Curious Key

Warp cocked her head at the male officer, still smiling her best smile, considering how to best grease the wheels of the establishment when he turned from officer of the law to light, near blinding. Warp closed her eyes tight and raised her arm over her eyes to ward away the light. Blinking away the few dots left in her vision, Warp lowered her arm and stared at the woman standing where the officer had been, taking a long moment to process what she was seeing.

28. Warp nails the reflex save, and through the magic of Evasion is also untouched.

"Too bad you can't transmit too," Kat said, peering suspiciously around at the hallway, her eyes glowing red. "Or we'd be free of his ears. I'm running on entropy; if something exists, I can erase it. No exceptions." She narrowed her eyes and raised her hand toward the wall, red sparks flashing around the darkness surrounding her arm. "Dunno about you guys, but I think they've got both ends of the hall covered and protected a little too much for our taste." And Kat smiled. "So let's make a new exit." Entropy bolted from her fingertips, roiling over the wall as it ate through matter, leaving a clean hole with smooth edges into a white room, filled with unfinished projects and worksmanship that Kat was fairly sure would take several PHDs to properly understand. She took a step through, peeked back with a grin; she could either take all this lightly or freak and the latter helped no one. She called "Ladies first!" Before she dove through into the workshop and away from whatever welcome the professor had prepared.

Warp is going to shoot a disintegrate at the wall to try to open an alternate path, because she hates fighting on someone else's terms. Because there's no risk of missing such a big target she'll go full power attack on the thing and see what happens.

Warp will be taking ten for 22 because skill mastery.

She raised an eyebrow. ". . . Kat," she finished his sentence and gave him a mute nod. "Call me Kat." She grinned, a tad too long on one side. She let herself be pulled along through space; their face-to-face when the staff reminded Kat of the importance of finding discrete places to break the rules while she bobbed her head at the teacher in frantic agreement; in a bit class would be over and— *ZAP!* —Kat was coughing on smoke that tried to burn its taste so deep into her tongue she'd never get it out, squinting as her eyes adjusted to the light. She put a hand on her hip, confused by unpreturbed until . . . No teleports? She reached out with an experimental thought, pressed her power against the walls of the world no one could see. Her face paled. Her power seemed dull, and reality held stronger than it had ever done before. It was like meditating in her room a year ago, desperately pressing against something she was far too feeble to break. She made a wide swiping motion with the blade of her hand, drawing on the first mnemonic that had worked for her. Still, nothing happened. Breathing deep, Kat forced herself to focus. She clenched her hand into a fist, writhing darkness crawling out of her sleeve and over her arm. She smiled at it like an old friend. "Well," she said, voice unsteady. "At least that still works." A breath. A surer tone. "Yeah." She smiled like there was nothing wrong. "Let's go kick some ass."

While it's fair to say that her skills would be more varied than they are at the moment, I can't say that it makes sense for her to be able to do all of them. And even the ability to do skills is kind of a mute point when your basic rolls for them are crap, which Sera's would be. And considering how much a scrooge I had to be to even make her slightly viable for what she's supposed to do, I'm especially shy of anything expensive for her.

Kat caught Morsa as he staggered, kept her stance wide to keep her feet steady. "Easy there," she said, letting Morsa steady himself against her. "Yeah," Kat said, turning toward the interrogators again. "You're real convincing. I'm thinking that we'll do you a favor by not bringing it up with mister Summers. But if it happens again . . . well. We'll have to see see what he thinks of your excuses." She clasped a hand protectively on Morsa's shoulder; an odd sight, since she was the shorter of the two. "Now shoo." No doubt Sally's gang would be giving her the evil eye for a while but while students were masters of passive aggression, they wouldn't be able to muster anything more than spite. Not when the teachers had supernatural powers to help them enforce discipline on school grounds. Still, it wasn't tell they started to drift away that Kat took her hand from Morsa's shoulder and put a comfortable distance between them. She visibly preened at Morsa's recognition and gave him him a warmer smile. "You heard right, though I don't really know what my max range is." She'd bet a pretty penny it wasn't as far as Pluto, but a girl had a right to bask in the moment every once in a while. She squeezed the little alien's hand in return. "I'd be glad to help any way I can."

Sera Mercer Abilities: 14 + 4 + 10 + 4 + 0 = 32 pp STR: 24 (+7) DEX: 14 (+2) CON: 20 (+5) INT: 10 (+0) WIS: 14 (+2) CHA: 10 (+0) Combat: 8 + 8 = 16 pp ATK: +7 Melee, +4 Ranged DEF: +4 (+2 flat-footed) Init: +2 Grapple: +14 Saves: 6 pp TOU: +10 (+5 Con, +5 Protection) FORT: +6 (+5 Con, +1) REF: +4 (+2 Ref, +2) WILL: +5 (+2 Wis, +3) Skills: 15 pp=60 r Acrobatics 8 (+10) Stealth 10 (+12) Knowledge (History) 10 (+10) Knowledge (Arcane Lore) 5 (+5) Sleight of Hand 8 (+10) Intimidate 10 (+10) Languages (Old English, French, Latin, English) Notice 6 (+8) Feats: 9 pp Acrobatic Bluff Attack Focus Melee 3 Fearless Hide in Plain Sight Move-by-Action Power Attack Skill Mastery (Notice, Stealth, Intimidate, Acrobatics) Powers: 13 + 1 + 5 + 7 + 3 + 2 = 31 pp Strike 0 (Extras: Penetrating 7; Feats: Mighty, Extended Reach [5ft], Improved Critical 2, Affects Insubstantial 2) 13pp Regeneration (Reincarnate) 1PP Protection 5pp Immunity 7 (aging, disease, poison, sleep, starvation and thirst, suffocation) [7 pp] Flight 2 [20mph] (Drawback: Restricable -1) [3pp] Super-senses (Visual, Detect Magic 2) [2pp] Drawbacks: Vulnerability (vs. Silver; Frequency: Uncommon, Intensity: Major [*2 DC) [3] 32 + 16 + 6 + 15 + 8 + 31 - 3 = 105

Insofar as exercise went, running wasn't Kat's least favorite activity; it was pleasant once you got the rhythm down, really, and easy. Sparring was fun, but at least with running Kat could take the time to think a little, and spare a few glances at the boys while they were taking their laps. She'd made another lap past what the kids had been told they needed and was gunning for another when she spotted a little huddle out of the corner of her eye. It was kinda hard to judge what was being said, but body language told her its own story. Disbelief pride threat fear anger. They were playing boy blue like a flute. She rolled her eyes and veered back off the track into the grass to the side, splashing dew up onto her ankles and over the top of her sneakers, aiming to ask boy blue to run with her to steal him away from the junior inquisitors. And it would've worked too, if she'd just gotten there before Serge came swooping in in everything but his suit and cape and started yelling down the bullies like they were cut-rate villains. There was no casually pulling boy blue outta that; he'd turned it into a straight up conflict and Kat was at loathe to get involved with it. It would be stupid, and the best result Kat could expect was that all of them would be sore at her for a while. "I'm sure they'd know better than to threaten," Kat said mildly, slowing to a stop next to the group and disregarding her own advice. "cause that always ends awfully. New kid?" She turned her head toward blue boy and pointed her thumb toward the others. "These guys bugging you?"

Urban Angel Sera was a living, breathing human girl once. She remembers living without knowing the grip of a city on her soul, without feeling the masonry shifting and moving beneath her feet. Then she was bricked up inside the walls of castle Widder, still alive, in a ritual to give birth to a guardian angel. Eternities of pleading and starving, she died, her body and trapped soul swallowed by the stone. The ritualists realized to their great dread that it was the soul slain that rose as a guardian, and from that day forward troubled no one north of hell again. They called her Widder's Seraph, for she had six wings and her wrath was fiery. She roamed the countryside, driven by the spells binding her soul to protect Widder, and protect it she did; as she saw fit, beholden to no lord, no bishop and no king. She hunted unnatural things, werewolves and vampires and more. She hunted slavers, bandits and cruel lords. For these things she was looked to as an angel and protector. Time made Sera many enemies, in the natural world and magical world both, and the cleverist of them waited and plotted, planted a hint that sent her flying to face an imaginary den of vampires on the fringes of their lands while her enemies opened the gates to a waiting army and razed the castle stone by stone, and Sera weakened until she fell out of the sky, with only smoke in the distance to tell the cause of her doom before she closed her eyes and died again. For hundreds of years that was the end. The man who raised her from the dead was an innate sorcerer named Alexander who spent his life chasing myths of immortality, and found some truth of it in the story of a soul bound to the stones of a broken castle. He uncovered the stones that had served as the beating heart of Sera's unnatural life, sealed in secret places by cultists too afraid or incompetent to remake her; too greedy to destroy her. He used his vast fortunes to purchase a crumbling building on Lantern Hill's edge and demolish it, carefully overseeing the construction of something that made architects' heads shake and mystics' eyes widen. He placed the stones of her heart at its centerpiece and opened the Castle Widder renaissance club to business. Lives and laughter rang through the halls, ringing along the edges, calling to broken bits of soulstuff that were Sera's remnants. She was pulled through the blood of the city into the heart of the club, shaped by their thoughts of what an angel should be and constrained by the limited power of this new Castle Widder. And in a surge of magic and a desperate will to live, the Seraph was born again.

Warp clapped her hands together and gave the officers a sunny smile. "Great!" She said, like a flute on a high note. "Then you won't mind taking us along to make sure. We're just worried." Warp held her hands palms up. "We'd feel so much better if we saw he was safe ourselves. Right Jay? Until we know for sure why some thug with a ceramic hand decided to use the Prince to practice boxing there's always a chance there'll be more coming for him later. And there's nothing like a superhero to keep a super villain off your back."

The Monster Hunter There are men who survive in the world of monsters. They are born no stronger, no more powerful, no more cunning. But they have learned a trick, to draw the monster’s power from their blood and use it as their own, and with it they have ruled as the lion rules his jungle; through blood and violence. Her name was Sarah, she was their princess, and she lived in the shadow of her father; a hunter who had stolen his immortality from the blood of ancient monsters at the core of world and remembered what the world was like before they came and overran the world. Her father believed in his pride that his girl could defeat more monsters than any other, and she was forced to live to his expectation. She learned to fight and loved to fight, and stripped the power from every monster that fell against her. Sarah’s life was conflict, and there was no one who doubted that she would rule by her father’s side. When the time came, her father called to her and demanded she win her right to rule in a battle to the death. Her father had slain the last and only immortal monster on the planet; it only the blood that let live forever, and preside over their people, and now her father was the only man who did. But Sarah refused. When he threatened her life and mocked her skill still Sarah refused. When he drew his sword against her throat and demanded she draw; Sarah threw her sword aside and said that he could never slay his unarmed daughter. And she was right. Instead he marked Sarah as a monster, and who she had once called friends hunted her, hungry to rip the carefully cultivated power from her corpse. They chased her across mountains, jungles and through the deep places of the world and still they did not stop. She sought out strange things with many eyes whose blood had driven all who had drunk it mad and asked, pleaded, begged for their guidance. They did. But only in exchange for the lion's share of her power. On their advice, with her family close behind, Sarah found the great door that the first monsters had stepped through, recited a series of dimensional coordinates and stepped through a veil of shadow. And appeared, just like that, in Freedom City’s streets.

Okay, toughness Roll! 7 Um. Let's reroll this with a hero point. I should have two left after that, if Arich's count is right. Toughness Reroll: 11 Add ten on top of that and she gets 21, which makes Warp dazed and bruised I think. Sense motive? 23. Warp is not phazed by the threats of a tiny god!

It took far too long for them to get assembled in Warp's estimation, though it was barely any time at all. Warp was leaning forward, chewing on her lip and insisting on expediency until they turned the corner and saw the little god throw Glow at the pavement. Warp made an awful, strangled sound in the back of her throat and dove forward into the weave of the world, crossing the distance in an instant. She appeared behind and above him, plummeting from the sky with one foot stretched out in a devastating kick. It took him square in the back and Anya grimaced as pain shot up her leg; it was like hitting concrete. She landed nimbly, her mouth twisted into a grimace of effort, eyes flaring. "Stay the hell away from her!"

Warp - 5 - 2 - 1 - 6 " - 20 - 9 - 1 - 19 For a total of 63.

Warp raised an eyebrow. She was more willing to forgive some strangeness in the police force of a city that helped guard a city where superheroes and supervillains made trouble for them every third day, but she looked over sideways and saw the hesitation in Blue Jay's expression. The unease was contagious, though she was having trouble pinning down exactly what the trouble was. "Not my place to answer, I'm thinking." Warp glanced over her shoulder at the Prince. "How bad do you have it back there? Do you need to go to a . . . a . . . " Warp's mouth pressed together in thought. " . . . A taxidermist or something?"

Warp is going to take a move action to get close to the fight and do a full +/-5 Power Attack martial arts strike, with the basic +2/-2 All Out Attack everyone can use to give her attack the boost it may or may not need. Attack: +10. Defense: +12. Attack Roll: 27 That's a 27 DC hit. But he's got Impervious 13, so even her hardest hit can't scratch him, if I remember right? I should have done a stunning attack instead. Whelp.

Character Name: ???? Power Level: 7 Trade-Offs: -3 Attack / +3 Damage, -3 Defense / +3 Toughness Unspent Power Points: 0 Progress To Bronze Status: 0/30 In Brief: A mage of life and vitality that has seen too much. Alternate Identity: Identity: Jade Yadav Birthplace: Occupation: Affiliations: (People and/or groups you work with) Family: Description: Age: 29 Gender: Female Ethnicity: Asian Height: Weight: Eyes: Hair: (Describe what they look like!) Power Descriptions: (Describe what their powers look like, if applicable) History: It was a car crash. She was seventeen. There was a thin trickle of blood from a sliced scalp running over her eye as she crawled her way to the front of the car, saw her mother in the driver's seat, clutching, the metal of the car curled around her body, a long piece of steel burrowed into her torso. Jade saw her mother's mouth move, but the words were noise without context in her mind. Her mother shook and shifted and gasped as she stretched over, stroking Jade's face with a trembling hand. Her mother was dying, Jade could see it plain as the sky, though she could not say why. It was like light, but it was something brighter and lovely. Jade could feel it pulsing beneath her skin, could hear the songs of life from the man in the car opposite, from the crowds that gathered around them. And she could see the spark of life fading from a delicate ember to warm coals to cold nothing. Jade said something soft and weak and pleading, crying cause she understood, crawling closer, put a hand on her mother's chest and power skipped from her fingertips. It knited flesh and bone together around the metal rod that had pierced her body, but it healed wrong. trapping the metal inside her body, and the blood flowed around the wrong way, and the life still flowed out of Jade's mother's body while Jade clutched at her mother and wailed like a child. And a narrow-shouldered old man in a long, flowing robe stepped out of a rift in reality, ripped the roof of the car off with a gesture and a guttural word and before Jade's eyes tore the metal pole from her mother's chest and chased away death with an arcane syllable. He frowned at Jade and offered a hand in invitation, offering a soft, urgent command. Jade took it, walking with him into the void of a portal to an elsewhere. So began Jade's long nightmare. ~o~o~o~ Magicians tried to find where she'd been taken later, but they could not. No wonder. She had been stolen away into a fold in space, to a citadel like something out of Tim Burton's nightmares. Ever wonder how a dark mages get their apprentices? It's a lot like usual. They approach a promising student and offer them tutelage and safety. The man who'd snared Jade called himself Alexander. And he told her to serve at his side as a grim apprentice, to partake in black rituals and follow his path to power. But she refused. So instead he made her suffer. She had a long time to practice her own art, to remend her bones and flesh together and undo the damage that Alexander's awful lessons left. There was no rescue, for Alexander had built the walls of his world high and thick for centuries, and there was only one way in. Only one way out. But the barrier was not so thick that whispers were barred from coming. They came to her in her dreams; we can't help you, they said. We can't save you. You must stop him, you must escape. There is a key, they said, around his neck, under his robes, the only way out, the only way in. One day soon, he came against her in person shook her while his magic ravaged her mind, asked commanded pleaded she say why she still resisted. Jade did not tell him. She ripped the key from around his neck and spoke the words the dreams had told her, appearing in the mortal world, out of Alexander's clutches. And in the process, she locked him inside his own impregnable fortress. For a while she cut loose, adrift in the world with nowhere solid to land on. She'd been gone long enough to be declared dead, and it wasn't until she happened across other magicians that she finally found root. She cured their ills for a price, aided them in the journey to longevity and profited from their lack of financial savvy. But it was an empty purpose, openly done for the money. She wanted to do better. Personality & Motivation: (Describe here) Powers & Tactics: Complications: The Tell-Tale Heart When she escaped from her master's clutches she knew she had to hide the key to his domain in a place no one would look, and that she could always protect. So she opened up her chest one day and nestled it right next to her heart. It seeps chaos, shadow and darkness, drawing strangeness to Jade wherever she goes like a magnet, complicating Jade's already difficult life. And if anyone who wanted to free her old master realized where the key was being held, well . . . Life Comes From Somewhere Whenever Jade heals anyone, the energy doesn't come out of thin air. Healing burns spare fat, even muscle, whether it's Jade's or her patient's. When she does her most dramatic work the subjects of her healing often wake ravenous and nigh-skeletal, often as crippled as they were before unless there is food on hand to help replace their reserves. If her magic doesn't have any reverses left to work with, the healing just doesn't work. The Secret World There is more to the magical world of earth than the Master Mage and guarding against the mystic beyond. There are others who turned their talents to enterprise instead of altruism. Alexander's other apprentices have scattered through their number, and Jade maintains contact with them to help reestablish herself in society and find work for her specific talents. And in exchange someone from that secret world often comes to Jade to ask a 'favor.' Abilities: 0 + 0 + 8 + 0 + 8 + 0 = 16 Strength: 10 Dexterity: 10 Constitution: 18 (+4) Intellect: 10 Wisdom: 18 (+4) Charisma: 10 Combat: 4 + 8 = 12PP Initiative: +0 Attack: +2 Melee, +2 Ranged, +4 Life Magic) Grapple: +0 Defense: +4 (+4 Base, +0 Dodge Focus), +2 Flat-Footed Knockback: -0 Saving Throws: 3 + 4 + 1 = 8PP Toughness: +10 (+4 Con, +6 Protection) Fortitude: +7 (+4 Con, +3) Reflex: +4 (+0 Dex, +4) Will: +4 (+3 Wis, +1) Skills: 32R = 8PP Concentration 7 (+10) Knowledge: Arcane Lore 10 (+10) Medicine 7 (+10) Notice 8 (+11) Feats: 10PP Accurate Attack All Out Attack Benefit (Wealth) Fearless Luck 2 Power Attack Ritualist Trance Uncanny Dodge [Mental] Powers: 38 + 6 + 7 = 51PP Life Magic Array (32PP Array: Alternate Power 6) [38PP] BP: Life Control 10 (Flaws: Ranged, Feats: Accurate, Reversible) Life Mastery 32PP AP: Damage 10 (Extras: Vampiric, Alternate Save [Fortitude], Feats: Accurate, Extended Reach) Life-Take 32PP AP: Damage 10 (Extras: Ranged, Concentration; Feats; Accurate, Homing; Bacterial Scourge) AP: Drain Constitution 10 (Extras: Ranged, Total Fade; Feats: Accurate, Reversible) Smother Life 32PP AP: Healing 10 (Extras: Total; Feats: Persistent, Regrowth) Accelerated Healing 32PP AP: Fatigue 10 (Extras: Ranged; Feats: Accurate, Reversible) Sap Vitality 32PP AP: Paralyze 10 (Extras: Ranged; Feats: Accurate, Reversible) Muscle Seize 32PP Protection 6 [6PP] Super Senses (Detect Life 2 [Mental], Accurate, Acute, Extended [100ft], Radius, Ranged) 7PP DC Block (see below) Totals: Abilities (16) + Combat (12) + Saving Throws (8) + Skills (8) + Feats (10) + Powers (51) - Drawbacks (0) = 103/105 Power Points

I have ideas I am not always sure whether to act on. Sometimes, when the ideas have congealed into something coherent, it will occur to me that I should put these thoughts somewhere. This will be that place.

I won't technically be 'back' until tonight, but today I will spend all day in a car with nothing but a few books, a laptop with no internet and a cell phone I can post from. So yeah, consider me back starting right now.

I know teleporters are supposed to be able to get out of grapples with a concentration check themselves, but I'm still not sure if Warp could apply that to help Glow somehow.

"Muscles can't change bone structure, Big and Tall." Kat shot back. "No matter how you train." Kat did not share Subito's optimism. Her growth had slowed considerably; puberty seemed mostly content with the scale of her, spending its time filling out the detail work instead. An inch or two was the best Kat let herself hope for. Kat crossed her arms and made a face. "School plays." She said, treating the word like a landmine. Crap pulled from the public domain or written by someone's cousin performed by kids who wouldn't know acting if bit them on the ass. "That's nice," she said, carefully. "What I'd pick for this would be different than I'd jump on in my troupe. Usually school plays like that are more limited in what they can do, since they usually can't pay the licensing fee, and they've gotta recruit people from outside a drama background. I'd suggest something simple, easy to learn and do and manage. I'd have to think about it."

"That . . ." Warp frowned and tapped her fingers against her side. "Sounds a lot less bad than what I was thinking. And is completely useless." She made a soft, frustrated sound in the back of her throat and addressed the prince. "You couldn't see him for what he was before. Does he remind you of anything now?" She gestured to red-hand. "Ancient cults? Supernatural nasties? Clique you snubbed at the school dance?" She took the police's approach mostly in stride. "No Golden Glove here," she said, planting a hand on her hip and pointing a thumb over her shoulder at the unconscious body. "But we caught his impersonator red-handed."

Fair warning; I'm not going to be around much next week. Spring break and a vacation will keep my posting down, though exactly how down it'll be I'm not wholly sure of. Either way, expect things to go slow if not stop outright.