(2) - Dawn of the Metahumans

Game Master mdt

"Did anyone ever find Snap?" she asks, each question taking a small breath, as she continued to ride the adrenaline rush through the pain. "She was the planty person. Did anyone manage to save Rocket? Where's Jester? What happened to Hellcat, Doc Shock and Circe? What day is it?"

Giving Blaze and Mud a chance to post. Also, Vi, you can wake up now with a major migraine

Blaze's eyes bugged out. "Three…YEARS!?"

He reverted to flesh and blood, the look on his face as if someone just punched him. "Oh sweet Jesus…Mom! I…I need a phone…I gotta make a call."

The quaver in his voice notwithstanding, he really needed to call her, even though he had no idea what to tell her.

Bolt holds up a hand. "If, I repeat, if, you are who you look like, just relax. That sort of thing has been... handled. If you're not..." She trails off, and a half dozen people mutter darkly under their breath, and the general mood seems to be that if the group is not who they look like, they are going to wish they were someone else very shortly.

Violet holds her hands to her head, trying to block out the light.

"Yes, of course, we're pretending to be who we really are, because obviously I would want to masquerade as a psychologically and emotionally stunted test-tube baby with more personality disorders than are feasibly possible according to the DSM," she grumbles. "Yeah. That's a fabulous plan."

She squints one eye at Queenie. "The combination to my liquor safe is 8-6-7-5-3-0-9 and there was a bottle of fifty-year-old scotch whiskey in it when we left. Unopened. With a little pink ribbon around it." she says, closing her eyes again.

"And I left sixteen pairs of very expensive shoes scattered around my floor because I couldn't decide what to wear out on my date with my missing boyfriend that night."

"Good enough? Now who was that bloody Cenobite looking mo-fo and what the hell is this about three years and where the f-bomb is my g$@ d#%ned boyfriend?"

Mud I think is still out of town, so botting

About the end of Vi's rant, the woman with the shaved head opens her eyes, and a violent purple light shines out of her eyes. The light spears into Aegis, Pulse, Mud, Blaze, and Vi.

Vi detects a powerful pulse of psychic energy, telepathic, beamed out of the woman. She can resist it by keeping her mental defense up, or she can let it in, VI's choice

Cone of Telepathy: 14d6 ⇒ (3, 6, 3, 2, 4, 1, 5, 4, 3, 3, 4, 4, 2, 3) = 47

The woman with the purple eyes begins to mumble in a nonsensical language, at least, until some parts of it make sense, and those in the violent violet light realize she's speaking all their thoughts aloud simultaneously, in one stream of sound. Finally the light dies, and she hits the floor on both knees.

Everyone has a migraine now, not just Vi. Vi's is no worse, oddly, even if she did lower her defense

"They're who they say they are... memories of being in a vault, of guards shooting each other, pretty much as we figured it..." The shaven haired woman says, wincing in pain. "God, I hate that power..."

The wall of paper returns to the walls, folding into place so that it's almost not noticeable. "Good to know!" Queenie says. Behind her, paper moves to begin making ice waters for everyone. "Here, drink some ice water, it'll help with the migraine. What Cenobyte? I only saw you guys."

The shaven haired woman shakes her head. "Someone with no skin saved them, pulled them out of the vault. Never saw him before, all blood and muscle, no features."

As the rest of the people in the room begin to relax and revert to non-hero identies, Bolt makes a face. "Eww, even his... that's disgusting..."

Violet takes the water and looks to where her liquor cabinet should be.

If it's still there, she will go over, get a bottle of scotch, and add some to the water.

"Funny thing... Bolt, right?... When you lose your skin, that goes, too. It's like, ninety-five percent skin. You know that, right?"

Violet drains the water and asks for another.

"Yeah. Skinless guy. Something about him felt familiar. But... I got nothing."

"Did anyone ever find Snap?" she asks, each question taking a small breath, as she continued to ride the adrenaline rush through the pain. "She was the planty person. Did anyone manage to save Rocket? Where's Jester? What happened to Hellcat, Doc Shock and Circe? What day is it?"

"Cenobite. That's the word that was escaping me. But... anyway... I've only seen powers like his with one person: Shadow Priest. When I asked if he knew him, he didn't really answer. Have we had eyes on Shadowpriest since we disappeared?"

"I... really don't think ice water is what I need right now." she adds, wincing at the newfound headache. "I appreciate trying to pull my attention away from being a trauma patient, but.. I really need the chemical shower, if that's still here. Cause whatever gunk is on me from that hellscape needs to stay out of the water supply and off my wounds."

Bolt holds up her hand. "Hold on, everyone sit, other than me. Transducer, you and Paper Queen tell them what all's been up. I'll go find Shimmer and make sure she gets word to Sanction and the rest." Bolt blinks, and then she hands a bottle of Appleton Estate 50 Year Jamaican Rum (although from the date on it, it's actually pushing 55 years at this point) to Vi, it's half drunk. "Sorry, your scotch is long gone. This is what I have handy."

Transducer and Queen wave everyone to a table, and take seats themselves, although Queen's seat is made out of paper and floats 2 feet off the ground as she sits in lotus position.

Transducer starts off. "Ok, so, it's March 21st, 2021. Uhm, about 9:20 in the morning, although that clock is always off by 5 minutes one way or another." She nods at the cafeteria clock, which seems to be the same one that was there yesterday to the group, and it was flakey then. "SWAT came in, took Rocket and Snapdragon. The government swore there was nobody in the base, and we couldn't confirm one way or another. You all just vanished. The day after you vanished, Shimmer found a note here on Vi's bed that said to bring cash in two days at midnight and meet on the top of the arch, or you'd all be killed."

Queen nods. "Yeah, Sanction almost cut Jester's head off 3 times that night, someone tried to set us up to take the fall for you guys vanishing. I finally managed to convince this guy Ace that I was telling the truth that we had agreed to meet and you guys were going to pay me. He made Sanction hand over the money and let us go. I liked him."

Transducer nods. "We all did. Anyway, things got really bad after that. The government claimed you guys were part of the break in, and that you'd taken off in the paper bird. But we know you hadn't, so someone was lying. We always thought either the government got you and you were in a different research facility, or the bad guys got you and dumped your bodies in the ocean or something."

Queen nods. "None of the real big mentalists could find you, they searched for months."

More to come, but giving you a break to ask questions, I suggest you ask them about just this post, as they can't continue the story until you are done

"Well... the good news is... I recorded pretty much everything." Pulse say, "So clearing our names should be pretty easy, unless they want to call it really advanced CGI. Other than us being officially hunted by the government for murder and robbery how have Meta-Affairs gone since we vanished?"

"We all 'did'?" she asks in relation to Ace.

"Do we know if the bad guys were successful in that heist? And how did they even know about the bird?"

"Not sure we'll need it, but hang on..." Transducer responds to Pule's first question. When she asks about Ace, there's a round of glum works. "We'll get there..."

When she asks about the heist and the bird, Queen speaks up. "Well.. yes and no, nothing was taken the day you vanished. Not a single thing. One year later, to the day, everything in the vault vanished overnight." She makes some paper fold into looking like gold bars and cash in stacks, and then it explodes into confetti. "Uh, Pulse girl, Jester and I blew the skylight out and took off using a giant paper bird. It was on the news for like.. months... how the hell could they not know about the bird?"

"Because you made it invisible with Jester's powers. or... does her power not at all work like I think it does?"

Paper blinks, and then smirks. "Oh! Yes, you didn't realize, her images only work in areas where there's something interfering with other people's senses. I couldn't keep the confetti properly centered on us for long after we were outside, wind kept blowing it away, so we became visible shortly after leaving. But it kept us from getting hit with sniper fire. And I had a few crates of extra paper set up on buildings, so by the time we were visible, I had 4 or 5 extra birds flying around us."

Saffron was growing painfully annoyed at being threatened in her own home again but there were enough questions they needed answer to keep her in line for now.

"Where is the rest of our team, Rocket and Snap." She asks, staring down Bolt the entire time. "You couldn't have let SWAT keep them."

Should we make a list of all our questions Aegis would have a ton the other characters might not care about

Probably best to keep a running list of questions you have as we go through, and then ask them all at the end? Some of them will likely be answered in the story

Queen takes that question. "Aegis, we didn't know they had them. Granted, I wasn't 'we' back then, well, I was, but not this we, back then it was Jester and me 'we'. But nobody else knew they'd been taken either. All of you went into the building, and then vanished, as far as we knew. We thought Circe had killed you."

Transducer holds up a hand. "Let's continue, a lot of questions will get answered as we go. Anyway, that was.. not good... for the rest of us, well, the us without Queen, she wasn't an 'us' at that point, just a 'them'. The government used your being part of the break in as leverage to really crack down on Metas, especially the president at the time. He was spouting really hateful stuff, and his followers were foaming at the mouth. Meta hate groups sprang up all over, people started getting attacked, even people who weren't metas, just people with disabilities, or who were too smart, or were gay, or who didn't 'fit in'."

Paper picks up the tale. "Yeah, that's about when Jester and I joined up, it wasn't safe to be walking around, and we couldn't go into hiding, not with the operations just completed and rehab and everything." She waves at the building. "They put us here, Sanction didn't want your families retaliated against, and if you vanished the same day, everyone would know who you were, so she got some shifters to come in an pretend to be you folks. Then after a month or so, they spread out all over the world, took over seas jobs, so that nobody would think anything of it. The shifters have been sending back pictures every once in awhile, and infrequent letters. Aegis's doppleganger is the only one who didn't go overseas. Honestly, it's been a real asset, let's us shift money anywhere we need it, phantom employee goes overseas, get's paid, money gets sent and removed from bank account, given to those that need it."

The man with the dark skin and blue outfit chimes in. "Yah, saved my ass a couple of times. And having precogs helps keep your portfolio phat too. Been making plenty of scratch in the market, using it as seed money to other meta branches."

Transducer picks up. "Yeah, we didn't spend all your money Aegis, you should be about as flush as you were before. Anyway, things were really bad, until they got even worse..."

"Yeah, a bunch of stuff I was hoping to help prevent, but now I've helped cause." Pulse nods slowly, doing a 'go on' motion with her hands, for once more interested in listening than talking.

Paper Queen nods, and the paper pulls off the wall and forms a 3-d map of the US. Everything explodes except Utah. Then a section of the paper in Utah begins to flip and as it does, different colored confetti forms a minature map, and the words 'DUGWAY PROVING GROUNDS' comes into focus.

"So yeah, 9 and a half months after you vanished, Dugway exploded." The paper map explodes into confetti that whizzes past everyone's face like shrapnel. "Forty eight Metas, all prisoners of the US, with no due process, no trials, nothing, escaped from a hardened research facility hidden in the mountains there behind biohazard signs from where they tested nerve gas back in the 70's. They didn't just escape, they pulled every single record in the base off the computers and brought it out with them, and then blasted it over the internet, including over 1800 hours of recordings of 'research' on Metas." A growl runs around the room, as well as some watery eyes. "Drug and genetic testing, pain tolerance testing, amputations, lobotomies, disections, vivisections..." Paper's cool English accent belies the words she uses.

A table in the background shatters as the man with the fancy red cloak slams his fist into it, shards embedding in the floor. "Och, yeah, and some of 'em were wee bairns... not even teenagers yet." A rumble of anger goes around the room.

Then the spider armed woman, who was knitting a ball of yarn made of spider silk suddenly gasps. "SKINRIPPER!" A round of gasps go around the room.

Transducer's eyes widen. "Yeah, it could be, damn, why didn't I think of that. Skinripper was a Meta at the facility, nobody knows who he was for sure, he broke everyone else out and vanished. He also killed every single researcher and every single guard in the facility in 10 minutes. Ripped their skin off, left the bodies laying there on the floor twitching and dying. That might explain your Cenobyte, he may have survived an attack by Skinripper, although I don't know why Skinripper would attack a Meta, or if he did, why that Meta would bring you guys 3 years into the future. But yeah, it fits. Anyway, Skinripper killed everyone at the base, and then somehow overrode the security on their mainframe, and copied all the information out, complete dump, and set all the Metas free, sent them out with the recordings, the records, everything. Then he vanished. Nobody had any descriptions of him, nobody ever saw him, just heard him on the intercom when he opened all the cells."

The scotsman growls. "Bastards deserved it, they killed over 40 Metas, confirmed, and another 30 or more are still MIA."

Transducer sighs and nods. "Yeah, that's one of the things I really hate to tell you, Rocket and Snapdragon are MIA. We know they were at the facility, there's recordings of them being experimented on. Files on them too, but no bodies, no records of them dying, and no body has seen either one since the Night of Blood, as the internet christened it. I had assumed you were dead, since we knew Rocket and Snap were there, but you weren't."

Paper nods. "That's when things got REALLY bad. Angry Metas started raging against the Meta Hate groups, and every day people were sickened by the recordings, especially the kids. Someone shot the president when he was at a Rally denying he knew anything, even though his signature was on paperwork in the base. Riots in the streets, the government declared martial law for awhile. People who supported hate groups were killed, their houses burned down..."

Transducer nods. "You really are lucky you weren't here. I thought we were going to lose the whole world for awhile, it spread globally, and the US still hasn't regained the trust of anyone else in the world. All our allies broke ties with us over the Dugway Attrocities. There were trials in the Hague, there's a lot of US citizens in hiding now, formerly in the government or military, who have arrest warrants out for crimes against humanity."

Paper nods. "So after things got bad, they got worse, and then.... yeah, they got even worse..."

Violet downs half of what's left in the bottle of scotch and offers the remainder to Aegis.

"So. Move to Paris?"

"So... Did we have any metas who stepped in to protect the hate groups from the more extreme retaliations? Is the only thing that stopped the world from denouncing us as the second Germany that they all probably did these same things?"

Mud is the first to follow the teleporting meta. He concludes that he's traipsing through hell and remembers his mythology about the consequences of not following directions, so he follows directions to the letter.

Then, when he steps out of the hell tub time machine, he locks up. Thinking that this is a door from hell into... hell?

Since his parents never knew where he was anyway, then shapeshifters would not be involved in his life... if this hell was true. However, they would probably have thought that he might have been located at that Dugway place.

He continued to watch the episode wondering where this hell would lead.

Transducer sighs. "So, like we said, things were going to hell fast. Other countries had been treating Metas pretty bad, and the US doing so did two things. First, the more moderate countries recoiled from us in horror, and began passing reform measures as fast as they could. Canada opened it's borders to any Metas, even Mexico passed stricter protections. The EU, Britain, Japan, Australia, all went out of their way to prove they were not the US. Puerto Rico renounced it's protectorship, so did the US Virgin Islands. There's a big push down in that are to form a Caribbean Union, loosely based on the EU. If it keeps going the way it is, they'll have a working government by the end of the year."

Paper takes over. "Yeah, but the problem folks, Russia, China, North Korea, they all took the US as an example of 'well, we are not as bad as the US' and tightened their restrictions, and anyone who said anything they pointed at the US and replied that they didn't torture children to death, so deal with that before you talk to us."

Transducer sighs. "Yeah, that's just lovely. Anyway, the Army declared Martial Law, and kicked all the Congress Critters and executive branch types out, along with any judges that had signed off on any of this stuff. They arrested everyone they could find that had anything to do with it, including several generals and one admiral. A bunch of protesters went to D.C. to protest the government and the DOJ."

Paper picks up. "Which was when things went all to hell. Five million protesters hit the capital, most of them protesting either the torture or the military martial law declaration, but almost a million were there to protest metas not being rounded up as dangerous. Things got heated, crowded, and then some idiot, nobody is sure who, started shooting."

Transducer nods. "The consensus is that the first shots were from a skin head group, but it could have been a military or police person in the wrong place who panicked. Either way, things escalated quickly."

Paper continues, making paper display a street with throngs of faceless figures, two tanks, and lots of confetti flying around like bullets. "Someone got up on a tank at one end of the street, and fired a blast at the other tank. Nobody ever figured out what meta did it, but the other tank thought it was under attack by the first tank, so the turned and fired at it. The round missed, went long, and landed in an area where a bunch of students had gathered from Alabama, all highschool students, bused up to protest against the takeover."

The paper battlefield expands up, and shows the buses, the school kids, and the shell moving in slow motion. Just then a brown and tan paper man shoots up out of the crowd, and takes the shell, making it explode. The paper bits rain down in pieces, bits of brown tinged red. "Ace was there, he took the shell in the chest, his shield was enough to stop it, but it cut through it like butter and 1200 copper penetrators burned through him. The news caught it live."

There are moist eyes all around. "No idea how he got in front of it so fast, but he did. And the video went viral. Within hours, the whole capital had calmed down. Things started getting better after that. Emergency elections, the military stepped down as soon as the elections were complete." Transducer shrugs. "First thing the new congress did was authorize full, and public, investigations into the torture. They also passed a new constitutional amendment, putting Metas into a special category, full citizens with full rights, and a protected minority, so nobody can discriminate against us. But, if our powers are able to alter minds, kill someone as quickly as a hand gun, or as silently as poison, we have to register with our states as if we had a concealed carry permit. If we can't get a concealed carry permit, we have to not use our powers. If our powers are more destructive than military grade anti-vehicle weaponry, we have to register with the government in a sealed database."

Paper nods. "It's left up to the states what they do about meta crime. So far, the main solution has been to hire Metas as special response teams, in case of Meta crime." She waves a hand around. "Aegis's company is now a state contractor."

"Things are pretty f*#*ing fragile, lasses." The scotsman pipes up. "Lot of people are scared, others are still angry. Almost a hundred thousand people got injured in the riots, over twenty thousand died there or from complications. Lot of it was trampling from panick, but a lot died from gunshots, or cars, or metas. Economy sucks, wall street sucks, and all our trade deals are shot. President McComb is doin the best she can, but it's a mess."

Violet looks at her feet for a long moment, and again asks her question.

"So. Move to Paris?"

Transducer shrugs. "If you want to give up on the country, and the people in it, sure. Or you can stick around and we can try to be an example and save people. We get some idiot with a paint can every month or two, but we also help people, and get letters of support and thanks. You can take it as a glass half full or half empty, but if you assume it's a cracked glass, you won't ever have anything to drink."

"Actually, I was thinking that I could just use a f-bomb vacation. Did you know we were going to go to Disneyland? We were. We were going to go to Disneyland, and I was going to Disneybound Alice In Wonderland and get Ho-Ho a pair of Minnie ears and stick them on her head when she wasn't looking, and make sure Saff' was never out of Mint Juleps and maybe try to sneak one in on Pirates with Zach on the last ride of the night when the ride's almost empty. We've been going non-stop since all of this began. And now, here we are, three years and a hell-blast of death in our faces."

She looks up at the room, tears running down her face. Thank goodness for really good, waterproof mascara.

"I'm tired. This hurts. Pardon the hell out of me for needing time to process and recover, you know? Forgive me for not being invulnerable."

A small paper cat leaps up onto Vi's lap, and starts to purr and rub it's head against her wrist. Paper smiles softly. "Sorry, we're all pretty exhausted, and we've been fighting a lot of despair lately too." Transducer looks sheepish.

"It's not all bad, there's good things, like the new Meta laws making us more safe every day. A lot of Metas are getting jobs in Hollywood now, doing special effects, acting, and all sorts of stuff." She laughs. "Jester's working for Marvel Studios as a special effects expert now. She's getting really good at her illusions. She's up to nearly a hundred meters now, and can make them work in direct sunlight. She's even got a creepy fanbase that dresses up like a Jester and screams they love her at every publicity tour stop. Which is a lot less creepy on the girls that do it than it is on the boys that do."

A round of chuckles go around the room. "You take your time, ok? We've been covering for you guys for years, you can probably take at least a few hours to get your feet under you." She says with quiet confidence. She waves a hand, and most of the room quietly heads out, all of them murmering quiet words of encouragement. Transducer starts to say something, but then just shrugs sheepishly and heads out as well.

"What do you need? We still have your rooms unused, easier to pretend you show up if you have rooms. Or we can get you some medical attention if anyone is injured, it's hard to tell, you're all coated in blood, but I think we all assumed it was from that mist you came out of. Any of it yours?" She asks softly. Paper's apparently grown up some in the last few years.

Mud finds a wall to lean against and absorb. He wondered how his parents were doing. He wondered if the agents that took him worked for Dugway and if was actually safe.

He guesses he missed his exam and got kicked out of school for missing classes. Sigh.

Did he say the president was a woman?

"I -really- need a doctor." Pulse offers. "So that I can take aspirin. Was shot, and mauled by a fire cat. I also need the wifi password, so I can get up to date on things, check my email, that sort of stuff."

"This... Skintaker guy. Is there any chance that he's a meta that can borrow powers? Because if he's the same guy that took us, that would explain a lot of how he did all the things he could do. He had dozens of people locked in prison cells there... or maybe he was a prisoner? I'm not really sure."

After a few minutes of silence in her chair with the paper cat, Violet gets up quietly and leaves the room. She goes straight to her room, walks directly into the shower (still clothed), turns it on until it's nearly scalding, and steps in.

After about an hour of sitting in the shower and crying, she'll actually try to get clean, see if her best pajamas are still in their drawer, take a sleeping pill (so she doesn't wake anyone up screaming), and try to sleep. She purposely shuts off the mindlink when she does so.

Questions can wait until she's had sleep and a lot of pancakes.

Pulse

Paper blinks, and then nods. "You should have said something girl." Paper flies down off the wall and lifts Pulse up off her chair, moving her to a flat position. "I'll get you to the medical room, and we'll get a doctor in here ASAP. You're stable right?" She begins jogging forward, and Pulse floats on the paper through the building toward the basement. Instead of taking the elevator, she just floats Pulse down the stairwell as it's faster.

There is a medical area set up in the basement, able to hold a dozen people. Pulse is lain on a bed, and almost immediately one of the RepliKates shows up. How she knew to do so, is not immediately clear.

"Hey Pulse, long time no see. God you're a mess, what did you do, fall into a hog thresher?" She immediately goes to work on Pulse's clothes, cutting them with a big pair of surgical shears, slicing them off from the wrist to the chest, then from ankle to waist. "Stop squirming, these things are ruined anyway."

VI

Vi finds her room, and her pajamas, as she left them. Mostly, a few things have been moved around, but mostly things are where she left them.

She passes out and sleeps for quite a while.

From the wall, Mud looks up and asks the room, "if you've been us for the past three years, do you know how my family is doing?"

We'll assume Mud's question was before everyone left the room.

Transducer looks at Mud, and then nods. "Oh, sure, we kept tabs on who we could. I haven't looked recently, but as of about 6 months ago, they were fine."

Saffron would wait until the rest of the party had moved on into their own plans before trying to talk to Bolt in private. "Unless you have any other leads about where the others are I need to go to the Proving Grounds and look for any signs of them."

"I'm not squirming, you're squirming." Pulse mumbles back. "Got into another fight with a cat. There was fire again. What is with this world and cats and fire. Oh, I was shot, too." she offers.

"Seriously though. Wifi. I need to find out what's a McComb, and catch up, and look at pictures of my parents, and see the crater, and... figure out what all this is."

@Aegis - Bolt isn't back yet, but she will be in a little while. Proving Grounds? You mean the military base? That was 2+ years ago, and the place has been gone over by hundreds of investigators and reporters.

@Pulse
"You can wait until we've done what we can." RepliKate says firmly, threatening Pulse with the scissors. "Besides, you probably don't know how to communicate with them anymore. We're using NG2 wireless with a SpaceX uplink. You're at least 3 versions of the comm protocols behind. Even the cell phones are different now." She pulls off a bloody rubber glove, and pulls a flat piece of glass out of her pockete with a metal rim. The glass light's up, and displays a dial pad. "Silicon Valley's been working on overdrive now that Meta's can come out in public." She grins. "I have three jobs with AMD and two with Alphabet. Right now I'm working on a 5nm IPU design, a new phone OS, and having a meeting with an Oracle VP." She grins impishly. "If you are very very good, I will teach you all you need to know about the new protocols. But that requires you to lie the f%$& down and listen to your doctor!" She growls, only partially kidding.

She winces as the burns, claw marks, and bullet wound come into sight. "You are really lucky, I think we can get Redit in to do some temporal trickery on your body and undo all that. I'll put in a request, might take a day or two. In the meantime, you get to have good old fashioned surgery to remove the bullet, and some burn pads on the burns." She begins bustling about to gather up a local anesthetic and what she needs to remove the bullet.

Pulse simply deflates at that point and stops protesting.

Everything had changed and there was nothing she could do about it.

You'll get access back in a bit, there's an important plot point coming up

get more information about his family (which we can assume off screen)

Mud finds that his parents had joined one of the milder anti-Meta groups, one that had been agitating for the government to round up Metas and 'cure' them.

These types of groups, however, were especially hit hard by the Dugway news, and there were lots of firebombs and riots against those who had openly supported it when the videos of the experimentation and such came out.

Mud's parents lost their home, someone burned it down while they were out, fortunately. Both parents lost their jobs, his mother due to her company closing with the economic slump, and his father when he was identified as a senior member in his local chapter of the group.

Mud's older sister had moved out and been very vocal about Meta rights, denouncing her father for chasing her little brother out, who was a Meta before anyone knew what Meta's were. She is working on becoming a psychiatrist when not agitating for more Meta rights and for the continued punishment of people like her father.

Mud's parents are now divorced, with his mother living with his aunt and uncle. His father is working as a janitor in a chemical plant and living out of a trailer park. He's still active in anti-meta circles, but not as vocal as he used to be. He's joined much more violent leaning groups since his downfall.

So, in theory, Pulse's mom has always been a 'low-tier' meta. Her powerset was essentially Sylar's before he started murdering people to find out how they tick (Limited to mechanical engineering).

Not sure how limiting it to mechanical engineering would work for being able to identify and copy powers. What do you mean by 'mechanical engineering'?

Pulse would like to know what's happened to her family.

Need above answered

Pulse would like to learn the new languages as quickly as possible.

You'll have 3 months of down time at least while you get caught back up, and I'll hand out exp again.

Pulse will focus heavily on the rise and fall of Meta Rights in the next days. She suspects that Ace f++#ed with perceptions to change the world, so she'll be analyzing any videos he's a part of.

Pulse rapidly realizes that Ace could not have f***ed with perceptions, as it was caught by cameras, and his powers were mental, not physical like Jesters. Plus cameras from multiple directions caught it. Oddly, he started up before the tank fired, leading to some detractors to claim it was a planned stunt. Others say he was just flying up and noticed it after he took off, and happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Perception Check, -4

Assume she binge watches any Jester movies as she is able to find them.

Pulse notices a marked improvement on the special effects when Jester is listed as an asset in the movie. The people on screen seem to interact better with the CGI in important sections than they do in others.

Edit: She also focuses on which of her friends has to register and which don't. She suspects everyone is required to. And she hates being compared to a firearm. This is a really sore spot for her, because making *people* register is not at all the same as making people register for a *firearm*. Bonus danger in that they likely need to stay unregistered as they fit the description of Metas wanted for a huge bank robbery and their skill set matches perfectly. :|

Pulse realizes that nobody saw them use their powers, other than Aegis, Blaze, Rocket, and Snapdragon. Blaze's powers are actually not uncommon. A change of costume would leave them new Metas. They were never identified beyond that one public appearance.

Aegis is the most problematic, given her dramatic gold coloring is rather unique.

Aegis would need to register as a WMD. Pulse, Vi, Blaze, and Mud would need to get concealed carry permits.

If Aegis is the only one going IMO it'd be better to just do a quick recap so we don't split the party too much for too long. How long would a quick scouting trip take, if it's just a few days it could be what she does while everyone recovers since she didn't take nearly as much damage.

Aegis takes a flight out, and sneaks into the area under the ground, just her head above now and then to breath. Searching the area at night, she finds that the ruins have been sealed off outside, and are guarded. She sneaks underground and searches, but finds nothing that hasn't been gone over in quintuplet apparently. Even a few sealed off rooms seem to have been searched, as they are in a bad state, things strewn everywhere. She finds nothing useful about either Rocket or Snap, nor anyone else for that matter. The place has been picked clean in the last 2 years.

Questions:
How's her father?

Aegis's father is 3 years older, but none the worse for wear. He's always held his prejudices close to his vest, so any pro or anti meta sentiment were not in the news. His weapons companies are doing very well, with gun sales through the roof the last few years.

Has the company been able to keep going?

Yes, the company has done pretty well. They've made it into a combination Meta help/Meta employment agency, finding Meta's work (such as Jester's). They make quite a bit of money off meta contracts now.

Why was her house picked to be the hideout?

It was large, already paid for, and they were keeping Aegis's real identity alive anyway, so they had easy access. Plus Missouri passed laws that made it easier to do a company that could 'hire out' Metas.

Was her room left untouched?

Mostly. There's some new clothes there, and things have been moved around a little, but it's mostly untouched. It was just 'lived in' enough by a shapechanger to make it look like Aegis returned regularly.

Private questions for Bolt when she returns:
Is mimic, the meta that tried to kill aegis in her intro, still in their custody?

Yes, he's still sitting on an island in the pacific.

Anything about Ace?

Nothing really, he had been acting a little odd that day, but everyone had been under a lot of pressure. He died, they confirmed that, plenty of DNA to test.

Has Whip been heard from/seen?

No, they think she may be dead, as it would be hard for her to hide with those wings.

She'd also reassure her they can use her bank accounts if they need them.

They really appreciate it. It's made a huge difference.

Sylar's power isn't 'stealing powers' or 'copying powers'. It's understanding what makes something tick. The fact that he can gain powers by figuring out how they work for someone else is an extension of that. Pulse's mother simply understands mechanical devices - cars, doorknobs, ceiling fan motors, and the like, rather intuitively. Her powers aren't overt, so both she and Pulse never realized it was really a thing. She may still not have ever realized, because it's more that she gets a hunch as to what's wrong. Of course, I'm also fine with her just being a normal, it was just something that I thought would be fitting. Call it super-analyze: Mechanical.

Perception: 13 - 3d6 - 4 ⇒ 13 - (2, 3, 3) - 4 = 1

Oh, that can be a super power, but it's really just 5 point levels with perception (only to analyze mechanical issues) and 10 point skill levels (only to fix mechanical issues). Basically, telling she was super or not would be almost impossible without a meta detection sense

Pulse's mother is doing fine, her knack for repairing or diagnosing issues has kept her very busy, and she's gotten another promotion.

Blaze, in all of this confusion, really only wanted the answer to one question: How was his Mom?

It didn't really come up very often. After all, she's a grown woman, a registered nurse and all that, but he hadn't expected to go missing for 3 years (and of course she had no clue about the whole "Blaze" thing), so that was something that refused to leave the top of his mind no matter what he or anyone else said.

Blaze finds, on asking, that his mom was injured in a riot, but it wasn't fatal. Just a broken arm, she was tending to someone who'd been injured when a police line began firing beanbags at the crowd and she was hit and arrested. She managed to prove her innocence when some film came to light showing she was tending to wounded, not rioting.

She's currently doing fine, and has switched to a new hospital as a head nurse in the Pediatrics wing. She's unaware of Blaze having been missing, as his doppleganger has been sending regular 'Hi Mom' quick vids from Singapore, Thailand, and Bangkok, where his 'new job' has him going around helping with building up infrastructure in isolated areas that could now connect to the internet thanks to the Space-X Network.

::Going to be playing Where's Waldo with the Man in Red, I think. Do you think Skinless meant 'don't look into it' or just 'stay away?':: she doesn't get more detailed unless someone approaches or talks with her about it.

'I'm going to call you Strife... or maybe Malice A. Forethought, if I'm right...' she thinks to herself, as her forcefield flickers back on on its own. Annoyed, she shuts it back down again.

Give me a Research roll