King Cosmos

Parahumans: Earth Drega

Hornet

“Please don’t just appear behind me. That’ll just startle me more.” Or at least give her more reason to panic, because the person that just appeared out of nowhere was also in her blind spot. Jessica wasn’t sure teleporting the contents of a confetti cannon into her face was all that much better either.

Hell, was there any way to make suddenly appearing in someone’s personal space not alarming? “Maybe just… appear behind me but like, give me a second to realise your there with my power? I’ll feel you arrive, I’m pretty sure, so just don’t sudden shout out and it should be fine.”

Tandem had all kinds of ideas for her power, including things that Jessica had never even considered. Really, rats? They were both teleporters, though the younger girl could do way more than just teleport, so maybe this was stuff that Tandem had already thought of for her own power. Or maybe she was just really good at this sort of thing; now that she had a moment to look around, she could see that other Tandem’s were talking to some of the other new Wards in the room. Asking them about their powers too?

“Yeah, probably best not to dive into burning buildings; good of you to try though.” Brave and reckless. Good kid. Still the most normal one here, too. “I could find people, yeah, even teleport to them. But I can’t take anyone with me when I do that, so I’d have to lead them out myself. I’d probably be able to tell the rescuers were to look though; coordinate things from outside?” That was something to consider. She would have to talk to Axiom or someone about that later; maybe she could volunteer to be on call for the fire department or something, when they need to do that sort of work.

“My power only works on people, as far as I can tell. At least, I can only tell where people are with my… whatever sense. Otherwise I’d be able to feel every rat and bug in this building right now and that, urgh, being able to sense insects must be the worse power. Like, I know every building is full of bugs, but if I could feel them too? All the time? I’d never feel clean anywhere I went.”

Did her power affect things she carried? It definitely affected the things she wore, but whether it extended further than that she didn’t know. Her power testing so far had been focused on learning the basic limits of her power and getting used to using them alongside her basic training; two months, yada yada, it wasn’t enough time to really dive into it. It was a good idea though; they could test her invincibility by shooting at a sheet of paper she was holding rather than at her, or she could try breaking a stick over a training dummy’s head. “Good idea!”

It looked like Tandem was going to say something else, but then someone Jessica only vaguely recognised as being someone important stepped into the room and grabbed all of their attention. “A bank robbery?” By powered mercenaries? Wait, that didn’t sound like something small time. Wouldn’t something like that be done by one of the bigger name villain groups? It was literally her first day, what the fuck?

“Shit.”

@TheMushroomLord

Yu-Gi-Oh!: Perils of The Night

@RickyG85 It has, good to see you again.

Is this RP going to allow Links and be using Master Rule 5? I'm thinking of using a Pendulum deck. D/D/D maybe, since it has so much variety.

Yu-Gi-Oh!: Perils of The Night

I'm in. Always willing to give a Yu-Gi-Oh RP a shot.

Power level is always going to be a tricky one with these and some effects just don't work well for RP purposes; aiming for Arc-V is fine but don't be afraid to buff or nerf people as appropriate.

Why Were We Reincarnated as Orcs?!

Akeno

It was a surprisingly nerve-wracking experience to have Shamar look over her work, running her practiced eye over the pelts she had scrapped, salted, washed and combed to see if she had done anything wrong. She had spent the better part of an afternoon on this, after all, and had the cuts and scrapes and muscle ache to show for it.

Akeno knew her work wouldn’t be perfect, not on the first try, and maybe that would be enough for the hunter to try and scam her; to say that her effort was inadequate and to give her nothing in return. All she could do was hope that the other Orc was fair and that her work met her standards. A good job her meant a reward, though it had never been stated what that would be, but it would also mean opportunities for more work in the future. Tanning wasn’t exactly pleasant work and it wasn’t something Akeno particularly wanted to get involved it, but having something she was trusted to do and a person who trusted her to do it would mean getting her foot into a door, any door, within the tribe.

So it was a relief when Shamar seemed satisfied with the pelts. The older Orc left to get something from her hut and returned a moment later with a vest that she had made from buckskin; a light defense boost, as well as an actual piece of clothing to cover herself with. Orc seemed pretty resilient to the elements, all things considered, but that didn’t make walking around bare-chested any less unpleasant. “Thank you.”

Putting it on and adjusting the size in the way Shamar indicated, Akeno felt a strange sense of accomplishment as she put the vest on; it was something that she had earned with her own hard work, something she hadn’t had this morning when she found herself with nothing in a strange world with no concern for her. The vest was tangible proof that she had managed to do… something since then.

But, it wasn’t shelter and it wasn’t safety. Akeno still had no place to sleep tonight and was no closer to getting one, despite having fewer hours left in the day than she did at the start of this.

“Do you hunt all of these animals yourself?” Looking around the area surrounding Shamar’s hut, there were a lot of pelts and animal carcasses around. A lot for one person to have killed by themselves, even if they made it their profession. Did people bring their kills to her, to be skinned and gutted and made into something useful, or did she do all of this by herself?

“How does a runt usually get their own shelter when they first leave the brood pit? And what happens to the ones that don’t?”

@Zeroth

The Hunt, A Modern Fantasy Smorgasbord RP

Morgana Faith

As she watched the teams of agents from the OMR arrive at the compound in the aftermath of the battle, as she saw the Golem’s inert remains be hauled away for investigation and squads of dedicated curse-breakers scuttle around doing their dangerous work, Morgana wondered if she was supposed to be developing a taste for situations like this. Whether the excitement and adrenaline of field work was supposed to thrill her, to provide a change of pace from her usual, comparatively mundane lab work and entice her towards becoming an agent; to be more like Madeleine or Xaviron or Faye. That when she went back to her lab in England and didn’t have to worry about rampaging, untethered spirits, cultist armed with abominable knives and so on, she would find the peace of it all unbearable and long for the action again.

That sounded like the kind of thing that was meant to happen. It was how it would go in a story at the very least; the pulpy kind with the rather interestingly dressed characters on the front cover.

As it was, Morgana couldn’t wait to see the back of this whole mess and get back to her regular job.

There was something to be said for being put into a situation where her knowledge and expertise was tested on the fly; having to prepare rituals and sealing circles on the fly was an interesting exercise and it was good to know her years of study was not incompatible with the task. But she longed to return to her previous work, to go back to tearing down the superfluous foundational concepts of magic and correct centuries and millennia of assumptions and superstition. But the experience was not without merit, to be sure.

Madeleine approached her as she stood and watched the activity around the camp, commenting on how her presence had made defeating the Golem easy; not possible, easier. Strangely it didn’t come as a surprise to hear that the demoness had fought and defeated similar constructs before, nr that she was confident enough to do so again. The researcher and the warrior certainly were a breed. “Less quick-thinking and more an excessive amount of trivia, really; I know enough about Golem’s to know their weakness, as do you. We’re just lucky the creator left behind notes on its construction.”

The suggestion of bonding time was unexpected. They had gone out for that meal together, what felt like weeks ago now, but aside from that Morgana hadn’t exactly been cordial with her co-workers. It wasn’t something she was particularly interested in, to be honest. She was a solitary type and focused on her work over her social life, so forming friendships with other people in the OMR had never been something she’d thought to do. All of her relationships at the moment were professional… and familial. Morgana had little desire to change that.

“What happens next? Now that we’ve dealt with this little distraction.” They had come here because the cult was connected to their investigation and also because Madeleine felt they could handle it better than the local agents; that she could handle it better. They were also here because they suspected that her family had some kind of connection to them, which Morgana had wanted to see for herself if it was true.

Now that she was here she could say the idea was… possible. The Golem certainly had nothing to do with her family and almost all of the curses that Madeleine had tripped or had thrown at her were generic fare; basic maledictions that could have come from any number of places, not necessarily sold to them by a very specific coven of witches. But some of the things that she had glimpsed while searching for the Golem’s maker, some of the notes on the blackboard or in the notebook…

She would need to take a second, closer look to be sure and something told her that she wouldn’t be permitted to do so if she tried, but the idea that this group had contact with witches was... probable. No, it was likely. But would it be them in particular? Would it be her mother? Morgana had a low opinion of the woman, sure, but she knew that her mother didn’t do things without purpose; and often that purpose was substantial personal gain. But she couldn’t see the advantage to becoming party to this.

But if her mother was. If she had. If all of this was driving them towards a confrontation Morgana had been carefully screening her calls to avoid, what would she do?

@Kumbaris

Parahumans: Earth Drega

Hornet

After Jessica had given her little introduction the rest of the group followed suit. Shattercrash’s demonstration came with few surprises; she hadn’t actually known exactly what the girl’s power was, beyond what she saw on the news or heard from people, so finding out that it was just pure kinetic energy was cool. But yeah, why was it pink? Then the last guy, Richter, demonstrated his power and… yeah, his power sucked too.

I mean, yeah, it was cool. And strong and good in a fight but… he couldn’t turn it off? Well, clearly he could turn if off because he was holding the coin before it disintegrated and then grabbed another one straight after. Maybe he just meant it was something he had to turn off, rather than something he had to turn on?

Some people really did just get screwed over by their powers, didn’t they? Even hers, as basic as it sounded, came with the added feature that she could tell where everyone within a set distance of herself was and where they were looking. It was useful and probably something she would get used to with time but there’s no real way to describe what it’s like to suddenly have a sense that wasn’t there before; no one to ask for advice when you couldn’t get to sleep because you kept feeling your neighbours walking around their living room and didn’t know how to ignore it.

Still, at least her power wasn’t telling her everyone’s deepest insecurities and turning everything she touched to dust. At least Jessica didn’t have to constantly watch what she said, lest she accidentally mind control people.

Being a Parahuman kind of sucked, didn’t it?

Grandmaster left the room in a hurry soon after and Jessica allowed her back to unstraighten just slightly at his exit. Axiom took over after that, but it didn’t seem like there was much left to this meeting; just an update on when their first patrol was going to be, which was tomorrow oh god, and a Q&A session. Jessica took the opportunity to think over everything she’d been reading in the lead up to today, all of the protocols and training and so on for any questions she might ask. Before she could think of any however, one of the triplets from earlier suddenly appeared right in front of her and nearly caught flailing hand to the temple for her trouble.

“Jesus, kid! Don’t do that!” Jessica folded her arms across her chest, trying to regain some of her composure and, let’s be honest, some of her dignity after jumping like that. “I mean, I’m definitely going to do the same to you at some point, can’t help it, but warn a girl first.”

What was she even asking about? Her powers? The girl… her name was Tandem, right? Tandem’s curiosity and enthusiasm was kind of endearing, if overwhelming, and Jessica saw no reason not to answer. “Yeah, Hornet, because like… I fly around and sting people? I don’t know, it seemed to fit. I don’t need to see anyone, I can tell where they are… sort of. It’s more like I can feel the places I can teleport to, which happens to be near people. Not sure about the exact range; it kind of fluctuates? It’s pretty far though. And the invincibility stuff… I don’t know? Like, it hard to test for that sort of thing. They didn’t want to throw too much stuff at me during the trials and I kind of agreed; since, you know, they might kill me by accident. I can just kind of tell when I’m invincible and when I’m not, but I don’t know what the limit is. But when I was hit during the tests I didn’t really feel it at all; not just that it didn’t hurt but that I just didn’t feel anything, so maybe I won’t get thrown around either.”

Was what everything? That seemed like everything.

“Uh, was there anything else?”

@TheMushroomLord

Why Were We Reincarnated as Orcs?!

Posted.

@Zeroth

I chose not to do every step of the tanning in one post; not sure if it was your intention that I do so or not, but I figured that would make for a pretty long, dry post if I did. Feel free to skip ahead to the end of the process in the next update if you want.

Why Were We Reincarnated as Orcs?!

Akeno

The process of preparing a hide for tanning was, as Akeno was quickly discovering, dirty, smelly and physically intensive work. Strip the flesh, salt them down, soak them in water, smoke them dry and then comb them out; it was a lot of work for what was apparently a single Orc to be doing by herself, but given the smell, she could see why no one was volunteering for this. No one but her, apparently.

There was still the option of turning around and walking away. She hadn’t committed to anything, the work was hard and the hunter hadn’t even guaranteed that she’d get anything worthwhile at the end of this; she could walk away, try her luck somewhere else, or just try to fend for herself. But…

Walking away at this point, just because the work sounded difficult felt like admitting defeat. Would any other Orc in the camp even give her work if she shied away from this? Could they trust her to follow through if she backed down from a challenge? Maybe it was arrogant to think that anyone would even pay attention, maybe she was over-estimating these Orcs who mocked someone for trying to fertilise the soil, maybe they wouldn’t care.

Akeno let out a sigh and turned away from the bloody, gorey hides and walked away, eyes lowered to the ground.

Then, a few meters away, she bent down to pick up a reasonably sharp rock that fit in the palm of her hand and walked right back.

If asked, Akeno probably wouldn’t describe herself as a particularly hard-working person. She coasted through her studies at a school her parents paid the tuition for, her social life mostly consisted of her being dragged along by those more outgoing than herself, her home life was similarly unattended and she had little drive to improve herself in either area. She was the type of person to let herself by carried along by the flow rather than push to move in a different direction instead; thing were easier that way. Less resistance. The one except to this was her dedication to karate; rather than sit back, she spent a couple of hours in the dojo two or three days a week training and longer on the weekends, worked out a home on the days she didn’t and went on frequent runs. Then, she took that effort and entered herself into competitions, tournaments, to see how much her dedication was worth compared to other peoples.

Most people would call that sort of thing hard work she supposed, but to her it was just something she did because she enjoyed it or sometimes just because she had an aversion to being sedentary. There was a desire to improve, and satisfaction when it happened, but no driving goal beyond that; her black belt had come as a matter of course, any improvements to her technique or fitness a matter of time and experience. She’d only ever placed higher than fourth in a competition once and that was when she came second a month or two before her eighteenth birthday; the trophy from that was the largest she’d ever won and though proud of it, Akeno ended up stuffing it in the back of her closet because she didn’t have anywhere to put it and didn’t want to make room.

She’d see it back there sometimes and think about doing something with it, but…

The point was Akeno was someone who put in exactly as much effort as she felt like putting in to something and had so far managed to coast by on just that. She was not a hard worker. She was a teenager in high school, or had been one at least, approaching the end of her final year and trying to figure out what to do once she got to college. The life of an Orc, by comparison, looked like it was going to one of constant physical effort. At the beginning of the day she had been asked to go out into the wilderness and fighting a wild animal to the death to earn herself the right to stay in the tribe or whatever these Orcs called themselves. All she’d really done was earn the right to fend for herself; find her own food, her own place to sleep, secure her own safety.

So she might as well get started. Placing the flat edge of the rock at the top of the sheet of hide, Akeno angled it so that it formed a wedge relative to its surface and dragged it down the length of the wooden board it was resting on. It accumulated a good amount of fleshy, bloody gunk along the way, some of it climbing up the rock to coat Akeno’s hands too, which she then shook off into the bucket of dirty water for lack of a better option. She continued at this until it seemed like she wouldn’t be able to get any more off, not with the tool she had anyway, and stepped back to examine her work.

Her hand was cramping around the rock; both of them, since she’d had to swap hands a couple of times to let the other rest, but from what she could tell the job she had done had been… adequate. Time for the next step then, which had been… salting, right.

Now where was that bucket of salt?

@Zeroth

Parahumans: Earth Drega

Hornet

Wow, okay. Looked like Shattercrash wasn’t the only person with an… abrasive personality here. They even came in three different flavours; Ethos seemed like the intentionally abrasive type, while Shattercrash gave off more of a I just speak my mind kind of abrasive where she just didn’t care if she offended anyone. With Keystone she kind of just got the impression that he was always at the end of his tether and end up sounding like a jerk because of it; he seemed to be trying though, and his power sounded like a real downer, so Jessica would give him credit for that.

Even so, she didn’t know how she was going to be able to deal with any of them long term. Five or ten minutes alone with either Ethos or Shattercrash with no one else to talk to, or act as a witness, and she might just take a swing at them; damn the consequences. And even if she gave Keystone the benefit of the doubt his grouchy jerk act was going to get to her eventually; add to that the fact that his power sounded incredibly invasive and legitimately terrifying, plus the fact that he just pressed a knife to his own throat and held it there like he was daring someone to do something about it…

Jessica didn’t want to spend more time around him than necessary. As harsh as that sounded.

“Shit, that sucks.” It was only after the words slipped out of her mouth that she realised how they might come across and hastily stumbled out the next few words. “Sorry! I mean, it seems like a useful power, both for the obvious and because pointing out our weak points means we know what to work on. It’s just… no, that sucks. It sounds like a lot to deal with, all the time.”

Other than him and Shattercrash, whose power Jessica already kind of knew, there were two people with Master powers. That explained why the earpieces were being pushed so hard; she wondered if they were designed specifically because of Ethos and the other girl, or if they would have been given to them regardless. Then there was big bird, who was obviously a Changer and even more obviously a giant pile of anxiety; their power was cool, if a little disconcerting to look at, but he was another person that Jessica couldn’t really see herself interacting with long term. Then there were the triplets, who had a whole bunch of different powers and despite being one person in three bodies, out of everyone somehow seemed to be the most normal.

Her only hope.

It was a strange group, to be sure. There were a lot of… intense personalities mixed together here and things were already starting to get a little tense. Jessica wondered how long it would be until things boiled over and if there was anything she could or should do to delay or prevent that. Usually she considered herself pretty good at dealing with people; making friends, soothing hurt feelings and stopping arguments were all things she could and did do at school. She’d had to, both as someone moving to a new city and also as someone who was part of a sports club; competitive teenagers could get a little worked up from time to time. But with this group? Jessica had no idea where to start, or what any of their problems were.

Well, actually no. She kind of did.

Jessica knew that she wasn’t completely fine after what happened to her. She wasn’t over what she went through. Sometimes it felt like she was, like it was in the past and the only thing that day had left her with was a scar on her face too large to properly cover up and a hole in her life where her friend used to be, and she’d feel like that for days or a week at a time. But then she’d have the nightmares again and she wouldn’t be okay, or she’d be in a situation where she felt cornered and she’d start to panic and the best solution her stupid scared brain could come up with to get away was to put her fist through the cause even though that was an entirely inappropriate response to have in math class. And so far Jessica had been able to resist those impulses, except for the one time she put a hole in the drywall, and luckily she’d never thought to use her powers in any of those cases but she was really worried that one day she might and what she’d do to someone if she did. Like, putting her fist through something wasn’t an exaggeration for her; she could do it pretty easily.

She had a point to this. What was it?

Oh, right. She knew she still had issues after her Trigger event and probably would for a while. And a couple weeks after hers had happened and her dad had already done all of the paperwork to get her signed up as a Ward she’d been shown the standard presentations on what Trigger events were and how they worked, so she knew that everyone else in this room had gone through something similar but it was only now that she was in a room full of Parahumans that she was really starting to understand what that meant. Every Cape went through something really bad to get their powers and a lot of them probably still carried some baggage because of that.

This probably went a long way towards explaining why half the people in this room were assholes and the other half seemed like nervous wrecks. They were also mostly teenagers to be fair, but Jessica had been around a lot of teenagers and this group seemed to be beyond the average.

Food for thought.

“Guess I’ll go next. I’m Hornet; I can teleport to people and then I can hit them really hard, for a little while. Temporary invulnerability and strength.”

Why Were We Reincarnated as Orcs?!

@Zeroth Akeno doesn't have anything on her that would work as a knife for those hides. Is there anything nearby she can grab?