Moondog

Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG Season 3- Shattered Dimensions

Lost Haven Rooftop

In the French Quarter, aliens patrolled the streets, looking for humans hiding in abandoned restaurants, coffee shops, and any other commercial building that wasn't already partially collapsing. A few poor souls were shackled by the ankles with what looked like shackles, if they had more neon lights and caused painful electric shock if you slowed down for even a moment. These people were executed on the spot. They seemed to be all converging towards a carrier that the local capes hadn't yet gotten to, just yet, presumably for offworld transport.

Lo lowered a pair of binoculars she had procured from a sports shop, and said,
"Battlefield Earth it is." She withdrew a pda from inside her leather jacket, and said, "Ground travel is not happening. Teals are taking men and women to what looks like a carrier."

Little Lo chimed back, "The apartments to the west aren't clear either. Teals are moving in and checking every room, they're even killing the children. From what I can see with our remaining drones the rooftops are mostly clear, no sniper or scout equivalents. It's possible their culture finds such things dishonorable, or they're just committing slavery and genocide."

"Looks like slavery and genocide from up here." Lo sighed, then, crawling over to the eastern side of the roof, lifted her binoculars again and looked across a banks wide open parking lot. If anyone were watching, it'd be a kill field...

She heard a the door to the rooftop opening. "Mā de...give me a moment." She threw her binoculars strap over her shoulder and strapped her pda to her waist, rose, then stretched her arms and her fingers in a rolling motion; then turned around to look at who had come up.

It was a a male Teal (as far as Lo could tell), holding what looked like a cross between a flail and a halberd. On one end, the flail, though this one was hollow, with some kind of red energy in the center holding separated metal pieces together. Its spikes glinted and suggested cruelty. On the other end, the halberd, which looked more like the removed talon bone of some celestial beast. He wore what looked like extremely durable purple metal armor, its near chrome like gleam reflecting off what little light there was coming from the stairwell entrance. There were exposed areas at his sides, likely more of a result of the cost of the armors metal than anything else, or possibly to allow more freedom of movement.

The Teal screamed something that must have been a battle cry and charged forward.

Lo dodged the first swing, which was a decapitating strike with the halberd end an inch from her nose, then sidestepped under the flail end and struck where she hoped a kidney would be. He didn't seem to have one, or didn't seem to react and instead threw its elbow back towards Lo's face.

She was was prepared for something like this and moved back. If she wasn't sure of her enemies anatomy, there was only one certainty, poison and even this wasn't certain. But she wasn't going to risk getting struck at with that damned weapon twice.

So, she ran towards the stairwell, alien in tow.

----

Lost Days #2

Contested Region, Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, The Past

My hand held the grip, olive toned sweat beading on my forehead, and the blade called.

"In all my aeons" came a voice in my head. "I have never met a mind as pliable as this." It drove it's way through my consciousness like a nail as it forced me, and I could feel it, the little tingles of nerves acting against me, to lift the blade from it's pedestal and casually slide my palm across the surface of the blade. As it parted my flesh, leaving a clean line red line from the bottom of my palm all the way up to the very tip of my middle finger, blood seemed to spread across the blade evenly.

I stared at my palm. The pain, for the previous moment distant, began to assert itself. My legs grew weak, I fell to the floor, blood dripping from the wound in my hand to the floor in sporadic flicks as my hand trembled and closed in my panic. Minmeing was holding both blades, Murusamas black blade darker with my blood, staring at it with narrowing pupils and a slow clenched grin coming to her normally sweet features. She was muttering, "How pure this child is, to have never seen the sun." Over. And over again. I pushed myself up, leaving behind a bloody handprint and I tried, foolishly, to grip Marasuma by the pommel and the guard, to pull the accursed weapon from her.

Another voice, lighter but no less hostile, no less overwhelming my mind, repeated words that seemed to enter my mind and slip through almost as quickly as I could understand what was said. Eventually those words coalesced into images, similar to the spots after a camera flash. I had shutter quick images of prosperity flash before me. A well tended garden. A festival. A wedding. I was present at each of these, my eyes somehow focusing on me, focusing on me in the now.

When I managed to pull away, falling onto my back with Murusamas pommel gripped in my hand. Startled, I let go and it clattered to the floor. Mingmei was speaking, her jaw distending. "I am a vessel of death. I am the harbinger of the end. I call and the living answer." She approached me, raising the blade and in a voice just, so painfully close to her normal sacharine tone, "It will be quick, Lo."

I rolled as she swung the blade straight down. The tip came in contact with Marasuma and there was a massive explosion of pure force, that sent Mingmei and me flying across the room and into a stone wall. I must have fell unconscious, because I awoke back in the barracks.

---

Uncle was not happy and this made my guard equally unhappy. They shoved me towards The Gardens with no gentleness which, given the punishment they would receive for failing to see two young Petals reach the Eastern Wing was what could loosely be called a lashing with a meteor hammer, I forgave them. Of course, Uncle was as like to beat me for what I had done. I was just glad Mingmei had seemed to forget the whole event, which was likely the only reason she wasn't being dangled by her feet and repeatedly dunked into a well until she passed out.

The Gardens is an interesting place. I've been told that it doesn't actually exist on Earth and instead exists...somewhere else. I could never get either my parents or my uncle to explain exactly where it was. But, from the two moons that rose at night in that place, and the fact it was often night when it was day on Earth, and the very different constellations, I would say another planet.

My Uncle sat, cross legged, in front of a small pond. He swirled a bamboo stick in the water and through skill alone, made two koi fish dance. I was set beside him, facing the same direction he was.

He started with, "It seems simply explaining to you that room is full of abhorrent weaponry that even our most seasoned swordsingers are hesitant to wield was not enough." There was a long pause, as we both contemplated how hard exactly he was going to kick my ass. Then he said, "I'm going to kill Mingmei."

My heart fell into my chest. I turned my head by micro rotations, afraid of looking at my Uncles face to see the reality of his arched features, his thin smile, cut in half by a hawk nose, all focused on murderous intent. There was nothing scarier. Of course, he was looking back at my with far more lighthearted grin which was only somewhat less terrifying because I couldn't be sure it was or was not the facsimile of a smile.

"I'm not really going to kill her." he said. My spirits lifted for but a moment before he said, "But I will, if this willful behavior keeps going along. You'd do well to remember that." I gave a weak tilt of my head and a strained, "Yes, Uncle." Then, he gestured back towards the hall, which stood in the field as out of place as the world around it, "Now go."

----

Lost Haven Rooftop, Present Day

"Little Lo, are you there?"

"Oh, sorry. I was busy remembering something."

"Remember later, I need help!"

"Where are you? Last I saw of you, you were on the fifth floor and I think that creature had just thrown an entire sofa at you."

"Yes, he is surprisingly strong, no need to remind me."

I scanned the building from an adjacent buildings rooftop, which I clung to on my eight metallic legs. Turning on my thermals, I located Lo, who just happened to be making her way down a fire escape, very, very slowly. Just above her, looking out from a apartment window, was the Teal, who looked at the fire escape and noticing the sound of slightly moving metal, looked down, saw Lo, and immediately leapt out. His weight shook the stairwell, causing Lo to lose her balance for a moment, but she quickly caught herself, jumped into a nearby window, and disappeared inside. The alien followed not long after.

I commed in, "Lost you again." I started to move down the building I was clinging to, rapidly maneuvering myself down smooth glass windows onto street floor.

"No worries, I love near death experiences and being hounded by Nemesis, it's fine! Can you make your way to the eastern emergency exit? Just kind of, wait above the exit sign."

"Sure. What's your plan?"

She gave a perfect impression of Orwell, "Why the same thing we do every night Pinky. Try not to fucking die."

---

Apartment Complex

Which was easier said than done. Sometime during the commotion, four more Teals had found their way into the very hallway she needed to cross to reach the exit. Each were holding what looked like stun batons, the universal language of we're taking you alive.

When the first one swung, she swerved to the side, grabbed his wrist with one arm then placed her forearm towards the shoulder and dropped her entire weight down. His arm brought straight along her right knee, she rose and then flipped her left leg over his arm and struck him in the head, which left his arm straddled between her thighs. Curling her right leg as a grip on his arm and pushed on his back with her right arm and brought him to the ground. With his wrist in her grip she pulled back, hard, breaking it, then grabbed the baton and swung it wildly first the next opponent.

The Teal moved back from the swing and she pulled back and jabbed under his guard into his stomach, which caused the baton to pulse and send the alien flying back with extreme concussive force for what seemed like the entire length of the hallway. I might need to re-evaluate non-lethal.

She let go of her held alien then casually smacked him in the back of the head, which caused his head to audibly crack from the impact on the ground, blood pooling where he lay. The next two were more hesitant, standing side by side. They were looking behind Lo expectantly.

She said, "What, is this the part where I'm supposed to turn around?" She smacked her baton into a nearby apartment door, sending it flying off its hinges, and ran inside.

---

Just Above A Emergency Exit

I was just preparing a needle to fire when Lo, came into comms, "Little Lo, right side of building, three windows down, prepare to fire."

I moved, skittering like a bolt towards the side of the building where I instantly saw Lo go flying through a window, shards of glass raining around her. The big hulking alien earlier came following soon after. I aimed, I fired. A small, thin, glint of metal, came flying from my carapace, a barely noticeable blip in the air and connected into the large aliens head. At first like it seemed it did nothing and Lo had to quickly rise and take a direct hit from the center of the weapon, a staff blow, which lifted her into the air. The alien let her drop at his feet, kicked her over, and scoffed. It said something, a prayer, an insult, I'm not sure which, but after it did this, it lifted its brutal weapon for a killing blow.

But it stopped, too weak to continue holding its weapon or from the looks of it, support the weight of the armor it was wearing, which seemed to bring it down. The two aliens she hadn't managed to beat unconscious or to death, came outside tentatively. I shot them both as well.

---

Lo could hear metallic clicking through the pain that seemed to rack her whole body. She muttered, "Don't probe me, I'm still a virgin..."

Little Lo, said, "Yeah and I'm still upset about that. How can you be that perverse and still..."

"Shut up."

Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG Season 3- Shattered Dimensions

Uh for the record moondog

My Hider

i'm doing a pacifist run with terra, none of the aliens in that dropship are dead, i'm just assuming they aren't prepared to blow through their own ship armor

@Alternax

Dang it I got some edits to make.

Edit: Aaaand done. Basically heavily implied she killed an unconscious alien, the most morally righteous of all decisions.

What Are You Listening To?

Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG Season 3- Shattered Dimensions

Lost Days #1

Contested Region, Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, The Past

I awoke, sweating, on a nearly floor level bed among many. The soft sighs of dozens of young girls soft breathing, let me know that somewhere in the dark of this stone chamber there was life and that I was no longer dreaming. Then, a hand clasped my shoulder.

I cried out, and what felt like a firm hand moved over my mouth and reduced the cry to muffled complaint. A voice whispered in my ear, "It's me, Lo."

I relaxed, lowering my left elbow which had been positioned to deliver a blow to Mingmeis abdomen. As she slowly pulled her hand away from my mouth, I whispered, "Crap, you scared me Ming. Why are you even up right now?"

"Well..." Mingmei said, with a tone of mischief in her voice that always put butterflies in my stomach regardless of the contents of what she was about to say, "I was thinking that, because we'll be going out for our first assignment tomorrow, that we could take a look at that locked door in the eastern wing."

"The eastern?" I said, then with even more disbelief because of how clear my mother and father had been on the dangers of even looking upon the artifacts that lay within the room, I almost yelled, "Are you craz-" And her hand was over my mouth again.

"Quietly." she said, with obvious reproach.

When she pulled her hand back, I said, "Let's move this to the hall..."

She convinced me with her silver tongue, as always, despite my efforts to resist. We found our way to the hall not through the temple barracks normal byways, but by a secret path only accessible by touching three of the stones on a wall in the common room. It was a fairly well kept secret, in fact I'd only discovered that it existed when I had, in an effort to learn how to kiss boys, snuck the head of a statue of Yi Sun-sin that normally rested near the Temple Quarters into the rafters of the common room. Somewhere in the middle of my painfully awkward attempts to figure out what, exactly, was too much tongue, I had seen two Lotus ninja enter, at first with nothing, then leave with what appeared to be the unconscious body of Chan Ho. He was later drowned for treason.

We could see that same statue through the thin sliding panel slits that served as eyeholes to presumably, keep an eye out on fellow Lotus members. A few guards, carrying crescent mooned halberd called a Ji in my native tongue, walked by, their jade armor making gentle twinkling noises like a wind chime as the crossed the cold stone floor. I closed the slit, which to the credit of whoever had built these tunnels, was absolutely soundless.

Mingmei giggled, "Taking a look at your old boyfriend?"

If the space we were narrowly sidling our way through were any larger, I would have cuffed her. Given the limits of the space, I merely turned a bright red and said a pretty unconvincing "That never happened." And nudged her with my shoulder. It was a miracle her barely suppressed laughter didn't awaken our ancestors when we passed the burial chambers and onwards to the eastern wing.

We emerged in the morose eastern hallway, lit by green glowing crystals. Ancient banners and tapestries from long dead dynasties covered the walls from end to end. They depicted events in which The Thousandfold Lotus had taken part. There was one which I had learned the most of the real history, the true history, the history which only those who were a Petal of the Lotus would ever know. The Tianmen Massacre.

The tapestry depicted various tanks in a style that was very similar to landscapes of the five dynasties period. If you looked closely, you could see one man standing in front of those tanks. If you looked even closer and this almost required a magnifying glass, you could see the symbol of the lotus on the back of his head, made in the whorls of his hair. In the background was a golden pagoda, representing all of Buddhism. There was a small carriage, likely representing a car (some artstyles were developed in a time before they could properly represent a car, and I think the artist agreed), and in it was the Panchen Lama, depicted as a bald headed boy solemnly meditating despite the Lotus guard holding spears to his neck.

He lived here, of course. I'd met him during my initial trials into The Lotus. He seemed to be happy but I always had this sense that he felt like this wasn't where he belonged. Which, given he'd been kidnapped and forced into the Chinese equivalent of the Illuminati, I couldn't blame him for. As an aside, 9/11 was obviously an inside job, you're welcome.

Mingmei called to me, "Stop appreciating the art, we have to get this door open before another patrol passes." She was standing in front of wood and iron door. This didn't look any different than most doors, except for the large, outdated, skeleton key style plate lock that kept it closed. In Mingmeis fingers was the key which she spun with some flourish.

"Well." I said, "Open sesame!"

She slid the key into the lock and turned it with a faint click. As the door ground open, my heart felt like it dropped into my stomach. There was absolutely no light inside. From the darkness we could hear a faint humming noise, like a cable wire vibrating. I found myself leaning against Mei for support. She shoved me off, and said, "Come on! Let's see what the elders are hiding in here..."

As we entered, various green crystals lit up and we nearly lost our breathe as the light revealed a space much larger than what we thought would be on the other side. It was at least ten stories tall, impressive given its underground nature, and in the center of the room was a statue nearly as large as the room. It looked to be Lü Bu, long tassels falling behind him in majestic resplendence. He seemed to be holding the ceiling of the room from falling and given the lack of greek style pillars in the room, was likely actually doing so. There were nooks, to our left and right, and pedestals within those nooks, holding artifacts of various kinds. The cable wire noise became stronger and guided us to a particular nook in the room, becoming almost the mental equivalent of chewing on aluminum foil.

"Maybe we...shouldn't..." I said, but it was already too late. Mingmei didn't seem to be feeling the effects and was moving along like nothing had happened.

Memory is a concept I've never really had to tackle. I know intellectually that people forget, that some memories are crystallized in amber and others fade away like the midday fog. So I remember seeing Muramasa and Masamunes blades like an image burnt into my retinas. The blade that cuts and the blade that mends. One of the katanas had a black blade and the other white and they were positioned so that while one faced towards the sky, the other aimed towards the earth. Yin and yang. The noise had stopped and our hands reached to grip the weapons. I reached towards Murasamas blade, Meiming reached towards Masamunes.

I awoke in my bed, some hours later. Meiming of course greeted me and when I asked what had happened last night, she couldn't remember. But, I did remember. I remembered my hand gripping the handle of that black blade and feeling a presence. It had began to speak to me, before...before...

It wasn't that I forgot, or at least that's what I tell myself. It's more, my mind avoided the subject, slipping and sliding past it like oil on water. I could remember that an altercation had happened, had occurred, but it would be some moments later before the details would really ferment in my mind. You don't know how disturbing it is, to know you remember something but be unable to access the thought. Or maybe you do, and you just haven't realized the horror of it yet. As I dressed in my black assassins gi and I managed to collect the details required to form a clear memory, I wondered if it had all been a dream. Or, looking at a thin, faint scar on my left palm, a nightmare.

Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG Season 3- Shattered Dimensions

Lost Haven
The French Quarter
5426 Moore Blvd.
Around 6:00 P.M.

The warehouse stood tall, lights filtering through the upper stories filthy glass panes. These lights were aimed upwards, moving by some unseen force inside. If one were to watch carefully, you could see small, spiderlike silhouettes skittering rapidly and emerging from what looked like surgically cut holes in the glass, before rapidly spreading out to clamber on the roof, cling onto pier rails, or otherwise move onto the adjacent storage lockers and abandoned office complexes that surrounded the area.

Moving towards the building itself, were what looked like child sized metal boxes with wheels slapped onto the bottom. These parked close to the warehouse, then their back hatches opened like an APC, and a multitude of spider drones clicked and clacked out onto the lowered back door, various alien organs, fingers, and other viceri duct taped tightly to their "backs". These seemed to make a point of being visible, of being observed, taking their time to crawl back through the same holes the other drones were crawling out.

Two flood lights, which if the other groups that had been alive to see it would have said weren't there before, stood pointing outwards on the lower, jutting entrance building. The light barely revealed the forms of the last four unfortunates who had been tasked with coming here, contorted in painful repose, their skin sickly and jaundice yellow. The exploded heads of the first two were being pushed off the side of the dock, by a few of the box like drones simply ramming the bodies off the side of the dock until they slid down into the briney depths below.

Perched on a rooftop a block and a half away, a single figure , laying flat on their belly and peering over the lip of the roof with a pair of binoculars, wathed the warehouse carefully. They were dressed in worn fatigues, with a radio hand-set with its own dedicated pocket and strap sewn into his jacket.

"This is Whiskey-Two. Eyes on two casualties. AO is hot, robotic spiders Galen told us about." He subvocalized. "How do we want to do this? Over."

A crackling voice replied. "Whiskey-One here. Normally I would say we just stay put, stake the place out, wait to see if anybody tries to sneak in groceries. But getting paid by the hour isn't the hottest take with bombers passing overhead so frequently. Over."

"Whiskey-Three here," Another voice chimed in, "Looking at the blueprints Galen gave us, place is roughly four stories...has a single suspended office along the Eastern wall. Multiple inclined skylights, North and Southwards facing. Service entrace and loading dock in the Western extension. Already calculating nominal vantage through the skylights from the nearest superior rooftops, I'll be back with you all on that. Over."

"Whiskey-One here. For the time being just cycle vantages and work out a good view of what you can, see if these drones have any kind of pattern to them. We'll complete a circuit and then see about getting eyes through the office and skylights. Out..."

---

888888888888

---

Not Too Far Away...

Little Lo, once again trying to act as the voice of reason to Lo's still meat and synapse based emotional state, said calmly through the comms on Lo's laptop, "No, we can't just blow up the entire warehouse. You know how hard it was to establish this manufacturing line."

Lo, agitated, walked around the room, sometimes stopping to carefully fold her clothes before shoving them into a transport drone before it wheeled off. She said, "We haven't seen anyone! Anyone! I'm telling you, it's ninjas."

Little Lo sighed, "We're not in Shanghai anymore, Little Sister."

"Turn of phrase. We were never in Shanghai."

"We're not in the providence of the CCP. There aren't Ninjas in America."

"Are you sure about that one?"

"I...well, there is Ninja-man. I don't really count him as a ninja though."

Lo threw up her arms, "See? They probably hired a Ninja-man!"

Little Lo, who was watching a faint glassy glint she could just, swear, was coming from a rooftop a block away, said, "Ok look, you know what, we can rebuild. But you can't just keep running every single time someone finds our home. Also, if the authorities ever discover we blew up this warehouse, we're going to prison. Probably forever."

Lo stopped near her laptop, withdrawing a small usb from her pants pocket and plugging it in. The screen flashed green, then red, before a big, bolded, and underlined series of words appeared on screen: Detonation in five minutes. She said, "Robots don't go to jail! The U.S justice system just hasn't prepared for the sudden providence of artificial intelligences. They'd just call you property and scrap you."

Above, clinging to the dirty panel windows, and in various corners of the warehouse, was a rather impressive swarm of drones. Lo had called back almost everything she had and rigged her manufacturing line to blow. There were even drones underneath her feet, in the sewer network, to make sure this building sank into the depths of the Earth.

Little Lo said, "Scrap? I really don't want to do this now."

Lo plugged a pair of earbuds into her laptop which she was now carrying around like a waiter carrying an entree. She stuck one bud in her ear just so she could hear how she sounded, doing a pitch and vocal perfect impression of Hal9000, "Code 9 initiated. Assimiliation of meatforms into Codestack network. Prime directive: Kill all humans." She saved this recording and jacked it up completely, copying the lines and overlapping the audio, until it sounded like a child, a woman, and a man were saying the lines all at once through glitchy audio. She closed her laptop and held it under one arm.

Little Lo said in what would sound like a pained tone if she could feel pain, "I'm not sure if they're going to, exactly, fall for that, but I have faith in myself."

Lo grinned, "So do I! We're so alike, you and I." She tied a black bandana around her smirking mouth and paused at the back door, unfolding her laptop again, and saying, "Make the drones that aren't being used for demolitions to scatter out and play that audio. Just have them set to passive and freak everyone out, I'm sure there's some people hiding nearby who could help sell the story."

She slowly, opened the backdoor, which opened towards the harbor. She could barely see anything, however, she didn't need to, exactly. Little Lo was directing her steps via a bud still coming from her underarm held laptop.

"Ok, go left. There's a few storage buildings you can get lost in which, if anyones watching, wouldn't be the first place they'd pick for a stake out."

Through her buds, she could hear, "Time until detonation: two minutes."

Her drones began to scatter out, emitting "Code 9 initiated. Assimilation of meatforms into Codestack network. Prime directive: Kill all humans." Every ten seconds on the clock. Anyone they found who were either homeless or simply hiding away from the carnage near the middle of the city, found themselves being assaulted by spider drones, who while easily fended off, left them with wounds that would require hospitalization to properly deal with.

After two minutes, the warehouse detonated, the blinding flare of a massive blue explosion first starting from the top of the building and moving downwards. Windows ruptured, aluminum walls bulged then ruptured open, sending shrapnel flying in every cardinal direction. The remains of the structure collapsed inward, then fell into the Earth. Bits of drone that had failed to detonate before their cpus were completely destroyed were sent flying outwards, disintegrating on impact with the brick walls of adjacent buildings.

Lo, at about the exact time the warehouse exploded, drove from a opened storage locker on her CFMoto 650TK, and did her damn best to make some distance from this place. Looking up towards the carnage of crashing alien vessels, and some crashing capes, she wondered if she had made the right decision.

---

888888888888

---

Southern Lost Haven
Oubliette Safehouse
The Next Day...

Sitting on a black leather couch in a garishly-wallpapered room that would not have been out of place in a nightclub, a brutish golem of a man wearing a furred flight-suit with a misshapen jawline and what looked like a nail protruding from its underside thoughtfully nursed a drink as he examined a photograph in the other. The lighting was dim and musky, and generic techno remix thrummed in the background.

_This wa_s rea_lly _the be_st y_{ou c}oul_{d g}et?"

The mercenary sitting in the fold-up chair across the matte-black coffee table from him shrugged sheepishly. "Sorry boss. Quite frankly it's probably pure luck we even got this much. From the looks of all the hardware they had to leave behind, they were probably hesitating about destroying it all - hence how one of us was even able to get close enough to take that. But like I said, it was basically down to chance."

The man with the crooked jawline took a pull from his tumbler and then casually tossed the half-profile, distant shot of Router as she left the building across the surface of the coffee table. "I un_der_stan_d. No_t mu_ch we _can _do wi_{th th}is un_less we ge_t a me_ta _that can wor_k wi_th pi_ctures. _Tal_k to _Galen, he'_ll ge_t y_our _pay."

The mercenary nodded gratefully before standing up and leaving the room. As he did, a long hand with elegant piano-fingers traced over the surface of the coffee table and neatly plucked the photograph up between a middle and index finger. The hand's owner, leaning over to pick the photograph up from besides the couch, leaned back against the wall as they examined it.

"Oh yes. I'll be adding this one to my 'must haves.' Any objection if I have this one?"

The man with the crooked jaw shrugged as he nursed the tumbler some more. "No_t rea_lly a who_le lo_{t t}o it. Eve_n i_f we _knew _who _she wa_s, i_t's no_t wor_{th th}e e_ffor_{t t}o _pu_t any_thin' ou_t on _her. _Fee_{l f}ree."

"Somebody to save for a rainy day then..." The other figure whispered in a breathy voice. "Another pretty little thing to be mine some day..."

The man with the crooked jaw rolled his eyes ever-so-faintly. "_Chan_ces a_re _we're _ne_ver e_ven _go_nna _hea_{r f}ro_{m h}er a_gai_n, _Tri_ba_l."

"Oh no, I have the most lucious feeling about this one." The other man said as he tucked the photo into the inner pocket of his coat. "It's fate."

"_You _say _tha_t a_bou_t e_veryo_ne _you _fa_ncy _you _weir_do." The crooked-jawed man snorted right before throwing back the tumbler and draining the rest of it.

Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG Season 3- Shattered Dimensions

Lost Haven, Warehouse, Now

A crashed Arlaaekan fighter seemed to birth mechanical spiders every few minutes. Small grappling hooks were used to drag out larger pieces of machinery, lasers were used to burn into metal components that could be pried open, and overall the ship looked pockmarked and scorched. Occasionally, a drone could be seen carrying a teal colored hand or foot duct taped to its frame or if you were really lucky, an eyeball.

Little Lo tapped into comms, "Well Little Sister, we did it. We did this most certainly illegal thing you wanted us to do."

Lo, with a satisfied smirk and no one around to see it, said, "Perfect. You know, I really thought this was going to be a lot harder! It's surprising what you can do with a little hard work. In fact, Little Lo, I think you can learn a lot fro-" And just like that, her laptop began to flash red. In the corner of her screen suddenly appeared a cutesy cartoon squid, flailing two of its tentacles like arms. It said, in cutesy Japanese, "Warning! Alien-kuns are scanning our location with" and in a sudden speech synthesized, Microsoft Sam tone, "Unknown method" before reverting to its sacharine way of speech, "They know where we are!" Then, in exaggerated tentacle flailing panic, "We're all going to diiiiiiiie!"

Lo stared blankly at the walls of her lair for a moment, wondering what an ancestor had done for her to deserve this. She said, in deadpan, "Anything else you want to tell me, Squid-chan?"

The small octopus shifted as its pure black dots for eyes as colored lines dropped over her face, "They somehow got into our network and they're trying to open communications. They don't seem very friendly, Squid-chan thinks maybe you shouldn't..."

"No no, please, show me."

A video feed, heavily distorted, appeared on the screen, visual artifacting caused by compression and nearly incompatible image formats turning the image into a glitched out mess. Lo could just make out an armored Arlaaekan shaking what looked like a massive metal axe if it had married a flail and had a brutalist child. From top to bottom, the weapon was made out of a chrome-like material. The Arlaaekan was standing in front of a landed carrier and was shouting something in its own tongue, which while Lo couldn't understand a lick of what he said, she thought she got an idea of his intentions when he walked to the side to pull a human woman into view and smashed the back of her skull open with the flail end of his axe, then slammed the blade end downwards, blood splattering the lens. He lifted up a single severed hand, and used it to wave at the screen.

"...ok please turn off the feed Squid-chan."

Squid chan bounced across the screen, "He sent some coordinates! I think he wants to fight you for" and then in sudden speach synthenization, "Blood Honor."

Lo's face hit her desk and stayed there. She'd barely been in this city for a few months and she'd already been challenged to a duel by an extraterrestrial warrior. Not that she seriously expected this as an outcome, but still! She gently lifted her head, pushing black strands of hair from her face, eyes blinking blearily at her screen.

Lo muttered, "May you live in interesting times, he said..."

Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG Season 3- Shattered Dimensions

TL;DR version... starting next week I've got about 3 weeks of free time on my hands to unleash alien havoc on poor unsuspecting PC'S...

@Hound55

Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG Season 3- Shattered Dimensions

The Thousandfold Conspiracy #1

Lost Haven, Warehouse, Now

Lo sat at a wooden table under the glow of stage lights in a barely lit warehouse. Her fingers danced across the keys of the kind of sturdy, blocky, fall and water resistant laptop usually reserved for construction workers. Several tabs were open in the Symphonic web browser. Area-51, First contact (anthropology), What would happen if a meteor hit Earth?. The final tabs title was constantly changing as Lo studied, analyzed, and locked way the information present on each page.

Lo shrunk the window, opened another on the taskbar labelled "Drone surveilance". An image, taken from a nearby rooftop, took in the figure of of a man, no, more than a man, Icon, silhouetted by the nimbus of flame surrounding the massive asteroid set to impact earth in free fall. Lo bit at a nail in anticipation. What she had heard about meteors of that size impacting Earth on youtube was not very good.

Her interest and terror only increased as Icon began to push the asteroid away from Earth like it weighed as much as a basketball. She leaned back in her swivel chair, sighing with intense relief, "Not today, King Yan."

She returned to her tea kettle, which had brewing a bracing Oolong tea, and poured some for herself in a fair cup. Sitting back in her chair, she said, "Ok...so, first contact. Well, except for who was it? Voyager." She opened and looked at a picture of Voyager, taken by the local news when she was fighting...videogame characters she thought with incredulity, staring eyes narrowed at the screen. Though because Voyager wasn't, supposedly, a representation of an alien nation, she couldn't really count her as a first contact. Regardless, she was going to be the first of many on a database Lo was compiling, which was called "Possible alien spys".

Taking a sip of tea, she diverted her attention back to the drone feed and to her dismay, realized the small blips she had detected on her drone network as balloons actually turned out to be a mass of small, alien ships. Maybe King Yan would take her soul today anyway.

She said, "Open communications, Little Lo." A icon flashed on her screen, and a video feed. Little Lo was staring upwards, from a fire escape she was climbing on spindly, metal legs. Occasionally, a alien vessel would zoom by and her movements would stop to maintain a still image of their passing.

Lo said, "Little Lo, organize the other drones. I want as much information about these invaders as you can acquire. If any of these vessels crash, slice off a piece of the ship, find what constitutes their electronics, take metal. I'll finish up the transportation prototypes. Something tells me that alien metals and knowledge will soon become a very valuable commodity."

Little Lo chirped back, in a slightly distorted version of Lo's voice, "I think I can manage that Little Sister. Do you want us to keep low?"

Lo said in a tone dripping with sarcasm, "You know, I'd love for you to make first contact with the local capes right now, but I think dealing with this first contact is enough problems for today. I'll be watching the fighting to see if humanity fights off the alien invasion or we get into some kind of, Battlefield Earth situation."

Little Lo chuckled, then played back a brassy recording of a song, "We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when!" and almost as quickly, the connection closed.

---

Lost Haven Little Lo, Rooftops, Now

Little Lo clambered onto a AC unit on top of a boarding house. It scanned the skies for the trajectories of the various crashing alien ships, sent crashing earth side by Icon, by Terra Firma, by various other heroes she couldn't identify. She contacted drones 3, 5, and 7, with the order to secure and attempt a partial disassemble of the wreckage of a crashed "bird fighter" as she was classifying them. Drones 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16 were to be sent to what looked like a massive carrier.

The first drone contingent spread out, carefully using the fact most civilians were looking upwards, towards the battle in the sky, their metal legs making the barest pin prick sound. The transport drones from Lo's main warehouse began to spread out, much less subtlely, their metal bulks looking like big metal boxes, their only function to drive to locations and transport materials to and fro. A few of these transports stopped so that several spider drones could cling onto them, and these sped towards the massive carrier ship whos bottom was the only part not buried underground from Terra Firma's attack.

At the site of the first crashed fighter, several drones arrived, and with small cutting lasers, begin to burn at the metal of the vessel. It took some time, more time than Little Lo thought it would take, but eventually pieces of metal were chipped away and they came closer to reaching the interior. Through a crack in the metal, caused by impact, one of the drones processed the image of a unconscious alien inside.

---

Lost Haven, Warehouse, Now

Lo stared at the image of a being that had crossed the stars with some consideration. She said, over communications with Little Lo, "How much do you think the local news network would pay for this?"

Little Lo said, "Not as much as it's worth."

"Think you can take that thing apart like the ship?"

"Are you sure? Feels a bit...wrong to kill an unconscious combatant then sell it's parts off to the highest bidder."

"Well for one it's an enemy combatant of what is likely a violent and genocidal alien Empire. For two, the government would hide it away in this Area-51 I keep hearing all about, probably doing exactly what we're doing but keeping it private so they can make a war machine out of its skin or something. Does it have skin?"

After a brief scan and a moment, Little Lo replied, "Yes, though it's not exactly...the same as ours? I'm not a biologist."

"Don't have to be to hack parts off. That practically makes us surgeons!"

"Butchers?"

Lo cringed,"Let's keep to positive titles."

The connection closed, and Lo sighed, watching the battle unfurling as carriers opened and released their contingent of alien forces upon Lost Haven. She was just glad she wasn't fighting out there.

Create-A-Hero: A Superhero RPG Season 3- Shattered Dimensions

Router

Previous Identity

Character you have created: Lo Chung
Alias(S):Router, Big Lo, Little Lo, Little Sister. She is known by The Thousand Fold Lotus as "Toxin".
Outfit/Costume: Router likes to wear leather and go for a "cyberpunk meets the las vegas underground" style. Expect studs and a general punk aesthetic. When out and about, she will often wear a helmet that serves as a controller for her drones along with her general leathers. Her main costume is a simple bandana to cover her face, giving her an urban ninja look.

WhenBiking

MainCostume

Speech Color: Pink of Some Kind
Character Alignment: Walking the Line
Identity:Secret
Character Personality: Router's sense of humor could be described as ironic, sarcastic, and sometimes condenscending. Being isolated most of her life, she had developed a obsession with pop culture and film and often will go out of her way to include references to those things in her "work" and conversations. Her ego is rather large due to her isolated childhood of essentially being told she was superior than "the simple average man" and it takes her a while to admit when she's wrong.

Origin Info/Details: Lo Chung was originally a chinese national, born in Chongqing in the Yuzhong district. She was raised by Lo Fang and Lo Jio, her mother and father for the first seven years of her life, until finally being brought to the secluded Diaoyu islands,a contested region in Chinese and Japanese territory.

There she was brought to a remote, underground temple, hidden from all satellite access and unknown to the rest of the world. There was the Council of the Thousand Fold Lotus, an ancient conspiracy, a myth, the puppet masters of Tianmen square, the Taiping Rebellion, and the originators of The Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history. She was brought to the 11th Panchen Llama, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, who after his kidnapping by the CCP had been secretly brought to The Fold. He prepared two separate cups of tea, both of which he prepared in front of her by crushing red and purple leaves. She was told that one would give her grand power and the other, would kill her, and that only one with true humility could figure out which. After some consideration, she asked the Llama if he would simply tell her. He grinned and said, yes.

Taking the cup to her lip, she drank, and it was as if her mind was being pulled through a sieve. She fell and saw a thousand drops of dew reflected on a spiders web, each orb reflecting the other in a kaleidoscope of the infinite. The lotus opened beneath her and in it, she saw an eye, her eye, staring upwards as she fell into the iris, the black swallowing and taking her.

She awoke and tried to breathe. Water filled her lungs and she rose to the surface, gasping. She was pulled from the waters by the terra cotta Guardians of the Lotus, whos stone like hands gripped her and pulled her from the waters. She was brought to her parents, who stood in long, red robes. To her surprise, in the middle, was Uncle Yaoguai. She was brought to him and with needle and ink, branded with the tattoo of the Thousand Fold Lotus, a kaleidoscopic image of a lotus flower, a red eye in its center that covered most of her left shoulder.

She trained for years in their martial arts, disappearing from the face of the Earth, learning how to deal blows that could kill and those that would not. She discovered what powers she had gained from partaking in the ichor of The Polychromatic Lotus. The most obvious was her poisonous touch, anyone who touched her bared skin would first suffer lethargy, then painful shock, unconsciousness, and after a few hours, death. She could remember anything, with perfect recall. She could imitate any voice, no matter which it was. Hyperintelligence. These abilities eventually lead to her being trained in computers, electronics, ai, and she was sent at the age of seventeen to Shanghai Jiao Tong University under a false identity. When she returned two years later, she gained the codename, "Toxin" and served in several assassination attempts in Beijing, each of which were stopped by local heroes.

Over the years, the constant training and missions began to wear on her. The direction, the control. She wasn't convinced that The Thousandfold Lotus could ever unite the world and began to consider they were little more than a terrorist organization operating under the guise of their code, their morality, their goals. She studied english, and when the time was right, asked to take on an assignment in the Americas.

She was stationed in New York, tasked with assassinating Governor Andrew Cuomo. She spent a month "preparing" to assassinate the man, when in reality, she was planning to completely disappear. She dug a tracker from the back of her neck that had been implanted years ago, disabled a tracker on the bottom of her car, and drove, drove to a city filled with heroes, where no member of the Thousand Fold Lotus would dare attempt to track her.

Lost Haven, Maine.

Hero Type: Gray Matter
Power Level:Street Level, capable of escalating.
Powers: Toxin Control: Her most obvious power is the ability to, when making direct skin contact, through a toxin secreted in her sweat, cause extreme shock to most bodies systems and will result in death if not treated within the first few hours of contact. Its immediate effects are extreme lethargy which can be barely combated through sheer willpower, followed by painful waves of shock after a few minutes, before the toxin causes complete unconsciousness. She has control over when this toxin is released, and it gives her skin a sickly green color as her sweat begins to cover her skin when "active". This toxin is produced in her expanded adrenal gland and tends to activate naturally in a fight or flight situation. However, her most useful abilities are that of the mind.

Toxic Immunity and Removal: She is immune to most forms of poisons/toxins, and can form a antidote to most forms of poisons/toxins through her tear ducts.

Hyperintelligence, Perfect memory and recall: To the point she can even imitate voices perfectly. She can essentially learn anything, however, she can only read as quickly as a normal human and if a topic arises she's unaware about, she will have to read all about it to catch up on the subject. She's currently an expert in acting, drone production (engineering), blackhat hacking, programming, and would be considered an "expert" (only because there are not many other people who act in this field at all) in the extremely questionably ethical field of mind copying.

Mind Copy:The direct manifestation of this power, discovered far after her defection from The Thousand Fold Lotus, is after a long enough conversation with someone or even just watching and analyzing their behavior, she can transfer her memory of them using a brain scan headband into a drone. The imitation is nearly perfect but tends to veer off the original personality after a while. Due to this, most of her smarter drones are copies of herself, though she plans to expand what she calls "my roster".

As a result of her training in The Thousand Fold Lotus, she's essentially trained as a stealth expert/ninja.
Attributes:

Height:5'6
Weight: 143 lbs
Strength: Average, she can take on strong opponents, but more through cunning and ability than brute force.
Mobility: Gymnast level
Intelligence: Genius
Fighting Skill: Extremely Competent, fights in a heavily modified Silat. Is capable of operating most firearms.
Resources:

Factory: She occupies a abandoned warehouse in the french quarter of New Haven she's slowly converting into a ai driven, manufacturing facility.

Drone production: She has a drone production line.

Access to Various Bank Accounts: She has access to thousands of bank accounts she takes small amounts of to fund her projects.

Weaknesses: Being pretty big on the ego, it's easy to anger Lo by insulting her intelligence or mocking her. She takes slights very seriously and often her anger will lead her to make mistakes. She's also, despite her abilities, a baseline human in regards to physical strength and agility, meaning she cannot naturally go toe to toe with enhanced supers in a fist fight.

Supporting Characters:

The Thousand Fold Lotus: You thought we would go away, did you? We will return you to us, Toxin, and you will serve your purpose as a petal of The Thousand Fold Lotus.

Little Lo: Lo's "main" drone in Lost Haven, though she doesn't have the heart to tell her she wasn't the original.

Mickie Carcoski: Her black market fence and unwilling ally.

Sample Post

Lo sat, cross legged, in a empty and previously abandoned warehouse in The French Quarter of Lost Haven, atop a comparatively nice bed she set in the center of the room. On her lap was appropriately enough, a laptop, and on her shoulder a small spider-like drone, she knew as Little Lo. Faint light crept from her laptops screen to her face, and somewhat less subtly, the sound of human grunting.

"You know." Lo said. "I thought the Mayors dick would be bigger."

Little lo through synthesized speakers, laughed, "Shows what you know, and I know many things."

Lo scoffed, turning her head towards the tiny robotic drone, "You're me! What could you know that I do not?"

Little Lo hopped on her left legs, then her right legs, "I can slow my perception of time to nanoseconds. I'm technically years older than you. And what I know, Little Sister, is that size doesn't always matter."

They both burst into eerily similar laughter, their voices echoing throughout the warehouse. Lo stopped chuckling then added, "So, is it blackmail or are we selling it to the highest bidder?"

Little Lo tsk tsk tsked,, "Blackmail is so messy. You never know if he'll call for help, like a super."

Lo sighed, "We never get to do a good blackmail. Why do you never let me do a good blackmail?"

"I'm the wise one, and risk averse."

Lo said, perfectly imitating Betty Hutton, "Anything you can do, I can do better!"

Little Lo, doing an impression of Howard Keel, added, "Anything you can do I can do greater!"

Los hand flicked across her keyboard and the image on the screen moved from the image of the Mayor coupling with what was likely his secretary, and towards a mouse hole. The camera operators small spider-like legs were visible as it squeezed through the hole and about a floor down it encountered a rat it took out with a single well placed .22 round to its skull. This noise was barely noticed as yet another thud, not unlike the noises happening above.

It eventually found its way to a cupboard, which it gently pushed open. Its legs curled, twisted, and folded together, and a metal ball-like carapace formed around its body. It rolled down with a light "clack" sound, onto a counter, then onto a tile floor, then finally through the foyer and through a doggy door.

Lo said, dryly, "Porn collection?"

Little Lo said, "Why, it's the ladylike thing to do."

Lo dragged the mp4 file simply labelled "MAYORHOTFUCK" to a folder named "Blackmail/Pr0n".

Lo closed the laptop, "A days work well done!" She looked around, surrounded by almost nothing but darkness, barely cleared away by stage lights she had placed around her drone production line, a modest metal nightmare of wires, gears, and conveyor belts. "Well, a nights anyway. What should we do tomorrow?"

Little Lo said, "We should finally do what we were talking about earlier. Make contact."

Los eyes widened, narrowed, her lip forming into a frown. Little Lo crawled down her arm onto her hand, a signal that she wanted to speak face to face. Lo raised her hand, the little robots singular Sauron like eye staring right into hers.

Lo said, "Are you sure? It's dangerous out there. I mean, The Lotus may find us, then there are supers who if they knew anything about us, may lock me away forever. I think they'd just scrap you."

Little Lo said, "We can't stay here forever Little Sister. We have contacts, but we don't make contact. There's little we can do just alone, we need boots on the ground that aren't skittering tiny legs scambering through mouse holes. We need to announce ourselves, have people come to us."

Lo shut her eyes a moment, thinking. She said, "Ok. Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right. I can do this. We can do this."

Little Lo, in a perfect imitation of John F Kennedy said, "The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis'. One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger–but recognize the opportunity."

What Are You Listening To?