Gizmo
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Midnight made a restrained sound of annoyance from behind his mask as the Night Cycle pulled up alongside the gargoyle. The black clad mystery man did not much care for walking into a trap in the first place but one so transparently obvious was especially galling. Still, they couldn't very well leave the Overriders in their addled state or leave Max Muscle's child in peril. Mark he was fairly confident could take care of himself but there was no sense leaving that to chance, either. "Redbird, equipment," he instructed calmly. Almost instantaneously, a cylindrical object popped into the air in front of him with pneumatic poump, followed by a hissing sound as a compartment revealed itself along the left side of the vehicles paneling. Catching the compressed bat with one hand, he held it over his right shoulder, offering it to Erin past Indira while removing the belt around his dress pants with his left hand. "Hold this, please," he requested of the current Young Freedom member, similarly holding the leather strip over his other shoulder while retrieving the pouch and tube laden belt and sliding it on.
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Okay, before we actually get to the main part of the thread, here are the power-swap sheets. Now, I haven't bothered to cleave to PP total at all but I have made sure that everybody ends up at the same effective PL that they usually are, though in some cases with different trade-offs. I'd like everybody to go over the sheet they'll be using to double check that everything's in order and generally get familiar with it. If you've got questions for me or the usual player of your temporary powerset, now's the time! Corbin Hughes - Ghostly gallant! Sharl Tulink - Holy firewall! Eve Martel - Petite paragon! Indira Singh - Mind over meat! Koshiro McMillan - Liquid paper! Kimber Storm - Has a pulse! To be clear: Corbin will be an actual, honest to goodness ghost, but he's not actually dying or leaving behind a body. Think of it more like his toggle getting switched from 'living, corporeal guy' to 'dead, insubstantial ghost'. IC there may be some confusion but OOC at least don't get bogged down in the existential ramifications! Sharl, at AA's request, will still be his usual digital self, but instead of being projected from his usual hard-light hologram emitter, he'll be projecting from the Cobalt Ring as a blue fire construct of himself. That means he's still Insubstantial but he doesn't have his Datalink and associated powers - although he could always use a Computer manually! By the same logic, Eve is getting a version of Sharl's paragon powerset which we saw during the trip to Tronik. If it comes up, assume that the descriptors on there are mutant like her psychic powers normally are. Since they're normally a manifestation of Sharl 'hacking' his home reality, feel free to play these as either 'tactile telekinesis' a la Superboy or just vanilla Super-Strength, Flight et al, Sorus. Indira and Koshiro will be human and Kinigosi respectively, as though they'd been born that species. The change will be instantaneous, so there's that body horror avoided, but abruptly having/not having a skeleton is probably going to be pretty disconcerting regardless. Fox, I'd suggest conferring with Sorus about what Indira's going to be experiencing telepathically while hopefully answering any question Electra has about Kinigosi physiology and quirks. Kimber for her part will physically be who she was when she was alive, but with Koshiro's magic origami paper! As for how difficult it will be for them to use their new, untrained powers, I'll be getting to that once it comes up IC.
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Meaghan flashed a black widow's alluring smile as Trevor and Erin took their seats across from her and her companion, her fingertips delicately brushing loosely curled hair from cheekbones which adulthood had made subtly more prominent than the last time Trevor had seen her. "My goodness, look who it is!" she purred in a tone that was playful in the same sense a predator was playful with its quarry. "Who let you into the grown-up party, puppy?" "Standards have fallen across the board, clearly," Trevor responded easily and it wasn't just the quickness of the calm retort that caused the Mercer heiress' one visible eyebrow to rise. She'd always been good at getting a rise out of the dark-haired young man one way or another, as much as anyone could from his innately reserved manner. This time however he had airily brushed her barb aside with a social confidence which was new. The minute lift of her tapered chin indicated he had her full attention. "Well, what can you expect, really?" she continued in feigned agreement, shaking her head slightly in sad disappointment. Though it would have been impossible to prove, they both knew perfectly well she was taking a shot at the nature of the Socotran leadership. That only raised more questions about why she'd deigned to grace the embassy with her presence and once again, they were both perfectly aware of way she was almost imperceptibly steering the conversation. More confident though Trevor may have been, he was dealing with someone of far greater experience in this particular arena. "More importantly, puppy, when are you finally going to introduce me to your mysterious, musclebound madame?" she asked, turning her attention to Erin as though separating a weaker member of the pack from its peers. "She--" "Would require little excuse to undo your orthodontist's hard work," Trevor interrupted unexpectedly, his voice cutting through Meaghan's aborted jibe without requiring him to raise his voice. The naked threat brought genuine surprise to the face framed by black cherry tresses, though perhaps not as much as it might have. "So be civil, Meag. More interested in your date, anyway," the composed detective went on, pointedly dismissing his attention from Meaghan as her turned it to the handsome Socotran beside her. "Relative of the bride-to-be? Have her eyes."
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"Met him once; think he has asthma or something," Erik muttered distractedly as Chris attempted to reassure him, the fencer glancing out the window partly because he half expected some crisis to suddenly erupt and partly out of a desperate need to focus his attention on something. With a slow breath, he looked back to the green clad teenage hero. "Haah, yeah. 'Father'. Ngh." Running a hand over his face, he shot Chris a dejected expression. "I wouldn't trust me with other people's kids, and I'm going to be responsible for a... a little person." "And considering the kid's genes, she's probably going to be an unholy handful," Gina agreed, rolling back into the living room with a tray of glasses on it, the retired policewoman's sense of humour showing through her deadpan even as her son groaned loudly.
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Ellie turned her eyes skyward, vaguely asking for a sudden infusion of social graces to see her through the increasingly frank and intimate conversation. "Yeah, I guess... I think I can understand that, at least a little bit," she allowed, doing her best to put herself in the mindset of someone who had seen the long millennia that Willow had. "I just want to make sure you get that this is more than just having a piece of mi hermano to hang on to. This kid is going to have an aunt and a grandmother and everything else and we're going to be part of her life." The sardonic medic's voice softened a bit as she added, "Which means you're part of that family, too."
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"You have to take 'that stuff'," LaMarr confirmed with an authoritative rumble undercut by a hint of a smirk pulling at the corner of his square jaw. It was difficult to challenge Patrick enough to keep him invested in most of his schoolwork, but there was something about being related by a mountain of a man who had been present with fists swinging that made history somehow more engaging for many teens. He accepted the elder Grayson's proffered hand, shaking it firmly. It was a little strange to be making the friendly gesture with an old foe but time had a way of providing perspective on rivalries that had seemed more important at the time.
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There is indeed a small placard on the side of the exhibit, under the glass section. Apparently this piece has been dubbed 'The Quantum Bauble'. Rick retrieved in on one of his many adventures to alternate Earths, mistaking it at the time for an abandoned genie lamp not entirely unlike the one used by his father. After what the placard briefly describes as 'a series of eventful misunderstandings', it was determined that the Bauble had some property which caused it to appear differently to anyone who saw it. The effect isn't telepathic - Eve can confirm this - it seems to literally be a different object for everyone, with no people ever having seen the same thing. Regardless, the Bauble doesn't put out any kind of energy or otherwise actually do much at all. The placard suggests bringing one's friends to view the exhibit and compare what everyone sees!
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Kimber looked between Sharl and Indira with a furrowed brow and deepening frown. "Huh? It doesn't look like any kind of space rock to me, Sharl. Probably just, I dunno, granite or something." She indicated an arc with her index finger. "See, lots of people on Earth put these sort of slabs called headstones on grave sites, y'know, with the person's name and date of death and stuff carved into them. That's the smoothed edge of the corner there, and here's where it must have broken off the rest of it." The phantom gestured to other points inside the glass case, none of which corresponded to anything the others were seeing. She turned around enough to address their friend still hanging back from the exhibit. "Tell them, Koshiro!" Surely her fellow human - well, Earth-native, at least - would be able to confirm what she was saying!
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Sage Wraith Cobalt Templar Citizen Papercut
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Kimber made a commiserating face, nodding in understanding. "You gotta pretend I'm giving you a hug right now, okay?" she insisted gravely, prodding the shapeshifting alien in the shoulder with the handle of her surreptitiously levitating umbrella. The ghost suspected she'd be more homesick herself if she could actually remember any of her life before death, but even so she did frequently find herself thinking about her home country in general and her cabin in particular. Sure, it had been a rickety, abandoned pile of logs in the middle of a dense forest but a poltergeist needed a place to haunt. As they continued to browse the collection, looking for enough information to write the obligatory reports assigned to them for the trip, Kimber's attention was caught by a piece set aside in its own case, far enough out from one corner of the room that there was ample room to walk around it entirely. "Huh. A chunk of rock?" With a smooth curve on one side and rubble on the other where it had been broken off from a larger granite tablet, the item rested on a simple cushion so as not to distract. "Looks like there were numbers or letters carved into it, but they're broken off so you can't read it. Hey, I think this was the corner of a gravestone! Neat! Wonder who's...?"
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Whether she thought Mara was actually joking or not about the refrigerator, Gina seemed amused, chuckling to herself as she wheeled past Chris towards the kitchen as the teenager exited. "It's good you're all here," she noted aloud, nodding absently. "My kids have good friends. Any of you want something to drink or eat?" "Heh," Erik breathed with a smirk, punching Chris lightly in the shoulder at the crack about the baby's looks. "I know, I know. Just hate standing still while other people do the hard part," he admitted in a similarly lowered voice, looking toward the bedroom. "Thanks again, by the way," he added at a normal volume. "If anything goes down tonight, Vince can break out the little black book and get you backup regardless, deal? No stupid solo act stunts." "What? No, that's not what I -- It's a weird situation is all," Ellie attempted to convey, leaning with her back against the wall next to the bathroom's doorway more to avoid showing Willow her own awkward expression than to preserve the dryad's privacy. Given the circumstances, I'd say we crossed that line a while ago. Taking a moment to marshal her words, she tried again, "I was pretty mad at first, yeah. I thought you were trying to take advantage of mi hermano and he's absolutely stupid enough to fall for something like that. But I... think I get it now. Why you get why this would be weird, I mean, and why you did it." The medic didn't really have a lot of comparable social situations to gauge this one against and was floundering more than a bit. She decided to shot rambling long enough for Willow to respond.
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KImber jutted out her lower jaw slightly as she regarded a purportedly heavily used matching ash wood stake and mallet set in a display that she frankly thought was in rather poor taste. Sure the nest of vampires described in the accompanying article had definitely been bad guys - the newspapermen of the seventies got a little more graphic with their descriptions of the victims than she might have liked - but there sure weren't any weapons used to destroy pre-mortem villains so casually out for everyone to see. Making a small harrumphing noise, she excised a bit of the telekinetic control she'd been practicing with Eve to give the illusion that her umbrella was tucked under her arm and headed over to see what Indira was looking at. The phantom caught up to her roommate just as she was leaving a display of photos and took a moment to glance over them herself. Kimber blinked once as she reread the inscription below one of the pictures, then let out a little squeal of delight as she bounded after Indira, her bouncing steps hanging just slightly longer in the air than gravity really should have allowed. "I didn't know True North went to Kinigosi! That's just so rad!" she enthused. "It's like we were going to be friends even before we... Hey, are you okay?" The disguised specter's expression turned from cheer to concern as she finally noticed her friend's melancholy attitude.
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We'll be getting to the action shortly, but let me get a Notice check from everybody in the meantime, along with any museum-relevant Knowledge skills, just to be thorough.
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Notice Check. (1d20+15=31) Knowledge (History) Check. (1d20+10=26)
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"No, he's still in Providence Asylum," Wail replied with a frown, running one hand over his grey-streaked beard. In his days a good number of the metahumans running around had been the result of accidents of science, whether experiments gone wrong or bystanders caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. It sounded more unlikely before one took a look at the sheer amount of wild and unprecedented research had been happening, which each new superpowered sensation appearing on the scene rekindling the experimental fervor. He supposed it wasn't all that surprising that decades later science was catching up enough to duplicate those quirks of fate reliably, but he wasn't sure he liked the implications. "Voluntarily, too. They've got him set up with a lab in there, working to fix himself. Figure he's the only one knows enough about the whole freaky fishman thing to have a shot." It was pretty clear who they needed to talk to if they wanted answers. "Doc might not do housecalls, but you figure he takes appointments?"
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Gather Information check. (1d20+14=31)
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With a subtle shake of his head, Trevor assured Erin that no fighting would be necessary just yet, at least in the physical arena. As Mark and the princess rejoined them, the dark-haired young man suppressed the urge to sigh or rub the bridge of his nose or otherwise display how very much he would have liked to forgo the necessary explanation. "Guest in green dress - don't stare, Mark. Meaghan Mercer." Knowing that the name wouldn't mean anything to anyone other that Erin, he let out a quiet breath and forced himself to continue, his voice without inflection. "Former... acquaintance. Parted on exceptionally poor terms. Extremely adept social manipulator. Anti-metahuman bigot." While Trevor tended to be reserved in his speech and body language, this was a detached coolness forcibly bottling any emotion from showing through. "Out of place at Socotran event. More so talking with definite metahuman." He didn't make any gesture to indicate the young man who had returned to Meaghan with two cups of punch, though he did note that the Socotran was taking care not to reveal his second set of eyelids in front of the predatory socialite. "Trouble," he summed up succinctly.
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Something about that caused Trevor's eyes to narrow behind his sunglasses and prompted him to do another scan of the crowd. This time one Cal McKenzie stood out to his methodical gaze, a New York record producer that the Trevor likely wouldn't have recognized if not for a familiar connection. "Manages Gibbson's 'musical' career," he noted to the auburn haired young woman on his arm in a hushed tone. During their shared time at Claremont Academy he had interacted only briefly with Daisy Gibbons but the fallout of her final spiteful revenge against Zoe 'MacMillan' Harris had left him with considerable distaste for the emotion controller. The bad feeling he felt growing in the pit of his stomach only worsened as he noted the pair speaking with McKenzie. Victoria Mercer came from old money, even by the standards of North Bay's well-to-do community, but had made a fortune in her own right first as an author of bombastic and not coincidentally hugely popular self-help books and then later as a publisher. Her current husband, Anthony Taylor-Mercer was nearly two decades her junior and recognizable as a successful male model. Their respective careers were of less interest to Trevor than Victoria's daughter from her previous marriage: Meaghan Mercer, his former swing dance partner and the first person besides his grandfather to whom he'd revealed his metahuman powers. Now that he was looking for her, Trevor spotted her almost immediately, dressed as ever in curve-hugging green a shade too dark to be called emerald that compliment the one forest green eye visible amongst black cherry tresses and a coyly knowing smile. Erin felt her boyfriend arm stiffen as his body language took on the unnatural stillness it did whenever he was expecting an ambush. Meaghan was talking - flirting - with a handsome young man of presumably Socotran origin, who excused himself to retrieve punch for them both as they watched. His course brought him right past the observing pair and for a moment his eyes met Trevor's directly. The dark eyes blinked briefly... then again as his inner eyelids closed as well. Nictitating membranes... Meaghan, he knew from painful personal experience, was vehemently anti-metahuman, a fact that she hid well in the social circles of Freedom City unless she was sure she was in the company of like-minded individuals. Her presence at the Socotran Consulate as all raised red flags, but this was something else entirely. 'Bad feeling', he decided, did not even begin to properly convey the sensation.
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Trevor didn't answer for a moment while they continued to circulate and surreptitiously scan the crowd. From overheard conversations it seemed that guests and embassy staff alike were in the dark about Morakot's bride-to-be, even including Ahmed al-Khalif, the Socotran Consul, who was too busy glad-handing with locals and nationals alike to be overly bothered by the mystery. With more than a handful of known criminals, metahuman or otherwise, in the crowd, al-Khalif certain had his work cut out for him. Trevor subtly pointed out Saturnalia Roman and Jonathan Grant in conversation to Erin along with a few other notables. It was an exercise in his considerably stoicism to do nothing more than set his jaw; the Manor's computers had extensive files on several of the guests here and while always at a legally insulating remove, there was considerable blood on their hands. Keeping the 'important' people in the dark is one thing, the young detective reflected as he refocused his attentions, but what about the people no one is paying attention to...? Sure enough, getting closer to a pair of the catering staff under the guise of taking a closer look at the buffet table - which, admittedly, was rather impressively stocked - proved fruitful. The younger of the two men, not much older than Trevor himself, noted to his senior that he hoped to be able to attract such young and beautiful American women when he reached Morakot's age himself and though the more experienced waited quickly silenced his coworker with a significant look about the room he too couldn't help but make a gesture of keen appreciation.
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Although he could have reasonably held his struggling opponent in place for the better part of the day while the others took turns using the sharkman as an improvised punching bag, Wail's sense of fair play balked a bit at prolonging the beating anymore than necessary. "Forget the camera, son," he told Cannonade conversationally as he adjusted his grip on the restrained mobster. "This one's under the size limit, I'll have to throw him back." Flexing his trunk-like arms until something internal made of cartilage gave way with a unsettling popping sound, the broad-shouldered hero let the sharkman drop on top of his brethren in a mutated pile of bulging muscles and rough skin.
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Wail Free Action: Maintain Grapple. Full Action: Coup de Grace Shark 3. That's automatically DC 33 Toughness and DC 23 Fortitude!
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Maybe it was the way limited resources tended to spark creativity or maybe it was just a matter of living in a city where 'impossible' was a challenge rather than a dead end, but LaMarr felt that he'd seen more than the average teacher's share of truly gifted, inventive minds over the years. There'd been that unusual business with Lamont Desmaris earlier in the year, the extent of which had come as something of a surprise, while Patrick Grayson's genius had revealed itself a little more gradually than that. Distinguishing certain fields as 'super science' had strictly speaking fallen out of favour in the education community of late but LaMarr was an old-fashioned sort in some ways and his decades of experience with the stranger side of Freedom City had left him with the gut feeling that some technologies and their underlying principles were simply in a different league from your day to day marvels. He'd have recognized the erstwhile Mauler immediately even if he hadn't known to expect him; age withstanding a life of profession fighting inside and outside of the ring left a distinctive mark on a man. LaMarr was hardly one to deny someone the right to give up the life and find happiness with someone they loved, however, and his days of carrying grudges were for the most part behind him. "Grayson," he greeted, sauntering up to the older man in the manner only someone with more than a thousand pounds of superdense muscle could really manage and giving Patrick a small nod before turning his attention back to his grandfather. "Seems retirement suits you."
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With Skill Mastery: Gather Information - 20, Intimidate - 35, Notice - 25, Sense Motive - 25 Bluff, Diplomacy Checks. (1d20+5=21, 1d20+5=21) Investigate Check. (1d20+15=22) Knowledge (Streetwise) Check. (1d20+10=20) Knowledge (Business), Knowledge (Current Events), Knowledge (Popular Culture) Checks. (1d20+4=23, 1d20+4=13, 1d20+4=7) Search Check. (1d20+4=19)
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How would you feel about Jack stunting Hellfire Control, AA? Something along the lines of: Move Object 13 (Extras: Damaging, Flaws: Limited [Hellfire], Power Feats: Accurate 3) [29PP]
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"Now where'd you get that fool idea, son?" Wail asked nonchalantly as he turned his attention to the surprisingly resilient sharkman who had shrugged off the energy tossing youth's attack. Stepping forward with a feint to the left, the mountainous man moved faster than normal muscles could have possibly moved so much mass, gripping his opponent's nearest arm and swinging around behind him, pinning the substance abusing abomination's limb against his back. A well practiced maneuver with a locked elbow pinned the opposite arm in a similarly useless position while Wail's own considerable presence anchored the helpless gangster in place. "Strong, fast, it all comes down to experience."
