It’s not enough. It’s not enough. There’s still debris getting through, too small for her to get a bead on, but still deadly enough to kill those below. She revs up the hardlight generator until it’s as hot as a brand, a coal placed by an angel beneath her spine, and she wraps a net of searing light around the chaos, instantly incinerating the debris falling through it.
Her legs go limp, and only the wing harness is keeping her up as she screams, her nerves hot fires, her hands clenched into claws, as she gives her all and then some. Her mind is a white-seared tiger-desert of instinct. The camera drones swinging around her catch it all: the blinding web matrix, the spears and claws that expertly skewer falling death and send it hurtling into the hell this fallen angel hangs above, and the sweat dripping down her agonized face.
Forget the airplane. This is the new benchmark for ballsiest thing @SARAHPHIM has ever pulled off.
[Choosing to escalate the situation below, and to take Influence over the civilians.]
Amy Bentham!You are being picked up. This is distracting you from watching the glorious fires of heaven and the perfect angel in the centre of all of it.
"Don't worry, small child," said the statueseque Maria, Maiden of the Black Sun. "I am here to protect you from this evildoer."
"She's not an evildoer," you say, squirming. She's holding you very uncomfortably with a single arm. "She's an angel. She saved me! She saved everyone!"
"
Non, I saved you," said Maria in an artificially friendly voice. "She is the one who caused the damage in the first place. Do not worry, come with me, we are going to arrest her. It is like you are my squire, yes?"
"You're not a knight. Knights don't carry guns," you inform her, as much as it disappoints you to not be a squire - but there are rules to this kind of thing.
"You need to watch more cartoons,
mon petite fille," she says. "Use the promo code Candybutton for 15% off season one of Knights of the Black Sun..."
*
@Sarahphim!You're on the ground. You're wrecked. Everything hurts.
Best tiger.
But coming through the rubble, outlined in smoke and ash, comes Maria, the leader of the Knights of the Black Sun. She's an invincible, monstrous mountain of armour and cybernetics... which means that she'd have to be extremely evil to come at you using a child as a human shield. Extremely evil or absolutely terrified of you. Possibly both.
Probably both. But she's coming at you slow, looking for the right angle to tear you apart with her rifle, evidently giving not a single damn about how any of this looks.
You're drained. You feel like you gave everything you had back there.
Ferra looks up at the Gears Foundation. No, fuck that, she looks up at her home. And it's got a giant bloody hole in it and is rapidly falling down towards the spaceport, including all the civilians. And Victor is calmly pointing it out. Her cat is in there. She is aware.
She doesn't register her surge of power from her core, or the leap that follows, or the absent, toneless "Thank you Victor, I know". That is her home, her home is in danger, and she is going to be there and helping. She rises up straight through the center of Sara's pattern, her last hardlight sword spread out into overlapping, neatly glowing fields, spreading out between her hands as she rises until the spirograph is large enough to encompass her home.
And she catches the building, and holds it there, her whole world between her hands.
The sky does not fall.
The building sets down heavily on the runway amidst plumes of fire. Immediately people pile out through the front doors, getting to safety as the fire suppression systems start to completely cut loose.
And behind you the rocket roars.
There's so much else that's happening right now, Ferra, but if that satellite goes up then all of this will be for nothing. Everyone else is distracted, distant, busy - you're the only one who has the opportunity to get aboard before the boosters engage and it's gone for good.
This is his moment, and his ideal location: that is to say, above the chaos, away from annoying--
The building shudders, and he winces. Self congratulation later, advice now. Brainstorm taps his headset. "Team, Victoria is on the scene, attacking the building. She is currently insecure about herself and is trying to separate herself from the Turbo Knight name, so feel free to poke that wound as much as you'd like. Errant, the Shogun looks like she's in need of assistance. Ferra, the Gears building is going down, they'd probably appreciate an assist. Sara, you're the best with crowds and multiple targets, and right now we have debris aimed at them."
He gulps, and adds, "Bode, if you're willing, I have a drone and a job for you, please."
[Tactical Genius. That's a 9, unless somebody wants to use team to bump it to a 10. That's a +1 Ongoing for Ferra, at the cost of looking like a showoff.]
Turbo Knight!They somehow lived through that. Good for them.
Her Magna-Melter is hot against her hand. This is the signature weapon of Turbo Knight, the devastating laser beam that can annihilate anything in its path - and it feels
good to use. There's something about the secondary explosions that just lets people know that you mean
business. Her grandfather was able to engage in collateral damage like this because he was a lunatic, but her? She could do it because she could
afford it. It was entirely different.
She hovers above the Gears foundation, letting the Magna-Melter warm up against her palm again. "You'd better come out soon,
Brainstorm," she blares over the suit's speakers. "I'd hate for all of these nice people to suffer the consequences of your lack of
respect."
*
Brainstorm! You have the following assets:
- 1x blonde disaster, buff but not a werewolf
- 1x bioscientist and special forces operator
- 1x hottie detective vigilante
- 1x invisible robot sniper
- 1x hacked Squalo-class Tactical Armoured Gear
- 1x BlackSun camera drone
- 1x workshop/warehouse belonging to Doctor Gears
- 1x Professor who knows her way around said warehouse
It's not nothing! That's a lot of stuff! But every single one of those assets is one blast of Turbo Knight's laser away from being a scorch mark on the floor. You need a plan, you need a
perfect plan and you need one
fast.
She slides to a halt in front of the crippled Shogun. Her head cocks slightly, and her shoulders heave as she sucks in breath. God, this has been a day, hasn't it? Workout for the fucking ages. When this is finished she's taking a god damn cheat day. And no, those cakes do not count. Those were apology cakes, there's a difference. She stretches her arm out to meet the Shogun's outstretched and bloody hand.
"Are you all--"
She doesn't even get the sentence out. Her visor pings danger at the last of last possible seconds and she dives forward out of the way, crashing into the Shogun and knocking her to the ground.
A flaming chunk of building maybe four cubic meters in size smashes into the ground with a cratering impact just behind the pair of them. Errant pushes herself up off the ground and immediately drops back onto her butt with her legs awkwardly splayed out in front of her. She really is worn out, you know? She flips her visor up on top of her head and flashes a stupid, dorky grin.
"Not gonna get a better shot than this, right, JuneBird?"
[Pierce the Mask: 13
“How could I get you to forgive me?”
“How could I make you look at Sara like I see her?”
“How could I gain Influence over you?”]
An E/Mauler is a
heavy weapon - the kind of thing that needs to be set up on a tripod and will still jolt every bone in your body with the recoil. It can be used in close quarters in the same way you can swing a heavy machinegun like a club - possible, but you've gotta be hella buff. JuneBird has made being hella buff the foundation of her fighting style. She trained to learn Mr. Big Show's "Oni Warrior" style, and is all about sweeping, zoning motions with a terrifyingly dangerous weapon.
So she's not swinging it just yet. Deprived of the devastating surprise attack she's holding the crackling weapon low in a foot-sweeping position. It's a position with a deliberate, defiant vulnerability to it - there's a way in against her but even the slightest brush with her weapon will disable every system on your person. The only saving grace going up against her is that she doesn't have a single augmentic anywhere on her - they'd make her vulnerable to her own weapon. It's gone in both directions during practice bouts - and that's your in. Duelling against her is a familiar enough thing, an
ordinary enough thing, that she'll be able to listen to you in a way she wouldn't otherwise. Begin the duel and take influence over her.
"You still don't see it," she said. The Impersonation Rig is rippling unsteadily, starting to move fluidly between different faces, concealing the E/Mauler as a walking stick, a sword, an umbrella - all making it impossible to judge its exact length and location. "Jesus, Euna. She's hurt you so many times. She's hurting you again and you don't even see it. You think you're going to wake up tomorrow and say 'wow, I sure made the right decision by betraying everything I ever stood for'? You think she's even going to
be there when you wake up tomorrow?"
There's a lot of anger in that question... but it's actually a question. She's actually listening to the answer. And she does trust you, even still. If you can look her in the eye and tell her
why you trust Sara, why she's worth so many chances and so much heartbreak... she'll listen. But that's only if you really can say that you trust her.
As for forgiveness? You don't think that's even necessary, actually. You're looking into her eyes and seeing concern but not
hurt. You don't think she loved you in that way. You think her objective then was the same as her objective now: to rescue you from a bad relationship.
RPM
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