Electra

This is the OOC thread for Stesha and Taylor dishing on Jack.

Stesha waited until Monday evening to give Taylor a call, hoping she'd be able to sort out her thoughts and feelings from the day before into some sort of coherent pattern before she had to try and convey information. Guilt nagged at her though, not to mention the continuing anger at Jack that pulled at the darker corners of her mind. If it had just been about her and Jack, she reminded herself, she would let well enough alone. Taylor was a grownup and could make her own choices. But it hadn't just been her, it had been Moira too. Jack couldn't be trusted, and it wasn't fair not to say anything. She waited until she got off work Monday evening before trying to call. A moment before she punched the button she wondered if Taylor would take her call at all. What if Jack had gotten there first and said horrible things, or what if Taylor was mad at her for getting her into the situation with Moira, one that clearly had implications Stesha didn't really understand yet. Well... she'd leave a voicemail if she had to. "Hello, Taylor? This is Stesha," she said as soon as the phone picked up.

"If that's what you want to do," Erin told Mark. "It seems like Chris has the controls handled pretty well, and you do make fights easier. But I'm not sure if we should divide up so that one person is alone, even in a flying submarine. We don't have any backup coming if things go bad here. If three of us are going, we should all go."

Erin tilted her head to one side, rather enjoying the unaccustomed feeling of wearing earrings again. "I think I'll leave you guys to do that, I spent half of July jumping off buildings and the thrill is kinda gone. I want to catch the gravity spinner. You probably wouldn't like it," she told Alex with a quick grin. "Do we have a time we're planning to meet up out at the front?"

This is the OOC thread for Stesha going shopping for bulletproof bookcovers at Dalkaresh's store.

Holding her knapsack in an embrace tight enough to make it bulge at the top and bottom, Stesha watched Dark Star leave, then turned to Ace. "Let me know when there's something I can do to help," she told him. "Maybe she'll find a way to get in touch somehow, and that'll make it all easier. But I guess research and waiting are all we can do right now. Thank you all for coming and helping," she added quietly. "I know Moira will thank you too, when she can." She waited while the little meeting broke up, staying on the couch until everyone was gone and everything was very quiet again. Finally she pushed herself off the couch and began gathering the plants from around the living room, carrying them one at a time out to her car. With the last one in her arms, she paused in the doorway. "I don't know if you can hear me," she said to the room at large, "but if you can, you should try not to worry. We're going to find you. But if there's anything you can do on your end... well, we could use a little help." Stesha turned off the light on her way out.

Stesha looked more resigned than happy, but she didn't argue. "I guess we didn't learn anything, then," she finally said. "I mean, you still don't know who's sending the imps and why. What if he sends something worse after you next time? There must be a way to find out more about what it is that's trying to have you followed around. Who would have anything to gain from hurting or bothering you?"

Erin had just a second to look along their trajectory and make sure the boat was going into a part of the lake with no boats before she had to act. Bunching her legs and springing into the air, she opened out her bat even as she raced towards the fleeing villain. Practically colliding with him in the air, she wrapped her arms and legs around him, bringing the bat up to throttle his neck. "Not so fast," she growled, her wet hair clinging to her face and shoulder in lank tendrils as she tightened the grip.

Another all-out power attack from Erin, this one into a damaging grapple attack. She rolls a 22. Her defense is once again at 5. Grapple check is 36

Erin screamed, a rather garbled sound with the water and all, but it was as much fury as fear, even as she dangled over the edge. Swinging herself back onto the dubious safety of the ship's roof, she bellycrawled back to the porthole. Ignoring the flimsy handle, she dug her fingers into the seams around the door and pulled, trying to rip it clean off its hinges.

Stesha closed her eyes and thought back, trying to sort through the confusion of those last few minutes. Finally she shook her head. "I can't remember," she admitted. "It was just a silver circle, like a flat band, not a tiara like girls wear for prom. I remember it was really shiny, like just polished or brand new, and it didn't seem to have any decorations on it. She kept playing with it once she took it out of the box, holding it and turning it around in her hands, but I don't know if that even means anything. I helped her with the toga, and it seemed weird too, just for a minute, like the cloth was moving on its own, but I don't know if I'm just trying to see things that weren't there." She put her fisted hands together, then pressed the knuckles against her lips as she thought, but nothing else seemed ready to shake itself loose from her memory.

"Isn't there something else you could do with it?" Stesha asked, grimacing. "I know it's not human, and it's not good, but it's alive, and it seems to be sentient... There's got to be something you can do that doesn't mean killing it, doesn't there?" She looked away from the screen when Phantom teleported down to the holding cell, not wanting to see what happened next.

Erin braced as Mike flew closer to the ship, tucking up her legs to jump and roll. "Okay, now!" she called. As soon as he let her go, she dove for the ship, tucking her arms and head down and rolling cleanly onto the top of the flying disc. She stopped her momentum by catching herself on the handle of a porthole that didn't seem inclined to open. Not that she wanted to go in there without knowing what she was up against, anyway. Leaving the bat aside for a moment, she plunged her fist into the metal hull of the ship itself. "Come out, come out, whoever you are," she muttered.

Erin goes on 27.

"There's the flying machine, right on schedule," Wander said grimly, tensing in Phalanx's grip as she got a look at the approaching antagonist. "I don't see the escort, but it's got to be nearby. Can you drop me on top of that thing and see if you can find him? You can't hold me in the air for this whole fight, but I should be able to keep my balance on the machine."

Erin looks harder than usual, but sees even less.

"Can't hurt to see where it goes," Erin agreed. "If Chris can take up there, it'll be a pretty quick trip anyway. We can be back here before your folks get home. And if we take the airship, we can even take the snack table along. But yeah, clothes first." She headed off to the poolhouse and changed back into her jeans and blouse, giving her hair a vigorous scrubbing with the towel before taming the frizzed tangle back down with a headband and rejoining the others.

Erin thought about that for a moment. "Yeah, sure, why not?" she agreed. "We can get the lay of the land, and if anything's coming, maybe we'll see it sooner." She took his hand, bracing for the quick stomach-turning swoop of accelerating to supersonic velocity. "And with these simulations, seems like being on a boat only means you're a hundred yards from a waterfall, anyway."

"Yeah," Erin agreed, standing up and unclipping the bat from her belt, but not deploying it just yet. "This place might be fun if every exotic location wasn't just the scenery for fighting monsters." She kept a close eye on the water, half-expecting to see the same giant insect monster coming at them. "Whatever it is, our best strategy is probably going to be to try and get out of the boat and away from the water, if it'll follow us. We'd get in trouble for breaking the Panama Canal."

Erin raised an eyebrow at Mark's enthusiastic greeting to Alex, unable to help but sneak a glance over at Mike to see what he thought of that. Had to be an interesting situation, with those two being roommates and all. "There's still plenty of time for more rides," she told Mark, "we've just been getting warmed up. But Alex pukes on the fast ones, so be careful," she added with a quick grin.

With no action in the offing, Erin relaxed from her crouch to sit crosslegged, clipping the bat to her belt. "I'd like to think so," she said with a half-smile. "I've hit as hard as that before and never managed to break the place, though. Maybe it was both of us attacking at once, and it felt like you whiffed because the simulation was falling apart. Maybe we'll get an automatic pass if they can't fix it." She rested her hands on her knees and watched Mr. Archer work with some satisfaction.

Erin rolled to her feet immediately, still clutching the bat. She looked at it oddly, gave it a little shake. "Huh. I thought this thing was supposed to be fake." She hit the button that collapsed it, then looked over at Mike. "You okay?" she asked. Her ears were still ringing a little from the shrieking of overtaxed circuitry, but a little fall wasn't enough to faze her.

As the monster reached land, Erin moved instantly. "Now, go!" She ran a few steps and leapt, a superhuman jump that carried her up onto the giant creature's chitinous leg. With a grunt of effort, she slammed the long bat against the joint of leg and body, doing her best to cripple the thing before it could reach the city! Her aim was true, striking the thing exactly where leg met body.

You guys... Erin's going twice before either of you! ;-) 1d20+13=28 Okay, Erin's going to use her move action to jump onto the thing's lowermost leg on the side closest to her, aiming to land up near the joint. She will do an all-out power attack to try and smash the joint between leg and body on the thing. This will drop her defense to +5, raise her damage to +17 with the bat, and keep her attack at +10. Attack roll is an 18

Erin held onto his arm as they accelerated, a grip tight enough that it would've been painful if his skin wasn't so tough. Landing in the path of the monster put them on a pier next to the bridge, with abandoned boats tied here and there, rocking gently back and forth with the wake the creature was creating. As soon as she was set down, Erin spun her bat out to full length and looked around for places to jump to. "It looks like a bug," she told Mike, "so it's probably got some kind of armor on it. Go for its eyes and the joints of its limbs, if you can."