Liliya

MASKS- A New Generation

Okay, so I feel like this should go without saying, but just to be totally, completely, one hundred percent sure; these civilians are not real, correct? I mean, they're solid light holograms capable of hurting us, sure, but they aren't flesh and blood human beings, or, at least, Alex doesn't think that they are, yeah? Because it would be responded to differently by her if they are, I mean realistically she's capable of just ripping human equivalents (size, strength, toughness, whatever) to literal bits if she wants to, and would be willing to light up holograms with what to biological organisms would constitute lethal force without question, but she would not be willing to harm random people and thus would, to be sure, react rather differently. Again, though, I obviously think they're not human beings, as I assume Alex also believes, seeing as they seemingly came from out of nowhere, but I'm just making sure that these holos didn't feel the need to open the literal door and walk in like normal humans would have to, but rather simply materialized in the control room and assaulted a couple teenagers without provocation beyond poor taste in music before I proceed with my post. @Joshie

MASKS- A New Generation

I think she has a complicated relationship with Net. He stands right on the edge of representing what she kind of fears supers are increasingly becoming, which is this group that has these militarized views of things comprising enemies, targets, missions, etc., etc., which, to her, is just not the right way. She looks at things as supers are just people, albeit ones who can toss cars around, but to her there are no enemies, just people causing trouble for the civvies and people who want to keep them from being successful. She legitimately fears a time when supers will look at the world as though they were a country or military with enemies in the more traditional sense, as opposed to their just being people trying to do some good for the world. So far as her friendship aspect, with regard to Rob, I think she respects his abilities, but is fearful that he is just not going to move forward and become a real person, and kind of worries that she's headed in the same direction. At the same time, I think she does want to help him move forward, well, what she considers to be forward, if only to prove to herself that the inevitable isn't so set in stone. So far as vitriolic friendship, I do think she appreciates his being there, they certainly aren't enemies or anything, and they probably do have the occasional good time together, but I imagine she prefers when it's on her terms. For instance, I imagine she'd be pleased to see him acting like a real kid when they do their Chuck E Cheese thing, though him having a good time when they train together probably isn't quite so mutually palatable to her. I edited my above post, by the way @Tengri.

MASKS- A New Generation

@Liliya

No love for Net, eh?

@Tengri

Well, okay, I know it's established that she asked him out and he like straight up meanly rejected her. I mean, not because he meant to be a dick, just because he's super awkward, but I doubt she'd be aces about the whole thing and pick up on him or whatever in the future. She definitely looks at the fan made Polaris/Network shipart in secret, though.

EDIT: Oh, me personally, as a ship thing? I guess I'd ship Network and Swarm as this totally awkward couple who are just like, awfully, painfully lame. Like, they just can't pick up on each other to save their lives. One would make like a clumsy move or whatever, and the other one's just like, "I have to go clean my bugs!" and just runs off, leaving the other super confused like, "Der, what'd I do?" or like Swarm touches Rob's arm or something, and he like ninja flips over her backwards like "HIYAHHHAHAHA!" and breaks the lamp, like zero chill. @Tengri

MASKS- A New Generation

Okay, now that we know more about our characters...

...who are our pairings? And what are they called? AND DO WE ALL SHARE AN OTP?!

@Ermine

Obvs mine's Alex/Riley/Sarah Kerrigan (SKrilex).

EDIT: Seriously though, Alex has the makings of a pairing with Ian and Riley is (I think) established to have a thing for Alex (amiright, that's established isn't it?).

EDIT EDIT: AndreaxSwarmxHana is fun, too. I imagine Alex and Andrea talking about it, like they're watching Netflix in their pjs and Andrea's all, "There's this girl at school, Hana, --, you know her, right? And I really think she's great and all, but then I remember how shit all the supers say being in a relationship with a civvie is, and you know, Swarm's pretty cool, right? 'Dude, the bug girl? Just... Eww, dude,' 'Alex! Come on, you know she's great. Plus, 'dem legs, do,' 'Dude, she wears a jumpsuit and a full mask. She's probably super ugly,' 'Why you always gotta be a bitch?' 'I'm not always a bitch. Just, like... Mostly always a bitch. Besides, seriously, I love you b, but I don't think bug bitch, 'Alex!' 'is interested. Like, I haven't once seen her check you out. Like, fer real, I check her out more than she checks you out,' '... Why?' 'What, I check her for bugs, like, all the time,' 'Uh huh,' 'I check you out all the time, too,' '... Dude,' 'For bugs, asshole!"

EDIT EDIT EDIT: Just fyi everyone, Carly Chaikin is definitely Alex's voice actress.

MASKS - A New Prequel

@Tengri Roll for Warbird to hold her breath, and keep from panicking. Ken and Talia are alright, for the moment, but you are aware of a dark shape moving towards you under the water, something with tentacles. (I rolled -2 for Ken, as he cannot swim, and freak for Talia as she was simultaneously trying to call her sanctuary to her, you should roll either superior or mundane, and there will be consequences of either option. Either (superior) Warbird is channeling her inner Nucleus to keep her on the proper path, or (mundane, and yours is still at +1) she is dealing with this in her own way, despite what Nucleus would expect of her.

@Grey as you stand and chat with your newfound friend pointing you in the direction of the foot of the stairs, a woman wearing, no, not wearing... A woman with the head of a rabbit appears walking down the exact same stairwell, turns to face your wolfy companion, and opens fire with a blaster rifle. You have seconds to do something to save the wolf's life, stop the rabbit, get out of the way, and generally not get blasted in the process.

Rabbit Headed Freak: roleplayerguild.com/rolls/1312

@Raijinslayer as Gamma spoke with the tiny human in the strange jacket, Okwaho warned her with startling alarm to turn, --, just in time to feel a sharp pain erupt on the right side of her head, her right shoulder, and right tricep, clear through to her bicep and, as Gamma notes in horror, much of the flesh of her arm has been instantly vaporized in a cloud of pink mist! A shrill ringing in her head is drowning out all understanding or notion of hearing in the outside world, and Okwaho is all that can be heard over the ruckus. "Turn and fight, run and hide, or die, child of wolf and woman.

@Ermine as Sophia entered the building, and swapped out her modified stilettos for battle axes and came upon the lobby, attempting to fix the situation within, she caught the ire of someone invisible, and altogether unhappy for the interruption. She may be invisible, but Sophia knows she is there, approaching at a jog, wielding some strange magical sickle sword, and mirrored shield, and aiming to take Soph's head off with one or the other. She doesn't know you see her, however, and that may be able to be capitalized upon, should Ermine, --, I mean, Sophia so choose to do as such.

MASKS - A New Prequel

Panel Sixteen

Ken didn’t move after her, Warbird, didn’t even try to reach her once he caught sight of her through the falling debris, refuse and once people forming a cloud of junk around the pair as they tumbled through the air towards the ceiling. She was too far away, and in the opposite direction than gravity was leading him, and besides, she didn’t need his help, or anyone else’s, not for this. She was well on her way to ending this quickly, the bitch in blue didn’t even see her coming, and most of these reality benders weren’t known for being tough enough to just shrug off a blow like the one she had to look forward to in a second. He’d really have to get a grappling gun one of these days. At least, if he wasn’t going to get flight down any time soon, it’d certainly be nice not to have to, “improvise,” in these situations by using his own body as a fleshy shield. He could take the hit, of course, had the physical toughness to not just die or severely rupture tendons, organs and muscle tissue from the impact. If he was lucky and had the correct angle in the fall Tal would lend her weight to his crash, relieving her of the worst of the messy physics and he’d take the blow for the both of them, she sure as shit couldn’t take something like this without sustaining massive, irreparable damage, and they both knew it. Maybe if they’d been trained better, had done something like this in the holoroom or something, he’d be more confident in his angle and in her survival.

Thwack!! Clang, buzz, “errgh,”. It hadn’t been pretty, but with a quick glance at the girl in his arms, he knew he’d done it, she was okay, and he was gonna be sore in the morning, but unlike any normal human his limbs hadn’t been liquefied by the sudden, hard impact. Wasn’t every day he took a forty foot fall, and truth be told he’d rather not have to repeat the experience any time soon, but luckily for him he was more than capable of taking a hard hit without turning into a spout of blood and gooey bits. He’d even landed on his feet, which was way cooler than landing on his back like a total scrub, and besides the falling body that had whacked him upside the head leaving a trail of sticky, wet, red down his face before impacting the ground spraying his legs and lower torso region with a thicker concoction of the gory awful substance that makes people tick, Ken and Tal seemed to be perfectly fine. Fighting back the urge to throw up once again, he cast a glance in Warbird’s direction just in time to catch the aftereffects of the human body moving at speed and impacting a neck with a sharp kick from a boot heel, hard enough to send the bitch in blue facing the wrong direction then she seemingly should be given the angle of her body. Failing to keep his terror and disgust bottled inside, he unceremoniously half set down, half dropped Tal before doubling over in the opposite direction, the image of Warbird sending that woman’s head spinning, neck snapping burned into his mind’s eye.

He felt weightless, and simultaneously heavy, under pressure, the world around him hazy and confused as he heaved. This was just a nightmare. This badass angel in a combat suit and geared out to the teeth falls in from the sky in a world of death and chaos, and just as quickly casually kills her target in a second flat. Could he accept what he had just seen? A computer would, it’s input all that weighed on its memory, devoid of consideration for the ramifications and toll of what had just been witnessed. Ken, of course, was not a machine, and this had been cold, calculated, aimed and timed with a jarring, inhuman precision. Is this what being a super hero means? Watching people die, potential allies kill those villains that kill others, and somehow having to sift through the particular moments, seconds, decisions which begat yet more decisions, in some vain attempt to get some kind of grasp of who is the good guy, and who the bad? Now he’d seen a dead body, several as it were, and watched someone he considered to be a hero kill someone he considered to be a villain, all in the same shockingly small window of time. Had it even been a whole minute? Felt like a world away, a lifetime here and then gone and passed, but he knew, that rational part of his mind still whirring on as though this were all just normal old shit that he dealt with all the time, that it couldn’t have been any more than a few seconds since he entered the lobby. Was Warbird a hero? Some anti-hero? A villain?

Was she some more easily quantifiable, somewhere in between human being who had complex morals and codes of ethics who was likely experiencing her own wave of colors and emotions wash over her at her own actions this day, this moment, just as he was subject to the press of conscience and the whirring of the lizard brain in opposition to the emotional bastion that supposedly made us unique to the beasts and monsters of the world? Ken couldn’t say, everything was too fogged and overwhelmingly blue, the kind of deep, dark shade of midnight that elicits fear of the dark in those who haven’t been exposed to the chilling bleakness that reality holds in those little turns, little moments that shape lifetimes. He was no exception, and found himself simply floating for a moment, capable neither of speech or breath in the face of the obscure, alien blues obfuscating his vision like a cloak or death shroud tossed haphazardly over his face. Something was screaming in the back of his mind, but its message wasn’t coming in clear, overwhelmed by the emotions and coldness of the twilight hues. Wait. He found himself floating, cold, wet, incapable of breath or speech, even his sick seemed to be floating beside him, and this wasn’t just in his mind. Panic overtook him as he suddenly forgot all about the shock of the scene he had just witnessed, and realized that he was literally, not figuratively floating in something cold, wet, and deep, dark blue. Oh shit!! This was water, salty, near freezing sea, and it was all around him, burying him alive in it’s cold embrace. I can’t swim!!!

Panel Seventeen

”Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!!” Tal curled up to Ken as much as possible, as close as she could, given the circumstances. All notions of physics, proper form and procedure, yeah, all out the window in an instant. Falling toward certain death had a habit of causing convention and reason to flee post-haste, and just this moment she didn’t feel much like any amount of training would have prepared her for this, then again maybe some holo time wouldn’t have hurt. She wanted desperately to close her eyes, but found that she couldn’t look away from the bitch in blue, their eyes locked as she coyly smiled at her f#$%ing prey, watching the amateur squirm under her effortless assault. That bitch was enjoying this, this wasn’t just something she felt like she needed to do for whatever lame ass reasons villains cause the trouble for everyone that they do, no, this was about some sicko satisfaction at watching people try to stop her, and fail. She wanted to rip this bitch in half, would even open up on her with those powers she knew would draw the attention of her family’s old foes, the ones that would one day chain her to a throne in a palace under the sea, her sanctuary, her chair, out of an old grudge toward her supposed ancestor long since dead. Even so, she’d gladly have invited their gaze to see this bitch burn, she had never wanted to see someone dead so much in her life as this living piece of semi-human garbage who wanted to splatter her brains, Ken’s brains on the f#$%ing floor, well, ceiling of this lobby.

She saw her then, that asshole who scared her half to death a couple seconds ago, Warbird, flying toward the bitch in blue. How is she doing that? Wait, was that a grappling hook? She was on course to knock the shit out of the bitch, moving faster than seemed at all reasonable given the fact that she wasn’t a flier and was being propelled entirely through use of a tiny little grappling gun and her own presumably totally within the normal spectrum of typical human level of physical strength, and here her and the bitch and blue were, just locking eyes with one another, her pain and fear feeding this bitch’s little ego trip. The woman in blue wouldn’t know what hit her. It was the first time she felt like she could grow to like this bitch, Warbird, knock her f#$%ing head off, girl. The timing, the angle, the speed, it was all just perfect! She’d clock her no question, she was gonna land a little high, but Tal had no doubt she would correct herself before impact and just send the blue bitch flying, or crashing to the ground. Either way, it was gonna hurt, which she couldn’t say she regretted her one bit, and she’d probably follow up with enough force to knock her out, or at least get her to stop fighting back before cuffing her or whatever it was she planned to do before handing her over to the authorities, before they finished up the job. Then they could be the heroes, save the day, and finally stop having to ask Ken’s mommy for permission to do baller super hero stuff.

THUD, SPLAT, CLANG!! Holy shit!! Am I alive? I am alive! Oh, Ken, I always had confidence in you. The thought was almost true, too. She’d thought, known that he could take the hit, at first, before the whole falling thing took away her reason and replaced it momentarily with crippling fear of imminent death by squishing off the floor. Plus, Warbird was just about to, --, Oh… Oh God, even from this distance anyone looking could see that the bitch in blue was facing the wrong way after meeting up, hard, with her face and Warbird’s boot, at speed, and with incredible accuracy. Tal would’ve wondered how she’d managed to land the hit, if she wasn’t overwhelmed with the disgust of what she had just witnessed. She’d wanted to tear the bitch in blue in half, sure, but she wouldn’t have actually killed her, not like that, not when she didn’t even have a second to react, and could have been disabled rather than just… Oh, God. That was cold blooded, she wasn’t even looking ‘till that last moment, she was looking at me! Why’d you need to do that!?!? She wanted to scream, to cry, to throw up, but mostly she just couldn’t understand why Warbird had done that. That wasn’t an accident, that blow was so well placed, computer precise, like something a robot ninja would do, that was planned to happen, meant to happen, had to be. We’re heroes, we don’t do things like that, dying in a proper fight where one side won’t give up and shit just happens is one thing, but that was just killing, cold, calculated, brutally efficient.

Tal felt cold, sick, wet, and altogether disillusioned with what she had just seen. She reached out to pull Ken closer, to take some comfort in him, her oldest and closest confidant, but found herself set down, hard, instead. Ken was doubled over behind her, throwing up again. She didn’t blame him, even if she was pissed that he was more concerned with being human and understandably disturbed by the events of the past few moments to care about her and what she needed, well, wanted from him by way of human contact. She moved to stand, to get up and get away from the bodies around her, to get somewhere else, anywhere where everything wasn’t quickly shattering apart, and taking her faith in humanity along with it, but found that she couldn’t. She could move, though she had a pain in her ankle that told her something was likely wrong and that she was probably in need of medical attention, but that wasn’t the problem. It was less that she couldn’t move, and more that she couldn’t stand, not in any proper sense of the term, anyway. As she moved she seemed to be traveling in one too many dimensions, as though floating. Well, not as though floating she realized, as she grabbed at her throat in disbelief. She found that she was floating, literally, and the chill she had felt upon seeing Warbird kill the bitch in blue, the wetness, it wasn’t exactly all in her head, an emotional response. Tastes… Salty, and it was salty. Sea water? Why was sea water everywhere? “Blub, blub, blub, blub!!” Ken can’t swim, need shelter, air, need… Sanctuary.

MASKS - A New Prequel

Well, the gravity is permanently messed up in the room, along with the space time continuum. The room is literally existing at the same place and time as an unspecified patch of the bottom of the ocean at the moment. It will correct itself, after a few seconds, but for right now the situation is completely unconnected to the bitch in blue. Basically, say she had turned on a sprinkler system before having her head turned backward and dying. Simply because she is now dead has nothing to do with the sprinkler remaining on, which it has. @Grey

MASKS - A New Prequel

For the record, with potential; because of the extreme time jumps involved in this prequel, you can all mark potential if you want, but seriously I'm just gonna give everyone an advancement or two with each issue, and assume they made up the difference in the year or two each issue just skips over (otherwise, once they're introduced as NPCs, they'd all be four issues ahead of our main cast instead of the more accurate four years ahead of our little group). For the roll, assume nothing happened, you're still affected by the gravity if Sophia's in the room, she is struggling to breath at the moment.

MASKS - A New Prequel

@LiliyaRolled this to expand senses for casing the building through biokinetic senses. Would there be some big Schrodinger's box-esque nexus point where Warbird is warping reality, or would thing just look normal?

Also two questions:
-would I have to roll anything to get past the cops as an acting parahuman paramedic, or are they just gonna let the biokinetic go about her business?
-no wounded civvies out front, yeah?

@Grey

You are aware of everyone's exact locations, though because you don't actually know any of these people, all it tells you is that there are four females, a male, and a werewolf in the vicinity of the lobby. If you want more exact information, I'll give it to you, though, but I need more specific questions. So far as the biokinetics of the situation, you can't determine whether or not there's anything odd about the situation, to include the gravity flux, save for everyone's ambient adrenaline levels being off the chart, which considering you're also aware of all the dead bodies in the room, isn't surprising to her whatsoever. There are no wounded civvies, everyone is either very dead or doesn't have a scratch on them, and you don't need to roll to get past the cops. They don't like that you're just wandering into this mess, but they won't shoot to stop you from entering. Unless you actually walk up to them and ask for permission to enter, which they would no doubt deny you and likely attempt to restrain you on the spot, if you just walk up to the doors from out of the crowd and enter, they wouldn't be able to do much assuming you didn't hang around and give them the time to deploy non-lethals to attempt to take you down safely.

For everyone else; because I've sent off quite a few PMs, and everyone seems to be waiting on further information to act, I'm delaying my post for today (well, yesterday). I'll have something up once everyone's up to speed and, hopefully, has everything they need to post before 9:00pm Eastern, today the 17th.

MASKS - A New Prequel

Very basic extremely late night Kiai explanation: This ability literally fractures reality. This can be used to do almost anything, and it will successfully happen somehow, but in each of the myriad different fractures in reality created, viewed by Warbird as a literal kaleidoscope of the scenes presented in each of the up to seven or so different realities she is facing at the moment, anything that does happen, usually and most obviously people getting killed, affects each of the realities. If there is a reality in which Warbird is at the bottom of the ocean along with the rest of the team and, say, one of them drowns? In the realities in which they were not at the bottom of the ocean, no matter how unlikely the circumstances surrounding it, the person will drown in all realities. While in a fracture, everyone is very aware that Warbird has this super power, after everything snaps back into a single reality no one remembers (except Sophia and Warbird). The most plausible reality is the one that everyone except those two remember, and the most entertaining reality is the one that will be shown in game, all realities can theoretically get civvies or team mates injured or killed. “But why use the power if there are realities where these things just happened without having to use the power?” Because by using the power, Warbird can literally kill the bitch in blue with a single hit. If she, using her normal old human strength, rolled a twelve on a hit, it wouldn’t do enough damage to even put the bitch in blue down. That would be like rolling twelve twelves in a row unlikely, just straight up taking her head off. However, because she could do it using the Kiai power, no matter how unlikely it may seem, in the reality in which she avoided the defense used by the bitch in blue and hit her head on, she happened to break her neck in the process, killing her instantly (the reality that, most likely, will be remembered). In the reality where she went straight through the portal and wound up at the bottom of the ocean, Tal hit the ground and, falling into a pool of mushy bodies and blood, found herself in her sanctuary, with Warbird, somehow having brought her along due to the proximity of their mutually physics breaking wormholes, which is more like twelve twelve twelves in a row unlikely, and then traveled back through her teleportal to the fight, where Warbird flying drop kicked the bitch in blue’s head clean around her neck, as extremely unlikely as the first blow had been, killing her instantly. Less unlikely than the first explanation (and thus, it won’t be remembered by the group after reality shifts back to normal) and less entertaining, in my opinion, then the latter (and thus it won’t be explored in character) but equally real and possible, to Warbird, at least for the duration of the fracture.