Electra
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Freedom City Guidebook
Freedom City PBP: A How-To Guide
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Miss Americana looked up as Harrier took off, seeming surprised for a moment by Harrier's vehemence, then turned to Nick. "Sounds like we're on the move," she said with her customary good cheer. "Can I offer you a lift?" With the necromancer's assent, she tugged on the decorative accents of her costume, the morphic molecules stretching into straps similar to a tandem parachute harness. "More comfortable than grabbing you by the armpits," she commented with a chuckle, "and I don't have an anti-grav field." A moment's work had them harnessed together, then she took off into the sky after the agitated Omegadrone. "Just tell us where to go," she told Nick, turning in the direction of Lantern Hill.
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Ouch, good thing Wander went through the door first. She takes a bruise, and is fairly pissed. And she goes on 17.
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"I don't like this," Wander muttered, glaring around at the shadows as though she expected danger to come leaping out of them at any moment. Unconsciously she'd risen to the balls of her feet, walking with the silent deliberation of a predator. Her bat was already out, gleaming silver in the light of distant street lamps. This was not a good place to be, and not a smart thing they were doing, her instincts told her. "It smells like a trap, and I don't like the idea of you going in alone," she told Trevor in a whisper."Take Edge in with you, at least. Mental attacks seem to bounce right off him, and even if he blows cover, he'll distract her. Going in on your own is too risky."
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"All right, good." Miss A relaxed a bit as well when it became obvious that he had no new physical or mental damage. "I was a little worried after last time you had a run-in with the authorities while you weren't in costume. And you ought to be in costume," she reminded him with a half-smile, keeping her voice low. "I went to a lot of trouble putting that thing together to keep you out of trouble." She patted the side of his mask as though she were patting his cheek, then turned to Nick. "That sounds like an excellent plan," she told the young necromancer, a hint of vengeance behind her bland look. "Mind if I tag along and lend a hand?"
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If Erin had been in costume instead of her security uniform, it would've been a simple matter to knock down the door and find what was inside. As it was, she was in the gray area of metahuman in civilian life, and that made things complicated. She'd been studying up on the matter since getting the job at HAX, since it was only a matter of time before something cropped up. It wasn't any less complicated, but she did have a handle on some of the basic legalities. "Go ahead and do the knock and announce," she told them, "and I'll take the door if they don't answer. Keep a couple steps back and cover me." The police officers managed a perfectly credible knock and announce, declaring themselves police officers and demanding the door be opened. When there was no answer, Erin took the bat from her belt and twisted it open before unlocking the door with one neat kick. She thought she caught a sudden jolt of recognition from one of the officers, but there was no helping that. It was the price of operating in Freedom City with a unique weapon and no mask. Striding through the door, she paused to take in the layout of the apartment and check for occupants or potential threats.
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Just then, a flash of red and white blazed through the deepening blue of the sky, arcing downward to speed between the buildings in a blur of color and light. Even in the middle of Freedom City, jaded superhero capital of the world, people looked up and pointed when Miss Americana flew by. Today she did not pause to smile and wave, she was obviously on a mission. She zeroed in on the speaker's corner and landed next to Harrier, concern writ large on her lovely face. "I heard the chatter on the police radio," she told him, putting her hands on his upper arms and looking him over for signs of damage. "They said an Omega cultist was inciting a riot, and there was an explosion involving an Omegadrone. Are you all right?" Belatedly she noticed Nick, giving him a smile that was no less potent for all it was an absent afterthought. "Oh, hello Nick. I didn't know you were here too."
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Erin had been quiet while the research went on, since it wasn't exactly her long suit. She looked very uncomfortable, almost afraid, ludicrous as that seemed given all the far more terrible villains they'd faced. "I'm not sure I'm up to engage Medea again," she admitted with some difficulty. "We already know how vulnerable I am to her powers. Mark, Trevor, you remember what happened last time we went up against her. I really hurt Mark, and if it hadn't been for Trevor and James stopping me, I could've done worse. If we have to go up against her face to face, it might be better if I stayed behind, unless we can take some precautions to avoid her mind control influence."
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Welcome, Thermonuclear! This is a great place to do some gaming when your schedule and the kiddos prevent sitting down for extended gaming sessions. You should find everything you need to get started in the Newbie Guide and the House Rules. If you have any questions or would like to meet people (it's a great way to get threads!), stop on into the chat room, accessible from the upper left menu bar. Have fun!
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"You haven't even cleared the building?" Erin asked Patrick and Petty with flat disbelief. "What kind of two-bit sideshow operation are you running here?" Tact was not exactly her strong suit either, especially with someone who was Andretti's colleague. "If you want us to take out your bomb, you get me a couple of uniformed policemen here right now, and we'll walk them through the building ourselves, since hand-holding seems to be what's necessary here, and get the civilians out. Then, if we haven't been completely overrun by supervillains by then, maybe we can actually deal with the problem. And if it isn't too much trouble," she added sourly, "maybe someone could actually put up a perimeter here and get the civilians out of the cul-de-sac and out of the street in case we need emergency crews or backup in here?"
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Hey, where are we? I thought we were at the Manor, but now we're suddenly at the Multiplex? Or near the Multiplex?
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Erin nodded acquiescence, sparing Andretti a single icy glare before heading down to the security office. She didn't need much in the way of equipment to do her job, but there were preparations to be made. With Steve and herself both going offsite, she selected one of the day shift team to lead security and keep in touch with the field team. She wouldn't put it past an especially sneaky villain to let them recover the material, then lay in wait at HAX to try and steal it. Villains were tricky. She also secured a first aid kit, a few halogen lanterns, and some other odds and ends that might come in handy. While she was at it, she called up satellite maps of the location on her fancy work phone, trying to gauge the neighborhood. She'd patrolled in Lincoln before, on her own and with others. This was Wail's neighborhood, she knew, and wondered if that notable might make an appearance with the news of a Grue warhead spreading. Erin liked Wail, but that would just make things more complicated. When she was as prepared as she was going to get, she headed downstairs with Steve.
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Fleur put a reassuring hand on the arm of the Beekeeper's suit, deferential but not intimidated by this very, very large queen. "Your majesty," she said, her voice loud and clear, "I know you have heard stories of The Beekeeper from the elders of the hive. On the world where your mother was born, The Beekeeper was a villain and used his abilities and the bees he created to do harm. This Beekeeper is different. He is a hero and will be a friend to human and bees here and on Earth Prime. It is important that he knows the stories of what came before him, so he can learn and be wise." As an intelligent race with no form of writing, oral history was already very important to the bees. In a few more generations, Stesha suspected, they would have their own legends and fables to match any of the storytelling human societies.
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Erin kept quiet for the start of the briefing, out of her depth in talks of chemical weapons and cosmic radiation. She did know something about tactics, however, and about human nature. "What's the cover story you've come up with?" she asked. "And how likely is it that word of this is going to leak out before we can get the materials contained? If this is as hot as you say it is, any supervillain who hears about it is going to want a piece, not to mention some pretty nasty non-meta organizations. And even a fishy story might make some random person curious enough to hang back and have a look around. How much can we trust that your sniffers and the people wrangling the civilians were perfectly discreet?"
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"There's no time to get back to the airlock," Koshiro reasoned, even as he headed quickly to one of the crash couches, "so we're going along for the ride. But we don't know how bumpy it's gonna be with no crew. Better strap in." He sat down on the couch and shrugged into the harness, fumbling for a moment with the unfamiliar mechanism before figuring it out. The cranes settled in next to him, the better to not become projectiles at high speeds. "Can you send a message to the station so they know what's happening?" he asked Sharl.
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"The old queen is gone," Fleur told him, looking pensive for a moment. "She was old when they came here, the parent to all the adult bees in the hive. They don't live as long as humans, though much longer than your average honeybee. Queen Beelissima hatched out here, and has never known anything but Sanctuary. The others... I suppose they don't seem to think about it much. They aren't at all interested in going back to Prime, except for a few plucky kids like Superbee here. Some of them are angry at him, especially the dragon bees, who he exiled from the hive. Some of them, especially the robot bees, seem to miss him." She shrugged. "Sometimes parental relationships are complicated. You'll probably have some explaining to do when we get to the queen's chambers. That's where we're going," she explained, "to the very bottom of the hive." Indeed, their progress for the last few minutes had been inexorably downward, through seemingly endless hallways of comb. Now when he looked closely, Baxter could see that in the chambers they passed, many of the combs were not filled with honey, but with large white spheres the size of yoga balls, or with shapes, moving shapes, wriggling behind nearly opaque curtains of wax. From another chamber, a bevy of tiny, relatively speaking, giant bees shot out as though propelled by rockets, their palm-leaf sized wings keeping keg-shaped bodies improbably aloft as they formed a wedge and zoomed down the corridor. Their high-pitched buzzing sounded excited, and they nearly ran straight into Superbee and her friends as they passed. "ZZORRY!" one yelled as they sped away, up the corridor and out of sight.
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Koshiro and Kotone hung back at the rear of the group, both of them with their hands tucked in their pockets. A good host, Kotone produced a paper airplane suited to carrying Koshiro's large backpack, so that floated along behind like an odd untethered balloon. Koshiro had sort of wondered if his feminine counterpart would use pink paper the way his evil counterpart had used black, but so far at least, Kotone's sculptures were plain white like most of his own. Thinking about that other Koshiro, he tilted his head to his counterpart and spoke in Japanese. "So a few weeks back, did you get an incursion-" "From Erde?" Kotone finished for him, her mind obviously moving in a similar direction. "Yes, and I uncovered some new information-" "About Takeshi," "Takara," "Whatever," Koshiro acknowledged with a nod. "If there's any chance of learning more by comparing notes, we should talk." "Yeah, but later," Kotone agreed. "Get the school stuff out of the way first." They sighed in unison at that, and got into the futuristic car that was such a big step up from the Wonder Bus.
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"Good work, guys," Miss Americana called, even as she hung back a moment to assess the situation. "Keep an eye on each other, we can't afford any friendly fire up here." Her brow furrowed as she saw the last drone release its payload into the side of the building, but all that assessment had also given her time to aim. A red white and blue laser barrage took it between the eyes, even as the heroine zipped through the sky to remove the missile it had launched. Whatever it was, leaving it there was just asking for trouble. Cracking her knuckles in the pattern that rerouted power from the laser systems to the synthetic muscle tissue, she wrapped her arms around the missile and gave it a mighty heave, wresting it out of the building.
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"There's no strategy if you can spin all four posts at once," Erin told Corbin good-naturedly, even as she lined up her troops so everyone was centered and pointed with their feet down. This was a newer set than the one she'd learned on, both lighter in weight and probably more frail, but she'd come a long way from the girl who'd cracked three Wiimotes while learning MarioKart. "Visitor goes first." With that, she dropped the ball into the shooting pocket on her side, flicking it with her fingers to set a wicked backspin on it as it shot onto the miniature field of play. She'd managed to angle it just enough that it rolled to her post first, and a quick flick of the wrist had it hurtling towards Corbin's defenders.
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Okay, let's do a laser blast attack on Drone 4, pew-pew! And it's a critical hit, for 34! Assuming she hits, it will also be a DC 34 toughness save. Move action to reach the missile lodged in the building. Spending HP to surge and try to get it out. Using my once-per-round array switch to ratchet up the Enhanced Strengthiness, then grappling! Grapple Check is a 41.
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"Oh no," Fleur called over from her bee. "We built all of this, the hive, the comb, the meadow, all over the past two years." She sounded very proud of the fact. "The second Beekeeper created the giant bees, but as weapons, without a real plan on how to give them a good life. They lived in an underground bunker on a diet of sugar water and daytime television. As you'll probably notice when you talk to some of the adults," she added with a laugh. "At first I only had the bees who were captured in the Freedom Hall battle, and then the fire-breathing bees that he exiled from the hive. I brought them here, but they weren't happy without the queen and colony. When we finally got Beekeeper into jail, I got him to reveal his secret lair to me so that I could go and collect the bees and bring them all here." As she spoke, they continued their rapid journey through the hive, deeper in and further down all the time. There was no more natural light here, but some sort of phosphorescent light provided enough brightness in the corridors to allow sight. "They didn't know how to build a hive, so we helped them with that, and I make sure they have enough to eat. But they're amazingly self-sufficient besides that."
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Koshiro studied the empty bridge with the others until his birds came winging back, two of them seeming to take point while the others hung back and flew in lazy circles around the bridge. He reached up and plucked one of the leaders out of the sky, unfolding it with a flick of his wrist so it was once again a square sheet of white paper. As he and the others watched, ink began to well up on the paper, forming mostly characters in Japanese at first, but then also creating moving pictures. The inked figures seemed to draw themselves, like watching stop-motion animation in real time. Koshiro pointed to the menacing-looking barrel on the delivery deck, its pulsating red lights suggested by ink bands that continually drew and erased themselves. The other bird unfolded just as quickly, but all this one contained was more Japanese characters and a number of drawn signs in a language that Koshiro couldn't read. "No people on either deck," he reported to the others, "not unless they're all hiding somewhere. But that big thing on the delivery deck looks like it might be worth a real careful look."
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Koshiro goes on 6
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"Jets suck," Erin agreed with satisfaction. "We'll take them down in the second half." Ignoring the halftime show, she got up from the couch and stretched, then walked around to snag a cold piece of pizza and look at the foosball table. "We used to have one of these at my grandparents' house. I was pretty good." She gave the midfield rail an experimental spin, watching the little men flip over and over. A little searching revealed the ball tucked away in the goal pocket. "Anybody want to play? With no telekinesis," she added, arching an eybrow at Corbin.
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Koshiro found himself standing nearly opposite his female counterpart, both of them having wandered to the edge of their respective groups. At a glance, the pair of them looked startlingly alike. Both were tall and lean, with short, shaggy haircuts and a perpetual hipshot slouch. They were also wearing the exact same clothes today, faded blue jeans and black t-shirts with the logo for one of Detroit's urban exploration groups. A second look, though, revealed enough differences to make telling them apart easy enough, more like fraternal twins than identical. The native version spoke first. "Koshiro, huh? I'm Kotone." Instead of extending a hand to shake, she gave him a quick upnod. He returned the gesture. "Pleasure." They both looked around at the others, their own introductions apparently handled satisfactorily.
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Koshiro's brow furrowed at the thought of a world where everyone was the opposite gender. It seemed overwhelmingly weird, but probably generally harmless. Which was, he guessed, why the school thought it was a good training ground for interdimensional travel. The idea of a female version of him was especially strange, but he figured it was quite likely she'd act something like him and look like an older version of his sisters. Anyway, he'd managed to work together with his counterpart from Erde under much more difficult circumstances. This shouldn't be that tough. And there was always the possibility of finding another piece to his puzzle. He slouched in his chair and studied the machine, absently taking out a sheet of paper to fold another bat. "What are we actually supposed to do there?" he asked Harcourt. "I'm guessing this field trip comes with homework."