Curious Key

Images, thoughts . . . knowledge swam through her mind. Suddenly, she was lost in the depths of an ocean of thought, of reality. The secrets of the universe lay before her. The knotted, dark inevitability burning in her heart. For a long, terrifying moment, Warp was no longer Warp. Just a piece of detritus, a shred of dark vanishing into the border of infinity. The noise in her head faded. She remembered that she was a person. Her name was Kat, yes. Or was it Warp? No, it was both, but Warp right now. So Warp peeled her hands off her face and tried to moderate her breathing as she stared, baffled, at the human contours of her hands. Her head still pulsed, and the world still felt too . . . clear, in a way she couldn't describe. Too shaken to leave the overblown chicken a last parting shot to remember her by, Warp vanished in a flash and appeared above the portal. She fell through it, hoping that she would be able to land okay on the other side.

I'm for it.

March 9th, Evening Warp had been wondering for a while how she would get back in contact with Velocity. The last time she had spoken with the speedster was before her meltdown after the Day of Wrath. She had called Velocity for a pep-talk, to try to get herself back into a healthy mindset, to help the gnawing at her mind. It hadn't worked, but Warp had appreciated the attempt. She wasn't sure what Velocity thought of her. A corner of her mind spat that surely Velocity hated her. Another insisted that was likely paranoia. The rest of her remained unsure. And so she had spent close to four months after being active staring at the new phone she'd gotten her hands on for Warp, wondering if Velocity even still used the same number. Apparently she still did. Joy. Ever living for drama, Warp suggested a meeting in the same place they had the first time, on the roof of the building in the Theatre district that Warp had asked Velocity for help on years ago as a gangly, awkward and desperate teenager. The landscape had changed since then A few of the community theaters had been torn down, or remodeled, or stayed stubbornly the same and, in their pride, highlighted how much the district had changed in half a decade. Warp had changed, too. She was a little taller, more comfortable. She looked about college aged. And also her eyes and hands glowed with a deep red, with crack-like patterns extending up her arms and across her body. She was sitting on the top of a metal vent on the Barbary's roof, drumming her fingers loudly against the metal, breathing deep and trying to think in circles.

Welp, Warp's gone all edgy. I may have gone overboard. Lemme know if there's a problem.

"Me?" Warp looked battered, a little shaky on her feet, but her smile was still long, and smug as ever. She knelt down, balanced on the balls of her feet, and talked ot the dinosaur like a child. "Oh that's just rich. So funny. But you know what's even funnier?" "I don't know what you did to your world, but it seems pretty bad. But we would have saved you." She wagged her finger. Naughty, naughty dinosaur! "Our world is full of boyscouts that would have been happy to help you relocate. You were thiiiiiis close to a happy ending." Warp held her fingers a centimeter apart. "But, just like that, first contact, you see a human. And throw it all away." " "You said you wanted to keep your world safe. And you weren't lying, I could tell. But you know what you cared about more?" Warp's smile bared teeth, turning into a snarl. "Your stupid ego." "You think you're above consequence." She shook her head, and when she spoke again her voice was back to normal. "But you're not. No one is." "When your stars grow dark and your world turns cold," her eyes narrowed to slits. "I want you to remember . . . You could have stopped this. Everything started when you decided you were too good to keep your promise. You destroyed your people's last hope." "I want you to remember that." At last she stood up and aimed her palm at something that looked important. Entropy cut the air like a bolt of black lightning, burning easily into machinery with a keening howl.

Hm, I'll go with jack of all trades, but beginner's luck requires the use of another hero point, which in theory she shouldn't be able to spend at the same time, as I don't think you can really stunt fortune/ultimate feats. I will however use extra effort on it, allowing for her to bump the bonus up from 0 to +2. So savvy! Aahahahaha, she gets NO breaks! (5) Which I think is lovely. Even if she had taken beginner's luck it wouldn't have saved her. I'll throw up a post now.

Hrrrm. Maybe? As a T-baby with a history of misfiring powers, a chip on her shoulder with regards to government organizations and some plans developing elsewhere, Warp has some problems that check that list. And she can breach dimensions and/or ferry people anywhere on earth in a matter of moments. That might be an asset if the auxiliary wants a sardonic bus.

Alright, there are two ways this could go. Part of Warp's protection used to be in her costume. She planned to switch into it with quick change immediately after Echo jumped in with Quick Change, so if so her toughness is +6. Otherwise, it's +5. So, I'm going to roll assuming she had time to change, but if she didn't, just subtract one from her save. 1d20+6: 9 [1d20=3] I think that knocks her out. Can I use a hero point to reroll saves like this? I'm going to assume I can, but if I'm wrong just ignore this next roll. 1d20+6: 21 [1d20=15] Okay, so Warp is untrained in knowledge (tech), so according to the book she fails automatically? I could use a hero point to temporarily give her the eidetic memory feat for a round in order to try, but I'm unsure about whether this technically counts as one round or not, so I don't know about spending more than one hero point.

Ah, Kat couldn't help but crack a smile at that! It seemed like you couldn't walk a meter without someone in tights flying overhead chasing someone cackling villain and then . . . "We're all over the place, aren't we." It didn't sound like a question. "Still feeling kind of lost, to be honest." Kat sat her food down in her lap. On the side that Mali couldn't see she gripped the side of her thigh until it hurt. "I had a plan for what I was hoping I'd do, next. Then I lost it, and I feel like I'm kind of treading water for now. I dunno about foresight, but . . ." "So, whatever nice health high-calorie foods are, I bet anything this isn't it." She held up the bag of greasy food and grinned. "Tell me your secrets. "

Oh, my thought was that, while the other two mount a distraction, Warp comes in, grabs the civilians and gets out. Warp has turnabout, so she can literally jump inside, grab them, and then pull them outside in the same round, assuming they don't resist her. She can move two of them per round out, max, due to her personal teleport weight capacity. If things get dicey, she can try to stunt something or increase her capacity to get them out much faster. Then I was thinking of having her blitz deeper in to see if there were any more hostages and improvise until everyone is safe. Afterwards joining the battle that's probably started in the meantime in earnest.

"Colonialism went real well last time," A voice said from the crowd, deadpan. "Didn't it?" The girl who'd spoken stood easily and confident in the middle of a gaggle of out-of-place students near the back, with sharp gray eyes and red-brown hair. Kat and most of her class from Freedom had been invited over for this weird emerald portal for extra credit. Kat had missed more bits of homeworks than she liked to admit and jumped on the chance to make up for it . . . But it had taken hours to get somewhere that she should have been able to reach in a whim to keep up her cover, and she was quietly seething at the world. If I have to seal this thing up too, I swear. . .

Warp Hardware Hoodlum Heist Vicissitude Cool Cats From Beneath You It Devours: Age of the Aquarian GM (To Warp I guess? For what it matters?) Extinquished

Warp Initiative: 1d20+12: 18 [1d20=6]

Warp blinked. Her expression was caught somewhere between befuddlement and belligerence. Is leaping to conclusions one of your superpowers? Was her first thought. No. That's unfair, he doesn't know how they work. So, tell him, then. "Okay, my tears look like this:" She absently held a both into the air and took a deep, careful breath. The marks on her skin flared up in a deep, sinister red as the group heard sound like the universe's whimper. The world opened like someone had pushed a knife through the other end and tore a long slash through reality . . . two slashes, actually, one above each of her hands. They were solid black, outlined in festering red, like an open wound. "If you can come up with a way to use these to spy on people without them noticing, be my guest." "Also, I've seen what the interior looks like, and I know where the first four hostages are, and warping just me and what I'm touching is easy." She closed her hands into fists and stopped the flow of power. Her marks faded back to black and the tears mended closed in the air. "I don't need a door."

Warp shrugged. "So we don't know what they want right now, and it sounds like we don't have a way to find out." Kat bit down on her lip. "But . . . They're robots who talk like old movie mobsters, might not need a reason. This could just be acting out like they were made. But . . .Doesn't really matter? They have hostages. We can worry about the how and why and what when everyone's safe, yeah?" When she heard the soft sound of metal breaking, Warp's head twisted sharply to the side. When she saw what Chrome was doing she relaxed. "Nice," she said. "Best I could have done was slag it or put it away, but they'd probably freak out when they realized it was just missing."

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.

Back when Kat had still been involved in the theater scene in high school, she'd learned some small things about costuming, alas, there was no real easy way to hide an eye that burned like the inside of the Doom Coil. She spent a long time testing out ways to hide it or conceal it, an eyepatch, letting hair drift over it . . . But all it ended up looking more suspicious. She elected to switch to an outfit she rarely used and wear her hair a little different instead of anything dramatic and just not think about it until it became a problem. AEON was hardly low-profile; Warp knew exactly where it was. And with Alex as the figurehead for the thing, she'd marked it in her head as something to remember, just in case. She could have been there, whistling out of an alley and looking innocently in either direction to make sure she hadn't been seen. But . . . Her first choice in outfits had arrived half-disintegrated. She could endure the stares on the bus. (And stares there were) Traveling was nerve-wracking, in a way she hadn't understood in a long time, since that first plane ride to Freedom to go to Claremont. Staring out the window of the plane, wondering whether she and her parents were being used, whether she was going to be used . . . Breathe in, breathe out. She shut her eyes, let the bus wind through the streets and listened as a mechanical voice cried out the various stops. Into the woods, it's time to go, I hate to leave, I have to, though. And there, that was her stop. Kat took a deep breath and hopped out of the bus and through the big, fancy double-doors. It looked fair enough to her, but Kat's blood was up enough it seemed a small comfort to her. She tried for an air confidence and wore it pretty well considering that she was almost as scared as she had ever been in her life. Kat took a quick look around and strode calmed into the metahuman inquiries booth. "Hello?" She gave a little grin while another her in the back of Kat's head shrieked, spat and begged her to stop go back and hide under something dark and warm until the problem went away and she didn't have to deal with this anymore. Instead, she took a deep breath and said. "I may need a little consulting," Kat considered giving her eye a jaunty point before her body rejected it so hard she almost convulsed. "Okay," Kat reached hands behind her back and rubbed absently at her elbow. "I definitely need some." A pause. Quieter, more desperate, "Now, please."

January 26, 2017 Kat noticed it that morning. She pushed herself awkwardly up, stretched, yawned, casually waved off her roommate as she tried to fuss and meandered in drowsy laziness to the washroom in a nightshirt, brushed her teeth, rinsed out her mouth, looked in the mirror and . . . Her brush fell out of her hand and into the sink. Her left eye was red. But that didn't quite capture the reality of it. Kat's eyes had been red for years, since her power had almost overwhelmed her in the street. Sometimes, people had joked to her about it glowing, and maybe, if she was totally honest, they had glowed a little. But her eye was red, one solid color, and . . . As her heart beat faster, the light got brighter. She slammed hte door and locked it firmly behind her, ignoring the muffled protest of her roommate. She can't see this. Calm down. She grabbed hold of the edge of the sink, breathed hard and closed her eyes. Calm down. You're excited. That's it. She counted her breaths, kept her thoughts in an easy circle. She opened her eyes again . . . and her eye was still red. And . . . What was that under her shirt? She pulled it up and saw red-dark lines slowly advancing slowly but determinedly down her body. "####."

"Oh I sure hope so," Kat said, an impish expression crawling across her face. "Watching that might be my favorite pa—" THUMP. "Uh." Subconsciously, Kat spread her stance to get some better balance. She went to the edge and peered over into the water, making sure to keep a tight hold on the railing. Nothing. "Did we just hit something? That felt like we hit something."

I'm hoping I wasn't too presumptuous in posting. I went ahead and responded right away since Chrome addressed a question directly to Warp, but maybe I should have asked first.

The figment of solemn break apart, dissipating into a screaming shade of . . . of something. Bonfire couldn't quite understand what he was seeing; a teeming mass of mouths and groping hands. It screamed, threw itself at Bonfire and horrible mass and all, pierced his torso. And suddenly he understood that there was no hope for him, not salvation except in submission. His defiance had doomed him and he could never make it right, but he could go back, he could stop this madness, end it himself before the angel ended it for him. He wasn't far from the tower now. The song was like razors under his skin, but this was the heart of this broken world. From here he could see a hole, a broken piece of masonry that he could pass through. Another flickering phantasm flew into the way, resolved into a familiar, large, reptilian figure that even Bonfire's addled mind recognized as . . . Leviathan?

Sorry for the delay! I have literally no excuse. Solemn(?) is going to try to hit Bonfire. In the process, "he" vanishes. 1d20+10=23 That hits! Make a DC18 Will save. If it fails, Bonfire is fatigued.

Warp tugged absently at her hair, looking up in thought. "Fifteen . . . No. Ten seconds, max. If you can give me that then I can get those four out there. All of them are probably more than I could take in one trip, or it'd be faster." Warp started chewing at her lip again. "Then the only question is whether they have any more people hidden in the back."

Warp hissed through her teeth. Of COURSE they had hostages. And they could even have more, as far as any of them knew. If these four were the only ones, she coudl get them out no problem. Gods, she should have just let the robot grab her and take her 'hostage.' That would have made everything far more simple. She . . . Could go further in, couldn't she? Check it out? But there might be a robot waiting around the corner, watching for intruders, and she might have gotten better about sneaking recently, but . . . She wasn't THAT good! Deciding against it, she opened a fissure beneath her feet and fell easily into it. "Yo." Warp's voice came from behind Hammer, because she was behind Hammer. She stepped past him and up to the car. "Yeah, there are hostages in there. At least four." She gave the two the gist, going over what little she'd seen so far. ". . . And I couldn't see what was going on any deeper than that." She scowled at the car, seemingly seeing it for the first time. "It's like they stepped out of the nineteen twenties, from this to the way they talk and their dumb outfits. What's up with that?"

"I mean, Warp frowned a bit, tilted her head to the side and gave it a bit of a think. "I could, I think. But, I don't know where they are in there. And you can't really look through my Tears to see where you're going. We could end up right in the middle of them, sitting ducks . . . But, well, if I could see exactly where I want to go, that'd be a different story . . ." But she couldn't. Warp gave a helpless shrug. Chrome had some sense. She liked him. "I could definitely take a peek around." Warp said, "But I could definitely take a peak around. I can be quiet when I want, and can cover a lot of space fast. Good thought." And then, without giving opportunity for any more discussion, Warp disappeared in a flash of red light. But she hadn't gone far. She was moving up toward the drive-through windows in short, staggered teleports, trying to stay out of obvious sight of anyone who might be watching from inside the bank. In no time at all she was underneath the service window. Biting down on her lip, Warp dared to lift her head enough to try to get a peek through and see what was happening.