alderwitch

This was a man who did not deserve banter. As he screamed, Talya closed the distance far more swiftly than anyone would have expected until her booted heel landed between his legs and she was close enough to catch the scents of blood and stale booze from his breath. Close enough that it seemed like she might kiss him - enough that her red lips caught his attention. As soon as his gaze dropped, as Talya knew it would, she twisted, slamming the butt of her baton hard against his jaw as Talya hissed, “You’re not even fit to lick the floor that my lovers walk on. You’re never going to lay a hand on your ex or her children again. Believe me, I will make certain of it.”

I will spend my HP to avoid fatigue and then, move action to close, standard action to feint with skill mastered bluff at 25, and then extra effort to surge and power attack for +2. Attack Roll: 18 for a DC26 Toughness typically.

Bombshell (8) Octoman: Close To Home (IC) = 2 Posts The High Stakes Quickstep = 5 Posts Way Back Home (IC) = 1 Posts Volcanic (9) A New Era = 2 Posts Everybody Make A Scene (IC) = 7 Posts Star Child (4) Star Fall = 4 Posts Janus Danger (13) Vita Nova (Open) = 4 Posts Summer Nights = 6 Posts Dakana Summer - Islands in the Sun = 1 Posts Dakana Summer – The Turquoise Coast = 1 Posts Dakana Summer - The Spiders Lair! = 1 Posts Psyche (1) At Last = 1 Posts Phantom (7) Down in the Underground (Open) = 7 Posts Nighthawk (15) Bang Bang Bang IC = 15 Posts Lovelace (2) Members Only (IC) = 2 Posts Renegade (12) Matchmaker: Ray and 'Jessie' = 12 Posts

"Never underestimate the power of theatrics," Janus drawled lazily. The prince sprawled out, long legs stretched out as they used their belt dagger to peel a curl of apple skin from the apple in their hand deftly. Janus was more relaxed, post their Dakanan vacation. The binder that Janus had been wearing was gone and the deep plunge of their poet's shirt only showed a flatly muscular chest. The changes were subtle but it made all the difference in Janus feeling comfortable in their body and that showed. "If a Danger can't manage to be charming, we must turn in our keys to all Danger affiliated merchandise. It's in the company by-laws," Janus added, a bright flash of white teeth making it clear they were joking. With the Dangers, it was sometimes hard to tell.

“All yours, boys,” Bombshell called out to the officers below as she launched herself from the window after the fight in progress. Her reputation might be... murky on the global scale but the West End officers were used to the Interceptors. Enough so that Bombshell wasn’t concerned they’d doubt her words. She slipped the baton from its place at the small of her back and sent the grapple line out to tangle along the roof line of the opposite building. As she dropped down, her boots barely skimmed over the top of the officer’s head as she added over one shoulder, “And bring medical up with you. The boyfriend is injured pretty bad.” That was all she could offer before her swing took her rapidly away from the officers and towards the fight. They were fast. Bombshell had to work to keep up, pressing the button to release the grapple line’s hold and free fall the last feet into a roll. Hopefully the kid was a quick healer. Bombshell was already calculating the fastest route to get the teen back to the HQ for medical aid. The wound on her shoulder had already sealed over and the drying blood on her skin itched. She was reasonably sure she could take this guy and, even if she couldn’t, better if he went after her instead of the kid. Bombshell knew she could more than take whatever this addict could dish out. “You should know, no one walks away from me,” Bombshell offered, the baton in her hand snapping out to its full length as she reached for its mate. She offered that slow smile. The sort of smile that had made men stop in their tracks time and time again. The more fool them. She dropped her voice to the low, husky purr that she had honed into a weapon easily as deadly as her fists. “You still owe me a dance, big guy. You’d best hurry, though, I don’t usually work alone and my usual dance partner? Well, he really isn’t too fond of bullies picking on women. You DO know that you’re in Interceptor territory don’t you? How long do you think before my teammates catch up, hmm? A minute? Two?” Bombshell cast a slow glance towards an alley, her lashes fluttering down to shield her blue eyes as she intimated which direction he might have Caradoc fly out of or Jack of All Blades swing from the sky. Absently, almost bored as if there wasn’t a teenager bleeding on the pavement, Talya flipped the night stick over to catch it in her gloved palm. “Less, perhaps. I imagine less.” Just turn, just a quick distraction and that was all the opening that Bombshell needed, really.

‘Some. Not as many as I would like but enough to keep the lights on. I’ve been doing a lot of mundane tattoos lately which is fine. I really depend on word of mouth and when I’m not out there involved in the super hero community, it tends to peter off. The only thing I don’t like, really, is the social networking nonsense. Not my thing.‘ Ray grimaced. He’d been spending a lot of his off time helping out with Ellis and his kids. Ray didn’t regret it. Being ‘Uncle Ray’ was a damn good use of his time but as Ellis’ league duties picked up, Ray had been spending more time in the carpool lane at Nicholson. I have a plantonic life partner, much like you. He’s been getting busier so I’ve been helping out keeping everything afloat. Having a day job, and super hero gig and family seems to be more than a full plate.’ Ray added. ‘What about you? There has to be more than work and superhero work keeping you busy.’

“Is the new League certain that you can continue to address disasters with the speed and efficacy that we are used to? Are there any gaps in your team line up that you feel the need to urgently address?” That was from the sober faced woman in the front. Those that bothered to track the various news outlets recognized the Freedom Tribune’s reporter. That outlet prided themselves on ‘tough but fair’ and although they had certain biases like most news outlets, they at least prided themselves on impartiality. “With so many of your members not considering Freedom City as their true home, are you considering relocating the League’s base of operations?!” That held the tinge of panic and excitement from the more histrionic Freedom Eagle News. “Will you still be Freedom’s heroes or will that end up in these new and untried junior members hands?” ”Comrade Frost! Comrade Frost! Will you be releasing the Auxiliary roster today? What new heroes can we expect to find in the halls?” It was an innocuous enough question if you didn’t recognize the channel sixteen team who regularly ran scare pieces on foreign born and aligned heroes on American soil.

I’ll have to spend an HP to get an action after moving full out to catch up. I’ll surge (hell, is that the right word still?) to use Talya’s Distract with her bluff. Sound good?

GM Even if most of these heroes had been on the League for years, there was still a large crowd of press and, beyond them, curious onlookers. This was still world news even if the heroes themselves might feel as if the fuss was excessive. A murmur rippled through the crowd at their appearance. Those that had been on the press junket before could pick out the more reputable reporters, as well as the gossip hounds. The murmurs died away and expectation filled the air as they waited for the promised announcements with bated breath.

Bombshell’s gaze travelled over the wounded and the frightened family members. When her gaze travelled over the frightened children, Talya’s jaw hardened. She’d never had patience for anyone who smacked around people they professed to ‘love’. That wasn’t love; it was ownership, but it hit extra close to home. It wasn’t hard to imagine Eden holding Mia’s hand. Children shouldn’t know that sort of fear. No one should. Bombshell dropped under one of Octoman’s tentacles, vaulting over the second. Too many potential targets, not enough control over the gun. The math was simple even if it meant she was going to come home bloody. Min was going to be so annoyed. Talya vastly preferred when a job was clean and precise simply because it so often wasn’t. Before the man screaming had a chance to realize, Bombshell was in his face, her body between him and the rest of the room. That left one potential victim not protected. Bracing, Talya reached out and closed her fingers around the barrel of the gun and twisted it. Disarming him was too risky but this... this was simple math as Bombshell yanked the gun away from the woman and rolled her shoulder forward until the barrel almost kissed her skin. Not the heart but somewhere with enough muscle and bone. Looks like a 9mm, should stay lodged in the tissue but the shoulder blade will make sure it doesn’t punch through. The gunshot was loud in the small room and Bombshell wasn’t above a grunt and grimace although it turned into a near feral snarl on her red lips. “I’ve seen men like you my whole life,” Bombshell’s voice was like ice, tightly controlled and bitter cold. “You’re a coward and a bully. You’re nothing, and the worst thing is deep inside, you know it. So you do something like this. Something to get people to look at you but the fact of the matter is, we’ve already looked and judged and found you wanting. You want to dance? Try me. Please. I could use a little amusement in my day.”

Talya’s going to be a Big Damn Hero! As we talked about in chat, she’s going to close and blow an HP to interpose her body between the gun and the victim. Toughness save for Talya is 17 so Bruised and Injured. Bruised will regen at no action speeds, the injured takes a round.

“Sandman, why don’t you take the human. Might be a rescue, might not be so on your toes,” Volcanic tossed out as she reached for the fires that burned bright in her breast. “Miss Grue, can you get a feel for the person with Sandman? Facs and I will head for the tiger?” Fires erupted from Leilani, wrapping around her body and solidifying into obsidian plates. It was clear that the transformation went deeper than flesh as the plates moved and showed only flame below the stone. Kicking off into the air with a flaming contrail behind her. “Lead the way, Facs, you have point.”

Init: 12 Talya took a moment to think!

The kid was a ball of lightning energy in a metamorphic shell. Talya had opened her mouth to reply - maybe offer a plan - when the teenager flung himself off the building and through the window. No. Nonono! Hostage situations were delicate at the best of times, especially if the gunman in question was intoxicated and volatile. Without pausing to plan or think, Talya leapt off the edge of the building, just a fraction of a second after Octoman. Part of her stored that info dump away from later. It was certainly a first that of all the people in her history, someone wanted to ask her about spending time with Geckoman. Bombshell let herself free fall for a heartbeat, eight stories over the ground before she flexed and twisted, converting her downward momentum into horizontal movement. Her gloved hands caught the broken window frame. She ignored the scrape of glass against her palms. Any abrasions would heal before she'd landed on the carpet. Pivoting, hands on the windowsill, Bombshell landed silently behind the tentacled hero, crouching as she listened for the whimper of frightened children. She ignored the twinge of guilt about using the teenager as a distraction but Talya was nothing if not practical. She couldn't contain the kid and rescue the hostages and deal with the bad guy. Even Bombshell had limits which meant prioritizing. The first was to clear the innocents from the game board.

Leilani sighed, letting the tension leave her shoulders as she found her feet on Terra Firma once more. Her bare feet made little noise in the grass as she let her stance relax into something a little more natural although she remained un armored. It didn’t take long to summon and burning in a lush environment wasn’t always the brightest move. ”Unlikely,” Leilani replied to Facsimile with a shake of her head, “Not enough of a challenge and too straightforward. Sandman? You’ve got senses that the rest of us don’t. Miss Grue? I think you do too?” The lilt of Leilani’s voice turned that into a question. “Facs, are you a flier? Can you get a bit of a height? I’m a flier but it’s showy. Not sure that’s the best call yet.”

Notice: 18

Talya was torn between horror and amusement at the excitable teenager. Multilimbed appearance aside, Talya knew a teenager when she saw one and she wasn’t about to let the kid get shot. Whatever skills he might have, Talya knew green when she saw it. Pre-game speeches meant green as grass. As if I wasn’t feeling old today already. She let her her own camouflage drop, so she appeared in the background of his video somewhere the ‘slack’ and the ‘business’. “Generally, we save the speeches for after the rescue,” came her low, husky tones just edged with the clipped crisp edges of her accent. She perched on the edge of the rooftop, one eyebrow arched in slight challenge. “Come on, hero, there are kids to save. Moments count and I’ve got your back. Save first, banter second. That’s the third rule.” Bombshell offered him that sharp smile, white against the bright red of her signature lipstick. “First rule is don’t die unless you make it count for more than you lose.”

No one looked twice at Tammy Monroe but then, that was the whole point, after all. The whole ex-spy turned super hero tended to make Talya take the secret identity to a whole different level. Natalya Browning was the fabulous bombshell and everyone knew that she dressed like she’d walked out of the forties, all pin up and blonde curls and a red lipped smile so sharp that it was more dangerous than any blade. Most people never realized that it was just one more mask, one she’d made in the war and wielded like the weapon it was. It helped hide the fact that she’d stopped aging at her first death. Tammy Monroe, on the other hand, looked like any fit soccer mom that might like to do pilates in her spare time. Helping out in the dojo meant that she could safely spend her entire time in the atheleisure section of her wardrobe. With her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, a pair of glasses on her nose and a loose soft sweatshirt over yoga pants and she fit very nicely into the gentrified part of the West End. Pretty enough that people smiled and not so pretty that anyone remembered her. Who Talya really was, well, that was something she wondered herself sometimes but not today. Today, she was just trying to get the groceries home without a crisis. Talya sighed, not so much surprised as accepting when she rounded the corner straight into a police baracade. I knew I shouldn’t have gotten ice cream. It’s going to be all melted by the time I’m done. Skirting her way through the edges of the crowd, ‘Tammy Monroe’ vanished between one person and the next. No one saw her vault her way up the side of a building with a bag full of groceries still clutched to her chest. Once she was on the rooftop, where it was at least LESS likely to be taken while she was working. At least her family understood that sometimes hero-work found you. Shedding her clothes, she left those tucked by the groceries. At least she had the halter top of her uniform on under her sweatshirt and the black leggings would be close enough. Fortunately, it was too warm to be missing her jacket. Talya sprinted off the edge of the rooftop, silently leaping over the police below as she trusted her mystical camouflage to keep her undetected as she scaled the side of the building to get a better look at the source of all this commotion. At least that was easy enough, the police below were clearly keeping an eye on a section of the building and only one of those windows was recently shattered. Probably a bullet. Hell. Talya loathed getting shot but Min would be cranky if she came home blood spattered AND with melted ice cream. Quick and clean. No problem.

You can find all the active characters on the site under the hero tab of the character bank. There's a lot of them as there's no one team but rather many, many heroes that pop in and out of threads and a handful of different teams made up of those characters as well as characters not on or not interested in a team.

Ray considered her responses and let the topic drop. Not everyone enjoyed the idea of jabbing needle into flesh repeatedly and he well knew it. 'I'm glad you liked it. Holding onto something before you get it on your body is not a BAD idea. More of my clients should probably go that route. Well, not MY clients. I try to keep my 'drunk college kid' tattoos to a bare minimum,' Ray replied, keeping it light as well. While Ray thought he did 'making friends' very well, Ellis claimed he attached himself barnacle like until they gave up and accepted his presence in their lives. Which was RUDE but not inaccurate. 'I'm glad I could help your friend. I know there's not a lot of people who could do it and less that probably would, more's the pity. Not going to lie, it's a little weird to tattoo invocations to deities likely better not invoked but, hell, I've always been more about intent than dogma anyway. It was clear she needed to have those markings when she came in. It is certainly not the weirdest thing that I've tattooed. I'm glad they still look the way she wants them too. I haven't tattooed too many amphibians and their skin is a little different.' No, weirdest tattoos were probably the ones that Ray did on himself. The Enochian symbols that cracked the holy seal on his powers over creation. They were certainly the most esoteric thing that he'd tattooed.

'Convenient and tasty.' Ray agreed with a soft chuckle that was quiet in his apartment. Loosely crossing his ankles on the other end of the couch, Ray typed out, 'All art is a conversation. You create something, stick it out there, and someone reads intent and meaning in what you've made but usually it's fairly divorced. Artist makes something in their studio and people view it elsewhere, later. A tattoo, though, its made for someone and crafted for their body. Some clients, its about making their body into what they want to see, or memorializing a memory or a moment or a person or a CONCEPT on their skin because they need it. Or perhaps they want something beautiful just to have it. Or they want a joke etched in their skin. It's profoundly human and impermanent and that's amazing and humbling all at the same time.' Ray paused and considered for a moment, 'And I understand it. My body didn't really feel mine when I was stuck on this plane but every time that I added images too it, it felt a little less strange and a little more like it was MY body. So, I get it. I get the need to anchor your soul to your flesh with ink and image and will.' He paused, sending the messages as quick as his fingers tapped over the keypad and then grimaced a little. 'Sorry, I get overly enthusiastic talking about what I do. Anyway, if you come by the shop sometime, I'll set you up with a machine and an orange; show you the basics, if you wan't.'

"Neither," Leilani said with amusement, though she tipped her head to take in Frost's mannerisms with some curiosity. She glanced over to her erstwhile partner, arching her brows in a silent question for his preferences before she shook her head and gestured towards Sandman and Miss Grue. "Go ahead and pick." Leilani offered. As she had said, she was typically one to deal with the situation as it presented but, especially here, she didn't want to give anyone concerns to latch on. They might be teammates after all of this, after all, and trust was critical in working together. Leilani had enough about her power set that was liable to raise concerns about teammates. Fire, after all, wants to burn and doesn't much care who was in the way. Might as well start building that trust now. "I'll just be glad to get my feet back on the ground. I'm not overly fond of this place, I'll be honest." She offered that more to Facsimile than the others though it wasn't really news to Dimitri. Leilani could function in space. She just didn't LIKE to.

'That's a nice way to put it,' Popped up on Jessie's screen along with a laughing emoji that followed. Ray smiled faintly as he remembered the 'we think you need a break speech. 'I didn't decide anything until I was on Earth. See, heaven's great and all but an angel needs to follow orders. Disobeying an order means falling - which I am not. I'm in an in-between sort of space. I wasn't doing what angels ought to but I wasn't rebelling either. There's not really a script for angel doing their own thing; free will is a gift for mortals but here I am, nonetheless. Grounded might be more accurate than sabbatical but it sounds so like a kid caught with a cookie.' There was another laughing emoji. Really, Ray was lucky he came from a benevolent heaven. He was following his heart and while his family didn't understand (at all), he had their vague support, even if that support was to boot him out to the mortal plane to figure out his life. 'I started on oranges in a hole in the wall apprentice shop in a bad part of London. I needed a job and the owner was kind. I had no talent. I was still maybe learning how my thumbs worked but as long as I tried hard and cleaned up around the shop, he'd teach me in between clients. I was awful. It took a year before he'd let me practice on my own thigh, even.' That tattoo was hidden among the other swirls of color now. It was small, poorly done and fading steadily but Ray had never magicked it away. 'Do you want to know why its my favorite kind of art?'

Leilani offered a smile and her own hand. Her skin was warmer than was typical but not unpleasantly so. "Aloha. Volcanic is the name I go by but Leilani is also fine. I don't have a typical secret identity." Her name lilted, giving the syllables the proper inflection. Her teeth flashed white against her tanned skin and she shrugged, "It's alright. I'm hard of hearing so I don't do well in crowds either. I think it's probably good to know what we can each do? We have the time, might as well use it. I'm a geothermic controller or 'lava' if you prefer. I can armor up and get a bit tougher - don't need to breathe and nothing really bothers me once I'm armored but I put off serious heat when I do and there's no helping it. You okay with heat and fire? I saw you do that metal thing; handy that." Leilani offered Sandman and Miss Grue a friendly smile at their side conversation although she wasn't really listening in. "I'm a go with the flow sort of person typically, personally."

"Yes, of course," Andromeda replied cheerfully to Triakosia although she meandered a bit as she followed the paragon in whatever direction Triakosia wanted to lead her. Andromeda let her fingers graze the trees and the ice cream cart with equal fascination and paused more than once to stare at the bystanders with just as much - if not more - fascination than then the crowd gave to the super heroes. When Nephlim offered his drink, Andromeda accepted it cheerfully, taking a ginger sip. "It is very cold. Cold and sweet and strange. Is it good? Is it good nourishment? I don't need to eat, really. I rest but my energy still generates inside like it always has - but I can eat. It seems important. You spend so much time consuming and resting. Over half your day and the days you have are so few so it seems important that you enjoy both of those things, don't you think?" She offered the drink back with a polite, "Thank you," before Legatus words caught her attention. "Why are 'scenes' bad? Do we not like scenes?"