witch's cape, not hat

[characterquarry]

Grendyne groans and starts pulling on her boots when the alarm goes off. Again. She quick-marches to the broom hangar, sits on her machine and is handed a plethora of loaded weapons by attentive corporals.

"Two flyers in one day? They're getting way too common."

"It's worse," the commander informs them, "South Karlsland got hit with three at once. We're taking Lytee's express and sleeping there. You can sit out if you absolutely need to, but Freya's still recovering so we could use you as a comms relay."

"No, I'll come. I just reserve the right to complain about it."

The 42nd United Forces Witch Wing takes off and assembles into a perfect synchronized formation as Lytee charges her teleport power.



...This is not South Karlsland wilderness.

[note: halfway through this thread I created a unique account for Grendyne. Do not be alarmed by the change in account. -Rockeye]

Comments

[wormcan]

In fact it's not wilderness of any kind. She can see a city, full of multi-story buildings and bright lights. Her current location is full of lower buildings with no windows, essentially boxes. The ground beneath her is entirely concrete and asphalt, not that those are necessarily familiar to her.

Nearby, she can hear crashes and explosions.

[characterquarry]

Well, wherever she is, there's fighting going on and she's on the Witch Wings. She might as well jump in. She draws and strings the bow, prepares a glowing guided-arrow, and flies towards the noise, keeping low over the buildings.

[wormcan]

She sees a variety of people in costumes. Some are matching costumes, most aren't. It's not immediately obvious what they're fighting about, but the five in non-matching costumes are running from the other three. The crowd of armed non-costumed individuals may have something to do with that.

[characterquarry]

And they have weird magic.

She sets to copying the closest of the four powers that smell like information, from one of the five running away. It's trickier than usual, but if it's any decent kind of information-getting ability it should tell her some of what the fuck is going on.

[wormcan]

Uncoordinated, unplanned. Not expecting this fight.

And more information.

The language is roughly similar to what they speak in Liberion, with accents she can't place.
Those two are teammates, not considered a serious threat by their opponents.
Most of the people in red and green are here unwillingly, at the command of the woman in the gas mask.
She herself is the one responsible for most of the explosions.

And then Grendyne suddenly develops a splitting headache. The magic here is weird .

[characterquarry]

She grunts and swears in Nordic and drops the copy.

But the gas-masked lady seems to be the aggressor here. She decides in an instant - far too risky to help the coerced crowd right now. Protect who you can. Arrow goes out, spearing one of the bombs currently flying through the air. And she dives down and puts up the widest shield she can manage, a translucent wall of blue light, closely following the retreating five.

"You lot are the victims here, so I'm helping. Can't hold the shield long though. I can carry one person."

[wormcan]

The information-smelling one dressed in purple nods, and the tallest one answers.
"Him." He's pointing at a teammate, who is thin and pale and more relevantly collapsed. "Get him somewhere he won't be found. He'll recover, but he's already out of the fight."

[characterquarry]

"Not familiar with the area, but I'll do my best."

Telekinesis floats the unconscious person into her arms and she ascends, dropping the shield.

She grabs the information power again, holding it as lightly as possible, trying to aim it at places-to-put-this-guy. And she doesn't need a power to identify out-of-the-way roofs.

[wormcan]

It outputs facts about whatever specific thing she is thinking at, and doesn't usually have enough starting information to answer that question. The headache starts building before she gets an answer (magic here continues to be uncooperative) but eventually one of the storage units registers as unlocked and unused. If she leaves him in there he'll wake up uninterrupted, if unhappy.

[characterquarry]

She leaves him there and, pressed for time, burns ash-words into the wall with miniature versions of her starburst attack. Your team told me to evacuate you. Gren.

She's lost her hold of the information spell by now, so she has to estimate where group of four has gotten to. But it's only been a minute or so. And she can probably just follow the sound of explosions.

On second thought, a brawl seems like the kind of thing the authorities should know about. And neither of those groups were that.

She flies high and looks for something official.

[wormcan]

The most obviously official location is a building that appears to be floating in the middle of a bay, surrounded by a glowing force field.

The other salient detail is the explosions currently going off all across the city. Various colors, brightnesses, at least one explosion made of silence and darkness, no two alike. These clearly aren't ordinary bombs, and it probably isn't an everyday occurrence.

[characterquarry]

God dammit. She pushes hard towards the force field, flaring mana, screaming at the top of her lungs, and generally trying to get attention.

[wormcan]

A man in power armor is just speeding across the bridge to the mainland, when he pulls over.

"This better be about the bombs! Got something I can use?" Other people in costumes are making their way across at different speeds, all of them faster than normal.

[characterquarry]

"There was a lady tossing them all over." Brief tactical description. Gas mask, long black hair, crowd of coerced gunmen. "Two others with powers, dunno what. Don't know where they are now, but I can show you where they were five minutes ago."

[wormcan]

"Show me." He starts speeding again, trusting her to stay ahead with her advantage of flight.

And he sends a message to his colleagues. He says he has a lead on the bomber's location from an unknown cape, and they should continue focusing on the disaster relief and rescue.

[characterquarry]

She's fast, when she's pouring this much mana into it.


This is where they were a few minutes ago, and that's the direction they were chasing a group of four 'capes', since that's apparently the word, in.

[wormcan]

When they catch up to the battle, the four capes are no longer fleeing; they're surrounded and on the ground. The gas masked figure is sitting on a car projecting her voice at her captives, and occasionally launching explosives for emphasis. None of them have hit any of her soldiers so far, but it's not because she's looking where she fires.

When she sees the newcomers, she cheers. "It's the white hats! Here to see me turn this guy's head inside out?"

[characterquarry]

Grendyne's voice is clear in armor guy's ear despite her being twenty feet above him. "I can probably drop her, maybe even non-lethally, but I don't think I can stop a bomb from going off."

She also tele-talks to the downed ones, "If there's anything I can do to disarm her bombs, whisper it 'at' me."

Just to check, though, she grabs bomb-lady's power and tries to make sense of it.

It doesn't work.

What other potentially useful powers are here, other than the headache inducing extrapolating one?

[wormcan]

Two incomprehensible, one belonging to the man on the motorcycle. One smells like micromanagement and large numbers of useless tools, one like dogs, and one dark. The remaining one gives an impression of instructions and competence.

Armsmaster answers the bomber by confidently stating some suitably heroic form of "meh, I can take her." To which the bomber crows, "Nope! You make a move, all these people go the way of Park Jihoo there!" She waves her grenade launcher at a stain on the ground that plausibly could have once been a person.

One of the downed capes hisses toe rings. Left foot without their enemies noticing.

[characterquarry]

Toe rings. Toe rings.

Invisibility is really hard. She barely kept it at all. But if anything deserves her best efforts, it's this.

A mostly-invisible arrow lances out while the bomber is mid-boast, curves down in midair, and slices off those toes. And Grendyne drops onto the nearest roof, semi-conscious, because that took way too much mana.

[wormcan]

Bakuda barely seems to pay attention to the pain. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me. The old-fashioned way then!"

She starts launching grenades at her opponents. Grendyne isn't in a position to see much of what goes on, but after the first few explosions and a charge from the man in blue, the terrified crowd of formerly coerced people attack the bomber with whatever comes to hand.

The other four capes flee, a cloud of darkness hiding them from the hero.

[characterquarry]

Grendyne will be up here, swearing loudly in Nordic, one (broken) leg pinned under her flying thing.

[wormcan]

The first person to approach is the blue-armored hero. He ascends by grappling hook after leaving the bomber restrained by his motorcycle.

"Thanks for your help. I never did introduce myself; I'm Armsmaster.
Let's get you to a doctor, you can give your statement on the way."

[characterquarry]

"Grendyne Nylund. I'll have the mana to get myself back into the air in a few minutes injury or no. Less if you have stimulants. I've got questions, though, what the hell is going on here? I expected to pop out of the transport spell and stop a Neuroi ravaging South Karlsland, and instead found insane bombers with weird magic! And where am I anyway? Liberion? Britannia?"

[wormcan]

"I do have stimulants." He offers her some. "And I can give you a ride if you'd rather not fly with that leg.
You're in the city of Brockton Bay. Britannia is across the Atlantic, and I've never heard the other names. Or of magic, though powers are poorly enough understood that they might as well be.

As for what the hell, Bakuda started detonating bombs across the city until I captured her. And she was about to kill a different group of villains, whom I didn't manage to capture. My teammates are running search and rescue."