You're searching one of those abandoned buildings right now. So you're not particularly into professional sports, right Brainstorm? Not your vibe. You know that Aristeia! is an anything-goes kind of sport, a battle of supers overseen by highly advanced medical drones and safety features - exactly the sort of thing that'd show up in a school full of rich kids looking to show off their custom augs and high fashion. In fact, it's just occurred to you that they represent the largest concentration of force in this entire building, and if you can get them on side you'll have all the force you need to directly confront Spiral...

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN," says Angel-IKA's voice from what feels like everywhere. "WELCOME TO THE HEXADROME!"

oh no.

"I'm Angel-IKA, with me is Locker, and strap yourselves in for the best night of high school Aristeia! that I am, um, not participating in directly!"

"In my opinion you were robbed, Angel-IKA," said Locker's voice.

"Kind of you to say, Locker, but today isn't about me. It's about them."

Two spotlights slam down, outlining two teams of four technicolour weirdos on both sides of you. This building isn't abandoned after all - it's the ring.

And before you have time to even think further there's a fucking samurai in your face. With a katana.

What would @SARAHPPHIM do?

"Hmm. Eight on one doesn't seem too fair." Then he sprints forward, and runs straight up and over the samurai--knee, groin, solar plexus, finish with a kickflip that sends the helmet soaring into the face of the bull coming in for a grab behind him. "Maybe try sixteen."

Then it's a melee. Samuwrong's on the ground, and the bull--eight feet tall, with horns--is none too happy with his black eye. Redirect his blows, don't try to absorb, that's Errant's trick. The one--looks like an angel, almost--rises on electric wings, calibrating for a shot, and he wishes he'd had more than half a second to determine which freaks were on which side, and that he could go all out without fear of A) unmasking himself or B) actually seriously injuring someone. I mean, medical bots are on standby, so really, B) is a nonissue, but he can feel the gaze of dozens of cameras, from every angle.

Surviving. Surviving is good.

"So!" he shouts, dodging the angel's cannon blasts, "it feels like y'all have some pent-up aggression issues. Anyone want to join me after the match for some good-old-fashioned villain punch-ups?"

[Directly engage: 9. Dismay or Impress.]

...You know how in all of the movies whenever there's a chase scene, the person being chased will always take extra time to turn over carts or dump bookshelves or do fancy parkour tricks over walls and stuff? And how it never, ever works? Yeah. This feels a lot like that. Every second Errant gains by putting whatever she can between her and Victoria she loses back by having to put it there in the first place. These poor cubicles don't even amount to speed bumps. The barricades she vaults over aren't faring a lot better. She sneers over her shoulder with every crumbling obstacle and corner.

"Amateur!" she snarls. Nobody respects how much work goes into being able to pilot a body like this well.

Which, great, yeah. Skill check Victoria into oblivion, Euna. You can afford a big fight right now, absolutely! It's not like the hundreds of other operatives in the vicinity are going to pounce on you while you deal with her or anything! Think, you idiot, think! For once in your life, just think!

...AEGIS operating procedure in the face of overwhelming superiority is to first break down the problem into its component parts. She gasps for air and starts from the top. Actually yeah, she starts with that. She has to breathe. Victoria... technically also does, but she's got a suit and rockets doing all of her heavy lifting, she's not even sweating right now. Errant on the other hand is rapidly reaching the limits of peak performance. She'll start slowing down soon. Worse than that, AEGIS will be fully mobilized and organized against her within a matter of minutes. The window for her to skate past rooms before her peers get blockades and ambushes properly set up is rapidly closing.

But reaching the exit in these conditions won't solve her problem. She's still going to have a furious Victoria on her six, and this time with nothing but straight lines between the both of them. So no, that's out. She needs a way to lose Victoria. The Reactor Room? No, too dangerous. The maintenance shafts? Even worse: she might shed one pursuer but she'd also be throwing up huge AROs announcing the exact spot she'd be popping up so everybody else could blast her.

Jeez. This hurts so much. There's something wet running under her nose. Urgh, god not again. It's blood. She can't keep this up. She can't. She just can't. She needs to rest, she needs to clear the blockades before... Oh son of a bitch.

It kills her to do it. It absolutely kills her to do it, but Errant grinds to a halt and launches herself like a laser bouncing off a mirror off to her right, deeper into the pyramid and closer to the barracks, where the highest concentration of trained personnel would be. Run, run! She springs off of a wall, and every time she hears a crunch behind her she turns to throw the kind of grin she stole from @SARAHPHIM. Try harder, dumbass! You can't measure up to me.

AEGIS Protocol for handling overwhelming force states that an operative should use the local terrain to re-establish advantage and deliver a decisive strike to the target. Corollary: do not show your hand before the strike falls.

This is the hardest part. Errant skids to a halt in front of a full firing squad hiding behind riot shields. Just like she expected, they came loaded with E/Maulers and other anti-cybernetic weaponry. She stares at her coworkers, glaring at them through her visor while her chest heaves with the effort of not being caught this entire time. She spins on the ball of her foot and turns her back to them in time to greet Victoria. Her hair whips around behind her like a beguiling serpent. She plants her feet. Thumbs away a mess of nose blood and sweat, and flashes a feral grin toward the woman who would be queen.

"This is it," she says in her absolute best Elvia impression, "I'm afraid you've lost, milady."

Victoria hurtles toward her. Errant waits. When she finally leaps, she can feel the tingle of EMP waves just barely missing her. There's one satisfying crunch as she slams her fingers through the ceiling to make a handhold, and a second even more satisfying crunch as Victoria's suit seizes and crashes to the ground. She swings forward, and takes the window reloading provides her to give all of AEGIS her very best princess curtsy before vanishing around a corner again.

Good work, Soldier.

[Errant gives AEGIS influence to use +Soldier to Provoke: 11.]

"Well... the orbital calculations would be a lot easier if I didn't have to account for the weight of all this spare ammunition..." said Professor Gears, starting to think.

But then there's the air-shattering sound of a portal opening. Howling wind and rain pour through. Suited up megagoons pile through in all directions, rifles raised. One of them grabs Professor Gears before she can react and swings around behind her, using her as a human shield while pointing her gun at you. "Autonomous Gears Project, you are hereby instructed to stand down in accordance with your contractual obligations as an asset of the AEGIS conglomerate!"

[They're trying to shift your Superior down and Freak up, accept their words or reject their influence]

[11 to Reject, cancelling influence and shifting danger up, superior right back down]

She laughs, bitterly. "I have a name. And, to put it mildly? No." She starts to glow, her own hue of blue, not Comstar's pink, and so does the one holding Professor Gears. "Let's go, I have a schedule." And launches right into the violence, appropriating a rifle and using it to disable.

[8 with the new danger and the +1 forward on engage, taking back Professor Gears]

Errant!

You're close.

Invisible agents emerge from ambush, multi-rifles blaring. Corridor after corridor is blocked with barricades, turrets, sealed doors. An agent on a motorcycle tries to run you down with a lance. There are entire systems calibrated precisely against your hardware, teams who have trained against you across their entire careers and have winning records to show for it.

But something's different. Today you're more than just your hardware specs. Today you're running on sunlight. You know every curve of this place as well as it knows you.

Better, even. It's forgotten itself. You haven't. And maybe that's it? Maybe it's more than your heart being ablaze, your limbs blessed with new responsiveness. Maybe their hearts just aren't in it. Maybe they know things aren't right here either.

You hit the lobby.

Just beyond is @Sarahphim, between you and the destination tree.

What would @SARAHPPHIM do?

"Hmm. Eight on one doesn't seem too fair." Then he sprints forward, and runs straight up and over the samurai--knee, groin, solar plexus, finish with a kickflip that sends the helmet soaring into the face of the bull coming in for a grab behind him. "Maybe try sixteen."

Then it's a melee. Samuwrong's on the ground, and the bull--eight feet tall, with horns--is none too happy with his black eye. Redirect his blows, don't try to absorb, that's Errant's trick. The one--looks like an angel, almost--rises on electric wings, calibrating for a shot, and he wishes he'd had more than half a second to determine which freaks were on which side, and that he could go all out without fear of A) unmasking himself or B) actually seriously injuring someone. I mean, medical bots are on standby, so really, B) is a nonissue, but he can feel the gaze of dozens of cameras, from every angle.

Surviving. Surviving is good.

"So!" he shouts, dodging the angel's cannon blasts, "it feels like y'all have some pent-up aggression issues. Anyone want to join me after the match for some good-old-fashioned villain punch-ups?"

[Directly engage: 9. Dismay or Impress.]

"Whaaaat's this?" said Angel-IKA from the commentary booth. "It looks like the match is being hijacked by the vigilante known as Brainstorm!"
"I heard he was a supervillain now," said Locker.
"A friend of mine told me that 'supervillain' was a political label given to anyone who tries to change the system against the will of the entrenched interests," said Angel-IKA.
"Well he's definitely holding his own. To everyone out there who slept on my boy: I told you so."

You're holding your own. More than that. You're making it look good. Take a powerful blow while you're at it, Victor, but the digital scoreboard has updated to include a third team's name: THE SUPERVILLAINS, and you, alone, are in the lead. You can hear the crowd start to shift. Aristeia! inherited a lot of professional wrestling DNA, and this is the sort of twist that audiences absolutely love.

But then the skylight shatters.

Spiral Corps goons in power armour start rappelling in from the ceiling, landing around all over the Hexadrome, combi-rifles aimed, various superpowers flaring. Flying troopers drop in and orient, looking around for the commentary booth.

The scoreboard adjusts. It adds these goons to your team.

[11 to Reject, cancelling influence and shifting danger up, superior right back down]

She laughs, bitterly. "I have a name. And, to put it mildly? No." She starts to glow, her own hue of blue, not Comstar's pink, and so does the one holding Professor Gears. "Let's go, I have a schedule." And launches right into the violence, appropriating a rifle and using it to disable.

[8 with the new danger and the +1 forward on engage, taking back Professor Gears]

A prepared and ready Megagoon team isn't anything to sneeze at, Ferra. They know there are supers on site, and the Professor has a reputation for heroism all of her own. Media's all over your new powers too so there are no surprises for them, their gear's annoyingly low-tech and unpowered. You need to take them on with just you brain and your fists and stop them from bailing the Professor into the portal.

Tell me a bit about how you do it, and the powerful blow you take in the process.

Errant stops running. Head feet drag heavily against the ground, digging a full inch into the tiling across several feet of stopping distance. Every breath looks like it's costing her a lot. She's not doing the controlled breaths through her nose like she taught you, Sara, it's all coming loudly and raggedly out of her mouth. Her chest heaves, her shoulders rise and fall with every greedy suck of air, and she's slouching pretty badly.

She's a mess. She's drenched with sweat, her face is stained with oils, fresh burns, cuts, blood, sweat, and yes, also tears. Her uniform is covered with flecks of hardened foam. It's also bright, gaudy, criminal red. It's not a good color for her. All across her chest there's a bunch of little cuts, so it's easy to look past it to the filthy undershirt that's supposed to keep all that heavy armor off her skin. Even her hair, the gorgeously long hair she says Princess Alina helped give her looks limp and bedraggled.

She stares across the lobby through her visor. Then she reaches up and snatches it off her face. For a moment, there's something like elation there, tired as it is. And then it shifts to confusion. Disbelief. Horror.

She drops into a combat stance, coiled so tense and so ready for a fight her limbs are whining.

"Tell me..." she croaks, "It's not the same. T-tell me it's not what I think it is. TELL ME! Sara, I swear to god I'm gonna... I'm gonna... even if it's you!"

Not like this. Oh no, please tell her it's not happening again.

POTENTIAL 0

Holy fuck. Fan wasn't lying. Vicki is in charge of a total AEGIS takeover, and she is... doing something. Something something satellite? Whatever it is, it can wait. Because Euna, brave and tough and loyal, never wins at pop quizzes. Just watch, the Shogun's going to come and fire a barrage at her and take her down before she can so much as touch the tree. Or Vicki's going to bust through a door and tear a limb off her and then make a snide comment about how she could buy something much more expensive. And, hell, maybe she could. She owns AEGIS now, she could sink a nation's worth of GDP into getting the perfect limbs if she wanted. But she could never buy something as perfect for Euna.

And why the fuck is she standing there?

@SARAHPHIM turns around, scans for the enemy that has to be behind her, and... oh. Oh, right.

"Shit," Sara says, looking back over her shoulder. "This is about the time I took you down, isn't it, Euna?" There are boots on the tiles, banging on the door that Euna smashed shut on her way out. "I can't lie, under any other circumstances I'd totally do it again just to see the look on your face, but fuck Vicki."

She holds one hand out, and smiles, and it's not her usual sardonic smirk, her "I win everything" cocky glance at the cameras. It's a "I knew Euna Kim wouldn't go down like a chump to Vicki of all people" smile. A "that's my Euna" smile.

An honest smile.

"So touch the fucking tree already and let's blow these stupid suits away, Eunicorn!"

And as the doors blow open, @SARAHPHIM is already firing the Judgment Of Solomon through them, leaving the perfect hole in the barrage of hardlight lances and chalices for her Euna to charge at the tree through, like she's the rock that the tide breaks around.

[14 on Comfort and Support.]

[Drat. The one time I was hoping for a miss. 7. Let's go for give ground.]

Well, when in Ring, do as the wrestlers.

"Yes! You know it to be true!" He's strutting, casually sidestepping blasts, a swirling silver nanite cape manifesting down from his soulders, the heel every wrestler loves to hate. "Listen to your friend, peons. Any dissidence or dissent can only be struck down with the full might of the media! But don't fear! I'm sure that when we rise up and unseat the bourgeoisie, there will be equality for all, regardless of birth!"

Despite himself, Brainstorm can't help but smile. Finally! Adoration! Recognition! Granted, it's the recognition of pubescent privileged trust-fund babies, but it's working! He's doing it! He could make this work! And Angelica has a point, after all--who cares what the pigs in power call him, if he's still helping people? Sure, it'd mean figuring out a new name, and heaven knows he agonized over that for literally weeks, and a new costume too, and he's gonna have to fight Euna.

Oh fuck.

He... He really doesn't want to fight Errant. Not sure he's got what it takes, if Errant stands in front of him and tells him to stand down, to say no.

His train of thought and the skylight shatter at about the same time, and he stops, mid-battlefield, to point up. "No! Bad scoreboard. Wrong!"

Fuck him, what was he saying with "Try sixteen?" Sure, try sixty-four. Maybe Euna could win this--she's had training, after all, in fighting an entire skyscraper at once. And despite himself, he's still only one person and soon it's all he can do to avoid being one smear on the pavement.

So, get off the pavement. Get in the air. Locker's with Angelica. He should be there too. Look around, find the broadcasting booth, get between her and as many Spiral troopers as he can.

[And that's a miss on Defend Someone. Marking XP]

This is a moment frozen in time.

Blood is rushing to her head. She can tell because she feels hot and dizzy for reasons that have nothing to do with how tired she is. The words sink slowly through Euna's skull, twisting her face right back into confusion. She shakes her head. She stares ahead, eyes diamond hard and ready for a fight. Hardlight answers her challenge, and she leaps straight into it.

This is not a pattern Euna has seen before. She doesn't know the holes at all. It doesn't matter; the holes know her. She bursts through the lobby on a fresh surge of speed. She is invincible. She is untouchable. She has stamina for days. She is... she is!

Free!

Euna Kim crashes through the doors leading out of the AEGIS pyramid with a roar and a thunderclap that rivals any of Sylvanus' missile strikes. Or at least, it seems like to her. Her eyes are on the tree. Only on the tree. How many times has she dreamed of touching this thing? How many times has she said she'd get it next time? Did she ever even think she'd really do it? Well it doesn't matter now. No one's gonna pop out and congratulate her. They're not putting her name on the plaque for this. The strategically optimal thing is to--

She strikes. Form perfect. Remember how she showed you, Sara? Wrist locked straight, make contact with the index and middle knuckles only. Drive with the hip and step through to add your entire body to the power of the blow. There's another crack like lightning, and the tree splits in half, from the trunk all the way up the middle to its highest branches. The two sides fall apart from each other until the roots catch in the ground, and they both settle in a huge V pattern, leaning away from each other. Euna spits on the ground.

And without waiting another second, she grabs Sara and lifts her into a princess carry before dashing off into the streets.

"You! Are! Such! An! Ass! I can't believe you'd say that to me!"

She's laughing and crying and coughing all at the same time. It's the ugliest sound you've ever heard. But if you listen closely, you can hear the trill of her stupid dorky giggle bubbling underneath it all. The one that means she's ok. Yes, she's ok. She'll be ok. Because...

Because she's got someone. She's got the one person she thought she wanted from the very beginning. She's got you, Sara.

[clearing Angry]

POTENTIAL 0

Sara could definitely get used to this. Euna's arms are keeping her stable and not shaking her around, despite the way her legs are tearing up the street, each step leaving a crater in the road, forcing cars to veer around the two supers, and forcing the poor little ChRB drone to push its engine to the limit trying to keep up with the silver blur.

"Love you too, Eunicorn," she says, and there's the smug as she rests her head against Euna's for a tender moment. She doesn't dare kiss her. Not yet. Just in case it's too soon. In case she's not forgiven yet. But she can't resist... she has to know that Euna knows that Sara's on her side, now and forever.

And that, yes, Euna will forever regret letting Sara find out about that name. She is, after all, such an ass.

A prepared and ready Megagoon team isn't anything to sneeze at, Ferra. They know there are supers on site, and the Professor has a reputation for heroism all of her own. Media's all over your new powers too so there are no surprises for them, their gear's annoyingly low-tech and unpowered. You need to take them on with just you brain and your fists and stop them from bailing the Professor into the portal.

Tell me a bit about how you do it, and the powerful blow you take in the process.

So the sucky thing about fighting somebody that has, until now, been your friend? They know what you're able to do, and they have a good idea of what you're about to do. See the climatic duel between Anyan and his mentor Soya in Swords By Moonlight 3, when Soya needs to teach him his final lesson. Soya knows the duel's coming, he can prepare. Anyan doesn't.

Maybe this isn't the best thing to flash through her mind as she steps right into the Megagoon's trap, but hey, it's the little things. The Megagoon she'd hacked, did in fact have enough counterintrusion and tech on him to keep her busy for a crucial, oh, half second. She'd gotten in, she'd gotten ready to fight, and they'd made him completely toothless. Gun's unloaded, servos on the armor turned way down, not even a smoke grenade in his equipment roster. Time for plan B. Plan B sucks. She grabs the Professor and shoves her out of the way and towards the door, ducking and weaving towards where the portal still sits open, ducking through for a desperate rush at the portal generator. Hack that, wreck that, and the Foundation is safe.

Remember how fighting friends sucks? There's a half dozen entrenched E/Maulers pointed at the portal. She makes it a handful of steps before they open fire, and she goes down, reaching for the rift generator, not sure if she got it.

Ferra Reboot In Progress

His train of thought and the skylight shatter at about the same time, and he stops, mid-battlefield, to point up. "No! Bad scoreboard. Wrong!"

Fuck him, what was he saying with "Try sixteen?" Sure, try sixty-four. Maybe Euna could win this--she's had training, after all, in fighting an entire skyscraper at once. And despite himself, he's still only one person and soon it's all he can do to avoid being one smear on the pavement.

So, get off the pavement. Get in the air. Locker's with Angelica. He should be there too. Look around, find the broadcasting booth, get between her and as many Spiral troopers as he can.

[And that's a miss on Defend Someone. Marking XP]

Like you say. It's too much. There are supervillains and superheroes on every side and they all seem to agree that you're a free target. You're getting hit from the right, hit from the left, barely able to keep your head together. You see Locker in the distance, throwing something that explodes and sends a flying guy into a wall, but then he's going bare fist against power armoured supervillain and you can tell he's losing, especially when Angel-IKA tries to break a chair over the spiral guy's back but instead smashes Locker clear in the face. Even over the melee you can hear the 'sorry! Sorry!' and 'fucking REALLY?'

And it seems like it was all for nothing. Alone, isolated, you against the world.

And you're seeing rainbows.

Errant! @Sarahphim! You rappel down from the ceiling together, sliding down a rope from one of Dominus' assault helicopters, surrounded by suppressive missile fire causing explosions in every direction. You land immediately above Brainstorm. How's your entrance?

So the sucky thing about fighting somebody that has, until now, been your friend? They know what you're able to do, and they have a good idea of what you're about to do. See the climatic duel between Anyan and his mentor Soya in Swords By Moonlight 3, when Soya needs to teach him his final lesson. Soya knows the duel's coming, he can prepare. Anyan doesn't.

Maybe this isn't the best thing to flash through her mind as she steps right into the Megagoon's trap, but hey, it's the little things. The Megagoon she'd hacked, did in fact have enough counterintrusion and tech on him to keep her busy for a crucial, oh, half second. She'd gotten in, she'd gotten ready to fight, and they'd made him completely toothless. Gun's unloaded, servos on the armor turned way down, not even a smoke grenade in his equipment roster. Time for plan B. Plan B sucks. She grabs the Professor and shoves her out of the way and towards the door, ducking and weaving towards where the portal still sits open, ducking through for a desperate rush at the portal generator. Hack that, wreck that, and the Foundation is safe.

Remember how fighting friends sucks? There's a half dozen entrenched E/Maulers pointed at the portal. She makes it a handful of steps before they open fire, and she goes down, reaching for the rift generator, not sure if she got it.

Ferra Reboot In Progress

"I can't believe - you let Professor Gears get away!?" Victoria's voice has the tension of a steel cable holding an entire battleship over the edge of a skyscraper. "You let the cyborg and the bitch get away!? And all you got for me is the fucking robot?!! What the fuck am I supposed to do with that!?"

You're starting to regain sensation - and the sensation is strain. You have been tied in some sort of avaunt guarde puzzle knot, an elaborate and even vaguely suggestive full body binding that courses with latent electricity ready to painfully jolt you if you struggle too hard. You can't see much. You can hear every word of the one-sided argument though.

"What do you expect me to do with it? Lower it into a vat of acid? It's not even a person! Who's going to give a damn about it? I'll just look even more ridiculous than you've already made me look - no, I do not fucking care about the 'positive situation in the Indian market', Perseus. I want you to devote every spare processing cycle to putting the goddamn super hero squad in chains below my boot or I will take my frustrations out on your goddamn CPU!"

[Victoria is telling you that you don't matter and no one is coming from you, shift your freak up and mundane down or reject her influence]

[accepting shift, regen erases moves, changes ability, changes appearance]

She comes back to herself, blinking. While before she was edges, now it's gentle curves, whorls of etching on her face and arms, somewhat reminiscent of the ocean. She resists the urge to tug at the bindings for now, pointedly ignoring the tingling from it, certainly just the electricity. "Do you need some tea to calm down? I can recommend a few good blends."

Repelling is for people who aren't in a hurry. Errant's been running full tilt ever since the moment Commander Warren gave her her last order; she's only got one mode right now, and that's maximum overdrive. Flying in a helicopter to get here felt intolerably slow.

But at least it gave her a moment to clean up a little. She's still wearing her scuffed, red-tainted uniform, but the benefit of having Sara be your partner is that you're never far away from a makeup kit. All the tears and stains have been swept away into hard, edgy lines and powerful colors playing around her visor. She looks like a Valkyrie as she steps out into the air off of that helicopter and plunges down into the battle below.

Falling, hurtling, soaring. She's a shooting star. And she's silent, her lips pressed together in firm concentration. She's got Sara to handle the commentary right now, literally, right here riding on her shoulders. All her focus is on reaching the ground as quickly and smoothly as possible. Landing is a skill, did you know that? Errant smashes down with the force of a comet: left knee, right foot, left hand dragging a Spiral Corps goon to the ground by the head. Right hand reaching up to hold Sara by the waist, keeping her steady. She won't even feel the impact up there.

She stands quickly, swinging Sara off her shoulders and taking the time to give Victor the slightest of nods before she's off again. And then she's everywhere, and it feels all at once. A rising knee into one goon, a hard elbow into another. Snap, snap, snap! Roundhouse, uppercut, heel kick! This is so much easier than fighting a hangar full of TAGs and a pissed off Turbo Knight!

She touches ground again as light as a feather, spinning to a stop as she comes out of a hammer throw tossing one guy in a jetpack into a second Spiral thug lining up a rifle on the commentary booth. Errant whips her head around and up to look at the scoreboard. It obligingly shifts to show a forth team:

@SARAHPHIM

She tosses her hands up in protest. What is this? What the hell is this? It shifts again.

@SARAHKIM

Ok then. Goddamn right.

[Defend: 10. Errant adds a Team to the pool]

POTENTIAL 0
ANGRY SHOWBOAT

Silver sparks streak up from the two heroines as they fall, each one tracing faint lines in the air as they travel until they’re barely visible at all, replaced by the next shower. The visual effect is that Euna is an inexorable comet, here to wipe out the dinosaurs and anything in her path.

Then Euna hits the ground, a perfect three-pointer, and the lines coalesce, flaring brightly enough that onlookers will see the afterimage clearly when they close their eyes: the shape of silver wings, stretching from wall to wall.

Euna hurtles forward, leaving Sara to power pose: hands on her hips, cocky grin on her lips, and shoulders back as each feather on those wings hurtles down to earth at extreme speeds. Competitors dive out of the way as she bombards the stadium with STAR SIGN: LUCIFER BARRAGE.

“What’s up, nerds?” Cheering breaks out from the stands as Sara flashes her ladykiller smirk. “Awww, your sportsball get interrupted by some big, mean supervillains? I guess we can do something about that, as long as you don’t act like morons and get in my way. Chop chop, Euna, I don’t want to do this all by myself~” They’re eating it up, and Sara’s practically untouchable in the barrage, spending her time grandstanding for the fans. Bonus points if they actually throw things at her, like flowers. Or bras.

[12 on Directly Engage, and marking SHOWBOAT, which is a very ego-driven variant of Angry. Sara will avoid their blows and impress or frighten her opposition (and the audience).]

Like you say. It's too much. There are supervillains and superheroes on every side and they all seem to agree that you're a free target. You're getting hit from the right, hit from the left, barely able to keep your head together. You see Locker in the distance, throwing something that explodes and sends a flying guy into a wall, but then he's going bare fist against power armoured supervillain and you can tell he's losing, especially when Angel-IKA tries to break a chair over the spiral guy's back but instead smashes Locker clear in the face. Even over the melee you can hear the 'sorry! Sorry!' and 'fucking REALLY?'

And it seems like it was all for nothing. Alone, isolated, you against the world.

And you're seeing rainbows.

Okay. So, this is it. Worst day of his life. Can't top this, can't be beat, can't get worse than...

Errant! @Sarahphim! You rappel down from the ceiling together, sliding down a rope from one of Dominus' assault helicopters, surrounded by suppressive missile fire causing explosions in every direction. You land immediately above Brainstorm.

...Okay, universe. I see what you're doing, and I don't like it.

Seriously? He's already beaten, they've got AEGIS Spiral troopers kicking his ass up and down the wall, and they send in the even bigger guns?

Might as well just lie down and let it--

She stands quickly, swinging Sara off her shoulders and taking the time to give Victor the slightest of nods before she's off again.

...Oh. Huh. You know what, that's a win and he's gonna take it if it kills him.

No time for sleepies. Hero time. Shit. He coughs, shoves off the floor, and hurls himself back into the fray.

"They're after Angelica!" he bellows to Euna. "Keep them away from the broadcast booth!"

[Above the Fray: Adding a Team to the pool]

Spiral Goons are attracted to @Sarahphim like a moth to a flame.

They're not thinking right. They're breathing deep on mind control gas, instincts dulled, personalities suppressed. But even then some stirring deep in their hearts tells them that this is a hero. This is the target. The other threats here don't matter in comparison to the fame, the glory they can get by bringing down @Sarahphim. They come after you, super-powered zombies, condensing into a solid cluster of power armour.

You're holding them off, backing up, drawing the majority of the horde along with you while avoiding their counterattacks. They're shoulder to shoulder, almost scrambling over each other as they come at you. You've got all the advantages here, what do you do with it?

Errant!

You come face to face with two elite Spiral troopers. Their armour is larger and deadlier than those of the more common goons, each holding crackling thunder-sabres. They take fighting stances and advance towards you with synchronized determination -

And then one of them stabs the other in the back and she goes down in a twitching, electrified heap.

"Hnn," rasps a familiar, haunting voice from behind the helmet's voice filter. "Don't get high on your own supply. Right kid?"

She stabs her sword into the ground and then turns around to show that her own backpack has many lights that have started blinking an ominous red.

"Looks like we're both off mission, huh?" rasped Sabrem. "They pack you kids with bomb squad skillwires still, or was that a heroic sacrifice I just made?"

Brainstorm!

You're hanging back, observing the flow of the battle - and one figure stands out clearly. Levitating down from the sky, cross-legged, it's the creepy hive queen Spiral Goon figure you saw back at the convention. She looks straight at you from her elevated position and you get the distinct feeling that she's assessing the situation, taking in the chaos, figuring out the tactical manoeuvres required to bring things back under control. If you don't do something to stop her you're going to go from fighting disorganized superzombies to fully capable and professional supervillains. What do you do?

Angel-IKA!

Locker fights like he's losing.

He takes a lot of hits. He goes onto the ground all the time. He's visibly bruised and limping. He always looks like he's seconds away from total disaster. But he's also holding off twenty power armoured goons with nothing but a claw hammer. Whereas you? You're clutching your broken chair leg in a stance somewhere between 'baseball bat' and 'I saw this in Duellists In The Rose Garden one time'. Not for the first time you check to see if you can transform into a sexy badass werewolf lady with claws that can tear through composite armour. Not for the first time you are disappointed.

But you're ready to do it. If Locker can fight even when he's that outmatched so can you. You stare down the megagoon, raise your weapon, and prepare to charge.

He... aims his gun at the roof? Fires a laser pointer dot?

CRASH

The ceiling shatters as a missile shoots down through it and you're knocked onto your back. Glowing yellow lights cut through the smoke. You see the ominous shape of a Zeta TAG looming above you and stare down the barrel of a riotstopper. You double check your latent werewolf potential just in case.

Then the lights flicker green. The TAG turns to the side and blasts the Spiral trooper in centre mass with fifty kilograms of adhesive.

Ferraphim1tp: FINALLY
Ferraphim1tp: I thought they'd never drop this fucking thing >:3

[accepting shift, regen erases moves, changes ability, changes appearance]

She comes back to herself, blinking. While before she was edges, now it's gentle curves, whorls of etching on her face and arms, somewhat reminiscent of the ocean. She resists the urge to tug at the bindings for now, pointedly ignoring the tingling from it, certainly just the electricity. "Do you need some tea to calm down? I can recommend a few good blends."

"Calm down!? I am responding exactly proportionately to the situation, how dare you tell me to calm down!?" said Victoria proportionately. "How dare you even talk to me!? Don't you know who I am!?"

There was a note of desperation in that last bit.

"That's fine. Fine," she said with the bare minimum amount of fine. "Doesn't matter. Soon everyone will know exactly who I am and what I'm capable of. Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha!" The laugh was involuntary, a stress giggle that turned into a horrified battle against herself when she realized what was happening. "It's," she clenched her teeth, trying to stop the twitching in her face. "Fine."

POTENTIAL 0
SHOWBOAT

It’s too easy, really. They’re not packed in close to cut off her escapes: she’s brought them into a tight knot so that there’s no escape for them. She twirls her fingers, and with each spin it coalesces: first a line, then a rod, then a baton, then a wickedly sharp arrow. Crackling with barely-contained energy, she sends it shooting into the crowd with a delighted cry, and it pierces straight through the gas lines of the first trooper, making them flop and leak out the precious zombiefication gasses. As long as she doesn’t breathe any in, she’ll be fine!

Zip, zip, zip! The arrow dances through their ranks like the perfect cut of an iaijutsu master, tearing open fuel lines and rupturing weak points in their armor. Instead of a rain of bullets for them to hunker down under, Sara is ripping through their vulnerabilities with just one, faster than they can react. Zip, zip, zip!

If she’s very, very lucky, the gas won’t get to her, and she’ll be able to use a hard light wedge to bust free from the disoriented mass, so that she can rejoin Euna. And, hey, the luck’s part of the fun! She’s laughing wildly as she controls that arrow almost by instinct, rather than any sense of sight.

"You!"

Errant doesn't drop out of her fighting stance when the first armored behemoth turns on the second. She doesn't relax when she hears the voice and does the math. Hell, she doesn't even move when Sabrem shows her back and the blinking bomb counting down her life, other than to clench her fists so tight her fingers start to hurt.

It's the strangeness of that sensation that saves her. A month ago and she might have gotten stuck in the memory. As it is, she's able to stand straight again and merely feel an unpleasant dip in her stomach and a hard line of fire beating through her heart. Her eyes are so wide they hurt. Her teeth grind audibly. All she can manage are sharp, unpleasant breaths through her nose. Move, Euna. You have to move.

No, you don't. You don't owe this bitch her life twice over! It's not even your fault. Walk away. Just walk away, and she pays. You're not doing it. You're just not saving her. That's it. That's all. It's justice! It's the thing you fucked up last time!

There's a dull thwack and an angry hiss as Errant elbows herself in the stomach. Idiot. Moron! She takes a deep breath to try and calm herself, but it's pointless: she's already reaching out and detaching plating to reach the complex mass of wires promising the death of the woman she hates more than anybody on earth.

"Don't be ridiculous," she scoffs, "You're not a hero yet."

What a strange sensation. Normally in these moments her skillwires are such an out-of-body experience she can't help but feel like her arms belong to someone else, which leads her to the nasty point of contemplation that, legally, they probably do. Or did. It doesn't feel like that anymore. Even though her brain is doing just as little to guide the delicate motions of defusing a bomb as it ever has, the sensations coming from her fingers are real, are vibrant, are... warm. It's her. She's doing this. It's a choice that she made, and she's doing this with her own body.

Suddenly, she can't find her anger anymore. It's not... it's not forgiveness, not it's exactly, it's... it's complicated. It's moving on. Moving forward.

"This does not make us even. So don't even think about pulling any of that Hac Tao bullshit on me, got it? Just because AEGIS rotted out from underneath me doesn't mean I believe what I said last time any less. So just... be good, god damn it."

...God damn it, Euna Kim. You are lame.

[Defend: 8. Errant will officially take Influence on Sabrem and expose herself to danger]

"Calm down!? I am responding exactly proportionately to the situation, how dare you tell me to calm down!?" said Victoria proportionately. "How dare you even talk to me!? Don't you know who I am!?"

There was a note of desperation in that last bit.

"That's fine. Fine," she said with the bare minimum amount of fine. "Doesn't matter. Soon everyone will know exactly who I am and what I'm capable of. Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha!" The laugh was involuntary, a stress giggle that turned into a horrified battle against herself when she realized what was happening. "It's," she clenched her teeth, trying to stop the twitching in her face. "Fine."

"Nope!" She responds cheerfully. "No idea who you are. I'm Ferra. I'd guess you know that already though." It's remarkably zen, dangling here. If she was anybody else, she'd probably be scared stiff, but honestly? No fucks given. "And yeah, no, you sound super stressed, and if you try to lie to my face again about that I'm going to laugh at you." She gives a abridged shrug. "So why do you want everyone to, I don't know, fear your power and flee in terror at your name? I'm guessing that's what you meant there."

Brainstorm!

You're hanging back, observing the flow of the battle - and one figure stands out clearly. Levitating down from the sky, cross-legged, it's the creepy hive queen Spiral Goon figure you saw back at the convention. She looks straight at you from her elevated position and you get the distinct feeling that she's assessing the situation, taking in the chaos, figuring out the tactical manoeuvres required to bring things back under control. If you don't do something to stop her you're going to go from fighting disorganized superzombies to fully capable and professional supervillains. What do you do?

Oh, Brainstorm has been there. Above the fray, getting the big picture, assessing. And if there's one thing that he's learned, it's that there's nothing quite so frustrating as getting distracted. Like, say, if someone where to thwip a little cable of nanites around that spiral trooper with a pulse rifle juuuust enough to nudge his aim high? Or maybe he snaps a missile out of the air and redirects it?

It's just the kind of thing that he'd find absolutely maddening, especially if he were to follow it up with snapping a cable onto her jetpack, and filling her helmet with buzzing, stinging nanites. See how they like it.

[Directly Engage with a 7. I'm stealing her concentration.]