Avenger Assembled

And so it was that, later that afternoon, two Scandanavian girls tracked down an Oklahoman guitar player near the intramural athletic field. "Hello, Micah," said Eira throatily, placing her foot on the bleacher where he was sitting, the other flat on the ground. Her boots were sturdy and leather, suitable for long-distance walking. "Astrid says you can play the guitar. Is that so?"

"Maybe I've just been waiting for the right partner," Ashley said with a smile, feeling on top of the world. It got a little too loud to talk on the dance floor for a while after that but that was okay by her; sometimes it was better to enjoy the moment, the togetherness, the nearness even from far away, and not think about the past or the future. There were advantages to living in the present. They were as close as they could be, moving fast together and enjoying the rhythm, and if the hands on her weren't real hands well they were close enough for her purposes. When the song was done, she sought out the muscular Asian woman at the table with the young, casual-looking guy. "Excuse me," she said, a little breathless, "would you mind taking our picture?" She winked at Fa'Rua. "Don't worry, nobody else is gonna see it..."

Judy gave Mia a confused look, then grinned. "Mia, honey, we really need to get you to church more." Impulsively, she hugged her, a warmth that wasn't quite fiery, and then headed for the door. "Come on, let's go hang out with the boys." Once they were outside, she waved hello to the pastor, then decided she was probably making Mia uncomfortable by being too friendly with Leroy - especially since Mia's date wasn't really a date. So she blew Leroy a kiss and plopped down on the couch next to Micah, so close he could feel the warmth of her body. "Ooh, the big fight with the pirates!" she enthused. "Just in time!"

Woodsman knelt down on the deck of the police boat and went to work. "Someone should get on the radio," he offered. From underneath his poncho, he removed a large black sphere about the size of a football and began unscrewing the top. "Get out a message to the Dreadnaut. Tell him we've deactivated his devices. Lie." He looked up from his work at Sagrado Corazon, his face invisible behind the goggles he wore over his mask. "You could do it. Make him think anything." He cracked open the magazine of his crossbow (which he seemed to be able to do absolutely silently) and removed several bolts, which he began affixing to the sphere. "Gonna block his signal."

How many Progression ranks would a rank 10 effect need to be to take in the entire bay?

"You have never demonstrated nano-scale manufacture," said Eira flatly. "Though your abilities are up to the task, you would need significant technical guidance to produce a working model. Even the most advanced Terran technology is multiple generations behind even the average vessel traveling in interstellar space. Though for cultural reasons, Lor technology has been, hmm, slow to embrace humanoid-sized synthetic life." Eira smirked at that, just a little. She followed Seresk up the steps, her hands folded behind her back as she made her way towards the center of the ship.

The door closed behind Eira as she stepped out into the hallway - and she watched the ongoing melee with the dog with a smirk on her face. With great and deliberate care, she removed her mirrorshades and slipped them into her hoodie pocket, then danced her way through the corridor towards civics class. She seemed to be in a world of her own, banging her head and mouthing along to metal lyrics, (a lipreader might spot "I don't believe in Heaven; I don't believe in Hell!") but it certainly wasn't the first time anybody in her class had seen her act that way. She found that their instructor, Ms. Hancock, had stepped outside to help deal with the melee caused by the dog, so without a backwards look she walked forward and took her usual seat inside the classroom. "Mr. Barrie!" said Ms. Hancock, the Claremont civics teacher. She was normally an even-tempered woman, but all this was a bit exciting - she didn't sound upset with him, just rather animated. "Mr. Barrie," she said, "the dog!" She gestured at the big woofing hound as he barreled through the corridors. "Why is the dog!?"

Elsewhere Eira Katastroff stood on a flat, featureless plain, dressed in a style her friends would not have recognized. Her hair was a shade of blonde cast in sheer gold, piled high on her head, topped by a feather that crackled with electricity Her eyes were blue sapphire and her skin sterling silver, her dress copper and emerald where it stretched down around her to ground level. She raised her umbrella, adjusted her dark glasses, and began to dance to the sound of a courtly waltz. She was the Rococo Basilisk - and it was time to go to work. The security systems were big, menacing toughs but she artfully twirled around them, avoiding the areas of the floor they patrolled on her hunt for weaker prey. The security systems around the non-essential systems were practically non-existent and so she passed them by, finding the system she wanted in the form of a big-eyed, square-jawed fellow with the mark of nobility in his bearing. She twirled up close and smiled prettily at him. "Hello there." "Do you wish to dance, milady?" She looked at him and without breaking stride drove her dataspike directly into his chest. As the waltz played, she watched dispassionately as the program warped, bucked, and shifted - into a punk rock version of himself, hair in spikes and dyed blue, a ring in his nose, studded leather jacket and T-shirt that bore the message FAN DU! She grinned at him, he sneered back, and she handed him her umbrella. Here Eira pulled her hand back from the computer's data port, her spike retreating into her wrist, and nodded. With a cocked head, she took in the noises outside.

APPROVED

I certainly have no objection to Horrorshow rolling (a probably mid-20sish? DC) Notice to recognize Ashley at this point - she definitely doesn't 'look like herself' in the dress and makeup, but on the other hand she's an attractive woman dancing her heart out on the floor, so she might get his attention.

Folks can try and penetrate Pan's effect however they like. Or they can pet the pupper!

Don't freak out don't freak out Ashley Tran firmly reminded herself that she was a mature woman and not a naive teenager, so there was no need to get giddy when Fa'Rua led her out onto the dance floor. So what if her heart was pounding in her chest in a rhythm that had nothing to do with the music? She adjusted the rose in her hair, the red over one ear. As she wrapped her arms around Fa'Rua, looking up in the other woman's eyes, for a moment the rest of the place could have burned down for all she cared. "Well, first you have to listen to the band..." She cocked her head, then nodded. "Find the dance pulse, the underlying rhythm..." She swayed her hips to the beat, "and then the music from the horns..." She moved her shoulders and elbows to the secondary rhythm. "Anybody can dance," she said as the movement of the band picked up and so did hers, "not anybody can dance to jazz!"

In the garden It was cold, but Ashley had her jacket - a warm fleece number where she could sink her hands into the pockets, and leather gloves on while she was at it. Judy was dressed rather less seasonably, in jeans (that were maybe a little snug, if she was honest) with dirt stains in the knees and a long-sleeved workshirt - but of course she didn't need the cold. "Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves, we will come rejoicing bringing in the sheaves..." Judy walked around the camellia bushes with a cheerful smile on her face, carefully trimming the topiaries down into the roughly hemispherical shape they were supposed to have. "There, that looks pretty good, don't you think?" "Seems fine," offered Ashley, leaning on the rake that she could use as a melee (or even ranged) weapon if her bodyguard duties called for them. "I think between this and the bush lilies, they'll actually have a flower garden for Valentine's this year."

THere we go, and she's broken even on HP between stunting a portal teleport with linked ESP and trying to save her enemies.

The hand scuttled upwards impossibly fast and buried itself in the Harbinger's throat, fingers digging deep into the gill slits. Heroditus could see immediately it wasn't a killing blow but it was a serious one, the Harbinger giving an almost animalistic bellow as he tore it free from his neck, his blood mixing now with Dalekos's in the water in a mix of different, curling shades of red that didn't look or smell so different when it was mixed together in the water. Sea Devil took a few scuttling leaps from the fight and landed next to the Atlantean boy and his half-changed sister, knowing what she had to do. "Run!" she urged in a bellow in their language, cutting the water with her trident. Just as she'd prayed, the magic of the portal took the gateway where she wanted it to go - through the gateway Heroditus could see the interior of the Atlantean submarine, see Doctor Galena shouting orders to the pilot left inside, her face white-lipped with tension. The gateway beckoned, swirling with arcane power, its edges writhing magic that looked more like the maw of a furious squid than anything else.

Leroy wasn't alone. Claremont students saw a lot of things - supervillain attacks, time travelers, dance-offs. But a big friendly dog running around everywhere, barking and woofing and licking, was entirely new. It wasn't long before other students had joined in, and teachers too, causing quite a mess. - Eira Katastroff smiled once and walked through the crowd, cutting her way to the simple, unlabeled wooden door that held the building's computer servers. She paused a barely perceptible moment, took her round-framed black mirrorshades from her hoodie pocket, and slipped them on over her deep blue eyes. With that job done, still smiling, she looked down at the simple numeric keypad and held her hand in front of it, green-painted fingernails spread wide. Her dataspike lashed out and hit the input port - she nodded at the faint, almost inaudible click. She reached down, turned the knob, and walked inside, shutting it behind her with a click. Smirking now, she walked up to the old-fashioned desktop computer on the far side of the room. Crack crack crack went her knuckles, and she raised her hands over the keyboard.

I'll set a DC of 20 for Angelic to break the security on the door. She has enough Quickness to do it in an action. 20

Anybody who would like to spend an HP to reroll their Bluff or Sense Motive may do so. Everyone who fails - Look at that good boi! ?

For the other thread. @RocketLord, post Pan's Bluff here. Anybody who wants to try and resist Pan's good boy, I mean his bluff, roll here.

Eira caught up on the keyboards so fast it was as if she and Astrid had been practicing together for years. It was obvious Eira was not a natural stage performer - the way she bobbed and jerked to the music was slightly off-tempo and a little of what an earlier generation might have unkindly called spastic, albeit very enthusiastic. But the music she produced (all without actually moving her fingers over the keyboard) was melodic and sad; the sort of symphonic metal keyboard that gave an aura of weight and gravitas to the music, as if the subject of Astrid's ballad was the great and ancient ballad that it deserved to be. It was certainly very technically proficient. When it was done, she stepped back, a smile on her face, still connected to the machine via her dataspike. "Beautiful," she said, her voice sounding thoroughly satisfied. "Do you come here often?" she asked frankly. "We should make a band."

"It wasn't perfect," Ashley admitted. "Our apartment was too small for seven people and the tourists mostly spend their money in the French Quarter, not on East. A lot of people don't even know there _is_ a New Orleans outside of tourist country." She smiled, then added, "But the food and music are the best in the world, and you'll never meet a city where more people are willing to work together. There's even room for hipsters now," she admitted with a grin. "Gumbo and jazz, that's New Orleans. Taking the best from all over, putting it together in one spot." She laughed. "Listen to me, I sound like a tour guide..." There was a brief pause when their drinks arrived. "To us," said Ashley, raising her glass. When they took a drink, she said, her voice breathy, "I want to show you some day."

February 17, 2020 15 minutes before the first class of the day Her face a picture that might have been captioned "Soon!", Eira Katastroff leaned back against the wall, a lazy smile on her face as her internal clock ran down. The halls were full of people in their lockers, heading to and from class, chatting and texting to each other, but as usual she seemed to be an island unto herself amidst the other teenagers. Smirking, she leaned back against the wall, her blue hair visible inside the yellow hoodie she'd pulled up over her head, and watched the other students go by, her head rocking slightly to the beat of an inaudible melody.

Feel free! Lemme post IC for Aquaria...

That is cool! Okay, the Harbinger currently has a Fort of 12 and a Tou of 11 He makes the first Fort save! 27 But he fails the second Fort save 19 Is that an injured or bruised he's taking with that dazed? (putting him at x2) Sea Devil: Sea Devil does the heroic thing and opens up a portal that Artificer and his sister will be able to escape through! It's okay if they don't take her up on that, though.

All right, didn't realize @RocketLord had posted! Okay, the Baby Monsters attack! DC 20 Reflex save for everyone in contact with the ground to avoid a DC 25 Toughness save as they bite you with their horrible baby teeth. Their bite has Penetrating 5, so you need to roll if your Impervious Tou is less than 15! After those rolls (which are from @Grumblefloof, @RocketLord, and @Heritage if I understand the scene correctly), I'll post IC, and then Persephone will be up.