Gizmo

Jill O'Cure Theme Song: [groove]21820092[/groove] Her words are fox tracks; her smile's a snake trap. Her love's a hornet's nest; Her heart's a lion's den. She's a swan, a songbird, in the house; And well, you know what they say. Combat: [groove]21820353[/groove] And all we get is… Dead disco; Dead funk; Dead rock and roll. Remodel! Everything has been done. La la la la la la la la la la... Romance: [groove]21820370[/groove] Why don't you sit right down and stay a while? We like the same things and I like your style. It's not a secret; Why do you keep it? I'm just sitting on the shelf. Tragedy: [groove]21820431[/groove] Were you born a closed book; Full of secret lines? (And bound so tight.) Or did you learn to lock it; As not to break your spine? (Oh! You were bound so tight.) Story Arc Specific: Moar Espadas Siblings! [groove]21820506[/groove] Maps won't show us where we're going; All they are is just the boring facts. Relax.

Character Score Meme Jack of all Blades Theme Song: [groove]21721169[/groove] When inclined for to spend; He walks with a friend; And with pleasure he sits himself down. He tips off his glass; And he winks at the lass; And he smiles if she happens to frown. Combat: [groove]23379632[/groove] I can rip you off, and steal all your cash; Suckerpunch you in the face, stand back and laugh; Leave you stranded as fast as a heart-attack. All day, I think bad thoughts! Romance: [groove]21721105[/groove] I've made time with girls; From every walk of life; And line of work; It's fine, I'm sure there must be something more. Because when we touch I swear; I think I think too much I still remember every minute if you were in it. Tragedy: [groove]21721238[/groove] But my dreams; They aren't as empty; As my conscience seems to be. I have hours, only lonely; My love is vengeance; That's never free. Story Arc Specific: Espadas Siblings Duet! [groove]21721178[/groove] We're not gonna join your army; We're gonna start our own. And we'll fight until we win or lose it; Oh! Oh, oh! Oh! Oh, oh!

Reflex Save vs. DC 20. (1d20+7=25)

As the group started toward the mountain, Midnight slid in to walk next to Erin. Once everyone seemed more or less occupied with their preparations and assent, the youth doffed his beaten black fedora with one hand to uncover a dark object about the size of a softball which he quickly retrieved before replacing his hat. Presenting it to the auburn haired girl beside him, he revealed a chocolate cupcake in a black paper liner, topped with a dark cocoa icing that seemed to swallow the morning sun's rays. In a slightly lighter brown the numeral '18' had been written in calligraphy, swirled into the darker glaze. "Happy Birthday," he told her solemnly.

Midnight barely spared a glance at the robot as he quickly pulled an escrima stick from its holster around his lower leg. A deft movement of his thumb clicked a rotating dial, concealed and flush with the rest of the matte black cylinder, into place, releasing a reservoir of gravimetric energy which crackled about the far end as he stepped forward. It wasn't something he could keep up indefinitely, but it added enough crushing force to his blow to rip through the machine sending sparks flying in all directions. As the robot's sensors compensated for the sudden lights, the black clad vigilante was suddenly gone, hidden somewhere out of sight.

Midnight II Free Action: Arrange Gadgets Damage 8 (Power Feats: Improved Critical, Mighty) [10PP] Immunity 5 (All Mental Effects; Flaw: Partial) [5PP] Standard Action: Power Attack 4. (1d20+11=19) That should be DC 30. Move Action: DC29 Stealth w/ Hide in Plain Sight and Skill Mastery

Initiative. (1d20+3=16)

"Pfft, you think I don't read the Ledger?" Jack's mother scoffed, waving Talya's self-effacing comments away blithely. "Know more about what's going on in this city than somebody, because he never listens," she elaborated with a pointed look at her son. The swashbuckler simply blinked and looked over as though he had been distracted. "Hmm? Sorry, what was that?" The older woman pursed her lips. "Oh, you're a comedian now. Should have your own show, like that nice robot friend of yours." "I really should," Jack agreed glibly. "And Vince isn't technically a robot, he's--" "You knew what I meant, sabihondo," she interrupted before turning back to Talya. "My point is that we've got enough problems in this neighbourhood that we oughta be too busy to give people who've served their time grief. Anyway." The trio reached the bus station and pulled up to the edge of the sidewalk. "You take care of whatever you've got to do. And you pick up a phone, huh?" she added for Jack's benefit.

Easily opening the window from the outside, Midnight slipped into the studio, climbing talons retracting silently back into his gloves and boots. Padding forward with feline stealth, he stepped nimbly over a sleeping cameraman to get a better look at the pulsing device emitting palpable waves of mind affecting signals. Only too late did he recognize the motion sensors he'd inadvertently tripped. Cursing his carelessness inwardly, the black clad youth prepared to face whichever of Otaku's automatons responded to the alarm.

Notice Check vs. DC25. (1d20+10=23) Hahaha... nuts. He is going to put his remaining PP of Gadgets into +4 Notice in the hopes of not ending up flat-footed when things get real.

"That would explain the overflowing charm and hospitality," Jack supposed with a lopsided grin as he sauntered over, giving Fear-Master a rough pat on the head as he went. "Something like that. Lotta pressure on these guys to win, especially the ones here on sports scholarships. Live in a city where Joe Average gets a dose of superhuman juju every other Tuesday, you start getting ideas, I guess." He jerked a thumb at the bound villain as he glanced at the broken device Miss Americana was examining. "Finish-Laster there said he could make 'em 'fearless'. Twigged on my radar when the injuries and fights started piling up, on and off the ice."

"And next time a guy in a flippin' straight jacket offers to give you an edge?" Jack called to the team as they groggily shuffled off, "Check with one of the kids here on an academic scholarship about whether that's a good idea, huh?" Shaking his head, the swordsman turned to Miss Americana and gave her a deep bow with a flourish. "Thanks for the assist, beautiful. Last hockey pun, honest."

"Maybe you could kiss it better?" one of the starting defensemen suggested, still slightly dazed from the ordeal, but rapidly regaining his senses in Miss Americana's presence. His glib reply earned him a solid smack on the back of the head from Jack of all Blades, however. The swashbuckler shrugged helplessly. "I thought he was still all mind whammied," the fenced explained with exaggerated innocence.

At some point the others turned slightly to their right to find Midnight already standing there in the courtyard. It wasn't entirely clear how long the masked figure had been standing there or when he'd arrived, nor did he seem particularly inclined to explain himself. He'd chosen a far more utilitarian jacket than he'd worn the previous evening and a few pieces of climbing gear were evident where they hadn't fit into his many concealed pockets and belt compartments. Notably, there were at least three thermoses strapped to his matte black uniform.

The woman in the wheelchair looked to be in about her mid-forties, her features slightly rounder and darker than her son's, though the propensity for athleticism clearly ad not come solely from his father's side of the family. Her grip was firm as she shook Talya's hand and leveled her with an appraising look before turning to wheel herself back outside. "Don't worry about it, dear, Evans has his head up his--" "Mamá, jeez..." Jack interjected, wincing as he held the door open for both women and shifted the weight of his suit bag over his shoulder once again. The elder family member responded by pointing a warning finger at him. "Figures I only get to meet any of your work friends when you need something." Glancing back over her shoulder at Talya, she nodded approvingly. "I get it though. She's a hottie." Jack could only respond by smacking his hand solidly into his face. "What? You don't say 'hottie' any more? I'm not hip to the slang?" She addresses the recently released ex-thief again, her tone knowing. "Not even surprised. Blonds with accents; silver bullet for this family."

"Well, I try," Jack replied with a grin that was a little too natural to be called cocky. The fingers on the side of her face ran slowly through honey blonde hair, though his gaze never left her brilliant blue eyes. His remaining hand remained lightly on the small of Bombshell's back. "Sorry if I ruined the trill of the chase there," he told her softly, his voice slightly deepened. "I'm a pretty direct guy like that."

Fear-Master stumbled backward on the stairs amidst the hail of laser blasts, accidentally letting the vaguely recorder shaped device in his hands fall. Landing badly, a glass pane shattered and there was sound of cracking electronics. "No..." the villain protested in an unsettling monotone, reaching out before turning on his heel and sprinting away. As the young hockey players stopped in their tracks and stumbled about, confused, Jack of all Blades was free to act. Whipping his grappling launcher from his greatcoat, he fired at the fleeing culprit, the cord shooting between Fear-Master's legs and tripping him. His hockey mask made a resounding thunk as it collided with the concrete pathway below his feet. "Ooh, ouch." Turning to the patriotic paragon, Jack added, "If a guy with a cowboy hat and flying motorcycle asks, I'm totally a better shot than him, okay?"

Roughly fifteen minutes later, the doors opened and a scowling Latina woman in a wheelchair rolled into the room, quickly picking out the detective who had detained Talya and calling out in a crisp shout, "Hey, tonto, what's the matter with you?!" Although the reformed thief didn't recognize her, it was easy to pick out the familial resemblance to the athletic young man you followed her into the room, a suit bag slung over his shoulder. With the officers otherwise occupied, the swordsman Talya knew as Jack wandered over to her cell, his free hand in his pocket and the expression wry. "Hey, pretty jailbird. I may be poor in bail money," he admitted with a broad smirk, "but I am rich in ass kicking women." Before she could respond, the voices at the other end of the room rose again. "You know what, Evans? I'd like to say your daddy woulda been embarrassed by you, but I worked with the man, and he was a pendejo too!" A few more minutes passed before a chagrined detective walked over to open Talya's cell, mumbling something under his breath about being free to go.

"Well," the swashbuckler began, his tone and expression softening slightly, "never let it be said that Jack of all Blades doesn't know how to push his luck." Leaving one hand on Bombshell's back, he used the other to gently hold her blonde tresses back while he leaned forward and kissed the mostly reformed thief. Having resolved to go all in, there was no trace of hesitation in the fencer's confident manner as he pulled her closer.

Trevor leaned forward reflexively as Erin pulled away and returned to her room for the evening, leaving the dark haired youth standing silently in the hallway for a beat while his brain processed enough of what he was feeling to devote attention to things like walking and breathing again. "...heh," he murmured finally, mouth opening in a slight grin as he placed a hand on the back of his neck. Had anyone been spying on the king's guests that evening, they surely would have assumed there had been some sort of mistake. Costume or no, there was no way the young man sauntering to his room with his hands in his pockets and quietly whistling a syncopated tune could be the grim, masked hero known as Midnight.

"Oh wow," Jill blurted, surprised to hear just how accomplished Eve was. The taller girl considered herself fairly acrobatic on the whole, certainly capable of maneuvers well beyond the average person, but the petite French teen was clearly on a whole different level. Jill couldn't imagine what it would be like if she was suddenly prevented from using the medical skills she'd worked so hard to develop; it had to be absolutely crushing. "That's pretty... wow. Well, hey, chin up, Snowpea, let's take your mind off it, right? What do you feel like doing?"

With a smirk, Jill let her own robot dissipate into the air before forming a simple box under her feet using her mystically enhanced bioelectrical field. As the prism expanded in size, it pushed her up into the air until she the top of her dyed black hair stood several inches above Corbin's brown buzz-cut. "You don't want to play the glowing blue force field game with me, Gulliver," she warned with wry good humour, placing her hands on her hips and leaning forward slightly to address him. Turning to Erin, she nodded in agreement. "Well, the whole 'give people diseases' thing is both a harrowing after school special and kind of a last resort. Robots at least I don't have to feel bad about wailing on."

Jack returned the smile with a flashing grin even as he sucker punched a momentarily distracted defenceman in the face. "You can cross my red lines any time, gorgeous," he called, leveraging another player's meaty forearm to deliver pair of lightning fast snap kicks in a manner that was considerably showier than strictly necessary. "Fashion-Disaster's using a sound thingy to mess with their heads. Think you can pull the plug on that?"

Giving Eli a long look from his one uncovered eye, Jack ultimately shook his head. "Too, too easy," he decided with a lopsided smirk as he turned to look in the direction the others had indicated. The swordsman couldn't see anything yet, particularly though the heavy foliage, but he readied himself to move nonetheless. "Not that we couldn't take a bunch of guys who've never herd of toilet paper, but we're kinda flying blind here. Stay and fight or move a regroup?" "No sympathy," Jill grumbled sullenly to speedster as she lifted her heavy skirt up just high enough to move around the campsite without tripping on every loose stick or stone. "Not even a little." Taking stock of the situation, the teenage girl's expression set into resigned professionalism. "So what, we figure they're after the pretty pixie princess here? If we're getting our fairy tale on, we're probably supposed to make a run for it."

"Man, I'm going to get a rep for beating up on college athletes, this keeps up," Jack of all Blades remarked as he vaulted over the back of a snarling university student in full hockey pads and felled the young man with a sweeping kick. The right winger was scrambling to his feet immediately, ignoring the painful fall like a cornered animal. All around the swashbuckling hero, the FCU Minutemen circled, manic grins on heavily perspiring faces as they charged with reckless abandon, Jack's acrobatics keeping him one step ahead of them. "C'mon, guys, I don't want to hurt you." "Can't say the same for them," the straight jacket wearing villain warned in a disconcerting monotone from his elevated perch on the stairs leading up to university's athletics center. "Such a little thing. Block the part of these cro magnon's brains that feels fear, and they're nothing but animals. Now you'll see. Proof you're all as 'sick' as I am." "And I'm sure scamming these meatheads out of their hard earned steroid money, rigging a few bets and messing with the kinda jocks who dated the girl you liked in high school was just bonus," Jack grumbled dryly as he ducked under a rocketing fist that landed in the face of its owner's teammate.