Electra

Also, Miss A goes on 10.

Just as the fire burst from Black Flame's hands, other hands intervened, knocking her arms up and sending the shot arcing harmlessly over the crowd and through a high window. "You may be any number of things," Miss Americana said evenly, grabbing the villain's wrists and wrenching them up behind her back. In a textbook move, she shoved Black Flame to the ground and knelt with one knee on the small of her back. "But Donna Danson wasn't a robot, so I'm pretty doggone sure you're not her. Why don't you calm down and try explaining again, without the hysterics, before I have to do any damage to this very nice piece of technology?" She looked up for a moment, her eye's meeting Sharl's. her voice echoed inside his head.

"You can come yourself, or you can send someone else, but I don't like letting her run around unsupervised," Erin replied, frowning into the phone. "She's already just about caused an international incident, and it's not even ten pm. We'll keep her here till you guys can come and collect her at the Socotran Embassy." Erin dearly wanted to know exactly what had happened between Daisy and Phantom, Avenger's tiny but intimidating wife, but now was not the time to ask. She put away the phone and gave Daisy a level look. "Someone is coming to fetch you," she told the beautiful pain-in-the-ass starlet. "You're gonna want to be here when they arrive."

Shoot, the action got away from me there, but I'll try and catch up. Attack roll is a 23 Grapple Check is a 43.

"You're going to stand right there, Daisy," Erin countered, reaching into her bag. Instead of her bat, though, she drew out her phone. "I'm going to call someone to come and pick you up, and you're going to wait here until they show up." She punched in a number she knew from memory, thanks to more than a year of regular babysitting gigs. "Hey, this is Erin," she began, then paused, a look of faint consternation on her face. "Yes, okay... hi JJ," she said, stifling a sigh. "Yeah, long time no see, huh? Oh, yeah, I like cars too. Listen, can you give the phone back to your daddy now? Thank you!" Reverting back to professional, she kept an eye on Daisy as she spoke. "The reason I'm calling is I've got a kind of a problem here with someone you might know. Maybe like in a professional capacity," she added vaguely. "Daisy Gibbons? She's causing some trouble at the Socotran embassy, and I'm not sure quite what to do with her."

"They aren't moved in yet, but they will be soon," Fleur explained, walking next to him along the river's edge. "Back when I started this whole business, Sanctuary was my personal project, as much for practice as anything else, so I didn't get very many other people in on it. When I discovered this world actually had survivors, though, it wasn't just my project anymore, it was their lives as well. And I certainly don't have the resources myself to do everything necessary." It was interesting, from a scientific standpoint as well as aesthetic, to watch the plants responding to Fleur as she walked by. Leaves rustled and flowers opened as she passed, leaving a verdant trail behind her."All kinds of heroes have had their hands on the world by now. Gaian Knight is the only other one who lives here, but there's Gabriel moving in soon, and then Dark Star and I, of course. And I've recruited help from all over. There's Supercape, Midnight, Jack of all Blades, Miss Americana, some of the students from the school, and others as well. It's nice to know that someone's always around with a skill at the right time when it's needed." Being back on her home turf had clearly lessened Fleur's remaining caution about talking with him, though she was still careful not to name names. "And that's not even counting the non-superheroes! This place is really starting to shape up. You haven't seen Beedom City lately, have you?" she asked. "It looks much different now than it used to."

Erin was a step behind Trevor, and the look on her face was almost comically shocked for a moment. Were they ever going to stop having weird trouble out of Daisy Gibbons at fancy parties? She blanked her face, then put on a look not far from the ones she used to give JJ when he would get hungry and chew on her arm. "Step away from him, Daisy," she ordered, reaching for her handbag just in case. "And take a few big steps back from all of us. We don't want to see anybody else get hurt tonight." She left the "not even you" part of the statement implied. At least the guard still seemed to be breathing, even if it didn't seem like he could stand on his own anymore.

Wander bore the blow from Omnibeast without so much as a flinch, betraying no emotion until the bestial villainess had the bad form to escape to the sky rather than stand and fight. "I hate flyers,"she muttered. Grabbing a branch from a tree she'd knocked over while fighting Razorwhip, Wander winged it in Omnibeast's direction with the speed of a bullet, but between the flyer's speed and the distance involved, the branch missed by a matter of inches. Wander was about to reach for another branch when Madrigal's command to her subordinates had her head whipping around. Eyes narrowed in vicious intent, she raced across the beach and leapt into the air, clearing the distance over water with no problem. In seconds she was on the island and on the edge of Midnight's opaque cloud. It wasn't that she didn't believe Trevor could hold his own, but anyone who wanted to ensure Midnight didn't leave the arena alive was going to have to go through her first.

"Oh no, the monk's were Gabriel's idea," Fleur told him cheerfully. She reached out and touched the doctor's arm, then lifted a hand to the flowers in her hair, and suddenly they were teleporting. A wash of green-colored light, the smell of newly mown grass, and they were stepping out on Sanctuary, near the bank of a large creek that was a navigable river on Earth Prime. "He's putting up a headquarters here as well, and suggested bringing in a group of agriculturalist monks to help teach farming and animal husbandry. It seems like a good idea to me, so long as they keep the proselytizing to a dull roar. We can always use more teachers." Sanctuary looked much different from the last time Doktor Archeville could remember seeing it. The area of clean air and land had obviously been greatly extended, and where ruins had dotted a decimated landscape, now the creek ran through a wildflower meadow on the near side and wet the roots of a healthy forest on the opposite bank. If it weren't for the faintest touch of landscape appeal recognizable in the placement of trees and plants, it would look very much like a natural and untouched world. Fleur stepped forward to the bank of the water, gesturing upstream to where a large bank of plant-choked sand and silt had blocked much of the water flow. "Here's the South River, or what's left of it. Between the plants and the soil dam, it's clean enough to drink along this length, which is more than you can say back home. On the other hand, we've lost some strength of flow. The village is over the hill about a quarter mile, they have a well and several pumps. I figured you wouldn't want to have a water wheel too close to that?" Stesha didn't know much about any of that, honestly, but she figured the doctor would have plenty of ideas.

Checks! Bluff: Skill mastered at 40 (don't kid a kidder, dear, especially when it comes to fake robot body parts) Knowledge: History: Her eidetic memory lets her roll a 25. Knowledge: Technology: Skill mastered at 40 as well. And though she's not moving into initiative yet, Miss A is going to ready a grapple action. If Black Flame starts to attack, Miss A will grab her.

Since there should be plenty of debris on the ground where Wander so recently launched Razorwhip through the trees and out of the arena, Wander will use Quick Draw to grab a branch from the ground, then a standard action to bullet it in Omnibeast's direction. She'll do a full power attack to get it there, still inspired so the plus and minus cancels out. She gets a 21, missing by one. Boo. Move action, running long jump to the island where Midnight is taking on all comers. She won't enter the cloud, for fear of leading Omnibeast onto Midnight, but she will Interpose for attacks against him.

NPC Spotlight Singularity A Few More Weary Days You told me something that scared me to death, Don't take me home, I can't face that yet. I'm ashamed that I'm barely human, I'm ashamed that I don't have a heart you can break, I'm just action, and other times reaction... -Neko Case “Nothing To Remember†The room was dim when Erin woke up, dark and quiet with only the noise of the ventilation system blowing quietly overhead. She was disoriented for a moment, trying to reconcile the reality of this room with the cheerfully sunny bedroom where her mind told her she ought to be. Mom was supposed to be calling her for breakfast any minute, or Megan would pound on the door seeking help with her hair or the TV or any of a million annoying little-sister reasons. What day was it? Did she have homework due, or softball practice this afternoon? If she missed any more algebra assignments, Dad had threatened a grounding, but it was so hard... “Light, please.†Erin sat up, raking her fingers through hair that finally touched her ears as she blinked away the tattered bits of dream. Psyche, Alex, had warned her that this would happen for awhile. The psychic's gentle, expert mental touch, so unlike her counterpart's, had untied many of the knots and wiped away much of the manufactured ugliness that had made Erin's mind a terrifying place to live. With the help of the other Erin, Wander- Erin, Alex had looked at a clean template of their memories and used it to piece things together like a puzzle assembled with the help of a box lid. Those had been difficult sessions, difficult enough to reduce the normally impassive Wander to sobs as memories good and bad had surfaced one after another. But it had helped. Pathos' implanted memories were mostly gone now, and the remaining horrific memories were blunted, almost as though Erin had seen them in a movie or heard them described instead of living them. It made the bad dreams and flashbacks come more rarely, but it also left her with very few clear memories of a quarter of her life. It also made the memories before that time clearer by comparison, so that the distant past of her old life sometimes seemed as close as the day before. That was a small price to pay for the chance to have a real life someday, but sometimes just waking up in the morning was like losing her family all over again. Luckily, she didn't have to sleep that often, and she had many ways to distract herself here in her new home. First, like always, she checked the perimeter, which mostly involved walking to the front of her cell and looking through the clear forcefield wall to make sure nothing had changed during the night. Sometimes one of her neighbors started getting really loud or obnoxious and would get baffles placed over their doors, but for today everything was calm. Even the whistler at the end of the hall was quiet, maybe sleeping in today. The psychiatric floor where she lived was sometimes noisy, but it was safe. The forcefield protected her. Turning her back on it, she went to her small desk and looked at her clock, then her calender. These were among her most important possessions, because they let her do something that had long been denied her: keep track of the passage of time. The clock said 6:40am, so it would soon be time for morning call. The calender told her that it was the fourth of June, and a Monday, and that she would talk to the psychologist in the morning and have occupational therapy in the afternoon. There was also a little star penciled in at the top corner of the day; seeing it made her smile as she went to wash up. Twenty minutes later she was back at the forcefield, carefully washed and dressed in a neat jumpsuit in the powder blue reserved for the mentally ill. She looked up as she heard the camera in the hall swivel on its mount, checking the floor once more before the heavy door at the end of the hall clicked and swung open. “Fall in for morning call,†came a pleasant tenor voice, even as the smell of breakfast filled the air. Oatmeal today, she thought, with fruit salad in syrup and coffee. She didn't like coffee much, but sometimes there was orange juice too, and that was much better. Even though she couldn't see the end of the hall, her excellent hearing let her track the progress of the cart as it made its way past all her neighbors. She shifted from foot to foot and hummed under her breath, and finally he arrived at her door. The guard pushing the cart was in his early twenties, tall and lanky, with a mop of black hair and deep brown eyes. He smiled at her as he took her tray off the cart. “Morning, Erin. You sleep well?†Her heart sighed as she smiled back at him. “Good morning, Jason. Yeah, pretty well. What's for breakfast?†“Good stuff today,†he informed her. “You get oatmeal with brown sugar, fruit cocktail, coffee, and a hard boiled egg. Plus I got you something special.†Reaching into the cool box, he pulled out a carton of orange juice. “Your favorite.†Erin's face lit up, though it was less because of the orange juice and more because he'd remembered it was her favorite. “I think you're wonderful,†she blurted out, then blushed red. “I am wonderful,†he replied easily, not seeming to notice her sudden embarrassment. “Stand clear and show me your jewelry,†he reminded her. Obediently she stood back and raised her arms, showing the power suppressant cuff on each wrist, glowing green in their ready but not activated state. Jason opened the field in front of the tray slot and slid her breakfast onto the little table. “Enjoy!†“I will, thank you.†She watched him until he passed out of sight, then sat down to her breakfast, but her ears were tuned to his movements until he finished his work and left the floor. Monday mornings were her favorite. Once breakfast was finished, she turned the radio on for music and began doing her homework. Homework was hard, because she'd forgotten a whole lot of material in her years out of school, but it was important and it made her feel good. Even if she didn't leave Blackstone for a long time, an idea that didn't bother her much, when she did, she would have an education. She wouldn't be a stupid, mindless, crazy tool anymore, not ever. So she did her trigonometry, setting aside a couple of problems that were too difficult, and she read thirty pages of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, then answered the discussion questions. Bored with that, she got up and did exercises, running in place for more than an hour, singing along with the radio till one of her neighbors yelled at her to be quiet. That made her mad, but she checked herself before she did anything silly. The forcefield protected annoying neighbors, too, and she'd come much too far to have a temper tantrum and lose her privileges. At ten sharp, she was washed up again and back at the door, waiting for Dr. Franklin to arrive for her twice-weekly appointment. Once she'd started talking, they'd begun making a lot more progress, and he always seemed to understand when she got upset and couldn't finish a session like she was supposed to. Talking to him usually made her feel pretty good for the rest of the day. Only today he didn't come. Unnerved, Erin waited at the door as the minutes ticked by, to eleven o'clock, then to noon. The guard delivering lunch found her still standing there, with one urgent question. “Where's Dr. Franklin?†He checked his little computer thing. “You're seeing Dr. Franklin and Dr. Ellis from Providence this afternoon at two,†he informed her. Erin shook her head and tried to explain that she couldn't do that because she had occupational therapy at two-thirty and they were going to be practicing walking on sidewalks again, but he was insistent that this was the way it had to be. Erin subsided and ate her lunch, but she didn't enjoy it like usual. Changes to her schedule made her nervous. She didn't like it when her calender didn't tell her what was going to happen. She spent the early part of the afternoon pacing, wondering what was going to happen if she didn't go to therapy. Would she miss the lesson on sidewalks? That was a really important one, she needed a lot of help before she would feel ready to walk anywhere with lots of random people around. At two, she was back at the door once more, watching the camera for its telltale movement. She was relieved when it gave its little whirring scan, followed by the heavy sound of the opening door. Dr. Franklin walked in along with Dr. Ellis, a woman Erin had seen a few times, but whose job she couldn't remember. Jason was the guard with them today, which cheered her up until she remembered that she was supposed to be going to occupational therapy today. She opened her mouth to explain that to Dr. Franklin, but he started talking instead, and it was second nature to just stop talking. He talked about nothing for a few minutes, reminding her that Dr. Ellis was the director of the mental hospital, and talking about how they'd been having meetings and stuff. Erin let her attention wander over to Jason, who was fiddling around with his phone, until something Franklin said grabbed her attention. “...and so we think with a lot of work, you'll be ready to move to the Project Freedom halfway house by the end of the year. Your progress so far has been extraordinary, and if you keep it up, I see no reason to believe you won't be allowed supervised release at your next review-†“Wait!†Erin's uncharacteristic exclamation cut him off. “I have to leave?†she asked, her voice full of uncertainty and nerves. “Not right now,†Dr. Franklin assured her gently. “But you're not going to stay here forever. You deserve a chance to be free, and we're going to help you get there in stages.†He went on from there, but Erin was only half listening. Live out in the world, the world full of alive people, including one who shared her name and face... she didn't know how she was going to be ready for that in a few short months. And what would happen to her without the protection of Blackstone's thick walls and forcefields when Pathos came? She folded her arms tightly across her chest and tuned the doctors out. Maybe if she didn't listen, none of it would wind up happening.

Invisible Castle doesn't like anyone today. Even with the Inspire bonus, Wander fails the toughness save badly. Spending an HP! A 28 will do nicely.

The puddle on the ground lashed out a tendril of liquid metal towards Sylph as the rocky villainess ran away, but it only extended about ten feet before falling back to the ground with a wet splat. The silvery liquid congealed once again into a round puddle, still muttering vile curses in a couple of different languages, then fell silent for a moment. Ripples began to form at the center of the puddle, spreading and growing until all at once, the entire thing distended as though someone were rocketing out of the floor beneath it. A vaguely humanoid shape appeared, bipedal and four-limbed with a head on top, though there were no real features but for a collection of floating eyespots drifting around on the top of the head. It lurched forward a step, then formed a mouth to utter an extremely pithy obscenity. It didn't look as though Papercut would be joining the fight anytime soon, but at least he was no longer an oil slick on the floor.

Koshiro will spend this round Shapeshifting to try and regain some semblance of his former handsome glory.

"But Socotra is his home," Erin pointed out, looking carefully at Morokot and his bride. "And his family is there. You can't just give up on your family." She looked around at the slightly worse-for-wear embassy. "And Morokot is still Typhoon's son, and the baby will be his grandchild. We can't know for sure how he's going to feel about that. And if the Serpent People are trying to attack them, they need someplace where they can all be safe. Maybe, your highness, you could stay here in Freedom City long enough to work things out with your father long-distance," she suggested delicately. "It might take a little while, but be less, um, emotional and tense that way."

Wander had a split second to take in the whole scene of the battle before it all began. She saw her friends surrounded, Trevor beginning to fall from the sky, another horrific battle for survival about to start. Looking into the sadistic, grinning faces of the two monsters set on killing her, for a moment all she felt was bleak despair. None of this was ever going to end, was it? She'd sacrificed the best of her powers for a chance at a normal life, free of constant deadly battles with the Terminus, and what had it gotten her? Constant deadly battles with the Terminus, but now she had no chance of winning, not even a chance to sacrifice herself for her friends. She was going to die here, they were all going to die, and it was all for nothing. Next to that, the pain of a physical blow barely fazed her. She stared down at her bat, an open and useless tool in her hand, and wondered why they were even trying. As though from far away, she heard Mark shouting defiance and freedom, and almost in spite of herself her heart began to stir within her. She looked up, and felt the brush of Eve's mind against hers, reminding her that she wasn't alone, that despite everything, Young Freedom had beaten the odds before, and they would do it again. Wander's hands tightened around her bat. "Maybe I'm doomed," she told the smirking woman with the whip, "but not today." In a blinding rush of movement, Wander dug the end of the bat into the ground, vaulting over it and flipping through the air to land behind Razorwhip. The moment her foe spun to face her, Wander's bat was there again. She used one end of the bat to rip the whip from Razorwhip's hands, sending it flying behind them into the trees. With the other end of the bat, Wander smashed Razorwhip in the chin like she was sending a line drive out of the park. And indeed, it looked as though the menacing Hound could go all the way.

Wander is going to try to attack and disarm Razorwhip, while she is feeling Inspired enough to possibly do so. Move action will be an Acrobatic Bluff, skill mastered DC 32. Attack is a full Power Attack, 1d20+10 with Inspire. Result is 17. I will spend to reroll if that fails. Okay, since that hits, and with her Inspiration she beats the disarm check AA rolled automatically, I'm going to have her knock the whip away, then spend an HP for a surge attack. Surge action is another power attack, same modifiers, with the bat. Result is a 20, which should hit again. DC 30 Toughness Save.

Erin secured her gloves and rechecked her breathing apparatus, the sound of her own breath loud in her ears. It reminded her of the times she'd gone snorkeling on vacation in Puget Sound, how the world had been so quiet but for the lap of water and her own lungs. Now there weren't even any waves, and there was nothing but herself. "Just a second," she said aloud, maybe just a little louder than necessary for the sake of banishing the silence. The helmet cut off her peripheral vision some, but she could see the others around her, making their own final checks. She took a couple of steps closer to Trevor and pretended to help check his suit. He didn't need it, Midnight's gear was always in good order. "Well, here's another first," she murmured to him with a wry smile. Touching her gloved hand once to his suited arm, she pushed off in the direction of the hatchway, moving like someone who'd been eluding gravity for years.

With her subdued opponent turned back into a human being along with the other transformed partygoers, Erin took a moment to look around the room. When no new threat presented itself, she smoothed her skirt and tugged her sleeves back into place, then tucked her bat discreetly back into her handbag. With one last secretly satisfied look at Meaghan, she went to join Mark and Trevor near the royal family. Rather belatedly, she realized that she could've done harm to Trevor's secret identity by her overt actions, but there was no help for it now. Maybe she could just put it down to being a professional security guard or something. She shot a quick look Trevor's way, wondering how concerned he was about it.

"Maybe it's an opportunity to you," Miss a replied in a clipped tone, even as she cracked her knuckles in the subtle but intricate pattern that rerouted power through her systems, "but all you're providing me with is a hassle. I have plans tonight that don't involve dealing with jumped-up petty thugs scaring civilians for a thrill. You're just going to have to find your challenge elsewhere." With that, she raced through the air, much faster than before, and slammed into Chimera with gut-wrenching, metal twisting force, wrapping her arms around the villain like steel bands. "This," she murmured into one tin ear, "would be an excellent time for you to surrender."

Miss A will launch an unarmed attack to grapple Chimera. She is switching from Blast to her Enhanced Strength/Flight AP. First roll is a natural one! Booo Spending an HP Second roll is a 28, yay! Grapple Check is a 40. Edit: And since that renders Chimera bound and helpless, she's going to spend another HP and surge to do an unarmed attack, power attacking for 2. Result is 18, DC 31 toughness save.

Wander fails the will save! Spending an HP! She still fails the will save! She is despairing, but not immobilized yet. Now for the toughness save, at -2. And it's a nat 20, for a result of 28. She takes a bruise and feels sooooo sad.

A loud liquid splash echoed from the center of the room as the water controller lost control of the cage that had surrounded Papercut and sent hundreds of gallons of water hurtling to the ground. As it puddled and flowed over the tiled floor, some of the liquid began to flow strangely, pooling together despite the pull of gravity, shimmering like a silver oil slick. Then it began swearing like a cab driver in a fender-bender, in a voice that sounded like it came over a transistor radio. The voice was Koshiro's, but the body... well, there was no body. At first the world didn't make any sense at all. He could remember grabbing the bauble, being grabbed himself, his armor melting off, then falling when the light blinded them all... and now there was only flat blank whiteness and a confusion of faraway voices. He tried to turn his head, tried to reach out, but nothing was working. He couldn't feel his own fingers move, couldn't hear his own heart beating. Had that been it? Koshiro wondered wildly. Was he dead? He rolled his eyes frantically, willing anything to work, and to his surprise, he did roll them, a lot further than he'd intended. There was a strange vertiginous sensation of the entire world inverting, and suddenly instead of whiteness he was staring at the ceiling, then at blurry human figures he couldn't focus on, and then... something moved. A twitch. It was as though his hand twitched, and something moved. He did it again, and this time he saw a liquid ripple in a silver puddle near his eyes. He began to curse steadily, and the noise of it was reassuring. At least something still worked! "What the hell is going on?" he finally blurted, his entire form rippling with tension.

Wander's on 25