Society of Justice 3: Crisis on the Earth

[NeoAC]

"Hey, if you're willing to put in a good word for me with someone there, I could use a bit of help," Brian admitted. "I still don't know what exactly went wrong the last time, I dunno. But yeah, I'd like that man." He watched as Tommy was basically being surrounded by all the regulars of the group trying to get everything set up. He thought ahead to his birthday coming in December, they had been extremely low=key affairs for the past little bit, just some get-togethers with the family and a few close friends. This looked like it was going to be a lot of work for nothing.

 

[blaze96]

"Well when one is rich one lives a rich man's life. I don't think there is a straight rainbow Tommy, you don't see armies or football teams using the rainbow for their uniforms." Richard said with a chuckle.

 

[Lizmichi]

Alex laughed some. "Eric might get the wrong idea Tommy." Alex said laughing some seeing Eric walk back out with his gift and the gift from Alex in his hands and placed them on the table.

"Hey Tommy happy birthday." Eric said waving at him then looking at Alex and sighed feeling like crap again. "Oh I put our gifts on the table Alex." Eric said holding his pick gay pride cape.

"Eric you better not." Alex said seeing his cape.

"Fine fine." Eric said walking to his room.

 

[RBMidknight]

Taryn peered over Levi's shoulder at the different bottles of alcohol Tommy had indicated. They were certainly...pretty. But it was a bit unsettling to see luminescent beverages. "I bet those are expensive." She commented quietly. Taryn recalled Tommy mentioning something about allergies. 'Did he mean to allergies to the ingredients or to magic?' she wondered. Was there such a thing as an allergic reaction to magic?

 

[Pm0n3y]

Meanwhile...
Jason began to wander the mall in a panicked huff, not spotting the store anywhere. His mind began to concoct negative thoughts involving his friends fate. He became so involved in his thoughts that he didn't notice the diminutive stranger trailing behind him. Quickly, the stranger closed on his position, making him jump slightly when he felt his shoulder being tapped, and jumping even further when he saw who the stranger was.

"Hey Bro." The stranger addressed simply. It was Marrissa. Jason's face took on a look of fright and confusion.

"Marrissa?! You're not out here by yourself are you? Where's your partner??" Jason replied, sweat beginning to accumulate on his brow as he frantically looked around. Marrissa sheepishly looked around herself before shrugging.

"Mmmnm. Somewhere around here. He won't mind. Anyway, what're you doing here?" She asked.

"Buying a birthday gift."

"Ooh, is it for one of your superhero friends? Can I tag along?"

"Tag along? I gotta find the store first! Have you seen a store called 'Tiki Treats' before?"

"What, this store right here?" Marrissa pointed across the hallway. There it was, looking bigger and more extravagant than before. Jason facepalmed at his lack of sight as Marrissa started towards the store.

"Oh hey...how convenient." Jason muttered dully as he followed his young sister into the store.

 

[Pm0n3y]

Spoiler: What's this?

The Escapist got Hungry.

 

[CounterAttack]

Katie chuckled at Tommy's discomfort. "Yeah, I know. It was just for a laugh," she answered, letting him go and taking a couple of steps back. "Um... I actually didn't get you anything yet, 'cause I didn't know what to pick out," she added sheepishly. "If there's anything you can think of that I could pick up... or perhaps an IOU to be used sometime in the future?"

[hr]

"Sure, bud, I'll see what I can do," Rowan replied, thinking over his dating history. Specifically, things he could pass on to help Brian. "Hmm... if you told me what happened, I could give you a few pointers. Just the short version will do, no need to go into details."

 

[NeoAC]

Brian relayed the whole story of what happened on his date. The pickup, the food stop, the trip to the rink, the movies, the storm out. He told Rowan every detail as briefly as he could. "And that's why the taxi stormed off," he ended. "I dunno man, maybe I'm just bad with women, eh? Like maybe I just repel them or something, like I give off some kind of stink, you know? I wish I knew."

 

[CounterAttack]

"I think the problem, Brian, is that you focused more on yourself than Kayla," Rowan explained. "The best way to progress from the first date to something further, in my experience, is to make it more about her likes and dislikes than yours. If I set you up with one of Sabrina's friends, you gotta go with what she likes to do at first, and then gradually build it up until you get a balance between what each of you enjoys. It helps if there are common interests... but since you have heavy roots in Canada and its culture, that could be a problem unless Sabrina knows a Canadian girl."

Rowan grinned wryly, at both Brian's predicament and his own knowledge. He liked helping people out with their relationship troubles, especially when they were just dipping their toes in the water. He had experience with both sides of the equation.

 

[Pm0n3y]

The two entered the store, Jason couldn't help but notice that Felix wasn't behind the counter like he usually would. Instead, there was a girl there, busying herself by organizing the countertop and examining the cash register. Jason looked on bewildered before decided to approach her.

"Um...is Felix in?" He hesitantly asked, thinking for a second that he might not own the store anymore. The girl looked up slowly before yelling 'Dad!' towards the open space behind the counter, the outburst making both Jason and his young sister jump. With the sound of rummaging from the back, the store owner in question appeared, the smell of baking pastries following him as he wiped his hands on his apron. Noticing Jason, Felix couldn't help but smile.

"Jason! So good to see you!" The man of Micronesian descent announced as he embraced his young friend.

"Hey Felix...you have a daughter? Also, I need a pair of gauntlets for one of my friends. You make melee weapons right?"

"But of course. As you can see, I've bought more space for my bakery/underground gun store, which has given me more room to do more crafting. Follow me...and yes. That is my daughter, her name is Micah. Is that your daughter?" Felix asked sarcastically as he lead the two towards the back, Micah looking up from her duties once she heard her name mentioned. Marrissa raised a fist at Felix's query as Jason caught her.

"No, no. What? No. This is my little sister Marrissa." He replied as the three walked into one of the rooms in the back, its walls littered with weapons of all shapes, sizes, forms, and types.

 

[socialtangent]

The drinks were...interesting to look at, Levi had to admit. However, he preferred fewer optical illusions with his beverages. He might try one of the other, non-glowing drinks when the time came to pop open the bottles. He nodded in agreement with Taryn's suppressed statement. Those drinks had to be expensive, considering they hailed from Atlantis of all places. "I bet plenty of those fancy liquor connoisseurs would kill to try some of those..." Levi wondered aloud.

 

[NeoAC]

"Hmmmmm," Brian thought to himself. "That's going to be kind of tricky there, but I guess I should probably give it a shot. So I just totally let them pick everything about where we go and what we do and just go with it then, huh? I can do that I guess. Takes some of the pressure off me there anyway."

 

[RBMidknight]

"It'd be interesting to try and eBay one of them." Taryn concluded. Losing interest in the glowing concoctions she turned to see Tommy occupied with greeting other members of the team. And the pile of gifts had been added to. 'And Jason still hasn't added his own. That's going to be a decent pile when it's finished. Let's see we've got gifts, decorations, lots of glowing alcohol, the birthday boy himself...' Taryn glanced around. '...we're just missing the cake.' How long did it take to frost one cake? "I'll be right back" she said. With a brief nod toward the kitchen for Levi's sake, Taryn walked over to investigate Leland's progress.

 

[tsatoma]

At the ever-growing amount of presents showing up Garrus decided to go and get the table set up to place them on. After grabbing the folded-up table out of storage he returned and set to work, placing it down on the floor as he unscrewed a few bolts here and there to unlock the legs of the table. After a few minutes he had the table up and decorated with a birthday-inspired table cloth and was finishing up by putting all the presents on top.

----

Leland groaned as he added more red dye to a bag of pink frosting, muttering something about pink not being in the spectrum he was going for. The other bags of colored frosting were sitting next to the empty bucket with the multiple layers of cake out on the kitchen table (ready to be frosted). After dumping the whole small bottle of dye inside the bag and mixing it up he finally got it close enough to where he wanted it to be.

"And now...to frost!" he said, grabbing all the bags and carrying them to the table. "Oh hey Taryn. Didn't see you there...was distracted by coloring and such. Uhh, do you need anything?" he asked as he cut open the bag of dark blue frosting at the tip.

 

[RBMidknight]

"No." Taryn shook her head quickly in response to Leland's question. "I just wanted to check on how things were doing in here." She explained. Taryn stepped closer and raised an eyebrow at the numerous colorful bags of frosting. Based on the plain cake sitting on the table, the decorating had yet to begin. "Do you need help?" she asked, gesturing to the tools of decoration.

 

[tsatoma]

"Sure if you can spare the time. Now Tommy said he wanted it rainbow colored so we're going to do it where the color starts in the middle than goes out; getting large as it goes. If it were to be done straight I don't think it'd look as good. If you grab a bag you can start helping me on the base layer first, just cut the bag flat at the tip," he told her, pointing out where each color would be on the cake and how large the stripes should be.

 

[Pm0n3y]

Marrissa couldn't help but gape at the expanse collection of custom made instruments of destruction that lined the walls to that room, while Jason just smiled modestly. Felix turned to face the two, putting his hands together in suggestion.

"Now, what kind of gauntlets would your friend like?" He asked with a eager smirk. Jason looked on, thinking about the certain attributes that make Tommy who he is.

"Well, Tommy's a big guy...he's fun loving, likes hitting things, but still still friendly to those around him. He's also powered by magic, if that's something to know. Also, you should put his emblem on them. It's like a gold hourglass shape." Jason slowly explained, Felix taking in all the info thoughtfully.

"Alright, doesn't sound too hard. I'll see what I can do." He replied before shooing the two of the room.

"Wha-, we can't watch you make them??" Jason pondered as he was shoved.

"Nope. It'll be a surprise for both you and your friend!" Felix replied happily, leading them back beyond the counter. Disappointed, Jason took a seat at one of the tables in the place while Marrissa purchased a cupcake from Micah before sitting next to him. As she bit into the pastry, she decided that she wanted to know more about the birthday boy.

"Tommy...that was the loud one that had his body switched with the gun lady...right?" She asked, mouth half full.

"You still remember that? Wow. Well yeah, that was him."

"And he likes breaking things...So he has like, super strength or something?" Marrissa returned, Jason simply nodding as a rebuttal.

"Sweet. I'm totally tagging along with you now." She answered happily as she polished off the cupcake.

 

[elementsoul]

Tyson finished cutting up the veggies and placed them on the tray leaving the center open. Next Tyson grabbed a bowl of dip out of the fridge and placed it in the center of the tray. Done with the tray the cover was put on it and stuck back into the fridge.

Tyson noticed that Tommy had arrived and that people were bringing out their presents. Figuring that it was best to get with the program Tyson headed back to his room, entering the passcode to unlock the door hearing a metallic click, before opening his floor safe. The contents of the safe were confined to identification papers, the research that Tyson had brought back with him, and a medium sized, oddly shaped, wrapped object that was Tommy's gift.

Tyson pulled the heavy object out of the safe and shut the door to the safe with his foot hearing it relock automatically. Tyson carried the gift out the door doing the same with his room door struggling a bit with the weight of the object. Tyson then walked back to the lounge placing the gift on the table gently.

Tyson turned to Garrus. "I hope he likes my gift. I had to fight a jaguar for it." Tyson said with a completely straight face.

 

[tsatoma]

"I'm not really sure how to reply to that. All it does is bring up numerous questions that I guess will be answered when Tommy unwraps it later on," Garrus replied back with raised eyebrows as he looked at the oddly shaped present then back to Tyson. "So I'm assuming the platter is all nice and done? Can you bring it out and place it on the coffee table? Let everyone start eating now and clear up some more space in the kitchen. I need to go and get the birthday card for Tommy," he added, thanking Tyson for cutting and placing everything for the platter before walking over to the couch and sitting down next to Renton who had been watching everyone whilst chewing on the couch cushions.

"You need to stop chewing on random things. You have teething rings to chew on," Garrus told him as he grabbed the diaper bag and handed one to Renton who immediately put it in his mouth and started chewing. Garrus also grabbed out a birthday card, placing it on the coffee table as he took out a pen.

After a moment of thought he wrote down a simple few lines about how he hoped Tommy enjoys his birthday and the outline of Garrus' IOU present; nodding his head once it was done and letting Renton scribble on the blank side of the card. "And you're done since most of your writing got on my hand instead of the card," he muttered as he plucked the pen out of his son's hand and put it away; placing the card into an envelope and putting it with the other gifts on the table.

 

[Captainguy42]

"Hmm, maybe." Tommy replied to Levi, not exactly realizing how special the bottles were. To him magic did have a tendency to appear mundane, he found the bottles on the counter no more interesting than bottles of Heineken. He of course realized that these where new to his friends and there fore exciting, but he didn't quick understand that everyone was also interested in the magic aspects of the bottles more than anything else.

"Hmm, Well, do you know that 3DS, I've saw someone playing with it on the street and I've been really wanting one." Tommy told Katie.