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  1. - Top - End - #151
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldest View Post
    Refocusing. She could deal with the empty feeling she couldn't pin down later. "I do have some antivirus features. What makes you think that? I don't believe I was compromised."
    shitshitshit abort

    Okay, he could do this. Truth. Truth, with choice omissions, and a few easily-made implications. Not lying, technically. They'd do the same in his position.

    "Blacksun has an AI coordinating their efforts," he states deliberately. Please, by all that's holy, let Errant not chime in. "Although not purpose-built to hacking, the AI is singularly good at worming its way into systems where it's not normally wanted." Like megacorp databases, spy networks, the internet... "And so I worry that even if you don't detect anything, he may have left little tendrils in you. Would you agree to a systems check, if for no other reason than peace of mind?"

    Nailed it.
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  2. - Top - End - #152
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    @SARAHPHIM: I don’t know what you mean :?
    @SARAHPHIM: If he doesn’t want mints that’s his problem
    @SARAHPHIM: because he’s gonna have a goddamn mint

    The thing about Sara is that she is something like a cat. This is not seductive, lingering touches and perfume. (Though we are sweaty teens, so maybe don’t look at Brain’s fun zone.) This is the possessive “I can get in your zone whenever I want because everything under the sun belongs to me” touching.

    As if to emphasize this, she shoves three mints into Victor’s mouth (fingers getting all the way in there) and then leans over his body to shake the tin in Ferra’s face. “Mint? Their juicy watermelon flavor will delight and astound your taste receptors.”
    freedom in the flame

    Spoiler
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    Quote Originally Posted by PhoeKun View Post
    Raz, you scoundrel! You planned this!
    Quote Originally Posted by BladeofObliviom View Post
    Great, and now I'm imagining what Raz's profile on a dating site would look like. "Must be okay with veils."
    Quote Originally Posted by Kasanip View Post
    I don't think there is such a time to have veils that it is not the fault of Raz_Fox.
    Quote Originally Posted by Dervag View Post
    It's a freaking Romulan dump truck. The Romulans are no more likely to build an unarmed warp-capable ship than they are to become a hippy commune.

  3. - Top - End - #153
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Ferra looks down at the mints being shoved in her face. Blinks. "I do not associate taste with pleasure. That would be a waste of a mint." Turns. "I would be willing to do a systems check. I would suggest the Gears Foundation's involvement. They are experienced with the code base."
    LGBTA+itP

  4. - Top - End - #154
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Quote Originally Posted by Eldest View Post
    Ferra looks down at the mints being shoved in her face. Blinks. "I do not associate taste with pleasure. That would be a waste of a mint." Turns. "I would be willing to do a systems check. I would suggest the Gears Foundation's involvement. They are experienced with the code base."
    eat the mint,” Sara hisses. The tin rattles alluringly.
    freedom in the flame

    Spoiler
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    Quote Originally Posted by PhoeKun View Post
    Raz, you scoundrel! You planned this!
    Quote Originally Posted by BladeofObliviom View Post
    Great, and now I'm imagining what Raz's profile on a dating site would look like. "Must be okay with veils."
    Quote Originally Posted by Kasanip View Post
    I don't think there is such a time to have veils that it is not the fault of Raz_Fox.
    Quote Originally Posted by Dervag View Post
    It's a freaking Romulan dump truck. The Romulans are no more likely to build an unarmed warp-capable ship than they are to become a hippy commune.

  5. - Top - End - #155
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Ferra reaches over and takes a mint, popping it in her mouth and chewing mechanically.

    "Hm. So that is what watermelon tastes like."

    It was easier than arguing with Sarah about how pointless it was.
    LGBTA+itP

  6. - Top - End - #156
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    ErrantOfficial: I do not appreciate attempts to harass me while I'm flying a multi-billion dollar air/spacecraft.
    ==User Locker has been timed out for 1 minute==
    ErrantOfficial: Consider this your warning.
    ErrantOfficial: If you like Duelist, Angel, there's an older film I recommend called "Burn, My Sword".
    ErrantOfficial: It's less romantic, but the Shinsengumi's portrayal is heartrendingly beautiful.
    ErrantOfficial: ...There is also one amazingly sweet kiss scene. The panning shot they chose is magical.

    Well, this is probably more productive than chiming into the other conversation, anyway. No points for saying nothing, Errant. But keep your lips shut anyway. She turns her head as far as she dares to get a good look at Victor and frowns deeply. Though for whatever it's worth, she lets the moment pass.

    "I have to fly this ship directly to HQ," she calls out from over her shoulder, "But you should head for the Gears people as soon as we're down. BlackSun tech is nothing to mess around with."

    No indeed. Right, Victor?

  7. - Top - End - #157
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Quote Originally Posted by Raz_Fox View Post
    @SARAHPHIM: I don’t know what you mean :?
    @SARAHPHIM: If he doesn’t want mints that’s his problem
    @SARAHPHIM: because he’s gonna have a goddamn mint
    Dominus: <3
    Angel-IKA: o.o;;
    Bode: Oh my
    Angel-IKA: @Sarahphim can be really scary sometimes.
    Dominus: The best of us are.

    [The Chat wants to shift your danger up and saviour down. Accept what they say and clear a condition, or reject them and mark potential]

    Quote Originally Posted by PhoeKun View Post
    ErrantOfficial: I do not appreciate attempts to harass me while I'm flying a multi-billion dollar air/spacecraft.
    ==User Locker has been timed out for 1 minute==
    ErrantOfficial: Consider this your warning.
    ErrantOfficial: If you like Duelist, Angel, there's an older film I recommend called "Burn, My Sword".
    ErrantOfficial: It's less romantic, but the Shinsengumi's portrayal is heartrendingly beautiful.
    ErrantOfficial: ...There is also one amazingly sweet kiss scene. The panning shot they chose is magical.
    Dominus: Heh. Probably shouldn't have done that.
    Bode: Why not?
    Dominus: Locker is the kind of person who won't rest until he's wasted sixty seconds of your time in retaliation.
    Angel-IKA: o.o *takes notes rapidly* I'll watch it tomorrow!


    *

    AEGIS HQ comes into view. The original iteration was all soaring glass spires; now it's a squat plate-metal pyramid wrapped in an orbital defence shield. It's an ugly and armoured thing, but the reason why is pretty obvious - as you make your approach an interplanetary missile cruises down and detonates pointlessly against the shield. One of those comes in every five to ten hours. Doctor Sylvanius seems to be hoping that at some point AEGIS' deflector shield goes down due to some sort of internal struggle and at that point he can wipe out the entire building with his slow-rolling barrage.

    In order to make the militaristic bunker a little more appealing, AEGIS has taken to projecting old public domain superhero films on the sides of the pyramid for the passing public to view. Adam West's Batman silently wrestles the Joker across the length of the East Facing, and a pack of spider people team up to take down Kingpin across the south. It's nice to see an enormous billboard in the city that isn't trying to sell you something - or, rather, trying to sell you something a little less obvious.

  8. - Top - End - #158
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    People call it depressing. Dumpy. Some call it spooky, or worse. To Errant that pyramid is the most beautiful building in the city. One time she spent an entire off day perched on a nearby rooftop just watching it sit there. She saw no fewer than four missile attacks that day. What sight could possibly have made her prouder? What could be more comforting than seeing your home suffer these slings and arrows, and shrug them off like nothing? 'We are still here', she heard it say, 'We will not give up, and we will not stop caring.' She smiles gently as she watches it on final approach.

    "HQ, this is Agent Errant. Three crew aboard, plus one prisoner. Transmitting security codes and requesting permission to land."

    Of course, this was the hard part. An instructor once told her that landings were 'the only part of the job where things could actually go wrong'. It turns out the ground is much harder than anything in the air, and that made it the enemy of everything that flew. And that was with optimal weather, which... pshyeah. Have you seen this city? So when she does touch and barely manages to avoid bouncing the damn thing, it doesn't surprise her. It just puts her heart in her throat. She takes a moment to just sit there in the flight chair with her face buried in her hands. Cold. Unpleasant. But solid. She stands and turns to face everyone else, trying her best not to look too awkward.

    "That's it for today, guys. You're officially dismissed and free to pursue whatever might interest you. If there's... you know, anything I can do to help just give me a call. I know it's a bit harder to buy given how things wrapped up but everybody really did do an amazing job today. You should, uh, you should be proud."

  9. - Top - End - #159
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Quote Originally Posted by Raz_Fox View Post
    @SARAHPHIM: I don’t know what you mean :?
    @SARAHPHIM: If he doesn’t want mints that’s his problem
    @SARAHPHIM: because he’s gonna have a goddamn mint

    The thing about Sara is that she is something like a cat. This is not seductive, lingering touches and perfume. (Though we are sweaty teens, so maybe don’t look at Brain’s fun zone.) This is the possessive “I can get in your zone whenever I want because everything under the sun belongs to me” touching.

    As if to emphasize this, she shoves three mints into Victor’s mouth (fingers getting all the way in there) and then leans over his body to shake the tin in Ferra’s face. “Mint? Their juicy watermelon flavor will delight and astound your taste receptors.”
    bad touch BAD touch

    Victor hacks and clutches at his throat. A few seconds of scrabbling with the seat harness later, he's on the floor and pounding his gut until three little pink pellets kapang off a support beam. And on the floor he stays until the coughing subsides.

    Pain. How novel.

    Quote Originally Posted by Thanqol View Post
    AEGIS HQ comes into view. The original iteration was all soaring glass spires; now it's a squat plate-metal pyramid wrapped in an orbital defence shield. It's an ugly and armoured thing, but the reason why is pretty obvious - as you make your approach an interplanetary missile cruises down and detonates pointlessly against the shield. One of those comes in every five to ten hours. Doctor Sylvanius seems to be hoping that at some point AEGIS' deflector shield goes down due to some sort of internal struggle and at that point he can wipe out the entire building with his slow-rolling barrage.

    In order to make the militaristic bunker a little more appealing, AEGIS has taken to projecting old public domain superhero films on the sides of the pyramid for the passing public to view. Adam West's Batman silently wrestles the Joker across the length of the East Facing, and a pack of spider people team up to take down Kingpin across the south. It's nice to see an enormous billboard in the city that isn't trying to sell you something - or, rather, trying to sell you something a little less obvious.
    Normally, it'd be a sight to provide gritted teeth and eye rolls. "We are heroes," AEGIS proclaims, "and you can't afford to get rid of us." Never mind the blocks of destroyed tenements from errant missiles. No crowds watch the movies--not from nearby, anyway--too much shrapnel, too much risk of being in the blast zone when some jackaknave or other takes a swing at the biggest hero employer in town.

    However, he normally isn't on the floor, glaring at a teammate. "Sarahphim, what the everloving fuck is wrong with you?" he demands. "Can you not go twenty seconds without the spotlight shining directly on you?" One arm tentacles out, snaps the mints out of her hand, and catapults them out of the plane and into the mud. "Numbers, drama, drawing a crowd! Fantastic! Leave me the hell out of it!"
    I run a Let's Play channel! Check it out!
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  10. - Top - End - #160
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Quote Originally Posted by Balmas View Post
    Normally, it'd be a sight to provide gritted teeth and eye rolls. "We are heroes," AEGIS proclaims, "and you can't afford to get rid of us." Never mind the blocks of destroyed tenements from errant missiles. No crowds watch the movies--not from nearby, anyway--too much shrapnel, too much risk of being in the blast zone when some jackaknave or other takes a swing at the biggest hero employer in town.

    However, he normally isn't on the floor, glaring at a teammate. "Sarahphim, what the everloving fuck is wrong with you?" he demands. "Can you not go twenty seconds without the spotlight shining directly on you?" One arm tentacles out, snaps the mints out of her hand, and catapults them out of the plane and into the mud. "Numbers, drama, drawing a crowd! Fantastic! Leave me the hell out of it!"
    "Look at you," Sara drawls, hands behind her head as an impromptu seat cushion. "All pent up! That emergency mint infusion probably saved your life." She's not taking this seriously, like, at all. Because it's comic relief, right? He's mad at her over the mints, and he's not brooding over the fight with Errant. It's water under the proverbial bridge now, and soon enough he'll realize he's overreacting about the mints.

    This is a perfect plan with no flaws whatsoever.

    "Besides. I think the spotlight's on you tonight, what with you launching a mint-based attack on... from the trajectory, Russia. Try doing that in our next fight, see how it helps." This is Nice. Yes. We are being friends. This is how that works.
    freedom in the flame

    Spoiler
    Show
    Quote Originally Posted by PhoeKun View Post
    Raz, you scoundrel! You planned this!
    Quote Originally Posted by BladeofObliviom View Post
    Great, and now I'm imagining what Raz's profile on a dating site would look like. "Must be okay with veils."
    Quote Originally Posted by Kasanip View Post
    I don't think there is such a time to have veils that it is not the fault of Raz_Fox.
    Quote Originally Posted by Dervag View Post
    It's a freaking Romulan dump truck. The Romulans are no more likely to build an unarmed warp-capable ship than they are to become a hippy commune.

  11. - Top - End - #161
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    ==Ferraphim1tp has rejoined the chat==
    Angel-IKA: Ferraphim! You're back!! :D
    Ferraphim1tp: Hey guys ^^
    Dominus: Hey
    Locker: good sandwich?
    Ferraphim1tp: Yeah I'm feeling much more chill now. What'd I miss?
    Bode: Errant answered some questions, Dominus stopped using their shouting voice for a few minutes, and most importantly @Sarahphim crammed a mint down Brainstorm's throat proving once and for all that they have zero chemistry together.
    Locker: idk i thought that that was p. sexual
    Bode: No it wasn't.
    Locker: did you see how she looked when he was blanking her?
    Bode: No.
    Locker: it was real mad
    Bode: That proves nothing.
    Locker: look me in the eye and say that saraf is not a stundrere


    *

    "Good news everyone!" said Mr. Big Picture. "Sarahphim's stream has received a 300% sustained boost in viewership, down from a peak of 1100% at the peak of the action!"

    Mr. Big Picture said this while occupying basically all free space in the ship compartment. The dude was a giant - imagine peak eyebrows and beard Confucius on a four meter* tall chassis - and he was very much in the same lack of personal space game as @Sarahphim if only because he usually couldn't physically fit in a room without crowding everyone against the wall. He was a retired superhero, one of the original generation with dramatic inherent powers relating to size manipulation, but now he operated mostly as AEGIS' media director and one of your team managers.

    "Now, we do need to have some debriefs, what worked and what to improve for next time," said Big Picture. "Individual reports first. I imagine you all have a lot to talk about!"

    *His size is actually deeply inconsistent. It's not a nice metric number, instead it seems to be the concept of 'too big' or 'bigger than you'. If he fights a giant he'll seem larger than a giant, if he goes into a room he'll always be a bit too large for the room.

  12. - Top - End - #162
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Quote Originally Posted by Raz_Fox View Post
    "Look at you," Sara drawls, hands behind her head as an impromptu seat cushion. "All pent up! That emergency mint infusion probably saved your life." She's not taking this seriously, like, at all. Because it's comic relief, right? He's mad at her over the mints, and he's not brooding over the fight with Errant. It's water under the proverbial bridge now, and soon enough he'll realize he's overreacting about the mints.

    This is a perfect plan with no flaws whatsoever.

    "Besides. I think the spotlight's on you tonight, what with you launching a mint-based attack on... from the trajectory, Russia. Try doing that in our next fight, see how it helps." This is Nice. Yes. We are being friends. This is how that works.
    Well, of course he's friggin' pent up. He's part of a team with his idol on a daily basis, and trying to keep from blabbing about Prometheus to the product of his other idol, all while working in a framework provided by an evil organization that's using all of them for public relations. Given the circumstances, he's allowed a little pent-up-ed-ness! And she's mocking him!

    And... And he just yelled at @SARAHPHIM. On stream.

    Welp, his life is over.

    A perfect end to a perfect day.

    Just like that, the anger drains away. Which is bad, because it was all that was keeping him going. Whatever. Let her have her win. It's not worth the fight, you know she'll just find a way to deflect it back, that's why the crowds love her and not you...

    Victor purses his lips, turns to Errant...

    Quote Originally Posted by Thanqol View Post
    "Good news everyone!" said Mr. Big Picture. "Sarahphim's stream has received a 300% sustained boost in viewership, down from a peak of 1100% at the peak of the action!"

    Mr. Big Picture said this while occupying basically all free space in the ship compartment. The dude was a giant - imagine peak eyebrows and beard Confucius on a four meter* tall chassis - and he was very much in the same lack of personal space game as @Sarahphim if only because he usually couldn't physically fit in a room without crowding everyone against the wall. He was a retired superhero, one of the original generation with dramatic inherent powers relating to size manipulation, but now he operated mostly as AEGIS' media director and one of your team managers.

    "Now, we do need to have some debriefs, what worked and what to improve for next time," said Big Picture. "Individual reports first. I imagine you all have a lot to talk about!"
    Oh, dammit all to hell. Yeah, not dealing with that.

    "You're quite correct, Errant. I should talk to the Gears foundation as soon as possible." And he shoots her a look loaded with I will forgive any sin if you keep him away from me.
    Last edited by Balmas; 2019-04-22 at 11:32 PM.
    I run a Let's Play channel! Check it out!
    Currently, we're playing through New Vegas as Gabriel de la Cruz, merchant and mercenary extraordinaire!

  13. - Top - End - #163
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    "Respectfully sir," says Errant as she drops out of a reflexive salute, "I've already promised the rest of the team some rec time effective upon landing. I'd like to ask that I be allowed to handle debriefing for today, and to let them fill in their sessions first thing tomorrow. I'm aware that prompt and accurate information is the lifeblood of any well-run organization but..."

    Her head dips a bit. Her teeth grind.

    "...As I will explain in my report, this mission inflicted higher than average stress levels on the team. So if we can," she sighs, "Relax regs a little this one time I think that would be best. For morale. Today."

  14. - Top - End - #164
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Locker: hey dominus you fought big show before didn't you
    Dominus: Urgh, don't remind me.
    Locker: iirc he fu'ing dunked you
    Dominus: Yeah.
    Locker: you wanna talk about it?
    Dominus: Mm.
    Locker: cmooooon
    Dominus: I thought it'd be easy because his type of hero generally leans exclusively on their power and I was ready for that, I just needed to force a close quarters punchout. But the guy is a world class martial artist as well and he does that infuriating style where he just constantly moves around and lets you trip over yourself. You'd think someone that big would be easy to hit but I couldn't land a punch on him. I'm just lucky it wasn't on camera.
    Angel-IKA: o.o
    Locker: interesting. did he manipulate his own size as part of that?
    Dominus: I think so. It was hard to tell how much was the martial arts and how much was him literally shrinking to avoid being hit.
    Locker: *scribbles notes* was it this style turl//1990/48439
    Dominus: No, he had open palms.
    Locker: this one turl//1990/55231
    Dominus: Looks about right
    Locker: hmmmmmm~

    Quote Originally Posted by PhoeKun View Post
    "Respectfully sir," says Errant as she drops out of a reflexive salute, "I've already promised the rest of the team some rec time effective upon landing. I'd like to ask that I be allowed to handle debriefing for today, and to let them fill in their sessions first thing tomorrow. I'm aware that prompt and accurate information is the lifeblood of any well-run organization but..."

    Her head dips a bit. Her teeth grind.

    "...As I will explain in my report, this mission inflicted higher than average stress levels on the team. So if we can," she sighs, "Relax regs a little this one time I think that would be best. For morale. Today."
    Big Show blinks. "Relax the..." he blinked a few more times, moustache wilting, "You want to relax the regulations? You?"

    His hand strays to his combead. "Control, I have a potential Section 84 here."

  15. - Top - End - #165
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Ferra stayed silent through the spat on the plane. She's sitting in the corner, completely still, watching Mr. Big Picture. Noticing him not reacting to her new body. "Were you aware of my adaptive abilities? Did Dr. Gears tell you?"
    LGBTA+itP

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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Not for the first time today, Errant looks like she's been slapped. The teeth grinding is if anything getting worse.

    "If you'll recall, sir, last year on my birthday I put in a request to appear in public in a non-official capacity while wearing a dress even though it didn't appear on the list of recommended casual apparel. So I am perfectly capable of bending a rule when the situation calls for it and there's no need to--"

    She stops. Then frowns. At the very back of her tongue, she can still vaguely taste the color blue.

    "...No, actually. Call that in. There's sufficient reason to suspect I may be compromised in one or more capacities, and the prudent move is to put me through protocol and make sure that isn't the case. Though sir if I may my unofficial recommendation is still to send Ferra and Victor to the Gears Foundation without delay. Regardless of pre-existing intel on her, um, adaptive capabilities she's been through a lot today and they're better equipped to check on her than we are. I do not want to break a promise. Sir."

  17. - Top - End - #167
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Angel-IKA: Hey, Ferraphim, are you okay?
    Ferraphim1tp: Yep!
    Angel-IKA: For real?
    Ferraphim1tp: Um... I'm honestly still a little tilted about this Ferra thing.
    Angel-IKA: You want to talk about it?
    Ferraphim1tp: I mean... it's complicated......
    Angel-IKA: You don't have to if you don't want to.
    Ferraphim1tp: It's - like! Um! There's a lot of stuff there, and I don't really know how to say any of it. it's not that I don't want to it's that I'm not sure I know what I'm saying.
    Angel-IKA: It's okay
    Ferraphim1tp: I mean, I chose this ID as a joke because obviously Sarah wasn't going to fall in love with a robot. Like Ferra's got all the personality of a washing machine - but is she still like that now? Was she a person all along? Was she a she all along? Ferra was a blank slate for me to fill in and suddenly...
    Angel-IKA: *nod nod*
    Ferraphim1tp: idk I'm not making sense right now. I just kind of want to see what happens next.


    Quote Originally Posted by Eldest View Post
    Ferra stayed silent through the spat on the plane. She's sitting in the corner, completely still, watching Mr. Big Picture. Noticing him not reacting to her new body. "Were you aware of my adaptive abilities? Did Dr. Gears tell you?"
    "Oh - oh!" said Big Picture, doing a bit of a double take when seeing you. Then he looked away. "Shouldn't you be, er, wearing clothes? There are jumpsuits in the overhead. I certainly wasn't briefed on... that, no. My word, isn't that strange?"

    [Big Show wants to shift your Freak up and Superior down. Accept what he says or reject his influence. Wearing clothes may count as 'using resources for non-task functions', and I'm confident there'll be enough misunderstandings caused by refusing to let you mark potential if you choose that path.]

    Quote Originally Posted by PhoeKun View Post
    Not for the first time today, Errant looks like she's been slapped. The teeth grinding is if anything getting worse.

    "If you'll recall, sir, last year on my birthday I put in a request to appear in public in a non-official capacity while wearing a dress even though it didn't appear on the list of recommended casual apparel. So I am perfectly capable of bending a rule when the situation calls for it and there's no need to--"

    She stops. Then frowns. At the very back of her tongue, she can still vaguely taste the color blue.

    "...No, actually. Call that in. There's sufficient reason to suspect I may be compromised in one or more capacities, and the prudent move is to put me through protocol and make sure that isn't the case. Though sir if I may my unofficial recommendation is still to send Ferra and Victor to the Gears Foundation without delay. Regardless of pre-existing intel on her, um, adaptive capabilities she's been through a lot today and they're better equipped to check on her than we are. I do not want to break a promise. Sir."
    "Ah, yes, there you are," said Big Show with a wheezing laugh. "Fine. We've got enough data from @Sarahphim's stream to know that she's fine, so she's dismissed. Victor and Ferra... well, Ferra is technologically beyond us to begin with so I'm not sure what tests we'd run, and Victor helped refine the Section 84 tech so we've got a different protocol for him. Yes, yes, I suppose they're free to go, but we'll keep an eye on them. Er, once they're decent, of course," Big Show coughed, and then backed awkwardly out of the confined space down into the hangar.
    Last edited by Thanqol; 2019-04-26 at 12:33 AM.

  18. - Top - End - #168
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    [Okay, so. Seeing as I forgot to interact with the chat because it was so obviously true, it’s thus confirmed. @SARAHPHIM now has Danger +1, Savior 0.]

    Sara feels like she should be chewing some gum right now. It would give the scene the right air of nonchalance. Then again, it risks being cliche, and Lord knows we don’t need any of that. Not with new viewers to impress. “You got it, chief,” she drawls, leaning back in her seat.

    ***

    @SARAHPHIM: Kay, stream’s over for now. Feel free to send me bullet theme requests under my Formspring.
    @SARAHPHIM: As ever, shout out to the most dedicated fans a bitch could ask for, you shut-ins and perverts. Don’t ever change.
    @SARAHPHIM: and hey, ferraphim, chill out. Ferra’s probably still Ferra, and it’s not like I’m going to suddenly get distracted by those voluptuous chrome headlights mid-fight, right? ;D
    freedom in the flame

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    Quote Originally Posted by PhoeKun View Post
    Raz, you scoundrel! You planned this!
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    Great, and now I'm imagining what Raz's profile on a dating site would look like. "Must be okay with veils."
    Quote Originally Posted by Kasanip View Post
    I don't think there is such a time to have veils that it is not the fault of Raz_Fox.
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    It's a freaking Romulan dump truck. The Romulans are no more likely to build an unarmed warp-capable ship than they are to become a hippy commune.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Thanqol View Post
    "Oh - oh!" said Big Picture, doing a bit of a double take when seeing you. Then he looked away. "Shouldn't you be, er, wearing clothes? There are jumpsuits in the overhead. I certainly wasn't briefed on... that, no. My word, isn't that strange?"

    [Big Show wants to shift your Freak up and Superior down. Accept what he says or reject his influence. Wearing clothes may count as 'using resources for non-task functions', and I'm confident there'll be enough misunderstandings caused by refusing to let you mark potential if you choose that path.]
    "Why would I wear a jumpsuit? I'm not human, after all." She stares at him, unblinking, confident in herself for a change. "Pants would be inefficient."

    [Accepting shift, marking potential]
    LGBTA+itP

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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Issue 02

    Here are your daily news recommendations:

    - Rain continues in the BlackSun Financial Family Park. Repairs to the LRS are delayed due to a legal dispute over repair costs.
    - Comstar's livestream resumes! "Don't worry, my first great caper will be to break myself out of AEGIS - a girl never leaves her interdimensional double hanging!"
    - Giant statue of Colonel Saunders destroyed by supervillain Dominus! Now the statue of Liberty stands alone once more, as she did in the 20th century. Project Yum!'s chief security officer has sworn swift justice will be brought to the perpetrator.
    - How @Sarahphim is corrupting the nation's youth, an essay in four parts.


    *

    @Sarahphim, you don't need me to tell you that you live life on the edge.

    Technology obsoletes people. You see it happen every day. Walking down the street you people with military-grade augmentics selling newspapers because it's been years since their tech was modern. You see beggars with chrome that once made them olympians. The phrase is 'rat race', but this is a race you're running alone. You have no government agency backing you up with the newest kit spat out by a hundred scientists. You weren't born with the ability to shoot lasers from your eyes. You were just like them. You can be again. Tick tick tick.

    Time to sharpen those claws. Time to claw time's eyes out.

    It's easy to miss how smart you are when you're standing near all these super-genius polymaths. But you know your way around dimensional physics, you know how to distill and harvest Rx, you even know a couple of tricks that haven't made their way into the scientific mainstream. And above all you know your hardlight generator. It's a single design that you know inside and out, every well-worn trick and pressure and optimization routine. Meat 1.0 can still be deadly with martial arts software installed, and your battle experience has let you surf the specs of your generator to the bleeding edge. Now it's time to come up with something new. Skill is what keeps you in the game, and it's what the fans want to see.

    Practice isn't going to do it for you, though. All your ordinary lines of exploration are tapped, you're uninspired. You need a different perspective. You need to find someone or something that'll broaden your horizons - mentally, technically, or spiritually. Something genuinely new.

    Tell us about the process. Tell us what your hangup is. Tell us where you go to put yourself in Inspiration's way.

    *

    Errant. New day new op. This is a big one, and needs a defter hand than the usual team represents.

    You're after Turbo Knight, one of the Silver Royals - an octogenarian mafia kingpin who was, in his prime, one of the scariest supervillains in town. Even in his old age he's still a nightmare combatant with two chief strategies. One is he always inflicts maximum possible collateral damage when cutting lose, the second is that he always surrounds himself with a crowd of hundreds of people in his non-stop rolling street parties. It's impossible to escalate fights to the point where it's safe to take him down.

    The Shogun has, apparently, come up with a plan to take him down without civilian casualties. AEGIS has dispatched you and your colleague JuneBird undercover to provide backup, and the vibe you got from the briefing was that the Shogun doesn't know you're coming. This is a dangerous enough op that AEGIS clearly hasn't taken the Shogun's decision to go it alone on faith.

    So you're wearing the cover identity of Bianca Amin, a cyber-tattoo enthusiast and professional poker player. JuneBird is playing Natasha Wafer, who is described in your dossier as 'your date, but the relationship has gone bad and is in its terminal stages so make sure to argue in public, even have a dramatic breakup if it gets you an in'.

    Set the stage. Set your costume. Set your tattoos. You've got a party to go to.

    *

    Ferra. You're driving a car, a retro as hell pile of garbage that feels like it's going to barrel roll every time you scream around a corner at eighty, leaving scorched rubber in the asphalt. Your brain is hooked up to a hundred electrodes, needles penetrating into your skull, wires falling across your face and interfering with your vision. The entire back seat is filled with computer servers. A little bit behind the back seat are cars filled with Megagoons. They mad.

    Naota is sitting in the seat beside you, laptop open, hooked to your head cables and the back seat mainframe server. Brainstorm sent you to this guy to scan for "viruses" - what kind of viruses he was pretty evasive about. He's the kind of guy who looks like the cigarettes started smoking him - thin, pale, a beard that says that he gives up on life and eye hollows that say that he gave up on sleep too. As soon as he started running the scan on your head the goons showed up so you piled into his car and you're on your way, screaming down the streets while he types furiously.

    "Hey, so, while we've got a moment, tell me about yourself," said Naota, fingers typing in a blur. "What kind of stuff do you do for fun?"

    Bullets crackled against the bulletproof back windows.

    *

    Brainstorm, you're on patrol. Ground pounding like a true night watchman. You've done what you can about Prometheus by sending Ferra to Naota for now, so now it's time to live up to your less dramatic responsibilities.

    Crown and Slate, a biotech focused megacorp, has decided that it wants a piece of real estate and it has also decided that it doesn't want to pay market price. And so it has commissioned Possum Girl to soften the inhabitants up. Possum Girl isn't exactly a supervillain but she's no hero either - she's mostly extremely loud, annoying and nocturnal. As far as the residents can tell, she juggles bowling balls but she's not good at it, her hookshot is an extremely loud vacuum cleaner that makes an enormous suction sound whenever she wants to get anywhere, she plays a bunch of musical instruments and sings, and she's accompanied by a veritable parade of vermin - some possums, but she's not picky. She's being paid to hang out in this building, making it unlivable by association, until the residents give up and sell out.

    The poor, bleagured residents of the apartment complex have turned to you. They want her gone and their nights quiet again - and so it falls to you, hero, to get the possum out of the roof. You've got time to prep and plan, but Possum Girl is notoriously slippery and stealthy despite being so persistently loud - how do you plan for someone like that?
    Last edited by Thanqol; 2019-04-28 at 05:04 AM.

  21. - Top - End - #171
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    Quote Originally Posted by Thanqol View Post
    Brainstorm, you're on patrol. Ground pounding like a true night watchman. You've done what you can about Prometheus by sending Ferra to Naota for now, so now it's time to live up to your less dramatic responsibilities.

    Crown and Slate, a biotech focused megacorp, has decided that it wants a piece of real estate and it has also decided that it doesn't want to pay market price. And so it has commissioned Possum Girl to soften the inhabitants up. Possum Girl isn't exactly a supervillain but she's no hero either - she's mostly extremely loud, annoying and nocturnal. As far as the residents can tell, she juggles bowling balls but she's not good at it, her hookshot is an extremely loud vacuum cleaner that makes an enormous suction sound whenever she wants to get anywhere, she plays a bunch of musical instruments and sings, and she's accompanied by a veritable parade of vermin - some possums, but she's not picky. She's being paid to hang out in this building, making it unlivable by association, until the residents give up and sell out.

    The poor, bleagured residents of the apartment complex have turned to you. They want her gone and their nights quiet again - and so it falls to you, hero, to get the possum out of the roof. You've got time to prep and plan, but Possum Girl is notoriously slippery and stealthy despite being so persistently loud - how do you plan for someone like that?
    Possum Girl has three main offenses: noise, vermin, and property damage.

    The vermin are probably the easiest to deal with: unless she has a power that lets her summon them from the aether, it's just a matter of tracking down where they live and poisoning their foodstuffs. So, check with the residents, make sure none of them have a pet that they let eat out of the dumpsters. Heck, might even raise their property value by getting rid of some of the background pests.

    The noise is a bit more difficult. Her vacuum cleaner can be fairly easily neutralized by cooking up a noise-canceling device that listens for the first sounds of suction, and then broadcasts the opposite waveform. Making the device should be fairly simple. Gimme a day in Mami's basement, and I can whip that up. The calibration would be the trickiest part of this whole operation: I'd need to get a few samples of the vacuum in operation so I can isolate the exact sound of the vacuum from the normal burble of the city around it.

    A similar principle could technically be applied to the singing, but it's much more difficult to account for a noise that she can change on the fly. In theory, I could just blanket the entire building with a device that cancels out all the noise it hears, but for some reason I think that perhaps the prospect of a life lived in monastic silence just might be worse for the residents than one plagued by a person singing Madonna at 3 AM. So, for the singing and property damage, I have to figure out how to neutralize her stealth/slipperiness, and then beat the fight out of her. It's cruder than I'd prefer, but a couple dozen bowling balls to the face have a remarkably persuasive air to them. Perhaps I could whip up some form of heat vision or tracker, so that after one fight, I can chase her signal down to her lair. Yeah, that sounds like it should work.

    Let the residents collect noise samples of the vacuum cleaner in the meantime. Then, after a few days of crafting and gizmogrifying, I should be ready to put my plan into action.
    I run a Let's Play channel! Check it out!
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    Quote Originally Posted by Thanqol View Post
    Ferra. You're driving a car, a retro as hell pile of garbage that feels like it's going to barrel roll every time you scream around a corner at eighty, leaving scorched rubber in the asphalt. Your brain is hooked up to a hundred electrodes, needles penetrating into your skull, wires falling across your face and interfering with your vision. The entire back seat is filled with computer servers. A little bit behind the back seat are cars filled with Megagoons. They mad.

    Naota is sitting in the seat beside you, laptop open, hooked to your head cables and the back seat mainframe server. Brainstorm sent you to this guy to scan for "viruses" - what kind of viruses he was pretty evasive about. He's the kind of guy who looks like the cigarettes started smoking him - thin, pale, a beard that says that he gives up on life and eye hollows that say that he gave up on sleep too. As soon as he started running the scan on your head the goons showed up so you piled into his car and you're on your way, screaming down the streets while he types furiously.

    "Hey, so, while we've got a moment, tell me about yourself," said Naota, fingers typing in a blur. "What kind of stuff do you do for fun?"

    Bullets crackled against the bulletproof back windows.
    Ferra judges her shot in the rearview mirror first, lining up a sonic blast that tears the roof off the convertible that Megagoon Squad A is piled into. No actual damage to the car, but hey, now it's raining on them. Minor annoyances have to count for something right?

    She snakes her hand back into the car and onto the wheel in time to screech her way around a bend in the road, tires in the air for a breathtaking moment.

    "Fun? I... don't know. I suppose I enjoy taking walks between missions? Does... does that count?"
    LGBTA+itP

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    Quote Originally Posted by Thanqol View Post
    Set the stage. Set your costume. Set your tattoos. You've got a party to go to.
    "Did you ever notice how whenever we do these kinds of runs they always write us as dating?" Errant muses while she deposits a red baseball cap in a vending machine return slot, "It's not that I mind, I just... they do it even when it's not helpful. Or when it's actively detrimental, like that attempted Sabrem sting. I can't tell if they're just being one-note or if someone's hoping something will happen..."

    Errant takes JuneBird's arm in hers without really thinking about it. There was a point where this would have been awkward and difficult, but at this point it feels so natural she's almost shameless about it even as the scenery gives way from the upscale corporate-controlled city blocks to the mom and pop equivalent stores trying to eke out a living, all the way down to the bars and, you know, other businesses where Turbo Knight's parties tend to spill into. Which is the real trick, so far as he's concerned. Threat of civilian casualties keeps away the private security forces like AEGIS well enough, but if he were to get in the way of a BlackSun or Atlas type threat, odds are they'd just eat the PR hit and be done with it. And him. Keeping his parties in places nobody of consequence owns (yet) means he stays safely off their radar. Already, the sounds of obnoxious stereotypical techno beats are pouring over the concrete, mixed with the kinds of shouting that comes from a bunch of people crammed into a small space to drink and gamble themselves into oblivion. It's not going to be safe to gossip about HQ much longer.

    Euna, or rather Bianca she supposes, has put an outsized out of effort into her outfit today. And an even more outsized effort into tearing it apart again and making it feel as obnoxious as she could make it. Hours spent after briefing staring at screens and fashion catalogs and social media posts until she was positive she'd personify street-level excess. Black ultra-retro high top sneakers. A navy blue leotard with a pair of gold embossed wings stretching out from the stomach and wrapping around to the back, covered by an open white jacket that's at least three sizes too big and its sleeves cut off. A plain gold choker, and a pair of opaque, gold-tinted shades. She hadn't been able to bring herself to cut her hair, but she did slick the left half of it back with an unholy amount of product until it sits perfectly flat and contrasts against the perfect sheet on the right. None of it is Sara's high fashion: clothes you wear to make people look at your clothes. Instead, it's fashion you wear because you're proud of your augs, to let your body steal the show.

    Cyber tattoos are a lot less permanent than the old fashioned skin and ink kind, owing at least partially to the fact that the body parts they go on are replaceable but also because they're carved on the surface: you can easily buff them out and repair any aug a dozen times or more before you start affecting its integrity. Consequently, cyber tattoos tend to be very wild, free flowing, and experimental. It's not that you never see chrome arms with a picture drawn on them or anything, but that's usually the sign of a casual enthusiast with no imagination. So Errant's limbs run up and down with all manner of bold and abstract patterns. Her legs are filled with huge, looping spirals filled with little lights like stars. Her left arm sports a branching pattern of lines like circuitry growing into a tree. Her right arm more simply depicts a portrait of Okita Soushi, 1st Captain of the Shinsengumi (astute readers are already aware which interpretation she went with). She took the time to scratch it out a little and make it more worn than any of the others; showing a story of tentative first steps into the hobby that Bianca Amin was too sentimental to discard as she got deeper in. Before you ask, no, she didn't sleep at all last night. But don't let anyone ever tell you that Euna Kim slacks off on a brief.

    She'd considered requisitioning some nano-paste from the quartermaster to give herself a less... erm... Korean face, but decided against it in the end. Her shades would do almost as well, and would give her a better HUD to work with than her normal contacts to begin with. What she did ask for was permission to temporarily unlock the first limiter on her legs. The mission at the end of the day was wide scale crowd protection and she wasn't sure she could keep up with The Shogun and a 1st Gen villain at the same time running on normal specs. Actually, if she was being honest, she probably wouldn't have thought nearly so hard about any of this if She wasn't involved. Last time was such a... no, don't even think about it. This time. She'd show her this time. For sure.

    "Come on, Nat. For serious, can we just try to have a good time?"

    [If it's necessary, the +Soldier roll for 'please give me better legs' was a 9]

  24. - Top - End - #174
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    Okay. So. It's a lot like that classic, Into the Spider-Verse.

    Except Sara wasn't ever really into the street art graffiti tagging. It's all about architecture, when you boil it down to the sweeping lines that she sees when she shuts her eyes. The fornicated ceiling of a cathedral. The rose mandalas of stained glass. Flowers opening up in high speed, and within them suns, and within them singing stars. The geometry built into the shape of our buildings, and the symmetry of old demon-binding seals. Under her mattress growing up she had several magazines which had interviews with the famous urban designer Gabriella Jalloh, and some of them even had illustrations. Diagrams, even.

    The stained glass aesthetic was, in hindsight, inevitable. The shape of her childhood, that. Memories of mass and being bored, staring up into the shadows of the ceiling.

    So a lot of her actual work is like 3D animation by way of martial arts, frame by frame, tracing out how the pattern is going to look. Freezing the pattern, holding it, and making adjustments manually, until everything is just so, just right. But that means she needs to go out and find the shapes, the patterns, the images that will spark into another designer bullet hell pattern, courtesy of the fallen angel of the city.

    Now take everything I just said and dunk it in a trash can because geometry isn't cutting it right now. Everything comes back to a variant on the Seal of Tiodosius, and it ends the same way: sudden jagged claws through her stained glass, shattering it into neon noise. It's been done! She needs something that makes her feel like she wants to go out and rock. She needs something organic. Something that says claws and meat. Something that doesn't so much harmonize as clash. The shadow of a tiger.

    So here we are. The Celestial Notion Zoo is staggered over a series of upper level floors in the Atlas Arcology. @SARAHPHIM has cleared out the tiger exhibit by being an absolute ass. She's got dubstep blaring out the headphones draped around her neck, at a tooth-vibrating pitch, and everything within arm's reach has become part of her sketchbook. Right now, her hands are tented in front of her face, and she's in a staring contest with the tiger who's come up to the glass. Anyone who walked between the two of them might catch fire.

    Which makes it an absolute certainty that someone's going to do just that.
    freedom in the flame

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    Quote Originally Posted by PhoeKun View Post
    Raz, you scoundrel! You planned this!
    Quote Originally Posted by BladeofObliviom View Post
    Great, and now I'm imagining what Raz's profile on a dating site would look like. "Must be okay with veils."
    Quote Originally Posted by Kasanip View Post
    I don't think there is such a time to have veils that it is not the fault of Raz_Fox.
    Quote Originally Posted by Dervag View Post
    It's a freaking Romulan dump truck. The Romulans are no more likely to build an unarmed warp-capable ship than they are to become a hippy commune.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Balmas View Post
    Possum Girl has three main offenses: noise, vermin, and property damage.

    The vermin are probably the easiest to deal with: unless she has a power that lets her summon them from the aether, it's just a matter of tracking down where they live and poisoning their foodstuffs. So, check with the residents, make sure none of them have a pet that they let eat out of the dumpsters. Heck, might even raise their property value by getting rid of some of the background pests.

    The noise is a bit more difficult. Her vacuum cleaner can be fairly easily neutralized by cooking up a noise-canceling device that listens for the first sounds of suction, and then broadcasts the opposite waveform. Making the device should be fairly simple. Gimme a day in Mami's basement, and I can whip that up. The calibration would be the trickiest part of this whole operation: I'd need to get a few samples of the vacuum in operation so I can isolate the exact sound of the vacuum from the normal burble of the city around it.

    A similar principle could technically be applied to the singing, but it's much more difficult to account for a noise that she can change on the fly. In theory, I could just blanket the entire building with a device that cancels out all the noise it hears, but for some reason I think that perhaps the prospect of a life lived in monastic silence just might be worse for the residents than one plagued by a person singing Madonna at 3 AM. So, for the singing and property damage, I have to figure out how to neutralize her stealth/slipperiness, and then beat the fight out of her. It's cruder than I'd prefer, but a couple dozen bowling balls to the face have a remarkably persuasive air to them. Perhaps I could whip up some form of heat vision or tracker, so that after one fight, I can chase her signal down to her lair. Yeah, that sounds like it should work.

    Let the residents collect noise samples of the vacuum cleaner in the meantime. Then, after a few days of crafting and gizmogrifying, I should be ready to put my plan into action.
    Well, the good news is that when you get there, she's not hiding.

    She opens with "I'm not crazy," which isn't a good sign on the best days. Also not a good sign? The fact that she's yelling that through a megaphone while standing on a rooftop, while carrying an oversized axe, while a dozen residents dangle upside-down over the edge of the building from ropes tied around their ankles. Usually this kind of thing is considered a red flag.

    There's a small crowd gathered in the street, watching her. She's hard to spot, exactly - she's wearing thermo-optic camouflage which makes her outline more of a vague suggestion than anything. "I'm not crazy. This isn't craziness," she says, gesturing at the blatant craziness. "This is justice. Proper and legal. These people deliberately assassinated a dozen of my friends using poison! So I'm going to hold a fair trial! See?"

    The visual distortion picked up a powdered white judge's wig and then moved it somewhere into the centre of the spatial distortion. She banged her megaphone against the ledge, creating a horrible feedback loop. "The court is now iiiiiinnnn session! How do the defendants plead!"


    Quote Originally Posted by Eldest View Post
    "Fun? I... don't know. I suppose I enjoy taking walks between missions? Does... does that count?"
    "Hey, that's good!" said Naota. "Like, from a technical sense - it's a f*cking boring hobby. But you're thinking about it, and that's giving me really good counterdata to help determine the differences between your mind and the virus. So I'm gonna need you to keep talking if you don't want me to lobotomize you."

    He rolled down a window - an ancient physical spin-roller that he had to crank - and fired his pistol out at the pursuing vehicles as you hit another corner. "Always wanted to do that," he muttered, going back to typing. "Anyway, walking. What do you enjoy about walking? The mega-advertisements, window shopping, street games, anonymity?"

    Quote Originally Posted by PhoeKun View Post
    "Did you ever notice how whenever we do these kinds of runs they always write us as dating?" Errant muses while she deposits a red baseball cap in a vending machine return slot, "It's not that I mind, I just... they do it even when it's not helpful. Or when it's actively detrimental, like that attempted Sabrem sting. I can't tell if they're just being one-note or if someone's hoping something will happen..."
    "Oh, for real?" said JuneBird. "I mean, I thought you were putting in the requests because you can't keep your hands off me."

    Natalie was doing a neo Russian Mafioso look, also known as the Fashion Black Hole. Imagine a tracksuit but cut to the shape of a three-piece suit, with a collared shirt underneath and pearls instead of a necktie. Stripes down the sleeves. A trainwreck in baggy polyester. She'd cut her hair short and dyed it blonde and wore bright white sneakers striped with orange. A red rose in her pocket evoked the impression of the Godfather but every petal was stamped with the Nidedas logo. It honestly kind of hurt to look at.

    "Come on, Nat. For serious, can we just try to have a good time?"

    [If it's necessary, the +Soldier roll for 'please give me better legs' was a 9]
    "Hey, hey, baby doll," said Natalie, rolling the words around, looking for the accent. "A good time is what happens when I light some candles and tie your hands behind your back. This here, this is business. So just look pretty and play poker while I do the talking, yeah?"

    The progression of the party took an unexpected turn - you walk in the door expecting a rave but instead you get a hospital. I mean, it's also a rave - people are clustering everywhere with liquor and drugs and strobes have been set up and all the usual stuff, but that doesn't cover the faint smell of antibacterial soap or the posters displaying prices for all the latest augs. The real meat of the party seems to be concentrated around the hospital's multifaith annex so you naturally gravitate in that direction. Here and there bouncers and security move through the crowd like sharks, biometric visors glowing.

    Walking is hard. Your limiters were there for good reason, to let you maintain a natural walking pace without thinking about it. Without them your muscles are like marbles on glass and skitter off wildly in any direction with only the slightest pressure. You need to measure each step specifically, making it feel like stomping around like an ogre. Relaxation has been set at 60KMPH and that's a long way from where you are.

    Quote Originally Posted by Raz_Fox View Post
    Now take everything I just said and dunk it in a trash can because geometry isn't cutting it right now. Everything comes back to a variant on the Seal of Tiodosius, and it ends the same way: sudden jagged claws through her stained glass, shattering it into neon noise. It's been done! She needs something that makes her feel like she wants to go out and rock. She needs something organic. Something that says claws and meat. Something that doesn't so much harmonize as clash. The shadow of a tiger.

    So here we are. The Celestial Notion Zoo is staggered over a series of upper level floors in the Atlas Arcology. @SARAHPHIM has cleared out the tiger exhibit by being an absolute ass. She's got dubstep blaring out the headphones draped around her neck, at a tooth-vibrating pitch, and everything within arm's reach has become part of her sketchbook. Right now, her hands are tented in front of her face, and she's in a staring contest with the tiger who's come up to the glass. Anyone who walked between the two of them might catch fire.

    Which makes it an absolute certainty that someone's going to do just that.
    ===Dominus has joined the chat===
    Dominus: HEY
    Ferraphim1tp: Oh hey Dominus! :D
    Angel-IKA: eeeeep
    Locker: shhh
    Dominus: WHAT'D I MISS
    Ferraphim1tp: Sarah has been staring at this tiger for twenty minutes and Locker is super into that for some reason ;)
    Locker: stfu. we are witnessing the process right now. this is the good bit.
    Angel-IKA: Did you really blow up the Statue of Kentucky o.o;;;;
    Dominus: YEAH
    Angel-IKA: I took a selfie with that statue a few weeks ago ><;;;;
    Dominus: THEN YOU'VE GOT A COLLECTABLE
    Bode: What do you have against fried chicken, Dominus?
    Dominus: HAHAHA. OH, WAIT. YOU'RE SERIOUS.
    Locker: shut uppppp. jesus. i respect you guys when your freaking out about lame crack ships, can we focus on the process here for a sec.

    *

    "You know, you don't have to watch from the outside," said Barnaby Bills - as his nametag helpfully informed you as he stepped between you and the tiger. Every part of him is optimized for sales, from his off-the-shelf not-too-handsomeness to his bright red blazer. He gave the distinct impression he was talking to your audience as much as you. "We at Spirit Animal Ltd. have recently perfected something the greater Furry and fur-curious subculture has been awaiting for decades: the animal synthcast! Yes, that's right - we can cast your consciousness into the mind of an animal and let you experience the majesty of the animal kingdom from the inside. You will have full control over your animal body, filtered through the animal's instincts and perceptions - a break from biology you didn't know you had! And of course, we'd like to offer you a special deal - any animal you want, as long as you want, with any scenario you want - so long as you broadcast the entire thing on your stream. Whaddayah say, @Sarahphim? Want to take a ride on the wild side?"
    Last edited by Thanqol; 2019-04-29 at 07:23 PM.

  26. - Top - End - #176
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Quote Originally Posted by Thanqol View Post
    "Oh, for real?" said JuneBird. "I mean, I thought you were putting in the requests because you can't keep your hands off me."
    "When you put it like that it does sound like my fault. I guess next time I should start shopping for a ring..."

    Give her some credit, she almost managed to say it without blushing. Just like she almost managed to avoid leaving a three inch deep footprint in the sidewalk. Urgh, limiter removal was a mistake...

    Quote Originally Posted by Thanqol View Post
    "Hey, hey, baby doll," said Natalie, rolling the words around, looking for the accent. "A good time is what happens when I light some candles and tie your hands behind your back. This here, this is business. So just look pretty and play poker while I do the talking, yeah?"

    The progression of the party took an unexpected turn - you walk in the door expecting a rave but instead you get a hospital. I mean, it's also a rave - people are clustering everywhere with liquor and drugs and strobes have been set up and all the usual stuff, but that doesn't cover the faint smell of antibacterial soap or the posters displaying prices for all the latest augs. The real meat of the party seems to be concentrated around the hospital's multifaith annex so you naturally gravitate in that direction. Here and there bouncers and security move through the crowd like sharks, biometric visors glowing.
    Her every step is so deliberate it hurts. Her shades automatically grab photos of a few key things: the aug price posters, a bouncer, a handful of particularly stand-out partygoers. She'd review them in slightly better detail once she was sitting. But Bianca couldn't afford to look too out of place or nervous, and holding herself in check was keeping the majority of her concentration. Acting ate most of the rest. She heaves a dramatic sigh.

    "Yeah yeah, I'm just the eye candy. Rub it in why don't you? Just go ahead and do your... whatever. But there'd better be one of your 'good times' at the end of this or I swear to god..."

  27. - Top - End - #177
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Quote Originally Posted by thanqol View Post
    well, the good news is that when you get there, she's not hiding.

    She opens with "i'm not crazy," which isn't a good sign on the best days. Also not a good sign? The fact that she's yelling that through a megaphone while standing on a rooftop, while carrying an oversized axe, while a dozen residents dangle upside-down over the edge of the building from ropes tied around their ankles. Usually this kind of thing is considered a red flag.

    There's a small crowd gathered in the street, watching her. She's hard to spot, exactly - she's wearing thermo-optic camouflage which makes her outline more of a vague suggestion than anything. "i'm not crazy. This isn't craziness," she says, gesturing at the blatant craziness. "this is justice. Proper and legal. These people deliberately assassinated a dozen of my friends using poison! So i'm going to hold a fair trial! See?"

    the visual distortion picked up a powdered white judge's wig and then moved it somewhere into the centre of the spatial distortion. She banged her megaphone against the ledge, creating a horrible feedback loop. "the court is now iiiiiinnnn session! How do the defendants plead!"
    "OBJECTION!"

    Brainstorm ascends over the edge of the building like he's riding an elevator. He takes two proud steps forward--nanites molding from wall-gripping treadmill to normal legs as he goes--and lowers an accusing finger at the blur in the air.

    Hold the pose, and... he cracks, grinning and laughing. "Sorry, I've always wanted to do that."

    Brainstorm struts back and forth on the edge of the building. He is the smartest damn person in this street, and he is not about to let some jackass with a dollar-store camosuit hurt people on his watch. So, stall.

    "You know how it is, obviously. If you're not rich, you never even get considered to practice law. And that means that people--common people like me, people like these poor citizens--don't get to represent themselves in a court of law. They need their lawyer."

    He pauses at one end of his stride, and spins to stare at the people hanging over the edge. "Where's their lawyer, by the way? We're going to do this legal, not cray-cray, right? Can't start proceedings without the defense lawyer."

    And hey, if his legs get a bit thinner and some nanites scramble off towards the ropes, that's probably just a trick of the light. After all, it can't be that easy to see out of the camouflage; light distortion goes both ways. That means that there's probably a spot in the camouflage where light isn't distorted. Find the metaphorical goggles, and you can find the individual.

    [Assess the Situation: 9. What here can I use to nautralize her camouflage?]
    I run a Let's Play channel! Check it out!
    Currently, we're playing through New Vegas as Gabriel de la Cruz, merchant and mercenary extraordinaire!

  28. - Top - End - #178
    Ettin in the Playground
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Quote Originally Posted by Thanqol View Post
    "You know, you don't have to watch from the outside," said Barnaby Bills - as his nametag helpfully informed you as he stepped between you and the tiger. Every part of him is optimized for sales, from his off-the-shelf not-too-handsomeness to his bright red blazer. He gave the distinct impression he was talking to your audience as much as you. "We at Spirit Animal Ltd. have recently perfected something the greater Furry and fur-curious subculture has been awaiting for decades: the animal synthcast! Yes, that's right - we can cast your consciousness into the mind of an animal and let you experience the majesty of the animal kingdom from the inside. You will have full control over your animal body, filtered through the animal's instincts and perceptions - a break from biology you didn't know you had! And of course, we'd like to offer you a special deal - any animal you want, as long as you want, with any scenario you want - so long as you broadcast the entire thing on your stream. Whaddayah say, @Sarahphim? Want to take a ride on the wild side?"
    @SARAHPHIM attempts to continue the staring contest through BB's stomach. This does not succeed, because BB is made of opaque organic materials, and also, because he is wearing an opaque red blazer. Still, she doesn't make eye contact with the fellow, and the moment stretches out for a long moment.

    Then: "I'm going to eat a deer." One eyebrow, arched. Still not moving those eyes. "Can you make that happen, Barny?"

    She may be just trying to psych the guy out. In fact, she probably is? But also, the likelihood of her locking in to this scenario out of sheer brute-mindedness is becoming increasingly likely. Make her a tigress. Let her chase down and eat a deer. Inspiration in the reds and whites, the oranges and blacks.
    freedom in the flame

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    Quote Originally Posted by PhoeKun View Post
    Raz, you scoundrel! You planned this!
    Quote Originally Posted by BladeofObliviom View Post
    Great, and now I'm imagining what Raz's profile on a dating site would look like. "Must be okay with veils."
    Quote Originally Posted by Kasanip View Post
    I don't think there is such a time to have veils that it is not the fault of Raz_Fox.
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    It's a freaking Romulan dump truck. The Romulans are no more likely to build an unarmed warp-capable ship than they are to become a hippy commune.

  29. - Top - End - #179
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Quote Originally Posted by PhoeKun View Post
    "When you put it like that it does sound like my fault. I guess next time I should start shopping for a ring..."

    Give her some credit, she almost managed to say it without blushing. Just like she almost managed to avoid leaving a three inch deep footprint in the sidewalk. Urgh, limiter removal was a mistake...
    "Hehehe, you need to up your flirting game if you're ever going to make it as a secret agent," JuneBird giggled, looking back at the sidewalk divot. "Why not date me for real? I bet you wouldn't be half as nervous in these missions if you actually had a few makeout sessions under your belt."

    [She wants to shift your Mundane up and Saviour down, accept what she says or reject her influence]

    Her every step is so deliberate it hurts. Her shades automatically grab photos of a few key things: the aug price posters, a bouncer, a handful of particularly stand-out partygoers. She'd review them in slightly better detail once she was sitting. But Bianca couldn't afford to look too out of place or nervous, and holding herself in check was keeping the majority of her concentration. Acting ate most of the rest. She heaves a dramatic sigh.

    "Yeah yeah, I'm just the eye candy. Rub it in why don't you? Just go ahead and do your... whatever. But there'd better be one of your 'good times' at the end of this or I swear to god..."
    "That's a promise I reckon I can keep," said Natasha with a wink.

    Turbo Knight looks even worse than he did in the briefing. He's in a wheelchair, hooked up to an oxygen tank, hands visibly trembling with every moment. He doesn't look old, he looks like he's about to die. His hair is gone, his eyes are sunken, his once-towering form has been reduced to a techno-mummy. His fingers are still scorched black from a lifetime of wielding his terrible powers.

    And yet he still grins. It's a horrible grin. Even in your line of work you don't often come across a face that makes you think of pure evil that often, but Turbo Knight's smile is knowing and cruel - even as air is forced down his nose by a tube. He's on the stage, decrepit body jerking along pathetically to the toxic music, bodyguards standing evenly paced in a circle around him.

    The Shogun is there too. She's in the back, making no attempt to conceal herself. Hovering a few feet off the ground, implacably staring at Turbo Knight across the room.

    In the centre of the room is a bright spotlight illuminating a poker table. Noise within is distorted and distant, the doofing of the party fading away into an ominous background echo. There are a wild range of characters present but you know them mostly as generic scum. There's only one other figure of serious note at the table: Victoria Messermitt, Turbo Knight's granddaughter.

    Unlike everyone else in this room who is pulled along by the invisible slipstreams of fashion, Victoria dresses for herself. Sleek hispanic features, lipstick so dark red it's almost back, hair tied back into a functional ponytail, blue woolen sweater, black jeans, eyelashes that could sever steel wires. Her look seems so casual it's almost house clothes but she's so inherently attractive she outshines everyone else at the table - without a single hard edge or triangular design in her wardrobe she comes across as raw edge.

    The briefing made special warning to watch out for her. She's deadly and ambitious, trained personally by Turbo Knight as his right hand. AEGIS has a big board in the Strategicon listing its biggest long term concerns. Doctor Sylvanius' martian army is at the top of course, but only a few steps below that is 'Victoria Messermitt unites the Silver Royals' crime families'.

    There's a seat pulled out just for you. Natasha hands a guy a black briefcase stuffed with cash. "Fifty thousand dollars credited to the account of Bianca Amin," announces the goon.

    Game on.

    Quote Originally Posted by Balmas View Post
    "OBJECTION!"

    Brainstorm ascends over the edge of the building like he's riding an elevator. He takes two proud steps forward--nanites molding from wall-gripping treadmill to normal legs as he goes--and lowers an accusing finger at the blur in the air.

    Hold the pose, and... he cracks, grinning and laughing. "Sorry, I've always wanted to do that."

    Brainstorm struts back and forth on the edge of the building. He is the smartest damn person in this street, and he is not about to let some jackass with a dollar-store camosuit hurt people on his watch. So, stall.

    "You know how it is, obviously. If you're not rich, you never even get considered to practice law. And that means that people--common people like me, people like these poor citizens--don't get to represent themselves in a court of law. They need their lawyer."

    He pauses at one end of his stride, and spins to stare at the people hanging over the edge. "Where's their lawyer, by the way? We're going to do this legal, not cray-cray, right? Can't start proceedings without the defense lawyer."

    And hey, if his legs get a bit thinner and some nanites scramble off towards the ropes, that's probably just a trick of the light. After all, it can't be that easy to see out of the camouflage; light distortion goes both ways. That means that there's probably a spot in the camouflage where light isn't distorted. Find the metaphorical goggles, and you can find the individual.

    [Assess the Situation: 9. What here can I use to nautralize her camouflage?]
    "You're right!" said Possom Girl, snapping her fingers like this was just something she genuinely forgot. "Lawyers are totally part of trials. Probably even more important than judges! So tell you what -" the motion blur moves away from a chair where a huge, intelligent looking possum now sits "- I will be the prosecutor and McMurrogh here will be the judge! Couldn't be fairer, or saner." She pauses. The possum says nothing. "He asks how the defense pleads!"

    Invisibility is an arms race. There's a constant knife's edge contest between corporations churning out the latest thermo-optic kit and different corporations producing multispectral visors to contest them. The bleeding edge is a high tech arms race between the greatest scientists of the age and often based less on the actual technical specs than meta awareness. There are only so many counterfrequencies and cyber-baffles you can stuff into a single piece of tech before it stops being man-portable, so even on the bleeding edge you'll still find TO baffles that random decade old civilian scanshades can see through through sheer chance.

    So odds are, in that crowd of witnesses down below? Someone is seeing Possum Girl for real. If you can figure out who that guy is and borrow his kit's settings you'll be able to calibrate your visor to match.

    Quote Originally Posted by Raz_Fox View Post
    @SARAHPHIM attempts to continue the staring contest through BB's stomach. This does not succeed, because BB is made of opaque organic materials, and also, because he is wearing an opaque red blazer. Still, she doesn't make eye contact with the fellow, and the moment stretches out for a long moment.

    Then: "I'm going to eat a deer." One eyebrow, arched. Still not moving those eyes. "Can you make that happen, Barny?"

    She may be just trying to psych the guy out. In fact, she probably is? But also, the likelihood of her locking in to this scenario out of sheer brute-mindedness is becoming increasingly likely. Make her a tigress. Let her chase down and eat a deer. Inspiration in the reds and whites, the oranges and blacks.
    "We can indeed!" said Barbaby Bills.

    The casting room is set up for luxury, and the kind of luxury that only flows to one person. This is a tailored experience, not something that made for the mass market. A luxurious leather chair, sleek and aesthetically refined equipment, wine and chocolates set out so you can relax while the techs go through the setup work. Minor stuff, medical checklists, fitting a sleek silver tiara to your head that matches the silver collar of the tiger, adjusting wires and knobs and talking in soft voices. Your camera drones are moved through to the tiger's enclosure.

    Finally the nod is given, you're told to relax, and the machines softly whir. Your mind reaches out, for a moment infinitely, and then is channeled...

    And you catch a crackle of pink light and a horrible feeling of something rushing in the other direction.

    You open your eyes.

    You are strong. You are fast. You are perfectly balanced. Your mind and body is in harmony. You are yourself, you think your own thoughts, you still have awareness and language and all the things that make you yourself. But you also have perfect awareness of your new body. You know how to move your paws. You know how to sprint. You know how to stalk. You know how to pounce. These things are as instinctive to you as breathing. You feel dangerous.

    You hear a roar. You turn.

    You see - yourself. Your own body from a distance, like watching yourself on TV. You're not sitting on the couch any more. You are, in fact, standing - and cutting down the scientists with bright pink hardlights. You move like an animal, low and crouched and predatory - the tiger's mind is in your body. You watch as your body carves a molten hole in the wall with its laser array and leaps out onto the streets below. You're still trapped in an enclosure behind a glass wall.

    Your tiger's eye flicks down to your chat visor.

    ===COMSTAR HAS JOINED THE CHAT===
    Comstar: Hi @SARAHPHIM!
    Comstar: I thought about trying to rebuild my stream but really, your way is better.
    Comstar: Why do all the work of harvesting new subs when I can just jack yours?
    Comstar: Welcome to the COMSTAR SHOW, FEATURING @SARAHPHIM
    Comstar: ALL COMSTAR CONTENT WILL NOW BE DISPLAYED THROUGH THE @SARAHPHIM STREAM
    Comstar: And for episode one, TIGER VERSES SUPERHERO. Let's find out who truly is the most dangerous game!
    Last edited by Thanqol; 2019-04-30 at 08:22 PM.

  30. - Top - End - #180
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    Default Re: [Masks IC] Resurrection Roundabout: Drawing Individuals

    Quote Originally Posted by Thanqol View Post
    "Hey, that's good!" said Naota. "Like, from a technical sense - it's a f*cking boring hobby. But you're thinking about it, and that's giving me really good counterdata to help determine the differences between your mind and the virus. So I'm gonna need you to keep talking if you don't want me to lobotomize you."

    He rolled down a window - an ancient physical spin-roller that he had to crank - and fired his pistol out at the pursuing vehicles as you hit another corner. "Always wanted to do that," he muttered, going back to typing. "Anyway, walking. What do you enjoy about walking? The mega-advertisements, window shopping, street games, anonymity?"
    "it's not boring!" She responds hotly. "You get to see so much of the city that you don't otherwise, when you're just going someplace. If you wander, you get to see what's what along the way!" The car takes a sudden, unexpected right, bouncing first up onto the sidewalk, then onto a vacant lot, swerving around a massive crater that explained why it was still vacant. "You miss all the little details that make a city, well, human. Like the homeless shelter down thataway." She gestures with a thumb down an alley as they roar past it. "I found that on my third walk. They were having trouble moving in new beds that had been donated, so I helped them out, and they tried to give me some soup. They're one of three shelters left that are actually non-profit. And you wouldn't know about that without having walked down that dead-end alley for no other reason than to find out what's down there, right?"
    LGBTA+itP

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