Framing A Moose

The Gifted - Concluded

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Location: Outside Jack's Office
Skills:

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"Is that what he told you?" Waverley scoffed when Sunshine told them of Jack's excuse, though her eyes were still staring daggers at the private detective. She continued to glare at him for a few more seconds, before shifting her gaze to Sunshine. She opened her mouth to explain her recollection of events, where Jack came in, drugged the both of them, and kidnapped the younger girl, but before she could, a half-conscious Max popped into being above the pair, collapsing down on them. Waverley's eyebrows knitted together into a look of equal parts disdain and confusion, before watching her roommate be pulled through a portal by the man that killed her mother. Her rage seemed to be replaced by annoyance as she brought her hand which had been stretched out defensively to her head, burying her face in her palm.

"Fucking moron. He better have gotten her to the Underground, because otherwise we're gonna have to find her all over again, and we'll have to get rid of Max's corpse without catching whatever disease she ends up using to kill him." She let out a frustrated sigh, completely dropping her battle-ready stance in favor of her normal awkward slouch. She shifted her body back towards the car, ready to leave to go make sure Sunshine made it safely back home, but she stopped when she realized that Jack could still be a threat to the girl's safety. As Veil gave the man one last chance, Waverley's eyes flitted nervously to the eyes staring worried out windows, but eventually they landed on Jack, narrowed, filled with anger rather than concern.

"Yeah, and give us a reason to believe you won't do this kind of shit to her again. Then we can go our separate ways before shit goes sideways." Waverley made sure not to include an invitation back to the Mutant Underground, even though she knew it wasn't her place to decide.

Ω Heroes of Olympus: The Next Age of Heroes Ω

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Location: In the Uber -> On the Trail
Skills: Guitar, Singing, Musical Empathy (failed)

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Waverley winced when Nancy snapped at her, shrinking into herself as the sharply spoken words dug into her gut. It admittedly hurt the sensitive girl. Emotionally, of course, an important distinction to make when talking about someone who could make words physically hurt. The argument hadn't convinced Waverley that Camp Jupiter wasn't a cult, but it had convinced her that it was a subject she wanted to drop, especially when she sensed it put Emily on edge. She let Nancy have the last word, getting the feeling that the strong-willed girl was the type who preferred it that way. She didn't mind; she just wanted to move onto something else before anyone else yelled at her. Her shoulders were still shrugged up uncomfortably around her neck when Niah spoke, though whether that was from the argument or Niah's suggestion was hard to tell.

"Uh, yeah, I don't know much about all the lore and stuff, but it seems to me that maybe purposely poking the buttons of the primordial being that holds up the world isn't such a stellar idea," she nervously suggested. When the vehicle came to a stop and her teammates began to file out, she grabbed her luggage and followed, stopping for a moment to give the driver a wave. "Thanks so much for the ride," she thanked, before hopping out. She set her suitcase down as soon as she was out, waiting for Niah beside Marco and Emily as the praetors began to walk. As they waited, Waverley absentmindedly plucked her strings, an unintentional habit that within seconds became a melody. With the luggage, she wouldn't be able to play on the walk, so she figured she'd do her best to raise the group's spirits before they started.

"There's a road calling you to stray
Step by step, pulling you away
Under moon and star
Take the road, no matter how far
Where it leads no one ever knows
Don't look back, follow where it goes
Far beyond the sun
Take the road, wherever it runs
The road goes on, ever ever on
Hill by hill, mile by mile
Field by field, stile by stile
The road goes on, ever ever on"

As Waverley sang the verse, she attempted to pour joy into it using the divine influence her music so often had on her listeners' emotions. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to take this time, with the song coming out instead as a normal (albeit well-played) rendition. It had been the first ability she'd discovered, one that she'd never really paid much mind to. After all, every song was capable of manipulating emotions. Hers were just capable of taking it to the extreme. It wasn't until she'd gotten trained by Lupa that she realized it was a supernatural ability. Even then it seemed odd. What did such an ability have to do with Trivia, the goddess of magic that Madalyne had convinced her was her mother? She was pulled out of her thoughts by Marco.

"Uh...I guess we're supposed to be following them," Waverley answered, using the neck of her guitar to point at Nancy and Madalyne, who'd already started walking. With that, she hoisted up her suitcase, and began to follow.

X-Men: Cosmic Crusades 👽

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Iris Rivers

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Location: Blackbird Hangar -> Hallway Outside Hangar
Skills: Pyrokinesis

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Iris' eyes was pulled away from her sinking friends by her partner's voice, going off once more on the jubilant blonde girl. Iris simply watched with an amused half-grin, opening her mouth to give a witty retort when Mira stopped talking. She never got it out, though, because as soon as Mira quit ranting, a loud scream filled Iris' ears, causing her to stumble backwards, tripping over her heel and falling to the ground. With her eyes clenched tight, Iris couldn't tell exactly when the screech stopped, as halfway through it was replaced by a high-pitched ringing that overtook her sense of sound.

Eventually Iris opened her eyes to see Mira glaring down at her, mouth closed. At first she looked surprised and confused, shifting her gaze over to look at the love goddess. She must've gone bad again, turning Mira against her. That was the only explanation. But when Iris' eyes landed on her, she saw no black glow around her hands, and she didn't look hostile. So Iris' eyes flipped back to Mira, now looking up filled with only a look of betrayal as they began to water. She didn't really know much about friends. She didn't really have any growing up. The first half of her life, her more feminine nature made her subject to teasing and pushed away any potential friends, and her second half of her life, she lived alone with her mother. Even so, she knew friends bantered, right? That was one of the things she was most excited for: exchanging witticisms with someone who wasn't exactly like her like her mom was. But friends didn't attack each other. She knew that. So she continued to stare at Mira as she pushed herself back onto her feet, a look of anguish on her face. Anguish and rising anger. Her hearing came back, albeit muffled, just in time to hear Bloom.

"Yeah, well, turns out people who don't like me are just my favorite type of people," Iris tried to joke with a forced smile, her voice choking up as she did. She was so caught up in Mira's attack that she didn't have any irritation left inside her to be annoyed that Mary was chastising her, almost saying she was asking for it. She swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat, feeling a pair of tears drop down her face, sizzling into steam not long after rolling onto her bright red cheek. She reached up and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. When she pulled her arm away, her eyes went wide at what she saw: Upsilon standing threateningly behind Mira, dangerously close. "No, don't-" Iris said, raising her hand to command him to step back, only to see ribbons of smoke rising from between her fingers and a dull blue glow beneath the skin of her knuckles.

"I-I have to use the lady's room," Iris mumbled out, unable to even make out what she was saying. She quickly walked towards the closest door she saw, only pausing when Elizabeth reappeared, her leg injured. Iris opened her mouth to offer her aid, but her smoking hands were a clear reminder for her to get away from the others as soon as she could, so she continued towards the door. She slammed it shut behind her, leaning against the opposite wall as she closed her eyes, trying to get ahold of herself, breathing in and out. Usually, her breath would steady as she calmed, but this time it didn't, remaining shaky no matter how much she breathed in and out. She tried to meditate, but the high pitched ringing kept her mind from descending into a state of calm. When she opened her eyes back up, Upsilon stood mere inches from her face. She stared at him for a few seconds, continuing her shaky, inefficient breathing exercise.

"Fuck it. Fine," she finally said. As soon as she said the words, the emotional walls she used to suppress her negative emotions came crumbling down, the very same walls that kept the fire in. Her hands, clenched tight in fists, were set alight. They let out torrents of flames, filling up the hallway with a blue conflagration, which was soon the only thing that filled her vision. She could feel the exhilarating sensation of heat exiting her pores, as though her skin was covered in tiny thermal exhaust ports. She could feel something burning in her mouth, but it didn't hurt; it was refreshing. Small flames rose from the corners of her lips, but it was mostly smoke, rising and obscuring her sight, which was already blurred by the unshed tears that filled them. After what felt like minutes of this, but was really only around seven seconds, the flames died down, leaving only a metal hallway, black and scorched, with Iris in the middle breathing shakily, her light pink sleeves scorched around the wrists, smoke rising from her fists, lips, and nostrils.

The Gifted - Concluded

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Location: On the Road Again -> Outside Jack's Office
Skills:

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Max's follow up description of the missing pair's location set Waverley's teeth on edge. Not only was it somehow even more useless than his last scrying attempt which had gotten him file cabinets and stale pastry smell, but the admission that he hadn't meant to scry at all caused her lips to twitch into a frown. Sure, scrying was relatively harmless, but what if next time it was something worse? What if next time he set the Underground on fire, or summoned a giant nail to crush them all. The thought caused Waverley to shudder, and she did her best to shake it out of her head as she climbed into the van. Rather than her usual spot in the back, she instead took the one closest to the door.

Most of the ride there, she stared out the window, only facing forward to give a nod to Veil's plan. She hoped that they'd find Sunshine there at the office. But that wasn't what she expected. That felt too easy. She expected that they'd find the room empty, save for some sort of clue or set of footprints to follow. Perhaps for the first time in her life, though, it appeared that her hopes won out against her expectations, for standing there outside a shaggy building stood Jack and, more importantly, Sunshine. Waverley wasted no time in unbuckling her seatbelt and hopping out of the car, leaving the van door open behind her. She stood next to Callie, looking even more tense than usual. Part of her wanted to subdue the man who'd drugged her and kidnapped her friend, but she didn't, primarily out of respect for Veil's 'talk first, attack second' rule. Her eyes immediately went to Sunshine.

"Are you okay? Did he do anything to you?" Waverley called out, the worry evident in her voice. Her gaze immediately shifted to Jack and sharpened to a glare. "You better start explaining yourself before I decide to bend your arm in a way that even your bones aren't supposed to bend, got it?" She bent her knees a little and raised her open hands up in front of her, readying herself for any attack Jack might throw. She wasn't going to attack first, but she was perfectly prepared to respond in kind if he made a move.

Ω Heroes of Olympus: The Next Age of Heroes Ω

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Location: In the Uber
Skills:

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"That's such a weirdly specific superpower," Waverley muttered as she saw fog spill onto the highway, obscuring the view of the car behind them. She didn't entirely understand the Mist, just that sometimes it was some unfathomable magical metaphysical force, and sometimes it was straight up just fog. She watched out the rear window for a couple of seconds after the mist swallowed up everything in sight, hoping that the car that had been following them wasn't going to be a problem anymore. Part of her felt guilty, worrying that they'd just inconvenienced a random civilian, but she was soothed by the fact that they probably hadn't caused the stranger any harm. When she turned back to face the front of the car, she was surprised to find that they were still discussing whether or not the Camp was a cult.

"Oh, are we still talking about this?" she asked, sounding a little embarrassed that her throw away comment was now the main topic of discussion. "I'm not saying it's Jonestown, I'm just saying that it's got a lot of the qualities often associated with cults. Everyone lives together in a commune separate from society, everyone has a job to help sustain said commune, most everyone holds the same religious beliefs, and we have to keep certain aspects of the Camp secret from friends and family." As she started to list off examples, she began counting them on her fingers. Once she got to four, she tensed up, realizing she got carried away. She lowered her hand, an apologetic frown making its way onto her face. "I'm sorry, I'm really not trying to shit on your guys' religion. If you want me to drop it, I can. I was just making conversation."

X-Men: Cosmic Crusades 👽

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Iris Rivers

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Location: Blackbird Hangar
Skills: Survival Skills

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"I hear you loud and clear, I'll go ahead and stick to darling," Iris replied to Mira, giving the girl a cheery thumbs up. Mischief danced on the corner of her lip, pulling it up into a half-smile. Her attention was pulled off her best frenemy when the previously hostile swordswoman pulled herself out of the rubble. She glanced over to Bethany to see if she was prepared to try their plan now that she had a clear line of sight, but relaxed when it appeared that the girl was no longer out to kill them. Before they could have much of a chat, the hippos charged their little group. Iris tried to dodge out of the way of the one heading towards her, but failed, causing it to toss her a few feet through the air, crumpling to the ground.

"Ugh, why does everything hate me?" she quietly whined, once again pushing her tall frame off the ground into a standing position. Seeing Klara snuggling up to a hippo, Iris' shoulders slumped down and her lips jutted out in an exaggerated pout. "Aw man, why can't I have a cool power like that?" She was so enamored by the girl's charm ability, she almost didn't get her hands over her ears in time. When she pulled them away, she found that a number of the hippos were dealt with. When Klara asked about her eye, Iris cast a sympathetic glance over to Neil.

"Uh, yeah, my bad, I'm really sorry about that. I kinda got carried away in the heat of battle, y'know? I'm sure we'll be able to get you a robot eye once this is all over though!" Iris piped up, willing to take one for the team. With everything that happened with Sara, she figured Neil was already super unlucky in love, so being on the love young love goddess' hitlist is probably the last thing he needed. Whereas Iris believed that she could be despised by all the romance deities in the universe and she'd still have game. Speaking of game, Iris went still as soon as she heard the riddle. It didn't take a genius to figure out what was to come. Sure enough, she felt her feet begin to sink into the floor. She immediately began to scour her index of nature facts bestowed by her mother, and was happy to find a rather large number dedicated to quicksand.

"Nobody panic! The worst thing you can do in this situation is panic. Now..." she looked over to Klara. "Quicksand is usually caused by water underneath the sand making it too unstable to hold weight. Love goddess, you did that stylish little water flourish a few minutes ago. Assuming this works like quicksand, if you could, like, removed the water underneath, it should go back to normal. You get me?"

The Gifted - Concluded

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Location: Outside Jack, James & Casper's Room
Skills:

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When Max wandered off, Waverley had expected him to come back with some sort of magical tracking device, or perhaps a cellphone of sorcery or something. So when he instead walked back up the stairs carrying a pair of plates, each adorned with waffles and fruit, the corner of her lip twitched downward in annoyance. When he shoved the plate into her hands, part of her wanted to throw the plate onto the ground. She didn't, of course, primarily out of respect for the poor soul who had to clean up those kinds of messes. Probably either Echo the Neat Freak or Colossus the Big Helpful Softie. So instead, she just shook her head.

"I said I'm not hungry," she told Max, a a clear edge to her voice. She automatically turned to hand the plate off to Sunshine for her to eat, as was their symbiotic relationship when it came to eating, only to remember the reason why her appetite had been robbed in the first place. The slip up made her realize that she should probably did need a little food, so she begrudgingly (and a little violently) stabbed her fork into the fruit and shoveled it into her mouth, not appearing to get any joy from the experience. She watched as he got to the ground, watching with anticipation as the boy went into his little meditative state. When he spoke, though, Waverley's shoulders dropped from both disappointment and annoyance.

"Filing cabinets and pastries?! That's the best you can do?! Great, she could be in the backroom of any Dunkin' Donuts in the capital. Great fucking wo-" her annoyance was interrupted by the call for Casper, and as she heard the man begin to speak, she quickly ran downstairs, too enveloped in finding her roommate to notice the bending of the railing. When she got to the kitchen, she was about to tell Casper to get to the point when Veil did it for her. When Casper spilled the beans, a small smile found its way onto Waverley's face for the first time the whole morning. She put her plate onto the table and looked over to the group of Echos.

"Mind wrapping this up for me?" she asked, not wanting the rats to get to it before Sunshine could. She didn't wait for an answer, quickly running back up the stairs to their room. She went immediately for her rebar, only to find it completely bent out of shape, almost at a 90 degree angle. With her good friend having died the previous day and another friend of hers missing, one would think that a bent piece of metal wouldn't cause much grief. But as she stared at it, she couldn't help but feel mournful. The rebar had been her weapon of choice for months, and here it was, rendered unusable. It didn't even get a glorious end in battle. It was like a legendary warrior dying of dysentery. She let out a saddened huff, before heading out and downstairs. Once she got to the group, she lifted the rebar.

"I think the magnet lady is up. Could someone maybe try and bend it back while we're out? Maybe she can, if, y’know, Havok convinces her to join the light side," she asked, ignoring the universal 'no weapons at the dinner table' rule and putting it on a space clear of any plates. She then followed briskly behind Veil, disarmed of the weapon that had always kept her safe.

Ω Heroes of Olympus: The Next Age of Heroes Ω

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Location: In the Uber
Skills: Musical Mystiokinesis

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"Doesn't matter how long it's been around. It's a self-sustaining commune in which all the members believe in the same deities. It's totally a cult," Waverley replied. A few seconds prior, she'd begun to pluck at the strings of her guitar, playing along with the music filling the car from the radio. She always felt less anxious when she was playing music, and the filter that so often kept her opinions from coming out got much thinner, sometimes disappearing entirely. "I mean, all money is...fake. It's just a concept, right? It's not like little pieces of paper with pictures of dead racists are actually valuable. They're just a representation of value. So...as technology gets better, virtual representations of the concept of money become the norm. Which is kinda inconvenient for those of us who don't really have methods of transferring that kind of money," she tried to explain to their praetors as she absentmindedly strummed her guitar. She didn't have a good grasp of the technicalities of virtual money, but she did her best to explain the basic idea.

When Niah mentioned the car behind them, the revelation made her forget the whole 'don't look all at once' part of Niah's statement, her head turning to look back over her shoulder. Sure enough, driving along behind them was a car matching their speed. She faced back forward, and as Niah began to lay their options out, Waverley's attention turned back to her guitar. She'd already been passively plucking at the strings in time with the music, but the plucking quickly became a full on cover, with Waverley's acoustic guitar blending surprisingly well into the electric guitar the one and only Joan Jett played through the speaker. When she sang, it was quiet, not wanting to distract the others from their planning.

"I hate myself for loving you
Can't break free from the the things that you do
I want to walk but I run back to you, that's why
I hate myself for loving you"

As she played, though, her mind was flipping through the index of the magical knowledge Madalyne had taught her. She did her best to separate out the aspects of a aspects of a spell, and then incorporate them into her song, but she couldn't manage it. She tried and tried desperately in her head to take the science and facts of the mystic arts and funnel them into her strings, but all it did was cause her to fumble the chords and stutter some of the lyrics. Out of frustration or perhaps stress, her mind suddenly went blank, emptying of any magical studies she'd been taught. When she played, it was from muscle memory, her body preferring to feel the rhythm over the stress. After a few more moments of playing, a far off pop interrupted her song. She opened her eyes, only realizing at that moment that she'd closed them, and looked behind her.

"Um...their tire just popped, so hopefully we'll be long gone by the time they get around to changing it," Waverley called to the front.

Forgotten Space

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Location: Water Processing Room/Catwalk
Skills:

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Cal buried her forehead into her hand, letting out a deep, shaky sigh. It was a mournful one, one of sorrow, but also of stress. What had happened was no doubt a tragedy, but they couldn't afford to dwell on it. If they spent too much time wallowing in their loss, then it wouldn't take long for the corpses to start piling up. So, as much as it pained the empathetic woman, they had to focus on the task at hand and honor their dead later. Some part of her was sure that the sudden sense of pragmatism was a coping mechanism to keep the painful memories away, but she didn't linger on this line of thought. Instead, she took a deep breath, and looked over to Tessa.

"Tess, could you run back over to the Galley and get us a bunch of green liquid? Maybe if we dump it down there on Noah, the bots will assume it was Y2K who fell over the edge. It sounds insensitive, but...it might keep them off our backs for a bit," Cal said, her lips curled into a frown. She then leaned over, putting a hand on Y92-6's shoulder and looking them in the eye, her voice suddenly softer. "Are you gonna need painkillers for the operation, or...is pain something you don't have to deal with anymore?"

X-Men: Cosmic Crusades 👽

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Iris Rivers

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Location: Blackbird Hangar
Skills: Tai Chi (RR)

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"Heh, Silver Balls is sooo much better," Iris replied, her voice ringing out amused through her lips, which were pinned up in a crooked grin. Even as she spoke, she kept her eyes on Klara, waiting for an attack to come her way. But when Lance spoke, she couldn't keep herself from glancing over at him and giving him a thumbs up. "Don't worry, I'm goo-" before she could finish her sentence, the awfully rude love goddess struck her across the cheek, causing her to fly through the air, her body slamming into the wall with a grunt. She let out a long, drawn out groan as she laid at the base of the wall for a few seconds, before slowly crawling back onto her feet. With the groan outlasting the time she spent on the ground, it quickly became apparent that the groan was not from the pain.

"You didn't raaaate it! If you don't give me feedback on my combative foreplay, it'll never get any better!" she whined, putting on a pouty face as she looked over to Klara. It didn't take long for the positive girl's smirk to return to her lips. She rolled her shoulder, trying to roll out the soreness that came after being thrown at the wall. She started to bounce back towards Klara, ready for round two, but before she could, Guin let loose a few shots at the ceiling, causing it to crumble down on their opponent. Iris raised her eyebrows.

"As dope as that was, I have a hard time believing she's taken care of. Mir, darling, I think you're right, we should be fighting smarter, not harder," she started, before lowering her voice, so that the crushed goddess, if conscious, wouldn't hear her. "How about this: if she crawls out of there awake and kicking, Beth ports her into one of those Blackbird mini plane things, and then Guin sets its course to take her back to Norway." As she spoke, Iris made her way over to Ed, where she decided to stand guard. He seemed to be doing some sort of magic casting stuff, and protecting him while he finished it seemed like a good idea.

Roll Request

I'd like to request that Iris roll her tai chi skill to protect Ed, whether it be from Klara if she crawls out, or the hippos (for the hippos, she'd be pulling him out of their way rather than trying to use tai chi to take down a hippo. Because she's not an idiot. :P)