Amelia

If Persephone's Plant Awareness Super-Sense picks up any nearby plant life, then she will use her Plant-Medium Postcognition power. If checks are required: Notice check: 18. Search check: 18.

CHLORO-FILLED OUT by Fox Persephone: Her point total makes her PL13 now. Power Level: 13 (Built as PL10) 3PP to spend. Drawbacks: Since she is now PL13, she can have one more point in Drawbacks. Please increase the intensity of her Fire Vulnerability by 1PP, from Minor to Moderate. This will change it as follows: Now she has 4PP to spend. Powers: Remove the Action (Move) extra and the Range (Touch) flaw from her Environment Control (Light) effect. That will change it as follows: Spend 1PP to get rid of her remaining Limited Immunities and consolidate non-Limited versions into the whole. She currently has: Take that away, and give her this instead: Please adjust her Power Loss Complication accordingly: Add the Source flaw to her Regeneration effect, and spend 3PP to increase it, changing it as follows: Please add the following Complication: Please update the first paragraph of her Powers & Tactics section accordingly: Please tweak her Plant Control array as follows. Her Healing is now Limited to Others. Her other APs each dropped a power feat to make room for +Subtle. Note: When you copy/paste this, please then manually restore the indents.

Filled With Skill by EP Mister Strix: Drop the 1 rank of un-Enhanced Search, reducing it to 0 (+15/+4), and move that rank to the Medicine skill, increasing it to 5 (+9). 2PP to spend. Spend it all to buy 8 ranks of Skills. +6 Medicine +2 Knowledge (Life Sciences) All this will change his skills as follows: Please correct the point total at the top of the sheet. It currently reads "Power Points: 211/212PP", but it should currently be "211/213", and once these points are spent, it should read "213/213".

Indented by EP Octoman: 4PP to spend. Spend it all by increasing both Intelligence and Charisma from 18 (+4) to 20 (+5). Please remove 1 rank each from Knowledge (Pop Culture), Knowledge (Technology), and Search, keeping those skills at the same total bonus, and add those 3 ranks to Knowledge (Current Events). This will change his Skills as follows: Please also make the following formatting corrections: His point total makes him Power Level 13 now. Power Level: 13 (Built as PL10) Feats: Please capitalize "Computers" in "Second Chance (Computers)". Powers: Please restore the indents in his arrays. They should look like this (but please do not just copy/paste this, because that's how they were lost in the first place):

Octoman DAMN. MISSED. What do I do NOW? "EW, Dude, it's not POOP, it's INK! I mean, didja miss the half a MILE of TENTACLES stickin' outta me? KINDA got a whole freakin' THEME goin' here! See, maybe if you'd GO to science class instead of tryin' ta kill the teacher, you'd KNOW, like, ANYTHING! And it's not a butthole! It's just a sphincter I use muscle contractions to push stuff out of and OK FINE it's kinda like a butthole!" Still suspended from the traffic light above him by his tentacles, still swinging back and forth, Octoman waited for the upswing, then held his hands and feet facing backward, flexed his internal muscles, and pushed a jet of air behind him, releasing his tentacles' grip on the light pole as he launched himself toward the teen boy. What I do now is what every great fighter does: THE UNEXPECTED. Everybody knows you can't win a fight by just doing the same thing twice. Nah, I need to do the last thing they'd expect...and that's doing the same thing twice! As Octoman flew toward him, he held his other hand up in front of himself and squeezed another glob of ink toward the boy's face. "So, y'know...ENJOY A FACE FULLA BUTTHOLE JUICE EVIL-DOER!"

Move Action: Octoman tries to Taunt the boy. Bluff check: 20. If that succeeds, then the boy is Shaken for 1 round. Standard Action: Octoman uses his Dazzle attack against the boy again. Since it's technically a Touch-range attack (it just has some ranks of Extended Reach), he'll do it as part of a Charge, using Leaping to move closer to the boy. That gives him +2 Attack for this roll, and -2 Defense until his next turn. He'll All-Out Attack for another +2 Attack and -2 Defense. Attack roll: 22. If that hits, then that's a DC20 Reflex save for the boy. Octoman's Defense is +6 (DC16) until his next action.

Octoman Ben threw his hands up and took a step backward. "DAMN, Dude, the waitress at Denny's put too much salt on yer Early Bird Special? CHILLLLL. You want me ta stop talkin', I'll stop talkin', whatever, that's cool. Not a peep. Mum's the word. This is me, zippin' my lip, shuttin' my yap, pluggin' the pie-hole." Ben nodded and continued to mutter. "I get it. Yer hittin' it HOOSIERS-style. FUNDAMENTALS. Brick by brick, and it's LEGOS, it ain't JENGA. Paint the house, wax off, gettin' yer Miyagi on, I feel ya." It wasn't clear whether or not he realized he was talking out loud. Ben raised his fists. Then several tentacles slid out of formerly hidden orifices his back with a slurping sound. The tentacles arranged themselves in the air around him, and the ends rolled themselves up into an approximation of a fist. Ben dropped into the fighting stance Benny had described. Then his entire body squished inward, as though a giant piston had just smashed it flat. His torso and limbs were now narrower than his fists, maybe three to four inches wide at most. Ben executed the combination, first with his arms, then with his tentacles (the entire set acting in perfect concert), alternating between the two.

Octoman's Initiative: 30.

Persephone Persephone had, by far, the slowest available transportation of any of the Vibora Bay Defenders. She could use her powers to force the local flora to pass her around town between them like the baton in a relay race, or she could simply drive her car, and she usually did both, but compared to the speed by which Torque or Speed-Demon could move about, Persephone was, in her own words, "As slow as molasses going uphill in January." Fortunately, she happened to be in the Cluet Farms neighborhood already, celebrating Thanksgiving with her family at her parents' mansion. Camellia's niece and nephew, neither one yet old enough for school, had already been put to bed with a story from their "favorite" (and only) aunt. Her brother sat on the front porch with her father, the two of them sipping aged cognac while her father smoked his pipe and periodically lamented having lost "the privilege of doing so in my own home". Camellia was inside, chatting with her mother and sister-in-law while servants cleared the table, when the call came in on her "work phone". Her family believed the cover story about a "patient emergency", though they made no effort to conceal their disdain for anyone who would interrupt a family holiday with "personal problems", and, never passing up an opening when it presented itself, they reminded her that she wouldn't have to put up with this sort of thing if she'd reconsider moving her practice to Easton and taking on a "more selective clientele", and also she'd get to see her family more often if she didn't have to commute all the way across town, "it must be such an ordeal", and they'd worry about her less if she lived and worked in a safer neighborhood, and so on. Lacking both the time and the inclination to argue, Camellia instead deflected, placated, and apologized on her way out the door. The Woodsman? This MUST be serious if HE'S the one who called it in. I can't imagine that man asking for a sip of water if he were wandering through a desert dying of thirst. The green woman arrived on the scene several minutes after having confirmed with the dispatcher that she was en route. If she wasn't the last Defender to arrive, then she was close to it. "Howdy, Y'all! Feels like I haven't seen you fellas in a month of Sundays! Hope you were all having a happy Thanksgiving before this ruckus. So sorry for the wait. Honestly, it would've been even longer, but whoever today's problem child is, they just happened to have twisted their knickers into a knot right near my old stompin' grounds."

...RIGHT. That's T-Day.

@Avenger Assembled At about what time of day on Thursday November 28th does the call come in?

Will definitely tag this later tonight after class.

Octoman Ben was completely oblivious to the comments of his classmates as he practiced. A couple of times, one of them yelled loudly enough for his phone to pick it up and change the vibration to alert him, but he was too engrossed in his martial arts drills to notice. It was only after he stopped pummeling the practice dummy and started wiping the sweat from his forehead that he glanced at his phone. His head jerked up and around the room, but he breathed a sigh of relief when it became clear that he hadn't missed anything that would qualify as an emergency. Still breathing hard as he rubbed his knuckles, Ben meandered back toward the main gathering. "I won't lie, been slackin' since school started. Gotta run them drills, y'know? Lock down that muscle memory. Fist's gotta know where ta go before you do." He glanced around at the students taping their hands up. "You guys sparrin-HEY!" His head cocked to the side when he noticed the shirt under Ashley's jacket. "Waitasec...YOU'RE Watchdog?! Shot-Raven-In-The-Balls I-Broke-My-Mouse-Clickin'-On-That-YouTube-Clip-Too-Many-Times WATCHDOG?! THAT'S who you are?! DAMN, Chica, we coulda been NUTSHOT-BROS this WHOLE TIME?! You gotta come on my vlog! You, me, collab-time, let's break the internet!"

Octoman Octoman didn't catch everything the scarlet-clad bowman had said, but he saw "around the corner" clearly enough, and the context provided by the young man's gesture helped. Octoman imagined a narrator from a movie or an old-timey movie trailer in his head. There may come a day in the life of Octoman when he is not the one to "take point". A day may come when he is not the first one through the door, to meet the fist of danger with the face of himself. But today...is not that day. "ON IT!" The teen hero's tentacles whipped out toward the corner, sticking to it, and quickly retracted, pulling him through the air. Octoman shouted as he chased after the bald man in blue. "YO, DISCO STU, WAIT UP! YOU DROPPED SOMETHING!"

GM Dale King whimpered as he dangled in Sekhmet's grip. Tears continued to flow from his eyes, and the dark wet spot on the front of his pants continued to expand. "No conjuring! No conjuring! Please, don't kill me! You guys are the real deal, I can see that now! But I'm nothing! I'm nobody! I just know a few spells I can use to get laid! Close a door, light a joint, party tricks! These stupid sluts eat that crap up!" "What're you talking about? The bookstore? What, that crap in the old man's office? He went crazy! Not my problem! Made it easier to swipe the book, yeah, and to sweet-talk the cops when he called 'em on me, but I didn't make him go senile! Bastard's older than radio, not my fault he outlived his own mind! Bangin' pagan skanks two or three at a time and calling it 'magic' keeps ya young, what can I say?! ! I don't know why she wanted me to bust up the pipes in the basement on the way out! That was weird! But she's got some kinda thing about plumbing! Probably wrecked the bathroom at your place too, right? That's where she told me to leave the charm if you wouldn't sell. Old lady's a freak! She's into all kinds of weird crap! But she pays the bills! Old hag has money to burn. I run a few errands, I give her a hand with her phony rituals 'cause the senile old bat thinks I actually know anything about real magic, and I close my eyes and stick it to her a couple times a week, and she makes it rain!" "Lurman! Regina freakin' Lurman! Big house out on Greeley Point, next to all the other big houses out on Greeley Point! She's the one who's got the damned books!"

Attack roll with Octoman's Dazzle effect: 21. If that hits, it's a DC20 Reflex save. If that fails, then he's blind and anosmatic until next round, when he starts getting DC20 Fort saves once a round to shake it off. EDIT: Also, the range on that Dazzle effect is only 25ft, so Octoman is within a single normal move action of the bad guys.

Octoman The yellow, black, and blue-spotted teen hero kept swinging back and forth under the streetlight, keeping the momentum going. "Sorry, Dude, doctor-huntin' season ended last week. Ya already bagged yer limit. It's LAWYER-huntin' season now. But thanks for goin' solid and lookin' me in the eye when ya tell me yer evil plan. Really shows RESPECT. Plus, if you didn't, then I couldn't do this." Octoman reached forward as if offering his hand for the teen to shake, then squeezed his fingers into a sort of half-fist which left most of his palm exposed. An orifice pulsed open in the overlap between his palm and his wrist, and a spurt of black ink shot out of it toward the teen's face.

Mister Strix The man in white took a step backwards. He glared at The Ratcatcher, his stare unmoving as he addressed his companion. "We did help them, D. That's what I didn't have time to say before." His glare finally broke away to glance down at The Woodchuck Man. "The memories I saw in his blood. The miscreants burning homeless people. We found them. We caught them in the act. It was the college kids. It's what they do for fun. That gas can that turned the alley into an inferno after the booze-soaked genius over here knocked it over with his earthquake? The fratboys brought it with them. The 'Nowhere Men' here were just trying to scare them away. Just trying to get them to stop. And they did, like he said, for a while." Strix slowly stepped over to where The Woodchuck Man lay. "But then the Woodchuck here found Ashley Fairchild. He wasn't the one who attacked her. That was her scumbag boyfriend Ethan Pfeffner, the same one leading the pack we just ran into. No, Chuck here just lifted her up out of the gutter where Ethan had left her to bleed out. Chuck brought Ashley to the restaurant because it was a big group of people, the kind of thing he'd usually die rather than get near. But he thought they could help her. Emily here, he only took her because he thought she was in danger. He didn't want to see what happened to Ashley happen to her. Just a simple misunderstanding. But it gave Ethan an excuse." Strix reached down under the several layers of jacket The Woodchuck Man wore, grabbed something, and yanked. He opened his hand to reveal the gold and diamond necklace Pfeffner had mentioned in his interview. "He didn't give a damn about Ashley. He came for this." He looked up at The Ratcatcher again. "And we need to give it back to her, or else they'll keep coming." He shoved it into a pocket on his belt. Then, still kneeling on the ground, he turned to little Emily. His voice changed. For once, the slight echo reverberating beneath it was gone. He sounded completely normal. Dead Head wasn't sure if he'd ever heard a human voice like that come out of Strix's mouth. He wasn't sure if it was even possible until this moment. "We're not here to hurt you. We're here to take you home, to your family."

Mister Strix Impressive. The man in white's black eyes stretched wide as he watched the exorcism. He slowly walked toward and around the floating ball of shadow-essence. "So that...that's me, isn't it? That's what I'm made of. This is the glue holding this decaying meat-puppet I call 'a body' together. These are the strings making that puppet dance, giving it the...illusion of life." He shook his head and turned away. "Great work. We'll hold onto the two of them for observation until the usual gestation period has passed. Then we can wipe them and cut them loose. But please tell me you didn't pull it out before you had some kind of container prepared. Do I need to run back to the library and frantically read up on how to craft a phylactery?"

Ben continued to ALT-TAB between the code he was writing, the streaming video he was half paying attention to, and his email exchange with Judy. "People aren't so different on the inside." Oh man, if only THAT were true. You should get a look at my X-rays sometime. But not, like, right before eating. Not unless you need, like, the mother of all weight-loss diets. Just keep a copy in yer wallet, and every time you get hungry, look at it, PROBLEM SOLVED. Or right after eating, now that I think about it. That's gonna make a mess. I mean, I don't exactly look human on the OUTSIDE when I'm not fakin' it like a big ol' CHEATER at the Game o' Life, but on the INSIDE? That's the REAL freak show. He whispered to himself. "Man, I'm SUPER-curious what Robot-Girl looks like under the surface. I know her stuff doesn't work for real, but, like, did they make it look real for show? She's so dead-on on the outside, they MUST've at least made it look good enough down below for her to, like, get on an airplane. They didn't bother giving her, like, sweat or bad breath or anything, but does she bleed? But it's not polite to ask, and you know me, I'm a GENTLEMAN." Yeah, yeah, I know that's not what you meant, I can hear you now...well, OK, I can't, good one, but you know what I mean. I dunno about that, tho'. I bet yer not exactly the Dark Web type, but if you really wanna heave up your dinner and my X-rays aren't gettin' the job done, maybe you used them too often and now you're, like, "desensitized" to it, see if you can find a mirror of one of Josef Bankowski's vlogs. Tell me THAT GUY's "the same on the inside" as you and me. Or read the comments from the guys sending him ByteCash. When I graduate? I dunno, write some code to pay the bills. Doesn't really matter. Keep hittin' the STREETS, THAT'S the REAL plan. Keep payin' it FORWARD, know what I mean? Geckoman didn't save me so I could just focus on my OWN green. Just get mine and the rest can go and play? Nah, SCREW that. Guys like Bankowski are EVERYWHERE, and every time one of 'em takes a swing at someone, I'm puttin' myself between them and his fist, and feedin' 'em a mouthful of calamari rings. I'm-a' flex the spandex 'till they BURY me in it. THAT's why I'M here.

Octoman Ben jumped off the bed to his feet, his back twisting and flowing like water as he did, emphasizing the lack of a rigid skeleton under the surface. "DUDE. NOW you're speakin' my language!" His skin broke apart into hundreds of little pieces which folded over themselves to change the texture of his flesh, while his cells released new pigments which changed his colors to the yellow, black, and blue of the Octoman "costume". "Less talky-talky about the feels, more introducin' the foot to the ass, it's been' dyin' to meetcha, hope you guys hit it off!" He jumped up into a crouch on the windowsill, then stopped and turned around. "But we should probably do, like, 'stealth-mode', 'till we're off-campus." His skin filled with a new combination of pigments which changed his colors to match those of his surroundings. He looked like someone had used an image editing program to cut a vague human shape out of a photograph and then pasted it on top of another copy of that photograph, just a millimeter or two off from its original location.

Free Action: Octoman maintains his grapple on Captain Imamba. Move Action: Octoman uses his Leaping power to get some air. From a standing start, he can get up to 125ft high. His elongated tentacle range is double that, so he should still be within "touch range" of at least one bad guy. He's shooting for high enough that he can look down and see one or more of the bad guys well enough to negate their cover. He won't go higher than that. The range increment on his elongated limbs is 60ft, so, ideally, he won't have to go higher than that. Standard Action: Octoman uses Captain Imamba as an improvised weapon to hit one of the crew members who's shooting at the PCs. I assume Imamba weighs less than 4 tons, so he's a Light Load. Attack roll: 11. Natural "1". No. Reaction: Octoman burns a Hero Point for a re-roll. Attack roll (HP re-roll): 27. The "7" becomes a "17". Depending on how high he had to go to negate the cover, there might be a penalty there (-2 for every 60ft increment past the first). If he hits, then that's a DC25 Toughness save (nonlethal) for both Imamba and the crew member Octoman hit with Imamba. Knockback is fine. Octoman is perfectly happy to knock these jerks overboard. That leaves Octoman at 4HP.

Octoman "Oops!" Octoman yelled as the wild flailing of his tentacles sent the shipping container tumbling toward the Dakanan renegades. The white eyes of his "mask" expanded to more than twice their normal size. He sent the tentacles that weren't wrapped around Captain Imamba surging forward, halting the giant metal box's advance. "RRRRNNNNGGGG" he grunted from the strain. He breathed a sigh of relief when the shooting stopped, opening his mouth to say something. He was cut off by the angry exclamations of the crew and the renewed shooting a few moments later. "DUDE. REALLY?!" he shouted incredulously as he dodged the gunfire. "So you wanna PLAY? Fine. BATTER UP!" Octoman crouched down onto the deck, and then an explosion of air expelled from the bladders in his torso through all his new orifices launched him straight up in to the air. "BASES LOADED!" His tentacles swung Captain Imamba's body up in a wide arc over the deck. "HERE'S THE PITCH!" Like a pendulum, Imamba's body rested high up in the air for an instant, then fell back down in a reverse of the arc by which it had ascended, swinging toward one of his own crew members.

Octoman Ben Wang rubbed his red-rimmed eyes and mumbled to himself as he staggered into the gym. "Freakin' Hanji-mains, man, overtime and you STILL won't get on the damn payload..." He lifted an open Beast energy drink can over his head and tipped it over, but nothing came out. He stared at it quizzically for a few moments, then dropped it in the trash can next to the door. He directed two finger-guns and a grin at each of the other students as he trudged past them and up to the row of mu ren zhuang dummies. He greeted his Green Squadmate Heroditus with "SQUADDY", Claude with "CLODDY", and Ben with "Uhhh...SQUATTY? I dunno, man, yer stocky and it's early." When he saw the sisters, the grin fell off his face, and he just muttered "...'Sup." He stopped at the reinforced steel dummy with the concrete-weighted base. His skin rippled and broke into hundreds of tiny tiles which flipped over each other, seemingly transforming the sweats he'd been wearing into a sleeveless tee-shirt and a pair of basketball shorts, while the sneakers he'd been wearing vanished altogether, leaving bare feet. He pulled his cell phone out of the pocket of the shorts he was now wearing, tapped a few buttons, then shoved it back in the pocket. Through the "fabric", any observer could hear the phone, and his matching smartwatch, vibrating loudly in time to the aggressive rap music the phone was playing at a barely audible volume. He mouthed the lyrics as his hands and feet began to move, slowly at first, in a series of circles and sweeps, sometimes around the arms and legs of the dummy, sometimes slamming against them with strikes from a mix of open hands, fists, elbows, knees, and feet. If the dummy had been a person, it would have sustained several brutal blows to its stomach, face, and throat, and its elbows and shoulders would have been broken and popped out of their sockets several times over. He slipped back and forth around the dummy, often hitting it from a 45-degree angle instead of head-on. To a Muay Thai enthusiast, his techniques would feel familiar, but slightly "off", while anyone familiar with Silat would instantly recognize him as a fellow practitioner. His strikes gradually became faster, eventually becoming hard to follow with the naked eye. His movements were impossibly fluid, and his balance was perfect, like a ballet dancer whose joints could bend the wrong way (which his literally did, more than once). His strikes didn't seem to leave any bruises on his bare hands and feet, but some of them did leave visible dents, as though his flesh were made of clay. Several times, he knocked the dummy over, either from the sheer force of his blows or with a sweeping kick to what would have been the backs of a person's legs. Sometimes, one of his tentacles burst forth from his forearm and grabbed it before it hit the ground, pulling it back upright in the blink of an eye. Other times, he followed it down, adding what would have been a devastating kick to the ribs or groin, and a punch to the solar plexus or also the groin. At one point, he yelled "DICK KICK! NUT PUNCH!" as he did so, giggling to himself.

Octoman's got great eyesight and superhuman smell/taste, so definitely the first one and maybe the second.