Heritage

No worries, and sorry for the delay. But I'm saving that HP for a rainy day! (stupid rhyming urges)

Untrained Craft: Electronics check = 7 http://orokos.com/roll/320514 Whelp, looks like her luck finally ran out! I'll figure something out.

Can I attempt to reach someone on the radio and say 'please don't shoot me?'

Initiative = 29 http://orokos.com/roll/319911 Pilot = 27 http://orokos.com/roll/319914

Gretchen crossed her arms and shook her head in disgust. "I knew it; you people are all the same! Do you have any idea how dangerous that s### is? People end up dead when they mess with magic, innocent people who didn't do anything wrong. Everyone wants a shortcut to power, and they really don't care who gets cut!" Her vehemence on the subject was surprising, and seemed to come out of nowhere. Meanwhile, Lynn was nodded as she tried to fight back the tears. "Yeah, yeah, I know; it still hurts sometimes, y'know?" She rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand. "I mean, I tried to stay away; I created a new identity for myself, put a few thousand miles between us, but I still meddled. Ruth finally tracked me down and called me up, and said, "Mom, we know it's you." She laughed at the memory of her offspring outsmarting her. "And then we all agreed that I should come back home, reconnect with my family back here. Which has been great, I'm not gonna lie." The changeling shook her head and looked around at the store she'd reinvigorated. "I've loved this store since I was a little kid, and running it's been a dream for most of my life." She shrugged happily. "It's not the people I imagined I'd have around me, but they're all good, solid people. Oh, did you meet Gretchen? She's my...well, she's my new sidekick." "Personal crime-fighting assistant!" Gretchen called out, rolling her eyes; she was not partial to the 'S' word.

At Taylor's question, Lynn covered her face with her hands, took a deep breath, then slowly pulled them back and through her her hair. "Uhhhh, no. No, there all back on Otherworld." She shrugged. "I don't know what the official designation for it is; I always just called whatever world I'm not on 'the other world', and the two words just mushed together." The changeling leaned back against a bookcase for support. "After Bill died, I...didn't have a life of my own anymore, y'know? I'd lost the love of my life, and I didn't want my kids to ever have to go through that. So, I kinda went into overprotective Jewish mother mode. I tried to micromanage their lives, protect them from all harm." She shook her head and snorted. "Y'know, typical mom s###, really." Then her face clouded over. "But actually what I was doing was smothering them; manipulating the world to make their lives easier, fighting all their battles for them, forming this...impenetrable shield to keep all the badness away." For a few moments, she said nothing, just staring off into space. "Then one day, my two oldest took me aside and said, 'Ma, we've gotta talk.' And what they told me was that I couldn't protect them from everything. That I shouldn't, and they needed to have the freedom to make their own mistakes, to fall down and break their noses. They were older now, with kids of their own, and as much as they loved me and always would, they needed the space to...have lives of their own. I had to...step aside..." And then the tears began in earnest. - - - - Gretchen looked down at her knuckles, where the words of Joe Strummer were tattooed on the fingers of her guitar hand: 'The Future Is Unwritten'. She frowned for a moment, then crossed her hands behind her back as she peered down her nose at the boy. "I know what you want," she began dryly. "You want the scary s###; you want the real deal, not the stuffed bunny stuck in the bottom of the top hat." She took a step forward, and her grin became rather unpleasant as she whispered, "You want magic."

Lynn sighed and then smiled wistfully. "Oh yeah, they were great years, filled with kids and grandkids and great-grandkids..." Then her smile got big as the memories flooded over her. "We fought in the War of Martian Independence; I ended up on a frickin' stamp! Me, the skinny little Jewish girl from New Jersey! Who'da thunk it? Had a really nice day school named for me, too." Turning her focus back on Taylor, she grinned warmly. "I'm so glad you two are still together, with the kids and everything; it's just the best, isn't it?" She swept an arm over the store, in Lance and Gretchen's general direction. "This is my family now, as much as they hate when I say it." Lance waved his latte knife behind the bar and grinned. "Thanks, mom!" Gretchen, on the other hand, had been keeping her eye on the young man poking around the magic books, her eyes slightly squinted; working in this store for a year had made her leery of anyone interested in the more esoteric stuff. Sliding gracefully off her stool, she made her way over to the back of the store, where Huang lingered. Clutching her right arm with her left hand, she cleared her throat and asked flatly, "So what are you looking for?" Customer service really wasn't her thing.

Gretchen's faint smile froze on her face and went cold as Taylor breezed past following her impetuous teenage son. "I don't know why I bother having a Cloak of Invisibility when no one sees me anyway." Shaking her head, she returned to scanning police reports on her Macbook. At the sight of her old teammate, Lynn's jaw dropped slightly and her eyes went big, "Oh my God, Taylor?! You look amazing! And weirdly unchanged!" She deftly manuvered around a stack of books, arms out to give her friend a hug, but then stopped herself. "Wait, are you huggable right now," she muttered under her breath. "I'd hate to pass right through and knock something over." Once the hug situation was resolved (firmly, if she had any say in the matter), she ran her fingers though her hair, shrugged and sighed. "I've been...I've been up and down, to be honest. Mostly good lately, though." She thoughtfully moved the conversation to a less populated part of the store. "Talking about time slips, i just got back from Bill's...from Colt's dimension last year, after being away. For eighty years." She lifted the iron band out from under her T-shirt by its thong, and her voice broke a bit. "He's gone now." She gave the ring a quick kiss, then dropped it back under her shirt as she smiled with a hint of effort. "So how's our broody Jackvenger these days?" Her face went suddenly pale as she rested a hand on Taylor's arm. "You guys are still together, right? Nothing bad's happened?"

It took a few seconds for the changeling's eyes to adapt to the darkness, more due to shock than anything else; her head jerked around this way and that as she tried to get her bearings. "Oh crap. Oooooooh crap! I think we flew through a portal thingie." Then she craned her head to look down. "Also I don't see any land, anywhere. How much fuel to we have in the tanks?" She worked radio for a few seconds. "I've got nothing on radio, either. S###!" The she peered into the distance. "And you're sure we don't have any weapons onboard? Because we might just get into that dogfight I was so eager about a few minutes ago."

The new arrivals found the store to be very welcoming; the smell of old books and fresh-brewed coffee, the hiss of a milk steamer, Velvet Underground playing over the sound system and sunlight streaming through the windows. Books were everywhere, in neat rows in the bookshelves that lined every wall, artfully arranged on small tables, and most importantly, in the hands of people. Those few sections of wall that had room to spare displayed old movie and magic act posters, and there were odd bits of bric-a-brac tucked in any spare corners. The clientele seemed to be a mix of old Jewish men from the neighborhood's past, and young interracial couples from its future. This particular Friday morning, most of the staff was present; Kiki was in back working on next week's schedule (Lynn was increasingly shift more of the day-to-day function of the store over to her, at her assistant's urging) Lance was working the bar as per usual, Gretchen was on register/searching the internet for recent criminal activity, and Lynn was working the floor. The whole place hummed like a well-oiled machine. Gretchen was the first person to notice Taylor; she sat up slightly on her stool and smiled, not a super-warm smile but they were getting to be more genuine every day. Her accent bore a hint of the Northeast, and she spoke like someone who was still getting the hang of it. "Hi, welcome to Silberman's! Books are what we do; what can we do for you?" She was pretty, with brown hair and dark blue eyes; she wore a loose lavender top under a dark vest, several silver rings on her fingers, and her ears were encrusted with various piercings. In addition, bars of music were tattooed on the inside of both forearms, and there were more tattoos on the fingers of her left hand. For her part, Lynn was a bit thrown off by the young man's casual greeting. "Oh, hey. Hi! Uh..." Though only three years had past since Taylor had last scene her, it looked like the young changeling had matured a lot; no longer the teenage pixie stick, Lynn now had more womanly curves, and she wore her hair curly and shoulder length. There was something vaguely Southwestern about her colorful T-shirt, knee-length denim skirt and rugged sandals, and something hung from a leather thong around her neck, out of sight under the T-shirt. The store owner paused and sniffed a few times as she approached the young man. "Are you...are you JJ?"

Yes! I think we were talking about humanitarian efforts in Southeast Asia, with Casey as a target of pirates/kidnappers who knew who her dad was, but didn't know she had powers? Something along those lines.

Boom! http://orokos.com/roll/319002

"Yes, ma'am!" Lynn began to take the aircraft up into a steep climb, nearly stalling out before applying full rudder, causing the plane to yaw into a perfect classic Immelmann, during which she whooped like a kid on a roller coaster. As the Super Tucano dropped, she then pulled into a tight barrel roll, very nicely executed. After that, she leveled off and seemed to be content with a few more restrained stunts; she did, however, begin to sing in a loud voice what could only be a battle hymn from another dimension. "We're the Martian Air Defense Even though that makes no sense There's barely any atmosphere to flyyyyyy! So we plummet when we dive Yet somehow we still survive And the bastards back on Earth they don't know whyyyyy! Like the sand, our blood is red And over half of us are dead But that just means there's less of us to cryyyy! We are Brothers of the Wing With our Sisters now we sing And we'll fight for a Free Mars until we dieeeee!" Then she pumped her fist in the air and cried out, "Greetings from Olympus Mons! Fifty-four days!" Her moment of Martian patriotism now passed, Lynn suddenly sat up in the seat and jerked her head towards the horizon. "Hey, do you see that at two o' clock? That doesn't look right."

No, it's cool. Thanks for your efforts!

Not too late to try something, since I haven't posted yet! http://orokos.com/roll/318430 Here.....we.....GO!

As the video played, Shrike cocked her head to one side as she was wont to do; now that she was wearing a bird mask, it seemed an oddly appropriate gesture. Her darting eyes hungrily devoured all that she saw, and widened slightly when the third man entered the frame; he was just slightly transparent to her eyes, which let her know he was invisible to pretty much everyone else. "I see him," she announced abruptly. "He's going for a steampunk D'Artagnan look." She turned to the others and gestured towards her face and body. "He's got these retro goggles on, maybe brass and covered in rivets. Lots of belt pouches, leather gloves and boots, a green sash across his chest. All the Puss in Boots stuff is over Army fatigues, maybe surplus." She shrugged. "Hard to make out details like height, weight and age, though he's probably young, to wear that outfit. He's not in any hurry, just waits for the guards to get out of the way to slip past. Which means he's invisible, not intangible, or else he'd just walk through the walls." The young heroine shrugged again. "So we've got that to go on."

Got a 25 on my Notice check. http://orokos.com/roll/318315

Across the street, Grim was Merging it up as well, sporting a black leather mini-skirt, military cut jacket and ridiculous high-heeled knee-high boots as she chewed on a wad of gum. “Take your time; I'm not in any hurry.” She tapped her earpiece and sighed. “How are you holding up, Starlight? Feeling the urge to rob banks yet?” It was very strange to adopt another metahuman persona on a job; her native instincts ran completely counter to the former criminal's own, but it was kind of fun to try it out this way.

Shrike crossed her arms and shook her head. "I don't know; she's probably got a pretty good head start, unless she hung around to gloat. Wouldn't put that past her, since she does the whole 'calling card' routine." She touched her fingers to the sides of her mask as she concentrated, shifting the Helm's senses as she scanned the vaulting, even floating up towards the ceiling; Lynn told her you often find interesting things up there. "We need to check the security footage. I also need to see schematics for your security system, see if I can find any holes." Lastly she floated back down towards the paper butterfly, thoughtfully stroking her chin as she gave it a good once over.

Lynn sighed as she reached over to pull on the mask. "Okay, but can we maybe set this at like the lowest setting possible? I feel bad wasting perfectly good oxygen like this." It took her a while to respond to Naomi's question, because to be honest she was a little bit overwhelmed right now, but in a good way. It had been several years since she was in a cockpit, and this Super Tucano was simply amazing. The controls were so sensitive, the sky so wonderfully blue; she felt like a kid again. "Dude, you have no idea how hard it is to resist the urge to just start pulling crazy-ass stunts; nothing life-threatening, but I want to do an Immelmann so bad I could scream!" The changeling shook her head. "I mean, I fly all the time when I'm shrunk down and tiny, but to be full size and have this great thrumming power at my fingertips?" She did a little dip, just enough to give you butterflies in the tummy. "This is intoxicating!"

Casey sighed and shook her head, shaking her multicolored braids. "Our robot friend must have copied the mind of a middle schooler at some point, because he used a trick right out of The Goonies to ditch us." She floated upwards to peer outside. "He climbed out the blasted window. C'mon, let's get after him." The blonde powerhouse easily climbed through the window and dropped down to the ground to have a look around. Not doing so great for her first night in Freedom! She only hoped Terrifica would never bring this up again, assuming they ever worked together after tonight.

Lynn is of the sneaky: 1d20+22=25 Technically, a crap roll for her, but what the hay!

Beneath her shoulder-length curly hair, Lynn's pointed ears were twitching this way and that as she strained to pick out the two men's words; her fae gift of tongues struggled a bit, like she was trying to find a weak radio signal om an old AM radio. But when she finally wrapped her words around her head, she knew she had to keep an eye on these two; she had no idea who or what this 'king' was, but she sensed is probably fairly important. Applying years of sneaky shadow superhero training, Lynn followed the two brutes without seeming to, sometimes just allowing them to the leave the room and just keeping their bizarre scent in focus. She was good at her job, but she knew there was always the chance they were sharper than she was, so she murmured a little prayer as she trailed after them. "Lord, let me be a speck of dust on the breeze."

Alright, Shrike is gonna try them all, assuming she has time. What the hell, right? Search: 1d20+5=24 Investigate: 1d20+5=7 Notice: 1d20+10=13 Craft: Electronics: 1d20+10=26 Odd mix, but makes sense. I will do an IC post later today setting up these rolls.