Conch Shell VII

Dead Roleplay, Ignore

Overreach squinted up at the sky for a moment, considering this. Obviously, having a Pyromancer on your side was handy if there was trouble afoot. If he was going to go with these people, he could gain some valuable protection. And that was always welcome. "Especially since I lost my gun," he thought to himself. "Wait, no, Dawn just said she can read minds. And Eira just did that thing with the wheelchair, so she might be able to as well. Uh... shit. Hey, uh, could you two pretend you didn't hear that? Thank you."

Anyway, now that he was thinking about it, there didn't really seem to be a downside to this situation. If they were gonna knock him out and steal his stuff, they would've done it by now. So yeah, he could probably get to the next town safe with these folks' help. It was a risk, but he felt like he could handle it.

Overreach grinned and leaned back, draping one arm casually over the back of his chair and smiling at the assembling group. "Yeah, why not?" he said casually. "I could use the company." "And the protection. Aw, dammit!" "Plus, if there's more of us, we can keep to the streets, save a little time. Strength in numbers, and all that. Blasting one person and taking their stuff's fairly simple, I've heard, but four at once is a little tougher. I mean--"

Overreach stopped in the middle of his sentence, suddenly glancing around looking for the newcomer Dawn had mentioned. "...huh," he muttered to himself, sincerely hoping he hadn't just put his foot in his mouth.

@bmxbrat484 @Claw2k11 @EchoicChamber

"You Are Your Avatar"

@BrokenPromise

"Oh, of course it isn't. You need to learn to respect your elders!" Jane snapped, sheathing his sword again. After a moment, he pulled out his radio and continued to bark into it. "This loadout isn't working. I need something better fit for combat. Switch me to A! That is an order!"

Jane tossed his rocket launcher to the ground and shrugged off his parachute. He stood still, snarling like a wounded beast, and slowly wiped the ink off his face with the his red sleeve. until at last there came a flash of crimson light. A shotgun with an olive tint and a white star on its handle materialized in front of him, and a slim, high-tech rocket launcher with a mounted scope and a wooden stock landed on the ground in front of him. Jane swung the shotgun over his shoulder and slipped it onto his back, then charged forward and picked up the rocket launcher. He slung it over his shoulders as he ran, bounding unevenly forward with a simple rhythm and cadence.

Jane charged towards the hardware store, loading rockets into his launcher one by one with a simple mechanical thwoomp until he heard the door to the hardware store crash open. "Ha! You call that destruction, you pastel pansy? Let a real Soldier show you how it's done!" And with that, he fired his rocket launcher at the back of the Lord of Lies, still charging towards him. This rocket was a lot faster than the other ones, and it shot forwards like it was on a mission. Of course, what the Lord of Lies (presumably) didn't know was that this explosion would be a lot smaller than a standard rocket's explosion, and if it was dodged, it would be pretty easy to avoid being hurt by it. However, unlike the now-abandoned orange rocket launcher, this explosion would certainly not be harmless.

Dead Roleplay, Ignore

Overreach cleared his throat, then gave Aran a quick, polite nod. "Right. Well, that's fi--"

He was interrupted by Eira's swift and thorough rundown of his chair's history. He just looked over her for a few moments once she was done, then glanced off down the street for a moment. "...I mean... yeah. I'd rather not talk about that, if it's all the same to you, but... yeah. Good guess." He chuckled softly at his own joke, and using that momentum, quickly swung his way back up to his normal confident swagger. "But yeah. I was just thinking, I haven't met a Mental since a couple of states back, and now here's two at once."

Suddenly, Overreach snapped his fingers and pointed his thumb over his shoulder towards Dawn. "Oh right, yeah, that reminds me! Uh, first of all, nice to meet you, Dawn. Secondly, since you brought it up, where are you folks headed, anyway? Me, I heard there's a village a ways east of here, so I thought I'd swing by, see if I can pick up some supplies. What about you?"

@bmxbrat484 @Claw2k11 @EchoicChamber

Dead Roleplay, Ignore

@bmxbrat484 @Claw2k11 @EchoicChamber

"What? Why d-- uh..."

The man in the wheelchair seemed more than a little taken aback by this. He leaned back slightly in his chair, unsure of how to react. He took a brief moment to consider his options. Obviously, he wasn't armed, and he wasn't sure he could take down a firebug even if he had a gun. That left him with considerably fewer options than he was really comfortable with. He could try to run, but he didn't have the best track record with outrunning people on the best of days, and right now he was a little behind on his repairs. He could try to fight, but based her reaction when she'd showed up, the firebug was in league with the older guy. That would make any fight two to one, and he didn't know what the other guy's gift was. That left him with about one choice.

So, after a moment, he cleared his throat, pasted the smile back on and nodded. "...Okay, Eira. That seems reasonable. Just, uh, be careful with it."

At that point, he heard a fourth person enter the fray. He quickly glanced over and let out a quick, relieved sigh, grateful for something else to bounce off of here. "Oh hey!" he said, waving his hand above his head. "I didn't see you there either! People keep getting the drop on me today. Huh. Anyway, hi! I-- oh," he added, quickly turning back to the rest of the assembling group, "I'm Overreach, by the way. Did I mention that? Good to meet you anyways. What're your names?"

Dead Roleplay, Ignore

@Claw2k11
@bmxbrat484
The man in the wheelchair gasped. He gripped the wheels of his chair in both hands and spun the right wheel as hard as he could. With the left wheel held firmly in place, he spun swiftly around to face the two wanderers. "What the-- Oh! Hey!" He laughed softly and released his grip on the wheels, rolling backwards slightly.

There was, for a moment, the flash of panic. He looked like easy prey, and he was well aware of this by now. And the fact that he'd recently been forced to trade away his gun for a few days' worth of food didn't help matters. But then, these people didn't know that. "Unless they can read minds," he realized. "...Naaaah, that's not gonna happen. I haven't met anybody who can read minds since at least Tuscaloosa."

He cleared his throat after a moment, then scratched his collarbone, peeking over the edge of his stained muscle-shirt. He needed to appear non-threatening, and fortunately he was very, very good at that. "Hey. I didn't see you two there." He then donned a hopefully disarming grin and shrugged. "Well, you didn't try to sneak up behind me and stab me in the neck, so you're already doin' better than the last guy. How you folks doin'?"

Dead Roleplay, Ignore

There came a soft but noticeable clattering of rusted, stiff metal. A brief glance out the window would reveal that a wheelchair was clattering along down the broken sidewalk. The chair was rusted and noisy, but it was still serving its function effectively. But there were two interesting things about the wheelchair. First of all, there was a large mass of what looked like maybe grass or some kind of unrecognizable plant matter strapped to the back of it like an improvised cape. Secondly, and more to the point, unlike most wheelchairs that clattered along down most broken roads, this one was occupied. There was a blonde man sitting in it, rolling down the street and whistling softly to himself. He clattered along, seemingly oblivious to the noise he was making. After a moment, he glanced up at the sky for a moment, then nodded and twisted around in his seat, taking his hands off the whee. He reached into the mass of plant matter, fished around for a minute, and came out with a scrap of cured meat. He grinned, stuck the jerky into his mouth and turned around, only to quickly grab the wheel and skid to a stop just in time to keep himself from slamming into a mailbox. He chuckled softly, rolled his eyes, and quickly corrected course. "That could've ended badly," he muttered, for the benefit of no one but himself.

If this man noticed Dawn probing his mind, he didn't do anything about it. His thoughts swirled semi-randomly through his mind, not taking shape into rigid words in favor of fluid concepts and half-formed images. The man was daydreaming. This was perhaps not the wisest thing to do in a Wasteland, but he seemed... if not happy, at least content. And one thing was clear: he certainly seemed harmless.

Dead Roleplay, Ignore

@bmxbrat484
Good to know. We may have to have them run into each other at some point.

Dead Roleplay, Ignore

Hey, while we're waiting around for the IC to drop, I came up with this as well. I considered having 'em join Liberty, but this doesn't seem like the kind of thing they'd be into. Anyway:

The Conductor

"We were victims to the night; the chemical, physical kryptonite. Helpless to the bass and the fading light..."

this reference is pretty big so here's a secondary hider

Full Name: Nobody knows.

Nicknames/Aliases: The Conductor

Age: Nobody knows, but they seem to be fairly young and agile.

Gender: Opinions are split.

Gift: The Conductor is capable of reproducing any music they have heard, seemingly from nowhere. This music can have various effects that would seem to fly in the face of reality, and can be used to temporarily give them various secondary superpowers during the length of the song, such as flame manipulation or flight. However, this is very taxing and often leaves The Conductor out of commission for at least a day. The more common and less risky use of The Conductor's power is what they call The Rhythm: Any who hear The Conductor's music and are not consciously shielded from its effects by The Conductor themselves are compelled to dance.

Loyalty: Mercenary

Description: The Conductor is a slender, agile young person, never seen without their concealing clothing and signature mask. Apart from that, nobody really knows.

Personality: The Conductor rarely speaks, preferring to communicate through simple gestures and, when the situation calls for it, interpretive dance. They are reserved and quiet, but carry themselves with a certain grace and class. Perhaps predictably, they move as if they're dancing to music that only they can hear.

Skills:
- The Conductor is a crack shot with close-to-mid-range firearms, not that they necessarily need to be. You don't necessarily need to be shotgun master to kill somebody who's too busy dancing to get to cover.
- Unsurprisingly, The Conductor is a talented musician, capable of playing a variety of instruments. This appears to be unrelated to their powers, but not everyone knows that.
- Also unsurprisingly, The Conductor is very fast and agile, capable of not only dancing like a maniac on the floor, but also performing various parkour shenanigans to escape pursuers.

Weaknesses:
- The particularly strong-willed have been known to resist The Conductor's compulsions in the past.
- It's theorized that The Conductor wears a bulletproof vest beneath their coat, but beneath it they seem to be pretty fragile.
- The Conductor's abilities effectively affect the fabric of reality around them. This has made them reliant on these powers and perhaps a bit overconfident.

Brief History: No one's quite sure where The Conductor came from, and The Conductor certainly isn't talking. But at some point, they must have taken the midnight train going anywhere and ended up in the ruins of New York. While there, the Conductor was set upon by The Firebrands, a vicious, violent gang who had laid claim to those broken streets. They attacked The Conductor in an attempt to steal the valuable violin they carried, thinking they might be able to sell it to some wealthy collector. The Conductor mesmerized them, took their weapons, and shot and killed every last one.

Since then, The Conductor has been wandering, taking on various contracts to kill or capture evasive or powerful people, and they've proved highly effective at it. After all, no matter how much flame you can channel or how many lasers you can shoot from your eyes, we are all slaves to The Rhythm.

Other: The Conductor's violin is of great personal significance to them. They will and have killed to protect it.

EDIT: the IC dropped immediately after I posted this actually while I was posting this and I feel bad

"You Are Your Avatar"

Jane's neck snapped up so fast you could almost hear his bones snapping into place. "Oh no you don't!" he snapped. "Get your candy ass back over here and FIGHT LIKE A MAN!" That said, he slashed through a small group of tarbeasts in order to clear a path. As he charged forward, through the rising tide, he sheathed his sword again. The black sludge that had accumulated on his blade slithered uncomfortably off the weapon and poured in a sickly slime onto the street behind Jane as he ran. As he ran, Jane held his hands out in front of him and pulled out his rocket launcher. He didn't really pull it out of anywhere in particular, it just sort of appeared in his hands. He aimed it at the ground again and fired, propelling himself through the air. The explosion had no effect on really anything except him. It propelled him high into the sky, leaving the slime monsters completely unharmed and leaving nothing more than a scorch mark on the pavement.

Jane wasn't very fast on the best of days, but he knew a thing or two about aerial motion. He pulled the ripcord at the arc of his jump and twisted, soaring to the left, towards the alley. He grinned as he approached, and then, at just the right moment, he aimed his rocket launcher at the wall next to him. He fired at the wall, which propelled him away from the wall of that building, deeper into the alley. As he approached the other wall, he swung his feet up and fired his rocket launcher at that one, sending him ricocheting down the alley like a pinball. He pulled the same trick a third time, the soles of his shoes leaving a trail of smoke and flame behind him, before finally dropping his rocket launcher and pulling out his sword.

"Surf's up, maggot!"

With that, his parachute sucked itself back into its pack, sending Jane careening forward and down. At just the right moment, he swung his sword down in a vicious arc, directly at the neck of the Lord of Lies.

"You Are Your Avatar"

For a moment, Jane stumbled backwards, clutching his weapon in his hands. His breathing came fast and heavy as he slowly backed away from the fight... but then, as the great beast roared and the sounds of battle reached his ears, it began to steady. He stared at the massing horde of black slime, watching the Harbinger tear through it, and something flashed into his mind.

The pain of death. The thrill of invincibility. The indescribable glow of immortality.

It was not the first time that a smile had come to Jane's face. But that... that was not a smile.

Jane's breathing began to come heavy again as he reached into his pouch to pull out his radio again. "Get me a sword," he growled into it. "You know which one."

Jane shoved the radio back into his pocket and stared at the rising tide of ink, waiting patiently for something to arrive. And soon enough it did -- a dull, uninteresting scabbard appeared in the air in front of him in a red flash. He caught it expertly and, in a single motion, affixed it to his belt. "You know," he growled as he gripped the sword's hilt, "I do not think I have mentioned lately how much I! HATE! MAGIC!"

Jane screamed again, but this time, there was not a drop of fear to be heard. He drew his weapon with a loud, dramatic scraping of metal on metal. He thrust his fists skyward and beat his chest like a wild ape, slicing open his cheek with his sword in the process. And charged forward, sword in hand. He smashed into the tide of ink like a battering ram, randomly swinging his katana at neck after neck after neck, coating his sword in a sickly black ooze.

And, for the first time in a long time, he fought.