Masks: the Ties that Bind (Issue 1: Bound by Fate) [Archive]

truemane

2019-02-17, 07:15 PM

Dawn breaks across Halcyon City.

The light glitters on Tradeport Bay, creeps along both the gleam and seam of the marinas and warehouses of the docks. Rising up Farpath Hill, the light touches both the slums of Roundtree and the mirrored glass edifices of Trader's Round.

Up and up and out and out the light drifts into every corner and shadow of the mighty metropolis, sounds of voice and car and machine rising up to the air to meet it.

And then, within the infinite clamour, comes the hue and cry of citizens in distress.

Land along the edge of the scenic Timberlane Valley, next to one of the city's major highways, is undergoing massive development, with residential and commercial complexes being built simultaneously. It is a high-profile pilot project, the first public use of an advanced Spatial Distortion Field Generator, invented and developed by the Arrowswift Corporation.

The media was filled with stories about the funding, design, zoning, implementation of the project and it is being built under a tight budget and on an aggressive timeline.

Within an hour after dawn the five-block area is teeming with workers, all toiling and working, with the nearby highway filling up with rush-hour traffic.

However, this morning, instead of the sounds of construction, there are cries of distress and the sounds of groaning, twisting, metal and the crash of large objects falling to concrete ground.

All around the complex can be seen forms wearing gleaming armour and purple capes, riding swift flying disks. They are throwing small objects at the skeletal construction, which land with bright blue explosions of energy.

Workers flee and run, but are being corralled by the figures and their weapons. Some of them, too near the blue explosions, stop frozen in place.
From a distance, all of the figures seem the same. Upon closer inspection, most (if not all) of them flickering and wavering as they move, as though behind a heat haze, or on a channel with poor reception.

Dawn in Halcyon City.

Time to go to work.

Welcome to Masks: the Ties that Bind! Thank you all for your patience. Now that we're in motion, my hope is that things will move forward a little faster.

The assumption here is that you've all been operating as a group for 'some time.' So this should be maybe your second or third 'outing' as a group. Alternately, it could be your first.

In your post, give us your Hero Shot: physical description, costume, visible effects of powers, method of transportation, reason for responding to the cry.

Someone should decide (IC or OC) how you heard about this situation and how you got here (even if that means you arrive long enough after it starts to have heard about it on the news or police bands). I have no real investment in the answer, so I'm fine with whatever you all come up with.

If you have any questions, you know where to find me!

Thanqol

2019-02-18, 08:41 PM

It was standing policy in Memorial Mall that Solar Girl pays for nothing.

The most immediate and practical reason for this is that no amount of corporate reprimands could ever stop staff members from giving her free things. A single glance can reduce a forty year old grizzled retail veteran to slack-jawed awe. The idea of asking such an angelic figure for something as crass as money strikes most people as some sort of sacrilegious.

The secondary reason is because it's not clear that she understands the concept of money. People just give her things and it's not clear if she realizes that other people aren't afforded the same treatment. It's always been like this for her. Sometimes when her coffee is a little too bitter hummingbirds land on her fingers holding little sugar packets in their beaks. There's a famous video of her going to step in a puddle of mucky water, but the water gets out of her way. Her entire life seems to operate on Disney Princess Physics so you'd almost need to explain the concept of scarcity to her from first principles to get her to understand the idea of payment.

(The final reason is because whenever she wears something there are a rush of people who come in immediately after her to buy every last available copy of that exact same thing so it kinda pays for itself.)

We find her on the balcony of a high-class café, idly plucking the petals from a vased rose that had been plastic before she arrived but was now as real and alive as anything. She was taking a sip of tea, gently warming it to the right temperature with the help of her golden sun-ball, when the first explosion went off in the distance. She tilts her head a little, listening to make sure she didn't imagine it. Then she gives a dainty sigh, places her cup down in place, and checks to make sure everything is in place: New silk scarf, autumn red-orange, with matching earthy brown jacket and black jeans and brilliant scarlet fingernails. She wears delicate leather handbag that she hangs cross-shoulder, one compartment filled with dog treats, another with a variety of sugary snacks. And, everywhere about her, is golden cascading light and strange violet cloud shapes. Her physical features are fascinating questions, not easy facts.

She stretches languidly and jumps the balcony fence. The clouds swirl around her and cushion her descent. She lands smoothly and starts walking toward the chaos, picking out her phone with one hand and dialling into the team channel. "Hi everyone! Good news - there are explosions! Meet me at the," she squints, "you know, like, the weird new tower that looks kind of like a totem pole? Oh, and bring sweets. I'm running low."

[Going into battle as a team:
Add two to the pool base
Solar Girl has influence over everyone and thinks she's the leader, so add another one. Unless someone has a different purpose, mistrusts Solar Girl, or feels particularly off balance - up to you! - that'd put us at 4 total.]

Ramsus

2019-02-19, 02:11 AM

The scene cuts over to the interior of a modest, and not particularly well looked after, single story home. Particularly a bedroom which tells an odd story. The smallish bedroom is mostly consumed with cheap furniture. The walls, once some kind of white, are now stained gray by smoke. In one ceiling corner there is a web with an orb weaver spider. The web has been there so long it inherited it and the name the other occupant of the room has given those that live there, Taylor. The door-less closet that takes up nearly an entire side of the room is an array of mostly blacks, half filled with cheap clothes sitting right next to the other half filled with garments that are each more expensive than all the other clothes in the house combined.

On a cheap bed-frame lays a luxury mattress covered in exquisitely soft and smooth blankets, sheets, and pillows all in black. The sheets cover the tantalizing form of a young woman. A single pale arm sticks out of the sheets and black hair covers a face.
A moment later the arm slaps upward at the air as the girl jolts awake from hearing an all too jubilant voice in her ear. Extending out from the arm is a small blast of smoke that gently collides with the ceiling, flowing outwards and dissipating like foamy waves onto a beach at midnight.

Renae groans, not caring or perhaps even preferring its being sent through the communicator, as she pushes herself slowly out of the bed and the sheets fall away from her. Exposing a body covered only under the chest by a thin black wrapping and boxer shorts with a flame pattern.
As she manages to get into a sitting position she puts together the words she heard and retorts, "Well I'm glad someone else on this team enjoys a good explosion, but what kind of self-respecting criminals are even awake at this time of day?" Clearly Renae is not a morning person.

She pulls off the boxer shorts and tosses them onto the bed while she puts on some underwear and grabs one of her nice gothic outfits from the closet and stuffs it into a bag. As she performs this action she briefly slides her hand over the strip of black around her torso and as she goes about her tasks it expands over her. It changes to a light gray as it covers her torso and then into black as it covers her limbs and neck and part detaches and slides up her face to form a domino mask. After this stage is complete, and she's now slung the bag over one shoulder, a black S appears on the chest. Finally a smokey ring appears around it, which then flows out in thin wisps in multiple directions and out to and into the black parts.

Her form slowly turns to smoke as she adds, "Whoever is getting Sunbeam donuts, get me coffee while you're at it." Clearly assuming nobody was expecting her to do the errands and that other people should do hers. If she was aware of it, even she probably couldn't tell you if she changed "sweets" to donuts because she was tired and had coffee on the mind and that's how it mentally translated for her or if she was intentionally manipulating the message for her own benefit. But she wasn't because even as she fully turns to smoke, her shadowy eyes being the last part to lose definition, and she flows through the slightly cracked open window on the wall directly against the bed, she is barely awake.

As she exits into the dark and overgrown path outside her window that leads into a narrowly twisting alley for no apparent good reason, she floods it with thick gray smoke so if there happen to be any onlookers they won't know where she came from. Then after moving to the rough "center" of the area she pulls the smoke back to her and unleashes it directly at the ground blasting her into the air like a kind of lazy rocket that twistingly makes it way to where the newly rebranded as a heroine known as Smoke thinks the whatever-the-heck-she-thinks-she-is Solar Girl tried to direct their team to.

seatyger

2019-02-19, 04:23 PM

"Hi everyone! Good news - there are explosions!"

"Shoot!" came the curse from behind the shower curtain, followed by a flurry of activity. Moments later, a half-soapy form bounded out of the bathtub, only to slip on the edge and land on the tile floor with a resounding slap.

A faint female voice called, "Are you okay up there, chinksi?"

Lifting himself off the tile with a groan, Jamie Blackbear replied, "I'm fine, ina! Just slipped." And how, he thought as he quickly wicked away the lingering soap and water with a towel. Hopping into the closet as he donned his skivvies, he pulled out a compression bodysuit and his costume and dressed. Adding gloves, boots, mask, and helmet -- dad wouldn't let him ride without it -- Jamie sprinted out the door and cleared the stairs in a single practiced leap.

Breaking for the garage, he yelled to his mother, "Got a call, ina!" -- then skidded to a halt and backtracked to the kitchen. "Oh -- uh, do you have a twenty? Need donuts for everybody."

His mother smiled knowingly and gestured with her head, "There's one on the table." Jamie grabbed the bill, doffed his helmet to give his mom a kiss on the cheek, and was gone in an instant, the sounds of a motorcycle engine and garage door motor filtering in through the closed door.

A moment later, a middle-aged man departed the downstairs bathroom, folding his newspaper and entering the kitchen. Giving his wife a kiss on the cheek, he asked, "Was that Jamie?"

"He said he got a call."

Frowning, his father grunted his acknowledgement and walked over to the table. "Hey, have you seen the twenty I left here last night?..."

chinksi is Lakota for "son," and ina is "mother". I'm probably not writing them in the proper case...

Fresh from his scheduled stop at Fred's Doughnuts, the young hero Tunweya raced along the Two-Two -- more formally known as State Route 22 -- toward Timberlane Valley on his highly-customized Indian (because, of course, it is) FTR 1200. The roar of its engine nothing more than a whispering whir as he weaved through the light early-morning traffic at a blazing 160, his heads-up display led him on the most-efficient course between the other commuters, who were largely unaware of his existence.

By the time Tunweya darted across an opening in traffic to the Timberlane project exit, the situation was clear, with the armored disc throwers wreaking havoc and herding the workers. He found a hidden spot to park the bike, and traded his helmet for his bow as he stepped out from the shadows.

His thigh-length tunic hugged his torso just enough to not be in the way of his athletics, it's largely-charcoal-black color broken by the sewn-in inverted chevron of "bone" armor over his chest and tan-colored shoulder pieces that blended into the broad stripe that ran down the outer half of his sleeves and gloves. His trousers and boots shared the same broad tan stripe on the outer third of the fabric. A high-tech quiver -- one of the many things for which he had to thank Firefly's genius -- gave him quick access to the variety of arrows he regularly used, which contrasted with the simplicity of the recurve bow he held in his left hand.

With a thought, his talisman camouflaged him against the background visuals and sounds, and he brought his phone up to his ear. "Okay, ladies, coffee and donuts are here. Where are you? And are you seeing this?"

Eldest

2019-02-20, 01:46 PM

Zoom in on a row of brownstones. Keep zooming in, you're going for one of the second story flats, where a short, punky woman with close-cut purple hair stands, leaning on the railing and watering her herb planters.

KABOOM

"Hi everyone! Good news - there are explosions!"

Samantha ignores her, and the explosion, for a just a moment more as she finishes watering the basil, making a face as she does. It'd been a nice, calm weekend for a change, and she had enjoyed the change of pace. Caught up on her homework (she makes another face, tongue sticking out at her desk inside the apartment), did some exercise instead of getting it "on the job" for once, and she'd invited Ras'i over to binge watch something (they'd hash out what later) that evening.

And now there were explosions. Lovely.

She goes inside, doing a few stretches leading into a cartwheel across the living room to warm up, scooping up her discarded costume from the couch. A few moments later and she's dressed in it, a spiky leather jacket with a large, gray spade patch on the back, a true-white mask over her face, blank except for the harlequin star over her left eye, and a denim skirt over leggings (which is not her usual, but she threw her usual in the wash a half hour ago, so it'll have to do). And the Observatory, the closest thing to a superpower you could say she had. She tosses the small orb from side to side as she makes her way to the roof, pulling at stars on there, until there's a path starting to form in front of her, twinkling stars and white lines between them marking the constellation-shape. She steps off the roof and onto the lights without hesitation, picking it up to a jog as she heads straight for the disaster in progress at roof height.

truemane

2019-02-23, 09:54 PM

Maybe a dozen figures zoom around the complex, flying on their shimmering disks, laughing maniacally, throwing those gleaming explosive orbs. They fly in and out of focus, each in the same metal armour and the same purple cape, each of them glitching in and out like static on a tv station.

Workers cry and scream as they are herded into two, three large groups in three nearly complete second and third floor rooms, leaving whatever tools and materials on the ground as they run.

"Dr. Calen!" calls one of the figures, "Dr. Red Calen! Come out come out wherever you are!"

When there is no answer, he lifts one arm and a beam of white-hot light sears from his gauntlet and tears through several support pillars holding up of the hostage-filled areas.

The building leans, iron groaning and squealing in protest. The hostages all scream and scramble toward the rear wall.

"Come now Dr. Calen! You wouldn't want your cowardice to kill these people would you?"

Another moment of silence.

"Very well."

He raises his hand once more...

Thanqol

2019-02-24, 04:25 PM

Solar Girl is in the habit of walking directly into dangerous things.

Energy blasts, bullets, punches, obvious traps. She sees something glowing, pointing, or winding up and she gravitates directly into its path in the same way another girl might get out of the way through backflips. There's a brief rustle of wind and a flash of sunlight and she's suddenly there in the way of the energy blast, yawning and stretching and in no way braced for impact.

"Hey, could you -" was all she got out before it hit her.

[Defend: 5
POTENTIAL!]

seatyger

2019-02-25, 11:51 AM

That's not good, Tunweya thinks to himself as he steps forward and reveals himself. An armor-piercing arrow nocked in his bow, the hero calls out and he sprints forward to get a clear shot, "Hey! Captain Redundant! Why don't you pick on somebody your own size!"

Well, that sounded stupid...

Tunweya draws and looses the arrow, aiming for the loudmouth's gauntlet. Maybe he can get the villain to take potshots away from the building -- namely Tunweya's way...

[Provoke "Captain Redundant" to turn his aim on Tunweya: [roll0] ]

The shot flies true and strikes the gauntlet with a loud clang.

Sahe

2019-02-26, 05:29 AM

Firefly
Potential: 0/0
Conditions: None
Influence on: Solar Girl, Smoke, Wild Card, Tunweya
Gadgets: 2

Laura "Firefly" Row - The teams very own pocket dimension

Laura's "corner" of the pocket dimension was a mess of cables, pizza cartons, empty noodle boxes and several cans of Solar Energy (a popular energy drink) and empty bags of various brands of chips. In one corner stood the looming figure of the Firefly suit, with several service hatches opened and hooked up to one massive beast of a computer. In front of which one could make out the silhouette of a girl sitting in a wheelchair staring intensely at the three screens in front of her that bathed the room in dim, cold light. Well...she was intensely staring at one the screens watching the most recent episode of Mecha Love, her favorite anime. The other, ignored screens, showed a progress bar with rapidly scrolling system messages and some work in progress fan fiction of Solar Girl.

When suddenly Solar Girls voice told her of explosions in the city she jerked up, suddenly pulled out of the fantasy world of Mecha pilots battling giant evil robots and Kaiju while dealing with relationship drama and back into the real world...that wasn't that different if she was being honest. Well, she wasn't having any real relationship drama (if only) and her Mecha-Suit was decidedly smaller (if more agile). Annoyed she pressed pause and glanced over to the progress bar of the update she was running on Firefly. Of course it just hit a 100% as she looked and with no error messages. She would've welcomed some excuse to have to rerun it and get that bit more time to finish the episode.

"- all done -", the synthesized voice of Riley informed her a bit redundantly.

"Yeah...great", Laura said without enthusiasm as she turned around, revealing her fully and showing that she was only wearing panties and an oversized (and slightly smelly shirt), thankfully nobody would notice that or her messy hair as long as she was in Firefly.

"- you do not sound very excited about this - it seems like the perfect opportunity to test the new upgrades -", Riley chirped as Laura rolled herself over to Firefly to disconnect the cables and close all hatches.

"I knooowww...but it was just getting to the episode climax and you know how much I love that anime...and don't you dare finish the episode without me...you're a blabbermouth and always spoiler me!" Laura groaned as she activated Firefly and the suit pulled her inside, connecting to her implanted connectors on her back that she thankfully was able to integrate a bit more gracefully than they were in The Matrix. As she fully integrated with the suit she could feel the strength return to her legs. Some might wonder why she wasn’t always wearing the Firefly suit if it let her walk again? Well...do you want to be an 8 foot tall combat machine everywhere you go?

The City

A few moments later, Firefly was soaring through the air towards the Spatial Distortion Field Generator that was being built and was now apparently under attack. Riley had pulled the specs for her at some point and Laura had to admit it was impressive technology working on similar principles that she used to create their little pocket dimension.

She opened her channel to the other team members, “I’m on my way...I just had to finish an update on Firefly and this better be worth it. I had to pause Mecha Love just as things were getting interesting between Hana and Yuna.”

Next she was connecting to her AI, “Riles...pull me everything you can get...you know the drill”

“- no problem -”, her artificial friend replied and soon after began flooding the Firefly HUD with tactical information (and the location of the nearest bakeries, which Laura quickly dismissed)

A few moments later, Firefly was hovering high above the site of attack, adding the sensor data and her own observations to form an analysis of the situation.

Rolling to Assess the Situation:
[roll0]
Questions:
- what here is the biggest threat.

Ramsus

2019-02-26, 02:31 PM

Smoke snakes her way around a nearby building, sees the chaos.... but more importantly sees her coffee in danger! She quickly jets over to it, leaving a jet-stream of smoke in her wake, and snatches it from Tunweya. "Thanks." she comments and then backs off a bit to give him space to dodge whatever retaliation is about to come his way.
Hovering there in the air she quickly gulps down the hot coffee. For someone else it might be painful, for her the heat just adds to its ability to wake her up. As she's there making herself not particularly useful she examines their foes. She tries to get a sense for the or even just be awake enough to recall anything she already knows about them.

Pierce the Mask: [roll0]

Questions: What do you intend to do?
and bonus question from Wrong Side of the Tracks: What are you really planning?

Eldest

2019-02-27, 02:52 AM

Wildcard lands with a roll inside one of the rooms with the hostages, a spiral shape of stars on her forearm as a shield, held up to block any incoming fire. She calls back the stars from the path she made to the Star Map, before snapping it in a loop, trying for a chute or tunnel to get people out. And trying, and trying again desperately as it fails to do more than sparkle. "Why's this damn thing so stubborn I'll never know." She mutters as she looks to the door, anxious.

Unleash my powers, full miss. Have fun with it.

truemane

2019-03-03, 12:33 AM

Solar Girl streaks in front of the energy blast. The beam of white hot... something... hits her straight in the chest and there's an unearthly groaning sound that fills the air around her and she feels... tight... somehow, trapped in her own skin, in the air around her, in the actual fabric of space and time, and a ripple of power cascades out from her and crashes right into the weakened girders.

"What?" yells the villain, "Solar Girl? I should have thought you'd come to gawk at the humans. You're no hero. You're a heartless, inhuman alien with no care for anything! Just like your father!"

Just then Tunweya's arrow strikes him in the gauntlet and he looks around and sees the young Lakota warrior.

"Are all your little minions here?" He cackles, "Never mind! You are no match for the likes of Doctor Tempus!"

He waves his arm and half of his duplicates break off from threatening he other workers and swarm toward Tunweya.

Firefly sweeps the area with her sensors, her brilliant mind reading and parsing the cascading figures faster than anyone else could even read them. She sees, with some alarm, that in places where his small bomb-devices have exploded near the spatial distortion field created by the SDF-G, there are significant rents in space-time.

It wouldn't take very many more to create a much bigger problem than some injured workers.

(oddly enough, the space around where Solar Girl was just struck by the beam shows a similar phenomenon)

Smoke knows bad guys. She knows them all the way down to the tips of her toes. And the way this guy is calling out for this Dr. Calen person... that meant business. Personal business. He wants to humiliate this guy. Hurt him. Maybe even kill him.

And, based on the patterns of his duplicates, she was pretty sure he was going to destroy the entire complex if he couldn't find him.

Starting with the SDF-G.

Meanwhile, Wildcard lands on the weakened structure and tries to manufacture an escape route. But while she stands, trying, a duplicate sweeps by, cackling madly, and throws a small explosive device at her. It misses, but the explosion it causes is the final straw, and with the scream of bending metal and the crash of brick, the entire structure starts to slide inexorably toward the ground...

Thanqol: Doctor Tempus is trying to shift your Savior down and your Freak up.

Ramsus

2019-03-03, 01:37 PM

"Well, if he's going to destroy the building if he can't find this Dr. Calen, better just make it so he can't find the building either." Smoke thinks to herself.
"I'll try and line em up for ya." she says to Tunweya and gives him a wink, the motion clear enough through the domino mask.
Then she jets further into the air in the midst of the fray and begins pouring out smoke as she zigs and zags, the smoke quite rapidly filling the air around the building. While it's a bit of extra effort, it's also nothing she hasn't done before to try and push multiple beings with the smoke. So she tries to shove them around to get them a bit disoriented and nudge their path out of the smoke and closer to her allies that are prepared to fight them.

Directly Engage a Threat: [roll0]

I'll take resist or avoid their blows and create an opportunity for your allies.

Thanqol

2019-03-03, 08:37 PM

seatyger

2019-03-04, 06:21 PM

Just then Tunweya's arrow strikes him in the gauntlet and he looks around and sees the young Lakota warrior.

"Are all your little minions here?" He cackles, "Never mind! You are no match for the likes of Doctor Tempus!"

He waves his arm and half of his duplicates break off from threatening he other workers and swarm toward Tunweya.

"I'll try and line em up for ya." she says to Tunweya and gives him a wink, the motion clear enough through the domino mask.
Then she jets further into the air in the midst of the fray and begins pouring out smoke as she zigs and zags, the smoke quite rapidly filling the air around the building. While it's a bit of extra effort, it's also nothing she hasn't done before to try and push multiple beings with the smoke. So she tries to shove them around to get them a bit disoriented and nudge their path out of the smoke and closer to her allies that are prepared to fight them.

The scout's eyes grow wide as he gets his wish. In a flash, he's sprinting parallel to the incoming arsenal, pulling a pair of identical arrows from his quiver and setting an adjustment on each. Then, with the purposeful planting of his leading foot, he explodes into the air, twisting and squaring his shoulders toward the trailing pair of duplicates, and fires the arrows, one at each of his targets.

Whistling in their high arc, the arrows sound like a pair of screaming eagles and, just before they reach their targets, each conical point splits into quarters, revealing a high-tensile-strength net within...

I had to read up on the move before I decided to use it. Since he's facing an overpowering force (six-ish duplicates), I think this qualifies as "dramatically under fire."

So, in that vein, here's Tunweya's +Savior roll
[roll0]

I'd like to spend 1 of our 4 team to improve Tunweya's roll to a 7. Pretty sure my post had enough justification for that.

So, that 6 is now a 7. Thanks, Smoke!

...and fall neatly over the pair, tangling them up. The nets won't keep them from flying on their little discs, but they won't be able to sling those little light bombs very well, that's for sure.

As he lands gracefully in the bed of a company pickup truck, Tunweya tenses up for the barrage to come. "Hopefully, I'll keep their attention for a while," he says over comms.

Going with Impress, Surprise, or Frighten the Opposition. Hopefully, they'll consider Tunweya a greater threat, to allow the heavier hitters to handle the tower damage and Doctor Tempus.

Eldest

2019-03-05, 11:04 AM

Wildcard shuts her eyes against the flash of the explosion and loses her footing, slipping out the window she came in. She makes a grab for the sill, blind, but misses, and finds herself falling, falling, and then not. She coughs and blinks away the afterimages, smelling R'asi before she can see her. It wasn't the first time that she'd been carried around by her, but she'd forgotten how fast she was. She takes a moment, trying to get a better view of the situation from here, recovering, not caring that the villain was right there. The flashiest guy isn't the one doing all the work, it's the guy that's deep in concentration. Find him, you unravel the plan.

It'd help her concentrate if R'asi didn't smell so damn good.

Assess, 8: How can we best end this quickly?

truemane

2019-03-06, 12:14 AM

The ring of netted duplicates emit a strangely synchronized growl of frustration. And a flicker-glitch passes through them all in a row. And a similar sound comes from the other half dozen still terrorizing the workers. They turn and streak toward Tunweya as well.

The ones near him struggle in vain to free their hands from the netting.

The duplicate facing Solar Girl and Wildcard stops at her challenging words. "It depends on what we're saving them from," he says in an ominous tone.

Wildcard sees a glitch pass through this one as well, as it does through all of them in turn due to Tunweya's trap.

But over by the SDF-G is another form. A Doctor Tempus that does not glitch. A Doctor Tempus investigating the machine. With some sort of control device on his wrist, light blinking in time with the glitches passing through the others.

And all the while. Firefly hovers around the periphery, running scans and keeping an eye for anyone that might need her assistance.

Sahe

2019-03-06, 04:25 PM

Firefly
Potential: 0/0
Conditions: None
Influence on: Solar Girl, Smoke, Wild Card, Tunweya
Gadgets: 2

Hovering above the battlefield, Firefly is a bit overwhelmed. There were so many things going on...things that needed fixing, strange phenomena that required further analysis, civilians in trouble, teammates in trouble, Wildcard getting carried by Solar Girl reminding her briefly about that fan fiction she was writing and a dash of jealousy. I wish she'd hold me like that...if I pretend my jets fail it would be like in Mecha Love...NO! Focus!

She shook her head and opened a channel to her teammates again. "Ok, so Glitch Mob's explosive devices seem to have unusual interactions with the SDF-G. My scans aren't conclusive yet, but they seem to create localized space-time anomalies. Currently they aren't much of a danger, but if they continue to form they may cascade into a full on singularity event that..."

"- maybe you should try a simpler explanation -", Riley interrupted Laura, causing a short pause in her transmission.

"Right...ehm...bombs near the big techy generator bad...they destroy space time and if enough are created something really bad will happen...like a black hole or something...so try steer him away from that...I'll try and secure the building to prevent it from collapsing."

Next she turned her attention to the building and dove down from her elevated position, while Riley was feeding her a scan of the critical weak points that needed to be stabilized in order to secure the crumbling building, as well as an optimal flight path. Zipping around and through the structure, Firefly used her omni-tool to inject the failing supporting structures with her Nanite Fibers. A substance she herself had come up with that was highly malleable and capable of mimicing the properties of nearly any known (and possibly even unknown substance). These also had been the basis on which she had developed Smokes (totally rad) Smokeing Suit. This time however they created an elastic foam cement with high tensile strength that hopefully was strong enough to prevent the building from collapsing.

__________________
Unleash Powers to change the environment, expending one Gadget to roll with Superior:
[roll0]

Thanqol

2019-03-06, 09:26 PM

The duplicate facing Solar Girl and Wildcard stops at her challenging words. "It depends on what we're saving them from," he says in an ominous tone.

Solar Girl continued to hover in place, still holding Wildcard absently but firmly.

"Is that it?" said Solar Girl. "I am hanging out here waiting for you to announce your evil plan and all you can manage is cryptic mumbling? If you have a problem with me say it to my face or fight me like a man. You get one shot at this before you go to jail forever."

[Pierce the Mask: 6 - POTENTIAL]

seatyger

2019-03-10, 04:08 PM

Jamie's eyes grow wide as multiple energy blasts zero in on his position; he leaps away at the last moment, but the explosion catches him and tosses him like a ragdoll several yards away, and he lands in a heap on the hard earth. As he slowly works his way back to his feet, Jamie growls at the pain that seems to radiate from every joint and muscle.

Idiot! Standing there like some comic book hero! You have stealth for a reason!

Though the anger and self-rebuke dulls the sting of the hit some, it also allows other things to seep into his thought process. What the hell are you doing here? Jamie could almost hear his father's voice in the question. You're no superhero. You're just a kid with a bow and a neat trick. You're way out of your league...

Jamie shakes his head and sighs; maybe his father is right. Maybe he isn't ready for the responsibility of the talisman, to be the defender of the tribe. He looks up, the enthusiasm gone from his eyes, and sees the remaining threat. He can't sit and wallow in self-pity; he still has a job to do. Tunweya still has a job to do, and teammates who are counting on him.

Activating his stealth, he begins to strafe the duplicates, popping into view after several steps to keep their attention, and throwing an explosive shot in their general direction before disappearing again. Rinse. Repeat.

After disappearing the second time, though, he doubles back, pops in early, and lets loose a barrage of explosive arrows. "I can play that game, too, dupes!"

[roll0]

Tunweya is going to Avoid Their Blows and Take Something From Them (take the Tempus' duplicates from him).

A slight grin begins to peek out from behind Tunweya's angry demeanor as the explosions causes the duplicates to wink out. Tempus' gauntlet sparks and smokes as the duplicate control nodes shorts out.

Eldest

2019-03-10, 04:45 PM

Wildcard juggles her priorities. On one hand, she'd like to go engage the One True Villain down there, help out Jamie. On the other, hoo boy that was a long drop and she can't fly. She waits for a minute, waits, and then as the two drift closer to one of the buildings, she hops down, onto the roof, into a roll and bouncing in the alley between the building and it's neighbor. And then she's there, backing up Tunweya, a loose axe constellation at the ready.

Ramsus

2019-03-10, 05:09 PM

It seemed like somehow Firefly had the whole "a building is going to collapse or explode or something" situation handled and Tunweya and Wildcard were handling the duplicates. And for some reason Solar Girl was standing around taunting the villain while she should be fighting. Well is she wasn't going to, Smoke would.

From within the cloud of smoke, Smoke sends a long tendril of smoke to wrap around Doctor Tempus and hardens it around him to try and tangle him up. Though she wonders what interaction their powers will have and if this will even work at all.

Directly Engage a Threat: [roll0]
• resist or avoid their blows
• create an opportunity for your allies

truemane

2019-03-10, 09:56 PM

Doctor Tempus, the real Doctor Tempus was, like so many before him, transfixed by Solar Girl. Whether her beauty, the blazing energy of her presence, or the particular moral imperative to convince her that he was right, he all but ignored the chaos erupting around him in order to speak to her.

"Dr. Calen stole my research. And look! Look what paltry use he put it to! Building condominiums for yuppies! It was meant to make the world a better place, maybe to save everyone, but now it's just a... tool... for the rich to get richer. For that, more than the theft, he has to pay!"

Meanwhile, Firefly cleverly manages to prop up the falling building. With her help, the girders stop their horrid squealing and the entire tilting structure stops sliding. The people inside scream out as it gives one final shudder and then stops.

"Great work, Laura," Riley says. "I think that ought to hold long enough to get those people to safety. You, uh, you do have a plan to get those people to safety?"

Wildcard lands next to Tunweya just as he is recovering from being nearly vaporized by the duplicates' blasts. And then, as he vanishes, her presence distracts them just enough that Tunweya is able to dance among them, striking and jabbing, until he finds the position to aim an arrow at the real Doctor Tempus.

It flies through the air, strikes his gauntlet and shatters the small blinking light. A burst of electrical static shoot down his arm and he cries out in pain. All of the duplicates pause, glitch, shimmer, squich in and out, and then are gone.

The Doctor raises his damaged gauntlet, the palm glowing white hot. He has a perfect shot at Tunweya...

And then Smoke surrounds him and tangles him.

From inside the smoke you can hear the Doctor scream out in rage and frustration.

"NO!" he cries, "THIS IS NOT OVER!"

And then a sound builds, a deep, deep humming sound so low and so deep that it pulls at the ears and turns the bowels watery. And at the same time there is a sensation of moving, even though everyone is still.

Solar Girl feels as though her insides are being pulled in seventeen different directions and as though she is being spun and spun and spun at supersonic speeds. She feels like crying flying puking yelling screaming tearing her own
skin off all at once.

And then, from inside the smoke, there is a rising blue light that grows brighter and more brilliant as the deep sound rises in power an volume.

And then it suddenly expands, holds, and contracts like an implosion.

Smoke's smoke vanishes, like water though a drain, leaving nothing behind.

But the SDF-G starts emitting a high, alarmed sound. They can all hear the word WARNING screamed out once in a high, robotic voice, and a tear in the face of reality opens up and a ribbon of blue light pours out in both directions, tearing through dirt and stone and asphalt. The SDF-G vanishes into the rift.

Several of the group have seen this before. This looks just like the ley line that gave Smoke and Fire (and Firefly) their powers. Solar Girl and Wildcard, both for different reasons, are very familiar with the phenomenon.

Tunweya has seen such a thing before, in a dream, just after he accepted the Talisman. Several ancestor spirits emerged from such a thing to impart wisdom and encouragement to him.

The rift ripples and undulated. The ribbon darkles and tincts. And starts growing longer. A few hundred feet and it would be at the highway. And into the parts of the building Firefly did not prop up.

Solar Girl: mark a Condition
Tunweya: decide whether or not the dream was just a dream. If it was, shift Savior down and Mundane up and mark Potential. It was not just a dream, shift Mundane down and Freak up, tell us something the ancestor told you and take +1 ongoing to follow their advice.

seatyger

2019-03-11, 01:06 PM

Tunweya has seen such a thing before, in a dream, just after he accepted the Talisman. Several ancestor spirits emerged from such a thing to impart wisdom and encouragement to him.

The rift ripples and undulated. The ribbon darkles and tincts. And starts growing longer. A few hundred feet and it would be at the highway. And into the parts of the building Firefly did not prop up.

Tunweya: decide whether or not the dream was just a dream. If it was, shift Savior down and Mundane up and mark Potential. It was not just a dream, shift Mundane down and Freak up, tell us something the ancestor told you and take +1 ongoing to follow their advice.

Tunweya freezes, momentarily transfixed by the crackling ribbon before him. He used to think it was just a dream, but there's no way it can be a coincidence that the rift today is anything but the rift he saw months ago...

Five ancestors stepped out of the ribbon of blue lightning, each appearance a thunderclap, as Jamie stood on the sacred Lakota hills.

Blackbear -- the ancestor from whom the family got their surname, wearing the emblems of a tribal chieftain (family legacy)
Charles Blackbear -- Jamie's grandfather, wearing a raven headdress and black feathered "wings" (prophecy & insight)
James Blackbear -- Jamie's paternal great-uncle, wearing a fox-pelt headdress and all black hunting gear (cunning trickster)
Fang-of-Wolf -- an ancestor that predates Blackbear, wearing a wolf-pelt around his shoulders and holding Jamie's bow, whom Uncle Joseph said was the first to wear the talisman (hunter)
Albert Blackbear -- Jamie's paternal great-great-uncle, wearing a vulture headdress and sickly brown feathered "wings," whom Uncle Joseph said was a serial killer never brought to justice (death)

"You are the guardian of your tribe," Chief Blackbear said. "Use this gift for the protection of all."

"You are the bringer of death from the shadows," the Vulture, Albert, rasped. "Do not let them see you until you are ready to usher them to my beak."

"You have learned the secrets of your craft from your elders," the Raven, Charles, crowed. "Take this knowledge and use it wisely, and no enemy will touch you."

"You are the cunning trickster," the Fox, James, quipped. "Be creative and unapologetically mischievous against your foes. Outwit them, outfox them."

"You are the hunter, joined to your bow," the Wolf counseled. "Rely on it. Trust it. Trust your senses, and your skills."

"We are all a part of this talisman, as we have each held it before you," Chief Blackbear adds. "Vulture, Raven, Fox, and Wolf, they are each a part of you. But, it is your legacy, as a Blackbear, that ties it all together. You are the chief in this arrangement, and it is your will that will drive it. Be wise and worthy of its power."

With that, Fang-of-Wolf fired an arrow at the ribbon of lightning, and then became the arrow as it pierced the heart of the blue. Albert burned and transformed into black smoke that followed in the arrow's wake. Charles transformed into a falling star that streaked into the ribbon. James morphed into a tiny lightning bug that chased the star's tail. And Chief Blackbear transformed into the glorious, blazing sun that followed the rest in, enveloped the others, and lit off a brilliant explosion that collapsed the lightning in on itself, leaving only starlit night behind...

Snapping out of his reverie with a jolt, Tunweya calls to his teammates, "I've seen this before; don't ask me how! We need to collapse it from the inside, like an explosion! Firefly, if we all pour everything we got into the heart of that thing, will it close?"

Thanqol

2019-03-11, 05:06 PM

Doctor Tempus, the real Doctor Tempus was, like so many before him, transfixed by Solar Girl. Whether her beauty, the blazing energy of her presence, or the particular moral imperative to convince her that he was right, he all but ignored the chaos erupting around him in order to speak to her.

"Dr. Calen stole my research. And look! Look what paltry use he put it to! Building condominiums for yuppies! It was meant to make the world a better place, maybe to save everyone, but now it's just a... tool... for the rich to get richer. For that, more than the theft, he has to pay!"

"So, who's to blame here?" said Solar Girl, still floating in place and ignoring the scene around her. "The building or Dr. Calen? If it's Dr. Calen why are you wasting your time punching a building?"

[Marking Angry]

This was what she found so deeply frustrating. For someone who was supposedly such a genius there was no plan here. This was just a tantrum, the kind of tantrum that threatened to kill innocent victims and waste a huge amount of time and money. Did he think that knocking down a building was going to, what, solve income inequality? Was it going to inconvenience anyone other than an insurance company? Was his commitment to making the world a better place such a weakly held belief that he'd give it up because someone built a damned condo?

Her fist clenched.

And then a sound builds, a deep, deep humming sound so low and so deep that it pulls at the ears and turns the bowels watery. And at the same time there is a sensation of moving, even though everyone is still.

Solar Girl feels as though her insides are being pulled in seventeen different directions and as though she is being spun and spun and spun at supersonic speeds. She feels like crying flying puking yelling screaming tearing her own skin off all at once.

And then, from inside the smoke, there is a rising blue light that grows brighter and more brilliant as the deep sound rises in power an volume.

And then it suddenly expands, holds, and contracts like an implosion.

[...]

The rift ripples and undulated. The ribbon darkles and tincts. And starts growing longer. A few hundred feet and it would be at the highway. And into the parts of the building Firefly did not prop up.

She brushed aside the pain. It was an easy thing to do. The feelings of immense speed and immense pressure are not foreign to her, they just serve to sharpen that growing edge of anger.

She floats into the air, sun-orb extending a sunbeam like a spotlight. She arcs it around, clearing through the smoke as she flies towards the rift, looking for Doctor Tempus. He was the problem here and he needed to be found and stopped before his insipid tantrum hurt anybody else.

[Assess the situation: 5. I'm drowning in all this POTENTIAL]

Sahe

2019-03-16, 07:15 PM

Firefly
Potential: 0/0
Conditions: None
Influence on: Solar Girl, Smoke, Wild Card, Tunweya
Gadgets: 1

Firefly was quite happy that her Nanite Fibers worked perfectly to stabilize the failing building and the rest of the team had meanwhile taken care of Doctor Lame and his clones. A winning smile appeared on Laura's face (that nobody could see under her helmet). Another victory for Team...wait did we have a team name? "Hey...uhm guys, we should talk about a team name...", Laura began enthusiastically before trailing off as suddenly the IDF-G began emitting alarming signals that were flooding her HUD, before it collapsed into a rift out of which uncontrolled ribbons of light poured, apparently just tearing through the fabric of this reality.

"Fascinating", was all that came over Laura's lips as she studied the data recorded by her suit with the same glimmer in her eyes as your average five year old looked at a lit Christmas tree. She didn't even know how to interpret half of it as even her advanced mind wasn't capable to process and categorize all of this information, quite literally pouring out of the rift, much of which was completely new and incompatible with known science.

"- laura...focus! There are people in danger -", Riley said, making Laura aware that she wasn't analyzing the data of a nice and safe Particel Accelerator experiment but a live phenomena tearing through their reality. She noted Tunweya's question and gave the data from the rift a more focused reading, while answering.

"Honestly, I'm not quite sure...this is...like completely new science...so your guess is as good as mine. I'm not sure we can pour enough energy into it to stop it and...I dunno...it could make it worse..."
"- Laura...the civilians -", Riley interrupted her once more reminding her that there were still people in the ruined building
"Oh, there are still people in the building too..."

________________________
Assess the Situation...
[roll0]
I want to know:
- How do we best end this quickly
- What here can be used to close the rift?

Eldest

2019-03-17, 01:01 AM

Wildcard is cheered by watching the teamwork take-down of the idiot doctor (really, this isn't going to help the world at all, it's just petty revenge), but stops short as soon as she sees the blue light drawing in the smoke from Smoke. She knew that look, it's a very bad look, and she immedietly runs for one of the nearby buildings, veering to a concealed cache of tech Patriarch had stashed away behind a false wall. She notices too late the blinking red light, and knows the alarm system immediately: he tended to respond to his stuff being broken into quickly. Here's hoping that the team can fix the first (second? third? she loses count in these encounters) crisis before the next one shows.

Ramsus

2019-03-17, 05:03 AM

At the sight of the raw ley-line Smoke is practically frozen in place. She remembers what happened last time she saw one of these. She gained her powers sure, but a lot of people could have died and ultimately it did result in the death of her love.
She's vaguely aware the others are doing things or talking, but none of it registers to her.
Then out of the corner of her eye she catches the light coming from Solar Girl. And she turns to look at her and a small part of her wonders if like her grandmother this happening is somehow her fault or if maybe she even wanted this to happen. A larger part of her wonders what's going on in the strange being's mind at all. But, unsurprisingly she just can't get a read on her through all that mind-fog inducing light and shimmer. No, figuring out is going to have to involve words or at least seeing more of her in action.

Pierce the Mask on Solar Girl.... got a whopping 3. Hurray, Potential!, I suppose. *shrug*

truemane

2019-03-17, 08:59 PM

Hearing Tunweya's words, Firefly tries to parse the reams of information pouring in from outside. Most of it is very confusing, but a couple of things are pretty clear:

The rift is unstable, and a focused concussive blast could indeed cause it collapse on itself without spreading any further. The blast would have to be shaped, in a complex spiral pattern. Riley helpfully offers the exact housing required for the explosive, and it's a bizarre, complex, almost non-Newtonian shape.

It would also have to be delivered at an incredible speed. But it should work. And it should end this.

However, her readings also show her two other somethings:

First, that Doctor Tempus is still in the area, moving up and away. He's somehow made himself out of phase with this timeline. He's almost invisible. Probably intangible. And getting away.

Second, there are two flight-drones heading toward them at incredible speed. Her readings indicate they are about a mile away. Riley was only able to catch them at all because their signature is very, very familiar.

Wildcard stares helplessly as the alarm light blinks rapidly. The device starts to emit a scrambled sound, not unlike a 90's era modem. She knows that sound all too well. It's the homing beacon for Patriarch's attack drones.

However, she also notices that the device itself is what's called an 'Anchor Beacon' for a different kind of drone. The kind that's programmed to hang around and record things. And it only has a range of a few hundred yards.

Smoke stares at Solar Girl, trying to get a sense of what she was thinking, or feeling. Solar Girl always made her think of Fire, of what they had. Of what she lost. And the air was thrumming with the pulse of the rift just as it had that day when they gained their powers. The power of the memories stirred by the combination was almost overwhelming.

Solar Girl, meanwhile, flies about, trying to get a sense of the situation. All she knows is that the influence of the rift is making her feel like she doesn't belong in her own skin. Like she was going to either grow and grow until she dissipated or shrink and shrink until she vanished.

She remembers her father trying to take her on a trip to Pluto once, showing her how to twist space in just the right way to go (no, not to go, but to BE) anywhere she wanted. But of all the things he was, Solar was not a great teacher. Most of what he had to say boiled down to 'watch me' and 'why can't you get this.' But she wanted to succeed. Wanted to to go to Pluto. She She tried and tried and tried. And she remembered the way he'd looked at her. Like she was just some stupid human and not worth his time.

Solar Girl: how did that story end? If she pleased her father, shift Saviour up and any other label down. If she didn't, shift Saviour down and any other label up.

Smoke: Tell us what she remembers and if they're good or bad memories (or at least if they make her feel good or bad). Take +1 forward if they're helpful, or spurn her to action. And then mark a Condition and Potential.

Ramsus

2019-03-18, 01:41 AM

Looking at the ley-line and Solar Girl memories and feelings come flooding at her like waves, all choppy and broken up displacing each other.

The way it felt to be.... Torn apart? Burned? Dissolved? Unraveled? All of these words fit, but even altogether none of them convey anything but the most surface level of what it was like. And then... Re-solidified? Restitched? Reborn? Re-forged? Again, these words barely coming close to the truth of it. It was horrible and swift, yet wondrous and maddeningly long. And that feel afterwards like you got put together back from your old pieces exactly as you were, but some of the pieces were different. And some were more you than they had been before.
And that lingering feeling that she still feels even now, like you were forever separate from what you once were (something that sometimes feels like it is this shadow of what people should be but this shadow is all most people are for some unfathomable and incorrect reason) but are connected to something more. The world, yes certainly. A deep connection to at least a part, a vital part of what the world is. But even more, even deeper than that. Part of what all things are.
But whenever she examines that feeling, it's always like that essential part of everything is just such a tiny almost meaningless part. Like that part is to existence as what the shadow-people are to what she is now. And so she is frustratingly much more than they can hope to be, what they should have been, and yet so like them in her smallness.

Then just the feeling of warmth. That warmth of sitting by a fire. But not the uneven warmth that leaves some parts too cool and some too hot requiring frequent movement in the pointless struggle to be "just right" that lies beneath the surface of that supposedly idyllic situation. The perfect warmth Fire could be. She was. At least for her. Only for her.

That warmth gone. The cold longing of it. The hurt of that coldness. That want.

The lulling falseness of it that the girl she's looking upon now has about her. Unfathomably pleasing, reassuring, and infuriating.

Then a flash of moments. Memories lost in the background of the ones the burn brighter. So quick the age and image are a blur.
The two girls sitting on a roof.
The two girls hands held fast in the middle of the night at an abandoned park.
The two girls yelling at each other.
The two girls standing there literally atop of some lesser challengers and trying to figure out how some weird device works while the flames leap around them and the building trembles.
One girl seeing a place in passing and suppressing that feeling of being gutted by something that should have so little meaning as to be nothing.

And that awful memory she tries to keep buried every day. Of seeing both this girl before her and the thing that was once her other self. And for a moment feeling that the wrong one was the true one, when in truth neither were.

She blinks this flood away and some part of her knows that somehow she can do what needs to be done here. It could be dangerous for her. But it would be more dangerous for everyone (everything perhaps?) else if Solar Girl does that part. As in that way where she is so small, she is the right size for this and Solar Girl is much much too big.
And just maybe she will for a moment touch that part of the ley-line that is connected to that perfect warmth. Even if she needs to be seared to reach it.

So I guess my answer is... the memories are both good and bad. Certainly helpful and spur her to action here. I'll mark Guilty.

Sahe

2019-03-18, 05:48 AM

Firefly
Potential: 0/0
Conditions: None
Influence on: Solar Girl, Smoke, Wild Card, Tunweya
Gadgets: 1

To a lesser mind the sheer amount of information Laura was passing right now would've been dizzying and even though she was capable of multitasking she liked it when her problems neatly lined themselves up one at a time to be dealt with but that didn't look like it and they weren't simple. For one there was the bomb that needed to be shaped in such a way that no conventional material could sustain. Luckily they were a team of unconventional means.

"Ok, team...we gotta build a bomb and fast to close this thing. Smoke, Wildcard give me a non-static flowing version of this...", she said and used her Nanite Fibers to create a to size model of what the bomb needed to look like, as she touched down on the ground.

Next they needed a payload capable of delivering at the very least 88 Gigajoules, luckily she had just the solution for that, "When you got that I'll jury rig one of my suits energy cells as the payload..."

Lastly there was the matter of delivery and that was risky as they couldn't just drop it in. If her math and Riley's was right their bomb needed at least a velocity of 2800 meters per second to pass into the rift, "and unless one of you got a customizable railgun lying around without telling me...one of us gotta push the thing into the rift..."

Then there where the other issues complicating matters. The civilians still in the building, the bad Doctor sneaking between timelines and the all too familiar energy signatures of two fast approaching bogeys, "there is also still the civilians in the building that need to be cleared out, the Doc that somehow managed to shift out of the timeline and we got two new incoming fast from 4 O'clock...so times wasting. Get to work!"

Was she sounding bossy? Maybe a little...no matter they had to get to work.

______________________________________
Using my last Gadget to Unleash to jury rig the payload. Taking +1 from Assess
After posting I figured I'm actually provoking the team the to do what I tell them to. Luckily the same roll.
[roll0]
10+ means you can:
- do it and add team
- or don't and take a condition

Thanqol

2019-03-18, 09:32 PM

Solar Girl, meanwhile, flies about, trying to get a sense of the situation. All she knows is that the influence of the rift is making her feel like she doesn't belong in her own skin. Like she was going to either grow and grow until she dissipated or shrink and shrink until she vanished.

She remembers her father trying to take her on a trip to Pluto once, showing her how to twist space in just the right way to go (no, not to go, but to BE) anywhere she wanted. But of all the things he was, Solar was not a great teacher. Most of what he had to say boiled down to 'watch me' and 'why can't you get this.' But she wanted to succeed. Wanted to to go to Pluto. She tried and tried and tried. And she remembered the way he'd looked at her. Like she was just some stupid human and not worth his time.

Solar Girl: how did that story end? If she pleased her father, shift Saviour up and any other label down. If she didn't, shift Saviour down and any other label up.

Sky blue.

"Just be at the place you want to be."

Earth golden.

"There is no distance. There is only connection."

Wind warming.

"I don't understand why you can't get this."

Fire embers.

"You do this all the time."

Tower rusting.

"I don't know how to want to be somewhere else."

Dust coarse.

"Change your wants. It's simple."

Reptiles bathing.

"How will I still be me?"

Rooftop red.

"Irrelevant."

Home distant.

The legacy matters[/B] lets me mark potential and take +1 forwards]

"Ok, team...we gotta build a bomb and fast to close this thing. Smoke, Wildcard give me a non-static flowing version of this...", she said and used her Nanite Fibers to create a to size model of what the bomb needed to look like, as she touched down on the ground.

Next they needed a payload capable of delivering at the very least 88 Gigajoules, luckily she had just the solution for that, "When you got that I'll jury rig one of my suits energy cells as the payload..."

Lastly there was the matter of delivery and that was risky as they couldn't just drop it in. If her math and Riley's was right their bomb needed at least a velocity of 2800 meters per second to pass into the rift, "and unless one of you got a customizable railgun lying around without telling me...one of us gotta push the thing into the rift..."

Then there where the other issues complicating matters. The civilians still in the building, the bad Doctor sneaking between timelines and the all too familiar energy signatures of two fast approaching bogeys, "there is also still the civilians in the building that need to be cleared out, the Doc that somehow managed to shift out of the timeline and we got two new incoming fast from 4 O'clock...so times wasting. Get to work!"

Was she sounding bossy? Maybe a little...no matter they had to get to work.

______________________________________
[S]Using my last Gadget to Unleash to jury rig the payload. Taking +1 from Assess
After posting I figured I'm actually provoking the team the to do what I tell them to. Luckily the same roll.
[roll0]
10+ means you can:
- do it and add team
- or don't and take a condition

Solar Girl was abruptly in front of Firefly. Too close. She reached out, took her by the chin, leaned in close - stared directly into her eyes.

It was literally blinding.

"How did you do that?" she murmured. "You changed where I was. By ordering me?" Her gaze became brighter, like the sun coming out behind a cloud. "Do that more often. Order me. That's who you are to me now."

She let her go. Picked up the bomb. "You want me to carry this into the rift?"

Ramsus

2019-03-20, 01:32 AM

Seeing Solar Girl pick up the device, Smoke rushes over in a panic.

"Actually!" she says a bit more sharply than she intended. "I have a bit of personal experience with these things. You've got more or less the right idea I'm pretty sure. But I know I can guide it in with less risk." There's an odd stress on the world risk because she's trying to avoid just coming out and saying "less chance Solar Girl or the entire city or both get mangled somehow" and perceptive person might also note she said she "knows" rather than "thinks" or such which might seem a bit odd considering the weirdness of this situation.
She continues, "And at a more reasonable speed, if Solar Girl or Tunweya or both handle the energy that will come off of it while I do so." She flashes Tunweya a smile to double down on the idea that she's implying he's of equal value to the team as Solar Girl. It may seem odd that she's just assuming Tunweya could interact with the energy of this thing at all, and to be fair she's just operating under the feelings she was left with about the situation and just isn't really questioning the things she feels to be true about it at the moment.
"I don't think I should make the bomb if I'm the one taking it in though." she sounds a lot less sure about this than everything else. And in fact clarifies that for everyone by adding, "That's just the feeling I'm getting."

seatyger

2019-03-21, 01:33 PM

"Oh, for crying out loud."

Tunweya furrows his brow. Solar Girl is being dramatic, again; Firefly is overthinking things, again; and Smoke is going her own way...again. Girls. The Lakota warrior is at a loss on how to contribute to either plan. "I can't just shoot at it," he quips, realizing that, in all honestly, he's too...mundane...for this sort of problem. In his frustration, Tunweya's gaze turns toward the crackling blue ribbon of energy.

And then it hits him. The spirits exited the rift and returned to it in his vision; Tunweya could probably use his power to cloak the bomb and contain the energy Smoke is talking about. It's not exactly concealment...

"Okay, wait. I might be able to use the talisman's power to...err...cover the bomb, or cloak it, or whatever -- anyway, I should be able to contain any excess energy and help it enter the rift. But I'll need to touch the thing first."

Taking Angry, since he's not following Firefly's instructions.

Eldest

2019-03-22, 09:06 AM

To a lesser mind the sheer amount of information Laura was passing right now would've been dizzying and even though she was capable of multitasking she liked it when her problems neatly lined themselves up one at a time to be dealt with but that didn't look like it and they weren't simple. For one there was the bomb that needed to be shaped in such a way that no conventional material could sustain. Luckily they were a team of unconventional means.

"Ok, team...we gotta build a bomb and fast to close this thing. Smoke, Wildcard give me a non-static flowing version of this...", she said and used her Nanite Fibers to create a to size model of what the bomb needed to look like, as she touched down on the ground.

Next they needed a payload capable of delivering at the very least 88 Gigajoules, luckily she had just the solution for that, "When you got that I'll jury rig one of my suits energy cells as the payload..."

Lastly there was the matter of delivery and that was risky as they couldn't just drop it in. If her math and Riley's was right their bomb needed at least a velocity of 2800 meters per second to pass into the rift, "and unless one of you got a customizable railgun lying around without telling me...one of us gotta push the thing into the rift..."

Then there where the other issues complicating matters. The civilians still in the building, the bad Doctor sneaking between timelines and the all too familiar energy signatures of two fast approaching bogeys, "there is also still the civilians in the building that need to be cleared out, the Doc that somehow managed to shift out of the timeline and we got two new incoming fast from 4 O'clock...so times wasting. Get to work!"

Was she sounding bossy? Maybe a little...no matter they had to get to work.

Wildcard opens her mouth to be indignent, just because her dad was a villain didn't mean that she knew anything about bombs! That was assuming...

Then she shuts up, remembers the two weeks he'd spent training her on different bombs.

"This is meant for buildings and material. This is how you implode a building. This is how you explode it. This is how you breach the walls, without causing significant structual damage. This is how you make a breach with the structual damage." A lesson by him, a snatched moment between schemes and plans. Two weeks camping in the woods near an old quarry, where nobody would question the blasts. He'd made sure she got good pictures of the area for her scrapbook, when she'd still kept up with one. Never of the bombs, though. He was smart like that.

"How did you do that?" she murmured. "You changed where I was. By ordering me?" Her gaze became brighter, like the sun coming out behind a cloud. "Do that more often. Order me. That's who you are to me now."

She furrows her brow and focuses on making things go boom, quietly sputtering in outrage for her friend and totally not jealousy that it was Firefly getting that offer (order?) instead of her, before squashing that. Later. She can talk to Solar Girl about why you'd have to be careful about that later.

truemane

2019-03-22, 11:11 AM

A minute or two and it is done. Wildcard generates the oddly-shaped container and fiddles with Firefly's power cell just enough to do what needed doing (at least she thinks). Tunweya stands, ready to use the Talisman's power to contain the device and cloak it long enough for it to deliver its payload.

But then what? How will be sent to the rift? Firefly seems to think Solar Girl should do it. Smoke seems to think she should.

In that moment of indecision, the ribbon-rift shimmers and vibrates and belches out a massive burst of energy and then splits and a single tendril snakes through the air, tearing and cutting the reality around it, striking through one of the groaning buildings containing workers.

And as the wave of energy washes over them...

Solar girl feels, again, that pull on her very person, as though something in the rift is made of her, or she's made of it, and the two are unable to properly exist in the same locale. As though the thoughts that form herself into herself are the same as whatever it is that makes the rift the rift and not something else.

Wildcard's emotions are flooded with the heady mix of safety and excitement that was her early childhood. Something her father said? Something he did? Something he did with her? To her? She can smell primrose. And brandy. "You will never be one of them,"
her father says, "You will be strong. Powerful."

Tunweya hears a voice that is somehow his father and his uncle and also something... other... that is old and grand and strong. it says "This place... not our place. The Wasicu.. should not have left." And then a pair of eyes, somehow only in his m ind but also there in the rift, look at him, look through him, burning into him, into every corner and fibre of his soul, "Not our place... but his place. The Tunweya is Wasicu now."

Firefly feels her thoughts speed up and broaden and spin so fast that she grows dizzy trying to keep up. Insights and conclusions run through her head at impossible, almost painful speed. The deepest secrets of the universe spin past her awareness and are gone and replaced by a dozen more, each passing through her like dreams, vivid and powerful, but forgotten upon waking.

Smoke smells the secret scene of that spot under Fire's chin where it tickled her to be kissed. She smells Fire's deodorant. The sweat of her after a long day. And then the rush of fear and thrill of power and pain that shot through her that day. When they both changed. "We can be whatever we want," Fire says, not said, says, she can hear her voice, can hear it, not as a memory, it's happening right now, "We are free."

And then a panicked scream from the workers in the building near where the new rift struck.

WHAT'S HAPPENING TO HIM?

WHAT IS THAT?

A MONSTER!

And then a high, long, ululating, unearthly cry of terror and fear and pain, and someone leaps from the building, his body twisting and bulging and pulsing and shifting and running like melting wax as he falls...

(wasicu = guardian spirit)

Solar Girl: mark a condition and take +1 forward to influence or understand the rift.

Wildcard: the memory of your father is trying to shift your Danger up and your Mundane down. Accept or reject.

Firefly: when the feeling passes, tell us if you remember any of the secrets. If so, mark a condition and Hold 1. Spend 1 to gain +1 on any roll to Asses the Situation or Piece the Mask or Unleash your Powers.

Tunweya: your ancestors are trying to shift your Saviour up and your Mundane down. Accept or reject.

Smoke: tell us if Fire had influence over you the day you got your powers. If so, her memory is trying to shift your Freak up and your Saviour down. Accept or reject. If not, mark a Condition and Potential.

Ramsus

2019-03-22, 03:53 PM

Smoke takes the bomb and shielded from the worst of the energy by Tunweya, she embraces the sensation of Fire as she enters the rift. She's barely aware of herself between the energies and the sense of her love being there with her again. The others see as her form rapidly shifts back and forth between being solid and smoke. At the point where Fire's sensation is the strongest, she releases the bomb and as it detonates she's thrown, in some form between physical and smoke, out of it.

Accepting Fire's influence.
Unleash Your Powers: 9 + 1 from the earlier Forward to do this = 10

Sahe

2019-03-23, 04:48 AM

Firefly
Potential: 0/0
Conditions: None
Influence on: Solar Girl, Smoke, Wild Card, Tunweya
Gadgets: 1
Cosmic Insights: 1 (spend for +1 to Assess/Pierce/Unleash)

Suddenly Solar Girl was in front of her, grabbing the chin of her helmet and looking into her eyes through the helmet as if it wasn't even there. Laura blushed hard and an incoherent mumble of sounds coming out of her mouth to weak (or Riley to merciful) for the recorders to pick them up and broadcast them to the world. Damn was she glad that she had that helmet, she probably looked like a total idiot right now. All sweaty, head red as a tomato and unable to even to properly process thought, no matter her intellect.

Then an argument broke out about how who and why the bomb was supposed to be delivered, that Laura had a hard time following, let alone participate, still trying to process what Solar Girl had just done. Was this flirting? Should she incorporate this in her next fanfic...oh...oh have I already written something like this and Solar Girl read it? Please don't...

Then there was a sudden flash of light coming from the Rift washing over all of them and Laura was flooded with everything she had ever desired to know...secrets of the universe she didn't even know existed. Too many too fast, even for her to process. The shape of the universe, Dark Energy, the nature and origin of what people called magic and that was when Firefly latched into a thought, letting all the other wonders pass her by while keeping that single idea in her mind so she wouldn't forget it and it worked. She woke up all of that cosmic knowledge merely a memory of a memory but a single idea about the relationship between magic and quantum mechanics in her mind. Not a full model or theory, but enough for a start, to formulate theories and maybe even prove them.

But now was not the time to research as a new challenger had approach, a twisted vaguely humanoid figure ready to charge and Smoke flew into the Rift. Laura wanted to say something, but it was too late. She was already in and in the next moment she was half drifting, half falling through the air. Firefly rushed towards her, to catch her? Figure out how to get her body into one shape again, because Laura was quite sure this couldn't be healthy.

Eldest

2019-03-23, 10:52 PM

Wildcard's emotions are flooded with the heady mix of safety and excitement that was her early childhood. Something her father said? Something he did? Something he did with her? To her? She can smell primrose. And brandy.

She was seven again, for a moment.

Seven is a weird age. You're starting to look at the world beyond just "what is that" and being aware that there is a future, not in any sort of day to day basis but in an abstract, long view way. And it's very easy, with that ability to be aware of the future, and such a short life so far, to have the worst day of your life happen.

She was playing at the park and had run into a kid, Omnikid, Aqualad, something like that, she didn't remember too well. Superpowered, of course, wearing a terrible costume, probably 9 or 10. One of the legacies. Thriving on the attention, the status of being the super here, standing on top of the playground and making demands of everyone like a tiny tyrant.

She didn't like that much. She'd objected, loudly. Called him a bully. He'd objected to that. She'd gone tumbling across the ground from his first shove, through a few bushes. Walked the 4 blocks back to where her dad was living at the time, a nice apartment building under an assumed name. He'd sat down with her, checked her over, made sure she was okay. And then hugged her within an inch of her life.

"You will never be one of them," her father says, "You will be strong. Powerful."

Snap back to here, now, she's nineteen and there's a bomb she made ticking down and a rift messing with her head and she needs space, she needs to breath...

The monster's arrival is welcomed with relief. Go, beat something up. Be normal, as much as you can, don't think about your dad, don't think about good intentions and bad actions and using a bomb to save people. She's looking up at the falling figure, unraveling a good half of the Star Map into a net, judging angles and mass and how exactly to save this one so she can figure out if she's supposed to be beating them up or not. "R'asi, I need a boost."

And she's up in the air and she's holding onto one of the windows with one hand, net holding the monster in the other, and it's slipping, she's slipping...

Accepting the shift.
Unleash! [roll0]

Thanqol

2019-03-24, 08:39 PM

Solar girl feels, again, that pull on her very person, as though something in the rift is made of her, or she's made of it, and the two are unable to properly exist in the same locale. As though the thoughts that form herself into herself are the same as whatever it is that makes the rift the rift and not something else.

But now was not the time to research as a new challenger had approach, a twisted vaguely humanoid figure ready to charge and Smoke flew into the Rift. Laura wanted to say something, but it was too late. She was already in and in the next moment she was half drifting, half falling through the air. Firefly rushed towards her, to catch her? Figure out how to get her body into one shape again, because Laura was quite sure this couldn't be healthy.

[Marking Hopeless]

Skies. Sunlight. Space. Silence.

Rrrgh! She couldn't focus. Why wasn't she answering!?

Solar Girl picked Firefly up with one hand. The armour's weight wasn't relevant. She wasn't relevant? She just floated there for a moment, tuning out as he expenses drifted all over the place, carrying Firefly with one hand. Then, she jolted as though coming out of a daydream. "Order me!" she repeated more intensely. "I'm not focused."

seatyger

2019-03-26, 12:49 PM

Okay, here's my redo.

Tunweya is going to accept the ancestors' shifting of his labels. Because his Savior is already +3, he instead takes the Insecure condition.

His adjusted roll to Defend Someone (+3 Savior, +1 Ongoing, -2 Insecure) in the deleted post was a 7.

Tunweya focuses on Smoke and her payload, slowly walking toward the rift as he concentrates on protecting his teammate from the excess energy spilling around her. The words of his ancestors, though, keep poking through his concentration...wasicu...guardian spirit, really? he thought. It was one thing to be a kid with a cool gadget, running around and playing hero; it was something else entirely to be given responsibility for the protection of his tribe...even if it's just a tribe of five.

As his thoughts continue to seed the growing doubt in his mind, Smoke releases the bomb and he panics, trying to shift his protection quickly. Unfortunately, Tunweya overcompensates, leaving Smoke vulnerable to the blast, and he watches in horror as she is ejected from the rift, her form a nebulous state somewhere between the corporeal and the gaseous. He's relieved to see Firefly respond quickly, especially since he had no idea how to help Smoke in that state.

His relief is short lived, as his attention is drawn to Wildcard's attempt to snare the shifting man. Seeing her struggling to hold onto the ledge and the man, the Lakota warrior springs forward, rapid firing a pair of heavy tungsten arrows and burying them into the structure just below her feet, followed by a singular arrow Firefly developed for him not long ago -- it was a net arrow like the ones he used earlier, but with explosive-firing pitons built into the four pieces of the casing. Tunweya takes aim at Wildcard's starglobe snare and fires; the net opens up and the pitons fire, embedding themselves into the structure and securing both the starglobe effect and the man within.

With the 7, he clears the Insecure condition he just picked up, but at the cost of exposing himself to danger.

Taking a moment to admire his handiwork, Tunweya begins realize he may actually be cut out for this "guardian spirit" thing, after all...

truemane

2019-03-28, 09:20 PM

The bomb detonated inside the rift and the energy causes it to ripple and shake all along its length, causing the ground to tremble and the whole damaged skeletal building shake and groan under the stress.

The shake grows in intensity, and different portions of the rift seem to be rattling against each other, twisting and turning into each other in the air.

And then there is a pause so deep and so wide it seems the entire earth is waiting, and a sharp pain tears through the chest of each of the heroes, and then the rift collapses upon itself, leaving a jagged rend in the earth where it lay.

Wildcard, meanwhile, grabs the falling worker. She can see her skin pulsing and growing and her features running like wax as she continues to morph and mutate.

Tunweya manages to secure the them in place with his arrows.

And the mutated creature makes a long strangled cry of pain and terror and belches out a massive stream of thick, viscous green fluid out onto the ground where it dissolves through the asphalt as though it were paper towel.

The mutant struggles under Wildcard's grip and strains to be free from Tunweya's arrows, and makes another strangled sound, and its growing, gaping maw, points right toward the young warrior...

In the distance the sound of helicopters can be heard approaching.

Everyone's ears itch as a tone sounds in the air, so high-pitched it is barely even perceptible.

Solar Girl knows it as the sound the air makes in a place where her father might suddenly appear.

Eldest

2019-03-31, 04:47 PM

Wildcard looks down in relief. The person didn't die, and it's actually some sort of melting-monster thing that is trying to kill her and she needs to fight. She's honestly not sure which of these she's happier with. She'll drop down into the net she'd made, supported by the arrows that Jamie had fired, and a short, brutal smackdown follows as her father's training kicks in. Stardust in the face to block vision, forearm to the side of the head, follow up with a throw into the side of the netting and a heel kick to neutralize, throat jab to kil-NO. She stops short, breathing rhythmically, watching the monster carefully.

Directly engage: avoid their blows, and I'd hope to actually impress/frighten/surprise one of: Doctor Tempus, Patriarch, and Solar, depending on which makes the most sense.

Sahe

2019-04-01, 04:32 PM

Firefly
Potential: 0/0
Conditions: None
Influence on: Solar Girl, Smoke, Wild Card, Tunweya
Gadgets: 1
Cosmic Insights: 1 (spend for +1 to Assess/Pierce/Unleash)

Firefly rushed towards Smokes falling body, when suddenly, she felt her arm jerked around and path interrupted staring once again into Solar Girls eyes as if the face plate of her helmet wasn't even there.

I had this dream...but different, Laura thought just staring blankly with a dry mouth for a moment. "I...uhm...I...", she began, stuttering. A command what do you want me to command you to do...no not what happened in the dream...FOCUS!

"Help!", Laura said, her slightly mechanized voice barely covering up her flustered panic "Help Wildcard...with the thing...", she specified and pointed towards the monster for clarification.

Captivated by Solar Girl she had all but forgotten about Smoke for a moment and looked around, trying to find the other girl.

Thanqol

2019-04-01, 10:19 PM

Firefly rushed towards Smokes falling body, when suddenly, she felt her arm jerked around and path interrupted staring once again into Solar Girls eyes as if the face plate of her helmet wasn't even there.

I had this dream...but different, Laura thought just staring blankly with a dry mouth for a moment. "I...uhm...I...", she began, stuttering. A command what do you want me to command you to do...no not what happened in the dream...FOCUS!

"Help!", Laura said, her slightly mechanized voice barely covering up her flustered panic "Help Wildcard...with the thing...", she specified and pointed towards the monster for clarification.

Captivated by Solar Girl she had all but forgotten about Smoke for a moment and looked around, trying to find the other girl.

Solar Girl gave Firefly a severe eyeballing. Was that it? All the force of a polite cough and with the citrus scent of dishonesty. She must have imagined it, there was nothing there to hold her attention after all.

She put Laura down abruptly then turned and flew, as directed, over to hover next to Wildcard. As Wildcard was desperately struggling with the monster Solar Girl hovered curiously, arms folded behind her back. She got the sense that Sam had control of the situation but man, was she making it look close. There was a whole back and forth fight that looked super intense and Wildcard was really focused and it didn't really seem polite to take that away from her.

"Oh, nice kick," she said, still floating unhelpfully by Wildcard's side. "You got this!"

Ramsus

2019-04-01, 11:58 PM

Smoke tries to shout out to regain Firefly's attention while she's busily ogling Solar Girl instead of helping out her teammates who are in peril. But no sound comes out. Panicking a bit she tries shouting for help from the others, hoping someone will decide to be the least bit useful. But no, the only person free is their heavy hitter, who once again is just sitting there doing absolutely nothing while the others risk their lives.
She tries to figure out how to get herself out of this situation, but is too overcome with fear and frustration at how dangerously useless half of this team of supposed "heroes" are being to focus.

Assess the Situation.... 2. Uh... yay Potential?

davyjones

2019-04-02, 12:18 PM

On seeing the maw open, Tunweya instinctively disappears and shifts by several steps as he keeps his gaze on the creature. When Wildcard engages it and takes its attention away from the ground, the Lakota warrior glances around at the rest of the team.

Firefly seems distracted, and then Solar Girl is suddenly floating near Wildcard and encouraging her. But, where was Smoke? Frantically, he searched the air for any hint of her, panic starting to grow in the back of his mind as he couldn't find her. Did she hit the ground? Was she--?

A strange, somewhat nebulous form catches his attention some yards away and up. Moving quickly in that direction, Tunweya finds Smoke still in her "in between" condition, just...floating a few yards out of his reach. The other girls just....left her like this? His anger starts to well up again, but he tries to push it aside.

"Smoke! Down here! Look at me!" he calls out in as commanding of a voice as he can muster. Then, inspiration hits him...maybe something that can help. "Renae, remember who you are, your physical self. Focus on that."

Result 6...drat 7, thanks to Smoke helping out with a Team spend.

Conditions = Angry
Potential = 1 0

Ramsus

2019-04-02, 12:46 PM

With Tunweya's encouragement and calming words she follows his suggestion. It takes a few moments but she's able to slowly pull out of this strange state. And then suddenly she's solid again and just falls right into Tunweya's ready arms. She's a bit exhausted and needs a moment to regain the energy to move and so she just hangs there limply. Taking the opportunity she places her mouth right up next to his ear, her breath hot on his neck, and whispers sweetly, "No real names in public."

Spending 1 Team to help helping me a success.
I clear Afraid.

davyjones

2019-04-02, 01:07 PM

Tunweya's eyes grow wide as her breath...and her tone...and her closeness...sends a tingling sensation shooting down his spine. And, for a brief moment, he's just a teenage boy holding a pretty girl, with all of the reactions and reflexes that come with it. He could get used to this...

Just as quickly, however, he's brought back to the reality of the situation. With a clearing of his throat, Tunweya regains his composure and discipline and replies, "Sorry, it was the only thing I could think of. You okay?"

The Lakota begins to look for a good place to set Smoke down.

Ramsus

2019-04-02, 01:10 PM

Smoke chuckles, knowing pretty well how the situation would have effected him, and replies, "I am now, thanks. Still feel a bit tingly."

truemane

2019-04-09, 08:14 AM

The misshapen worker-monster is subdued (rather handily), and the rift is closed. And the team-members are all, at least physically, safe.

There follows a moment of almost profound silence. It is not, in any way, silent, of course. The workers are still trapped. A sizable audience has sprung up outside the fence, alongside the highway, generating a massive traffic jam, and the associated honking and yelling and muttering implied thereby. And then there is the ever-present background din of the city beyond.

But all the same that moment of inaction feels silent.

And the silence is broken by the sound of helicopter blades cutting through the air.

And three dark-coloured copters with Arrowswift Industries logos land and out pour a small stream of people:

A middle-aged white guy, dark suit, well-coiffed hair, stern look, direct gaze, powerful walk. Clearly an executive of some sort.

A grizzled guy in a lab coat. Messy hair. Large glasses. Looking confused and uncomfortable, but with a laser-focused gaze on the place where the SDF-G is/was.

A half-dozen 'security' guards, who look and move like well-trained soldiers. They are armoured, helmeted, and armed with long, unfamiliar weapons that look like tall, flat rifles.

The air is still singing in Solar Girl's ears.

The screeching modem-like homing beacon is still screeching away.

Wildcard sees, out of the corner of her eye, a single, small drone that is basically a camera with wings, hovering at the far periphery of the scene. The little light on its front is on. Which means it is recording.

Or transmitting.

The CEO-looking guy points at the group and starts over. Three soldiers peel away from the rest and follow in a well-trained manner.

"Jesus, you're kids! What have you done here?"

davyjones

2019-04-09, 09:31 AM

"And one'd think you'd have better security for a project of this importance," Tunweya responds as he lowers Smoke to her feet and makes sure she's steady before walking over to the suit and his goon squad. "Are you or any of your minions Dr. Calen? Some fellow named Captain Redundant -- I mean, Doctor Tempus -- went to great lengths to try to destroy your project on account of him. You're lucky us kids arrived when we did."

Ramsus

2019-04-09, 01:38 PM

Smoke looks to the others, waiting for them to respond, since she's pretty sure nobody wants her to do the talking here right now.

Eldest

2019-04-09, 10:27 PM

Wildcard pulls a strand of the net loose, sliding down it to the ground. She makes sure that the mutant-person-thingie gets down to relative safety, and then reclaims the rest of the stars for her Map. She walks up to the group, toning down her normal swagger. Dudes with guns generally thought they were scarier than they were, but half the media still screamed that she was her father's pawn. Best not to give them an excuse. "We were responding to the explosions. Somebody named Dr. Tempus, as mentioned, started a fight. There might be a second fight coming up from people joining in on various sides. So if you could, say, evacuate the civvies?" She nods towards the civilians trapped at the building site. "That'd be great, given that you have a helicopter and I don't." Hm. Maybe not the best tone, still.

Provoke! [roll0]

Thanqol

2019-04-10, 09:47 PM

Solar Girl is pretty sure they're not talking to her. If they were talking to her she'd look at them, and if she looked at them she'd make eye contact, and pretty much nobody talks to her once she makes eye contact. So she ignores the civilians and hovers over to the epicentre of the building energy, waiting for the arrival of someone who could talk to her directly.

Sahe

2019-04-14, 06:27 PM

Firefly
Potential: 0/0
Conditions: None
Influence on: Solar Girl, Smoke, Wild Card, Tunweya
Gadgets: 1
Cosmic Insights: 1 (spend for +1 to Assess/Pierce/Unleash)

Hovering above the area, she noticed that at least all immediate threats had been cleared. The mutant was subdued and she made a mental note to get a tissue sample later to analyze it and Smoke seemed to be in one piece again.

The others, with the exception of Solar Girl already had the Arrowswift bigwigs handled, who for some reason brought a sizeable security force that could've been real useful about 30 minutes ago. Those weapons seemed certainly interesting though. "Riley, give me a scan on those weapons and pull up what you can find about Arrowswift Industries' security...also give me an update on those two tangos? Are they still inbound?"

----------------------------------
Not sure if I need a roll here, but in case I do, I'm gonna roll Superior
If it isn't needed. Ignore.
[roll0]

truemane

2019-04-14, 08:28 PM

Riley answers right away, "Inbound, indeed. And at least two more nearby, just hovering. And their weapons seem to be some manner of smaller version of that big device. They look like they generate small spatial distortions."

The scruffy lab coat guy starts striding toward where the SDF-G was. "I'm Dr. Calen! Where is it? What have you done with it? Where did it go?"

The CEO guy calls over his shoulder, "Easy Red, these, uh, heroes, here, can tell us what happened."

He turns an oily smile on the group.

"How about it, huh? Can you all tell me what went on here? And why my very expensive piece of equipment appears to be missing? And then maybe why you all aren't in school?"

His tone is friendly. But his eyes are flinty and grey.

Meanwhile, the mutant lies, subdued, on the edge of unconscious. Its horrid maw grinds and moves. It makes lurching yurking noises deep in its throat.

It reminds Smoke very much of Bad Dog, an old associate of hers from... previous lives.

And the Solar is there.

In a blast of wind and light and sound roughly reminiscent of choral music, as though the heavens themselves sing for his arrival.

ATHI! he says before even appraising the situation, WE SPOKE OF THIS! WE...

He catches himself. Pauses. He is not often wrong. About anything. He looks around. Three of the soldiers drop their guns and throw themselves to the ground as his eyes pass over them. Gaze lands squarely on Solar Girl as though there is nothing else of any interest happening.

RAS'I WHERE IS ATHI? WHAT HAVE YOU TWO BEEN DOING?

Thanqol

2019-04-16, 10:03 PM

It had taken her a while to learn not to use the Solar Voice. It was the natural way to speak; not using the air from your throat so much as creating the sounds in the air around her. She hadn't really got it until she'd spent a few weeks staring at crows - the way they put their entire throats behind their croaks had finally made it click in her head.

"I haven't seen her," said Solar Girl diligently. Posture good, hands folded behind her back. Respectful. "This whole thing was set off by a Doctor Tempertantrum who might have copied her methods."

She wasn't visibly phased by the impact of Solar's presence... but things did start to feel more mythic. The logic of life told itself in sun and silhouette. It was very easy to submerge in Solar's personality.

Ramsus

2019-04-17, 01:06 PM

Smoke keeps her focus off of Solar/Solar Girl. As to look at them together would probably be a bit painful and more importantly, make it extremely difficult to focus.
As she's averting her gaze, it occurs to her that they're probably extremely distracting for everyone else too. Including the suits who just seem like they're itching to somehow blame their disastrous self-made problems on them. She's not sure about Wildcard, but she doesn't expect the others to consider the idea of a harmless lie to smooth this situation out. Though she doubts Solar Girl or Firefly would be speaking to the suits at this point anyway.

So she takes a few steps closer and says, "Dr. Tempus came to steal your gadget and in the fighting a stray shot by one of his minions destroyed it. Which then caused a whole mess of other problems. That gizmo of yours is a serious safety risk if you ask me. Anyway, now that we've enjoyed your questions, we'll be leaving...." she looks over vaguely in the direction of Solar/Solar Girl. "After the show is over I guess." At that she walks back over to the others, making it clear she's not interested in standing around being questioned further.

davyjones

2019-04-17, 05:58 PM

As Smoke rejoins the group, Tunweya nods to her and says, "Come on, let's go rescue the folks still in the structure."

Result: 10. Doing the thing and clearing the Angry condition.

He finds a pathway up the building, firing and anchoring the last of his grapnel arrows where needed for handholds as he leads the trapped workers safely to the ground level.

Conditions = Angry
Potential = 0

Ramsus

2019-04-18, 12:45 PM

Smoke nods and takes the granted excuse to not allow the suits to respond to her. She floats up after Tunweya and makes a solid smoke half pipe slide on an area of the structure on the far side from Tunweya's ropes going to the ground.

Defend: 10
I'll clear Guilty.

Sahe

2019-04-18, 08:55 PM

Firefly
Potential: 0/0
Conditions: None
Influence on: Solar Girl, Smoke, Wild Card, Tunweya
Gadgets: 1
Cosmic Insights: 1 (spend for +1 to Assess/Pierce/Unleash)

Laura nodded and had Riley project the current location of the incoming enemies as well as the smaller ones onto her hud. "Keep them tracked Riles and give me an intercept course."

She was about to turn to the team when THE SOLAR of all people appeared with all the subtlety of a Super Nova, berating his daughter with an overbearing voice that despite the Firefly's automatic audio filters still seemed to drown out everything in her head. Was she glad that Athi (isn't that a cute name? Focus Laura) didn't use it. However the distressed beeping of the incoming enemies actually managed to quickly bring her back. Solar Girl would have to deal with her dad for now on her own. Not that she knew if she could even do something there. She'd rather stay out of family business.

Instead, she opened that com-channel, "Not to interrupt you gals and guy...good job on getting those workers out btw...we have two more incoming and two smaller ones nearby. Get them all out, I'll run interference."

And with that Firefly took off towards the two new challengers on the intercept course Riley had plotted for her.

"Riley...give me a visual and analysis"

_________________________________
Rolling to Assess:
[roll0]

truemane

2019-04-23, 11:38 PM

Tunweya and Smoke busy themselves with the mechanics of leading the remainder of the workers from the swaying structure to the ground. The soldier-types mill about on the ground, keeping the workers milled into a single group, telling everyone to hang on, stay put, stay patient, that ambulances were on their way, that everyone had the rest of the week off with pay, that they would all be taken care of.

Meanwhile, the CEO seemed completely overwhelmed at the arrival of Solar. His face turned red and he started stammering and stuttering.

I KNOW NO DR.TEMPER-TANTRUM, Solar said, without a trace of irony, BUT THIS... SOMETHING ABOUT THIS SMELLS OF ATHI'S WORK. A pause. ATHI... OR...

And he looks up...

Firefly is in the air, tracking the drones. Riley shows her the two smaller ones, basically sensory equipment attached to articulating rotors, flitting about along the periphery, pointing here and there, lights blinking and flickering.

The two on their way, however.

"One of them is a tactical bot," he says his voice maddeningly calm, "Heavy armour, heavy weapons, basically two legs, over jets and guns. The other is humanoid. Realistic facial features. Realistic voice. Meant to be remote-controlled by diplomatic envoys in hostile territory."

Eldest

2019-04-23, 11:57 PM

Wildcard lets out a long, put out sigh and leans against the wall frowning at the drones. "Hi dad."

davyjones

2019-04-29, 10:52 AM

Tunweya thanks a nearby guard for looking after the workers, and slowly begins to make his way back to the others.

Wildcard lets out a long, put out sigh and leans against the wall frowning at the drones. "Hi dad."

"Wait. What?"

Stopping in mid-stride, Tunweya starts scanning the area for the Patriarch; sighting Firefly hovering above, he follows her line of sight to the glint of a couple incoming aerials. His eyes grow wide.

"Oh, boy. Wildcard, are we in for another fight?"

Eldest

2019-04-29, 09:36 PM

"Iunno." She shrugs, staring the drone down as it approaches. "Up to him really." She's still, except for her hand, which keeps clenching into a fist, before deliberately loosening back up, with the cycle starting back up again every few moments.

Ramsus

2019-04-29, 10:28 PM

Smoke drifts over after having safely delivered the last of the civilians.

"What's this about another fight? Solar is right here. Oh... though I guess if he's anything like his daughter I could see how we might have to do all the work anyway." Underneath her annoyance is a good amount of trepidation.

If anyone wants to say their character is especially perceptive or make a roll for it, they'd note that what she's uncomfortable about is being so close to Solar rather than the possibility of another fight. (Of course she did miss who the other fight would potentially be with which might change things there.)

Thanqol

2019-04-29, 10:33 PM

Smoke drifts over after having safely delivered the last of the civilians.

"What's this about another fight? Solar is right here. Oh... though I guess if he's anything like his daughter I could see how we might have to do all the work anyway." Underneath her annoyance is a good amount of trepidation.

"Fighting villains is good for your self confidence!" said Solar Girl with a bright smile that let you know that she's genuinely happy to have done you this favour. "Don't worry, I would have stepped in if you were actually in trouble."

truemane

2019-05-14, 09:09 PM

SOLAR GIRL
Solar shakes his head as though to clear it. Still floating just enough off the ground that everyone else has to look up at him, his gaze finds Solar Girl.

Ras,'i, he says, his voice lower now, more thoughtful but no less stern and serious, You will come with me. Right now. I must speak with Athi and you will be there with me when I do.

WILDCARD
The 'realistic' drone comes down to the ground. There is a flicker of light and shadow and a vague hologram imposes itself over the realistic, but basic features. It is the Patriarch, his patrician cheekbones and noble bearing partly obscured by the mask he always wore 'at work.'

The simulacrum walked over to Wildcard and stopped.

"This is enough!" somehow her father's annoyance was almost perfectly communicated by the electronic voice, "I've had it with this little rebellious charade of yours, Wildcard," he invested her nome de guerre with a shocking amount of scorn, "I forbid you from associating with these children. Come home. This is over. Now."

TUNWEYA AND SMOKE
Just behind them, as Solar and Patriarch both start trying to rope in their unruly children, the soldiers and the two executives surround the remaining workers. The one that had mutated is put in some kind of high-tech manacles and carried away by two soldiers.

They hear the CEO say to the chief soldier, "It looks like these kids are taken care of. Stun the rest of them. The truck will here in a moment to take them away."

FIREFLY
The remaining drone zeroes in on Firely and starts toward it on an intercept course. As it approaches, dozens of small hatches open up all across its surface and a massive cloud of small particles streams out from them toward her.

Nanotech, Riley says. And it's all he has time for before as they race toward her.

Eldest

2019-05-14, 11:07 PM

Sam takes a breath. More, and he'd think she's waffling. Don't take one, and she'd say something she'd regret. It was a lesson she'd learned in the past, over years.

"Dad. I am your daughter, yes. I am also a person. I am not" she reaches out and jabs the drone in the chest, hard. "one of your drones. You cannot order me around. Your house is not my home. And these "children" are my friends. So no. Back off."

davyjones

2019-05-15, 11:11 AM

TUNWEYA AND SMOKE
Just behind them, as Solar and Patriarch both start trying to rope in their unruly children, the soldiers and the two executives surround the remaining workers. The one that had mutated is put in some kind of high-tech manacles and carried away by two soldiers.

They hear the CEO say to the chief soldier, "It looks like these kids are taken care of. Stun the rest of them. The truck will here in a moment to take them away."

As soon as the guards start surrounding the workers, Tunweya pulls out his cell phone and records video. To the suit's instructions he responds, "Excuse me; you and your men need to back off and let first responders come take a look at these folks. I doubt the public and the authorities wouldn't look kindly on multiple counts of attempted kidnapping. And, so you can't take my phone..."

He disappears from view, invisibly and quietly padding several steps over to the CEO, where he has a good shot of both the suits and his goons.

OOC: Provoking the guards into backing off. Result: 5. Potential!

Thanqol

2019-05-15, 08:00 PM

Ramsus

2019-05-16, 05:02 PM

Smoke looks at basically everyone in this whole situation with incredulity. Patriarch sending drones to attack his kid's teammates while Solar is also right there. Suits kidnapping people in broad daylight after they've just been rescued when there surely must be dozens of cameras and witnesses on them given how loud this scene got. The workers just letting themselves be kidnapped right after being rescued. Her teammates prioritizing conversations with overbearing parents over action. Solar just floating there uselessly like his daughter did for so much of the prior fight, blithely ignoring people being kidnapped right in front of him.

She just wanted to scream at all of them about how stupid they all were and then leave. She strongly considers doing just that. But no, she doesn't want any of them later accusing her of not taking action when it was needed.

So instead she just elects to yell at a more narrowly selected group. She shields her eyes as she looks at Solar and Solar Girl and shouts at them, "Really!? You're really so involved with your family drama that both of you useless glow balls are going to ignore the people being kidnapped right in front of your noses!? Is this the kind of 'heroic behavior' I'm supposed to be learning?"
While "useless glow balls" isn't exactly harsh language, she injects as much venom into her tone as she can muster while being pretty terrified of one of them being distracted enough by their drama that they might just lash out at her in response and do something crazy like cut her in half with a stream of plasma.

Provoking Solar and Solar Girl to do something about the kidnapping: 10
Wow, I was expecting that to go terribly. Glad it didn't, making Solar actually mad at Smoke would suck.