Fox

I won't bother rolling against the bluff, since he'd hit her regardless. Toughness Save vs. Guy's attack, DC21 (1d20 + 8=25) Force field > knives, apparently.

Chaos or not, under fire by bolts and knives or not, Dragonfly's immediate attention was on Jill and the beating she took. She almost shouted her girlfriend's name, but caught herself - it'd be the wrong name, and that was entirely more information than any of these people deserved. Panic wouldn't get her anywhere, anyway, and certainly wouldn't help keep Jill safe. That thought brought focus, and focus brought control. In the space of a couple seconds Dragonfly's expression went from concern to cold, cold wrath; fast enough even to surprise herself, she shot out a hand and...planted it flat against Diehard's chest. The expression didn't change as something deep inside her gauntlet clicked and the metal plating got linked directly into the device's considerable power supply, unloading quite the electric shock straight into the martial artist's torso.

This hand of hers glows with an awesome power. Its electric grip tells her to grasp revenge. Melee Attack Roll vs. Diehard (taser hand) (1d20 + 10=29) DC20 Fortitude save. Failure means dazed (can't take actions, but retains dodge bonus) until they can make a fortitude save, failure by 5 means stunned until they can make a fortitude save, failure by 10 means KO. Saves to recover get a +1 bonus per failed save. I...have no idea whether the initial save counts for that. I'd assume not, but who knows?

"Guess not," Dragonfly wryly commented, time - at least, as she perceived it - grinding to a halt as her normally distracted brain turned its attention on assessing the situation. five threats - 'Angel' - poor fashion - attention-seeking? - at least in part - doesn't appear very smart - nominal leader - 'Blackfire' - superhuman strength - 'Guy' - familiar - movie? - explosives - threat to civilians - nice, Ellie - 'Diehard' - trained fighter? - moves like one - unknown final party - Jackal? - magician? - real or fake - assume real The world sped back up and Dragonfly disappeared, reality wrapping in around her even as it unfolded next to Blackfire, her hand snapping out to grab his arm as soon as it appeared. general assessment - stop calling it 'general assessment' like a robot - avoid physical range of Blackfire and Diehard - Jackal unpredictable element - stay near Ellie Lines spread across his body like creases in paper and the man folded in on himself, twisting away into nothing in the palm of Dragonfly's hand. She vanished again, the distortion closing back in around her as she reappeared back where she started. even odds

Move action: Teleport up to Blackfire; turnabout teleporting right back to Jill's side afterwards. Standard action: Melee attack roll to use Dimensional Pocket on the guy. Melee Attack Roll vs. Blackfire (Dimensional Pocket) (1d20 + 10=14) @#@$ing.... Dragonfly spends an HP to reroll. Melee Attack REROLL vs. Blackfire (Dimensional Pocket) (1d20 + 10=13) 3-> 13 + 10 = roll of 23. Blackfire gets a DC19 reflex save to not get pocket'd. Post pending results.

Stealth Check (1d20 + 2=17)

Dragonfly blinked, but nodded, following after Miss Americana as fast as she could without being quite as athletic as the paragon was. athletic - well-built? - more ways than one - annoying - feel inferior enough to normal heroines Along the way (when she could spare the breath, anyway) she shared what she knew of existing law-enforcement-grade (and, oddly, criminal-use-grade) nullifiers. She had no doubt whoever was behind Miss A's signal could design such a thing without her, but anything that saved them a fraction of a second was looking good at the moment....

Initiative Roll (Speed of Thought) (1d20 + 7=9) Distracted by the sexy!

Dragonfly's ire dulled pretty quickly when her girlfriend started stripping right then and there - stripping down to tights and then putting on her costume, mind, but the process combined with the kiss clearly short-circuited her brain and she spent a moment just kind of unfocused, reigning her mind back in in time to blush, mumble something unintelligible, and fold Jill's clothing away into personal storage. She shook her head, the noise from the restaurant helping to get her mind back on track. "....right." She scowled again, gauntlets emitting a barely-audible low-pitched whine as she started building a charge. "Ready."

Mara followed Ellie as fast and as quietly as she could, having snatched up her worn cloth messenger bag with the hand that wasn't being pulled away from their table. As soon as the restaurant's door blew open she'd cycled rapidly through surprise, concern, and disgust, finally settling on something akin to a deep and annoyed ire by the time the washroom door had closed behind them. "All the restaurants in all the districts in the city...had to be this one. Today. Odds are just...." She made a angry sound, digging around in her bag until she came up with a pair of familiar-looking gauntlets. These she pulled on - with more force than necessary, scowling - and pushed closed, whatever unseen latching mechanism that kept them secured clicking into place. Not a moment later they flared to life, a distorted ripple traveling up her arms and across her body to leave her costume in its wake. "Frustrated," she growled accusingly at the door leading back into the restaurant proper. Even her visor seemed irate, flaring to life with what seemed like a little more energy than usual as she habitually ran through some system checks and brought her force field up as a twisted line an inch away from her profile. "Food is going to be cold by the time we're done. If the table survives. Very, very frustrated."

Nodding, Tarrant was perfectly happy to let the conversation move at its own patient pace - it was certainly an event to savor. He spared a glance over to Dr. Archeville and Mona as he pulled her into a hug, and briefly raised an eyebrow (They're certainly happy about something. The influence of the spirit of the day, maybe?) before Lynn's question brought him back. "I do. God help me, but I do. Your mother's right, though...unless you're teaching classes for majors only or grad school, you end up with a lot of people who just...don't put the effort in, and obviously aren't interested." He shrugged, but smiled. "But those one or two, ah, 'diehard nerdy kids'? They make it all worthwhile. Even when you feel pretty down about how the class is going, sharing something you really enjoy with the few who really enjoy learning it is...well. It makes all the rest worth the headaches. Usually."

Dragonfly nodded, tapping a finger against her leg as she thought. "Not that good at biology, myself. And haven't studied psychics much...usually a biological process. Still. Agree with Miss Americana. Nullifier could cut off the...mmh. Cut off the nodes from the rest of the network. Inside information will be useful there. Nullifiers usually limited by strength and ar...." She frowned, glancing over at Miss A and tilting her head. "Usually area affected. But not always. Have seen designs for nullifier harnesses - attachable, locking nullifier that only affects the harnessed. Could extend that here, maybe. Depending on unknown information."

Mara gave a mental sigh of relief, glad that the meal met muster. "Am glad you like it," she noted, carefully cutting into her fish and taking a moment to savor it before continuing. apologize for cockroach comment? - not fit for dinner - best not to bring it back up maybe "Don't eat at fancier places too often. Usually...phrase. Style over substances. And too expensive for portions. But do enjoy this restaurant...like I said. Good balance. Should try my fish - delicious."

I am currently sick, and in a decent amount of pain - these are not things conducive to posting. I may not be around much for the next couple of days, but if I'm holding up a thread please poke me over instant messenger and I'll try to crank something out so that other peoples' end-of-month thread counts don't suffer for my body's betrayal.

Grumbling sympathetically, Mara shook her head. "Hate ninjas. Spend most of my time doing that, too. Cleaning up, I mean." reminder - local arms dealer moving? - interrupt moving shipments between old and new locations - cripple organization while vulnerable "Prefer thugs. Direct, honest. Fond of simple tactics and guns. Ninjas are...like cockroaches. A hundred of them, quiet and all over - walls, boxes, ceilings. And too hard to pin down." She frowned, running her mind back through what she knew of local movement in her part of town. "Haven't seen Katanarchists activity in Greenbank. Will let you know if I do."

"Don't even have an anti-gravity belt I can use," Dragonfly wryly countered, making her way out of the workshop and heading in the direction of what seemed to be increasing commotion as fast as she could without losing Supercape. "And no. Not good. Containment breach. Better if we moved faster."

Well under 1000lbs, yes. Way heavier than they should be for their size, but they shed most of their mass to go dormant. Supercape could indeed plonk them on the other side of the universe if he so desired. That's up to him! If you're curious, they're pretty much just space monsters. Tarrant's buddy found them sealed away underground because the civilization that found them when their meteor 'homes' crashed to earth didn't know what else to do with them. That they subdued the things at all is fairly impressive, if you ask me. There are probably more somewhere, but they require a good dose of radiation to get woken up, so the world's safe. For now.

Arching her neck and setting her jaw as Sharl talked, Dragonfly could not have looked more prickly if she'd turned into a porcupine; her eye twitched and she opened her mouth to reply - from her posture, something terribly unkind - but thankfully Miss Americana beat her to it, and as the robotic paragon talked the young engineer had the time to cool down and let her rationality bring her nerves-fueled ire into check. She took a deep, slow breath, collected her thoughts after Miss A had finished speaking, and tried to be a little more reasonable. "Am...willing to kill it. If absolutely necessary. But...hopefully better options. And won't design something to kill it unless I know there are no better options. Too many...." She shook her head, letting whatever she was about to say trail off. "Speed would be good. Speed, caution, information. Miss Americana's point was good. Probably people in the city living on limited time."

The moment discussion hard turned to designing something to kill the entity Dragonfly closed up on herself, visibly becoming...smaller, arms wrapped in around her body and head hunched down a bit on her shoulders. Her face, what of it was left exposed by her visor, was some nigh-unreadable mix of anxiety, stubbornness, and defiance. Her mind, meanwhile, had already designed about thirteen quicklime delivery systems, each more lethal than the one that came before it. crystal injector system - ranged hollow-shell mortar for maximum wide-spread - crystal 'bullets'? would need a hardening agent - spacial warp to deliver payload directly inside target - no "...no. No ideas. Won't invent something to kill it. Subdue, maybe. But not kill. Not even this thing."

"I...don't know," Gaian Knight admitted, bringing his rock a little closer to the ground. Some dirt and stone pulled itself together into a long, thin pole, which moved through the air to carefully prod each of the two porous space rocks in turn. "I...guess they're hibernating? I can't feel anything moving in there. Still...." Nearby debris pulled together around the two sleeping blobs' homes, wrapping around them until they became large, smooth spheres nearly three times as thick as they'd started, and almost seamless. I guess I have to leave some spots for holes - at least it'd slow 'em down? "I guess this is the kind of thing we really ought to hand over to the authorities. I don't know about you, but I'm not really equipped to jail giant, acidic eating machines from space. Maybe the people who usually deal with the aftermath of this sort of thing will have better ideas."

Dragonfly raised an eyebrow, looking Supercape up and down again. "Are you? Don't seem to be on your best footing. Don't know all the secrets of how you do your teleportation, but have suspicions and would...prefer not to be turned inside out, or transported to the inside of a wall." She could think of at least seven outcome scenarios for that, depending on the exact mechanics of the caped hero's powers; five were fatal, and two posed a worse threat than Hiroshima, even when he'd been feasting on reactors. She frowned, bringing her force field up...just in case. "Suppose I'm as ready as I'll ever be. If you are."

Mara winced a little at 'don't have anything to prove', but she took the offered hand and squeezed. "Fair enough. Wasn't really planning on grand gestures anyway, just...get the urge once in a while. Have to be more rational about it. Suspect I wouldn't react too well to too grand a gesture myself. It's...good advice. Thank you." Content to sit quietly for a moment, the young woman finally realized that the onus for a new subject was probably on her; quietly clearing her throat, she adjusted her skirt with her free hand and asked, "Anything interesting recently with you and your brother? Don't...watch much news, don't know if I'd have missed something."

Tarrant chuckled, moving (if not quite with grace) with steadiness and reliability. "At FCU, I'm afraid," he replied, shrugging helplessly. "I teach earth science; mostly geology, really. The new guy has to deal with all the freshmen." He made a face at that, more out of amused and exaggerated suffering than anything else. "Not that freshmen are bad, of course, but the classes I teach are usually classes full of kids who want easy credit and aren't really there to learn anything. What are you planning on studying?"

"Will...try," Mara replied, pulling some hair back behind an ear. It stayed there, this time. "Don't mean to imply that you badly need the help, of course. Just...don't...have that many people that I care for." two? - probably two - don't say that - likely sounds depressing "Have to fight the urge to....help out. When it isn't always needed. Or in ways that would be uncomfortable for the person I help. Not very good at subtlety, and paying power plants to...mmh. 'Misplace' electrical bills wouldn't go over well. Not even really wealthy, just...want to put the money to better use."

Mara blushed a bit when the server arrived, a sudden and mysteriously-timed interest in the salt & pepper shakers on the other end of the table saving her from making eye contact as she ordered her fish. As soon as he was gone, however, Ellie had her undivided - if a little bashful - attention again. "That's...would certainly accept the help. Then. If you want. Would at least try to spare you from the boring or very dirty parts, maybe." She was trying very hard not to imagine Ellie in overalls working on a greasy engine, and wasn't having a lot of success; she blushed a little, coughed into her hand, and tried to shift her brain to another line of thought. "Offer works both ways, of course. If you ever need a hand, or...not sure. Help making ends meet, maybe. Anything."