Gizmo
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"Needs adjustment," a gravelly voice noted quietly just behind Corbin's shoulder as a black gloved finger poked into a set of jotted down measurements on the young historian's sketch. "Sizable pit in rock, hidden by brush." It was hard to say just how long the black clad tactician known as Midnight had been standing there, so close. Corbin was sure he hadn't seen the distinctive black motorcycle parked to his left when he arrived but he also hadn't heard it pull up or spotted the relatively new dark crimson detailing while he'd been waiting, either. Regardless, the Claremont alumni had evidently had time to make a thorough examination of the area.
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:approved:
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Okay, that helps! However I wouldn't really describe Pete as 'scarred'. He's got issues and baggage, no question, but he's ultimately a pretty optimistic, positive guy. Unless your going for Topher Grace. And... don't be Topher Grace. Just as a general life rule. Anyway! Wisecracking to keep others at arm's length and hide her insecurities: Good, just keep in mind that some players can be quite sensitive about their characters, so pick your moments. Being soft on Victor Fries style tragic villains: A potentially interesting complication, so long as she doesn't some across as a gullible dummy. Prone to misunderstanding-based pre-team-up fights: Not bad, per se, but we aren't a PvP site anymore for some very good reasons. The other player would have to agree beforehand, obviously, and you'd probably want a GM keeping an eye on things. Spreading gossip about her fellow students: Eugh... I get what you're going for here, actually, but that role has typically been left to openly antagonistic NPCs. Refusing to wear a costume: Is there a specific reason for this or is it just a case of her being 'too cool' for it? Looking at her backstory, and dipping back into analogues for a moment, what I'm getting is sort of Hope Summers is raised by Cable and Oberon on Apocalypse until the former is killed and the latter tries to use her as a weapon, Nick Fury decides he hates little girls, she's adopted by Batman as played by Uncle Ben who dies in a Skrull Invasion because she couldn't stop it, at which point she's adopted again by Tuxedo Mask. Also she's magic. I like a lot of those elements individually, but altogether... it's a little much, not just in terms of how awful her life has been but in how busy the narrative is. I'm not going to use the 'M' word here (largely because it's a terrible litmus test for this genre), but keep in mind that mimic-based character already have an element of 'everything you can do, I can do better', so you're working under some existing preconceptions already. I know AA suggested taking a look at Wander and Harrier as examples of successful characters with exaggeratedly tragic backstories. I think that would be a good idea, just for comparison's sake.
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Kimber's face drained of colour, becoming nearly fully translucent as her expression turned aghast at her apparent carelessness in the moments before it faded from view and left her a headless, floating body with flailing arms. "Ack, I wasn't even--" she began to apologize profusely before the other girl dissolved into laughter. "What? I... ooooh!" The ghost's head reappeared wearing a suitably annoyed look, one cheek puffed out as she stamped her foot midair. "Very funny, you guys!" Still, she wasn't any more capable of maintaining her ire than Kristin was, and was soon giggling along with the others. "Okay, okay, I'll smooth it back out after! And that sounds like a lot of fun, Eve, thanks!"
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Alright, setting the mechanical half of things to the side for a moment, there are some issues here. Her backstory on the whole is definitely pushing it for the tone of the site. I can live with the idea of her growing up in a hostile environment with a Cable-esque guardian and even with Shrike's self-sacrifice, but layer after layer of parental figure dying and turning evil strains things somewhat. I'm also not clear why AEGIS would hold a minor being controlled by a literal demon responsible for her actions. I'm more concerned with what her Complications and Personality sections suggest about her current state, however. A character who can't tell who the good guys are and explicitly enjoys the misfortune of others isn't just a bit unheroic, she doesn't sound like anybody anyone else would particularly want to have around, especially in a high school. It paints a picture that would be too far on the grim and gritty side in an adult heroine, let alone a teenager. I'll illustrate it this way: in the section of the genre we strive for, growing up in on hellish environment and drawing the special attention of its despotic ruler result in personalities like Mister Miracle and Big Barda. Being raised by a brutal killer results in personalities like Cassandra Cain. Feeling responsible for the death of a parental figure results in personalities like Peter Parker. Cass is probably the closest to what you're going for here, but even then (setting aside some of her questionable OYL portrayals) she always knew right from wrong and was often shown as particularly empathic. Does that help?
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Kimber's face fell at Sharl's distress and the realization that they'd jumped in without thinking and in doing so played right into Rogue's hands. The atypically solid poltergeist just hoped that none of the city's people payed for that mistake. Tilting her head slightly to one side, she relayed the events over the psychic link she hoped Sage would be able to hear her over. <...looks like we messed up,> she finished, the full extent of her remorse coming across. <Be careful, everybody!> Leaving their downed foe to Wraith's tender ministrations, she floated after Citizen, little sparks of electricity lighting up the air behind her as she waved and gave the media personnel a big grin. "Hi, everyone!" she greeted her voice chipper and eyes bright with cheerful enthusiasm. "I'm, er..." Glancing down at the large 'G' still emblazoned on her new outfit, she quickly recovered and supplied, "I'm Gal Vanic, and it's a real charge being here in Tronik, let me tell you!" Both puns were absolutely atrocious, but the broad wink and 'aw shucks' arm pump managed to sell it. "We're just going to have a quick chat with this crook then we'll go round up the rest of her gang, so you've got nothing to worry about!"
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Diplomacy Check vs. Assembled Media. (1d20+13=30) 34 with Attractive!
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"Well, you probably could," Ellie noted affixing the new armband on the opposite arm, careful not to disturb any of its components despite the purported solidity of the construction. "Whether you should or not..." she added with a grin, trailing off and making a show of an exaggerated shrug, palms turned upward. She was trying especially hard to draw a smile from the harried inventor with everything they'd had to deal with so far; it was, after all, Mara's birthday even if her girlfriend had ultimately chosen to make it an outing for the both of them.
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"Hey, look on the bright side, 'Hawk," Jack offered. "If it is a trap, we get to fight are way out and make them look dumb doing it." With their host having left, the fencer's lackadaisical attitude seemed to have returned, though a keen ear would note it was a little more forced than it had been previously. "He's a very 'glass half full' person," his sister clarified dryly, as she nodded briskly to the aide assigned to take her to the medical facilities. Jill followed where she was being led and her brother stepped in close behind, not about to let her run off on her own. "If anything goes wrong, just yell something Scottish really loud," he called over his shoulder, sticking his hands in the pockets of his greatcoat and whistling tunelessly.
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It's uncanny, isn't it?
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Closing the short distance between them with a single step, Ellie stooped slightly around the awkwardness of Mara's half-retracted helmet to plant a soft peck of a kiss on the engineer's cheek. "That would be amazing," she assured her partner genuinely, the corner of her mouth pulling up into a smile that showed teeth. "Granted, coming back to the spot where we first met is a tough act to follow, but the flipping moon is a pretty good contingency plan on the romance-o-meter." The masked acrobat offered Mara a rueful look. "I know you just wanted to spend the day together without any interruptions. We'll make it happen, promise."
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Keep his borrowed temporal anomaly detector close at hand, Midnight stalked about the space, inspecting everything with a critical eye from behind his red tinted lenses. It took a few moments for him to decide to fully believe what his eyes were telling him; the distances from one point to another seemed inconsistent and fluid, while the dome displaying scenes from the relative past fluctuated in view and dimensions. Getting close enough to one of the 'time windows' caused its view to shift to show events he recognized from his own life and adventures; fighting alongside Arrowhawk during the Grue invasion on one surface, while racing through the darkened streets of Freedom on the Night Cycle with Wander behind him on another. Though none of the scenes showed his identity behind the mask, out of a desire to avoid revealing potentially timeline contaminating information more that any courtesy, he assumed, it still struck the black clad hero as irritatingly invasive. Putting that aside, he spoke up to answer Cannonade's question. "Pad we arrived on. Airlock to the planet's surface." The partially terraformed environment outside didn't look particularly hospitable, but the airlock was the only obvious physical way in or out of the room.
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Well, I think Midnight was going to go straight for the hostage while 'Hawk dealt with the snipers, but we can do that, too.
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Ellie's own chin pulled back reflexively the moment Mara's head tilted just slightly to the side, recognizing the look on her girlfriend's face, practically hearing the gears within shifting into a higher gear. Even so, she was taken off guard by the question. "Space where?" she responded with a small frown before her eyes went wide a moment later. "What, space space? Outer space?" She pointed straight upward rather unnecessarily. "Are you ser- No, what am I saying, of course you are." She knew for a fact that the inventor had been outside the Earth's atmosphere on more than one occasion, not the least of which had involved commandeering a satellite and turning it into a massive laser weapon on Ellie's own behalf. "...really?"
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"'Rigged to blow', huh?" Erik repeated in a lowered tone, his smirk mirroring the grin on Willow's face. For all the dyrad's protestations about the strange ways of the modern world and her own slightly inhuman perspective she'd picked up a number of modern idioms with no discernible difficulty. The again, that probably qualified as an act of self-preservation given the verbose company she kept. "There's something to be said for the low-tech option, yeah," he continued, resuming his previous volume. "And I'm not just saying that because we're broke and it's our only option." "There's a line about itty bitty living spaces," Vince quipped from the computer monitor, making a show of straining against the screen's cramped dimensions, "but it escapes me at the moment."
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"Ooh, like you'd know fashion if it zapped you upside the head anyway!" Kimber called back to their opponent, recklessly pulling upon the wellspring on energy she could feel buzzing inside of her and sending a lance of lightning streaming from her outstretched hand. Flush with the unexpected display of raw power, Ghost Girl -- well, that wasn't really an appropriate name at the moment, actually -- moved her passenger into an advantageous position and continued to shout, "Besides, that's a pretty dumb line coming from an actual holo- wait." It took her a moment to work out what was giving her pause; she never got to make clever pop culture references in the middle of fights, after all. None of her friends ever knew what she was talking about when she tried, since a lot of things she knew about were literally before their time. Which was precisely the problem here. "Uh, Citizen? Why does Rogue know about 80s cartoons from our world?"
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'Gal Vanic' Standard Action: Electrical Blast vs. 'Rogue'. (1d20+11=20) Well, it's DC 26 if it hits. Move Action: Get Wraith close enough to jump the rest of the way.
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"Well, I just, I felt really bad about the whole... about freaking out earlier," Kimber told Indira, her expression falling a bit as he costume's domino mask evaporated into the air like a wisp of smoke. "And I was so mad about the whole thing - you're supposed to be able to trust teachers of all, people! - and everybody was arguing about how to stop them, so I just... did that!" Visibly cheering up again, the phantom shrugged broadly. "Not sure what it was, really, but it felt pretty good!" Normally changing her image felt like pulling on a mask over her whole being, an odd if not entirely unpleasant sensation, but the way in which she'd stopped the ritual had felt more like peeling off a layer of chapped skin from one's lips. Or so she supposed, not actually having skin in the first place.
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"Funny how 'properly' sounds a lot like 'so you're not losing', girl," Wail noted with a conversational tone marred by a grunt as Tackle strained against his grip. Tightening his arms kept the villainess pinned but she was strong enough to push back against his superdense muscles and avoid taking any real injury. "Look, we can keep at this all day, but I've got better places to be. You saw what I did to your old man. You really want to make me raise my voice when your head's right next to mine?"
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"At least the whiny one's not bored any more, I guess," Jill agreed with a shrug, idly inspecting her side before forcing herself to leave it alone. Her powers had healed the minor injury almost immediately but not surprisingly her subconscious was reluctant to believe it. "I don't really want to be around when he comes to and offers his sincere thanks, though, no," she agreed, looking out across the icy field and pursing her lips. "Ugh, it's going to bug me knowing they're in there even if we get out of earshot, too. I don't suppose you had a Plan C?"
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Midnight makes a 25 Notice check with Skill Mastery and an Investigate Check. (1d20+15=29) What does that tell him about the room?
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"'Pension'?" Redbird inquired softly from her egg's position in Midnight's arm. Glancing down for a moment, the terse detective supplied, "Continued income post-retirement." The bulk of his attention remained on the photo their hosts had brought up on the wall-sized screen, hunting for any hidden scrap of information to be found there. In truth he thought Edge's plan was a good one, and privately admitted to being surprised by the gregarious young man's astuteness. Though Mark had become a much more prone to consideration in the time they'd been friends, the way he occasionally revealed additional areas of knowledge and expertise was still unexpected. "Ah, of course," the autonomic machine intelligence murmured in understanding, "once their aging human forms have become frail and ineffectual."
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Midnight can match that with his own Stealth and Skill Mastery, heading in the opposite direction. For clarity's sake: Gadgets: Super-Movement 3 (Slow Fall, Wall-Crawling 2) [6PP] That leaves him 14PP still free should the need arise.
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Wail Opposed Grapple Check vs. 32. (1d20+23=36) She's not going anywhere. Free Action: Maintain Pin Free Action: Switch to third AP slot. Move Action: Demoralize vs. Tackle. (1d20+13=24) Standard: Unarmed Damage, Toughness DC 28.
