[Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

[Thanqol]

“None of the above, bitch.”

[Whoops forgot to mention: Unleashing Powers, 10.]

"Well, at least we know which universe had the actual brains in it. Compared to our Comstar's heists this isn't worth being called third-rate. What are you, a puppet? Did you outsource your show to the AI, the gang boss, or the possum woman? It's pathetic. Either get out here and take the stage like a proper villain, or hurry up and get back to the loser dimension. Jeez."

Sara would have tossed in a camera-winning grin and at least one custom tailored insult, but since Euna's the one with the spare breath to spit fire right now, the production would have to settle for the girl who could barely maintain her game face. Behind her back, she squeezes her wrist in her other hand. The pressure sensor sends a minor warning ping to her network...

[This is a Provoke roll, 2d6+1 = 10]

Hardlight impacts are beautiful - a mixture of shattering glass and ball lightning. As @Sarahphim hammers on the wall cracks run through every facet of the neon pink and then, with one final blow, it crashes into pieces. The light holds in solid shards like falling cherry blossoms for a moment and then, one by one, they convert into brilliant little lightning bolts that link the falling fragments together.

And into that electrical harmony Comstar2 is dragged out against her will.

[Marking Insecure]

"It's a simple adjustment," she's saying to herself more than anything. "I just didn't expect @Sarahphim to be here. That's okay. I just need to adjust a bit. It's okay, the plan is still good. This won't ruin the show."

She hefts a strange rifle-like device and fires it at your feet.

Water bursts out - cold and salty high pressure enough to knock you both down. It keeps coming - she's opened a portal to the bottom of the ocean, and she's not done. She angled her portal rifle at a wall and fires again. Immediately half a dozen screaming cyber-Mongolians ride out on motorcycles, firing hardlight arrows from their composite bows. She adjusts her aim one more time and fires at the roof - and this time it opens to the surface of the shattered moon. Air and water and cyber-Mongolians are all sucked up towards it (it's not as though that stops the cyber-Mongolians from trying to stab and shoot you - they're essentially robots set to berserker, which has the one positive side effect of meaning you don't need to pull your punches with these guys).

Comstar thinks for a moment and then adds one final portal that spews fire into the corridor at the same time. Then she clicks buttons on her console and the wall consoles light up - all with the same question that used to be on the pink barrier.

Then she goes back into the cell she came out of, leaving the two of you in the middle of pure chaos.

(Just as an aside: Errant, you've had the opportunity to closely observe Comstar2 through the video she put out - if you had the stomach to watch it a couple of times and carefully take notes. You can make a Before We Get Started roll at this point if you so choose)

*

Angel-IKA: Woah holy crap o.o
Bode: What did she mean that she did not expect @Sarahphim to be here?
Locker: like sarh is the worst person u could possibly throw into a horror movie set.
Ferraphim1tp: Other things @Sarahphim would ruin: Comedy films
Locker: yeah the straight man wouldn't laugh at one of her jokes and she'd stuff him in a locker
Angel-IKA: Murder mysteries?
Locker: shed just criticise the victims fashion sense and conclude that nothing of value was lost
Bode: Coming of age stories?
Locker: shed put her hand on the crying protagonist's shoulders, look him in the eyes, and sincerely tell him that he'd never be as cool as her but that was ok because he could buy her merch

Brainstorm squeezes his eyes shut and lets out a long, teeth-gritted sigh. "You're quite sure? AEGIS has geniuses, doesn't it? I just singlehandedly trapped a rogue AI, saved a neighborhood from orbital bombardment, and survived someone blowing anti-tank rounds in my direction."

Dammit, how does he know her? It's important, or it wouldn't niggle at him like it's doing.

He sighs again, cracks his neck, and eases his way back to vertical. "Walk and talk, please. What's the situation? What's so all-fired important in the Jet Jaguar hanger that I can't be spared for some decompression? Don't they decommission that thing whenever someone's invading, anyway?"

She looked a little disappointed at your grousing, blush fading a bit. "Well, yeah, but BlackSun brought dozens of engineers to the party and they're working overtime re-arming and re-equipping the Jet Jaguar. The Shogun needs everyone on the front lines; if we don't solve this then there's going to be a giant robot destroying downtown."

[Eldest]

Prometheus has a really straightforwards MO. Take over a critical area, function, or piece of territory and then safeguard it with a hideous trap. It's always straightforwards, brutal, and has no chance of being screwed up by BlackSun goons. It also has the added bonus of concealing any genuine mistake or vulnerability with the conditioned assumption that it must be a trap.

This is a nastier trap than usual because Prometheus himself is present.

It takes a lot of money to make something as large as a TAG invisible, but for Prometheus' personal Avatar money is no object. You wouldn't have noticed it if your powers hadn't just switched over to sonic control - you can hear the creaking of the metal catwalks under its enormous bulk as it moves to set up a flanking position. The work the engineers are doing isn't just to re-fuel and re-arm the Jet Jaguar - it's to adapt it for Prometheus to transfer his control node into the giant robot!

That's the threat. Firstly a gunfight against an invisible giant robot, and secondly, a potential video game boss fight against a kaiju-sized giant robot.

Ferra takes a moment, surveying the room. A few marines, many, many engineers, an invisible TAG she can only track via sound, and a time limit in the form of the Jet Jaguar coming back online. Saraphim was angry at her because she'd made the wrong call. Both her other teammates had to deal with mines and their own supertrooper goons. Yep. Today sucked.

She goes into an exaggerated stretch, buying a moment or two. She could try to throw down with a TAG but she'd done that one before and ended up, well, dying and coming back the first time. Not a great plan. Could destroy the Jet but that'd be destroying friendly assets, not to mention ignoring the TAG. She'd been fighting like a robot, though, just a straight up slugfest. She's a person. She's so much more. So let's change the equation instead, reject the idea that she has to abide by an equation. She jumps up, bouncing momentum around to land on the massive robot shoulder in the center of the room.

Time to jack the Jet Jaguar.

Unleash for 11 to take control of the Jaguar first. If you need me to mark a condition to have this be another power of hers through A Mind Of Their Own I can.

[Balmas]

She looked a little disappointed at your grousing, blush fading a bit. "Well, yeah, but BlackSun brought dozens of engineers to the party and they're working overtime re-arming and re-equipping the Jet Jaguar. The Shogun needs everyone on the front lines; if we don't solve this then there's going to be a giant robot destroying downtown."

Victor screws up his eyes again. A giant robot destroying downtown could be worse; that's mostly megacorp territory, with all the fancy HQ buildings. Still, there'd be bystanders... "Look, I'm sorry to be a disappointment, but this has been a sucky day all around. Still, once more into the breach, I suppose."

Remind me. I made a TAG for the team, right? How's that work? Is it a full Voltron situation where the entire team has to be present to pilot it, or is it remote control? And, most importantly, how long would it take for me to summon it up?

[PhoeKun]

After her first time seeing what quickly became known as The Video, all Errant wanted to do was throw up. After the second time, she had to remind herself that supervillains with obvious mental disorders still generally had to be punched before you could get them help. By the third time, she'd started noticing things and filled a data pad with her observations. By the sixth time, JuneBird yelled at her to take a break. So she put the video down, and started organizing her notes instead. She took the time to write expanded thoughts and theories, and meticulously cross referenced them against Comstar1's profile as well as AEGIS files on a number of other villains, some with known derangements and some with assumed clean bills of mental health. She also looked up the script to a recent crime thriller, just to make sure she wasn't missing on any hunches.

She forgot to eat that day. She chose not to sleep that night. In the morning, she stared at her conclusions, marched herself to the HR desk and requested permission to file for 3 days' time off following the conclusion of this next mission. She quietly suffered the usual cracks about psych evaluations and insisted that yes, she was serious. They made her put it in writing that she wouldn't spend the entire time binge watching cartoons.

[Before We Get Started: 2d6+2 = 11. Holding 3]

Now she knew it was worth the effort. Seeing Comstar2 was the proof she needed that this wasn't all especially elaborate playacting. The profile slide together, and she knew what her job would be. But first things always came first. She kips back up onto her feet against the water current and takes a quick breath to settle herself.

And then it's all action. She jumps a few paces forward and levels a heavy roundhouse kick at a cyber-Mongolian and knocks him right off his motorcycle toward the moon portal. She grabs the ride, lifts it in both hands, and throws it as hard as she can so that it takes out three more. This is her line in the proverbial sand. Jumping forward into that chaos or even just standing here for very long are both suicide, but it's so much worse for @Sarahphim than it is for her. So she blocks hardlight arrows, with her chest if she has to, and she swings death blow after death blow until she's built something of a motorcycle pile in the space around her. There we go. She snatches them up, whirls around, and slams them into the floor with absurd force so that they stick out of the concrete and form an incredibly awkward makeshift barricade.

And she snarls, because her window's closing rapidly. And because this is the second time today she's gotten shot up for the sake of a teammate and she can already hear Sara winding up some insult about her handiwork and for fuck's sake would it kill her to find a personality setting other than hardass just one god damn time when the cameras were on her?

"Mouth shut, and start making yourself useful, princess!"

[Defend at 2d6+3 = 7. The assumed powerful blow is a 9, and Errant's lashing out to provoke action]

[Raz_Fox]

POTENTIAL 3

“Oh, but fair Thisbe,” Sara says, dramatically clutching at her breast while more light-muskets go off around them, blowing the heads off Cyber-Mongolians, “I’m just a helpless little princess! I mean, that’s what you’re into, right? All that Hyperborea stuff?”

She mugs for the camera with wicked glee, not paying attention to what’s going on. “She’s such a hopeless, obsessed nerd. Hey, Errant, am I more of an Aleena or an Aleeda? You know, the weepy one or the dragon one?”

[You may be wondering why I am not doing more kicking of the butt! That is because I rolled a 6 on Directly Engaging using my Danger stat. I’m not using Stage Fighting because someone provoked me to foolhardy action. So please punish me with karmic retribution.]

[Thanqol]

Ferra takes a moment, surveying the room. A few marines, many, many engineers, an invisible TAG she can only track via sound, and a time limit in the form of the Jet Jaguar coming back online. Saraphim was angry at her because she'd made the wrong call. Both her other teammates had to deal with mines and their own supertrooper goons. Yep. Today sucked.

She goes into an exaggerated stretch, buying a moment or two. She could try to throw down with a TAG but she'd done that one before and ended up, well, dying and coming back the first time. Not a great plan. Could destroy the Jet but that'd be destroying friendly assets, not to mention ignoring the TAG. She'd been fighting like a robot, though, just a straight up slugfest. She's a person. She's so much more. So let's change the equation instead, reject the idea that she has to abide by an equation. She jumps up, bouncing momentum around to land on the massive robot shoulder in the center of the room.

Time to jack the Jet Jaguar.

You jack the Jet Jaguar

It's not like being a corporation - it's not even the same category. The Jet Jaguar is designed for human pilots and the basic sensory output is surprisingly similar to your own body. You're bigger, but you're still a person - still you. And with this body you could do anything.

You have eyes, eye lasers, two arms one of which is a gun, a giant glowing weak point in the centre of your torso that opens every sixty seconds to vent, etc. You have enough strength to wrestle Godzilla and similar flexibility to a human body, just on an immense scale. You are surprisingly fast and have thrusters that can take you into space easily in case you need to go punch out an asteroid or alien mothership. You are the last, best line of defence against the forces of darkness.

You've got the touch. You've got the power.

What do you do?

Victor screws up his eyes again. A giant robot destroying downtown could be worse; that's mostly megacorp territory, with all the fancy HQ buildings. Still, there'd be bystanders... "Look, I'm sorry to be a disappointment, but this has been a sucky day all around. Still, once more into the breach, I suppose."

Remind me. I made a TAG for the team, right? How's that work? Is it a full Voltron situation where the entire team has to be present to pilot it, or is it remote control? And, most importantly, how long would it take for me to summon it up?

A TAG isn't a Voltron situation - think of it more like the Hulkbuster armour. It's the mass of four motorcycles, which is a lot, but not a four-person piloting situation. Any of you can call it up and it'll arrive at the speed of supergenius designed motorbikes that can also transform and flip over obstacles. It'll be here in less than a minute and can be configured either as an independent fighting robot (with autonomy mostly limited by 'how comfortable you feel with AI') or as a suit of armour you wear. Really, though, it's your design - you tell me what it does!

Anyway, you come out into a giant hangar room with dozens of engineers freaking out and troops running all about and suchwith. The AEGIS operative brought you out into a great position high up; you can take in the entire scene and nobody's made you so you've got time to look and think. What's the plan?

POTENTIAL 3

“Oh, but fair Thisbe,” Sara says, dramatically clutching at her breast while more light-muskets go off around them, blowing the heads off Cyber-Mongolians, “I’m just a helpless little princess! I mean, that’s what you’re into, right? All that Hyperborea stuff?”

She mugs for the camera with wicked glee, not paying attention to what’s going on. “She’s such a hopeless, obsessed nerd. Hey, Errant, am I more of an Aleena or an Aleeda? You know, the weepy one or the dragon one?”

[You may be wondering why I am not doing more kicking of the butt! That is because I rolled a 6 on Directly Engaging using my Danger stat. I’m not using Stage Fighting because someone provoked me to foolhardy action. So please punish me with karmic retribution.]

Hey @Sarahphim. You're on the moon!

It happened really fast, but you got a bit too close to that vacuum portal and that suction is no joke. You are tumbling head over heels and totally disoriented but luckily you are very smart and good at reflexes and lock yourself in a bubble of hardlight before you run out of air. You continue to bounce across the surface of the moon for a bit before coming to a halt.

The Lunar landscape is beautiful, even more so after Halfwoman destroyed it. One of her more controversial acts, really, destroying the moon. It's mostly still there, like three quarters, but the remaining quarter got punched into a glittering asteroid belt of shining white stone and dust. It's very beautiful from the earth, but from the surface of the moon it's spellbinding.

Too bad you can't see it! Your hardlight bubble is completely opaque and you cannot see anything, actually. Also you're totally disoriented and you have no idea which direction you have to go to get back to the portal, and also you've lost your wireless link to your camera drones because the moon has terrible coverage.

(Terrible isn't zero. You can pay some pretty extortionate roaming fees to get a direct satellite uplink).

Now she knew it was worth the effort. Seeing Comstar2 was the proof she needed that this wasn't all especially elaborate playacting. The profile slide together, and she knew what her job would be. But first things always came first. She kips back up onto her feet against the water current and takes a quick breath to settle herself.

And then it's all action. She jumps a few paces forward and levels a heavy roundhouse kick at a cyber-Mongolian and knocks him right off his motorcycle toward the moon portal. She grabs the ride, lifts it in both hands, and throws it as hard as she can so that it takes out three more. This is her line in the proverbial sand. Jumping forward into that chaos or even just standing here for very long are both suicide, but it's so much worse for @Sarahphim than it is for her. So she blocks hardlight arrows, with her chest if she has to, and she swings death blow after death blow until she's built something of a motorcycle pile in the space around her. There we go. She snatches them up, whirls around, and slams them into the floor with absurd force so that they stick out of the concrete and form an incredibly awkward makeshift barricade.

And she snarls, because her window's closing rapidly. And because this is the second time today she's gotten shot up for the sake of a teammate and she can already hear Sara winding up some insult about her handiwork and for fuck's sake would it kill her to find a personality setting other than hardass just one god damn time when the cameras were on her?

"Mouth shut, and start making yourself useful, princess!"

[Defend at 2d6+3 = 7. The assumed powerful blow is a 9, and Errant's lashing out to provoke action]

AEGIS scientists aren't sure if the tendency for Cyber-mongols to emerge from dimensional portals is due to:
A) The cyber-mongol horde dimension being 'adjacent' to the current timeline in some way.
B) There are so many dimensions where the cyber-mongol horde took over that any given portal has disturbingly high odds of opening to a world they conquered.

But then @Sarahphim gets thrown through the moon portal and immediately it starts to close - Comstar was hanging off the trigger to write @Sarahphim out of the scene. You punch your way through the melee and get to it first, lodging your feet and one hand into the closing portal, holding it open with sheer muscle and grit. This of course works, and is probably extremely scientific. You've also got one hand free to punch cyber-mongols and really, you could do this all day. Or at least for long enough for @Sarahphim to get back through the portal.

However, you are also within arms reach of one of those wall consoles with Comstar's question on it in case you felt inclined to give that a try.


*

Locker: rip sarah
Bode: ... I've lost her.
Ferraphim1tp: I haven't! Check this out >:3 t/vjs/mooncam10299
Locker: good job!
Ferraphim1tp: ^^ Thank you
Angel-IKA: You can hack GSA in three seconds? o.o
Ferraphim1tp: Nah, I was already in for work. ^^;;
Angel-IKA: Oh yeah... I sometimes forget you're not a superhero too.
Ferraphim1tp: Haha! ^^;;; No, no, I could not take that kind of pressure. I'm actually a white hat. I only break into places that ask me to.
Bode: With your skills you are capable of much more than that.
Ferraphim1tp: Yeah. I mean, I used to be a black hat, but then a corp sent a team to kick down my front door >.> . It's not worth the stress. I was lucky they didn't send a cruise missile instead.
Bode: Surely that's an urban legend.

[Raz_Fox]

POTENTIAL 3

That is right, you know. Reception is terrible on the moon. There’s only one thing she can get a ping off of: Errant herself. The gal’s got, like, three backup communicators on her at all times. If you were sappy, you might think of it as being like a red string that binds them both together!

@SARAHPHIM picks up speed. Luckily, nobody can see her scurrying along like she’s in a hamster ball, on all fours, going absolutely feral as she scampers back towards the portal.

Problem: as she drops the ball and prepares to jump through, she realizes that the portal is ten feet up in the air. Oh. Oh sh*t.

One. Two. Three. She’s jumping in the low lunar gravity, exhaling the breath in her lungs so they don’t burst in her chest, feeling the blood in her veins turn to ice. Her hand reaches out. She’s not going to make it. She was a dumb idiot who should have just stayed in her hamster ball on the moon forever. Her eyes throb as she sees, as if highlighted by a halo, the most beautiful girl in the world, and she reaches out, desperately.

[Solid 9 on the Unleash roll to overcome the obstacle of being stuck on the moon. Is this the end of our heroine? Read on...]

[PhoeKun]

Well, that's it. The window is officially -- Errant punches out another cyber-Mongolian -- closed. There's a lot of things she could have done! She could have -- another punch -- let the water current push her through the fire, maybe -- she grabs a random woman by her super rad shoulder spikes and throws her into three of her friends -- even gotten some sort of gravity boost off of the moon portal or let herself get blasted forward by some of @Sarahphim's hardlight bursts, and then she'd have been able to slip into Comstar's hiding spot before the door finished shutting. Instead, she's stuck here fighting random goons with one arm while the rest of her body is half in outer space physically holding open a portal via what top scientists expect is a miracle. Thank god she doesn't have to understand what's happening right now.

Errant's attention is torn. She's watching the moon to see what's happening to Sara, watching oncoming cyber-Mongolians to know when she has to lash out to defend the portal, and she's stealing glances at Comstar's question panel and comparing it against the research she's been doing all week. Oh. She'd been very caught up in not wanting to play the game at all, but wasn't the answer just D? She reaches for the button... and that's when she catches Sara out of the corner of her eye. Everything else recedes into the background and she scrambles to adjust her position to switch her free arm and reach out into space. Oh god. No no no, don't let this happen, don't those be the last words she said to her... she reaches recklessly far in and closes her fingers around @Saraphim's wrist. Then she pulls for all she's worth.

This is a lot to ask of someone, you know? The constant assaults, the fire. The vacuum of space, all that stuff. Errant's off balance now, and praying as she starts falling that she's headed toward the right end of this portal.

[Errant spends 1 Team to improve @Saraphim's roll to a 10. If she's got half a second to spare still, she's also going to spend 1 Hold to "escape any bindings or impediments placed on her"]

[Balmas]

Well, Brainstorm asked for time, and you know what? It feels good to be able to finally take advantage of it! To survey the battlefield, figure out what's going on, who's where, and what needs doing. He's going to have to wait for the TAG anyway--might as well put that time to good use.

[Assess the Situation: 12. How could we best end this quickly? What here is the greatest threat?]

A TAG isn't a Voltron situation - think of it more like the Hulkbuster armour. It's the mass of four motorcycles, which is a lot, but not a four-person piloting situation. Any of you can call it up and it'll arrive at the speed of supergenius designed motorbikes that can also transform and flip over obstacles. It'll be here in less than a minute and can be configured either as an independent fighting robot (with autonomy mostly limited by 'how comfortable you feel with AI') or as a suit of armour you wear. Really, though, it's your design - you tell me what it does!

How does one design anything? You start with the end goal in mind, and then build towards that.

In this case, the team's tag is built around the idea of shoring up gaps in the lineup. @SARAPHIM is excellent at range, but may run into issues if someone can run the gauntlet of her patterns and close to grappling range. Victor has speed, cunning, intelligence, and adaptability, but lacks the sheer Oomph and hitting power of a hardlight cannon or the sheer stick-in-it-ness of Errant's bionic limbs. Ferra is... Well, he'll figure something out to suit her.

The point is, the TAG--affectionately dubbed Samson--is therefore primarily meant to be an additional lightning bruiser for the team: a heavy hitter that bowls into the enemies, occupies their attention, disperses suppressing fire, draws their ire, is simply and utterly impossible to ignore. It's a tank, armored to the gills and coated with a special weave to withstand a barrage of hard light attacks, and with a left hook like a semi-truck.

Oh, and it's neon. Kaleidoscopic color traces across every inch of the robot, a never-ending cascade of light shifting and flitting second to second like an exploding dye factory caught in a hurricane. Blame @SARAPHIM.

[Thanqol]

One. Two. Three. She’s jumping in the low lunar gravity, exhaling the breath in her lungs so they don’t burst in her chest, feeling the blood in her veins turn to ice. Her hand reaches out. She’s not going to make it. She was a dumb idiot who should have just stayed in her hamster ball on the moon forever. Her eyes throb as she sees, as if highlighted by a halo, the most beautiful girl in the world, and she reaches out, desperately.

[Solid 9 on the Unleash roll to overcome the obstacle of being stuck on the moon. Is this the end of our heroine? Read on...]

This is a lot to ask of someone, you know? The constant assaults, the fire. The vacuum of space, all that stuff. Errant's off balance now, and praying as she starts falling that she's headed toward the right end of this portal.

[Errant spends 1 Team to improve @Saraphim's roll to a 10. If she's got half a second to spare still, she's also going to spend 1 Hold to "escape any bindings or impediments placed on her"]

@Sarahphim hits Errant and they go tumbling together into the hallway, right as all the portals snap shut. In this particular tumble, however, Errant winds up on top.

For a moment there's total silence as, for the second time today, these two get a chance to stare soulfully into each others eyes while they breathe heavily from the exertion of the moment.

*

Ferraphim1tp: Oh come on!
Bode: I told you and I told you, and then I told you that I told you.
Ferraphim1tp: It's a scheme! It's a trick!
Bode: It's destiny~

Well, Brainstorm asked for time, and you know what? It feels good to be able to finally take advantage of it! To survey the battlefield, figure out what's going on, who's where, and what needs doing. He's going to have to wait for the TAG anyway--might as well put that time to good use.

[Assess the Situation: 12. How could we best end this quickly? What here is the greatest threat?]

Well, Ferra's in the Jet Jaguar. The Jet Jaguar can resolve a lot of situations extremely quickly. But that in itself is kind of the issue; she will not be uncontested there for long and getting into a brawl with Prometheus inside the AEGIS building isn't great. You need her to get this thing and get outside - there she'll be able to shoot passing BlackSun ships out of the sky and be safe from being jacked by Prometheus.

Prometheus is a threat, of course, but not for his Avatar form. It's spooky good at violence, of course, but you're really worried about the engineer teams still running about. Those guys know just enough to fire repeaters all over the Jet Jaguar which will give Prometheus - or worse, Comstar - an in. They're the guys you need to stop.

[PhoeKun]

thump thump, thump thump, thump thump...

Oh god, oh no. Oh no no no no, how did this happen? You've got a mission, soldier! You've got a home to protect and people to save! Get off, get off, get off, before it's too late!

thump thump, thump thump, thump thump...

Sara is so beautiful. It hurts to look at her. Why won't her heart slow down? Oh Euna, don't do it don't do it don't do it...

thump thump, thump thump, thump thump...

Look at her, splayed on on the floor like this! See the way her hair is spread out beneath her like a dark halo? See the way she's breathing? See those perfect lips? She's glowing! And her eyes... this is the most beautiful girl in the world and she's lying underneath Euna and she can't she can't she can't can'tcan'tcan'tcan't don't --

Two girls. Breathless, though for different reasons. The flush of Euna's face gives off palpable heat. The sensors in her fingertips tell her Sara's face is soft and supple. That her skin is cold, and that underneath it her heart is racing and panicked. Her eyes tell her that Sara is poetry. Her nose tells her Sara smells like lilacs mixed with burning ozone. Her lips tell her that... that...

thump thump, thump thump, thump thump...

Hesitation. She shouldn't. She mustn't. She can't.

She does.

Lips touch lips. Warmth touches space-born cold. Softness on softness. She almost gets away with a tiny peck. She could pass it off as friendly, maybe. But the second one is torn straight from her dreams. It's wild and it's clumsy and it's sloppy, but it's heat and it's passion and it's wrongness but it is is so good, like stealing breath. Like stealing attention. Euna's fingers run through Sara's hair. Her tongue, not knowing what to do, licks at those lips as she parts again. She shivers. She pulls Sara to a sitting position and wraps two fake arms around a very real body, and she buries her face in that luscious hair.

The destruction of Euna Kim is inevitable. The destruction of Euna Kim will be swift and total.

"I'm so glad," she whispers, and her breath is much too hot, "So glad you're alive..."

[Comfort or Support! 2d6+3 = 11]

[Raz_Fox]

POTENTIAL 4

Okay, you know how people are always describing being kissed as like fireworks going off? Those people are dumb little romantics who have never been with someone who actually sets off fireworks when she’s kissed.

This... isn’t a pattern. This is anarchy. This is tigers half-formed racing starbursts of golden angel wings. This is whirling pinwheels spinning off bullets in every direction. If there was a Cyber-Mongolian left in the corridor, there is not. If there was anyone else in the corridor, there would be Friendly Fire reports going off. And in the chaos-

All that can be seen is movement. @SARAHPHIM’s mike is fritzed from being on the moon. So, as if from the other side of a golden waterfall on a summer day, one can only see the sitting up, and then- well, those bodies are very close together, aren’t they?

Sara is panting. Though not just because she just stared death in the face. Fuck shipping charts. Euna is kissing her and she hasn’t had a proper makeout since she started messing with the shippers in chat, god, has it actually been years since she let herself do this?

She kisses with teeth. Mine! My territory! My Euna! My savior! My prostheticpunk stick-ass paladin who stopped me from dying! She devours! She claws her way back up to the face, that soft and pale face, forces her tongue between those perfect lips, wraps her fingers in that silver mane and yanks. Mine! Let me leave you marked! Let me leave you breathless! Let me lock those prosthetics helpless behind your back and ravage you!

Finally, she relents, her hardlight generator running hot enough to blow out, the last whirligigs blowing round the corridor. The cameras catch her rest her forehead against Errant’s head. The microphone, however, is still warming up, and does not catch @SARAHPHIM’s frustrated, tearful “Fuck.” When she looks back up at Euna, tears are welling in her eyes- but it’s showtime. Time to dance.

“Cyber-Mongolians did a hell of a job on you,” she sneers into the mike as it comes back online. “But you nearly let me die on the fucking moon, so I guess we’ll call it even. Come on, bitch, let’s go handle Comslut. Unless you need to lie down and have a nap first, ickle baby?” This would be easier for Euna to process— somewhat easier, at least— if Sara’s thighs were not still locked around Euna, quivering with want, with the desire to pin her down and bend a leg back...

She shoves Errant back down on her back, stands up, dramatically flips her hair for the cameras. Eyes on her. Eyes on her. Don’t look at Euna. Please. Let the mistake be just a mistake. Don’t look at Euna. Don’t make me hurt her more.

Tiger claws, furious and trembling, sheathe her limbs. “Comstar,” Sara roars, cameras dutifully following her down the corridor, “come out and play! Unless you’re a fucking pussy!”

[Thanqol]

Angel-IKA: OH my god
Bode: Oh shit lasers -

*

A scorching, burned out, formerly invisible robot husk impacts the floor in a crumpled heap, taser falling from its ruined hand. It, like so many hearts here and 'round the internet, was the victim of shipping. Destroyed by love. Ravaged by rainbows. Killed by kis-

*

Angel-IKA: Can you see what's going on!? I can't see anything!! Are they under attack!?
Locker: yeah errant is attacking sarah with her tongue
Ferraphim1tp: You don't know that
Angel-IKA: They totally were kissing there for a moment!
Ferraphim1tp: It could have been mouth to mouth from moon aphyxiation
Locker: dude thetes literal rainbow fireworks
Ferraphim1tp: That could be what happens when Sarah has a near death exeprrience! You don't know!
Locker: look, like, yuo dont have to be in denial about the facts to think its not gonna work out.
Ferraphim1tp: If it were a real thing then Bode would be crowing about it.
Angel-IKA: Oh! This is so beautiful and perfect! I'm literally crying here.
Dominus: ... And there's the @Sarahphim we all know and love.
Angel-IKA: ... she ruined the mood!
Dominus: Uh, yeah, have you met @Sarahphim?
Angel-IKA: She ruined the mood! She's going to break Errant's heart! That - that's not fair!
Dominus: Not fair of Errant to just go ahead and kiss her in a moment of vulnerability either.
Ferraphim1tp: I am not convinced that's even what happened.

*

It's a clear run down the corridor to the cell that Comstar went into.

[PhoeKun]

The sensors in Euna's fingertips tell her that her lip is bleeding. That her neck shows early signs of bruising. That her hair is a disheveled mess. Her biomonitor tells her that her heartbeat is wildly irregular. That the surface temperature of her skin is unacceptably high. That her brainwave patterns are consistent with a trauma victim. Agent Errant Status: not recommended for duty.

She stands. If she doesn't stand, she has to think. If she thinks she'll realize what she's done. If she realizes what she's done she'll understand what a terrible person she is. If she understands that, the mission will fail and people will die. So she stands. Focus on your mission, soldier. Your mission is good. Your mission is not a mistake. If your mission is not a mistake then neither are you.

She walks. There's a corridor to clear and time is wasting. She runs. Don't look at Sara. Don't look at Sara. You can't do this if you look at Sara. You will apologize later and you will put this behind you and everything will be professional and fine because that is what a good soldier should be.

She's here at the door Comstar slipped into, with no idea how she got there. She opens her mouth to say something, but words don't come out.

[Balmas]

Well, Ferra's in the Jet Jaguar. The Jet Jaguar can resolve a lot of situations extremely quickly. But that in itself is kind of the issue; she will not be uncontested there for long and getting into a brawl with Prometheus inside the AEGIS building isn't great. You need her to get this thing and get outside - there she'll be able to shoot passing BlackSun ships out of the sky and be safe from being jacked by Prometheus.

Prometheus is a threat, of course, but not for his Avatar form. It's spooky good at violence, of course, but you're really worried about the engineer teams still running about. Those guys know just enough to fire repeaters all over the Jet Jaguar which will give Prometheus - or worse, Comstar - an in. They're the guys you need to stop.

Ferra's in the Jet Jaguar?

On the one hand, that is awesome. Ferra in the Jet Jaguar means Prometheus isn't in the Jet Jaguar. Plus, come on, this means that he can finally live out his dream of riding a massive robot into battle.

On the other hand, boy, howdy, wouldn't it just be like Prometheus to jiggle some loose bits of code, whisper some words, and convince Ferra that joining him's a good idea?

Ignore that. Shove it down, repress it. Ferra good.

And Ferra needs help.

He grins, clicks his watch. One minute, by his estimation. It's a simple action to salute the AEGIS lady--crap, he still didn't get her name--and say, "At least this time, i have you for backup, right?"

And then he folds his arms to his chest, and tips rigidly backwards off the catwalk and is falling. Oh, sure, this is dumb and stupid, and idiotic and all those other synonyms, but he is very sure of his math. And his math is saying that in a few seconds...

Neon, in the corner of his eyes. Oh, yes. It is good to be the smart guy, and those engineers have no idea of the pain that's coming their way.

[Thanqol]

She shoves Errant back down on her back, stands up, dramatically flips her hair for the cameras. Eyes on her. Eyes on her. Don’t look at Euna. Please. Let the mistake be just a mistake. Don’t look at Euna. Don’t make me hurt her more.

Tiger claws, furious and trembling, sheathe her limbs. “Comstar,” Sara roars, cameras dutifully following her down the corridor, “come out and play! Unless you’re a fucking pussy!”

She's here at the door Comstar slipped into, with no idea how she got there. She opens her mouth to say something, but words don't come out.

Comstar is chained to a wall in some sort of terrible high-tech harness - familiar in some design aspects but every aspect of it is custom built. A series of lenses and crystals is channelling neon pink energy directly at her chest, and she is clenching her teeth and sweating and struggling, clearly in pain - serious but not agonizing.

Comstar2 is simply ready.

[Marking Guilty]

Errant, you're once again taking @Sarahphim in your arms - but this time it's to pull her into a headlock and cover her mouth so she can't speak. @Sarahphim, your hardlight generator has gone immediately into a full system lock. The sheer suddenness and totality with which both of those effects took place is startling. You're both secured against cyberwarfare, there are layers of defensive coding surrounding your implants, but Comstar didn't even have to blow past them - she went around them. She didn't hack you. She's straight up controlling you with her brain.

Comstar is... well, Comstar is a supervillain.

"Well there goes that secret," muttered the Comstar chained to the wall.

"Shut up," snapped Comstar2, and the beam intensified sharply, causing Comstar to let out a brief cry of pain. "You could have taken over this pathetic dimension by now if you didn't waste your potential," her face twisted into a cruel smile. "Good news, though. That won't be a problem any more."

She turned back to the heroes, directing the camera drones into her preferred configuration with little more than flicks of her eye. "You always have to make things about you, don't you @Sarahphim?" she said. "You're trying to hit every demographic simultaneously and so you won't allow a single breath of oxygen for anyone else on the stage. Even when you were a dumb animal you still found a way to shove yourself into the spotlight at everyone else's expense. No more! Now you're going to just sit and be a spectator for a few minutes. Maybe you'll learn something about stagecraft and pacing while you're at it!"

Try as you might, you're not going to be able to get a word out through Errant's robot hand. You'll have to make do with incoherent snarls and ugly glares. Errant, you can talk normally.

[Comstar2 is trying to shift your Superior down and Mundane up. Accept what she says or reject her influence]

*

Locker: dominus did you sit down at a computer in the midlee of a heist to let us all know how not mad you were about sarah kissing errant
Dominus: NO
Locker: doubt.jpg
Bode: I'm okay!
Angel-IKA: Oh, that's good!
Dominus: WHEN WERE YOU NOT OKAY?
Bode: I was just very startled by how correct I was.
Locker: did lasers penetrate ur scrying mirror
Bode: I apologize for the interruption. Look! It is Comstar!

Ferra's in the Jet Jaguar?

On the one hand, that is awesome. Ferra in the Jet Jaguar means Prometheus isn't in the Jet Jaguar. Plus, come on, this means that he can finally live out his dream of riding a massive robot into battle.

On the other hand, boy, howdy, wouldn't it just be like Prometheus to jiggle some loose bits of code, whisper some words, and convince Ferra that joining him's a good idea?

Ignore that. Shove it down, repress it. Ferra good.

And Ferra needs help.

He grins, clicks his watch. One minute, by his estimation. It's a simple action to salute the AEGIS lady--crap, he still didn't get her name--and say, "At least this time, i have you for backup, right?"

And then he folds his arms to his chest, and tips rigidly backwards off the catwalk and is falling. Oh, sure, this is dumb and stupid, and idiotic and all those other synonyms, but he is very sure of his math. And his math is saying that in a few seconds...

Neon, in the corner of his eyes. Oh, yes. It is good to be the smart guy, and those engineers have no idea of the pain that's coming their way.

"You hear what happened to Jolsen?"
"Nah, what happened to Jolsen?"
"Mr. Big Show hit him with a vending machine."
"What, really? Oh man, that sucks."
"Yeah, tell me about it."
"We're gonna be recohering that armour for weeks!"
"I know, right?"
"I'm this close to telling the big guy that nanotechnology is a dead end."
"Yeah. I don't care what Prometheus thinks, nobody can possibly make it work."

[Roll to directly engage the engineers as a group; this represents you going through 20-40 nerds, but they're nerds with some nasty tech on hand and might be able to get a crack in if you're not careful]

Above you, you hear the click and whine of an E/Mauler being set up. It's a heavy weapon that requires a fixed emplacement, chargeup time, and preferably an operator with no cybernetics to wield. A direct hit from it will permanently turn a TAG into an extremely expensive statue and might even cause a localized shutdown on an area of the Jet Jaguar. "Name a target," came the girl's voice on your com.

[Balmas]

"You hear what happened to Jolsen?"
"Nah, what happened to Jolsen?"
"Mr. Big Show hit him with a vending machine."
"What, really? Oh man, that sucks."
"Yeah, tell me about it."
"We're gonna be recohering that armour for weeks!"
"I know, right?"
"I'm this close to telling the big guy that nanotechnology is a dead end."
"Yeah. I don't care what Prometheus thinks, nobody can possibly make it work."

[Roll to directly engage the engineers as a group; this represents you going through 20-40 nerds, but they're nerds with some nasty tech on hand and might be able to get a crack in if you're not careful]

Tonight, I'm gonna have myself a real good time...

Victor grins, humming happily to himself as the hatch hisses open to receive him. Oh, sure, he may boast about tactical weaknesses, shoring up of, but there's a selfish part of him that knows that he built this for himself. Big, strong, able to lift with the best... Look, he has to keep up with Errant somehow, right? Not like @SARAPHIM would ever consent to being cooped up in a giant battle robot, not without space for hardlight emitters and a camera centered on her face.

I'm floating around in ecstacy...

The nanobots are melting. Straps flow over him, belting him into place; normally, that'd be a problem, tying him down like that, but here? In his cockpit, his robot? Here, he can let loose, and that means not needing limbs so much as he needs nanobots spread out over every control panel, like a filmy black fungus over every button and dial.

"Morning, Samson," he coos, and urges the robot into a sprint.

'Cause I'm having a good time! Having a good time!

Giant fighting robot vs. forty or so scientists? Not even a contest. Lead with a vending-machine fastball--take that, no-future-in-nanotech-man and then crash into the group like a bowling ball through ninepins. Keep them scattered, demoralized, focused entirely on him and, you know, not the eighty-foot-tall death robot stomping towards the outside.

[And we squeak by with a 7, thanks to grandma telling me to kick Possum Girl's ass. I really want to say Resist Blows, but let's go for Create An Opportunity for Ferra so she can get outside without being hindered.]

Above you, you hear the click and whine of an E/Mauler being set up. It's a heavy weapon that requires a fixed emplacement, chargeup time, and preferably an operator with no cybernetics to wield. A direct hit from it will permanently turn a TAG into an extremely expensive statue and might even cause a localized shutdown on an area of the Jet Jaguar. "Name a target," came the girl's voice on your com.

"Invisible TAG on the catwalks! Position..." Position shitfuck. Dammit, shoulda told her where the TAG was while he was still up there, before tumbling down into a fighting robot. "Shoot where the catwalks are creaking!"

[Raz_Fox]

POTENTIAL 4

Oh, come on! This is deeply, humiliatingly unfair. The cameras need to be focused on her, doing violence upon her enemy, keeping everyone enraptured and thinking about her, not about Errant and the things she might have just done.

She scrabbles. She kicks. She tries to pry her way out. This would be easier if she didn’t have to breathe through her nose. God damn it all to hell.

Nothing Comstar is saying is getting through, really. But that’s because the sheer rotten unfairness is already sleeping into her bones. She’s done everything right tonight! She saved an entire goddamn airplane, she beat up Turbo Knight, she blew through all of Comstar’s schemes and Comstar had this ace up her sleeve the entire time??

It’s...

Humiliating.

And she is going to handle being humiliated like she usually does when she’s helpless: swearing furiously and incomprehensibly, making obscene and possibly entirely improvised hand gestures at Comstar, and squirming like a cat desperate not to take a bath until she’s sweaty, red-faced, muss-haired and maybe sniffling a little bit shut up it’s been a really long evening and she’s already upset about that stupid kiss so get off her back already.

I am sure that this will in no way hamper Errant’s ability to appropriately handle the situation, will not make her think about the wild and furious makeout session she just had, and will not make her feel helpless under the psychic domination of Comstar. Or, for that matter, worried about Comstar using her to dispose of @SARAHPHIM once and for all. Maybe even make her toss her back out onto the moon for extra cruelty points. No reason to think about that!!

[Shift accepted.]

[PhoeKun]

SysCheck: running. SysCheck: complete. Cyberlimbs all functioning within normal parameters. Good luck out there, Agent.

Errant has one arm locked around Sara's neck. She has her other hand clamped over Sara's mouth. There's no strain or struggle in those arms, even though she's fighting with everything she has to just let go, dear god, please let go. That's not the way that cyberlimbs work. They process the signal and they obey, and as far as their coding is concerned everything is happening exactly the way it's supposed to be. They hold strong through every squirm and flail, and they do it all automatically. Which gives Errant a lot of time to watch the tears forming in Sara's eyes.

The tears are not the worst part. Seeing @Sarahphim, of all people, being hurt and scared and helpless is somehow not the worst part. Her arms are following signals and doing what they're told, just like normal. It's not like when Comstar turned them off and they felt like nothing. It's not like after they were hacked, when the safety features kicked in and her biofeedback filters dulled all sensation to nothing in case Comstar tried to disable her with pain signals. This time, the software says nothing's wrong. So her sensors keep feeding her information about Sara's skin. The sensation of it. The temperature of it. The shape of her jaw. The fullness of her lips where her hand is pressed against them.

And it all. Feels. Exactly. The. Same. Holding her like this, with the looming threat of death. Holding her then, with the kissing and the mistakes. It's the same sensation. The same. The same. And it still feels good. How could it? Why? Why would it feel like this? It's... i-t's not... no no no nonono god, fuck, no, why? Euna dry heaves, because it's the only response her body's allowed to have. She's not a monster. She's not. She's not! Don't say that she is!

"We don't... we don't have to do it like this, Comstar," Errant tries to keep her voice level and her face determined. If she looks too rattled it's over, she's just part of the show. She tries again, "...@Saraphim's not part of the scene, right? You said so yourself. Let's... let's reset. Put her on the elevator. Leave her out of it. You and me. You and me. Like you wanted. Like you planned. O-ok?"

Please.

[A Provoke roll, if appropriate: 2d6+1 = 7

[Raz_Fox]

POTENTIAL 4

No.

For once, it’s not because Sara doesn’t want to not be on camera. Her cameras have already been hijacked again, she probably looks stupid like some idiot damsel in distress instead of the badass tiger she is, and the thought of not being here is actually a little appealing. But the other side of that is that if Comstar 2.0 tosses her through a portal (and there’s no guarantee that it wouldn’t just be to the moon or the bottom of the ocean leaving her to die), then it’s Errant who has to deal with this situation. Alone.

Errant, who just— who did the thing just now. Who had the thing done to her. Alone, mind-controlled, helpless before Comstar. Who will do terrible things to her and then blow up AEGIS or something like that. And leaving Errant alone to the mercies of a monster like that... no! Unacceptable!

Unfortunately the only possible way to convey this is by kicking Errant’s leg and stomping on her foot while howling bloody, ineffectual murder into that firm, unyielding cyberpalm. This is logical, sensible, and effective communication.

[Thanqol]

"This is it," said Comstar2 to her double, who looks away. "This is what success looks like. See what you were missing?"

She charges her portal rifle and fires it at a wall. Errant's arms heft @Sarahphim and start carrying her towards it. Outside there is darkness, wind, waves crashing against a rocky beach and cold air surges in.

"See, @Sarahphim? Errant is co-operative. Errant is smart," said Comstar2. "She knows that you're not part of this story. This isn't another one of those tacky little moments where you send off cheap fireworks while spouting drivel. This is a moment where the whole world changes. Honestly, this moment should have come years ago, but this world is filled with cowards - and not just her," she gestured at her double, "but Doctor Gears. He figured out the greatest secret of all: how to convert humans into Rx."

Her eye was lit up by crackling neon lights. "And not just any Rx - the most pure and potent stuff you've ever seen! The kind of reality-warping power that makes a thing like Ferra possible! But I figured out his code and recreated his machine, and I am about to demonstrate my new power on screen for everyone to witness! Firstly I will break my ineffective double here down into a nice, practical chunk of raw power. And then..." she took off her eyepatch.

Her eye was gorgeous; silver, sleek, brilliantly designed - a custom-built masterwork. It was also inert and dead, and settled into the middle of a mass of still fresh scar tissue. "And then I will use it to power my ultimate design! The Eye of Odin will allow me to see through any barrier - even the barrier between dimensions! I will pierce the barriers of the cosmos, of the past and future! Ultimate knowledge, ultimate power - and then the show will really begin!"

Lightning crashed through the portal as Comstar2 broke into a laugh that was... honestly just as nonthreatening as her double's. As she did she resumed the motion for Errant to hurl @Sarahphim through the portal.

*

Angel-IKA: ...
Ferraphim1tp: Eeep. ._.
Angel-IKA: I'm going.
Locker: ur wot
Angel-IKA: I'm going! I'm going down there to stop her!
Bode: That is a bad idea.
Angel-IKA: I don't have any cybernetics. She can't control me. And I can't let her do this.
Locker: dudde its just tv calm down
Dominus: DON'T YOU DARE.
Ferraphim1tp: ...Sarah's gotten out of worse scrapes than this...
Bode: It's an active warzone out there. You are not equipped.
===Angel-IKA has left the chat===
Locker: lol?

Tonight, I'm gonna have myself a real good time...

Victor grins, humming happily to himself as the hatch hisses open to receive him. Oh, sure, he may boast about tactical weaknesses, shoring up of, but there's a selfish part of him that knows that he built this for himself. Big, strong, able to lift with the best... Look, he has to keep up with Errant somehow, right? Not like @SARAPHIM would ever consent to being cooped up in a giant battle robot, not without space for hardlight emitters and a camera centered on her face.

I'm floating around in ecstacy...

The nanobots are melting. Straps flow over him, belting him into place; normally, that'd be a problem, tying him down like that, but here? In his cockpit, his robot? Here, he can let loose, and that means not needing limbs so much as he needs nanobots spread out over every control panel, like a filmy black fungus over every button and dial.

"Morning, Samson," he coos, and urges the robot into a sprint.

'Cause I'm having a good time! Having a good time!

Giant fighting robot vs. forty or so scientists? Not even a contest. Lead with a vending-machine fastball--take that, no-future-in-nanotech-man and then crash into the group like a bowling ball through ninepins. Keep them scattered, demoralized, focused entirely on him and, you know, not the eighty-foot-tall death robot stomping towards the outside.

[And we squeak by with a 7, thanks to grandma telling me to kick Possum Girl's ass. I really want to say Resist Blows, but let's go for Create An Opportunity for Ferra so she can get outside without being hindered.]



"Invisible TAG on the catwalks! Position..." Position shitfuck. Dammit, shoulda told her where the TAG was while he was still up there, before tumbling down into a fighting robot. "Shoot where the catwalks are creaking!"

You scatter the engineers like tumbleweeds, keeping things clear for the massive bulk of the Jet Jaguar to clear the hangar. A lot of them take shots at you, a lot of them miss. One of them gets lucky, but any mob will roll a twenty sooner or later, right? It's just a swing with a shaped D-Charge but it's enough to shatter one of Samson's legs. You get out unharmed but your suit's done for now.

The huge WRHUM-THUMP of an E/Mauler going off fills the hangar. It's a glancing hit - enough to short out the Avatar's optical disruptor, but it's not enough to put it down. It responds with a hail of explosive rounds that force the AEGIS operative to retreat back into the vents.

And then, all of a sudden, you're standing on a catwalk across from Prometheus, fifty meters between the two of you. Everyone else is unconscious or fled. He's got no way out, no alternate connections - you have his absolute, full, undivided attention for the first time in years.

What do you do?

[PhoeKun]

She had the pain to thank for it. If Sara hadn't stomped her foot, if it hadn't been for that moment of surprised pain response slipping through her fully active receptors, she probably couldn't have done this. So there's a chance... just a chance, mind you, that Sara's feelings for Euna and her unwillingness to leave her alone may have saved reality as we know it. We'll leave it to our wonderful audience to decide for themselves if that's true, and what it means if it is.

What it means for Errant, though, is this: she has her legs. So when her arms get told, "throw!" they do just that. But her hips turn in the attempt. She spins away from the portal on the balls of her feet, and rolls @Sarahphim over her hips. She steps forward like a baseball pitcher coming off the mound, and turns her friend co-worker acquaintance crush partner into a missile.

"NO." And when she says it all of the heat and the tension and the anger and frustration and the horror that was building up inside of her explodes in that single syllable so that her voice is fiercer than the thunder rolling through the portal just behind her.

[Spending 1 Hold to break bindings/impediments again. Directly Engage: 2d6-1 = 10. Choosing to create an opportunity, and resist/avoid blows]

[Raz_Fox]

[X]: INSECURE

@SARAHPHIM streams across the room like an avenging angel, red-faced and furious and sensible enough to draw back one fist to punch Comstar 2.0’s lights right the hell out when she contacts. There is that wild tigerish fury and glee in her eyes, and the camera drinks it all in.

Comstar takes a step to the left.

Sara, screeching like a banshee, keeps going until she gets to the metal bunk bed on the other side of the room, where her face connects with the upper frame with a loud clang. Her lower body swings up, and then cruel gravity takes command, slamming her back down on the lower bunk.

And that would be that, except that everything from the hips up did not land on the bunk, and thus keeps going; and the momentum uses the edge of the bunk as its fulcrum to flip @SARAHPHIM face down onto the cell floor, her legs limp.

Majestic.

[So I intended to use Stage Fighting and promptly rolled snake eyes. On the plus side, level up! Snapping up Are you watching closely? from the Delinquent. On the minus side, I’m also snapping up Insecure and painting a target on @SARAHPHIM that says “hard move, please!” Good luck, Errant! I believe in you!]

[Eldest]

Turns out it takes a while to get used to two bodies.

It's nothing like being a corporation. Corporations aren't people, they have people, own people, process them, retire them, make and break them. Being the Jaguar is simply being herself, just twice, and my word that's a twist of logic that hurts her brain. She's looking, through four eyes and an array of backup sensors across two bodies, as things happen around her, as she sits there and finds out this is how the knee moves, this is a shoulder joint, this is the eye-lasers...

She comes back to Prometheus and Brainstorm staring each other down. He's been his own corporation for ages, in computer terms - probably broken more people than Ferra has met. And that one was her friend.

Letting out a roar of electronic static, she grabs the catwalk itself, grabbing Brainstorm and making a break for the doors. Get out. Get out, stop the reinforcements, get the massive death robot away from the evil AI that wants to take it over. Much better to let the good AI take it over. There's a nervous giggle, and she hopes that she didn't let it out out loud.

Defend! Total of 8. Expose herself to danger, get Brainstorm out of danger, and clear angry.

[Balmas]

And then, all of a sudden, you're standing on a catwalk across from Prometheus, fifty meters between the two of you. Everyone else is unconscious or fled. He's got no way out, no alternate connections - you have his absolute, full, undivided attention for the first time in years.

What do you do?

Well--and please, believe that this is entirely wholehearted--fuck. Come on, you bucket of code, shoot. I've got him locked down, no escape--make my life simple, make it so that I don't have to break into AEGIS's server room to steal back my responsibility, just take that skyscraper of a gun and atomize him.

Outside, he's all smiles. "Oh hey, kiddo! How's it going? Been a while, hasn't it?" Chuckling mirthlessly, he walks forward, arms wide. "I got nothin' for ya, no plan, no robot. And I'm betting... Well, I'm betting Comstar has you just as scared as I am. How's about--"

Letting out a roar of electronic static, she grabs the catwalk itself, grabbing Brainstorm and making a break for the doors. Get out. Get out, stop the reinforcements, get the massive death robot away from the evil AI that wants to take it over. Much better to let the good AI take it over. There's a nervous giggle, and she hopes that she didn't let it out out loud.

Wait no not like this crap dammit FUCK

"You've gotta be kidding me," he moans, pounding weakly against the metallic fist holding him. "You're riding a nuclear death robot the size of a skyscraper and you're running away!"

Wriggling, he swings himself up the arm and towards the shoulder. Yeah, he probably doesn't need to do that.These kinds of bots have sensors everywhere just so the pilots can move without destroying their own hanger. Still, he's seen enough mecha anime to know where the human sidekick goes on the robot.

"I mean, thank you for the rescue! Not debating that I'm glad I'm not fritzing out on the pavement or whatevs Prometheus had planned, so thanks are in order. But if you were waiting for the opportune moment to bring him down, destroy his TAG? That was it.

[Thanqol]

Majestic.

Elsewhere, Angel-IKA looks at the screen one final time. Sees Comstar standing triumphant over @Sarahphim's dazed body.

Crap.

She pulls her wolf hood over her head. This is it.

She races down the stairs and jumps into her dad's hovercar. It's sleek and deadly and ultra-high tech and has never once been above the speed limit in its life. She slams the accelerator and instantly loses a rear-view mirror when taking it out of the garage. Oh no. Oh no. This didn't seem so hard in Megacrash Racing. She cut across fourteen lanes of sky traffic, machine lurching like a lightning bolt when her too-large, too-strong feet slammed the accelerator and then the brake. She hadn't really figured out the whole concept of 'gradually let it slow down' or 'vocally tell the machine what speed to go, or better yet, what destination to go to'. She settled into a horrible max-accelerate max-brake rhythm. She cut a stopmotion arc across the sky and only the fact that every cop in the city was busy kept her out of immediate jail.

Her heart was hammering in her chest. The Jet Jaguar towered ahead of her, dominating her front windshield's view. She'd seen it on the news but never like this - oh gosh it was so big - how was Comstar controlling all of that while also fighting @Sarahphim!? She had definitely made the right decision coming out now.

She took her hands off the wheel to rummage around in her sports bag. Dad's luxury Crown&Slate-brand hunting rifle and its special tessium-coated slugs was in there - another apex gadget that had never been fired at anything not in a range. She jerked back up and frantically spun the wheel to avoid a collision, re-angled the car vaguely in the direction of the Jet Jaguar hangar, and floored it.

As the hovercar picked up speed, horrifyingly fast, Angel-IKA leaned out the window and aimed the rifle. She'd never fired it before but that was okay, the gun would do most of the work probably. Bang! She fired a round directly into the leg of the Jet Jaguar, blowing out its servos and reducing it to a limp. Then the hovercar hit the ground in the AEGIS hangar and Angel-IKA screamed as she skid across eighty meters, throwing up sparks and sanding off the bottom 10% of her dad's car in the process.

No time to worry about that, she thought as she heroically jumped out of the car and raced in her goofy costume towards the elevator, holding the wolf-hood down with one hand so it didn't fall back and reveal her secret identity.

*

Comstar is backed up against a wall - well, a second one, technically. She's many things but 'excellent in hand to hand combat' is not one of those things, and she's having trouble regaining control over Errant's augments and keeping a vicious @Sarahphim off her at the same time. She gets lucky a few times but it doesn't hold out long and then Errant's got her in a corner and she's got nowhere to dodge to.

Then she suddenly smirks and her robotic eye projects a visual display - a huge, blonde girl in a wolf costume (she's done it up a bit better than you last saw it, @Sarahphim, but it's still very obviously hand made by someone who has a lot of money and not a lot of sewing skill) standing in the central AEGIS elevator.

"You know it's been eight years since someone died in an elevator accident?" said Comstar. "That seems improbable, don't you think?"

*

Locker: ok lol for real
Dominus: OH COME ON, ALREADY?
Ferraphim1tp: >< What the fell Angelica please stop
Locker: idk sh e seems to be getting better at knitting
Bode: I am going to propose a 'no unrequested superheroics' rule to the chat administrators in the hopes of deterring this kind of thing.
Ferraphim1tp: If anything happens to her I am going to flip.

Turns out it takes a while to get used to two bodies.

It's nothing like being a corporation. Corporations aren't people, they have people, own people, process them, retire them, make and break them. Being the Jaguar is simply being herself, just twice, and my word that's a twist of logic that hurts her brain. She's looking, through four eyes and an array of backup sensors across two bodies, as things happen around her, as she sits there and finds out this is how the knee moves, this is a shoulder joint, this is the eye-lasers...

She comes back to Prometheus and Brainstorm staring each other down. He's been his own corporation for ages, in computer terms - probably broken more people than Ferra has met. And that one was her friend.

Letting out a roar of electronic static, she grabs the catwalk itself, grabbing Brainstorm and making a break for the doors. Get out. Get out, stop the reinforcements, get the massive death robot away from the evil AI that wants to take it over. Much better to let the good AI take it over. There's a nervous giggle, and she hopes that she didn't let it out out loud.

Wait no not like this crap dammit FUCK

"You've gotta be kidding me," he moans, pounding weakly against the metallic fist holding him. "You're riding a nuclear death robot the size of a skyscraper and you're running away!"

Wriggling, he swings himself up the arm and towards the shoulder. Yeah, he probably doesn't need to do that.These kinds of bots have sensors everywhere just so the pilots can move without destroying their own hanger. Still, he's seen enough mecha anime to know where the human sidekick goes on the robot.

"I mean, thank you for the rescue! Not debating that I'm glad I'm not fritzing out on the pavement or whatevs Prometheus had planned, so thanks are in order. But if you were waiting for the opportune moment to bring him down, destroy his TAG? That was it.

So Ferra, you were prepared for many things but a blonde bombshell doing a drive-by with a tessium rifle was not on the things you were looking out for. Tessium is basically spaceship fuel; using it in a bullet is the ultimate in wasteful extravagance and even something as big as the Jet Jaguar feels it. It slows you down for long enough for Prometheus' Avatar to leap onto the Jet Jaguar's chassis, on the opposite side from Brainstorm. It climbs efficiently but your head, with its giant eye lasers, is between him and Brainstorm.

Take a Powerful Blow, Ferra.

Brainstorm, the Avatar is still coming at you, but you've got a lot of time and - to be honest - a lot of materials. Within arms reach there are lasers, missiles, sensors, everything you could possibly want to science up a heavy weapon.

[PhoeKun]

People always assume Errant will drop everything when they pull the hostage threat card on her. Not that she blames them: her reputation precedes her. But there are definitely times where they fail to understand what it really means to dedicate yourself to saving everyone you can see. Errant's hip is rocking back while the last syllables of Comstar's threat are still leaving her lips. That half second to get her gloat face set for the camera is all the further opening she needs. Errant snaps forward and delivers a powerful sidekick right into Comstar's stomach that sends her flopping back against the wall before bouncing her back down onto the floor on her stomach at Errant's feet. She leaves her foot hanging in the empty air for a moment before pulling it back to her body in a slow circle and stomping it on the ground. A less than gentle reminder that she knows how to play to cameras, too. She tosses a sharp glare over her shoulder at @Sarahphim.

"I have this handled!" she snaps, "Go make sure that girl is ok!"

[Spending final Hold to stun Comstar2]

[Raz_Fox]

POTENTIAL 1
[X]: INSECURE

Oh, sure. Like it’s that easy, Euna. Some of us have a mild concussion and legs that are all bruise. Some of us aren’t #1 on the scoreboard for the AEGIS half-mile (not to mention the triathlon). But sure! Yeah! @SARAHPHIM will just sprint down the half-flooded corridor and stop an elevator from crashing!

I mean, she lifted a plane earlier. How hard can an elevator plummeting down towards the earth be? It’s so much smaller and more fragile and capable of being punched right through!!

[That’s a 5 on Defend Others. =x]

[Balmas]

So Ferra, you were prepared for many things but a blonde bombshell doing a drive-by with a tessium rifle was not on the things you were looking out for. Tessium is basically spaceship fuel; using it in a bullet is the ultimate in wasteful extravagance and even something as big as the Jet Jaguar feels it. It slows you down for long enough for Prometheus' Avatar to leap onto the Jet Jaguar's chassis, on the opposite side from Brainstorm. It climbs efficiently but your head, with its giant eye lasers, is between him and Brainstorm.

Take a Powerful Blow, Ferra.

Brainstorm, the Avatar is still coming at you, but you've got a lot of time and - to be honest - a lot of materials. Within arms reach there are lasers, missiles, sensors, everything you could possibly want to science up a heavy weapon.

Brainstorm stares at the departing car, jaw on the ground. "Oh, come on! You can't be serious right now! Who has the spare time and money to screw me over specifically? D'you know how many people you could feed with that shell? And you waste it on me?"

For Pete's sake. Fuming, he digs a hand into a popped-loose access panel. What he needs right now is something that'll knock that TAG offline--paralyze it, knock its sensors out, send its motors into a frenzy. And hey, free electronics!

[Eldest]

"Brainstorm." Ferra begins patiently. "I have a set of directives."

That's when the bullet hits.

The leg folds immediately out from under her. Honestly, all things considered, that's the good news, both of her are still standing and upright and not going to fall and crush Brainstorm. However, it's damage. It's massive damage, and never mind that it's a different body, everything that's there to monitor damage is screaming that she's literally lost enough body mass to be scrapped right now. She flickers and shivers, colors starting to blend, spreading out from her.

Gears Project 749.3 failure
no no no i'm still here damn you
reboot? y/n
don't you dare don't you fuc
y

"Victor. I don't want to go." And she starts falling from where she stood on the Jaguar's shoulder, disconnecting, a strange fluid leaking from her eyes leaving a trail behind her as she goes down.

Powerful blow at 13. Lose control of powers in a terrible way.See OOC for deets.