ditched it in the canal and went back to the pub.

You'd think Castor and Pollux would be grateful we got back safely with all the stuff but they just wanted to know if we'd started that riot. They went to look after the guy in the back, so I went behind the bar to get us some crisps, and we all sat down for a bit.

Then Billy said a load of crap that sounded like he was making fun of me, and I tried to say something nice to Balae but that just upset her more, and Billy stormed out of the pub. So I went behind the bar again and grabbed the first bottle I could see and took it up to the roof, because what was the use of doing any of that if my new friends already hated me?

By the time I got to the bottom of the bottle I felt a bit dizzy, and then my phone buzzed. It took me a while to figure out how to enter the unlock code, and then when I did I didn't have any new texts. Then I realised it was a different phone in my other pocket which I hadn't seen before. It took me a few goes to read it because my vision was all blurry, but it was someone called Ariadne who wanted to meet me at the docks at midnight and said to come alone.

It took me a while to get back down the stairs, because they kept moving about, but I got back to Balae and told her I was going to do something stupid and asked if she'd come with me.

I was a bit steadier on my feet by the time we got to the docks, although I was starting to get a headache. Balae turned into a tiny version of her to hide in my pocket and we went into the warehouse. It was dark, and nobody answered when I called. In the end I got fed up and sat down and told them to stop messing about, and then they shone a light in my face and told me off for bringing Balae although it sounded like they expected me to do that anyway so I don't know what their problem was.

Someone called Ariadne talked to me, and she called me Melanie, which was weird. She told me she'd helped me out and she'd keep helping me out if I worked for her and got some thing the Asterians wanted for her. I didn't realise straight away what she meant, but she had the same spider tattoo as the hospital janitor so maybe that was what she meant about helping.

She said I didn't have to decide right away, which is good because she was pushing really hard and my head was hurting, but I've been pushed around so much and I don't mind getting this thing to help stop the Asterians but I don't want to do it for her, just because she told me to.

At least me and Balae seem to have made things up. She told me she saw one of her kind at the hospital, and I didn't need to hear any more to know how bad it was.

So that was today. I'm back home now and writing this down. Abeni says I don't have to show it to her, so I don't have to hide anything. I don't feel much like a hero right now but maybe tomorrow will be better.

Wicker Valley, episode 18: Mazes and Monsters

Toby the gargoyle was very clear on the importance of looking after Michael and his new weapon. Not that I needed telling. But we'd all had a long and confusing day and needed some rest. I suggested we meet up at the Wicker Stop in the morning to catch up.

My flat was nicer than I remember it being. I've always had this feeling of impermanence. Like at any moment my true nature was going to become known to the wrong people again and I'd find myself having to move on. It's happened enough times before, after all. But this timeline's version of me seems to have felt a bit more secure. Enough to actually put up some pictures and get some nicer homewares. The go bag was still under the bed, but some of the stuff had been taken out. It was nice.

Next morning, Adam had some idea about having me using my magical talents to summon our memories from this timeline, which pretty much everyone else agreed was a terrible idea that would probably make our brains disintegrate. We were all gradually catching up on things. Adam, it seemed, was now the newer arrival to the group and had never been in the Foundation. I started googling family members, which was easier once I remembered that all the Agneses were now Agathas.

But then Agnes and Mary showed up, and I got a surprise hug that I still don't really know how to deal with. They had a job for us. Some things never change. Missing teenagers out hiking, and claims of a sighting of the lake cryptid known as Bownessie. Of course we had to help. That's what we do. That's what our alternate timeline selves had been doing for quite a long time.

The Strava app proved useful, as one of the missing teens, Amy Baker, had been using it before she went missing. The data looked a bit weird, but it was a starting point. She'd been out by the lake, and had been moving towards it, and then turned and moved away from it, following a very strange path.

We talked to a fisherman down by the lake, and also a photographer out trying to get pictures of Bownessie. I found a necklace on the ground with the initials AB. We were definitely in the right place, so now we just had to find the hedge maze we'd been hearing about which supposedly only appeared at night. It certainly wasn't there in the late afternoon, so we went back to town for a pizza and came back after dark with head torches and fishing line. Michael remembered the story of Theseus and the minotaur and we wanted an escape string.

Not that escape strings are helpful when the maze is in some kind of alternate dimension reached by looking at the lake and turning around. And turning around and running certainly seemed like a sensible choice when some kind of horrible lake monster with an implausible amount of teeth put in an appearance. Amy's strange route away from the lake made sense now. The others had heard the sound of a child in pain at the edge of the lake. I'd just seen Michael disappear, and followed him.

I flew up to take a look at the layout. Or at least I tried to. What actually happened is I opened the wings and suddenly teleported into the air, which took everyone else by surprise, and the hedges got taller so I still couldn't see.

Back on the ground, the fishing line was going nowhere helpful, and we needed to get out. Some horrible zombie child ran across the path, and straight away I knew I needed to protect Michael. Which manifested in the form of a suit of red and white armour that I was suddenly wearing. Something very weird was happening to me and I was way past being able to hide it from the others.

I'm not sure how Adam got out, but the rest of us had to navigate our way through, eventually emerging without having to fight any more zombie children. We found him outside, making sure the photographer from earlier didn't do anything stupid. We were just wondering what to do next when Elizabeth turned away from the lake and disappeared again.

Halcyon Calling, Episode 1: Honey Badger

We've just started a Masks campaign. Our Halcyon City is London, in a world forever changed by an alien invasion. The Asterians are starfish-like, and attach themselves to people who then become their puppets. A treaty has been signed that means the Asterians have free rein over Britain but leave the rest of the world alone, and the whole world gets the benefit of the biomechanical tech the Asterians are building in their new factories. Turning Britian into an alien-controlled fascist police state was an acceptable compromise. But three young heroes have decided to fight back.

I don't like writing. But Abeni says it will help me, and Abeni's one of the few people I actually trust. So here we go.

My name used to be Melanie Gwyn, although nobody calls me that any more. I don't remember much before the change. I guess I had parents and shit. The important bit is that I ended up in a compound with a bunch of Welsh survivalists. I kind of get it, with all the Asterians around. They wanted to hide. Except they decided they needed a guardian, and instead of getting dogs like normal people they used me.

They had some sophisticated genetics lab stuff for making food, and people who knew how to use it. Where they got the honey badger DNA from I don't know, but that's what they spliced into me to turn me into the ultimate warrior. They seemed happy with the result. I'm strong, hard to injure, and I've got a nasty set of claws. None of them cared how much the transformation hurt.

All I could think about was escape. My first outburst of rage scared them enough that they kept me chained up most of the time, but I was getting stronger. At last I was strong enough to rip those chains right out of the wall and make a run for it. I had to get past the compound fences, but I had these handy chains to help me with the climbing.

Some hikers found me in the morning, when I was too tired to go any further. Then I was in the system, although the system didn't know what to do with me. Most of the options were for normal teens, not escaped genetics experiments. In the end I got a flat of my own and a social worker. Abeni.

She was the first person since the change who didn't seem to be scared of me. Even better, she didn't keep telling me what to do. Well, she told me not to swear, but I could tell she didn't mean it. She helped me get the flat sorted out, bought me some clothes, and took me out to the pub. It's called the Gull and Switchblade and I could tell the guys who run it know her. She said it would be a good way to meet new people and maybe make some friends.

I didn't think that was very likely, but if it was going to happen anywhere it was probably there. And it did.

One of the Asterian enforcers showed up at the pub one night. Yigirel. We all knew who he was. Everything he said wound me up and I was struggling to stay in control. But this time I wasn't alone. There were two other people around my age in the pub. Billy, who's got some kind of alien fish fused to his chest, and Balae, who's just some kind of alien. We looked at each other, and then we got up and kicked the shit out of Yigirel.

That's how we found out that if you beat the human host hard enough, the Asterian drops right off and you can stamp on the little fucker. Except now the guy Yigirel was piloting around is in a coma, being looked after in the back room of the pub. I don't know if that's better or worse than being puppeted by a mind controlling alien starfish. Oh, and Castor and Pollux were pissed off because we were fighting in the pub. They said something about 'don't shit where you eat' which I didn't understand because they only sell peanuts and crisps.

Anyway, Billy and Balae are my friends now. Billy can get a bit annoying, because he's super competitive and sometimes he tries to push me around, but he's alright really. And Balae's really sweet, and let me talk about what happened to me at the compound. When I'm with them, I feel like I fit in.

All my life I've had people trying to tell me what to do, but Abeni says I can make my own mind up about that. I'm not going to be the glorified guard dog I was created to be. I'm not going to be the victim that people act like I'm meant to be. I'm not going to be the troubled youth everyone thinks I am. I'm going to be a hero.

Wicker Valley, episode 17: Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey

Rusty could tell I wasn't telling him everything, but it's not like he could actually get me to talk. He did ask to talk later on, somewhere else. I didn't answer, but I knew I would. He's my brother, even when he's an arsehole, and I need to know what's going on with the family.

Then he said something about his day pass running out, and went over to talk to one of the Whisper Sisters who looked significantly younger than we remembered. While Alabaster ran off for some urgent appointment elsewhere, there was some frantic googling to make sure that Hitler was still dead and so forth. Things seemed largely unaltered, beyond that Robin had an email about a house for sale. The construction site was now a fully built housing estate.

We needed to have a look. As we walked down the street in the middle of Wicker Valley, things were different. Nicer, somehow. And there was a brand new shop that none of us had seen before. The Witch's Hut.

Well, Agnes did say we'd meet again.

It had all the usual crystals and incense you'd expect to find in a tourist town new age shop, but as Elizabeth noted, some actual real stuff as well. I'd made it very clear to Elizabeth, to avoid future incidents, that all my family were bad and none of them could be trusted, or told secrets or anything like that. Of course we were now going to see Agnes again, and she was...a bit different. But better that than have her flirting with Rusty.

I think it was around then she let slip about having died before. "You what?" I asked. She deflected, but I wanted to know. Was she a zombie? She said no, and of course that was a ridiculous idea. With her skills she's clearly a lich.

Anyway, we had a lovely chat with Agnes and Mary, who caught us up on a few things. They now had a ward up around the whole town to keep demons and fae out - with a few exceptions, of course, including the Whisper Sisters of all people, who were apparently fae. Hence why Rusty had needed a day pass.

Quite a few of the events we remembered now hadn't happened, including the Halloween incident and all the trouble with the coin. Gillian now barely knew who we were, and given everything that she'd gone through in our timeline that seemed like it was for the best. Also in this timeline I apparently owned the Wicker Stop instead of just working there, and the family had given up on the name Agnes for their matriarchs and started calling us Agatha instead. Better, but I still think I would have changed it to Scarlet. Far more me.

 More worrying was when the subject of doppelgangers came up, and they said they'd found one outside the town and killed it. This seemed bad. Elizabeth certainly thought so.

I was getting a headache. Doctor Who really had not prepared me for this kind of thing.

They'd left a present for Robin on the edge of town, and we were all curious to see what it was, but first there was the matter of the coin. Agnes and Mary were interested, and keen to get their hands on it to improve the town's ward, but having seen what happened last time, we had concerns. We went back to Adam's junkyard, which fortunately was just as he left it, and got in the oubliette. There was still a remnant of dust from grinding up the coin, but on being moved out of the oubliette, it disappeared.

We needed to get that coin to safety, and fast. So we piled into Vanessa the Batvan and drove to the church, as Michael was sure he'd left it there. I waited outside the crypt, just in case I had to persuade Michael to leave again, and because I wasn't in the mood for itching. But as Michael was retrieving the coin, and the others were admiring the refurb job he'd apparently done down there according to Vicar Todd (and what had happened to Vicar Matthews?) I realised I'd stepped over the threshold. And I wasn't itching. Was something wrong with the church? Except the others were more worried that Michael was stroking an invisible cat.

Michael wanted to check out the belfry, given the strange things he'd seen there before. I followed him up to check out the stone faces. And there, while Michael was in some kind of trance, a small stone creature that I just know I'm going to end up calling a gargoyle for want of a better name even though he totally wasn't a gutter spout, introduced himself as Toby. He was quite cute really. And not trying to kill me, which was nice.

We left the belfry. I don't know what was up with Michael. Or the belfry, which also was not making me itch. Had someone deconsecrated the place?

Back at the junkyard, Adam made a case for the coin so Michael could wear it, in the shape of the Witcher coin thing so anyone seeing it would just assume he was a massive nerd. Adam also thought we should keep a record of our own timeline to make sure we didn't forget it over time, and I happened to have this diary I'd been writing. He took photos. I told him not to look at some bits because it was embarrassing but he looked anyway. Well, at least it wasn't Michael reading it.

Out of town then, and past the Wicker Stop, now named Scarlet's Wicker Stop. Well done, alternate timeline me. It looked really nice. And also hadn't had a recent gunfight outside.

Robin followed the GPS to the spot Agnes and Mary had given, and there was Adam's friend James in a cage with some other guy in a Foundation suit berating him. Robin tried to kill the other man, Elizabeth got involved, so did Michael and Adam, and I...I could have ripped him apart with my bare hands, but instead I went over to the cage and bent the bars to let James out. He was Adam's friend, and last time I saw him one of the Foundation had tried to kill him. It seemed like the right thing to do. Also he apparently had a special weapon to give to Michael.

Anyway, the other man turned out to be the werewolf who'd killed Robin's friend, but Robin was talked out of killing him. Michael got his special weapon, which looked like a cricket bat with obsidian blades attached. James said we had to stop the witches, who were combining demonic and fae powers, leading to creatures without the usual weaknesses.

We walked back to town. I stopped off for a moment to talk to Toby who was hanging out in the trees. Something weird happened again. I popped the wings to fly up, but then found myself already up in the branches. The same thing happened on the way down.

So now we knew the current state of Wicker Valley. Caught in a fight between the Foundation and Aunty Agnes, neither of which seemed to be wholely good or bad. And once again, it was going to be us who had to sort it out.