Electra
-
Posts
11,284 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Freedom City Guidebook
Freedom City PBP: A How-To Guide
Gallery
Events
Everything posted by Electra
-
Wander stood absolutely still and listened to the incriminating board meeting over her earpiece, completely ignoring her companions on the roof. As Jonathan Grant outlined his plans, her lips pursed together tighter and tighter until there was a ring of white around her mouth. When he came to the part about the vaccines, though, she seemed to come alive again all at once. "No." she said flatly, a death-knell sound of finality in her voice. "You don't get away with that, you son of a bitch." In a heartbeat she'd drawn her bat from the sheath at her waist, but this time she didn't twist her hand to spin it to extension. Instead she looked at it and tossed it aside, the silver rod flashing in the sunlight as it rolled across the graveled roof. Another heartbeat and she was over the rail, seeming to defy gravity as she swarmed down the side of the building using tiny handholds and her own acrobatic grace to descend to the level of the executive meeting room. The double-paned glass of the panoramic windows didn't even slow her down as she broke through, dropping down in front of Grant as he cowered from the spray of glass. Wander stared down at him, an avenging angel with a face full of righteous wrath. "Your murders for the Terminus end here!" she told him, then drew back her fist. The snap of his neck was clearly audible as her fist connected with his chin, the snap of his spine less so as his body flew like a projectile across the room, straight through the wall and into the waiting room beyond.
-
"We better go straight to Summers," Koshiro pointed out. "The less time we're in charge of all this nasty, the better. He'll be able to get the super hazmat team or whatever to come in and toss it all into the sun. I'd rather do that than try a cross-town drive to ArcheTech. Who knows what even a fender bender might end up doing?" He checked his watch, compared it to the clock tower on the church beyond the school's walls. "Looks like it's about 9:30, so we should be able to catch him in his office and maybe still make the tail end of breakfast. Good deal." He climbed out of the Wonderbus and stretched, glad to be back on safe, boring Prime.
-
Miss A input a quick order into her computer, one that would have every sensor array in Freedom City tuning in for that frequency, even as she maintained a cool facade. "if it were that easy, everyone would do it," she pointed out, subtly shifting into a more flattering tone of voice. "All the intel we have on your suit suggests that you've got plenty of tricks up that sleeve. Your counterpart wouldn't have had such a successful run without superior tech skills and strategy. There are any of a dozen places and ways he could hide from sensors. Still I imagine you could probably take a good guess as to where we might find him if he's in the city." Her fingers never stopped moving as she spoke, bringing up data, scrolling through results, and even working on a new schematic for the Whistler's door controls. There just weren't enough hours in the day.
-
Erin looked up from the map of the city she'd been reading, struck by Jill's words. She'd tuned out a bit on Beekeeper after his initial assent, and had nearly missed what Ellie had caught. It wasn't that she didn't feel bad for the guy, who looked truly pathetic when he wasn't suited up, but it was easy to slip into paranoid fantasy after only a little time in a place like this. She hadn't really considered the possibility that it might be the Curator himself. "You think the Curator is trying to get an exhibition fight out of us, like the time with the Madrigal Martinet and her Hounds?" She looked around and realized that no one there would likely know what she was talking about, then waved a hand dismissively. "Or whatever. It can't just be that, why would he lift the three of us who know each other and work together, and Quickstep here weeks ago?" She rested her chin on her fist and forced herself to think of the possibility she'd been willfully ignoring. "Maybe it's not about us," she offered. "Or at least not just about us. Maybe he wants us out of the way so he can get to someone else." Turning, she met Steve's eyes, then Ellie's. "We know one person already who is unprotected because we're not there. Between the rest of us, there may be more. But I don't know what we can do." Erin dropped her hand, scrubbed her face. "We don't even know how long we were all unconscious to get here, or how much time has passed on Earth. But we know people are looking for us, so we have to try and get back as soon as possible. And if we can give the Curator a black eye in the process, I'm all for that. Steve, you said Defenders Base in Chicago might have a ship?"
-
"Only if we're right there behind you," Wander put in, her face set in stubborn lines. "You two may be the sneakiest, but that doesn't mean your asses aren't going to end up in a sling. You stay in touch, and Edge can move the rest of us in as soon as there's a hint of trouble. If this is the Terminus, last time they laid a trap for us it happened almost faster than we could handle it, even though we were all together." She looked down again at the map, her face going cold. "And anyway, if there's a chance for us to bust these guys down, I want to be in on it."
-
"Does it really matter?" Erin asked. "We don't actually know how many heroes got the message, just that we particular heroes all know each other and are talking about it." She sat with her hands folded on the table and her back ramrod-straight, studying the information they had. "If I had to pick a company who'd be consorting with the Terminus, it would be Grant. Pharmeceutical companies, with few exceptions, make a living off monetizing human suffering in the first place, and everybody knows that Grant is shady. You hear all kinds of rumors about what they're up to. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out this is absolutely true." She looked up at the others and shrugged. "Anyway, even if it's a trap, we have to go check it out, right? We'll just be careful and make sure not to get caught in whatever anyone might try to spring."
-
During the trip to Philadelphia, Wander had been, between leaps, keeping an eye on the capabilities of their new erstwhile allies. "Airplane's probably not a good bet for now," she pointed out. "Even if one of us has unexplored depths as a pilot, trying to find a plane that'll work, find fuel and get it into the plane, and fly with no navigation system, that'll take us a few hundred miles before we have to find an airport, land, and do it all again. Similar problems with a car, really. There's no way to navigate, has anybody else noticed that?" Her voice took on a bit of an edge as she looked at the cloud-filled sky. "There's no sun, no stars in the nighttime. Compasses don't point anywhere in particular, and I'm pretty damn sure there's not going to be a navsat system up there if we get a GPS working. If we want to travel, we're going to be doing it by pure line of sight navigation, which means getting in the air, but not too high, and following the roads from city to city. Beekeeper, are you strong enough to take a loaded van and fly with it? I'm pretty sure you're the fastest flyer we've got, and if we could take a minivan and rig the chassis with tow lines, one strong flyer could haul us all and our gear instead of this piggyback business." She looked to the battlesuited cipher for his (probably his, though the voice modulator on the suit could mean either) reaction to the idea.
-
Fleur handily makes the toughness save. As far as I know, the Grue's nauseate effect is explicitly a poison attack, so unless you tell me otherwise I will assume that her immunity to poison negates the need for a fort save. Also, rolling for the trees is fine, I think they're under your control and all I can do is use move actions to command them anyway.
-
As Corbin sent his message, he felt a soft whoosh of air and heard a quiet thud behind him. Erin brushed herself off from her landing, looking around to take stock of the situation. "We should go in through the garage," she told him. "You don't want to wake up Travis." She led the way down the steps and around to the massive garage, keying her way in through security with the ease of long practice, for all she looked slightly... ill at ease? Uncomfortable? Whatever it was, after a moment the door swung open and she gestured him inside. "I'll leave it open for the others, they should be coming soon. Midnight's probably already downstairs."
-
"In here," Erin decided after a moment's thoughtful consideration. "Put it up like a window." She gave the three strangers in the corridor a curious look as she passed, but one without a hint of recognition, then stepped uncomplainingly into the cell that looked a lot like a dorm room. Miss Americana was distracted from Steelgrave for a moment by the new arrival as well, watching her with a considering look. "That's not the one you know, Steve," she explained. "That's Erin White EVM1, codenamed Singularity. Or more properly EZO2, I suppose, but that's not where she was picked up, and it's just more confusing given the other one's designation. In any case, Young Freedom rescued her from Anti-Earth, but she needed some serious reconditioning. I did some of the consulting work on her cell." She turned her attention back to the cell in front of them, giving Steelegrave a bored look. "And I suppose you know something about these drugs and how they're supposedly being disseminated?" she drawled.
-
Bluff check, trying to psych Steelgrave into revealing his secrets by insulting his everything. Gonna use skill mastery, so that's a DC 40 check.
-
"It's not a bad idea, Gabe, but I'm afraid it's not likely to succeed." Miss A rose easily to her feet, walking just into sight of the clone in the cell as she jotted a work order on her pad computer. "He's not the real Steelgrave, merely a handful of cloned cells forced into reproductive mitosis and imprinted with a selection of memories to make him feel like he was the man himself." Her voice was mild, totally dismissive. "The mental matrix is almost certainly faulty, listen to how he's already cracking under the strain of even mild incarceration. A pawn like this would never have gotten information on any important operations from his betters on Nihilor. You'd probably have as much luck interrogating him as you would the cheek swab that spawned him."
-
"Good morning Gabe, Steve," Miss A said, the perfect pleasantness in her voice belying any hint of the awkwardness Steve had suggested. "I'll be a little while yet, I'd rather not leave this shield running on its backup mechanism any longer than necessary. But I'll do my best to keep the volume down," she promised. "You're here to ask about the rumors that have been floating around lately, I assume?" Normally she and Steve would've discussed all of this in more detail beforehand, but ever since that horribly awkward night before Christmas, he'd been keeping his distance and she'd been letting him. It was all she could do to keep her own balance, let alone find one in their strange pas de deux. "Good luck with that, I think he's sleeping."
-
Erin picked up her phone when the message arrived, carrying it over to the one upholstered chair in her apartment. Charlie hissed and jumped away as she sat down without looking, fluffing his fur and glaring at her from the safety of the windowsill. She paid him no attention, keying in her password and taking in the message. It seemed to be addressed to Trevor, which was odd, but the contents were at least as germane to her. She scanned the message through twice, then smiled. At last, time for some action. Rising, she went to her closet and pulled on her purple and black uniform, buckling on her belt and sheathing her bat. She picked up her communicator and thumbed it on. "This is Wander, I'll meet you all at the HQ."
-
Wander grimaced at Jason's litany of baseless taunts. "Personally I hate Medea," she said conversationally to her opponent, "but right at this moment you're making me feel a tiny bit of sympathy towards her. And that pisses me off so much." With those words she was in the air, using the mythic figure's own shoulders as a springboard as she vaulted into an aerial somersault and came down to stand side-by-side with Midnight. Before Jason had a chance to turn around, she'd unleashed a flurry of blows from her shining silver bat, sending him off his feet and flying across the room in a helpless tumble. "So much."
-
Erin withdrew her arm, moving with considerably more care now than when she'd put it in the wall. She stared at Trevor for a minute, her face oddly blank. She could've been woolgathering, or staring at television, or sleeping with her eyes open. Finally she said, "No, I'm done with walls. Punching walls isn't going to help a damn thing, is it? Here, I brought you your Christmas present. I'll see you in January." She reached into her pocket, leaving a smear of plaster dust on her blue uniform, and pulled out a small square envelope. She placed it on the counter between them as though she didn't dare put it into his hand herself, then turned and walked out, leaving her winter clothes behind. It was easy to tell what the envelope contained, a gift card for Starbase Coffee, an outlet of which was located conveniently on-campus.
-
Koshiro wasn't the best choice to do any of the driving or the carrying, but he'd been ideally suited to help with the packing. All the crates in the refrigerator were cushioned with sturdy paper balloons from floor to ceiling, leaving not an inch of space for them to so much as shift during transit. With that done, he'd laid paper maché strips along the door to seal it tight against any possible leakage, then scattered the floor in the room beyond with little paper men figures, his equivalent of terra cotta warriors, ready to come alive and fight off any threat. Only then had he been ready to call it safe enough for the moment. Once outside the bus again, he looked to Sharl. "We've got the copy of Tronik, we've got the bioweapons, we've struck a blow for the rebellion, Ghost Girl is going to put out the word with the Canadian team... do we have any other business that needs doing before we get the hell out of here?"
-
The look she gave him when she met his eyes was hot with anger, not the restrained anger layered with grief that she'd been shouldering for years, but the sort of look she got during a battle when the control was slipping away and she was ready to make someone pay. It didn't seem to be directed at him, maybe it wasn't even directed at anyone, but it was suddenly there, and dangerous as an unsheathed blade. "Why should anything be wrong?" she demanded, the same edge right there in her voice. "I'm here, aren't I? I'm going to work and paying my bills and living my life, so how could anything be wrong? The world is immeasurably screwed up and people are suffering and dying everywhere from crime and war and neglect, and this is supposed to be the best possible world in an infinite universe of hellholes, but if we can just ignore all that, then hey, we can all be happy and normal!" Spinning away, she drew back a fist and punched it into the wall as hard as she could. The aged wood splintered with a deafening crack, splinters of wood and plaster shrapnel flying across the room. The wall provided no effective resistance to her superhuman strength, leaving her arm buried to the elbow at the end of her textbook follow-through. There was silence for a moment as Erin stood absolutely still, looking down at her arm. "I should go," she finally said.
-
Wander Test Site I Where the Love Light Leads And Countless Screaming Argonauts When It Rains, It Snows Merry HAXmas Midnight City A Briefing With Friends Fleur de Joie Sanctuary: Panacea Miss Americana Papercut A War-Torn World NPC Love the One You're With Gina's posts go to Miss A, obviously. All points go first to Wander, then to Papercut.
-
Fleur looked from the android captain, struggling against his bonds with prodigious strength, to the deformed Grue fighting GK and Gabriel to at least a draw. "What we need are some reinforcements," she muttered. Reaching into her pouch, she selected seeds by touch, then tossed them to the floor in a wide arc. Plants sprang up, but these were different than usual. Instead of rooting in the ground, these grew roots almost like tripedal legs, then sprouted woody trunks and leafy branches. In seconds, there were five small trees in the cavern, and all of them were walking. "Attack the Grue!" Fleur called to them. "Help Gabriel and Gaian Knight!"
-
What we need is some reinforcements! Fleur will summon her five animated tree minions to help even the odds. She'll spend her action to summon, and her move to command them to attack the Grue Minions. Here are their stats.
-
Erin looked down at herself and seemed almost surprised to see the uniform still on. She shrugged, frowning. "It's just a uniform," she replied. "I don't mean we have to go to any five star place you usually go, just somewhere for some food. People can do things like that, just go out and be normal sometimes. But if you don't want to, whatever. I don't even have to eat everyday." She took her nearly-untouched cocoa and dumped it down the sink, then set the mug next to his with a solid thunk. Up close to him, she definitely seemed more tense than usual, nearly twitchy, as though she were either spoiling for a fight or contemplating a hasty escape.
-
For Reference: Wander is seriously tired of this guy, so let's use the old acrobat smack to try and put him down for the count. Move Action: Improved Acrobatic Bluff, Skill Mastered and Inspired for 32 Standard Action: Fully shifted power attack, inspired. 1d20+12=25. DC 32 toughness save plus whatever autofire might give her.
-
Erin had heard the Furion appellation once or twice, so wasn't totally confused by Blue Jay's words, even if it still seemed a little strange to her. "I'm Wander," she agreed with a nod. "Jill o'Cure of the Interceptors, Quickstep," she indicated the others, "and Harrier, a free Omegadrone. I've worked with him since he came to Freedom City, and there aren't many heroes I trust more. We're all going to have to work together to get through this, so any personal problems can wait till your own time." She looked to the sky along with the others, shading her eyes with her hand. "You're both right about getting out of here, fast as we can. We've got very little in the way of supplies right now, so I suggest we head towards Philadelphia, then further inland. If we make good time, we can be a couple states away by dark. Harrier, you grab Jill and fly low. Quickstep, I'll give you a lift, we can't have you teleporting all the time. Either of you guys fast movers?" she asked Blue Jay and Beekeeper. "Human hiking speed isn't going to cut it right now."
-
Miss Americana was dressed down for her visit to prison today. Instead of her normal tailored designer wardrobe, she was dressed for work in a loose-fitting maroon blouse and navy slacks, her hair pulled up and back in a bun with a few rhinestone barrettes. That had turned out to be good forethought, since at the moment she was laying on the immaculately-scrubbed floor, digging up into the much-less immaculate guts of the door system. Already she was covered with a fine powder of dust from the destroyed systems and had used a barrette to wedge open a particularly stubborn coupler latch. After several more minutes of work, she sat up, resting her arms on her knees. "It looks like you're going to want a modifier for that court order," she told the guard. "He may not be attacking people with that sonic whistling, but I'll bet my favorite boots that when I get these components back to the lab I'm going to find sonic damage is to blame for the disintegration. A single supersonic melody isn't going to do much, but if he's been at it for a year, well..." She picked up a bit of the dust, sifted it through her fingers. "I can put some extra shielding in there, but you're going to want a suppression cuff on him from now on. If the backups had failed, or he'd managed to destroy them as well, he'd have been standing in the hallway to say hello next time you came in." As she jotted a memo on her pad to have the proper equipment and tools delivered, Miss A took a moment to look around the high security ward. This was a psych ward, she'd been told, reserved mainly for prisoners who were threats both to the general prison population and to themselves. If the clone of Steelegrave was any indication of the sort of prisoner they kept, she could understand why the warden kept them isolated. For now, though, the short hallway was quiet, the crazy villains apparently having a bit of a lie-in this morning.