Zeitgeist Blue

Nicole It was an odd sort of act, pretending to be merely a civilian bystander so soon after she had a hand in bringing the whole mess to a close. No matter how many times she's done the act, she knew she could never play the part of a civilian shaking in fear to the point of tears. She wasn't an actor but she felt that keeping quiet and out of the way was well enough to go through these situations. People were too busy on more important matters than one girl's way of dealing with the crisis. But she too had other things to occupy her mind besides playing her part. When she had left, there were the telltale signs of tampering within the recordings. Done before she had attempted to, she had little time to investigate further before the police had arrived, pointing a gun at her face. The mystery annoyed her, like an itch at the back of her mind she could not reach. Besides her pride lost at having been caught flat-footed, it posed risks to her identity. If someone had seen her in those recordings, which they most definitely had... Nicole looked up at Rita's question. She blinked as she realized Rita had been speaking to her for the past few moments. "Sorry, sorry. Just thinking" She shook her head as if to clear her mind, though it did little to dispel the thoughts. "I'm- I'm fine, I think." She gave Rita a wan smile. "I just hid in the closet the whole time." She averted her eyes from Rita and looked at the scene around her. Then when she returned her gaze back, her face fell, hand going up to rub at her arm idly. "I'm so sorry I left you in the elevator. I thought I'd left you to die." It was not a lie and so it was easy to say and show emotion for.

Sure! I'll be using Skill Mastery on that for a 22 result. What kind of changes are those exactly?

Salvo With her scans completed, Salvo stepped away from Guy's form and, with barely a glance at Rita to see how she was doing, strode towards the basement doorway from which she had entered. It would do little good to engage Rita in conversation when the doctor knew her civilian identity. She might let slip something and Rita could have suspicions. Even as bewildered as the doctor might be now, there was no need to engage in unnecessary risk. So she ignored Rita's questions and Bellios' the heavy footfalls at first dominated the room. "You're safe now, Doctor,"' she said as she passed by Rita. "Wait for the emergency services to arrive and you will find assistance from them. In the meantime, please stay put." Just as she said this, her suit rang 9-11 and several other emergency services directly - emergency medical service and the police mostly. They service operators would find a prerecorded message in Salvo's voice waiting for them, informing them of a metahuman incident in the Archetech Emerald City HQ. Dealt with, fortunately, so they only needed to clean the mess and figure out what had happened. That wasn't a job for someone like Salvo. She reached the stairs and her suit began to fire again, targeting all recording systems within and around the Archetech pyramid. Then it found all footage of Nicole and of Salvo and imposed a new reality into the recordings. Nicole never scrambled down the hallway on the second floor. Guy never called to her as she had just entered the laboratories. Salvo never appeared where once Nicole had been. In fact, Nicole had reached the ground floor and instead of fighting her way through a passing horde of mice, decided to hide in a nearby janitor's closet. It was Salvo who appeared from nowhere, unbidden by anyone inside, just as she would disappear. Bellios banished back to whence it came from. The lights of the whole building flickered, sending Archetech into darkness for a few seconds. And as the lights turned back on, Nicole sat inside the janitor's closet, her eyes peered almost shut, gripping a lamp as a weapon in both hands, as she waited for emergency services to arrive.

Salvo To no one's surprise Rita was confused and scared as she stirred back to consciousness, noticing both the heavily armored Salvo and Guy, who was drooling silver fluids from his orifices. As she began to speak, Salvo held out an arm to block her path towards Guy. "Stay back, Doctor. You aren't safe yet." Salvo's voice was deeper, electronically altered to sound like another woman's voice. Salvo and Rita did not know each other but Salvo was a known hero, perhaps not so much in Emerald City as she was in Freedom City, but she hoped a calm tone would be enough to get Rita to sit still while she worked. She felt her programs run their course, slaughtering the nanomachines in their path, but she had to make sure the deed was done. And more importantly, if there were any survivors left. She glanced once more at Rita to make sure she was behaving, then strode towards Guy. And as if he were a stuffed doll, she lifted him up until he was level with her, his toes dangling against the floor. Silver fluids continued to leak down, spilling on her armor plating. Annoying, but she had more important things to focus on. She peered at him as she prodded into the now broken nanomachines inside his body, and only then did her eyes widen with the realization. "Damnit damnit damnit!" Guy's body dropped to the floor as her systems overclocked to expand throughout the facility and locate the infected persons. She had to shut down the nanomachines' continuous replication, or else they'd kill their hosts in the process.

Salvo There was little time to gloat or to bask in her success. Once she had noticed the physical effects of her breakthrough, like hardware effecting a forced shut down from internal processes, she too stopped in her tracks. From the outside it seemed like Bellios and the blob of nano-mice stood still together but Salvo was frantic in her mind's eye. She knew control could be an ephemeral thing and no doubt some uncompromised portion of the nano-network was fighting back now. So she began torching everything she could find, starting with Rita and all the nanomachines near her, and spreading from there. Among the indiscriminate destruction, she set a small portion of her automatic runtimes to searching for Guy and identifying other infected humans. If Rita and Guy could have been then there was no telling who else was infected inside the building. When she was confident enough her programs did not require her full attention she turned to the Bellios' physical space and with a mental confirmation moved his body. Salvo climbed over the railway and fell down the middle of fire escape, armor clanging and crashing through cement and steel bars on her way down. Cement cracked under her with her landing, plaster and bits of cement raining down as she rose from her knees. She found the door to the basement and began to walk, intent on only one thing: Rita.

Yay! Salvo will do three things, two with the control of the nanomachines. 1. Destroy every nanomachine starting with Rita and her surroundings. 2. Search for other infected humans in the building and destroy them. 3. Fall down the stairwell.

Alright, give me a Notice test to perceive all the guns with your Metal sense power. Then give me a roll for your Move Objects power at a +9.

Salvo = 1 post = 1 post = 1PP Happiness in Slavery (2)

Salvo When one got down to it, nanocode and systems were just like any other cutting-edge machine, just incredibly small and a dozen other minor differences that were moot. She wasn't all too familiar with nanotechnology so when something baffled her, instead of trying to bash her head against a wall she quickly diverted to the use of magic to supplement her infiltration. There was no time for pride or curiosity with both her and Rita's lives on the line. Yet as immersed as she was in cracking the nanotech, her eyes caught movement at the periphery of her vision. Tugging and scurrying around and behind her were once all the mice had been surrounding her. She let go off her assault, her program scripts running on the background, and turned around to see the dozens and dozens of mice merging together. Bodies melting, bones crunching and sliding, silver blood pooling into one incoherent mass. It had no shape. No eyes to watch her, no limbs to move. It was just a blob of silver. "S*&^." They found her out. So she dropped the act and let her independent networks reroute. They exploded into the the nanites' security walls, shedding subtlety for an all-out assault. Then she ran. Down the stairs to Rita before it was too late.

Sure, let's reroll. Computers: 1d20+12 = 24 Since her Device was fatigued before, now it is Exhausted. All its power ranks are at -3. See her Bellios Device in her profile and page 81 of M&M 2nd edition. So what she will do is All-Out Move.

Yay!

RNG, give me the power of good rolls! Notice: 1d20+8 = 27 So far so good. Computers: 1d20+12 = 16 Nope!

https://orokos.com/roll/759172 Use of Datalink: 1d20+12 = 31 Computer Check: 1d20+12 = 14

Oh right, forgot to say. Salvo will use her Datalink powers to try to get het gauntleted fingers into the nanites. Metaphorically and electronically. Not sure if I should roll Computers or Data Link though, or anything else for that matter. AP: Data Link 4 (Radio, 1 mile; Extras: Area, Linked [Enhanced Feats]; Flaws: Check Required [Computers]; Feats: Machine Control, Selective, Subtle) {7/11}

Skill Mastery (Cosmology) for a roll of 21. Scratch the Skill Mastery. We aren't pressed for time or anything so I can roll instead of taking 10. Knowledge (Cosmology): 1d20+11 = 29