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  1. - Top - End - #451
    Ettin in the Playground
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    POTENTIAL 3

    Simply saying “Sara screams” is insufficient to fully convey what happens. What happens is that her lungs briefly convert into miniature black holes, sucking in several football fields’ of air, before expelling every bit of air in her body at a highly sustained operatic pitch that can be heard clearly on the other end of the train.

    Hyperbole? Yes. But only barely.

    She runs out of breath, which gives her just enough time to think for 0.02 seconds about what she’s going to do next. The winning choice: “grab the gun from the goon closest to her, pull the trigger, and spray wildly at the Dracula while screaming again at an even higher pitch.”

    NOBODY SAID THERE WOULD BE DRACULAS ON THIS TRAIN.

    [double sixes on Defend. I would like to protect Dominus from the Dracula while also clearing a condition through the magical power of terror.]
    freedom in the flame

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    Quote Originally Posted by PhoeKun View Post
    Raz, you scoundrel! You planned this!
    Quote Originally Posted by BladeofObliviom View Post
    Great, and now I'm imagining what Raz's profile on a dating site would look like. "Must be okay with veils."
    Quote Originally Posted by Kasanip View Post
    I don't think there is such a time to have veils that it is not the fault of Raz_Fox.
    Quote Originally Posted by Dervag View Post
    It's a freaking Romulan dump truck. The Romulans are no more likely to build an unarmed warp-capable ship than they are to become a hippy commune.

  2. - Top - End - #452
    Ettin in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    "Right. Ok, yeah... right. Unity and... stuff."

    Errant busies herself finishing her meal. It's gone cold and has approximately none of the appeal it had at the beginning of lunch, but the one thing her mother drilled into her head deeper than anything else is that you never ever ever waste food. She chews, resolutely swallows, and is extremely careful never to make a noise with her spoon until finally (blessedly) her bowl is empty. Without that to occupy her brain, she jumps immediately to compulsively smoothing her hair. Which is pointless, it's not even remotely out of alignment right now. But it's that or punch an HR specialist, right?

    Come on, Euna. Move. Move or they'll keep saying things at you and you don't need that right now. Just stand up, there you go, return your tray to the assigned tray return area, and be on your way. You've got a nice, busy schedule you can check out in the hall and spend the rest of your life pretending none of this ever happened, ok? On three, now: one, two,

    "So, um. I'll just... take this and" find a shredder "look into the program. So yeah, thanks for. Thanks. I'm good now. I'm... good. Just gonna go now, yeah? I'm on, uh" flick flick check...oh, "weapons testing in a few here. That's six sectors down and through a cleanup zone, so I really need to... you know, thanks again. Tell HR, ok? Better Together and... ok, yeah. Good talk. Bye now."

    She disappears into a hallway, flattens herself against the wall, and shudders.

  3. - Top - End - #453
    Ettin in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Ferra finds herself in her room. She has a rug and a beaten up couch that she aquired from a break room that was being remodelled, she has a pile of clothes over there, she has a bean bag chair over there, she has a draped large cloth that divided the room in two there. She also has her charging port over there, in the rare case she needs it: mostly the rx heart provides it's own energy. Nothing here catches her attention, though. Nothing here matters, after seeing everything. She needs to see... not more, but differently, get another perspective. She starts walking, almost not caring where she ends up.

    She finds herself in Aegis's holding faculty. This time, the room feels right, even if she hadn't intentionally headed here. A different view on the world indeed. She hopes she went in through the normal way, showed her clearance and stuff: her active memory was still recovering from Infinity, and she wouldn't put it past herself to just... walk through the walls into here.

    Ah well, a problem for Future Ferra.
    LGBTA+itP

  4. - Top - End - #454
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Quote Originally Posted by Thanqol View Post
    "Oh... oh!" Professor Gears looks genuinely shocked. "I thought you knew what went wrong! I mean, you built it, you've got the code... and you don't know what the mistake is?"

    She sat for a moment, toying with a collection of pens she'd linked together into some sort of weird nunchuck configuration as she thought.

    "Well, if you don't know, then there's only one person who can find that out!" said Professor Gears suddenly. "We'll just get Comstar to force it out of him!"
    You... You can't do that! That'd be morally bankrupt, unthinkable, tantamount to torture! It'd be violation of not just rights, but of humanity itself! That's mine, don't you dare hurt him! I'll, I'll, I'll stop you! Somehow!

    The thoughts pound at him, begging to be said, cried from the rooftops, and he nearly bites his tongue in half with the effort of not shouting. It's only after a few seconds of pained silence that he remembers to breath, unclench, let go his white-knuckled grip on the desk.

    Yes, of course that's what they'd do. Who cares what the program thinks or wants? Why care, if you can force it to your will? It's useful, ergo we need to do whatever is necessary to keep it useful.

    "I find that," he says, picking each word with the care of a landmine disposal specialist, "morally objectionable. Prometheus may not be a person in the eyes of the law, but... violating him in such a way would be just as terrible as if you were to mind-control a person. If it's villainous for Comstar to do it, is it not villainous to do it on our behalf?"

    He grits his teeth, and hops to the floor. "But, it's going to happen, despite my objections." With a snap, the nanobots swirl into a drab, lawyerly pinstripe suit. "After all, everyone's entitled to legal representation. Lead the way."
    I run a Let's Play channel! Check it out!
    Currently, we're playing through New Vegas as Gabriel de la Cruz, merchant and mercenary extraordinaire!

  5. - Top - End - #455
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    JULIET
    "What's here? a cup, closed in my true love's hand?
    Poison, I see, hath been her timeless end:
    O churl! Drunk all yet again? Well, just between us that's not unusual. This bitch has no impulse control whatsoever."
    ROMEO
    "Excuse me?"
    JULIET
    "I mean, far be it from me to talk ill about the dead" shoves Romeo back down
    "Especially on the brink of my beautiful sacrifice for love,
    The performance thereof is all the more impressive
    Given its truly selfless nature."
    ROMEO
    "Selfless!? Thou means to imply after all the sh*t thou has pull't
    And how thy covers for forgetting thy lines
    With mere domestic quarrels and smears
    That thou art motivated by anything other than the self?"
    JULIET
    "Shut up Romeo you're meant to be dead."
    ROMEO
    "Just because I'm meant to be dead doesn't mean I have to lie here and take crap from this f*cking camgirl."

    *

    In the audience, Brainstorm and Ferra are in the paralyzed late-stage horrified staring at what the Comstars are doing to poor Bill Shakespeare. It's been like this all throughout the play.

    The environment here is outright medieval - Hackers' Prison, it's called, for all the supergeniuses and people with technology-control powers. The room is lit by literal candles and books and stageplays are all the inmates have to entertain themselves. Brainstorm, you've been made to check your nanobots at the door and downgrade to some archaic aug limbs that aren't much smarter than a pocket calculator. It's a pain, but it's probably better than brain-fighting every supergenius AEGIS has locked up simultaneously for control of your tech. They haven't tried to downgrade Ferra, perhaps out of favouritism or not knowing how to effectively do that, but she has been made to wear a set of mag-cuffs just to be on the safe side.

    Anyway, back to the play.

    *

    JULIET
    "Camgirl!?!?? Well this camgirl will kiss thy lips
    In the hope that some poison doth remain on them
    And take her definitively out of thy presence."

    Awkward hate kissing ensues

    "Thy breath is bad."

    ROMEO
    "Thou stole my toothpaste!"
    JULIET
    "Yea, whining? Then I'll be brief. O happy dagger!
    This is thy sheath!"

    Stabs Romeo

    ROMEO
    "What the f*ck you whore?"
    JULIET
    "It's what my character would do. You were a sh*t boyfriend."
    ROMEO
    "You were a sh*t person!"
    JULIET
    "Shut up, Romeo, you're dead!"
    ROMEO
    "No, you're dead you talentless hack!"

    They fight.

    WATCHMAN
    "Not this sh*t again."

    The performance is broken up by the Watchman. Exeunt.

    Quote Originally Posted by Raz_Fox View Post
    She runs out of breath, which gives her just enough time to think for 0.02 seconds about what she’s going to do next. The winning choice: “grab the gun from the goon closest to her, pull the trigger, and spray wildly at the Dracula while screaming again at an even higher pitch.”

    NOBODY SAID THERE WOULD BE DRACULAS ON THIS TRAIN.

    [double sixes on Defend. I would like to protect Dominus from the Dracula while also clearing a condition through the magical power of terror.]
    The rest of Dominus' crew open fire alongside you. Bullets tear through Dio from every side as a dozen goons empty their full clips into his body. He is perforated with a thousand bullet holes and what is left looks like it should not be able to stand.

    And yet it does.

    "Fufufufu..." wheezes the blasted corpse.

    The blood that has been torn from him lifts up in the air and begins to curve through the air in glittering crimson trails. It curves and sweeps and soars back into the open wounds. The soldiers gasp in horror as Dio reconstructs himself from nothing.

    "HOTFOOT IT, TEAM!" yells Dominus. She takes the opportunity to shatter a window and fire a flare gun out above the train as she and her crew all head towards the front of the train at a full sprint.

    Quote Originally Posted by PhoeKun View Post
    "So, um. I'll just... take this and" find a shredder "look into the program. So yeah, thanks for. Thanks. I'm good now. I'm... good. Just gonna go now, yeah? I'm on, uh" flick flick check...oh, "weapons testing in a few here. That's six sectors down and through a cleanup zone, so I really need to... you know, thanks again. Tell HR, ok? Better Together and... ok, yeah. Good talk. Bye now."

    She disappears into a hallway, flattens herself against the wall, and shudders.
    Comstar's disembodied eye was still kind of creepy, even now.

    "Even missing the proposed Rx core and associated interdimensional functionality, this hardware is still a decade beyond AEGIS' cutting edge!" Professor Gears was saying brightly as she performed some last minute tinkering from behind her welding mask. "Multispectral visors tend to be partial channels that require in depth frequency tuning, which is notoriously difficult in the field. Comstar's technology seems to involve using dimensional uncertainty principles and semirandom cycling to have tuned itself towards the requisite frequency before -"

    "Please, Professor," said Doctor Skately. "Agent Errant doesn't need to understand the theory."

    "Oh, right, of course," said Professor Gears awkwardly. She placed the eye into the casing of the heavy visor and sealed it up. "So, uh, I converted the eye into a visor! I thought that since you were already so low on organic components you'd want to hold onto the bits you had left even if it wasn't strictly optimal... Anyway, this should allow you to pre-emptively cycle n-dimensional spectrums -"

    "Professor," Doctor Skately's voice was more firm this time.

    "Um. This will let you see invisible mans," said Professor Gears, not seeming to have a middle ground for her technobabble. "As many bad mans are invisible then seeing invisible mans is good."
    Last edited by Thanqol; 2019-08-18 at 09:54 PM.

  6. - Top - End - #456
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Quote Originally Posted by Thanqol View Post
    In the audience, Brainstorm and Ferra are in the paralyzed late-stage horrified staring at what the Comstars are doing to poor Bill Shakespeare. It's been like this all throughout the play.

    The environment here is outright medieval - Hackers' Prison, it's called, for all the supergeniuses and people with technology-control powers. The room is lit by literal candles and books and stageplays are all the inmates have to entertain themselves. Brainstorm, you've been made to check your nanobots at the door and downgrade to some archaic aug limbs that aren't much smarter than a pocket calculator. It's a pain, but it's probably better than brain-fighting every supergenius AEGIS has locked up simultaneously for control of your tech. They haven't tried to downgrade Ferra, perhaps out of favouritism or not knowing how to effectively do that, but she has been made to wear a set of mag-cuffs just to be on the safe side.

    Anyway, back to the play.
    "If you listen really closely, you can hear my braincells dying."

    Vaguely, Victor remembers that he used to have eyebrows. But they're gone now, ascending into the deep jungles of his hairline, presumably on an expedition to find his common sense, last seen with his will to live. This sucks. They suck. These are really the villains that had all of AEGIS shaking in terror, scant weeks ago? These are the villains that, admittedly, are still kind of terrifying even in the midst of shanking each other?

    But it's better to look at them than think about... Almost of its own accord, his right arm wanders over to his left hand and yanks at the thumb. Impatiently, Victor slams the offending limb back into place against his side. These augs suck, too. They're stiff, constricting, barely a step above a peg leg. They aren't him, aren't fluid, lock him in place. Vulnerable, helpless, in front of a pair of weirdoes who sacrifice humans to the gods of the multiverse and have the power to directly assume control of technology. Granted, they won't be able to do much more than get him to flip himself off, but that just highlights how little he can do if it came to that.

    At least Ferra still has all of her powers. And now, he has to go through as much of Dr. Gears' notes as he can remember and pray that Comstars can't hack Ferra, or they're all fucked.

    Damn. And there the thoughts were again. Gingerly, he ventures to glance in her direction, before snapping back to the Comstars being dragged out. "Honestly, I didn't expect to see you down here."
    I run a Let's Play channel! Check it out!
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  7. - Top - End - #457
    Ettin in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    "Erm... right. Thank you, Professor. And I do appreciate the choice to make it wearable! My mom used to say I had 'eyes like an idol', so I... you don't care. Sorry."

    The smile falls off of Errant's face as she glances at Dr. Skately. Crap, he was in a bad mood, and that meant trouble. What could have happened? Had he heard about her, too? Great, that's just what she needed, another lesson on her love life. Ugh, where did that thought even come from? Be professional, Errant! What's going through his mind or not is none of your business. You're just the soldier, these two are the brilliant scientists that keep AEGIS at the forefront of the fight. Act like it, Agent. Why was this suddenly so hard for her?

    She waits for a head nod to approach the workbench, then crisply settled into an at ease stance for a full ten seconds before she let her hands come forward to take the visor and inspect it for herself. Don't think about what's in there, Errant. It's not a gross eye, this is a new hyper r-- extremely useful tech that would be her biggest edge yet. She doesn't even let herself mention how much the design is reminiscent of the mask that Merryweather, the Starlight Assassin wore when she faced the evil Seyfarth corporation's Technosaurus Rex in Imperium Nova 4: The Revenger, because that would be the act of Euna Kim: total dork and dumb kid. She's being trusted with so much right now. She has to be more than that.

    "This is a good design," she says appreciatively, but with a sparkle in her eye that the observant will notice means she's still internally geeking out, "Nice heft. What kind of arms fire is it rated against? Are we ready for testing? I'm really looking forward to seeing what kind of-- um. I mean, I'm eager to help out how I can, Sirs."

  8. - Top - End - #458
    Ettin in the Playground
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    POTENTIAL 4

    @SARAHPHIM: HEY SO REAL QUICK
    @SARAHPHIM: IF ANYONE HAS ADVICE ON FIGHTING DRACULAS
    @SARAHPHIM: SHARE IT NOW

    [A beautiful, beautiful 6 on Seeking Help. I think this means Dominus puts two and two together? Either that or she jumps to the wrong conclusion and thinks @SARAHPHIM must be on the train and fighting the Dracula behind them now]
    Last edited by Raz_Fox; 2019-08-21 at 07:59 PM.
    freedom in the flame

    Spoiler
    Show
    Quote Originally Posted by PhoeKun View Post
    Raz, you scoundrel! You planned this!
    Quote Originally Posted by BladeofObliviom View Post
    Great, and now I'm imagining what Raz's profile on a dating site would look like. "Must be okay with veils."
    Quote Originally Posted by Kasanip View Post
    I don't think there is such a time to have veils that it is not the fault of Raz_Fox.
    Quote Originally Posted by Dervag View Post
    It's a freaking Romulan dump truck. The Romulans are no more likely to build an unarmed warp-capable ship than they are to become a hippy commune.

  9. - Top - End - #459
    Colossus in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Quote Originally Posted by Raz_Fox View Post
    POTENTIAL 4

    @SARAHPHIM: HEY SO REAL QUICK
    @SARAHPHIM: IF ANYONE HAS ADVICE ON FIGHTING DRACULAS
    @SARAHPHIM: SHARE IT NOW

    [A beautiful, beautiful 6 on Seeking Help. I think this means Dominus puts two and two together? Either that or she jumps to the wrong conclusion and thinks @SARAHPHIM must be on the train and fighting the Dracula behind them now]
    Let's scroll back through the chat a bit.

    Locker: so i have to ask. why the wolf thing
    Angel-IKA: Because wolves are cool <.<
    Locker: yea but why do u want to be one
    Angel-IKA: Um. how do I put this...
    Ferraphim1tp: Yo, Locker, back off >:T
    Locker: sorry
    Locker: i was just curious i dint mena to make it a thing
    Angel-IKA: No! No, it's okay, it's just, I'm trying to figure out how to say it.
    Dominus: YOU SURE?
    Angel-IKA: Yeah
    Angel-IKA: So, I mean... the furry thing, I mean, I know it's weird but I didn't really realize it was more weird than other weird things?
    Angel-IKA: I mean I just first started the internet by reading comics about cute anthro catgirls
    Angel-IKA: And just orbited around that space for a while
    Angel-IKA: So that's, like, normal to me? I didn't really realize it wasn't normal, uh. Until recently.
    Angel-IKA: There were so many people making fun of me on the forums ><;;;;;
    Locker: i wasn't asking about that
    Locker: screw those ppl
    Locker: i was asking why a wolf specifically
    Angel-IKA: Well... I've got a bunch of OCs actually. But I don't exactly have the catgirl build, and I didn't want to go all the way up to like a bear or something <.<;;;;
    Angel-IKA: I might go for something more normal next time
    Angel-IKA: Which will be never ._.
    Dominus: JESUS
    Angel-IKA: Oh, um, I'm sorry
    Dominus: CRAP
    Dominus: THIS IS BULLSH*T
    Bode: I did not know you were so invested in Angel-IKA's superhero career.
    ===@SARAHPHIM has joined the chat===
    @SARAHPHIM: HEY SO REAL QUICK
    Dominus: I MIGHT HAVE A VAMPIRE PROBLEM
    @SARAHPHIM: IF ANYONE HAS ADVICE ON FIGHTING DRACULAS
    @SARAHPHIM: SHARE IT NOW
    Dominus: ...
    Bode: ...
    Ferraphim1tp: o.o
    Locker: omg i knew it
    Angel-IKA: were they... were they secretly On A Date

    You've screwed up, @Sarahphim. All that work put into balancing the shipping matrixes and now you're having a secret, untelevised date with a fan?

    You can fix this, though - it just needs to be a feature and not a bug. @Sarahphim's Secret Hangouts - work out the details later, maybe make it one of those secret easter egg bits for people who follow an elaborate series of clues in old videos or whatever. Say something to distract them and send them along those lines right now and they'll fall over themselves in uselessness. They'll be zero use to you helping fight draculas while they all look for morse code patterns in old laser arrays or whatever it is that nerds do but it'll be a brand positive. You'll need to put up with one or two of these enforced hangouts to pay for it but small price to pay.

    Quote Originally Posted by PhoeKun View Post
    She waits for a head nod to approach the workbench, then crisply settled into an at ease stance for a full ten seconds before she let her hands come forward to take the visor and inspect it for herself. Don't think about what's in there, Errant. It's not a gross eye, this is a new hyper r-- extremely useful tech that would be her biggest edge yet. She doesn't even let herself mention how much the design is reminiscent of the mask that Merryweather, the Starlight Assassin wore when she faced the evil Seyfarth corporation's Technosaurus Rex in Imperium Nova 4: The Revenger, because that would be the act of Euna Kim: total dork and dumb kid. She's being trusted with so much right now. She has to be more than that.

    "This is a good design," she says appreciatively, but with a sparkle in her eye that the observant will notice means she's still internally geeking out, "Nice heft. What kind of arms fire is it rated against? Are we ready for testing? I'm really looking forward to seeing what kind of-- um. I mean, I'm eager to help out how I can, Sirs."
    Professor Gears and Doctor Skately exchange glances. "Well, we'll see, won't we?" he said.

    Then he pulled out a short-barreled boarding shotgun from under his labcoat and she produced a bright spiralling laser blaster from up her sleeve and your uniform changes into a bright red colour and oh no it's a pop quiz.

    Pop Quizzes, or 'Unstructured multipolar testing environments', are sequences where AEGIS' entire staff turns on you abruptly and you need to see if you can exit the building and touch the redwood tree in the front garden without being incapacitated. They can come at any time, aimed against either individuals or teams - typically staff are targeted once every two years or so and the average survival distance is 36 meters. You get a medal and everything for making it out, not many people have ever earned that.

    They're a lot more fun to be on the opposing side of - every couple of months you come across a frantically fleeing staff member in the corridors and get to crash tackle her. You can also, by request, learn the time and date of any other staff member's pending pop quiz so you can arrange a dedicated ambush and takedown.

    Given that you're a big name in the organization a lot of staff take time out of their day to lay traps for you specifically when your name comes up. Tell me a bit about how your last pop quiz went down.

    Quote Originally Posted by Balmas View Post
    "If you listen really closely, you can hear my braincells dying."

    Vaguely, Victor remembers that he used to have eyebrows. But they're gone now, ascending into the deep jungles of his hairline, presumably on an expedition to find his common sense, last seen with his will to live. This sucks. They suck. These are really the villains that had all of AEGIS shaking in terror, scant weeks ago? These are the villains that, admittedly, are still kind of terrifying even in the midst of shanking each other?

    But it's better to look at them than think about... Almost of its own accord, his right arm wanders over to his left hand and yanks at the thumb. Impatiently, Victor slams the offending limb back into place against his side. These augs suck, too. They're stiff, constricting, barely a step above a peg leg. They aren't him, aren't fluid, lock him in place. Vulnerable, helpless, in front of a pair of weirdoes who sacrifice humans to the gods of the multiverse and have the power to directly assume control of technology. Granted, they won't be able to do much more than get him to flip himself off, but that just highlights how little he can do if it came to that.

    At least Ferra still has all of her powers. And now, he has to go through as much of Dr. Gears' notes as he can remember and pray that Comstars can't hack Ferra, or they're all fucked.

    Damn. And there the thoughts were again. Gingerly, he ventures to glance in her direction, before snapping back to the Comstars being dragged out. "Honestly, I didn't expect to see you down here."
    Your meeting, Brainstorm, is with Comstar1 because she is generally regarded to be the less evil and more co-operative of the two. Ferra is slated to meet with Comstar2 as she has more interdimensional experience. Feel free to go ahead to your relevant meetings whenever you're ready.

  10. - Top - End - #460
    Ettin in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Quote Originally Posted by Thanqol View Post
    Your meeting, Brainstorm, is with Comstar1 because she is generally regarded to be the less evil and more co-operative of the two. Ferra is slated to meet with Comstar2 as she has more interdimensional experience. Feel free to go ahead to your relevant meetings whenever you're ready.
    Ferra stared at the play throughout, ignoring the cuffs, ignoring Victor. It wasn't intentional, she just had too much to think about. Who she was, who she wanted to be, what to do with power. What power was. All sorts of stupid, very important questions. Stupid, cheesy answers were all she found on the web, that and a few books by really old people about power and manipulating people. Whoever this Machiavelli was, he was a jerk.




    "I liked your play."

    She did. It was... honest, in a way that it doesn't really fit in a commercial way. Terrible, too, but Ferra was willing to look past that given that she hadn't exactly seen any live plays before. Videos didn't count, they took the best takes, not the full, live thing. She was cheered by the villains creating something. Maybe if they did something constructive, they could be less restrained, or reformed, instead of imploding somebody and all their possible selves to make a power source.

    "Your plan was stupid and had a decent shot of getting you killed, though. First, you were trusting Aegis's restraints to hold in the face of torture and death. Second, you were trusting the possibility collapse to not take you with it. Third, you showed everyone that you know how to do that Rx transformation, which paints a target on your back. And fourth." She sits back in the chair, crossing her arms deliberately. No threats. "You painted that same target on my back. Which I do not appreciate."

    "So. Why?"
    LGBTA+itP

  11. - Top - End - #461
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    POTENTIAL 4

    @SARAHPHIM: lol :smugknife:
    @SARAHPHIM: This wouldn’t be fun if I hadn’t given Dominus a more obvious hint
    @SARAHPHIM: she *completely* missed the shout-out in the 3.22 stream, and the coordinates in the Dolphin Mandala showcase
    @SARAHPHIM: which was disappointing
    @SARAHPHIM: I mean, a *real* fan would have figured out I’m already here ;3
    @SARAHPHIM: don’t you fucking dare post Homestuck I can already see you typing Locker

    Boom. Suddenly it’s a game of Spot @SARAHPHIM. Who’s she going to surprise next? Who’s she calling out in her clues? What clues did she actually leave? (No, really. Tell her, please. She has no clue.)

    @SARAHPHIM: anyway, I’m a little worried Dommy’s over her head here, and so if anyone wants to give her tips on fighting Draculas, now would be the tskishavjajahab
    freedom in the flame

    Spoiler
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    Raz, you scoundrel! You planned this!
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    Errant has never reached that stupid tree. It's a point of equal pride and mystery within AEGIS, because she gets a lot more bites at this particular apple than most employees, averaging one Pop Quiz every six months or so (varied to optimize her surprise every time, of course). Just about everyone expects her to come out on top every time, which is why she's favored against the field in the internal betting pools whenever her name comes up in the hat. But it's a sucker bet, because pretty much the entire pyramid from Records on down is happy to take a shot at her on her latest attempt out the door.

    Command is very pleased about the whole arrangement. Errant's psych profile suggests that she responds extremely positively to failure, while 'defeating' an opponent of her stature is a boost to morale especially among the lower ranks lasting almost a full week. Errant's day-to-day productivity tends to dip for a period of approximately 48 hours while she studies and takes notes on what went wrong, but the net productivity gain among the company at large is as high as 3.7%. Careers in the Stats and Efficiency Department are made on smaller gains than that.

    Her first attempt had easily been the most fun. She was younger and a much less proven commodity, so most everybody was down to try standard tackles or punching her out, and the whole thing became a mad dash like something out of a kung fu movie. It was awesome. At one point she was fighting 23 field agents and desk employees in some combination in a full on bare knuckle brawl, which lasted close to 250 meters before she stepped on an E/M mine she just plain wasn't expecting to be part of the environment, and the whole thing ended with her flopped on the floor like an awkward metal fish while Agent Jenkins stood there on her chest shaking his head at her. 'Rookie.'

    After that it was an arms race. She took a stealth approach and circumvented mines by crawling through the air vents, which worked amazingly until a careless step alerted a full field squad on an unrelated live fire training exercise to her presence, which uh... did not end well for her. The next time, she'd undergone several enhancements and properly hit her now legendary level of toughness, but the vents had been filled with rapid-hardening foam traps and mostly all she got out of it was humiliation and a taste that took two full weeks and a night in the infirmary to get off of her tongue. She ditched the vent approach and focused harder on disarmament and one-on-many tactics, but somebody got permission to fight her with a TAG and everything sucked. Once she had the brilliant idea to just fling herself out of a window and try running outside from there, but it turned out that far from being brilliant this was the one move they'd always been ready for. Who even owned a trampoline anymore, honestly?! They also deducted the window repair cost out of her paycheck. It's a sore subject just how long it took her to pay it off, and people still laugh about it when they tell the story.

    The worst experience, ironically also her closest attempt, was the most recent Pop Quiz. It had been nothing but wall-to-wall traps as far as the eye could see. Fully coordinated, heavily armed riot squads in the halls. Net launchers, E-maulers, an honest-to-god pit with a tiger robot in it, more E/M mines than you could shake Victor's nanobots at, and somebody had the brilliant idea to screw with the lights in every room she entered so that she was never really able to see. But several years of intense combat training and practice through most every conceivable scenario left her ahead of the curve for once and she fought, jumped, or dodged through it all. She made it all the way to the door to the garden, and actually let herself believe she was finally going to make it.

    That's when she saw @SARAHPHIM. That was a dirty trick. She'd been so excited to see a friend, finally find a face that wasn't trying to blast her into oblivion, that she actually pulled up to wave and excitedly talk about what she was about to achieve. Which was exactly the moment she'd been shot through the front desk a full 15 meters behind her with all 337 hits of what had been at the time Sara's most famous lotus combo. The desk was reduced to a smoking crater. Errant envied it. Later, Sara got a big bonus on her contract. Errant got charged for the desk repairs. Lessons in humility, Soldier!

    *

    "Jesus fu--"

    Errant scrambles away from the mad science duo and narrowly avoids a barrage of small arms and laser fire via one impossibly acrobatic flip that saw her swing off the ceiling light and back toward the door. God damn it. Why today? Why today of all days?! This is not fair. She's filing an official complaint as soon as this is finished. Errant ducks and dodges out of the way of another volley and flips Dr. Skately off while she secures her new visor in place.

    Fine. You know what? Fine! If they were gonna do this to her, then she was fighting back with every new weapon they'd seen fit to hand her. And she would gloat with a smugness that'd make Nobunaga look humble when she finally touched that f*cking tree. Just bring it, Command. You'd better have prepared something extra special.

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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Quote Originally Posted by Thanqol View Post
    Your meeting, Brainstorm, is with Comstar1 because she is generally regarded to be the less evil and more co-operative of the two. Ferra is slated to meet with Comstar2 as she has more interdimensional experience. Feel free to go ahead to your relevant meetings whenever you're ready.
    "Do you resent your alternate self for trying to kill you?"

    The atmosphere could not possibly be more different from the standard prison drama interrogation room. No high-beam flourescents, no stark metal table. But still, as he taps his--too stiff, too inflexible--hand against the tun's head, Brainstorm is all too aware of the single high-piece glass pane in the room. No recording equipment down here, but he'll give his left prosthetic arm if there's nobody behind that glass.

    It's probably not a slight against him that he's been given the easy twin. (Sister? Clone? Coffee-shop AU? Future Brainstorm can figure that terminology out later.) Still, it feels like an insult.

    "Honest question. People don't normally try to stab one another for being bad Romeos."
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Quote Originally Posted by Raz_Fox View Post
    POTENTIAL 4

    @SARAHPHIM: lol :smugknife:
    @SARAHPHIM: This wouldn’t be fun if I hadn’t given Dominus a more obvious hint
    @SARAHPHIM: she *completely* missed the shout-out in the 3.22 stream, and the coordinates in the Dolphin Mandala showcase
    @SARAHPHIM: which was disappointing
    @SARAHPHIM: I mean, a *real* fan would have figured out I’m already here ;3
    @SARAHPHIM: don’t you fucking dare post Homestuck I can already see you typing Locker

    Boom. Suddenly it’s a game of Spot @SARAHPHIM. Who’s she going to surprise next? Who’s she calling out in her clues? What clues did she actually leave? (No, really. Tell her, please. She has no clue.)

    @SARAHPHIM: anyway, I’m a little worried Dommy’s over her head here, and so if anyone wants to give her tips on fighting Draculas, now would be the tskishavjajahab
    Locker: dammit called
    Angel-IKA: Oh my gosh they're fighting vampires it's just like my Castlevania crossover fanfiction
    Ferraphim1tp: Bode! What do you know about this!?
    Bode: I know nothing about this.
    Ferraphim1tp: Use your freaky powers!
    Bode: I am nowhere near @Sarahphim right now.
    Ferraphim1tp: >:3c So you're saying that you follow her around normally?
    Locker: lol she actually changed her status to afk
    Angel-IKA: 3.22 which year? Damn it, I'll have to check all of them!
    @SARAHPHIM: anyway, I’m a little worried Dommy’s over her head here, and so if anyone wants to give her tips on fighting Draculas, now would be the tskishavjajahab
    Dominus: I HAVE A PLAN
    Bode: Are you texting each other from the same room?
    Dominus: NO SHUT UP

    *

    An unreasonably thick leg steps from a passenger room - the kind of thick that is spelled with two c's. It's followed by the BAM of a torso of equally poorly spelled thickness. This immense chunk of meat and muscle blocks the entire corridor and both you and Dominus run directly into it and are bounced to the floor.

    The crisp white sailor outfit strains, and then rips slightly as it suddenly transitions from a resting pose into a full body flex - one arm above his head, palm open against the ceiling, the other twisted behind his back angled to a point, one leg raised to put his foot against his thigh. BAM.

    The door rips open to the compartment behind you. DIO stands there, enormously muscled back to you, face hidden in shadow, one fist resting on his hip, the other holding aloft a wine glass filled with red liquid. All about him, an army of the living dead, red eyes glinting from the compartment behind him.

    "Joel Joestar!" said DIO, raising a finger to point without turning around at all. "I never doubted that you would track me all the way out here!"

    "For all the people you killed... for Julius Caesar and for Fried Zeppili..." said Joestar, clenching a fist while a passionate tear ran down his face. His vision resolved into a sudden glare. "I will never forgive you!"

    "Every member of the Joestar bloodline has claimed that I am a curse shadowing their noble family..." DIO's head snapped around out of the shadow, matching Joestar's glare. "But you are instead a curse that shadows my immortal lifespan!"

    "How dare you...!" said Joestar, clenching his fist. "It is time for my final attack... RIPPLE SABER OVERDRI - NANI*?!?!!?!"

    His hand had reached for his belt where there was not a magical wood and gold flashlight. That ancient magical treasure was currently in the depths of a trash compactor due to some completely unforeseeable chain of events.

    Nobody moves. Sweat runs down Joestar's face. DIO lets out an ominous chuckle which gains volume into diabolical laughter.

    * Nani means 'what'.

    Quote Originally Posted by PhoeKun View Post
    "Jesus fu--"

    Errant scrambles away from the mad science duo and narrowly avoids a barrage of small arms and laser fire via one impossibly acrobatic flip that saw her swing off the ceiling light and back toward the door. God damn it. Why today? Why today of all days?! This is not fair. She's filing an official complaint as soon as this is finished. Errant ducks and dodges out of the way of another volley and flips Dr. Skately off while she secures her new visor in place.

    Fine. You know what? Fine! If they were gonna do this to her, then she was fighting back with every new weapon they'd seen fit to hand her. And she would gloat with a smugness that'd make Nobunaga look humble when she finally touched that f*cking tree. Just bring it, Command. You'd better have prepared something extra special.
    Some part of your mind is thinking that this is weird ambush. I mean, two science drones with small arms isn't exactly the sort of elaborate ambush that things have been pushing towards, is it?

    Then the visor settles over your eyes and - oh. Oh gosh.

    There are like a hundred ninjas in this room.

    Your visor flickers and rolls, adjusting rapidly like a camera lens but in a hundred places at once. It unpacks hundreds of different thermo-optic frequencies and signatures almost instantaneously. There are ninjas standing on the desks. There are ninjas hanging from the ceiling. There are ninjas in places where there should not be ninjas. They're all standing still as statues, shockswords and tactical bows raised. It's like being in a room full of statues - they're not shifting even slightly because to do so would blow their camouflage. They're waiting for you to walk into the arc of one of those swords or into the crosshairs of their bows so that the attack will come totally unexpectedly - or, totally unexpectedly for someone who wasn't capable of seeing every single part of the spectrum simultaneously.

    Still. While they're statues now the second they realize their cover is blown you're going to get rushed by a hundred ninjas.

    Would you like to Assess?

    Quote Originally Posted by Balmas View Post
    "Do you resent your alternate self for trying to kill you?"

    The atmosphere could not possibly be more different from the standard prison drama interrogation room. No high-beam flourescents, no stark metal table. But still, as he taps his--too stiff, too inflexible--hand against the tun's head, Brainstorm is all too aware of the single high-piece glass pane in the room. No recording equipment down here, but he'll give his left prosthetic arm if there's nobody behind that glass.

    It's probably not a slight against him that he's been given the easy twin. (Sister? Clone? Coffee-shop AU? Future Brainstorm can figure that terminology out later.) Still, it feels like an insult.

    "Honest question. People don't normally try to stab one another for being bad Romeos."
    "Uh, duh," said Comstar extremely flatly, holding an ice pack to her black eye. "I mean, maybe I was happy with my brand as a cool, fun, non-psycho villain? Maybe not every program on television needs to be ultradark 'adult' murderviolence? Maybe I was smart enough to figure out how to turn people into batteries and then choose not to do that? I could have been out of here by now on my own if they'd kept me in the kiddy ward, but now my secret's out and I'm suddenly a 'dimensional threat'. Plus she's a terrible actress, like you saw."

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldest View Post
    She did. It was... honest, in a way that it doesn't really fit in a commercial way. Terrible, too, but Ferra was willing to look past that given that she hadn't exactly seen any live plays before. Videos didn't count, they took the best takes, not the full, live thing. She was cheered by the villains creating something. Maybe if they did something constructive, they could be less restrained, or reformed, instead of imploding somebody and all their possible selves to make a power source.

    "Your plan was stupid and had a decent shot of getting you killed, though. First, you were trusting Aegis's restraints to hold in the face of torture and death. Second, you were trusting the possibility collapse to not take you with it. Third, you showed everyone that you know how to do that Rx transformation, which paints a target on your back. And fourth." She sits back in the chair, crossing her arms deliberately. No threats. "You painted that same target on my back. Which I do not appreciate."

    "So. Why?"
    "Any two bit idiot can put together a correct plan," said Comstar 2. She was nursing a black eye as well, but it was significantly more troublesome for her than Comstar1's because her other eye was an eyepatch. "Like that hack Dominus. Nobody respects her because every mission she shows exactly what she wants, how she'll get it, and what she's capable of. She's eight seasons deep into a show that's still following the formulae to episode one - nobody cares! But when you tune into my show you have no idea what you're going to get."

    Her voice is doing that same slightly breathy thing that you heard from the other Comstar when she was talking about her obsession. "What's going to happen? Murder-suicide? Terrible reality-changing secrets revealed? An open invasion of a megacorporation? @Sarahphim turned into a tiger? Everyone's watching it. I can feel it. Everyone tuned in, people are still going over the vods. I got everyone's attention. Everyone's. And the next time I'm in front of a camera everyone will tune in automatically. Can you imagine it? Plus," her vision turned into a glare and she raised her voice on the off chance it carried into the next interrogation room, "getting rid of that unambitious, mediocre hack would have been worth it all on its own!"

  15. - Top - End - #465
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    POTENTIAL 4

    Let’s focus on the positives here! And not positives in the sense of that old canard, “I’m positive we’re going to die!” There’s a Dracula hunter here. That’s good! She hasn’t completely blown her cover, Dominus just knows she’s one of her team, she can stay under the radar for now if she stays off her phone. That’s good! Um. Let’s see, what else. Oh, she’s not one of the living dead! Yet!

    Wait nope should have stopped at still being under the radar

    “What are you waiting for,” she hisses at Joel Joestar. “Kill the f*cking Dracula already.”

    [8 on Assessing Situation. What here can I use to have Joel Joestar save the day?]
    freedom in the flame

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    Quote Originally Posted by PhoeKun View Post
    Raz, you scoundrel! You planned this!
    Quote Originally Posted by BladeofObliviom View Post
    Great, and now I'm imagining what Raz's profile on a dating site would look like. "Must be okay with veils."
    Quote Originally Posted by Kasanip View Post
    I don't think there is such a time to have veils that it is not the fault of Raz_Fox.
    Quote Originally Posted by Dervag View Post
    It's a freaking Romulan dump truck. The Romulans are no more likely to build an unarmed warp-capable ship than they are to become a hippy commune.

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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Well, here it is at last: a situation AEGIS has not trained Errant for. It's not that she hasn't asked! It's just that the unofficial reply was "you watch too many movies, Agent." The eventual official line was that, while wanting to be prepared for all possible scenarios was admirable, Command was of the opinion that an agent faced with a 100-on-1 ambush was in such a phenomenally poor position that the only tactically advisable option was swift and total surrender.

    ...Right then. Thanks for nothing, Command. Bet you feel pretty silly now, don't you? And you could be sure they'd be watching every second of this Pop Quiz so they could write the book on tackling this scenario later. Which would be great for the next person AEGIS found that could handle all of Errant's augs, she's sure. Urgh. Ok, whatever. Fine. It's fine! Everything is fine. Errant is the Queen of Tacticool, even if she never quite got credit for it the way that any of the big name villains did. That's not her fault! It's just that "stop crime" tends to have fewer steps to it and more face punching than "commit crime". But compare the way she handles herself to someone like @Sarahphim, and you'd see. She's got a few seconds at least to find a line through all of these bows and shock swords. It should be easy, even, since she can see every last one of them as easy as breathing. Thank you, super awesome visor thing! So all she has to do is not freak out and

    "...Oh jeez, that is a lot of ninjas."

    Sh*t. Would you look at that? It's Errant Season!

    [Errant would love to Assess, but she also rolled a 6]

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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Quote Originally Posted by Thanqol View Post
    "Uh, duh," said Comstar extremely flatly, holding an ice pack to her black eye. "I mean, maybe I was happy with my brand as a cool, fun, non-psycho villain? Maybe not every program on television needs to be ultradark 'adult' murderviolence? Maybe I was smart enough to figure out how to turn people into batteries and then choose not to do that? I could have been out of here by now on my own if they'd kept me in the kiddy ward, but now my secret's out and I'm suddenly a 'dimensional threat'. Plus she's a terrible actress, like you saw."
    "That's exactly why I'm asking the question." Brainstorm shifts in his chair and leans further over the table. "You don't like her. She doesn't like you. You're in this for the exhibition, the exhilaration, the perverse thrill of millions of people watching you be bad. With your mind control--tech control? I'm working to understand that, honestly--you could have hit the big times of both good or evil with no issue or assistance needed."

    "And yet, here you sit, with an alternate dimension you. An Evil AU version. Could you help me understand that? Help me understand the logic behind summoning a version of yourself? Did using your tech control powers seem like cheating, somehow?"
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Quote Originally Posted by Thanqol View Post
    "Any two bit idiot can put together a correct plan," said Comstar 2. She was nursing a black eye as well, but it was significantly more troublesome for her than Comstar1's because her other eye was an eyepatch. "Like that hack Dominus. Nobody respects her because every mission she shows exactly what she wants, how she'll get it, and what she's capable of. She's eight seasons deep into a show that's still following the formulae to episode one - nobody cares! But when you tune into my show you have no idea what you're going to get."

    Her voice is doing that same slightly breathy thing that you heard from the other Comstar when she was talking about her obsession. "What's going to happen? Murder-suicide? Terrible reality-changing secrets revealed? An open invasion of a megacorporation? @Sarahphim turned into a tiger? Everyone's watching it. I can feel it. Everyone tuned in, people are still going over the vods. I got everyone's attention. Everyone's. And the next time I'm in front of a camera everyone will tune in automatically. Can you imagine it? Plus," her vision turned into a glare and she raised her voice on the off chance it carried into the next interrogation room, "getting rid of that unambitious, mediocre hack would have been worth it all on its own!"
    "So you decided that you should expose yourself as having the most dangerous technology in the world, expose that it even exists, force an entire megacorporation to back your play against a rival mega, all to keep everyone's eyes on you?"

    She pauses for a moment.

    "I feel like I should be remarkably angry at you. Hate what you did, what you exposed about how I was made. Hate that you know more about Dr. Gears than I do. But that's just... sad. That desperate need to be seen, recognized, and paid attention to... I feel like I can get that. Somewhat. It's not something I prioritize, at all. It's not something I ever want to. But like I said. I can see enough of what you're doing, to understand how much it drives you. A part of me respects it even, not the means or the motive, but the drive itself, that you need this and are willing to go this far for it."

    She sits back in the chair. Sighs, and looks to the side. Takes a moment to just breath, and focus on that cycle. Then, stop being a coward, and ask. "Do you know what my name is? The person who I was, in all her infinite variety, before Gears... yeah."
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Quote Originally Posted by Raz_Fox View Post
    POTENTIAL 4

    Let’s focus on the positives here! And not positives in the sense of that old canard, “I’m positive we’re going to die!” There’s a Dracula hunter here. That’s good! She hasn’t completely blown her cover, Dominus just knows she’s one of her team, she can stay under the radar for now if she stays off her phone. That’s good! Um. Let’s see, what else. Oh, she’s not one of the living dead! Yet!

    Wait nope should have stopped at still being under the radar

    “What are you waiting for,” she hisses at Joel Joestar. “Kill the f*cking Dracula already.”

    [8 on Assessing Situation. What here can I use to have Joel Joestar save the day?]
    "Oh?" said DIO. "Are you not going to strike me down with your Ripple Saber Overdrive, Joestar-san?"

    Sweat pours down Joestar's face. He gives the impression of having an extremely frantic and long-winded internal monologue. Everyone waits patiently for him to finish, anything less would be impolite.

    Then he laughs and folds his arms across his chest. "Of course not, DIO - for I have seen through your trap!"

    "NANI*!?!?" said DIO, eyes bulging, composure shattered in an instant.

    Joestar touches two fingers to his forehead and points. "You expected me to attack you directly with my Ripple Saber Overdrive. But you forgot that vampires do not cast reflections - and so I can see what's waiting behind you through the reflection in your wine glass!"

    DIO's eyes are wide, staring in horror at the wine glass he was holding. He makes a kind of choking, gurgling sound of shock and surprise.

    "Yes, I see it! The final and most deadly of your Chess Statues - LEFT HAND CASTLE OF WHITE! You were intending to castle behind him when I attacked!"

    DIO recovered from his shocked expression suddenly. He threw his head back and laughed "Just what I would expect from the Queen of Black! Good, good, then Joestar! This fight seems like it will be interesting after all! So now that you are confident you have seen through my trap what is stopping you from attacking?"

    Okay so this seems like it could go on for a while.

    But while it does you've come to what's really the only conclusion here - Joel Joestar is stalling because he's missing that wooden lightsaber doohicky that an unknown person threw into the trash. Ah, but if only there was someone here who had experience rummaging through trash for the lost possessions of rich, entitled jerks.

    Quote Originally Posted by PhoeKun View Post
    ...Right then. Thanks for nothing, Command. Bet you feel pretty silly now, don't you? And you could be sure they'd be watching every second of this Pop Quiz so they could write the book on tackling this scenario later. Which would be great for the next person AEGIS found that could handle all of Errant's augs, she's sure. Urgh. Ok, whatever. Fine. It's fine! Everything is fine. Errant is the Queen of Tacticool, even if she never quite got credit for it the way that any of the big name villains did. That's not her fault! It's just that "stop crime" tends to have fewer steps to it and more face punching than "commit crime". But compare the way she handles herself to someone like @Sarahphim, and you'd see. She's got a few seconds at least to find a line through all of these bows and shock swords. It should be easy, even, since she can see every last one of them as easy as breathing. Thank you, super awesome visor thing! So all she has to do is not freak out and

    "...Oh jeez, that is a lot of ninjas."

    Sh*t. Would you look at that? It's Errant Season!

    [Errant would love to Assess, but she also rolled a 6]
    "Still not psychologically stable. Good."
    "Wait, really? The meme play worked?"
    "The meme play always works against Agent Errant."
    "You're joking - who's scared of ninjas?"
    "Agent Errant isn't scared. She just has no ability to objectively evaluate threats without reference to third-party media. It's a strength and a weakness, and one that we will continue to cultivate."
    "Wait, is that why the Director of Animated Programming is here?"
    "Yes, of course. We need to manage what she watches to ensure we have a handle on what she believes is possible. Certain categories of threat need to remain outside of her context, especially now."
    "Holy crap. I thought that the small numbers of characters on screen in Hyperborea was because of low animation budgets."
    "No, it's because of high black ops budgets. We could invest billions into an encrypted system of backdoors and kill-switches in her augmentics and hope that nobody finds them, or we could throw a couple hundred thousand into some cartoons to influence her psych profile so that she freaks out when confronting a threat she hasn't seen beaten up on television."
    "And, conversely, she'll take on impossible odds if we've conditioned her to believe that it's possible to win?"
    "Precisely."

    *

    Errant! You have escaped from the ninjas. Barely. It was a mad rush but you managed to give them the slip by going up rather than down and you're just ahead of the search waves. You have been electrocuted so many times in rapid succession you're causing massive static electricity jumps every time you go near anything metallic, and you've got half a dozen arrows stuck in your dermal plating. But you're just barely ahead.

    But you have been funneled into a corridor that's going to take you right by Mr. Big Show's office. He's one of AEGIS' combat instructors and martial artists, and never turns down an opportunity to bring some humility to his students. What is your plan going to be to get past him?

    Quote Originally Posted by Balmas View Post
    "That's exactly why I'm asking the question." Brainstorm shifts in his chair and leans further over the table. "You don't like her. She doesn't like you. You're in this for the exhibition, the exhilaration, the perverse thrill of millions of people watching you be bad. With your mind control--tech control? I'm working to understand that, honestly--you could have hit the big times of both good or evil with no issue or assistance needed."

    "And yet, here you sit, with an alternate dimension you. An Evil AU version. Could you help me understand that? Help me understand the logic behind summoning a version of yourself? Did using your tech control powers seem like cheating, somehow?"
    "Yeesh, I don't go around throwing your face in the fact that you're in it to prove that you're the smartest boy in class," said Comstar, pouting and looking off to the side. "Look, coming up with ideas for shows is hard, okay? I just wanted to ask a more successful version of myself for some advice, that's all."

    It can be very hard to respect this person.

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldest View Post
    "So you decided that you should expose yourself as having the most dangerous technology in the world, expose that it even exists, force an entire megacorporation to back your play against a rival mega, all to keep everyone's eyes on you?"

    She pauses for a moment.

    "I feel like I should be remarkably angry at you. Hate what you did, what you exposed about how I was made. Hate that you know more about Dr. Gears than I do. But that's just... sad. That desperate need to be seen, recognized, and paid attention to... I feel like I can get that. Somewhat. It's not something I prioritize, at all. It's not something I ever want to. But like I said. I can see enough of what you're doing, to understand how much it drives you. A part of me respects it even, not the means or the motive, but the drive itself, that you need this and are willing to go this far for it."

    She sits back in the chair. Sighs, and looks to the side. Takes a moment to just breath, and focus on that cycle. Then, stop being a coward, and ask. "Do you know what my name is? The person who I was, in all her infinite variety, before Gears... yeah."
    "Do you honestly expect me to reveal a secret like that without a single camera on me?" said Comstar2 looking at you like you were an idiot. "I mean, there's an easy way to get the answers out of me, you know. Let me out, come to catch me, I'll monologue whatever you like at you. But I don't think you will - because you're an empty robot who has no idea about motivation. You have no drive. If you really knew what it was like to want something - if you were genuinely prepared to make sacrifices to get it - then there'd be no stopping you. But you're exactly the same kind of empty shell as my lame-ass double over there and I don't respect that at all."

    [She wants to shift your Mundane up and Danger down. Accept what she says or reject her influence.]

  20. - Top - End - #470
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    POTENTIAL 4

    By train regulations, the doors to the service areas are always meant to be locked, only openable by a swipe of a keycard. But trains are staffed by people. It takes Sara just under four minutes to find a door that’s been left unlocked for convenience of use.

    “I observed a passenger depositing a personal item belonging to Mr. Joestar in the pneumatic garbage chute earlier,” she explains to Dominus and the remainder of the strike team. “It appeared to be composed of wood with golden highlights, consistent with what one might expect from a so-called Ripple Saber Overdrive. If we suspend the pneumatic system and search in grid formation through the tanks, it should be located in less than 10 minutes, by which time I expect Mr. Joestar to have exhausted his repertoire of banter with the Dracula.” Don’t keep calling him the Dracula! That’s super suspicious! Dominus is probably on to you.

    She’s able to access the pump override no problem, and the doors to the reeling tanks of perishable waste and used wrappers and entire shrimp carcasses open wide. Sara pulls her (intentionally plain and beige) uniform kerchief over her face, because if you black out in the tanks ain’t nowhere to go but down.

    She looks to Dominus for confirmation of orders, in the vain hope she totally hasn’t already been busted.
    freedom in the flame

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    Quote Originally Posted by PhoeKun View Post
    Raz, you scoundrel! You planned this!
    Quote Originally Posted by BladeofObliviom View Post
    Great, and now I'm imagining what Raz's profile on a dating site would look like. "Must be okay with veils."
    Quote Originally Posted by Kasanip View Post
    I don't think there is such a time to have veils that it is not the fault of Raz_Fox.
    Quote Originally Posted by Dervag View Post
    It's a freaking Romulan dump truck. The Romulans are no more likely to build an unarmed warp-capable ship than they are to become a hippy commune.

  21. - Top - End - #471
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    Ok! That (ow) went way (ow) better than (ow) that time Princess Alina fought that platoon of evil pegasus troopers to save her sister! Of course, it (ow ow ow) helped that Errant had been fighting (kzzt!) to run away. But still! She'd count this as a personal best no matter how much farther she made it. A tiny fist pump, and her window for self congratulation closes. She bends down and very gently sets the arrows she's plucked out of her body on the ground so they don't go clattering everywhere and alerting anyone to her presence.

    Which would be really bad right now! Errant is completely certain that she could at minimum fight any of AEGIS' combat instructors or star agents to a standstill right now, and probably an outright victory, but what she absolutely couldn't do was win a fight like that under the constant threat of a hundred ninja ambush. She didn't have them completely shaken. She couldn't: they knew exactly where she was trying to go. Just as well it's Mr. Big Show office she's stumbled across, because avoidance is back to being the strategy of the day.

    Errant did not like Mr. Big Show very much, as far as her teachers went. He was stodgy and old fashioned, made weird jokes, and constantly diverted from the prescribed teaching methods to share folksy wisdom about waterfalls and teacups. Plus, he was really rude to Ferra that one time. Still, that didn't mean he was wrong. "The best way to take a punch," he liked to say, "Is to not take a punch at all. And that begins with not seeking out fights." That's definitely good advice here. If he found out she was here and in the middle of a Pop Quiz, he'd not only block the corridor by existing, but he'd make the ensuing fight about making as much noise and wasting as much time as possible. Then after she got shockbladed into, erm, compliance, he'd drop super heavy magnets on her wrists and lecture her about impatience or blah blah blah.

    Ugh. Right. So no counting on her speed to get her past this before he could do anything about it. She could try to shimmy up to the wall and try to ninja flip up and over the door frame, she supposes, but the walls were full of data jacks and access panels and other extremely metal things, and damn it she's still holding a charge. She tries to put her hands together and gets an arc for her troubles. Annoying. But, hm. Actually, could she use that somehow? Bleh, don't dwell on it Euna. Ok yeah, moving on. She could bust a hole in the floor or ceiling and change floors, but down was like to be full of ninjas and up was away from the goal and... honestly, odds were good she was only going to make the garden by getting overtop her target area and dropping directly through the rooms between her and it as it was, and she knew already she was paying for any of the damage she caused as part of this test. That is, what's a dozen paychecks between friends? But maybe don't go causing collateral damage until it's necessary.

    All right, that's too much thinking time. Simple is best after all. Errant jumps into the air and does a half flip so that when she clings to the ceiling with her hands and feet her head is at least pointing in the correct direction. She's not stupid enough to try the vents again, and AEGIS prohibits running visible pipes or cables indoors as both a safety and security measure, but Errant's grip is strong enough that she can support herself up there with only superficial damage to the surface. This'd be a quickie nanopaste repair job at the worst. Much more budget conscious, in terms of wrecking AEGIS' stuff to past their stupid battle test.

    So now it was just a matter of staying flat and staying quiet as she went, while still trying to keep so that she doesn't get tracked down and surrounded again. Easy, right?

  22. - Top - End - #472
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    Quote Originally Posted by Thanqol View Post
    "Yeesh, I don't go around throwing your face in the fact that you're in it to prove that you're the smartest boy in class," said Comstar, pouting and looking off to the side. "Look, coming up with ideas for shows is hard, okay? I just wanted to ask a more successful version of myself for some advice, that's all."

    It can be very hard to respect this person.
    "That's not--I don't--" Victor huffs, and sits back heavily. "Look, I'm not here to rub your nose in it. Or to prove that I'm more intelligent." What's the point in repeatedly noting the obvious, after all?

    "I don't like being down here any more than you do. My limbs are gone, everything feels wrong, and the candles smell bad. I'm here because when I look at you, I don't see a dimensional threat; I see a genius with potential. Give that genius some support, some friends, some way to act out in a less violent fashion, and you're going places. But you're going nowhere here. You don't change something, the most you can look forward to is Brutus'ing Julius Comstar.

    "But..." The word hangs in the air like a stale fart, and Brainstorm grits his teeth. "But if you were to show AEGIS that you can be useful--can be trusted not to stab them in the back--you might be able to see the light of day again. Trust me, I hate them too, and it absolutely kills me to imagine you on their side. But I need your help too, and I'm not gonna bring all of AEGIS down on my family just to bust your ass out. Work with me here."
    Last edited by Balmas; 2019-08-30 at 12:54 AM.
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Quote Originally Posted by Thanqol View Post
    "Do you honestly expect me to reveal a secret like that without a single camera on me?" said Comstar2 looking at you like you were an idiot. "I mean, there's an easy way to get the answers out of me, you know. Let me out, come to catch me, I'll monologue whatever you like at you. But I don't think you will - because you're an empty robot who has no idea about motivation. You have no drive. If you really knew what it was like to want something - if you were genuinely prepared to make sacrifices to get it - then there'd be no stopping you. But you're exactly the same kind of empty shell as my lame-ass double over there and I don't respect that at all."

    [She wants to shift your Mundane up and Danger down. Accept what she says or reject her influence.]
    [failed to reject influence with a 5: marked angry, made shift, potential get]

    She very much wants to hit her. Act out, make her pay for that insult, for that negation of her being a person. And there's a second there where her fist moves, but she draws it back in, deliberately relaxing it. Not good, frankly, when you're staring somebody down that wants to break out of here and... well, do whatever. But make it work. "That's such a stupid idea, I'm not even going to humor it. But. Empty robot, no motivation. Right. I'm reactive, yes. I am going to be working to make the world better, and a lot of that is stopping the status quo from getting worse. That's not going to look like I'm a go getter, and I sure as hell do not have it all figured out. But." She shifts forward, glaring. "I am not empty. You are. You have one, hollow motivation. Attention. You want it all. And you will do anything for it. Anything. Tear out an eye. Kill another version of yourself, kill all the other possible versions of yourself. All for that sweet, sweet audience. You are a paperclip AI given human form and and an even worse, stupider motivation. So if you want to stop being one dimensional, shallow, and empty, I'm right here. Make some art. Make something creative. But I don't think you are going to. I think you just want another hit of dopamine, and you've found the button that gives you that and you're going to keep hammering it and tearing anything you need to apart to get that."

    [This pretty much screams provoke to me, which is unfortunately something I am very bad at: 7 - 2 is a 5, if she is susceptible to my words.]
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Quote Originally Posted by Raz_Fox View Post
    POTENTIAL 4

    By train regulations, the doors to the service areas are always meant to be locked, only openable by a swipe of a keycard. But trains are staffed by people. It takes Sara just under four minutes to find a door that’s been left unlocked for convenience of use.

    “I observed a passenger depositing a personal item belonging to Mr. Joestar in the pneumatic garbage chute earlier,” she explains to Dominus and the remainder of the strike team. “It appeared to be composed of wood with golden highlights, consistent with what one might expect from a so-called Ripple Saber Overdrive. If we suspend the pneumatic system and search in grid formation through the tanks, it should be located in less than 10 minutes, by which time I expect Mr. Joestar to have exhausted his repertoire of banter with the Dracula.” Don’t keep calling him the Dracula! That’s super suspicious! Dominus is probably on to you.

    She’s able to access the pump override no problem, and the doors to the reeling tanks of perishable waste and used wrappers and entire shrimp carcasses open wide. Sara pulls her (intentionally plain and beige) uniform kerchief over her face, because if you black out in the tanks ain’t nowhere to go but down.

    She looks to Dominus for confirmation of orders, in the vain hope she totally hasn’t already been busted.
    "Hey," said Dominus, grabbing you by the arm as you are about to go in.

    She looks... sympathetic? "I get it. This is your day off. I ruined it. Let's just, f*cking, ditch, all right? The chopper's almost here. I can take you somewhere nice, and leave you alone there if that's what you want. I'll signal the authorities once we're clear and they'll clean things up here. This doesn't have to be your problem."

    [Dominus is trying to shift your Saviour down and Mundane up. Accept what she says or reject her influence, she also counts as a member of your audience.]

    Quote Originally Posted by PhoeKun View Post
    All right, that's too much thinking time. Simple is best after all. Errant jumps into the air and does a half flip so that when she clings to the ceiling with her hands and feet her head is at least pointing in the correct direction. She's not stupid enough to try the vents again, and AEGIS prohibits running visible pipes or cables indoors as both a safety and security measure, but Errant's grip is strong enough that she can support herself up there with only superficial damage to the surface. This'd be a quickie nanopaste repair job at the worst. Much more budget conscious, in terms of wrecking AEGIS' stuff to past their stupid battle test.

    So now it was just a matter of staying flat and staying quiet as she went, while still trying to keep so that she doesn't get tracked down and surrounded again. Easy, right?
    Mr. Big Show has invested a lot into the aesthetic of his office. It's a beautiful indoor rock garden, open and spacious, delicately raked sand with raised wooden platforms. Weapons racks, calligraphy scrolls, and lunatic pillars of books are everywhere. He is wearing embroidered green and white robes, long cascading beard brushing against the floorboards, quietly going through some sort of tai chi tea drinking ceremony with his eyes closed. It's more or less exactly what you'd expect to find him doing in any given moment if he was hanging out here by himself.

    His nose twitches ominously as you enter but his eyes remain closed. The good news is that you had a shower after finishing your race, Errant - but tell me about your favourite brand of shampoo.

    While you're frozen in thought, your visor comes active. It starts wildly cycling as it tries to focus on Mr. Big Show - outlining him in a hundred different sizes and trying to cycle through them rapidly. It's a genuine surprise to watch it try - you thought this thing was just for spotting invisible people, but it's actually trying to give you a honest assessment of how large Big Show is at any given moment, one of the most notoriously difficult things to track in martial arts. If you were able to have an accurate reading of his size and reach then you would have a genuinely decisive advantage against him. Roll to Unleash Your Powers to see how it goes.

    Quote Originally Posted by Balmas View Post
    "That's not--I don't--" Victor huffs, and sits back heavily. "Look, I'm not here to rub your nose in it. Or to prove that I'm more intelligent." What's the point in repeatedly noting the obvious, after all?

    "I don't like being down here any more than you do. My limbs are gone, everything feels wrong, and the candles smell bad. I'm here because when I look at you, I don't see a dimensional threat; I see a genius with potential. Give that genius some support, some friends, some way to act out in a less violent fashion, and you're going places. But you're going nowhere here. You don't change something, the most you can look forward to is Brutus'ing Julius Comstar.

    "But..." The word hangs in the air like a stale fart, and Brainstorm grits his teeth. "But if you were to show AEGIS that you can be useful--can be trusted not to stab them in the back--you might be able to see the light of day again. Trust me, I hate them too, and it absolutely kills me to imagine you on their side. But I need your help too, and I'm not gonna bring all of AEGIS down on my family just to bust your ass out. Work with me here."
    "Oh? Oh!" said Comstar. "Of course! You need me for something! Oh, of course you do, that makes total sense, haha, oh for sure - I have seen what the dark side looks like, officer, and I want no part of it. I am looking forwards to reforming into a model citizen and leaving queen bitchwad down here by herself. So what do you need?"

    She flexes her fingers and idly strums them. No, not idly - she's deliberately rat-tatting out a hexahedranic code at you. If this meeting was being watched by cameras hooked up to high-tech codebreaking programs they'd be able to solve for it but here, in Hacker's Prison, you two are the only two smart enough to perform that level of cryptography in your heads.

    -So... you hate AEGIS, huh? Just how badly?-

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldest View Post
    [failed to reject influence with a 5: marked angry, made shift, potential get]

    She very much wants to hit her. Act out, make her pay for that insult, for that negation of her being a person. And there's a second there where her fist moves, but she draws it back in, deliberately relaxing it. Not good, frankly, when you're staring somebody down that wants to break out of here and... well, do whatever. But make it work. "That's such a stupid idea, I'm not even going to humor it. But. Empty robot, no motivation. Right. I'm reactive, yes. I am going to be working to make the world better, and a lot of that is stopping the status quo from getting worse. That's not going to look like I'm a go getter, and I sure as hell do not have it all figured out. But." She shifts forward, glaring. "I am not empty. You are. You have one, hollow motivation. Attention. You want it all. And you will do anything for it. Anything. Tear out an eye. Kill another version of yourself, kill all the other possible versions of yourself. All for that sweet, sweet audience. You are a paperclip AI given human form and and an even worse, stupider motivation. So if you want to stop being one dimensional, shallow, and empty, I'm right here. Make some art. Make something creative. But I don't think you are going to. I think you just want another hit of dopamine, and you've found the button that gives you that and you're going to keep hammering it and tearing anything you need to apart to get that."

    [This pretty much screams provoke to me, which is unfortunately something I am very bad at: 7 - 2 is a 5, if she is susceptible to my words.]
    Anger is a new one to you, Ferra. This is the first time in your life you've ever felt personal hatred for someone. It's honestly a little bit shocking how quickly and totally it takes over you - and you'd be even more surprised if you knew just how totally it blinded you to the faint ultrapink glow that Comstar is able to hide just below your nose while she smirks punchably at you.

    You'll be happy to learn that your assessment is dead on. Comstar2 is too driven by her base impulses to make the smart play; to hack your brain - if such a thing was even possible. She might not be hacking your brain because she knows that that is beyond even her abilities. She's hacking something different - she's hacking your Rx core.

    Spoiler
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    The next time you regenerate your personality will transform into an alternate reality Comstar-Ferra hybrid. As a player you have full freedom to interpret what this means and what you're comfortable with - it can be two personalities existing simultaneously in the same head, a version of Comstar living by Ferra's Rules, Ferra maintaining her normal personality but changing all her Rules into things that makes sense for Comstar, etc. It's advised to pick Technology Control and Superintelligence as replacement powers but that's up to you as well. I'm putting these decisions entirely in your hands; it's an opportunity to get weird and creative.


    "You have no idea what it's like," she said, pouting and folding her arms in a mirror of the gesture her double just gave Brainstorm the next room over. "But you will. One day you'll learn what it is to want something and then you'll understand."

    "So, did you come here to ask something specific?"
    Last edited by Thanqol; 2019-08-31 at 02:38 AM.

  25. - Top - End - #475
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    POTENTIAL 0

    “I really have no idea what you’re talking about, ma’am,” Sarah DuMonte says, quizzically. And she sells it. Vaguely Eastern European accent, bafflement pivoting into confidence. You don’t get to be @SARAHPHIM without being a damn good actor. And knowing how to straight-up gaslight someone in order to win. “I’m here because you’re right. It’s time for the old order to fall.” She snaps off one of Dominus’s salutes, selling the hell out of this. Maybe... maybe, Dominus might decide in the confusion she settled on the wrong person as being @SARAHPHIM. Or maybe she’s just impressed by Sara’s dedication to being undercover, and to paying attention to Dominus’s iconography. Awww, she really does care!

    But c’mon it’s totally that Sarah DuMonte is the wrong person to suspect of being secretly @SARAHPHIM.

    Sarah then proceeds to demonstrate her convictions by jumping into the tank and joining the grid search. Maybe she’s able to wade through half-melted banana peels and ice cream containers and empty pill bottles because of her paramilitary training! Or maybe it’s because she got used to it a long time ago. Or maybe it’s because @SARAHPHIM has a habit of getting into character and then refusing to leave it.

    [10 to Reject, marking potential by proving her wrong!]
    freedom in the flame

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    Quote Originally Posted by PhoeKun View Post
    Raz, you scoundrel! You planned this!
    Quote Originally Posted by BladeofObliviom View Post
    Great, and now I'm imagining what Raz's profile on a dating site would look like. "Must be okay with veils."
    Quote Originally Posted by Kasanip View Post
    I don't think there is such a time to have veils that it is not the fault of Raz_Fox.
    Quote Originally Posted by Dervag View Post
    It's a freaking Romulan dump truck. The Romulans are no more likely to build an unarmed warp-capable ship than they are to become a hippy commune.

  26. - Top - End - #476
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    Her shampoo? Why would that matter? It's... oh. Hell.

    Well as you know, Errant's hair is silver. Except it's not, actually! Haha, can you imagine? She's Asian; of course it's black! Also she's a field agent for a publicly traded peace keeping company: she does not make the kind of money that would let her get gene therapy to customize aspects of herself like that. I mean, let's be real for a moment, she can't even afford the consultation for something like that. So yeah, she dyes. Like a nerd. And that's important, because she lives a very active lifestyle that sometimes (like today!) necessitates more than one shower in a day. And technology has done a lot of amazing things over the years, but it hasn't yet invented hair dyes that don't wash out. Normal hair care routines would turn her blond inside of a week. Hence, her options: either spend a quarter of her life and savings in a salon, give up and go back to being the ugly Korean girl, or become an exclusive customer of Garnier-Gliss' color guard shampoo (and conditioner. Come on). It's a proprietary formula that actually strengthens color in hair rather than washing it out, which minimizes the amount of maintenance she has to put into it.

    It's expensive beyond reason, but it's cheaper than the alternatives and since it mostly uses a blend of synthetic citrus oils it smells really nice and makes her hair so soft and it is absolutely worth it. It's fine. It's fine, ok? She still saves 17% of her paycheck on average, she'll manage. She'll... m-maybe she'll marry a rich girl. It could happen!

    Anyway it's probably already given her away, hasn't it? Good plan, Euna! You're doing great at this whole 'thinking' thing today, Command will be very proud of you. Luckily, she's got this amazing visor. Watching it rapid-cycle while she watches Mr. Big Show is honestly a little dizzying at first, but the longer she watches the narrower the band becomes and the easier it gets. This is incredible. Actually incredible! Powers like this are the kind of things she's only dreamed of. She has to fight off the urge to whistle. Then the urge to laugh. Dare she even hope this might turn out to be fun?

    [Errant Unleashes her powers and rolls double sixes. So with the -1 because her Freak is somehow preposterously low, that's an 11. Let's go nuts]

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    Quote Originally Posted by Thanqol View Post
    "Oh? Oh!" said Comstar. "Of course! You need me for something! Oh, of course you do, that makes total sense, haha, oh for sure - I have seen what the dark side looks like, officer, and I want no part of it. I am looking forwards to reforming into a model citizen and leaving queen bitchwad down here by herself. So what do you need?"

    She flexes her fingers and idly strums them. No, not idly - she's deliberately rat-tatting out a hexahedranic code at you. If this meeting was being watched by cameras hooked up to high-tech codebreaking programs they'd be able to solve for it but here, in Hacker's Prison, you two are the only two smart enough to perform that level of cryptography in your heads.

    -So... you hate AEGIS, huh? Just how badly?-
    "You know Prometheus. Probably. AI, used to run Blacksun's organization. Your evil twin knew him well enough to hunt him down and coerce him into joining her attack on AEGIS. Completely, 100%, bat**** insane. And AEGIS has decided that they want to trust their organization to it without finding out how the original went insane."

    Damn her. Damn her for thinking of that before he did.

    -General background-level hatred for being a megacorp. An organization that exerts far too great an influence on the world for its mere existence. Promises the world that they'll protect the world from problems they largely create. Heros for profit. Better than most megacorps, but the world would still be better without so much power concentrated in so few hands.-
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  28. - Top - End - #478
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Quote Originally Posted by Raz_Fox View Post
    POTENTIAL 0

    “I really have no idea what you’re talking about, ma’am,” Sarah DuMonte says, quizzically. And she sells it. Vaguely Eastern European accent, bafflement pivoting into confidence. You don’t get to be @SARAHPHIM without being a damn good actor. And knowing how to straight-up gaslight someone in order to win. “I’m here because you’re right. It’s time for the old order to fall.” She snaps off one of Dominus’s salutes, selling the hell out of this. Maybe... maybe, Dominus might decide in the confusion she settled on the wrong person as being @SARAHPHIM. Or maybe she’s just impressed by Sara’s dedication to being undercover, and to paying attention to Dominus’s iconography. Awww, she really does care!

    But c’mon it’s totally that Sarah DuMonte is the wrong person to suspect of being secretly @SARAHPHIM.

    Sarah then proceeds to demonstrate her convictions by jumping into the tank and joining the grid search. Maybe she’s able to wade through half-melted banana peels and ice cream containers and empty pill bottles because of her paramilitary training! Or maybe it’s because she got used to it a long time ago. Or maybe it’s because @SARAHPHIM has a habit of getting into character and then refusing to leave it.

    [10 to Reject, marking potential by proving her wrong!]
    You get a good look at Dominus' entirely flummoxed face, and see her subtly scrolling back up through the chat log to check if she was imagining this whole situation from stress or vampire magic. But then you're off, and gone, and to work.

    So let's ask the question, Ms. DuMonte.

    How, exactly, do you know your way around the maintenance panels and garbage compactors of a luxury train? What were you doing when you acquired the very specific skillset of digging through the garbage in the search for the lost luxuries of important passengers? How is being up to your elbows in garbage at all compatible with the mythos of @SARAHPHIM, the promised champion who beat her powers out of Lucifer Morningstar when he dared to cross you?

    Quote Originally Posted by PhoeKun View Post
    Anyway it's probably already given her away, hasn't it? Good plan, Euna! You're doing great at this whole 'thinking' thing today, Command will be very proud of you. Luckily, she's got this amazing visor. Watching it rapid-cycle while she watches Mr. Big Show is honestly a little dizzying at first, but the longer she watches the narrower the band becomes and the easier it gets. This is incredible. Actually incredible! Powers like this are the kind of things she's only dreamed of. She has to fight off the urge to whistle. Then the urge to laugh. Dare she even hope this might turn out to be fun?

    [Errant Unleashes her powers and rolls double sixes. So with the -1 because her Freak is somehow preposterously low, that's an 11. Let's go nuts]
    Mr. Big Show finishes his tea. He bows respectfully to the shrine, eyes still closed. The visor adjusts and angles -

    And then he's slamming the massive teacup into the roof around you like a man trying to catch a spider in a glass. Big Show is just as capable of altering the size of things he is holding, and already he's kicking a bo staff into his hands where it expands to the size of a telephone pole - but you saw it coming.

    You visor is giving you a perfect read on the shift of energy that distorts the martial artist's size. It visualizes it as a swinging light source - the closer it gets to him the larger the shadow he casts, and therefore the larger his body. As he sends it further away the more the light wraps around him and the smaller he seems. Being able to view the proximity or distance of that light lets you predict exactly how big he is about to be. And if you can predict that he's no longer a lightning-fast teleporting whirlwind who can be everywhere at once - he's just an unusually skilled martial artist who doesn't know you're on to him.

    This is your fight. You're almost shocked to realize it as it's start, because it must be the feeling he's felt every time he's fought you. You've already won. The matter is already resolved. All you need to do is follow the flowing currents of strike and counter to its conclusion and your victory.

    Tell us how you win the fight. Then roll to Directly Engage to see if you can pick up anything extra along the way (don't take a powerful blow if you fail to resist his blows, that result means instead that he successfully delays you for too long).

    Quote Originally Posted by Balmas View Post
    "You know Prometheus. Probably. AI, used to run Blacksun's organization. Your evil twin knew him well enough to hunt him down and coerce him into joining her attack on AEGIS. Completely, 100%, bat**** insane. And AEGIS has decided that they want to trust their organization to it without finding out how the original went insane."

    Damn her. Damn her for thinking of that before he did.

    -General background-level hatred for being a megacorp. An organization that exerts far too great an influence on the world for its mere existence. Promises the world that they'll protect the world from problems they largely create. Heros for profit. Better than most megacorps, but the world would still be better without so much power concentrated in so few hands.-
    "Oh, of course," said Comstar, leaning forward, unable to keep the grin off her face as she realized how much leverage she had here. "Sure. Sure. Awesome. Where do I come in?"

    -Uhuh, uhuh,- she tapped out. -So you're probably thrilled by the idea of them stealing your work to build a Skynet, huh? That sounds like the kind of thing you want to stop. The kind of thing you'd want to make a show of stopping, huh?-

  29. - Top - End - #479
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Quote Originally Posted by Thanqol View Post
    Anger is a new one to you, Ferra. This is the first time in your life you've ever felt personal hatred for someone. It's honestly a little bit shocking how quickly and totally it takes over you - and you'd be even more surprised if you knew just how totally it blinded you to the faint ultrapink glow that Comstar is able to hide just below your nose while she smirks punchably at you.

    You'll be happy to learn that your assessment is dead on. Comstar2 is too driven by her base impulses to make the smart play; to hack your brain - if such a thing was even possible. She might not be hacking your brain because she knows that that is beyond even her abilities. She's hacking something different - she's hacking your Rx core.

    Spoiler
    Show
    The next time you regenerate your personality will transform into an alternate reality Comstar-Ferra hybrid. As a player you have full freedom to interpret what this means and what you're comfortable with - it can be two personalities existing simultaneously in the same head, a version of Comstar living by Ferra's Rules, Ferra maintaining her normal personality but changing all her Rules into things that makes sense for Comstar, etc. It's advised to pick Technology Control and Superintelligence as replacement powers but that's up to you as well. I'm putting these decisions entirely in your hands; it's an opportunity to get weird and creative.


    "You have no idea what it's like," she said, pouting and folding her arms in a mirror of the gesture her double just gave Brainstorm the next room over. "But you will. One day you'll learn what it is to want something and then you'll understand."

    "So, did you come here to ask something specific?"
    She takes a moment to compose herself. Deep breath, yes, never mind that she doesn't need to respire. It's the thought that counts, literally here. Focus on emulating them, you are focusing on something other than that burning fury. "Yes. I came here to ask something specific. But I think you've made it clear that you have no interest in answering a question of mine. And it's the sort of question that would tell you information by asking it. So, unless you've got anything convincing to say as to why I should continue our conversation, I believe I'll just take my leave here." She stands up from the chair, quirking an eyebrow at her. "You have twenty seconds."
    LGBTA+itP

  30. - Top - End - #480
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldest View Post
    She takes a moment to compose herself. Deep breath, yes, never mind that she doesn't need to respire. It's the thought that counts, literally here. Focus on emulating them, you are focusing on something other than that burning fury. "Yes. I came here to ask something specific. But I think you've made it clear that you have no interest in answering a question of mine. And it's the sort of question that would tell you information by asking it. So, unless you've got anything convincing to say as to why I should continue our conversation, I believe I'll just take my leave here." She stands up from the chair, quirking an eyebrow at her. "You have twenty seconds."
    "Oh, well," said Comstar2 with such saccharine fakeness that it's somehow even worse than her acting. "My secret lair contains an unstable dimensional flux capacitator set to full power that will reach full meltdown sometimes... next week maybe? Oh whoops that was only five seconds."

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