Gizmo
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"Oh... oh marmalade!" Ghost Girl gulped as the Omegadrone stood revealed, the reds and blacks of its armor blending together into a terrifyingly jagged silhouette in the dark, raindrops sizzling as they hit the malicious glow of the ignited pike. No wonder Tarva had been so frightened; no matter what assurances Eve and the others had given her the former Annihilist had always maintained that someday her former allies would come to punish her betrayal and that nothing would be able to stand in their way. But Kimber has stood up to Hiroshima Shadow, she'd stood up to the Curator and she wasn't about to give up this time... even if she'd had her friends to back her up all of those other times. "Tarva, run! It can't hurt me! ...maybe." The specter's jaw stretched as though it had come unhinged and a howling gale of pent-up blizzard erupted forth, washing over the Omegadrone and turning rain to sleet along the way.
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Ghost Girl Full Action: Snare 12 (Extras: Affects Corporeal, Area [General, Cone], Flaws: Action [Full Action]), Range [Touch], Power Feats: Progression 1 [Area, max 275'], Reverse Progression 1 [Area, min 100']) [26PP] (ice breath)
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"You're an asshole," Jack shot back grumpily, even as he accepted Geckoman's support and rested some of his weight on the younger man with a pained grunt. "Nhff. Thanks, hermano. You ever notice how every time we deal with alien stuff I always get halfway blown up? What's up with that, right?" An unpleasant pattern was definitely starting to form. Figuring that the Farsiders had to be pretty good at dealing with the impending threat of hard vacuum, the leader of the Interceptors deferred to Lieutenant Tri'ennek, mainly serving as a rallying point for the startled moon-dwellers when the junior officer's confidence or authority seemed to waver. Decapitating one of the corpse-filled Star Knight robots in a single blow might not have been the wisest long term course of action but it certainly lent some credence to the swordsman's shouted instructions. Jill offered Miss Americana a faint smile even as the muscles in her jaw tightened with the concentration of maintaining the force field around the dome. "So far so good, yeah. How, uh, about you? I don't want to make a thing about it or anything but if I'm going to be playing healing potion for everybody later I might kinda need to know what the deal is with the Bionic Woman routine." There was a note of apology in her tired voice, reluctant to pry into what could well be a very sensitive topic, but harsh pragmatism won out.
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"You'd better believe 'me', buddy! Hey! I said let her go!" Kimber wasn't going to pretend that Tarva being afraid of someone automatically made them a bad guy but her brutish captor definitely wasn't the squeaky clean knight in shining armor he was pretending to be, that much was certain. She sure didn't buy that he was just planning to give the sorceress a friendly ride back to the Dutempts Building. "Nobody's going anywhere until you learn to keep your mitts to yourself!" Diving forward as the armored man began to rise into the air, she passed bodily through his torso to emerge behind him on the other side of what appeared to be some kind of rocket pack. Her ectoplasm hummed with a defiance of natural laws that caused havoc for circuits and sensitive mechanisms, enough to short out the flight device if she'd gauged things correctly. Whatever was going on she decided she'd rather sort it out on the ground than airborne with a hostage.
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There's just the one tower attacking the transport for now but the ship is still high enough - and moving fast enough - that just jumping out would only be probably survivable for most of the troopers.
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That's more than enough to tear free the remaining metal, definitely. Go for it! Hronos is dazed and out of HP, so he'll be passing his turn. Did you still want to get an IC post in for that, Vahn? You're welcome to! 26 - Asad - Uninjured, 3HP 24 - Citizen - Injured x2, 0HP 19 - Terrifica - Bruised x1, 1HP 17 - Maxima - Uninjured, 1HP > 14 - Hronos - Disabled, Dazed, 0HP 8 - Compu-Jackals with Wings and Penetrating Claws x2 - Uninjured
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After nearly a year of going out of her way to avoid Tarva around the castle topping the Dutemps Building, Kimber had gotten awfully good at knowing where the sorceress was likely to be at any given time. It helped that the Nihilor expatriate was something of a creature of habit. Despite her grandiose manner she set about any tasks assigned to her with an almost desperate efficiency that the poltergeist tried not to think about too closely. Once those responsibilities had been seen to, though, she could usually be found brooding at one of the skyscraper's choicest vantage points or in her room writing poetry, which ultimately was just a variation on the same brooding. Kimber supposed it made sense; a society of immortals would have to be comfortable with repetition or else they would surely go mad over time... though she didn't think she'd want to be put in the position of having argue that Tarva was completely sane, either. Over past few weeks she'd started trying to add some variety to that routine mainly with movie marathons and television binge watching of cultural touchstones she'd missed while otherwise occupied haunting a log cabin in the middle of the woods, ostensibly to help Tarva better understand Earth culture so that she could relate to the rest of the staff. With a good amount of Indira's time taken up with school and the Kinigosi warrior's reluctance to sit inactive for long periods of time anyway it was as good an excuse as any. With a boxed set of sitcom DVDs floating in the air behind her it hadn't taken her long to realize that Tarva was nowhere to be found, confirmed by an alarmed conversation with Bluebird. Quickly shifting into her tattered reaper's cloak the phantom was off like a shot, passing through the stone walls and out into the heavy rain. There was an entire city to get lost in but Kimber wasn't without her own talents. For a being who could sense death and smell fear Tarva's trail stood out like a familiar ribbon of neon in the near blackness of the cloud covered night, making a beeline for Liberty Park. Cutting through the air back down toward ground level, the sympathetic energies of the deluge adding to the ghostly wind that always tossed her hair and cloak out behind her, she was startled to meet her quarry coming back toward her in the opposite direction, struggling in the steely grip of what appeared to be a knight of myth and legend in resplendent silver armor. Kimber was still attuned to her more ghastly aspects, however, and if the miasma of horror that surrounded Tarva was made somewhat more tolerable by dint of exposure over the past year the violently thrashing spiritual echoes around her captor nearly knocked the undead girl out of the air. Tarva was someone who lived with a constant certainty of her own doom colouring her every thought and deed but she was terrified of this man. "H-hey!" Ghost Girl shouted over the roar of the rain, recovering from her surprise and balling up her translucent blue fists at her sides. Her jaw set and some of the youthful roundness seemed to melt from her face, leaving it hard and almost skeletal. "Don't touch her!"
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To help keep track: Squad C Lanky Canid Male (Unimpressed by Lor)Spotted Lor Female (Unimpressed by OOPS)Lor Male with Cybernetics (Cyber Eyes on Cyber Skies)Jy'mm; Grue Genderless (Two Pistols, No Respect)Ron-Digo; Eight-Eyed Indigo Male (Jaded but Friendly)Other +7Squad EJacia; Lor Female (Little Scrap of Combat Engineer)Kharg Male (None Too Pleased)Za'ak Male (Doesn't Like Roulette)Other +9Squad WEkna Veiu; Green Male (Hoping to See Eighteen)Big Green Male (Belligerent)Zultasian Male (Something to Prove)Broan Female (Older and Wiser)Other +8Squad RJilinson-08; Lor Clone Male (Answers to Jibby, Jibster, etc.)Grunt; Dog-Like Male (Squat Bounty Hunter)Bleed; Elf-Like Female (Skinny Bounty Hunter)Broan Male (Potentially Amorous)Lor +4Broan +1Grue +1Zultasian +1Leche +1
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> 21 - Corona - Uninjured, 1HP 19 - Eclipse - Uninjured, 2HP 17 - Wander - Uninjured, 3HP 07 - Roulette - Uninjured, 4HP 05 - Squad C - Unaffected 05 - Squad E - Unaffected 05 - Squad W - Unaffected 05 - Squad R - Unaffected Alright, we'll be using the Field Battle Rules here, with each commander in charge of a Squad-sized group of Trained quality troops. These rules are in the Golden Age sourcebook. If you have a chance to brush up on them, definitely do so! If not, give a general idea of what your character is instructing their troops to do and I'll help to interpret that. Corona is up first!
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Maxima is up. Let's see if we can't pick up the pace here and get to the climax! 26 - Asad - Uninjured, 3HP 24 - Citizen - Injured x2, 0HP 19 - Terrifica - Bruised x1, 1HP > 17 - Maxima - Uninjured, Pending Fatigue, 2HP 14 - Hronos - Disabled, Dazed, Distracted, 0HP 8 - Compu-Jackals with Wings and Penetrating Claws x2 - Uninjured
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With a soft grunt, Trevor unfastened his featureless mask and let it hang about his neck. The Whites had seen him without it before and the last thing the situation needed was the added awkwardness of someone present without a face. "Empirically infinite multiverse," he offered as a partial answer to Richard's question, moving to stand behind his Erin. This was an entirely different sort of tension than he was used to dealing with and he wasn't at all sure how to proceed. "Funny story from February-- Hhn. May not be the time. Or funny." Pressing his lips into a thin line he went silent once again, shifting his weight to his other foot uneasily and waiting for someone else to say something.
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"Time can work... differently between realms," the straw blonde explained hesitatingly, making a halting gesture with one hand as she began trying to illustrate the point before deciding against it. Having taken in Arrowhawk from head to toe with an unblinking intensity when they'd first come face to face she now seemed to be looking anywhere else. "My mother... A mortal valkyrie be a rare thing, the results unexpected." Squaring her shoulders she manged to look the elder archer in the eyes. "My birth was impolitic. I have trained well to overcome but I did not think to ever set foot upon Midgard until recently." "Pleasant perk of the 'god stuff'," Set commented airily, stepping out from behind Meatheral with as much nonchalance as he could muster. "One meets the most interesting people at parties. More of a bacchanal, truly, Dionysus or no; the Norse do know their beverages." Shrugging casually, he made a show of inspecting the fingernails of one hand while explaining to the air, "The venerable old one-eye has become less generous with the replica-Mjölnirs of late. I put in a good word with an old acquaintance among the aesir. I'm terribly persuasive." Ignoring the godling entirely, the young woman continued, "I am named Osla. Osla Jónsdóttir." That hung in the air awkwardly for a moment before with sudden inspiration she raised her bow to display the weapon for her father. "This is Orheidir. Her name means arrow hawk." "She be unappreciative of 'oh hai there' jests," Set warned the small group of heroes in a whisper out the side of his mouth. "Now! Let us give them some privacy, aye? I'm sure another opportunity to give the strapping Scot your number will be forthcoming, Sekhmet. Who would like to help prepare a shadow portal ritual, eh? Valuable on-the-job experience!"
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"They're not slowing d--!" the analyst began in an alarmed tone before being interrupted as the entire asteroid shook with an impact. Feed from comparatively primitive image recorders embedded into disguised emplacements on the exterior of the massive space borne rock flickered to life on the bank of monitors, triggered by movement as a humanoid figure rose from a three point landing from the bottom of a newly formed crater and behind a cloud of disturbed dust and rubble. Despite Paradigm's suggestion everyone in the war room seemed frozen in place, those biologically predisposed toward breath holding it as they strained to make out who had found their hidden parliament. The cloud dispersed into the vacuum and the silhouette resolved into an armored figure with long hair fluttering in low gravity, his grey-blue skin riddled with tubes of sloshing silver liquid and metal grafts. Diena Th'emme had seen that mutilated visage before, on the day her world was crushed to dust. In a whisper she pronounced the name everyone watching was already thinking with dread: "Star-Khan." The tense silence was broken almost immediately as the sound of rending metal came from behind them, the result of the door to the room being forcibly twisted off of its hinges, coming off entirely in the hands of a hulking mass of stone with embers for eyes and a floating Tempestian girl looking over his shoulder. The rough statue poked its head into the war room and looked back and forth quizzically. "Rock?"
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Kimber met Tarva's eyes and for a long moment said nothing. Then her lower lip began to quiver and tears began to trace winding lines down her cheeks. She floated through the air back toward the window and sat down next to the sorceress so that their shoulders were side by side, maintaining the illusion of leaning against the shadow covered window as she hugged her knees close to her chest. With the afternoon sunlight blocked out she took a moment to allow her form to turn opaque, colour bleeding into her various shades of blue until no one at a glance would have suspected she were anything but a normal, living girl. It was just a trick, easily dispelled, but she took a small measure of comfort in the warm pinkness on the backs of her hands. They sat that was for a long time before she spoke up softly. "I actually did like the poetry. I wasn't just saying that."
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Kimber's wispy eyebrows dropped inward and the corners of her eyes started to sting with the illusion of moistness as she bit back, "Oh sure, it's not like I've been studying magic or going out of my way to meet different types of undead or-- Mnh." She rubbed the back of her sleeve across her face and turned away from Tarva, embarrassed to have made a production out of something everyone else clearly agreed was a non-issue, embarrassed to be on the verge of breaking down as she tried to explain her feelings, embarrassed to be practically shouting at the woman she'd been trying to apologize to just for trying to give her what was probably very good advice. "Just-- just forget it. I didn't think I'd get so worked up, sorry. I'm sorry. Don't worry about it. And you don't have to worry about me hiding when you're around any more either. I don't know why I thought it mattered." She started to float toward the opposite connecting hallway, going slowly not to be dramatic but because she felt drained of the usually bottomless energy that typically propelled her gracefully though the air. Instead she felt thin and brittle and foolish.
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"I know that!" Kimber snapped with considerably more anger than she'd intended, the whites of her eyes flickering to hollow black briefly. "But maybe that's a lot easier to say when you're so pretty and corporeal you can have any boy you like! Two boys!" Her hands went from raised above her head in exasperated outrage to clamped over her mouth in immediate regret. There was no way Tarva's story had anything resembling a happy ending, not knowing where the sorceress had ended up. She'd shared something deeply personal and Kimber had turned around and slapped her in the face with it. "Oh. Oh, Tarva, I'm sososo sorry, that was awful. I knew I was going to make a mess of this." She sagged in the air, dejectedly dropping to just a few centimeters off of the floor. "I know you don't think anyone likes you and I really am sorry I helped make you feel like that but you don't understand. I doesn't even matter if anybody likes me." Her voice was barely a whisper by the time she finished, her eyes cast downward.
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"Mnnh, this is how the Terminus got so messed up," Kimber groaned quietly, running a hand through her bangs in frustration. "An entire dimension dedicated to completely missing the gosh jams point!" Shaking her head vigorously to knock the loosed stands of hair out of her eyes she tried to clarify. "The umbral-entropical stuff was fine, Tarva. Well. No, that was super gross, actually, if I actually ate food I would have totally gagged like for real. But I asked you to do that so it's fine. That part's fine." She looked away, casting her glance out the window and the sunlight from which her instincts told her to retreat. "You know I don't remember anything from when I was alive, right? I guess maybe that's never come up. Probably not." That was the sort of thing that happened when you avoided talking to someone as much as possible for an entire year. "So I don't really know what kind of stuff I, um, did before I-- before. For all the time I do remember I couldn't touch anyone and they couldn't touch me." There'd been technical exceptions; Corbin had been able to make his rings constructs more or less solid to her and Eve could telepathically implant the sensation of physical contact but it was much the same as the trick Nick had taught her for consuming the essence of food she couldn't actually eat: a pale imitation that was far better than nothing but still just a cheat. "What I'm getting at is, I mean, for all intents and purposes, that was the... That was my, um..." She yanked her hood down over her eyes, unable to complete the thought out loud.
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"I did, actually," Kimber admitted and found she wasn't lying to spare Tarva's feelings, taking one hand out of her pockets to cover the lower half of her face as she felt colour rising there again. The poetry had been objectively pretty awful, she knew, but either the teenage girl or the restless spirit in her found the melodrama oddly endearing. "But you should have said something! I... I didn't think you knew I was there and I shouldn't have been snooping anyway but I-- Because-- You-- Fffft." The poltergeist took the hand away from her face to wave it hurriedly in the air in front of her, needing a moment to form an actual sentence. Finally she blurted, as loudly as Tarva had been shouting into her phone moments before, "You kissed me and it freaked me out, okay?! It shouldn't have been a big deal but it was for me and I couldn't talk to you about it but I know I should have! I should have been helping you adjust to Earth and I didn't and that was pretty crummy so I'm, y'know, I'm really sorry." She seemed a little out of breath by the time she finished, shoulders rising and falling even if no actual air passed through her lungs.
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Midnight paused for a tense moment in the foyer of the White house, waiting to see whether or not Jessie would be able to calm herself down. Erin - his Erin - seemed to have things under control but it was a close thing. Relaxing imperceptibly he turned to the friendly and cautiously polite man who'd greeted him. He wasn't entirely sure how to respond to the respect based on the assumption that he was his grandfather; it was, after all, a lie of omission that they cultivated intentionally but it seemed somehow inappropriate in this odd social context. "Thank you," he decided on eventually, the hesitation covered somewhat by his filtered voice as he belated offered a gloved hand to the photographer. "Taking this well."
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Absolutely, but not from within the transport. If you want to leap right into action - which is probably wise - hit me some initiative rolls.
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"I could ride you, pretty boy," the Boran shot back loudly, splitting the squad between laughter and groans along the lines of crude pirates and career military professionals. The Za'ak who'd objected to Roulette's style earlier opened his mouth to say something but before he could the entire transports shook violently. This was no simple atmospheric turbulence, as the stream of profanity from the pilot clearly proved! "Wasn't supposed to be any anti-craft emplacements near the LZ, karkkit!" he shouted back over his shoulder, shoulders bulging as he wrestled with the controls. "This tub's not maneuverable enough to dance this dance, everybody needs to get out now!" The inertial dampeners struggled to keep up as the ship dove steeply downward. The floor between the two rows of seats and straps retracted with a loud whirr of machinery, revealing the metallic sheen of the cyberformed planet below, the surface still a good ten meters away and whipping by quickly, cast in the red light of heavy cannon fire at irregular intervals.
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"Haha, 'phrasing'," Kimber chuckled nervously before covering her eyes with one hand in embarrassment and rubbing the bridge of her ethereal nose. "And no, no that was fine. It sounded good. Maybe less talking about people's 'very souls', uh even metaphorically. I think maybe that's a Terminus thing that doesn't really translate very well... Um." She hunched a little inside her hoodie, letting the over-sized fabric envelop her a little more before she continued. "So, I guess you kinda know that I've been avoiding talking to you one-on-one for a while and I wanted to-- Ohmigoodness, I don't have to explain what 'awkward' means to you, right? 'Cause I was just talking to Birdie and we were getting nowhere with that and I really don't think I can handle having that conversation twice."
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Even if Wraith didn't translate the entirety of her exchange with the green-blue skinned alien with the bony ridges, Ghost Girl picked up on the unmistakable disgust in his tone, followed by a pause and the carefully controlled politeness that characterized her best friend's speech in any language. Leaning forward in her seat she glared at Kharag. <"Is this guy being space racist?"> she asked Indira in English, still looking at the Praetorian. As she did, the visage of a young, living albeit blue woman flickered briefly, like an electric light threatening to burn out, replaced for a split second by a skull with hollow sockets that nevertheless managed to convey her pending ire. The specter was gone as quickly as it came and replaced by a look of irritation that would have been more at home in a high school lunch room than a graveyard. <"'Cause it sounds like he's being a big space racist."> Before the conversation could advance any further the ship touched down and the phantom straightened her back in excitement. <"Ooh, new planet!"> Without waiting she simply slipped through the back of her seat and the bulkhead of the ship, passing effortlessly outside to look around.
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Hesitating in the space where the hall opened up into the area overlooking the courtyard, Kimber started to fade out into invisibility before catching herself. She couldn't pass for a living human in the revealing rays of the afternoon sun but whether or not Tarva could detect her presence with sorcery appearing in full view seemed like the first step in her own apology. Still, she turned around and started to head back the way she'd come twice before forcing herself to float into the windowed area, even if she stayed to far away from the far wall to chance anyone in the courtyard catching a good look at her. She opened her mouth with the intention of making some sort of greeting and settled for clearing her throat loudly, a completely artificial gesture for someone who didn't need to breath or swallow.
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"Jams, Birdie, if I challenged somebody to a duel every time I got zapped by something weird, I-- Gosh. My unlife is just a mess." With a sigh, Kimber straightened out her legs until she was floating just a foot or so off of the ground in an upright position, shoving her hands into the pockets of her ethereal hoodie. "You're still not totally getting it, but that's alright. Maybe Eve can explain it better when she gets back? You're right about me needing to just woman up and talk to Tarva though." The ghost's shoulders slumped while she grimaced. "This is gonna stink." Bobbing dejectedly though the air she passed effortlessly through the room's double doors in the direction the sorceress had left, trying to marshal her feelings into coherent sentences in preparation.
