eldest

MASKS - Ghost Gate City

Soul punched out of body? Uh, technically...

Yes....?

Pause, reboot. No. This guy thinks she's evil. A kidnapping menace. She'd never, she approves of the cute phone decorations too much. But she's supposed to be a dramatic specter. But that means this isn't the time to start talking about experimental metaphysics, which she totally knows about and didn't just go on a wikipedia deep dive over a week ago. She also can't just babbled at him about this to fix the problem, or otherwise confuse him till the problem goes away, which really is almost the same thing when you think about it!

What she needs is a sufficiently spooky and drama-filled way to correct his opinion so he knows that she is in fact a good, helpful ghost? No reason to try to trick this guy, he's clearly a good person since he's looking after a girl with superior phone decorations.

"I believe you have mistaken me for your captives... mortal."

#nailedit

MASKS - Ghost Gate City

Omigods omigods omigods.

Breath. Breathing. We are alive. We. We?

Huh. Branch came too.

That. That's new? Maybe she can make other living things into ghosts and... back again, yes, he's breathing. She's breathing too! On purpose, even. 4 in, hold 4, 4 out, hold 4. That's a square.

But Branch is here and breathing and was briefly a ghost and he probably wasn't one before, and isn't one now. So. That was her? Probably? Not what she wanted to do at all. But he's gonna be safe here! Unless the entire tower collapses in which case we all die except for probably Foxpearl and, depending on how good she is at becoming spectral on demand, Rain herself. But that won't happen. Won't.

Could have been the sunset? Or can she just do that all the time? She's taking inventory of the office (locked? maybe?, empty aside from them, lacking in painkillers sadly, no visible cameras) and that's about as far as she gets before the nerves hit. Shaking hands under the coat, deep breaths, and back to the square.

In.

Hold.

Out.

Hold.

Marking Afraid

MASKS - Ghost Gate City

You know what. On second thought. Maybe she was wrong.

He prooooooooobably isn't the kidnapped person. Still need to save him. Very important to save him, him and his nice firm muscles and the tasty stubble.

No helpfully placed shiny knife to save him, though. Disappointing. The world is supposed to provide the tools to lead you to prosperity, that's what her family always said and you just need to find the tools and wield them properly. Which is why she is not in fact trying out that halberd. Wisdom in restraint and emptiness in motion or something like that, she wasn't paying too close attention last time the topic came up.

So no, we're back to plan b, which is getting him out of here via the front door and ghost cheating. The sun's still up, she's alive and her heart is stubbornly beating, as it should be, but that's not helping her save this man... name. He's being named Branch now. There's a peach phone there, he supports the peach person, he's Branch.

Rain carefully grabs onto the ropes tying Branch in place and carefully, carefully tries to turn just her hands and the ropes incorporeal.

Unleash powers: 2 - 1 is a 1. Enjoy.

MASKS - Ghost Gate City

This! Rain knows what this is! She's read stories online with this. Secretly this guy is a hostage or something and the fire is meant to be threatening him, and all the video cameras are broadcasting the peril to his loved ones to make them crack and tell secrets or open up the actual vault! Everything else is a sideshow (but an important one, since nobody should get hurt and that's what the blackguards are counting on), and this is what's important, but the Princess is taking care of the other civilians and that means she can take care of what's happening here.

Assuming she's right. She's not always been right about these things.

She peers at the bound man, resisting the urge to wave at the cameras, and frowns under the mask. She saw the halberd and that coooooould cut the ropes but it could also go terribly, terribly wrong. But on the other hand she probably shouldn't leave to get a knife (note to self, add a knife to her go bag, a nice folding one that looks sufficiently spooky for a ghost to use), so she's going to have to find something here. Probably. Or try something tricky. She can't make anybody else into a ghost, unless she's making them permanently a ghost by killing them, but that is not proper behavior and she will chose not to do that. But. But! She might. Miiiiiiight. Be able to do something tricky with making the ropes into ghost-ropes and then pulling them off her. She carefully does not think of alternative uses for ghost ropes. Now is not the time, brain, later with a word document, maybe when she's supposed to be doing accounting practice.

Straight. Up. Creepin'. : 11

- who or what here is not what they seem?
- what here is worth grabbing?

MASKS - Ghost Gate City

Rain Lanahe
Superhero Identity: none chosen yet
Powers: Phasing and Swords

Potential: 0/5

Labels
Danger -1
Freak -1
Savior +2
Superior +1
Mundane +2

Conditions
[_] Afraid (-2 to directly engage a threat)
[X] Angry (-2 to comfort or support or pierce the mask)
[_] Guilty (-2 to provoke someone or assess the situation)
[_] Hopeless (-2 to unleash your powers)
[_] Insecure (-2 to defend someone or reject others’ influence)

Moves

Straight. Up. Creepin’.: When you scope out a person or place, roll + Mundane. On a 10+, ask two. On a 7-9, ask one.
- what’s my best way in/out?
- what happened here recently?
- what here is worth grabbing?
- who or what here is not what they seem?
- whose place is this?
On a miss, you find yourself in over your head. The GM will tell you why this is a bad spot.

No powers and not nearly enough training: You’re always picking up new gear to keep yourself in the game. Whenever you pick up a new piece of gear, you can write it in as a new ability if this line is empty.

The first time you use each piece of gear to directly engage a threat, unleash your powers, or defend someone, you can roll + Mundane instead of the normal Label.

Drives

Choose four drives to mark at the start of play. When you fulfill a marked drive, strike it out, and choose one: mark potential, clear a condition, take Influence over someone involved.
When your four marked drives are all struck out, choose and mark four new drives. When all drives are struck out, change playbooks, retire from the life, or become a paragon of the city.
X lead the team successfully in battle
❑ kiss someone dangerous
❑ punch someone you probably shouldn’t
❑ help a teammate when they most need you
X take down a threat all on your own
❑ outperform an adult hero
❑ pull off a ridiculous stunt
❑ save a teammate’s life
❑ get drunk or high with a teammate
❑ drive a fantastical vehicle
❑ get a new costume
X get a new hero name
❑ earn the respect of a hero you admire
❑ make out with a teammate
❑ punch out a teammate
❑ break up with someone
❑ stop a fight with calm words
❑ tell someone your true feelings for them
X travel to an incredible place (or time)
❑ reject someone who tells you “you shouldn’t be
here”

Looks

Rain has a smiling, distracted face, glasses, comfortable clothes and a satchel with a book and some fruit with her at all times. She's got a cascade of black curls going down to the small of her back, with fuzzy black cat ears and a tail to match from an exotic quirk of her family's bloodline. She tends towards earth tones, cream and brown and dark green, all in long flowing skirts and copper bracelets, but will sometimes instead dress up in a riot of color or sleek formality when the occasion calls for it. When operating as a vigilante, she wears crisp monochrome, white shirt, black pants, and an oversized coat with silver embossing depicting doves in flight. She carries an extendable shock baton in either outfit, and is learning to apply classical sword training to it.

Backstory

How did you gain your skills?

I grew up learning them. Swordplay was an interest after reading a story with pirates, as was acrobatics, though sadly until recently I was never any good at the latter. History and old architecture sparked from a trip to an old family summer house, where I could see three different ages and styles of building all grafted onto the main house. Transportation and logistics came from when I visited the Three Leg Canal.

But you're asking about the ghost stuff. I came to Skygate City for, bluntly, resume building. Intern between schooling, it looks better, and there was the need for somebody who knew about old tunnels. I'm not entirely sure what the goal of their experiment was: they tried to explain some of the science behind what they were doing, but it didn't click for me at all, kept coming off like a bad screenplay.

Then it did turn out like a bad screenplay, because everything was silver lightning and a horrific shrieking noise that I was told afterwards the entire city heard. Not sure how I'm not deaf, or dead for that matter. I survived, somehow, but the next thing I clearly remember was stumbling into Doctor Huan who was trying to study the aftereffects of whatever I had just survived. It'd been three days.

After that, I've found that I can turn wispy and ethereal if I focus during the day, and it takes focus to not have that happen during the night. I can do that to anything I can carry that's not alive, with some concentration. I'm not sure what's going on, but I might have to go back and talk to Doctor Huan again: nobody else from the original experiment has turned up alive yet.

When did you first put on your costume?

Okay, there was a costume party a week after I got back from Underneath. I was supposed to go to the costume party, but, well. I didn't really care that much. So I ended up exploring in the lesser night market looking for some really tasty smelling plum sauce, and I accidentally interrupted a mugging. Some shirtless idiot with dragon tattoos and a knife. Tried to stab me, but it went straight through me, and then I grabbed a plank of wood and brained him with it. The couple that I had saved started to babble about the ancestors protecting them, and I panicked and rushed away through the wall into a quiet back storeroom.

So now there's stories floating around about a severe ghost in black and silver saving people, and I keep that outfit in my bag, just in case: it's been helpful several times already. I added a good baton to fight with, though, and a hat to keep my ears hidden on top of the mask it already had.

Who, outside of the team, thinks you shouldn’t be a superhero?

I'm not a superhero! I'm just trying to help people while I'm in the city, and don't have to work. I have 3 months left till I start back up at university again. My Uncle Dor, the one who organized the apartment I'm living in, doesn't even approve of superheroes at all. Says that HOUND will clean up the city and bring a new age of prosperity. He plays cards with Director Li and some others every other week, and they catch up: I think they were childhood friends or something.

Why do you try to be a hero?

Well. I'm not a hero. And to be honest, I'm doing all this for really selfish reasons: I like getting to see people happy. I got to stop back in the lesser night market a few nights after I stopped that first mugging, and a nice noodle vendor was telling the herbalist next to him about it with the biggest grin on his face. One of the two ladies that I'd helped was his niece (though originally the family had thought she was a nephew instead, but she figured that one out young), and it just sort of rippled out through there. So I try to hang around the markets and back alleys and places now, and step in when I'm needed.

Why do you care about the team?

I've known Hsien for three months but it feels like years, and I was so damn excited when I found out she lived in Skygate after I bitched about not knowing anybody there on Tumblr that I couldn't sit still for hours. And the Princess I ran into when I was exploring the tunnels: she was trying to track down a black pearl smuggling group, apparently, and I could help with that! Sure, Hsien gets kinda weird about ideas and philosophy and stuff and I don't actually know the Princess's name, but that's fine. Friendship is one of the good things in life.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

She finishes stirring the pot, letting the pork simmer, and moves to cutting up vegetables. Onions, peppers, leeks, carrots. It's not what she's used to cooking with, there's no taro root and the spices are different. Not wrong. She thought that when she first came here, that everything was wrong, but no, it's simply different. She's gotten a taste for it, though.

One must prepare one's thoughts. Meditation, a chance to reflect on how she feels, would have been ideal. But she doesn't have that time, so she licks her lips, nervous, and begins with the declaration of treason. Hopefully she gets to finish the thought.

"The Red Wolf... no. Cathak Agata is wrong. She has no right to act as she does, not by blood, not by conquest, and certainly not by the abundance of essence she has been gifted. Her command over the Dominion forces here, their very presence, is immoral. But it doesn't serve Dominion interests to act morally, so they will ignore or tolerate it up until there is a forced public acknowledgment of her actions. That will be a blow to their ability to bring the Flower Kingdoms into harmonious accord, so they will not see anything wrong with how she acts. The entire system is wrong, and flawed from the start. There's no benefit to the people who live here to be brought into that fold. But that's not why."

She looks up and meets her teacher's gaze, through the veil. The hat was new, but she always did like the theatrical details. Draw the eye to something big and easily swapped out of, like a hat, or a painted mask, and nobody will make an easy connection. She'd liked that lesson.

"There are two women in that room that love each other very much, and only just have managed to realize there is a chance, a seed to sprout. Agata will crush that, without hesitation, not because it's right, or because it's needed, but because it does not glorify her. She is not the center of their worlds, and so the two lovers will suffer for it."

Her grip shifts on the vegetable knife.

"I won't have it."

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Never let a weaker person fight their own battles.

What in the world is giving the impression that's what she's doing?

Love has been compared to many a thing, but Piripiri naturally leans towards gardening metaphors. You need to make sure the ground is right, the season is correct, tend it carefully, water it, and then leave it be for periods of time. And then you check up on it. She's got perhaps ten minutes left till the food is done. She's hoping that Lotus is not one of those unfortunates who has absolutely no spice tolerance, and that nobody is allergic to carrots for whatever reason, but it'd be very awkward to intrude back in after declaring that they'd have privacy to ask about meal preferences.

So instead she'll make a lot of noise coming down the hallway in about fifteen minutes, let them separate and have a chance to realize that yes, they're both interested, and yes, it wasn't just a heat of the moment thing. Have a nice dinner together. And then exhaust the two of them training on basic essence flow. Han needs it, bless her, and Lotus can keep up. She's never seen how a demigoddess would take to the practices, it'd be interesting for them all.

But for the moment? She is intervening, it's the entire reason they've kissed by now (they better have kissed by now). But she's doing so strategically. Carefully. With an eye for thorns, and when to leave well enough alone.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

As she's walking away, Piripiri feels the flare of heat from behind her, and half turns. It's not an attack, though, it's- ah. Ahhhhh.

Well. That's one thing she's wanted out of this mess, accomplished. She'll have to figure out more reasons for them to cuddle later. Maybe a muscle massage for Han after hard training?

She turns back to the kitchen, pulling a stack of bowls and filling them with water halfway, before walking around the perimeter of the house. At each cardinal point, she places a bowl, leaving a selection of petals and herbs floating in the bowl, and chanting a short poem. The first five, the outer layer, are a notice-me-not, to ward away the smaller spirits that might seek out Lotus for her mother. The inner layer, each placed equidistant between two outer bowls, is a forbiddance to those same spirits. It won't keep out a focused and trained witch, but she doesn't have anything that would. Delaying and hiding.

She crouched by the last bowl, chewing her lip. She's safe, for the moment. Azazuka is off someplace. Giriel is off someplace, probably with her. Hopefully with her. The Red Wolf is at the legion's camp, most likely, with the barge scuppered. She's been ordered to bring Lotus directly to the camp, and... she's not going to. She never was going to, she realizes. It's Cathak acting out of emotions and ego, instead of what's helpful. Lotus being in the wind is better for every angle, Lotus's comfort, operational security, political risk to the Dominion, she could keep going. The only danger is if somebody makes the accurate guess that the Dominion has her, but suspects that she's in the camp, and launches a full attack.

She could fix that.

She's staring down at the bowl, the last part of the forbiddance. Right now, as it stands, everything she has done was for security. Disobeying a specific order to follow a more general one is reasonable. Letting in a fox spirit, on purpose, is not. Nobody else would know. But she would.

Her back hurts still. Agata's gift. That fierce, warm joy of the two discovering their feelings.

It'd be a kindness to them.

She tips over the bowl, pouring out the water and flipping the bowl upside down. Piripiri rises from her crouch, raises a finger to her lips, and winks out at the river. Our little secret.

She then goes back to the kitchen. Let's see what lunch options we have.

TSL: The Excess of Flowers

Piripiri leans in close to Lotus first, lips brushing against her ear, and whispers instructions.

"Be protected. Be kept safe by her, and me. Be valued, for yourself. Aid her, and treat her wounds. Talk with her about any anxieties the two of you have. I will be giving you privacy."

She winks with a soft smile. Han next.

"Guard and protect her from harm. Should the need arise, use the blade. Talk with her, reassure her, discuss anything you want. Allow her to care for you. You may remove the gag but not the rope. I will be giving you privacy."

And then, she leaves, shutting the door after her. Time to give the two privacy, and secure the lodge.

Hard Wired Island: The Future is a Foreign Country

"This is all public, insider trading means something else, you're good, don't gamble on the stock market."

There's no bite to the reproach: her mind's elsewhere, racing through all of the things she's done recently. Fistfighting a cop in public, sort of, breaking and entering, sort of. Both things that the cops can't really try to go after her legally for, but they're really pissed so they might try something. Her safehouse. Might need to avoid it, since it's condemned and they could spin something out of it. Or just try to approach it through the underways.

Not the important thing right now. She yanks her train of thought away from contingencies and worst-case situations. She's in public, there is a Black Sun lady here with the Yggdrasil party, there is no Orochi Group presence, something is wrong and she needs to know.

"More." She's got a spider doing the searching for her and that means she can just do legwork and connections. "Anything recent on Orochi and Yggdrasil?"

Three minutes later, she has a headache, a newfound disdain for corporate headhunting, and the voice in her ear's still talking.