Electra
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Once the issue with the kids was taken care of, Danica relaxed enough to pop back into her shell, stand up, and look around. The alive wooden elephant was still very weird but way outside her expertise, and they were all home and safe and... "Oh no!" she exclaimed in dismay. "My Segway is still on the spaceship!" She'd been preoccupied at the time by being scooped up by elephant trunk and hadn't even tried to hold onto the machine that would've been much too heavy for her anyway. She put her hands over her mouth. "That thing costs like a thousand bucks and they aren't even making new ones! My parents are gonna flip out!"
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"You're doing fine," Paige assured her warmly, making a subtle gesture to the crew offstage. The two cameramen both stepped back a couple of feet and the sound engineer pushed her headphones down around her neck. "Take as much time as you need. "I know this can't be an easy thing to talk about, and I'm really very grateful to you for coming in." She took a drink from her own water bottle. "Worrying about yourself is relatively straightforward. Worrying about the people you love, that's so much harder and scarier."
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No, I think I've got it, Baldy was Buddy, even if he wasn't, like, entirely bald. Even a guy who got knocked unconscious early on is a better fighter than a guy who uses a kid, was the taunt she was going for. Raina fails the toughness save by 2, so she takes a bruise. She will use Fast Taunt to make taunting the guys a second time a move action, and then use her move action to taunt them a second time! She will use her standard action to Fireball at Cueball and gets an 18. I don't know if that hits given his proximity and state of demoralization, all I know is that it is impossible for Orokos to have a good day.
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"I... what?" Danica asked, baffled. She could tell that something had bothered Redbird a lot, but it wasn't exactly clear what that was. The way she talked made it a little harder to figure out too, like she was a character from She-Ra: Princess of Power. "I just... my friend told me that this was a good place to come if I wanted to get a car made so I could actually drive it?" she offered. "And so that I could fit in it even with my shell on, and it could carry my scooter?" She gestured vaguely to the door beyond which the Segway was parked. She had no idea who or what a mender perilous was, and it didn't really seem the right time to ask.
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Raina held up the sweater and took a long, considering look at it. If she was nothing else, she was a shrewd judge of fashion, even fashion that didn't necessarily fall within her tastes. "This is really nicely done," she told Cathy. "Very sturdy, and the cables are tight. You made this yourself?" On the table, Merlin held up a jumper of his own, done in the same style on smaller needles and in sport-weight yarn. He gave his a good looking over as well, then pulled it over his head. The bar was cold, he explained, especially when people insisted on going in and out. "I'm not putting mine on," Raina replied firmly, "not with as much time as I spent on my hair and makeup. But it's a really nice sweater, Cathy. Thank you." She folded it neatly and tucked it into the knapsack. "Now, assless chaps, grasshopper," she began, turning her attention to Fred, "are an amazing invention in men's fashion, in that they are pants that cover everything except the important business. Theoretically you wear them over regular pants, but the key is that this is optional and changes the look entirely, if you know what I'm getting at."
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"There's always a bus coming along in Freedom City!" Danica agreed, doing her best to maintain her optimism despite the miserable cold. The Segway she'd been borrowing had finally given up the ghost completely, and since the company wasn't even selling them anymore, she was kind of out of options. She'd tried one of the scooters the company made now, but they were too wobbly to actually stand on, and trying to put her foot down all the time for balance sort of defeated the purpose. So this morning she was on foot and unshelled, dressed in as many layers of warm things as she could get away with, and waiting for a bus that hadn't come yet. She was super glad Ryder had come with her, or she might have given in to the temptation to be kind of miserable. The clicking from Ryder's backpack caught her attention. "Oh," she asked, immediately perking up, "did you bring Magenta with?"
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"You are indeed at ArcheTech, Agent Irons," Miss Americana said smoothly, stepping into view of the screen. "I'm afraid there was catastrophic damage to your robot shell, but we were able to upload your neural programming into a secured partition on the ArcheTech servers. Everything you see around you is of course a simulation, but if there's anything I could add to make you more comfortable, please let me know. We have Keres as well, in a separate and equally secure partition and will also be speaking to him. Even as she spoke with the agent, she accepted the box of parts and opened a tight radio link to Eira. What's the matter? What did you find?
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Danica startled momentarily when the door burst open, but quickly recovered. "Hi!" she chirped, taking in the big woman in all her mightiness. This definitely had to be some kind of superhero, she decided. She'd met a lot of superheroes, and the woman definitely had the vibe. Accepting the invitation, she made her way slowly into the garage, relaxing immediately when the place turned out to be heated. It felt so good! "I'm in disguise!" she explained to the lady. "I know Mr. Hunter does work for superheroes, but I thought it would be rude to draw people's attention to his house! This house is awesome, it looks like it could be on a TV show or something, and... wow!" Her attention was caught by the garage itself, huge and spotless and full of really neat vehicles in different stages of repair. Most of them seemed like old classic cars, but it was entirely possible that one might be a superhero's ride, in for a tuneup or new turborockets or something like that. "This place should be a TV show!" she decided. "But yeah, see?" She shrugged off her backpack, letting it drop away into nowhere as her shell came up to cover her, coat and all. "Ta-da!"
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North Bay was very nice, Danica decided as she putted along the edge of the immaculately-paved road past the huge houses, but she definitely wouldn't want to live there. The houses were beautiful and the big old trees and sprawling gardens were probably super nice when the weather was warm, but everything was awfully spread out. Also there were no bus stops because it was a rich area, and there were very few sidewalks, because same. She'd had to find the nearest bus stop and then go on two wheels for nearly a mile to the actual place. Trying to keep her balky old borrowed scooter out of the slushy puddles at the edge of the road and also not get hit by cars was a little bit challenging. At least there wasn't much traffic! She was relieved to finally reach the address and turn down the long driveway. The driveway was pretty cool, lined with tall old trees whose branches arched high overhead and probably made a ceiling when the leaves were on them. It was also immaculately paved, without a pothole or a smidgen of gravel anywhere to be seen. It was also-also a bit of a wind tunnel, making Danica tuck her face a little further down into the scarf she'd wrapped around her neck, over the hood and knit hat she was also wearing. Between that and her sweater and two pairs of pants and puffy coat and mittens, she barely felt underdressed even without her shell on. Still cold, though. Freedom City was always so cold in winter! The Segway did not like the cold, either. It was in much poorer condition than her lost one had been, and was making sad rattling Segway-noises. At the end of the driveway she found a huge old handsome house, even bigger and handsomer than most of the ones she'd ridden past. Attached was a garage that looked like it could fit at least four cars and probably more, with its own little door out front. Ellie had said Mr. Hunter worked out of his garage most of the time, so she headed that way. Carefully dismounting from the Segway of Sadness, she adjusted the straps of her backpack and rang the buzzer by the door.
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"Shit," Raina muttered. Forcing a close-in encounter would not serve her well, but letting a hostage die looked pretty bad one one's heroic Permanent Record. Pulling the mirror from her pocket, she scrubbed her fingers over it quickly as she hummed, imagining herself as something less invisible, but very different. When the invisibility dropped, she was not a college-age witch on a broom, but rather a massively-built superhero, Centurion-on-steroids type, in a matte black costume and mask with deep red flames imprinted all over it. There was no broom in sight, and anywhere a monkey might have been was concealed by a billowing black cape. "Firestarter?" she asked mockingly, her voice deep and resonant like it came from a chest much larger than her own. "Trust me, I finish all my fires. Gotta say I'm surprised to see one of the Devil's Advocates hiding behind a little kid. I guess riding on that cheap little bike for too long rubbed the balls right off you. Even that hairless little pissant managed better than that." Raina-the-hulk turned her attention to Born Loser. "I don't even have to ask about you; using that goddamn stupid axe to take out empty minivans while the folks with powers are fighting. You're nothing but a couple of cheap low-powered wannabes pretending they're a big bad in a city that eats little shrimp like you for breakfast."
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Raina will switch from Concealment to Morph in her array, which gives her a +20 to Disguise. She will be disguising herself as a massive, hulking superhero, and attempting to Taunt and demoralize Angel. Her skill mastery in Bluff will give her a 34 on the roll against Angel. She will also attempt Mass Taunt (Mass Demoralize but with Bluff as the base skill instead of intimidate) against Born Loser, with a -2 to the check, so that's a 32.
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Singularity will Interpose. She fails the first roll, so I will spend that HP you just gave me and reroll. She succeeds on the reroll.
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After only a moment, the tortoise shell in question, already quite a bit larger than a normal example of the type, grew somewhat larger, big enough for an adult to crawl into with no trouble. Danica came to the front opening and looked up at Jolan. "Um, hello," she said, looking abashed and relieved all at once. "Are you here to help with the kids? I swear we didn't mean to take them, and the pirates totally kidnapped us first! They put us in their daycare when they saw we weren't adults, but then the guy who was supposed to be watching the children just up and left, and we couldn't make our escape and just leave all the kids with nobody taking care of them! They're practically babies... I'm pretty sure!"
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ic (OMTB) The Young These Days Are Glued to TV Screens
Electra replied to Avenger Assembled's topic in City Center
Both guests looked pleased at Richard's evaluation. "Well," Kinsley told him, "if you find yourself looking for a new project after SuperCrime! wraps..." "Which you definitely should," Devin added, "because a whole lot of people will be really disappointed if you guys stop making television!" ..."There are a lot of so-called 'conspiracy theories' out there that people aren't paying attention to!" Kinsley continued smoothly. "You could put a lot of knowledge into the world and stop some very shady things all at once!" "We'd be happy to consult!" Devin assured him, "even be cohosts! Lesser-billed cohosts, of course!" "We wouldn't even ask you to do stories that might jeopardize planetary safety like the secret war against the Terminus," Kinsley went on, "we understand some things need to be secret." "Yeah, we're not crazy," Devin agreed. "But people deserve to know the truth." -
ic (OMTB) The Young These Days Are Glued to TV Screens
Electra replied to Avenger Assembled's topic in City Center
"Because of all the crises since," Devin replied, shrugging. "Weird things happen here all the time, and superheroes are always coming and going. Within a couple months of the infiltration there were Grue down in Missouri, more T-baby protests in Freedom City, the secret war against the Terminus, and all the other stuff that heroes deal with. People look to the next big thing and don't expect the past to come up and bite them right on the-" "It's not just a matter of priorities," Kinsley cut in. "It's also a matter of pull. Various governmental organizations and private companies were very interested in getting access to some of the curator technology that was abandoned after the last battle. Check out Katastrof and Sorenson Industries, they're this mega-sketchy Swedish conglomerate that used some really shady connections to get a whole load of drones. No research ever came out about them, no papers, nobody ever talked about them again, but reliable sources say that a year after the whole thing, K&S lost an entire underground research facility to some kind of "wave of liquid metal." But nobody will say anything about it, or what happened to those other dead drones. If somebody does know something, they're not talking." -
Paige beamed at him as she shook his hand. "Thank you so much! We've really tried to make our show educational as well as entertaining. And you shouldn't need to worry about makeup, the lighting here shouldn't be intense enough to wash you out." As the cameramen finished their argument, the assistant provided Cobalt Templar with a bottle of water and Paige escorted him to the stage. It was set up simply, a living room theme with two comfortable chairs angled towards each other and a small table between them. It could've been the set for a thousand public access shows, and probably had been. "I don't know how familiar you are with television interviews," Paige began, sitting down in the stage-right seat, "but this should be a pretty uncomplicated one. Eamon here has his camera set up on you, and Dave here will be using a steadicam to get overall shots of the stage and of both of us. I'm going to ask you some basic background questions, then we can move on to talking about the Curator's infiltration. If there's ever any question you don't want to answer or that makes you uncomfortable, you can let me know and we'll go a different direction and edit around it." She gave him a disarming smile. "I'm sure if you've watched the show, you know we don't try to make our guests look bad. We'll probably only end up using a small portion of the interview overall because we're packing a lot into one show, but you should use as much time and detail as you like to tell the story. Do you have any questions before we start?"
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"And at this point you still didn't know that this was not the person you knew, is that correct?" Paige asked curiously. "What was the first thing that went across your mind when you thought it was your friend doing all these things? Did you have any ideas for why she might be doing that, or were you simply focused on trying to stop her?" She made a mental note to try and pull any footage of that moment; a plainclothesed heroine with a massive sword would be a nice image to add to the show.
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"I still have a home in the city," Fleur explained, "but I spend a lot of my time in a different dimension, yes. I call it Sanctuary. It was a mostly destroyed alternate Earth, but I've been rehabbing it for, oh, almost ten years now. And doesn't that make me feel super old," she confessed with a laugh. "It started out as just my headquarters, a place to practice using my powers to clean up disasters and as a holding area for civilians." You know how it is," she added, "when you're trying to get people out of the way of a fight but there's no place safe to put them? I just move them there for a few minutes or hours, in a safe building there." She waved a hand at the plants and they all began to bloom much more quickly, flowers widening out and becoming full, then overblown, then dropping their petals and drooping. "We've ended up taking in a number of small refugee populations over the years, with the help of private charities and several universities, some religious groups, anybody who'll lend a hand. Right now there's about twenty thousand people and a few thousand giant bees living there." As the plants withered and collapsed into humus, she reached into the remains and pulled out a small handful of seeds, tucking them into a pouch on her belt.
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Danica was looking decidedly nervous as well, watching the crowd over the side of the howdah and wincing at the loud crunching noises from the elephant. This adventure had not exactly gone according to plan. "Okay kids," she said brightly to the youngsters, "How about we go back in my shell and I'll show you the awesomeness of Disney movies!" The little ones were just as happy to go back into the relative safety of the shell (even the New Jersey sky was awfully big when you were used to space!) and Danica followed them right on in.
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"I don't think the human agents are going to be our best source of information on this, even if they decide to tell all the truth they know," Miss A agreed with Voltage's assessment. In the air, the little pantomime being sketched out by Dragonfly's drone program showed the agents arriving right at the end of whatever pivotal moment had just taken place. "I think we're going to have to wake up the principal actors in this thing and see what they can tell us." She picked up a sleek little cellphone and punched a speed-dial number. "Hey FB, you still in the building? Yeah I know it's late, just like I know you're ganking my server space to play Valheim with your buddies in California." She grinned just a little at whatever response that got her. "I need you to jack in and keep an eye on the partitioned drives we just set up. If anything starts trying to get away, don't let it. Uh-huh, you'll know it when you see it. Yeah, okay." Setting down the phone, she turned to the others. "Irons first, then Keres," she decided. "One way or another, we'll get the whole story." Rather than waste her time with the keyboard, Miss A pressed her fingertips to the console and let her brain do the work. In just a minute or two, the room's large main television screen was filled with the image of a plain beige bedroom, one bed, one desk, one chair, one lamp. Sleeping on the bed was the familiar, even iconic form of the Patriot himself. "Simulated environment," she explained. "He'll come online in a moment."
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"These guys are f---ing worst," Raina muttered, trying like hell to shake off the cloying, rotting, tired feeling of magic settling over her. She was able to do it, and so was Merlin, but only just. "We better get out of here." She shot out another long lick of fire, grabbing the unattended motorcycle and flinging it like a giant, unwieldy frisbee at the other two bikes. It skidded across the road in front of them, raising a truly impressive shower of sparks, but didn't come near to actually hitting them. Raina said a few more bad words, then flew a good distance away with Merlin clinging to her shoulder.
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Okay, tried the bike attack thing, it does not succeed. IC coming soon
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Raina and Merlin both fail the Reflex and succeed on the Fort save. She's going to yeet Buddy's magic bike into the ocean, which I think I can do without a roll since it's not moving and has no person with it., while Merlin uses his action to climb up onto her shoulder. Her action will be to fly out of range.
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As it turned out, Danica spotted Heroditus first, waving at him enthusiastically until he came over to her group. "Hey, happy almost-Valentine's Day!" she told him brightly. "Look at this, it's a robot!" she added enthusiastically, gesturing to the very large pink metal bug on the edge of her shell. "Ryder built it! Have you met Ryder yet, and Astrid?" she asked, nodding to the people she'd been talking with. "So many people came to the party, I'm totally stoked!" Indeed, the party seemed to be rapidly picking up steam, with students eating, dancing, talking, even singing and playing instruments for entertainment. "You should definitely try the food, it's awesome! My mom made cookies, and I got the caf to put together a big party platter of veggies and dip, and there's itty bitty sandwiches I cut with a heart-shaped cookie cutter!"
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"Pfft, Matt would never ride horses, he thinks they're bougie," Raina shared with a roll of her eyes. "He had, like, a dissertation on it the first time we went out and bought boots for Fred." She gave him a look, tilted her head a little. "You might be able to pull off the hat, but only if you got some facial hair going," she decided. Merlin chirruped at her and waved his package, indicating that he wanted his sweater. Raina stole one of his pineapple chunks since she'd given her drink away, then started fiddling with the strings and paper on Cathy's gift. Merlin was much quicker, given that he had smaller fingers. "The drink's sherry and lemon-lime pop," she told Fred, "it's good for starting out the night. What do you think?"