Raveled

Jessica shrugged. "We've brought in a few, ah, consultants as you say. They claim that the energy is drained -- it's a car with an empty gas tank, a gun without any bullets. But like I said," she added with a wink, "we're keeping several electronic eyes on it at all times. "Okay, didn't just bring you on board to look at creepy scribbles," she said, turning away from the circle and heading back into the belly of the craft. "Actually, we found an interesting device in the, well, I guess it's a galley here. Seems to take inedible, organic materials like wood or rotten food and turn out a basic protiEEEEEN!" The young woman's voice rose sharply as the entire corridor, indeed the entire sub, canted sharply to one side. She clutched to the walls and doorway for support as it rocked back; before it had settled, she was already moving down the hallway as fast as she could, making for the control room. Once there she armored up in a blaze of light and leapt into the sky, thrusters propelling her and letting her hang in the air. Even as she watched, a ruby-red figure dashed out of the air and struck the sub on one side, rocking it violently. As it sped away from the impact, the energy bled away to show an incongrously young-looking woman in a black bodysuit with red piping, ruby energy streaming from the ring on one hand. She turned in place, surveyed the rent in the sub's hull, and laughed shrilly. A flash of blue-white drew Ironclad's attention to the street, as a steady stream of incandescent energy tossed cars aside and turned the pavement into rubble. Above it all floated a burly man in a tee-shirt and jeans, his skin emitting a blue-white glow. He smiled broadly and gestured to the black-clad woman. "Well? What do you think, Dee?" The woman put her fists on her hips in an exaggerated posture of anger. "I told you, Ajax! It's Dirae now! Get it right!" All of a sudden, the young woman noticed Ironclad floating above the sub, watching the carnage. "Look! Someone's come to play!" The armored heroine regarded the pair cooly. "I suppose it's past time to tell you two to sit down, play nice, wait for the cops, et cetera?" The red-energy woman thrust her fist in the air. "Play nice? That's for saps and losers! Me and Aaron -- uh, Ajax -- here have the power, and now this city is gonna play by our rules!"

Actually, that's more than enough to get the full benefit of Autofire. Steelshanks' Toughness, vs DC 27. (1d20+10=20) Bruise x6 and Stun. :facepalm:

Brian smiled as the vines snaked across the ground and up his leg. He put his hand out flat and they crawled up his fingers; he closed his hand into a fist and they wriggled inside. He evidently hadn't forgotten that Gwen was there, though. "From what I've seen of them, it must be like having a puppy on your shoulder all the time." Brian opened his fist and the vines wrapped around his fingers. He engaged in a simple game of tug-of-war, allowing them to pull him down to the ground until he was stretched out on the ground, hand almost to the tree, face nearly in Gwen's knee. He shook the vines off with a laugh. "Man, it must be wild with those things. I remember the first time I used my powers, I... ah." He grimaced and sat up, looking away from Gwen. "I kinda put a cop in the hospital. Two cops, actually. And an AEGIS agent."

Jessica shook her head but didn't reply; Agent Simms' eyes flashed between the two teens before she inclined her head to the pair. "Right. Well, I'll have one of the gendarmes take you back to your hotel, alright?" Jessica didn't argue, and the trip back to the hotel was much quicker in the back of a police cruiser. Their room, unseen until now, looked almost like something out of a clothing commercial -- lots of stark white furniture with pure black pillows and sheets. There was a couch, really more a padded platform, in the middle of the room, and Jessica threw herself onto it before the door closed. She stayed face-down for a long minute before shuffling onto her back. "Honey," she called out, "was this the right thing to do? Should we even have bothered to leave Freedom City?"

"There aren't any Deep Ones on-board," Jessica assured the young man. "We're tied into the sub's internal security network, and we've set up our own multi-spectrum cameras overlooking important junctions." She turned back to look at the circle. "According to the computers, this vessel was cruising around the Pacific when the creatures forced themselves on-board. A bunch of them clustered at certain points -- including here -- and enacted certain... rituals. The next information we have from the GPS, it was located in the Atlantic. Quite near the city," she added. She leaned on the catwalk and faced down at the circle, but glanced at Cole out of the corner of her eye. "Thoughts?"

Brina enjoyed the view of Gwen crawling away from him, suddenly wishing that she did her midnight gardening in a bikini. He pushed the pleasant but distracting image away, snapping his eyes up when she turned around. "I do what I do," he said. "Fly around and blow stuff up. Though a couple of the things I've learned under Mr. Archer are pretty cool," he admitted. He leaned back and stretched out his legs, tapping his shoe against her knee. "Heck, I haven't even been doing this a whole year, Gwen, and I'm finding out new stuff." He grinned. "And don't forget, we're teenagers. Puberty, hair, hormones. Makes sense that our powers would change some, right?"

With +15, that's 32 exactly.

This is your OOC for the round. And this is your IC post. Your OOC mentions attacking Steel specifically, not Targeter. Your IC contradicts that. I'm just trying to figure out exactly what it is Flora wants to do.

"We move them out whenever we find them," Jessica said, "those that can be moved anyway. But like I said, more just appear when our collective backs are turned. We're not sure how they're getting on board, but maybe you can help us figure that out." The pair descended through several levels, moving steadily towards the rear of the vessel. Before long they were standing in what was obviously the engine compartment, a cavernous space that was dominated by long turbine engines. Water pooled on the floor, but one space near the very bottom had been dried off, the ever-present moisture held back by shimmering containment fields. Inside was a circle containing a hexagram; eye-watering symbols were chalked at each of the star's six points, and more disturbing effigies were spaced around the circle at regular intervals. Jessica leaned against the catwalk, looking down at the entire arrangement. She glanced at Cole and gestured at the circle. "Well? Any hypotheses?"

Brian looked down at Gwen, his mouth pressed into a thin line. It hurt, physically pained him, to imagine such a trauma in her past. To picture her, as she was or even younger, trapped behind a wall of flame, or running through a building building, chocking on smoke... It made him want to strike out, to hit something, to punish whoever was responsible. His eyes flared more brightly for a moment before he closed them tightly. He kissed the top of her head, inhaling the mixed scents of glowers, tilled earth, shampoo, and Gwen. "It's okay," he said, his voice muffled by her hair. "I'm here. Nothing's going to hurt you."

Bree, clear up some confusion for me. In your OOC post, you mention attacking Steel, but in your IC post it looked like you attacked Targeter. Which one is it?

"Wisp's teleports aren't really sneaky," Glowstar pointed out. "If she can take all three of us in and Changeling can cover us all, I can protect Wisp and the hostages with an energy field." He tapped the screen where the bags of money were still flying out of the vault. "I can seal whoever that is in, as well. The fewer folks we have to deal with at the start, the better."

"Like, individuals?" The heavy doors leading out of the circular control area had been prised open and locked that way, but she was still quick on her feet when stepping through the gap. "Maybe twenty or so, including myself. How many excursions, though? Well, I've been inside almost every day since we moored it here, so." The interior of the sub was more or less what Cole had been expecting; narrow passages, lots of metal that was cool to the touch, and many, many locking portholes. Several rooms were partitioned off by hanging sheets, and turning a corner the pair ran straight into a primitive-looking totem of some description. It was hard to make out the details: a column of what looked like stone carved into vertebrae, creating an ossified spinal column and rib cage; inside the ribs were numerous skulls, some human and some obviously not, each one of them stained with blood and ichor. All in all it was unsettling to look at, and trying to resolve the details made one's stomach roil. Jessica jumped at the display and turned away, clenching her teeth. "Goddamn shrines," she muttered. She disappeared into a side room and came out with a tarp that she draped over the macabre installation. "We found a number of odd-looking, well, religious figures here as well as we can tell. We think the Deep Ones brought them on board. And every time we think we've found them all, another one turns up."

Brian scowled and chugged more electrolytes to give him time to think. When he lowered the bottle, it was almost empty. "Yeah, but what if Zach's what makes her happy, man? The guy's trouble, I can just feel it." He sighed and reached for a water bottle this time, twisting it open savagely. "Anyway, yeah. Pranks." He reached out and bumped the bottom of his bottle against the bottom of Morgan's. "Do you think you could gin up a powder that made someone's hair fall out? Overnight?"

Brian reached over Gwen's shoulder and plucked one of the new white blossoms, then brushed the woman's hair back from her face and set the flower behind her ear. "There we go," he said. "Just about perfect. Here, come here." He sat on the ground near the edge of the plot of grass, facing the revitalized tree. He pulled Gwen down next to him, wrapping his arm around her shoulder. They watched the tree grow in silence for a long while. When Brian spoke again, his voice was quiet. "You didn't come down here just to talk to your flowers," he said, "did you?"

Agent Simms turned to one of the police officers hanging around and snapped "Les deux eaux," before leading the teens to a nearby park bench. "Those two you drove off," she said, smoothing down her suit, "are known to UNISON as Enfant Terrible de Notre Dame, and the Ghost Fox Killer. They're mercenaries, lovers, and for the past two years they've been on Overthrow's payroll. We knew the organization was intending to try and assassinate Secretary de Luc today, but we never thought they'd bring in heavy hitters like that." A smile quirked on her lip. "This was actually supposed to be a quiet assignment for me. I'm normally on the Alphabet Team; taking care of Secretary du Luc's security was supposed to be a cherry job, give me time to relax." The officer reappeared with a pair of water bottles, condensation beading on the side. He handed them to the two heroes and stood at parade rest near Agent Simms. Jessica twisted the bottle open and drank down two long swallows, waving away Blake's magic potion. "No. Those always taste like flat soda water, babe. I'll live."

That does indeed hit. Steelshank's Toughness, vs DC 25. (1d20+11=17) Bruise x5 and Stunned.

Ironclad landed near Blake, and after fussing over her boyfriend to make sure he was uninjured, she nearly collapsed against him. The armor folded away in a blaze of light (acutely uncomfortable, when it was five inches from your eye) and revealed Jessica's battered form, somewhat the worse for wear. She held onto Blake, as French police cars with flashing lights and sirens that went EEEEEooooEEEEoooEEEoooo surrounded them. "All I wanted," she muttered, "was a quiet vacation." The gendarmes quickly surrounded and secured the park. Before long, a short, lanky woman of Asian extraction walked up to the pair of teens. She was wearing a blue and black jumpsuit with the logo of the United Nations International Superhuman Oversight Network -- UNISON -- on one breast. She gave the teens a quick looking over before extending her hand. "Blake Salazar. Jessica Parker. I am Gail Simms, with UNCOT. Mind if I ask you a few questions?"

Ironclad shook her head, trying to clear the ringing in her ears from the impact. She curved back around, easily finding the slim woman in the green overcoat that had very nearly blasted her from the sky. Surprsingly, the woman was just standing there, staring at the horizon. Ironclad wasn't about to stop and wonder why the mystic wasn't fighting back; she charged up a shot and released it, knocking the woman to the ground. The gargoyle looked up from the furrow he'd dug into the ground, eyes fixed on the collapsing form of the woman in the green coat. He let loose a cry of "JEANNE!" and dashed through the air faster than looked possible. The human-like monster scooped the woman up and beat his wings, making for the edge of the city.

Ghost Fox is to far away to hear Warlock's instructions, so she's gonna stand there and drool a bit while Ironclad flies back over and does a strafing run. Ironclad's ranged attack, vs Ghost Fox's flat-footed Def. DC 30 (1d20+10=15) That just barely hits. Ghost Fox's Toughness save, vs DC 30. (1d20+7=12) And she's out. Gargoyle freaks out and grabs the chick. Warlock's up, if he wants to do something.

Ironclad hesitated, hanging high in the air. Bres' plant thing had shrugged off her energy blast, but she knew from before that she could hurt and even take down the yougai demons. When Guan Yu joined the fight, that decided her; the armored heroine turned her head towards the fight raging in the city beyond and accelerated towards the nearest pocket of demons. En route she connected to Cannonade's cell phone sent a text; "Going to fight demons. Monitoring phones. BIAB."

There's four superheroes and a friggin' god of war here. I think Bres and his plant buddies have lost this fight. Ironclad's going out into the city and fight demons. EDIT: By Word of TT, the first demon she comes across is a minion. Taking 10 on attack w/ All-Out Attack and Power Attack. 15 attack roll, DC 30 Toughness check.

Ghost Fox Killer's Will save, vs DC 21. (1d20+7=20) Squeaks it in this time.

Ini order is: 26 Gargoyle -- Bruised + Stun (Ironclad) -- GM 23 Warlock -- Uninjured -- HP x2 20 Ghost Fox -- Uninjured -- GM 15 Ironclad -- Bruised + Stun (Ghost Fox) -- HP x3

The gargoyle shook his head as Warlock's magics reached out and tired to grab his mind. It failed, but gave Ironclad enough leverage to boost the power to her servo-muscles and break his hold. She reared back and punched the creature right in its muzzle-like snout. "This was supposed to be a vacation," she shouted over the wind. "It was supposed to be relaxing and peaceful! Not work!" She emphasized each sentence with another bone-crunching blow, and when she released him the beast fell to the ground, tearing a furrow in the carefully manicured lawns. As Ironclad zoomed overhead, the woman in the green anorak turned to track her, her own hands forming into pointed gun-shapes and her thumbs working furiously. Amazingly, bolts of eldritch energy leapt from her fingertips, impacting on the armored heroine like rain on a tin roof. Ironclad covered her body with her arms, and so didn't see the tree until she rammed into it.