Raveled

Does the woman appear to be Native American?

http://orokos.com/roll/282867 Not sure what I should be using for this check, but she has +10 Medicine and +15 Search.

Samaritan's notion of tracking the arrow got a single, lifeless laugh from Blue Jay. "Yes, we can," she said. "They're made by ASTRO Labs in job lots of fifty. Carbon fiber shaft with nano-mechanisms allow the head to be tuned to three different settings." She pulled an arrow from her quiver and demonstrated the knurled knob at the end, how it could be turned and the arrowhead collapsed into a blunt surface, or the end pushed out until it was distinct and sharp, or how the entire construction would pull back and shove out razor-sharp spines. It was also readily apparent, even in the dim light of the alleyway, that the arrow in the woman was a twin to the one Jay held in her hand. She put her arrow back and carefully checked the body over for any other sign of attack, then began prying out the arrow that was still in the woman's head. It was slow work, but the archer was patient and determined. She made sure to mostly use the palm of her hand and her fingers, keeping her thumbs tucked in. Her gloves would stop her getting any fingerprints on the weapon, which would be important in determining who was trying to frame her.

Blue Jay Blood on the Sands The Punk Princess We Need to Talk Dead Island What a Strange Trip Guidebook Page Corona The Misery of Knowledge The Dig Praetorians: the Deadly Dozen Miras Azathoth Remix Hell Q Reputation Brigandine Mall Madness GM Blood on the Sands Punch Lovecraft's Brain! Don't Go Into the Water Mall Madness Hark the Merry Church Bell

Professor Aquarius looked between the heroes, mouth agap. “It was all… it was in the Seventies, you have to understand. We all lived in Father Yod’s compound, in Hawaii. He’d, he’d bring out these musicians, like Sky Saxon, and we’d all perform. Twenty or thirty people all at once, on pipes and drums and chanting all in a circle. It was… it was a transformative experience.” Aquarius reached into his patched jacket and pulled out a pipe. He bit on the end of it; even unlit, it seemed to calm him down. “When Father Yod died, the music died with him. I stayed another year or so, then I picked up a few recordings that were special to me and left. This one was… was…” He realized that he was stroking the surface of the album cover and purposefully put it aside. “I could never quite get it out of my head.” “Who else would know about this recording,” Miras asked, a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. “How many records did Father Yod release?” Aquarius looked up at her. “Oh, he never released this one,” he said, patting the album cover. “This is the master disc. We made this one a few days before he killed himself, and in the mess after that no one thought to release it. The only people who know about it,” he added, “would be other people who were in the Source family, who lived on the compound.” “Professor Eric?” The heroes turned and saw a young man with a short green mohawk, face pierced in several interesting areas, standing in hall. “Is everything copacetic, Professor Eric?” Aquarius waved him off. “It’s alright, Holiday,” he said. “These heroes were just… just looking into a stolen record.” He waved the album cover in the air by way of further explanation. Holiday didn’t look relieved. In fact, the color drained out of his face and he was suddenly pale as a sheet. “Oh,” he squeaked. “That’s, yeah, that’s good. I just had some papers to talk to you about, but, uh, I can come back.” He turned on his heel and started power-walking away.

The door to the locker room opened and a woman carrying a clipboard began walking through the prep area. “Cassandra Steel? Is there a Cassie Steel?” Once the fight coordinator caught sight of the doctor, she waved half-heartedly with the clipboard. “Five minutes. You’re up on Mat 2.” The woman left without asking if Cassie was ready or not. Tona checked the program she had in her hands. “Karate students are up next,” she said. “Cassandra Steel and Jon Yu. I wish they’d skip the amateur stuff. There’s a wushu fight on the docket and I don’t want to miss that, but if these fights are over too fast then I’ll be caught in the bathroom when it starts.” She shifted uneasily on the bench, crossing her legs.

Aya put her head to one side, staring dumbly at Sharl for a long moment. “Wander brought back to…” She suddenly snapped her fingers and recognition flooded into her. “Wander! The Terran back on… back in the Garron system, yeah. Well, you know, we were all just tryin’ to do our part.” She found a stool and perched on the edge of it, the metal groaning a touch under the weight of the Lor and her armor. “You’re one of Wander’s kith, then?” she asked. “And you know Miss Americana. Are all crazy Terrans part of a club or what?”

Jay blinked rapidly, shocked speechless by Noor’s suggestion. “I… am not a princess,” she protested. “I do not know how to rule people or make proclamations or go to fancy parties, or wear… dresses.” She turned away from Foix woman, burying her face in her coffee cup and staring out the window, her mind racing. “I could never pass for your princes,” she insisted. “I would be found out right away, and we would all be thrown in a… oubliette.” She put her face in her coffee cup again, refusing to meet either Noor or Blodeuwodd’s eyes. Truthfully being arrested didn’t bother her too much; she was much more worried about being embarrassed.

Aya’s eyes narrowed fractionally. The magistrate was scared, almost panicked, and the absolute Lor authority on a planet should never be anything but self-assured and collected. Something was obviously very, very wrong. “Well if’n they stay quiet I guess we don’t really need to go pokin’ that hive,” she said. She paused to watch the magistrate’s reaction, then added, “But as a member of the Outback Overwatch Patrol an’ Survey, it is my duty to make contact an’ learn about new alien species. I’ll search out their heads, once I’ve sorted the Za’akis out.” She fixed the magistrate with a hard stare. “I’ll be needin’ to utilize your comms to do that.”

"I could never turn down such a gracious offer," Brigandine said. In moments she had grown to twice her normal size, encased in cherry-red energy, and dropped down to street level almost lightly. Her armor unfolded and by the time the Talon pulled around she was just herself again, bouncing on her heels. She hopped onto the motorcycle without a care, wrapping her arms around Nevermore's waist. "Now get us north, and don't spare the rubber." She was holding on perhaps a bit tighter than was necessary, but who cold say how many tights corners there would be on the way? The pair roared north, crossing the bridge and continuing into the posher sections of the town. The ride was far too short for Brigandine's taste, but she climbed of and stared through the wrought iron bars of what she could only think to call a 'compound.' She glanced into the sky, but couldn't see either Endeavor or Miracle Girl. "Are you sure you'll be okay in there," she asked Nevermore. "I can be pretty sneaky when I'm not ten feet tall and glowing."

Blue Jay usually worked alone, unless she was patrolling with one of her girlfriends. She recognized Samaritan from the school, though, and something compelled her to let him stick around. Maybe it was nostalgia for the school where she had started a new life, or maybe she was feeling lonely after so long separated from Sam, or maybe she was just feeling aware that she was about to leave behind the most safe and secure part of her life she had ever known, and wanted something to distract her from it. So it became a game for the pair of them, traveling high over the city and swooping down to pluck unwitting criminals who were in the midst of performing their illegal trades. They never got too far away from each other, even though Blue Jay was sticking rigorously to one of her usual patrol routes. Vonnie would swing by occasionally, calling out his total, while the archer kept her own number silent. She fully expected to win their little contest; it wasn't even in doubt. The scream that cut through the air attracted both heroes. Jay paused at the edge of the roof and swept the area visually, then roped down to the bloody and unmoving body. Something nagged her about the body, even as she checked the woman's pulse just to be sure. She did a double-take at the arrow before the penny finally dropped and she felt a hard, cold weight in her belly. The woman had been killed by an arrow -- one of Blue Jay's arrows.

Blue, can Starlight read? Can she sell reading to other people?

I'll put out there that Blue Jay is already working behind the counter as juice master.

Is everyone okay with fast-forwarding to the house?

http://orokos.com/roll/281538 Initiative 1d20+15: 21

"'Allo," Brigandine called out, waving at the other heroines. "You can simply call me Brigandine. And I do have an address," she said. The short woman tapped at her forearm and a curving computer screen popped up, scrolling an address and GPS coordinates north of the river. The address scrolled past and was replaced by Google Earth satellite imagery, showing a large house with a fence, a tennis court, and a pool under construction. "I cannot say I have a good way for us to get up there," she said, "unless someone wants to ride on my shoulders." She gave Nevermore a sidelong look. "Does anyone up here have a jetplane?"

Would it be reasonable to buy ranks of Luck that creates HP that can only be used for powers within a given Array? Like a mage who has HP for rerolls and stunts just off the Magic array, but can't use them anywhere else on the sheet.

"Addiction isn't just about getting high," Asli insisted. "There's a whole psychology of it. I didn't start using because I thought heroin chic was a really great idea, I started using because it stopped me being scared and alone, and later it stopped me being depressed and angry at myself. I'm not worried that you're going to get on cocaine or something again, but there's other things to get addicted to," she pointed out. "A whole big wide world of temptations and assholes trying to pull you off the path to --" She stopped herself. "Sorry. I'm preaching. I shouldn't be preaching, it's just..." She sighed. "Just don't think you're invincible, Sam. Addiction teaches you to define yourself by a whole mess of stuff outside of you, and you can't control the world outside of you. The best thing you can learn is to define yourself by what's in here." Sh reached out and tapped a finger against Sam's breastbone. "Not by what anyone else says, maybe not what other heroes say. If you can live by that... Well, people might be able to hurt you or even kill you. But the can't beat you." She stood up, rubbing at her eyes. "Man, am I making any sense? This is what happened when you get a sleep-deprived rapper working off adrenaline. I'll let you get some sleep, Sam, and we can talk about things in the morning." She walked into her bedroom, closing the door behind herself. She barely had the presence of mind to take her boots off before falling into bed and falling into a deep, deep sleep.

"That is west, and a little bit south," Asli clarified. "Shows me where Mecca is. Hold on, I'll see if I can find that quilt." She ducked into her bedroom, which was pretty much the polar opposite of her neat, dry front room. There were a pair of the same model of clothes rack off to one side, and lots of hangers hanging off the racks, but all the clothes were either in the overflowing hamper or in one of the two laundry baskets underneath the clothes racks. Her bed was rumpled and unmade, the comforter kicked roughly to the foot and almost falling off. The walls were covered in crude, DIY shelves covered in books, CD cases, a few vinyl albums, scattered photographs, and enough locked boxes to be suspicious. Asli checked the only closet in the apartment and found a folded quilt and a dusty pillow. She beat the pillow and grabbed them both before stepping back into the front room. "Okay, this should about do it," she said, holding both out to Sam. Asli suddenly wished that she had another chair or something, because she ended up pacing nervously as she considered how to breach the next subject. "Uh, rules. I'm not going to say 'don't go into my room,' because you kind of have to, to get to the bathroom. I am going to say 'don't read any books without asking me.' What I do is magic, and it's learned from those books, and it could be very, very dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. Other than that, clean the kitchen when you're done cooking and don't play loud music after midnight. And try not to bring the cops around, unless it’s for hero stuff." Asli paced a bit more, before perching on the edge of the couch. “Listen, I don’t know all of your story, and I’m not trying to say I do. But..” She pushed her sleeves up almost to her shoulders, exposing stretch marks and a web of fading bruises in the crook of her elbow. “I want you to come with me to Narcotics Anonymous. I’m not saying you have to, whatever you want say I’m going to let you stay. But I think it’ll really help.”

Miras snorted as she scribbled her phone number and Twitter handle on the back of the card. "It's been a long damn time since anyone called me a kid, Richard Cline." She handed the card back to him, saving one and putting it somewhere inside her robe. "Thanks, for tonight. I'm sorry I I thought you were some kind of ghoul. This night..." She took a deep breath, breathing in the cool air. "I wish I got there an hour earlier. I wish we were around Alison's hospital bed right now. But we put the guy away and there's not going to be anymore Doze in this town. That's good enough, for tonight." She waited for Starlight to say her goodbyes and then set off, carefully keeping her speed low enough for the flying heroine to keep up. They ended up back at the building they had entered the sewers at. During the chase, Miras had discarded her robes and hood and was now dressed in a leather hoodie, worn jeans, and combat boots. She gave Starlight a crooked smile as the woman landed. "When we're not busting drug rings, you should probably call me Asli." She held out a hand to be shaken. "Asli Saddik, in fact. Now come on up and be underwhelmed." The building was dark, the lobby only lit by a single flickering bulb, but the walls and floors were scrubbed to within an inch of the lathe. Asli led the way up the stairs, her breath coming hard by the third floor. Most of the doors were decorated in some way, either by a banner or painting on the lintel or even in a few cases by crude drawings in crayon. They didn't pass anyone else out and about at this time in the night/morning, but it was obvious that if the tenants lacked money at least they had pride in their meager dwellings. Asli's apartment was on the sixth floor, and she unlocked it smoothly. Directly inside the room was carpeted in something dark and berber; the walls were covered in posters for all different bands, except for one conspicuously clear square with a simple, blank picture frame hung on it. There wasn't a closet, but on the right was a metal rack; Asli shrugged off her jacket and hung it up with the solemnity of a knight doffing their armor. On the left was a small, clean kitchen. Opposite the kitchen was a sagging, overstuffed couch that took up most of the wall. Asli walked in, giving Starlight plenty of room to walk in. Underneath the coat she was dressed in a plain black shirt that covered her from neck to wrists. "Well," she said lamely, "that's just about it."

"Wait, collapse on a park bench? Hold up a second." Miras reached out and grabbed Starlight, pushing her hood back and searching the other woman's face. For the first time that night, the photokinetic got a good look at the magus's dark skin and intense blue eyes. She was silent for a long minute, doing her best to try and determine if the bench had just been a joke. Someone else might have just assumed it was and brushed it off, but Miras had been down the long, dark well of addiction, and she knew that Starlight was at least familiar with that lifestyle. Finally, Miras broke the silence, shaking her head hard. "No. You're not going to spend tonight outside. Listen, I... I've got a couch, and a quilt, and I'm sure I can find some pillows or something. It's not much but dammit, it's a roof. Please, let me help you."

Ami looked around when Nevermore talked to her. She was sitting next to the thief, holding his one hand in both of hers. "<All billboards are ridiculous,>" she said, "<but I know the one you mean. I might be able to talk to someone.>" She glanced at the man sitting next to her, squeezing his hand. "<I don't think I'm going to press charges against him, but it's probably better if both brothers stay here for the time being.>" The young Frenchwoman expertly extracted herself from the conversation, leaving the young man alone and talking brightly and briefly with the mall officials. In a few minutes, she had stashed her purchases in her oversized SUV and had driven it across the road, stashing the large vehicle in a convenient alleyway. Ami preferred much smaller vehicles, ones that were peppy and powerful and responsive, rather than rugged or spacious, but the truck did have one big advantage. By pushing a button, Ami could retract the back row of seats into the floor, leaving the petite woman plenty of room to shimmy out of her walking-around clothes and pull on the formfitting bodysuit designed to focus her powers. She crawled out of the sunroof, dropped the car keys inside it, and stopped worrying about it. The young heroine was careful to step off the vehicle before calling on her power. The tubes that connected her chakra points glowed yellow-orange as a fog the same color seemed to raise out of the concrete all around her. In less than a second, it had solidified into a vaguely human form easily three or four times Ami's size. She looked up, a visor shading her eyes as she considered the height of the building, bouncing on her heels with an idle air to her movements. Then, without warning, her bent her legs and pushed off, the energy around her mimicking the motions and propelling her several stories straight up in a single bound! She landed with an impossible grace for the size of the suit, not even disturbing the gravel on the roof. The suit flashed red as she dismissed it, walking up to Nevermore. "Hi there, handsome," she said, her words heavily accented. "A little French birdie said you need help, keeping an old girlfriend from messing up your pretty face."

Okay, so I figure this is sort of it for the mechanical parts of this thread. Now we can focus on wrapping up the story bits, i.e. getting Starlight on Miras's couch. AA, if Fast-forward wants to take off at this point he can.

Miras sped upstairs, relishing the fact that she was tracking sewer muck all over this guy's nice, white carpet. She quickly located the master bedroom and headed in the opposite direction, poking her head in different rooms. It wasn't long until she found one with a plastic shroud covering the entrance; inside was a number of plastic tables set up with lots of glass beakers and Bunsen burners. She counted at least three nearly-identical set-ups. The mage didn't know the first thing about chemistry, but she was able to spot the input and the pipet that dripped a pale yellow liquid out at the end. She made a slow, cold anger tingling in her at the sight of so much antiseptic death staring her in the face, but she resisted the urge to smash it. After all, the police would need it all for evidence. She did rip down the plastic shroud, through, wrapping the door so it couldn't be missed. An eyeblink later she was back in the basement, her cellphone in her hand. "Yeah, the guy's got his Breaking Bad playset up there. Bet your maids are paid not to go upstairs, huhn?" She nudged the dealer with her own boot. "Well don't worry, the cops will take plenty of pictures, so you can show all your inmates how awesome it looked." She dialed 911 and was soon dictating the street address for the operator. Before long the house was swarming with police, and the three heroes were standing a block away, watching it happen. Miras hoped the anonymous tip wouldn't be traced back to her cellphone, but her budget wouldn't exactly stretch to an endless line of burner phones. She'd just have to deal with it if it did. When she saw the police taking the dealer out of his home in handcuffs, she turned away, feeling the tension drain out of her. "Well," she sighed, glancing at the other heroes. "That was a hell of a night. Anybody going to join me for a coffee before I collapse into my bed?"

Weapons Array 6 (30 PP, Hard to Lose, Feat: Alternate Power 3) [27PP] BE: Damage 5 (Extra: Ranged, Penetrating 5, Autofire 10, Feats: Improved Range 2 [250 ft increments], Progression [Range] [1250 ft] Variable Descriptor 2 [Bludgeoning, piercing, slashing]) (Volley) [30/30PP] AP: Damage 5 (Extra: Ranged, Area/Burst [Targeted], Selective, Feats: Improved Range [75 ft increments], Variable Descriptor 2 [Bludgeoning, piercing, slashing]) (Crowd Tactics) [23/30PP] AP: (Energy Grapnel) [27/30PP] Snare 5 (Extra: Constricting, Extra: Variable Descriptor 2 [Any Energy]) (Energy Bonds) [17PP] Leaping 2 (x5, Move action, Extra: Linked [+0] [Speed, Super-Movement]) + Speed 2 (25 MPH, Extra: Linked [+0] [Speed, Super-Movement]) + Super-Movement 2 (Slow Fall, Swinging, Extra: Linked [+1] [Leaping, Super-Movement]) [10PP] AP: Stun 5 (Extra: Ranged, Linked [+0] [Dazzle]) + Dazzle 5 (Auditory, Visual, Extra: Linked [+0] [Stun]) (Flash & Bang) [30/30PP] Utility Belt 8 (16 EP, Feats: Alternate Power 2) [18PP] BE: Dazzle 4 (Auditory, Visual, Extra: Area/Burst [General]) (Flashbang Grenades) [16EP] AP: Obscure 4 (Visual, 50 ft radius, Extra: Independent, Flaw: Limited [Normal Vision Only]) (Smoke Grenades) [8EP] AP: Drain Toughness 4 (Extra: Affects Objects [+0], Effortless, Independent, Total Fade) (Thermite Bar) [12EP]