Shofet

The Meta-Naut's initiative: 15

The Meta-Naut Raya suddenly felt her eye twitch beneath her helmet visor. She clenched her teeth, then she took a moment to confirm just who had the stones to mock her. The blaster around her hand changed shape, somewhat, taking on a more martial air as she leveled it at the enemy. They were going to regret this. "OH YEAH?" she spat, her translator changing her speech into their tongue. "WELL LET'S SEE HOW FUNNY YOU FIND THIS!" She fired off her blast, aiming it directly for the groin of her mocker. She had no idea if there was even anything there, but she really hoped there was. It was a spectacularly spiteful move, but Raya Wells was a spectacularly spiteful person when needled, and oh boy was she needled.

Oh! I totally forgot. I shall fix that.

First toughness save: 20. Safe there. Next... 25. I am feeling really lucky. Now, to try and hit one of these jerks. Using a tachyonic blast... 26 to hit. That's a DC 21 Toughness save for the one that badmouthed her.

Mia looked off at the side, and sniffled slightly, nodding curtly. "Yeah... Yeah, of course," she said very quietly. She pinched her brow, and stood there in silence until a stray thought came to her. "...Judy, I'm sorry I ruined this revelation with my... being me. Look, I'm going to see if my babo can pick me up for Thanksgiving early... I... Keep in touch this Thanksgiving, okay? Text me and... Maybe don't use that group chat we had." At the last request, she tried not to look at Ashley. "Unless, I guess, you have to for like security stuff." She sighed, and quickly texted something out to her granddad. Just said she wanted to come home early, that she had a fight with a friend. Everything was already packed, of course. That was easy with a dimensional pocket for stuff. There was a vibration, and she nodded, putting her phone away once more with a neutral expression. "Alright," she said. "...He'll be here in a bit..."

The Meta-Naut The Meta-Naut's eyes lit up when the creatures were revealed. Suddenly, all the panic she had been feeling just a moment ago was gone. The unknown element removed, she could go ahead and begin an assault with confidence. She took only a second to chastise herself for almost losing her cool. That couldn't happen again. Eyes focusing on the one who shot at her, a malicious grin crossed her face as she hatched a plan. The translucent image of the blaster around her hand reshaped slightly into its tractor beam form, and she aimed it at her attacker. Her plan was simple: She was going to use him as a bludgeon to beat the other assailants with, taking out multiple opponents at once! "Take this!" she said, the beam firing down toward the strange looking being.

Woof, that's a 13 on that toughness test. Rerolling with a hero point and... 26. Excellent! Now, she's going to try and attack one of these things with a grapple. And I rolled a 10! Nevermind.

The Meta-Naut The Meta-Naut fidgeted with her badge for a moment, and as Mag-Might signed with her hands, a little cone of light projected out over Mag-Might's hands. It scanned them for a moment, before producing a robotic sounding translation for her. "Ah-hah!" she cried. "It works! Oh, man, but I'm going to have to let it scan you to work. That's going to be rough. Still! I can understand you!" Then, her attention turned to Rebellion. "Drug dealers aren't usually my thing - live and let live and all - but this one seems to be causing a lot of trouble and I don't want that in my home city. Superpower drugs are no joke. So I am in. But I am going to warn you, I am not really someone used to fighting people with powers. But you already knew that," she said to Rebellion.

Mia stopped and thought about what she had just heard. By all accounts, she should have been ashamed of herself. Shouldn't she have? She had assumed and blown up at Ashley and now she was wrong. But she was still angry. She was still hurt. She slumped her shoulders, her bangs slipping over her face and obscuring her face. "...I am sorry I yelled at you, Ashley," she said quietly, but there was still resentment in her voice, resentment she couldn't mask. "And I'm... glad you were able to come to that realization." The skin of her fingers groaned noisily as her thumbs dragged across them as her hands tightened into fists. Then, just as quickly they relaxed. She sighed, rubbing some more tears out of her eyes. "I... I can't help it. I'm still so goddamn mad at you. I meant it. I wanted to be you. Everything you projected. You were strong, you're... You didn't need to please anyone. Cool... And I... I wanted to be like that. I wanted to be like you because I thought you were my friend and I thought you were cool." "...And it was a lie. I don't know if I can forgive that," she said very quietly. "...I want to, because I know you were doing it for Judy, but I don't know if I can." Her voice was hoarse from her throat being tight.

Mia’s expression suddenly darkened at the latest revelation. Her head whipped to look Ashley square in the eyes, and there was danger there. Her lips curled into a sneer, and her teeth were tightly clenched. “You… aren’t… GAY? YOU WERE PRETENDING?” she practically hollered. She waved a finger at Ashley. “☠☠☠☠ YOU! How dare you? How dare you? The amount of bull☠☠☠☠ the community goes through, and you think you can just pretend? What is wrong with you? God, I can’t believe this! I thought you were so cool and then it turns out not only are you pretending to be my friend, you’re lying to my face about being gay!” Mia suddenly looked lost. “I thought… You were… God damnit. You said it so casually and self-assured and I wanted to be able to be like that. I thought hey, Ash is cool, she knows who she is and yeah, maybe she’s a little mean but sort of comes with the territory! But no! You’re just actually a bad person! COOL!” She wiped at moisture from her eyes. “I’m gonna be on the roof,” she said. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep your stupid secret.” With that, there was a flash and Mia disappeared. Yet just as quickly as that happened, she reappeared, looking around, confused. "Damnit, you've got me so upset I can't even..." She tossed her head and started to head for the door.

Soliton Soliton's head was swimming at the realization that the woman she was fighting was Angela Ruiz, one of her best friends from Joseph Clark. She didn't have superpowers, as far as she knew, last time they spoke. But Soliton didn't have time to question her old friend, instead watching her get yanked away by Octoman and into a fire hydrant. She felt some concern, but the girl did just try and fry her face, so she understood why Octoman did what he did. She was more annoyed by what Angela had to say as she was struggling. "Octoman and I are just friends, okay? You always do this! You always assume I'm trying to date every boy I-- Ope! None of that!" Her attention was drawn to the jet of acid that Gabe was firing at Octoman, and she knew she had to do something about this guy. Conjuring a giant gas canister, she tried to envelop Gabe, but found that the guy was too slippery for her. "Ah, come on!" she said. "Can't do anything today." She looked to Octoman, wondering what he was going to do next.

GM "Oh my God, Mia, it's been forever! You totally dropped off the face of the earth this summer, what the hell happ-- AAAAAAAA," Angela screamed as her reunion was cut short by tentacles wrapped around her and suddenly yanked her into the geyser of a broken fire hydrant. She tried to struggle, but there was no use. Suddenly, Angela felt herself cool down rapidly, her metallic skin going from red hot to a cool chrome colour. She looked around, bewildered, and tried to reignite herself, but found she couldn't. She struggled against Ben's grasp, her eyes wide. "Hey!" she said. "Lemme go, you dick! Mia, get your boyfriend offa me!" She cried. Gabe's eyes went wide, and he turned his focus on Octoman. "Let go of her!" He aimed towards Octoman, focusing a blast of concentrated acid in Octoman's direction. Unfortunately for him, and fortunately for Octoman, he missed.

Alright, to cap things off, Mia is going to attempt to use Create Object to contain our gaseous friend with a big gas canister. That's a DC20 Reflex for him to avoid, so... 22. Then it's Ben up again. To recap, Angela is semi-depowered and attempting to flee, it looks like Gabe is about to do the same, and Mia has attempted to contain him but failed.

Yes, and yes. That's all fine. @Tarrakhash.

Mia didn't entirely know what to do with this information. However, it did make her nervous. Dio had been a spy the whole time? Oh man, had he told Leroy's mom about the whole Black House thing? Oh no, she was probably on this lady's ☠☠☠☠list. She frowned, and held her hands in a moment, making a stressed noise, before looking up at Leroy balefully. "So Dio is also someone who could..." she paused, then her expression became more dire. "Am I going to find out Ben is secretly a robot? Like, I was prepared for secrets. Secrets are normal with super stuff. But this is some surveillance state crap, and I am not into it," she said, her breath becoming more erratic. Her face blanched a bit. Feeling something unpleasant coming on, Mia pulled out her inhaler and took a puff on it, then took a few seconds to just breathe. In and out, like she was taught. "Okay. Is there any other potentially big secret we need to get out into the air here? Because I just found out two people I considered friends, one of them a good one," she said, side-eyeing Ashley "are more like handlers paid or ordered or something to tolerate their, ah, charges friends." She sighed, rubbing her temples. "I don't mean to be mean, but... You know. Would be nice to know."

GM "What?" The man said, confused. Then, horror dawned on his face. "No! You can't! We need this! I... Can't fight, I'm not really a combatant, old man body and all, but..." He looked around, and then began to pick up random objects around him, lightly tossing them at Valkyrja and the horse and watching as they bounced off of them harmlessly. "Nyeehhhh," he said. It was clear the old man posed no obvious physical threat to the two, meaning they were able to move on to the dimension that held Raya's soul easily enough. Normally, it would have been a chore to locate the dimension, but the cabinet provided an easy in. The dimension itself was... strange. A great mass of neon colours: pink hills, green sky, red ground, where weird, whale like beings drifted through the aether, their sound sounded distorted and unnatural. There was no obvious sign of Raya. In fact, there was no sign of intelligent life at all, beyond what appeared to be a single stone edifice out in the distance, made in the shape of a rigid looking... creature. It had no obvious facial features on a round, mantis-like head aside from a long trunk that descended down to a distended belly. A pair of wings extended from its back, while its arms were like that of a lobster. Its body ended in a mass of tentacles in the place of legs. Aside from that, there wasn't much.

The Meta-Naut The Meta-Naut groaned at the second arrow coming out of nowhere. That wasn't good. She looked around frantically, trying to find the source of the attack. Their defences were holding up, sure, but her force field wasn't that reliable and she really didn't like being attacked from somewhere she couldn't see. But as she flew around over the mountain, towards the ruins, she couldn't find anything. "Aaaaaahhhh," she groaned, frowning as her eyes darted about. She didn't want to freak out. Justice had just started to like her and she knew if she lost her cool, that would stop. The Meta-Naut was an adventurer, not a superhero. She had said that. But still. No one wanted to be around a coward. And she was a coward, wasn't she? Always running from things. Freaking out when things didn't go right. No, get it under control. "Where ARE these guys?"

Mia watched with delight as the birds feasted upon her summoned bread. Thankfully out here, no one was around to sue her for attempting to copy WonderBread. Now that the pigeons were eating, they also seemed a lot more cute and slightly less terrifying (They'd be completely pleasant if not for the sheer volume of them.) Still waaaay too many birds for Mia to let her guard down entirely. "Heh heh. You're welcome for the bread. Name's Soliton, I make things, sort of my thing. I'd ask your names but there's like a million of you and the human brain can only process about 150 people so I'm pretty sure that's not gonna happen, but I want you all to think of me as a friend anyway. I can do requests, if you like, bird-bath, giant seed balls, bunch of statues for you all to ah, enjoy. You know. Just ask," she said, speaking quickly and wearing a grin on her face as though she was making a sort of sales pitch. She knew she might be making a bit of a fool of herself, but she was also pretty sure that this could go south again at almost any time and she wanted to ingratiate herself to the feathery friends as quick as possible to ensure that didn't happen. Not to mention there were definitely still some of them giving Davyd the stink-eye and she was hoping that maybe by jabbering and putting on a show, they'd focus more on her and not on the person they seemed to equate with their worst enemy.

The Meta-Naut will fly on forward for sure, but only about 450 feet which is her movement range at Flight 3. She's gonna take another notice check... 1. Yikes.

The Meta-Naut "Woah!" cried the Meta-Naut as the arrow came whizzing out at her, her life flashing before her eyes. Then, it hit her force field with a sizzle and a hiss and hit the ground. The Meta-Naut could hear her heart pumping in her ears, and she looked around frantically for whoever could have shot at her. "What the hell?" she asked, before flying higher up into the air to see if she could catch her assailant with a bird's eye view, in addition to hopefully moving out of range of the enemy's attack. As she looked down, she realized she could see nothing. She frowned deeply. This wasn't good. "I can't see who did that, can you?" she called down to Justice, her blaster now manifesting over her hand in attempt to give herself some measure of security.

Soliton - 19 IC Posts + 3 GM Posts + 2 Extracurriculars (2 PP) = 5 PP Amygdala: 1 IC post Everybody Knows: 7 IC Posts Extradimensional Birdwatching Club: 1 IC Post Puppy Love: 2 IC Posts, 3 GM Posts Teen Idle: 2 IC Posts We’ll Shine Together: 6 IC Posts Extracurriculars: 20Q (1 PP), Reputation (1 PP) Corona - 10 IC Posts + 3 GM Posts = 2 PP Birthday Girl: 7 IC Posts Crime Doesn’t Pay: 2 IC Posts Kingmaker: Checkmate: 1 IC Post, 2 GM posts Kingmaker: Queen's Defence: 1 IC Post, 1 GM Post The Meta-Naut - 5 IC Posts = 1 PP Meta-Justice Z: 5 IC Posts

Mia's eyes narrowed at the 'somebody like you' comment. "Whaddaya mean, someone like him? Like with superpowers, or like... nobility or you know... blackness? 'Cause the last one sounds super hypocritical 'cause isn't your mom like..." she stopped there, frowning. "I don't remember your mom's tribe. GOD. How did I not figure out it was you? Mom hate-watches C-SPAN all the time." She furrowed her brow. How didn't she figure it out? She supposed she didn't actually pay all that much attention in the past, but come on! She should have made like, some connection, right? Ugh, this was deeply embarrassing. Still, no reason to make it more awkward than she had already made it. "And, uh... Yeah. What's up with Leroy's family?"

20Q/The Interview So, Soliton, where are you from? Freedom City, born and raised. The Fens, actually. The Fens? That’s a pretty poor part of town, isn’t it? It is, yeah, I grew up with not a lot of money. Just sort of how it goes, sometimes. Did growing up poor bother you? I’d be lying if I said it didn’t. Mom and dad always said there wasn’t any shame in it, but people make comments when you’re wearing hand-me-downs and clothes with holes in them a lot of the time. But you can create objects, can’t you? That’s one of your powers. Why didn’t you just make things? Well, just suddenly making stuff would draw a lot of attention, you know? That’s what mom always said. It would make people ask questions. I mean, I wasn’t happy about it. I always thought I could fix things if I was allowed to use my powers, make things easier for all of us. I got pretty bitter. Bitter, you say? Did you ever think about using your powers for evil? I mean, not evil. But yeah, I definitely considered… Okay, I can use a dimensional pocket to store stuff, right? I sort of… I sort of used that to shoplift a few times. Did you get caught? Not using my powers, but trying to filch stuff? Yeah. It sort of got me started on the whole path I am on now, where I’m in Claremont and stuff. Do you feel guilty about it? Yeah, I do. It caused my parents a lot of stress and it was a bad way to just… act out. I was feeling trapped about not using my powers, and I just… I wanted nice things. But that wasn’t the right way to go about it. So what are you doing now? I’m going to Claremont, and doing the whole ‘teen superhero’ thing. It’s a lot different than my old high school, for sure. How do you feel about being in Claremont? Honestly? It’s pretty great. I have made a lot of friends, and it’s nice to be able to use my powers openly. It’s a place I feel accepted. Everyone’s a lot nicer than they were in public school. How about the superhero end of things? It’s pretty great. I haven’t done much yet, but I really do like helping people. Not to mention I enjoy showing off. That’s a definite plus. Do you see yourself continuing with superhero work after high school? Oh, def. Superheroing is a lifelong sort of thing, and besides, probably one of the best outlets to use my powers, you know? Not to mention, being a teleporter, I can help so many people and I feel like that kind of gives me an obligation to at least try, you know? What are your other plans after high school? College? University? I’d like to take a gap year, then I want to study chemistry in university. I haven’t picked out a university yet, but it would be cool to leave the city for a bit. I’d like to get my masters, I think. Maybe even a doctorate? But that sounds like a lot of school. Of course I don’t know how I’m gonna pay for all this. Stuff’s expensive. A gap year? What would you do with that? I think I’d like to visit Europe. I don’t have to worry about lodging because I can just teleport back home in six seconds, so it’s kind of easy for me to do. I’d probably have to get something like a job though so I could pay for school. But hey, could travel in my free time, which is more than a lot of people could say. Would there be anyone you’d like to bring with you if you went to Europe? Well, my parents, but they work too much. Mom works at the book shop and dad has his computer repair shop. Maybe I could bring my babo, my mom’s dad, back to Bosnia and we could see where he grew up. Oh, I could also maybe bring my friend Danica, or maybe Lulu around. I don’t think I’d be allowed to take my friend Judy anywhere since I don’t think her sister would appreciate it. Have you ever traveled before? Only once, to Bosnia with my mom and her dad. It’s also the only time I’ve ever been on a plane. Also might be the only time I’ll ever be on a plane, considering, well, you know. Teleporting. You seem to What would you do if your powers disappeared tomorrow? EUGH. Don’t even joke about that. I have no idea what I’d do without my powers. They’re… They’re a part of my whole… Me. Do you feel your powers make you better than people? Just different? No one’s better than anyone else. My powers make me different, and they come with certain responsibilities, but I just got lucky in essentially a cosmic lottery. There are people who think having powers make them like… entitled to mistreat people, and we call those people jerks. How do you feel about other people with powers? Aliens? It’s weird, we’re still kind of finding our place in the world in a lot of ways. The feds tamp down on a lot of us, and there’s definitely still a lot of people who don’t trust us or aliens. But we’re just people, you know? Would you change anything for meta-humans or aliens? I’d definitely like for us to be able to use our powers and live more openly. I think that we’re not embracing our potential enough. I’d like to change that. As a final note, is there any advice you’d like to give your past self? Just talk to mom about how you feel. She’s more understanding than you think she is, and she will understand how much not using your powers and hiding them away is hurting you.

Character sheet Guidebook HellQ Interview/20Q Reputation