Curious Key

Warp appeared right in front of Natas and seized the end of his spear, and her scowl turned into a feral grin. "Let's see how well you do without your toy," she hissed. Warp brought down a hand on his wrist, forcing it off the weapon. She grunted, struggling to wrench and twist it away from the villain . . . and then she was reeling back, momentarily off-balance from winning the tug-of-war. Another moment's effort and she was out of reach, examining Natas' weapon with a smile. "Thank you! For my next trick," she sang, "I'll make this overblown dart gun disappear."

Warp appeared right in front of Natas and seized the end of his spear, and her scowl turned into a feral grin. "Let's see how well you do without your toy," she hissed and brought down a hand on both his wrists in

Drumroll please! 16. . . . I hope he rolls bad.

Warp is very determined to disarm this guy . . .21 Not sure if that's a hit or not.

If she was being technical, then what Tona was saying didn't necessarily preclude her from hating Terminus mutants for the twisted little coil of power inside them. But before she could hedge a thought in edgewise she caught herself; semantics were worthless. She knew what Tona had meant when she said it; the only thing left over was to decide whether or not to believe it. Kat stared at the hand, her eyes flickering up to meet Tona's once, twice . . . she breathed in deep and took Tona's hand, trying to make her handshake a firm one. "Hi," she mirrored. "I'm Kat."

Kat eyed Murdock sideways until he stood. She sat very still, eyes wide, hands at ease in her lap. Her shoulders loosened a little. The corner of her mouth turned upward and she shifted in her seat; a child embarrassed by praise. He was, Kat thought with relief this time, honest. "I . . ." She groped for better words to say, but all she found was "I will." Kat grabbed at her elbow and smiled up at the Omegadrone like she'd smiled at a human being. She pushed herself back up to her feet and leaned back on her heels. "Thank you."

Tona's doppleganger had announced precisely that before she declared that all Terminus mutants should die an awful death and putting an arrow in a girl's eye. It was stranger to hear it said here, meekly. Kat crossed her arms, her mouth forming a thin line as her eyes pretended to examine the exibit. She let the conversation drop and the silence grew fat and bloated on the moments. "I thought maybe it was lying," Kat said. "Dorothy's said that it was something I'm almost sure Dorothy wasn't." It was a little frustrating to talk in vagueries like this. Kat looked to the left and right, tried to find anyone close enough to listen in. Kat bit down on her lip and tried to keep her voice neutral. "It really had a grudge against mutants."

Natas' shot hit and electricity ran through Warp's body; her vision went dark around the edges and it threatened to take her down. But when the charge stopped coming Warp was right back to her senses, and she was staring at Natas with narrow eyes. Another flicker of darkness and she was standing right to his side. Warp made a swipe at his hand, trying to knock the speargun away . . . but the charge must have disoriented Warp more than she'd guessed, because she missed by a wide mile, and she was forced to retreat back a distance with nothing to show for it.

Warp is going to try to disarm the bastard again. 15 . . . :argh:

Fort Roll: 8. . . I will spend my last hero point to reroll this. 23

At least they weren't gonna shoot a hole in some glass by accident in here, Warp thought, keeping her body in a deep crouch. "Tough cookies, Nemo." She said, and ripped open a way between where she stood and where Natas was climbing. And she struck, trying to get ahold of the bastard's weapon . . . but he twisted away from her at the last second. She slipped back the way she came, on the walkway overlooking the sub. "We're not going anywhere."

Kat glanced at Tona with half-narrowed eyes, remembering before she turned back toward the painting. It reminded her of something the robot had said, before she had destroyed it. Mostly they seemed to have been reliable replicants of the heroes they replaced, right up to the point where someone pulled the crazy lever. Even after, in some ways. So. "So." Kat jotted down a note about something into the crook of her arm. "I assume you've seen the tapes of it." "Was what it said about where you came from true?" The Terminus; the dark engine of entropy that sought the end of all worlds and then some. It was hard to imagine someone coming from that place, really. Dorothy's copy had went and claimed that she was a Terminus mutant. They were not, it seemed to her, beyond lies.

For the first time since they'd met, Kat turned and looked Murdock in the eyes. The lines over his body weren't just there, they were in his eyes. She gripped hold of her knees to still the tremor of a shudder before it could be seen as more than a shiver beneath february's chill. Mention of Dorothy's name got Kat to sit up and pay attention. "You know . . . ? Oh." Kat reached back and scratched her neck. She supposed they would know each other, wouldn't they? They'd both been taken. It had been strange, trying to champion a girl who'd she'd wrongfully loathed. "Someone had to," Kat said, looking down. A quiet snort. "Some hero I'd be if I just sat on the sidelines and let kids go after Dorothy for something she didn't do."

Kat tucked her hand behind her back and raised an eyebrow at Subito. "You know, usually if someone wants to get somewhere quick with only a little stomach trouble, they suggest me." The last time she could remember taking a bus, it was yellow, with sticky seats and red-faced drivers trying to yell over the sound of children screeching like little banshees. Kat made no move to change her course, though, and kept right up beside Subito. She smiled into her chest at Subito's compliments, taking small steps in the darkness, the stark light of near-evening casting dark shadows across Kat's body. She looked very small and very young next to her friend. For a while, she said nothing at all. Darren had a point. He had, he truly had. "You know," Kat said at last, her voice soft and low. "Cerys is lucky to have you."

Warp is going to go for the disarm attack on Natas, using her teleport with turnabout to get down and back up again.16 Ew.

Something about the way Murdock was talking, like grief and sadness wasn't just a feeling in your head but a sickness that could sit inside you. "That's it . . ." Kat fiddled with her hair tie a little though it needed no straightening, remembering again exactly who she was talking too. "It shouldn't be too much. Other people've gone through so much worse." "Never. I never saw anyone die." She said, and her mind found it insufficient. How dare you talk about this when you've never seen someone die before? How dare you?! "My uncle died in a car crash and they had an open casket anyway," Kat said, groping for experience to draw from. "But it wasn't the same, I didn't see it, not like this."

Init: 8 Aw hell.

Warp stared. "You want to put a hole in it, then?" She said, tilting her head a little to the side. "That'd be one helluva present. I can make a hole." She breathed in deep and raised a hand, touched her heart with an imaginary finger and drew up darkness from the hole in it. Her eyes glowed red and darkness engulfed her extended arm. Warp could afford the time to be careful, to gather all the nastiness she could into the palm of her hand, and when she let it go it screamed into the side of the sub, spreading over the metal like creepers over a wall, dissolving the sub's side as they watched. There was a metalic ripping as the area Warp had stuck decided it was not strong enough to hold back the water and suddenly a hole about as tall as Warp was opened up as the river forced its way inside. Warp put a hand on her hip and smirked. "Think that'll be good?"

Warp is going to try to make a hole with an entropic bolt to the side at +5/-5 Power attack, if possible. If not, she'll just do it regular strength.

Silence was a dragon. A dragon that didn't know how to die. Kat had walked through the museum with scarcely a word except some muttered curse at the paradoxes of school papers and museum design, but with Tona beside her Kat felt silence coil around them like a living thing with strength and a quiet malice all its own. Tona fought it back for a while longer, but Kat knew it would be back unless she took her turn against it. "Um, yeah." She said, staring sideways at the tools, hands in her pockets. "Amazing." The word had a distracted dullness that told all; she did not understand, not the way Tona would. She remembered, vaguely, farms she had visited on trips to meet her father's side of the family, long fields and big tractors and bales that she mainly ignored in favor of dreams of pavement and concrete and home. "It's good we don't have to worry about that," she said, weilding the words like a weapon against the silence.

The caustic thing in Warp's heart quivered at her violence. She felt its touch spread through her body, the stuff of the end of the world pushing through her till she almost choked on it. The little spark of the end of the world sensed her hate, her desire to unmake. Warp's eyes did not glow; they glared warning like a lighthouse in fog, the power running through her, leaking away through dark sparks across her skin. Potent enough to consume her if she lost control, even for a moment. She did not. "Neat trick," Warp said, her mouth glowing like the inside of furnace. She raised a single hand. "My turn." Her arm flared, incandescent and hungry enough to make Warp wince back; she felt it coil inside her like a living thing, wanting only to eat, anything, everything. She obliged it. The little piece of the Doom Coil sprung from her arm, screaming with desire, falling on the little god like a starving predator.

Warp breathed and put herself into a firm, deep stance. And then she vanished, same way the pair'd appeared, like smoke. She was a flicker appearing out of the darkness; appearing behind one henchman and shoving a hand deep into his side, slamming another into a wall, bringing her heel down on the last's head so he sprawled against the railing. When it was done she was back on the walkway, and the two heroes were the only conscious things in sight. Warp turned to Tsunami and tilted her head to the side, grinning. "I guess we're the welcoming committee now." She drove palm into fist. "Let's set up the best surprise party they'll ever see."

. . . I thought I'd lost that. Okay then. Full +5/-5 power attack, hitting all the wetsuits, taking ten on the attack because minions. That'll be a 27DC Toughness check for them, and an attack of 18.

It's times like this I wish she had a standard ranged attack. Warp closes the distance with a teleport and gets close to one that Tsunami isn't covering.

Warp is going to try to hit him with a +5/-5 again. 12. Oh Lordy. Edit: I'll take that advice then. Let's see what happens. 28 . . . That's a crit. That makes the fortitude roll to reduce his toughness 27. It makes the toughness check 32.