SHADE JOURNAL DO NOT READ

Back to Shade.

*The notebook is a cheaper one you'd find at a dollar store, one of the 'one subject' school notebooks. The cover has ~~HANA~~ SHADE JOURNAL DO NOT READ in sharpie. The inside of the front says 'Seriously I mean it don't read this it's private and I'll punch you. I punch hard, too'*

## S4E71 - The Beacons Are Lit!

2020, May 17
Okay, so like, Sledge said I should start writing stuff down so I don't forget things. Or well, she said 'writing stuff down can help sometimes' to somebody else, but I'm like super sure she knew I could hear them so obviously that was her telling me to do it.
Okay so this Gwen person that I think used to be on Big Team, I don't really know, asked us for help for some fae stuff? Uhh, no idea, but I was around when she called ~~Atla~~ Verve about it. Verve. No other names. Verve. Yeah. We had to go to Canada to do it, maybe the like, fae veil is thin there or something? Magic stuff is really not my thing. I was training with Jackal and Bolt ended up being there and made a cool fire breathing robot thing that we beat up, and it was so cool! Jackal's awesome, her powers are sick, and Bolt's tech stuff is awesome too. He actually knows some tech stuff and can talk to machines or whatever, like way more than me, I just got my hacking thing, not really a techie or anything.
So like, we went to some mansion where I guess Boon lives with some other people? I had no idea Boon was loaded and lived with a bunch of other rich people. Then we fixed some German dude's car and borrowed it from him. It could talk, so like, that was cool. I wasn't allowed to drive it at first, which is weird, like, driving is driving, right? I got a bike, what the heck?
We went into a Bishop plant where they were making more of those white robots that have the time science stuff, freaking assholes. The last place blew up because of those things and almost ripped a hole in time. Apparently they thought that was fine and wanted to make more of them. We went there cause the Gwen person needed a battery or whatever, like a big battery, and robots have big batteries, so wham bam, take a robot battery. That went bad fast, Verve like, teleported and had a coin or something with Jackal, something about a pocket? We had to beat up more robots and junk, so like, that was cool I guess. It's hard to mess up busting something, so I like those missions.
The next stop sucked. We had to get something from Sam Ribaldi, Smoke's niece that I kinda told about her uncle accidentally in a food court. She's not doing the best, like, doesn't trust anybody, and it sucks to know I kinda was part of that. Like, her uncle was the one that did the supervillain stuff, but I didn't have to shout it out in a food court like I did. She's really cute too, and it sucked seeing her hurt like that, and I made it worse when I tried to help and made her think her mom was gonna turn out to be a villain too, so that was shitty of me. But that's what I do, I can't really be subtle. Even when I gotta lie and sneak or whatever I just stomp in and make stuff happen. When it works it's fine, but I hope nobody tries to get me to do anything quietly, or anything important.
I learned something super important about ~~Ver~~ someone on the team who will go unnamed in case somebody ends up reading this. Yeah. Um, like, so some of the team tries to hide their identity, and one of them told me about their other identity today. I had no idea, and like, I've hung out with both of them a lot, on missions and at the community center and crap, like, it's wild to think about it. I feel bad though, she really shouldn't have trusted me with it. I'm gonna do my best to not blab cause she's awesome and good at baking and like, I want to be friends or whatever but like, I know I'm gonna mess it up. Only reason I haven't messed up the band thing is because I just have to hit drums.
Seriously if anyone reads this and knows I want friends they're dead meat.
But yeah, like, that went fine, I got to drive the cool car on the way back, mainly cause Verve got pissed at us backseat driving the whole time. I was cool with it, didn't have to talk or do anything, just get us back home alive. So yeah, uh, that's it, first writing thingie done. I don't know why this is supposed to help, but I gotta. Weird how Sledge does that thing where she tells me to do stuff without actually saying it to me like my mom did. Eh, I'm sure it's just some adult thing.

## S4E78: When The Smoke Clears, Who Will Remain Standing?

2020, May 24

Okay, journal number two or whatever. Uh, so, like, just because I write something in here that doesn't mean I'm like admitting to a crime or whatever. Yeah, anyone that reads this, but you better not be.
Okay so Bolt called Cypher, Whiz, and me to come like, uh, get Smoke out of super villain jail. Yeah. Like, he's not tooooootally a villain I guess? So it's not a big thing, and we did it to save a friend. We met at the hospital, I got a disguise and I'm pretty sure it helped cause it helped me be sneaky. Oh shit before I forget our contact was named Hayeli and she was so hot and stuff and she complimented me and it was nice I mean uh, like, our contact was very competent. Yeah.
I guess Sam's dad set this all up, cause that's who we met to talk through it. Sam is uh, going through some stuff. Like, more stuff than she was already going through. I feel really bad. I guess to save her uncle she did a ritual or something and now she's cursed, and we had to get Smoke out to save her life. So we were basically down to do it immediately. Our group concocted several highly elaborate plans to get more information from Sam about her condition, but while we were discussing the effectiveness of said plans, Sam showed up and we kinda just asked her. Cypher found some creepy stuff in her...aura? Is that how magic works? No idea. She's totally cursed though, so off to prison we went.
Baroness helped us out again, she's great, and got us up to the jail. She probably won't help us again though caaauuuuuuse Whiz kinda crashed her. Then set off the alarms. Then I had to shove her out of the helicarrier so she could glide away. Now that I think about it, that's the point things started to go south. I'm like, not good at leading stuff, I don't make good decisions or keep track of all the stuff you gotta keep track of when you're leading a thing. It kinda keeps happening though so I know I should get better at it if I want my friends to not be hurt. Well, teammates, I don't know if they consider me their friend or not.
It's all kind of a blur of laser guns and alarms and being hit by AEGIS agents after that. We went in to find Smoke but Bolt got left behind (see why I shouldn't be the leader?) and he got captured, we set off some alarms to distract guards but then the cells actually started opening and villains escaped. I still don't know how that happened, I'm like, super duper sure I only targeted the alarm protocols and not the actual hardware to open the cells. Ugh. Whiz was able to talk Smoke out of the cell, and when the guards came in to stop us they dragged Bolt with them so I jumped in to get him away from them. Cypher was all badass and shot fireballs and stuff and Hayeli was fighting off guards and Whiz was getting Smoke out, and then I got beat up a bunch so I hope that's all actually what happened. We got surrounded after I broke free and Cypher put a shield around us. Bolt called his big bird friend and I burnt a hole in the ship to get us out. Things reaaaallllyyy went south there. Super villains and agents were fighting and attacking us and Bolt got knocked unconscious and Cypher's shield blew up and made the aegis ship start falling and I just had to get everyone down the hole. Sooooo we almost crashed the helicarrier, which wouldn't have been good. We got out though, and like, beaten up and stuff but Smoke was out so he can save Sam. That's the important part.
I still feel really shitty though with how much the others got hurt and we freed other super villains and almost crashed the carrier and like, it should have gone a lot better. I talked to Hayeli after and she tried to tell me it was all good, since we succeeded and no one died, and that helped. Oh, and I asked her out. I was like, exhausted and my head hurt so I didn't know any better. But she said yeah! Like, not expecting that at all, but I got her number and texted it and it was a real number and everything, and like, I feel really nice cause of it. I'm awful at dates and being on a date but I'm gonna try and hope I don't screw it up too much cause like, I get to go on a date with a hot mercenary and how awesome is that?!

## S4 Finale: Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood

2020, June 6
Eff cops. Like, just...straight up. So like today Phalanx, IR, UV, and me went to a flea market where people were selling shit they shouldn't be, like future weapons and stuff. Side bar, uh, there's like some techy hacky people who might think I'm a god cause I hacked my Tamagotchi so Meelo wouldn't die. They might have also just been high, not really sure. Anyway, we found the jerkwads selling them and told them to knock it off. Phalanx convinced everyone we were time cops and got the crowd to kinda take care of the dude for us. Are time cops a thing? That's weird.
But like, while we were there, we heard some police radio stuff about a stray beaver at city hall and went to check it out. Turns out a stray beaver means ATTACK CITY HALL AND CIVILIANS BECAUSE YOU WANT TO TAKE OUT CYCLONE EVEN THOUGH YOU WERE ALREADY PROVED WRONG AND YOU'RE JUST AN ASSHOLE. They had giant robots! What the hell?! Ugh. We stopped them and beat up the robots and some people that used to work for the police chief told us stuff was going down at one of the precints. Precink? Precinct. Anyway, we went to Zodiac City.
So there, Phalanx distracted some cops while the rest of us snuck in through the basement, and inside like...was just chaos. Cops were arguing with each other about...seriously...following or not following their evil asshole chief in his plan. What was the plan? BLOW UP ALL THE COMPUTERS ON THE COAST. Yeah, what the fuck? Some of them were seriously still like 'hmmm i dunno' uugggghhhhh. We busted through the roof and found the chief and his weird emp thing that was powered by synthetic Zodiac sap. That's when I hacked the bomb while IR and UV fought the chief and found out his plans. Sidebar again, he literally had a Rubicon suit that was made to look like caesar. Like the dude that invented the dressing and was a shitty king or whatever. How much of an asshole can you be?
I managed to stop the computer from continuing to power up the emp, but the sap was already all unstable and gonna blow anyway. While we fought the dude UV slashed up the bomb and got it to shut off. But because everything was terrible today apparently, the sap started to leak out and be all dangerous, and it summoned a GIANT GHOST SNAKE. That's like my worst nightmare. You can't punch a ghost, what was I gonna do to it? I'm super glad the rest of the team was there with like, actually useful powers and stuff. UV distracted it with some future tech that condensed an alligator or something while IR used her sweet portal stuff to get the sap out of there. Phalanx was handling the ground stuff and helping civilians there, and freaking finally things were settled. UUGGGGHHH.
People showed up after to help clean up. I thiiiiiink IR tried to apologize and bond with me, which is cool, but she's kinda like me in that we're not good at talking about stuff like that. UV was awesome with how she handled everything. It was my first time working with Phalanx but he was pretty good too, that speed is super cool. Sledge wanted to introduce me to some of her league friends, or were they her bosses? Coworkers? Whoever they were, I guess they were older Phalanxes, and I kinda embarassed her cause I was taking a pic over the knocked out chief while the clean up was happening. She was actually cool with it but just like, of course I had to do that right when she was trying to be all professional with the other heroes. I'm a dummy. After she told me I'd handled things well and she was proud of me though, which felt pretty nice. Things were okay once stuff was all said and done, but gaaaaahhhhh that was a long day. Hope everyone else is alright, I heard some other stuff was going down while we were handling that too.
I'm sure it's fine. It's not like 5+ potentially world ending, catastrophic events could have all happened on the same day, right?
More importantly, my date with Hayeli was sooooooo awesome and I can't wait to see her again. I don't wanna write too much cause she likes her privacy but like, she's got some stuff in her life and her past she's trying to deal with. I know my stuff is like, barely anything to hers, I know what that's like, and it like...felt good or whatever to have someone to talk to about it. I wanna keep getting to know her, she doesn't have a lot of people she can trust and be actually open with, and I want to be that for her. Crap, is that too cheesy? Seriously if someone reads this I will punch you so freaking hard.