Electra
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Well, that's going to smart a little. She misses by seven, so is bruised and dazed. I'll spend an HP to shake the daze, and the bruise will regenerate on her next turn.
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The scene reminded Stesha of the tiny marketplace on Sanctuary, with the homespun clothing and the bartering over homemade and homegrown goods, but no one on Sanctuary would ever have that look of fear or reverence at her approach. It was more than a little unsettling, but she couldn't let the facade slip now. The more attention she kept on herself, the better for her friends. As the barque approached the pier, every lily pad in the brackish water burst into full bloom, filling the air with a nearly intoxicating floral scent. Vines rose up from the earth, smoothing the pier into a pathway and rising into stairs that allowed her to alight from the giant flower. She looked to the dryads and cocked her head, obviously expecting them to escort her down the path. "It's all very beautiful," she allowed. "I'm more eager than ever to meet the creator."
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Erin waited, not twitching a muscle, until Curtis and his arm-candy disappeared into the green room. She disliked the man on sight, a reaction she reminded herself was totally unimportant to the matter at hand. It didn't matter if the guy had a slimy vibe to him, what mattered was whether he was some kind of magic supervillain trying to take over a comic book company for completely unknown and unfathomable reasons. When the corridor was clear, she nodded to Mark, then dropped soundlessly to the floor. She raised her arms and caught him as he jumped down, then led the way to the double doors out to the stage. It was clear from the rehearsal noise earlier that the room wasn't open to the hall just yet, but other than that, she had no idea of the setup. "Go in silent," she whispered to Mark, her hand on the door. "If there's a curtain, stay away from it. We need to get a look at his magic kit and see what sort of tricks he's got planned." She was no magical expert, not by a long shot, but she figured she could tell dime store magic tricks from someone actually preparing to summon up a demon or ten in front of an audience. Carefully, quietly, she pushed open the door and slipped inside.
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Almost reflexively, Fleur raised a curtain of vines to shield the spectators from falling chunks of rock, even as she herself shaded her eyes to watch the obsidian monster go all to pieces. There'd be some damage to the city, she estimated, but nothing that couldn't be put right within a few hours, and no serious injuries. A good day for hero work. She smiled at her colleagues, relieved enough that even Comrade Frost got caught up in the periphery of it. "That was a great job by everybody. We might even have the scene clear before rush hour!" Letting the curtain of vines fall away and disintegrate to dust, she jogged in the direction of the two visitors. They'd landed well, but it had been a tough introduction to the city. "Are you all right?" she called.
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Fleur risked one glance back as she left the atrium, but everyone else seemed to be standing pat for the moment. That was all right, she could always teleport back if things got too risky. She hoped, anyway. Keeping her shoulders back and her chin up, she followed the plant women with the air of someone accustomed to an entourage. Once aboard the lily, she tried to keep some idea of where they were going, but the unfamiliar scenery wasn't very helpful. "She certainly has made a great many improvements," she responded to the dryads' enthusiasm, trying to sound impressed. "I hardly recognize the place. It used to be so very crowded with people and all their machines. Did a great many of them have to be resettled before the Mother could do her work?"
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"It's just a big rack of bones. Hopefully they've got a list of how the pieces go together somewhere." Snagging Mark around the waist from behind, Wander broke a single square panel on the edge of the atrium (the easiest kind to replace) and dropped into the exhibit hall. She bent her knees and absorbed the landing, then deposited Mark on his feet and raced towards the dinosaur. This wasn't the sort of fight that needed a lot of cleverness or acrobatic finesse, just enough raw power and speed to take it down without getting a bite from those skeletal teeth. Heeding Mark's advice, she sped between the huge skeleton's legs and drove her bat into the back of one knee, then the other, a flurry of blows that left the thing staggering.
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Erin took a couple of steps back from the door, but their options were limited in terms of places to hide. She glanced up and noted that back here in the service areas of the hall, they hadn't bothered with a drop ceiling to cover the exposed pipes and joists overhead. Catching Mark's eye, she pointed upwards, then made a stirrup with her hand to boost him up. In seconds, he was securely tucked up in the pipes, ten feet off the ground, and a moment later Erin was up there with him. She kept her eyes on the door, wanting to get a look at this guy before he got a look at her.
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Erin pursed her lips and struggled not to bite the lower one, an obvious enough tell of tension that even Mark was likely to notice. "I guess it's a good thing you're already resolved to make sure she gets help, then," she told him as they turned down the hall that seemed to run beside the banquet room and towards the stage. "See what you can do about making sure nobody happens by while we're sneaking around, all right?" She slipped off her heels and set them in an alcove, walking on silent bare feet towards the first set of double doors that looked like they could hide a backstage area. She paused outside the door and listened for any signs of activity, trying not to feel foolish.
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Once the ship was landed safely, the silver robot was perfectly still for a few minutes, blank face slack. It appeared the AI was either busy or had shut down from the gravitic propulsion trick. Eventually, though, it animated itself again, flying up to examine the ship through the portholes and any damaged places. "When you say "they've got him," do you mean that whoever set the trap for you has your Star Knight colleague still up in local space somewhere? Or do you believe they're still aboard the vessel we've got here? Traveling any distance into space will probably require securing some extra equipment."
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Erin glanced at Mark, a significant look coupled with a slight tilt of her head that said she wanted to get a look at the stage show. And that was true, because she believed in being thorough, but it was also an excuse to get away from the very uncomfortable atmosphere at the table. These people had obviously known Mark since he was small, and most of them seemed to actually like him, but none of them seemed to know what to say or do in this particular situation. The food wasn't even particularly good, though Erin knew full well that was probably because between home and HAX, she was getting spoiled. "You know," she commented to Mark, "I just realized I left my phone in the car. Could you come unlock it for me?" She rose from the table, giving the other people there a polite smile. "Back in just a minute."
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Move-by Move Action: Drop through the skylight with Mark, deposit him out of T-Rex biting range, then rush on in for a dinosaur beat-down. Standard Action: Full power attack with bat, inspired, cosmic power array shifted to autofire. The roll is a 28. That's a DC 32 toughness plus any autofire.
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"We'll do our best," Fleur assured Sehkmet, even as she stared with some consternation at the giant monster clutching the unfortunate would-be god. It was too far up to throw a vine, and she suspected that the monster would not be much hindered by tangling its feet with plants. If she could get up there herself... but it was no good, there were no plants that high to teleport to. Not for the first time, she wondered if she could convince her teammates that live-flower boutonnieres were what all the stylish heroes wore. In any case, that wouldn't help her now. Stone, stone, a monster made of stone... What hurt stone? Earthquakes, obviously, or heavy impacts, but that wasn't her purview. She thought of dandelions growing in the cracks of pavement, the strong roots breaking up the cement, gradually turning what had been stone into dust. That might work, if she could speed it up a bit. Reaching into her pouch, she drew out a tiny, slender seed, cupping it in her hand and coaxing it into growth. A bowl of bright green, arrow-shaped leaves formed first, then from it a single shoot, which bloomed in seconds into a cheerful yellow disc. The bloom discolored and closed once again, its yellow fringe turning white and opening a second later as a round white ball: a perfect dandelion clock. Fleur held it up, focused on the monster, made a wish, and blew. The white dandelion seeds made a little cloud as the floated and spun, catching the breeze to drift high onto the monster's torso and arms, or staying low and sticking to the legs and feet. Each one landed and immediately began to grow, sending roots deep into whatever crevice or joint they could find, binding up and eroding the rock creature's moving parts, even as they covered the obsidian structure in a patchwork of cheerful yellow.
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Okay, spending an HP to stunt off Fleur's array: Drain All Ability Scores 20 (plant infiltration, Extras: Affects Only Objects, Ranged [+1], Flaws: Action [Full], Distracting, PFs: Precise, Reversible, Selective) {43/48} It's basically getting plants into all the cracks in the big stone body and doing what lichen does to stone, but faster. Mechanically the plant growth will hold the broken bits together. Precise and reversible so she can control it, stop it and even fix it if she wants to. Attack Roll: Fleur gets a 22 So that'll be a reflex save, DC 30, I believe.
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Wander goes on 25
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"Kim Park, got it," Erin answered. She spent part of the trip asking a few more questions about events in the Andie universe, just so she wouldn't look a total fraud, Eventually, though, they both lapsed into a silence weighted heavily by the absent Martha Lucas. It was difficult, Erin thought, to see the usually ebullient Mark seem so worried and dispirited. "The thing is," she finally said, breaking the silence as they got close to the office complex, "sometimes people just need a break from bad times. It's almost like a protective thing, the mind clicks onto a weird channel to keep itself from breaking in a way it can't be fixed. And it's still bad and all, but you get better from it. Eventually the mind starts to heal up and come back to reality and be okay again. I mean..." She hesitated, struggling with the words, wondering if they'd even help. "I mean, I'm not like Singularity, but before I came to Prime, there was a long time, months and months, where I wasn't in my right mind, couldn't let myself take in reality, it was too hard. But eventually... it got better, you know? Little by little. People can get better from this stuff." She laced her fingers together in her lap, looking uncomfortably out the windshield.
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"Don't worry about it," she told him. "I wouldn't trust many people with Singularity either, and you had my back there. We've all got family stuff to deal with. I'll see you at six, okay?" Erin spent the rest of the day attending to her work, but with part of her mind worrying over what was going to happen with Martha Lucas. She knew she couldn't wholly discount the possibility that something bad really was happening. It was Freedom City after all, where almost anything was plausible. But it was still very hard to believe, given the reliability of the source. What were they going to do about her? She took off a half-hour early, promising Steve she'd make the time up to him later, and headed back to North Bay, to the house where it was still hard to believe she lived. Trevor wasn't home yet and there was no sign of Travis, but Charlie met her at the door, purring and casting insinuating glances back towards the kitchen. Since the cleaning team's visit not long ago, the house smelled like lemon oil and old books, a welcoming sort of scent that made her just want to settle in somewhere and not go out for awhile. That wasn't in the cards, though, so she dumped food into an ecstatic Charlie's bowl, then headed to her closet. "Formal but not too formal" was probably the biggest hole in her wardrobe, since most of what she wore was either durable enough to chase crooks and fix cars in, or suitable for an evening party with the set Trevor Hunter the secret identity socialized with. Neither were quite in order tonight. It took some doing, but by ten of six she was dressed and ready, with makeup and appropriate shoes and everything, a note for Trevor scribbled and left on the counter. Despite her own color preferences, Frank insisted on putting her in colors that looked good, so for tonight she'd put on a beige and gold ballroom sheath, then dressed it down with a linen jacket that reached her thighs. Frank would probably tell her it was all wrong, but she wasn't trying to win any fashion awards. The dress was stretchy enough that she could easily fight in it, and that was what mattered. Not tonight, probably, but in general. Stepping onto the long driveway outside the manor, she took a few running steps and leapt into the air, jacket fluttering behind her like a cape as she angled towards Mark's house. His car was a little more suited than her truck for tonight's festivities.
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"Let's do it outside, Tona," Stesha said, suddenly sounding weary. "We'll have to round up all these pirates and send them back to Earth Prime, which means that if they won't surrender, we'll have to capture them one by one. Meantime, let's see if I can keep the bees from destroying the ship while we're in it." She touched the archer's arm, and suddenly they were back on the ground, at the foot of the massive tower of plant life holding the ship aloft. Stesha gave one clap of her hands, and suddenly the entire tower bloomed with red flowers, vivid as a summer sunset. "Enough!" she called, once she had the bees' undivided attention. "We've disabled the ship, you don't need to attack it anymore. Now we just need to round up the pirates. "NEED ZZZOME HELP WITH ZZHAT?" Beeatrizz asked convivially, whirling down to join the humans as the ship continued its slow sag earthwards. "ZZHEZE BAD ZZQUIZZY BIPEDZZ ARE ZHE MOZZT FUN WE'VE HAD IN MONZZZ." She seemed a bit disappointed that defending the hive was almost finished. "Why don't most of you fall back." Stesha suggested, "and make a perimeter in the air? That way if any of the pirates try to escape, you can stop them. We don't want any of them sneaking around after today. You and Curlbee stick around, you can help Blue Jay and I if the pirates get rowdy." As the ship touched down, more vines rose to meet it, creating a solid net that left only one exit open for use, and that one quite well-guarded.
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"Well, as long as we're talking about tripping our breakers," Miss A said over the various radios, sounding slightly amused. "I've been wanting to try this new gravitic propulsion device somewhere not as fragile as the interior of my lab... you may want to brace yourselves." At the nose of the falling ship, the silent silver gynoid ceased in its pushing efforts for a moment and began tugging on its own fingers in a pattern too studied to be a random affectation. Suddenly, the robot began emitting a low-pitched worn-worn-worn sound, and the clothes and hair of the people around it began to float ever so slightly. It retook its position under the ship, and with careful pushing, settled it into a slow lateral glide, heading towards the sea as slow and easy as a gull on the wing.
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All righty, since Gina has recently gone to space and been working on a totally new robot design, now seems like a perfect time to stunt a test of her experimental propulsion system. HP to Stunt: Flight 4 {8} + Move Object 20 (Effective STR 100, Heavy Load: 12.5 kilotons) (Flaw: Limited [straight Up]) {20} = 28/30 The mechanic for this is that you have to cancel out both the flight speed and hold up the weight of the object - with Move Object 20, you're buying off both Flight 9 and 24 tons of weight (which would require Move Object 11 to move) Hopefully this will be enough to considerably slow or completely stop the downward motion of the object, though it may still be moving laterally to some extent.
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I'll stick with it
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The strange snake guardians were tough customers, Stesha decided as she watched the fight unfold. They could be captured and they could be hurt, but they didn't go down easily. It would've been a simple enough matter to put them into her dimensional pocket, but she suspected getting them out again might be a different story. They didn't seem the type to be cowed into good behavior by a few hours caught between worlds. Instead, she sent a creeper sliding around the legs of one of the creatures still on the ground. The vine opened a dozen lovely pink flowers, each with an oversized yellow stamen. All at once, the flowers shook themselves like wet dogs, sending a cloud of pollen into the air that all but obscured the snakey creature.
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Fleur is going to attempt a Stun attack on one of the unbruised Tzitimitl. She rolls a 28. If her attack has any effect, it will be a DC 30 Fortitude save.
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Erin was quiet for a moment. "Yeah," she finally said, "I understand. But getting help for her doesn't mean losing her, it means doing everything you can to get her back, instead of losing her bit by bit. Therapy's not so bad," she added dryly. "Take it from a pro. Anyway, I'll meet you at your place tonight and we'll go over together, that's probably easiest to handle.If we meet up a little early, we can case the venue beforehand, get an idea of the tactical situation." Just because it was a stupid mission, she figured, didn't make it less a mission. Everything was practice. "What's the dress code going to be like?"
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"It's all right," Fleur told the crowd of scientists and soldiers with a quick smile. "This is why you brought us along, right?" She tugged the crown of flowers from her hair and tossed it down onto the platform, then leapt free of it before Gaian Knight's rocky covering finished growing. She took in the entire scene, the Simurgh far overhead, deftly handled by Gabriel and Tiamat but far out of her own reach. "The fight's going to have to come down here," she murmured to Gaian Knight. "We'd better be ready for it." She threw her prepared handful of seeds onto the earthen outcropping the terrakinetic had already created. Plants sprang up, vines and trees and sturdy shrubs, forming a surprisingly sturdy barrier that concealed and added a layer of extra protection to the already-formidable barrier. Even if the fight came to them, their charges would be safe.
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Fleur is pretty groundbound, so this round I'm going to have her hop off the platform before the rock closes, then weave a curtain of plants overtop of it. That'll make a double layer of protection overtop the non-heroes and hopefully keep them out of the fight.