Silver Carrot

"What Did They Do To Us?" - A Mysterious Supernatural Escape RP!!

Travelling back home today, and will make a post once I'm back

Geonet 2.0 - Battle for the Megacity

After showering, Julia looked through her wardrobe for what to wear. Her old leather jacket had been irreperably damaged in the explosion that took her left arm and right leg. She'd been able to buy a few more leather jackets from 'retro' shops in Arcadium 15, though hearing them called retro had really pissed her off. They sold trenchcoats in that shop too. She knew of a few dead E street members and MCPD officers who'd be horrified to see that if they were still here.

After wearing a particularly shiny 'dress' one, a silver crop top that she would not have been able to pull off without the jacket over it, and tight leather pants, she then actually brushed her hair and did her makeup for once. The finished effect was that she now looked like a rather attractive, trendy woman in her early 40's as opposed to late 50's, if you ignored the greying hair. She took her handbag and her keys and headed out the door. She didn't need to look far or wonder which car was Xiang's. It was certainly a statement, and no doubt the car of an eccentric heir. She approached it and knocked on the window. After the door was opened for her, she slid into the passenger seat.

"Just me," She replied. "sorry, hope you weren't waiting too long. I had to remember how to dress up."

She was certainly tense when she heard the engine. It wasn't exactly a sound you'd associate with the healthy engine of a safe car. Her grip tightened against the edges of her seat. The sound apparently being deliberate was slightly reassuring but that was cancelled out by the heir apparently having made the car herself. After a while, she got used to the noise, and could see that Xiang was a very good driver. Julia had never owned her own vehicle but when she was ninteen, she had a boyfriend who owned a hoverbike. Riding on the back of that thing was the single scariest thing she had experienced in her life at that point, gunfights included.

Xiang easily got past the bouncer, a task that Julia always remembered being a gargantuan struggle for a posse of scruffy E street kids, several of whom were too young to drink legally. So even by the standards of heirs, Xiang must be a big deal. Not just a corporate higher up, but maybe a CEO herself. She followed Xiang to her usual spot, and smiled when she saw where it was.

"Well, isn't that a coincidence," she chuckled before collapsing into the sofa beside Xiang. "This was my usual spot too." When the robot bartender arrived, Julia had no such restraints as Xiang did. "I'll take a cocktail. Shuffle. Choose random." The robot bartender process the command words before ordering Julia a random cocktail. Not even she knew what she'd ordered.

After her new friend inquired about her story, Julia looked like she was deep in thought for a second. "It's not a case of 'I'd tell you but then I've have to kill you.' There's a lot of details we would genuinely both get targeted for if I spill them, so I'll have to cut a lot out. I'll tell you what I can, though. I was in prison for the last thirty years. Walked right into a trap, got blown up, caused a huge mess that I had to clean up by taking the fall for absolutely everything, in exchange for a lenient sentence."

The doors to the club opened, and a man in a black coat walkied in. For a brief second, Julia swore she recognised the gentleman. She tried imagining him thirty years younger, and the color immediate drained from her face. Her eyes narrowed to pinpricks. Something Xiang could never have pictured until that moment; Julia was terrified. She averted her eyes and preyed that he hadn't noticed her. Why oh why of all days did she have to wear a leather jacket today?!

@Kumbaris@Thayr

Geonet 2.0 - Battle for the Megacity

Julia was across from Xiang, and watched her curl the dumbells, as well as listened to her. The older woman's brow furrowed. "When you say 'robotic', you mean you've installed augments inside your natural arms, right? I don't mean to stick my nose where it doesn't belong but you could say I've developed a distaste for the rush to willingly get rid of natural limbs in their entirety. I never had a choice in the matter. This arm is only a replacement. It doesn't have any mods or gimmicks. No hidden blades or guns. I could have requested them but...that would be admitting I wouldn't rather have my real arm back..."

She looks down at her arm as it curls a heavy dumbbell with no issues at all. The hydraulics in the elbow were making easy work of the movement. She sighed with a melancholy longing and returned her attention to Xiang. Once they both finished their reps, Julia put her bells back on the rack, where an attendant dressed in white shorts and a collared shirt took them away for sterelising. This was after all a Spire gym. She listened to Xiang talk about her past and rested her metal hand on her hip, impressed.

"Wow! I would not have guessed you only started fighting that late in life, though if you're involved in that sort of thing, it makes sense. As for me, there...was nothing to get used to. I had my first firefight and took my first life when I was thirteen years old. I was E Street, you see," she explained. A scarred, unkempt lady with a rough accent and the air of a killer suddenly moving to the Spire made a lot more sense now. However, it didn't seem like she was going to divulge anything more detailed than that. E street stay in the good books of their Heir benefactors (and by extention, Law Enforcement) by keeping their mouths shut and following orders.

"And sure! I'm down for hitting Vivian's! As long as I can stop by my apartment to change first. I am not going to Vivian's in gym gear with no makeup," Julia agreed as they both walked in the direction of the showers side by side. "Vivian's used to be the Black Cat, right?"

Vivian's was renamed from the Black Cat before Xiang was even old enough to get in.

Geonet 2.0 - Battle for the Megacity

When Julia got to the gym, she decided to start with her old daily prison workout routine as a warm up. Fifty pushups, fifty situs, fifty crunches, fifty bicycle crunches, twenty minutes on the treadmill as a subsitute for ten laps of the field, followed by fifty squats. With that done, she waited for one of the posturing bronzed pretty boys to be done with the nearest bench. He took one look at the middle age woman covered in scars and wlked away in a mix of fear and slight revulsion. She clearly wasn't an heir with her messy grey hair and makeup-barren face. Julia sighed. She used to be the most attractive girl in the E street nightclubs. Bigger pond, different fish, thirty years later. Not the same story.

Now a little pissed off, she hit the benches. Pressing this much would have been easy. Still technically was easy in terms of the reps. But what she was trying to train with this were both her back and shoulder muscles, and her coordination. A robotic arm was a little too easy to move quickly and easily compared to a human one, and she wanted both of her arms to move in sync. In a way, having gotten used to being one-armed and having forgotten how to use her left arm was a blessing, as it made these coordination exercises easier. She didn't need to unlearn anything the same way people only augmenting one side needed to.

Her shoulders were always undertrained. She used to work out so that she could fight, and run. But she wanted to achieve this without adding too much bulk to her feminine frame. But that ship has now sailed. So what if she gets broad shoulders? A robot arm is strong but a punch from it is only as strong as the power you can pack into your shoulder.

She lost track of time as she zoned out, disassociated from her body and started thinking about other things while her arms kept on moving by themselves now they'd gotten the rhythm down. Only when her right arm and left shoulder finally started to feel physically exhausted did she come back to reality and place the bar back on its rack. She wiped the sweat from her face and arm with her gym towel, before one of their heirs approached and addressed her.

Julia caught herself thinking 'why is she holding out her left hand? I don't have a left hand' before remembering the arm. She shook Xiang's hand with her prosthetic and nodded in greeting.

"Yeah, I'm new here. Only moved into the Spire a little under two weeks ago," Julia answered. She wasn't intimidated by Xiang, but she was impressed. Julia had been checking in on Xiang out of the corner of her eye every minute or two. She'd seen women who were like this in prison; strong, heavily augmented, fighters. Killers, even. But not so much in the Spire. And she clearly knew how to fight fight, not just throw punches. Julia liked this stranger.

"I'm Julia Kray. And I just got done on the bench but I was going to hit the bells next if you want to talk there. Gotta say, don't see very many heirs who can fight like that."

@Kumbaris

Geonet 2.0 - Battle for the Megacity

'08:04' was the display on the bedside clock. Julia's eyes went wide with panic as she tried to scramble out of the covers. Shit! She was four minutes late for cell inspection!

She stopped. There was no cell inspection. She was free.

Julia sighed and scratched at her messy bed-hair. She looked around her bedroom, still unable to believe that this was her home now. Her bedroom alone was over four times larger than her cell. A king-size bed in the middle of the room. Very soft foam mattress. An empty walk-in wardrobe because her clothes were all folded up inside the chest of drawers. She had yet to buy nice clothes despite having the money for it. She tried to go clothes shopping in the Spire once, and her courage ran out. Nobody wants to see her old, scarred one-armed body in a cocktail dress, least of all herself. The clerks were practically begging her to the contrary, desperate to make the sale. She wanted to shoot them both then and there.

After a quick shower, Julia got dressed in baggy cargo pants and a navy blue vest. She always liked to dress comfortably on gym days. She entered the main living are of her open plan Spire apartment. It was swish. Intimidatingly nice. She'd earned this, but still felt wierd enjoying it. It felt like living in a hotel you needed to be careful not to trash because one day the real owner's going to tell you that your time's up. But this was hers. She was the real owner. Her benefactor had paid in cash for the apartment. They'd even asked Julia if she was sure she wanted somewhere so small and basic. Julia assured them that any Spire house nicer than this and Julia wouldn't be able to sleep at night.

She cooked herself a simple breakfast of bacon and eggs then crashed on the couch and watched junk TV on her home cinema while she ate, more for the background noise than anything else. It reminded her of the buzz of the prison cafeteria. Eating in silence made Julia self-conscious now. She didn't want to hear herself chew.

All of this, had been done with only one arm. only now, at 9:30am, did Julia finally walk to her arm stand and attach her arm. The robot leg, she couldn't live without. The robot arm, she was re-learning how to live with. That's why her frequent visits to the gym every morning were so important. Yes, she'd gotten soft after thirty jears incarcerated, but the main purpose of her gym sessions were to get her brain used to being able to use her left arm again. She'd spent longer without a left arm than with one at this point in her life. Even so, it was shocking how quickly it was coming back to her.

She fished her gym clothes from her unironed clean laundry pile, tossed them in a duffel bag, pocketed her keys and threw on a leather jacket as she left her apartment. The door autolocked behind her, and she was off to the Spire's gym.

Parahumans: Earth Drega

---

Bridgewater Bank
June 19th, 2021
@Blizz@Aku the Samurai@Duoya

Faith could see that there was a fight happening in front of her, but she couldn't process association. It felt like she was watching TV. Even after Richter flicked her head and Shattercrash shouted at her, it took a moment for her to come back to the here and now. There wasn't time to be scared. She turned and headed to the row of teller counters. She very briefly considered picking up the assault rifle, but guns made her very uncomfortable. She didn't think she'd be able to pull the trigger even if she knew bullets wouldn't be able to hurt her target. So she made her way past the gun, leaving Richter and Shattercrash to fight Ironsides.

Shattercrash had gotten the same idea that Decree herself had thought up in the van; using the teller's PA system with her power. All of their group were wearing their earpieces which meant that Decree's commands should only affect Ironsides. It did make her feel less special that somebody else figured that out. Likely, everybody else had figured that out. Most of them had some history in violent, high-stress situations. She was one of the only members who had not. She was not smarter than them, and their experience trumped hers. She wasn't special. As much as she hated using her powers, they were all she had going for her in this team. She needed to get very comfortable using them very fast.

The doors intol the staff area were, naturally for a bank, locked and very secure. Luckily, one or two of the counters had broken glass from the mercanary groups' initial invasion. Decree carefully crawled in through the broken glass, and looked around at this room. The PCs and tills were useless to Decree right now. What wasn't useless was the PA system's microphone, and a CCTV screen showing multiple camera angles of the lobby including a few where she could see Ironsides, Shattercrash and Richter. Just then, Keystone's voice came through her earpiece, and therefore probably everybody's.

"Lot more metal here than I expected - I'm thinking something is boosting Ironside up more than usual. Maybe a trump, tinker tech enhancements or something. Hard to narrow it down with my power being distracted and pointing out every puddle to me. Just be careful if you guys see him, and watch where you step. If Tandem is free, covering the metal in containment foam would be smart."

The other two in the foyer would have heard that too. Didn't change that the fight was going to be a lot more dangerous than the group initially anticipated. They'd need Decree's help. She knew that her power had much less effect on people who didn't trust her, so telling him not to attack or to stand down wouldn't work. But commands he'd want to follow anyway, even if, no, especially if he wasted precious time and brainpower to resist them, would make all the difference. She waited to see what Ironsides would do now he was faced with two powerful opponents. From what Richter did to that coin, Decree knew that he couldn't be underestimated here.

"What Did They Do To Us?" - A Mysterious Supernatural Escape RP!!

Pia

---

The first thing Pia noticed when leaving the elevator was that there were bodies strewn across the floor, many with weapons in their hands. But unless they were killing each other, whatever they were shooting at hadn't been taken down by the gunfire. VV moved a little ahead then looked up and her expression quickly changed to one of fear. A had a similar reaction, and suggested they slowly stick to the shadows to avoid drawing its attention.

"We already have its attention," Pia whispered back sharply. "There's no way it didn't hear the elevator door open. Don't make any sudden movements."

Pia started very slowly inching her way away from the elevator in the direction of the archive room's exit, and the main corridor that awaited. She saw the weapons littering the floor. If they couldn't help their previoud owners, they probably wouldn't help this group any more, but it would be slightly more reassuring to be holding something she could use to defend herself.

"What Did They Do To Us?" - A Mysterious Supernatural Escape RP!!

@Estylwen

Will definitely post tomorrow because I'll be back at my own house

"What Did They Do To Us?" - A Mysterious Supernatural Escape RP!!

Pia

---

She lay still and listened to a voice that had broken through the silence. Something about...stopping a flood? She concentrated, so that she'd be able to recall every word. For some reason, what he was saying seemed very important.

It was only when she pulled herself upright in the pod, that she realised that the voice had been talking English, and that she understood him. Why, then, were her thoughts in German? She must have been bilingual. From the moment she woke up until now, she'd been trying to recall something. Anything. But it wasn't even a blur. There was nothing up there at all.

She climbed out the pod to discover that she wasn't alone. There were others, similarly dressed up like...test subjects, who had also come from pods. She immediately had to cover her ears because the woman in the pod besides hers started screaming and cursing, breaking the still silence. She didn't want to glare at the woman. Her feelings were understandable, but it was still...startling, to say the least.

One of the others drew the group's attention to a map, and began discussions on where to go, and each other's names. She saw several others looking down at barcodes. She had one too. PG-414-G6G-78. From the way others were name each other, that'd make her what? P? Hmm, she'd rather have a real name. What about Pia?

"Call me Pia, then," She'd say to the group, in a heavy German accent, before pointing at the map. "Only two rooms are pointed out. The safe room and the main gate. I think whoever drew on this map wants us to get to the main gate, but...why would we need to use a safe room?"

Geonet 2.0 - Battle for the Megacity

Julia Kray

"If there's one thing that never changes, it's that a gun can fix most of life's problems."

Age: 57

Appearance: Despite her age, it is impossible to mistake Julia for a civillian. Behind messy, dishevelled grey hair that covers half her face, she has the eyes of a crminal. Her cybernetics, gait and overall aesthetics and fashion sense suggest that she may be a soldier. That isn't exactly a lie. Her face shows signs of its former handsome shape, and betrays that if she concealed her crows feet and actually wore makeup, she'd likely look rather attractive.

Faction: E Street

Sk8te Cell/Gang: N/A

Background: Julia had the misfortune to grow up in an orphanage, never knowing or learning who her real parents were. She was, however, fortunate that the orphanage had ties to E Street. She can't remember the point where she went from having "older brothers" in the gang to being in the gang officially, but she remembers the day when she took her first life for the gang, age fifteen. She gained a reputation as a ruthless, violent enemy to have yet a caring and intelligent leader to follow.All that mattered to her was that there was mutual respect wthin the gang at all times.

By the time she was 19, she was the leader of her cell. By the time she was 23, she was one of the more senior members of the entire gang, and was frequently in direct contact with the gang's benefactors. During her tenure at the top, a rival gang named Black Maria had suddenly grown very powerful without anyone noticing and were claiming large swathes of the entertainment district as their own without asking her. It was, to Julia, a lack of respect. The long-running feud between Black Maria and E Street that is still felt to this day, was started with four shots from Julia's gun, and three bodies.

Things would escalate in the coming years. Everything came to a head when Julia was 27. She was already starting to be looked down on by newer members for getting too old, and her power quickly unravelled. She couldn't keep her cells as tight-knit as she used to, and rival gangs found weaknesses to exploit in the cracks. That's how before she could realise these problems, Julia found herself waking up in a hospital bed.

Her left arm and right leg couldn't be saved, Too mangled from the explosion, and her benefactors screaming at her over the phone that they'd been comprimosed. A trail leading right back to them had been blown wide open. It was Julia's idea, in response, to have everything pinned on her. All loose ends tied. She would be the mastermind. The benefactors agreed, and used their sway to reduce the sentence to 30 years. Any shorter and people would start smelling a rat. She really should have gotten the chair for all the things she'd done.

Finally free 30 years later, she has served her sentence. She is a free women. Her benefactor's family give her a suite in the Lower Spire, and the best cybernets money can buy to replace her arm and leg. She could have lived like this. She could have put her feet up, enjoyed an easy life and relaxed. But Julia Kray was a criminal. Julia Kray was E Street for life.

Cybernetics: Julia Kray has a cybernetic arm and a cybernetic leg. Neither have any hidden gadgets or gimmicks. All she needed from them was the fuctionality of her missing limbs, though her left arm is now much, much stronger than it used to be.

Weapons/Tools: Julia carries a single Camelid 446-G Pistol. An old fashioned gun that nevertheless packs a punch. Around her neck (and sonetimes her ears) were a set of headphones connected to the GeoNet. Though the technology is now almost 40 years out of date, these are still Julia's preferred method of utilising cyberspace as it leaves her eyes and hands free.

Likes:
- Anything alcoholic that's sweet
- Nostalgia
- Acheiving self-set daily or weekly goals

Dislikes:
- Disrespect
- Noisy places
- Smoking

Quirks:
- Julia refuses to update her fashion. She believes she'd look ridiculous in modern fashion and opts for the classics; jeather jackets, high collars, tight pants and aviator shades
- Doesn't listen to music unless she can sing along in private
- Has discovered, with the help of her new apartment, just how much she loves a nice long bath at the end of the week

Places of Interest:
-Her Apartment - A spacious, modern two bedroom apartment in the lower spire. As big and luxurious as Julia could feel comfortable with, being a hardened criminal from the streets

-Vivian's - A Nightclub on the lower levels of the Spire, near her new home. She used to frequent it back when it was called 'The Black Cat' and the charm has mostly been kept the same. Music is good, drinks are cheap (for The Spire) and the food is to die for.

- [REDACTED] - The hidden E-Street base of operations that is still being used by the big shots of the current gang to this day.