"And someone's planning to auction Slingshot's old armor. But, like, tonight."
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Jason spends some of the evening on the dark web. If there's one community he knows how to fit into, it's conspiracy rumors, and so he lurks around the Adventurer-watcher forums for a few hours, dropping stories of "hacked documents" and "confidential whistleblowers" telling a story of a rogue group of government agents working to duplicate the notorious Slingshot's technology to perform some sort of copycat CIA assassinations. It's a thin story, but maybe someone watching the right feeds will drop a rumor of their own if the same sort of power armor shows up in a traffic feed or local news story—and it's the sort of information-gathering that's best to start early.
"Well, sure. I'd rather not have a roommate, if it's all the same. Maybe someone can fish around on Craigslist, see if they can find a nice big house we can rent, or a few adjacent flats—but I should probably see what kind of net presence we can work with on this sort of thing, see if we can recruit any eyes in the underground power-fan community, that sort of thing."
Cowboy points to the riot shield he's carrying, onto which the word "COWBOY" has been spray-painted, as well as the full suit of chrome-and-black kevlar combat armor he's wearing. "Not a lot of cargo space in the van. Probably better to just wear everything, we'll ditch as soon as we have somewhere to ditch it."
"I've got a few passengers—you'd rather I summon a motorcycle? Then somebody think up a destination so we can get outta here."
"On it," Cowboy replies. "Maybe watch the parking lot? I don't want too many people seeing this." And, pulling a large tablet out of the back of his shield, he begins paging through a collection of vehicle schematics, eyes reading numbers and dimensions, as his hands trace glowing lines through the air that gradually solidify into axles and pistons. Several minutes later, he's standing in front of a large white van. "Angel Security Solutions" is painted along the side, along with two clip-art angels. On the inside, it's your standard FBI surveillance vans; a dozen screens and radios, though these are currently tuned to various TV stations or GPS and weather readouts. A single seating bench is fitted into the wall, with additional cramped bucket seats growing out of the floor at various angles. "Right, then," he announces. "This is the Cyber-Van. Not used to seating seven, so I had to make some adjustments. [b]"Faster than she looks; self-driving software run by a trickster spirit, which means zero to sixty in about four seconds, though the handling isn't great for highway chases. So, where are we going? I haven't exactly paid rent on my place for a few months..." "Oh, and there should be wi-fi in the back, which means y'all can read up on those prisoner files during the drive."
"Don't draw attention?" Cowboy attempts to scowl through the tinted glass of his riot helmet. "I'm a f***ing superhero. This is gonna suck." And, looking around. "Right. Do we get a car, or am I gonna have to summon one? And where are we actually going?"
"And here I thought we were supposed to be doing things quietly," Jason replied, "Leaving in prison clothes seems a bit more conspicuous."
"Or, you know... maybe they have our entire files, know exactly what we were in for and what we would and wouldn't be capable of," Cowboy points out, taking some time to strap on his heavy kevlar armor before following.
"Only thing I care about is my armor and hammer," Jason comments, "And they weren't about to let me hold onto those. Any chance there's an office I can pick them up at?"
"Sure," Jason replies, "But I only see five of us."
I thought 5e left the "natural 20 isn't an automatic success on skill checks" intact? The original idea was that, no matter what you roll, a guy with Jump +20 can't get across the Grand Canyon.
"Jason Majors," Jason says, tilting his hat, though again eyeballing the various spots other prisoners have fled to. "Online whistleblower, plus kinetic combat and healing. I've broken a lot of windows taking on bad dudes, some of them literal, and I guess that makes enemies. Best I can tell I'm in here because of paid testimony from three crooked cops and a blood sample left at a crime scene in a city I've never visited." "Still... 'Rapture,' as you call him, said he let some real nasty types loose in this yard, and that we'd have a fight on our hands in a few minutes."
Eh, you could always meet up with 626 later or something
Ugh that's a lot of rolls:
"Yeah, yeah." The cowboy calls back. "And I could hack the prisoner records, but there are more pressing concerns than showing off. No masks, so you can call me Jason."
And he stands up, seeing that everyone still alive is getting at least some measure of treatment, and pivots on one foot, tracing a triangle in the air with his two hands while reciting a series of numbers; and then Jason is surrounded in overlapping shimmering fields of orange and blue, each itself undulating through complex geometrical patterns. And, quickly, he walks over the man with black eyes. "Now, excuse me, but I don't think that's yours. And I'm not in a fun mood today. So you've got sixty seconds to explain what you're doing in that body, and why you deserve to keep doing it."
I... read a lot of Shakespeare...
I await with baited breath. :) Technically, it's bated breath (Shakespeare shortening from "abated"). Baited breath is when you eat a few worms, then sit underwater with your mouth open until a tasty fish swims into it. #pedantry #themoreyouknow
I don't mean "good vs evil" as in "bad vs good"; just, like, the two options being offered seem to be more appealing to characters based on good/bad in their alignment
I mean... heroic alignments and all, it's a pretty divisive choice to say "we're the murder faction," so, fair enough. He could've probably posed it as more of a lawful vs chaotic split, but the specifics of this plan seem more good vs evil (as in, classic superhero teams instead of, say, watchman type teams)
Eh. A few people initially seemed interested in working with him, but maybe that was before it was clear this was a choice to split.
I think 1 or 2 other people were on the fence?
Hmm, wonder if I should've sprung for Conjure Knowbot. Would've let me actually hack into the internet through a security camera... ah well. Should those of us staying behind be rolling knowledge checks on the "dangerous" prisoners, or does that wait until I can find a way to patch into wikipedia (adventurepedia)?
Cowboy looks at the others, realizing that a few have followed his lead—certainly enough medics here, and someone asking for advice. "I'm not sure..." he shakes his head. "I'd try cutting my own way out, but Mr. Rat suggests we'll have bigger problems soon... I could build an impenetrable barrier, but that would take ten or fifteen minutes, and I don't know if we have that kind of time. Still... is there a chance they let any of you keep a phone, laptop or tablet with crippled internet?"
The man in the cowboy hat shakes his head. "There's too much you're not telling us, Rat. With a power like yours, why wait this long to escape—and if you could have shaken off all our implants at any time, why aren't you in a special cell? Hell, if you had freed us all in the middle of the night, I bet we could've broken through those walls without any outside help." "Plus, I'm not eager to try and murder every one of the most powerful folks in the world. Sounds like an extraordinarily painful way to die—and as wanted as you say you are, leaving with you seems a good way to put a big damn target on my back." "Still... thanks for the unshackles. I owe you something, but someone's gotta stay behind and play hospital."
And he begins quickly moving among the unconscious prisoners, stopping the bleeding of anyone who still has a pulse—and glaring, briefly, at the man with the black eyes.
Ah, got it, so it's sort of a telekinetic attack.
Out of curiosity, does the Rat's terrible blood thing count as either a poison or a disease? Asking for.... a friend...
Cowboy: In his month in the prison, Jason hasn't interacted much with the other prisoners—he's got little interest in socializing with criminals who might be truly terrible, and the limited spaces he has access to makes it easy to keep to himself. If he interacts with anyone, it's mostly the guards; often this is antagonistic, but there's a few he gets along with. Specifically, the "Sarge"—Sergeant Nicholls, one of the senior guards, overseeing the Cowboy's block—left a veteran detective job through forced early retirement not too long ago, and occasionally brings by photos and files from cases he never solved, asking for a clever criminal's insight into the tech or gadgets that might've been used.
"Basketball's not really work..." Jason mutters to the Rat, as he puts down the book, and scoops up one of the cookies between his two locked hands. "You know anything about this?"
Alright, was traveling for a few days. Will try to catch up.
Prison: For most of its prisoners, The Hole was more pleasant than expected. Jason Majors had no such illusions. He knew his rights—knew that his arrest had not been exactly legal, and that he'd never see a lawyer in this place—and, from the first, resolved to resist. And he had the talents to make that possible. The implant was the biggest problem. Jason could feel its presence, interact magically with its tech-field; and he knew how to shut it down, at least for a few seconds. And he maintained, in talks with the prison's psychiatrists, that he believed this would give him enough time to blast it out of his skull—and in the likely case that it didn't, he would be willing to die trying. And so, because any object in his hands could become a sledgehammer, and with a wave of a finger he could blast holes in walls—this meant his hands had to be restrained, at all times. With the stiff-suit, it was easy enough; with fingers posed in resting positions, he could eat some foods awkwardly (or be fed others), and he was allowed to wiggle his hands at regular daily integrals, under armed guard. And, just to be safe, he wasn't allowed near anything digital. Which meant mostly solitary time in his room, with book stands and a microfiche projector that could be paged through with a rigged-up foot pedal. And so he read, mostly, to pass the time—old newspapers, and language books, finally bothering to teach himself Chinese, and scanning for old crime stories—though after only two months, the pastime hadn't quite worn thin yet.
Okay, think I got this working.
Okay, got an alias, as requested. |