Young Justice Plus

[mc2rpg]

What is the plan for the peace route if Ethan keeps his lady robot? I doubt he is hanging around it by mistake after all.

 

[DeAnno]

Morrow is not going to listen to reason. He's a deranged lunatic that in canon almost led to the detonation of the Yellowstone Supervolcano. He is going to smile and nod and take our help, and best case we are going to wake up in a shitty robot body with no powers and Ethan laughing at how fucking stupid we are. He wants the extinction of all biological life on earth, and the League is going to eventually come and crush his face like a bag full of hammers.

 

[Nai]

[X] You remove the head with an ugly popping noise and put it in a bag. Ethan might be able to do something useful with him.
-[X] You want to loot the body. You dissemble it piece by piece, ripping them out of the ground in sequence. You disable any obvious power supplies as you do so, and haul the thing back to your hotel room for a more thorough examination. Ethan probably doesn't know much about technology anyways.

 

[Delcer]

[X] You remove the head with an ugly popping noise and put it in a bag. Ethan might be able to do something useful with him.
-[X] You want to loot the body. You dissemble it piece by piece, ripping them out of the ground in sequence. You disable any obvious power supplies as you do so, and haul the thing back to your hotel room for a more thorough examination. Ethan probably doesn't know much about technology anyways.

 

[WyldCard4]

Voting closed. I am off to write.

 

[WyldCard4]

[X] You remove the head with an ugly popping noise and put it in a bag. Ethan might be able to do something useful with him.
-[X] You want to loot the body. You dissemble it piece by piece, ripping them out of the ground in sequence. You disable any obvious power supplies as you do so, and haul the thing back to your hotel room for a more thorough examination. Ethan probably doesn't know much about technology anyways.

Click to shrink...

Bar Harbor, Maine- July 15, 06: 58 EDT

There is nothing so simple as a power supply. The robot's body looks mostly like a body. White fluid replacing blood, strange organs, ceramic bones. You are rather surprised it proved as durable as it was.

You assemble the obviously mechanical parts on the floor. An oval in the head, wires connecting to the eyes, a strange bag of gas, a few bags of non-white fluid, computer chips in the hands and some seemingly random places. Joints, ligaments, tendons, muscles, all of it looks inhuman but none of it looks truly mechanical.

You think the mouth and teeth might actually be from a corpse or forced growth tank, maybe something Martian. They seem plugged into a large rubbery slot. The throat looks normal besides a small set of wires and what might be computer chips. The throat seems to turn into a tube at the halfway point that would presumably drop things into a small elastic bag for later being squished out uneaten. You get the feeling that whatever went into the teeth and mouth was done more elegantly with the respiratory system, the nose and air canal seemingly meshed together with the white fluid system.

The testicles seem to just be lumps, with the same material that went into the skin being used in entirety for everything else in that area.

You do not know anywhere near enough about the brain or nervous system to figure out what the robot is using. Outside of a coating, the eyes seem almost entirely mechanical, and the inner ears even more so. You honestly have no idea if this robot had a sense of taste or smell.

Putting it very, very roughly "back together" you consider this thing. Whoever made this was very, very smart. This was building a human body from the ground up, not wrapping a convincing skin around a metal shell. It would pass anything short of a blood test. Even an x-ray would probably show the hands as normal, and that was the most common quick check of human structure. You think that the metal involved could mostly be explained by a few surgeries. Hm, there is a small box tied to both the digestive tube and the brain computer, so maybe it has come kind of "cloaking device" to fool x-ray machines for the least human parts?

It would take alien technology to do better, and good technology at that. Andalites, perhaps. Martians could make something biological, but it would take them years to make something sentient and capable of doing this.

You are kind of surprised that Morrow hadn't made the fluid red instead of white. A function of the internal fluid, or is this thing a cheap version of something even more complex?

You remove and carefully put away the possible cloaking devices, the brain computer thing, the oval and connected eyes, the robotic eardrums, and a few other weird pieces you can't guess at in a small bag you transform out of one of the towels. You make the bag impossible to open without tearing it and put it in your backpack.

Absolute worst case there has to be someone who would want to buy all of this. A really good shape shifter might be able to integrate the technology, but no one you have ever met could do that. Ethan could probably get you in contact with someone who might be able to give you the use of some of this in the future.

In some ways the tech isn't that advanced. Truly advanced technology wouldn't have wires, instead routing information and energy through Z-Space. A truly advanced machine would have most components in Z-Space, creating "pyramids" with the "point" resting in 3-Space. That is all cargo cult, information taught to you. You have no more idea of how to penetrate Z-Space than you do on how to cast magic.

The whole thing strikes you as very brute force, in a way. The stretching of basic concepts into ridiculous complexity and building a very large system out of it. It is kind of amusing for someone priding himself on robotics. The concept is not robotic, it is organic.

Then there is a knocking on the door. Who would knock at this time? Oh, of course. "Hey hey hey. You up?"

You sweep the robot under the bed with a wave of your hand and greet her."It's like five AM."

"Closer to seven, duh. Also, the news this morning. That new princess, Starfire, went crazy in DC. Attacked the Prince Seerow Memorial." She seems to consider this an appropriate reason to hook her arm around yours.

"Who?" You ask.

"Like, three GLs back. He died in like the 60s with Zirral, that alien space babe Lantern, succeeding him. Apparently the princess went berserk when she saw an Andalite honored on Earth." Spencer had won the silent effort to bring you out of your room and down the hallway to breakfast.

"Oh yeah, him. Didn't he cause the Green Revolution or something?"

Spencer nods enthusiastically. "Well, he met with a human who was trying to do it and basically told everyone to listen to him. He spent most of his time elsewhere. Got killed by the guys behind the Secret Invasion in the 90s, apparently one of the planets he helped the most. This Princess Starfire shouted, blaming him for unleashing a race of slavers into the galaxy."

"Interesting." You nod as you sit down. "So what would you suggest I eat?"

[X] It is time to go back to Rosewood. This vacation is proving rather stressful, and you are not coming back empty handed.

[X] You want to continue your vacation. There is still plenty to do here.

[X] You want to see if you can find where Thomas Morrow came from. That could be useful.

 

[DeAnno]

"Closer to seven, duh. Also, the news this morning. That new princess, Starfire, went crazy in DC. Attacked the Prince Seerow Memorial."

Click to shrink...

Andalite Scum!

Anyways, I think we should work on the skill Ethan wanted us to learn here in the first place. Maybe if we can see auras we'll be able to figure out if there are any other hidden robots around.

[X] You want to continue your vacation. There is still plenty to do here.
-[X] Work on Aura Sight. Read some of the book and try to use it around town if you can get it going.

 

[mc2rpg]

[X] You want to continue your vacation. There is still plenty to do here.
-[X] Work on Aura Sight. Read some of the book and try to use it around town if you can get it going.

 

[Xicree]

[X] You want to continue your vacation. There is still plenty to do here.
-[X] Work on Aura Sight. Read some of the book and try to use it around town if you can get it going.

 

[Nai]

[X] You want to continue your vacation. There is still plenty to do here.
-[X] Work on Aura Sight. Read some of the book and try to use it around town if you can get it going.

 

[Xicree]

Seerow's Kindness has indeed left a legacy of Sorrow ^_^

Heh. Animorphs cross over. Nice!

 

[Malcolmo]

[X] You want to continue your vacation. There is still plenty to do here.
-[X] Work on Aura Sight. Read some of the book and try to use it around town if you can get it going.

 

[Delcer]

[X] You want to continue your vacation. There is still plenty to do here.
-[X] Work on Aura Sight. Read some of the book and try to use it around town if you can get it going.

 

[StackedDeck]

[X] You want to see if you can find where Thomas Morrow came from. That could be useful.

I wanna see how far this rabbit hole goes.

 

[WyldCard4]

[X] You want to continue your vacation. There is still plenty to do here.
-[X] Work on Aura Sight. Read some of the book and try to use it around town if you can get it going.

Click to shrink...

Bar Harbor, Maine- July 16, 11: 06 EDT

You crack open the book and begin to read. The paper is cheap and for some inexplicable reason the book smells of oranges. You would have expected something British and low class like tobacco or beer, but oranges? You briefly wonder if this is some obscure test or a reaction due to your apparently having some kind of aspect of "orange" avarice, but it doesn't seem like Ethan.

The cover is purple and quite sparkly, with the back having the picture of a heavily bearded man who might be East Indian, or faking being East Indian, based on a name you can't imagine pronouncing.

Every sentient being, no matter the origin, has a "soul" according to the book. The citations for this include experiments by Amy Winston, PhD. You can't recall an Amy Winston, but the name seems annoyingly familiar. There are long digressions into history and scientific concepts that remind you very strongly of some UFO literature you have read. Either Ethan has the worst taste in textbooks, or the options were pretty bad.

Anything that feels an emotion releases tiny amounts of electromagnetic energy colored appropriately. Anything that has emotions about itself closes a kind of electromagnetic loop that vanishes spontaneously after death most of the time, though occasionally lies within the body or leaves it to create a "ghost." The electromagnetic energy of the soul works in a mystical pattern that is indistinguishable from consciousness and sensation.

The principle of aura sight is to become aware of your own soul's reactions to the souls of others. Given the connection between the soul and electromagnetism, literal light, it is usually easiest to translate these influences into the visual spectrum. Sound, smell, taste, and more evolved have been reported among users of The Powers.

Click to shrink...

In some ways the more you learn about this the more disturbing the idea becomes. You are literally giving yourself a mental disorder, synesthesia, to translate emotions into colors. Learning magic changes the learner. You are going to sacrifice a piece of who you were to become a witch.

You sigh and leave your room. Spencer seems very likely to ignore you as you try to put this book into practice. She is chatting happily with an old man you don't think is the relative she is visiting. She waves at you happily as you sit down and begin to half-listen.

You try to match her mood, her emotion, while standing near her, and then try to shift away from it rapidly. You focus on the color you are "feeling" at the time. Slowly you begin to notice discrepancies in Spencer, feel the disassociation between your assumptions and her feelings. Spencer and the old man, James something, don't pay too much attention.

You focus on the colors, hard. There are glimmers, now. Flashes along faces or the backs of heads. Once you train yourself into this state it is hard to pull out of. Spencer has waves of violet and a kind of churning of green, yellow, and blue.

The man is stranger, very bizarre, with a long trail of black. According to your book, that is the burning of someone associated with death, an imposition on the normal and healthy spectrum. Robots, zombies, ghosts, the suicidal, manifest the black light. The strange flickering of black, yellow and orange are disturbing. This is someone who has given up, someone who does not believe in his own free will. The book called such people "servants of Anti-Life."

In some ways aura sight is the easiest thing in the world once the ball gets rolling. All you have to do is pay more attention to the things you were already looking for. You are seeing another piece of people.

According to the book, there is a reason not everyone reads auras. Humans are a social race. Aura reading can throw off instincts, put someone half a step out of society. A thousand little social truths, lies that keep society functioning, can be torn away. For someone who cannot compensate, untrained, uneducated, it could be disastrous in a tribe of hunters and gatherers. The fact that this is in the middle of a long dissertation on orgone energy and the amazing scientific power of vitamins is not reassuring for the accuracy of these claims.

Mostly aura reading is neutral, mostly. Plenty of alien races use aura reading. But it is more often than not a disadvantage by itself, something that mothers do not teach their daughters and fathers do not teach their sons. If someone could master aura reading it is far more useful to keep it a secret. It is speculated that somewhere between a million and a billion people use it in day to day life on Earth.

Click to shrink...

The writer is clearly missing something deep, but you can't figure out what it is. Magic is marginalized too much on Earth for something so simple to be so accessible and magical. The whole thing gives you more of a headache than learning aura sight does. The author is probably just stupid.

Aura sight can usually tell someone with magical power from someone without it. They glow brighter and usually more intensely of a smaller band of colors. This is hardly a perfect test. Someone could glow brightly or singularly for any number of reasons, and magic users are rare. Many casters can even manipulate their auras. Learning more subtle tricks of the aura, to see a potential caster or cold read, will take much longer.

Click to shrink...

Bar Harbor, Maine- July 17, 14: 07 EDT

You think about a third of the people traveling through the town are mystically active. Thomas Morrow's head is still emotionally colored. Blue, green, and indigo burn brightly there, which strikes you as deeply disturbing. The lack of black energy surprises you more than anything else in the last few days.

Ethan's phone call to the payphone should have been impossible. Payphones are no longer capable of accepting phone calls, only making them. Organized crime and similarly nefarious people were clearly the people most likely to pickup from a payphone.

"Is this chaos magic or the regular kind?" You ask curiously.

"More a favor from a man who I would personally avoid naming under any circumstances. A man who would kill you if he heard I had used his name." Ethan sounds strangely serious.

"You have the weirdest friends," You say softly.

"He's not a friend at all. How is your vacation, Pet?" Ethan sounds a bit scared.

"Not bad. I have learned a lot and have a lot to share when I get back."

"You should get out of that place. I heard something bad is coming up from Salem. That town is not going to stay peaceful for long. I also have a bit of a job for you."

Anything that seems to be scaring Ethan Rayne seems like something to avoid. "What do you want me to do?"

"There is a woman in Hartford who recently had an auction for an unusual item that will complete a collection I have been making. I won the auction, and if you would pick it up on your way back it would save me a good deal of money to get someone I trust to get the thing." Ethan is in a better mood now.

"What is it?" Something a dangerous wizard has been collecting has to be interesting.

"A cactus, or something that is enough like a cactus that you need an advanced degree to care about the difference."

You feel a small burst of disappointment. "You have a cactus collection?"

"Chaos, dear. If it always made sense I wouldn't bother." Ethan's voice sounds quite amused, throaty and pleased.

You suppress a giggle.

Happy Harbor, Rhode Island- July 18, 11: 06 EDT

You are taking a mildly circuitous route in the hopes of not being followed. The changes to traffic are what tip you off. The suddenness, the confusion, the panic. This is the second time you have been in a car during a supervillain attack.

A car comes swirling into view and crashes a few feet behind your own non-stolen car. This looks a great deal worse than Icicle Jr. on the bridge.

[X] You run as fast as you can, throwing up distractions as you move.

[X] You need to get closer to the unknown threat. If you do that you can actually fight.

[X] You consider your options, and turn the ground into the same low friction hole as you often drop enemies into. You will dig deeper than he can follow, keep going in some random direction, and then come back up. That might work.

 

[StackedDeck]

[X] You need to get closer to the unknown threat. If you do that you can actually fight.

It probably has something to do with us, so let's check it out.

 

[Delcer]

According to the wiki:

July 18, 11:16 EDT: T.O. Morrow and Brom Stikk dispatch Mr. Twister to Happy Harbor to locate and reprogram Red Tornado. It encounters Robin, Aqualad, Kid Flash, Superboy, and Miss Martian instead and is destroyed. The remains are confiscated.

I don't think I actually watched this episode.

 

[Nai]

[X] You consider your options, and turn the ground into the same low friction hole as you often drop enemies into. You will dig deeper than he can follow, keep going in some random direction, and then come back up. That might work.

We need to deliver that cactus thing. Getting into a superhero/villain fight and possibly being recognized by any heros after our previous encounter with Red Arrow due to the kryptonite wouldn't be good.

 

[DeAnno]

We need to deliver that cactus thing. Getting into a superhero/villain fight and possibly being recognized by any heros after our previous encounter with Red Arrow due to the kryptonite wouldn't be good.

Click to shrink...

Just as a clarification, I don't think we have it yet. We were in Maine, and now we're moving through RI on our way into Connecticut to pick it up. The argument is still valid, but at least we don't need to defend the cactus right now.

 

[Xicree]

[X] You need to get closer to the unknown threat. If you do that you can actually fight.

 

[mc2rpg]

[X] You need to get closer to the unknown threat. If you do that you can actually fight.

 

[DeAnno]

[X] You need to get closer to the unknown threat. If you do that you can actually fight.

 

[WyldCard4]

[X] You need to get closer to the unknown threat. If you do that you can actually fight.

Click to shrink...

Happy Harbor, Rhode Island- July 18, 11: 14 EDT

More cars get thrown by. Some of the cars have people inside.

This is a lot worse than the bridge. You see a massive pale cloud turn into something like an inverted mountain before a long, thin cord of the stuff connects to the ground. The connection thickens rapidly and begins moving toward you. You are dealing with a tornado. It is wider than the whole highway after seconds and is moving straight towards you. The tornado churns up a huge amount of dirt and dust, with the long grey tendril keeping a connection to the clouds.

This is serious.

The hole you make, sliding into the ground, provides protection. You emerge to the side a minute later.

"Greetings. I am Mr. Twister."

He floats above you, and you can't help but feel the robot is smug about this despite a lack of a facial expression. You stay still as an illusion bolts, and he doesn't seem to notice.

"Figment," You supply, and you raise your hands. The flash rips the robot's eyes open, resulting in you being thrown back ten feet by a swirling jet of wind.

"I expected better. Is that all you have to offer?" Mr. Twister advances on you, still flying, which makes your ground manipulation tricks futile if you were to try them. You react by trying to severe the tubes running along his arms and back.

"Blue Meteor Rock? Who went insane to make you?" You ask with a feeling of mild disbelief.

"Not a soul." You try to deflect the next wind blast to no avail. The tubes are too dense, the air too thin, for you to work with. Your arms and back are bruised by now. Trying to scrape the metal off him is hard when he is keeping up this attack, and he is clearly holding back.

"LetHerGo!" A scream cuts through the wind and the sirens and the car alarms. You hear a massive metallic screech and a massive thud before you look up. Mr. Twister, an empty car, and a man in black are visible, with the man in black hanging for dear life off of one of the tubes.

"Go!" The same voice shouts. You can tell the voice is female, now. You glance and see two girls standing together. Both have dark hair. One has two thin strips of red across her face forming a cross that feeds into a black costume, with her pink Caucasian face and dark hair providing a stark contrast. Her arms and legs are largely exposed besides a small skirt. The whole thing is an athletic outfit.

The other girl's face is a mask of white makeup, as are her exposed forearms and neck. Very large boots and a familiar looking axe complete her simple costume with a one body piece of red tights.

"I think not." Another burst of force in the air throws you away from them. You soften the ground as you land, allowing yourself to spring up start boiling away near Mr. Twister's tubes. Those have to be a weak spot, right?

The man in black has landed a few feet from you, and you see the image on his shirt. Superman's symbol, the stylized fusion of the human letter S and the Kryptonian symbol for hope. He looks up with a rage in his eyes, looking straight past you and at Mr. Twister. Long, muscled arms are mostly exposed, and he is wearing a set of blue tights colored in the fashion of jeans.

"Are you a super?" He asks. You nod. "Then help!" He leaps back into the air and into Mr. Twister, delivering another punch as he fends off a huge mass of rock.

The girl in red is keeping a large distance between herself and Mr. Twister, while the girl in black charges him with a long dark spear. She doesn't even come close to getting near Twister.

All the melting you have managed so far has done is expose a lot more tubing. At this range, with him constantly moving, and no time to really focus between the noise and attacks you can't manage to just melt him down. Superboy howls as he is thrown back without even connecting a punch.

"Got a name?" The woman in red lands next to you.

"Figment," You answer.

"Echo." She thumps her chest. "Friend of yours?" She waves her axe at Mr. Twister.

"I never saw him before today. I think he was sent to kill me. I messed with Thomas Morrow recently, and I think he's responsible for that." Echo swings forward with her axe and lashes deep into a blast of air. This accomplishes absolutely nothing, as both of you are still thrown back.

"I thought that would work. Who?" You see the axe more closely now. It is very thin, with a very short spear coming out of the handle, all silver and red with the metal not being something you recognize.

"Thomas Morrow. Evil scientist, did things in the First and Second World Wars."

"Damn, he's old." Echo grabs you and leaps as Mr. Twister prepares another strike. So far the damage to him has not seemed to inhibit him.

Superboy and the levitating cars keep heading after Mr. Twister, but all the kid capes seem to have managed is to slow him down.

"I thought I would be facing the Justice League, not children."

"Can you hurt him?" Another cape slides up next to you.

"I'm the one boiling him." She nods. "Figment."

"Miss Martian," She answers. You glance at her and are briefly stunned. Her skin is green, and not makeup green, but pored and pigmented green. Red hair hangs from her head in a style that seems very deliberate. Her arms are mostly exposed with small sleeves, and her center is wrapped in a white cotton-like fabric. A blue cape and skirt are made of the same fabric, and a red x along her chest and belly complete the look.

"You're an alien," You whisper.

"So are you," She answers cheerfully. "M'gann M'orzz of Mars." <Ma'aleca'andra, actually. Terra Cimmeria is the area I grew up on, if you want to know that. Well, that's what it's called on Earth, but the translation's pretty accurate, Lands of Darkness.> "It's nice to meet another alien on Earth."

"Not exactly," You smile sadly.

The black suited cape lands with a thud near you. "Anyone got a plan?"

[X] Combat.
-[X] Write in.

[X] Escape.
-[X] Write in.

[X] Social.
-[X] Write in.

 

[mc2rpg]

It seems like if we can get close maybe we could transmute the scarf into something else. A powerful acid or explosive perhaps, but I am unsure if that would be enough.

 

[Xicree]

Oh look! It's Mrs Martian again. (And she doesn't realize it's us)



[X] Combat.
-[X] Have a flyer get us in the air or get Mr. Twister on the ground. Since we can't mess with the tubes, then we can mess with the harness he's wearing for the wind generators. We can try melting it off him or just converting it into an explosive. If that fails, then we can try messing with the components in the wind generators on his wrists to take away his main weapon and make our escape while they finish him off.

 

[StackedDeck]

[X] Combat.
-[X] Get me in close enough to touch those pipes on his back. I'll transmute them into something else... Nitroglycerine maybe. Um can someone fly me in and someone else keep me covered as for getting close?

 

[mc2rpg]

It was explicitely mentioned that the tubes are too dense for Ava to work with. I really think transmuting the scarf is the way to go if we are trying to transmute an explosive.

 

[DeAnno]

Brainstorming

[16:12:00] <@WyldCard4> I assumethey don't mean the blue kryptonite tubes that move with the guy?
[16:12:11] <mc2rpg> I think they do?
[16:12:17] <@DeAnno> I dont know what other pipes they could mean
[16:12:24] <@WyldCard4> ...
[16:12:35] <@WyldCard4> Someone point out that this is the thing Figment can't transmute?
[16:13:09] <@DeAnno> Maybe they want to trasmute the plastic/glass/whatever?
[16:13:19] <@DeAnno> I mean, I dont think it forms pipelike shapes naturally
[16:13:22] <@DeAnno> maybe its inside something
[16:14:16] <@DeAnno> she doesnt have line of effect to the pipe insides anyways
[16:14:20] <@DeAnno> just the outsides
[16:14:56] <@WyldCard4> The blue tubes are a general material that can't be transmuted, a Meteor Rock based compound thing
[16:15:53] <@DeAnno> this plan seems unlikely to go well then
[16:16:45] <@DeAnno> I had a thought earlier of transmuting the scarf into a magnet, but I dont think we can make one strong enough to matter
[16:17:04] <@DeAnno> Also its not clear the morrow roboclone pilot inside would be effected
[16:17:15] <@DeAnno> though we dont know about that IC
[16:17:37] <@DeAnno> Illusions wont work
[16:18:02] <@DeAnno> As for other resources, we have superboy, whose powers we know, MM, who is a martian, and two girls, one with a spear and one with an axe
[16:18:47] <mc2rpg> maybe put some of this in thread
[16:18:54] <@DeAnno> yeah thats reasonable

 

[Delcer]

If the heroes can get him out of the air, we can try melting him into the ground.