KnightDisciple

Raven III "Hn. More abandoned than before, certainly. Still. Something's off. We need more intel..." He trailed off as they finished securing Bowman, before he moved toward the primary passenger compartment. Raven was in the driver's seat of the Unkindness while Arrow and Nevermore finished the cleanup. The senior (conscious) hero of the team was rapidly inputting data into the holo-screen his vehicle was projecting. He had an array of disjointed thoughts and data points he needed to enter before they faded into the background hum of his thoughts. Later he could sift through the entries and sort them, make more sense of them. His scars were itching, and that was never a good sign. "Nevermore. Arrow. Status report on evidence cleanup." His voice was just firm enough to make clear it was not a request, and that his patience was thin.

I'll go ahead and roll init: 19.

Right, sorry, let's see. Here's my Edit Request. Going to go with a Craft: Electric for the Mini, and a Mech for the Truck. Mini check/Craft: Electronic: 30. Truck check/Craft: Mechanical: 19. I'll keep it for now, since I'm sitting inside the truck and can hopefully notice stuff a bit easier...

Doktor'd! Fairly minor edit for Thunderbird. Spending 4PP: -2 more skill points to Craft: Mechanical, for 10 ranks (+11 total) -6 more skill points to Craft: Electronic, for 10 ranks (+11 total) -8 skill points into Knowledge: Technology, for 8 ranks (+9 total)

Micah held his tongue while Pan spoke, as much as he disliked the implications. Pan was being honest with him. Micah's father had taught him that deserved respect. "Well. If it's new and different, I guess it's a good thing you have a friend by your side." He lapsed into silence for a couple of minutes. "You know. If you did 'break' the story, maybe the good news is, when we put things right again, we can rewrite the story? Give everyone, who deserves it, a better ending?" The air around them thrummed for a moment. "I really don't want to lose you to a fight with a one-handed rum mascot."

They'd been flying for hours before Micah spoke up. He raised his voice to a half-shout as they pushed through. "Pan...what's going to happen? On Wish Island, I mean? The way that Sherlock Holmes said, and by the way if we hadn't been stuck in the wilderness for two weeks I'd probably have geeked out about that...but the way Holmes talked, this sounds...dire." He pondered his next words before he spoke. "Pan. You are my best friend. You have been probably the truest friend in my entire life. You are basically a brother to me; if my father had lived, and I had had more siblings, I would have been blessed to get some as faithful and true as you. I want to help you, Pan. I want to hep these people, this world. Worlds. But..." The sky darkened around them for a few moments, but it faded quickly. Micah's subconscious control was improving by leaps and bounds. "I don't want to save a world and lose my best friend. I love you, Pan, and I don't want to lose you. So we better not be on some death ride bullshit right now."

Cobalt Templar's grip almost shockingly gentle for a man of his size as Paige shook his hand. He gave the chair he was supposed to sit in a look with a tilt of his head, with the look of a man lost in thought. Then he shrugged his shoulders and a thin wave of ethereal blue fire washed over his body, starting at his right hand, shining from a ring on the middle finger. Paige's eyes, sharpened by years of life on one side or the other of the super-community, would very briefly catch the sight of a simple gold band on his left hand, the color mostly washed out in the wave of fire as it swept over Templar's extremities. In their wake, rather than an imposing suit of plate armor, he was wearing a sturdy garment that was somehow simultaneously antiquated, yet also with hints of the future. It was primarily in muted shades of blue, with the belt matching the dark maroon of his armor's cape. His mask had morphed slightly, covering a bit more of his face, seemingly to compensate for not having a helmet to mute the lines of his head overall. His black hair was just long enough to look a bit ruffled after being set loose. His blue-tinted brown eyes reflected the smile on his face as he gathered his robe about himself and sat down. "Thank you, Vivi," he remarked to her as she handed him the bottled water. He took a quick sip then set it to the side, and folded his hands in his lap. His attention was fully on Paige now. "The margin to keep history interesting, without inventing things whole-sale for the sake of entertainment, is razor-thin, and your show has walked it for 15 years. That's quite impressive. As for talking in front of a camera, I've done a couple of on-the-street interviews personally, in the wake of one event or another. As for a sit-down....I can't say that I've ever done one quite like this, no. I'm happy it's with such an accommodating group, though. Sounds like an entirely reasonable format." He pondered her question for a moment before answering. "Is there a preferred signal or the like if I need to 'skip' a question, or will you just worry about that in your editing?"

I am pulling technobabble from the ether, if you can't tell. ?

Micah squinted behind his sunglasses as he scrolled through the stats on his laptop. The truck had one of those mounting arms that meant he wasn't constantly struggling to keep the laptop from falling to the floorboard. It let him concentrate on his part of the job. "The telemetry I'm getting is in the green but it's edging slightly to the yellow. I'm going to have to recalibrate the system when you make the stop. I think the load-balancing's a bit off, and every time to push it up to over 180 kph and then drop back down, it takes it slightly more out of whack. We're at about 1.005% imbalance right now, so it's not a real issue. Yet. Try to avoid spiking your speed past 180 too often; either get up there and stay up there or don't go that fast. I'm working on updating the load-balancing algorithm now. Better news is that we're doing better than expected on battery degradation. We won't have to retire that set of cells for at least another couple of rounds of travel, and maybe not for the rest of the race."

Micah frowned deeply at Eira's near-rant-like words. Something about what she was saying just did not sit right with him. "Wait, Eira, are you sure that's a good-" And then she was gone before he could finish. Micah watched her leave, then turned to Pan. "If you think you're just gonna run off to this Wish Isle without me, you have another thing coming. You're my best friend. I'm with you, Pan. Until the end of the line." Thunderbird clapped the Forever Boy on the shoulder, even as his own wings extended from his back. "Now, it sounds like we need to get to flyin' unless we want to get to fightin'. Let's go." The wind stirred, and Micah rose into the air, though he kept his pace slow until Pan caught up.

Micah blinked at the rapid change in music, and at Pan's directions, but he was adaptable. Music was one of his great passions, and one of the ways he felt he expressed himself. So he was not perturbed having to keep up with a new song. Still, the change was rapid enough he strummed a slightly sour note from sheer shock. With a shake of his head, he adjusted his grip on the guitar. "Bit more warning next time..." The rest of the guitar's transition was smooth. Micah soon lost himself in the notes once again, bobbing his head as he played with vigor.

Micah calmed down a bit at Pan's attempts to intervene. Pan and Eira both knew Micah hadn't slept well these last several days; the young man had basically willed himself to sleep lightly enough that his dreams wouldn't call down terrible weather on them. The one good thing from that trial was that his passive control had increased. Just not enough that he trusted himself yet. He sighed and rubbed his face as the arguing continued. Then Eira gave his attempt at calm a one-two punch. He looked at Pan, Watson, and Holmes for a moment. "Everyone stand back. This isn't the most precise thing yet." He looked up to the sky and held one hand straight up, with the other hovering about a foot above Eira's open palm. The clouds gathered and rumbled, and then an emerald-tinged bolt fell from the sky and struck his upraised hand. Micah grimaced, but the bolt weakened between his hands before a tiny shower of miniature bolts fell from his own palm to Eira's. He held this for about 30 seconds before suddenly cutting it off with a gasp. When he did, he shook his left hand, the one that had taken the larger lightning discharge from the cloud. The palm was slightly red, though it faded quickly. "Okay, so now that I've done you that favor, you can listen to me when I say: slow down, Eira. We're visitors here. This is not our home; it's Pan's, and theirs. We have no right to just...'uplift'....these people. If they even want it. Like....I get that you really dig tech and stuff, but...no. We're not here to "civilize the savages". If we do anything here it's to actually help them." He turned to Watson and Holmes. "We're from a different Earth. Another world. Similar to this one, but not the same. On our world, you two, and Pan, and the dude strapped to his ship back on that beach a week back, and a whole lot more folks, are....well, you're stories we tell. Doesn't mean you aren't real. Just means....well, shoot. Maybe Eira and I are a story someone's telling somewhere. Existence is big. Good Lord has plenty of surprises for us. But part of this is that we're not home. I have family, back on my world. That's....Pan's my friend. I want to help him. But I don't want to stay here. I have folks I need to get to, back there."

Micah actually laughed at the question about Taylor Swift. "Yeah I think I can keep up." Indeed, Micah was quickly able to match Judy's singing with the minimum amount of assistance. While Swift wasn't his go-to music, she was one of his cousin's favorite artists (not that she'd easily admit such). As he played, his right foot tapped along with the song, though his eyes were half-closed as he visibly concentrated on the music. What attention he did pay beyond playing the guitar was almost entirely focused on Judy as she sang and moved about the room.

Micah had not exactly had fun during their trip, but his ability to at least ensure the weather wasn't horrific on top of them helped. He'd eyeballed the shipwrecked Ahab, glanced at his friends, then given the Captain's corpse a quick flash of the finger. "Dude was a total jerk to his Native crew in the books, can't imagine it was better here" was his response to their inquiry. He'd been uncomfortable going through the "great" factories, though he'd stayed silent in regards to their necessity. He'd endured rather spartan traveling conditions and made do with what food they could forage or barter for. And all that time, he'd kept his temper, never shown anything more than mild irritation at the worst. Which was why his face twisting into a near-snarl at the words of the "Great Detectives" might be a shock to Pan and Eira. "Listen here you two-bit whitebread discount Raven-wannabes. Pan's a kid; I don't care if the magic here meant he was a kid longer, he's a kid. You're the-"here he let loose with a half-dozen Cherokee words that Eira would likely raise an eyebrow at after translating"-adults, so why aren't you the ones fighting this war? You're suppose to be super-smart detectives, why don't you detect how to beat Hook instead of sitting back and making a kid do your work? Or is that all you old-time-chaps are good for, making kids work for you?"

Micah finally stood straight after a minute of catching his breath. He looked over at the wrecked ship, and just shrugged. "Did my best." He turned to Pan and Eira, his expression pensive. "Pan. Buddy. Everything okay?" He gave Eira a bit of side-eye about this being a "nothing" world despite people living there. He did, however, direct a question to her. "If there's almost no electrical stuff, how do you know there's people here?"

Colbat Templar tilted his head a bit to one side. With a few wisps of ethereal flame, his helmet and cape were gone, leaving a large domino mask in that dark red tone that highlighted much of his armor. "I can adjust things on the fly, though I'm keeping at least this much of my face covered. My identity's not public, and I'd prefer to keep it that way. As for the refreshments, let's just stick with water for now; don't want the camera catching a bunch of stuff stuck in my teeth. I don't really know cameras and makeup needs, so you tell me if this will still need makeup?" He gestured at his still-masked face. Paige waved hello, and CT smiled at the other staff and gave them a nod before heading over to Paige. He offered her his hand to shake. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Cline. Your show is, if I may be so bold, one of the best history-oriented programs out there."

Micah blushed as Judy complimented him and tweaked the tie. "Thanks. I just...I figured I oughta have a little fun with it, yeah? I wanted to try and look decent....well, next to you." He glanced around at the growing crowd around them, blinking a bit. He did see Danica, and gave his shell-wearing friend a smile and a tip of his hat. "You knocked it out of the park, Danica." Micah shrugged. "My dad taught me, when I was younger. This seemed like the time to do it." His voice was nostalgic, but had a few hints of sadness. Judy and some of the others would know why, but Micah's home life was not something he shared with most. Micah was more than happy to be led along by Judy. Probably helped she was holding his hand. It took him a second to seemingly "tune in" to Judy doing anything more than holding his hand and arm. When he did, he gave her a soft smile. "It would be my honor and pleasure to play for you, Miss Cahill. Just give me a moment to make sure this thing is tuned up." Micah picked up the guitar and fiddled with it a bit. As he did so, he nodded toward the iPod. "Do we have an earphone for that or something, just to help me out? I can play most stuff by ear if it's not too crazy."

It was into the somewhat hectic environment, in the wake of Eira's outburst, that Micah Roebuck stepped into the room, looking around in a bit of confusion. He'd gone for a somewhat less ostentatiously "western" look than at last year's Prom, but had still apparently been able to scrape enough together to look distinctive. He'd opted for something inspired by one of his all-time favorite classic movies, Tombstone. His feet jangled a bit as he walked, as he'd somehow gotten his hands on some genuine metal cowboy spurs; they were put up high enough on his black boots that they shouldn't scratch the floor. The sound echoed a bit in the space after Eira and Astrid had their exclamation-off, and probably drew attention to the young Oklahoman. He shifted a bit, clearly not entirely comfortable in his suit. He wore a black blazer and pants, complimented with a red vest with a subtle paisley pattern. The vest and old-style red tie stood out starkly against his white shirt, while the black wide-brimmed hat completed the look. Micah glanced around until he saw Judy. When he laid eyes on the daughter of the former President, they lit up, and his face split with a grin. He took a few large, jangling steps to arrive near the small gaggle of girl-folk who'd been speaking. "Judy! I'm sorry I'm late, the tie was giving me trouble. You look ni-pretty. Look pretty. You. You look pretty." He was blushing.

Raven helped Nevermore get Bowman secured in the crash-seat. While less "fun" to ride in due to no windows (the current Unkindness could seat 3 up front, and he was working on more), the extra padding and the transition to a prone position should help him. Only when the archery-based hero was secure did Raven turn and look at his apprentice. "Yes. We weren't ready tonight." His voice promised more training, but it would be something they faced together. "I've gotten complacent. My mistake, not yours. We'll need to dig up everything we can on the Ushers. This was just the opening move. They seem ready for war. So we'll have to be ready, too."

Outside of the PBS building, a faint dot on the horizon quickly resolved itself into a blue-and-red blur, which slowed down to reveal a large man in faintly-glowing blue armor with a handful of dark red highlights, and a flowing cape to match. Blue flames flickered out as he touched down, his steps as light as a feather. Once on the ground, he walked up to the building's door and knocked. He gave the slightly dumbfounded security guard a smile and nod as he was let in. "Thank you! I have an interview in a few minutes." He was quickly guided to a hallway on the second floor, often having to turn sideways to let others past. When he was outside the studio, he stopped and knocked politely, speaking through the door. "Hello, this is Cobalt Templar. I'm here for an interview with Supercrime!."

Alek calmly, slowly bent down to pick up the kit. He gave no outward indication of fear at the comment about how long it would matter. Instead, he went over to the injured man, and the cluster of other "big names" who were as far away as possible from the men with guns. He knelt down next to the injured man and gave him a slight smile as he opened the kit. "Listen to my voice. I know you're in pain. It hurts a lot. Don't grit your teeth, or try to hold in the pain. Breath with me." Alek took several large, soft breaths as he worked to pack gauze into the wound. He grabbed the hands of one of the other board members. "Hold this here, don't be shy." His own hands free, Alek continued the breathing. "Breath with me, everyone. It'll help you stay calm. There we go, move your hand like-yes, thank you." Within a few moments more, the man's leg was, if not repaired, at least at the point that it was not at risk for immediate bleed-out. Alek calmly wiped his hands with a couple of the small sanitation cloths packed into the large kit; he handed several to the board member who had held the gauze. "Thank you. Now, let's all try to sit quietly for a few minutes. Seems like a good idea, yes?" With that, Alek turned around and sat down on the ground. The fact that he just happened to be sitting seiza was of no consequence. He closed his eyes for several moments, then opened them and tried to take in the room, its occupants, and the opportunities in front of him.

"You're trusting Dad to not make a single comment or joke about it when Eliza's around? We'll see, I guess." He gave his father a skeptical look. At his grandmother's insistence, Will coughed a bit and turned red. "Not a concern just yet, but duly noted, Grandma." He bought time by taking a bite of his own, never mind that he was telepathic. When he'd chewed and swallowed, he continued. "I'll let you know when and where she'll be there. If she is." The last sentence held equal parts fear and hope.

Sadly I have no HP to spend, so I'm stuck with the Daze for this round. I'll do an IC post when I have more to do (hopefully next round).

For a moment, Thunderbird considered just letting the ship crash. But they were high up, and he was not sure how well the pirates would survive. He didn't like them, didn't feel a lot of sympathy, but... "Y'all best appreciate this, you bunch of horse thieves." Thunderbird's accent was in full force as he clenched his fists and slowly raised them. As his arms lifted, the wind beneath the ship began to howl. At first, nothing happened. As the sound of the wind went from a whistle, to a wolf's howl, to an ear-splitting roar, directly underneath the ship, finally something happened. The ship began to slow. Right before it would strike the sand, Thunderbird exerted a bit of effort and flew up and away from the ship a bit; his powers stopped him a bit over two hundred feet in the air, enough to be well clear of the ship when it slammed into the ground. What would have been an impact sufficient to render the ship into kindling, and probably kill everyone in it, instead was only enough to likely crack her keel and send everyone rolling around like it was a moderate car accident. Lots of bruises, maybe some broken bones, but hopefully nothing worse. Thunderbird himself gently floated down to land next to Angelic, at which point he bent down, hands on his knees, and gasped for breath like a man who'd just run an Olympic sprint.

Can Micah use his Weather Control to generate enough wind that the ship doesn't crash hard enough to basically disintegrate and kill everyone inside? He doesn't care about it flying again, but he'd rather not straight-up kill all the pirates.