The Age of Heroes [M&M 3E]

[Belial_the_Leveler]

It was the dawn of a new age. A time when men that tread the skies and could punch through tank armor were not confined to the pages of comic books but flew above many a major city. A single insane year since the advent of phenomena science could neither analyze nor explain, that had brought major changes to human civilization. Oh, the city of Chicago was just as cold and snow-covered in the middle of January as any other year, its streets, airports, railways, and harbors closed due to the whiteout just as they'd been in ages past, but there were differences. For one, the news was far less concerned with the bad weather than usual; the chaos caused by the recent clashes of superhuman warlords in Africa drew the viewers' attention like iron filings to a magnet. After all, the best CGI of Hollywood had nothing on the new reality of superpowered battles... and one of said warlords was a teenage girl - who was actually winning.

Another change was that the Eternal Flame company had been selling more than a few perpetual lanterns in the States and Canada, so most Chicagoans were currently huddling around sources of heating that did not bloat their electricity or gas bills. Unfortunately for the Eternal Flame's competitors, all attempts to use the lanterns to produce electricity or otherwise power machines had failed for no discernible reason. Fortunately for the first superhuman-owned company in North America, despite countless accusations, lobbying campaigns, vocal protests, and huge bribes, the government had yet to ban power-produced devices.

As centers of superhuman activity went, Chicago had been one of the quieter major cities. Its distance from the ocean gave it relative immunity to Kaiju attacks and its location at the heart of the most militarily powerful nation in the world meant that most lesser threats would be intercepted long before they became problems for the city itself. Despite the city's history and reputation as a place of crime and lawlessness, Power-related offenses had been limited to joke villains, accidents, and the occasional zombie swarm Chicago's finest could easily handle. All in all, the city had survived entering this millennium of marvels rather well.

It was the new Age of Heroes, and all of the above meant that the strange fish-men coming out of the city's sewers at the dead of night caught everyone by surprise.

Everyone except a small group of superheroes just coming into their powers...

[Quellian-dyrae]

While Keira wasn't the party-girl she had been back in her band days, she wasn't an old fuddy-duddy either. And while she was still rather getting used to these new powers, some of them she had down pretty pat. Such as the one that let her basically just turn off her body's need for food, water, and sleep.

So this evening she had been out at a club, mainly just dancing. Of average height and slender build, her dark blond hair was styled for the evening out in an elaborate mass of ringlets that went down past her shoulders. She was dressed in a loose, comfortable dress and open silvery shoes a bit too fancy to rightly be considered sandals. She'd only had a couple of drinks, nursed carefully throughout the nigh - she was rather more cautious with her ability to think clearly and focus intently these days than she had used to be, and the psychic powers dependent on those capabilities were if anything the smallest part of the reason for that. She had just requested an Uber (technically, yes, she could teleport places far faster, but she lived alone and her first couple of attempts to use that power to blink home had led to some...awkward encounters with her neighbors).

She was waiting for the pickup when the creatures started climbing out of the sewers.

So, you know.

That was unexpected.

They looked...well, they looked like they might be monsters. But to be fair, you couldn't really say for sure. Keira wasn't the type to judge on appearances. She also wasn't the type to just wait and see if a bunch of fish-people from the sewers were going to be so helpful as to confirm her guess by, say, launching into a wild attack on people.

And she also wasn't the type to just split the difference at invading their minds, thanks for asking.

No. But if they were a threat, Keira was better equipped to defend herself than others would be. So she strode quickly to the manhole they were spewing out of. She kept her stance non-threatening, a gentle smile on her face. "Hey there. Are you...new in town?" she asked. The friendly politeness might forestall even the most violent of potential aggressors, by wrong-footing them if nothing else.

And while she wouldn't invade their minds without cause, there was no reason she couldn't reach out with her own to get a better sense of what she was dealing with!

Keira's going to swap to Mind Sense so she can Detect Minds, Detect Emotions, and Detect Mental Powers, all of which are Acute, Analytical, Accurate, and Radius. Mainly checking to see if these guys have any mental powers and what their current emotional state is. She'll supplement this with an Insight check to Evaluate them at [roll0].

She's also going to use her Fascinate advantage to Entrance them, just to be safe, at [roll1].

[Binks]

Ekrash had been out for a late night walk around town, headphones in with an audio version of one of his textbooks playing. He was decked out in his 'mystic' garb, mostly because he took advantage of any excuse to put the stuff on. It hid his scrawny frame pretty well, making him appear as a relatively nondescript dude around 6ft tall in a dark robe. The white headphones stretching down the phone in his pocket, and the sneakers emerging from the robe's bottom every time he took a step kind of ruined the image though, and he'd decided to leave the circlet at home for the night. All it all, he made for a strange figure that you might not want to be on the same side of the road as, but you would not likely be immediately afraid of if he turned a corner in front of you.

As he turned the corner onto one of the streets not too far from his apartment, he caught sight of a lady heading towards a bunch of fish-men emerging from the sewers. He took two steps down the sidewalk vaguely towards the scene without reacting before his brain caught up with what he was seeing. At which point, his feet froze (thankfully, both on the ground) and he did a rather comical looking double-take. Not at the lady, but at the fish-men emerging from the sewers!

Deep Ones? In Chicago? Well, honestly, more like knock-off deep ones, their movement was all wrong, too much man, not enough frog, and their scales seemed a bit larger than Lovecraft described them...but Deep Ones!? In Chicago!? At this time of year!?

Ekrash stared unblinkingly at the scene, his jaw open, completely flabbergasted and his brain running in very unproductive circles as the lady approached the creatures.

[SuperCracker]

On a weekend night on the South Side of Chicago, an old bar/music club called “The Dive” was stuffed to the gills. The event of the night was a free for all rap battle tournament. Young men and women took turns savaging each other with freestyle verse while the crowd reacted with cheers and jeers. And while the South Side of Chicago tended to get a bad rap, if anyone came down to The Dive they would probably have a good time. The event had been going into the night and showed no signs of letting up anytime soon.

But as monsters came crawling out of the sewers in large numbers, people who were awake on the South Side were noticing this event and taking our their phones. Twitter blew up.



Yo @TrailerParkTitan u see those #FishPeople ?

F*** this sh**. Im locking my doors. @TrailerParkTitan Help! #FishPeople

Where you at @TrailerParkTitan #FishPeople

etc.

etc.

etc.


Inside The Dive, a tall young man with a sleeveless Atlanta Falcons hoodie and worn out jeans was drinking a beer and shouting “Ooooo” to a particularly sick burn. He felt his phone buzzing. Once, twice, again and again and again. He pulled out his phone and opened up his Twitter Feed to see that it was blowing up with #FishPeople. Well, time to get to work. He set his glass down on the bar and turned to walk towards the door.

Cue the music. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2zgB93KANE)

He was a tall, handsome, broad shouldered caucasian man in his twenties. He had intense brown eyes. His brown hair was cut very short on the sides and back but was longer (read: still short) on top. His arms were covered in tattoo sleeves with a variety of bright colors. There was at least one orange Koi in there somewhere, probably a picture of Tupac, and many… many… many more.

Someone in the crowd, who had seen the texts and now saw the young man heading out the door, yelled out: “GO GET ‘EM AEGIS!”

The tall guy didn’t stop walking, but a little grin did break out on his lips.

By the time he hit the street, he’d pulled an old red headband from his pocket and tied it around his forehead.

He stood out in the street, his white sneakers standing out against the ice-cold asphalt.

The tall guy, who happened to be The Invincible Aegis was alone out on the Southside street as monster after monster came up to face him. He clenched his fists and punched them together with a blast of booming force.

“Ah-ight… let’s do this sh*t.”

[CandyLaser]

Finally. That was the thought running through Grace's mind as she saw the fish-people shambling up out of the sewers. Grace had been bored before getting her powers. After learning how to access the Akashic records, she had some weeks of excitement as she explored her new abilities. That swiftly waned, however, as she grew accustomed to the talents that she'd been granted, and then the familiar ennui returned. It was even worse, in fact, as she now found her life almost completely lacking in challenges. That was why she was currently in a ridiculous costume and perched on top of a nearby building, looking for something that could test her abilities.

Hence her excitement in seeing a bunch of slimy, scaly creatures shuffling around the city streets—and in seeing a woman, apparently out for a night on the town, trying to have a friendly chat with them. Her lips curled into a wolfish grin as she took a leap from the rooftop, using her grapple gun to swing into a more advantageous position. Her aim was to be hidden in the shadows above the streetlights, ready to intervene if it the fishy folk made any aggressive moves.

I'll go ahead and be sneaky, using Access the Akashic Records to max out Stealth and get Hide in Plain Sight. Here's a roll: [roll0]

[Izzarra]

Ever since the handling the ancient tablet Aya has been unable to sleep. Not in the sense that she is restless and has trouble falling asleep. It is no longer possible for her to fall asleep, she lacks the biological capacity to do so. The tablet changed her, she dissolved and when she regained consciousness her body was composed entirely of sand. Also there is this nagging itch in her contentiousness compelling her to constantly help people in need.

So she spends most of her nights floating around the city as a cloud of dust looking to stop anyone that is up to no good.

Thus on one winter night when fish-men came crawling out of the sewers it would have barely caused her to raise an eyebrow, if she had her face assembled.

The cloud of dust descends towards the fish-men to see what they might be up to.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

Ekrash, Master of the Beyond
The sorcerer savant blinks at the scene before him. One moment, he's seeing a dozen fish-men crawling out of the sewers. The next he notices tentacles of black tar easily as thick as a man's thigh reaching out of said sewers, each one splitting into smaller tendrils and burrowing into the fish-men's eyes and mouths. No, not fish-men. At a second glance they appear more like normal corpses, bloated from the tentacles ripping into them, their skin twisted by the oozing miasma dripping from the undulating tangle of formless limbs.

Ekrash realizes the nightmarish vision is what his magic-detecting sight is making of the fish-men before the tentacles writhe, a dozen thin tendrils reaching out to passers-by. The civilian woman still gaping in shock at the fish-men does not seem to notice the tendril sneaking up her nose. Ekrash certainly notices the three trying to shove themselves into his mouth. The connection is not spiritual, but twisted sorcerous touch trying to scramble his brain...

Keira Styles
Tamer takes a look at the fish-men with her mental senses... and wishes she didn't. All creatures have minds, complex patters of emotions and thoughts created by biochemical interactions in organics, the dance of electrons in a computer in most artificial intelligences, or even more complex processes in more fantastic individuals. But where the fish-men's minds should be, there are just holes. Their brains are still there, though whether they're alive or not Tamer cannot say. Any thought or emotion however has been crudely torn away, leaving behind an empty void that yearns to be filled, like a hungry maw subtly gnawing at nearby minds.

This is probably why a nearby civilian is blankly staring at the fish-men rather than reacting to them, she guesses. The influence is subtle, but too weak to affect more than civilians. Or so Keira thinks until an unseen force thrusts directly at her brain. It's like taking a hammer between the eyes, the sudden blows threatening to scramble her thoughts or even outright stun her.


Akasha
Grace quickly disappears into the shadows with the skill and practiced ease of every ninja, assassin, smuggler, and spy in the history of humanity. Doing so is not an effort but routine, the motions coming as easily to her as breathing. She watches the fish-men crawl slowly away from the sewer, spreading loosely but evenly across the street. They are an even dozen, all equally ugly and inept, stumbling in every shambling step. They look around as Grace looks down at them, and time passes. Why are they not doing anything? What are they waiting for?

The answer comes to Grace moments later; the fish-men are not looking for something, but for someone. Specifically, her. They might not be able to see or hear her - her skill in stealth is simply beyond their meager perception skills - but monsters are not necessarily limited to human senses. Unless there is somebody else they are combing the area for, they must have at least one sense or power telling them she's still in the area, if not exactly where.


The Invincible Aegis
Tim is quite certain the strange fish-men are bad news. Just their looks and smell would be enough to constitute several violations of public decency and health codes. This impression is reinforced by the three or four invisible blows he takes in his forehead as he openly approaches them. The force behind them is not enough to make him flinch, but it is a clear declaration of intent as far as he is concerned.

The Invincible Aegis charges at the foul-smelling swarm of enemies, bowling several of them over with momentum alone, and carefully punching down one of them, testing their defenses. Ugly McFrog-face goes down, but only momentarily. Within mere seconds he's back up, his busted lip flowing back into pristine condition as if Tim had just punched an inflatable monster-doll...

[Binks]

Ekrash just stares in shock at his vision, flabbergasted by what he is seeing. This shock lasts precisely long enough for the first tendril to burrow into him, which wakes him up to the danger. Grabbing at the elder sign necklace beneath his robes he shields himself with his magic as best he can against the rest of the tendrils, cutting off the one that has already embedded itself within him.

He takes two staggering steps backwards in pain, his mind swimming with a combination of confusion and leftover magical compulsions he can't quite clear.

"OW!" is the only verbal response Ekrash gives, his normal language skills having retreated from the wash of magic within his mind as he struggles just to keep his eyes open and himself conscious. Shaking his head once he concentrates on the bodies, feeling the flow of power within him as he has so many times in practice, and lets it out against a real enemy, sending forth a hungry tentacle of his own, visible only to those with magic senses like himself, to try and consume the otherworldly magic on the bodies.

Assuming I'm not compelled (see IC), trying to use Mi-go Antimagic on the body that was the conduit, I guess, for the tendrils that attacked me.

(taking into account 1 impaired)
[roll0] vs. Dodge to hit. [roll1] vs. Effect rank or Will defense, whichever is higher, to nullify. Targeting all magic effects on the body (using simultaneous)

[Quellian-dyrae]

Well.

That was weird.

Keira didn't so much as flinch at the realization that the creatures were mindless. Maybe if they had been, like, human it would have been more disconcerting, but for monsters it was kinda meh whatever. She likewise didn't so much as flinch at the psychic spiritual attack, shrugging it off trivially.

So. They had no minds, but were being controlled. She wasn't immediately certain whether she could target their controller through them, but regardless there were people in danger so it was more important to neutralize this lot directly. Keira reached into her mind, imagined a full-scale military response, channeled her powers through it, and projected it into the world.

To any humans in the area, the soldiers would be wispy and insubstantial - clearly not real. But they would appear real to all the senses of the fish-creatures. The illusion also included a military speedster whisking people away, removing them from the perceptions of the creatures as it happened.

Move: Meh.

Free: Swap to Mind Surge.

Standard: Project Imagination. And I'm realizing I forgot to give this thing the Alternate Resistance using Will to negate rather than Dodge, whoops. All enemies who can see the illusion get Dodge DC 20 to negate entirely, and if that fails, Will DC 20 vs. Cumulative, Progressive Entranced/Compelled/Controlled, Limited to dictated senses. This is a [Sensory] effect; being Mindless offers no protection, although full Will immunities can still apply.

Current Status: Normal.

[SuperCracker]

The mindless monsters reached out to drain Tim of his life force only to find out that he is still in fact The Invincible Aegis. Tim barely registered that anything had happened to him except that it didn’t feel friendly and f*** them for that, right? He apparently set upon them, beating one down only for it to start getting back up and regenerating the damage dealt.

Tim gave the monster a side-eye for a moment, standing still while the things kept trying and failing to drain his life force. He was wondering what you do to a monster that won’t stay down when you put them down.

And then he got an idea.

You don’t put them down. You send them up. Up, up and away.

Aegis calmly walked around the monster so that he was facing a Northeasterly direction, which also happened to be the direction of Lake Michigan.

“Happy trails, motherf***er!” he said in his Southern accent before throwing an uppercut at the monster and trying to launch it far away into the horizon to splash into Lake Michigan 120 miles away.

All-Out Attack 5. Power Attack 3. DC 30 toughness vs. damage and DC 25 strength vs. Move Object. If Move Object is successful, Aegis launches it 120 miles away into Lake Michigan.

Attack Roll: [roll]1d20+10

Messed up. Will roll it in ooc.

EDIT: 25 to hit.

[Blindfolded Ape]

Michael had just wanted a quiet evening in w͵ here he could get some work done. Some peaceful coding and maybe a frozen pizza to round things out. What he didn't want was the pugent smell of fish filling his apartment, and he certainly didn't need, as he saw out the window, fishmen attacking the city.

So why was he getting up and heading for the bag he kept his costume in?

He shook his head. This was dumb. There had to be some other hero in the area to deal with this, right? The sound of fishy gurgling outside would have to die down eventually. The sound of glass smashing and a car alarm going off joined in on the noise. Knowing that this was going to take all night to resolve otherwise, Michael suited up, glowing energy hardening around him as he did.

Moments later, the golden comet of Assembly rose from a nearby alley, arcing and twisting around the building and coming to float in front of the road the fishmen were on, some 50 feet in the air. It was relatively abandoned, save for the fish-men and the ever-present smell they brought with them. Maybe he'd be able to keep this relatively clean.

Arm extended, he winced back as he let the barrage of energy out, pulsing his release and letting a massive number of thin beams out, each quickly hardening into spears that indiscriminantly covered the area before him, impaling whatever they found before retreating back into his palm. At the very least, the car alarm shut up.

Using Cosmic Barrage in the cone area with Multiattack. Bit rusty on my M&M, but I think it's just Dexterity here.

[roll0]

Instead, it's a DC 20 Dodge check for the fish

[Izzarra]

Aya is unsure what exactly is going on, but the people are acting a little weird. One would expect at least a scream, or a bit of panic at the appearance of fish people crawling out of the sewers. Not blank stares.

She descends to meet the fish people face to face. Consolidating into a humanoid form, not exactly the way she used to look like before the tablet. In addition to everything else it did to her it made it so that her default appearance is a good half a foot taller then it used to be and dressed as a high priestess circa Egyptian fourth dynasty. At least it was easier then having to take care of a super suit, even though it always felt like she was naked as the clothing was actually part of her body.

Landing directly in front of one of the larger fish people she asks "What is your intention here?"

[CandyLaser]

All right. This is a bit more interesting. Having them search for her suggested two things. First, their intentions probably weren't benign. What they were doing looked to her like hunting behavior, and they probably weren't interested in running her to ground so that they could have a pleasant chat about the benefits of a semi-aquatic lifestyle. Second, the fact that the creatures hadn't simply zeroed in on her position straight away meant that while they may have had senses that extended beyond the human norm, they weren't infallible. They had their limits.

That meant that she could exploit those limitations... and it meant that she could have fun doing it.

Here's the game, she thought. Drop all over them without being found. Silently, she slipped some throwing discs out of a belt pouch. Looking down, she surveyed the layout of the street, calculating angles and trajectories, before sending one of the discs spinning off into the darkness. It ricocheted off a nearby building, and then off a lamppost, before striking one of the creatures in the back of the head.

I'll set her akashic records power to the following:

Perfect Aim: add the Perception Range extra to her Ranged Damage from the throwing discs, as well as Indirect 4. Cost: 14 pp
Hide in Shadows: Concealment 6 (all visual and auditory senses; Limited: only in shadows). Cost: 6 pp.

Assuming that passes muster, I'll use the Concealment effect to stay hidden and attack with Perception Range Damage 10.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

The Invincible Aegis
Aegis winds up for a massive blow, delivering an uppercut to the closest fish-man that would flatten an apartment block. The slavering, near-mindless monster has its sightless, lidless eyes pulping as its jawbone is simultaneously crushed and thrust into the rest of its splintering skull... then the transferred momentum launches it whole into the stratosphere with the thundering boom of a broken sound barrier.
The remaining fish-men recoil... then swarm Aegis as one. Their claws initially scrape ineffectually against his skin, delivering hits way stronger than any human but not enough to harm him at all. Most of them miss as well, their fight somewhat clumsier than first-graders in a schoolyard brawl. Then something flashes blue and Aegis actually feels something stab through his skin. Not by much but it is noticeable, and when he turns around he sees the claws in one of the fish-men glowing a faint purple.

Ekrash, Master of the Beyond
If his target had been one of the fish-men, Ekrash's bolt of counter-magic would have missed. As it is, his target is the magic within and around them, and unlike creatures, magical effects don't actually dodge. The bolt hits one of the tendrils of black, twisted magic, and the entire tangle recoils as the counterspell cascades over it. It is a single large effect working on all the fish-men, which makes its core harder to disperse. But because it's spread over multiple targets and Ekrash's counter can hit multiple effects at once, three of the tendrils fray and unravel.
In the physical world, three fish-men fall into a seizure, collapse, then their bodies wither and turn to dust as if from decades of exposure. The rest of the swarm turn around and scramble for the sewers...

Keira Styles
Keira's grand illusion sends the swarming fish-men into chaos. They are obviously reacting to it, and just as obviously can't tell it's not real. The swarm loses cohesion, any coordination between them scrambled to hell as they begin to react as Keira wants them to through modified perceptions.
But everything isn't going well. An eerie purple-black gleam cascades over the fish-men's mottled, scaled skin, and suddenly the stench of sewers and week-old rotting fish both magnifies enormously and spreads around the area at alarming rates. A nearby tree's leaves blacken and rot as the foul cloud hits them.

Akasha
From her out of the way perch, Grace hits a fish-man at the back of the head with one of her discs. Her target stumbles, falling to its knees while its 'friends' turn towards the direction the attack came from... which is nowhere close to Grace's hiding place. Apparently, whatever senses those things have are not enough to deal with her amazing hiding skills. Which is a good thing because there's no way she'd want to engage them up close and personal; with their rotting, misshapen scales, putrid stench and slime-dripping limbs, they're the most disgusting things she's ever fought. Even their endless moaning drone is unsettling, more a mindless buzz that makes your stomach clench than a form of communication. In fact, Grace is beginning to feel sick just listening to it...

Aya
The one-woman sandstorm lands before the swarm of fish men demanding explanations, but realizes she's unlikely to get them. Those things are not alive; no breathing, no heat, no vibrations from functional internal organs. Their dead, lidless eyes have no gleam of intelligence despite their apparent coordination; there's nobody there to get a response from - not something that would belong to the body anyway.
What she does get is a lot of slashing claws that harmlessly pass through her form, until one of the fish-men's gaping maws glows purple a split second before it spits at her. The glowing
goop coming in contact with her sand-form is the first time she's felt genuine pain since her transformation. The foul liquid sizzles and smokes as it literally melts through her sand!

Michael
Michael's response to the swarming fish-men isn't a power he's tested in combat conditions before - which is why the effect is slightly greater than anticipated. His blast of cosmic force turning into a massive torrent of piercing bolts hits everything in a hundred and twenty foot cone like the rotary cannon of an A-10 assault plane. Cars are reduced to scrap so full of holes they resemble Swiss cheese, asphalt and concrete shatter, walls caught by the barrage are thoroughly perforated. If any humans had been in the area, they'd have been reduced to chunky salsa.
The fish-men are hardier, but not by much. The entire swarm has been toppled to the ground and mangled so that black ichor is oozing out of dozens of fist-sized holes in their bodies. Unfortunately, they are not dead. Black ichor is oozing back into wounds, shattered bones slowly mend, mangled flesh is regrowing even as it glows purple. It won't be long before they start standing up...

[Quellian-dyrae]

Keira directed the illusion in response to the creatures' attacks. The acidic fumes and any other area effects they may have been using appeared to be shunted harmlessly and perfectly aside by some sort of forcefield over the soldiers. Those that struck physically seemed to have actual effects, even dropping some of the soldiers. It was immediately evident that the most effective means of attack by far was direct physical harm. The soldiers, however, took their toll, appearing to shoot down several of the creatures and get embroiled in the thick of the melee. The selective illusion made it seem to each creature that enemy soldiers, which appeared impervious to area attacks, were now occupying the positions that were actually being held by several of the other creatures. It appeared to each creature that about a third of their number had been taken down already, so unless they struck back effectively, they would almost certainly be rapidly wiped out.

And that wasn't all. Keira went ahead and took a shot straight for their minds, now that her illusion was buying her the breathing room to try it. She gathered her will and unleashed a potent mass suggestion, a single telepathic compulsion crashing into the minds of all of the creatures within 30' of her, a pounding, insistent demand to attack the "soldiers" with maximum aggression.

Move: Give a new Order. The creatures now perceive that only targeted physical damage will prove effective against these soldiers, and that the soldiers are occupying positions that are in fact occupied by other creatures.

Standard: Mass Suggestion. Perception range Area effect, so no Dodge for half, centered on myself. All enemies in 30' get Will DC 20 vs. Entranced/Compelled/Controlled, Limited to a command to attack the "soldiers" (i.e. each other) with maximum aggression (i.e. All Out Attack for the maximum they can and use their most powerful targeted physical attacks). Since I'm on Mind Surge still, this effect is Progressive.

Current Status: Either normal or 1 Bruise.

[Blindfolded Ape]

Michael winces, the destrucion achieved through methods only slightly less subtle than an IED. Thankfully it was late and no one was out, though he'd definitely need to aim that one upwards in the future. Dead birds was a much netter outcome than the heap of rubble before him. At least the fishmen were....getting back up.

OK, time to think. He had time to do something here, but what? He wasn't going to shred up the streets again, seeing as that had done more collateral than anything else. Maybe he could scoop them up? He floated towards one of the piles of goo, once more holding his hand out. This time though, instead of a blast of energy (or multiple blasts, as the case may be), a single tendril extruded from the tip of his finger, forming a scoop-shape that he moved to pry the majority of the fish-goo up. Once it had, he sealed the scoop into a sphere and kept an eye on it, keeping it as small as he could.

Using Hardlight Constructs to contain one of the fishman goo piles. Technically this needs an attack roll vs their Dodge and a DC 15 Dodge check from them, but given that they're currently piles of goo I don't see them avoiding it. Roll provided for posterity.

[roll0]

[Binks]

Ekrash smiles as the magic tendrils are consumed by his antimagic, then flinches as the pain in his skull flares up once more. As the fish men retreat to the sewers he cautiously steps forward to look over one of the abandoned bodies.

"What in the world are you things?" he says aloud, mostly to himself, as he looks over the body.

As they appear to be in retreat, would like to take a look at one of the bodies and see what I can learn about it. Specifically, was it actually human once (or just in roughly the same image) and what was the magic doing to it (but obviously whatever I can get with my roll :P)

(still impaired I assume)
[roll0] Investigation. -1 if Expertise (magic) would be more appropriate, same # if Expertise (occult). Using my magical sense if it helps at all but no other powers.

[SuperCracker]

Magic claws raked across Tim’s back, shredding several long gashes in the dark colored Atlanta Falcon’s hoodie and scraping ineffectually at the actual skin of superhero underneath. It left a few quickly fading red lines like when one lightly scratches their fingernails on an itchy patch of skin. But hey, he at least noticed that one. Particularly because…

His Falcons hoodie…

was now ruined.

Aegis’ turned his head towards the glowing-clawed fish man monster, his brown eyes shining with the heat of a thousand suns. “I just bought this thing!” Aegis, ignoring the other fish-men and their flailing, spun around and threw another uppercut, jumping up into the air as he did so, extending the impact moment of the punch as he flew up into the air twenty feet at the speed of a rocket.

“SHORYUKEN!”

And punching the fish-man quite literally into space.

All-Out Attack 5, Power Attack 5 – [roll0] – DC 32 toughness, DC 27 strength vs. move object

[CandyLaser]

The sickening drone of the fish-men left Grace feeling queasy, and she thought that it would be wise to clear out before things got worse - but not before she put another flurry of throwing discs in the air, aiming to put as many of the creatures down as she could. Then she swung away, using her grappling gun to get out of earshot as she vanished into the shadows.

I'll tweak the attack power from last time to add Takedown and attack as many of them as possible before swinging away. The goal is to stay in the shadows and hidden but get out of the area of effect of the drone.