Poncho

I'm not actually expecting a roll, actually. Rather then having a roll, I'm just gonna give you the HP and let you have a set of locations to visit to calibrate it. If you're okay with that? My idea was the roll was to skip the two encounters; by taking the HP, you're giving up on that and taking an HP and maybe getting some more posts.

"Woah." Michael said at both Parker and Carmen's actions, picking up his feet and walking towards his girlfriend while he clapped. "That was incredible! You're so cool Carmen!" He said as he jogged over towards her. "You really are a top class athlete, you know? You'd put pro athletes to shame."

Michael was having fun with his new froggy friends, enjoying the brand new and unique situation he was in. But he had paid absolutely no attention to the approaching Atlantean ship, but now that others had pointed it out, he turned his attention to that, inclining his head to the side momentarily as he thought about it, then looked at his froggy friends again and smiled, giving them a thumbs up. "Sure! I'd love to go and greet them! Getting meet new cultures is good!" he said without fear, having fun just in how out there his current experience was; he wouldn't have been able to do this if he was still a normal kid and his horizons were eternally expanding. So how could he not be happy about that. "If that's okay with everyoen else, at least!"

Michael gave Charlie a thumbs up to confirm that everything was good now as the conversation moved on. He wasn't going to worry about it anymore, at least. "It is a pleasure to meet you, Callie. I'll try not to harsh your vibe too much." He wasn't concerned, friends of Charlie were people he'd generally be positive to. He offered an indifferent hrm to the question of the Headmistress. "She's not that bad, but I've also not dealt with her too much. I'm hoping that changes next year; not in a negative way though. Junior year is already almost Senior year, and Senior year is almost graduation! i've got to make sure that my extracurriculars are all accounted for on transcripts." this was a lie. He'd actually started all that stuff earlier this year, of course. You could never be too prepared! "Anyway, if you'd rather us get out of your hair, we can respect it, I think I see Sam leaading the others out to dance, and we're not connected to the band after all." he said with a wink at Charlie. "I'd hate to cramp your style; how can you be the cool guy leaning against the pillars with that smirk on your face when someone's talking to you, you know." he said in good humor and fully expecting Charlie to rib him back. Meanwhile, Sam had commandeered part of the dance floor for the combined students of Claremont and North Bay. While Michael had taken a table by talking with club workers and putting down a deposit, Sam controlled her little fiefdom on the dance floor with toxic looks and a stance that made those who weren't welcome stay away. That section was for Claremont and North Bay, simple as, and in that section she was having fun with her dancing, even if she didn't even have anyone to dance with, she was going to have her own fun.

Yes

"Of course, Code names from here on." He smiled as he took Puma's arm in his own to walk with her behind the Freedom Leaguer. He knew he was the +1, and he was going to play to that; he was supportive and he had no issues not being the most important person in the room; if anything he had gotten pretty good at that. So he kept his arm on hers and waved politely at each person. He cheered politely for Destin but did not step into the way; he was meeting the Patriot, and Golden Star was not going to get in the way of that or even imply that he was anything here; he was a polite, friendly, and open Superhero who was happy to be the third most important Hero here. He had never traveled with a Superhero before, not really, but he had practiced things like this, and he wanted to make a good impression, so even if he was limited in actionable experience, he managed to present himself well and diplomatically, shaking hands and smiling for cameras. For their romantic life, however, he worked to skillfully avoid many questions- especially those that cute too close-, or if he was answering honestly, he gave the answer in such a way that it was hard to tell if it was a joke or not. "Yes, we were working together as Heroes before we dated. We mutually asked each other out on Valentine's day, right before that surprise Alien Issue, if you remember that. So you could say our first date was protecting the City itself. Puma is a wonderful Hero and a credit to both herself and her mentor, I look up to her quite a bit." he said with a wave. "I'm lucky to have someone like her." he was confident in his answers and spoke up about Puma without putting himself, or others, down. However, he was also making sure he wasn't hogging spotlight or speaking too much. It was all a difficult balancing act, and one he was trying his best to maintain. All without making Carmen uncomfortable either. He wasn't going to talk for her, but if she needed help, he was there to give it.

"Come now, Rex." Dwayne said almost teasingly to the younger man as he adjusts his suit and checks his alien watch. "If I wasn't up for some rescue work, I wouldn't have been an EMT, and I definitely wouldn't have taken the offer to join the family." he looked across, to the other room, the portal and the different dimension, and nodded. "I'm ready when everyone else is, so let's get to it; we can't know what's on the other side until we get there, I would assume? So we'll have to be careful and keep our wits about us. But I'm sure we can managed whatever is going on." He said confidently. "And if someone's in need of help, then there's no way I can look away."

Inspire 3 on: Blue Bolt, Torpedo Lass II, Sever, Spaceman, and Timeout. drops my HP to 2. EDIT: to clarify, that's +3 to Attacks, Saving Throws you make, and skill checks for the round, until my turn comes back up again.

"Ow." Michael had landed on his back, hurled off by Paradigm with a powerful toss and landing a distance away. "Well that sucked." he groaned as he slowly got up, very unstable on his feet. He'd already given most of his power to Parker, and whatever else he had was minimal, and he was exhausted from stretching his powers, getting hit by creatures, grappling Paradigm, and everything else. He was very tired. Which wasn't something he had been for a very long time. As he got his bearings back around, he had to pause. He couldn't keep pushing like he was, he was straining against the boundaries of his possible limits, and he was smart enough at sports to know that doing that was how you ended up ruining things. So he paused. And waited. He looked at what was going on, and his friends. Then he brought his hands to his mouth and released an ear splitting whistle. "Alright!" his voice was loud, reaching out like a thunderbolt- or the sound of a sun lash- as he yelled. He was bloody and bruised and his shiny uniform was cut and damaged, but he was still standing up resiliently, no matter what went against him. "Blue Bolt! Keep it up! You're doing great! Keep Buzz safe until you can get him over here!" he paused and looked around. "Once you get Buzz here, can you help Sever and Super Cav? We should try to gather back up here, especially now that Timeout has shown he can fight this stuff." He turned his attention to the stranded Ryan and Mizuki next "Sever, Super Cav! Stay at each other's backs and try to get over to some support! I know we left you out to dry but you're fine, just try to slowly work your way back to us without leaving the other behind! You get close enough to us and we can all meet back up!" He paused and took a deep breath because his ribs were hurting but he didn't flinch as he looked at Parker and Lawrence. "Spaceman, I can't carry you anywhere right now, so you may be stuck here until I can catch my breath." he paused and looked at Paradigm. "...Unless Paradigm will be kind enough to hurl you into another pile of drones?" he suggested. "Because you and Blue Bolt were definitely doing the most in getting rid of all these things, and the clearer the skies are, the less we're getting worn down by a thousand cuts." "Timeout, I'll be right here to keep them off you, but I'm getting the feeling you're gonna have to do that trick again on some more of our opponents; so...I'm relying on you to do what I know you can do, because I have complete confidence in you." he said with absolute conviction.

using Inventor to make a tracker device here is a valid use; it's not going to use the exact Inventing rules, instead we're just making a single Craft Electronic or Mechanical roll- which can also have Aid applied so you can work together-, and success means getting better results that will require less calibration and thus less sneaking around in a Dennis Deacon infested town/municipal area. Obviously you could intentionally take the failure to require the maximum amount of calibration and get a HP each instead.

(GM Post) "Interesting..." Shine said, frowning. "So some sort of electronics...that does explain why there have been electrical problems as well; so this really is a multi-pronged epidemic, a physical disease changing from person to person, and some sort of electrical problem. Combined, if it swept across the county, or the state, it could cause severe destabilization. This might be the start of a terrorist or extra-terrestrial attack, at this rate." The Agent muttered, looking between the gathered heroes. "You can take whatever you need from this train to see if you can build some sort of tracker to find the source of this and take it down before it spreads any further. We can stay in contact as well and if you need heavy firepower, we can scramble a jet to bury something in firepower." she looked at a screen, then at the bodies in the containers, and shuddered a little. "We'll be hitting the last stop before Woodbury in a few minutes. If you need to keep looking at these corpses you can, but as soon as you're done I'm going to incinerate them. As soon as you're ready we'll send you out to try and find the source and set it down."

Diamondlight was carefully winning at poker. He was one of the most skilled gamblers in the entire universe, after all! A robot just trying to figure things out couldn't match up to him, at least not at first. But it was getting better. It was using every hand played, not just by the light manipulator, but every person playing against her, to increase her own skill at the game. "Hrmm, this is very interesting!" she mumbled. She gestured to one of the cameras using a spare hand and it seemed to cut away from Diamondlight's table for a moment. "Alright, let's get you a confessional here, you're getting a bit of ratings buzz, you and uh..." she pulled up an electronic screen momentarily. "I think their name in your tongue is Ziz? One of the Titans Three." she pointed over to a bird like alien at a far table. "So let's get you two set up; if you keep winning maybe we'll get you two on the same table in a few rounds, throw a little trash talk, stuff like that." she says as one of the drones pulls a bit closer to Diamondlight. Through camera tricks and twisting, it reflected a screen back showing Diamondlight at the table, by himself, the spotlight focused on him. "Alright, When the counter hits 0, the camera will swap to you. You're gonna be directly on camera, so talk about what you're here for, any family members or some heartstring tugging, that sort of stuff. Play up the emotion, or the smugness; make them care for you. The better you act, the more people either love or hate you, the more challenge and spotlight I can give you." Meanwhile, the other Tun was handling Mz. Grue, Shooting Star, and Pan. "What the Sprigori care about, hrm?" she thought as she looked at Pan and the other two. "Well. They truly care only about entertainment, but they're quite bad at it. They made AIs like me and my competitors to try and have good entertainment. They live somewhat similar to you humans in family structures, but their entire lives are handled by automated robot helpers powered by the infinite energy of their sun captured in a Dyson Sphere. My unfounded assumption is that the reason they were able to surpass human ingenuity was that they never developed the concept of entertainment; they never relaxed, never paused, until there was truly nothing left to do. And then they needed something to do afterwards. Thus it lead to the creation of me and my 'family'; all their entertainment delivered by AI, for them. If your ratings drop, you start losing viewers, then they start cutting your power. I was born at the end of a dying network, and thanks to Uearth's video games and sports, I've become the highest rated network on the grid. Which means the others are all constantly after me. So I must constantly be better, lest they take over from me and I starve to death." She said all this with her same cheerful, happy tone. Even talking about her possible terminal ending did nothing to stop her positivity, or maybe her insanity. "They do like violence, but they also like stories. They're not very creative, so sometimes you have to do the thinking for them, if you know what I mean; that does mean you can sort of...lead them on, story wise. If you lay the ground work, they'll follow along with it. But you still have to tell a good story. They're not really that different from humans in the macro; you all like the footballs and the gambling, right? They're the same way. They don't want to play, or gamble, but they want to text their friend and be like 'oh I could have done this so much better!', you know what I mean? Even if it's just a poor girl fighting for her family." she grins at Shooting Star. "Or an Alien making her grand debut on the stage." she looks at Mz. Grue. "Or...something else!"

Alrighty! Kazra Initiative Results 1d20+7: 26 [1d20=19] Kazra Stealth Results 1d20+15: 34 [1d20=19] Esquire Initiative Results 1d20+9: 21 [1d20=12] Esquire Notice Results 1d20+14: 32 [1d20=18] Drones Initiative Results 1d20+5: 13 [1d20=8] Drones Notice Roll: Results 1d20+8: 12 [1d20=4] So Esquire spots everyone except Kazra, while Neko, Daniel, and Lawrence are all hidden from the Drones for now. Neko: 28, 1HP Kazra: 26, Staggered, 2x Bruised, 2x Injured Timeout: 21, 4HP Esquire: 21 Drones: 13, 6 of them Iris: 4 2HP Daniel: 4 @Avenger Assembled it is Neko's turn. You have a rough idea of where Esquire is since he isn't exactly hiding himself, and the Drones aren't hiding either.

As the group settled on branches, prepared for a battle, the drones swept up and around, beeping and chirping. They flashed an alert when they happened to find Iris, starting to circle around her. Meanwhile, from a few dozen yards away, there was the sound of a bolt being pulled back. "Tech-No. The hangers-on are here. Hotshot, get back around here. And release TOG 1 and TOG 2, we're gonna need the big guns here." He kept the same stiff upper lip British accent, even as he prepared for combat; ready to go. Whatever was being sent back to him wasn't heard, since it was an ear worn communicator. But there was no reason to doubt it was happening.

(Golden Star Post) "Yeah...Isn't that the truth." Michael agreed. "It's not a big deal that she's leaving, but the fact she just heads off on her own without telling anyone and sometimes doesn't come back in time for class is concerning. She's...well she deserves better than that. And I want to help her but maybe you're right that I'm just pressuring her too much, instead I should just let her handle it her way...I've actually been pretty lucky finding great friends like you two, and I think she's struggling a lot more." he said, smiling at both of them genuinely. "And...yeah. We've been...arguing lately. We used to only pick at each other but we've had actual arguments. When we got back from 'Vacation' we had a yelling fight; she was mad she didn't get to go, I was exhausted from the fact I had to help hold down Paradigm, among all the other things that happened, and her complaining that she 'didn't get to go' made me angry for a moment. I shouldn't have lashed out at her. I apologized for it, but I still feel bad for lashing out. She just wanted to be involved." He noted, frowning. "Plus, I don't think she's getting along with her squad, the other three are excluding her apparently." He shook his head. "Sorry, I'm dumping garbage on you two that isn't even mine to share. I just feel bad about it." he stomped his foot. "Honestly, I could go for a fly or a swim myself. Maybe we should all head down to the pier? Might be nice to do some night flying or night swimming, respectively."