[quote=@Tatterdemalion] POTENTIAL 0 SHOWBOAT It’s too easy, really. They’re not packed in close to cut off her escapes: she’s brought them into a tight knot so that there’s no escape for them. She twirls her fingers, and with each spin it coalesces: first a line, then a rod, then a baton, then a wickedly sharp arrow. Crackling with barely-contained energy, she sends it shooting into the crowd with a delighted cry, and it pierces straight through the gas lines of the first trooper, making them flop and leak out the precious zombiefication gasses. As long as she doesn’t breathe any in, she’ll be fine! Zip, zip, zip! The arrow dances through their ranks like the perfect cut of an iaijutsu master, tearing open fuel lines and rupturing weak points in their armor. Instead of a rain of bullets for them to hunker down under, Sara is ripping through their vulnerabilities with just one, faster than they can react. Zip, zip, zip! If she’s very, very lucky, the gas won’t get to her, and she’ll be able to use a hard light wedge to bust free from the disoriented mass, so that she can rejoin Euna. And, hey, the luck’s part of the fun! She’s laughing wildly as she controls that arrow almost by instinct, rather than any sense of sight. [/quote] You stand triumphant atop a crowd of ruptured, smoking suits. About half of the audience has taken their cue to evacuate but the remainders are all cheering for you and you can see that stream count go up, up, up. [i]BOOM[/i] You're also the one to see the [i]Optokoppler[/i] pull in above. It's an assault carrier, a flying warship, the central base for the entire Spiral Corps company. Evidently whoever's co-ordinating this attack has decided to well and truly fuck subtlety. You can see half a dozen hangar bays open and begin launching reinforcements at the school - combat remotes, TAGs, reserved Spiral troopers. And you, @Sarahphim, get to play Space Invaders with the targets as they come down. [quote=@Phoe]"Don't be ridiculous," she scoffs, "You're not a hero yet." What a strange sensation. Normally in these moments her skillwires are such an out-of-body experience she can't help but feel like her arms belong to someone else, which leads her to the nasty point of contemplation that, legally, they probably do. Or did. It doesn't feel like that anymore. Even though her brain is doing just as little to guide the delicate motions of defusing a bomb as it ever has, the sensations coming from her fingers are real, are vibrant, are... warm. It's her. She's doing this. It's a choice that she made, and she's doing this with her own body. Suddenly, she can't find her anger anymore. It's not... it's not [i]forgiveness[/i], not it's exactly, it's... it's complicated. It's moving on. Moving forward. "This does [i]not[/i] make us even. So don't even think about pulling any of that Hac Tao bullshit on me, got it? Just because AEGIS rotted out from underneath me doesn't mean I believe what I said last time any less. So just... be good, god damn it." ...God damn it, Euna Kim. You are [i]lame.[/i] [Defend: [b]8[/b]. Errant will officially take Influence on Sabrem and expose herself to danger] [/quote] "Hnn. Yeah. Just..." Sabrem held perfectly still, the stillness of training and discipline that mirrored yours just as the unsteadiness in her voice mirrored yours. "I just..." with breathtaking fluidity she'd snatched the sword out of the ground and hurtled it across the room into the chest plate of a Spiral trooper drawing a bead on the two of you, all without even slightly shaking the backpack you were working on. "... call your bank. Tell them you want to upgrade to the Rega Plus package. It'll cost you about fifty bucks and will switch your savings to Crown&Slate scrip. Heads out any attempts from the corp to mess with your money. And there's a guy on 18th/44th/2609 who does competent cybersurgery no questions asked." She has her pistol out and is firing one handed, covering you from sporadic rifle fire. You know how exposed you are like this but just as you're working to save her she's working to save you. She sets her feet to resist the impact of hexshells against her armour. Her knee joint sparks and locks up as she absorbs damage. "Plus... hnnn... I made my own skillwire chip. For you. Simple thing. Get a hat and it'll give you the reflexes to automatically adjust it to block any camera that looks at you. Lets you move around the city safely. Hnn. Do you like hats?" [quote=@Balmas]Oh, Brainstorm has been there. Above the fray, getting the big picture, assessing. And if there's one thing that he's learned, it's that there's nothing quite so frustrating as getting distracted. Like, say, if someone where to thwip a little cable of nanites around that spiral trooper with a pulse rifle [i]juuuust[/i] enough to nudge his aim high? Or maybe he snaps a missile out of the air and redirects it? It's just the kind of thing that he'd find absolutely [i]maddening,[/i] especially if he were to follow it up with snapping a cable onto her jetpack, and filling her helmet with buzzing, stinging nanites. See how they like it. [Directly Engage with a 7. I'm stealing her concentration.] [/quote] [Marking Angry] The Spiral Commander endures this for a little while. Big picture. Big picture. [i]Big picture[/i]. But when your helmet is full of bees the big picture gets a lot smaller. She snaps out, surrounded by an aura of spectacular violet energy. Floor tiles begin to rip out of the ground and huge chunks of the roof are torn apart to procure additional projectiles - they surround her like the rings of Saturn, accelerating faster and faster, until they're launched at you like shots from a railgun. You've got her full attention now, but take a Powerful Blow from the counterattack. [b]Angel-IKA![/b] TAGs are not meant to be ridden. They're all sloping armour plates and smooth surfaces and keeping your grip on the three meter tall combat robot is [i]really hard[/i]. But goddamn it if this isn't the next best thing to piloting one. Ferraphim1tp: Woah - jeez! Ferraphim1tp: I am really glad I put in the simulator hours [i]first[/i] Ferraphim1tp: This thing does not move like I thought it would There was a dull roar as the main gun began to fire, tearing through a cluster of combat remotes. You swing your wooden chair leg like a baseball bat and land a solid connection against another repeater drone. If one of those gets onto the TAG then it'll be back to team evil. You might not be a badass sexy werewolf lady, but oxpecker is also a completely valid thing for a hero to be doing. You spare a glance at Locker. He's somehow got one of the Spiral troopers in a headlock and as you watch he rips off her helmet. She's dazed, glassy eyed, still dazed by the gas. "You're Igni, right?" he said in a voice that makes you flinch a little. "You shoot fire? Well you goddamn start shooting fire at anything I point you at." He swings her around like a human shield, holding up her right arm with one of his hands, catching bullets on her armour and clearing a huge swathe with blasts of fire from the supervillain. And there's Dominus. Camo jacket. Flag patches. Raven black hair. Moving in the midst of a cluster of her minions and you've never seen anyone move more like a superhero. Maybe it's just that she's surrounded by goons who make her look better in comparison, but every jump and swing and punch looks like something out of a movie. She punches a trooper's jaw, shattering her respirator, and pulls her in close to her neck so that the escaping gas is brought into close contact with the venomous perfume she's wearing. The Spiral trooper goes limp in her arms and Dominus makes eye contact with you from across the room and in that moment you're feeling like she must have poisoned you too. [quote=@eldest]"Nope!" She responds cheerfully. "No idea who you are. I'm Ferra. I'd guess you know that already though." It's remarkably zen, dangling here. If she was anybody else, she'd probably be scared stiff, but honestly? No fucks given. "And yeah, no, you sound super stressed, and if you try to lie to my face again about that I'm going to laugh at you." She gives a abridged shrug. "So why do you want everyone to, I don't know, fear your power and flee in terror at your name? I'm guessing that's what you meant there." [/quote] "You're [i]going to[/i] -" she hissed. "I don't even want fame. It's stupid! Only stupid people want fame! I just want a completely reasonable amount of respect! I've overthrown two megacorporations and am about to take down a third and I'll be the ruler of the world before I'm thirty. Is it too much to ask that every stupid teenager with a hoodie and a halloween mask stops breaking into my office to challenge me to a fistfight? That stupid old people stop second-guessing my business strategies? I just want to be taken seriously, and if that means blowing up Australia then that's what's going to happen."