Gizmo
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Ellie's sienna cheeks tinged a deep crimson that had nothing to do with the October chill in the air. "Yeah, well..." she coughed through the blush, doing a poor job of tempering a self-conscious smile. "Can you believe she insists she's not good with words?" she asked Carly as they neared the residence's entrance. "I'm still not over how adorable you two are," the midwesterner replied frankly, still dragging Mara along. "This is quite the departure from what we usually get to see from Ms. Espadas here, I don't mind telling you." Showing her student card to the security guard on staff, she released her prisoner to sign the other two young women in before leading them to the elevator. The lobby itself wasn't quite so busy as the courtyard had been but down the hall they could see the attached cafeteria was well attended.
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"Nnh, coffee good. Burned bean bad," Trevor groaned as he accepted the thermos, doing his best Karlof impression. Although it was, as usual, difficult to tell, he was enjoying the holiday immensely. Besides the welcome relief of a Hallowe'en without city-wide disaster or personal emotional trauma, decorating the manor grounds and dressing up had long been a favourite tradition. A flair for the dramatic ran strong in the stoic Hunter men; it had, in fact, been at a costume party hosted at the very same mansion that Travis Hunter had first donned the guise of Midnight, originally with the intent of providing his guests with a good scare before fate had intervened. There was definitely an element of getting back to his roots in causing pre-teen vampires to befoul themselves. Setting the bowl aside, he leaned over enough to kiss Erin on the cheek. "Me too. Glad, I mean. Glad you're having fun, too."
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Without losing her smile, Carly nodded vaguely and looked to Ellie in profound confusion. "Short version, Mara's a prodigy," the West Ender supplied by way of explanation, the look on her face trying to decide between effusive pride and just trying not to laugh at the mixed first impression. "She ended up in the private sector just on the strength of her personal projects." Her words came smoothly; they were, after all, technically true. "She tries not to lord it over we lesser mortals..." "Oh, wow," Carly blinked as she processed the information. "So... you're a true blue genius, then! That's really impressive stuff!" Lowering her voice, she added to Ellie, "I know it's not a competition, but I think you won." Turning her attention back to Mara, her sunny smile resumed it's full incandescence. "And yes! Pre-med. Aiming for pediatrics in the long haul, but that's a ways off! Oh, costumes!" Remembering what Ellie had said earlier, she pointed towards the on-campus housing. "I was just heading back to rez; you can change in my dorm room!" Without waiting for a response, she deftly linked her elbow with Mara's and began dragging the blonde along. "So, how'd you two meet?"
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"Get over here, you," Ellie insisted, taking advantage of the loosely hanging tie to pull Mara back toward her for a chaste but deliberate kiss on the mouth. It said something about either Freedom City, the halls of higher learning or both that the display went largely unnoticed or commented upon, apart from a pointed whoop of approval from the guitarist. Without turning around the young woman flatly called back, "Get a haircut, Fuerth." "Yes, ma'am!" he replied with a grin and sloppy salute over wholly ridiculous sunglasses as he gathered up his guitar and bag and headed back inside. Ellie suspected the would-be rockstar was off to get into costume for the department party just as they were. She wished he payed as much attention to the tutoring group she ran when time permitted as he did to cultivating his appearance for passing co-eds but Matt Fuerth was a basically good kid. A polite step to one side, Carly bounced on her heels with apparent delight. "Hi, Carly," she introduced herself, offering Mara her hand. "It is so great to finally confirm your existence! This is the closest I've ever seen Ellie to less than two scoops of cynic in every box. Engineering, right? HIT?" Which program someone was in was the natural go-to first topic of small talk around the campus and Carly had a bit of small town gossip in her yet.
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In the early October dusk only about half of the lamps out in the open quad between flanking halls had deigned to turn on, leaving the crowds of students getting out of class lit in a dim, autumn glow. Amidst the usual fretting over potentially disastrous tests and looming deadlines were excited last minute plans for the evenings festivities, a handful already in costume. For whatever reason one long haired freshman had taken up a spot on a wide stone surface bordering a staircase, sitting cross-legged with an acoustic guitar and strumming simple four chord progressions while looking about soulfully. Ellie and her classmate stepped outside and down the same steps, the former scanning crowd and waving when she spotted Mara observing the crowd. The pred-med student quickened her step as she walked over to meet the inventor, a lopsided smile falling into place unbidden. "Aw, lookit you, you're beaming," Carly observed, jogging to keep up and adopting an expression usually reserved for internet videos of Husky puppies. "Yeah..." Ellie agreed. "Also, shut up."
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As the afternoon of October 31st gave way to evening, Ellie Espadas shoved one more secondhand textbook into a protesting messenger bag before slinging it over her shoulder and starting down the stairs of the classroom's tiered seating toward the exit. The premed student supposed she appreciated her professor's well meaning attempts to make the lecture festive but there was only so much one could do to make pathology significantly more ghoulish. "Well, that was especially disgusting," a less generous voice quipped from just behind her as a fellow student with long, chestnut hair bounded down the steps two at a time to catch up. Carly Westmas had come a long way from the nation's breadbasket to attend FCU, ending up in most of the same classes as Ellie in the first and second years of the medical program. Her frank and outspoken had recommended her to the Freedom City native, forming the basis of a friendship. "I want to know who looked at that toe and thought, 'Yes, I need to take a photo of that right now'." "I think it's more of a hazing thing," Ellie replied as the stepped out into the crowded hallway, full of students getting out of the last classes of the day. Various bat and pumpkin-shaped decorations had been plastered along the walls and a few orange and black streamers dangled from the railings of the second floor walkways. "Better to figure out your gross-out threshold now then when you're in the middle of treating someone?" Carly stuck out her tongue through a grimace. "I know you always say you've seen worse, but I don't think I'm jealous anymore." The tall, weedy brunette had understandably assumed her friend was referring to patients she'd seen volunteering at local hospitals but in this case it was hard to beat the zombies the young woman sometimes known as Jill O'Cure had fought on a previous Hallowe'en for sheer nausea inducing appearance. Spotting one of the many flyers taped haphazardly about the hallway, Carly snapped her fingers. "Ooh, you're coming to the party in McNider Hall, right? There's gonna be karaoke!" She turned the final word into a singsong crescendo to properly convey her excitement. "That's the plan," Ellie nodded with a small, bemused smile. She hadn't exactly been big on class parties, sanctioned or not, in high school but a lot of things had changed since then. If nothing else, she actually had a date this time. "Mara's meeting me here with our costumes." The way her eyebrows disappeared into her bangs communicated Carly's piqued interest. "Really? So... she actually exists? I had even odds that you'd just made her up to get losers to stop hitting on you." The skepticism was met with grumbling and reproachful mutters.
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The expansive yard to either side of the curving driveway up to the mansion had been transformed for the holiday into a decrepit graveyard strewn with off kilter gravestones, weathered statues missing limbs or pieces of their faces and an eerie fog that rolled about the grass in a shifting carpet, spilling onto the pathway and causing the costumed children to shuffle closer to the center and each other. The direction the faint, ominous music was coming from seemed to shift subtly, first to the left then behind them back the way they'd come then from the beckoning double doors up the semicircle of steps. Only the hesitation to be the first one to turn back outweighed the growing dread. When the finally made it to the door, they were greeted by an enormous jack-o'-lantern's toothy grin and a life-sized Frankenstein's monster sitting heavily in a ramshackle electric chair. The children paused for a moment, looking between each other until the boy dressed as Midnight stepped forward again to reach up for the heavy knocker on the door. Unfortunately, his stature left it well out of his reach, requiring the pink-jacketed Lady Liberty to nudge him aside and slam the knocker into the ancient wood thee times. At the third resounding impact, the monster to their right abruptly rose up with a tortured groan, looming well over six feet of stitched together flesh and torn clothing. The vampire's shout of shock was cut short when the children slowly noticed the large bowl of candy balanced in one of the monster's hands while the other produced a generous gift card for Starbase Coffee for the van's driver. "Nice costumes," the creature congratulated them in a surprisingly soft-spoken voice.
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Midnight shook his head sadly. "Already delusional," he lamented, his voice gravelly and flat through the filter in his mask. "Tragic." Placing a pair of fingers to his ears, he spoke into a build-in communicator. "Redbird. Status?" The autonomic intelligence's voice came through a small speaker at the vigilante's wrist for the benefit of the other heroes. "If I had a fleshy head, I believe it would be best by a ringing sensation," she grumbled, obviously annoyed to have been taken out of the fight before they'd tracked down the true villain. "I will recover shortly." "Good."
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Should Midnight be rolling some Sense Motive here, incidentally?
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The pieces had clicked into place in Midnight's mind the moment Medea revealed that Jason had already been resurrected. When she continued to explain that the captain of the Argo had had time to establish himself already, the flexible material of his gloves whispered a creak over clenching fists. "Milonakis." The black clad detective veritably seethed in his silent, stoney manner. His instincts had screamed warning at the unlikely appearance of the new 'hero' but he'd tempered his response with the benefit of the doubt. Idiot, he snapped at himself inwardly. It was right there in his codename. His teeth practically grated against each other as he verbalized, "Hades' Vanguard."
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"Oh, a bit of everything!" Kimber volunteered readily, glad to change the topic. Her translucent blue being blended in with the blue light coming from above. "I've got History this semester, oh, and a really neat Creative Writing course! Plus powers-type stuff. Even getting some magic tutoring outside of school! Watch this!" Reaching up to her face with both hands, the phantom plucked her own eyes right out of their sockets without warning. Holding her palms parallel one over the other, she sent the removed orbs spinning in a levitating circle between them, the grin on her disfigured face suggesting she'd been working on the stunt for a while. "Ta da!" Pulling arms back to perform enthusiastic jazz hands, Ghost Girl floated her ectoplasmic eyes back into the empty sockets behind her domino mask, blinking a few times to set them into place. "See, most magic comes from life, which leaves me sorta out of luck but I've got a connection with death which is almost the same thing only not at all? Um. Nick and 'Nox give a lot of contradictory information, honestly. Dead Head knows all the best undead party tricks, though, for sure!"
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Erik crouched next to the bed with one arm around Willow's shoulders and the other around her arms and the tiny person she was holding. "Dios, she is, too," he managed in reply, more than a little dumbfounded as he looked down at the child staring up at him with dark green eyes flecked with amber, blinking and yawning. A few, thin wisps of dusty brown hair lay above faintly pointed ears and the subtlest hint of angular features behind her round baby face. "Hey, gorgeous," the fencer whispered with a lopsided grin, extending a finger for the infant to grab reflexively with one hand. "Ha, nice grip you got there." With a small noise, the baby let go and closed her eyes, exhausted. After a long moment of quiet, Erik spoke up again, "Hey, Will, what do you think about 'Eden'? For a name, I mean."
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"Oh, well, it's mostly a blur," Ghost Girl replied, tapping the tips of her index fingers together pensively and avoiding Miss Americana's eyes. "I remember a couple moments pretty well, sorta. Y'know, like sitting down against a tree to rest and realizing my legs were too numb to stand up again. Mainly just general feelings, though. Being cold and terrified. Knowing that nobody was going to find me in time. Pretty much what you'd expect, I guess." For a split instant, the poltergeist's face flickered like a burst of static on a monitor unfocusing violently before reasserting itself just as quickly. "Can... we maybe talk about something else?"
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Tell you what, make whatever checks you think Corbin would make and I'll let you know what you get. And be nicer to Sharl, he just saved you from a magic fishing net! :)
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Would you like him to maybe make some skill checks or examine the Bauble while he's on his way?
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Ghost Girl's face literally darkened with no regard for the actual lighting in the subterranean chamber, hair continuing to stream behind her wildly as faint wisps of fog began to float from the corners of her mouth as if she was chewing on dry ice. "Y'know, just about everybody says they're not afraid of ghosts," she retorted coldly as she rose slightly into the air, undeterred as Milliner gathered the enchantments about him. "Mostly I actually like that. But you want to know a secret?" The teenage apparition's eyes turned to flawless, luminous orbs of pale blue. "That's really, really stupid of them." Without further warning her jaw widened impossibly and released a blinding steam of frost and fog along with a horrible sound of wind echoing in an great, empty nothingness. Swooping down behind it, she thrust her spectral arms through the poacher's vest, the supernatural chill of her unnatural presence draining the strength from his limbs.
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"Pulling to the right there, kid," Wail called to Temperance as he took a step forward toward one of the remaining crows. His massive hand shot forward with surprising speed, wrapping around the slender, avian neck and squelching a startled squawk. "Had the same problem at your age. Actually practiced in a junkyard like this one some," the earsplitting educator continued casually as he dragged his victim along far enough to repeat the grab on another of the carrion spirits. This one saw the hand coming and tried to dodge out of the way but a snap punch to the face sent it reeling long enough for LaMarr to grab it and lift both off of their feet and into the air.
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Dusting off the sleeves of his jacket with brief, efficient movements, Midnight gave Cobalt Templar a look that probably meant to be reassuring but lost something being filtered through dimly gleaming ruby lenses and a featureless expanse of his mask. "Ever go mad," he promised the younger hero with a clap on the back, "put you down. Never see it coming." Although the sentence was delivered entirely is a toneless deadpan, Corbin knew his former classmate well enough to realize that that was more words than Trevor ever would have used on an actual threat. Clearly the black clad detective was not particularly worried about the possibility.
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Math adds up and the fluff looks good, so: :approved: Since you're going for a Spider-man vibe here and knowing that you haven't had much exposure to the genre, I'm going to suggest watching at least the first season of The Spectacular Spider-man the first chance you get. Besides the titular character, it has a number of animal-themed villains and should give you a better idea of how that sort of thing is handled in a setting like this.
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Kimber stifled a laugh but had the composure not to explain that Indira probably wouldn't just be putting the impervium on a shelf. "Oh, well, not really," she answered the question about her interactions with the real world, beginning to feel a little useless given the vague information she was providing. "Wehn I pick stuff up I'm sort of picturing holding it in my hand in my head, right?" she continued, pointing to a nearby table where a small cylindrical tool lifted into the air and began spinning about lazily. "I don't actually feel it though, so like it wouldn't matter if it was, I dunno, covered in spikes or something! Some stuff can touch me though." She set the gadget back down carefully and turned back to Miss Americana. "Sage used her tee-kay to give me a hug one time, although I guess maybe that was partly her making me think that? She's a telepath, too, y'know, and a big softie even if she tries to act like a real hard case when she helping us train. Well. Not a 'big' softie. Petit softie. Cee Tee, too, with his magic ring! He makes armor and stuff and that worked. A lot of magic things, I guess, like Avro, my pet manticore. I helped save him from the jerk poacher, see, and... I think I'm getting off topic, sorry!" Shrugging her shoulder with mild embarrassment she tried to refocus on the topic at hand. "So yeah! Oh. And, um, fire. See, 'cause I froze to death and all I absorbed some of that cold -- it's actually a little tough not to freeze everything around me when I'm not paying attention! But that means that I can still get burned and, er... we don't have to test that part, right?" The ghost looked to the scientist hopefully, reflexively biting her lower lip in apprehension.
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Siren!Get-Away Opposed Grapple Check vs. 31. (1d20+18=27)
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Reflexively, Kimber rolled along the dock and out of the worst of the electric attack while a few of the origami bird's heeded her subconscious call and intercepted bolts before they could test what happened to a ghost who died twice. Rising back up to her feet stiffly, the temporarily revitalized teen found herself mildly offended by how outrageous the aches and pains of bruised muscles were. "Brat?! If anybody here has an attitude problem...!" she sputtered indignantly, pulling back one hand as she marshaled the willpower that directed her borrowed creations. The remaining origami cranes stopped pecking erratically and formed one each other in a tight squadron of folded doom, whipping about Grab in a tornado of slicing and bludgeoning wings. The villainess shrieked and threw lightning about haphazardly to no avail until one of the birds caught her solidly across the back of her head and sent her unconscious form toppling down to the ground. Sniffing in satisfaction, Ghost Girl outstretched her arms as the paper cranes flew down and landed along the sleeves of her hoodie like woodland creatures in a fairytale. "Good work," she congratulated them with a pleased nod.
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Sage's atypically powerful fists left noticeable dents in Argo's antiquated armor and robotic face, twisting one side of a look of absolute disbelief with an askew jaw as the Ultimate Android hit the docks. Meanwhile Get-Away, more used to out-maneuvering opponents with blinding speed than trying to keep them locked down with a net, proved unable to deal with Papercut's amorphous attacks and hold onto Cobalt Templar at the same time. "That's it, I'm getting the @$#% out of here!" Grab shouted, turning to fly away and swatting at the swarm of origami birds assaulting her. Her remaining partner is crime shouted back as she managed to right herself from the tumble Koshiro's tackle had thrown her into. "Don't be an idiot, we need that thing back!" With a groan of frustration, the red-haired woman stopped her retreat to fling another arc of lightning at the hooded youth on the ground "If I have to deal with this @#$% I'm taking it out on you, brat!"
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I'm going to to toss Ghost Girl and HP and clear Grab's Daze condition. Thunder!Grab Standard Action: Area Damage 10 vs. Ghost Girl. DC 20 Reflex, DC 25 Toughness. Ghost Girl Reflex Save vs. DC 20. (1d20+5=22) Toughness Save vs. DC 20. (1d20+9=22) Standard Action: Thousand Crane Attack vs. Grab; Power Attack 5. (1d20+11=15) Hero Point: Thousand Crane Attack vs. Grab; Power Attack 5, HP Reroll. (1d20+11=26) Thunder!Grab Toughness Save vs. DC 28. (1d20+10=14) That's a second Staggered, so she's unconscious too. Almost there! 50 - Smash - Unconscious 45 - Argo - Unconscious 27 - Trap Door - Unconscious 26 - Sage - Uninjured, 2HP 24 - Citizen - Uninjured, 1HP 20 - Grab - Unconscious 17 - Ghost Girl - Uninjured, 4HP 9 - Wraith - Uninjured, 2HP 7 - Cobalt Templar - Uninjured, 3HP 6 - Papercut - Uninjured, 4HP 6 - Get-Away - Staggered
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Wail Standard Action: Unarmed Attack vs. Crow 3. (1d20+8=24) That's a DC 28 Toughness Save. Improved Grab: Opposed Grapple Check. (1d20+23=39) He's going for a pin here. Improved Grapple lets him hold the crow with one hand, leaving the other free and Improved Pin gives the crow a -4 penalty on trying to escape. Extra Effort: Surge for Standard Action. Standard Action: Unarmed Attack vs. Crow 4. (1d20+8=27) Improved Grab: Opposed Grapple Check. (1d20+23=35)
