DeviousMe

OOC:

Anywhere you like, pretty much. And it doesn't have to 'fit in'. Paragon's seaside zones just got drained of their 'seaside' element due to ending up on dry and. So your island can land just about anywhere. It could end up in a sea, in a lake, on a shore, on land, on top of a mountain, even right in the middle of a city - up to you. All I ask is that you don't squish anyone's characters with it.
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BIC:

No response. That was generally bad. And it had grown quiet. That was generally worse. He sped up his step. He hoped no one was...

Alert. Incoming projectile.

Incoming wha-?

Before he even knew it, something whooshed by overhead and zipped off into the ruins toward the west. He blinked. The heck had that been? Well, at least it probably meant he wasn't where he thought he was, which brought a great wave of relief with it. In any case, he could figure that out later. Right now, he had someone (he really hoped it was a someone) to find.

Rounding a building corner, he saw his hopes fulfilled - and to a much greater degree than he'd reckoned. Half-crouched on a shallow mound of dirt was a sight against which paled even the majestic beauty of the setting sun's glorious colors.

And he stared.

Stared at the scintillating hide of the ruby-red Dragoness, the tiny, delicate scales of her skin carrying that barely-noticeable undertone of cuprous, rusty sand, her deep-green eyes sparkling with the turquoise of the Great Eastern Sea. The finest lavender silks wrapped about her wondrous form like the ethereal fingers of some protective deity, caressing even the ebony spikes of her back and tail with a wind-swept flow gentle as the softest down. The long horns that jutted back from her head, the lavish hair that flowed around them, even the golden sunrise that was the skins of her wings...

It was her!

And he stared.

Morpology - Unknown
Geoform 192 matches 76/93 parameters
Primary material content:_

He shook his head. What? That wasn't-? How the-?!

Overlay acquisition. Now!

The white outline that always flashed so briefly when his system first scanned something reappeared. He took a step back in shock. Its shape didn't match what he saw there. That was no Dragon! And it certainly wasn't Kida!

With a click and a clack, a pair of nearly half-meter-long, savage-looking claws sprang from the upper wrist of the metal Dragon's right arm...

Structure - Type 6249
Primary material content:
- Iron
- Carbon
- Silicon_
|
No life signs detected

Structure - Type 11267
Primary material content:
- Iron
- Carbon
- Copper_
|
No life signs detected

Structure - Type 212
Primary material content:
- Carbon
- Silicon
- Oxygen_
|
No life signs detected

Structure - Type 312659
Primary material con_

He walked steadily along the dusty ground. By now, he'd stopped paying attention to the sensor readouts that scrolled on the left of his HUD. White text was white text, and despite the like-hued outlines that flashed briefly about blocks, cylinders, needles, and a great many other shapes as his crimson sight passed over them, nothing had yet triggered any manner of alarm. Not that he really wanted it to, but...it would've been nice to find some kind of clue already.

Well okay, so technically he'd found two already. The first he'd literally walked across when he'd entered 'Boomtown' - namely that a dividing line ran roughly parallel to the war wall to the south, separating two compositions of ground. They were extremely similar, but not close enough to be overlooked by his sensors. Or rather, their dates weren't close enough. The dust his heavy black boots now left their footprints upon was at least a century older than that which covered Baumton.

The second was the ion storm building overhead. The dark clouds had been only the beginning. Slowly but surely, they grew denser, darker, blotting out the sun. Lighting kilometers long spidered through the menacing vapors like the skeletal fingers of unseen titans. And yet it hadn't rained a drop. It wouldn't either, no matter how much he wanted it to.

And he really wanted it to.

Please...

The metal Dragon raised his nose toward the sky, pulling the lapels of the sleeveless jacket across his chest as the wind picked up around him. His eyes pleaded.

Don't let this be Rauk.

Long ago, it was a place like any other. Empty. Peaceful. Ordinary. Then came the Builders, and with them their dilemma. Existence was so vast, so grand. How could they ever hope to meet others in this gigantic tapestry of so many empty, peaceful, and ordinary spots? There were so many, such an incredibly large number of spots to look that the idea of traveling about to look was surely ludicrous! It just couldn't be done! And messages were all well and good, but the fast ones most wouldn't even notice, and the slow ones would require such great transmission power as to spiral into madness! Even then, they would've taken ages to arrive!

And then the Builders got an idea.

Why go to other places to meet other people? Why not being other places to them? It was discussed. It was approved. And it was done. They found a place close-by. An empty, peaceful, ordinary place. And they began to build. They built the earth. They built the oceans. They built the skies. Finally, they built the threads. The glorious, the wonderful, the magnificent threads that would pull other places, and with them their people, here to them so they could meet. Oh, it was a time of bliss. Though many places turned up empty, the threads just kept pulling. Eventually, inevitably, a place that held people always came, and the Builders rejoiced in celebration. Slowly, gradually, but with steady pace, the collection of pulled places grew into a world of its own. It became a single place, constructed from a patchwork of many, and thus the Builders decided to name their great work.

They called it Patches.

And they were far from done. They wanted more. So they expanded the threads to reach not only through space, but through time as well, and even through the very fabric of existence to reach into the multiverse...and beyond. It was their ultimate achievement, even as they met and greeted, talked and traded, and their knowledge and wisdom grew into the boundless realms.

For that was the end of the Builders.

Even for them, time moved like a river. Eventually, they moved on. They had no more need for the material and traveled beyond the veil, drawing it behind them. The Builders were gone.

But their creation did not go with them.

It had a simple task. Reach new places. And it kept performing that task. Only now, without the Builders, there was no one to do the greeting. No one to do the explaining, no one to do the talking. Worse yet, there was no one to say goodbye and send the pulled places back. But the threads kept pulling, the creation continued to do its job. For ages. Places began to pile up. Some places landed right on top of old ones, and chaos erupted. Eventually, the purpose of this patchwork world was forgotten, and people that lived in newly pulled places were only faced with the chaotic tapestry of tapestries, the disorder that ruled this world left behind by its makers.

The people of some places began to conquer others. Domains spread across the face of the Builders' creation, their oft-frightened rulers clinging to whatever they could. It was a time of war, a time of devastation, and a time of suffering.

And one day, Patches found the Paragon City of present day...
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As usual.

He sat on his usual spot on a usual day. Well, perched to be more accurate. A few dozen floors above ground, on the slim stone rim that jutted from each face of this high-rise, which in turn was just one of Steel Canyon's many. Clawed fingers curled about the edge of the block, the large boots of his digitigrade feet placed securely against the stone surface, he surveilled the streets below with dispassionate eyes, letting his long tail hang loosely from the block, its deltoid tip swaying slowly to and fro. To his left stood another block, and atop it a stone gargoyle. To his right, another perched on its, sitting there motionless, stoic, and cold.

Just like him.

He hadn't always been. A long time ago, he'd been a dragon. Fire, warmth, they'd been so close, so easily accessible...he'd always taken them for granted. Just like having a heartbeat. He'd lost that when he died. He didn't really remember being dead, but it had probably been a good while before he'd woken up in the body which the metal claws he now looked upon belonged to. His body. A machine's body. So then he'd been a robot. And now he was a gargoyle. The world worked in strange ways sometimes. But now, after everything that had happened, sitting up here alone and watching the city was just...the usual.

And as usual, it made him depressed.

He could dress however he wanted, but it never made a difference. Thick black boots, densely woven pants, a sleeveless biker jacket, it never mattered. He was still cold. Still metal. Only his head still resembled what he'd used to look like, but both the long black hair and hide of velvet brown were artificial. Dead. Cold. Even the bright, smiling sun overhead never warmed him up. Nothing did. He'd given up zipping that jacket a long time ago, just letting it flutter open in the wind. What was he doing here?

L-System anomaly. Spectral flux detected.

The white text blinked across the deep-red HUD that was his sight before he even really noticed it. Spec what? That had something to do with light...right? He looked up at the sun. Didn't look any different. Although...had it? Maybe for just a moment? He wasn't sure. Living in a world of red didn't make for a great ability to discern color.

It did, however, give him remarkable skills at discerning shape - and even from here, it took him but a glance to the north to note that 'Boomtown' didn't look like it used to. The buildings were...different. Still slanted, still crumbling, still burnt-out ruins, but definitely different. Something was wrong here. He just knew it.

What he didn't know was that it wasn't just here. It was all over the city. Some zones suddenly took on a dead, deserted nature. Others simply vanished. In Independence Port, ships ran aground as the sea beneath their keels became a desert, the waters cascading into the sandy wasteland that had appeared to the west, leaving the great vessels high and dry. The same happened about Talos Island, though there the sea fled east. It was some twisted perimeter, like a ring of lifeless earth and ruined structures that had suddenly been stamped about the edges of the city.

And from those edges, dark clouds gathered.

As usual...
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OOC:

Ever wanted to see the world? Wanted to see a world? Created one and wanted someone else to see it? Well then, here's your chance. Welcome to Patches, the world of many worlds. Or rather, pieces of them, one of which is now the bulk of Paragon City. But what of the others? Well, 'the desert' is one. The others are up to you. Are they dangerous? Do people live there? If so, do they want to go home? Or do they like it better here (some for more fiendish reasons than others)?

All up to you.

And if you don't feel like managing a setting, then don't and just come along for the ride. Be heroic. Be villainous. Be your character(s). Be respectful to your fellow writers, and don't do anything to their characters that you wouldn't want done to yours. Just common courtesy.

As usual.

Dang. Well, when it's time, it's time I guess. You'll be missed though, that's for sure. Good luck and take care.

While I can't answer your first question due to me knowing basically zip about your characters, your second one can be answered with a maybe. It'll depend on just how the devs integrate the PFN into the world - if they need to mentally 'tag' someone to tell their thoughts apart, if they do group sweeps of certain areas at certain times and 'listening' for any specific thoughts that set off alert flags, if they follow the traditional 'everyone around me screams their thoughts at me' model, or if they do something else entirely. If it's an omnipresence kind of thing, you'd actually have to have your characters break it in order to account for the lack of the game being able to predict all the actions of your character.

As to your third question, the answer is both yes and no. Most people with telepathic characters take a fairly reasonable approach to them - and those that don't will bug you with it even if you declare your character immune. In the end, it doesn't make much of a difference.

And to your last, again I don't know your characters, but I do know that the ability to do something doesn't automatically give immunity from having it done to you. In other words, YMMV but just because someone's a telepath doesn't mean other telepaths can't listen in on their thoughts.

AGS-4 - Bridge

A pair of door halves parted smoothly, freeing the way from the small ship's main transit corridor to its command deck. Technically, the presence of such a thing was obsolete, but the Khelari who now walked through the wafting mists and into the orange twilight of the many like-hued holograms that comprised both displays and interfaces was in some reagards simply old-fashioned like that.

You really think that was wise?

"Probably not." Acid shrugged in response to the soundless voice inside his head, stepping to the bridge's central holodisplay and letting his claws tap across keys that both did and did not exist, "But Emry's got enough pull to pick they guy up whenever he wants to now. If they still want to. They might just decide that he got what was coming to him and leave it at that. You know how they work. Besides..."

The cartographic planetary display became but one of several more, the copies placing themselves about the original before being altered into forms similar, yet different from the first. Along the front 'windshield' of the semicircular command deck, 2-D readouts appeared, projecting a course toward the galactic center.

"...we've got work to do." the reptilian finished as the vessel accelerated, "Not the least of which is figuring out why the Oblivion Gate suddenly seems to have a whole lot less Oblivion to it."

Roughly four minutes later, the ship had reached half the speed of light, deeming departure from the Einstein universe within acceptable stress tolerance. Not three seconds later, the AGS-4 vanished amongst the stars...

Wow!

Eh, I dunno. I kind of like having my character names be unique, and so do a lot of other people.

"Yeah, I bet you do, dont'cha?" Acid regarded the congressman with a chuckle, "Doubt you'd want it, though. I'm going home. You wouldn't like it there. Assuming you didn't get eaten, of course. Nooo...I think I've got something different in mind for you."

The reptilian raised his hand in order to snap his fingers. Even as he did, a reply from the telepath came to the gathered Kheldians.

No, you want to get him somewhere you think he'll be safe. That'll be hard to do. The man messed with a whole lot of the wrong people, and now they all want a piece of him. I'm not sure there are enough to go around. But fine. You can try. Good luck. I believe you'll need it.

With the snap of Acid's claws, the fictive transmitter came to life again. In the haze behind the Khelari, a three-meter sphere that seemed composed of both metallic and at the same time crystalline material turned the now-iridescent glimmer of its 'pupil' at the man, like some bombastic eyeball that could literally glare someone to death. The next instant, the scene around him had vanished, replaced with an entirely different, yet at the same time very familiar setting.

The inside of a SWAT van - and a good dozen very surprised officers of the task force. Moreover, if the associates of the Urban Fellow of Merry Wit wanted to home in and follow this teleportation, they'd have to get a whole lot more clever than last time.

The transmitter didn't stop there either, and built up its energies once more before carefully aiming its 'lens' at the 'kid' and attempting to send him off as well, destination the front steps of the hospital...

((Written with Dogma))

The little boy giggled like a kid in a school-yard. Which was a fairly apt description since he probably saw the ship AS a school yard.

"You're real smart mister." He said hapilly, still grinning. "My sis says he's an evil man, and I can see that because he's like a piggie! But she says that the "Artemis" thingie she works for wants to either lock him up or use him to undermine bad guy politicians everywhere! And then right before Shikimaru started acting like a meanie, she told me that you needed to join the forces of good!"

He gave Acid a thumbs-up and winked. "She says that he's better off with the Hands of Artemis or something. But she always says she wants to do right by you. She's willing to have the Artemis thingie become delegated to you or something with loadsa complicated words that I can't even read yet, since apparently you couldn't do it yourself even with all your nifty toys and friends! And then she said!"

And he giggled again.

"And then she said, that even if you said no, it was all ok! She said that even if you said no, we could still be friends, and I could stay up here with you and we could play games and have FUN forever!" He gave Acid another thumbs up, flashing him another pearly-white smile. "Are you prepared to have FUN, Mr. Zero?"

And he locked eyes with the reptillian. Perfect green eyes that were full of joy and fun-loving and the innocence of a mere child. And it was the most terrifying thing in the world, and a reminiscent line of nobody being able to hear your screams in space came to mind for apparently no reason at all.

V, help! His saccharine wholesomeness is making me sick!

Ohhh no. You got yourself into this situation, now you get yourself out. Besides: sleeping.

How can you be sleeping if you're talking to me?

Easy. One: I'm not talking to you. Two: sleeping.

Hmf. Fine. But just you wait and see if I stop at Sol this time.

Acid looked back at the 'boy'. He felt like his toenails had just curled up. Knives of Artemis. Great. Exactly how could...?

Wait a minute.

He looked to the congressman. Actually...he could see this working. He'd hired them before, and they were extremely reliable. Unfortunately, their missions tended to involve killing more than anything else. Still, if this guy was telling the truth, it could be a very acceptable deal.

Was he...?

Acid was both surprised and not. On one hand, coming after an instantaneous jaunt through hyperspace was an amazing feat. On the other, he was dealing with superheroes here, and supers tended to make the extraordinary a thing of routine. In hindsight, he probably should've expected any number of them to follow. Talk about experiencing a 'duh moment'.

For a moment, just a moment, he had to fight the instinct to ram a fist into a green contact plate on the nearest wall, before realizing the 'intruder' seemed protected enough. Technically, it didn't take much anyway. The Urban Fellow of Merry Wit already had a shield, so he likely could've walked around fine even thought his larger bubble. Well...maybe rolled around. The Khelari didn't know enough about the guy's equipment to determine where what effect came from. Regardless, it obviously had all the necessary elements to allow normal operation in hostile environments.

Hope shadow-boy doesn't as well. Wouldn't that just be a hoot?

Shadow-boy? Who? What? Is the Disciple of Umbralurgy back?

No. Everything's fine. Go back to sleep.

Okay.

The mental exchange had been brief, but still covert. The reptilian and his conversation partner had no desire to be 'overheard', and thus kept their thoughts under wraps - unlike the congressman, who blurted them out vocally and shone like a beacon right now. Not to Acid, of course. No, this was in regard to the ship. While it technically had sensors, the term applied to the vessel in roughly the same way as eyes were an example of the sensors of a human being. In this case, the ship felt him. And it didn't like the feeling. In fact, it didn't like people it didn't know coming aboard at all. Still, it didn't act yet. At least not directly. Several normenergetic fields came online and it readied the security stations in the transmitter bay, but that was about it. Mostly, it awaited orders.

"Alright, I'll bite." the Khelari answered the 'boy' after picking his translator back up, keeping a hand on the rifle now wrapped within his jacket, keeping his voice slow and steady so the words came through the atmospheric difference clearly enough to be understood, "I assume you want Slime-o over here? Why? What do you want to do with him?"

The reptilian was focused, 'all business', and (at least he hoped) ready for anything, carefully surveilling his opponent, trying to discern anything he could potentially use to his advantage in a fight - no matter how badly he wanted to quote Thor to Congressman Wolfe right now...

((Aiight. I guess I'd better get on with a description then, heh.))

The destination coordinates weren't hard to find. The ship hadn't even attempted to hide itself. Orbiting Terra in a highly eccentric elliptical path, it was presently a little under six million kilometers from the PPD's current position toward the northern sky. At least for now. Its course headed for a periapsis of roughly two million, where its orbital velocity would reach maximum. Where it would go after that was anybody's guess...
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AGS-4 - Transmitter Bay

Acid dropped the congressman to the ground with a deep groan of relief, fleeing his arm slip free from the force field around the man and into the wonderful shipboard warmth. 427 degrees Celsius. Just the way he liked it.

He practically felt every square centimeter of his hide unclench, a deeply relaxing sensation overcoming the Khelari. He even closed his eyes. A long exhale followed, expelling the frigid, over-oxygenated terrestrial atmosphere from his lungs just before he filled them with the sulphurous, sweet-smelling fumes of his homeworld, the corrosive gases tickling all the way down his windpipe and beyond. Heavenly.

To Wolfe, of course, it must've appeared that he'd been dropped straight into hell. Outside the protective, now very visible bubble of pale-blue energy that kept the air he breathed inside safe from the nearly 300 atmospheres of pressure all about was not just a collection of gases more toxic than found within most of Earth's volcanoes (and could easily eat into quite a large number of materials humans considered very sturdy, including stainless steel), but a foggy, orange twilight that just barely illuminated wherever he'd been dragged to. It came from small, like-hued dots that formed a widely spaced line along the ceiling, and all in all provided just barely enough light for the congressman to make out the silhouettes of Acid, Joy, and the robots, and that the floor was made of some kind of metal.

Which suddenly gave a resounding, heavy, and strangely reverberating clang as the reptilian dropped the tiny little device he'd just taken out of his left ear. It had his the floor with over 3.7 times as much vigor as it would've on Earth. Things here were literally heavy. Very heavy.

"Ziffre." Acid's shrug in response, however, came just as casually as it would've before - even though his voice now sounded heavy and drowning to the human. The Khelari was used to this. It was home. He even took his jacket off. He didn't need it anymore. Not here. Not home.

Why couldn't global warming go faster already?

With another deep breath, he opened his eyes again - and he could see. No longer was his vision blurry at a distance thanks to that accursedly thin 'air' with its blasted nearly-100-times-normal 2% oxygen content. No, now he could truly see again.

What did he see...?
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AGS-4 - Ventral Cargo Airlock

((Um, Dogma...are you sure you want to do this? I mean, nothing against it, the ship's shields are down right now so it's perfectly legit to jump aboard, buuut...this is an alien spacecraft. As in a very exotic environment in which things might operate any number of different ways than they to on Terra. There might not even be air. So yeah...you sure about this? ))

"Actually, without my Hyperion ripoff, I'm nothing." Acid chuckled maliciously in response, "But that's not the difference between you an' me, kid. This is the difference between you and me. Number Four, if you please."

And with that, from one instant to another, they were gone. Khelari, mechanoids, spirit, and human, all vanished into thin air with naught but the characteristic clap of air filling the void a teleportation had left behind...

Indeed. To one and all.

"Yyyyeah, what's the word I'm thinking of...?" the Khelari mused with a chuckle at Wolfe, "Oh yeah - no. An' yeh, I dare. In case you haven't caught on yet, that's my thing. I laugh at everybody who goes and gets too full of him-, her-, it-, or whateverself and starts ordering people around and junk."

"See that guy with the big curvy stick?" he rhetorically questioned of the congressman with a lax motion toward Jase, "Prime example. He can do stuff others around him can't and bada-bing bada-boom, he thinks he's the baddest sark in the...I mean the biggest fish around and can tell everybody else what do do or that they're gonna die or some garbage like that. Heck, I bet you he mouths off again as soon as those cops over there get here and he has to back off. Extra points if he says he's gonna be generous today and 'allow' us to live just before he disappears."

"Seriously, I'm about a hundred times more afraid of the party dude." Acid added, though this time he was being quite serious, "He's silly. An' he likes to be silly. You know what that means? He doesn't have to be serious to win his battles - and that's a true mark of power. If he was trying to stop me from taking you...yeah, then I'd be worried."

8...7...6...

((No, I got that. Acid, however, did not. He still thinks it's Torrent. ))

Acid's jaws parted, and he looked on in shock at Jase's display of shadowy power, looking more than aghast as the torrent crashed against the large protective dome of force he'd expanded about himself and those near him earlier. Normally, this likely would've been a good thing for the wielder of the scythe. This time, however, the reasons for the reptilian's reaction were quite different from the norm.

"Torrent?" he remarked to Jase with a look that personified the words 'what the hell?', as well as a supporting gesture of his right hand in the fashion of some Italian mafioso, "You're kidding me, right? Please tell me you're kidding me. Torrent? You do all this junk and go into full-on drama queen mode for the Lich's most useless ability? Freakin' torrent? Dude...seriously. I feel disrespected. I think we all feel disrespected."

Speaking and thinking were two very different things though, and the Khelari made sure to keep the two carefully parted. Mentally, he already prepared for the next strike...

...and chuckled at the congressman's very likely realization that his current captor disregarded that there spectral terror with just a little too much apathy.

33...

((Oh, okay. Thanks for the heads-up. Edited accordingly.))

The Khelari scowled as Dire Lament's plan took hold. He hated when he didn't manage to mess up other people's schemes.

Fortunately, luck seemed to be on his side. Not only did the woman retreat, but she also assumed. Nanites and the stuff Acid had put into the congressman were two very different things. In fact, aside from being machines, the two had just about nothing in common with one another. Thus being, they conveyed in great detail what had been done to the man - and while the reptilian didn't know to undo it off the top of his head, the chances that the SPC wouldn't find a way was slim to none. Of course, that was assuming they decided to not make it his sentence in the first place. It may well have been a fitting punishment. Acid didn't really know. All he knew was that the guy was now trying to sweet-talk him.

A quiver played about the edges of his lips, and he couldn't help but let out a chortle.

Then he giggled.

Then he chuckled.

And finally, he began to laugh loudly, terribly, throwing his head back in a downright psychotic bout of laugher, seeming to find this wonderfully amusing.

Then, from one moment to another, he stopped.

"Sorry." he grinned to the congressman, "Couldn't resist. That was pretty good. Pretty good. You probably could, yeah. Too bad for you I'm evil."

49...

((Hm. While I don't appreciate you not waiting for me to have time to respond to a question and instead godmoding away my detention field to suit your whims, I guess it's too late to change now, so don't worry about it. However, please don't do this sort of thing in the future. It's horribly rude behavior.))

Concentration requires attention. Attention requires concentration. A vicious cycle. So easily broken, too.

"Dammit." Acid snarled as he lost one due to diversion of the other, the action of taking aim at Jase with the heavy combinatorik he carried snapping off just enough to make the congressman vulnerable.

Acting immediately, he threw over one plan in favor of another, once again expanding his force bubble and hurling an additional bolt of force at Dire Lament, hopefully hurling her back and away while his robotic entourage took up protective formation around the congressman. If not, the assault bot would attempt to swat her away with one of its massive arm cannons. They didn't fire just yet, but would if the woman performed any more actions that they deemed a threat - and while their paralyzers couldn't take down supers in a single shot, enough of the bolts that attacked the motoric nervous system could take down even the toughest tanker.

Surprisingly enough, the Khelari didn't do anything to directly help the congressman aside form putting another field of force around him. The tiny machines still in the human's bloodstream could take care of that. Long as those things were operational, he'd be pretty hard to kill, at least by human standards.

63...