Fox
-
Posts
6,269 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Freedom City Guidebook
Freedom City PBP: A How-To Guide
Gallery
Events
Everything posted by Fox
-
".....no, definitely not native to the area. Not really," Matt cagily replied, eyeing his dog; it, in turn, quickly finished the piece of sausage it had conned out of its keeper and gave Fred a polite sniff. It cocked its head, apparently not quite sure what to make of her. "Couldn't tell you, for the breed. They all pretty much look like that, but if there's a name for it I don't know it." "As for well-behaved," he added, scowling; still, even scowling couldn't protect him from the puppy-dog eyes, and he surrendered another piece of meat. "I mean, I've never needed collars or leashes or anything, but I also don't think they'd be happy about using them without good reason, so...I guess that counts as trained." He shrugged; the dog thumped its tail against the floor and licked its lips. "I'm Matt, by the way."
-
"Well, you probably didn't have an invite," Matt pointed out, digging the scroll out of his robe and waving it at Riley. "Assuming it means what it says, y'wouldn't have seen it without one, or something similar. Still, though. Wish I'd known it was serious. Didn't know it was a-" He turned around just in time to see Robin & Fred dismount the broom, and his dog mimicked the glance before looking up in what, for a brief second, read an awful lot like disappointment. "....uh. Didn't know this was an openly-magical sort of thing, if that's the case. ....maybe it's for the best." He shrugged, and went to put his hands in his pockets only to be foiled by the robe. That earned a scowl, if only at himself, and he offered the last arrivals a friendly nod before making his way to the food. Food he almost lost, as he assembled a small selection of edibles, when his companion not-so-subtly bumped his leg with a truly piteous look in its eyes. "Wha-- hey, hey. Only if you're good. Be nice."
-
"Oh, uh." If one listened especially closely one could hear Matt's brain shifting gears without a clutch. One well-dressed, attractive girl his age had been just barely manageable for the teenager when he'd seen it coming and had a chance to approach on his own terms; turning from one to be visually jumped by the other turned out to be a bit much for the unprepared, and it took him a beat to recover. "Y-yeah, sorry. That's me. You're, uh..." He hesitated, but only for a second; the dog sneezed and seemed to shake the name off his tongue. "Phaedra, right? Don't think we've met. This's Moon," he gestured at the dog, "and if you haven't met 'em, that's Riley, that must be Robin, and he's Jimmy," he pointed in turn. Not that he'd met the latter two, but he'd heard enough from Riley on the former and sharper ears than most had caught the name of the latter on his way up. May as well exploit the knowledge. "Your costume's not, uh, bad itself. Horns are a nice touch. Mine's...yeah, well. Had the robe, found the rope. Ain't much, but it's something."
-
Initiative Roll (Speed of Thought): 1d20+9 14 Bleeegh.
-
Dragonfly's self-recrimination for her slow reaction to the mind control was clear to see: even with her face hidden behind her armor, the feeling was written all over her body language. She'd been too slow, too distracted by the lost friends and interesting science to consider the angles. Mind control was out of left field, but an infiltrator, a plant, an attack from elsewhere...one gloved hand tightened into a fist as she rolled a perfect memory back over anything she could have missed. As fast as she fell into that spiral, though, Jill pulled her right back out. The fist relaxed and became a reassuring hand that fell over her girlfriend's waist, followed quickly by a gentle hip-bump; the armor spoiled the familiarity of the act a little, but it was the thought that counted. Hopefully. "Very fast. Expertly handled. Plus, know we're on the right track now. Wouldn't bother stopping us otherwise - easier to let us blow ourselves up. That, though," she added, gesturing at her device - still glowing, still spinning gently as it modulated leftover energy and converted it into something that wouldn't cripple city infrastructure too badly. "That is no good. Cosmic energy. Glad Miss Americana and I both covered the exotics. Estimation of enemy weight class probably just went up, or they found something potent to play with. ....still. Barrier's down, now. Can do something about it. Got some readings, too; other end of the portal's displaced, but not too far; mix/max puts it...mmh." She paused for a moment, tapping a finger against her leg as she called up the readings and did some math. "....not here, too much strain. That way," she pointed, audibly frowning. "That's, what, west...ish. Too far to be here, not far enough to hit ocean. Not far enough up to hit space, which is good."
-
"Anyone tried knocking?" The figure that walked up out of the darkness wore an outfit that was as simple as it was economical: his black robe was long and billowing, tattered at the hem and the ends of the voluminous sleeves, held at the waist by frayed rope and topped by a deep hood and a rather effective glowing eye effect, the mechanism for which wasn't immediately clear but seemed to fade way as he got closer. It was a little bare-bones, as grim reaper costumes went - he had no scythe to wield, nor had he managed any kind of skeletal pieces for his hands and face - but it had been cheap...an old outfit he'd started to put together before wiser minds had talked him out of it. Cheap was good, and he was secretly glad he hadn't kept it around for nothing. Hooded or not, if his voice hadn't betrayed the holiday specter's identity the dog certainly did: only one today, a great big hound with scruffy fur as black as Matt's cloak, following at its master's heel. "Hey, Tin Man. Helluva house for a party, huh? Wonder if it always looks like this."
-
"Potentially lots of wax," Dragonfly supplied, either clarifying or muddying the metaphor. Willow and Jill had gotten quick but entirely sincere thank-yous as they laid the cable out, and it hadn't taken her long before she was zipping to each of the cables' ends to wire them into...something. The city transformer had been partially gutted, turned inside-out to give her access to things rarely seen, while the other end was connected to a knee-high device that looked something like a blooming onion of metal and glass, each piece - from her quiet muttering - apparently operating as some kind of capacitor and transformer. "Directing wax is easy. Give it a place to flow. But it has to go somewhere; don't really have the infrastructure on hand to dump it if we don't know how much....wax. City main grid, though. Especially this city's - should be able to handle major surges, redistribute load." The armor-clad engineer gave her creation one last once-over, gently pushing one of the rings to make sure it could rotate freely. "Going to give a lot of people a lot of free power, drop their electricity bills. ....or blow out every circuit breaker in the district, cause minor utility damage. Either/or, good odds. Ready when you are."
-
"...guessing this is a 'boy thing'," Mara noted, eyeing the grill-oriented banter and competition; there wasn't much malice in her voice, though, and despite herself the corner of her mouth turned into what was probably a smile if you squinted hard enough. "....or just a thing-thing. Would probably react like that if a colleague challenged me to a build-off." She gave Ellie a friendly hip-bump, clasping her hands behind her back as she peered around the area. very hard to not deploy drones "It's...nice, here," she offered Stesha - an introvert's attempt at small talk. "Quiet, though. Too...low-tech, no chatter, other than cell phones that can't find satellites. What do you use for power?"
-
Tak-tak-tak went Dragonfly's finger before she answered, the armored heroine casting her gaze around the area to ponder what she had to work with. "Might be a lot of energy," she muttered, mostly to herself. "Batteries do bad things when they overflow, not going to send it to drone storage, suit would probably take it but Jill would get mad...." Her eyes landed on a utility box at the edge of the parking lot, and her helmet cocked to the side. "....okay," she said, one drone already zipping off to inspect it. "Will need some high-voltage cable. And a lot of capacitors. Think I already have the rest....need volunteers to run as much heavy cable as we have between here and that transformer? It's heavy," she apologized, audibly frowning, "and I've gotta build things."
-
"No living mine canaries," Dragonfly muttered, still pulling at the wires in her poor, distressed-looking drone; she apparently found the ones she was looking for only when its less put-upon companions floated back to her hauling a monitor and some poor technician's laptop by little energy tethers. The former got set down a lot more gently than the latter, but she was apparently after parts anyway - and given the rush, she wasn't taking too much care to preserve the equipment. Jill's question managed to burrow through her concentration, if only just, and she glanced up, fingers still patching wire together. "Notice...? Pregnancy?" She sounded...well, suitably confused. "....yes? Hard to miss at this point. It...I thought you already knew." He tone was nothing if not apologetic as she set her little drone down, where it made a protesting beep at the cable it dragged behind it, marching its way toward the middle of the anomaly. "You spend more time with them than I do, in theory; didn't occur to me they hadn't told you. I...sorry. Never my intention to keep secrets. Never from you." The monitor was tilted up so the others could watch from her cyclopean minion's point of view as it went to its potential doom - overlaid on its blue-tinted camera was a fair amount of data of dubious clarity, though it seemed to be tracking a number of ambient readings and the location of (and information on) its fellows. Dragonfly had some choice words to share when it got about as far as Ellie's ball had before being pushed back, legs scraping against the asphalt like it had run into rubber, but the run of impolite Russian trailed off when she cocked her head at, and enlarged, a few of the HUD displays. "...that...okay. Americana, verification? Barrier pushes back almost perfectly - momentum inversion, controlling for leg motors. Otherwise, no bad readings, no weird readings, no...nothing. Very quiet. No radio. From the other side, I mean; anomaly itself is putting out stupid amount of interference." She tapped a finger against her leg, metal tik-tik-tikking as she thought. At the other end of the cable, her little robot futiley pushed against its invisible oppressor. "Not good at history, but radio is...pretty far back. Or pretty far forward; bad possible future to take out radio pollution. Probably safe enough, if we can remove or push through barrier."
-
Alrighty. In the interests of moving things along, AA, d'you want me to roll whatever happens when the drone tries to march its way into the portal into my post, as with Ellie's energy ball (in which case, what happened? The drone, for what it's worth, won't be moving with any great force.) or do you want me to just set it up and you respond?
-
"Perhaps not right away," Indira mused, clawed feet clacking on the floor for a few steps before she reformed them into something softer and more suited to indoor wear. "I recall eating similar food, and remember the stomach as being very limited. It was unfortunate - I remember it being quite good." "Kimber is correct; I do prefer the '3D' puzzles," she admitted, frowning briefly. "They are...I think the word is 'tactile'? Also, I see more colors than normal people and it makes some of the printed pictures odd, if they used cheap inks. Still," the metal creature countered, eyes turning back up into a friendly smile...or her approximation thereof. "Still, I would be happy to help. I am not always good at the puzzle part, but I am very good at finding pieces and have a very good reach."
-
"Would if I could find a good enough cable," Dragonfly responded - she'd apparently had similar ideas, and already had one of her drones in hand. The football-sized flying contraptions did, apparently, have proper walking legs: the bottom half of its armor plating had split apart and rotated out into insect-like appendages, which wiggled impotently in the air as she cut through its rear housing to indelicately pull out some wires. "And a compatible video port. Drones aren't really designed for wired use. Could always just talk to them directly if I had to. Anyone have a bunch of cable and a laptop they don't care about? Would settle for an old tv if anyone can find one."
-
Indira was tempted to remind her new friend that hero work involved a great deal of screaming and armed people, but decided against it; she was sure the frog girl would learn that in due time. Instead she rippled, a ridge of metal running down her body to strip her of as much rainwater as possible without a towel. "It is a good plan," she agreed, flexing a bit as they returned to a warmer environment - only when she flexed, her whole body stretched as if it was one large muscle. "Humans will take time to get used to you, I think, but they do recognize when people are being helpful. Perhaps do not advertise where you are from at first?" She hummed, eyes frowning. "It is not intended to be deception, but they may need to form their own opinion of you before they decide what they think they should...think. I avoid recognition, though, so perhaps I do not know what is best."
-
Tagging before I forget it.
-
"She might not, but I do," Dragonfly established, with the phone call completed and a strong desire to be on the move. "Going to have to pocket you to take you all at once. It's...not really pleasant, going to be really disorienting. And the adults need to not think too hard about leaving; kids'll be fine, though, and it's perfectly safe. First stop, Gina's." She held out a gauntleted hand for anyone who was coming, and when they took it the process was, indeed, a bit disorienting: where someone on the outside of the dimensional trickery saw their friend fold up and disappear, each found that when they were the ones being put away it was the world that folded up - twisting in alien geometries until they were left in a blank white void, standing on a floor with no walls, seeing by light with no source. At some point their host had apparently taken in some bottled water and a couple children's toys, though, so there was that. At top speed it didn't take Dragonfly long to hit Gina's, for drop-offs and extremely quick explanations, and soon after that touching down in the parking lot to quietly discharge her passengers. "Americana. Anything new?"
-
"It would be useful to still turn 'ghostly' sometimes," Indira mused, ever the huntress; at Koshiro's struggles and Kimber's woodland assault she grudgingly set the group down, extra arms flowing back into her body to give her torso a bit more substance. "I do hope you can be touched around us most of the time, however," she admitted. "I owe you several years of hugs; movies and television tell me I also owe you many of the 'noogies'." She raised a hand that had grown some rather uncomfortable-looking knuckle spikes, but her eyes were still all smiles. "The hair looks good - a notable change to match your growth. I believe that is traditional."
-
"I understand," Indira hummed, glad for the change in atmosphere; she'd been visibly uncomfortable, in as much as her state of mind could be read from a somewhat featureless head, but it had at least seemed more like personal discomfort than any kind of judgement on Aquaria. Whatever its cause, she'd pretty clearly resigned herself to enduring it rather than trying to change things. "I am not supposed to do most of what I do, though I do not think that being found out would put me into jail...and I do not think an Earth jail would do a very good job of holding me." The bipedal metal being seemed rather amused by that last point, but let it go. "You sound like you have had a very interesting life," she observed, eyes smiling as she looked at her new friend. "I do not know that I am in a position to judge you, but do not forget that some struggles last all life. ....'all life'? She paused for a moment, mulling that one over. "...I do not think it translates, but I think that you know what I mean. If you begin kicking the police again, I do not doubt that your friend would aid you and you would end up in jail again. You will have to choose your...kicking targets wisely."
-
Mara's face was almost perfectly blank for a moment, looking vacantly toward the phone while her brain processed those...tidbits. "....a temporal field that steals cars?" she finally questioned, frowning; she'd been working on one of her drones with her multi-tool when the call came, and now it sat abandoned on the nearest flat surface as she took in the news. "....in a strip mall parking lot. ....okay. We are not in contact, no, but this might explain why." Little lights danced behind dark blue eyes, and the heavy metal choker at the base of her neck lit up in response - it sent a wave of twisted space washing over the young engineer's body, leaving behind familiar armor that wasted no time in spinning to life. "Will be there shortly," she announced, picking her drone up. Lines ran across it like creases in paper, and the mass of metal and wires folded in on itself until it had disappeared. "Can probably get closer than you, though the suit won't like it. Need to get a look at this...thing. Anyone else coming?"
-
"....further than you might think," Indira admitted, gazing into the sky with rain streaming across her face - the rain didn't seem to bother her eyes any, but the hesitation in her voice made it clear that this wasn't a subject she broached often. "But I have gods, yes. Or, my people do; we each choose one in this life, to worship as a...private choice." She put up a hand again, craning her head bonelessly to watch the water run off it in drops and waves. "I do not worship the storm, or believe it to bless me. But it is an enjoyable experience none the less, and reminds me of greater things."
-
The rapid crunching of snow underfoot heralded the sight of Wraith charging straight at Kimber and Koshiro - a point of view normally reserved for extremely unlucky prey, and one made only slightly less concerning by the loss of her scythe-tendrils and the addition of an over-sized hand that she'd grown to snag a surprised Eve and drag her along with perhaps less warning and dignity than the psychic would have preferred. She hit her friends surprisingly gently for a mass of metal moving that quickly, grabbing the lot of them and sweeping them off their feet in a near-crushing hug (complete with an extra pair of arms apparently grown specifically for that purpose). "<Wonderful!> You did it!" she announced, eyes turned up in what was easily a smile...even on a mouthless face. "You look good! That was very impressive."
-
"I thought I told you I don't need to know that stuff!" Matt called after his roommate, before rolling his eyes and flopping his head back onto the bed. "And, yeah, they're open late - they get the late-night crowd from a hospital. But seriously, patrolling? It's supposed to just be a quick burger run!" He looked down at his dogs, who were looking at him expectantly, tails thumping. "Wh...no. Aw, no, not you too," he protested. "You go looking for trouble, you find trouble. Tin Man's gonna kill someone, and then we've gotta clean that up. I don't even wanna know what kinda messes he runs into, and he's not gonna have any arrows for the crap we find. Y'can't.....rrrrrgh." Matt shucked his shirt, reaching behind his bed for a hidden bag and its black-and-gold contents. "Shouldn't even have this crap," he grumbled, the dogs perking up and starting to dance around the room in anticipation of a 'walk'. "Fine," he announced, pulling on what was plausibly normal clothing and tucking what wasn't into his pockets or belt. "I'm going with you for a burger and to keep you out of trouble. And no killing, Tin Man. We'll know if you do, so don't even try it."
-
Indira was considerably less bouncy than Aquaria, though she seemed no less bothered by the rain - albeit not inherently thrilled, either. Her surface rippled and shifted as she stepped out into the inclement weather, arms and legs lengthening for reach, knees inverting into a formation somewhat more quadruped than biped for power, and some of her torso thinning out to extend a thick, lizard-like tail out of her backside for balance. "It is good weather," she hummed, looking up into the rain and extending a clawed hand to catch a few drops. "Fewer people try to cause trouble when it rains - humans do not often enjoy being in it for longer than they have to. Their hair and clothing absorb too much water, and are difficult to get clean again. I do not enjoy it as much as proper darkness, but it is very refreshing."
-
Gaian Knight / Tiamat - Dragonfly Mystery at Bedside Manor (3) Seven is the Number (3) Wraith How to Build a Better Scythe (2) A Picture of Sophisticated Grace (5) Eclipse - Grim Who Let the Dogs Out? (13) Rollover and ref point to Grim, please. Fox Veteran Progress: 147/150 Basic Character Slots: PL10 / 150PP: Gaian KnightPL10 / 150PP: WraithPL7 / 105PP: Dragonfly [Maxed]Veteran Rewards: 4 / 5 Spent Ranked Feats for Gaian Knight: Sidekick 15PL10 / 180PP: EclipseRanked Feats for Eclipse: Equipment 13 (remaining 2 unspent)PL10 / 180PP: GrimunspentRetired Characters: none
-
"No," Matt responded, a bit more seriously than he intended. "Nah. I make my own way. Not big on charity, y'know? Got to at least give something back, and I've got nothing for you." He shrugged, kicking up his feet. "Besides, y'don't need it now but you might later. You'll be here a while, I guess. If nothin' else, you can buy those burgers." He turned his head to give Riley an odd look, frowning at him over one of his companion's tails. "....the Tin Man," he insisted, with all the intonation of someone who was being forced to explain a joke. "From The Wizard of Oz. The movie? And a book, I guess, but nobody really cares about the book."
