Fox
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"Mmh. Will probably need that when I have a file cabinet to keep it in. Don't think those are here yet. In storage. Experience...." She had to admit, really, it was kind of appropriate - the young woman with not much in her resume applying for a job with the young woman whose company barely existed. symmetry? - pattern or coincidence - assume coincidence The soon-to-be company owner tilted her head to the side, eyeing Erin up and down as she mentally played back the research she'd done. not sure what interviews do - seemed like the appropriate thing? - screw convention - practical questions "Doctor Stratos comes through that window shooting lightning," she said, out of nowhere, pointing without looking at one of the few windows that actually had glass already. They were only on the second floor, but the lobby had been awfully tall and whatever this floor was designed to be, it had pretty high ceilings itself - they were easily on the equivalent of a third or fourth floor, the window overlooking other buildings and, in the distance, the river. "What do you do?"
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"Mmh. No," Mara replied, glancing off in the direction the drones had gone again. "Both questions, I mean. Not that busy - not going to make you wait regardless. Doesn't seem...responsible?" She wasn't quite sure that was the word she wanted, but she was pretty sure that sitting there trying to figure out what word she did want wasn't a good use of interview time. think about it later "Using robots for a lot of the work - dangerous work, heavy lifting, high-voltage power lines - but not all of it. Not very....dexterous. No substitute for human work. Good for speed, though - can do simple jobs quickly, efficiently. Bothers some of the human workers, though - try to use them more after hours." She shrugged, used to what people thought of her giant, steel-plated laborers. "Company's nearly done, yes. Building needs to be finished - soon, not as incomplete as it looks, needs final installations, finishing touches, some....work in the lower basements. Rest is done, minus a final name. Contracts lined up, already. Trying to get the rest of the hiring done before then. Which is why you're here, I think."
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Mara Hallomen was wearing a simple grey suit, looking a little out of place amongst the plastic and heavy wiring; was a apparently busy giving directions to a pair of those same spiders, one of which easily dwarfed her 5'5" frame, and both of which were staring at her with the intelligence and dignity one usually associated with cattle. They noticed Erin before their creator did, though, lifting their single eyes up to look over the engineer's shoulder at the new arrival and finally tipping Mara off that her interviewee had arrived. She blinked, glancing over her shoulder, and waved the drones off to their work. "Early," she observed, sounding tired and business-like. "Good. Not necessary, of course - not that mean to employees - but good sign. Good sign you showed up, too, I suppose." The young woman straightened her jacket and turned around, tilting her head. "Sorry. About the building, I mean - was hoping to have it done before now, but the Gorgon was...bad timing. Hard to get anything done during disasters. Probably best that way. Still, delays - will be much more impressive when it's done. Modern. ....cleaner. No construction drones. Hard workers, not very smart. Strong AI didn't seem right for laborers...." She paused again, glancing off at where the ones she'd been talking to had gone before turning her attention back to Erin. "Mmh! Sorry. Mara - I am, I mean. Welcome."
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Security, apparently, the building had - sort of. The sections of the walls still missing betrayed a subtle but surprisingly-reinforced outer structure, and there were half-complete holes here and there on ceilings or walls in the corners of the room past the doorway that looked like they could hold...well, something. Whatever it was wasn't installed, but from the cables dangling out of some of those mounts it looked like they'd require a lot more power than your average security camera. Most of that was security of the future, though. Security of the now went walking by on four large, bug-like legs arching up to a heavy-duty joint and then back down to support a heavy steel body with a single spherical camera attached to the end of a jointed, retractable-looking 'neck'. As Erin pressed the buzzer it stopped, turning that volleyball-sized eye to look at her through the glass of the front doors. It paused there, like it was waiting for something, before coming to life again and ambling forward and reach out with a delicate grasper arm and pull the door open. As soon as she was inside it backed away, turning to look at a stairway toward the back of the lobby next to an elevator that was clearly out of service before ambling off to do whatever it had been sent to do in the first place.
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October 10th, 2011, early afternoon The North End, unnamed building under renovations As the sage once said with respect to real estate: location, location, location. Finding the right timing to start a technology company was easy enough with Doctor Archeville's recent, destructive actions; finding the right place was harder. Those actions had freed up a number of large buildings all across the city, of course - provided you didn't mind a little structural damage - but Mara had had a laundry list of requirements and preferences, and it had taken her quite a while to manage to find a place. The place. Her place. The building was, really, fairly nondescript: it stood independent from its surrounding neighbors, relatively unadorned and several stories high, surrounded by enough machinery and workers to imply that it was in the late stages of being rebuilt from the frame out, coils of beyond-industrial-strength power lines and odd selections of pipes and tubing lying here and there awaiting their chance to be installed and hidden away when walls were put back together. The construction was winding down for the day, aside from shadowy, machinery-like movement deep behind the sheets of plastic that covered areas where windows were or would soon be. Even still it didn't look like the sort of building a normal person would be inclined to just walk up to and enter - unless, of course, that person wasn't awfully normal, and happened to be expected.
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The hard metal and glowing lenses of Dragonfly's helmet disguised a rather rapt curiosity at the intruding transmission; not rapt enough to keep her from maintaining their concealment (and doing another check to make sure it was actually working), but she did pause for just a moment, tilting her head as she tried to focus on the sound and feel of it. [bg=#555555]"No,"[/bg] she replied, quickly catching back up and glancing toward what she could only assume, given the diagrams, was roughly the Gorgon's center of mass. The scale made it hard to pinpoint, exactly - something as big as this being was a little confusing to her suit's normally stellar tracking and measurement suite. [bg=#555555]"Don't recognize it. Language, certainly - pattern, syntax, repeating sounds. Not one that I know. Very strange. Hopefully standard broadcast, or message in preparation of already-planned attacks...not 'intruder alert' equivalent. Should record, decode later. Valuable information at best, insight into language at worst."[/bg]
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Ah, sorry - Dragonfly could easily make the check, but she doesn't have the comprehension.
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Not that she'd ever admit it, but who they were fighting had given Wraith a little pause as fighting erupted. Monsters in the forest, fine; would-be big time villains in Detroit, sure. But this? She wasn't as familiar with the Crime League as she probably should have been, but Blackstar she knew, and if they were hanging out with Blackstar.... She shook her head, hunching a little and narrowing her eyes. In a flash - or what probably would have been a flash in any city with a lower population of speedsters - she was gone, traveling low to the floor in a beeline toward Blackstar. The last of his monologue was barely out of his mouth when she rose up and plowed right into him, her club-tipped arms having shortened a few feet and apparently put all that heavy, metal mass right into their business end. "Something about the unexpected stroke, I believe," she mused.
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Move Action: Shapeshift. Elongation 1 (+5ft) [1PP] Speed 1 (10mph / 100 feet per Move Action) [1PP] Strike 5 (Feats: Improved Critical [19-20], Mighty, Power Attack) [8PP] Standard Action: You know, I've never done a fancy melee maneuver thing. Let's try one of those. Wraith charges, making a beeline toward Blackstar. Melee Attack Roll vs. Blackstar (whip-clubs; Power Attack -5/+5, Charge +2/-2) (1d20 + 10 - 5 + 2=9) ......hm. No. Wraith has quite a few HP, here; let's spend one of those. Melee Attack REROLL vs. Blackstar (whip-clubs; Power Attack -5/+5, Charge +2/-2) (1d20 + 10 - 5 + 2=18) That's not much, but it ought to hit. DC25 (base) + 5 (power attack) = DC30 toughness save for Blackstar.
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Wraith backed down as villains surrendered; it wasn't as exciting as a real finish to the battle, but she had to accept - reluctantly - that it was better than risking anybody getting hurt as their opponents got increasingly desperate. What a rush, though - a real supervillain battle! She pulled back into herself, the massive hammer she'd bounced Firehawk off the pavement with splitting back into two hands, and those hands' arms pulling back into her body until they were a more reasonable length. As Corbin reappeared - out of costume - she sighed a little. She'd had the distraction of the fight to cover her changing into her true form; she didn't really have that luxury for changing back, and two people reappearing out of nowhere wouldn't be so subtle. So, she tried to look as inconspicuous as a tall, metal, three-eyed alien could on the streets of Detroit.
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Dragonfly shook her head. [bg=#555555]"Should stay together,"[/bg] she advised, though her voice had an odd echo to it - she still hadn't gotten around to putting a proper communications suite into her suit, and lights faintly dancing behind the lenses of her helmet betrayed how she was cheating her way around that limitation. [bg=#555555]"Strength in numbers, can't guarantee concealing field over large distances or loss of line of sight, need to stay near Supercape for emergency retreat, if needed. Agreeing with Protectron and Ironclad - head for the mouth, stay close, stay quiet. Figuratively. Not actually making sound anyone else can detect, no sound in space anyway unless Gorgon provides its own surface atmosphere. Possible. Seems to have the mass."[/bg] focus [bg=#555555]"...anyway. Leave burrowing or splitting for plan B, C."[/bg]
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Gaian Knight was frowning again, chewing on the new - and subtle - revelation. It explained a lot, at the very least...and he had to admit, it humanized the normally-suspicious Grue. I guess 'humanized' probably isn't very polite...hm. "I can get us all there," he offered, waving a hand as if to dismiss the admittedly not-insignificant effort that'd take as trivially unimportant, "above ground or under it, whichever people prefer. I'm gonna need to know where the shelter is, though...we've been putting up a lot of those lately, and I don't think this is something we want to drop in the wrong person's lap."
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Dragonfly had the concealment (she refused, even to herself, to actually call it a 'cloaking device') on before they finished teleporting in, her helmet's inside display showing the status of each of her companions' controlled distortions. Not that she was keen on telling them she was hiding their presence by twisting space around and through them, of course. That made people nervous, for some reason. She turned her gaze to the incredible, planet-sized Gorgon as soon as she was sure her somewhat slapdash suit modification was actually working, taking a moment - several moments - to just take in the incredible distances at work here. Seeing long-range signals was one thing, but this.... She snapped herself out of it and brought her wings online, four blades of neon blue flashing to life behind her and carefully rotating her body to gaze below their feet and down the length of what took her a moment to realize had to be a snake's mouth. fast way - not subtle - long way - slightly more subtle - more dangerous? - hard trade-off - not actually sure what others are capable of in a fight - mmh
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Gaian Knight frowned a little and looked around, running a hand through his hair again and sighing. So many hurt people.... He couldn't heal, really, or at least not that he knew of; he didn't want to crowd the little girl, either, as much as it hurt to see her so frightened. Though, speaking of frightened, he doubted the natives would know anything of Grue but if any of the refugees that had been filing in caught sight of their new patient...no, that wouldn't be helpful at all. That, at least, he could do something about. The ground moved again, but slowly this time, almost gently. Bits of stone and dirt carefully pulled up into the air, flowing together into the uniform walls of a make-shift, open-topped building. More a shack, really; the hero had made it as large as he could, but the point was to protect prying eyes from their own hurt, panic-filled minds, not impede anybody from getting to those in need. "Privacy," he supplied, with a lopsided smile that was more tired explanation than an attempt at a joke. "And - no offense, miss," he offered the frightened girl, giving her a friendly smile and as polite a bow as he could in the space he had, " - but you looked like you could use a wall to put your back to, hmm?"
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Wraith doubled in on herself as her insides burned, literally wrapping in on her own body as the metal she was made of heated up far hotter than was good for her. Still, it would take more than that to remove the alien from the fight, or the fight from the alien; she (figuratively, being mouthless) bit back the pain and straightened up just in time to see Sage fly past Firehawk...and more importantly, see Firehawk see Sage fly past Firehawk. That was all the opening she needed. Wraith reared back, her entire body arching as her feet gripped the ground and both clubbed hands came together into a single, massive hammer head that got whipped relatively slowly but unerringly through the air and down toward the villain's head.
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Move Action: Shapeshift: Basically, she drops speed for the ability to do a powerful (but slow) attack. Speaking of which.... Standard Action: Melee Attack Roll vs. Firehawk (Power Attack -5/+5, All-Out Attack +2/-2) (1d20 + 10 - 5 + 2=14) Just barely enough! Wraith loses 2 defense for a round, Firehawk gets to chew on a DC30 Toughness save.
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Reflex Save vs. Blackstar's Dropped Created Object, DC22 (1d20 + 8=10) Thump! Toughness Save vs. Blackfire's Dropped Created Object, DC27 (1d20 + 12=23) One bruise. She'll take that, why not. Initiative Roll (1d20 + 3=6) Getting things dropped on you = bad init.
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Somewhere between the last of the rescues and the unveiling of the grue a piece of wood toppled, its connection to its surrounding supports burnt away by the raging fire that had all but consumed it anyway. It fell, unseen, and hit the earth...and the earth hit back. Jagged spines of solid stone and flowing snakes of dirt pulled up out of the ground, coming together to form a tall, seamless wall around what was left of the immolated clinic; the open top knitted together to form a lattice of earth to let the heat and smoke out but the sparks in, and so preserve the neighboring buildings. Gaian Knight may have showed up pretty late to the party, but this apparently wasn't his first burning building. "I couldn't feel anybody else in there," he said, quickly bringing the large, flat-topped rock he was standing on closer to the assembled heroes - some he recognized, some he didn't - and running a hand back through his hair. "Looked like you'd gotten everybody already - sorry I didn't get here in time. I didn't even know anything was wrong until I got close enough to see it; I lost track of time putting up some tempor...ary....?" He trailed off, standing on his rock, blinking behind his goggles at the burnt man and then glancing to the heroes and back again. ".....that's a Grue. Isn't it? What the hell is a Grue doing here?"
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Yeah, part of the confusion's my fault; I'd just intended for her to be in the vents until she was drawn out (or ambushed a villain or something), but I saw AA put her close to CT and figured that's just where he wanted her for story purposes, so I rolled with it without comment, since there wasn't any real reason she couldn't have found him between posts. I'd say just go ahead with what we have (Wraith near CT), honestly, unless it bugs someone or makes AA's life harder. It's all good to me, and it means less delay while people (me, CT, and AA at minimum) go back to edit posts for a retcon.
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If it was at all possible - and it was, because she wasn't so terribly bound by physical limitations as her bodily-limited companions were - Wraith's eyes went just a tiny bit wider, and she turned her head to glance around with a great deal of caution. She had the distinct feeling that she was two steps away from being prey, rather than hunter, and she wasn't sure she liked that much.... "Rojan Lhar," she quietly supplied to Cobalt Templar, turning a bit to cover his back as he and Ghost Girl faced off against Hiroshima Shadow. "I think that you call him...what was it? Blackstar." "Blackstar! I thank you for your offer, but I cannot accept," she continued, louder, as her form shifted into something leaner, with long, whip-like tendrils that ended in heavy-looking clubs. She stood steady, black eyes scanning the area in the hopes of catching sight of anyone trying to get the drop on her and her team, but she sounded a little less sure of her ability to stand against an ex-Star Knight than she looked. "My place is here, and I have given my word to protect it."
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Wraith switches to whip-club mode, on the assumption that this is all going to go bottoms-up in a moment. She knows stories about Blackstar!
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Wraith's already not-inconsiderable eyes widened, her head rearing up on her neck as she peered around herself, alert. Those short, cilia-like tendrils around her neck and shoulders waved in the air, trying to catch a taste of something - anything - that would tell her who or what was talking...in her head? "Who is there? Where are you?" she asked, though she didn't really expect an answer to that last one. "It is not important why I am here. These...'hardbodied' ones are my friends, and please do not use that term to describe them. It is not their fault their bodies are poorly-designed."
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Toughness Saves vs. Firehawk's blast, DC25 (1d20 + 12=26, 1d20 + 12=23) One bruise for the alien. She could spend an HP of her own and make that no bruises, but ehn - might as well make his last fancy-pants move worth something!
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[bg=#555555]"Good,"[/bg] Dragonfly nodded, frowning. [bg=#555555]"Good enough, anyway. Immaterialism causes more problems than it solves. Don't have time to make sure you all don't disassociate from this dimension complete. Bracers."[/bg] She gestured at the items she'd been working on, and the chair to go with it. [bg=#555555]"Made...suit revisions. Kludge. Short-term. Can disguise us from anything but physical force - tactile sensors. Don't touch anything you don't want to. Bracers help suit track you, disguise you without hiding anything else - disappearing walls not subtle - but won't work as well if you break line of sight, won't work at all if you get too far away. So don't."[/bg]
