Quinn

Push shook his head, hopping off the bike and rolling it behind a tree, covering it with some handy branches and brush. "Sorry about my friend, kid. Name's Push, and this here's Powerhouse. Guy named Supercape's stuck somewhere up near Pluto, and unfortunately the only comms he could reach were ours. This Captain Kraken guy's apparently landed nearby, so we're heading in to con him outta his ship and pull off a rescue. Though with you around, we might have a better chance...you got a name?" He tapped his earcomm, hand-waving although Supercape couldn't see it. "Relax, Cape, we'll be out there as fast as we can, but we've still got time to negotiate. If time does gets critical, we'll go in guns blazing, but I don't want to risk damaging the ship if we can avoid it."

And stunt two of the thread! One HP left! Obscure 12 (Kinetic chaos!) [24/24]

Push's eyes fixed on Victory, and his hand whipped up the haft of his hammer...then stopped. His eyes narrowed, the steel-grey looking positively frightening. Air around him started to warp and crackle, the bricks on nearby walls staring to shake, garbage randomly leaping up and around, papers flying hither and thither around him. "I really wish you hadn't said that..." Come on, Quinn, cool your jets. This guy doesn't know us from Adam, and he's AEGIS. That means he only knows what the cops do. Just gotta calm the frak down...alright. Distraction and escape. Three...two...one...!! Without more than a blink, he swiveled his arms, closing his eyes and feeling the tiny amounts of kinetic energy in everything surrounding him...dumpsters...garbage cans...sheets of paper....tin cans...everything was moving at some level, and all it took was a little...push. It started with a tin can bouncing off of Victory's head. Which was followed by a dumpster narrowly missing his left leg. Papers began flying all over, garbage and fallen bricks and detritus bouncing here and there and everywhere, creating absolute chaos in that alleyway, with Victory in the eye of that hurricane. Without looking to see the result, Push ducked down and ran by, scrambling through the chaos and away, deeper into the bowels of the city.

When Supercape said "Stop there", Push parked the bike, before turning to look at Powerhouse. "Powerhouse, you cool to walk from here? Or...jump or fly or...well, whatever it is you do? The bike can't take much more of these trails, I built it for city streets and highways." He motioned at the trail ahead, filled with potholes and bumps. If he had to, he might be able to maneuver it over them...but he really didn't want to take the risk of blowing out a tire or screwing up the suspension.

Quinn shrugged, reaching into his messenger bag and taking out a PDA, tapping it a couple of times to bring up a map. "I say lead on, oh maiden of the rainbow hair. How about the Castel Sant'Angelo, the Trevi Fountain, and St. Peter's Basilica? I'm a big admirer of Renaissance architecture...oh, and we have to visit the Vatican archives." A wide grin was on his face, the flabbergasted mean completely gone. The odds of managing to get back here was slim to none, so he was sure as hell going to make the most of it. Tooling around Roma with a gorgeous woman? Man, how had he walked into this one?

Push raced down the alleyways, feet pounding the pavement as his heart thudded in his ears. Turning corners, over fences, random directions left and right...hope to God it was as disorienting to that bucket of bolts as it was to him. Unfortunately, there was one slight difficulty with evasion by this method. Soon he was completely lost in a maze of alleyways, although he didn't really care much by this point. Keep head under cover. Watch the skies...react, adapt, evade. React, adapt, evade.

Right, first stunt of the thread. Stunting for pure distance, call it... Leap 12 (Kinetic jump-jets) [24/24] Pure distance on this one, no fancy shticks or anything.

A grin creased his features, and as he tumbled closer to the man's hand, Push spoke in a quite friendly-type manner. "Right. Plan B." Push's hand shot out and turned the hero on his back, so that he was sliding forward with his feet towards Victory, looking like he was ready for a kick. "Sorry, mate, but I've got better places to be than jail!" And on the word jail, he slammed his feet down, kicking in the kinetic jets for a split second...except a hell of a lot more powerful than normal. He shot off like a cork from a bottle, flying over Victory's head and thumbing his nose at the hero, before starting to plummet down to the streets. . . . Crap, how am I supposed to land? His arms started windmilling a split second later as he tumbled end over end, but fortunately the force field took up most of the blow as he hit the pavement. Taking advantage of the sudden distance between the two, he took off at a run, racing for the nearest alleyway.

Push blinked his eyes open. He looked at the...man? Cyborg floating in front of him. Then he looked at the AEGIS marker. Then he looked at the cyborg again. Then he looked at the sky. And let out a long-suffering sigh, speaking in a musing voice. "Why is it whenever life seems calmest, fate seems to find some new way of kicking me in the balls? I don't suppose saying I'm innocent'll help any, since it hasn't before. So I think my only response here is...no, and frak you." And on that note, he calmly sat up, dusted off his coat and scarf, then tipped his wool cap (at least, as best he could) towards the hero. Then, in one swift motion, he promptly rolled off the side of the building and fell off.

Date: December 6, 2010. Time: 12:00. High Noon. Weather: Sunny. No clouds. The theme song from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly played in Push's ear, the commlink tuned to an old radio station. The top of St. George's Cathedral was one of his favorite places to relax and reflect, and he kind of needed it then. A hoagie wrapper lay beside him, his lunch finally eaten. All seemed right with the world, for once...a rare quiet day in Freedom City. He amused himself by watching the clouds go by, pondering the shapes of them. Oh, look, a jet. At least, he thought it was a jet. In this town you never could tell if something in the skies was a plane or a flying hero. And God knows the number of accidents that have probably occurred due to that... Meh. Quinn shrugged and took a sip from a water bottle, then dropped it back in his bag. Maybe he had time for a quick siesta before going back to looking for a hideout. With Scratch still at large and the evidence pointing to him still being here, he might as well settle in for a long haul. Yeah, a nap would be juuust right right about now...

In which Victory goes out on patrol...and finds a heap of trouble by the name of Push!

Ok, Push swoops in, Telekinesis... And Tank's Running Low complication kicks in. Not a surprise considering all the high-octane stuff he's been doing. Flare's call if I get an HP or not, or how long I can hold up the building ;)

Frakbuildingcomingdowngottathinkgottathinkgottathinkformkineticleechchainenergymovingfrombuildingtomeandbacktopushupwardsandslowdescentlongenoughfor civviestoescapethatllworkfrakthatscomingdownfastgottamove! The suits fell completely out of his mind as Push roared in, gunning the thrusters to max as he cleared the half-mile in what seemed like ages. The building was crumbling, bits and pieces falling all over, but the structure was still intact. He'd handled collapsed buildings before, but this one...Christ, that sucker was big. He threw up his arms, focusing every ounce of his body into channeling the raw kinetic energy that was bringing the structure down. For a moment, the building slowed...slowed...stopped...then something happened. The ersatz hero felt a shock of pain travel up his entire body, as if every cell was suddenly on fire. His concentration wavered and broke, and the building began to descend again, but in stutters. But each time it went down a little further, and a crushing weariness was setting in on his body. "NonononononoNO!" Refocusing...barely worked, but he felt the link fracture and fray. His face, under the scarf, grew panicked. He was out of juice. Completely drained. He'd been way too reckless, and now those civilians were going to pay the price. Any second now that link'd break and the whole place'd collapse! The sweat ran down his forehead as he threw everything he had left into at least delaying the thing. "Oh hell...Dragonfly! Powerhouse! Get clear!"

"Of course I know which way I'm going! This way's just...a shortcut!" I have no idea which way I'm going... He wrenched the bike over yet another set of bumps in this now very troublesome trail, wincing as he heard the groaning of the engine. The bike wasn't built for this kind of road...Quinn gritted his teeth as Powerhouse just blurted out his name, so much for subtlety. "Still...err...let's have those directions anyway. Just to make sure your scanner is...working. Yeah, let's go with that."

How so?

If Lone_Star comes online, we'll have Kid Cthulhu show up ;)

And a self-invocation of Push's No Sense Of Direction complication. Why? Because this is exactly the kind of situation it should happen in :D

Push sighed with the sigh of a man exercising infinite patience. Not that Powerhouse didn't have a reason, sometimes Quinn could look fairly eccentric. "We ARE negotiating. It's just in this situation, Kraken would be more likely to negotiate with people who look like they'd fit in his view of the world. Which means we wear costumes, savvy?" The roar of the engine brought another smile to his face underneath the scarf, and the two tore off at top speed, aiming completely the wrong way.

You've got to be kidding me...this guy's never heard of pirates? "Pirates? Thieves of the sea? Way back when humanity was sailing around instead of using steel ships, pirates would steal and plunder from merchants and coastal cities and...well, consider these jokers under Kraken to be like space criminals. At least, that's what the newspapers say about this jerk. Supercape, can you give him the Cliff's Notes on this Kraken guy?" He swung his leg over the bike, motioning for Powerhouse to hop on the back. "I've done some modifications to this sucker. Don't know if it can break the sound barrier yet, but it's damn fast, and we need all the speed we can get. Hop on, matey, I'll fill you in on the plan en route."

Push tossed a small pile of clothing to Powerhouse, then thumbed at the alley. "What? You think Kraken'd just let us on his ship? Besides, I've heard of the guy. He likes the whole old-school pirate thing, and if we plan this right, we might get on board without a tussle. Got a similar outfit for ya, so get changed fast, time's not on our side here." Then Supercape's second broadcast came through, and he tapped a finger to the comm. "Don't like giving out names. Just call me a friend."

Full speed shot, and I miss. Frak. Come on, hit the mark... (1d20+8=16)

"Frak!" Push reslung the hammer on his shoulders, leaping up and feeling the familiar jets of kinetic force rush through his legs and push him off the ground. A cushion of warping air erupted under him, causing the wind to kick up beneath his feet and send small papers and dust clouds flying. "You two keep these ones down, I'm going after the runner!" And with that he turned on the gas, shooting off into the air as fast as he could go. The distance was far too wide, though, and the suit was going at nearly double the speed Push was going. In a few seconds, it'd be out of range. In desperation, he thrust his arm forward, charging a blast... Lead the target, lead the target, lead the target...there! And he flung the shot as hard as he could right across the scum's flight path...and missed. A torrent of curses flowed from his mouth as he watched the figure disappear into the sky, Push simply hanging there and trying not to plummet. He'd nearly drained his tank on this one. Turning, he began to move backwards towards the war zone they'd made of the street. Not that it was hard to miss with those two craters in the street.

Ditto.

The bike roared to a stop outside what looked like an abandoned car garage, and Push parked it in a side alley beside it, wrapping it in a tarp he kept stored in the back as usual. "One of these days I've got to get a decent method of stashing this thing...Wyrd used a cloaking device a few months back, hmm..." A quickchange, and a completely different individual stepped out from the alley...the Dread Pirate Quinn! He cut a dashing figure in his new outfit, a classic pirate longcoat with oversized cuffs, a tricorned hat and knee-high boots, with a redder than blood sash around his waist, and an eyepatch (conviniently see-through on his side) over one eye. Oversized trousers and a puffy shirt were beneath the coat, with his undercover bulletproof shirt hidden underneath. No reason to be dumb, after all. The only things unchanged were his long red scarf, still wrapped around his neck and covering his lower face, the massive hammer still slung across his back, and the messenger bag over his shoulders (though he had decored it with a few piratey bits and bobs from the costume pack). I must be completely mad. Of course, if I wasn't, this'd never work.

Right, let's go with that.