R. Bluefish

Neither am I, and it's a cool trick, so s'all good.

GM Post Now that the show seemed to be over, the mass of gormless tourists seemed content to comply with Casey's command. They began filing back towards the bus in a comparatively obedient manner, chattering to each other about the unexpected display of heroics. Meanwhile, the dock supervisor had turned pale. "You heard the lady!" he shouted, rounding on the gathered workers. "Let's move it, people! We're getting off this dock!" Even as they started to move, he grabbed his radio from his belt and spoke into it urgently. "We're going to need some emergency services down here right now. I think...I think we've got a bomb." Already, sirens could be heard wailing in the distance. "Look," he said, turning back to Casey, a faintly pleading look in his eyes. "If the rest of...whatever those things are...go off...can you do anything about it? Can you throw it into space or something?"

GM Post There was no sign of movement from within the container, but the metal surface around the hole was red-hot. Inside, she could faintly see what looked like thousands of grapefruit-sized heat signatures stacked in neat, orderly rows - except the area on the container where the explosion had happened; there it looked as though the blast had destroyed most of whatever the small objects were. Thankfully, none of the objects seemed to be growing any hotter. Yet, at least. The dockworkers looked at each other at Casey's question, and one produced a shipping manifest that he had impressively managed to hold on to despite the chaos that had been happening just moments ago. "Uh..." he said, consulting the clipboard. "Yeah, looks like it came here from..." He frowned. "That's weird." Looking up at the container's ID tag again, then back down at the manifest, he shook his head. "It's not listed here." He edged closer, squinting at the tag. "And there's nothing on here about where it came from. According to the records, it shouldn't be here at all." He stared around at the gathered workers accusingly, as though expecting one of them to fess up. "Is there smuggling going on on my dock?"

Justicar's Notice check: 1d20+5 11 Justicar's Knowledge (streetwise) check: 1d20+10 28 By the way, until proven otherwise my working theory is that the robbers are made of chocolate. Chocolate golems!

GM Post Only a scant few of the gormless tourists seemed to realize how close they had just come to death - they were the ones with pale faces and shaking hands, staring at the container in mute disbelief. The rest were cheering unabashedly. Seeing a superhero do her thing was a much better show than most visitors to the city were likely to get a front seat to, and if all the phones were anything to go by, Casey had a feeling clips of this were going to be showing up on the Internet within minutes. The tour guide rushed over frantically to below where Casey was hovering. "Oh my God! You saved our lives! Are you okay? How heavy was that? It looks..." her gaze shifted to the massive, forty-foot steel container with the gaping hole rent in the side. "What happened? What was that?" Dockworkers in hard hats were appearing from all directions, crowding around below Casey to congratulate her on her heroism. They, at least, understood the peril that had been present. "Was that a bomb?" asked one worriedly. "Are we still in danger?"

"I'm..." Starlight hesitated. "Starlight." She wasn't in the mood for revealing her identity to just any random construct/partner/whatever. While this woman - if indeed she was a woman - didn't seem like the type who would be liable to leak the info to FC's drug gangs, if Sam did have a lapse of judgement, then Sam wouldn't be the one paying the price. People called paranoia an indulgence - she considered not being paranoid a luxury. "And what she said," she added, jerking a thumb in Gretchen's direction. "She broke the magic mirror, which made a...magical thing happen," so I'm not a wizard, sue me, "and we wound up having to come in here to bail her skinny ass out." Even as the words passed her lips she realized how rude they sounded, and she hastily threw a sidelong look at the other woman. "Which we were totally happy to do," she amended.

"I'll give you a hand with the food," said Sam, rising from the couch with a grunt. "Don't seem right to have you doing all the work." Maybe I can just blast the patties with energy. Might cook 'em on the stop - I've never tried that. It was also likely to result in tiny particles of charred meat exploding all over the place, though, so she decided it was probably best to do things the old-fashioned way. Unless she found herself needing a party trick. She glanced after Gretchen and Lawrence as they went off for their game. "Hey kid, take it easy on her, yeah?" Pausing, she looked down at Samuel on the couch. "What kind of research you up to? Magic stuff?" Sam had never been the most intellectually-inclined sort - all of her high school teachers could attest to that. She'd devoted more time to smoking weed behind the bleachers and flirting with various douchebags. The former didn't lead her down a particularly shiny road, and the latter turned out to be pretty much a complete waste of time. Although at least one good thing had come of it.

Works for me - how about you, Ecal?

Feel free to have Casey catch the container automatically - it's big enough that no roll is required to intercept it, and with her Strength she can juuuust manage to carry it.

GM Post Within the space of an instant, the crowd's screams of fright turned into shouts of excitement when the costumed Casey appeared in the air. All Freedom tourists came here with the hopes of seeing a superhero up-close. Having that dream fulfilled seemed to instantly erase the presence of imminent danger from their minds - the sound of eagerly clicking camera shutters almost drowned out the cried warnings of the dockworkers. A few of them displayed better judgement, seizing their fellows and attempting to drag them back out of the field of danger. "Move!" shouted the tour guide, tugging at the arm of the stubborn grey-haired man. "It's coming down!" "Don't be stupid," he said irritably, holding up his smartphone to record the scene. "Can't you see the hero there? She's got it under control. You oughta put this on the tour, it would-" With a metallic twang, another cable broke, and with that the container came loose. Cables slithered free like snakes as the container lurched, then plummeted, swinging towards the crowd below!

GM Post The crowd of tourists, already overstimulated by the city, proved difficult to control. "Yeah, yeah, in a minute," snapped an grey-haired, paunchy man in sunglasses. "Come on, what's the hurry? City ain't going anywhere." No matter where you were, it seemed that tourists were always both very rude and very easily impressed. The frazzled tour guide shot Casey a grateful look before resuming her attempts to get things back on track. "Now, folks, if you'll look to your right you'll see where...where...folks, if you'll all just please look to your right..." Continuing to ignore her, the crowd now seemed to be busying itself with comparing pictures and adjusting filters. The tour guide trailed off wearily, and looked at Casey again. "It's like herding cats sometimes, I swear," she said, just low enough for Casey to hear her. "Or magpies. They just get distracted by anything-" A sound, deafening, halfway between an explosion and an electronic screech. People screamed - some ducked. The crowd pulsed, in the way that crowds did when everyone knew they needed to move but no one knew which way to go. The sound had come from above. Looking up, Casey saw the cargo container rocking wildly - a gaping hole rent in its side, strange blueish energy still crackling over the metal surface. As though there had been an explosion from within the container. Cables snapped, the sound sharp enough to make people clap their hands over their ears. The container suddenly sagged dangerously. The entire crane was listing to the side, damaged by the mysterious blast. Men in orange hard hats were shouting. Another cable snapped, and now the entire container seemed on the verge of falling - and if it did, Casey saw, the remaining cables would make it swing straight towards the panicking crowd.

Lena's breathing was slowing to a more measured rate once more. She felt her lips quirk in a bitter smile - if Bedlam cops weren't such bigots, they might be in a lot of trouble right now. Funny how that worked out. Grunting, she pulled her mask away from her face and tucked it back in her bag as she climbed into the truck cab beside her brother. "You know the cops in this city," she said to the hooded woman. "'Shoot first so you don't have to ask questions later' is their motto." Though you might not have to worry about that so much, she added silently. She hesitated, unsure of what to say. Trusting people immediately upon meeting them was generally a pretty bad idea, especially in Bedlam. But it also didn't seem quite right to just grab the disc and high-tail it, cutting the hooded woman out. Lena settled on, "You...need a ride out of here or something? Cops might still be sniffing around."

Heh, responded to your message before I saw this, so we're staring out great on the communication front. That's fine by me, and it makes sense that she would be interested in touring the city. It's also a nice smooth way to introduce her to the thread.

OOC for this. Let me know if you need a reason for Casey to be at the scene, and feel free to have her be currently in-costume or out of it!

Wednesday August 24, 2016 The Waterfront, Freedom City GM Post Tourism had always been a valuable source of income for the city of Freedom. The main draw was obvious - FC had seemingly more superheroes per capita than any other city in the nation. And once you got here, the residents had devised many other ways of extracting your money from your wallet. The casinos were always popular, as were the restaurants. But one of the most consistently popular tourist activities was the citywide tours offered by a number of organizations. When the city was full of superheroes - and consequently, a history of superbattles - it made for an town rife with landmarks. The waterfront had proved to be a surprisingly popular location for many tourists. The many docks and cargo ships that were constantly coming and going, loading and unloading, was already an impressive enough sight. Add in the ability to recant the history of the various superbattles that had taken place there, and you had a major inconvenience for the workers who had to be constantly shooing clueless tourists away from loading zones. It was a hot day, with the sun beating down fiercely on the city from the sky. Cargo ships blared their deafening horns as they methodically rumbled through the water - which did nothing to deter the busload of overexcited tourists from taking pictures of everything that moved while chattering to each other excitedly. The guide seemed to be weakly attempting to get them back to the subject of whatever landmark they were supposed to be admiring - but the crowd was cheerfully ignoring her, their attention having instead been captured by the spectacle of a forty-foot shipping container with a "Mercury Shipping" logo in the side being hoisted into the air by a towering crane. For residents or citydwellers, it was a none-too-impressive sight, but for those new to both Freedom and cities in general, it was apparently miraculous. Sharp-eyed observers might have noticed dockworkers expressing some consternation at the situation. The unruly tourists were crowding entirely too close to the work zone for comfort, disregarding the yellow warning signs. If there was an accident or malfunction of some sort, bad things could happen - but what were the chances of that happening?

Starlight looked from the woman to her two companions, then back. Slowly, she lowered her upraised fist, and the fierce light that she had conjured there mostly faded away - but not entirely. "Well," she muttered. "I don't think anybody here was expecting that." A glance around her seemed to indicate that there were no eldritch tentacles seeking to tear them limb from limb, so things were apparently off to a good start. The tentacles could, of course, always come later. "That's the question of the hour, yeah," she said, eyeing the strange woman uneasily. "Other question would be - do you know how the hell we get out of here?" Also, will we be able to believe a word that comes out of your mouth?

So just to clarify, should Echo make another save against the confusion and roll for the new effect now?

Echo had the impression that something important had just happened, but damned if she could suss out what it was. Right now, she was more concerned with the tiny oranges giraffes that seemed to be dancing on her shoulders. She giggled confusedly. "Is this a new power?" she slurred sleepily. "Everything's gone all...bendy...giraffes...lift me up..." A sudden surge of energy took her and at once she started babbling. "No thank you, Auntie," she addressed to a store mannequin that was either modeling football pads or dancing a jig, she couldn't tell. "No time for tables today, I have to go through the stars to the base, coffee needs to make a lot of me today. I'm an Internceptor now, you know, and that means that if you don't beat the jester the dinobots will just Mormon their way through everything. It's all because of the dumpsters, they think they can just portal you around however they like and the famous bugs won't stop them." A tennis racket fell off the shelf and bounced off her shoulder. Echo kicked at it in irritation. "You be quiet, Felix, we all know what you think of corn muffins. I'm not giving them up for anything, my boss would kill me if I let anything happen to them. I can't fight him, his rainbows are too swirly." She then forgot everything she'd just said and stared dramatically into the distance. "The last pasta is here."

Ah yes, I forgot to roll for the confusion effect. Let me do that right now... Echo's Confusion effect: 1d20 10. "Do nothing but babble incoherently." Hmm. Well, at least this should be fun to roleplay.

Sam felt her mouth fill with water at Lynn's words. Ever since her impromptu eight-month fast, her appetite lay just beneath the surface and would arise at a moment's notice. Not even needing to eat anymore didn't seem to have discouraged it in the slightest, and it took a certain amount of resolve to resist requesting "all of the above." Being your boss's guest required a certain degree of decorum. "I'll just take a burger," she said from her position on the couch, popping the well-chewed toothpick back into her mouth. "Maybe some of that potato salad too. Though it's your party, I feel like we should be the ones serving you." What's the point of having a birthday if you're still waiting on people? "Unless this is your..." she made a vaguely arcane gesture with one hand, "magic conjured food? If it is, then I don't think I can help you make that."

There's a quick IC post for ya, let me know if anything needs editing there.

Deadbolt's fist smashed straight into Echo's face, hard enough to send her reeling back into a shelf of merchandise, nearly knocking it over. Ow. Lights exploded in front of her eyes as she scrabbled at the shelf in a blind attempt to remain upright, sending tennis balls and rackets cascading to the floor. She tasted the hot tang of blood - from her mouth or her nose, she couldn't tell. Panic started to claw at her gut as she felt the bizarre dimensional madness taking hold of her again. No. Not now. But already the world was distorting - or was it her that was distorting? Were her legs always ten feet long? Or was it ten inches? She blinked around, trying to remember where she was. "Did I...join a sports team?" she mumbled. "Can't do that...gonna miss work..."

Lena barely hesitated for an instant before snatching the DVD from the tray and shoving it into her book bag. Rothstein was presumably Jewish - which meant the cops weren't exactly likely to strain themselves looking for him. They wouldn't miss one little disc of security footage. And even if they did...well, her and Luthor would make far better use of it than the cops would. As a precaution, she also grabbed her mask from her bag and tied it around her face as she rushed back to stand by the door, behind Luthor. "I've got the security footage. Time to go." The sound of the approaching sirens was making the hair on the back of her neck stand up. "We can argue about whose fault this is once we get out of here, yeah?" She leaned closer to the door to shout through it over the sound of the alarm. "I think we've got what we came for here, so I vote we all make ourselves scarce before the 'thief-takers' show up!" Though Lena had no idea who the hell this woman was, she seemed to want to help them. Lena wasn't one to trust easily, but they also weren't in a position to turn away aid at the moment. "If we leave now, we might not have to fight our way out."

Echo's Toughness save: 1d20+8 19. Ouch. That should be Bruised and Dazed, yes? Echo's Will save: 1d20+8 10. Wonderful. Agh, I'm finding my brain is pretty fried tonight. I'll get an IC post tomorrow - sorry for the delay.

The security monitor - is it the type that Lena could just grab the disc/tapes/hard drive/whatever and take it with her?