TeChameleon

((Oh, I'm sure Danny would have plenty to say... if he actually cared at this point. Right now he's wearing a jury-rigged long-term Vanguard Medallion that feeds off his own electric powers to stay active... it's not a comfortable feeling, although it's less annoying than the resonator ))

Danny watched the byplay indifferently, more focussed on keeping his energy levels steady- the constant, sharp drain of the Medallion, coupled with an unsteady spike every time another psionic resonator wave hit, made for a constant, aggravating ache at the base of his skull.

At Alyssa's question, he breathed a poorly-disguised sigh of relief and hopped out of the air. "Aye, an' 'tis about time." he grumbled. "Weed 'troller, neh?" he asked Alyssa, with a raised eyebrow. "Why'd ye take a cruise, then? Most o' th'close-t'Earth tree-hugger types tha' I know of tend t'be uncomfortable when they're awa' fro' th'plants n'moss an' whatnot. And, as Acid has pointed out, there isnae a lot o' that on a ship."

He shrugged, and waved an arm vaguely sternwards, and slightly to Starboard. "Th'resonator..." he started, then clutched at his head and doubled over as fragmented future images cascaded past- them finding the resonator, them being found by blue-flack-jacket-wearing troops of some sort, a handful of Carnival of Shadows masks (Danny didn't know the Carnies by sight, but he'd seen a few of their broken masks that were kept as trophies by various supergroups he had visited), weird, amorphous blob-beings (decoys? he managed to wonder)...

After a moment, he managed to straighten up again. "Right... 'tis that way." he grated, grinding his teeth in irritation.

((I'm still here, just isn't a lot for Danny to do, or even comment on, at the moment))

Danny simply floated patiently, legs folded, elbows on knees and chin in hands, waiting for Acid to finish whatever he had come for. He wasn't sure what Alyssa was going to do, but he was hoping to drag the big reptilian along to find that psibomb. From what Acid had said, he wasn't especially fond of the Malta group, and the little archer hoped that would be enough to secure his help, at least long enough to stop the thing Danny had dubbed "th'head-melter".

Danny shrugged. "Fogged by pain is nae th'same as fogged by drugs, 'special psi blockers. Y'wind up feelin' like y'r head is fulla slumpy puddin'." He didn't elaborate on how he knew, although his tone made it clear that he was speaking from (unpleasant) experience.

The boy archer didn't notice that they were heading away from the cabins, either... not really, anyways. His direction sense was poor at the best of times. However, he remained wary; while Acid seemed likeable enough, Danny had met his fair share of affable psychos who went from cheerful conversation to murderous rampages in the space between heartbeats.

Danny frowned as he followed Acid into the infirmary. "If'n we've got crazy paramilitary superspy types runnin' about, I'm nae thinkin' foggin' her head 's th'best idea, e'en if it does dull th'pain..." his voice trailed off as Acid worked.

"Ah. Techno-whatsis solution." he said eventually, with a shrug. "As t'why th'psibomb is only affectin' folks wi' mental-type abilities, who knows? Maybe they're thinkin' tha' th'big threat t'them on board 'sa psi o' some sort, an' th'rest o' us are just an afterthought..." Then he stopped and made a face. "O'course, it could just be tha' there's more'n one set o' nasties runnin' about, and th'Malta group dinnae have a thing t'do wi' th'head-melter." He shrugged again. "T'would be about par f'r th'course o' my life, t'have my vacation attacked by half-a-dozen diff'rent supergoon organizations a' th'same time."

Danny raised an eyebrow. "Miss, if ye're o' a psychic nature at all, th'infirmary willnae be o' much help to ye. 'Tis a device o' some sort that is muckin' up the psychic plane summat fierce." He shrugged, and gave Acid a look. "An'... I dinnae know if y'noticed, but I'm nae but thirteen years old. 'Tis no' a lot that I know about disarmin' supertech doohickeys, shy o' blowin' 'em to bits an' hopin' that works."

Then his brain caught up with his ears. "Malta..?" he repeated. He frowned. "I havenae run across a group by tha' name before... maybe I'd best stay wi' ye, if'n ye know what's goin' on."

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"Acid." the Khelari smiled, still a bit more toothily than he intended, as he wrapped his fingers securely around Danny's hand. His claws here doubtlessly sharp as razors, yet he left the boy without a single scratch

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"Acid." Danny echoed, glancing down at the short, fingerless glove he wore- a casual visual inspection for any tears in the leather that could catch a bowstring and foul a shot. "I' tha' a reference t'th' chemical, th'drug, the rock music, or just a coincidental carryover b'tween languages?" he asked curiously, returning his gaze to Acid.

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"And can't say I have. Heard of him, though. Hasty guy, I'm told. Kind of like you, huh...?"

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"An' y'r surprised tha' th'student is like th'teacher?" Danny riposted with a smirk. He shrugged. "If'n ye dinna ha' anythin' t'do wi' this psibomb doodad, y'may want t'join me in findin' it- th'pulses seem t'be intensifyin', an' if it gets too strong, there's nae any ammount o'... noodlebots?" he trailed off for a moment, raising an eyebrow as he realized what the big reptilian had said. Then he shrugged. "There's nae ammount o' noodlebots tha' can be protectin' ye." he finished. Then he raised his eyebrow again. "O'course, i' ye are wi' th'mooks who put this bloody headache-inducer aboard, I'm owin' ye a belt in th'gob for what 'tis doin' t'my poor head."

Danny shook his head violently. "There isnae time... s'gettin' worse, an' th'docs canna do much, less'n they've got psionic... shie... lds..." his voice trailed off, and he slapped himself in the forehead (well, tried to. He missed.) "Daft stupid sod that I am..." he muttered. Another wave caused him to bobble in midair, making Acid's grab miss, and as his head throbbed, he fumbled around in his cross-D pocket for a bit.

Eventually, he pulled out what looked like a small Vanguard symbol on a string. He tapped it once as he slid it on over his head, and was enveloped in a brief purple glow. "Phew... I dinna use thi' thing often, so I f'rgot 'bout it..." He shook his head again, trying to clear it. Electricity crackled around the Vanguard Medallion as it drank power from the boy, and he shivered a little. "I canna use it f'rever- 'tis too much o' a strain, but it should protect me f'r th'moment."

He straightened out, floating in a somewhat more relaxed position now, and blinked as he saw Acid clearly for the first time. Then he smacked his forehead again, actually connecting this time, and said "Ai... where are m'manners." He stuck his hand out abruptly for Acid to shake. "'m Danny, 'though most folk in th'tights-'n-towels brigade call me Target Lad. Usually 'kick for m'uncle, Energon X, dinna know if ye know 'im." he introduced himself.

Acid's voice buzzed to the low subsonic, then whiplashed back up, repeating dozens of times before Danny managed to regain at least a little control between pulses. "Y're... nae... psychic, are ye?" the little archer managed. Absently, he rubbed his face where the bow had struck. "Summat... AAARGH..." he trailed off.

Another five-second interval of inside-out-time, flashes from all over the boat, wherever psychic energy was being deployed... and then, mercifully, that brief respite. "Summat raisin' Cain on th'psychic plane." Danny managed to blurt out. "Think 'tis a bomb or some such. Bloody hurts, whate'er it is..." He waved a hand vaguely. "S'tha' way, 'think..."

((... okay, not sure how I missed that, but I could swear that wasn't there when I typed the previous post...))

Danny braked hard when he narrowly missed clipping Acid, coming to a screeching halt in midair. Acid's mumbles were clearly audible, and, to the boy's slightly-detatched-from-the-present precognition, repeated dozens upon dozens of times. He shook his head violently.

"I just passed it." he said, assuming that Acid was mumbling about the infirmary down the hall. "'s'empty. Nae a soul in there... guessin' tha' th'doc hasna come back yet fro' runnin' about wi' all th'emergency drills tha' keep goin' on." He winced as another pulse caused his senses to report that his own words were distorting and rippling through the timestream, repeating, stretching out, accelerating to chipmunk speed... he clutched at his head, not caring that he had just smacked himself in the face with his still-drawn bow, nearly falling out of the air.

"Bleedin' hell..." he managed to gasp.

((ooookay... er, well, could you assume that Danny drifted downwards enough to smack into Acid? It's not like he was paying that much attention >.&lt)

Danny glided rapidly along through the hallways. He had tried a standard 'grid' search pattern, but the layout of the ship's hallways had made that impossible. He wasn't even sure where he was now, paying more attention to the pings on his sixth sense as he concentrated intensely on tracking down the... whatever... that was causing such an uproar on the psychic plane.

He was relying mostly on skimming along at seven feet above the deck to avoid crashing into things... a tactic that would have stood him in good stead if he hadn't flown down the same hallway that Acid (or at least one of him) was jogging down in search of David and Odette. The big reptilian found himself taking seventy pounds of flying boy to the face at a fairly respectable speed.

Danny snorted indelicately, still weaving hypnotic patterns of flame with the tip of the arrow. "Just tryin' t'keep things under control, neh?" he echoed, a mocking edge to his voice that went undispelled even by his voice cracking partway through the sentence. "Aye, an' 'tis a fine actor y'are, then... 'twas th'finest imitation o' blind, pants wettin' panic 've e'er had th'pleasure o' seein'." The little archer chuckled. "Y'sounded like m'auntie when she sees a mouse."

Danny shook his head, waving the flaming arrow in time with it. "Y're fine magic boom-escaper... what sort o' range does it ha'? Last I checked, we were a'ready more'n six hundred miles from th'coast- weel outta range o' anythin' but satellite an' stuff bouncin' off th'ionosphere." Then he shrugged. "Ah, 'tis none o'my affair, I suppose." He turned to go.

Midway through the turn, he glanced back. "A word o' advice... if ye go anywhere near m'family, I'll fry ye like a bug in a zapper, an' I'll be the least o' your worries." With that, he flipped the arrow over his shoulder at Famine- a lazy tumble totally absent of any threat, but at an angle that the orange-armoured man would have to twist awkwardly to catch, or risk it falling and setting fire to his foot- and flew out.

The little archer sailed aimlessly up and down the corridors, seeking, trying to home in on the weird pulses that were making his precognition twitch and stretch beyond the norm, overlaying his vision with the future.

((Wait, so all I get is one line and him leaving? No reaction to the attack, no interaction, just a complaint and exit, stage right already?

...

Bleah.))

Danny stared as the other fighter bailed out, wincing a little at the revelation that he could have exploded (although, given the gleeful abandon with which he had been slinging bullets, the little archer didn't have a whole lot of sympathy for his whining).

Then the opponent he had picked up on Silk's abortive exit started whining as well, and left. Danny stared for a moment, then shrugged. "Weel, na, that was anti-climactic..." he muttered, swooping out the open cage door.

In the main room, he paused, orienting himself briefly. Spotting Famine still standing next to the fire extinguisher, he glided noiselessly over to hover silently behind the orange-armoured man, a short distance out of arm's reach. After a moment, he cleared his throat. "Right, y'stupid sod. Ye've got nae security goons t'hide behind this time, so answer me true; are ye here t'kill, t'rob, t'guard..." the little archer went silent for a moment as a thought struck him. "Or t'deliver?"

Danny offered Famine a disturbing little wolverine smile, more a brief baring of the teeth than anything humourous- an odd, disquieting sight on such a small face- and concluded "An' if I dinna like th'answer... we'll be seein' how well ye burn." He produced an arrow and rolled it between his fingers, back and forth... an arrow that burst into white-hot flame after a few seconds, hypnotic trails of fire weaving strange patterns as he rolled it about in his hand.

Then the psychic... wave... rolled over them, and Danny blinked as his precognition... twitched. The scene in the casino was briefly overlaid by an odd-looking canister-computer-thing, something his sixth sense was telling him was the cause of the odd sensation. The little archer shook it off; he had more immediate problems, what with the crazed terrorist he was (probably futilely) trying to intimidate standing right in front of him. Trying to cover his brief disorientation, he flashed another humourless little smile.

"Oh, aye, an' I'm totally mad, before y'ask. Y'd have t'be to get into this daft game o' tights an' flyin' about wearin' dishtowels around y're neck. An unplanned detonation someplace tha' c'n take it is likely t'do less damage than you goin' boom where'er ye've got a mind to." Danny added, apparently as an afterthought, to Famine.

((As Danny is locked, hovering in place, in a cage where TIME HAS NO MEANING!!!!! Seriously, I've been able to move something like twice in the last ten pages.

*grumble*))

((Uh... Bwerp? Danny's making a fairly solid attempt to turn Grey into a pincushion. Any plans on acknowledging that?))

Danny blinked as Silk just kind of... left. Then he shrugged briefly and unlimbered his bow.

"Oy, tar baby!" he called down to Grey. "I dinna know about ye, but I'm thinkin' tha'th'fine folks watchin' wouldna appreciate y'cuttin' their entertainment short by double-teamin' th'poor sod wi' th'guns an' th'shiny wall."

As he spoke, he stretched out his precognition, casually dropping a burning arrow where Grey's foot would be when the arrow arrived. He followed it up with a steady stream of precisely, but slightly less pretenaturally, aimed arrows, some on fire, some stunners of various sorts (electrical, psionic disruptors, impact stunners, even a couple of magical stun-spell imbued heads), and even some standard-issue pointy sticks (although perhaps calling impervium-headed broadheads 'standard' might be stretching credulity a little).

As he fired, he gave every indication that he intended to keep doing this until someone got up to where he was in the rafters of the arena and forced him to stop.

Danny floated a little tighter to the ceiling as the fight became an indiscriminate orgy of explosions. After a particularly near miss, he yelled "Oi! This wasna my idea t'be in here, but if'n y'daft gits keep on wi' th'booms, 'm gonna put an arrow in y'r nadgers!" He shook his head. "Idiots. Nae precision at all."

((and Target Lad/Danny is stuck in a corner of the cage. *sigh*

Somebody want to 'accidentally' attack him so I can do something? ))

Danny looked at Silk oddly as she scaled the improvised 'ladder' towards him. "Now why w'd ye be assumin' that I'd ha' any arrows at all, miss?" he asked politely. "But neh, I dinna have any o' th'fancier types; just th'ones tha' go 'boom' or make holes in things."

He paused a moment, then fished around for a minute in the invisible pocket-dimensional quiver that held his apparently bottomless supply of arrows. "Actually, this might do th'trick." he commented, holding out a couple of heavy neural scrambler stun arrows, designed for targets that mere physical impact couldn't disorient.

((Bleah... could someone at least make a token gesture of recognition towards Danny? I know he's trying to remain unobtrusive, but you'd think someone would notice the kid in the tee and jeans floating in one upper corner of the arena >.&lt)

Danny floated in midair where he'd popped out in the cage, his face in his palm and his head shaking from side to side. "Aye, 'cos I couldna have done somethin' this stupid on m'own. Daft bint." he muttered. After a moment, he floated up into one upper corner and watched the match with some interest. Well... 'tis a good seat, i' nothing else...

The way to the door was blocked so he simply leaned back in midair and enjoyed the show... keeping a wary eye on Famine. For someone of his infamy to be undisguised and heavily armed in a place so public... the boy archer was slowly coming to realize that there had to be something more at work here.

((Okay, where is everyone? I'm getting the impression that most of us are in or around the fight cage, or else still in the Casino, but things are moving so fast, it's hard to keep track))

((Uhm... well, if nothing else... assuming that this particular bit of chaos doesn't get retconned away, you've ensured Danny never taking Miranda seriously ever again >.>

Maybe just summarize, vote if it's kept, and move on?

Miranda has just tossed Target Lad/Danny into the cage and popped in herself.

She then tried to 'port Gunner and Silk out, and lobbed ice at them on the off chance that they didn't want to go, along with more ice being hucked at Grey and Famine.

So. Keep, yea or nay?))

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Whyyyy do you all contribute to this vile act of necromancy?

(Poster realized the futility of this post, and subsequently facedesked.)

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Because necromancy's hot.

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... you liked the movie "Crash", didn't you?

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“Look, with my help, you can get inside the cage with him so you can force answers out of him. That’s what you wanted, right?”

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"Actually, I wanted t' zap th'bugger an' get his nasty toys away from 'im, but I s'ppose tha' is close enough." Danny commented offhandedly. The young archer thought for a moment, then nodded sharply. "I'll be righ' back." he said, flipped upright, and vanished with a surprising turn of speed.

A moment later, he reappeared, apparently dressed casually in a white t-shirt with a bullseye on the chest, jeans, and sneakers, along with his usual targetting reticle over his eye... but there was a subtle hum of power around him. "A'right, let's go." Hmm... this c'd become interesting... he thought. Miss Miranda here... I suspect tha' she just doesna want me buggerin' up her vacation any further. Pity tha' it almost never works that way wi' me... He made a face, and followed Miranda.