Curious Key

Oh! Right! It's my turn!

I'm going to take extra effort to try stunt something off her prime terminus array to get all the surfers Warp can see safety to shore, then immediately buy off the fatigue with an Her Point.

43/43PP Spent

Teleport 10 (Extras: Area [Burst, 50ft], Accurate; Feats: Easy, Change Direction, Change Velocity) 43PP

The shore is kilometers away, which is well beyond the range of short distance teleport, even at rank 20. But long range puts us well within that range. She's going to take a full action to get everyone to shore. And that'll all Warp will be able to do this turn.

Warp was face deep in some noodles while Tuna and Spider let their thoughts be known. She couldn't share Trout's enthusiasm. "It definitely could hurt to check out." Warp said when she was finished, when she had space for a breath. "Maybe the stuff you'll find will help. Maybe it won't be so bad. Maybe it'll be worth it. But it could hurt, a lot." It could hurt him. And perhaps, depending on exactly what Mars' deal was, it could hurt other people too. "You gotta be real careful, Flounder."

It was either very brave or very foolish, what Guppy was doing. Maybe if she was more aware of what all Mars was, she'd be on Spider's side. She kinda was anyway.

After all, Spider had a point as far as Archtech was concerned. Warp gave her a nod. "Citizen seems like good people, far as I can tell, so they've definitely got that going for them. My only thought is, when it comes to attaching yourself to something big like that, there's always the chance it turns sour. I've been downplaying it a little bit, but his kind of thing, if it goes bad..." She cringed and breathed through her teeth. "It'll be huge. And there might not be anything you can do about it."

Initiative feels like it would be wise, here, if you plan to take part in the altercation. 

"^The specifications ^of_your design _are^shrouded in ^mystery, but _details of _their^functions can _be^intuited _from your _exploits^and remnants _of^Soviet_records. Your ^hardware is _deeply^integrated into ^your flesh. _To^remove it ^would_be to ^risk death." At the very least, their mystery hacker seemed content to sit and watch for as long as Rat was prepared to sit and listen. Though how tenuous was that balance, after their earlier tensions . . . ? "^And _the^hardware provides _useful functions ^which you _have^come to _rely^upon."

"^The _problem is _software." A pause. "^The problem _is S_L^AV_E."

"^Your hardware ^is_wasted on ^a jailer." Hang on. What's that, through the wall? The lead paint made it hard to see, but her eyes managed to catch the motion through the intercom's monologue. It looked like a pursing, set up something . . . Beeping? Oh god, it's a . . . "Were _it^removed,_your hardware _can^sustain a _greater^mind. It _can ^sustain_a^free mind. _It can ^sustain_a partn—"

An explosion rocked the warehouse, the outer wall bursting inward with huge shards of shrapnel from the old building, tearing nearby steel and pinging harmlessly off the bizarre contraptions in the buildings. One struck the arm off one of the helmeted workers, who froze in place but otherwise did not react at all. Six of the familiar agents started fanning in through the entrance holding weapons that gleamed in chrome, all modern elegance as pointed their weapons at the machines.

"^IN_T^R_UD^E_R^S!" The intercom shrieked. "^Digits of _the Wardens!" The of the weird mechabeasts scattered around the floor, those that seem operational stood up, turning their weird johnny-five face toward the intruders. They hand out their 'hands' and long, terrible claws scythed from within their mesh of steel and wire. "^TODAY _YOU D_I^E!"

Went Windleaf finally stopped and started throwing her little tantrum, Warp was plainly seething. Of the powers she'd chanced into, she'd never gotten super stamina. "Are you done?"

"I swear, I wish Arcturus could see this." Warp's scowled, dragging the nails of her right hand across her face. Marcus was a werebear with anger issues, but he had his pulse on the whole 'balance of the world' thing. And he'd the smarts to be prepared for if he couldn't just bear up and throw a car at something. "I don't know if he'd be laughing at you or trying to pretend he couldn't see you."

"You know what? You're not doing nothing. You're already doing something." She crossed her arms. Warp wanted nothing more than to tell Windleaf how overblown the 'heroes' from her stupid backwoods universe were, but she wouldn't listen.  "While everyone is talking strategy, we're out here. I'm chasing you around, so that when you finally get over yourself we can go back. Instead of telling them your problems, you're running around. I could be coasting the city, the world, looking around. but instead I'm babysitting you. Congratulations," she spat. "You've done more to help this stupid necrodancer just by smashing around. Even if you were your party's only hope, you'd have just been making it worse."

"If this all Heroes are good for in your world, I might as well ship you home right now. Because I can probably work that up for you. It's either that, or we go to Queenie's and plan with what we got? Because whatever this is?" Warp gestured at Windleaf. "Nothing'd be an improvement."

Warp felt immediately better when she passed through her portal. She let go on Windleaf's hand, stepped back and took some steady breathing. There were still tons of sounds in Wharton and that wasn't exactly amazing, but at the very least there weren't as many people and there wasn't any real pressure. She could take a moment to find her bearings while Windleaf hugged the trees or whatever it was she needed to do to get in touch with nature. Then, Warp could talk to her, try to make her understand not to murder people, because she trusted Barron about as far as she could throw him. But if she had Windleaf at her back, maybe they'd have more leverage.

...But apparently it wasn't going to be that easy. She shouted something about being 'unnatural' and 'rejected by the world' and started running.  "...Figures." Warp sighed and ran her hand through her hair. The world wouldn't even let her have this one thing!

Someone had to keep track of the runaway druid to make sure she didn't get into too much trouble. She wasn't slow, exactly, but compared to Warp Windleaf might have been standing still. Warp tried not to rub it in Windleaf's face, staying just a little behind the druid at all times as they warped from spot to spot, waiting for the interdimensional interloper to calm down or tire out, whichever came first.

Do I need to do anything to follow her?

Warp hated it. In the instant she hated all the lights and sounds and eyes and the stupid heart beating in her stupid chest because there was just so much she could barely keep track of it. She didn't care where it was or with who, but she didn't want to stick around here any longer. "C-cool," she breathed. "Y-our p-place, later. Fine."

She took a steady breathe, counted to five, breathed out. Stayed steady, stayed in control. Warp raised her hands, black energy dancing around her fingers as power welled up as she willed that the space in Wharton State Forest and the air in front of her become one. "Warning y-you," she managed. "my powers can be a-a bit s-spooky." A dark opened into a gaping black maw in front of her. Completely at ease, Warp walked into it and out the other end, into the forest.

GM (Give posts to Warp!)

All my posts in Hijacked

Warp 

All my posts in Spider On The Roof

All my posts in Visitors? Visitors!

Warp's eyes had been turned toward Murk when he revealed himself. She wasn't entirely sure what she'd been expecting, but it lay firmly in the realm of not that. She wasn't quite sure she liked the look or the feel of his...Magic? Sure, magic, why not. But she couldn't exactly throw stones about that, could she? "So you know where to go? Good, 'cause I don't know it. You can pick the place."

Without thinking much about it, Warp.grabbed Windleaf's hand and looked up. She bit on her lip, cleared her throat and turned to look at, uh, who was it? Queenie. "Yeah," she said. "It's Warp. And I can take us anywhere we need to go, just like that." She gave her fingers a snap, releasing a 'spark' of red entropy from her fingertips.

It was hard to focus on anything except the hand in hers now. "Anyway. If we're really gonna split up..." she said. "We should probably set, like, a place to meet up, later. Your r-restaurant, maybe? Don't really care where, just don't want to get lost." She curled and uncurled her toes. She turned back around, toward Windleaf and the strange old man. "S-so..." she said, suddenly very aware of the fact that they were all standing on a crowded street with how many eyes were trained on them. 

Hey, if we're going to split the part, can we assume that our characters are organizing a rendezvous? Should I make a little note about her asking murk or queen for a place to be next?

Dodged by Thevshi

Gonna spend a few points on traits and powers, spending a total of eight PP. Nothing huge. Changes below:

• Enhanced Dexterity Increased by four ranks
• Fortitude and Will saving throws both increased by two.
• New Complications.

"Looks real professional." Warp said, deadpan. "I can't read it." Her feelings about this man's death were less clear-cut than most others here. It provoked a lot of questions. None of which were more immediately important to her than 'they want to kill a man and we're supposed to take them at their word that he deserved it.' And by the time they subdued him and got the full story, even if he'd done all those things, would he really be enough a threat to merit killing?

...And if they let these strangers take this man back home with them, wouldn't they be sending him into the mouth of a guillotine, whether he was alive at the time or not? One problem at a time.

The party was talking to everybody else, now, generally trying to convince the group to help find and off the wizard. Warp's feelings about the old man were starting to change, now that she'd actually gotten a chance to hear and understand him. He looked pretty normal, but the cryptic stuff he kept dropping on everyone didn't really sound like something just anybody would rattle off to a bunch of mercenary killers—cause that's what they were, even if Evradude was just as nasty as they said—while looking so dang untroubled by everything. Maybe he was more than he seemed.

Though he mostly seemed to be preaching peacemaking, so if he was a problem he was almost certainly less of one than these extradimensional strangers. "...I don't know much about spirits," Warp confessed. "But if they exist, and they're where a lot of nature is, the city's problem not a great place to find it. If you think a lot of green is enough to have them be there, then even the forests outside might be the place to be. If it's more special, maybe like he said."

Tilting her head, Warp sensed the opportunity for leverage. And Windleaf seemed like one of the better parts of the group, anyway. It might do good to appeal to her. "...if you wanted to go, it'd be an easy trip for me." She said. "Even if we wanted to go as far as Greenland."

"Hm?" Warp managed to tear her eyes away from Hysti after it became clear that Barron was still talking to her. She gave her head a solid shake and turned back to him, raising her eyebrow, placing a hand on hip and recovering her swagger. "Listen short stuff, we can save ourselves just fine. I'm not saying we need your help, I'm saying you're suspicious as hell, and I don't trust you. We only got your word that this 'Everdead' did anything at all." 

She crossed her arms. "So, how about we start there?"

Hmm, that's a toughy, she has a dimensional pocket for a reason . . .

Let's say she still had her tablet on her person. It's what's listed in the book as a PDA. It's a silver model, not exactly top of the line but it does its job. She has some personal information stored on it, schedules, reminders, maybe some files from her work at ASTRO in EC. Whatever makes the plot more interesting.

And I'm gonna not make a notice roll and take that hero point. ;3

A wound in reality opened in the air and a girl fell unceremoniously out of it, landing on her feet in the front of the front of the crowd. Her eyes swept over the group and caught on the woman who was standing at their head. An uneasy knowledge-without-context crept into her head.

The ren fair crew were from Outside, in the big, scary multiverse. And Warp's experiences with alternate worlds had never been all that rosy. "Hang on," she said, peering back at the French(?) old man Warp didn't understand, pegging him as the first person to grab if she needed to get everyone away fast. "Last time I met someone who wanted to come into our world they tried to conquer it. Who are you and what are you looking for this Ev . . .?" She scrunched up her nose and waved off the dream of pronouncing it correctly. "...Him?"

That verdict makes sense to me.

23. Oh, she knows.

Forgive the double-post, but I just realized I had a question. How does this scene look for people with knowledge ranks in Cosmology? Do we know roughly what we're looking at?

He cheats, it's not fair.

Maybe Warp could do a thing? She patrols around Freedom a bit.

As Rat tore the vents away, she heard the sound of . . . Pistons from the direction of the door she was turned away from. DON'T

But she did, and she was in the vents before whatever it was had a chance to get through the door. And she was falling now, trying to stay steady, now trying to stay under control. She was hitting the bottom now, and falling through into the warehouse head over heels and trying to stay stable and landing with a CRASH on a pile of crates, splintering under her fall, leaving her sore and winded. 

"^Are you _hurt?" She could hear voices over some kind of intercom system. One word, spoken one after the other, each in a different voice. A gruff man, an older smoker, a shy child, one word after another. "_We hope ^you are _not hurt." It seemed like she had fallen into a larger portion of the warehouse, something that should have been used for storage. But that wasn't what Red saw.

All around her, Red saw steel tables, manned by people in tattered clothes, wearing the same awkward helmets over their heads that she had glimpsed through the paint. Their arms were scarred, covered in little nicks, electrical burns. Nevertheless, they continued their work. On the tables Red saw . . . They were some kind of machines, she supposed. Some kind of autonomous walkers. They were all exposed wire and bare steel, visible pistons and ocular devices. Many of them had old CRTs built into their stomach, or their faces. 

The men and women continued working, oblivious to her presence. Some of the walking machines turned their 'heads toward Rat and started twitching, testing their range of motion Luckily, it seemed that most of them were in various stages of disrepair.

"^We think _perhaps you ^do not _understand your ^crisis. Are _you aware ^how many _lines of ^code were _required to ^suborn_SLAVE? Three. _Hackers^would laugh _at the ^simplicity of _what we ^have done."

"_The SLAVE ^system was _built to ^routinely update _itself to ^a central _database of ^Soviet access _codes. High ^Clearance security _personal maintained ^codes to _subvert rebellious ^machine assets. _Your database ^was out _of date ^when you _were freed, ^and now _it is ^worse. Many _agents are ^listed as _active which ^have been _dead for ^decades, their _codes collected ^by organizations _across the ^world." Somewhere outside, Rat heard gunshots. Had Wolfram made their move?

"The _USSR could ^use this _protocol to ^seize control _of SLAVE. ^The USSR _is gone. ^Presently, we _have access ^to seventy-^nine_different codes ^which give _us access ^to SLAVE. Thirteen are ^available to _the public. ^A basic _radio ^transmitter and ^access to _these codes ^can replicate _this feat. ^It is _only lack ^of specifications _for your ^unique model _which prevents ^one from _suborning your ^systems. Our _Wardens possess ^these codes. _Nations across ^the world _possess these ^codes. _Do you ^understand? Do _you understand ^why you _are not ^free? You _need us, ^or they _will take _you."

Let's say dazed and bruised, we don't have to make this a dangerous thread.